Chapter III · (continued 3)

(γ) Finally, on the question of the particular types under which we may classify this more modern system of romantic poetry, I only propose to advert briefly to what appears to me of most importance in respect to alliteration, assonance, and ordinary rhyme.

(αα) The first, or at least the most thorough, example of alliteration is that we find elaborated in the earliest Scandinavian poetry, where it supplies the fundamental basis, whereas assonance and the terminal rhyme, albeit these two aspects play a by no means unimportant part, are, however, only present in certain particular kinds of such poetry. The principle of alliterative rhyme, letter rhyme, is rhyme in its most incomplete form, because it does not require the recurrence of the entire syllable, but only that of one identical letter, and primarily the initial letter only. Owing to the weakness of this type of recurrent sound it is, in the first place, therefore necessary that only such words should be used in its service, which already independently possess an express accent on their first syllable; and, secondly, these words must not be remote from one another, if the identity of their commencement is to make a real impression on the ear. For the rest, alliterative letters may be a vowel, no less than a double or single consonant; but it is primarily consonants which are of most importance in the scheme. Based on such conditions, we find in Icelandic poetry[47] the fundamental rule that all alliterative rhymes require accentuated[48] syllables, whose initial letters must not in the same lines occur in other substantives which have the accent on the first syllable; and, along with this, of the three words, the initial letters of which constitute the rhyme, two must be found in the first line, and the third, which supplies the dominant alliteration, must be placed at the commencement of the second line. We may add further that, in virtue of the abstract character of this identical sound of initial letters, words are generally made alliterative proportionally to the importance of their signification. We find, therefore, that here, too, the relation of accented sound to the meaning of words is not entirely absent. I cannot, however, pursue this subject into more detail.

(ββ) Secondly, assonance has nothing to do with initial letters, but makes a nearer approach to rhyme in so far as it is a recurrence in identical sound of the same letters in the middle or at the termination of different words. It is not necessary, of course, that these assonant words should in all cases come at the conclusion of a line; they may fall into other places. Mainly, however, it is the concluding syllables of lines which come into this mutual relation of assonance, as contrasted with alliteration which is effective rather at the line's commencement. In its richest elaboration we may associate this assonance of language with the Romance nations, more especially the Spanish, whose full-toned language is peculiarly adapted to this recurrence of the same vowels. As a rule, no doubt assonance is here restricted to vowels. But the language further permits of other variety of assonance, not only that of vowels, but also that of identical consonants and consonants in association with one vowel.

(γγ) That which, as above described, alliteration and assonance are only able to establish with incompleteness is abundantly fulfilled by rhyme. In it, and expressly to the exclusion of initial letters, we have asserted the wholly equable sound of entire verb stems,[49] which are, by virtue of this equability, brought into an express relation with their tonal utterance. We have no mere question now of the number of the syllables. Words of one syllable, no less than others of two or more, may be rhymed. By this means we not only get the masculine rhyme, which is restricted to words of one syllable, but also the feminine rhyme, which embraces words of two syllables, as also the so-called gliding rhyme, which reaches to three or even more syllables. It is in particular the languages of Northern Europe which incline to the first type, Southern languages to the second, such as the Italian and Spanish. The German and French languages would appear to lie between these two extremes. Rhymes of more than three syllables are rarely to be met with in any language.

The position of the rhyme is at the conclusion of the lines, in which the rhyming word, although there is certainly no reason that it should ever concentrate in itself the ideal expressiveness of the significance, nevertheless does attract attention to itself so far as the verbal sound is concerned; and, furthermore, it makes the different verses or stanzas follow one another either in accordance with the principle of a wholly abstract recurrence of the same rhyme, or by uniting, separating, and mutually relating them in a more elaborate mode of regulated change, and variously symmetrical interweaving of different rhymes with correspondent relations, sometimes more near, at others more remote, of every degree of complexity. In such a process the particular rhymes will at one point stare us in the face at once, or they will appear to have a game of hide-and seek; so that in this way our ear, as it listens, will at one time receive instant satisfaction, at another it will only find it after considerable delay, wherein the expectation will, as it were, be coquetted with, deceived, and kept on the stretch, until the assured end from point to point of artistically arranged recurrence is reached, and with it the hearer's approval.

Among the various types of the poetic art it is pre-eminently lyric poetry, which, by virtue of its ideality and personal quality of expression, most readily avails itself of rhyme, and thereby converts language itself into a music of emotion and melodic symmetry, a symmetry not merely of time-measure and rhythmical movement, but of the kind of resonance which finds a responsive echo in the inner life itself. To promote this, therefore, the art elaborates in its use of rhyme a more simple or complex system of strophes, every one of which is part of one organic whole. Examples of such an interplay of melodic sound, whether steeped in emotion or rich in ingenuity, are the sonnet, canzonet, triolet, and madrigal. Epic poetry, on the contrary, so long as it does not mingle lyrical subject-matter with its more native character, preserves a more equable advance in its construction, which does not easily adapt itself to the strophe. We have an obvious illustration of this in the triplet stanzas of Dante's "Divine Comedy," as contrasted with the lyrical canzonets and sonnets of the same poet. However, I must not permit myself to go further into detail.

(c) Now that we have in the above investigation separated rhythmical versification from rhyme, and contrasted the same, we may now proceed, thirdly, to ask ourselves whether a combination of the two is not also intelligible, and, indeed, actually employed. The existence of certain more recent languages will render exceptional and important aid to the solution; in other words, we cannot deny to these either a partial reassertion of our former rhythmical system, or, in certain respects, an association of the same with rhyme. We will, for example, confine our attention to our mother tongue, and, in reference to the first-mentioned aspect, it will be sufficient to recall Klopstock, who would have as little of rhyme as possible; who not merely in epic, but also in lyrical poetry, set himself to imitate the ancients with the greatest enthusiasm and persistency. Voss and others have followed in his steps, ever striving to enforce with increased strictness principles upon which to base this rhythmical treatment of our language. Goethe, on the contrary, never felt quite himself in his classical syllabic measures. He asks himself, not without reason:

Stehn uns diese weiten Falten Zu Gesichte, wie den Alten?[50]

(α) I will in this connection merely reiterate what I already have observed upon the distinction which exists between ancient and more modern languages. Rhythmical versification is based upon the natural quantity of syllables, possessing therein an essentially stable criterion, which the ideal expression can neither limit, alter, or weaken. Such a natural measure is, however, abhorrent to more recent languages; in these it is only the verbal accent of the ideal significance, which makes one syllable long in its contrast to others, which are defective in such significance. Such a principle of accentuation, however, does not supply any audible compensation for the absence of the natural quantity, or rather it adds to the actual uncertainty of such a measure. For the more strongly emphasized significance of a word can at the same time make another short, despite the fact that, taken by itself, it possesses a verbal accent, so that the criterion accepted is wholly one of mutual relation. Du liebst, can, for instance, according to the stress of the emphasis which is thrown, according to the sense intended, either on both words, or one or the other, be a spondee, iambus or trochee. No doubt the attempt has been made, even in our own tongue, to return to the natural quantity of syllables, and to create rules with this intent; but in the presence of the overwhelming importance that the intelligible significance and the accent it asserts has secured such a reference to theory is quite impracticable. And in truth this agrees with the state of the facts. If the natural measure is really to constitute the essential basis, the language ought not as yet to have become such an instrument of soul expression as it is of necessity in our own times. Once allow, however, that it has already in its course of development thus secured such a mastery of the intelligible purport over the sensuous or native material, and it follows that the fundamental test for the value of syllables is not to be deduced from the objective quantity itself, but rather from that whereof words are themselves indicative as means. The emotional impulse of a free intelligence refuses to allow the temporal activity of language, as such, to establish itself in the independent form of its native and objective reality.

(β) Such a conclusion, however, does not necessarily imply that we are forced to oust altogether from our German language the rhymeless rhythmical treatment of the syllabic measure; it merely in essential respects points to this, that it is not possible, conformably with the character of the structure of our modern speech, to retain the plastic consistency of the metrical medium as it was secured by the ancient world. We must consequently seek for and elaborate some further element in poetical composition by way of compensation, which on its own independent account is of a more ideal[51] character than the stable natural quantity of syllables. Such an element is the accent of the verse, no less than the caesura, which as now constituted, instead of moving independently of the verbal accent, coalesce with the same, and thereby receive a more significant, albeit a more abstract assertion, in virtue of the fact that the variety of that previous threefold accentuation, which we discovered in the rhythmical type of classical poetry, on account of this very coalescence necessarily disappears. It, however, equally follows as a result that we only retain the power with conspicuous success to imitate the rhythmic movement of such poetry where its impression on our ear is most emphatic. We no longer possess, that is to say, the stable quantitative basis for its more subtle distinctions and manifold connections, and the more crude mode of accentuation, which we do possess in its place, to emphasize our measure, is intrinsically no sufficient substitute.

