The Epic - Lascelles Abercrombie
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. Those who think
Bacon wrote _Hamlet_, and those who think several poets wrote the
_Iliad_, can make out a deal of ingenious evidence for their doctrines.
But it is all useless, because the first assumption in each case is
unthinkable. It is psychologically impossible that the mind of Bacon
should have produced _Hamlet_; but the impossibility is even more
clamant when it comes to supposing that several poets, not in
collaboration, but in haphazard succession, could produce a poem of vast
sweeping unity and superbly consistent splendour of style. So far as
mere authorship goes, then, we cannot make any real difference between
"authentic" and "literary" epic. We cannot say that, while this is
written by an individual genius, that is the work of a community.
Individual genius, of whatever quality, is responsible for both. The
folk, however, cannot be ruled out. Genius does the work; but the folk
is the condition in which genius does it. And here we may find a genuine
difference between "literary" and "authentic"; not so much in the nature
of the condition as in its closeness and insistence.
The kind of folk-spirit behind the poet is, indeed, different in the
_Iliad_ and _Beowulf_ and the _Song of Roland_ from what it is in Milton
and Tasso and Virgil. But there is also as much difference here between
the members of each class as between the two classes themselves. You
cannot read much of _Beowulf_ with Homer in your mind, without becoming
conscious that the difference in individual genius is by no means the
whole difference. Both poets maintain a similar ideal in life; but they
maintain it within conditions altogether unlike. The folk-spirit behind
_Beowulf_ is cloudy and tumultuous, finding grandeur in storm and gloom
and mere mass--in the misty _lack_ of shape. Behind Homer it is, on the
contrary, radiant and, however vehement, always delighting in measure,
finding grandeur in brightness and clarity and shining outline. So,
again, we may very easily see how Tasso's poetry implies the Italy of
his time, and Milton's the England of his time. But where Homer and
Beowulf together differ from Tasso and Milton is in the way the
surrounding folk-spirit contains the poet's mind. It would be a very
idle piece of work, to choose between the potency of Homer's genius and
of Milton's; but it is clear that the immediate circumstance of the
poet's life presses much more insistently on the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_ than on _Paradise Lost_. It is the difference between the
contracted, precise, but vigorous tradition of an heroic age, and the
diffused, eclectic, complicated culture of a civilization. And if it may
be said that the insistence of racial circumstance in Homer gives him a
greater intensity of cordial, human inspiration, it must also be said
that the larger, less exacting conditions of Milton's mental life allow
his art to go into greater scope and more subtle complexity of
significance. Great epic poetry will always frankly accept the social
conditions within which it is composed; but the conditions contract and
intensify the conduct of the poem, or allow it to dilate and absorb
larger matter, according as the narrow primitive torrents of man's
spirit broaden into the greater but slower volume of civilized life. The
change is neither desirable nor undesirable; it is merely inevitable. It
means that epic poetry has kept up with the development of human life.
It is because of all this that we have heard a good deal about the
"authentic" epic getting "closer to its subject" than "literary" epic.
It seems, on the face of it, very improbable that there should be any
real difference here. No great poetry, of whatever kind, is conceivable
unless the subject has become integrated with the poet's mind and mood.
