No More Learning

And if it may
be said that the insistence of racial circumstance in Homer gives him a
greater intensity of cordial, human inspiration, it must also be said
that the larger, less exacting conditions of Milton's mental life allow
his art to go into greater scope and more subtle complexity of
significance. Great epic poetry will always frankly accept the social
conditions within which it is composed; but the conditions contract and
intensify the conduct of the poem, or allow it to dilate and absorb
larger matter, according as the narrow primitive torrents of man's
spirit broaden into the greater but slower volume of civilized life. The
change is neither desirable nor undesirable; it is merely inevitable. It
means that epic poetry has kept up with the development of human life.

It is because of all this that we have heard a good deal about the
"authentic" epic getting "closer to its subject" than "literary" epic.
It seems, on the face of it, very improbable that there should be any
real difference here. No great poetry, of whatever kind, is conceivable
unless the subject has become integrated with the poet's mind and mood.
Milton is as close to his subject, Virgil to his, as Homer to Achilles
or the Saxon poet to Beowulf. What is really meant can be nothing but
the greater insistence of racial tradition in the "authentic" epics. The
subject of the _Iliad_ is the fighting of heroes, with all its
implications and consequences; the subject of the _Odyssey_ is adventure
and its opposite, the longing for safety and home; in _Beowulf_ it is
kingship--the ability to show man how to conquer the monstrous forces of
his world; and so on. Such were the subjects which an imperious racial
tradition pressed on the early epic poet, who delighted to be so
governed. These were the matters which his people could understand, of
which they could easily perceive the significance. For him, then, there
could be no other matters than these, or the like of these. But it is
not in such matters that a poet living in a time of less primitive and
more expanded consciousness would find the highest importance. For a
Roman, the chief matter for an epic poem would be Roman civilization;
for a Puritan, it would be the relations of God and man. When,
therefore, we consider how close to his subject an epic poet is, we must
be careful to be quite clear what his subject is. And if he has gone
beyond the immediate experiences of primitive society, we need not
expect him to be as close as the early poets were to the fury of battle
and the agony of wounds and the desolation of widows; or to the
sensation of exploring beyond the familiar regions; or to the
marsh-fiends and fire-drakes into which primitive imagination naturally
translated the terrible unknown powers of the world. We need not, in a
word, expect the "literary" epic to compete with the "authentic" epic;
for the fact is, that the purpose of epic poetry, and therefore the
nature of its subject, must continually develop. It is quite true that
the later epics take over, to a very great extent, the methods and
manners of the earlier poems; just as architecture hands on the style of
wooden structure to an age that builds in stone, and again imposes the
manners of stone construction on an age that builds in concrete and
steel. But, in the case of epic at any rate, this is not merely the
inertia of artistic convention. With the development of epic intention,
and the subsequent choosing of themes larger and subtler than what
common experience is wont to deal in, a certain duplicity becomes
inevitable. The real intention of the _Aeneid_, and the real intention
of _Paradise Lost_, are not easily brought into vivid apprehension. The
natural thing to do, then, would be to use the familiar substance of
early epic, but to use it as a convenient and pleasant solvent for the
novel intention. It is what has been done in all the great "literary"
epics. But hasty criticism, finding that where they resembled Homer
they seemed not so close to their matter, has taken this as a pervading
and unfortunate characteristic. It has not perceived that what in Homer
was the main business of the epic, has become in later epic a device.
Having so altered, it has naturally lost in significance; but in the
greatest instances of later epic, that for which the device was used has
been as profoundly absorbed into the poet's being as Homer's matter was
into his being. It may be noted, too, that a corresponding change has
also taken place in the opposite direction. As Homer's chief substance
becomes a device in later epic, so a device of Homer's becomes in later
epic the chief substance. Homer's supernatural machinery may be reckoned
as a device--a device to heighten the general style and action of his
poems; the _significance_ of Homer must be found among his heroes, not
among his gods. But with Milton, it has become necessary to entrust to
the supernatural action the whole aim and purport of the poem.

On the whole, then, there is no reason why "literary" epic should not be
as close to its subject as "authentic" epic; there is every reason why
both kinds should be equally close. But in testing whether they actually
are equally close, we have to remember that in the later epic it has
become necessary to use the ostensible subject as a vehicle for the real
subject. And who, with any active sympathy for poetry, can say that
Milton felt his theme with less intensity than Homer? Milton is not so
close to his fighting angels as Homer is to his fighting men; but the
war in heaven is an incident in Milton's figurative expression of
something that has become altogether himself--the mystery of individual
existence in universal existence, and the accompanying mystery of sin,
of individual will inexplicably allowed to tamper with the divinely
universal will. Milton, of course, in closeness to his subject and in
everything else, stands as supreme above the other poets of literary
epic as Homer does above the poets of authentic epic. But what is true
of Milton is true, in less degree, of the others. If there is any good
in them, it is primarily because they have got very close to their
subjects: that is required not only for epic, but for all poetry.
Coleridge, in a famous estimate put twenty years for the shortest period
in which an epic could be composed; and of this, ten years were to be
for preparation. He meant that not less than ten years would do for the
poet to fill all his being with the theme; and nothing else will serve,
It is well known how Milton brooded over his subject, how Virgil
lingered over his, how Camoen. carried the _Luisads_ round the world
with him, with what furious intensity Tasso gave himself to writing
_Jerusalem Delivered_. We may suppose, perhaps, that the poets of
"authentic" epic had a somewhat easier task. There was no need for them
to be "long choosing and beginning late. " The pressure of racial
tradition would see that they chose the right sort of subject; would
see, too, that they lived right in the heart of their subject. For the
poet of "literary" epic, however, it is his own consciousness that must
select the kind of theme which will fulfil the epic intention for his
own day; it is his own determination and studious endurance that will
draw the theme into the secrets of his being. If he is not capable of
getting close to his subject, we should not for that reason call his
work "literary" epic. It would put him in the class of Milton, the most
literary of all poets. We must simply call his stuff bad epic. There is
plenty of it. Southey is the great instance. Southey would decide to
write an epic about Spain, or India, or Arabia, or America. Next he
would read up, in several languages, about his proposed subject; that
would take him perhaps a year. Then he would versify as much strange
information as he could remember; that might take a few months. The
result is deadly; and because he was never anywhere near his subject. It
is for the same reason that the unspeakable labours of Blackmore, Glover
and Wilkie, and Voltaire's ridiculous _Henriade_, have gone to pile up
the rubbish-heaps of literature.

