No More Learning

The tradition, indeed, would start afresh with
him; but how the novel tradition fared as it grew old with his
successors, is difficult guesswork. We can tell, however, sometimes, in
what stage of the epic material's development the great unifying epic
poet occurred. Three roughly defined stages have been mentioned. Homer
perhaps came when the epic material was still in its first stage of
being court-poetry. Almost certainly this is when the poets of the
Crusading lays, of the _Song of Roland_, and the _Poem of the Cid_, set
to work. Hesiod is a clear instance of the poet who masters epic
material after it has passed into popular possession; and the
_Nibelungenlied_ is thought to be made out of matter that has passed
from the people back again to the courts.

Epic poetry, then, as distinct from mere epic material, is the concern
of this book. The intention is, to determine wherein epic poetry is a
definite species of literature, what it characteristically does for
conscious human life, and to find out whether this species and this
function have shown, and are likely to show, any development. It must be
admitted, that the great unifying poet who worked on the epic material
before him, did not always produce something which must come within the
scope of this intention. Hesiod has just been given as an instance of
such a poet; but his work is scarcely an epic. [3] The great sagas, too,
I must omit. They are epic enough in primary intention, but they are not
poetry; and I am among those who believe that there is a difference
between poetry and prose. If epic poetry is a definite species, the
sagas do not fall within it. But this will leave me more of the
"authentic" epic poetry than I can possibly deal with; and I shall have
to confine myself to its greatest examples. Before, however, proceeding
to consider epic poetry as a whole, as a constantly recurring form of
art, continually responding to the new needs of man's developing
consciousness, I must go, rapidly and generally, over the "literary
epic"; and especially I must question whether it is really justifiable
or profitable to divide epic poetry into the two contrasted departments
of "authentic" and "literary.
"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: hos d' ote cheimarroi potamoi kat opesthi rheontes es
misgagkeian xumballeton obrimon udor krounon ek melalon koilaes entosthe
charadraes. _Iliad_, IV, 452. ]

[Footnote 2: Etymologically, the "good" man is the "admirable" man. In
this sense, Homer's gods are certainly "good"; every epithet he gives
them--Joyous-Thunderer, Far-Darter, Cloud-Gatherer and the
rest--proclaims their unapproachable "goodness. " If it had been said to
Homer, that his gods cannot be "good" because their behaviour is
consistently cynical, cruel, unscrupulous and scandalous, he would
simply think he had not heard aright: Zeus is an habitual liar, of
course, but what has that got to do with his "goodness"? --Only those who
would have Homer a kind of Salvationist need regret this. Just because
he could only make his gods "good" in this primitive style, he was able
to treat their discordant family in that vein of exquisite comedy which
is one of the most precious things in the world. ]

[Footnote 3: Scarcely what _we_ call epic. "Epos" might include Hesiod
as well as epic material; "epopee" is the business that Homer started. ]




II.


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.