(γ) To state, then, finally, what this actual association of the rhythmical mode of verse with rhyme is, we may go so far as to affirm that it is the absorption, although to a limited extent, by the more modern form of versification of the more ancient one.

(αα) The predominant distinction of the natural syllabic quantity by means of the verbal accent is in fact not an entirely satisfactory principle of the mere medium. It does not arrest the ear's attention, even on the side of sense simply, so far as to make it appear, absolutely and everywhere unnecessary, where the ideal aspect of the poetical content is paramount, to summon the complementary assistance of the sound and response of syllables and words.

(ββ) It is, however, at the same time necessary in the interest of metre that an equally strong contrasting force should be set up to that of the rhyme sound. In so far, however, as it is not the distinction of syllables in their natural quantity and its variety, which has to be co-ordinated and made predominant, we have, in respect, to this temporal relation, no other expedient left but the identical repetition of the same time-measure; in this the element of accented beat will tend to assert itself in a far more emphatic degree, than is compatible with the rhythmical system. As an illustration we have our German rhymed iambics and trochaics, in the recitation of which far more beat stress is admitted than is proper to the scansion of the unrhymed iambics of the ancients, although the caesura pause is capable of bringing into emphatic relief isolated words whose accent is mainly referable to their meaning, and is capable of further making all that remains dependent upon them a resisting effect to the abstract equality of the verse, and by so doing introduces a varied animation. And as in such a particular case, so we may assert generally, the time-beat cannot be of actual service in poetry with the force that is required of it in most musical compositions.

(γγ) Although, however, we may affirm it as a general rule that rhyme should be associated merely with such verse metres, which, by virtue of their simple changes of the syllabic quantity and their continuous recurrence of similar verse feet, do not on their own independent account give sufficiently effective modality to the element of sensuous medium in modern languages which admit at all of rhythmical treatment, yet the application of rhyme to the more profuse syllabic metres imitated from classical models, as, for instance, to borrow one example only, the alcaic and sapphic strophe, will not merely appear superfluous, but even an unresolved contradiction. Both systems repose on opposed principles, and the attempt to unite them in the way suggested, can only involve us in a like opposition, which can produce nothing but a contradiction we are unable to mediate, and which is therefore untenable. It follows, therefore, that we ought only to make use of rhyme in cases where the principle of the older versification merely makes itself effective in more remote implication, and through a transitional process essentially deducible from the system of rhyme.

The above, then, are the points which we have sought to establish as, in a broad sense, of most vital concern to poetical expression in its contradistinction from prose.

III

THE SEVERAL GENERIC TYPES OF POETRY

The two fundamental aspects, according to which we have hitherto examined the poetical art were, in the first instance, that of poetical significance or content in the broadest sense, the nature of the outlook of a poetical composition and the creative activity of the poet; secondly, poetical expression, not merely respectively to the ideas which have to be embodied in words, but also to the modes under which they are expressed and the character of versification.

I. What we, above all, in these respects endeavoured to enforce consisted in this, that poetry has to embrace the ideality of conscious life as its content; yet, in its artistic elaboration of the same, it cannot rest satisfied with the objective form of direct perception as other plastic arts; nor can it accept as its form the emotional ideality which alone reverberates through our soul-life, nor yet that of thinking and the relations of reflective thought. It has to maintain a mediate position between the extremes of immediate objectivity and the inner life of feeling and thought. This intermediate sphere of conception overlaps both sides. From thought it borrows the aspect of ideal universality, which binds together the immediate particularity of the senses in more definitive simplicity; while, on the other hand, its mode of envisagement shares with plastic art the haphazard[1] juxtaposition of objects in space. The poetic imagination, moreover, is essentially distinct from thinking in that it permits, under the mode of sensuous apprehension from which it starts, particular ideas to remain in an unrelated series or contiguity; pure thinking, on the other hand, demands and promotes the reciprocal dependence of determinate concepts on each other, an interstructure of relations, consequential or conclusive judgments, and so forth. When, therefore, the poetical imagination in its art-products renders necessary an ideal unity of all particularity, such integration may easily meet with obstruction by virtue of the above-mentioned diffuseness[2] which the nature of its content forbids it wholly to eschew; and it is just this which puts it in the power of poetry to embody and present a content in organic and vital inter-connection of successive aspects and divisions, yet impressed at the same time with the apparent independence of these. And by this means it is possible for poetry to extend the selected content at one time rather in the direction of abstract thought, at another rather under the condition of the phenomenal world, and consequently to include within its survey the most sublime thoughts of speculative philosophy, no less than the external objects of Nature, always provided that the former are not put forward in the logical forms of ratiocination and scientific deduction, or the latter as void of all vital or other significance. The function, in short, of poetry is to present a complete world, whose ideal or essential content must be spread before us under the external guise of human actions, events, and other manifestations of soul;life, with all the wealth and directness compatible with such art.

2. This explication, however, does not receive its sensuous embodiment in stone, wood, or colour, but exclusively in language, whose versification, accentuation, and the rest are in fact the trappings[3] of speech, by means of which the ideal content secures an external form. If we ask ourselves now, to put the thing somewhat crudely, where we are to look for the material consistency of this mode of expression, we must reply that language is not essentially on all fours with a work[4] of plastic art, independent, that is, of the artistic creator, but it is the life of our humanity itself the individual speaker alone who is the vehicle of the sensuous presence and actuality of a poetical work. The compositions of poetry must be recited, sung, acted, reproduced, in short, by living people, just as the compositions of music are so reproduced. We are no doubt accustomed to read epic and lyric poetry, and only to hear drama recited and to see the same accompanied by gesture. Poetry, however, is essentially and according to its notion, sonorous expression, and we may, in particular, not dispense with this, if a complete exposition of the art is our aim, for the reason that it is the aspect and the only aspect, under which it comes into genuine contact with objective existence. The printed or written letter is, no doubt, also in a sense objectively present, but it is merely as the indifferent symbol of sounds and words. We no doubt have in a previous passage regarded words as the purely external means which give us the signification of ideas. We must not, however, overlook the fact that poetry, at any rate, so informs the temporal element and sound of these signs, as to ennoble them in a medium suffused with the ideal vitality of that, whereof, in their abstractness, they are the symbols. The printing press merely makes visible to our eyes this form of animation under a mode which, taken by itself, is essentially indifferent and no longer coalescent with the ideal content; it consigns it, in its altered form of visibility, to the element of time-duration and the sound of ordinary speech,[5] instead of giving us in fact the accented word and its determinate time-duration. When we, therefore, content ourselves with mere reading we do so partly owing to the ease with which we can thus picture to ourselves what is real as actually uttered in speech, partly because of the undeniable fact that poetry alone among the arts, in aspects of fundamental importance, is already completely at home in the life of spirit, and neither the impression of it on our sense of sight or hearing give us the root of the matter. Yet for all that, precisely by virtue of this ideality, poetry, as art, ought not wholly to divest itself of this aspect of objective expression, if at least it is anxious to avoid an incompleteness similar to that in which, for instance, the mere outlined drawing attempts to reproduce the picture of famous colourists.

3. As an artistically organic whole referred no longer to a specific type of exclusive execution on account of the onesided character of its medium, the art of poetry accepts in a general way for its determinate form various types of art-production, and it is consequently necessary to borrow the criteria of our classification of such poetical types or species from the general notion of artistic production.[6]

(A) In this respect it is, first, and from one point of view, the form of objective reality, wherein poetry reproduces the evolved content of conscious life in the ideal image, and therewithal essentially repeats the principle of plastic art, which makes the immediate object of fact visible. These plastic figures of the imagination poetry furthermore unveils as determined in the activities of human and divine beings, so that every thing, which takes place, issues in part from ethically self-subsistent human or divine forces, and in part also, by virtue of obstructive agencies, meets with a reaction, and thus, in its external form of manifestation, becomes an event, in which the facts in question disclose themselves in free independence, and the poet retires into the background. To grasp such events in a consequential whole is the task of Epic poetry, inasmuch as its aim is just to declare poetically, and in the form of the actual facts, either an essentially complete action, or the personalities, from which the same proceeds in its substantive worth or its eventful complexity amid the medley of external accidence. And by so doing it represents the objective fact itself in its objectivity.

And, moreover, the minstrel does not recite this positive world before conscious sense and feeling in a way that would seem to announce it as his personal phantasy, and his own heart's passion; rather this reciter or rhapsodist recites it by heart, in a mechanical sort of way, and in a metre which, while it repeats something of this monotony with its uniformity of structure, rolls onward in a tranquil and steady stream. What, in short, the minstrel narrates must appear as a part of real life, which, in respect to content no less than presentation, stands in absolute independence aloof from himself, the narrator; he is throughout, in relation that is to the facts of his tale no less than the manner in which he unfolds them, not permitted wholly to identify his own personality with their substance.

