The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Beginnings of Poetry, by Francis B. Gummere

118. It would be more to the purpose if one went to the sources of poetry and religion and studied the survivals of primitive rite. At seed-time in Brandenburg, the women still go out to the fields and unbind their hair in sign that the flax may grow as long as their tresses. With such a ritual act goes nearly always a song, a repeated shout, a cry to the powers of growth; and this, if one please, is poetry in its making, while it is easy to think that the symbol would sooner or later force itself into the words—“make our flax like this hair.”

119. Aesthetik, Werke, ed. 1838, X. III.: summary, pp. 269 f.—“So ist denn jedes wahrhaft poetisches Kunstwerk ein in sich unendlicher Organismus,” etc.

120. IX. 9. See the translation by Roberts, p. 65.

121. Hegel, work quoted, p. 257.

122. E. S. Dallas, Poetics, p. 8, is sound in idea, but less happy in illustration, when he says that a poem without verse can be no more than the movement of a watch without its dial-plate.

123. Literary Criticism, p. 134.

124. “Als der erste und einzige sinnliche Duft.” The passages to which Gayley and Scott refer—e.g. Hegel, p. 227—do not change this statement in the present application. Nobody pretends that rhythm is the soul of poetry; it is a necessary form, a necessary condition.

125. The Power of Sound, London, 1880. Chap. III. is on the elements of a work of art. On p. 51, again on p. 423 f., Mr. Gurney rejects poetry in prose.

126. Théorie de l’Invention, thèse pour le doctorat ès Lettres, Paris, 1881, p. 142.

127. It is perhaps superfluous to point out that imagination is utterly ignored in this analysis, and to recall Mr. Swinburne’s phrase that “the two primary and essential qualities of poetry are imagination and harmony.”

128. A curious passage which follows (pp. 149 f.), treats poetry as a supply of coal, rapidly used and close to exhaustion, so far as originality and freshness are concerned.

129. Choice of Books, pp. 81 f., 126.

130. History of Æsthetics, pp. 461 f.

131. Professor Masson in the North British Review, 1853, reviewed the Poetics of Dallas, printing the review later as fifth essay in Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, London, 1874; the sixth essay “On Prose and Verse,” repeats a discussion of De Quincey’s prose in the journal just named for 1854. Poets are led, Masson says, by the “flag” of imagery and the “flute” of verse; and while he inclines to the test of rhythm, he comes to no conclusion. Bain (On Teaching English, 1887; see Chap. VII. and pp. 249 ff.) also inclines to the test, but hedges after the manner of his brethren.

132. Encycl. Brit., article “Poetry,” which defines its subject as “the concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical language.... In discussing poetry, questions of versification touch ... the very root of the subject.”

133. In the sense, of course, that it absorbed the best labour of two centuries.

134. The same argument, of course, applies to Plato, as in the “hymns” to Eros, noble prose indeed; and in less degree to such passages as De Quincey on the Ladies of Sorrow.

135. Œuvres, Paris, 1810, IX. 227 ff., “De la Prose Mesurée.” See also pp. 185 ff.

136. See his Petits Poëmes en Prose, in Œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1869, IV. p. 2,—an interesting preface.

137. Young Ofeg’s Ditties, trans. Egerton, London, 1895.

138. Also Sprach Zaruthustra, III. “Das Andere Tanzlied.”

139. His defence is very fine and languid and aristocratic,—“inutile dispute de mots,” he protests at last: Œuvres Complètes, Paris, 1852, V. 84, 295 (“Examen des Martyrs”).

140. A foreigner is no judge in these things; but he may say how much more the lucidity of Mérimée, of M. Anatole France, appeals to him than the poetic prose of Flaubert’s Salammbô.

141. Has any one noted in the opening chapter of the Trionfo della Morte a prose refrain, “Gocce di pioggia, rare, cadevano,” repeated with considerable effect?

142. Ibid., p. 396. The structure is strophic and very artistic in its complication.

143. See D’Annunzio’s dedication of this romance, and his artistic creed, quite an echo of the preface to Baudelaire’s poems in prose.

144. There is often in these prose-poems, so much praised now, a startling reminder of the golden style of certain despised folk who wrote cadenced and coloured prose in their romances three centuries ago. And not only in romances; Tom Nash tried rimed prose, both with alliteration and with actual rime, by way of helping the antithetical clause. See the “Anatomy of Absurdity,” in Nash’s Works, ed. Grosart, I. 6 ff., 24: inferre: averre; praise: daies; nose: rose: and the lilt of “to play with her dogge, than to pray to her God.” The Arcadia is not so much a rimed or rhythmical prose, as swelling and sonorous. For mediæval rimed prose, see Wackernagel, Gesch. d. deutsch. Lit., 2d ed., I. 107 ff., and Sievers, Altger. Metrik, p. 49,—the latter for Germanic relations.

145. “Das Volkslied Israels im Munde der Propheten,” in the Preussische Jahrbücher, LXXIII. (1893), 460 ff. See p. 465.

146. Driver, Introd. Lit. Old Test., p. 361, says that rhythm, the restrained flow of expression, separates poetry from prose.

147. Professor Sievers has announced “a discovery of the principles of Hebrew metre,” and his exposition will be welcome. See Sitzungsberichte der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 5 February, 1899.

148. Professional “readers” nearly always kill a poem by reading it as prose. Tennyson read his own verses almost in a chant. De Vigny, Journal d’un Poete, p. 70, says, “tout homme qui dit bien ses vers les chante, en quelque sorte.” Ronsard, Œuvres, ed. Blanchemain, III. 12 f., asks the reader of his Franciade one thing: “Be good enough to pronounce my verses well, and suit your voice to their emotion, not reading it, after the way of certain folk, as a letter, ... but as a poem, with good emphasis.” So Quintilian; but the elocutionist has no bowels of mercy.

149. Geography, Introd., I. ii. 7, translation of Hamilton.

150. Corpus Poeticum Boreale, I. 434.

151. Critische Dichtkunst, pp. 70 f.

152. Bruchmann, Poetik, pp. 161, 124, 22.

153. Aston, Japanese Literature, p. 13.

154. The younger Racine is startling with his assertion that “poetry is the daughter of nature, while verse is the work of art.” Mém. Acad. Inscr., XV. 307 ff., “De la poesie Artificielle....”

155. Curiously enough, J. Grimm, though not too clear in his statement, is with the rationalists, in spite of his “divine origin” for poetry and the “mystery” of self-made song, which he advocates elsewhere; for in his Ursprung der Sprache (reprint, 7th ed., 1879, p. 54) he says poetry and music had their origin in the reason, emotion, and imagination of a poet, and gives a genetic process not unlike that set forth by Mr. Spencer: “denn aus betonter, gemessener recitation der Worte entsprangen gesang und lied, aus dem lied die andere dichtkunst, aus dem gesang durch gesteigerte abstraction alle übrige musik.”

156. Die antike Kunstprosa, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1898. Mr. Spencer’s theory, analogous in some respects to Norden’s, is considered below.

157. This notion itself—see the extract above from Strabo—Norden, I. 35, refers to a desire to glorify the golden age, and to set its poetry over against the prose of degenerate modern days.

159. Ibid., I. 78.

160. Tam apud Graecos quam apud Latinos longe antiquiorem curam fuisse carminum quam prosae, etc. Varro in Isiodor. