advances towards him, he throws away sword and shield and pleads at her
feet for his life. The reasons he gives at length in order to arouse
her sympathy: his defencelessness; the wealth of his father, who would
ransom him with gold; the gentleness of the sex to which Joan belongs
as maid; the love of his sweet bride, who waits for his return home in
tears; the grief of the parents whom he has left at home; the grievous
fate of death unwept for in a foreign land--all these motives are
themselves, in one aspect of them, essentially objective conditions,
effective and of value as such, and on the other hand, the tranquil
exposition of them is itself in the epic vein. In the same way the
poet motives the condition, that Joan must hearken to him, through the
external circumstance of the defencelessness of the pleader, although
from the dramatic point of view she ought without delay and at the bare
sight to have slain him, being as she was the relentless foe of all
Englishmen, and in fact expresses such destructive hatred with every
resource of rhetoric, justifying her action by the statement that she
is bound with most fearful vow to the spirit-world.
Mit dem Schwert zu tödten alles Lebende, das ihr
Der Schlachten Gott verhängnissvoll entgegenschickt.[26]
If the point of importance to the maid were merely that Montgomery
ought not to die defenceless, he possessed apparently an excellent
means in his grasp of retaining his life; in other words he had merely
to refuse to take up his weapons. This view is supported by the fact
that Joan has already listened to him so long. Yet when she demands
that he should fight for his life with her, of mortal flesh like
himself, he again takes up his sword and falls by her hand. Such a
_development_ of the scene had been more in keeping with the drama had
it dispensed with all this varied epic exposition.
(_γγ_) In general, then, we may characterize the type in which we
have the poetic passage of epic events set before us in the following
way, namely, that the epic presentation does not merely linger over
the picture of objective reality and ideal conditions, but over and
above this provides _obstacles_ to a final solution. This not only
applies to its relation to the wide field of external condition, to
which the more immediate vision enforces us, but also in respect
to the culminating movement of the action, more especially in its
contrast to dramatic poetry. For this reason above all it diverts us
from the execution of the fundamental purpose, the connected course
of whose evolved conflict a dramatic poet ought never to lose sight
of, into much digressive matter; and, moreover, by this means avails
itself of the opportunity, to bring before our vision the complex
unity of a world of circumstances, which otherwise could not have
been expressed in speech. We have an illustration of such an obstacle
in the beginning of the Iliad. Homer here at once tells us about the
fatal sickness, which Apollo had spread throughout the Greek camp,
and connects with it the strife between Achilles and Agamemnon. This
wrath is the second impediment. Even more obviously in the Odyssey is
every adventure that Odysseus has to pass through, a delay to his home
return. More particularly, however, the distinct episode serves to
interrupt the unimpaired progression of the story, and is to a great
extent an obstacle to this. Such, for instance, is the shipwreck of
Æneas, his love for Dido, the appearance of Armida in Tasso, and we may
add as a rule the many independent love affairs of particular heroes
in the romantic Epos, which, in the poetry of Ariosto, accumulate and
interlace with such profusion, that the conflict between Christian and
Saracen is thereby entirely hidden. In the "Divine Comedy" of Dante
we do not find such definite examples of obstruction to the plot or
narrative. In this case we must associate the slow advance of the Epic
denouement partly with the generally pausing manner of the description,
and in part with the many little episodical histories and conversations
with particular characters, whether damned or otherwise, about whom the
poet permits himself more detailed information.
In this connection it is above all things necessary that impediments
of this description, which interfere with the flow of narrative to its
final end, should not be presented as though they were merely means
directed to objects of an objective character. For inasmuch as already
the general condition, on the basis of which the movement of the epic
world is carried forward, is only truly poetical where it appears as a
self-constructed growth, so too its entire course, either in virtue of
circumstances or the inherent destiny, must also appear self-originated
without our being able to detect thereby the personal views of
the poet; and this is all the more so because, in the form of its
objectivity--not merely under its aspects of phenomenal reality, but
also in respect to the substantive character of its content--it claims
for the whole no less than its divisible content that it is a positive
growth, spontaneous in its origin and independent. If, however, a
directive world of gods is its apex, controlling the course of events,
it is even more necessary that the poet himself should possess a lively
and vivid faith in them, because in that case it is generally through
the instrumentality of these that obstructions such as we have referred
to are asserted; consequently where these divine forces are treated
merely as some lifeless mechanism, it is inevitable that everything
for which they are responsible must equally become so in a poetic
composition which is artificial even in intention.
(_γ_) Having thus briefly adverted to the totality of objects, which
the Epos is able to unfold by interweaving a particular event with a
universal national world-condition, and, further, having discussed
the manner in which the course of events is developed, we have now,
_thirdly_, and in conclusion, to examine the problem as to the nature
of the _unity_ and _rounding off_ of an epic composition.
