Epic and Romance Part 2

elements in Homer, of which their adversaries were not slow to take advantage.

One of the most orthodox of all the formalists, who for some reason came to be very much quoted in England, Bossu, in his discourse on the Epic Poem, had serious difficulties with the adventures of Ulysses, and his stories told in Phaeacia. The episodes of Circe, of the Sirens, and of Polyphemus, are _machines_; they are also not quite easy to understand. "They are necessary to the action, and yet they are not humanly probable." But see how Homer gets over the difficulty and brings back these _machines_ to the region of human probability.

"Homere les fait adroitement rentrer dans la Vraisemblance humaine par la simplicite de ceux devant qui il fait faire ses recits fabuleux. Il dit a.s.sez plaisamment que les Pheaques habitoient dans une Isle eloignee des lieux ou demeurent les hommes qui ont de l'esprit.

[Greek: heisen d' en Scherie hekas andron alphestaon]. Ulysses les avoit connus avant que de se faire connoitre a eux: et aiant observe qu'ils avoient toutes les qualites de ces faineans qui n'admirent rien avec plus de plaisir que les aventures Romanesques: il les satisfait par ces recits accommodez a leur humeur. Mais le Poete n'y a pas...o...b..ie les Lecteurs raisonnables. Il leur a donne en ces Fables tout le plaisir que l'on peut tirer des veritez Morales, si agreablement deguisees sous ces miraculeuses allegories. C'est ainsi qu'il a reduit ces Machines dans la verite et dans la Vraisemblance Poetique."[7]

[Footnote 7: _Traite du Poeme epique_, par le R.P. Le Bossu, Chanoine Regulier de Sainte Genevieve; MDCLXXV (t. ii. p. 166).]

Although the world has fallen away from the severity of this critic, there is still a meaning at the bottom of his theory of machines. He has at any rate called attention to one of the most interesting parts of Epic, and has found the right word for the episodes of the Phaeacian story of Odysseus. Romance is the word for them, and Romance is at the same time one of the const.i.tuent parts and one of the enemies of epic poetry. That it was dangerous was seen by the academical critics. They provided against it, generally, by treating it with contempt and proscribing it, as was done by those French critics who were offended by Ariosto and perplexed by much of the Gothic machinery of Ta.s.so. They did not readily admit that epic poetry is as complex as the plays of Shakespeare, and as incongruous as these in its composition, if the different const.i.tuents be taken out separately in the laboratory and then compared.

Romance by itself is a kind of literature that does not allow the full exercise of dramatic imagination; a limited and abstract form, as compared with the fulness and variety of Epic; though episodes of romance, and romantic moods and digressions, may have their place, along with all other human things, in the epic scheme.

The difference between the greater and the lesser kinds of narrative literature is vital and essential, whatever names may be a.s.signed to them. In the one kind, of which Aristotle knew no other examples than the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, the personages are made individual through their dramatic conduct and their speeches in varying circ.u.mstances; in the other kind, in place of the moods and sentiments of a mult.i.tude of different people entering into the story and working it out, there is the sentiment of the author in his own person; there is one voice, the voice of the story-teller, and his theory of the characters is made to do duty for the characters themselves. There may be every poetic grace, except that of dramatic variety; and wherever, in narrative, the independence of the characters is merged in the sequence of adventures, or in the beauty of the landscape, or in the effusion of poetic sentiment, the narrative falls below the highest order, though the art be the art of Ovid or of Spenser.

The romance of Odysseus is indeed "brought into conformity with poetic verisimilitude," but in a different way from that of Bossu _On the Epic Poem_. It is not because the Phaeacians are romantic in their tastes, but because it belongs to Odysseus, that the Phaeacian night's entertainment has its place in the _Odyssey_. The _Odyssey_ is the story of his home-coming, his recovery of his own. The great action of the drama of Odysseus is in his dealings with Penelope, Eumaeus, Telemachus, the suitors. The Phaeacian story is indeed episodic; the interest of those adventures is different from that of the meeting with Penelope. Nevertheless it is all kept in harmony with the stronger part of the poem. It is not pure fantasy and "Faerie," like the voyage of Maelduin or the vigil in the castle of Busirane.

