2. PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENUINE EPOS

We have previously in our consideration of the general character of

epic poetry briefly drawn attention to certain incomplete types, which,

although of an epical strain, are not epopees in their completeness.

They, in short, neither represent a national condition, nor a concrete

event, within the boundaries of such a sphere. It is these latter

features, which were then excluded, which offer us for the first time

a content wholly equal to the perfected Epos, whose fundamental traits

and conditions are thus stated.

Having recalled these points it becomes necessary now to investigate

more closely what it is we require by way of completing our notion

of the epic work of art. We are, however, on the threshold of this

enquiry confronted with the difficulty that we have little or nothing

to say on features of specific interest, if we confine our attention

to generalities; Ave must rivet our attention on historical evidence,

and those varied epic and national compositions, works which on account

of the extraordinary diversity of the times and peoples to which they

refer do not make us very hopeful of securing either a definite or a

congruous result. We find, however, some compensation in the fact, that

from among all the many epic bibles of the past we can place our finger

on one at least, in which we have the clearest evidence of all which it

is possible to establish as the true and fundamental character of the

genuine epos. Such are the Homeric poems. These, then, above all, will

be the source from which I shall borrow the characteristics, which,

in my view, essentially determine the nature of such poetry, whether

from the point of view of fact or theory. We propose to summarize our

enquiry under the following heads:

_First_, we have to deal with the question, of what structure _the

general_ world condition ought to be, on the basis of which the epic

event is permitted to receive an adequate reproduction.

_Secondly,_ we shall investigate the quality of this specific type of

historical event itself.

_Lastly_, we shall direct attention to the form in which these two

aspects of our subject-matter coalesce and are completed in the unity

of a single work of art, that is, in the epic poem.

(_a_) _The General World-condition of the Epic Poem_

We have already, when Ave started on this subject, seen that it is not

a single isolated action which is accomplished in the true epic event;

the subject of the narrative is not, in short, a wholly accidental

occurrence, but an action which is dove-tailed into the entire

complexus of a particular age and national circumstances, which in

consequence can only be placed before us with success as a constituent

part of an extensive world, demanding as it does the reflection of such

a world in its entirety. In respect to the actual poetical content of

this background I shall be brief, inasmuch as I have already indicated

the fundamental points of interest when, in the first part of this

work, I discussed the general world-condition which the ideal action

presupposed. In the present context therefore I shall restrict myself

to the question what is of most importance to the Epos simply.

(_α_) That which is most adapted, as the all-embracing condition of

human society, to form the background of the Epos consists in this,

that it already possesses for particular individuals the form of a

positive condition actually present, and yet continues with them in

closest association with the simplicity of primitive life. For if the

heroes who are placed as the crowning fact of all, are first to found a

collective condition the determination of what is or ought to come into

existence falls into the more personal sphere of character to a greater

extent than is compatible with the nature of the Epos, and therewith

all appearance of the same as objective reality is impossible.

(_αα_) The relations of ethical life, the aggregate of the family, of

the people regarded as a complete nation, not merely with a view to

war, but also in their peaceful security, must have become a positive

fact in their evolution; yet along with this their organization cannot

as yet have assumed the settled form of co-ordinate regulations,

obligations, and laws independent in their validity of the direct

personal and private activities of individuals, and possessive of the

power to maintain themselves against such particular wills. Rather it

is the _intuitive sense_ of right and fairness, the moral habit, the

temperament, the personality, which supply the support, as they are

the source, of such a social order; we have, in short, no theoretic

intelligence in its precipitated form of prosaic reality able to

establish and secure such a resistance to the heart, the opinions and

passions of individuals. We may dismiss the thought that a community

with a fully organized constitution and an elaborate system of law,

judicial courts, government officials and police, would supply the

environment of a really epic action.[3] The conditions of positive

morality must, no doubt, be present in the general will and conduct,

but the instruments of its realization can only be the action and

personality of individuals, and a determinate mode of its existence, of

universal application and independent stability, is necessarily absent.

We find, in short, in the Epos no doubt the substantive reciprocity

of objective life and action, but we find no less a freedom in this

world of life and action, which has all the appearance of originating

exclusively from the isolated volition of individuals.

(_ββ_) The same considerations apply to the relation of the individual

to the _natural_ environment, from which he borrows the means to

_satisfy_ his wants, no less than discovers the best way to do so.

In this respect, too, I would refer the reader back to what I have

observed at greater length, when discussing the external definition of

the Ideal.

What mankind requires in its external life, house and farm, tent,

settle, bed, sword, lance, the ship, in which he crosses the sea, the

chariot, which bears him into battle, his soup, his roast of meat, and

drink--not one of these things need perforce become to him a lifeless

instrument; he ought still to communicate to the same something of his

entire life and substance, his essential self, and thereby leave the

stamp of his own human individuality, by his active association on that

which is otherwise wholly external. Our present life with its machinery

and factory-made products, no less than the kind of way we seek to

satisfy generally the needs of our external life, is in this respect

quite as much as that of our political organization, wholly unfit to

form the background which the Epos in its primitive guise demands. For

just as the scientific faculty with its generalizations, its imperious

conclusions, delivered independently of all personal views, can never

have asserted its claim under the world-condition of the poetic type

we are considering, so, too, we may assume that man did not yet appear

divested of his vital connection with Nature, and the fresh and

vigorous comradeship, whether as friends or opponents, which is therein

implied.

(_γγ_) Such is the world-condition which, in a previous passage, and

in contrast to the idyllic, I have called the _heroic._ We find it

depicted in Homer with the noblest poetry, and with all the wealth

of entirely human characterization. We have no more here, whether in

domestic or public life, a barbarous state of things, than we have

the wholly conventional prose of a regulated family and political

organization; what we do find is that primitive mean of poetry much

as I have already described it. A fundamental feature in such a

condition is unquestionably the free individuality of all the principal

personages. In the Iliad, for example, Agamemnon is, no doubt, a

king of kings--all other chieftains are subject to his sceptre--but

his superiority is no merely formal mutual relation of command and

submission of the lord, that is, to his vassals. On the contrary,

much circumspection is required of him; he must be shrewd enough

to know where he ought to give way, for each particular chieftain

is independent even as himself; they are not merely governors or

generals summoned by him. They have assembled around him of their

own free will, or are induced to follow his lead in a variety of

ways. He must take counsel with them; and if they disagree with his

judgment they are at liberty, as Achilles did, to remain aloof from

the battle. It is this freedom of acceptance, no less than this free

right to assert disapproval, which secures the absolute independence

of such individuality, and attaches its poetical atmosphere to every

situation. We find much the same thing in the poetry of Ossian, as also

in the relation of the Cid to the princes, whom this poetical hero of

romantic and national chivalry serves as vassal. In Ariosto and Tasso

this free relation is still unimpaired; and indeed in Ariosto the

individual heroes set forth in practically unqualified independence on

their own path of adventure. And the mass of the folk stand in much the

same relation to their leaders as that of the separate chieftains to

Agamemnon. These too follow voluntarily. There is still no paramount

legal obligation by which they are constrained. Honour, reverence,

humility in the presence of men more mighty than themselves, ever able

to enforce that might, the imposing presence of the heroic character

in short and all it implies, such are the essential grounds of their

obedience. The order of domestic life is maintained in a similar way.

It is not enforced as an accepted rule of service, but as dependent

on personal inclination or ethical habit. All is made to appear as

though it had grown up spontaneously. Homer, for example, tells us of

the Greeks, when narrating one of their battles with the Trojans, that

they had lost many valiant fighters, but not so many as the Trojans;

and the reason given is that they were always mindful to ward off from

one another the extreme of necessity. In other words, they assisted

each other. And if we, in our own days, had occasion to define the

difference between a well-disciplined and an uncivilized army we

could not express it more directly than by laying stress on this very

coherence and spirit of cameraderie, this unity enforced by all in

a felt association, which distinguished the former. Barbarians are

simply human mobs, in which no individual can rely on his neighbour.

What, however, in our modern example, being as it is the final result

of a stringent and tedious military discipline, rather appears as the

exercise and command of an established regime, in Homer's case is still

an ethical habit asserted of its own accord, springing from the vital

strength of the individual in his private capacity.

We may explain in a similar way Homer's great variety in his

descriptions of Nature and external condition. In the prose romances of

our own day we do not find much stress laid on the natural aspects of

things. Homer, on the contrary, gives us every detail in his portrayal

of a staff, sceptre, bedstead, armour, clothing, doorpost; he does

not even omit to mention the hinges on which the door turns. Such

things appear to us wholly outside our attention and insignificant; or

rather we may say that it is the tendency of our education to affect

an extremely severe superiority to a whole number of objects, matters,

and expressions, and we deliberately classify in their claim to our

notice such things as various kinds of dress, furniture, implements,

and so on. Add to this the fact that in our day all the means supplied

or prepared for the satisfaction of our wants are so split up into

every kind of machinery product from work-shop and factory, we come

to regard the medley of supply as something beneath us, neither

deserving enumeration or respectful attention. The heroic existence

is, on the contrary, confronted with a primitive simplicity of objects

and inventions; it readily lingers on their description. All these

possessions are, in short, regarded as of one standard of value, as

chattels or instruments in which man still discovers evidence of his

craftsmanship, his positive wealth and interest whereof he may be

justly proud. His entire life is not abstracted from such material

things, nor exclusively occupied with a purely intellectual sphere.

To slaughter oxen and prepare their flesh for the table, to pour out

wine and things of that sort are part of the heroic life, carried out

with purpose and delight; with us a meal, if it is not to be a very

commonplace affair, must not merely carry with it something of the

culinary art, but is incomplete without really good conversation.

