LITERARY EPIC

Epic poetry, then, was invented to supply the artistic demands of

society in a certain definite and recognizable state. Or rather, it was

the epic material which supplied that; the first epic poets gave their

age, as genius always does, something which the age had never thought of

asking for; which, nevertheless, when it was given, the age took good

hold of, and found that, after all, this, too, it had wanted without

knowing it. But as society went on towards civilization, the need for

epic grew less and less; and its preservation, if not accidental, was an

act of conscious aesthetic admiration rather than of unconscious

necessity. It was preserved somehow, however; and after other kinds of

literature had arisen as inevitably and naturally as epic, and had

become, in their turn, things of less instant necessity than they were,

it was found that, in the manner and purpose of epic poetry, something

was given which was not given elsewhere; something of extraordinary

value. Epic poetry would therefore be undertaken again; but now, of

course, deliberately. With several different kinds of poetry to choose

from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and

he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. The

result, good or bad, of such a determination is called "literary" epic.

The poems of Apollonius Rhodius, Virgil, Lucan, Camoens, Tasso and

Milton are "literary" epics. But such poetry as the _Odyssey_, the

_Iliad,_ _Beowulf_, the _Song of Roland_, and the _Nibelungenlied_,

poetry which seems an immediate response to some general and instant

need in its surrounding community--such poetry is "authentic" epic.

A great deal has been made of this distinction; it has almost been taken

to divide epic poetry into two species. And, as the names commonly given

to the two supposed species suggest, there is some notion that

"literary" epic must be in a way inferior to "authentic" epic. The

superstition of antiquity has something to do with this; but the

presence of Homer among the "authentic" epics has probably still more to

do with it. For Homer is the poet who is usually chosen to stand for

"authentic" epic; and, by a facile association of ideas, the conspicuous

characteristics of Homer seem to be the marks of "authentic" epic as a

species. It is, of course, quite true, that, for sustained grandeur and

splendour, no poet can be put beside Homer except Dante and Milton; but

it is also quite clear that in Homer, as in Dante, and Milton, such

conspicuous characteristics are simply the marks of peculiar poetic

genius. If we leave Homer out, and consider poetic greatness only (the

only important thing to consider), there is no "authentic" epic which

can stand against _Paradise Lost_ or the _Aeneid_. Then there is the

curious modern feeling--which is sometimes but dressed up by erroneous

aesthetic theory (the worship of a quite national "lyricism," for

instance) but which is really nothing but a sign of covert

barbarism--that lengthy poetic composition is somehow undesirable; and

Homer is thought to have had a better excuse for composing a long poem

than Milton.

But doubtless the real reason for the hard division of epic poetry into

two classes, and for the presumed inferiority of "literary" to

"authentic," lies in the application of that curiosity among false

ideas, the belief in a "folk-spirit." This notion that such a thing as a

"folk-spirit" can create art, and that the art which it does create must

be somehow better than other art, is, I suppose, the offspring of

democratic ideas in politics. The chief objection to it is that there

never has been and never can be anything in actuality corresponding to

the "folk-spirit" which this notion supposes. Poetry is the work of

poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be

anything but the production of an individual mind. We may, if we like,

think that poetry would be more "natural" if it were composed by the

folk as the folk, and not by persons peculiarly endowed; and to think so

is doubtless agreeable to the notion that the folk is more important

than the individual. But there is nothing gained by thinking in this

way, except a very illusory kind of pleasure; since it is impossible

that the folk should ever be a poet. This indisputable axiom has been

ignored more in theories about ballads--about epic material--than in

theories about the epics themselves. But the belief in a real

folk-origin for ballads, untenable though it be in a little examination,

has had a decided effect on the common opinion of the authentic epics.

In the first place, a poem constructed out of ballads composed, somehow

or other, by the folk, ought to be more "natural" than a work of

deliberate art--a "literary" epic; that is to say, these Rousseau-ish

notions will admire it for being further from civilization and nearer to

the noble savage; civilization being held, by some mysterious argument,

to be deficient in "naturalness." In the second place, this belief has

made it credible that the plain corruption of authentic epic by oral

transmission, or very limited transmission through script, might be the

sign of multiple authorship; for if you believe that a whole folk can

compose a ballad, you may easily believe that a dozen poets can compose

an epic.