Odysseus in the house of Alcinous is not different from Odysseus of the return to Ithaca. The story is not pure romance, it is a dramatic monologue; and the character of the speaker has more part than the wonders of the story in the silence that falls on the listeners when the story comes to an end.

In all early literature it is hard to keep the story within limits, to observe the proportion of the _Odyssey_ between strong drama and romance. The history of the early heroic literature of the Teutonic tongues, and of the epics of old France, comes to an end in the victory of various romantic schools, and of various restricted and one-sided forms of narrative. From within and without, from the resources of native mythology and superst.i.tion and from the fascination of Welsh and Arabian stories, there came the temptation to forget the study of character, and to part with an inheritance of tragic fables, for the sake of vanities, wonders, and splendours among which character and the tragic motives lost their pre-eminent interest and their old authority over poets and audience.

III

ROMANTIC MYTHOLOGY

Between the dramatic qualities of epic poetry and the myths and fancies of popular tradition there must inevitably be a conflict and a discrepancy. The greatest scenes of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ have little to do with myth. Where the characters are most vividly realised there is no room for the lighter kinds of fable; the epic "machines"

are superfluous. Where all the character of Achilles is displayed in the interview with Priam, all his generosity, all his pa.s.sion and unreason, the imagination refuses to be led away by anything else from looking on and listening. The presence of Hermes, Priam's guide, is forgotten. Olympus cannot stand against the spell of words like those of Priam and Achilles; it vanishes like a parched scroll. In the great scene in the other poem where the disguised Odysseus talks with Penelope, but will not make himself known to her for fear of spoiling his plot, there is just as little opportunity for any intervention of the Olympians. "Odysseus pitied his wife as she wept, but his eyes were firm as horn or steel, unwavering in his eyelids, and with art he concealed his tears.[8]"

[Footnote 8:

[Greek: autar' Odysseus thymoi men gooosan heen eleaire gynaika, ophthalmoi d' hos ei kera hestasan ee sideros atremas en blepharoisi; doloi d' ho ge dakrya keuthen.]

_Od._ xix. 209.]

In pa.s.sages like these the epic poet gets clear away from the c.u.mbrous inheritance of traditional fancies and stories. In other places he is inevitably less strong and self-sustained; he has to speak of the G.o.ds of the nation, or to work into his large composition some popular and improbable histories. The result in Homer is something like the result in Shakespeare, when he has a more than usually childish or old-fashioned fable to work upon. A story like that of the _Three Caskets_ or the _Pound of Flesh_ is perfectly consistent with itself in its original popular form. It is inconsistent with the form of elaborate drama, and with the lives of people who have souls of their own, like Portia or Shylock. Hence in the drama which uses the popular story as its ground-plan, the story is never entirely reduced into conformity with the spirit of the chief characters. The caskets and the pound of flesh, in despite of all the author's pains with them, are imperfectly harmonised; the primitive and barbarous imagination in them retains an inconvenient power of a.s.serting its discordance with the princ.i.p.al parts of the drama. Their unreason is of no great consequence, yet it is something; it is not quite kept out of sight.

The epic poet, at an earlier stage of literature than Shakespeare, is even more exposed to this difficulty. Shakespeare was free to take his plots where he chose, and took these old wives' tales at his own risk.

The epic poet has matter of this sort forced upon him. In his treatment of it, it will be found that ingenuity does not fail him, and that the transition from the unreasonable or old-fashioned part of his work to the modern and dramatic part is cunningly worked out. "He gets over the unreason by the grace and skill of his handling,"[9]

says Aristotle of a critical point in the "machinery" of the _Odyssey_, where Odysseus is carried ash.o.r.e on Ithaca in his sleep.