(B) In direct contrast to epic poetry we have our second type, that namely of lyrical poetry. Its content is that within ourselves, the ideal world, the contemplative or emotional life of soul, which instead of following up actions, remains at home with itself in its own ideal realm, and, consequently, is able to accept self-expression as its unique and indeed final end. Here we have, therefore, no substantive totality, self-evolved as external fact or event, but the express outlook, emotion and observation of the individual's self-introspective life shares in what is substantive and actual therein as its own, as its passion, mood or reflection; we have here the birth of its own loins. Such a fulfilment and ideal process is not adequately realized in a mechanical delivery such as we saw was conceded as appropriate to epic poetry. On the contrary the singer must give utterance to the ideas and views of lyrical art as though they were the expression of his own soul, his own emotions. And inasmuch as it is this innermost world, which the delivery has to animate, the expression of it will above all lean to the musical features of poetical reproduction; whether permitted as an embellishment or a necessity we shall here meet with the varied modulation of the voice, either in recitation or song, and the accompaniment of musical instruments.

(C) Our third and final mode of poetical composition unites the two previous ones in a new totality. In this we not only discover an objective exposition, but also can trace its source in the ideal life of particular people; what is objective here is therefore portrayed as appertinent to the conscious life of individuals.[7] To put the case conversely, the conscious life of individuals is on the one hand unfolded as it passes over into actual life experience, and on the other as involved in the fatality of events, which brings about passion in causal and necessary connection with the individual's own action. We have here, therefore, as in Epic poetry, an action expanded to our view in its conflicts and issues; spiritual forces come to expression and battle; the element of contingency is everywhere involved, and human activity is either brought into contact with the energy of an omnipotent destiny, or a directive and world-ruling Providence. Human action, however, does not here only pass before our vision in the objective form of its actual occurrence, as an event of the Past resuscitated by the narrative alone; on the contrary, it is made to appear as actually realized in the particular volition, morality or immorality of the specific characters depicted, which thereby become central in the principle of lyric poetry. Add to this, however, that such individuals are not merely disclosed in their inner experience as such; they also declare themselves in the execution of passion directed to ends; whereby they offer a criterion—in the way that epic poetry asserts what is substantive in its positive reality[8] for the evaluation of those passions and the aims which are directed to the objective conditions and rational laws of the concrete world; and it is, moreover, by this very test of the worth and conditions, under which such individuals continue in their resolve to abide, that their destiny is discovered by implication. This objective presence, which proceeds from the personality itself, no less than this personal experience,[9] which is reproduced in its active realization and all that declares its worth in the world, is Spirit in its own living totality; it is this which, as action, supplies both form and content to dramatic poetry.

Moreover, inasmuch as this concrete whole is itself no less essentially conscious life than it is, under the aspect of its external realization, also a self-manifestation, quite apart from all question of local or other artistic means of realization, we are bound, in respect to this representation of actual facts, to meet the claim of genuine poetry that we should have the entire personality of the individual envisaged; only as such the living man himself is actually that which is expressed. For though, on the one hand, in the drama, as in lyric poetry, a character ought to express the content of its own soul-life as a veritable possession, yet, from another point of view, it asserts itself, when, in its entire personality it is confronted with other personalities, as effective in its practical existence, and comes thereby into active contact with the world around it, by means of which it attaches itself immediately to an active disposition,[10] which, quite as truly as articulate speech, is an expression of the soul-life, and requires its artistic treatment. Already we find in lyrical poetry some close approach to the apportionment of various emotions among different individual speakers, and the distribution of its subject-matter in acts or scenes.

In the drama, then, subjective emotion passes on likewise to the expression of action; and, by so doing, renders necessary the manifestation to our senses of the play of gesture which concentrates the universality of language in a closer relation with the expression of personality,[11] and by means of position, demeanour, gesticulation and other ways is individualized and completed. If, however, this aspect of deportment is carried forward by artistic means to a degree of expression, that it can dispense with speech, we have the art of pantomime, which resolves the rhythmical movement of poetry in a harmonious and picturesque motion of limbs, and in this, so to speak, plastic music of bodily position and movement gives animated life in the dance to the tranquil and cold figures of sculpture, that it may essentially unite by such means music and the plastic art.

A. EPIC POETRY

The Epos, word, saga, states simply what the fact is which is translated into the word. It acquires an essentially self-consistent content in order to express the fact that it is and how it is. What we have here brought before consciousness is the object regarded as object in its relations and circumstances, in their full compass and development, the object, in short, in its determinate existence.

We propose to treat our subject-matter as follows:

First, we shall attempt to describe the general character of what is Epical:

Secondly, we shall proceed to some particular features, which in respect to the real Epos are of exceptional importance:

Thirdly, we shall enumerate by name certain specific methods of treatment, which have been actually in use in particular epic compositions within the historical elaboration of the type.

1. THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPIC TYPE

(a) The most simple, but nevertheless in its abstract concentration, still one-sided and incomplete mode of epic exposition consists in the assertion of that which is essentially fundamental and necessary among the facts of the concrete world and the wealth of mutable phenomena, and in the expression of such on their own account, as focussed in epic phraseology.

(α) We may begin our consideration of the type with the epigram i, in so far as it really remains an epigram, that is an inscription on columns, effects, monuments, gifts and so forth, and at the same time points with an ideal finger to something else, and by doing so explains through words, inscribed on an object, somewhat otherwise plastic, local, something present outside the words expressed. In such an example the epigram states simply what a definite fact is. The individual does not as yet express his concrete self; he attaches a concise interpretation to the object, the locality, which he has immediate perception of and which claims his interested attention, an interpretation which goes to the heart of the fact in question.

(β) A yet further advance may be discovered in the case where the twofold aspect of the object in its external reality and the fact of inscription disappears, in so far, that is, as poetry, without any actual representation on the object, expresses its idea of the fact. To this class belong the gnomes of the ancients, ethical sayings, which concentrate in concise language that which is more forceable than material objects, more permanent and universal than the monument of some definite action, more perdurable than votive offerings, columns, and temples. Such are duties in human existence, the wisdom of life, the vision of that which constitutes in action and knowledge the firm foundations and stable bonds for human kind. The epic character of such modes of conception consists in this, that such maxims do not declare themselves as exclusively personal emotion and reflection, and also, in the matter of their impression, are quite as little directed with the object even of affecting our emotions, but rather with the purpose to emphasize what is of sterling validity, whether as the object of human obligation or the sense of honour and propriety. The ancient Greek elegiacs have in some measure this epic tone. We have still extant a few verses of Solon of this kind, though the transition here into a hortatory tone and style is easily made. Such include exhortations or warnings with reference to the common social life, its laws and morality. We may also mention the gold sayings, which tradition ascribes to Pythagoras. Yet all such are of a hybrid nature, and referable to this, that though in general we may associate with them the tone of our distinct type, yet, owing to the incompleteness of the object, it is not fully realized, but rather there is a distinct tendency to involve with it that of another poetical type, in the present case the lyrical.

(γ) Such dicta may, however, thirdly, as already suggested, by being divested of this fragmentary and self-exclusive isolation, go to form a larger whole, be rounded off, that is, in a totality, which is altogether of the Epic type; we have here neither a purely lyrical frame of mind nor a dramatic action, but a specific and veritable sphere of the living world whose essential nature, as emphasized in its general characteristics, no less than as situated to particular aspects, points of view, occurrences or obligations, supplies us with an integrating unity and a genuine focal centre. In complete agreement with this type of epical content, which displays what is of permanent and universal import along with, as a rule, a distinct ethical purpose of admonishment, instruction or exhortation to an, in all essentials, ethically stable life, compositions of this kind receive a didactic flavour. Nevertheless, by reason of the novelty of their wise sayings, the freshness of their general outlook and the ingenuousness of their observation we must keep them quite distinct from more recent didactic poetry. They wholly justify, inasmuch as they give the necessary play to matter entirely descriptive, the conclusion that these two aspects taken together, instruction and description, are directly deduced as the substantive summary of facts which have been throughout experienced. As an obvious illustration I will merely mention the "Works and Days" of Hesiod, the teaching and descriptive power of which, in its primitive style and as a poetical composition, exercises a fascination upon us wholly different from the pleasure we experience in the colder elegance, the scientific or systematic conclusions of Virgil's poems on agriculture.

(b) The above described modes of epigram, gnome, and didactive poem accept their specific provinces of Nature or human life as their subject-matter, while endeavouring to fix attention in concise language, with more or less limitation of survey, on that which is of permanent worth and essential truth in this or that object, condition, or activity; and even under the still more restricted condition which the art of poetry imposes on such a task the practical result upon human effort is still maintained. There is, however, a further or second type of such compositions, which is, on the one hand, profounder in its penetration, and, on the other, lays less stress on instruction and reform. Such are the cosmogonies and theogonies, no less than those most ancient works of philosophy, which are still unable entirely to liberate themselves from the poetical form.

