more dangerous assumption in modern æsthetics than that of _popular
poetry_ and _individual poetry_, or, as it is usually called, _artistic
poetry_. This is the reaction, or, if you will, the superstition, which
followed upon the most momentous discovery of historico-philological
science, the discovery and appreciation of the _soul of the people_. For
this discovery prepared the way for a coming scientific view of history,
which was until then, and in many respects is even now, a mere
collection of materials, with the prospect that new materials would
continue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing pile would never be
systematically arranged. The people now understood for the first time
that the long-felt power of greater individualities and wills was larger
than the pitifully small will of an individual man;[1] they now saw that
everything truly great in the kingdom of the will could not have its
deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral individual will; and,
finally, they now discovered the powerful instincts of the masses, and
diagnosed those unconscious impulses to be the foundations and supports
of the so-called universal history. But the newly-lighted flame also
cast its shadow: and this shadow was none other than that superstition
already referred to, which popular poetry set up in opposition to
individual poetry, and thus enlarged the comprehension of the people's
soul to that of the people's mind. By the misapplication of a tempting
analogical inference, people had reached the point of applying in the
domain of the intellect and artistic ideas that principle of greater
individuality which is truly applicable only in the domain of the will.
The masses have never experienced more flattering treatment than in thus
having the laurel of genius set upon their empty heads. It was imagined
that new shells were forming round a small kernel, so to speak, and that
those pieces of popular poetry originated like avalanches, in the drift
and flow of tradition. They were, however, ready to consider that kernel
as being of the smallest possible dimensions, so that they might
occasionally get rid of it altogether without losing anything of the
mass of the avalanche. According to this view, the text itself and the
stories built round it are one and the same thing.
[1] Of course Nietzsche saw afterwards that this was not so.--TR.
Now, however, such a contrast between popular poetry and individual
poetry does not exist at all; on the contrary, all poetry, and of course
popular poetry also, requires an intermediary individuality. This
much-abused contrast, therefore, is necessary only when the term
_individual poem_ is understood to mean a poem which has not grown out
of the soil of popular feeling, but which has been composed by a
non-popular poet in a non-popular atmosphere--something which has come
to maturity in the study of a learned man, for example.
With the superstition which presupposes poetising masses is connected
another: that popular poetry is limited to one particular period of a
people's history and afterwards dies out--which indeed follows as a
consequence of the first superstition I have mentioned. According to
this school, in the place of the gradually decaying popular poetry we
have artistic poetry, the work of individual minds, not of masses of
people. But the same powers which were once active are still so; and the
form in which they act has remained exactly the same. The great poet of
a literary period is still a popular poet in no narrower sense than the
popular poet of an illiterate age. The difference between them is not in
the way they originate, but it is their diffusion and propagation, in
short, _tradition_. This tradition is exposed to eternal danger without
the help of handwriting, and runs the risk of including in the poems the
remains of those individualities through whose oral tradition they were
handed down.
If we apply all these principles to the Homeric poems, it follows that
we gain nothing with our theory of the poetising soul of the people, and
that we are always referred back to the poetical individual. We are thus
confronted with the task of distinguishing that which can have
originated only in a single poetical mind from that which is, so to
speak, swept up by the tide of oral tradition, and which is a highly
important constituent part of the Homeric poems.
Since literary history first ceased to be a mere collection of names,
people have attempted to grasp and formulate the individualities of the
poets. A certain mechanism forms part of the method: it must be
explained--i.e., it must be deduced from principles--why this or that
individuality appears in this way and not in that. People now study
biographical details, environment, acquaintances, contemporary events,
and believe that by mixing all these ingredients together they will be
able to manufacture the wished-for individuality. But they forget that
the _punctum saliens_, the indefinable individual characteristics, can
never be obtained from a compound of this nature. The less there is
known about the life and times of the poet, the less applicable is this
mechanism. When, however, we have merely the works and the name of the
writer, it is almost impossible to detect the individuality, at all
events, for those who put their faith in the mechanism in question; and
particularly when the works are perfect, when they are pieces of popular
poetry. For the best way for these mechanicians to grasp individual
characteristics is by perceiving deviations from the genius of the
people; the aberrations and hidden allusions: and the fewer
discrepancies to be found in a poem the fainter will be the traces of
the individual poet who composed it.
All those deviations, everything dull and below the ordinary standard
which scholars think they perceive in the Homeric poems, were attributed
to tradition, which thus became the scapegoat. What was left of Homer's
own individual work? Nothing but a series of beautiful and prominent
passages chosen in accordance with subjective taste. The sum total of
æsthetic singularity which every individual scholar perceived with his
own artistic gifts, he now called Homer.
