)
]
[Footnote 8: 'Mother, since thou didst bear me to be so short-lived,
Olympian Zeus that thunders from on high should especially have bestowed
honour on me.
]
[Footnote 8: 'Mother, since thou didst bear me to be so short-lived,
Olympian Zeus that thunders from on high should especially have bestowed
honour on me.
Lascelle Abercrombie
That, in order to
symbolize in epic form--that is to say, in _narrative_ form--the
dualistic sense of destiny and the destined, and both immediately
--Milton had to dissolve his human action completely in a
supernatural action, is the sign not merely of a development, but of a
re-creation, of epic art.
It has been said that Satan is the hero of _Paradise Lost_. The offence
which the remark has caused is due, no doubt, to injudicious use of the
word "hero. " It is surely the simple fact that if _Paradise Lost_ exists
for any one figure, that is Satan; just as the _Iliad_ exists for
Achilles, and the _Odyssey_ for Odysseus. It is in the figure of Satan
that the imperishable significance of _Paradise Lost_ is centred; his
vast unyielding agony symbolizes the profound antinomy of modern
consciousness. And if this is what he is in significance it is worth
noting what he is in technique. He is the blending of the poem's human
plane with its supernatural plane. The epic hero has always represented
humanity by being superhuman; in Satan he has grown into the
supernatural. He does not thereby cease to symbolize human existence;
but he is thereby able to symbolize simultaneously the sense of its
irreconcilable condition, of the universal destiny that contains it. Out
of Satan's colossal figure, the single urgency of inspiration, which
this dualistic consciousness of existence makes, radiates through all
the regions of Milton's vast and rigorous imagination. "Milton," says
Landor, "even Milton rankt with living men! "
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: 'And all round the ships echoed terribly to the shouting
Achaians. ']
[Footnote 7:
'When in a dusty whirlwind thou didst lie,
Thy valour lost, forgot thy chivalry. '--OGILBY.
(The version leaves out megas megalosti.
)
]
[Footnote 8: 'Mother, since thou didst bear me to be so short-lived,
Olympian Zeus that thunders from on high should especially have bestowed
honour on me. ']
[Footnote 9: 'Honour my son for me, for the swiftest doom of all is
his. ']
[Footnote 10: "For everyone his own day is appointed; for all men the
period of life is short and not to be recalled: but to spread glory by
deeds, that is what valour can do. "]
[Footnote 11:
"They wer' amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscure
Walking forth i' the void and vasty dominyon of Ades;
As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin'd
One goeth in the forest, when heav'n is gloomily clouded,
And black night hath robb'd the colours and beauty from all things. "
--ROBERT BRIDGES.
]
[Footnote 12: "All that is known, all that is felt, is God. "]
V.
AFTER MILTON
And after Milton, what is to happen? First, briefly, for a few instances
of what has happened. We may leave out experiments in religious
sentiment like Klopstock's _Messiah_. We must leave out also poems which
have something of the look of epic at first glance, but have nothing of
the scope of epic intention; such as Scott's longer poems. These might
resemble the "lays" out of which some people imagine "authentic" epic to
have been made. But the lays are not the epic. Scott's poems have not
the depth nor the definiteness of symbolic intention--what is sometimes
called the epic unity--and this is what we can always discover in any
poetry which gives us the peculiar experience we must associate with the
word epic, if it is to have any precision of meaning. What applies to
Scott, will apply still more to Byron's poems; Byron is one of the
greatest of modern poets, but that does not make him an epic poet. We
must keep our minds on epic intention.
symbolize in epic form--that is to say, in _narrative_ form--the
dualistic sense of destiny and the destined, and both immediately
--Milton had to dissolve his human action completely in a
supernatural action, is the sign not merely of a development, but of a
re-creation, of epic art.
It has been said that Satan is the hero of _Paradise Lost_. The offence
which the remark has caused is due, no doubt, to injudicious use of the
word "hero. " It is surely the simple fact that if _Paradise Lost_ exists
for any one figure, that is Satan; just as the _Iliad_ exists for
Achilles, and the _Odyssey_ for Odysseus. It is in the figure of Satan
that the imperishable significance of _Paradise Lost_ is centred; his
vast unyielding agony symbolizes the profound antinomy of modern
consciousness. And if this is what he is in significance it is worth
noting what he is in technique. He is the blending of the poem's human
plane with its supernatural plane. The epic hero has always represented
humanity by being superhuman; in Satan he has grown into the
supernatural. He does not thereby cease to symbolize human existence;
but he is thereby able to symbolize simultaneously the sense of its
irreconcilable condition, of the universal destiny that contains it. Out
of Satan's colossal figure, the single urgency of inspiration, which
this dualistic consciousness of existence makes, radiates through all
the regions of Milton's vast and rigorous imagination. "Milton," says
Landor, "even Milton rankt with living men! "
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: 'And all round the ships echoed terribly to the shouting
Achaians. ']
[Footnote 7:
'When in a dusty whirlwind thou didst lie,
Thy valour lost, forgot thy chivalry. '--OGILBY.
(The version leaves out megas megalosti.
)
]
[Footnote 8: 'Mother, since thou didst bear me to be so short-lived,
Olympian Zeus that thunders from on high should especially have bestowed
honour on me. ']
[Footnote 9: 'Honour my son for me, for the swiftest doom of all is
his. ']
[Footnote 10: "For everyone his own day is appointed; for all men the
period of life is short and not to be recalled: but to spread glory by
deeds, that is what valour can do. "]
[Footnote 11:
"They wer' amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscure
Walking forth i' the void and vasty dominyon of Ades;
As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin'd
One goeth in the forest, when heav'n is gloomily clouded,
And black night hath robb'd the colours and beauty from all things. "
--ROBERT BRIDGES.
]
[Footnote 12: "All that is known, all that is felt, is God. "]
V.
AFTER MILTON
And after Milton, what is to happen? First, briefly, for a few instances
of what has happened. We may leave out experiments in religious
sentiment like Klopstock's _Messiah_. We must leave out also poems which
have something of the look of epic at first glance, but have nothing of
the scope of epic intention; such as Scott's longer poems. These might
resemble the "lays" out of which some people imagine "authentic" epic to
have been made. But the lays are not the epic. Scott's poems have not
the depth nor the definiteness of symbolic intention--what is sometimes
called the epic unity--and this is what we can always discover in any
poetry which gives us the peculiar experience we must associate with the
word epic, if it is to have any precision of meaning. What applies to
Scott, will apply still more to Byron's poems; Byron is one of the
greatest of modern poets, but that does not make him an epic poet. We
must keep our minds on epic intention.
