No More Learning

But there are one or two poems in which the old union seems still happy.
Most noteworthy is Goethe's _Hermann und Dorothea_. You may say that it
does not much matter whether such poetry should be called epic or, as
some hold, idyllic. But it is interesting to note, first, that the poem
is deliberately written with epic style and epic intention; and, second,
that, though singularly beautiful, it makes no attempt to add anything
to epic development. It is interesting, too, to see epic poetry trying
to get away from its heroes, and trying to use material the poetic
importance of which seems to depend solely on the treatment, not on
itself. This was a natural and, for some things, a laudable reaction.
But it inevitably meant that epic must renounce the triumphs which
Milton had won for it. William Morris saw no reason for abandoning
either the heroes or anything else of the epic tradition. The chief
personages of _Sigurd the Volsung_ are admittedly more than human, the
events frankly marvellous. The poem is an impressive one, and in one way
or another fulfils all the main qualifications of epic. But perhaps no
great poem ever had so many faults. These have nothing to do with its
management of supernaturalism; those who object to this simply show
ignorance of the fundamental necessities of epic poetry. The first book
is magnificent; everything that epic narrative should be; but after this
the poem grows long-winded, and that is the last thing epic poetry
should be. It is written with a running pen; so long as the verse keeps
going on, Morris seems satisfied, though it is very often going on
about unimportant things, and in an uninteresting manner. After the
first book, indeed, as far as Morris's epic manner is concerned, Virgil
and Milton might never have lived.
It attempts to be the grand manner by
means of vagueness. In an altogether extraordinary way, the poem slurs
over the crucial incidents (as in the inept lines describing the death
of Fafnir, and those, equally hollow, describing the death of
Guttorm--two noble opportunities simply not perceived) and tirelessly
expatiates on the mere surroundings of the story. Yet there is no
attempt to make anything there credible: Morris seems to have mixed up
the effects of epic with the effects of a fairy-tale. The poem lacks
intellect; it has no clear-cut thought. And it lacks sensuous images; it
is full of the sentiment, not of the sense of things, which is the wrong
way round. Hence the protracted conversations are as a rule amazingly
windy and pointless, as the protracted descriptions are amazingly
useless and tedious. And the superhuman virtues of the characters are
not shown in the poem so much as energetically asserted. It says much
for the genius of Morris that _Sigurd the Volsung_, with all these
faults, is not to be condemned; that, on the contrary, to read it is
rather a great than a tiresome experience; and not only because the
faults are relieved, here and there, by exquisite beauties and
dignities, indeed by incomparable lines, but because the poem as a whole
does, as it goes on, accumulate an immense pressure of significance. All
the great epics of the world have, however, perfectly clearly a
significance in close relation with the spirit of their time; the
intense desire to symbolize the consciousness of man as far as it has
attained, is what vitally inspires an epic poet, and the ardour of this
infects his whole style. Morris, in this sense, was not vitally
inspired. _Sigurd the Volsung_ is a kind of set exercise in epic poetry.
It is great, but it is not _needed_. It is, in fact, an attempt to write
epic poetry as it might have been written, and to make epic poetry mean
what it might have meant, in the days when the tale of Sigurd and the
Niblungs was newly come among men's minds. Mr. Doughty, in his
surprising poem _The Dawn in Britain_, also seems trying to compose an
epic exercise, rather than to be obeying a vital necessity of
inspiration. For all that, it is a great poem, full of irresistible
vision and memorable diction.