THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF EARLY EPICS
Though comparison is the method of Science, the comparative study of the national poetry of warlike aristocracies, its conditions of growth and decadence, has been much neglected by Homeric critics. Sir Richard Jebb touched on the theme, and, after devoting four pages to a sketch of Sanskrit, Finnish, Persian, and early Teutonic heroic poetry and _SAGA,_ decided that "in our country, as in others, we fail to find any true parallel to the case of the Homeric poems. These poems must be studied in themselves, without looking for aid, in this sense, to the comparative method." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 135.] Part of this conclusion seems to us rather hasty. In a brief manual Sir Richard had not s.p.a.ce for a thorough comparative study of old heroic poetry at large. His quoted sources are: for India, La.s.sen; for France, Mr.
Saintsbury"s Short History of _FRENCH LITERATURE_ (sixteen pages on this topic), and a work unknown to me, by "M. Paul"; for Iceland he only quoted _THE Encyclopedia BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Edmund Gosse); for Germany, Lachmann and Bartsch; for the Finnish _Kalewala,_ the _ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA_ (Mr. Sime and Mr. Keltie); and for England, a _PRIMER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE_ by Mr. Stopford Brooke.
These sources appear less than adequate, and Celtic heroic romance is entirely omitted. A much deeper and wider comparative criticism of early heroic national poetry is needed, before any one has a right to say that the study cannot aid our critical examination of the Homeric problem.
Many peoples have pa.s.sed through a stage of culture closely a.n.a.logous to that of Achaean society as described in the _Iliad_ and Odyssey. Every society of this kind has had its ruling military cla.s.s, its ancient legends, and its minstrels who on these legends have based their songs.
The similarity of human nature under similar conditions makes it certain that comparison will discover useful parallels between the poetry of societies separated in time and s.p.a.ce but practically identical in culture. It is not much to the credit of modern criticism that a topic so rich and interesting has been, at least in England, almost entirely neglected by Homeric scholars.
Meanwhile, it is perfectly correct to say, as Sir Richard observes, that "we fail to find any true parallel to the case of the Homeric poems,"
for we nowhere find the legends of an heroic age handled by a very great poet--the greatest of all poets--except in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
But, on the other hand, the critics refuse to believe that, in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey,_ we possess the heroic Achaean legends handled by one great poet. They find a composite by many hands, good and bad, and of many ages, they say; sometimes the whole composition and part of the poems are ascribed to a late _litterateur_. Now to that supposed state of things we do find several "true parallels," in Germany, in Finland, in Ireland. But the results of work by these many hands in many ages are anything but "a true parallel" to the results which lie before us in the _Iliad_ and _ODYSSEY_. Where the processes of composite authorship throughout many _AGES_ certainly occur, as in Germany and Ireland, there we find no true parallel to the Homeric poems. It follows that, in all probability, no such processes as the critics postulate produced the _Iliad_ and Odyssey, for where the processes existed, beyond doubt they failed egregiously to produce the results.
Sir Richard"s argument would have been logical if many efforts by many hands, in many ages, in England, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, and Germany did actually produce true parallels to the Achaean epics. They did not, and why not? Simply because these other races had no Homer. All the other necessary conditions were present, the legendary material, the heroic society, the Court minstrels, all--except the great poet. In all the countries mentioned, except Finland, there existed military aristocracies with their courts, castles, and minstrels, while the minstrels had rich material in legendary history and in myth, and _Marchen_, and old songs. But none of the minstrels was adequate to the production of an English, German, or Irish _ILIAD_ or _ODYSSEY_, or even of a true artistic equivalent in France.
We have tried to show that the critics, rejecting a Homer, have been unable to advance any adequate hypothesis to account for the existence of the _ILIAD_ and _ODYSSEY_. Now we see that, where such conditions of production as they postulate existed but where there was no great epic genius, they can find no true parallels to the Epics. Their logic thus breaks down at both ends.
It may be replied that in non-Greek lands one condition found in Greek society failed: the succession of a reading age to an age of heroic listeners. But this is not so. In France and Germany an age of readers duly began, but they did not mainly read copies of the old heroic poems.
They turned to lyric poetry, as in Greece, and they recast the heroic songs into modern and popular forms in verse and prose, when they took any notice of the old heroic poems at all.
One merit of the Greek epics is a picture of "a certain phase of early civilisation," and that picture is "a naturally harmonious whole," with "unity of impression," says Sir Richard Jebb. [Footnote: Homer, p. 37.]