Milton is as close to his subject, Virgil to his, as Homer to Achilles
or the Saxon poet to Beowulf. What is really meant can be nothing but
the greater insistence of racial tradition in the "authentic" epics. The
subject of the _Iliad_ is the fighting of heroes, with all its
implications and consequences; the subject of the _Odyssey_ is adventure
and its opposite, the longing for safety and home; in _Beowulf_ it is
kingship--the ability to show man how to conquer the monstrous forces of
his world; and so on. Such were the subjects which an imperious racial
tradition pressed on the early epic poet, who delighted to be so
governed. These were the matters which his people could understand, of
which they could easily perceive the significance. For him, then, there
could be no other matters than these, or the like of these. But it is
not in such matters that a poet living in a time of less primitive and
more expanded consciousness would find the highest importance. For a
Roman, the chief matter for an epic poem would be Roman civilization;
for a Puritan, it would be the relations of God and man. When,
therefore, we consider how close to his subject an epic poet is, we must
be careful to be quite clear what his subject is. And if he has gone
beyond the immediate experiences of primitive society, we need not
expect him to be as close as the early poets were to the fury of battle
and the agony of wounds and the desolation of widows; or to the
sensation of exploring beyond the familiar regions; or to the
marsh-fiends and fire-drakes into which primitive imagination naturally
translated the terrible unknown powers of the world. We need not, in a
word, expect the "literary" epic to compete with the "authentic" epic;
for the fact is, that the purpose of epic poetry, and therefore the
nature of its subject, must continually develop. It is quite true that
the later epics take over, to a very great extent, the methods and
manners of the earlier poems; just as architecture hands on the style of
wooden structure to an age that builds in stone, and again imposes the
manners of stone construction on an age that builds in concrete and
steel. But, in the case of epic at any rate, this is not merely the
inertia of artistic convention. With the development of epic intention,
and the subsequent choosing of themes larger and subtler than what
common experience is wont to deal in, a certain duplicity becomes
inevitable. The real intention of the _Aeneid_, and the real intention
of _Paradise Lost_, are not easily brought into vivid apprehension. The
natural thing to do, then, would be to use the familiar substance of
early epic, but to use it as a convenient and pleasant solvent for the
novel intention. It is what has been done in all the great "literary"
epics. But hasty criticism, finding that where they resembled Homer
they seemed not so close to their matter, has taken this as a pervading
and unfortunate characteristic. It has not perceived that what in Homer
was the main business of the epic, has become in later epic a device.
Having so altered, it has naturally lost in significance; but in the
greatest instances of later epic, that for which the device was used has
been as profoundly absorbed into the poet's being as Homer's matter was
into his being. It may be noted, too, that a corresponding change has
also taken place in the opposite direction. As Homer's chief substance
becomes a device in later epic, so a device of Homer's becomes in later
epic the chief substance. Homer's supernatural machinery may be reckoned
as a device--a device to heighten the general style and action of his
poems; the _significance_ of Homer must be found among his heroes, not
among his gods. But with Milton, it has become necessary to entrust to
the supernatural action the whole aim and purport of the poem.
On the whole, then, there is no reason why "literary" epic should not be
as close to its subject as "authentic" epic; there is every reason why
both kinds should be equally close. But in testing whether they actually
are equally close, we have to remember that in the later epic it has
become necessary to use the ostensible subject as a vehicle for the real
subject. And who, with any active sympathy for poetry, can say that
Milton felt his theme with less intensity than Homer? Milton is not so
close to his fighting angels as Homer is to his fighting men; but the
war in heaven is an incident in Milton's figurative expression of
something that has become altogether himself--the mystery of individual
existence in universal existence, and the accompanying mystery of sin,
of individual will inexplicably allowed to tamper with the divinely
universal will. Milton, of course, in closeness to his subject and in
everything else, stands as supreme above the other poets of literary
epic as Homer does above the poets of authentic epic. But what is true
of Milton is true, in less degree, of the others. If there is any good
in them, it is primarily because they have got very close to their
subjects: that is required not only for epic, but for all poetry.
Coleridge, in a famous estimate put twenty years for the shortest period
in which an epic could be composed; and of this, ten years were to be
for preparation. He meant that not less than ten years would do for the
poet to fill all his being with the theme; and nothing else will serve,
It is well known how Milton brooded over his subject, how Virgil
lingered over his, how Camoen. carried the _Luisads_ round the world
with him, with what furious intensity Tasso gave himself to writing
_Jerusalem Delivered_. We may suppose, perhaps, that the poets of
"authentic" epic had a somewhat easier task. There was no need for them
to be "long choosing and beginning late." The pressure of racial
tradition would see that they chose the right sort of subject; would
see, too, that they lived right in the heart of their subject. For the
poet of "literary" epic, however, it is his own consciousness that must
select the kind of theme which will fulfil the epic intention for his
own day; it is his own determination and studious endurance that will
draw the theme into the secrets of his being. If he is not capable of
getting close to his subject, we should not for that reason call his
work "literary" epic. It would put him in the class of Milton, the most
literary of all poets. We must simply call his stuff bad epic. There is
plenty of it. Southey is the great instance. Southey would decide to
write an epic about Spain, or India, or Arabia, or America. Next he
would read up, in several languages, about his proposed subject; that
would take him perhaps a year. Then he would versify as much strange
information as he could remember; that might take a few months. The
result is deadly; and because he was never anywhere near his subject. It
is for the same reason that the unspeakable labours of Blackmore, Glover
and Wilkie, and Voltaire's ridiculous _Henriade_, have gone to pile up
the rubbish-heaps of literature.
