The Norms of Epic

Thomas Greene

Comparative Literature, Vol. 13, No. 3. (Summer, 1961), pp. 193-207.

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THOMAS GREENE

1he 1 .orms 01 kpic

+ N R E THEORY since the seventeenth century has gained in G"subtlety and lost in metaphysical security. As distinctions between genres have grown more gradual and complex, the easy neoclassic sense of the necessity or naturalness of genres has faded. The authority of Croce has denied them any validity. 13ut they continue to be fruitfully discussed-fruitfully if less coherently. In the absence of a general theory which assigns to each its function, the individual genres have to find singly their working principles within themselves. Out of the writ- er's and critic's effort to redefine we have the opportunity to under- stand the genres more profoundly.

In the case of epic, one can begin by distinguishing heroic poems, poems produced by barely literate, widely separated societies, whose resemblances confer a unity supported by sociology and history. 11 second group is con~prised of poems written in emulation of or, as it were, out of nostalgia for Hon~er's two heroic poems (and for the poem of his emulator, Virgil). I t is easy enough, in most cases, to show which poems in European literature fall into this second group, simply on the basis of obvious, demonstrable devices and conventions. T o isolate that group implies no metaphysical assertion.

The student who wants to pass beyond the historian's rule of thumb and to speak more searchingly of genre types must not seem to assert too much. Aware of literature's natural resistance to tidiness, he yet ap- proaches the historian's class with an intuition of norms less obvious and more essential than the superficial conventions, norms which no single poem fully embodies. He knows that a pure epic has never been written. And yet he postulates an epic mode which Homer's emulators approach along with Homer and with the authors of other heroic poems which attain a certain magnitude and value. To describe the mode as he apprehends it is not to insist on its full actualization in any one

C O X I P A R A T I I T E L I T E R A T U R E

poenl, nor even to overlook an historical fact-that, as the mode crys- tallized in literate societies, it tended to cllolie poetic vitality; that to be perpetuated and renewed, it had to lje violated and extended. T o describe the niode, then, is not to prescribe, wit11 the na!! ct6 of some TZenaissance critics, nor to dcny that each successive great a r t ~ s t ~ v h o ~vorlred in it left it a somewhat diiferent thing. Furthermore, the stu- dent should not be disposed to quarrel over the classification of indi- vidual poems within or n ithout the genre; he knows that \T-orlts may participate in the niode to varying degrees. Rut, having rccogtli~erl all this, he will not forget another historical fact-that the legendary epic ideal was like a spirit that seized and rode great men, haunting and exhausting them, driving them sometimes to nlisdirect their gifts 1)ut also, in some few cases, to surpass thern.

The ren~arks ~ ~ h i c h follow are based 011 these presuppositions and are written in the hope of isolating some of the epic norms. They are concerned in turn with the imagery, the hero, the structure, and the language of epic.

The first cjuality of the epic imagitlation is expansiveness, the 1111-

pulse to extend its o \ ~ t l lu~nitlosity it1 ever-widening circles. It con-trasts in this respect ~v i th both the comic and the tragic imagination. The coinic imagination accepts u ithout cramp the fixity of its horizon ; it chooses not to press beyond the street, the clrawing room, the public place, the boudoir, nhich cotlst~tute ~ t s chosen 1ocale.l Tragic space, 011 the other hand, cloies in to hedge and confine. I t permits at best fragtiletlts of k t lo~~ledge,clearings of light, islands of felicity. The space lleyond the cleari~igs remains shadowy atld unknou aljle. But the epic universe is there to be invaded by the human will and imagitla- tion. Epic answers man's need to clear away an area he can appre- hend, if not donilnate ; and commonly this area expands to fill the epic unl\ erse, to cover the ltno\vn viorltl and reach between Heaven and Hell. Epic characteristically refuses to be hemnled in, in time as well a5 in space; it raids the u t~kno~vn and colotlizes it. I t is the imagina- tion's manifesto, proclaiming the range of its grasp, o r else it is the dream of the \\ill, indulging its fantasies of power.