This is the central point of the Homeric errors. The name of Homer, from
the very beginning, has no connection either with the conception of
æsthetic perfection or yet with the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. Homer as
the composer of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ is not a historical
tradition, but an _æsthetic judgment_.
The only path which leads back beyond the time of Pisistratus and helps
us to elucidate the meaning of the name Homer, takes its way on the one
hand through the reports which have reached us concerning Homer's
birthplace: from which we see that, although his name is always
associated with heroic epic poems, he is on the other hand no more
referred to as the composer of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ than as the
author of the _Thebais_ or any other cyclical epic. On the other hand,
again, an old tradition tells of the contest between Homer and Hesiod,
which proves that when these two names were mentioned people
instinctively thought of two epic tendencies, the heroic and the
didactic; and that the signification of the name "Homer" was included in
the material category and not in the formal. This imaginary contest with
Hesiod did not even yet show the faintest presentiment of individuality.
From the time of Pisistratus onwards, however, with the surprisingly
rapid development of the Greek feeling for beauty, the differences in
the æsthetic value of those epics continued to be felt more and more:
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ arose from the depths of the flood and
have remained on the surface ever since. With this process of æsthetic
separation, the conception of Homer gradually became narrower: the old
material meaning of the name "Homer" as the father of the heroic epic
poem, was changed into the æsthetic meaning of Homer, the father of
poetry in general, and likewise its original prototype. This
transformation was contemporary with the rationalistic criticism which
made Homer the magician out to be a possible poet, which vindicated the
material and formal traditions of those numerous epics as against the
unity of the poet, and gradually removed that heavy load of cyclical
epics from Homer's shoulders.
So Homer, the poet of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, is an æsthetic
judgment. It is, however, by no means affirmed against the poet of these
epics that he was merely the imaginary being of an æsthetic
impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists
indeed. The majority contend that a single individual was responsible
for the general design of a poem such as the _Iliad_, and further that
this individual was Homer. The first part of this contention may be
admitted; but, in accordance with what I have said, the latter part must
be denied. And I very much doubt whether the majority of those who adopt
the first part of the contention have taken the following considerations
into account.
The design of an epic such as the _Iliad_ is not an entire _whole_, not
an organism; but a number of pieces strung together, a collection of
reflections arranged in accordance with æsthetic rules. It is certainly
the standard of an artist's greatness to note what he can take in with a
single glance and set out in rhythmical form. The infinite profusion of
images and incidents in the Homeric epic must force us to admit that
such a wide range of vision is next to impossible. Where, however, a
poet is unable to observe artistically with a single glance, he usually
piles conception on conception, and endeavours to adjust his characters
according to a comprehensive scheme.
He will succeed in this all the better the more he is familiar with the
fundamental principles of æsthetics: he will even make some believe
that he made himself master of the entire subject by a single powerful
glance.
The _Iliad_ is not a garland, but a bunch of flowers. As many pictures
as possible are crowded on one canvas; but the man who placed them there
was indifferent as to whether the grouping of the collected pictures was
invariably suitable and rhythmically beautiful. He well knew that no one
would ever consider the collection as a whole; but would merely look at
the individual parts. But that stringing together of some pieces as the
manifestations of a grasp of art which was not yet highly developed,
still less thoroughly comprehended and generally esteemed, cannot have
been the real Homeric deed, the real Homeric epoch-making event. On the
contrary, this design is a later product, far later than Homer's
celebrity. Those, therefore, who look for the "original and perfect
design" are looking for a mere phantom; for the dangerous path of oral
tradition had reached its end just as the systematic arrangement
appeared on the scene; the disfigurements which were caused on the way
could not have affected the design, for this did not form part of the
material handed down from generation to generation.
The relative imperfection of the design must not, however, prevent us
from seeing in the designer a different personality from the real poet.
It is not only probable that everything which was created in those times
with conscious æsthetic insight, was infinitely inferior to the songs
that sprang up naturally in the poet's mind and were written down with
instinctive power: we can even take a step further. If we include the
so-called cyclic poems in this comparison, there remains for the
designer of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ the indisputable merit of
having done something relatively great in this conscious technical
composing: a merit which we might have been prepared to recognise from
the beginning, and which is in my opinion of the very first order in the
domain of instinctive creation. We may even be ready to pronounce this
synthetisation of great importance. All those dull passages and
discrepancies--deemed of such importance, but really only subjective,
which we usually look upon as the petrified remains of the period of
tradition--are not these perhaps merely the almost necessary evils which
must fall to the lot of the poet of genius who undertakes a composition
virtually without a parallel, and, further, one which proves to be of
incalculable difficulty?