There is a continual play in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ between the wonders of mythology and the spirit of the drama. In this, as in other things, the Homeric poems observe the mean: the extremes may be found in the heroic literature of other nations; the extreme of marvellous fable in the old Irish heroic legends, for example; the extreme of plainness and "soothfastness" in the old English lay of _Maldon_. In some medieval compositions, as in _Huon of Bordeaux_, the two extremes are brought together clumsily and without harmony. In other medieval works again it is possible to find something like the Homeric proportion--the drama of strong characters, taking up and transforming the fanciful products of an earlier world, the inventions of minds not deeply or especially interested in character.

[Footnote 9:

[Greek: nun de tois allois agathois aphanizei hedunon to atopon.]

ARISTOT. _Poet._ 1460 b.]

The defining and shaping of myths in epic poetry is a process that cannot go on in a wholly simple and unreflecting society. On the contrary, this process means that the earlier stages of religious legend have been succeeded by a time of criticism and selection. It is hard on the old stories of the G.o.ds when men come to appreciate the characters of Achilles and Odysseus. The old stories are not all of equal value and authority; they cannot all be made to fit in with the human story; they have to be tested, and some have to be rejected as inconvenient. The character of the G.o.ds is modified under the influence of the chief actors in the drama. Agamemnon, Diomede, Odysseus, Ajax, and Achilles set the standard by which the G.o.ds are judged. The Homeric view of the G.o.ds is already more than half-way to the view of a modern poet. The G.o.ds lose their old tyranny and their right to the steam of sacrifice as they gain their new poetical empire, from which they need not fear to be banished; not, at any rate, for any theological reasons.

In Shakespearean drama, where each man is himself, with his own character and his own fortune to make, there is small scope for any obvious Divine interposition in the scene. The story of human actions and characters, the more fully it is developed, leaves the less opportunity for the G.o.ds to interfere in it. Something of this sort was felt by certain medieval historians; they found it necessary to begin with an apologetic preface explaining the long-suffering of G.o.d, who has given freedom to the will of man to do good or evil. It was felt to be on the verge of impiety to think of men as left to themselves and doing what they pleased. Those who listen to a story might be tempted to think of the people in it as self-sufficient and independent powers, trespa.s.sing on the domain of Providence. A pious exculpation was required to clear the author of blame.[10]

[Footnote 10: "In the events of this history may be proved the great long-suffering of G.o.d Almighty towards us every day; and the freedom of will which He has given to every man, that each may do what he will, good or evil."--_Hrafns Saga_, Prologue (_Sturlunga Saga_ Oxford, 1878, II. p. 275).

"As all good things are the work of G.o.d, so valour is made by Him and placed in the heart of stout champions, and freedom therewithal to use it as they will, for good or evil."--_Fostbraera Saga_ (1852), p. 12: one of the sophistical additions to the story: see below p. 275.

The moral is different in the following pa.s.sage:--

"And inasmuch as the Providence of G.o.d hath ordained, and it is His pleasure, that the seven planets should have influence on the world, and bear dominion over man's nature, giving him divers inclinations to sin and naughtiness of life: nevertheless the Universal Creator has not taken from him the free will, which, as it is well governed, may subdue and abolish these temptations by virtuous living, if men will use discretion."--_Tirant lo Blanch_ (1460), c. i.]

In the _Iliad_ this scrupulous conscience has less need to deliver itself. The G.o.ds are not far away; the heroes are not left alone. But the poet has already done much to reduce the immediate power of the G.o.ds, not by excluding them from the action, certainly, nor by any attenuation of their characters into allegory, but by magnifying and developing the characters of men. In many occasional references it would seem that an approach was being made to that condition of mind, at ease concerning the G.o.ds, so common in the North, in Norway and Iceland, in the last days of heathendom. There is the great speech of Hector to Polydamas--"we defy augury"[11]--there is the speech of Apollo himself to Aeneas[12] about those who stand up for their own side, putting trust in their own strength. But pa.s.sages like these do not touch closely on the relations of G.o.ds and men as they are depicted in the story. As so depicted, the G.o.ds are not shadowy or feeble abstractions and personifications; yet they are not of the first value to the poem, they do not set the tone of it.