Certainly we can find no true parallel, on an Homeric scale, to this "harmonious picture" in the epics of Germany and England or in the early literature of Ireland. Sir Richard, for England, omits notice of _Beowulf_; but we know that _Beowulf_, a long heroic poem, is a ma.s.s of anachronisms--a heathen legend in a Christian setting. The hero, that great heathen champion, has his epic filled full of Christian allusions and Christian morals, because the clerical redactor, in Christian England, could not but intrude these things into old pagan legends evolved by the continental ancestors of our race. He had no "painful anxiety," like the supposed Ionic continuators of the Achaean poems (when they are not said to have done precisely the reverse), to preserve harmony of ancient ideas. Such archaeological anxieties are purely modern.
If we take the _Nibelungenlied_, [Footnote: See chapter on the _Nibelungenlied_ in Homer _AND the Epic_, pp. 382-404.] we find that it is a thing of many rehandlings, even in existing ma.n.u.scripts. For example, the Greeks clung to the hexameter in Homer. Not so did the Germans adhere to old metres. The poem that, in the oldest MS., is written in a.s.sonances, in later MSS. is reduced to regular rhymes and is retouched in many essential respects. The matter of the _Nibelungenlied_ is of heathen origin. We see the real state of heathen affairs in the Icelandic versions of the same tale, for the Icelanders were peculiar in preserving ancient lays; and, when these were woven into a prose saga, the archaic and heathen features were retained. Had the post-Christian prose author of the _Volsunga_ been a great poet, we might find in his work a true parallel to the _Iliad_. But, though he preserves the harmony of his picture of pre-Christian princely life (save in the savage beginnings of his story), he is not a poet; so the true parallel to the Greek epic fails, n.o.ble as is the saga in many pa.s.sages. In the German _Nibelungenlied_ all is modernised; the characters are Christian, the manners are chivalrous, and _Marchen_ older than Homer are forced into a wandering mediaeval chronicle-poem. The Germans, in short, had no early poet of genius, and therefore could not produce a true parallel to _ILIAD_ or Odyssey. The mediaeval poets, of course, never dreamed of archaeological anxiety, as the supposed Ionian continuators are sometimes said to have done, any more than did the French and late Welsh handlers of the ancient Celtic Arthurian materials. The late German _bearbeiter_ of the _Nibelungenlied_ has no idea of unity of plot--_enfin_, Germany, having excellent and ancient legendary material for an epic, but producing no parallel to _ILIAD_ and Odyssey, only proves how absolutely essential a Homer was to the Greek epics.
"If any inference could properly be drawn from the Edda" (the Icelandic collection of heroic lays), says Sir Richard Jebb, "it would be that short separate poems on cognate subjects can long exist as a collection _without_ coalescing into such an artistic whole as the Iliad or the Odyssey." [Footnote: Homer, p. 33.]
It is our own argument that Sir Richard states. "Short separate poems on cognate subjects" can certainly co-exist for long anywhere, but they cannot automatically and they cannot by aid of an editor become a long epic. n.o.body can st.i.tch and vamp them into a poem like the _ILIAD_ or Odyssey. To produce a poem like either of these a great poetic genius must arise, and fuse the ancient materials, as Hephaestus fused copper and tin, and then cast the ma.s.s into a mould of his own making. A small poet may reduce the legends and lays into a very inartistic whole, a very inharmonious whole, as in the _Nibelungenlied_, but a controlling poet, not a mere redactor or editor, is needed to perform even that feat.
Where a man who is not a poet undertakes to produce the coalescence, as Dr. Lonnrot (1835-1849) did in the case of the peasant, not courtly, lays of Finland, he "fails to prove that mere combining and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," says Sir Richard Jebb.
[Footnote: Homer, p. 134-135.]
This is perfectly true; much as Lonnrot botched and vamped the Finnish lays he made no epic out of them. But, as it is true, how did the late Athenian drudge of Pisistratus succeed where Lonnrot failed? "In the dovetailing of the _ODYSSEY_ we see the work of one mind," says Sir Richard. [Footnote: Homer, p. 129.] This mind cannot have been the property of any one but a great poet, obviously, as the _Odyssey_ is confessedly "an artistic whole." Consequently the disintegrators of the Odyssey, when they are logical, are reduced to averring that the poem is an exceedingly inartistic whole, a whole not artistic at all. While Mr.
Leaf calls it "a model of skilful construction," Wilamowitz Mollendorff denounces it as the work of "a slenderly-gifted botcher," of about 650 B.C., a century previous to Mr. Leaf"s Athenian editor.
Thus we come, after all, to a crisis in which mere literary appreciation is the only test of the truth about a work of literature. The Odyssey is an admirable piece of artistic composition, or it is the very reverse.