Let it be noted that the insight into the most diverse operations of the
instinctive and the conscious changes the position of the Homeric
problem; and in my opinion throws light upon it.
We believe in a great poet as the author of the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey--but not that Homer was this poet_.
The decision on this point has already been given. The generation that
invented those numerous Homeric fables, that poetised the myth of the
contest between Homer and Hesiod, and looked upon all the poems of the
epic cycle as Homeric, did not feel an æsthetic but a material
singularity when it pronounced the name "Homer." This period regards
Homer as belonging to the ranks of artists like Orpheus, Eumolpus,
Dædalus, and Olympus, the mythical discoverers of a new branch of art,
to whom, therefore, all the later fruits which grew from the new branch
were thankfully dedicated.
And that wonderful genius to whom we owe the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_
belongs to this thankful posterity: he, too, sacrificed his name on the
altar of the primeval father of the Homeric epic, Homeros.
Up to this point, gentlemen, I think I have been able to put before you
the fundamental philosophical and æsthetic characteristics of the
problem of the personality of Homer, keeping all minor details
rigorously at a distance, on the supposition that the primary form of
this widespread and honeycombed mountain known as the Homeric question
can be most clearly observed by looking down at it from a far-off
height. But I have also, I imagine, recalled two facts to those friends
of antiquity who take such delight in accusing us philologists of lack
of piety for great conceptions and an unproductive zeal for
destruction. In the first place, those "great" conceptions--such, for
example, as that of the indivisible and inviolable poetic genius,
Homer--were during the pre-Wolfian period only too great, and hence
inwardly altogether empty and elusive when we now try to grasp them. If
classical philology goes back again to the same conceptions, and once
more tries to pour new wine into old bottles, it is only on the surface
that the conceptions are the same: everything has really become new;
bottle and mind, wine and word. We everywhere find traces of the fact
that philology has lived in company with poets, thinkers, and artists
for the last hundred years: whence it has now come about that the heap
of ashes formerly pointed to as classical philology is now turned into
fruitful and even rich soil.[2]
[2] Nietzsche perceived later on that this statement was,
unfortunately, not justified.--TR.
And there is a second fact which I should like to recall to the memory
of those friends of antiquity who turn their dissatisfied backs on
classical philology. You honour the immortal masterpieces of the
Hellenic mind in poetry and sculpture, and think yourselves so much more
fortunate than preceding generations, which had to do without them; but
you must not forget that this whole fairyland once lay buried under
mountains of prejudice, and that the blood and sweat and arduous labour
of innumerable followers of our science were all necessary to lift up
that world from the chasm into which it had sunk. We grant that
philology is not the creator of this world, not the composer of that
immortal music; but is it not a merit, and a great merit, to be a mere
virtuoso, and let the world for the first time hear that music which lay
so long in obscurity, despised and undecipherable? Who was Homer
previously to Wolf's brilliant investigations? A good old man, known at
best as a "natural genius," at all events the child of a barbaric age,
replete with faults against good taste and good morals. Let us hear how
a learned man of the first rank writes about Homer even so late as 1783:
"Where does the good man live? Why did he remain so long incognito?
Apropos, can't you get me a silhouette of him?"
We demand _thanks_--not in our own name, for we are but atoms--but in
the name of philology itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a
Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just as the Muses descended upon
the dull and tormented Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a
world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of the deepest, most
incurable woes; and speaks to men comfortingly of the beautiful and
godlike figure of a distant, rosy, and happy fairyland.
It is time to close; yet before I do so a few words of a personal
character must be added, justified, I hope, by the occasion of this
lecture.
It is but right that a philologist should describe his end and the means
to it in the short formula of a confession of faith; and let this be
done in the saying of Seneca which I thus reverse--
"Philosophia facta est quæ philologia fuit."
By this I wish to signify that all philological activities should be
enclosed and surrounded by a philosophical view of things, in which
everything individual and isolated is evaporated as something
detestable, and in which great homogeneous views alone remain. Now,
therefore, that I have enunciated my philological creed, I trust you
will give me cause to hope that I shall no longer be a stranger among
you: give me the assurance that in working with you towards this end I
am worthily fulfilling the confidence with which the highest authorities
of this community have honoured me.