[Footnote 11: _Il._ xii. 241.]

[Footnote 12: _Il._ xvii. 227.]

They are subsidiary, like some other of the most beautiful things in the poem; like the similes of clouds and winds, like the pictures on the Shield. They are there because the whole world is included in epic poetry; the heroes, strong in themselves as they could be if they were left alone in the common day, acquire an additional strength and beauty from their fellowship with the G.o.ds. Achilles talking with the Emba.s.sy is great; he is great in another way when he stands at the trench with the flame of Athena on his head. These two scenes belong to two different kinds of imagination. It is because the first is there that the second takes effect. It is the hero that gives meaning and glory to the light of the G.o.ddess. It is of some importance that it is Achilles, and not another, that here is crowned with the light of heaven and made terrible to his enemies.

There is a double way of escape for young nations from their outgrown fables and mythologies. They start with enormous, monstrous, and inhuman beliefs and stories. Either they may work their way out of them, by gradual rejection of the grosser ingredients, to something more or less positive and rational; or else they may take up the myths and trans.m.u.te them into poetry.

The two processes are not independent of one another. Both are found together in the greater artists of early times, in Homer most notably; and also in artists less than Homer; in the poem of _Beowulf_, in the stories of Sigfred and Brynhild.

There are further, under the second mode, two chief ways of operation by which the fables of the G.o.ds may be brought into poetry.

It is possible to take them in a light-hearted way and weave them into poetical stories, without much substance or solemnity; enhancing the beauty that may be inherent in any part of the national legend, and either rejecting the scandalous chronicle of Olympus or Asgard altogether, or giving it over to the comic graces of levity and irony, as in the Phaeacian story of Ares and Aphrodite, wherein the Phaeacian poet digressed from his tales of war in the spirit of Ariosto, and with an equally accomplished and elusive defiance of censure.[13]

[Footnote 13: The censure is not wanting:--

"L'on doit considerer que ce n'est ni le Poete, ni son Heros, ni un honnete homme qui fait ce recit: mais que les Pheaques, peuples mols et effeminez, se le font chanter pendant leur festin."--BOSSU, _op.

cit._ p. 152.]

There is another way in which poetry may find room for fable.

It may treat the myths of the G.o.ds as material for the religious or the ethical imagination, and out of them create ideal characters, a.n.a.logous in poetry to the ideal divine or heroic figures of painting and sculpture. This is the kind of imagination in virtue of which modern poets are best able to appropriate the cla.s.sical mythology; but this modern imagination is already familiar to Homer, and that not only in direct description, as in the description of the majesty of Zeus, but also, more subtly, in pa.s.sages where the character of the divinity is suggested by comparison with one of the human personages, as when Nausicaa is compared to Artemis,[14] a comparison that redounds not less to the honour of the G.o.ddess than of Nausicaa.

[Footnote 14: _Od._ vi. 151.]

In Icelandic literature there are many instances of the trouble arising from inconsiderate stories of the G.o.ds, in the minds of people who had got beyond the more barbarous kind of mythology. They took the boldest and most conclusive way out of the difficulty; they made the barbarous stories into comedy. The _Lokasenna_, a poem whose author has been called the Aristophanes of the Western Islands, is a dramatic piece in which Loki, the Northern Satan, appearing in the house of the G.o.ds, is allowed to bring his railing accusations against them and remind them of their doings in the "old days." One of his victims tells him to "let bygones be bygones." The G.o.ds are the subject of many stories that are here raked up against them, stories of another order of belief and of civilisation than those in which Odin appears as the wise and sleepless counsellor. This poem implies a great amount of independence in the author of it. It is not a satire on the G.o.ds; it is pure comedy; that is, it belongs to a type of literature which has risen above prejudices and which has an air of levity because it is pure sport--or pure art--and therefore is freed from bondage to the matter which it handles. This kind of invention is one that tests the wit of its audience. A serious-minded heathen of an older school would no doubt have been shocked by the levity of the author's manner.