(_αα_) This is a point all the more important for the reason that in
our own day people are ready to take up the view that we may end an
Epic as we like, or continue it just as capriciously. Although this is
the opinion of men of talent and learning--it is in fact the contention
of F. N. Wolff--it remains none the less a crude and illiterate view.
It in fact amounts to nothing less than excluding from the finest
ethic compositions any genuine character of artistic composition. For
it is only in virtue of the fact that an Epos depicts an essentially
exclusive, and thereby, for the firs time independent world, that it
is at all a work of fine art in contrast to what is, in part, the
diffuse, and, in part, the finite, series of independent sections,
causes, effects, and other modes of self-causative reality. One can,
of course, so far admit that for the genuine and primitive Epos the
wholly aesthetic review of the design and organization of the parts,
of the position and completion of the episodes, of the kind of similes
employed, and so forth, this is not the point of most importance,
inasmuch as here, more than in lyrical poetry of a later date, and
its artificial elaboration of the drama, the general world-outlook,
the faith in divine beings, and, in a word, what is most essential in
such national Bibles, must be expressed as the aspect of most weight.
Nevertheless, these great national books, such as are the Ramajana, the
Iliad, and the Odyssey, and even the "Song of the Nibelings," ought not
to lose that quality which alone, in respect to both their beauty and
their art, can endow them with the worth and freedom of artistic works,
the quality, that is, whereby they bring before our vision a complete
sphere of action. What we have simply to do, therefore, is to discover
the appropriate form of this exclusive unity.
(_ββ_) The term Unity, if employed in this general sense, has become
a very commonplace one even for tragedy, one capable of much misuse.
For every event, in its causes and effects, creates an infinite chain,
which, in the direction of the past no less than the future, and in
a way that is in both directions incalculable, leads to a further
series of particular circumstances and actions, it being impossible
to determine all that may form part of the circumstances and detail
in other respects, or the mode of their coalescence. If we merely
confine our attention to this series, no doubt an Epos may be extended
backwards and forwards indefinitely; and, over and above this such
always offers opportunity for digression. But it is just such a series
as this which makes the composition prosaic. To adduce an example the
Greek cyclic poets have celebrated the entire cyclus of the Trojan
war, and in doing so continue at the point where Homer stops, with a
beginning, too, from the egg of Leda. But it is precisely on account
of this that they degenerate into prose, if we contrast them with
Homer's compositions. Just as little--I have already drawn attention
to this--can an individual as such surrender the central focus of his
unity, inasmuch as it is from this that the most varied events issue,
and are able to effect a union in the same, though they may be entirely
without connection regarded simply as events. We have consequently
to seek for another type of unity. In this respect we must briefly
determine the distinction between a mere _event_, and a _definite
action_, which accepts the form of event in the epic narrative. We
may define a mere event as the external aspect and realization of
every human action, without involving with it the execution of a
particular end; or, in general terms, we may call it every external
modification in the form and appearance of what actually exists. When
anyone is struck by lightning, that is a mere event, an external
occurrence. More is implied in the sack of a hostile city; we have here
the fulfilment of a predeterminate purpose. An essentially distinct
object of this kind, such as the liberation of the Holy Land from the
yoke of the Saracens and heathen, or better still the satisfaction of
a specific impulse, such as the wrath of Achilles, must, under the
mode of the epic eventuality, constitute the synthetic unity of the
Epopaea; and by this I mean that the poetic narrative must restrict
itself to that which is uniquely the effect of this conceived purpose
or specific impulse, and in this co-operation be rounded off in an
essentially exclusive unity. Action and execution of this type is,
however, only possible to human agency; so that, as the culminating
point of our composition, we must have in progressive conjunction
with purpose and impulse a _human personality._ Furthermore, if the
action and satisfaction of the entire heroic character, from which both
purpose and impulse proceed, are merely the result of wholly definite
situations and motives, which are dissipated as we look back in an
extensive complexity of relation, and if, further, the execution of the
purpose, as we look forward, carries with it a variety of result, then
in that case on the one hand no doubt a large number of presuppositions
will be involved with such a specific action, and on the other hand we
shall have many effects of reaction, which, however, will not be placed
in any more intimate poetic connection with just this determinate
character of the end under exposition. In this sense, for instance,
the wrath of Achilles has as little connection with the rape of Helen
or the judgment of Paris, although the one fact is presupposed in the