Homer's detailed descriptions in these matters must not therefore be

looked upon as a purely poetical embellishment of things of little

moment; such a copious attention is nothing more or less than the

actual spirit of the men and circumstances depicted. We find just the

same prolixity of speech on external things in the case of our own

peasants; and for that matter do not the dandies of our own day dilate

without limit upon their stables, horses, top-boots, spurs, pants, and

the like. In contrast to a life of profounder intellectual interest

such things will doubtless appear somewhat jejune.

Such a world ought not merely to embrace the _limited_ universality

of the particular event, which occurs on the _definite_ background

presupposed; it must coalesce in its expansion with the _entire

horizon_ of the national vision. We have a supremely fine example of

this in the Odyssey, which not only brings us into contact with the

domestic life of the Greek chieftains, their servants and subordinates,

but also unfolds the richest variety with its tales of the many

opinions of foreign peoples, the hazards of sea-life, the dwellings

of distant lands, and so forth. But in the Iliad also, though the

nature of its subject restricts to some extent the horizon of our

vision, and not unnaturally on its battle-fields has comparatively

little to tell us of more tranquil scenes, Homer, at least, has on the

shield of Achilles managed in a wonderful way to give us a view of

the entire compass of terrestrial existence, no less than human life,

in marriages, judicial affairs, agriculture, the might of armies, the

private wars of cities, and much else. And these descriptions we 'shall

do well not to regard as a wholly incidental feature of the poem. In

contrast to such a treatment the poems we identify with the name of

Ossian introduce us to a world that is too limited and indefinite. It

has for this very reason rather a lyrical character; and as for Dante

we may say that his angels and devils inhabit no truly positive world

open to our detailed approach; it exists solely as instrumental to

the final fruition or due punishment of mankind. And above all in the

Nibelungenlied the absence is complete of any definite realization of

a visible world or environment, so that the narrative tends in this

respect to assume the strain or tone of the mere balladsinger. The

narrative is, no doubt, diffusive enough; but it is all much as if

some journeyman had picked it up first as gossip, and then retailed

it as such afterwards. We are not brought to close quarters with the

facts, but are merely made aware of the impotence and tedious effort

of the poet. This wearisome expanse of poetical debility becomes of

course even more pronounced in the Book of Heroes, until finally the

whole business is handed over to the true poetical journeyman, in other

words, the Master singers.

(_β_) Furthermore, for the reason that the Epos has to embody in art a

specific world, in all its separate characteristics carefully defined,

one, in short, for this reason itself essentially individual, the

mirror of such a world must be that of a one _particular_ people.

(_αα_) In this respect all truly primitive Epopees present to our view

a national spirit in the ethical structure of its family life, its

public dispositions in times of peace or war, its wants, arts, usages,

and interests--in a word, a picture of the relative type and stage

of the national consciousness. What the epic poem reveres more than

anything else, observes most narrowly, that which, as previously

noted, it expatiates upon, is the power to let our inward eye see as

in a mirror the individual genius of nations. We have presented us,

as the result of such a gallery, the world-history itself, and what

is more, we have it in its beautiful, free, and emphasized vitality,

manifestation, and deed. From no source, either so impregnate with life

or simplicity, can we, for example, better understand the Hellenic

spirit and Greek history, or at least grasp the principle of that

content, which this people embodied, and which it brought with it when

it first set forth to engage in the conflict of its wholly authentic

history, than from this of the poet Homer.

(_ββ_) Now the national substance in its realization is of a _twofold_

nature. First, we have an entirely _positive_ world of specialized

usage or custom peculiar to the nation in question, a definite period

of history, a definite environment, whether geographical in its

streams, hills and forests, or in its climatic situation. Secondly,

we have that ideal _substance_ of its spiritual life, whether in

the religious sphere, the family or the community generally. If

thus an Epos of the primitive type is, under the conditions already

indicated, to be and remain a permanently effective bible, the

nation's Book, in that case that which is positive in the reality

of the Past can only claim such a continuously vital interest in so

far as the characteristic features accepted are placed in an ideal

connection with the actually substantive aspects and tendencies of the

national life. Otherwise what claims to be of positive value will be

entirely contingent and a matter of indifference. Native geographical

conditions, for instance, enter into the conception of nationality. But

if they do not confer on a folk its specific character, the addition of

other natural environment, provided that does not contradict national

character, is not in certain cases prejudicial to the effect, but may

even prove attractive to the imagination. No doubt the sensitive

experience of youth is interwoven with the immediate presence of its

native hills and streams; but where the deeper bonds of the entire

spiritual outlook are absent, such an association assumes a more or

less external character. And, apart from this, where we have, as in

the Iliad, a warlike expedition, it is impossible to preserve the

_locale_ of the fatherland. In such a case the scenery of a foreign

land in itself fascinates and attracts. The enduring vitality of an

Epos is, however, more seriously impaired, where, in the course of

centuries, the spiritual consciousness and life has so entirely changed

that the links between the more recent Past and the original point of

departure already adverted to are completely severed. This is actually

the case with the poet Klopstock in another province of poetry, where

he attempts to establish a national religion, and, in order to do

so, gives us his Hermann and Thusnelda. We may affirm the same kind

of defect of the Nibelungenlied. The Burgundians, the revenge of

Chriemhilda, the exploits of Siegfried, the entire social condition,

the fated downfall of an entire race and many like facts--all this is

no longer vitally held together with the domestic, civil, and judicial

life, the institutions and constitutions of the present day. The

biography of Jesus Christ, with its Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Roman

jurisdiction, even the Trojan war itself, come home to ourselves far

more nearly than the events of the Niebelungen; the latter are for

present consciousness a state of things wholly gone for ever, swept

away once and for all with a besom. To attempt to compose of such

something of national significance, to say nothing of a national bible,

betokens the extreme limit of folly and superficiality. In times when

it was rashly[4] assumed that the flame of youthful enthusiasm had

flashed up anew, such a conceit was taken as a proof of the sere leaf

of an age once more become childlike in the approach of death; and it

refreshed itself with a past that was dead, and deemed it possible to

associate others with a similar refreshment and renewed presence.

(_γγ_) If, however, a national Epos is to secure in addition the

permanent interest of foreign nations the world which it depicts must

not merely be of a _particular_ nationality, but of a type that is, in

this specific folk, its heroism and exploits, equally impressed with

the stamp of our common humanity. In the poems of Homer, for example,

the superb directness with which he deals with matters of divine or

ethical import, the nobility of the characters and of everything living

therein embraced, the pictorial quality of their presentment to the

reader, all this insures an undying truth for succeeding ages. In this

respect we find a remarkable contrast in the creation of different

peoples. We cannot deny, for instance, that the Ramajana reflects

with the essential directness of life the national spirit of the

Hindoos, more particularly from the religious point of view; but the

character of the entire Hindoo race is so overpoweringly of a unique

type, that the essential features of our common humanity are unable to

assert themselves through the veil of this national idiosyncracy. A

remarkable contrast to this is the way in which the entire Christian

world, from the earliest times, has found itself at home in those epic

passages of Old Testament narrative, above all in the pictures of the

patriarchal state, and able to repicture for itself to the life the

events portrayed over and over again with the greatest enjoyment. The

testimony of Goethe is unequivocal. Here was the _one_ focal centre,

he assures us, on which, in his young days, amid much that he learned

of a miscellaneous and unconnected character, his intellect no less

than feeling concentrated itself. Even in later life he still remarks

upon them that "after all our wanderings through the East we always

returned in the end to these writings as the most invigorating spring

of waters: here and there they might be troubled; not unfrequently they

hid themselves in the earth; but it was only to rise up again pure and

fresh as ever."

(_γ_) _Finally_, the general condition of a particular people must

not in this tranquil universality of its individual character wholly

oust what is more directly the object of the Epos, in other words, be

described with no reference to that. It ought only to appear as the

_foundation_, upon which an event throughout its entire process is

transacted, one which is in contact with all aspects of the national

life, and one which illustrates the same as it proceeds. Such an

eventuality must not be a purely external incident; it must imply a

deliberately conceived purpose executed by equally deliberate effort.

If, however, these two aspects, namely, the general condition and the

particular action, do not coalesce, then the event in question must

seek its justification in the particular circumstances, the causal

conditions which dominate its movement. That is practically to say the

world of Epos which is reproduced must be conceived under a specific

situation which is so concrete that the definite objects which it is

the function of the epic narrative to realize, are necessarily made

explicit by it. We have already, when discussing the ideal action,[5]

pointed out on general lines that this realization presupposes

situations and circumstances which bring about collisions, actions

that do injury and consequently necessary reactions. The particular

situation, therefore, in which the epic world-condition of a nation

is made actual to us, must of itself be essentially one implying such

_collisions._ In this respect, therefore, epic poetry enters the field

already occupied by dramatic poetry; and we may find it convenient at

once to determine in what respects the collisions of these two types of

poetry differ.

(_αα_) Under the broadest review of this question we may say that the

conflict of the _belligerent_ condition is that which supplies the

Epos with its most pertinent situation. In war it is obviously the

entire nation which is set in activity, and which, as a whole placed

under similar conditions, is moved and stimulated in a novel way,

in so far at least as it possesses any claim, as such a whole, to

participate in it. We may admit that the above conclusion stands in

apparent contradiction not merely with Homer's Odyssey, but also the

subject-matter of many poems that are epic in an otherwise intelligible

sense. It finds, however, ample corroboration in the majority of the

most famous Epopees. Moreover, the collision of operations in the

events of which the Odyssey informs us, derives part of its source

from the Trojan war; and even under the aspect of domestic life in

Ithaca, no less than that of the home-returning Odysseus, although the

narrative is no actual account of conflicts between Greeks and Trojans,

yet it deals with facts which are the immediate consequence of that

war. Nay, it is itself war under a new aspect, for many chieftains are

forced to reconquer their homes, which after their ten years' absence

they find under wholly altered conditions. We have practically but one

example of the religious Epos, Dante's "Divine Comedy." Even here,

too, the fundamental collision is deducible from that original Fall of

the evil angels from heaven, which brings in its train and within the

sphere of human experience the ever active external and ideal conflict

between the Divine Father and the conduct of men, whether hostile or

well-pleasing to Him, a conflict eternally perpetuated in condemnation,

purification, and blessedness, or in other words, hell, purgatory, and

paradise. Also, too, in the Messias it is the former war against the

Son of God which supplies the focal centre. At the same time the most

vital and truly pertinent examples are those which actually describe

the belligerent state. We have already drawn attention to such in the

Ramajana, and, most instructive of all, in the Iliad; further examples

are the famous poems of Ossian, Tasso, Ariosto, and Camoens. In war

_courage_ is and remains the fundamental interest; and warlike courage

is a state of the soul and an activity, which is neither so suitable

for lyrical expression nor for dramatic action, but is pre-eminently

adapted to the descriptive power of the Epos. In dramatic poetry it is

rather the ideal strength or weakness of spiritual life, the ethically

justified or reprehensible pathos which is the main thing: in the

Epos, on the contrary, it is rather the native characteristics of a

personality. For this reason, where it is national exploits which are

undertaken, bravery is in its right place; it is in fact not an ethical

state,[6] in which the will is determined through its own initiative

as an intelligent consciousness and volition. It rather depends on

natural temperament, unites in direct equilibrium, as by fusion, with

the sphere of self-conscious life, and, in order to bring into effect

practical ends, which can be more fitly expressed in epic description

than under the conceptions of lyrical emotion and reflection. And

these conclusions with regard to bravery in war apply with equal force

to the exploits of war and their consequences. The activities of

personal volition and the accidents of the external event supply the

two scales of the balance. The bare event, with its wholly material

obstructions, is excluded from the drama, inasmuch as here what is

exclusively external is not permitted to retain an independent right,

but is causally related to the aim and ideal purposes of individuals,

so that as to all contingent matter, if by any chance it appears to

arise and to determine the result, we are none the less compelled to

look for the real operative cause and justification thereof in the

spiritual nature of human character and its objects, no less than in

that of its collisions and their necessary resolution.

(_ββ_) A basis of the epic action such as this of active hostilities

is obviously the source of a very varied subject-matter. We may have

placed before the imagination a host of interesting actions and events,

in which bravery in action supplies the leading rôle, and the claim

of external forces, whether asserted in circumstance or incident, is

maintained unimpaired. At the same time we must not overlook a respect

in which the possibilities of epic narration is essentially restricted.

It is only wars waged between one foreign nation and another which

partake of a truly epic character. In contrast to this conflicts

between dynasties, civil wars and social revolution, are more suited

to dramatic exposition. And in fact Aristotle long ago[7] advises

the tragic poet to select subject-matter which is concerned with the

conflicts of brother against brother. Of this type is the war of the

Seven against Thebes. It is Thebes' own son who storms the city; and

its defender is the actual brother of the aggressor. Hostility of

this type is something more than that of a mere foe; its significance

is bound up with the individuality of the opposed brothers. We have

similar examples with every kind of variety in Shakespeare's historical

tragedies. In these, almost without exception, agreement between

particular individuals is what might be legitimately looked for, and

it is only the private motives of individual passion and a personality

absorbed in its own aims and satisfaction which bring about collisions

and wars. As an example of an action of this kind treated in the epic

manner, and therefore defectively, I will mention the "Pharsalia" of

Lucan. However indisputably important the conflicting aims in this

poem may appear to be, yet for all that the opposing parties are here

too closely related on the common ground of one fatherland: their

conflict, consequently, instead of being a war between two national

entities, is nothing more than a strife of parties, either of which,

by the very fact that it splits asunder the substantive national

unity, points in one direction, namely, that of tragic guilt and

demoralization. Held to this the objective facts are not placed before

us in their clearness and simplicity, but are inweaved with one another

in a confused manner. The same objections are equally pertinent to

Voltaire's Henriad. In contrast to this the hostility of _foreign_

nations is something substantive. Every nation constitutes a totality

essentially distinct from and in opposition to that of another. When

these come into conflict we do not feel that any positive ethical

connection is shattered, nothing at least of essential value to either

is violated,[8] no necessary whole broken into fragments. Rather it is

a conflict waged in order to maintain such a totality unimpaired and to

justify its claim to be so. Hostility therefore of this type is suited

in every way to the essential character of epic poetry.

(_γγ_) Not every war, however, waged under ordinary conditions

between two hostile nations is necessarily on that account of an epic

character. We must have a further condition satisfied, namely, the

justification on broad historical grounds for the bellicose attitude

thus adopted. Only when we have this do we obtain a picture of an

enterprise at once novel and more exalted, which does not present

the appearance of something apart from universal history, the purely

capricious subjugation of one state by another, but is absolutely and

essentially rooted in a profounder principle of necessity, however

much at the same time the more superficial and obvious motive of

the undertaking may assume from one point of view the aspect of

deliberate wrong,[9] and from the other that of a private revenge.

We have something analogous to such a situation in the Ramajana. But

the supreme example is that of the Iliad, where the Greeks invade an

Asiatic people, and in doing so fight out as it were the preludic

conflict of a tremendous opposition, the wars of which practically

constitute the turning point of Greek history as we see it on the

stage of universal history. Of the same type is the struggle of the

Cid against the Moors, or in Tasso and Ariosto the battles of the

Christians against the Saracens, or in Camoens the strife of the

Portuguese against the Indians. And indeed we may assert that in all

the greatest Epopees we find nations which differ from each other in

moral customs, religion, and language, in a word, in all that concerns

their spiritual and external life, brought into collision; and we are

ready to contemplate such without any revulsion on account of the

triumph we find asserted there of a nobler principle of world-evolution

over a less exalted, a victory assured by a bravery that is simply

annihilating. If any one should, in this sense, and in emulation of

past Epopees, which have sought to depict the triumph of the West over

the East, of the European principle of moderation, of the individually

articulate and truly organic type of beauty over Asiatic splendour,

over the magnificence of a patriarchal unity, which does not attempt to

secure such organic completeness, or is at least merely held together

by abstract and superficial conjunctions, if such, I say, should aspire

to write the Epopee of the future, he will be necessarily restricted

to the portrayal of the victory of some future and intensely vital

rationality of the American nation over the prison-house of the spirit

which for ever pursues its monotonous task of self-adjustment and

particularization.[10] In the Europe of our day every nation finds

itself conditioned[11] by its neighbour, and cannot venture on its own

account to wage any war with another European nation. If we lift our

eyes beyond Europe, there can be only one direction, America.

(_b_) _The Individual Epic Action_

It is on such an essentially limited foundation then of conflict

between entire nationalities that the epic event is realized, the

leading characteristics of which we have now to determine. We may

summarize the form we propose our investigation should take as follows:

_First_, what actually takes place consists essentially in this that

the object of the epic action ought necessarily to be of _individual

vitality_ and definition, however much it may rest on a basis of the

most general extension.

_Secondly_, for the reason that it is only of individuals that we can

predicate actions we have the problem to solve of the general nature of

the epic _character_ or personality.

_Thirdly_, in the epic eventuality the form of objectivity is not

exclusively that of external appearance: it consists quite as much in

the significance of all that is itself intrinsically necessary to and

substantive in the exposition. We have consequently to determine the

form in which this intrinsic significance of the occurrence proclaims

itself as effective, either in part as the ideal necessity which is

therein concealed, or as the disclosed direction[12] of eternal and

providential forces.

(_α_) We have postulated as a necessary background of this epic world

an enterprise of national significance, in which the entire compass of

a national spirit can express itself in the bloom and freshness of its

heroic condition. From this fundamental substratum in its simplicity

we now further assume the apparition of a _particular_ end, in the

realization of which all other aspects of the national character,

whether in belief or action, can be represented to our vision. The

original postulate is in fact bound up in the closest way with such an

all-embracing actuality.

(_αα_) This purposed object, which is infused with the vital principle

of individuality on the lines of which, regarded in its particularized

content, the entire process moves forward, must further, as already

ascertained, appropriate to itself in the Epos the form of an _event_.

It will be therefore above all important to recall at once the specific

character of the mode, under which human volition and action generally

combine in what we designate as the event. Now, in the _first_ place,

action and adventure are the outcome of conscious life, the content

of which is not only ideally expressed in emotions, reflections, and

thoughts, but also quite as much in a practical way. We may regard

such realization from two distinct points of view. _First,_ we have

the ideal substance of the end presupposed and purposed, the general

character of which the individual must recognize, will, calculate and

accept. _Secondly_, there is the external reality of the spiritual or

human and the natural environment, within which he is only able to

act, and the accidental features of which at one time obstruct and at

another assist his path; so that either in the one case he is carried

forward by virtue of this favour to a successful issue, or, if in

the other he is not prepared wholly to give way to such opposition,

he finds it necessary to overcome them with his individual energy.

If now the world covered by this volitional power is conceived as

the indivisible unity of these two aspects, with the result that the

right of assertion by both is equally asserted, in that case what

is most pertinent to conscious life likewise enters into the formal

structure of the event, the form, that is, which confers on all human

action the _configuration of events_, in so far as the conscious or

subjective will, with its purposes, motives of passion, principles

and aims, can no longer appear the fact of most importance. Or, in

other words, in human _action_ everything is referred back to human

personality, personal obligation, opinion and intention. In the case of

the _event_, on the contrary, the external constitution of things is

permitted to assert its inviolable claim. Here it is objective reality

itself, which constitutes either the form assumed by the whole, or from

another point of view a fundamental part of the content. In agreement

with such a view I have already stated that it is the function of epic

poetry to demonstrate the _happening_ of an action, and thereby not

only to establish the external disposition of the execution of ends,

but also to meet as readily the claims of external condition, natural

occurrences, and all else of a contingent character, which, in action

taken simply as such, the ideal element of conscious life claims

exclusively as its province.

(_ββ_) With regard to the _particular_ end, the carrying out of which

the Epos unfolds under the mode of the event, it follows from our

previous conclusions that it must be no mere mental _abstraction_,

but on the contrary of wholly _concrete_ definition. At the same

time, inasmuch as it is realized within the substantive actuality of

the national unity, such a process must exclude the notion of merely

capricious activity. The political state as such--the fatherland,

let us say--or the history of a State and country, are essentially

something universal, which, regarded in the light of such universality,

does not appear under the mode of a subjectively individual existence,

or, in other words, in inseparable and exclusive coalition with one

definite living individual. For this reason the history of a country,

the development of its political life, its constitution and destiny

may also no doubt be narrated as event; if, however, the facts thus

described are not placed before us as the concrete deed, the conscious

aim, the passion, the suffering and accomplishment of particular

heroes, whose individuality supplies the form and content of the

realization in all its parts, the event merely assumes the rigid

form of its independent forward movement in the prosaic history of a

people or an empire. In this respect no doubt the most exalted action

of Spirit would be the history of the world itself. We can conceive

it possible that our poet might in this sense undertake to elaborate

in what we may call the absolute Epos this universal achievement on

the battlefield of the universal spirit, whose hero would be the

spirit of man, the _humanus_, who is drawn up and exalted from the

clouded levels[13] of conscious existence into the clearer region of

universal history. But in virtue of the very fact of its universality

a subject-matter of this kind would so be quite unfitted for artistic

treatment. It would not adapt itself sufficiently to individualization.

For on the one hand we fail altogether to find in such a subject a

clearly fixed background and world-condition, not merely in relation to

external _locale_, but also in that of morality and custom. In other

words, the only basis for all we could possibly presuppose would be the

universal World-Spirit or intelligence, whom we are unable to bring

visibly before us as a particular condition, and who is possessed of

the entire Earth as his local environment. And in like manner too the

one end fulfilled in such an Epos could only be the end proposed by the

World-Spirit himself,[14] who can only be apprehended and explicitly

disclosed in his true significance through the processes of thought. If

he is, however, to be represented in the form of poetry, or, at least,

if the whole is to receive its proper meaning and coalescence from

such a source, it is necessary that his presence should be expressed

as that which acts independently from its own resources. This could

only be possible for poetry, in so far as the ideal Taskmaster of

history, the eternal and absolute Idea, which is realized in humanity,

either was envisioned as a directive, active, perfecting individual

person, or was merely made effective under the concealing veil of an

ever-operative Necessity. In the first case, however, the infinity of

such a content must shatter the necessarily limited artistic vessel

of determinate individuality, or, as the only way of avoiding such a

defect, must assume the inadequate form of a dispassionate allegory

of general reflections over the destination of the human race and its

education, over the final purpose of mankind, its moral consummation,

or over whatever result the end of this World-history might establish.

In the alternative case it is the genius of the various peoples which

has in each example to be presented (in the heroic figure) in the

conflicting existence of whom history expands and moves forward in

progressive evolution. If, however, the genius of nations is really

to appear in poetical form this can be carried out in only one way,

namely, by placing before us the actual world-historical figures as

operative through their deeds. We should, however, then merely have a

series of particular characters, which emerged and again disappeared in

a wholly external succession, the objects of which lacked individual

unity and connection; and this would be so for the reason that the

controlling World-Spirit, under our conception of it, as the ideal

essence and destiny, could not, in the case supposed, be set forth as

itself an active individual and the culminating agent in the process.

And if, further, anyone was desirous of appropriating the spirits of

different nationalities in their universality, and of displaying them

as agents in such a substantive form, we should still only have a

similar series, the individuals whereof, apart from the fact that they

would merely possess an appearance of positive existence similar to

Hindoo incarnations, would, in the fictitious form of the imagination

they received pale into nothingness when contrasted with the truth of

the World-Spirit as realized in actual history.

(_γγ_) We may consequently lay it down as a general principle that the

particular epic event is only able to secure a vital form in poetry

when it is united in the closest state of fusion with _one_ individual.

Precisely as it is _one_ poet who thinks out and executes the whole,

so too _one_ individual must crown the edifice, with whom the event is

associated and in connection with whose single identity it is continued

and completed.

We must point out, however, that here too we are limited by essential

conditions. For just as in our previous discussion it was the

world-history, so too now, from the converse point of view, it is

possible that the biographical treatment in a poetic composition of

a definite life-history may appear to supply the most complete and

adequate subject-matter of the Epos. This, however, is not the case. No

doubt in biography the individual is one and the same throughout; but

the events, through which the life-development proceeds, may entirely

fall apart, and only retain the subject of the same in a wholly formal

and accidental bond of relation. If, on the other hand, the Epos is

essentially homogeneous, the event also, in the form of which the

content of the poem is disclosed, must itself possess intrinsic unity.

Both aspects, in short, the unity of the individual and that of the

objective event, as it is evolved, must coalesce and be united. In the

life and exploits of the Cid it is unquestionably true that on the

field of the Fatherland it is only one great personality which without

intermission remains true to himself, and in his development, chivalry

and end constitutes the interest. His deeds pass before him, much as if

he were the sculptured god; and finally all is gone and vanished for

us, no less than for himself.[15] But the poems of the Cid are also as

rhymed chronicles no genuine example of the Epos; and, in their later

form of romances, they are, as their specific type necessitates, merely

isolated situations split off from this national hero's life, which do

not necessarily coalesce in the unity of a particular event.

The finest examples, however, of the observance of the above rule

are to be met with in the Iliad and Odyssey, where Achilles and

Odysseus are respectively the prominent figures. The Ramajana, too,

resembles these poems in this respect. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is an

illustration, but in quite a unique way. In other words, it is the Epic

poet himself with whose single personality, in his wanderings through

hell, purgatory, and paradise, all and everything is so associated that

he is able to recount the picture of his imagination as a personal

experience, and is consequently entitled to interweave with the general

substance of his composition his private emotions and reflections to a

larger extent than is possible for other epic poets.

(_β_) However much then, speaking generally, epic poetry informs us

of actual fact and its occurrence, and thereby makes the objective

world its content and form, yet on the other hand, inasmuch as what

happens is an _action,_ which passes in successive views before us,

it is rather, and for this reason, to _individuals_, and their deed

and suffering that the main emphasis is attached. For it is only

individuals, be they gods or men, who can veritably act; and just in

proportion as they are interwoven in the vividness of life with such a

panorama, to that extent they are entitled to attract the main interest

to the fulness of their exposition. From this point of view epic poetry

stands on level terms with lyric no less than dramatic poetry. It is

therefore of some importance that we attempt to define more closely

what the _specific_ features are which distinguish the portrayal of

personality in the epic composition.

(_αα_) Now, first, what is essential to the objective aspect of an epic

character--I am speaking mainly of the leading personages--is that

they should be themselves essentially a _totality_ of such traits, in

other words complete men, and thereby display in themselves all aspects

of emotional life, or to put it better, should represent in a typical

way, national opinion and its active pursuits. In this respect I have

already in the first part drawn attention to the heroic characters

of Homer; and, in particular, to the variety of genuinely human and

truly national qualities which Achilles unites in himself so vitally,

the hero of the Odyssey supplying an admirable companion picture. The

Cid is similarly presented us with much variety of characterization

and situation, as son, hero, lover, husband, father, householder, and

in his relations to king, friends, and foes. Other Epopees of the

Middle Ages are a great contrast, far more abstract in their type of

personification, particularly so where their heroes merely champion the

cause of chivalry as such, and are removed from the sphere of the true

and actual life of the nation.

It is then the fundamental characteristic of the exposition of epic

personality that it should unfold itself as such a totality in the most

diverse scenes and situations. The characters of tragedy and comedy may

no doubt also possess a similar wealth of ideality; for the reason,

however, that in their case the sharp contrast between a pathos that is

never other than one-sided and a passion opposed to it is within very

definable limits and ends the thing of most importance, such a varied

character is in part, where it is not entirely superfluous, at least

more in the nature of a prodigality which is incidental, and in part

is also, as a rule, overpowered by the _one_ passion, its motives and

ethical considerations, and thus forced by the type of presentation

into the background. In the whole of the epic composition, on the

contrary, all aspects assert an equal right to assert themselves,

and expand with freedom and breadth. That they should do so is

indeed fundamental to the principle of epic composition; and from a

further point of view the personality here, in virtue of the entire

world-condition he presupposes, possesses a right to be, and to make

all that valid wherein his existence is realized, and for the good

reason that he lives in an age to which precisely this _objective_

being, this immediate individuality is appropriate. It is, of course,

for instance, quite possible for us, with regard to the wrath of

Achilles, to point out, as moral reflection may suggest, the injury

and loss which that wrath entailed, and therefrom to conclude that the

superiority and greatness of Achilles is very appreciably removed from

any approach to ideal perfection, whether as hero or man, having no

power apparently on a single occasion to moderate his anger or exercise

self-restraint. But for all that we do wrong in blaming Achilles. And

this is not because we may overlook the wrath in virtue of his other

great qualities. Achilles is, in other words, simply nothing more or

less than this portrait. So far as Epic poetry is concerned, that is

the end of the matter. The same observations apply to his ambition and

his love of glory. The main justification of these great characters

is the energy of their achievement; they carry, in fact, a universal

principle in their particularity. Conversely, ordinary morality tends

to depreciate its native personality, and hold in reserve the resources

of its life-force, and discovers its essential being in this attitude.