'l'raged), on the other hand, dramatizes the isolation of the will, the limits of human apprehension. This is n h y tragedy co~~i t~ ion ly uses - ~

1 I am tllillking it1 particular of writers like Terence, Jonson, hloliere, Congreve, Slintv, and even Jane tlusten, who seern to me to be more or less "pure" comic z~rtists. Some great comic triumphs (as in Cervantes, some of Shakespeare, Kafka, aiid Joyce) irivolve an adlnixture wit11 other genres (tragedy, romatlce, epic) and do not exemplify my getleralizatiotls.

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partial, fragmentary images. If you think of any familiar Shakespearean metaphor or allusion-the player \\rho struts and frets, Hamlet's un- weeded garden, Lear's basest beggar-you see them as unsituated, without context and without detail. Each is a hrief candle of an irupres- sion, which flickers and goes out in the flov oi speech.? It is coi~lpressed, suggestive, unfulfilled; it invites analysis; and it frequently gains resonance froill its place in a series of like images scattered through the play. Moreover, the speaker and the image are e.xterior to each other; vie do not think of H:unlet literally nloving through the garden, even though it represents metaphorically the rvorld he does move in. All of these qualities of tragic inlagery are appropriate to the ultii~late unkno~vability of the tragic universe.

The characteristic imagery of epic is unlilte all this ; it expands, exfoliates, fulfills itself in harnlony \\-it11 the expansive, emancipated imagination governing it. The epic simile cannot, 115. definition. 1)e a hrief cailclle of an inlpression; it is permitted to fill out space in its natural limits, to iilclude not one but. many living things, to detail with leisure the various aspects of its se1c:ctecl scene. I t is in itself characteristically a miniature, conlplete action. A scene need not be descril~ed exhaustively o r n~eticulously, but we are told all t11:xt we \\.ant or need to kno\v ai!oj.;t it. And this is equally true when the epic poet is at work upon one of the greater images of his poern, upon the lalldscape of the action. '\Ye feel as readers that our eye can move easily over the well-lit :space l~efore us, that no occasional shadow will forever ?~afEe our g a z e . T h e darkiless of R'lilton's Hell must remain darkness visil~le.

I t would be useful to think of these greater images, with whatever movement or action they contain, as the unit counters of the epic poet's art. The death agony of Troy as Virgil clescril>es it, with its various episodes, locales, peripeties, its accretion of similes, its moral, historical, symbolic associations-all this intricate but illassive blocl< exists in our nlincls as a single, giant image which cannot easily be pulled apart and to \vhich everything in Virgil's secoild I~ook contributes. 111 this epic

V t is true that itnages like these are natural to speech aiid so fitting for the stage, tragic or not. But if the imagery of a Shakespearean comedy \\-liicli is truly comic and free of tragic mystery-say, As J70u Like It-is compared with the imagery of tlie tragedies, the comic itnages are seen to tend to\vard a rela-tively greater solidity and fullne!;~ (when at least they are not witticisms). This must remain uiiproved here. But iii any case the fragmentary image is pecaliarly effective as a property of tragedy; it is the instrutneiit of an Xescliylus far more than of an Xristophai~es.

V talce it that this is the distinction Luhhock malces \\.he11 lie spealcs of the feeliiig for Russian laiidscape in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Tolstoy's affinities u-it11 epic and Dostoevsky's u-ith tragedy are clear. See Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fictioit (New York, 19.57), pp. 44-47.

iniage scenery and synihol merge. Any given detail, any smaller visual unit, has to he related to its place in that larger whole. The whole is what the poet is intent upon and what the reader should be illtent upon. Afilton's l'aradise is such a \vllole; so is the Ogygia or Phaeacia of the O d y ~ s c y ;SO even is Dante's Inferno. But of course the greater iniage need not be so very huge as these exaniples; the African harbor which receives Aeneas's storm-weary ships would be a more modest example. There is no tern1 which clesigilates precisely this kind of unit; I shall call it an arch-image. I t is distinguished froni the fragmentary image of tragedl- because it invites, not exegetical expansion, but exploration. And the characters, rather than remaining outside it, are contained by it, help to define it and indeed to comprise it.