Bla.s.s, Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, and the opinion of the ages declare that the composition is excellent. A crowd of German critics and Father Browne, S.J., hold that the composition is feeble. The criterion is the literary taste of each party to the dispute. Kirchhoff and Wilamowitz Mollendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, Bla.s.s, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see a masterpiece of excellent construction. The world has judged: the _Odyssey_ is a marvel of construction: therefore is not the work of a late botcher of disparate materials, but of a great early poet. Yet Sir Richard Jebb, while recognising the _Odyssey_ as "an artistic whole" and an harmonious picture, and recognising Lonnrot"s failure "to prove that mere combining and editing can form an artistic whole out of originally distinct songs, even though concerned with closely related themes," thinks that Kirchhoff has made the essence of his theory of late combination of distinct strata of poetical material from different sources and periods, in the _Odyssey_, "in the highest degree probable." [Footnote: Homer, p.
131.]
It is, of course, possible that Mr. Leaf, who has not edited the _Odyssey,_ may now, in deference to his belief in the Pisistratean editor, have changed his opinion of the merits of the poem. If the _Odyssey,_ like the _Iliad_, was, till about 540 B.C., a chaos of lays of all ages, variously known in various _repertoires_ of the rhapsodists, and patched up by the Pisistratean editor, then of two things one--either Mr. Leaf abides by his enthusiastic belief in the excellency of the composition, or he does not. If he does still believe that the composition of the _Odyssey_ is a masterpiece, then the Pisistratean editor was a great master of construction. If he now, on the other hand, agrees with Wilamowitz Mollendorff that the _Odyssey_ is cobbler"s work, then his literary opinions are unstable.
CHAPTER XVI
HOMER AND THE FRENCH MEDIAEVAL EPICS
Sir Richard Jebb remarks, with truth, that "before any definite solution of the Homeric problem could derive scientific support from such a.n.a.logies" (with epics of other peoples), "it would be necessary to show that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appear in early Greece had been reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere."
[Footnote: Homer, pp. 131, 132.] Now we can show that the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems confessedly arose were "reproduced with sufficient closeness elsewhere," except that no really great poet was elsewhere present.
This occurred among the Germanic aristocracy, "the Franks of France,"
in the eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth centuries of our era. The closeness of the whole parallel, allowing for the admitted absence in France of a very great and truly artistic poet, is astonishing.
We have first, in France, answering to the Achaean aristocracy, the Frankish n.o.blesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and strong castles, dominating an older population, owing a practically doubtful fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, pa.s.sing their days in the chace, in private war, or in revolt against the Over-Lord, and, for all literary entertainment, depending on the recitations of epic poems by _jongleurs_, who in some cases are of gentle birth, and are the authors of the poems which they recite.
"This national poetry," says M. Gaston Paris, "was born and mainly developed among the warlike cla.s.s, princes, lords, and their courts....
At first, no doubt, some of these men of the sword themselves composed and chanted lays" (like Achilles), "but soon there arose a special cla.s.s of poets ... They went from court to court, from castle ... Later, when the townsfolk began to be interested in their chants, they sank a degree, and took their stand in public open places ..." [Footnote: _Literature Francaise au Moyen Age_, pp. 36, 37. 1898.]
In the _Iliad_ we hear of no minstrels in camp: in the _Odyssey_ a prince has a minstrel among his retainers--Demodocus, at the court of Phaeacia; Phemius, in the house of Odysseus. In Ionia, when princes had pa.s.sed away, rhapsodists recited for gain in marketplaces and at fairs.
The parallel with France is so far complete.
The French national epics, like those of the Achaeans, deal mainly with legends of a long past legendary age. To the French authors the greatness and the fortunes of the Emperor Charles and other heroic heads of great Houses provide a theme. The topics of song are his wars, and the prowess and the quarrels of his peers with the Emperor and among themselves. These are seen magnified through a mist of legend; Saracens are subst.i.tuted for Gascon foes, and the great Charles, so n.o.bly venerable a figure in the oldest French epic (the _Chanson de Roland, circ._ 1050-1070 in its earliest extant form), is more degraded, in the later epics, than Agamemnon himself. The "machinery" of the G.o.ds in Homer is replaced by the machinery of angels, but the machinery of dreams is in vogue, as in the Iliad and _Odyssey_. The sources are traditional and legendary.
We know that brief early lays of Charles and other heroes had existed, and they may have been familiar to the French epic poets, but they were not merely patched into the epics. The form of verse is not ballad-like, but a series of _laisses_ of decasyllabic lines, each _laisse_ presenting one a.s.sonance, not rhyme. As time went on, rhyme and Alexandrine lines were introduced, and the old epics were expanded, altered, condensed, _remanies_, with progressive changes in taste, metre, language, manners, and ways of life.
