No More Learning

But of course the early epics do not, any of them, merely repeat the
significance of Homer in another form. They might do that, if poetry had
to inculcate a moral, as some have supposed. But however nicely we may
analyse it, we shall never find in poetry a significance which is really
detachable, and expressible in another way. The significance _is_ the
poetry. What _Beowulf_ or the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ means is simply
what it is in its whole nature; we can but roughly indicate it. And as
poetry is never the same, so its significance is never quite the same.
Courage as the first necessary value of life is most naively and simply
expressed, perhaps, in the _Poem of the Cid_; but even here the
expression is, as in all art, unique, and chiefly because it is
contrived through solidly imagined characters. There is splendid
characterization, too, in the _Song of Roland_, together with a fine
sense of poetic form; not fine enough, however, to avoid a prodigious
deal of conventional gag. The battling is lavish, but always exciting;
and in, at least, that section which describes how the dying Oliver,
blinded by weariness and wounds, mistakes Roland for a pagan and feebly
smites him with his sword, there is real and piercing pathos. But for
all his sense of character, the poet has very little discretion in his
admiration of his heroes. Christianity, in these two poems, has less
effect than one might think. The conspicuous value of life is still the
original value, courage; but elaboration and refinement of this begin
to appear, especially in the _Song of Roland_, as passionately conscious
patriotism and loyalty. The chief contribution of the _Nibelungenlied_
to the main process of epic poetry is _plot_ in narrative; a
contribution, that is, to the manner rather than to the content of epic
symbolism. There is something that can be called plot in Homer; but with
him, as in all other early epics, it is of no great account compared
with the straightforward linking of incidents into a direct chain of
narrative. The story of the _Nibelungenlied_, however, is not a chain
but a web.
Events and the influence of characters are woven closely and
intricately together into one tragic pattern; and this requires not only
characterization, but also the adding to the characters of persistent
and dominant motives.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot
strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of
life. But life as courage--the turning of the dark, hard condition of
life into something which can be exulted in--this, which is the deep
significance of the art of the first epics, is the absolutely necessary
foundation for any subsequent valuation of life; Man can achieve nothing
until he has first achieved courage. And this, much more than any
inheritance of manner, is what makes all the writers of deliberate or
"literary" epic imply the existence of Homer. If Homer had not done his
work, they could not have done theirs. But "literary" epics are as
necessary as Homer. We cannot go on with courage as the solitary
valuation of life. We must have the foundation, but we must also have
the superstructure. Speaking comparatively, it may be said that the
function of Homeric epic has been to create imperishable symbolism for
the actual courageous consciousness of life, but the duty of "literary"
epic has been to develop this function, answerably to the development of
life itself, into symbolism of some conscious _idea_ of life--something
at once more formalized and more subtilized than the primary virtue of
courage. The Greeks, however, were too much overshadowed by the
greatness of Homer to do much towards this. The _Argonautica_, the
half-hearted epic of Apollonius Rhodius, is the only attempt that need
concern us. It is not a poem that can be read straight through; it is
only enjoyable in moments--moments of charming, minute observation, like
the description of a sunbeam thrown quivering on the wall from a basin
of water "which has just been poured out," lines not only charming in
themselves, but finely used as a simile for Medea's agitated heart; or
moments of romantic fantasy, as when the Argonauts see the eagle flying
towards Prometheus, and then hear the Titan's agonized cry. But it is
not in such passages that what Apollonius did for epic abides. A great
deal of his third book is a real contribution to the main process, to
epic content as well as to epic manner. To the manner of epic he added
analytic psychology.