So far, supposed differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic
have resolved themselves into little more than signs of development in
epic intention; the change has not been found to produce enough artistic
difference between early and later epic to warrant anything like a
division into two distinct species. The epic, whether "literary" or
"authentic," is a single form of art; but it is a form capable of
adapting itself to the altering requirements of prevalent consciousness.
In addition, however, to differences in general conception, there are
certain mechanical differences which should be just noticed. The first
epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be
read. It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of
readers. This in itself would be enough to rule out themes remote from
common experience, supposing any such were to suggest themselves to the
primitive epic poet. Perhaps, indeed, we should not be far wrong if we
saw a chief reason for the pressure of surrounding tradition on the
early epic in this very fact, that it is poetry meant for recitation.
Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen
to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected
things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the
re-creation of tired hours. Traditional manner would be equally
difficult to avoid; for it is a tradition that plainly embodies the
requirements, fixed by experience, of _recited_ poetry. Those features
of it which make for tedium when it is read--repetition, stock epithets,
set phrases for given situations--are the very things best suited, with
their recurring well-known syllables, to fix the attention of listeners
more firmly, or to stir it when it drowses; at the least they provide a
sort of recognizable scaffolding for the events, and it is remarkable
how easily the progress of events may be missed when poetry is
declaimed. Indeed, if the primitive epic poet could avoid some of the
anxieties peculiar to the composition of literary epic, he had others to
make up for it. He had to study closely the delicate science of holding
auricular attention when once he had got it; and probably he would have
some difficulty in getting it at all. The really great poet challenges
it, like Homer, with some tremendous, irresistible opening; and in this
respect the magnificent prelude to _Beowulf_ may almost be put beside
Homer. But lesser poets have another way. That prolixity at the
beginning of many primitive epics, their wordy deliberation in getting
under way, is probably intentional. The _Song of Roland_, for instance,
begins with a long series of exceedingly dull stanzas; to a reader, the
preliminaries of the story seem insufferably drawn out. But by the time
the reciter had got through this unimportant dreariness, no doubt his
audience had settled down to listen. The _Chanson d'Antioche_ contains
perhaps the most illuminating admission of this difficulty. In the first
"Chant," the first section opens:[4]
Seigneurs, faites silence; et que tout bruit cesse,
Si vous voulez entendre une glorieuse chanson.
Aucun jongleur ne vous en dira une meilleure.
Then some vaguely prelusive lines. But the audience is clearly not quite
ready yet, for the second section begins:
Barons, ecoutez-moi, et cessez vos querelles!
Je vous dirai une tres-belle chanson.
And after some further prelude, the section ends:
Ici commence la chanson ou il y a tant a apprendre.
The "Chanson" does, indeed, make some show of beginning in the third
section, but it still moves with a cautious and prelusive air, as if
anxious not to launch out too soon. And this was evidently prudent, for
when the fourth section opens, direct exhortation to the audience has
again become necessary:
Maintenant, seigneurs, ecoutez ce que dit l'Ecriture.
And once more in the fifth section:
Barons, ecoutez un excellent couplet.
In the sixth, the jongleur is getting desperate:
Seigneurs, pour l'amour de Dieu, faites silence, ecoutez-moi,
Pour qu'en partant de ce monde vous entriez dans un meilleur;
but after this exclamation he has his way, though the story proper is
still a good way off. Perhaps not all of these hortatory stanzas were
commonly used; any or all of them could certainly be omitted without
damaging the poem. But they were there to be used, according to the
judgment of the jongleur and the temper of his audience, and their
presence in the poem is very suggestive of the special difficulties in
the art of rhapsodic poetry.