The arch-image is inseparable from the action it contains. The expe- rience of whoever nioves through it colors the image just as the iniage controls the experience. The poet may clloose to begin an episode by describing an action, ancl, with the developing narrative and shifting focus, fill in progressively the area about the central figures. That is basically the prececlure of Virgil's secoild hook. But niore frecluently w e see the arch-image before we see the experience; this is the case with Milton's Paradise. In either case the real niovenient of the poem is froni one arch-image to another, and its vital force depends greatly upon their richness ancl flow.

S o t all the epic episodes of course need to be contained within arch- images. There are trailsitional episodes which take place against sketchy, vague hacl~grouncls. I shall have more to say about this below. Here let it suffice to ohservc that episodes can be clcscribed as "strong image" or "weak iinage" according to their visual intensity. The poet must clccide how niuch intensity each episocle needs, when to strengthen and when to relax the iniagistic inipression. A11 excess of either extreme is deadly. Rut, within the broad spectrum of feasible choice, one may study the poet's iniagistic style, as it were, through his successive re- sponses to that recurring problem.

The expansiveness of epic is checliecl finally by a comple~nentary, containing quality \vhiclz affects not so niuch or not only the sense of space as the capacity of the hero. I t lzas to do ~vitli a kind of austerity. This has been touched upon in three recent hoolis written fro111 very cliffereilt orientations

C. 11.Bowra, in his Hrroic Poetry, l~ypotl~esizes that the stage of cultural evolution producing such poetry was preceded hy a stage producing shailianistic poetry, of ~vhicll the Finnislz Kalcvala would

T I l E NORMS O F E P I C

he an example. The magician or shaman r h o is the protagonist suc-ceeds not through physical prowess so much as through hermetic knowledge, magical powers, and initiation illto supernatural mysteries. The protagonist of the heroic poem who, according to L3o\vra, suc- ceeded the shaman, would then have to 1:e seen as an essentially weaker man, gifted at the outset with less formida1)le capacities, and less likely to control his world, relying as he does chiefly on courage and strength, sometimes intelligence-all merely human clualities.

A secoild scholar, Gertrude I<.Lev)-, working more iiltensively than Ronrra with a smaller numI)er of texts, argues that the action of sev- eral ancient epics was based on irun~easurahly older myths ancl rituals of the Kear ancl b'Iiclclle East. In her study, T h e Srcrorcl f ~ o wtlze Koclz, RlIiss Levy attetnpts to show that the action of the huinan hero follo~vs a pattern origiilally ascribed to divine protagonists, a pattern which descended over a period of centuries and even millenin-from the god to the clenligod to the exceptional tnan. I do not know whether hliss Levy \voulcl feel that Eo\vra.'s hypothesis conflicts with her own. In any case, we find a third writer interested in laying the Insis for

a "scientific" criticism, who sees the epic analogously as a post-nipthical genre. Northrop Frye, in Anatovzy oj' Criticism, places the epic in the category of high mimetic which f o l l ~ \ ~ s , logically and chronologically, upon the categories of nlyth and romance. The hero of myth is a god ; the hero of romance is supcrior to other men and to his environment, superior not in kind as z got1 is I)ut in degrec. Roillance is the realm of the marvelous, the magical, and the monstrous. The epic would seem to fall just over the line in high minletic; I imagine h l r . Frye \vould agree that epic coi~~monly treats this line solne\vhat carelessly. The hero of high nlirnetic "is superior in degree to other illen hut not to his natural environinent . . . H e has authority, passions, ancl powers of expression far greater than ours, hut what he docs is subject both to social criticism and to the order of i ~ a t u r e . " ~

All these writers thus view the epic not as an attempt to inflate the hero's naturally meager capacities 11ut as rather the opposite, in ternis of its l~istorical deve1opmeni:-as a djnlinishing of his capacities to ap- proximate more closely those we l\-noxi-. The epic represents a sacrifice, in the name of reason or realism or something else, of the pleasure of pure fantasy. The hero encounters a new sort of resistance and reaches the limitations of his being. H e is denied something, particularly those

extrei-ne might be placed the e i j~~i l ibr iun~ which antic- of the O d ~ v s c ~ l , ipates a remote and easy death balanced against a glorious name and a degree of control-though certainly not total control-over the linown world. The hero learns-and the reader \\- it!^ 1iin1-wherein lies his power acc! to what degree, and wherein lie his liinitations and to n-hat degree. The conclusion forti~alizes thece discoveries.