So far, supposed differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic
have resolved themselves into little more than signs of development in
epic intention; the change has not been found to produce enough artistic
difference between early and later epic to warrant anything like a
division into two distinct species. The epic, whether "literary" or
"authentic," is a single form of art; but it is a form capable of
adapting itself to the altering requirements of prevalent consciousness.
In addition, however, to differences in general conception, there are
certain mechanical differences which should be just noticed. The first
epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be
read. It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of
readers. This in itself would be enough to rule out themes remote from
common experience, supposing any such were to suggest themselves to the
primitive epic poet. Perhaps, indeed, we should not be far wrong if we
saw a chief reason for the pressure of surrounding tradition on the
early epic in this very fact, that it is poetry meant for recitation.
Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen
to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected
things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the
re-creation of tired hours. Traditional manner would be equally
difficult to avoid; for it is a tradition that plainly embodies the
requirements, fixed by experience, of _recited_ poetry. Those features
of it which make for tedium when it is read--repetition, stock epithets,
set phrases for given situations--are the very things best suited, with
their recurring well-known syllables, to fix the attention of listeners
more firmly, or to stir it when it drowses; at the least they provide a
sort of recognizable scaffolding for the events, and it is remarkable
how easily the progress of events may be missed when poetry is
declaimed. Indeed, if the primitive epic poet could avoid some of the
anxieties peculiar to the composition of literary epic, he had others to
make up for it. He had to study closely the delicate science of holding
auricular attention when once he had got it; and probably he would have
some difficulty in getting it at all. The really great poet challenges
it, like Homer, with some tremendous, irresistible opening; and in this
respect the magnificent prelude to _Beowulf_ may almost be put beside
Homer. But lesser poets have another way. That prolixity at the
beginning of many primitive epics, their wordy deliberation in getting
under way, is probably intentional. The _Song of Roland_, for instance,
begins with a long series of exceedingly dull stanzas; to a reader, the
preliminaries of the story seem insufferably drawn out. But by the time
the reciter had got through this unimportant dreariness, no doubt his
audience had settled down to listen. The _Chanson d'Antioche_ contains
perhaps the most illuminating admission of this difficulty. In the first
"Chant," the first section opens:[4]

Seigneurs, faites silence; et que tout bruit cesse,
Si vous voulez entendre une glorieuse chanson.
Aucun jongleur ne vous en dira une meilleure.

Then some vaguely prelusive lines. But the audience is clearly not quite
ready yet, for the second section begins:

Barons, ecoutez-moi, et cessez vos querelles!
Je vous dirai une tres-belle chanson.

And after some further prelude, the section ends:

Ici commence la chanson ou il y a tant a apprendre.

The "Chanson" does, indeed, make some show of beginning in the third
section, but it still moves with a cautious and prelusive air, as if
anxious not to launch out too soon. And this was evidently prudent, for
when the fourth section opens, direct exhortation to the audience has
again become necessary:

Maintenant, seigneurs, ecoutez ce que dit l'Ecriture.

And once more in the fifth section:

Barons, ecoutez un excellent couplet.

In the sixth, the jongleur is getting desperate:

Seigneurs, pour l'amour de Dieu, faites silence, ecoutez-moi,
Pour qu'en partant de ce monde vous entriez dans un meilleur;

but after this exclamation he has his way, though the story proper is
still a good way off. Perhaps not all of these hortatory stanzas were
commonly used; any or all of them could certainly be omitted without
damaging the poem. But they were there to be used, according to the
judgment of the jongleur and the temper of his audience, and their
presence in the poem is very suggestive of the special difficulties in
the art of rhapsodic poetry.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry
meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal
beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. Vigorous but controlled
imagination, formative power, insight into the significance of
things--these are qualities which a poet must eminently possess; but
these are qualities which may also be eminently possessed by men who
cannot claim the title of poet. The real differentia of the poet is his
command over the secret magic of words. Others may have as delighted a
sense of this magic, but it is only the poet who can master it and do
what he likes with it. And next to the invention of speaking itself, the
most important invention for the poet has been the invention of writing
and reading; for this has added immensely to the scope of his mastery
over words. No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for
the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken
word only, that his art is founded. But he trusts his reader to do as he
himself does--to receive written words always as the code of spoken
words. To do so has wonderfully enlarged his technical opportunities;
for apprehension is quicker and finer through the eye than through the
ear. After the invention of reading, even poetry designed primarily for
declamation (like drama or lyric) has depths and subtleties of art which
were not possible for the primitive poet. Accordingly we find that, on
the whole, in comparison with "literary" epic, the texture of
"authentic" epic is flat and dull. The story may be superb, and its
management may be superb; but the words in which the story lives do not
come near the grandeur of Milton, or the exquisiteness of Virgil, or the
deliciousness of Tasso. Indeed, if we are to say what is the real
difference between _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, we must simply say
that _Beowulf_ is not such good poetry. There is, of course, one
tremendous exception; Homer is the one poet of authentic epic who had
sufficient genius to make unfailingly, nobly beautiful poetry within the
strict and hard conditions of purely auricular art. Compare Homer's
ambrosial glory with the descent tap-water of Hesiod; compare his
continuous burnished gleam of wrought metal with the sparse grains that
lie in the sandy diction of all the "authentic" epics of the other
nations. And, by all ancient accounts, the other early Greek epics would
not fare much better in the comparison. Homer's singularity in this
respect is overwhelming; but it is frequently forgotten, and especially
by those who think to help in the Homeric question by comparing him with
other "authentic" epics. Supposing (we can only just suppose it) a case
were made out for the growth rather than the individual authorship of
some "authentic" epic other than Homer; it could never have any bearing
on the question of Homeric authorship, because no early epic is
comparable with the _poetry_ of Homer. Nothing, indeed, is comparable
with the poetry of Homer, except poetry for whose individual authorship
history unmistakably vouches.

