Epic poetry will
certainly never be didactic. What we may imagine--who knows how vainly
imagine?--is, then, a sequence of odes expressing, in the image of some
fortunate and lofty mind, as much of the spiritual significance which
the epic purpose must continue from Milton, as is possible, in the style
of Lucretius and Wordsworth, for subjective symbolism. A pregnant
experiment towards something like this has already been seen--in George
Meredith's magnificent set of _Odes in Contribution to the Song of the
French History_. The subject is ostensibly concrete; but France in her
agonies and triumphs has been personified into a superb symbol of
Meredith's own reading of human fate. The series builds up a decidedly
epic significance, and its manner is extraordinarily suggestive of a new
epic method. Nevertheless, something more Lucretian in central
imagination, something less bound to concrete and particular event,
seems required for the complete development of epic purpose.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: In the greatest poetry, all the elements of human nature
are burning in a single flame. The artifice of criticism is to detect
what peculiar radiance each element contributes to the whole light; but
this no more affects the singleness of the compounded energy in poetry
than the spectroscopic examination of fire affects the single nature of
actual flame. For the purposes of this book, it has been necessary to
look chiefly at the contribution of intellect to epic poetry; for it is
in that contribution that the development of poetry, so far as there is
any development at all, really consists.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94