If Dante's Coiili~lediadoes not altogether satisfy one's sense of what an epic is, the reason may lie in the protagonist's failure to acquire or lose porirer over his n-orld; he acquires it only over himself. Subjective conquest may complen~ent the ol~jective in epic, 11ut cannot replace it. I n a sense Ilante's universe does not permit an individual to acquire power because for hiill all power belongs to God.

In certain Renaissance epics, lilie Spenser's, the landscape which is contested can i ~ e talien to represent the hero's own soul. I t might be argued that Spenser's story is essentially Dante's story-as it could certainly be argued of Spenser's folloner, Philieas Fletcher, whose Pztvplc Isliri~d is l~ased on nothing more than a very simple psycho- n~achia. T o the degree that Spenser frees himself from the simplifica- tions of the crudest allegory, to the degree that he evokes a n-orld exterior to the hero whose existence is imaginatively coinpelling, he participates in the epic.

The subject of all epic poetry might thus be said to be politics, 11ut a politics not limited to society, a politics eml~racing the natural and the fabulous n-orlds, enlbracing even the i~loral or spiritual worlds they sometimes shado~v forth, and involving ultimately the divine. The implications espand to suggest, if not franltly to assert, a cosmic power struggle. The heroic act assumes its highest prestige 11y its divine authorization-the authorization which became symbolized with increasing frequency in the Iienaissance by the literal descent of the angelic messenger to the hero, to direct or counsel him.

So far 1 may seen1 to suppose that a given poem containeti a single hero; but of course tlle epic is not always so simple. One may set against a poem like Bco7vz~lj,nhose hero we scarcely lose sight of once lle is introtiuced, tlle nlore complex Clza.ilso.il dc K o l a ~ l d ,where two conlplernentary heroes are brilliantly balanced. I t nlight be said that tlle wl~ole poem belongs essentially to Roland, even though a con-siderable part of the action occurs after his death; Cllarlernagne's vic- tory would thus be read as a response to Roland's tiefeat. This is a defensible reading but so is the contrary-that the poem helongs es- sentially to Charlenlagne, with wllom it begins and entis, anti that Roland's defeat should be seen as a peripety in his liege's larger, cir-

C O M P A R A 4 T I V E L I T E R A T U R E

through a comparison with novelistic structure. Luhhock recognizes two lcintis of narration in the novel : the fanora~~z ic ,which surveys plot development from above, as it were, over a length of time, and the sce~l ic ,which descends to a given incident at a given liotir and place. Of these two procetiures, epic depentis very little upon the panoramic. I t lltirries through nllatever transitional niaterial is necessary with soiile einbarrassment and evident eagerness to be done wit11 it. \Ivhat it wants to give us is a series of specific scenes. But the scenes tl~emselves tenti to fall generally into t ~ v o kinds, one of which assumes some of the functions of panoramic narration in the novel.

The first kind of scene or episode lays stress upon activity and nlovement ; it contains the agolz, the struggle between capacity and limitation, and whatever other vital cruxes of the narrative are to be presented. I t is not only high keyed etnotively, hut, since imagistic intensity in the epic tentis to accompany enlotive intensit)-, it is the nlore brilliant anti s h o w ; it is always a strong-image episode. I t con- tains the crises in which violence occurs, ai-etc is tested, the deed is accomplished, the terror confronted, the name enhanced. I t tentis to focus upon the Kolanti figure. T h e seconti kind of episode tiepends primarily on dialogue, tllougll dialogue is a niisleading term, for epic avoitis the abruptness of st ichonqd~ia just as it avoids all other ahrupt- ness. Speech in the epic is ampler and more formal than common speech; it is the vehicle hy which the political and symbolic associa- tions of an action or iniage are commonly revealed, and by ~vhich they are situated in an historical context. I t is concerned with the significance anti consequences of the violence. I t is cornrnonly a weak-irnage episode although it need not be. I t tends to focus on the Charlemagne figure.