(α) In this way the exposition of the Eleatic philosophy in the poems of Xenophanes and Parmenides still remains poetic in form; and this is exceptionally so in the introduction prefaced by the latter to his work. The content is here the One, which, in its contrast to the Becoming or the already Become, all particular phenomena in short, is eternal and imperishable. No particularity is permitted to bring content to the human spirit, which strives after truth, and, in the first instance, is cognizant of the same in its most abstract unity and concreteness. Expatiating in the greatness of this object, and wrestling with the might of the same, the impulse of soul inclines instinctively to the lyrical expression, although the entire explication of the truths into which the writer's thought here penetrates carries on its face a wholly practical and thereby epic character.

(β) It is, secondly, the becoming of objective things, in particular natural objects, the press and conflict of activities operative in Nature, which supplies the matter of the cosmogonies, and impels the poetic imagination to disclose in the still more concrete and opulent mode of actions and events real eventuality. And the way this faculty does this is by clothing the forces of Nature in relatively more or less personified or figurative images placed in distinct stages, and through the symbolical form of human events and actions. Such a type of epic content and exposition pre-eminently belongs to Oriental Nature-religions; and above all among them the poetry of India is to an excessive degree prolific in the invention and portrayal of such modes of conception, frequently of an unbridled and extravagant type, concerning the origin of the world and the powers that are active therein.

(γ) We find, thirdly, similar characteristics in theogonies. Such occupy their true position mainly in so far as, on the one hand, the many particular gods are not suffered exclusively to possess the life of Nature as the more essential content of their power and creation, nor, conversely, is it one god that creates the world out of thought and spirit, and who, in the jealous mood of monotheism, will tolerate no other gods beside himself. This fair mean is alone exemplified in the religious outlook of the Greeks. It discovers an imperishable subject-matter for theogony-building in the forceful emancipation of the family of Zeus from the lawlessness of primitive natural forces, no less than in the conflict waged against them. It is a process and a strife which we may indeed affirm gives us the historical origins of the immortal gods of poetry itself. The famous example of such an epic mode of conception we possess in the theogony known to us under the name of Hesiod. In this composition the entire course of event is throughout wedded to the form of human occurrences; it becomes less and less symbolical just to the extent that the gods, who are summoned to a spiritual dominion, are themselves liberated through an intelligent and ethical individuality adequate to their essential nature, and consequently are rightfully claimed and depicted as acting like human beings. What is, however, still absent from this type of Epic composition is, in the first place, a genuinely complete result[1] as poetry. The acts and events, which are within the scope of the survey of such poems, are no doubt an essentially necessary succession of occurrence, but they are not an individual action which issues as from a centre, wherein it discovers its unity and independence. From a further point of view the content of such poetry does not, and in virtue of its character cannot, present to us an essentially complete whole. It does, and for the above reason must, exclude the real activities of mankind, which are indispensable as the truly concrete material for the active display of the Divine forces. Epic poetry, therefore, is bound to free itself from such defects, if it is to receive its most perfect expression.

(c) This actually does take place in that sphere which we may designate the true Epopœa.

In the types hitherto discussed, which as a rule are wholly passed over, what we call the epic tone is unmistakably present, but the content is not as yet poetical in the concrete sense. Particular ethical maxims and philosophemata still persist as part of the material. What is, however, poetical in the full sense is concrete ideality in individual guise; and the epos, inasmuch as it makes what actually exists its object, accepts as such the happening of a definite action, which, in the full compass of its circumstances and relations must be brought with clarity to our vision as an event enriched by its further association with the organically complete world of a nation and an age. It follows from this that the collective world-outlook and objective presence of a national spirit, displayed as an actual event in the form of its self-manifestation, constitutes, and nothing short of this does so, the content and form of the true epic poem. As one aspect of such a totality we have the religious consciousness in every degree of profundity attained by the human spirit; it furthermore embraces the particular concrete life, whether political or domestic, not excluding all the detail of external existence, and the means by which human necessities are satisfied. All such material the epos makes of vital account as a growth in close contact with individuals; and for this reason, that for poetry the universal and substantive is only realized in the living presence of spirit life.

Such a comprehensive world, together with the human characterization it embraces, must then pass before us as real in a tranquil stream, without any undue haste, either as positive history or dramatic action, towards its aim and conclusion. We must thereby be permitted to linger round isolated facts, to penetrate into the different pictures of its movement and to enjoy them in all their detail. And by this means the entire panorama receives in its objective mode of realization the form of an external series of events, the basis and limitations of which must be implied in the essential ideality of the particular epic content, and of which the positive assertion is alone absent. If, consequently, the epic poem is, in its links of connection, more diffuse, and, by virtue of the relatively greater independence of portions of it, inclined to suffer from lack of coherency, we must not allow ourselves the impression that it could ever have been actually sung throughout in this manner. Rather it is an imperative in its case, as in that of any other artistic production, that it should be finished off in an essentially organic whole, which, however, moves forward in apparent tranquillity, in order that the particular fact and the images of actual life it contains may engage our interest.

(α) Such a primitive whole is the epic composition, whether known as the saga, the book, or the bible of a people. We may add every great and important nation can claim to have such primitive books, in which we find a mirror of the original spirit of a folk. To this extent these memorials are nothing less than the real foundations of the national consciousness; and it would be of profound interest to make a collection of such epic bibles. Such a series of Epopees, however much they fell short of artistic compositions in the modern sense, would at least present to us a gallery of the genius of nations. At the same time it is doubtless the fact that it is not every national bible which can claim the poetic form of the epopœa; nor do all nations which have embodied their most sacred memorials, whether in relation to religion or secular life, in the form of comprehensive compositions of the epic type, possess religious books. The Old Testament, for example, contains no doubt much epic narrative and genuine history, no less than incidental poetic compositions; but despite of this the whole is not a work of art. In a similar way the New Testament, as also the Koran, are mainly limited to a religious subject-matter, starting from which the life of the world at large is to some extent and in later times a consequence. Conversely, though the Hellenes have a poetic bible in the poems of Homer, they are without ancient religious books in the sense the Hindoos and the Parsees possess such. Where, however, we meet with the primitive epopoea, we must essentially distinguish between primitive poetic books and the more recent classic compositions of a nation, which do not any longer offer us a mirror of the national spirit in all its compass but do no more than reflect it partially and in particular directions. The dramatic poetry of the Hindoos, for example, or the tragedies of Sophocles present no such exhaustive picture as we find in the Ramajana and the Maha-Bharata, or the Iliad and the Odyssey.

(β) And insomuch as in the genuine Epos the naïve national consciousness is expressed for the first time in poetic guise, the real epic poem will appear for the most part in that midway stage in which, though no doubt a people is aroused from its stupidity, and its life is to that extent essentially strengthened to the point of reproducing its own world and of feeling itself at home therein, yet, for all that, everything which at a later stage becomes fixed religious dogma or civic law and ethical rule, still remains in the fluency of life as mere opinion, inseparable from the individual as such. And along with this volition and feeling are not as yet held distinct from one another.

(αα) It is only after the separation of the individual's personal self from the concrete national whole, with its conditions, modes of opinion, exploits and destiny; it is only, further, after the division in man himself between his emotion and volition, that the lyric and dramatic types of poetry in turn replace the epic type and attain their richest development. This consummation is only reached in the later life-experience of a people, in which the general lines laid down by men for the due regulation of their affairs are no longer inseparable from the sentiments and opinions of the nation as a whole, but already have secured an independent structure as a co-ordinated system of jurisprudence and law, as a prosaic disposition of positive facts, as a political constitution, as a body of ethical or other precepts; and being so, individuals are now confronted with material obligations rather as a necessary force external to themselves than one which their own inner life asserts, and which it compels them to substantiate as its fulfilment. As opposed to such an already actual and independent system, the individual life will seek in part to find expression in an equally independent world and growth of personal vision, reflection and emotion, which are not carried further into the sphere of action, and will further give lyrical utterance to its selfabsorption, its pre-occupation with the content of such a soul-experience. And, in part also, it will make its active passion of main importance, and will seek to assert itself independently in action, in so far as it is able to divest external conditions, the event and its concomitants of any claim to truly epic self-subsistency. It is just this increase to the strength and stability of individual character and aims in their relation to action which opens the way to dramatic poetry. To return, however, to the epic, we repeat that it is the above-mentioned unity of feeling and action which it demands, that unity between the self-fulfilled object of the personal life and the external accident and event; a unity which, as observed, is only present without blemish as it first appears in the earliest periods of the national life or the national poetry.

(ββ) At the same time, we must not yield ourselves, therefore, to the impression that a people in its heroical time simply as such, and as the home of its epos, there and then was in possession of art, or could necessarily depict its life in the mirror of poetry. As a matter of fact, an essentially poetical nationality in its actual world-presence is one thing; the art of poetry regarded as the imaginative consciousness of poetical material, and the artistic presentment of such a world is quite another. The felt want to express oneself as idea in terms of the latter, the trained knowledge of art, are later acquisitions than the life and spirit itself, which discovers itself in all simplicity at home in its unreservedly poetical existence. Homer and the poems under his name are centuries later than the Trojan war, which is to myself quite as much an historical fact as the personality of Homer. In the same way we may affirm of Ossian, always assuming that the poems ascribed to him are really his, that he celebrates an heroic past, the sunset splendour of which inspires him to recall and reclothe the same in poetical form.