So we cannot say that Homer was not as deliberate a craftsman in words
as Milton himself. The scope of his craft was more restricted, as his
repetitions and stock epithets show; he was restricted by the fact that
he composed for recitation, and the auricular appreciation of diction is
limited, the nature of poetry obeying, in the main, the nature of those
for whom it is composed. But this is just a case in which genius
transcends technical scope. The effects Homer produced with his methods
were as great as any effects produced by later and more elaborate
methods, after poetry began to be read as well as heard. But neither
must we say that the other poets of "authentic" epic were not deliberate
craftsmen in words. Poets will always get as much beauty out of words as
they can. The fact that so often in the early epics a magnificent
subject is told, on the whole, in a lumpish and tedious diction, is not
to be explained by any contempt for careful art, as though it were a
thing unworthy of such heroic singers; it is simply to be explained by
lack of such genius as is capable of transcending the severe limitations
of auricular poetry. And we may well believe that only the rarest and
most potent kind of genius could transcend such limitations.

In summary, then, we find certain conceptual differences and certain
mechanical differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic. But
these are not such as to enable us to say that there is, artistically,
any real difference between the two kinds. Rather, the differences
exhibit the changes we might expect in an art that has kept up with
consciousness developing, and civilization becoming more intricate.
"Literary" epic is as close to its subject as "authentic"; but, as a
general rule, "authentic" epic, in response to its surrounding needs,
has a simple and concrete subject, and the closeness of the poet to this
is therefore more obvious than in "literary" epic, which (again in
response to surrounding needs) has been driven to take for subject some
great abstract idea and display this in a concrete but only ostensible
subject. Then in craftsmanship, the two kinds of epic are equally
deliberate, equally concerned with careful art; but "literary" epic has
been able to take such advantage of the habit of reading that, with the
single exception of Homer, it has achieved a diction much more
answerable to the greatness of epic matter than the "authentic" poems.
We may, then, in a general survey, regard epic poetry as being in all
ages essentially the same kind of art, fulfilling always a similar,
though constantly developing, intention. Whatever sort of society he
lives in, whether he be surrounded by illiterate heroism or placid
culture, the epic poet has a definite function to perform. We see him
accepting, and with his genius transfiguring, the general circumstance
of his time; we see him symbolizing, in some appropriate form, whatever
sense of the significance of life he feels acting as the accepted
unconscious metaphysic of his age. To do this, he takes some great story
which has been absorbed into the prevailing consciousness of his people.
As a rule, though not quite invariably, the story will be of things
which are, or seem, so far back in the past, that anything may credibly
happen in it; so imagination has its freedom, and so significance is
displayed. But quite invariably, the materials of the story will have an
unmistakable air of actuality; that is, they come profoundly out of
human experience, whether they declare legendary heroism, as in Homer
and Virgil, or myth, as in _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, or actual
history, as in Lucan and Camoens and Tasso. And he sets out this story
and its significance in poetry as lofty and as elaborate as he can
compass. That, roughly, is what we see the epic poets doing, whether
they be "literary" or "authentic"; and if this can be agreed on, we
should now have come tolerably close to a definition of epic poetry.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: From the version of the Marquise de Sainte-Aulaire. ]




III.


THE NATURE OF EPIC

Rigid definitions in literature are, however, dangerous. At bottom, it
is what we feel, not what we think, that makes us put certain poems
together and apart from others; and feelings cannot be defined, but only
related. If we define a poem, we say what we think about it; and that
may not sufficiently imply the essential thing the poem does for us.
Hence the definition is liable either to be too strict, or to admit work
which does not properly satisfy the criterion of feeling. It seems
probable that, in the last resort, classification in literature rests on
that least tangible, least definable matter, style; for style is the
sign of the poem's spirit, and it is the spirit that we feel. If we can
get some notion of how those poems, which we call epic, agree with one
another in style, it is likely we shall be as close as may be to a
definition of epic. I use the word "style," of course, in its largest
sense--manner of conception as well as manner of composition.

An easy way to define epic, though not a very profitable way, would be
to say simply, that an epic is a poem which produces feelings similar to
those produced by _Paradise Lost_ or the _Iliad_, _Beowulf_ or the _Song
of Roland_. Indeed, you might include all the epics of Europe in this
definition without losing your breath; for the epic poet is the rarest
kind of artist. And while it is not a simple matter to say off-hand what
it is that is common to all these poems, there seems to be general
acknowledgment that they are clearly separable from other kinds of
poetry; and this although the word epic has been rather badly abused.
For instance, _The Faery Queene_ and _La Divina Commedia_ have been
called epic poems; but I do not think that anyone could fail to admit,
on a little pressure, that the experience of reading _The Faery Queene_
or _La Divina Commedia_ is not in the least like the experience of
reading _Paradise Lost_ or the _Iliad_. But as a poem may have lyrical
qualities without being a lyric, so a poem may have epical qualities
without being an epic. In all the poems which the world has agreed to
call epics, there is a story told, and well told. But Dante's poem
attempts no story at all, and Spenser's, though it attempts several,
does not tell them well--it scarcely attempts to make the reader believe
in them, being much more concerned with the decoration and the
implication of its fables than with the fables themselves. What epic
quality, detached from epic proper, do these poems possess, then, apart
from the mere fact that they take up a great many pages? It is simply a
question of their style--the style of their conception and the style of
their writing; the whole style of their imagination, in fact. They take
us into a region in which nothing happens that is not deeply
significant; a dominant, noticeably symbolic, purpose presides over each
poem, moulds it greatly and informs it throughout.

This takes us some little way towards deciding the nature of epic. It
must be a story, and the story must be told well and greatly; and,
whether in the story itself or in the telling of it, significance must
be implied. Does that mean that the epic must be allegorical? Many have
thought so; even Homer has been accused of constructing allegories. But
this is only a crude way of emphasizing the significance of epic; and
there is a vast deal of difference between a significant story and an
allegorical story. Reality of substance is a thing on which epic poetry
must always be able to rely. Not only because Spenser does not tell his
stories very well, but even more because their substance (not, of
course, their meaning) is deliciously and deliberately unreal, _The
Faery Queene_ is outside the strict sense of the word epic. Allegory
requires material ingeniously manipulated and fantastic; what is more
important, it requires material invented by the poet himself. That is a
long way from the solid reality of material which epic requires. Not
manipulation, but imaginative transfiguration of material; not
invention, but selection of existing material appropriate to his genius,
and complete absorption of it into his being; that is how the epic poet
works. Allegory is a beautiful way of inculcating and asserting some
special significance in life; but epic has a severer task, and a more
impressive one. It has not to say, Life in the world _ought_ to mean
this or that; it has to show life unmistakably _being_ significant. It
does not gloss or interpret the fact of life, but re-creates it and
charges the fact itself with the poet's own sense of ultimate values.
This will be less precise than the definite assertions of allegory; but
for that reason it will be more deeply felt. The values will be
emotional and spiritual rather than intellectual. And they will be the
poet's own only because he has made them part of his being; in him
(though he probably does not know it) they will be representative of the
best and most characteristic life of his time. That does not mean that
the epic poet's image of life's significance is of merely contemporary
or transient importance. No stage through which the general
consciousness of men has gone can ever be outgrown by men; whatever
happens afterwards does not displace it, but includes it. We could not
do without _Paradise Lost_ nowadays; but neither can we do without the
_Iliad_. It would not, perhaps, be far from the truth, if it were even
said that the significance of _Paradise Lost_ cannot be properly
understood unless the significance of the _Iliad_ be understood.

The prime material of the epic poet, then, must be real and not
invented. But when the story of the poem is safely concerned with some
reality, he can, of course, graft on this as much appropriate invention
as he pleases; it will be one of his ways of elaborating his main,
unifying purpose--and to call it "unifying" is to assume that, however
brilliant his surrounding invention may be, the purpose will always be
firmly implicit in the central subject. Some of the early epics manage
to do without any conspicuous added invention designed to extend what
the main subject intends; but such nobly simple, forthright narrative as
_Beowulf_ and the _Song of Roland_ would not do for a purpose slightly
more subtle than what the makers of these ringing poems had in mind. The
reality of the central subject is, of course, to be understood broadly.
It means that the story must be founded deep in the general experience
of men. A decisive campaign is not, for the epic poet, any more real
than a legend full of human truth. All that the name of Caesar suggests
is extremely important for mankind; so is all that the name of Satan
suggests: Satan, in this sense, is as real as Caesar. And, as far as
reality is concerned, there is nothing to choose between the Christians
taking Jerusalem and the Greeks taking Troy; nor between Odysseus
sailing into fairyland and Vasco da Gama sailing round the world. It is
certainly possible that a poet might devise a story of such a kind that
we could easily take it as something which might have been a real human
experience. But that is not enough for the epic poet. He needs something
which everyone knows about, something which indisputably, and
admittedly, _has been_ a human experience; and even Grendel, the fiend
of the marshes, was, we can clearly see, for the poet of _Beowulf_ a
figure profoundly and generally accepted as not only true but real;
what, indeed, can be more real for poetry than a devouring fiend which
lives in pestilent fens? And the reason why epic poetry so imperiously
demands reality of subject is clear; it is because such poetry has
symbolically to re-create the actual fact and the actual particulars of
human existence in terms of a general significance--the reader must feel
that life itself has submitted to plastic imagination. No fiction will
ever have the air, so necessary for this epic symbolism, not merely of
representing, but of unmistakably _being_, human experience. This might
suggest that history would be the thing for an epic poet; and so it
would be, if history were superior to legend in poetic reality. But,
simply as substance, there is nothing to choose between them; while
history has the obvious disadvantage of being commonly too strict in the
manner of its events to allow of creative freedom. Its details will
probably be so well known, that any modification of them will draw more
attention to discrepancy with the records than to achievement thereby of
poetic purpose. And yet modification, or at least suppression and
exaggeration, of the details of history will certainly be necessary. Not
to declare what happened, and the results of what happened, is the
object of an epic; but to accept all this as the mere material in which
a single artistic purpose, a unique, vital symbolism may be shaped. And
if legend, after passing for innumerable years through popular
imagination, still requires to be shaped at the hands of the epic poet,
how much more must the crude events of history require this! For it is
not in events as they happen, however notably, that man may see symbols
of vital destiny, but in events as they are transformed by plastic
imagination.

Yet it has been possible to use history as the material of great epic
poetry; Camoens and Tasso did this--the chief subject of the _Lusiads_
is even contemporary history. But evidently success in these cases was
due to the exceptional and fortunate fact that the fixed notorieties of
history were combined with a strange and mysterious geography. The
remoteness and, one might say, the romantic possibilities of the places
into which Camoens and Tasso were led by their themes, enable
imagination to deal pretty freely with history. But in a little more
than ten years after Camoens glorified Portugal in an historical epic,
Don Alonso de Ercilla tried to do the same for Spain. He puts his action
far enough from home: the Spaniards are conquering Chili. But the world
has grown smaller and more familiar in the interval: the astonishing
things that could easily happen in the seas of Madagascar cannot now
conveniently happen in Chili. The _Araucana_ is versified history, not
epic. That is to say, the action has no deeper significance than any
other actual warfare; it has not been, and could not have been, shaped
to any symbolic purpose. Long before Tasso and Camoens and Ercilla, two
Scotchmen had attempted to put patriotism into epic form; Barbour had
written his _Bruce_ and Blind Harry his _Wallace_. But what with the
nearness of their events, and what with the rusticity of their authors,
these tolerable, ambling poems are quite unable to get the better of the
hardness of history. Probably the boldest attempt to make epic of
well-known, documented history is Lucan's _Pharsalia_. It is a brilliant
performance, and a deliberate effort to carry on the development of
epic. At the very least it has enriched the thought of humanity with
some imperishable lines. But it is true, what the great critic said of
it: the _Pharsalia_ partakes more of the nature of oratory than of
poetry. It means that Lucan, in choosing history, chose something which
he had to declaim about, something which, at best, he could
imaginatively realize; but not something which he could imaginatively
re-create. It is quite different with poems like the _Song of Roland_.
They are composed in, or are drawn immediately out of, an heroic age; an
age, that is to say, when the idea of history has not arisen, when
anything that happens turns inevitably, and in a surprisingly short
time, into legend.
Thus, an unimportant, probably unpunished, attack by
Basque mountaineers on the Emperor's rear-guard has become, in the _Song
of Roland_, a great infamy of Saracenic treachery, which must be greatly
avenged.

Such, in a broad description, is the nature of epic poetry. To define it
with any narrower nicety would probably be rash. We have not been
discovering what an epic poem ought to be, but roughly examining what
similarity of quality there is in all those poems which we feel,
strictly attending to the emotional experience of reading them, can be
classed together and, for convenience, termed epic. But it is not much
good having a name for this species of poetry if it is given as well to
poems of quite a different nature. It is not much good agreeing to call
by the name of epic such poems as the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_,
_Beowulf_ and the _Song of Roland_, _Paradise Lost_ and _Gerusalemme
Liberata_, if epic is also to be the title for _The Faery Queene_ and
_La Divina Commedia_, _The Idylls of the King_ and _The Ring and the
Book_. But I believe most of the importance in the meaning of the word
epic, when it is reasonably used, will be found in what is written
above. Apart from the specific form of epic, it shares much of its
ultimate intention with the greatest kind of drama (though not with all
drama). And just as drama, whatever grandeur of purpose it may attempt,
must be a good play, so epic must be a good story. It will tell its tale
both largely and intensely, and the diction will be carried on the
volume of a powerful, flowing metre. To distinguish, however, between
merely narrative poetry, and poetry which goes beyond being mere
narrative into the being of epic, must often be left to feeling which
can scarcely be precisely analysed. A curious instance of the
difficulty in exactly defining epic (but not in exactly deciding what is
epic) may be found in the work of William Morris. Morris left two long
narrative poems, _The Life and Death of Jason_, and _The Story of Sigurd
the Volsung_.

I do not think anyone need hesitate to put _Sigurd_ among the epics; but
I do not think anyone who will scrupulously compare the experience of
reading _Jason_ with the experience of reading _Sigurd_, can help
agreeing that _Jason_ should be kept out of the epics. There is nothing
to choose between the subjects of the two poems. For an Englishman,
Greek mythology means as much as the mythology of the North. And I
should say that the bright, exact diction and the modest metre of
_Jason_ are more interesting and attractive than the diction, often
monotonous and vague, and the metre, often clumsily vehement, of
_Sigurd_. Yet for all that it is the style of _Sigurd_ that puts it with
the epics and apart from _Jason_; for style goes beyond metre and
diction, beyond execution, into conception. The whole imagination of
_Sigurd_ is incomparably larger than that of _Jason_. In _Sigurd_, you
feel that the fashioning grasp of imagination has not only seized on the
show of things, and not only on the physical or moral unity of things,
but has somehow brought into the midst of all this, and has kneaded into
the texture of it all, something of the ultimate and metaphysical
significance of life. You scarcely feel that in _Jason_.

Yes, epic poetry must be an affair of evident largeness. It was well
said, that "the praise of an epic poem is to feign a person exceeding
Nature. " "Feign" here means to imagine; and imagine does not mean to
invent. But, like most of the numerous epigrams that have been made
about epic poetry, the remark does not describe the nature of epic, but
rather one of the conspicuous signs that that nature is fulfilling
itself. A poem which is, in some sort, a summation for its time of the
values of life, will inevitably concern itself with at least one figure,
and probably with several, in whom the whole virtue, and perhaps also
the whole failure, of living seems superhumanly concentrated. A story
weighted with the epic purpose could not proceed at all, unless it were
expressed in persons big enough to support it. The subject, then, as the
epic poet uses it, will obviously be an important one. Whether, apart
from the way the poet uses it, the subject ought to be an important one,
would not start a very profitable discussion. Homer has been praised for
making, in the _Iliad_, a first-rate poem out of a second-rate subject.
It is a neat saying; but it seems unlikely that anything really
second-rate should turn into first-rate epic. I imagine Homer would have
been considerably surprised, if anyone had told him that the vast train
of tragic events caused by the gross and insupportable insult put by
Agamemnon, the mean mind in authority, on Achilles, the typical
hero--that this noble and profoundly human theme was a second-rate
subject. At any rate, the subject must be of capital importance in its
treatment. It must symbolize--not as a particular and separable
assertion, but at large and generally--some great aspect of vital
destiny, without losing the air of recording some accepted reality of
human experience, and without failing to be a good story; and the
pressure of high purpose will inform diction and metre, as far, at
least, as the poet's verbal art will let it.

The usual attempts at stricter definition of epic than anything this
chapter contains, are either, in spite of what they try for, so vague
that they would admit almost any long stretch of narrative poetry; or
else they are based on the accidents or devices of epic art; and in that
case they are apt to exclude work which is essentially epic because
something inessential is lacking. It has, for instance, been seriously
debated, whether an epic should not contain a catalogue of heroes. Other
things, which epics have been required to contain, besides much that is
not worth mentioning,[5] are a descent into hell and some supernatural
machinery. Both of these are obviously devices for enlarging the scope
of the action. The notion of a visit to the ghosts has fascinated many
poets, and Dante elaborated this Homeric device into the main scheme of
the greatest of non-epical poems, as Milton elaborated the other
Homeric device into the main scheme of the greatest of literary epics.
But a visit to the ghosts is, of course, like games or single combat or
a set debate, merely an incident which may or may not be useful.
Supernatural machinery, however, is worth some short discussion here,
though it must be alluded to further in the sequel. The first and
obvious thing to remark is, that an unquestionably epic effect can be
given without any supernatural machinery at all. The poet of _Beowulf_
has no need of it, for instance. A Christian redactor has worked over
the poem, with more piety than skill; he can always be detected, and his
clumsy little interjections have nothing to do with the general tenour
of the poem. The human world ends off, as it were, precipitously; and
beyond there is an endless, impracticable abyss in which dwells the
secret governance of things, an unknowable and implacable
fate--"Wyrd"--neither malign nor benevolent, but simply inscrutable. The
peculiar cast of noble and desolate courage which this bleak conception
gives to the poem is perhaps unique among the epics.

