No More Learning

"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. 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.