What an astonishing self-esteem, for instance, an Alexander asserted

over his friends and the life of I know not how many thousands.

Self-revenge, even traits of brutality, testify to an energy of the

same type in heroic times; and even in this respect Achilles, in his

rôle of epic hero, has little to learn.

(_ββ_) And it is just on account of this fact that such preeminent

figures are complete individuals, who have in resplendent degree all

that concentrated in them which otherwise is diffused and separate in

the national character, and thereby are throughout great, free, and

humanly beautiful characters that they are rightly set in the chief

place; and we find that the event of most significance is inviolably

linked with such individuality. The nation is, as it were, focussed

as a single living soul in them, and as such they fight out its main

enterprise, and suffer the hazards of its resulting experience. In

this respect Gottfried von Bouillon, in Tasso's "Jerusalem Liberated,"

is no such overpowering figure as Achilles, this typical youthful

bloom and perfection of the entire Grecian host; nor is he even an

Odysseus, although he is selected as the wisest, bravest, and most

just of leaders to command the entire army. The Achæans are unable to

win a victory if Achilles stands aloof from the contest; it is he

alone who, by means of his triumph over Hector, carries victory into

Troy itself; and in the return home of Odysseus we find a mirror of

the return of all the Greeks from Troy, only with the difference that

it is just in that which it is his destiny to endure we have placed

exhaustively before our vision the entire compass of the sufferings,

life experience, and conditions which are implied in the whole

subject-matter. The characters of the drama, on the other hand, are not

so represented as in themselves the absolute crowning point of all the

rest, which becomes objective in and through them. They rather are set

forth independently and for themselves in their purpose, which they

accept as the outcome of their character, or as the result of definite

principles which have grown up in conjunction with their more isolate

personality.

(_γγ_) There is a _third_ distinguishing feature in epic

characterization due to the fact that the Epos does not portray

an action simply as action, but an event. In drama the matter of

importance is that the individual manifests himself as operative for

his specific purpose, and is expressly represented in such activity and

its consequences. This undeviating consideration for the realization

of a distinct purpose is absent in the Epic. No doubt in this case,

too, heroes have desires and aims, but the main thing here is all that

they may happen to experience while fulfilling it, not the nature of

their conduct in the carrying it out. The circumstances are just as

active as themselves, frequently more active. The return to Ithaca,

for example, is the actual project of Odysseus. The Odyssey, however,

does not merely display this character in the active execution of his

predetermined end, but expands its account into all the variety of

occurrence which he happens to experience in his wanderings, what he

suffers, what obstructions meet him in the way, what dangers he has to

overcome, and all, in fact, that moves him. And this varied experience

is not, as would be necessary in the drama, a direct result of his

action, but is in great measure rather incidental to his journey, in

the main even independent of the concurrent action of the hero. After

his adventures with the Lotophagi, Polyphemus, and the Laestrygones,

the godlike Circe detains him for a full year. Further, after he has

visited the lower world and suffered shipwreck, he dallies with

Calypso, until he falls into home-sickness, wearies of the damsel, and

stares with tearful eyes over the solitary sea. Thereupon it is Calypso

herself who finally provides him with the means wherewith he builds

his boat, who provides him with food, wine and raiment, and takes her

right anxious and kindly farewell of him. Finally, after his sojourn

among the Phæacians, he is carried in sleep--he knows not how--to the

shores of his island. To carry out a purposed end in this sort of way

would not be possible for dramatic poetry. Again, in the Iliad, the

wrath of Achilles, which, along with all else that results from this

compelling force, constitutes the specific object of the narrative, is

throughout not an end, but rather an emotional state. When Achilles is

insulted he rages. In this condition, so far from doing anything truly

dramatic, he withdraws apart, does nothing with Patroclus by the ships

on the seashore, sullenly angry that he is not honoured by the lord of

the folk. Then follow the consequences of his retirement, and only at

last, when his friend has been slain by Hector, do we find Achilles

once more plunge into the conflict. In another way, again, is the end

prescribed to Æneas, which he has to carry out, where Virgil recounts

all the events as the result of which its realization is in such varied

ways postponed.

(_γ_) We have just one further important feature to mention in respect

to the form of the event in the Epos. I have already observed that

in the drama the conscious will, and that which the same demands

and wills, is essentially the determining factor, and constitutes

the permanent foundation of the entire presentation. All that is

carried out appears throughout as posited already by the personal

character and its aims; and the main interest above all turns upon the

justification or its absence of what is done within the situations

presupposed and the conflicts they bring about. If consequently it so

happens also that in the drama the external conditions are themselves

active, they nevertheless only retain their validity by virtue of

that which conscious feeling and volition makes of them, and the

ways and means under which character reacts upon them. In the Epos,

however, the circumstances and external accidents are effective on

level terms with the personal will itself. All that man accomplishes

passes before us precisely as any other event of the world outside

him, so that the human exploit is in this case likewise and equally

conditioned, and must be shown to be carried forward by the development

of such an environment. The individual, in short, in epic poetry does

not merely act freely of himself and independently. He is placed in

the midst of an assemblage of facts, whose end and actuality in its

wide correlation with an essentially unified world of conscious life

or objective existence supplies the irremovable foundation of the

life of each separate individual. This typical system is, in fact,

predominant in the Epos through all its content, whether in that of

passion, determined result, or general achievement. It is true that

at first sight we might expect that, on account of an equal cogency

being accorded to external condition in its independent eventualities,

we should find indisputable opportunity given for every shade of

contingency. And yet we have seen that it is the function of the Epos

to present what is truly objective--what is, in short, essentially

substantive existence. The solution of this contradiction is to be

found in this, that the principle of _necessity_ is involved in the

events, whether taken in detail or generally.

(_αα_) In this connection we may affirm of the Epos--not, however, as

is generally assumed of the drama--that _Destiny_ is a predominant

force. No doubt the dramatic character by the kind of end accepted,

which he endeavours to carry out despite all obstruction under the

circumstances given and recognized, makes of _himself_ his Destiny;

but in the Epos, on the contrary, it is _made for him_, and this force

of circumstances, which stamp their particular form on the deed,

apportions to each individual his lot, determines the result of his

actions--is, in short, the genuine control of Destiny. What happens

is appertinent to itself. It is so, and only thus; it is the fiat of

necessity. In lyric poetry we are conscious of emotion, reflection, the

personal interest, and yearning. The drama converts the ideal claim

of human action into an objective presence. The presentation of epic

poetry, on the other hand, moves, as it were, within the element itself

of essentially necessary existence. Therefore, the individual has no

choice but to follow this particular substantive condition; and, in

its process of being, to adapt himself to it or not, and then to suffer

as he is able and is forced to suffer. Destiny, in short, defines what

is and inevitably must be, and in the result success, misadventure,

life, and death are plastic precisely in the sense that individuals

are plastic. What does actually unfold before us is a condition of

universal expanse, in which the actions and destinies of mankind appear

as something isolated and evanescent. This fatality is the great

justice, and is not tragic in the dramatic sense of the term, in which

the individual appears judged as a _personality_, but in the epic sense

in which judgment is passed on man in all that concerns him.[16] The

tragic Nemesis consists in this, that the greatness of his concerns is

too great for the individual concerned. Consequently a certain tone of

sadness[17] prevails over the whole. What is most glorious is seen very

early to pass away. In the fulness of his life Achilles mourns over his

death; and at the conclusion of the Odyssey we view him and Agamemnon

as spirits that have passed away as shades, with the consciousness that

they are shades. Troy, too, falls; old Priam is slain hard by the altar

of the home; women and maidens become slaves. Æneas, in obedience to

the divine command, departs to found a new kingdom in Latium, and the

victorious heroes only return after manifold suffering to the happiness

or bitterness that awaits them at home.

(_ββ_) This necessity of events may, however, be represented in very

different ways.

The most obvious and least elaborate is the bare exhibition of such

events without any further explanation of the poet of a necessary

element existing in the particular occurrences and their general

consequence by his addition of a controlling world of gods disclosed in

the decision, interference, and co-operation of eternal powers. In such

a case we must, however, have the feeling brought home from the entire

atmosphere of the exposition, that in the recounted events and great

life-destinies of single individuals and entire families or races, we

are not merely confronted with what is mutable and contingent in human

existence, but with destinies which have an essential foundation,

whose necessity remains, however, the obscure operation of a power

which is not placed before us poetically as such a power in its divine

controlling energy to the point of defined individualization and in

its explicit activity. The Niebelungenlied retains this general tone

strongly, albeit it does not ascribe the direction of the blood-stained

final result of all committed deed either to Christian Providence or

the pagan world of gods. For in regard to Christendom, we merely hear

of churchgoing and mass. We have, indeed, the remark of the bishop

of Spejevs to the beautiful Ute, when the heroes withdraw into king

Etzel's country: "Please God, He will keep them there!" We have also no

doubt dreams of warning, the prophecy of the Danube maidens to Hagen,

and other examples of a similar kind, but no really conclusive witness

to the control and interference of gods. This leaves an impression on

this poetry as of a something unriddled, unyielding, a mournfulness

that is at the same time objective, and consequently wholly epic in

its tone. It is a great contrast to the poems of Ossian, in which

in the same way no gods appear, yet in which, on the other hand, we

find lamentation over the death and downfall of the entire heroic

stock presented under the form of the private sorrow of the dismayed

minstrel, and as the yearning of a woe-begone recollection.

Essentially distinct from the above type of conception is the complete

interlacement of all human destiny and natural event with the

resolution, volition and action of a many-sided world of gods such

as we find in the great Hindoo Epopees, and in Homer, Virgil, and

others. I have already expressly drawn attention to the varied poetic

interpretation which the poet himself supplies of events, which are

apparently accidental, through his assumption of the co-operation and

apparition of gods, and attempted to enforce the same by particular

examples from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Here we may observe that the

condition of most importance to the poetry in question is that in this

reciprocal action of gods and men the relative independence of both

aspects is maintained, so that neither the gods fall into lifeless

abstractions, nor the human individuals become purely subservient

vassals. How such a danger is to be avoided I have already discussed

at length in a previous passage. The Hindoo Epos is in this respect

unable to force its way fully to the truly ideal relation between

gods and mankind; on such a stage of imaginative symbolism the human

aspect still remains aloof in its free and beautiful actuality, and the

activity of individuals in part appears as the incarnation of gods,

and in part, as something of more incidental merit, vanishes, or is

depicted under the guise of ascetic exaltation to the condition and

power of gods. Conversely the variously personified powers, passions,

genii, angels, and so forth, that we meet with in Christendom possess

for the most part too little individual independence, and consequently

tend only to affect us in a cold and abstract sort of way. The case is

much the same in Mohammedanism. Through the deification of Nature and

the world of mankind, through the conception of a prosaic co-ordination

of reality, it is hardly possible to avoid the danger, more

particularly where we enter a region of fairyland, wherein a miraculous

interpretation is given to that which is essentially contingent and

indifferent in external circumstances, which are themselves only

present as a simple occasion for human action and as the ordeal of

individual character, without possessing therewith an ideal consistency

and foundation. By reason of this no doubt the infinitely extensible

connection of cause and effect is broken, and the many sections in this

prosaic concatenation of circumstances, which cannot be throughout

made clearly distinct, are brought all of a sudden into one union. If,

however, such a result is secured without the principle of necessity

and ideal reasonableness, such a mode of elucidation, as, for example,

frequently in "The Thousand and one Nights," appears as little more

than the sport of an imagination, which endeavours to unfold as

causality possible and actual, by means of such inventions, what is

otherwise incredible.

The fairest mean, on the other hand, in this respect is that retained

by Greek poetry, inasmuch as it is able to bestow both on gods and

men a reciprocally indestructible power and freedom of independent

individuality. And such is harmonious with its fundamental standpoint.

(_ββ_) There is, however, particularly in the epic conception of it,

a point of view relative to the collective world of gods, which I

have already referred to above in another connection. This is the

contrast which the _primitive_ Epopee presents to the _artificial_

composition of later times. This difference is very pronounced if

we compare Homer and Virgil. The level of education, from which the

Homeric poems originated, still continues in a fair harmony with the

poetic subject-matter. With Virgil, on the contrary, we are reminded by

every single hexameter that the general outlook of the poet is totally

different from the world, which it is his endeavour to depict; and

the gods more particularly have lost the freshness of their original

vitality. Instead of being living persons in their own selves, actual

witnesses to us of their existence, they have rather the appearance

of being mere creations of the poet and external instruments, which

it is neither possible for the poet or his audience to take quite

seriously, although there is an open pretence made that they have been

taken thus seriously. Throughout the whole of the Virgilian Epic we

feel ourselves in the atmosphere of ordinary life; the old tradition,

the saga, the fairyland of poetry enters with prosaic distinctness

into the frame of our common-sense faculties. What we have in the

Æneid is very much what we find in the Roman history of Livy, where

ancient kings and consuls make speeches, precisely as an orator made

his speech in the Agora of Rome, or the school of the rhetoricians in

the days of Livy himself. And, on the other hand, in what is really

retained from tradition, as an example of primitive speech, such as

the fable of Menenius Agrippa[18] about the functions of the belly, we

find a contrast which is almost repulsive. In Homer, however, the gods

are wafted in a magical light between poetry and reality: they are not

permitted to approach the imagination so nearly, that the apparition of

them confronts us with all the detail of ordinary life; nor are they

left so undefined, that they lose all appearance of vital reality as we

look at them. All that they do is readily explained by the soul-life

and activities of men; and that which supports our faith in them is

the substance and content upon which they essentially repose. From

this point of view the poet, too, is thoroughly in earnest with his

creations, though he treats with irony their form and external reality.

In agreement with this it appears that the ancients themselves believed

in this external form merely as works of art, which receive their

confirmation and significance as a gift of the poet. This light-hearted

and human freshness of presentment, in virtue of which the gods appear

human and natural, is one of the pre-eminent qualities of the Homeric

poems. The divine figures of Virgil float before our vision as so many

invented wonders, as members of an artificial system. Virgil has not

wholly escaped the charge of mere travesty, despite his earnestness;

nay, this earnest mien of his is rather the cause of it, and Blumauer's

Mercury with his boots and spurs and riding-whip is not without its

justification. There is no necessity for any one else to make the

Homeric gods ridiculous. His own picture of them makes them quite

ridiculous enough. Nay, in his own story the gods themselves have their

laugh over the lame Hephestus, and over the cunning net in which Mars

lies in company with Venus, to say nothing of the box on the ear that

Venus gets, and the howl of Mars as he collapses. By means of these

touches of natural lustiness and gaiety the poet at once liberates

us from the external form which he set up, and enforces all the more

emphatically our common human nature, which he values, and which

suffers, however, the necessary and substantive power involved therein,

and the faith in the same, to remain. But one or two more examples of

similar detail. The tragic episode of Dido is so entirely to the modern

colour, that it was able to inspire a Tasso with emulation, nay, even

in part to a literal translation. Even nowadays the French are moved

to something like ecstasy over it. And yet how totally different in

their human naïveté, simplicity and truth are the Homeric narratives of

Circe and Calypso. The contrast is the same in Homer's account of the

descent of Odysseus into Hades. This obscure and twilight like retreat

of the shades is shown us through a dusky cloud, in an intermingling of

imagination and reality, which takes hold of us with astonishing force.

Homer does not suffer his hero to descend into any Underworld ready to

hand. Odysseus himself digs a pit, and pours therein the blood of a ram

he has killed; he summons the shades, which are then under constraint

to circle round him, and bids some of them drink fresh blood that they

may address him, and give him news, and drives away others with the

sword as they throng round him in their thirst for life. Everything

that happens here is bound up with the life of the hero, whose general

demeanour is the reverse of the humble attitude of Æneas and Dante. In

Virgil's account Æneas descends in the ordinary way; and the flight

of steps, Cerberus, Tantalus, and all the rest leaves us with the

impression of a definitely organized family establishment, quite to the

pattern of an orthodox compendium of mythology.

With yet more force will this artificial _compôte_ of the poet appear

as such rather than a work that springs naturally from the subject

where we are already cognisant of the substance of the tale that

is told us in its fresh and primitive form, or as actual history.

Examples of this are Milton's "Paradise Lost," the "Noachid" of

Bodmer, Klopstock's "Messias," Voltaire's "Henriade," and others. In

all these poems we cannot fail to detect a real cleft between the

content and the reflection of the poet which modifies his description

of the events, characters and circumstances. In Milton's case, for

example, we find emotions and observations obviously the growth of an

imagination and ethical ideas inseparable from his own age. In the

same way with Klopstock we have God the Father, the history of Jesus

Christ, patriarchs and angels combined with our German education of

the eighteenth century, and the ideas of Wölffian metaphysic. This

twofold aspect asserts itself in every line. No doubt in these cases

the content itself offers many difficulties. For God the Father,

the heaven of the angels, and the angelic host are far less adapted

to the individualization of a free imagination than are the Homeric

gods, which, in a manner similar to the in part fantastic creations

in Ariosto, in their external mode of appearance, and so far as they

do not epitomize[19] human action, but rather independently confront

each other as individuals, do of themselves suggest the gibe over such

a presentment.[20] Moreover Klopstock, so far as a religious outlook

is concerned, introduces us to a world devoid of foundation, which he

crowds with the brilliant effects of a rather exhausting imagination,

and compels us to take everything as seriously as he means it himself.

This is particularly unfortunate in the case of his angels and devils.

Such creations only really have substance and can be brought home to

us in their individuality in so far as the material of their actions,

as with the Homeric gods, is rooted in the spiritual experience of

humanity, or in a reality already known to us, as in cases where

they claim importance as being the guardian spirits or angels of men

or cities, but who, apart from such a concrete significance, assert

what is just so much the more merely the vacancy of imagination in

proportion as a serious actuality is ascribed to them. Abbadona,

for instance, the repentant devil,[21] possesses neither a truly

allegorical meaning--for in the abstract notion of devil there can be

no inconsistency of guilt which can be converted into virtue--nor is

such a figure one that is essentially and truly concrete. If Abbadona

were a man, a conversion to God would no doubt be reasonable; but

where we have evil regarded as something independently substantive,

which is not an individual human evil, such a conversion is merely

a triviality of sentimental emotion. It is in fact a distinguishing

characteristic of Klopstock's invention that it creates such unreal

personages, conditions and events, which have nothing in common with

the actual world and its poetical content. And he fares no better in

the machinery of his judicial condemnation of riotous living in high

places, least of all in the contrast he presents to Dante, who condemns

the famous personalities of his time to hell with a power of detailed

realization of another type altogether. Equally destitute of real

content as poetry is the joy of the resurrection among the assembled

spirits of Adam, Noah, Shem, Japhet, and the rest, as depicted by

Klopstock, who, in the 11th canto of the Messias, at the command of

Gabriel, once more revisit their graves. Reason and rational ground

are alike absent here. The souls have lived in the Divine Presence;

they now behold the Earth, but they enter into no renewed relation

with it. We may presume that they could not do better than appear to

men; but of this there is not a single example. No doubt we find here

beautiful emotions, endearing situations; and above all the moment in

which the soul is once more united to a body is depicted in a way that

arrests us; but the _content_ remains none the less an invention that

possesses no real claim to credibility. In contrast to such abstract

ideas the blood-drinking of the phantoms in Homer, their reanimation

in memory and speech, possess for us infinitely more the truth and

realization of ideal poetry. And though from the point of view of

imaginative resource these pictures of Klopstock are decorative enough,

what is most essential in them is throughout the lyrical rhetoric of

angels, who appear merely as instruments of service, or of patriarchs

and other Biblical figures whose speeches and harangues have little in

harmony with their historical characters as we have received the same

from tradition. Mars, Apollo, War, Knowledge, and so forth--powers of

this kind are neither in respect to their content wholly inventions, as

the angels are, nor are they simply historical persons borrowed from

historical sources, as are the patriarchs; they are on the contrary

permanent forces, whose _form_ and mode of appearance is alone the

_poet's creation._ In the "Messias," however, admitting its excellence

in certain directions--its purity of feeling, the brilliancy of its

phantasy--yet it cannot be denied that by reason of the very type of

such a phantasy we have here very, very much indeed that is hollow,

without definite substance, and utilized simply as machinery for

something else, all of which, combined with the absence of continuity

in the content and its mode of conception, has even already covered

the entire poem with oblivion. Things only live and remain green,

which, essentially vital in themselves, unfold to us original life

and activity in their pristine mould. For this reason we must hold

fast to the primitive Epopees, and keep aloof, not only from modes

of conception which are antagonistic to the actual presence which is

vindicated in such, but also and above all from false aesthetic theory

and predilection, at least if we are really anxious to enjoy and study

the original world-outlook of nations, that great and spiritual[22]

natural history. We have every reason to congratulate recent times,

and our German nation in particular, that it is now on the road to

the attainment of this object; that it has, in short, broken through

the former obtuseness, of ordinary methods of thinking, and by its

liberation of the mind from restricted views made it more receptive

to ideas of the world which it is imperative that we as individuals

enter into, and which alone are able to restore to us, to the full

extent of their claim, the resurrected spirits of nations, whose ideal

significance and deed thus appear struck into life in these their own

Epopees.

(_c_) _The Epos as Unified Totality_

Hitherto, in considering the necessary qualifications of a genuine

Epos, we have on the one hand discussed the _general_ world-environment

and from a further point of view the nature of the particularized event

transacted on such a background by _individuals_ either acting under

the direction of gods or subject to destiny. These two fundamental

aspects have yet further to coalesce in one and the same epic totality.

In respect to this I will merely confine the reader's attention to the

following points of interest:

In the _first_ place we propose to consider the _collective aggregate

of objects_, a satisfactory exposition of which is necessary to

disclose the connection between the particular action and the

substantive ground referred to.

_Secondly_, we have to examine the nature of the difference which

obtains between the epic mode of _disclosure_ and that of lyric or

dramatic poetry.

_Thirdly_, we have to deal with the _unity_ in which an epic composition

is rounded off despite all its breadth of extension.

(_α_) The content of the Epos, as already observed, is the entirety of

a world in which an individual action is eventuated. In such a world

the greatest variety of objects appear necessarily appertinent to the

general views, deeds, and conditions of such a world.

(_αα_) Lyrical poetry is, no doubt, involved in definite situations,

within which the subject of the lyric is permitted to import a great

variety of content into its emotion and reflection. In this type of

poetry, however, it is throughout the form of conscious life itself

which characterizes such content; and for this reason excludes the

outlook on the objective world in all its breadth of extension.

Conversely the dramatic composition presents us characters and the

carrying out of the action itself with all the animated appearance

of life, so that here, too, the portrayal of local accessories, the

external form of the active personages and all that happens, in the

nature of the case tends to disappear. As a rule, what we have to

express is the soul-motive and purpose rather than its extensive

relations with the surrounding world of objects, or a description of

individuals in their positive appearance as part of them. In the Epos,

however, quite apart from the national actuality in the widest sense,

upon which the action is based, we must find room for the ideal or

soul aspect no less than the external or world aspect. We have in this

type, therefore, under review and in coalescence the entire totality

of all that we may reckon as comprised in the poetic presentation of

our human existence. In this content we must not merely include on

the one side the natural environment in the sense of this or that

specific locality in which the action takes place, but also the more

universal objective outlook such as I have already pointed out is a

feature we find illustrated in the Odyssey, enabling us to understand

how the Greeks in the times of Homer regarded the shape of the Earth,

the configuration of the seas, and similar geographical facts. At the

same time these natural aspects are not the object of most importance

in the poem; they are merely the foundation; there is, in short, the

further and more essential aspect of the composition unfolded in

the existence, activities, and co-operation of the entire world of

divinities; and between these two extremes we have humanity simply as

such in its collective relation to domestic, public, peaceful, and

warlike situations, ethical habit, customs, characters and events. And,

moreover, throughout we have to assume in both directions, whether

that is from the point of view of the individual event, or the general

condition, the all-embracing national and other actual complexus.

Finally, if we consider the nature of this intelligible content it

is not merely an external _événement_ that is presented us, but

in conjunction with such we must have, too, placed before us the

ideal world of emotion, the aims and purposes of mind, all that may

contribute to justify or condemn a deliberate line of conduct. In

short, the real subject-matter of lyric and dramatic poetry is not

wholly excluded, although in the epic type these aspects merely are

valid as subordinate features; they do not, as in the former cases,

constitute the essential form of the exposition, nor do they deprive

the Epos of its distinctive character. We may consequently affirm that

the distinctive note of the Epic is absent, when lyric expression

determines both tone and colour, as is the case, for example, in

Ossian, or when passages are emphasized in which the execution of

the poet is made as consummate as possible, as is to some extent the

case with Tasso, and to a still more marked degree characteristic of

Milton and Klopstock. Emotions and reflections ought rather, no less

than the portrayal of objective fact, to be transmitted as something

done, already spoken and thought, and not interrupt the tranquil

course of the Epic narrative. The incoherent exclamation of emotion,

the direct outcry of the soul mainly intent with its utterance upon

self-revelation, is out of place in such poetry. It will for the same

reason and as strongly abstain from an imitation of the animation

of dramatic dialogue, in which individuals carry on a conversation

as though face to face with each other, where the aspect of most

importance throughout is the contrast presented by different types of

character in their interchange of speech as they strive to convince,

command, impose upon, or passionately unravel their motives to one

another.

(_ββ_) And, _secondly_, the Epos has not merely to bring before

our vision the manifold content above described in its actually

independent and subsistent objective form, but also the form in

which it essentially becomes the Epos is, as I have more than once

already described it, an _individual_ event. If this essentially

limited action is to remain united with all other material introduced,

this additional accretion of fact, must throughout be brought into

definite relation with the course of the individual event, that is to

say, it must not fall outside it as independent. We could not find a

more perfect illustration of this interweaving of all threads than

that of the Odyssey. The domestic arrangements of the Greeks, for

instance, no less than the ideas we get of foreign and barbarous folk

and countries, or of the realm of the shades, and much else, are so

closely interwoven with the personal wanderings of the home-returning

Odysseus and the fortunes of Telemachus on his journey after his

father, that not one of these aspects of the tale is held in a loose

and independent position apart from the main event, or, as with the

chorus of tragedy, which does not usually enter into the action

and merely deals with generalized reflections, is able to relapse

inactive into retrospection, but co-operates in the actual progress

of the event. In a similar manner Nature also and the world of gods

for the first time receives, not so much on their own account as in

their relation to the particular events, which it is the function of

the godlike to direct, an individual representation and one of rich

vitality. Only when such a condition is fulfilled, or, in other words,

when the narrative throughout informs us of the progressive movement

of the event, which the poet has selected as the unifying material of

his composition, can it never appear as a mere portrayal of independent

objects. On the other hand, the particular event for its part should

not be involved in and absorb the substantive national basis and

totality upon which it moves forward to such a degree, that these are

themselves divested of all independent existence, and fall by necessity

into a relation simply of service. In this respect the expedition of

Alexander against the East would not supply satisfactory subject-matter

for the true Epopee. An heroic exploit of this kind not merely in

respect to the original resolve, but also to its manner of execution,

depends so entirely on this _one_ single individual, his personality

and character is so exclusively that which supports it, that we lose

altogether the independent existence and self-assertion of the national

basis, the host and its leaders, which we have shown to be a necessary

condition. Alexander's army is his people, wholly bound up with him and

his command: it follows him rather in the relation of vassalage than

that of free will. In contrast to this the true vitality of the epic

consists in this, that both these fundamental aspects, the particular

action with its individual agents and the general world-condition,

while no doubt continuing under a mediated relation, yet in this

relation of reciprocity no less preserve their necessary independence

and thereby enforce themselves as one existing whole, at the same time

securing and possessing an independent entity.

(_γγ_) In a previous passage we laid it down generally that in order

to have an individual action the substantive basis of epic poetry must

offer the opportunity of collisions, and furthermore observed, that the

general foundation must not appear as wholly independent but under the

form of a specific event; we may now add that it is in this individual

_événement_ that we must seek the point of _departure_ for the entire

epic poem. This is pre-eminently of importance for the situations

connected with its commencement. Here, too, we may take the Iliad and

Odyssey for models. In the first the Trojan war is placed before us

as the general background of contemporary life, but only so far as it

comprises the particular events connected with the wrath of Achilles.

And for this reason the poem commences without any possible confusion

with situations which excite the passion of the principal hero against

Agamemnon. In the Odyssey there are two classes of subject-matter which

determine the content of its opening, that is to say, the wanderings of

Odysseus and the domestic complications at Ithaca. Homer brings them

together by giving us briefly information concerning Odysseus on his

home-journey to the effect that he is detained by Calypso, and then at

once passes to the sorrows of Penelope and the voyage of Telemachus. We

are, consequently, able to review at one glance what obstacle stands

in way of the return, and what is consequently rendered necessary for

those left behind at home.

(_β_) The advance, then, of the epic poem from a commencement such as

this is totally different from that of lyric or dramatic poetry.

(_αα_) In the first place we should draw attention to the possibilities

of _extension_ within the range of the Epos. These are quite as much

due to the form as they are to the content. We have already seen what

a variety of objects may be comprised in the world of the Epic as

fully elaborated, not merely in its ideal capacities, motives, and

aim, but also in respect to its objective situation and environment.

Inasmuch as all these aspects assume an objective form, an appearance

of reality, each one of them takes to itself a form of essentially

independent ideality and externality, in which the epic poet, either

in his exposition or description, is permitted freely to linger, and

to disclose in its positive appearance. The lyric, on the contrary,

concentrates all that it lays hold of within the ideal realm of the

emotions, or refines it away in the generalized vision of reflection.

In the objective world it is the immediate complex in juxtaposition, or

the varied wealth of manifold characteristics, which is presented us.

In this respect we find that in no other type of poetry is the claim

to introduce episodical matter, even to the point of to all appearance

absolute independence, more indisputable than in the Epos. The delight,

however, in actual fact for its own sake and in its natural form must,

as already observed, not be carried so far as to import into the

poem circumstances and facts which have no real connection with the

important action. Such episodes must assert themselves as effective in

the advance of such action, whether as events which are obstructive to

its course, or assistant in their mediation. Yet, despite of this, the

particular portions of the epic poem will be somewhat loosely bound

together. This is a necessary result of the mode of its objectivity.

For in what is objective mediation persists as the ideal essence; what

in contrast to this confronts the external aspect is the independent

existence of particular aspects. This defect in the direction of a

stringent unity and the emphasized relation of specific portions of the

epic poem, which, according to its primitive form, possesses moreover

a primitive period of origination, has this result, that it lends

itself more readily than lyric or dramatic compositions to subsequent

additions and continuations; and, further, it is enabled to appropriate

under its more recent and embracing whole even examples of the saga

which have already received artistic expression of a definite, if not

so exalted character.

(_ββ_)_Secondly_, if we look at the way in which epic poetry may be

justified in its _motivisation_ of the progress and course of events,

we shall find that it ought not either exclusively to take the ground

of what happens from the individual mood, nor yet from what is purely

personal character. In other words, it should not encroach upon

what is the proper sphere of the lyric and drama; it must, in this

respect too, adhere to the form of objectivity which constitutes the

fundamental epic type. We have, in fact, seen more than once previously

that external conditions were of no less importance, for an exposition

that takes the form of narrative, than states of soul which revealed

character. In the Epos character and the necessary rational condition

coalesce completely on terms of equality, and the epic character may

therefore give way to external conditions, without impairing his poetic

individuality, may be, in short, in his action, the result of relations

in such a way that these appear as the predominant factor rather than

the exclusively effective character as we find it in the drama. We

find in the Odyssey that the progress of events is almost entirely

motived in this way. We find the same thing in the adventures of

Ariosto and other Epopees, where the material of the song is borrowed

from the the Middle Ages. The divine command, too, which induces Æneas

to found Rome, no less than the varied episodes which extend its

embrace over a wide field, would involve a type of motivisation wholly

uncongenial to the drama. A further illustration of this is Tasso's

"Jerusalem Delivered," in which, quite apart from the brave antagonism

of the Saracens, many a natural event is opposed to the object of

the Christian host. Such examples might be indefinitely multiplied

from almost all the more famous Epopees. And, indeed, it is precisely

material of this kind, in which an exposition of this type is possible

and necessary, that the epic poet ought to select.

The same thing is effected where it is bound to appear as the result

of the actual decision of individuals. Here, too, we have neither

to assert nor to express that which the character in the dramatic

sense of the term--that is, according to his aim and the individual

passion which uniquely animates him--makes of the circumstances and

relations, in order to maintain his personality against this external

resistance no less than against other individuals. Rather the epic

character excludes this action viewed simply in reference to its

personal character, just as it excludes the tumult of purely subjective

states and feelings. Instead of this it cleaves fast, on the one

hand, to the circumstances and their reality; and on the other that,

whereby its movement is effected, must necessarily render explicit all

that is essentially valid, universal, and ethical. In Homer, as in

no other writer, we shall find inexhaustible material for pertinent

thought on this head. The lament of Hecuba over Hector, for instance,

or of Achilles over the death of Patroclus--episodes which, so far

as content is concerned, would lend themselves admirably to lyric

treatment--are in Homer held throughout within the epic temper. And

to quite as little extent do we find this poet handle in dramatic

style situations which would primarily adapt themselves to dramatic

exposition, such as the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles in the

council of the chiefs, or the parting of Hector and Andromache. Only to

glance at the last-mentioned scene, this belongs unquestionably to one

of the finest conceivable efforts of epic poetry. Even in Schiller's

dialogue between Amalia and Carl in "The Robbers," where the same

subject ought to be treated in the lyric vein throughout, we distinctly

hear an epic reverberation from the Iliad. How consummately epic in its

effect, however, is Homer's description in the sixth book of the Iliad

of the way in which Hector vainly seeks for Andromache at home, then

at last meets her on the way to the Scæan gate, how she hurries toward

him, and when close to him, as he looks with a peaceful smile on his

little boy lying on the arm of his nurse, exclaims: "Amazing man, thy

courage will destroy thee, and thou compassionest neither thy infant

boy nor me, hapless wight, who will soon be widowed of thee. Ay, for

soon the Achaeans will slay thee, storming against thee together. And

if I lose thee it were better for myself to pass beneath the earth. No

other comfort is left for me, but only sorrow, if thou art stricken by

fate! Neither have I my father any more, nor yet my lady mother." After

which she narrates at length all the story about her father and the

death of her seven brothers, all of whom Achilles had slain, also the

captivity, ransom, and decease of her mother. Then at length she turns

with earnest plea to Hector, who is henceforward to her father and

mother, brothers, and spouse in the bloom of life, and implores him to

remain on the walls, and not to make his son an orphan and his wife a

widow. Hector replies in much the same spirit: "All this is also a care

to me, wife; but I fear too much the Trojans, if I avoid the battle

here, like a coward; the eddy, too, of the moment worries me not, who

am wont to be ever dauntless, and to fight in the foremost ranks of the

Trojans, protecting the high fame of my father and mine own. Ay, well

indeed I wot, both in mind and soul, that the day will come in which

sacred Troy shall fall, as also Priam and the folk of the king cunning

with the spear. But I sorrow not so much for the Trojans, nor yet for

Hecuba herself and Priam, nor the brothers of my flesh, who shall fall

beneath the foe, as for thee, when some bronze-greaved Achæan shall

bear thee away, robbing thee of thy day of freedom, and thou shalt spin

from the flax of another in Argos, or wearily draw water, loth indeed,

but the might of necessity will be upon thee; and I doubt not there

will be someone who will say, as he sees thee weeping: 'See yonder

Hector's wife, the bravest of all who fought among the Trojans when the

fight was over Ilium.' Thus perchance shall someone speak; and woe will

come upon thee, that thou hast no longer such a husband, to fend thee

from such serfdom. As for myself, may the earth cover me, or ever I

hear thy bitter cry and thy carrying off." All that Hector says here is

full of feeling, pathetic enough, yet not merely expressed in a lyrical

or dramatic manner, but in the epic vein, inasmuch as the picture which

he outlines of suffering, and which brings pain to himself, in the

first place depicts circumstantially objective conditions as such, and

in the second place because all that affects and moves him does not

appear as personal volition, or individual resolve, but rather as a

necessity which is not at the same time his own aim and will. Of much

the same epic effect are the pleas with which the vanquished plead, as

they may on various grounds, for their life with their victors; for a

movement of the soul, which proceeds merely from circumstances, and

only attempts to affect us through the causative effect of objective

relations and situations, is not dramatic, although modern tragedians

from time to time also make use of such a type of effect. The scene,

for example, in Schiller's "Maid of Orleans," on the battle-field

between the English knight Montgomery and Joan,[23] is, as others have

already justly observed, rather epic than dramatic. In the moment of

danger all courage forsakes the knight; yet, for all that, when pressed

by the fierce Talbot, who punishes cowardice with death, and the Maid,

who conquers even the bravest, he is unable to have recourse to flight,

and exclaims:

O, wär ich nimmer über Meer hieher geschifft,

Ich unglücksel'ger! Eitler Wahn bethörte mich,

Wohlfeilen Ruhm zu suchen in dem Frankenkrieg,

Und jetzo führt mich das verderbliche Geschick

In diese blut'ge Mordschlacht. Wär ich weit von hier

Daheim noch an der Savern' bluhendem Gestad

Im sichern Vaterhause, we die Mutter mir.

In Gram zurückblieb und die zarte süsse Braut.[24]

Expressions such as these are unmanly, and make the figure of this

knight neither fit for the genuine Epos nor the tragic drama, are in

fact rather suggestive of comedy. And when Joan, after exclaiming,