Part 2 (1/2)

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic att.i.tude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life. But life as courage--the turning of the dark, hard condition of life into something which can be exulted in--this, which is the deep significance of the art of the first epics, is the absolutely necessary foundation for any subsequent valuation of life; Man can achieve nothing until he has first achieved courage. And this, much more than any inheritance of manner, is what makes all the writers of deliberate or ”literary” epic imply the existence of Homer. If Homer had not done his work, they could not have done theirs. But ”literary” epics are as necessary as Homer. We cannot go on with courage as the solitary valuation of life. We must have the foundation, but we must also have the superstructure. Speaking comparatively, it may be said that the function of Homeric epic has been to create imperishable symbolism for the actual courageous consciousness of life, but the duty of ”literary”

epic has been to develop this function, answerably to the development of life itself, into symbolism of some conscious _idea_ of life--something at once more formalized and more subtilized than the primary virtue of courage. The Greeks, however, were too much overshadowed by the greatness of Homer to do much towards this. The _Argonautica_, the half-hearted epic of Apollonius Rhodius, is the only attempt that need concern us. It is not a poem that can be read straight through; it is only enjoyable in moments--moments of charming, minute observation, like the description of a sunbeam thrown quivering on the wall from a basin of water ”which has just been poured out,” lines not only charming in themselves, but finely used as a simile for Medea's agitated heart; or moments of romantic fantasy, as when the Argonauts see the eagle flying towards Prometheus, and then hear the t.i.tan's agonized cry. But it is not in such pa.s.sages that what Apollonius did for epic abides. A great deal of his third book is a real contribution to the main process, to epic content as well as to epic manner. To the manner of epic he added a.n.a.lytic psychology. No one will ever imagine character more deeply or more firmly than Homer did in, say, Achilles; but Apollonius was the man who showed how epic as well as drama may use the nice minutiae of psychological imagination. Through Virgil, this contribution to epic manner has pervaded subsequent literature. Apollonius, too, in his fumbling way, as though he did not quite know what he was doing, has yet done something very important for the development of epic significance.

Love has been nothing but a subordinate incident, almost one might say an ornament, in the early epics; in Apollonius, though working through a deal of gross and lumbering mythological machinery, love becomes for the first time one of the primary values of life. The love of Jason and Medea is the vital symbolism of the _Argonautica_.

But it is Virgil who really begins the development of epic art. He took over from Apollonius love as part of the epic symbolism of life, and delicate psychology as part of the epic method. And, like Apollonius, he used these novelties chiefly in the person of a heroine. But in Virgil they belong to an incomparably greater art; and it is through Virgil that they have become necessities of the epic tradition. More than this, however, was required of him. The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time. Virgil not only implies, he often clearly states, the original epic values of life, the Homeric values; as in the famous:

Stat sua cuique dies; breve et inreparabile tempus Omnibus est vitae: sed famam extendere factis, Hoc virtutis opus.[10]

But to write a poem chiefly to symbolize this simple, heroic metaphysic would scarcely have done for Virgil; it would certainly not have done for his time. It was eminently a time of social organization, one might perhaps say of social consciousness. After Sylla and Marius and Caesar, life as an affair of sheer individualism would not very strongly appeal to a thoughtful Roman. Accordingly, as has so often been remarked, the _Aeneid_ celebrates the Roman Empire. A political idea does not seem a very likely subject for a kind of poetry which must declare greatly the fundamentals of living; not even when it is a political idea unequalled in the world, the idea of the Roman Empire. Had Virgil been a _good Roman_, the _Aeneid_ might have been what no doubt Augustus, and Rome generally, desired, a political epic. But Virgil was not a good Roman; there was something in him that was not Roman at all. It was this strange incalculable element in him that seems for ever making him accomplish something he had not thought of; it was surely this that made him, unintentionally it may be, use the idea of the Roman Empire as a vehicle for a much profounder valuation of life. We must remember here the Virgil of the Fourth Eclogue--that extraordinary, impa.s.sioned poem in which he dreams of man attaining to some perfection of living. 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 n.o.ble art makes us a great symbol of _that_, is a.s.suredly 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.

But even more important, in the whole process of epic, than what Virgil's art does, is the way it does it. And this in spite of the fact which everyone has noticed, that Virgil does not compare with Homer as a poet of seafaring and warfaring. He is not, indeed, very interested in either; and it is unfortunate that, in managing the story of Aeneas (in itself an excellent medium for his symbolic purpose) he felt himself compelled to try for some likeness to the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_--to do by art married to study what the poet of the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_ had done by art married to intuitive experience. But his failure in this does not matter much in comparison with his technical success otherwise. Virgil showed how poetry may be made deliberately adequate to the epic purpose. That does not mean that Virgil is more artistic than Homer. Homer's redundance, wholesale repet.i.tion of lines, and stock epithets cannot be altogether dismissed as ”faults”; they are characteristics of a wonderfully accomplished and efficient technique.