But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry
meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal
beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell. Vigorous but controlled
imagination, formative power, insight into the significance of
things--these are qualities which a poet must eminently possess; but
these are qualities which may also be eminently possessed by men who
cannot claim the title of poet. The real differentia of the poet is his
command over the secret magic of words. Others may have as delighted a
sense of this magic, but it is only the poet who can master it and do
what he likes with it. And next to the invention of speaking itself, the
most important invention for the poet has been the invention of writing
and reading; for this has added immensely to the scope of his mastery
over words. No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for
the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken
word only, that his art is founded. But he trusts his reader to do as he
himself does--to receive written words always as the code of spoken
words. To do so has wonderfully enlarged his technical opportunities;
for apprehension is quicker and finer through the eye than through the
ear. After the invention of reading, even poetry designed primarily for
declamation (like drama or lyric) has depths and subtleties of art which
were not possible for the primitive poet. Accordingly we find that, on
the whole, in comparison with "literary" epic, the texture of
"authentic" epic is flat and dull. The story may be superb, and its
management may be superb; but the words in which the story lives do not
come near the grandeur of Milton, or the exquisiteness of Virgil, or the
deliciousness of Tasso. Indeed, if we are to say what is the real
difference between _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, we must simply say
that _Beowulf_ is not such good poetry. There is, of course, one
tremendous exception; Homer is the one poet of authentic epic who had
sufficient genius to make unfailingly, nobly beautiful poetry within the
strict and hard conditions of purely auricular art. Compare Homer's
ambrosial glory with the descent tap-water of Hesiod; compare his
continuous burnished gleam of wrought metal with the sparse grains that
lie in the sandy diction of all the "authentic" epics of the other
nations. And, by all ancient accounts, the other early Greek epics would
not fare much better in the comparison. Homer's singularity in this
respect is overwhelming; but it is frequently forgotten, and especially
by those who think to help in the Homeric question by comparing him with
other "authentic" epics. Supposing (we can only just suppose it) a case
were made out for the growth rather than the individual authorship of
some "authentic" epic other than Homer; it could never have any bearing
on the question of Homeric authorship, because no early epic is
comparable with the _poetry_ of Homer. Nothing, indeed, is comparable
with the poetry of Homer, except poetry for whose individual authorship
history unmistakably vouches.
So we cannot say that Homer was not as deliberate a craftsman in words
as Milton himself. The scope of his craft was more restricted, as his
repetitions and stock epithets show; he was restricted by the fact that
he composed for recitation, and the auricular appreciation of diction is
limited, the nature of poetry obeying, in the main, the nature of those
for whom it is composed. But this is just a case in which genius
transcends technical scope. The effects Homer produced with his methods
were as great as any effects produced by later and more elaborate
methods, after poetry began to be read as well as heard. But neither
must we say that the other poets of "authentic" epic were not deliberate
craftsmen in words. Poets will always get as much beauty out of words as
they can. The fact that so often in the early epics a magnificent
subject is told, on the whole, in a lumpish and tedious diction, is not
to be explained by any contempt for careful art, as though it were a
thing unworthy of such heroic singers; it is simply to be explained by
lack of such genius as is capable of transcending the severe limitations
of auricular poetry. And we may well believe that only the rarest and
most potent kind of genius could transcend such limitations.
In summary, then, we find certain conceptual differences and certain
mechanical differences between "authentic" and "literary" epic. But
these are not such as to enable us to say that there is, artistically,
any real difference between the two kinds. Rather, the differences
exhibit the changes we might expect in an art that has kept up with
consciousness developing, and civilization becoming more intricate.