But all this rests on simple ignoring of the nature of poetic

composition. The folk-origin of ballads and the multiple authorship of

epics are heresies worse than the futilities of the Baconians; at any

rate, they are based on the same resolute omission, and build on it a

wilder fantasy. They omit to consider what poetry is. Those who think

Bacon wrote _Hamlet_, and those who think several poets wrote the

_Iliad_, can make out a deal of ingenious evidence for their doctrines.

But it is all useless, because the first assumption in each case is

unthinkable. It is psychologically impossible that the mind of Bacon

should have produced _Hamlet_; but the impossibility is even more

clamant when it comes to supposing that several poets, not in

collaboration, but in haphazard succession, could produce a poem of vast

sweeping unity and superbly consistent splendour of style. So far as

mere authorship goes, then, we cannot make any real difference between

"authentic" and "literary" epic. We cannot say that, while this is

written by an individual genius, that is the work of a community.

Individual genius, of whatever quality, is responsible for both. The

folk, however, cannot be ruled out. Genius does the work; but the folk

is the condition in which genius does it. And here we may find a genuine

difference between "literary" and "authentic"; not so much in the nature

of the condition as in its closeness and insistence.

The kind of folk-spirit behind the poet is, indeed, different in the

_Iliad_ and _Beowulf_ and the _Song of Roland_ from what it is in Milton

and Tasso and Virgil. But there is also as much difference here between

the members of each class as between the two classes themselves. You

cannot read much of _Beowulf_ with Homer in your mind, without becoming

conscious that the difference in individual genius is by no means the

whole difference. Both poets maintain a similar ideal in life; but they

maintain it within conditions altogether unlike. The folk-spirit behind

_Beowulf_ is cloudy and tumultuous, finding grandeur in storm and gloom

and mere mass--in the misty _lack_ of shape. Behind Homer it is, on the

contrary, radiant and, however vehement, always delighting in measure,

finding grandeur in brightness and clarity and shining outline. So,

again, we may very easily see how Tasso's poetry implies the Italy of

his time, and Milton's the England of his time. But where Homer and

Beowulf together differ from Tasso and Milton is in the way the

surrounding folk-spirit contains the poet's mind. It would be a very

idle piece of work, to choose between the potency of Homer's genius and

of Milton's; but it is clear that the immediate circumstance of the

poet's life presses much more insistently on the _Iliad_ and the

_Odyssey_ than on _Paradise Lost_. It is the difference between the

contracted, precise, but vigorous tradition of an heroic age, and the

diffused, eclectic, complicated culture of a civilization. And if it may

be said that the insistence of racial circumstance in Homer gives him a

greater intensity of cordial, human inspiration, it must also be said

that the larger, less exacting conditions of Milton's mental life allow

his art to go into greater scope and more subtle complexity of

significance. Great epic poetry will always frankly accept the social

conditions within which it is composed; but the conditions contract and

intensify the conduct of the poem, or allow it to dilate and absorb

larger matter, according as the narrow primitive torrents of man's

spirit broaden into the greater but slower volume of civilized life. The

change is neither desirable nor undesirable; it is merely inevitable. It

means that epic poetry has kept up with the development of human life.

It is because of all this that we have heard a good deal about the

"authentic" epic getting "closer to its subject" than "literary" epic.

It seems, on the face of it, very improbable that there should be any

real difference here. No great poetry, of whatever kind, is conceivable

unless the subject has become integrated with the poet's mind and mood.

Milton is as close to his subject, Virgil to his, as Homer to Achilles

or the Saxon poet to Beowulf. What is really meant can be nothing but

the greater insistence of racial tradition in the "authentic" epics. The

subject of the _Iliad_ is the fighting of heroes, with all its

implications and consequences; the subject of the _Odyssey_ is adventure

and its opposite, the longing for safety and home; in _Beowulf_ it is

kingship--the ability to show man how to conquer the monstrous forces of

his world; and so on. Such were the subjects which an imperious racial

tradition pressed on the early epic poet, who delighted to be so

governed. These were the matters which his people could understand, of

which they could easily perceive the significance. For him, then, there

could be no other matters than these, or the like of these. But it is

not in such matters that a poet living in a time of less primitive and

more expanded consciousness would find the highest importance. For a

Roman, the chief matter for an epic poem would be Roman civilization;

for a Puritan, it would be the relations of God and man. When,

therefore, we consider how close to his subject an epic poet is, we must

be careful to be quite clear what his subject is. And if he has gone

beyond the immediate experiences of primitive society, we need not

expect him to be as close as the early poets were to the fury of battle

and the agony of wounds and the desolation of widows; or to the

sensation of exploring beyond the familiar regions; or to the

marsh-fiends and fire-drakes into which primitive imagination naturally

translated the terrible unknown powers of the world. We need not, in a

word, expect the "literary" epic to compete with the "authentic" epic;