But very few epic poets have ventured to do without supernatural
machinery of some sort. And it is plain that it must greatly assist the
epic purpose to surround the action with immortals who are not only
interested spectators of the event, but are deeply implicated in it;
nothing could more certainly liberate, or at least more appropriately
decorate, the significant force of the subject. We may leave Milton out,
for there can be no question about _Paradise Lost_ here; the
significance of the subject is not only liberated by, it entirely exists
in, the supernatural machinery. But with the other epic poets, we should
certainly expect them to ask us for our belief in their immortals. That,
however, is just what they seem curiously careless of doing. The
immortals are there, they are the occasion of splendid poetry; they do
what they are intended to do--they declare, namely, by their speech and
their action, the importance to the world of what is going on in the
poem. Only--there is no obligation to believe in them; and will not that
mean, no obligation to believe in their concern for the subject, and all
that that implies? Homer begins this paradox. Think of that lovely and
exquisitely mischievous passage in the _Iliad_ called _The Cheating of
Zeus_. The salvationist school of commentators calls this an
interpolation; but the spirit of it is implicit throughout the whole of
Homer's dealing with the gods; whenever, at least, he deals with them at
length, and not merely incidentally. Not to accept that spirit is not to
accept Homer. The manner of describing the Olympian family at the end of
the first book is quite continuous throughout, and simply reaches its
climax in the fourteenth book. Nobody ever believed in Homer's gods, as
he must believe in Hektor and Achilles. (Puritans like Xenophanes were
annoyed not with the gods for being as Homer described them, but with
Homer for describing them as he did. ) Virgil is more decorous; but can
we imagine Virgil praying, or anybody praying, to the gods of the
_Aeneid_? The supernatural machinery of Camoens and Tasso is frankly
absurd; they are not only careless of credibility, but of sanity. Lucan
tried to do without gods; but his witchcraft engages belief even more
faintly than the mingled Paganism and Christianity of Camoens, and
merely shows how strongly the most rationalistic of epic poets felt the
value of some imaginary relaxation in the limits of human existence. Is
it, then, only as such a relaxation that supernatural machinery is
valuable? Or only as a superlative kind of ornament? It is surely more
than that. In spite of the fact that we are not seriously asked to
believe in it, it does beautifully and strikingly crystallize the poet's
determination to show us things that go past the reach of common
knowledge. But by putting it, whether instinctively or deliberately, on
a lower plane of credibility than the main action, the poet obeys his
deepest and gravest necessity: the necessity of keeping his poem
emphatically an affair of recognizable _human_ events. It is of man, and
man's purpose in the world, that the epic poet has to sing; not of the
purpose of gods. The gods must only illustrate man's destiny; and they
must be kept within the bounds of beautiful illustration. But it
requires a finer genius than most epic poets have possessed, to keep
supernatural machinery just sufficiently fanciful without missing its
function. Perhaps only Homer and Virgil have done that perfectly.
Milton's revolutionary development marks a crisis in the general process
of epic so important, that it can only be discussed when that process is
considered, in the following chapter, as a whole.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Such as similes and episodes. It is as if a man were to
say, the essential thing about a bridge is that it should be painted. ]




IV.


THE EPIC SERIES

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art
has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which
it was made. But the development of human society does not go straight
forward; and the epic process will therefore be a recurring process, the
series a recurring series--though not in exact repetition. Thus, the
Homeric poems, the _Argonautica_, the _Aeneid_, the _Pharsalia_, and the
later Latin epics, form one series: the _Aeneid_ would be the climax of
the series, which thence declines, were it not that the whole originates
with the incomparable genius of Homer--a fact which makes it seem to
decline from start to finish. Then the process begins again, and again
fulfils itself, in the series which goes from _Beowulf_, the _Song of
Roland_, and the _Nibelungenlied_, through Camoens and Tasso up to
Milton. And in this case Milton is plainly the climax. There is nothing
like _Paradise Lost_ in the preceding poems, and epic poetry has done
nothing since but decline from that towering glory.

But it will be convenient not to make too much of chronology, in a
general account of epic development. It has already appeared that the
duties of all "authentic" epic are broadly the same, and the poems of
this kind, though two thousand years may separate their occurrence, may
be properly brought together as varieties of one sub-species. "Literary"
epic differs much more in the specific purpose of its art, as civilized
societies differ much more than heroic, and also as the looser _milieu_
of a civilization allows a less strictly traditional exercise of
personal genius than an heroic age. Still, it does not require any
manipulation to combine the "literary" epics from both series into a
single process. Indeed, if we take Homer, Virgil and Milton as the
outstanding events in the whole progress of epic poetry, and group the
less important poems appropriately round these three names, we shall not
be far from the _ideal truth_ of epic development. We might say, then,
that Homer begins the whole business of epic, imperishably fixes its
type and, in a way that can never be questioned, declares its artistic
purpose; Virgil perfects the type; and Milton perfects the purpose.
Three such poets are not, heaven knows, summed up in a phrase; I mean
merely to indicate how they are related one to another in the general
scheme of epic poetry. For discriminating their merits, deciding their
comparative eminence, I have no inclination; and fortunately it does not
come within the requirements of this essay. Indeed, I think the reader
will easily excuse me, if I touch very slightly on the poetic manner, in
the common and narrow sense, of the poets whom I shall have to mention;
since these qualities have been so often and sometimes so admirably
dealt with. It is at the broader aspects of artistic purpose that I wish
to look.

"From Homer," said Goethe, "I learn every day more clearly, that in our
life here above ground we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell. " It is
rather a startling sentence at first. That poetry which, for us, in
Thoreau's excellent words, "lies in the east of literature," scarcely
suggests, in the usual opinion of it, Hell. We are tempted to think of
Homer as the most fortunate of poets. It seems as if he had but to open
his mouth and speak, to create divine poetry; and it does not lessen our
sense of his good fortune when, on looking a little closer, we see that
this is really the result of an unerring and unfailing art, an
extraordinarily skilful technique. He had it entirely at his command;
and he exercised it in a language in which, though it may be singularly
artificial and conventional, we can still feel the wonder of its
sensuous beauty and the splendour of its expressive power. It is a
language that seems alive with eagerness to respond to imagination. Open
Homer anywhere, and the casual grandeur of his untranslatable language
appears; such lines as:

amphi de naees
smerdaleon konabaesan ausanton hup' Achaion. [6]

That, you might say, is Homer at his ease; when he exerts himself you
get a miracle like:

su den strophalingi koniaes
keiso megas megalosti, lelasmenos hipposunaon. [7]

