No More Learning

The story may be superb, and its
management may be superb; but the words in which the story lives do not
come near the grandeur of Milton, or the exquisiteness of Virgil, or the
deliciousness of Tasso. Indeed, if we are to say what is the real
difference between _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, we must simply say
that _Beowulf_ is not such good poetry. There is, of course, one
tremendous exception; Homer is the one poet of authentic epic who had
sufficient genius to make unfailingly, nobly beautiful poetry within the
strict and hard conditions of purely auricular art. Compare Homer's
ambrosial glory with the descent tap-water of Hesiod; compare his
continuous burnished gleam of wrought metal with the sparse grains that
lie in the sandy diction of all the "authentic" epics of the other
nations. And, by all ancient accounts, the other early Greek epics would
not fare much better in the comparison. Homer's singularity in this
respect is overwhelming; but it is frequently forgotten, and especially
by those who think to help in the Homeric question by comparing him with
other "authentic" epics. Supposing (we can only just suppose it) a case
were made out for the growth rather than the individual authorship of
some "authentic" epic other than Homer; it could never have any bearing
on the question of Homeric authorship, because no early epic is
comparable with the _poetry_ of Homer. Nothing, indeed, is comparable
with the poetry of Homer, except poetry for whose individual authorship
history unmistakably vouches.

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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




III.