"Literary" epic is as close to its subject as "authentic"; but, as a
general rule, "authentic" epic, in response to its surrounding needs,
has a simple and concrete subject, and the closeness of the poet to this
is therefore more obvious than in "literary" epic, which (again in
response to surrounding needs) has been driven to take for subject some
great abstract idea and display this in a concrete but only ostensible
subject. Then in craftsmanship, the two kinds of epic are equally
deliberate, equally concerned with careful art; but "literary" epic has
been able to take such advantage of the habit of reading that, with the
single exception of Homer, it has achieved a diction much more
answerable to the greatness of epic matter than the "authentic" poems.
We may, then, in a general survey, regard epic poetry as being in all
ages essentially the same kind of art, fulfilling always a similar,
though constantly developing, intention. Whatever sort of society he
lives in, whether he be surrounded by illiterate heroism or placid
culture, the epic poet has a definite function to perform. We see him
accepting, and with his genius transfiguring, the general circumstance
of his time; we see him symbolizing, in some appropriate form, whatever
sense of the significance of life he feels acting as the accepted
unconscious metaphysic of his age. To do this, he takes some great story
which has been absorbed into the prevailing consciousness of his people.
As a rule, though not quite invariably, the story will be of things
which are, or seem, so far back in the past, that anything may credibly
happen in it; so imagination has its freedom, and so significance is
displayed. But quite invariably, the materials of the story will have an
unmistakable air of actuality; that is, they come profoundly out of
human experience, whether they declare legendary heroism, as in Homer
and Virgil, or myth, as in _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, or actual
history, as in Lucan and Camoens and Tasso. And he sets out this story
and its significance in poetry as lofty and as elaborate as he can
compass. That, roughly, is what we see the epic poets doing, whether
they be "literary" or "authentic"; and if this can be agreed on, we
should now have come tolerably close to a definition of epic poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: From the version of the Marquise de Sainte-Aulaire.]
III.
THE NATURE OF EPIC
Rigid definitions in literature are, however, dangerous. At bottom, it
is what we feel, not what we think, that makes us put certain poems
together and apart from others; and feelings cannot be defined, but only
related. If we define a poem, we say what we think about it; and that
may not sufficiently imply the essential thing the poem does for us.
Hence the definition is liable either to be too strict, or to admit work
which does not properly satisfy the criterion of feeling. It seems
probable that, in the last resort, classification in literature rests on
that least tangible, least definable matter, style; for style is the
sign of the poem's spirit, and it is the spirit that we feel. If we can
get some notion of how those poems, which we call epic, agree with one
another in style, it is likely we shall be as close as may be to a
definition of epic. I use the word "style," of course, in its largest
sense--manner of conception as well as manner of composition.
An easy way to define epic, though not a very profitable way, would be
to say simply, that an epic is a poem which produces feelings similar to
those produced by _Paradise Lost_ or the _Iliad_, _Beowulf_ or the _Song
of Roland_. Indeed, you might include all the epics of Europe in this
definition without losing your breath; for the epic poet is the rarest
kind of artist. And while it is not a simple matter to say off-hand what
it is that is common to all these poems, there seems to be general
acknowledgment that they are clearly separable from other kinds of
poetry; and this although the word epic has been rather badly abused.
For instance, _The Faery Queene_ and _La Divina Commedia_ have been
called epic poems; but I do not think that anyone could fail to admit,
on a little pressure, that the experience of reading _The Faery Queene_
or _La Divina Commedia_ is not in the least like the experience of
reading _Paradise Lost_ or the _Iliad_. But as a poem may have lyrical
qualities without being a lyric, so a poem may have epical qualities
without being an epic. In all the poems which the world has agreed to
call epics, there is a story told, and well told. But Dante's poem
attempts no story at all, and Spenser's, though it attempts several,
does not tell them well--it scarcely attempts to make the reader believe
in them, being much more concerned with the decoration and the
implication of its fables than with the fables themselves. What epic
quality, detached from epic proper, do these poems possess, then, apart
from the mere fact that they take up a great many pages? It is simply a
question of their style--the style of their conception and the style of
their writing; the whole style of their imagination, in fact. They take
us into a region in which nothing happens that is not deeply
significant; a dominant, noticeably symbolic, purpose presides over each
poem, moulds it greatly and informs it throughout.