(γγ) Despite, however, such a separation, some intimate bond of association must exist between the poet and his subject-matter. The poet must still stand on even terms with the conditions, the general point of vision, the beliefs which he depicts. All he should find it necessary to do is to attach to these the poetic consciousness and the art capable of portraying them; in other respects they are still essential factors in his own life. If such an affinity as that above described is absent in our poet's epic creation, his poem must infallibly contain disparate and irreconcilable features. For both these aspects—namely, the content, the epic world, which it is the intention to portray, and the world of the poet's conscious life and imagination, which is in other respects independent of the above—are of spiritual derivation; they each of them possess intrinsically a definite principle, in which particular traits of characterization are involved. If, then, the personal life of the artist is essentially of a different order to that by virtue of which the historical and national life depicted came into actual being, we must necessarily become conscious of a cleft in the artistic result which will disturb and injure its effect. We shall have, in short, scenes placed before us of a previous condition of history, combined with modes of thought, opinions, and views more pertinent to other periods; and, in consequence of this, the configuration of primitive beliefs will, in its contact with the more developed reflection of a later time, lose the warmth of conviction, become, in short, a mere superstition, an empty embellishment of the mere poetical instrumentation, from which all the vitality of its actual life has vanished.

(γ) And this brings us to the general question what position the poet himself of genuine epic poetry really ought to take up.

(αα) Now, however much the Epos ought also to be positive in the sense that it is the objective presentment of a world based upon its own foundations, and realized in virtue of its own necessary laws, a world, moreover, with which the personal outlook of the poet must remain in a connection that enables him to identify himself wholly with it; yet it is equally true that his artistic product, which reproduces this world, is throughout the free creation of himself. In this connection we shall do well to recall that fine expression of Herodotus: "Homer and Hesiod have created the gods of the Hellenic race." And, in truth, this free and audacious spirit of creation, which Herodotus attaches to the abovementioned poets, already is some testimony to the fact that although the Epopœa belongs to the early age of a nation, it is not its function to depict the most primitive condition of all. In other words, every nation possesses in its earliest origins more or less an alien culture of some kind, is confronted with a religious cult of foreign importation to which it submits, or which it regards as sacrosanct. And, indeed, we find that the minstrelsy, the superstition, the barbarous elements in human life, no less than the most exalted have their source just in this, that instead of being entirely at home with themselves, they are experienced as something aloof from themselves, that is not the natural product of their own national and individual consciousness. In this way, for example, the Hindoos must certainly, long before the date of their great Epopees, have experienced many an important revolution of religious beliefs and secular condition. The Greeks no less, as previously remarked, had to transform much material of an Egyptian, Phrygian, and Asiatic descent. The Romans, in their turn, were confronted with much of a Greek origin; and the barbarians, in the period of national invasion, with Christian or Roman antecedents, and so on. Not until the poet is able with a free hand to cast from him such a yoke, is able to take stock of what he really possesses, is conscious of his own worth, and we are thereby released from all perturbed state of mental vision, will the dawn break of a genuine epic creation. In contrast to such an outlook we have the age and the society modified by a cult abstract in its origin, with its elaborate dogmas, established political and moral maxims, all of which take us away from the concrete life at home with itself. The world of the truly epic poet maintains its opposition to such conditions. Not merely in respect to universal forces, passions, and aims which are operative in the soul-life of individuals, but also in such a poet's attitude to all external facts, be his creation never so independent, he is entirely as one in his own province. In just this way Homer is at home in all that he sings to us of his world, and where we are conscious of such intimacy in another we are infected with a like feeling, for we are here face to face with truth, with that spirit which lives in its world, and discovers therein its true being; and it does us good to feel this, inasmuch as the poet is himself present therein heart and soul. Such a world may, indeed, belong to a less advanced stage of evolution and culture than our own; but at least it does remain faithful to that of a poetry and beauty which is open to all, so that we essentially recognize and understand here everything which our higher life, our humanity in its fundamental demands, whether it be the honour, the opinions, the emotions, the exhortation, or the exploits of each and every hero; and we are able to enjoy such characters, in all the detail of their portraiture, as themselves united to such a life and the richness of its actual presence.

(ββ) But on account of the emphasis upon the objective independence of this whole, it is a further necessary contrast that the poet fall into the background and become lost in his subject. What is to appear is the creation, not the poet; and yet withal, that which the poem expresses belongs to him. He has imagined all in his mind's eye; he has implanted there his soul, his genius. All this, however, is not expressly asserted. So we find, for instance, that at one time a Calchas will give the outline of events; at another, a Nestor. Yet, for all that, such interpretative matter is the gift of the poet himself. Nay, actual changes in the soul-life of his heroes he explains in objective fashion as an entrance of gods upon the scene, as in the case where Athene appears before Achilles in his rage, counselling self-restraint. And inasmuch as the Epos does not disclose the soul-life of the creator, save indirectly, but the positive facts of external life, the subjective aspect of his creations must completely fall into the background, no less than the creator himself vanish behind the world he unfolds to our vision. From this point of view a great epic style makes the work appear to be itself its own minstrel. It seems to pass before us self-begotten, a work of independent birth.

(γγ) Moreover, the epic poem, if a true work of art, is the exclusive creation of one artist. However much an epic may express the affairs of the entire nation, it remains the fact that it is the individual who is the poet, not the nation as a whole. The spirit of an age, of a people, is no doubt the essential operative cause; but realization is only secured in the work of art as conceived by the constructive genius of a particular poet, who brings before our vision and reproduces this universal spirit and its content as his own experience and his own product. Poetical composition is a real spiritual birth, and spirit or intelligence only exist as this or that actual and individual conscious and self-conscious life. When we have already an artistic creation in a particular style,[2] we have no doubt something to start from; and others are then able to copy with more or less success something like it, just as we have to listen nowadays to some scores of poems written in the Goethesque manner. To continue to sing many compositions in the same kind of key, however, will never create the unified creation, which is throughout the work of one inspiring genius. This is a point of real importance not only in our attitude to the Homeric poems, but also the Niebelungen Lied. For the last-mentioned work we are unable to determine an author with any historical certainty; and as for the Iliad and Odyssey, the opinion of some critics is notorious that the Homer of tradition—that is, the sole author of these books—never existed at all. They are the production in different parts of various authors, parts which have finally been patched together in the two larger works we possess. With regard to such a theory the question of most importance is whether either or both of these extant works constitute an independent organic whole in the epic sense, or, as is the view fashionable nowadays, they possess no inevitable beginning or conclusion, but rather might be continued on present lines for ever. We may, of course, admit that the unity of the Homeric poems is, as part of their essential form, less compact than that we associate with the terse concentration of a dramatic work. Inasmuch as every separate portion may be and may appear as relatively independent, they give free play to many interpolations and abrupt transitions; but, despite of this, they do unquestionably constitute throughout a true, ideally organic, and epic totality. Such a whole can only be the composition of one author. This notion of a conglomerate without essential unity, of a mere patching together of various rhapsodies composed in a similar strain, is a wild sort of idea opposed to all artistic canons. Of course, if such a view merely amounts to this, that the poet, in his bare individuality, vanishes in his creation, it is the highest form of praise. This is merely a statement that we are unable to recognize any positive traces of wholly personal opinions and feeling. So much is certainly true of the Homeric poems. What we have before us, and we have only this, is the positive fact, the objective outlook of a people. But the song of a people requires a voice, a voice which can sing forth the contents of heart and soul, as harvested from the national granary; and an essentially self-integrated work of art calls for yet more than this from the unique genius of its creator.

2. PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GENUINE EPOS

We have previously in our consideration of the general character of epic poetry briefly drawn attention to certain incomplete types, which, although of an epical strain, are not epopees in their completeness. They, in short, neither represent a national condition, nor a concrete event, within the boundaries of such a sphere. It is these latter features, which were then excluded, which offer us for the first time a content wholly equal to the perfected Epos, whose fundamental traits and conditions are thus stated.

Having recalled these points it becomes necessary now to investigate more closely what it is we require by way of completing our notion of the epic work of art. We are, however, on the threshold of this enquiry confronted with the difficulty that we have little or nothing to say on features of specific interest, if we confine our attention to generalities; Ave must rivet our attention on historical evidence, and those varied epic and national compositions, works which on account of the extraordinary diversity of the times and peoples to which they refer do not make us very hopeful of securing either a definite or a congruous result. We find, however, some compensation in the fact, that from among all the many epic bibles of the past we can place our finger on one at least, in which we have the clearest evidence of all which it is possible to establish as the true and fundamental character of the genuine epos. Such are the Homeric poems. These, then, above all, will be the source from which I shall borrow the characteristics, which, in my view, essentially determine the nature of such poetry, whether from the point of view of fact or theory. We propose to summarize our enquiry under the following heads:

First, we have to deal with the question, of what structure the general world condition ought to be, on the basis of which the epic event is permitted to receive an adequate reproduction.