for the fact is, that the purpose of epic poetry, and therefore the

nature of its subject, must continually develop. It is quite true that

the later epics take over, to a very great extent, the methods and

manners of the earlier poems; just as architecture hands on the style of

wooden structure to an age that builds in stone, and again imposes the

manners of stone construction on an age that builds in concrete and

steel. But, in the case of epic at any rate, this is not merely the

inertia of artistic convention. With the development of epic intention,

and the subsequent choosing of themes larger and subtler than what

common experience is wont to deal in, a certain duplicity becomes

inevitable. The real intention of the _Aeneid_, and the real intention

of _Paradise Lost_, are not easily brought into vivid apprehension. The

natural thing to do, then, would be to use the familiar substance of

early epic, but to use it as a convenient and pleasant solvent for the

novel intention. It is what has been done in all the great "literary"

epics. But hasty criticism, finding that where they resembled Homer

they seemed not so close to their matter, has taken this as a pervading

and unfortunate characteristic. It has not perceived that what in Homer

was the main business of the epic, has become in later epic a device.

Having so altered, it has naturally lost in significance; but in the

greatest instances of later epic, that for which the device was used has

been as profoundly absorbed into the poet's being as Homer's matter was

into his being. It may be noted, too, that a corresponding change has

also taken place in the opposite direction. As Homer's chief substance

becomes a device in later epic, so a device of Homer's becomes in later

epic the chief substance. Homer's supernatural machinery may be reckoned

as a device--a device to heighten the general style and action of his

poems; the _significance_ of Homer must be found among his heroes, not

among his gods. But with Milton, it has become necessary to entrust to

the supernatural action the whole aim and purport of the poem.

On the whole, then, there is no reason why "literary" epic should not be

as close to its subject as "authentic" epic; there is every reason why

both kinds should be equally close. But in testing whether they actually

are equally close, we have to remember that in the later epic it has

become necessary to use the ostensible subject as a vehicle for the real

subject. And who, with any active sympathy for poetry, can say that

Milton felt his theme with less intensity than Homer? Milton is not so

close to his fighting angels as Homer is to his fighting men; but the

war in heaven is an incident in Milton's figurative expression of

something that has become altogether himself--the mystery of individual

existence in universal existence, and the accompanying mystery of sin,

of individual will inexplicably allowed to tamper with the divinely

universal will. Milton, of course, in closeness to his subject and in

everything else, stands as supreme above the other poets of literary

epic as Homer does above the poets of authentic epic. But what is true

of Milton is true, in less degree, of the others. If there is any good

in them, it is primarily because they have got very close to their

subjects: that is required not only for epic, but for all poetry.

Coleridge, in a famous estimate put twenty years for the shortest period

in which an epic could be composed; and of this, ten years were to be

for preparation. He meant that not less than ten years would do for the

poet to fill all his being with the theme; and nothing else will serve,

It is well known how Milton brooded over his subject, how Virgil

lingered over his, how Camoen. carried the _Luisads_ round the world

with him, with what furious intensity Tasso gave himself to writing

_Jerusalem Delivered_. We may suppose, perhaps, that the poets of

"authentic" epic had a somewhat easier task. There was no need for them

to be "long choosing and beginning late." The pressure of racial

tradition would see that they chose the right sort of subject; would

see, too, that they lived right in the heart of their subject. For the

poet of "literary" epic, however, it is his own consciousness that must

select the kind of theme which will fulfil the epic intention for his

own day; it is his own determination and studious endurance that will

draw the theme into the secrets of his being. If he is not capable of

getting close to his subject, we should not for that reason call his

work "literary" epic. It would put him in the class of Milton, the most

literary of all poets. We must simply call his stuff bad epic. There is

plenty of it. Southey is the great instance. Southey would decide to

write an epic about Spain, or India, or Arabia, or America. Next he

would read up, in several languages, about his proposed subject; that

would take him perhaps a year. Then he would versify as much strange

information as he could remember; that might take a few months. The

result is deadly; and because he was never anywhere near his subject. It

is for the same reason that the unspeakable labours of Blackmore, Glover

and Wilkie, and Voltaire's ridiculous _Henriade_, have gone to pile up

the rubbish-heaps of literature.