It seems the art of one who walked through the world of things endowed
with the senses of a god, and able, with that perfection of effort that
looks as if it were effortless, to fashion his experience into
incorruptible song; whether it be the dance of flies round a byre at
milking-time, or a forest-fire on the mountains at night. The shape and
clamour of waves breaking on the beach in a storm is as irresistibly
recorded by Homer as the gleaming flowers which earth put forth to be
the bed of Zeus and Hera in Gargaros, when a golden cloud was their
coverlet, and Sleep sat on a pine tree near by in the likeness of a
murmuring night-jar. It is an art so balanced, that when it tells us,
with no special emphasis, how the Trojans came on with a din like the
clangour of a flock of cranes, but the Achaians came on in silence, the
temper of the two hosts is discriminated for the whole poem; or, in the
supreme instance, when it tells us how the old men looked at Helen and
said, "No wonder the young men fight for her! " then Helen's beauty must
be accepted by the faith of all the world. The particulars of such
poetry could be enumerated for pages; and this is the poetry which is
filled, more than any other literature, in the _Iliad_ with the nobility
of men and women, in the _Odyssey_ with the light of natural magic. And
think of those gods of Homer's; he is the one poet who has been able to
make the dark terrors of religion beautiful, harmless and quietly
entertaining. It is easy to read this poetry and simply _enjoy_ it; it
is easy to say, the man whose spirit held this poetry must have been
divinely happy. But this is the poetry whence Goethe learnt that the
function of man is "to enact Hell. "

Goethe is profoundly right; though possibly he puts it in a way to which
Homer himself might have demurred. For the phrase inevitably has its
point in the word "Hell"; Homer, we may suppose, would have preferred
the point to come in the word "enact. " In any case, the details of
Christian eschatology must not engage us much in interpreting Goethe's
epigram. There is truth in it, not simply because the two poems take
place in a theatre of calamity; not simply, for instance, because of the
beloved Hektor's terrible agony of death, and the woes of Andromache and
Priam. Such things are the partial, incidental expressions of the whole
artistic purpose. Still less is it because of a strain of latent
savagery in, at any rate, the _Iliad_; as when the sage and reverend
Nestor urges that not one of the Greeks should go home until he has lain
with the wife of a slaughtered Trojan, or as in the tremendous words of
the oath: "Whoever first offend against this oath, may their brains be
poured out on the ground like this wine, their own and their children's,
and may their wives be made subject to strangers. " All that is one of
the accidental qualities of Homer. But the force of the word "enact" in
Goethe's epigram will certainly come home to us when we think of those
famous speeches in which courage is unforgettably declared--such
speeches as that of Sarpedon to Glaukos, or of Glaukos to Diomedes, or
of Hektor at his parting with Andromache. What these speeches mean,
however, in the whole artistic purpose of Homer, will assuredly be
missed if they are _detached_ for consideration; especially we shall
miss the deep significance of the fact that in all of these speeches the
substantial thought falls, as it were, into two clauses. Courage is in
the one clause, a deliberate facing of death; but something equally
important is in the other. Is it honour? The Homeric hero makes a great
deal of honour; but it is honour paid to himself, living; what he wants
above everything is to be admired--"always to be the best"; that is what
true heroism is. But he is to go where he knows death will strike at
him; and he does not make much of honour after death; for him, the
meanest man living is better than a dead hero. Death ends everything, as
far as he is concerned, honour and all; his courage looks for no reward
hereafter. No; but _since_ ten thousand fates of death are always
instant round us; _since_ the generations of men are of no more account
than leaves of a tree; _since_ Troy and all its people will soon be
destroyed--he will stand in death's way. Sarpedon emphasizes this with
its converse: There would be no need of daring and fighting, he says,
of "man-ennobling battle," if we could be for ever ageless and
deathless. That is the heroic age; any other would say, If only we could
not be killed, how pleasant to run what might have been risks! For the
hero, that would simply not be worth while. Does he find them pleasant,
then, just because they are risky? Not quite; that, again, is to detach
part of the meaning from the whole. If anywhere, we shall, perhaps, find
the whole meaning of Homer most clearly indicated in such words as those
given (without any enforcement) to Achilles and Thetis near the
beginning of the _Iliad_, as if to sound the pitch of Homer's poetry:

meter, hepi m hetekes ge minynthadion per heonta,
timen per moi hophellen Olympios engyalixai
Zeus hypsibremetes. [8]
* * * * *
timeson moi yion hos hokymorotatos hallon
heplet'. [9]

Minunthadion--hokymorotatos: those are the imporportant words;
key-words, they might be called. If we really understand these lines, if
we see in them what it is that Agamemnon's insult has deprived Achilles
of--the sign and acknowledgment of his fellows' admiration while he is
still living among them, the one thing which makes a hero's life worth
living, which enables him to enact his Hell--we shall scarcely complain
that the _Iliad_ is composed on a second-rate subject. The significance
of the poem is not in the incidents surrounding the "Achilleis"; the
whole significance is centred in the Wrath of Achilles, and thence made
to impregnate every part.

Life is short; we must make the best of it. How trite that sounds! But
it is not trite at all really. It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe
that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments
that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original
metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual. It is
difficult to imagine backwards into the time when self-consciousness was
still so fresh from its emergence out of the mere tribal consciousness
of savagery, that it must not only accept the fact, but first intensely
_realize_, that man is hokymorotatos--a thing of swiftest doom. And it
was for men who were able, and forced, to do that, that the _Iliad_ and
the _Odyssey_ and the other early epics were composed. But life is not
only short; it is, in itself, _valueless_. "As the generation of leaves,
so is the generation of men. " The life of man matters to nobody but
himself. It happens incidentally in universal destiny; but beyond just
happening it has no function. No function, of course, except for man
himself. If man is to find any value in life it is he himself that must
create the value. For the sense of the ultimate uselessness of life, of
the blankness of imperturbable darkness that surrounds it, Goethe's word
"Hell" is not too shocking. But no one has properly lived who has not
felt this Hell; and we may easily believe that in an heroic age, the
intensity of this feeling was the secret of the intensity of living. For
where will the primitive instinct of man, where will the hero, find the
chance of creating a value for life? In danger, and in the courage that
welcomes danger. That not only evaluates life; it derives the value from
the very fact that forces man to create value--the fact of his swift and
instant doom--hokymorotatos once more; it makes this dreadful fact
_enjoyable_. And so, with courage as the value of life, and man thence
delightedly accepting whatever can be made of his passage, the doom of
life is not simply suffered; man enacts his own life; he has mastered
it.

We need not say that this is the lesson of Homer. And all this, barely
stated, is a very different matter from what it is when it is poetically
symbolized in the vast and shapely substance of the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_. It is quite possible, of course, to appreciate, pleasantly
and externally, the _Iliad_ with its pressure of thronging life and its
daring unity, and the _Odyssey_ with its serener life and its superb
construction, though much more sectional unity. But we do not appreciate
what Homer did for his time, and is still doing for all the world, we do
not appreciate the spirit of his music, unless we see the warfare and
the adventure as symbols of the primary courage of life; and there is
more in those words than seems when they are baldly written. And it is
not his morals, but Homer's art that does that for us. And what Homer's
art does supremely, the other early epics do in their way too. Their way
is not to be compared with Homer's way. They are very much nearer than
he is to the mere epic material--to the moderate accomplishment of the
primitive ballad. Apart from their greatness, and often successful
greatness, of intention, perhaps the only one that has an answerable
greatness in the detail of its technique is _Beowulf_. That is not on
account of its "kennings"--the strange device by which early popular
poetry (Hesiod is another instance) tries to liberate and master the
magic of words. A good deal has been made of these "kennings"; but it
does not take us far towards great poetry, to have the sea called
"whale-road" or "swan-road" or "gannet's-bath"; though we are getting
nearer to it when the sun is called "candle of the firmament" or
"heaven's gem. " On the whole, the poem is composed in an elaborate,
ambitious diction which is not properly governed. Alliteration proves a
somewhat dangerous principle; it seems mainly responsible for the way
the poet makes his sentences by piling up clauses, like shooting a load
of stones out of a cart. You cannot always make out exactly what he
means; and it is doubtful whether he always had a clearly-thought
meaning. Most of the subsidiary matter is foisted in with monstrous
clumsiness. Yet _Beowulf_ has what we do not find, out of Homer, in the
other early epics. It has occasionally an unforgettable grandeur of
phrasing. And it has other and perhaps deeper poetic qualities. When the
warriors are waiting in the haunted hall for the coming of the
marsh-fiend Grendel, they fall into untroubled sleep; and the poet adds,
with Homeric restraint: "Not one of them thought that he should thence
be ever seeking his loved home again, his people or free city, where he
was nurtured. " The opening is magnificent, one of the noblest things
that have been done in language. There is some wonderful grim landscape
in the poem; towards the middle there is a great speech on deterioration
through prosperity, a piece of sustained intensity that reads like an
Aeschylean chorus; and there is some admirable fighting, especially the
fight with Grendel in the hall, and with Grendel's mother under the
waters, while Beowulf's companions anxiously watch the troubled surface
of the mere. The fact that the action of the poem is chiefly made of
single combat with supernatural creatures and that there is not tapestry
figured with radiant gods drawn between the life of men and the ultimate
darkness, gives a peculiar and notable character to the way Beowulf
symbolizes the primary courage of life. One would like to think, with
some enthusiasts, that this great poem, composed in a language totally
unintelligible to the huge majority of Englishmen--further from English
than Latin is from Italian--and perhaps not even composed in England,
certainly not concerned either with England or Englishmen, might
nevertheless be called an English epic.

But of course the early epics do not, any of them, merely repeat the
significance of Homer in another form. They might do that, if poetry had
to inculcate a moral, as some have supposed. But however nicely we may
analyse it, we shall never find in poetry a significance which is really
detachable, and expressible in another way. The significance _is_ the
poetry. What _Beowulf_ or the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ means is simply
what it is in its whole nature; we can but roughly indicate it. And as
poetry is never the same, so its significance is never quite the same.
Courage as the first necessary value of life is most naively and simply
expressed, perhaps, in the _Poem of the Cid_; but even here the
expression is, as in all art, unique, and chiefly because it is
contrived through solidly imagined characters. There is splendid
characterization, too, in the _Song of Roland_, together with a fine
sense of poetic form; not fine enough, however, to avoid a prodigious
deal of conventional gag. The battling is lavish, but always exciting;
and in, at least, that section which describes how the dying Oliver,
blinded by weariness and wounds, mistakes Roland for a pagan and feebly
smites him with his sword, there is real and piercing pathos. But for
all his sense of character, the poet has very little discretion in his
admiration of his heroes. Christianity, in these two poems, has less
effect than one might think. The conspicuous value of life is still the
original value, courage; but elaboration and refinement of this begin
to appear, especially in the _Song of Roland_, as passionately conscious
patriotism and loyalty. The chief contribution of the _Nibelungenlied_
to the main process of epic poetry is _plot_ in narrative; a
contribution, that is, to the manner rather than to the content of epic
symbolism. There is something that can be called plot in Homer; but with
him, as in all other early epics, it is of no great account compared
with the straightforward linking of incidents into a direct chain of
narrative. The story of the _Nibelungenlied_, however, is not a chain
but a web. Events and the influence of characters are woven closely and
intricately together into one tragic pattern; and this requires not only
characterization, but also the adding to the characters of persistent
and dominant motives.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot
strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of
life. But life as courage--the turning of the dark, hard condition of
life into something which can be exulted in--this, which is the deep
significance of the art of the first epics, is the absolutely necessary
foundation for any subsequent valuation of life; Man can achieve nothing
until he has first achieved courage. And this, much more than any
inheritance of manner, is what makes all the writers of deliberate or
"literary" epic imply the existence of Homer. If Homer had not done his
work, they could not have done theirs. But "literary" epics are as
necessary as Homer. We cannot go on with courage as the solitary
valuation of life. We must have the foundation, but we must also have
the superstructure. Speaking comparatively, it may be said that the
function of Homeric epic has been to create imperishable symbolism for
the actual courageous consciousness of life, but the duty of "literary"
epic has been to develop this function, answerably to the development of
life itself, into symbolism of some conscious _idea_ of life--something
at once more formalized and more subtilized than the primary virtue of
courage. The Greeks, however, were too much overshadowed by the
greatness of Homer to do much towards this.