Secondly, we shall investigate the quality of this specific type of historical event itself.

Lastly, we shall direct attention to the form in which these two aspects of our subject-matter coalesce and are completed in the unity of a single work of art, that is, in the epic poem.

(a) The General World-condition of the Epic Poem

We have already, when Ave started on this subject, seen that it is not a single isolated action which is accomplished in the true epic event; the subject of the narrative is not, in short, a wholly accidental occurrence, but an action which is dove-tailed into the entire complexus of a particular age and national circumstances, which in consequence can only be placed before us with success as a constituent part of an extensive world, demanding as it does the reflection of such a world in its entirety. In respect to the actual poetical content of this background I shall be brief, inasmuch as I have already indicated the fundamental points of interest when, in the first part of this work, I discussed the general world-condition which the ideal action presupposed. In the present context therefore I shall restrict myself to the question what is of most importance to the Epos simply.

(α) That which is most adapted, as the all-embracing condition of human society, to form the background of the Epos consists in this, that it already possesses for particular individuals the form of a positive condition actually present, and yet continues with them in closest association with the simplicity of primitive life. For if the heroes who are placed as the crowning fact of all, are first to found a collective condition the determination of what is or ought to come into existence falls into the more personal sphere of character to a greater extent than is compatible with the nature of the Epos, and therewith all appearance of the same as objective reality is impossible.

(αα) The relations of ethical life, the aggregate of the family, of the people regarded as a complete nation, not merely with a view to war, but also in their peaceful security, must have become a positive fact in their evolution; yet along with this their organization cannot as yet have assumed the settled form of co-ordinate regulations, obligations, and laws independent in their validity of the direct personal and private activities of individuals, and possessive of the power to maintain themselves against such particular wills. Rather it is the intuitive sense of right and fairness, the moral habit, the temperament, the personality, which supply the support, as they are the source, of such a social order; we have, in short, no theoretic intelligence in its precipitated form of prosaic reality able to establish and secure such a resistance to the heart, the opinions and passions of individuals. We may dismiss the thought that a community with a fully organized constitution and an elaborate system of law, judicial courts, government officials and police, would supply the environment of a really epic action.[3] The conditions of positive morality must, no doubt, be present in the general will and conduct, but the instruments of its realization can only be the action and personality of individuals, and a determinate mode of its existence, of universal application and independent stability, is necessarily absent. We find, in short, in the Epos no doubt the substantive reciprocity of objective life and action, but we find no less a freedom in this world of life and action, which has all the appearance of originating exclusively from the isolated volition of individuals.

(ββ) The same considerations apply to the relation of the individual to the natural environment, from which he borrows the means to satisfy his wants, no less than discovers the best way to do so. In this respect, too, I would refer the reader back to what I have observed at greater length, when discussing the external definition of the Ideal.

What mankind requires in its external life, house and farm, tent, settle, bed, sword, lance, the ship, in which he crosses the sea, the chariot, which bears him into battle, his soup, his roast of meat, and drink—not one of these things need perforce become to him a lifeless instrument; he ought still to communicate to the same something of his entire life and substance, his essential self, and thereby leave the stamp of his own human individuality, by his active association on that which is otherwise wholly external. Our present life with its machinery and factory-made products, no less than the kind of way we seek to satisfy generally the needs of our external life, is in this respect quite as much as that of our political organization, wholly unfit to form the background which the Epos in its primitive guise demands. For just as the scientific faculty with its generalizations, its imperious conclusions, delivered independently of all personal views, can never have asserted its claim under the world-condition of the poetic type we are considering, so, too, we may assume that man did not yet appear divested of his vital connection with Nature, and the fresh and vigorous comradeship, whether as friends or opponents, which is therein implied.

(γγ) Such is the world-condition which, in a previous passage, and in contrast to the idyllic, I have called the heroic. We find it depicted in Homer with the noblest poetry, and with all the wealth of entirely human characterization. We have no more here, whether in domestic or public life, a barbarous state of things, than we have the wholly conventional prose of a regulated family and political organization; what we do find is that primitive mean of poetry much as I have already described it. A fundamental feature in such a condition is unquestionably the free individuality of all the principal personages. In the Iliad, for example, Agamemnon is, no doubt, a king of kings—all other chieftains are subject to his sceptre—but his superiority is no merely formal mutual relation of command and submission of the lord, that is, to his vassals. On the contrary, much circumspection is required of him; he must be shrewd enough to know where he ought to give way, for each particular chieftain is independent even as himself; they are not merely governors or generals summoned by him. They have assembled around him of their own free will, or are induced to follow his lead in a variety of ways. He must take counsel with them; and if they disagree with his judgment they are at liberty, as Achilles did, to remain aloof from the battle. It is this freedom of acceptance, no less than this free right to assert disapproval, which secures the absolute independence of such individuality, and attaches its poetical atmosphere to every situation. We find much the same thing in the poetry of Ossian, as also in the relation of the Cid to the princes, whom this poetical hero of romantic and national chivalry serves as vassal. In Ariosto and Tasso this free relation is still unimpaired; and indeed in Ariosto the individual heroes set forth in practically unqualified independence on their own path of adventure. And the mass of the folk stand in much the same relation to their leaders as that of the separate chieftains to Agamemnon. These too follow voluntarily. There is still no paramount legal obligation by which they are constrained. Honour, reverence, humility in the presence of men more mighty than themselves, ever able to enforce that might, the imposing presence of the heroic character in short and all it implies, such are the essential grounds of their obedience. The order of domestic life is maintained in a similar way. It is not enforced as an accepted rule of service, but as dependent on personal inclination or ethical habit. All is made to appear as though it had grown up spontaneously. Homer, for example, tells us of the Greeks, when narrating one of their battles with the Trojans, that they had lost many valiant fighters, but not so many as the Trojans; and the reason given is that they were always mindful to ward off from one another the extreme of necessity. In other words, they assisted each other. And if we, in our own days, had occasion to define the difference between a well-disciplined and an uncivilized army we could not express it more directly than by laying stress on this very coherence and spirit of cameraderie, this unity enforced by all in a felt association, which distinguished the former. Barbarians are simply human mobs, in which no individual can rely on his neighbour. What, however, in our modern example, being as it is the final result of a stringent and tedious military discipline, rather appears as the exercise and command of an established regime, in Homer's case is still an ethical habit asserted of its own accord, springing from the vital strength of the individual in his private capacity.

We may explain in a similar way Homer's great variety in his descriptions of Nature and external condition. In the prose romances of our own day we do not find much stress laid on the natural aspects of things. Homer, on the contrary, gives us every detail in his portrayal of a staff, sceptre, bedstead, armour, clothing, doorpost; he does not even omit to mention the hinges on which the door turns. Such things appear to us wholly outside our attention and insignificant; or rather we may say that it is the tendency of our education to affect an extremely severe superiority to a whole number of objects, matters, and expressions, and we deliberately classify in their claim to our notice such things as various kinds of dress, furniture, implements, and so on. Add to this the fact that in our day all the means supplied or prepared for the satisfaction of our wants are so split up into every kind of machinery product from work-shop and factory, we come to regard the medley of supply as something beneath us, neither deserving enumeration or respectful attention. The heroic existence is, on the contrary, confronted with a primitive simplicity of objects and inventions; it readily lingers on their description. All these possessions are, in short, regarded as of one standard of value, as chattels or instruments in which man still discovers evidence of his craftsmanship, his positive wealth and interest whereof he may be justly proud. His entire life is not abstracted from such material things, nor exclusively occupied with a purely intellectual sphere. To slaughter oxen and prepare their flesh for the table, to pour out wine and things of that sort are part of the heroic life, carried out with purpose and delight; with us a meal, if it is not to be a very commonplace affair, must not merely carry with it something of the culinary art, but is incomplete without really good conversation. Homer's detailed descriptions in these matters must not therefore be looked upon as a purely poetical embellishment of things of little moment; such a copious attention is nothing more or less than the actual spirit of the men and circumstances depicted. We find just the same prolixity of speech on external things in the case of our own peasants; and for that matter do not the dandies of our own day dilate without limit upon their stables, horses, top-boots, spurs, pants, and the like. In contrast to a life of profounder intellectual interest such things will doubtless appear somewhat jejune.

