Part 7 (2/2)
Eleanor Hull, in _A Text Book of Irish Literature_, also says in Vol. 1, p. 95, that there are few verse poems in the earlier _Tain Bo Cualnge_, most of the poetry being usually in declamatory prose style known as rosg, while in the later version long verse poems are frequent.
The earliest Teutonic verse was rather rhythmical prose, with some alliteration. It is often hard to distinguish Anglo-Saxon prose from Anglo-Saxon verse. aelfric, who is regarded by many as one of the fathers of English prose, wrote his _Lives of the Saints_ in rhythmical prose, arranged in irregular lines just like our modern free verse. The reader may consult Professor Skeat's edition. This arrangement, needless to say, did not make poetry of it. But free verse, as we see, was written in England in 1000 A.D.
Dr. Edwin Guest, in his _History of English Rhythms_, says that the Anglo-Saxon writers sometimes gave a very definite rhythm to their prose, and he cites a few pa.s.sages characterizing King William, from the Chronicle attributed to Wulfstan in the latter part of the eleventh century. Dr. Guest adds that in his opinion this rhythmical prose was one of the instruments in breaking up the alliterative system of the Anglo-Saxons. The pa.s.sage he cites, however, is no more rhythmical than many pa.s.sages in modern English prose. Anglo-Saxon prose, then, often was rhythmical, and even arranged like free verse, but it became genuine poetry only when the element of ecstasy was present. Even the middle-English impa.s.sioned alliterative prose poem, _The Wooing of Our Lord_, of the thirteenth century, does not differ much from Anglo-Saxon verse.
The earliest Teutonic poetry was emotional prose, and only later did definite rules bind it. The author of _Beowulf_, though the first English verse poet, is not the oldest Teutonic poet; he had predecessors in rhythmic prose. ”When we consider primitive Teutonic verse closely,”
says Gosse in his article in the _Britannica_ on Verse, ”we see that it did not begin with any conscious art, but as Vigfussen had said, 'was simply excited and emphatic prose' uttered with the repet.i.tion of catch words and letters. The use of these was presently regulated.” English poetry, then, began in the use of excited and emphatic prose. One of the best pieces of Anglo-Saxon prose poetry is the _Sermon to the English_ on the ravages of the Dane by Archbishop Wulfstan of York in the early part of the eleventh century. It reads like Anglo-Saxon verse. One sees the unconscious influence of Anglo-Saxon prose poetry as late as Drummond's _The Cypress Grove_ (1623), an ecstatic prose poem against death.
The fact that the _Sagas_, the earliest literature of Iceland, were written in perfect prose has puzzled those who claim that the early literature of all nations is verse poetry, and that prose is a later development. The events which the _Sagas_ celebrate took place in the tenth century, and the following century was the period of their narration. They were written down in the present form chiefly in the thirteenth century. Ari Frodi (1067-1148) is considered by many the first inventor of cla.s.sic Norse prose. The most famous of the _Greater Sagas_ is the _Njala_ written about the middle of the thirteenth century and celebrating events of the beginning of the eleventh century.
Earlier Icelandic verse poetry did exist, but it does not belong to Iceland proper. The great strength of real Iceland poetry was in the _Sagas_, which Morris calls ”unversified poetry.” Some of these existed as early as the first part of the tenth century. It seems anomalous to the literary historian that a nation should at the very beginning of its literary history have developed prose before verse, that it should have celebrated its heroes in prose instead of verse song. All stories among ancient people were, however, originally told in prose; the first expression was always in rhythmical poetical prose.
It is not true, then, that verse is the first form in which a nation's poetry is written, or that prose developed from verse. Prose was the original language of poetry, and to prose it should return. The pattern was a gradual development.
FOOTNOTES:
[100:A] ”The Religious Poetry of Babylonia.” _Presbyterian Review_, 1888, p. 76.
[105:A] There is an English translation of this work.
CHAPTER VI
BLANK VERSE AND FREE VERSE AS FORMS OF PROSE
The unrhymed iambic pentameter known as blank verse is really a form of free verse; it is a modified form of the unrhymed cla.s.sical measure. It made its appearance in Italy in the early part of the sixteenth century, and was used by Ariosto in his comedies, except that he employed a final additional unaccented syllable, making eleven syllables in each line.
Surrey, who used it in his translation of two books of the _aeneid_, imported it from the Italians. It was called by the Italians _versi sciolti_, ”untied or free verse.” It was, then, the old cla.s.sical measure with more freedom.
In his essay, _Blank Verse_, John Addington Symonds dwells especially on the plasticity and variety of blank verse, which he says it has more than any other national metre. It may be used for the commonplace and the sublime, the tragic and the comic, etc. It does not have to consist of five iambuses only, but other feet may be subst.i.tuted almost at the caprice of the poet. This, however, practically amounts to saying that blank verse is after all a great deal like prose; indeed, it may be arranged like modern free verse with great ease. Its plasticity and variety are due to the fact that its artificial requirements are less than those of most other metres. It was a fortunate day for English drama and poetry when Marlowe, Shakespeare and Milton, following in the footsteps of Surrey's translation of two books of the _aeneid_, and Sackville's and Norton's play, _Gorboduc_, made blank verse fas.h.i.+onable.
The writers really brought poetry back into prose. For blank verse is but a restricted prose, because there is as often as not no natural pause at the end of the line, and because other feet may be subst.i.tuted for the iambus.
One of the reasons why English verse poetry excels French is because blank verse, a more natural medium than the rhymed Alexandrines, became the chief vehicle for poetry.
In fact, the blank verse of the later Elizabethan dramatists is really prose, for it is less rhythmical than that of Shakespeare. Blank verse was said to have degenerated with them. It is also said to be prosaic as used by Wordsworth. These poets, however, are merely less rhythmical than the alleged masters of blank verse. All blank verse is as near prose as any metrical medium that has been hitherto introduced. Bernard Shaw said he found it easier than prose. It appears very often in prose without the writer being aware of it. d.i.c.kens had a tendency, as also did Ruskin, to drop unconsciously into blank verse in his prose.
The great English blank verse poets and nearly all the poets of England in the nineteenth century used this medium, and are really our supreme prose poets.
The experiment of arranging blank verse in the form of prose and of putting prose in the metre of blank verse has been often tried with success. I have no intention of using this means of showing that blank verse is really a more modulated prose. Any pa.s.sage of blank verse can naturally also be put into modern free verse, into the free rhythms of Whitman, for example.
The lovers of blank verse imagine, however, that its beauty is partly derived from the existence of a pause at the end of the fifth foot and because the next line begins with a capital letter. As a matter of fact, there is no particular virtue in having that pause, and the next line need not begin with a capital letter, and should be continued as of the same line. For the real pauses are, after all, not in these artificial places but where our natural speech and punctuation marks dictate them.
The virtues of blank verse are the virtues of rhythmic prose, which is still freer and more natural than blank verse, just as blank verse is preferable to the heroic couplet.
Our English poets who write in blank verse would have done even better to use prose, rhythmical or unrhythmical. To us moderns there is something of a distortion in chopping up good prose into lines of five feet, each beginning with a capital letter. The more beautiful and natural medium is prose, for blank verse is but a confined prose. It is not fair or right to make characters speak in this fettered prose. It is absurd to state that their speeches become poetry only because of this fettered prose. Every great pa.s.sage in Shakespeare in blank verse would have continued to be poetry in regular prose. We observe that the great prose pa.s.sages of Shakespeare are poetry even though not in blank verse.
English poetry should free itself from the bondage of blank verse, and use prose. However, next to free verse blank verse is the best medium that English poetry has yet found.
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