There are no terms in English ready to hailti to tiistinguish these two kinds of episodes. Tlle best terms I lcliow are those used hy Aristotle to distinguish not between episodes but between kinds of epic or tragic poems-the terms "patlletic" anti "ethical." Patilctiizos, of course, did not have the sentinlental associations of the English worti ; it was cog- nate wit11 fiatlzos which nleant simply "what happens," either as a given incident or as experience in a broader sense. I t coulti but diti not always involve the elenlent of niisforttine or suffering. "Ethical" (etlzikos from e thos ) characterized a poem, loner keyed emotively, which laid stress on character anti manners. I shall use these ternls to tiesignate the two kinds of epic episotie I have tiistinguished above, although this tisage modifies slightly their usage in iiristotle, T,onginus, and Quintilian. The first kind of episotie will be called pathetic and the seconti ethical.

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The ethical episode takes to itself most of the functions of panoramic narration in tlie novel. Through the speech of the well-informed char- acter (~vell-informed through accident, wistiom, or divinity), we are given tliat sense of the passage of time ~vhicli action need5 to assume its full resonance; we are moved l~ack~vardand forward ill history, throiigli ren:inisceiice and prophecy, with the sanie free expansiveness ~v i th ~vllich we are nioveti in space. I t does not matter if the visual 1)ackground of the dialogue reiizai~zs sketchy anti vague ; what 11-e learn iron? it is useful only for thr fuller apprehension of the nlajor action of thc pathetic scenes. I t is a necrssary link ; becausc of it, the great scenes will 11e niore tiranlatic, profounder, richer in sy~ni~olic s~lggestiveness. i t is striking that the ethical episode is used so collsi.;tcntly in prei- crciicc to siiilple exposition. I t wotrltl appear that the pott ins:. lsts on smile sort of scene capable of visualization, ho\\-ever \-:iglie, remain- i!~g before the reader's eyes. Rut wllen liistorical perspective needs par- ticular en~phasis, then the et1lic:~l presentation is tiroppeti anti some other means of heightened vistializatioii is fouiiti. This nlav be the pageant vision of the future such as Anchises sho~vs Aeneas, 3llichael shows Adan?, and llelissa sho~vs F3radamaiite. O r it may be the work of art representing remote e-vents-the conventional bas-reliefs, woven hangings, or tiecorated shields.

Some balance between action as spectacle, as gesie, as object of awe, and action as political event secnis necessary to epic. When the balance tips too far either way, the poenl participates so much the less in the epic mode. When one read:; 1,lican one is struck ilrlnzediately 1)y his overi.idirig interest in the historical and moral meanings of the action he narrates-narrates rather than describes. lLe is neglectful of spec- tacle, of visual inlnlediac:;; lle tells you very little about the landscape around Pharsalus. His central characters are directors, not executors of violence. H e is fond of speeches which concern ~nilitary or diplolnatic issues and lie narrates frequently in a panoranlic, novelistic fashion. H e must have felt hilliself to be doing something halfivay bet~veen what Virgil had done and what versifiers of history like Ennius had done. T o cornpensate for his imaginative aridity, he had to fall back on sen- sationalism. U'e may contrast with him a writer of romance like I3oi- ardo bent on chartning an a~idietice into hearing his tale, a tale ~vhich depends on atlnospliere, gesture, the n~arvelous, and narrative entangle- ment. Between these two extremes lies the epic, opposing the nlelo- dralna to ~vhicli both tend with its o ~ v n dramatic firmness.