Such a world ought not merely to embrace the limited universality of the particular event, which occurs on the definite background presupposed; it must coalesce in its expansion with the entire horizon of the national vision. We have a supremely fine example of this in the Odyssey, which not only brings us into contact with the domestic life of the Greek chieftains, their servants and subordinates, but also unfolds the richest variety with its tales of the many opinions of foreign peoples, the hazards of sea-life, the dwellings of distant lands, and so forth. But in the Iliad also, though the nature of its subject restricts to some extent the horizon of our vision, and not unnaturally on its battle-fields has comparatively little to tell us of more tranquil scenes, Homer, at least, has on the shield of Achilles managed in a wonderful way to give us a view of the entire compass of terrestrial existence, no less than human life, in marriages, judicial affairs, agriculture, the might of armies, the private wars of cities, and much else. And these descriptions we 'shall do well not to regard as a wholly incidental feature of the poem. In contrast to such a treatment the poems we identify with the name of Ossian introduce us to a world that is too limited and indefinite. It has for this very reason rather a lyrical character; and as for Dante we may say that his angels and devils inhabit no truly positive world open to our detailed approach; it exists solely as instrumental to the final fruition or due punishment of mankind. And above all in the Nibelungenlied the absence is complete of any definite realization of a visible world or environment, so that the narrative tends in this respect to assume the strain or tone of the mere balladsinger. The narrative is, no doubt, diffusive enough; but it is all much as if some journeyman had picked it up first as gossip, and then retailed it as such afterwards. We are not brought to close quarters with the facts, but are merely made aware of the impotence and tedious effort of the poet. This wearisome expanse of poetical debility becomes of course even more pronounced in the Book of Heroes, until finally the whole business is handed over to the true poetical journeyman, in other words, the Master singers.

(β) Furthermore, for the reason that the Epos has to embody in art a specific world, in all its separate characteristics carefully defined, one, in short, for this reason itself essentially individual, the mirror of such a world must be that of a one particular people.

(αα) In this respect all truly primitive Epopees present to our view a national spirit in the ethical structure of its family life, its public dispositions in times of peace or war, its wants, arts, usages, and interests—in a word, a picture of the relative type and stage of the national consciousness. What the epic poem reveres more than anything else, observes most narrowly, that which, as previously noted, it expatiates upon, is the power to let our inward eye see as in a mirror the individual genius of nations. We have presented us, as the result of such a gallery, the world-history itself, and what is more, we have it in its beautiful, free, and emphasized vitality, manifestation, and deed. From no source, either so impregnate with life or simplicity, can we, for example, better understand the Hellenic spirit and Greek history, or at least grasp the principle of that content, which this people embodied, and which it brought with it when it first set forth to engage in the conflict of its wholly authentic history, than from this of the poet Homer.

(ββ) Now the national substance in its realization is of a twofold nature. First, we have an entirely positive world of specialized usage or custom peculiar to the nation in question, a definite period of history, a definite environment, whether geographical in its streams, hills and forests, or in its climatic situation. Secondly, we have that ideal substance of its spiritual life, whether in the religious sphere, the family or the community generally. If thus an Epos of the primitive type is, under the conditions already indicated, to be and remain a permanently effective bible, the nation's Book, in that case that which is positive in the reality of the Past can only claim such a continuously vital interest in so far as the characteristic features accepted are placed in an ideal connection with the actually substantive aspects and tendencies of the national life. Otherwise what claims to be of positive value will be entirely contingent and a matter of indifference. Native geographical conditions, for instance, enter into the conception of nationality. But if they do not confer on a folk its specific character, the addition of other natural environment, provided that does not contradict national character, is not in certain cases prejudicial to the effect, but may even prove attractive to the imagination. No doubt the sensitive experience of youth is interwoven with the immediate presence of its native hills and streams; but where the deeper bonds of the entire spiritual outlook are absent, such an association assumes a more or less external character. And, apart from this, where we have, as in the Iliad, a warlike expedition, it is impossible to preserve the locale of the fatherland. In such a case the scenery of a foreign land in itself fascinates and attracts. The enduring vitality of an Epos is, however, more seriously impaired, where, in the course of centuries, the spiritual consciousness and life has so entirely changed that the links between the more recent Past and the original point of departure already adverted to are completely severed. This is actually the case with the poet Klopstock in another province of poetry, where he attempts to establish a national religion, and, in order to do so, gives us his Hermann and Thusnelda. We may affirm the same kind of defect of the Nibelungenlied. The Burgundians, the revenge of Chriemhilda, the exploits of Siegfried, the entire social condition, the fated downfall of an entire race and many like facts—all this is no longer vitally held together with the domestic, civil, and judicial life, the institutions and constitutions of the present day. The biography of Jesus Christ, with its Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Roman jurisdiction, even the Trojan war itself, come home to ourselves far more nearly than the events of the Niebelungen; the latter are for present consciousness a state of things wholly gone for ever, swept away once and for all with a besom. To attempt to compose of such something of national significance, to say nothing of a national bible, betokens the extreme limit of folly and superficiality. In times when it was rashly[4] assumed that the flame of youthful enthusiasm had flashed up anew, such a conceit was taken as a proof of the sere leaf of an age once more become childlike in the approach of death; and it refreshed itself with a past that was dead, and deemed it possible to associate others with a similar refreshment and renewed presence.

(γγ) If, however, a national Epos is to secure in addition the permanent interest of foreign nations the world which it depicts must not merely be of a particular nationality, but of a type that is, in this specific folk, its heroism and exploits, equally impressed with the stamp of our common humanity. In the poems of Homer, for example, the superb directness with which he deals with matters of divine or ethical import, the nobility of the characters and of everything living therein embraced, the pictorial quality of their presentment to the reader, all this insures an undying truth for succeeding ages. In this respect we find a remarkable contrast in the creation of different peoples. We cannot deny, for instance, that the Ramajana reflects with the essential directness of life the national spirit of the Hindoos, more particularly from the religious point of view; but the character of the entire Hindoo race is so overpoweringly of a unique type, that the essential features of our common humanity are unable to assert themselves through the veil of this national idiosyncracy. A remarkable contrast to this is the way in which the entire Christian world, from the earliest times, has found itself at home in those epic passages of Old Testament narrative, above all in the pictures of the patriarchal state, and able to repicture for itself to the life the events portrayed over and over again with the greatest enjoyment. The testimony of Goethe is unequivocal. Here was the one focal centre, he assures us, on which, in his young days, amid much that he learned of a miscellaneous and unconnected character, his intellect no less than feeling concentrated itself. Even in later life he still remarks upon them that "after all our wanderings through the East we always returned in the end to these writings as the most invigorating spring of waters: here and there they might be troubled; not unfrequently they hid themselves in the earth; but it was only to rise up again pure and fresh as ever."

(γ) Finally, the general condition of a particular people must not in this tranquil universality of its individual character wholly oust what is more directly the object of the Epos, in other words, be described with no reference to that. It ought only to appear as the foundation, upon which an event throughout its entire process is transacted, one which is in contact with all aspects of the national life, and one which illustrates the same as it proceeds. Such an eventuality must not be a purely external incident; it must imply a deliberately conceived purpose executed by equally deliberate effort. If, however, these two aspects, namely, the general condition and the particular action, do not coalesce, then the event in question must seek its justification in the particular circumstances, the causal conditions which dominate its movement. That is practically to say the world of Epos which is reproduced must be conceived under a specific situation which is so concrete that the definite objects which it is the function of the epic narrative to realize, are necessarily made explicit by it. We have already, when discussing the ideal action,[5] pointed out on general lines that this realization presupposes situations and circumstances which bring about collisions, actions that do injury and consequently necessary reactions. The particular situation, therefore, in which the epic world-condition of a nation is made actual to us, must of itself be essentially one implying such collisions. In this respect, therefore, epic poetry enters the field already occupied by dramatic poetry; and we may find it convenient at once to determine in what respects the collisions of these two types of poetry differ.