Finally, an age of Cyclic poems began; authors took new characters, whom they attached by false genealogies to the older heroes, and they chanted the adventures of the sons of the former heroes, like the Cyclic poet who sang of the son of Odysseus by Circe. All these conditions are undeniably "true parallels" to "the conditions under which the Homeric poems appeared." The only obvious point of difference vanishes if we admit, with Sir Richard Jebb and M. Salomon Reinach, the possibility of the existence of written texts in the Greece of the early iron age.
We do not mean texts prepared for a _reading_ public. In France such a public, demanding texts for reading, did not arise till the decadence of the epic. The oldest French texts of their epics are small volumes, each page containing some thirty lines in one column. Such volumes were carried about by the _jongleurs_, who chanted their own or other men"s verses. They were not in the hands of readers. [Footnote: _epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. i. pp. 226-228. 1878.]
An example of an author-reciter, Jendeus de Brie (he was the maker of the first version of the _Bataille Loquifer_, twelfth century) is instructive. Of Jendeus de Brie it is said that "he wrote the poem, kept it very carefully, taught it to no man, made much gain out of it in Sicily where he sojourned, and left it to his son when he died." Similar statements are made in _Renaus de Montauban_ (the existing late version is of the thirteenth century) about Huon de Villeneuve, who would not part with his poem for horses or furs, or for any price, and about other poets. [Footnote: _epopees Francaises, Leon Gautier_, vol. i. p. 215, Note I.]
These early _jongleurs_ were men of position and distinction; their theme was the _gestes_ of princes; they were not under the ban with which the Church pursued vulgar strollers, men like the Greek rhapsodists. Pindar"s story that Homer wrote the _Cypria_ [Footnote: _Pindari Opera_, vol. iii. p. 654. Boeckh.] and gave the copy, as the dowry of his daughter, to Stasinus who married her, could only have arisen in Greece in circ.u.mstances exactly like those of Jendeus de Brie.
Jendeus lived on his poem by reciting it, and left it to his son when he died. The story of Homer and Stasinus could only have been invented in an age when the possession of the solitary text of a poem was a source of maintenance to the poet. This condition of things could not exist, either when there were no written texts or when such texts were multiplied to serve the wants of a reading public.
Again, a poet in the fortunate position of Jendeus would not teach his Epic in a "school" of reciters unless he were extremely well paid. In later years, after his death, his poem came, through copies good or bad, into circulation.
Late, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we hear of a "school"
of _jongleurs_ at Beauvais. In Lent they might not ply their profession, so they gathered at Beauvais, where they could learn _cantilenae_, new lays. [Footnote: _epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. ii. pp. 174, 175.] But by that time the epic was decadent and dying?
The audiences of the _jongleurs_, too, were no longer, by that time, what they had been. The rich and great, now, had library copies of the epics; not small _jongleurs"_ copies, but folios, richly illuminated and bound, with two or three columns of matter on each page. [Footnote: Ibid., vol. i. p. 228. See, too, photographs of an illuminated, double-columned library copy in _La Chancun de Willame_., London, 1903.]
The age of recitations from a text in princely halls was ending or ended; the age of a reading public was begun. The earlier condition of the _jongleur_ who was his own poet, and carefully guarded his copyright in spite of all temptations to permit the copying of his MS., is regarded by Sir Richard Jebb as quite a possible feature of early Greece. He thinks that there was "no wide circulation of writings by numerous copies for a reading public" before the end of the fifth century B.C. As Greek mercenaries could write, and write well, in the seventh to sixth centuries, I incline to think that there may then, and earlier, have been a reading public. However, long before that a man might commit his poems to writing. "Wolf allows that some men did, as early at least as 776 B.C. The verses might never be read by anybody except himself" (the author) "or those to whom he privately bequeathed them" (as Jendeus de Brie bequeathed his poem to his son), "but his end would have been gained." [Footnote: _Homer_, p. 113.]
Recent discoveries as to the very early date of linear non-Phoenician writing in Crete of course increase the probability of this opinion, which is corroborated by the story of the _Cypria_, given as a dowry with the author"s daughter. Thus "the particular conditions under which the Homeric poems appeared" "been reproduced with sufficient closeness"
in every respect, with surprising closeness, in the France of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The social conditions are the same; the legendary materials are of identical character; the method of publication by recitation is identical; the cyclic decadence occurs in both cases, the _monomanie cyclique_. In the Greece of Homer we have the four necessary conditions of the epic, as found by M. Leon Gautier in mediaeval France. We have:--
(1) An uncritical age confusing history by legend.
(2) We have a national _milieu_ with religious uniformity.
(3) We have poems dealing with--
"Old unhappy far-off things And battles long ago."
(4) We have representative heroes, the Over-Lord, and his peers or paladins. [Footnote: _epopees Francaises_, Leon Gautier, vol. i. pp.
6-9]