other, as it has with the actual sack of Troy. When, therefore, it is
contended that the Iliad neither possesses a necessary beginning, nor
an appropriate conclusion, such a verdict is due to an inability to see
distinctly that it is the wrath of Achilles which is the main subject
of the Iliad, and which consequently should supply the focus-point of
unity. If, on the contrary, we form a stable conception of the heroic
figure of Achilles, and assume that this, as asserted in the wrath
aroused in him by Agamemnon, is the connecting thread of the whole,
we shall be unable to conceive either a beginning or termination of
greater beauty. It is, as I have already pointed out, the direct motive
of this anger, which forms the poem's commencement; the consequences
of the same are comprised in all that follows. Against this critics
have attempted to enforce the view that in such a case the last cantos
are irrelevant, and might just as well be omitted. Such an opinion, if
we look at the poem itself, is untenable. For just as the dallying of
Achilles himself by the ships and his abstinence from the conflict are
purely the result of his indignant wrath, and are in this inactivity
bound up closely with the almost immediate success of the Trojans over
the Grecian host, no less than with the fight and death of Patroclus,
so, too, the lament and revenge of the noble Achilles and his victory
over Hector is closely linked with this fall of his brave friend. If in
the previous opinion it is implied that death is the end of everything,
and after that we may as well pack and be off, such a view merely
indicates extreme crudity of imaginative conception. With the idea of
death it is merely _Nature_ that is brought to a standstill; man is not
so, nor yet are the obligations of his _ethical life_ and _habit_,[27]
with their claim of honourable recognition for the fallen hero. In this
sense the sports that form part of the funeral rites of Patroclus,
the heartrending pleas of Priam, the reconciliation of Achilles, who
returns the father the corpse of his son, in order that in this case,
too, honour to the dead may not be absent, each and all are connected
with the previous events, and contribute to the supreme and satisfying
beauty of the narrative's conclusion.
(_γγ_) Inasmuch, however, as we have attempted above to make a
specifically individual action, which issues in accordance with a
deliberate purpose or heroic impulses, conform to the type of an epic
whole in which focal points are ascertainable that bind it together
and round off its completeness, the view is at least possible that
we have made the _unity_ of the Epos too nearly identical with that
of the _drama._ For in the drama also it is _one_ particular line of
action issuing from self-conceived purpose and character with its
conflict which constitutes the focal centre. In order, therefore,
not to involve these two types of poetry, the epos, that is, and the
drama, in confusion, though the confusion merely appear to be such, I
will yet again draw the reader's attention emphatically to my previous
explanation of the distinction between human action and event. And
quite apart from this the epic interest is not simply confined to
those characters, objects, and situations which have their ground
in the particular action as such, whose progress is the subject of
the epic narrative, but this action possesses the further stimulus
to its opposed factors and their resolution, and in fact is directed
throughout its course and exclusively within a _national_ and
_collective whole_, or substantive content, which claims on its own
account to assert a variety of characters, conditions, and events. In
this respect the final consummation of the Epos does not merely consist
in the particular content of the predominant action selected, but quite
as much in the entire synthesis of the _general world-survey_ whose
objective reality it undertakes to depict; in fact, the epic unity is
only then fully complete when the particular action, from one point of
view no doubt, in its independent character, but also from another,
regarded in its progression as the essentially rounded world within
the sphere of which it moves, is placed before us as one indissoluble
totality; and both of these spheres, or aspects of one sphere, repose
together in the mediating fulness and unimpaired unity of very life.
Such, then, are the most essential characteristics we find it possible,
within the limits accepted, to draw attention to in respect to the
genuine Epos.
It is, however, possible to apply the same form of objectivity to
other subject-matter, whose content does not carry with it the true
significance of genuine objectivity. It is very possible that a
theorist in Art will feel embarrassment when, with such modes of speech
before him, he is asked to make a classification adapted to all poems
without distinction; and we must not forget that under the generic term
of poem these hybrid forms have also to be reckoned. In any really
just classification, however, we ought only to include that which only
conforms with a definition of the generic notion.[28] All that is, on
the contrary, incomplete in content or form, or both, precisely for the
reason that it is not as it ought to be, is only subsumed defectively
under the notion, or in other words under the definition, which gives
us the thing as it ought to be, and in truth actually is. I only
propose, therefore, in conclusion and by way of supplement, to add a
few observations upon such subordinate and collateral branches of the
true epic composition.