(αα) Under the broadest review of this question we may say that the conflict of the belligerent condition is that which supplies the Epos with its most pertinent situation. In war it is obviously the entire nation which is set in activity, and which, as a whole placed under similar conditions, is moved and stimulated in a novel way, in so far at least as it possesses any claim, as such a whole, to participate in it. We may admit that the above conclusion stands in apparent contradiction not merely with Homer's Odyssey, but also the subject-matter of many poems that are epic in an otherwise intelligible sense. It finds, however, ample corroboration in the majority of the most famous Epopees. Moreover, the collision of operations in the events of which the Odyssey informs us, derives part of its source from the Trojan war; and even under the aspect of domestic life in Ithaca, no less than that of the home-returning Odysseus, although the narrative is no actual account of conflicts between Greeks and Trojans, yet it deals with facts which are the immediate consequence of that war. Nay, it is itself war under a new aspect, for many chieftains are forced to reconquer their homes, which after their ten years' absence they find under wholly altered conditions. We have practically but one example of the religious Epos, Dante's "Divine Comedy." Even here, too, the fundamental collision is deducible from that original Fall of the evil angels from heaven, which brings in its train and within the sphere of human experience the ever active external and ideal conflict between the Divine Father and the conduct of men, whether hostile or well-pleasing to Him, a conflict eternally perpetuated in condemnation, purification, and blessedness, or in other words, hell, purgatory, and paradise. Also, too, in the Messias it is the former war against the Son of God which supplies the focal centre. At the same time the most vital and truly pertinent examples are those which actually describe the belligerent state. We have already drawn attention to such in the Ramajana, and, most instructive of all, in the Iliad; further examples are the famous poems of Ossian, Tasso, Ariosto, and Camoens. In war courage is and remains the fundamental interest; and warlike courage is a state of the soul and an activity, which is neither so suitable for lyrical expression nor for dramatic action, but is pre-eminently adapted to the descriptive power of the Epos. In dramatic poetry it is rather the ideal strength or weakness of spiritual life, the ethically justified or reprehensible pathos which is the main thing: in the Epos, on the contrary, it is rather the native characteristics of a personality. For this reason, where it is national exploits which are undertaken, bravery is in its right place; it is in fact not an ethical state,[6] in which the will is determined through its own initiative as an intelligent consciousness and volition. It rather depends on natural temperament, unites in direct equilibrium, as by fusion, with the sphere of self-conscious life, and, in order to bring into effect practical ends, which can be more fitly expressed in epic description than under the conceptions of lyrical emotion and reflection. And these conclusions with regard to bravery in war apply with equal force to the exploits of war and their consequences. The activities of personal volition and the accidents of the external event supply the two scales of the balance. The bare event, with its wholly material obstructions, is excluded from the drama, inasmuch as here what is exclusively external is not permitted to retain an independent right, but is causally related to the aim and ideal purposes of individuals, so that as to all contingent matter, if by any chance it appears to arise and to determine the result, we are none the less compelled to look for the real operative cause and justification thereof in the spiritual nature of human character and its objects, no less than in that of its collisions and their necessary resolution.

(ββ) A basis of the epic action such as this of active hostilities is obviously the source of a very varied subject-matter. We may have placed before the imagination a host of interesting actions and events, in which bravery in action supplies the leading rôle, and the claim of external forces, whether asserted in circumstance or incident, is maintained unimpaired. At the same time we must not overlook a respect in which the possibilities of epic narration is essentially restricted. It is only wars waged between one foreign nation and another which partake of a truly epic character. In contrast to this conflicts between dynasties, civil wars and social revolution, are more suited to dramatic exposition. And in fact Aristotle long ago[7] advises the tragic poet to select subject-matter which is concerned with the conflicts of brother against brother. Of this type is the war of the Seven against Thebes. It is Thebes' own son who storms the city; and its defender is the actual brother of the aggressor. Hostility of this type is something more than that of a mere foe; its significance is bound up with the individuality of the opposed brothers. We have similar examples with every kind of variety in Shakespeare's historical tragedies. In these, almost without exception, agreement between particular individuals is what might be legitimately looked for, and it is only the private motives of individual passion and a personality absorbed in its own aims and satisfaction which bring about collisions and wars. As an example of an action of this kind treated in the epic manner, and therefore defectively, I will mention the "Pharsalia" of Lucan. However indisputably important the conflicting aims in this poem may appear to be, yet for all that the opposing parties are here too closely related on the common ground of one fatherland: their conflict, consequently, instead of being a war between two national entities, is nothing more than a strife of parties, either of which, by the very fact that it splits asunder the substantive national unity, points in one direction, namely, that of tragic guilt and demoralization. Held to this the objective facts are not placed before us in their clearness and simplicity, but are inweaved with one another in a confused manner. The same objections are equally pertinent to Voltaire's Henriad. In contrast to this the hostility of foreign nations is something substantive. Every nation constitutes a totality essentially distinct from and in opposition to that of another. When these come into conflict we do not feel that any positive ethical connection is shattered, nothing at least of essential value to either is violated,[8] no necessary whole broken into fragments. Rather it is a conflict waged in order to maintain such a totality unimpaired and to justify its claim to be so. Hostility therefore of this type is suited in every way to the essential character of epic poetry.

(γγ) Not every war, however, waged under ordinary conditions between two hostile nations is necessarily on that account of an epic character. We must have a further condition satisfied, namely, the justification on broad historical grounds for the bellicose attitude thus adopted. Only when we have this do we obtain a picture of an enterprise at once novel and more exalted, which does not present the appearance of something apart from universal history, the purely capricious subjugation of one state by another, but is absolutely and essentially rooted in a profounder principle of necessity, however much at the same time the more superficial and obvious motive of the undertaking may assume from one point of view the aspect of deliberate wrong,[9] and from the other that of a private revenge. We have something analogous to such a situation in the Ramajana. But the supreme example is that of the Iliad, where the Greeks invade an Asiatic people, and in doing so fight out as it were the preludic conflict of a tremendous opposition, the wars of which practically constitute the turning point of Greek history as we see it on the stage of universal history. Of the same type is the struggle of the Cid against the Moors, or in Tasso and Ariosto the battles of the Christians against the Saracens, or in Camoens the strife of the Portuguese against the Indians. And indeed we may assert that in all the greatest Epopees we find nations which differ from each other in moral customs, religion, and language, in a word, in all that concerns their spiritual and external life, brought into collision; and we are ready to contemplate such without any revulsion on account of the triumph we find asserted there of a nobler principle of world-evolution over a less exalted, a victory assured by a bravery that is simply annihilating. If any one should, in this sense, and in emulation of past Epopees, which have sought to depict the triumph of the West over the East, of the European principle of moderation, of the individually articulate and truly organic type of beauty over Asiatic splendour, over the magnificence of a patriarchal unity, which does not attempt to secure such organic completeness, or is at least merely held together by abstract and superficial conjunctions, if such, I say, should aspire to write the Epopee of the future, he will be necessarily restricted to the portrayal of the victory of some future and intensely vital rationality of the American nation over the prison-house of the spirit which for ever pursues its monotonous task of self-adjustment and particularization.[10] In the Europe of our day every nation finds itself conditioned[11] by its neighbour, and cannot venture on its own account to wage any war with another European nation. If we lift our eyes beyond Europe, there can be only one direction, America.

(b) The Individual Epic Action

It is on such an essentially limited foundation then of conflict between entire nationalities that the epic event is realized, the leading characteristics of which we have now to determine. We may summarize the form we propose our investigation should take as follows:

Firsts what actually takes place consists essentially in this that the object of the epic action ought necessarily to be of individual vitality and definition, however much it may rest on a basis of the most general extension.

Secondly, for the reason that it is only of individuals that we can predicate actions we have the problem to solve of the general nature of the epic character or personality.

Thirdly, in the epic eventuality the form of objectivity is not exclusively that of external appearance: it consists quite as much in the significance of all that is itself intrinsically necessary to and substantive in the exposition. We have consequently to determine the form in which this intrinsic significance of the occurrence proclaims itself as effective, either in part as the ideal necessity which is therein concealed, or as the disclosed direction[12] of eternal and providential forces.

(α) We have postulated as a necessary background of this epic world an enterprise of national significance, in which the entire compass of a national spirit can express itself in the bloom and freshness of its heroic condition. From this fundamental substratum in its simplicity we now further assume the apparition of a particular end, in the realization of which all other aspects of the national character, whether in belief or action, can be represented to our vision. The original postulate is in fact bound up in the closest way with such an all-embracing actuality.

(αα) This purposed object, which is infused with the vital principle of individuality on the lines of which, regarded in its particularized content, the entire process moves forward, must further, as already ascertained, appropriate to itself in the Epos the form of an event. It will be therefore above all important to recall at once the specific character of the mode, under which human volition and action generally combine in what we designate as the event. Now, in the first place, action and adventure are the outcome of conscious life, the content of which is not only ideally expressed in emotions, reflections, and thoughts, but also quite as much in a practical way. We may regard such realization from two distinct points of view. First, we have the ideal substance of the end presupposed and purposed, the general character of which the individual must recognize, will, calculate and accept. Secondly, there is the external reality of the spiritual or human and the natural environment, within which he is only able to act, and the accidental features of which at one time obstruct and at another assist his path; so that either in the one case he is carried forward by virtue of this favour to a successful issue, or, if in the other he is not prepared wholly to give way to such opposition, he finds it necessary to overcome them with his individual energy. If now the world covered by this volitional power is conceived as the indivisible unity of these two aspects, with the result that the right of assertion by both is equally asserted, in that case what is most pertinent to conscious life likewise enters into the formal structure of the event, the form, that is, which confers on all human action the configuration of events, in so far as the conscious or subjective will, with its purposes, motives of passion, principles and aims, can no longer appear the fact of most importance. Or, in other words, in human action everything is referred back to human personality, personal obligation, opinion and intention. In the case of the event, on the contrary, the external constitution of things is permitted to assert its inviolable claim. Here it is objective reality itself, which constitutes either the form assumed by the whole, or from another point of view a fundamental part of the content. In agreement with such a view I have already stated that it is the function of epic poetry to demonstrate the happening of an action, and thereby not only to establish the external disposition of the execution of ends, but also to meet as readily the claims of external condition, natural occurrences, and all else of a contingent character, which, in action taken simply as such, the ideal element of conscious life claims exclusively as its province.