But epic poetry cannot be written as Homer composed it; whereas it must be written something as Virgil wrote it; yes, if epic poetry is to be _written_, Virgil must show how that is to be done. The superb Virgilian economy is the thing for an epic poet now; the concision, the scrupulousness, the loading of every word with something appreciable of the whole significance. After the _Aeneid_, the epic style must be of this fas.h.i.+on:

Ibant ovscuri sola sub nocte per umbram Perque domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna: Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna Est iter in silvis, ubi caelum condidit umbra Jupiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem.[11]

Lucan is much more of a Roman than Virgil; and the _Pharsalia_, so far as it is not an historical epic, is a political one; the idea of political liberty is at the bottom of it. That is not an unworthy theme; and Lucan evidently felt the necessity for development in epic. But he made the mistake, characteristically Roman, of thinking history more real than legend; and, trying to lead epic in this direction, supernatural machinery would inevitably go too. That, perhaps, was fortunate, for it enabled Lucan safely to introduce one of his great and memorable lines:

Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque moveris;[12]

which would certainly explode any supernatural machinery that could be invented. The _Pharsalia_ could not be anything more than an interesting but unsuccessful attempt; it was not on these lines that epic poetry was to develop. Lucan died at an age when most poets have done nothing very remarkable; that he already had achieved a poem like the _Pharsalia_, would make us think he might have gone to incredible heights, were it not that the mistake of the _Pharsalia_ seems to belong incurably to his temperament.

Lucan's determined stoicism may, philosophically, be more consistent than the dubious stoicism of Virgil. But Virgil knew that, in epic, supernatural imagination is better than consistency. It was an important step when he made Jupiter, though a personal G.o.d, a power to which no limits are a.s.signed; when he also made the other divinities but shadows, or, at most, functions, of Jupiter. This answers to his conviction that spirit universally and singly pervades matter; but, what is more, it answers to the needs of epic development. When we come to Ta.s.so and Camoens, we seem to have gone backward in this respect; we seem to come upon poetry in which supernatural machinery is in a state of chronic insubordination. But that, too, was perhaps necessary. In comparison with the _Aeneid, Gerusalemme Liberata_ and _Os Lusiadas_ lack intellectual control and spiritual depth; but in comparison with the Roman, the two modern poems thrill with a new pa.s.sion of life, a new wine of life, heady, as it seems, with new significance--a significance as yet only felt, not understood. Both Ta.s.so and Camoens clearly join on to the main epic tradition: Ta.s.so derives chiefly from the _Aeneid_ and the _Iliad_, Camoens from the _Aeneid_ and the _Odyssey_. Ta.s.so is perhaps more Virgilian than Camoens; the plastic power of his imagination is more a.s.sured. But the advantage Camoens has over Ta.s.so seems to repeat the advantage Homer has over Virgil; the ostensible subject of the _Lusiads_ glows with the truth of experience. But the real subject is behind these splendid voyagings, just as the real subject of Ta.s.so is behind the battles of Christian and Saracen; and in both poets the inmost theme is broadly the same. It is the consciousness of modern Europe. _Jerusalem Delivered_ and the _Lusiads_ are drenched with the spirit of the Renaissance; and that is chiefly responsible for their lovely poetry. But they reach out towards the new Europe that was then just beginning. Europe making common cause against the peoples that are not Europe; Europe carrying her domination round the world--is that what Ta.s.so and Camoens ultimately mean? It would be too hard and too narrow a matter by itself to make these poems what they are. No; it is not the action of Europe, but the spirit of European consciousness, that gave Ta.s.so and Camoens their deepest inspiration. But what European consciousness really is, these poets rather vaguely suggest than master into clear and irresistible expression, into the supreme symbolism of perfectly adequate art. They still took European consciousness as an affair of geography and race rather than simply as a triumphant stage in the general progress of man's knowledge of himself. Their time imposed a duty on them; that they clearly understood. But they did not clearly understand what the duty was; partly, no doubt, because they were both strongly influenced by mediaeval religion. And so it is atmosphere, in Ta.s.so and Camoens, that counts much more than substance; both poets seem perpetually thrilled by something they cannot express--the _non so che_ of Ta.s.so. And what chiefly gives this sense of quivering, uncertain significance to their poetry is the increase of freedom and decrease of control in the supernatural. Supernaturalism was emphasized, because they instinctively felt that this was the means epic poetry must use to accomplish its new duties; it was disorderly, because they did not quite know what use these duties required. Ta.s.so and Camoens, for all the splendour and loveliness of their work, leave epic poetry, as it were, consciously dissatisfied--knowing that its future must achieve some significance larger and deeper than anything it had yet done, and knowing that this must be done somehow through imagined supernaturalism.

It waited nearly a hundred years for the poet who understood exactly what was to be done and exactly how to do it.