To this class of poetry above all the _idyll_ belongs in the modern
sense of that term, viz., that in which poetry stands aloof from the
profounder interests of spiritual and ethical life, and depicts mankind
in its innocence. Innocent life in this sense amounts to little more
than an ignorance of everything except eating and drinking. We may
add that what we eat and drink here is extremely simple, it is goat's
milk merely, or sheep's milk, or at the most cow's milk, roots, acorns,
vegetables, and cheese made from milk. I should say that bread is no
longer in the truly idyllic sphere; we must, however, allow to it
flesh-eating; for it is hardly possible that our idyllic shepherds and
shepherdesses could have wished to sacrifice their herds exclusively
to the gods. Their occupation will consist in looking the whole day
long after their beloved herds with their faithful hound, in providing
their food and drink, and along with this giving vent, with as much
sentimental feeling as possible, to every kind of mood which does not
disturb this condition of repose and contentment. In a word, they are
satisfied with their peculiar piety and gentleness, piping away on
their reed or oat-pipes, warbling to each other, and above all making
love with the greatest tenderness and innocence.
The Greeks, on the contrary, possessed in their plastic representations
a more jubilant world, with its attendants of Bacchus, Satyrs and
Fauns, who, in their harmless service of a god, stimulated animal
life and human joviality with a vivacity and truth totally different
from the above pretentious innocence, piety, and emptiness. We may
also recognize the same essentially animated outlook on the world as
illustrated in lively pictures of national condition, in the Greek
Bucolic poets such as Theocritus; this is so whether our poet lingers
over actual situations of the life of fisher-folk, or shepherds,
or extends the mode in which he expresses this, or similar spheres
of life, to a yet wider circle, either depicting such states in an
epic form, or treating them in lyric form and that of the objective
drama. Virgil already sings to us with less warmth in his Eclogues.
Most tedious of all, however, is Gessner, so tedious that I suppose
no one reads him nowadays. We can only wonder that the French ever
had so much taste for him that they even ranked him highest among
German poets. Their morbid sensibility on the one hand, which evades
the tumult and changes of life, while yearning also for some kind of
movement, and on the other the absence of all true interest in such
poetry, so that the otherwise disturbing influences of our culture were
not represented--both of these factors, no doubt, contributed to this
preference.
We may reckon as a further class of this hybrid type of Epic those
poems which are half description and half lyrics, a favourite type
with the English, and one which for the most part accepts for its
subject-matter Nature, the Seasons, and similar subjects. We may also
associate with this type the various _didactic_ poems concerned with
physical science, astronomy, medicine, chess, fishing, and hunting--in
short, the art which loves to elaborate in a poetic form what is really
the content of prose, an art which has been cultivated with much talent
in later Greek poetry, and after that by the Romans, and, in our time,
pre-eminently by the French. Such poetry, despite its general epic
temper, will very readily pass over into the lyric treatment.
The _romances_ and _ballads_, which we find both in the Middle Ages and
modern times, are no doubt poetry of a kind, though it is impossible to
define accurately their type; so far as their content is concerned they
are in part epic. If we look at the form of their composition, however,
they are for the most part lyrical, so that we have perforce to reckon
them from different points of view to different types.
The _romantic_ novel, that Epopaea of _modern society_, opens a
different field altogether. In this we possess, on the one hand, in
all its completeness and variety, an epic prodigality of interests,
conditions, characters, and living relations, the extensive background
in fact of an entire world. We have also the epic exposition of events.
What fails us here is the _primitive_ world-condition as poetically
conceived, which is the source of the genuine Epos. The romance or
novel in the modern sense pre-supposes a basis of reality already
organized in its _prosaic form_, upon which it then attempts, in its
own sphere, so far as this is possible from such a general point of
view, both in its treatment of the vital character of events and the
life of individuals and their destiny, to make good once more the
banished claims of poetical vision. For this reason one of the most
common collisions in the novel, and one most suitable to it, is the
conflict between the poetry of the heart and the prose of external
conditions antagonistic to it, including with such the contingency
such imply. This is a conflict which may be resolved on the lines of
tragedy or comedy, or finds its settlement in the twofold conclusion,
first, that the characters which in the first instance contend with
the ordinary course of life are taught to recognize in it what is
the genuine heart of things, becoming thereby reconciled to their
conditions and ready to cooperate with them; and, secondly, that they
learn how to brush away the purely prosaic aspect of all that they do
and accomplish, and thereby replace the prose which they have found
there with a reality allied and congenial to beauty and art. In so
far as the form of the exposition is concerned, the genuine romance
pre-supposes, precisely as the Epos does, the synthesized purvey of
the world and life as one whole, the manifold contents of which are
manifested within the reach of the individual event which supplies
the focal centre of the entire complexus. In his attitude to detail,
however, the poet must here permit himself a freer play both of
conception and execution, and all the more so because he is here less
able to avoid the prose of actual life in his descriptions, though this
freedom should not make him any more inclined to dwell exclusively in
such an atmosphere of prose and ordinary occurrence.