So far, supposed differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic

have resolved themselves into little more than signs of development in

epic intention; the change has not been found to produce enough artistic

difference between early and later epic to warrant anything like a

division into two distinct species. The epic, whether "literary" or

"authentic," is a single form of art; but it is a form capable of

adapting itself to the altering requirements of prevalent consciousness.

In addition, however, to differences in general conception, there are

certain mechanical differences which should be just noticed. The first

epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be

read. It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of

readers. This in itself would be enough to rule out themes remote from

common experience, supposing any such were to suggest themselves to the

primitive epic poet. Perhaps, indeed, we should not be far wrong if we

saw a chief reason for the pressure of surrounding tradition on the

early epic in this very fact, that it is poetry meant for recitation.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen

to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected

things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the

re-creation of tired hours. Traditional manner would be equally

difficult to avoid; for it is a tradition that plainly embodies the

requirements, fixed by experience, of _recited_ poetry. Those features

of it which make for tedium when it is read--repetition, stock epithets,

set phrases for given situations--are the very things best suited, with

their recurring well-known syllables, to fix the attention of listeners

more firmly, or to stir it when it drowses; at the least they provide a

sort of recognizable scaffolding for the events, and it is remarkable

how easily the progress of events may be missed when poetry is

declaimed. Indeed, if the primitive epic poet could avoid some of the

anxieties peculiar to the composition of literary epic, he had others to

make up for it. He had to study closely the delicate science of holding

auricular attention when once he had got it; and probably he would have

some difficulty in getting it at all. The really great poet challenges

it, like Homer, with some tremendous, irresistible opening; and in this

respect the magnificent prelude to _Beowulf_ may almost be put beside

Homer. But lesser poets have another way. That prolixity at the

beginning of many primitive epics, their wordy deliberation in getting

under way, is probably intentional. The _Song of Roland_, for instance,

begins with a long series of exceedingly dull stanzas; to a reader, the

preliminaries of the story seem insufferably drawn out. But by the time

the reciter had got through this unimportant dreariness, no doubt his

audience had settled down to listen. The _Chanson d'Antioche_ contains

perhaps the most illuminating admission of this difficulty. In the first

"Chant," the first section opens:[4]

Seigneurs, faites silence; et que tout bruit cesse,

Si vous voulez entendre une glorieuse chanson.

Aucun jongleur ne vous en dira une meilleure.

Then some vaguely prelusive lines. But the audience is clearly not quite

ready yet, for the second section begins:

Barons, écoutez-moi, et cessez vos querelles!

Je vous dirai une très-belle chanson.

And after some further prelude, the section ends:

Ici commence la chanson où il y a tant à apprendre.

The "Chanson" does, indeed, make some show of beginning in the third

section, but it still moves with a cautious and prelusive air, as if

anxious not to launch out too soon. And this was evidently prudent, for

when the fourth section opens, direct exhortation to the audience has

again become necessary:

Maintenant, seigneurs, écoutez ce que dit l'Écriture.

And once more in the fifth section:

Barons, écoutez un excellent couplet.

In the sixth, the jongleur is getting desperate:

Seigneurs, pour l'amour de Dieu, faites silence, écoutez-moi,

Pour qu'en partant de ce monde vous entriez dans un meilleur;

but after this exclamation he has his way, though the story proper is

still a good way off. Perhaps not all of these hortatory stanzas were

commonly used; any or all of them could certainly be omitted without

damaging the poem. But they were there to be used, according to the

judgment of the jongleur and the temper of his audience, and their

presence in the poem is very suggestive of the special difficulties in

the art of rhapsodic poetry.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry

meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal

beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. Vigorous but controlled

imagination, formative power, insight into the significance of

things--these are qualities which a poet must eminently possess; but

these are qualities which may also be eminently possessed by men who

cannot claim the title of poet. The real differentia of the poet is his

command over the secret magic of words. Others may have as delighted a

sense of this magic, but it is only the poet who can master it and do

what he likes with it. And next to the invention of speaking itself, the

most important invention for the poet has been the invention of writing

and reading; for this has added immensely to the scope of his mastery

over words. No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for

the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken

word only, that his art is founded. But he trusts his reader to do as he

himself does--to receive written words always as the code of spoken

words. To do so has wonderfully enlarged his technical opportunities;