In _Paradise Lost_, the development of epic poetry culminates, as far as it has yet gone. The essential inspiration of the poem implies a particular sense of human existence which has not yet definitely appeared in the epic series, but which the process of life in Europe made it absolutely necessary that epic poetry should symbolize. In Milton, the poet arose who was supremely adequate to the greatest task laid on epic poetry since its beginning with Homer; Milton's task was perhaps even more exacting than that original one. ”His work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first.” The epigram might just as reasonably have been the other way round. But nothing would be more unprofitable than a discussion in which Homer and Milton compete for supremacy of genius. Our business here is quite otherwise.

With the partial exception of Ta.s.so and Camoens, all epic poetry before Milton is some symbolism of man's sense of his own will. It is simply this in Homer; and the succeeding poets developed this intention but remained well within it. Not even Virgil, with his metaphysic of individual merged into social will--not even Virgil went outside it. In fact, it is a sort of _monism_ of consciousness that inspires all pre-Miltonic epic. But in Milton, it has become a _dualism_. Before him, the primary impulse of epic is an impa.s.sioned sense of man's nature _being contained_--by his destiny: _his_ only because he is in it and belongs to it, as we say ”_my_ country.” With Milton, this has necessarily become not only a sense of man's rigorously contained nature, but equally a sense of that which contains man--in fact, simultaneously a sense of individual will and of universal necessity.

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. Or, if that seems too much of an antinomy to some philosophies (and it is perhaps possible to make it look more apparent than real), the dualism can be unavoidably declared by putting it entirely in terms of consciousness: destiny creating within itself an existence which stands against and apart from destiny by being _conscious_ of it. 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 poetry of _Paradise Lost_ is just--_Paradise Lost_! Its pomp of divine syllables and glorious images is no more the poetry of Milton than the idea of man which he expressed. But the general manner of an art is for ever similar; it is its inspiration that is for ever changing. We need never expect words and metre to do more than they do here:

they, fondly thinking to allay Their appet.i.te with gust, instead of fruit Chewed bitter ashes, which the offended taste With spattering noise rejected: oft they a.s.sayed, Hunger and thirst constraining; drugged as oft, With hatefullest disrelish writhed their jaws, With soot and cinders filled;

or more than they do here:

What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not to be overcome.

But what Homer's words, and perhaps what Virgil's words, set out to do, they do just as marvellously. There is no sure way of comparison here.

How words do their work in poetry, and how we appreciate the way they do it--this seems to involve the obscurest processes of the mind: a.n.a.lysis can but fumble at it. But we can compare inspiration--the nature of the inmost urgent motive of poetry. And it is not irrelevant to add (it seems to me mere fact), that Milton had the greatest motive that has ever ruled a poet.

For the vehicle of this motive, a fable of purely human action would obviously not suffice. What Milton has to express is, of course, altogether human; destiny is an entirely human conception. But he has to express not simply the sense of human existence occurring in destiny; that brings in destiny only mediately, through that which is destined.

He has to express the sense of destiny immediately, at the same time as he expresses its opponent, the destined will of man. Destiny will appear in poetry as an omnipotent G.o.d; Virgil had already prepared poetry for that. But the action at large must clearly consist now, and for the first time, overwhelmingly of supernatural imagination. Milton has been foolishly blamed for making his supernaturalism too human. But nothing can come into poetry that is not shaped and recognizable; how else but in anthropomorphism could destiny, or (its poetic equivalent) deity, exist in _Paradise Lost_?

We may see what a change has come over epic poetry, if we compare this supernatural imagination of Milton's with the supernatural machinery of any previous epic poet. Virgil is the most scrupulous in this respect; and towards the inevitable change, which Milton completed and perfected from Camoens and Ta.s.so, Virgil took a great step in making Jupiter professedly almighty. But compare Virgil's ”Tantaene animis celestibus irae?” with Milton's ”Evil, be thou my good!” It is the difference between an accidental device and essential substance. That, in order to symbolize in epic form--that is to say, in _narrative_ form--the dualistic sense of destiny and the destined, and both immediately --Milton had to dissolve his human action completely in a supernatural action, is the sign not merely of a development, but of a re-creation, of epic art.

It has been said that Satan is the hero of _Paradise Lost_. The offence which the remark has caused is due, no doubt, to injudicious use of the word ”hero.” It is surely the simple fact that if _Paradise Lost_ exists for any one figure, that is Satan; just as the _Iliad_ exists for Achilles, and the _Odyssey_ for Odysseus. It is in the figure of Satan that the imperishable significance of _Paradise Lost_ is centred; his vast unyielding agony symbolizes the profound antinomy of modern consciousness. And if this is what he is in significance it is worth noting what he is in technique. He is the blending of the poem's human plane with its supernatural plane. The epic hero has always represented humanity by being superhuman; in Satan he has grown into the supernatural. He does not thereby cease to symbolize human existence; but he is thereby able to symbolize simultaneously the sense of its irreconcilable condition, of the universal destiny that contains it. Out of Satan's colossal figure, the single urgency of inspiration, which this dualistic consciousness of existence makes, radiates through all the regions of Milton's vast and rigorous imagination. ”Milton,” says Landor, ”even Milton rankt with living men!”

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