Rut both extremes are represented in epic by tlie alternation of ethical and pathetic episodes. Perhaps Inore examples would clarify

C O l I P.\RATIVE LITERATURE

the tlistinction. Uoolis I1 and I11 of Paradise Los t are based on a bal-ance of ethical and pathetic. The deinonic council in Pandeinonium is ethical; Satan's flight through chaos is pathetic. The exchange of speeches in Heaven is ethical, preceded as it is 11y only a brief evoca- tion of setting. But when the exchange has concl~~ded, the great arch- i111:~g.c of f ieaven is rnore fully evolied ; with the angelic adoration and hj-inn AIiltoil passes to the pathetic which will govern the rest of 13001i IT, iilcluding Satan's descent through the planetary spheres to earth. The sl)eeches in the opening episodes of both boolis contain perspec- tives o f the future: in L:oolc TI, the demonic, tentative, illusory per- slxctives ; in I3ooli 111, the true perspective. In each l~oolc they serve to provide inoral acd historical frames for the action of the latter part oi the 11ooli as well as for the rest of the poein. Siniilarly, the pathetic e~~isocle episotle of Sophronia opening Hook I1 of 'Tasso's poem-the xntl Olintlo-balances the ethical second half, which I~rings together tlie I-g!-ptian am1)assadors with Coilredo.

In l!ook I of the .4~nrill' we are given tivo major pathetic episodes at the opeiling and the close, the tempest and the bancjuet at Dido's palace, im:igcs ~vhich mark the general movement of the book from exposure to security o r pseudo security. The teinpest is folloived by the paler image of landing; the bancjuet is preceded by the paler image of Ilido dispensing l a m at the temple. Connecting and interpreting these four inlages is a wealth of ethical episode ; once the panoranlic introduction has been terminated (not eve11 here, however, \vithout the accent of a human voice, the poet's voice, speaking in the first personj, we are given Juno's speech, ~ ~ h i c h loolis back-fi-ard and forward, and the en- suing scene \\-it11 Aeolus, which helps to inforn? the ensuing tenlpest with moral meanings. Later the great central scene 11etweei1 Venus anti Jupiter will provide a much broader llistorical, allnost eschato- logical, perspective, Jupiter's iainous prophecy answering and balanc- ing Venus' review of the past. The subsequent ineeting of \'enus and Aeneas provides another perspective into the past, nolv into Dido's past ; llioneus' account o i his men's fortunes serves the same purpose, while Venus' exchange with Eros turns us about to the future again, facing us toward Book IT'. 'That book will move from ethical to pathetic, fro111 dialogue to spectacle and agony.

One can observe the care n i th which the great epic poets fitted to- gether their pieces of narrative, following laws which have more to do nit11 tonality and feeling than with causation or chronology. Cut the ultimate epic cjuality is less susceptible of analysis-the quality of

T H E N O K L I S O F E P I C

heroic energy, the superabundant vitality 1%hicli charges character and image and action alike. ITrit~iout it the most carefully plotted ~ 1 o r k is as dust and ashes. I t is a qu,ility of the imagination which iluparts life to men and things through worcls, the quality possessed pre-en~inently by the poet of the Iliad.One senses in Achilles the measureless reserves of living po\\er, tlie inexhaustible capacity for fury-equally \\hen he is active o r at rest. T o create that sense is the nark of the epic ima,' 0ma-tion, and it must be done \\itliout apparent effort; it must be done with language which is unstrained. To achieve it, to create a character l~osxssed of heroic energy, is to obviate "personality" as an artistic end-as it is obviated in Vlrgil's Turnus, in Ariosto's Orlando and Rodomonte, in Tasso's Argante. Uut you feel that energy equally, if more subtly, in landscape ; it is in tliis :

;is I\ hen Heaven's Fire I-Iath scath'd the Forest Oaks, or hlountain Pines, With singed top thir stately growth though bare Stands on the blasted Heath.

but it is not in tliis :

Even the wild bath displays her purple dyes .ind 'midst the desert fruitful fields a r i ~ e , That crowned with tulted trees and springing corn, Like verdant isles the sable \taste adorn.6

The energy of epic commu~~icates a ltind of excitement which is like the basic human excitement. of living bodily in a physical world. I t draws upon sexual springs 1 o in1 igorate the imagination. I t anirnates the City of Man with that electric clynamism the ancients thought was divine or demonic and the Renaissance thought was ancient. I t dram- atizes tlie fact of death. Upon it depends, really, the llumanistlc awe, the viarazriglin,for that ~vhich quicltens the self but surpasses the self. This energy is not highly prized today. But without a proper sense of it, the epic nil1 always seem to readers a little puffy, flatulent, over- blonn, and dull.