for apprehension is quicker and finer through the eye than through the

ear. After the invention of reading, even poetry designed primarily for

declamation (like drama or lyric) has depths and subtleties of art which

were not possible for the primitive poet. Accordingly we find that, on

the whole, in comparison with "literary" epic, the texture of

"authentic" epic is flat and dull. The story may be superb, and its

management may be superb; but the words in which the story lives do not

come near the grandeur of Milton, or the exquisiteness of Virgil, or the

deliciousness of Tasso. Indeed, if we are to say what is the real

difference between _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, we must simply say

that _Beowulf_ is not such good poetry. There is, of course, one

tremendous exception; Homer is the one poet of authentic epic who had

sufficient genius to make unfailingly, nobly beautiful poetry within the

strict and hard conditions of purely auricular art. Compare Homer's

ambrosial glory with the descent tap-water of Hesiod; compare his

continuous burnished gleam of wrought metal with the sparse grains that

lie in the sandy diction of all the "authentic" epics of the other

nations. And, by all ancient accounts, the other early Greek epics would

not fare much better in the comparison. Homer's singularity in this

respect is overwhelming; but it is frequently forgotten, and especially

by those who think to help in the Homeric question by comparing him with

other "authentic" epics. Supposing (we can only just suppose it) a case

were made out for the growth rather than the individual authorship of

some "authentic" epic other than Homer; it could never have any bearing

on the question of Homeric authorship, because no early epic is

comparable with the _poetry_ of Homer. Nothing, indeed, is comparable

with the poetry of Homer, except poetry for whose individual authorship

history unmistakably vouches.

So we cannot say that Homer was not as deliberate a craftsman in words

as Milton himself. The scope of his craft was more restricted, as his

repetitions and stock epithets show; he was restricted by the fact that

he composed for recitation, and the auricular appreciation of diction is

limited, the nature of poetry obeying, in the main, the nature of those

for whom it is composed. But this is just a case in which genius

transcends technical scope. The effects Homer produced with his methods

were as great as any effects produced by later and more elaborate

methods, after poetry began to be read as well as heard. But neither

must we say that the other poets of "authentic" epic were not deliberate

craftsmen in words. Poets will always get as much beauty out of words as

they can. The fact that so often in the early epics a magnificent

subject is told, on the whole, in a lumpish and tedious diction, is not

to be explained by any contempt for careful art, as though it were a

thing unworthy of such heroic singers; it is simply to be explained by

lack of such genius as is capable of transcending the severe limitations

of auricular poetry. And we may well believe that only the rarest and

most potent kind of genius could transcend such limitations.

In summary, then, we find certain conceptual differences and certain

mechanical differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic. But

these are not such as to enable us to say that there is, artistically,

any real difference between the two kinds. Rather, the differences

exhibit the changes we might expect in an art that has kept up with

consciousness developing, and civilization becoming more intricate.

"Literary" epic is as close to its subject as "authentic"; but, as a

general rule, "authentic" epic, in response to its surrounding needs,

has a simple and concrete subject, and the closeness of the poet to this

is therefore more obvious than in "literary" epic, which (again in

response to surrounding needs) has been driven to take for subject some

great abstract idea and display this in a concrete but only ostensible

subject. Then in craftsmanship, the two kinds of epic are equally

deliberate, equally concerned with careful art; but "literary" epic has

been able to take such advantage of the habit of reading that, with the

single exception of Homer, it has achieved a diction much more

answerable to the greatness of epic matter than the "authentic" poems.

We may, then, in a general survey, regard epic poetry as being in all

ages essentially the same kind of art, fulfilling always a similar,

though constantly developing, intention. Whatever sort of society he

lives in, whether he be surrounded by illiterate heroism or placid

culture, the epic poet has a definite function to perform. We see him

accepting, and with his genius transfiguring, the general circumstance

of his time; we see him symbolizing, in some appropriate form, whatever

sense of the significance of life he feels acting as the accepted

unconscious metaphysic of his age. To do this, he takes some great story

which has been absorbed into the prevailing consciousness of his people.

As a rule, though not quite invariably, the story will be of things

which are, or seem, so far back in the past, that anything may credibly

happen in it; so imagination has its freedom, and so significance is

displayed. But quite invariably, the materials of the story will have an

unmistakable air of actuality; that is, they come profoundly out of

human experience, whether they declare legendary heroism, as in Homer

and Virgil, or myth, as in _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, or actual

history, as in Lucan and Camoens and Tasso. And he sets out this story

and its significance in poetry as lofty and as elaborate as he can

compass. That, roughly, is what we see the epic poets doing, whether

they be "literary" or "authentic"; and if this can be agreed on, we

should now have come tolerably close to a definition of epic poetry.