Chapter VII: Introduction: I (6)

(_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:

_First_, 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.

(_ββ_) With regard to the _particular_ end, the carrying out of which the Epos unfolds under the mode of the event, it follows from our previous conclusions that it must be no mere mental _abstraction_, but on the contrary of wholly _concrete_ definition. At the same time, inasmuch as it is realized within the substantive actuality of the national unity, such a process must exclude the notion of merely capricious activity. The political state as such--the fatherland, let us say--or the history of a State and country, are essentially something universal, which, regarded in the light of such universality, does not appear under the mode of a subjectively individual existence, or, in other words, in inseparable and exclusive coalition with one definite living individual. For this reason the history of a country, the development of its political life, its constitution and destiny may also no doubt be narrated as event; if, however, the facts thus described are not placed before us as the concrete deed, the conscious aim, the passion, the suffering and accomplishment of particular heroes, whose individuality supplies the form and content of the realization in all its parts, the event merely assumes the rigid form of its independent forward movement in the prosaic history of a people or an empire. In this respect no doubt the most exalted action of Spirit would be the history of the world itself. We can conceive it possible that our poet might in this sense undertake to elaborate in what we may call the absolute Epos this universal achievement on the battlefield of the universal spirit, whose hero would be the spirit of man, the _humanus_, who is drawn up and exalted from the clouded levels[13] of conscious existence into the clearer region of universal history. But in virtue of the very fact of its universality a subject-matter of this kind would so be quite unfitted for artistic treatment. It would not adapt itself sufficiently to individualization. For on the one hand we fail altogether to find in such a subject a clearly fixed background and world-condition, not merely in relation to external _locale_, but also in that of morality and custom. In other words, the only basis for all we could possibly presuppose would be the universal World-Spirit or intelligence, whom we are unable to bring visibly before us as a particular condition, and who is possessed of the entire Earth as his local environment. And in like manner too the one end fulfilled in such an Epos could only be the end proposed by the World-Spirit himself,[14] who can only be apprehended and explicitly disclosed in his true significance through the processes of thought. If he is, however, to be represented in the form of poetry, or, at least, if the whole is to receive its proper meaning and coalescence from such a source, it is necessary that his presence should be expressed as that which acts independently from its own resources. This could only be possible for poetry, in so far as the ideal Taskmaster of history, the eternal and absolute Idea, which is realized in humanity, either was envisioned as a directive, active, perfecting individual person, or was merely made effective under the concealing veil of an ever-operative Necessity. In the first case, however, the infinity of such a content must shatter the necessarily limited artistic vessel of determinate individuality, or, as the only way of avoiding such a defect, must assume the inadequate form of a dispassionate allegory of general reflections over the destination of the human race and its education, over the final purpose of mankind, its moral consummation, or over whatever result the end of this World-history might establish. In the alternative case it is the genius of the various peoples which has in each example to be presented (in the heroic figure) in the conflicting existence of whom history expands and moves forward in progressive evolution. If, however, the genius of nations is really to appear in poetical form this can be carried out in only one way, namely, by placing before us the actual world-historical figures as operative through their deeds. We should, however, then merely have a series of particular characters, which emerged and again disappeared in a wholly external succession, the objects of which lacked individual unity and connection; and this would be so for the reason that the controlling World-Spirit, under our conception of it, as the ideal essence and destiny, could not, in the case supposed, be set forth as itself an active individual and the culminating agent in the process. And if, further, anyone was desirous of appropriating the spirits of different nationalities in their universality, and of displaying them as agents in such a substantive form, we should still only have a similar series, the individuals whereof, apart from the fact that they would merely possess an appearance of positive existence similar to Hindoo incarnations, would, in the fictitious form of the imagination they received pale into nothingness when contrasted with the truth of the World-Spirit as realized in actual history.

(_γγ_) We may consequently lay it down as a general principle that the particular epic event is only able to secure a vital form in poetry when it is united in the closest state of fusion with _one_ individual. Precisely as it is _one_ poet who thinks out and executes the whole, so too _one_ individual must crown the edifice, with whom the event is associated and in connection with whose single identity it is continued and completed.

We must point out, however, that here too we are limited by essential conditions. For just as in our previous discussion it was the world-history, so too now, from the converse point of view, it is possible that the biographical treatment in a poetic composition of a definite life-history may appear to supply the most complete and adequate subject-matter of the Epos. This, however, is not the case. No doubt in biography the individual is one and the same throughout; but the events, through which the life-development proceeds, may entirely fall apart, and only retain the subject of the same in a wholly formal and accidental bond of relation. If, on the other hand, the Epos is essentially homogeneous, the event also, in the form of which the content of the poem is disclosed, must itself possess intrinsic unity. Both aspects, in short, the unity of the individual and that of the objective event, as it is evolved, must coalesce and be united. In the life and exploits of the Cid it is unquestionably true that on the field of the Fatherland it is only one great personality which without intermission remains true to himself, and in his development, chivalry and end constitutes the interest. His deeds pass before him, much as if he were the sculptured god; and finally all is gone and vanished for us, no less than for himself.[15] But the poems of the Cid are also as rhymed chronicles no genuine example of the Epos; and, in their later form of romances, they are, as their specific type necessitates, merely isolated situations split off from this national hero's life, which do not necessarily coalesce in the unity of a particular event.

The finest examples, however, of the observance of the above rule are to be met with in the Iliad and Odyssey, where Achilles and Odysseus are respectively the prominent figures. The Ramajana, too, resembles these poems in this respect. Dante's "Divine Comedy" is an illustration, but in quite a unique way. In other words, it is the Epic poet himself with whose single personality, in his wanderings through hell, purgatory, and paradise, all and everything is so associated that he is able to recount the picture of his imagination as a personal experience, and is consequently entitled to interweave with the general substance of his composition his private emotions and reflections to a larger extent than is possible for other epic poets.

(_β_) However much then, speaking generally, epic poetry informs us of actual fact and its occurrence, and thereby makes the objective world its content and form, yet on the other hand, inasmuch as what happens is an _action,_ which passes in successive views before us, it is rather, and for this reason, to _individuals_, and their deed and suffering that the main emphasis is attached. For it is only individuals, be they gods or men, who can veritably act; and just in proportion as they are interwoven in the vividness of life with such a panorama, to that extent they are entitled to attract the main interest to the fulness of their exposition. From this point of view epic poetry stands on level terms with lyric no less than dramatic poetry. It is therefore of some importance that we attempt to define more closely what the _specific_ features are which distinguish the portrayal of personality in the epic composition.

(_αα_) Now, first, what is essential to the objective aspect of an epic character--I am speaking mainly of the leading personages--is that they should be themselves essentially a _totality_ of such traits, in other words complete men, and thereby display in themselves all aspects of emotional life, or to put it better, should represent in a typical way, national opinion and its active pursuits. In this respect I have already in the first part drawn attention to the heroic characters of Homer; and, in particular, to the variety of genuinely human and truly national qualities which Achilles unites in himself so vitally, the hero of the Odyssey supplying an admirable companion picture. The Cid is similarly presented us with much variety of characterization and situation, as son, hero, lover, husband, father, householder, and in his relations to king, friends, and foes. Other Epopees of the Middle Ages are a great contrast, far more abstract in their type of personification, particularly so where their heroes merely champion the cause of chivalry as such, and are removed from the sphere of the true and actual life of the nation.