The language ~vhich in~par ts epic energy must be itself in some sense alive. The living inlpulse of heroic verse stems from a discovery about language ~ \ ~ h i c h lnust have 1,een nlade very early in h u m a ~ i history- the discovery that language can do more than denote, that it can possess, exorcise, invoke, bind nit11 a spell, that it has magical, demonic properties transcending its concern ~v i th statement, One wonders n hether the fearful, clen~onit god in ~ \ ~ o r d s Tvas discovered with joy or terror. In any case, the dcrncn is there in all the primitive cornpositions

'> PorclcJ~scLost , I . 612-615 : Pope's IVi?ldsor Forest, lines 25-28.

C O L I P X R A T I V E L I T E R A T U R E

we l<now. The heroic poet made use of him, and with time he learned to restrain him, to set him customary liiilits of ineter and s j litax and formula. But happily he never tanled the deiiloii altogether, as rhetoric- ians of later ages \\anted to do. The creature 1vho possesses and hinds is at work still ~vithin the poet's n lar~~elous chant. That for the poet is the fundamental task-to tether tlie creature but not to hobble him.

EIeroic verse lives with the life of that demon. But, as heroic be- comes epic, as the deliloll is caught upon the \\ ritteii page, his ~vildness is threatened; lie must have recourse to a new cunning. The formula is liable to lose its energy. So there occurs a shift froin the poetry of the expected to the poetry of the uilexpected Now the demonic life is inore frequently sinothered ; but, when it is quicl<ened again, its life is more various, through scarcely more free, than before

This is the first cluality of epic language-the living iinpulse ~vhich i m ~ ~ a r t senergy to inen and things. Rut of course this impulse is not liinited to the epic There is a second quality, inherent in the feeling proper to epic. I ts language inust become, 111 whatever n7ay the poet finds, the language of awe; it must itself register awe and it must in- vite the audience to anre. I t must reiliind the audience that the story told is no ordinary story, concerning no ordinary men ; it must ~vi th- draw into its heroic remoteness, with its own uncoinrnon rhythms and dictioil and tropes. I t cannot permit itself the abandon of lyric poetry, o r its slender grace, or its coloring of personality. I t must remain the exlxession of the ritual community, the collective City. The language must eii~ulate the weight of the story \\it11 its on11 austere solemnity. This is the quality of language wl~ich rhetoricians came to call or assimi- late with the "high style," ~vhicli, like so mucll in epic, lent itself to imitative debasement. But of course it is reall) Yes;" difficult to imitate. Once the epic has passed out of the preliterate, formulaic stage of the heroic poem, the poetry of the expected, every ilen nork poses afresh the problem of a fitting heroic language

111 his language as in other things, the poet stands implicitly midway between the hero and his audience. H e is the amphibian, the mediator, the nlessenger, the guide, \ \ho is inspired and inspires in turn. I3e is the kno~ver of the naiiies, the speaker to those 1vho cannot speak of high things. Hut he is not the actor; he, like the audience, has only heard of those things. I-Ie can say "we" to embrace hiinself and the audience, but never himself and the hero.

H\vaet, \\.e Gar-Dena in geardagum peodcyniiiga brym gefrunon . . .

T H E N O R L I S 0 1 7 E P I C

Lo! we hare heard of the past glory of Danish kings . . .

And in the old poems he joins his audience in a common anonymity.

These remarks pretend neither to completeness nor, for the most part, to originality; in such a discussion there can be no real claim to either. But when a genre falls into relative neglect, as the epic has fallen, its potential audience begins to forget how to read it. And that forgetfulness leads to Inore neglect. Today there are ten readers of Sophocles or 1Iolii.re to one of T'irgil or Ariosto. The charm of lyric poetry, in particular, has pr-cluded a sensitivity to bulkier, imperfect work. Alarvell, with his fint., aristocratic precision, has become inore attractive than Milton. This is perhaps as it had to be. Hut one must deplore such patsionate exclusive preferences if they lead us to forget the very experience which Ariosto and Virgil and Milton aflford, so that nre no longer know .rvh:tt to expect of then1 or what questions to ask about thein. I have herr tried to recall ivhat questions are to be asked about epic poems.

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