Lascelles Abercrombie

“ It has already been remarked that the ultimate significance of great drama is the same as that of epic. Since the vital epic purpose—the kind of epic purpose which answers to the spirit of the time—is evidently looking for some new form to inhabit, it is not surprising, then, that it should have occasionally tried on dramatic form. And, unquestionably, for great poetic symbolism of the depths of modern consciousness, for such symbolism as Milton's, we must go to two such invasions of epic purpose into dramatic manner—to Goethe's Faust and Hardy's The Dynasts. ”

“ In Milton's poetry the spirit of man is equally conscious of its own limited reality and of the unlimited reality of that which contains him and drives him with its motion—of his own will striving in the midst of destiny: destiny irresistible, yet his will unmastered.
This is not to examine the development of epic poetry by looking at that which is not poetry. In this kind of art, more perhaps than in any other, we must ignore the wilful theories of those who would set boundaries to the meaning of the word poetry. In such a poem as Milton's, whatever is in it is its poetry ”

“ The significance is the poetry. What Beowulf or the Iliad or the Odyssey means is simply what it is in its whole nature; we can but roughly indicate it. And as poetry is never the same, so its significance is never quite the same. Courage as the first necessary value of life is most naively and simply expressed, perhaps, in the Poem of the Cid; but even here the expression is, as in all art, unique, and chiefly because it is contrived through solidly imagined characters. There is splendid characterization, too, in the Song of Roland, together with a fine sense of poetic form ”

“ But Homer occurred; and the tales of Troy and Odysseus became incomparable poetry.
An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative. An epic is not even a re-creation of old things; it is altogether a new creation, a new creation in terms of old things. And what else is any other poetry? The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling. ”

“ It is still this Virgil, though saddened and resigned, who writes the Aeneid. Man creating his own destiny, man, however wearied with the long task of resistance, achieving some conscious community of aspiration, and dreaming of the perfection of himself: the poet whose lovely and noble art makes us a great symbol of that, is assuredly carrying on the work of Homer. This was the development in epic intention required to make epic poetry answer to the widening needs of civilization. ”

“ As a rule, though not quite invariably, the story will be of things which are, or seem, so far back in the past, that anything may credibly happen in it; so imagination has its freedom, and so significance is displayed. But quite invariably, the materials of the story will have an unmistakable air of actuality; that is, they come profoundly out of human experience, whether they declare legendary heroism, as in Homer and Virgil, or myth, as in Beowulf and Paradise Lost, or actual history, as in Lucan and Camoens and Tasso. ”

“ It is certainly possible that a poet might devise a story of such a kind that we could easily take it as something which might have been a real human experience. But that is not enough for the epic poet. He needs something which everyone knows about, something which indisputably, and admittedly, has been a human experience; and even Grendel, the fiend of the marshes, was, we can clearly see, for the poet of Beowulf a figure profoundly and generally accepted as not only true but real; what, indeed, can be more real for poetry than a devouring fiend which lives in pestilent fens? ”

“ Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life. But life as courage—the turning of the dark, hard condition of life into something which can be exulted in—this, which is the deep significance of the art of the first epics, is the absolutely necessary foundation for any subsequent valuation of life; Man can achieve nothing until he has first achieved courage. ”

“ For epic material, it must be repeated, is not the same thing as epic poetry. Epic material is fragmentary, scattered, loosely related, sometimes contradictory, each piece of comparatively small size, with no intention beyond hearty narrative. It is a heap of excellent stones, admirably quarried out of a great rock-face of stubborn experience. But for this to be worked into some great structure of epic poetry, the Heroic Age must be capable of producing individuality of much profounder nature than any of its fighting champions. ”

“ And the reason why epic poetry so imperiously demands reality of subject is clear; it is because such poetry has symbolically to re-create the actual fact and the actual particulars of human existence in terms of a general significance—the reader must feel that life itself has submitted to plastic imagination. No fiction will ever have the air, so necessary for this epic symbolism, not merely of representing, but of unmistakably being, human experience. ”

“ They omit to consider what poetry is. Those who think Bacon wrote Hamlet, and those who think several poets wrote the Iliad, can make out a deal of ingenious evidence for their doctrines. But it is all useless, because the first assumption in each case is unthinkable. It is psychologically impossible that the mind of Bacon should have produced Hamlet; but the impossibility is even more clamant when it comes to supposing that several poets, not in collaboration, but in haphazard succession, could produce a poem of vast sweeping unity and superbly consistent splendour of style. ”

“ We may, then, in a general survey, regard epic poetry as being in all ages essentially the same kind of art, fulfilling always a similar, though constantly developing, intention. Whatever sort of society he lives in, whether he be surrounded by illiterate heroism or placid culture, the epic poet has a definite function to perform. We see him accepting, and with his genius transfiguring, the general circumstance of his time; we see him symbolizing, in some appropriate form, whatever sense of the significance of life he feels acting as the accepted unconscious metaphysic of his age. ”

“ In the greatest poetry, all the elements of human nature are burning in a single flame. The artifice of criticism is to detect what peculiar radiance each element contributes to the whole light; but this no more affects the singleness of the compounded energy in poetry than the spectroscopic examination of fire affects the single nature of actual flame. For the purposes of this book, it has been necessary to look chiefly at the contribution of intellect to epic poetry; for it is in that contribution that the development of poetry, so far as there is any development at all, really consists. ”

“ For Homer is the poet who is usually chosen to stand for "authentic" epic; and, by a facile association of ideas, the conspicuous characteristics of Homer seem to be the marks of "authentic" epic as a species. It is, of course, quite true, that, for sustained grandeur and splendour, no poet can be put beside Homer except Dante and Milton; but it is also quite clear that in Homer, as in Dante, and Milton, such conspicuous characteristics are simply the marks of peculiar poetic genius. ”

“ And just as drama, whatever grandeur of purpose it may attempt, must be a good play, so epic must be a good story. It will tell its tale both largely and intensely, and the diction will be carried on the volume of a powerful, flowing metre. To distinguish, however, between merely narrative poetry, and poetry which goes beyond being mere narrative into the being of epic, must often be left to feeling which can scarcely be precisely analysed. ”

“ That is a long way from the solid reality of material which epic requires. Not manipulation, but imaginative transfiguration of material; not invention, but selection of existing material appropriate to his genius, and complete absorption of it into his being; that is how the epic poet works. Allegory is a beautiful way of inculcating and asserting some special significance in life; but epic has a severer task, and a more impressive one. It has not to say, Life in the world ought to mean this or that; it has to show life unmistakably being significant. ”

“ It seems probable that, in the last resort, classification in literature rests on that least tangible, least definable matter, style; for style is the sign of the poem's spirit, and it is the spirit that we feel. If we can get some notion of how those poems, which we call epic, agree with one another in style, it is likely we shall be as close as may be to a definition of epic. ”

“ It is not an age that lasts for very long as a rule; and before there comes the state in which strong social organization and strong private individuality are compatible—mutually helpful instead of destroying one another, as they do, in opposite ways, in savagery and in the Heroic Age—before the state called civilization can arrive, there has commonly been a long passage of dark obscurity, which throws up into exaggerated brightness the radiance of the Heroic Age. ”

“ And next to the invention of speaking itself, the most important invention for the poet has been the invention of writing and reading; for this has added immensely to the scope of his mastery over words. No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded. But he trusts his reader to do as he himself does—to receive written words always as the code of spoken words. ”

“ The single sense of these two irreconcilables is what Milton's poetry has to symbolize. Could they be reconciled, the two elements in man's modern consciousness of existence would form a monism. But this consciousness is a dualism; its elements are absolutely opposed. Paradise Lost is inspired by intense consciousness of the eternal contradiction between the general, unlimited, irresistible will of universal destiny, and defined individual will existing within this, and inexplicably capable of acting on it, even against it. ”

“ The Homeric hero makes a great deal of honour; but it is honour paid to himself, living; what he wants above everything is to be admired—"always to be the best"; that is what true heroism is. But he is to go where he knows death will strike at him; and he does not make much of honour after death; for him, the meanest man living is better than a dead hero. ”