"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 withoutcoalescing 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. Nobody can stitch and vamp them into a poem like the ILIADor 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 mass 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. Lцnnrot (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 Lцnnrot 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 Lцnnrot failed? "In the dovetailing of the ODYSSEYwe 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 Odysseyis 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. Blass, 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 Mцllendorff see a late bad patchwork, where Mr. Leaf, Sir Richard Jebb, Blass, Wolf, and the verdict of all mankind see a masterpiece of excellent construction. The world has judged: the Odysseyis 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 Odysseyas "an artistic whole" and an harmonious picture, and recognising Lцnnrot'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 rйpertoiresof 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 Odysseyis a masterpiece, then the Pisistratean editor was a great master of construction. If he now, on the other hand, agrees with Wilamowitz Mцllendorff that the Odysseyis 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 analogies" (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 noblesse of warriors dwelling in princely courts and strong castles, dominating an older population, owing a practically doubtful fealty to an Over-Lord, the King, passing 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 class, 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 class 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 Franзaise au Moyen Age, pp. 36, 37. 1898.}