Not much otherwise would the poem have affected a serious adversary of heathendom, or any one whose education had been entirely outside of the circle of heathen or mythological tradition. An Englishman of the tenth century, familiar with the heroic poetry of his own tongue, would have thought it indecent. If chance had brought such an one to hear this _Lokasenna_ recited at some entertainment in a great house of the Western Islands, he might very well have conceived the same opinion of his company and their tastes in literature as is ascribed by Bossu to Ulysses among the Phaeacians.

This genius for comedy is shown in other Icelandic poems. As soon as the monstrosities of the old traditions were felt to be monstrous, they were overcome (as Mr. Carlyle has shown) by an appreciation of the fun of them, and so they ceased to be burdensome. It is something of this sort that has preserved old myths, for amus.e.m.e.nt, in popular tales all over the world. The Icelandic poets went further, however, than most people in their elaborate artistic treatment of their myths.

There is with them more art and more self-consciousness, and they give a satisfactory and final poetical shape to these things, extracting pure comedy from them.

The perfection of this ironical method is to be found in the _Edda_, a handbook of the Art of Poetry, written in the thirteenth century by a man of liberal genius, for whom the aesir were friends of the imagination, without any prejudice to the claims of the Church or of his religion. In the view of Snorri Sturluson, the old G.o.ds are exempt from any touch of controversy. Belief has nothing to do with them; they are free. It may be remembered that some of the greatest English writers of the seventeenth century have come short of this security of view, and have not scrupled to repeat the calumny of the missionaries and the disputants against the ancient G.o.ds, that Jupiter and Apollo were angels of the bottomless pit, given over to their own devices for a season, and masking as Olympians.

In this freedom from embarra.s.sing and irrelevant considerations in dealing with myth, the author of the _Edda_ follows in his prose the spirit of mythological poems three centuries older, in which, even before the change of faith in the North, the G.o.ds were welcomed without fear as sharing in many humorous adventures.

And at the same time, along with this detached and ironical way of thinking there is to be found in the Northern poetry the other, more reverent mode of shaping the inherited fancies; the mode of Pindar, rejecting the vain things fabled about the G.o.ds, and holding fast to the more honourable things. The humours of Thor in the fishing for the serpent and the winning of the hammer may be fairly likened to the humours of Hermes in the Greek hymn. The _Lokasenna_ has some likeness to the Homeric description of the brawls in heaven. But in the poems that refer to the death of Balder and the sorrow of the G.o.ds there is another tone; and the greatest of them all, the _Sibyl's Prophecy_, is comparable, not indeed in volume of sound, but in loftiness of imagination, to the poems in which Pindar has taken up the myths of most inexhaustible value and significance--the Happy Islands, the Birth of Athena.

The poet who lives in anything like an heroic or Homeric age has it in his power to mingle the elements of mythology and of human story--Phaeacia and Ithaca--in any proportion he pleases. As a matter of fact, all varieties of proportion are to be found in medieval doc.u.ments. At the one extreme is the mythological romance and fantasy of Celtic epic, and at the other extreme the plain narrative of human encounters, in the old English battle poetry or the Icelandic family histories. As far as one can judge from the extant poems, the old English and old German poetry did not make such brilliant romance out of mythological legend as was produced by the Northern poets. These alone, and not the poets of England or Saxony, seem to have appropriated for literature, in an Homeric way, the histories of the G.o.ds. Myth is not wanting in old English or German poetry, but it does not show itself in the same clear and delightful manner as in the Northern poems of Thor, or in the wooing of Frey.

Thus in different places there are different modes in which an inheritance of mythical ideas may be appreciated and used. It may become a treasury for self-possessed and sure-handed artists, as in Greece, and so be preserved long after it has ceased to be adequate to all the intellectual desires. It may, by the fascination of its wealth, detain the minds of poets in its enchanted ground, and prevent them from ever working their way through from myth to dramatic imagination, as in Ireland.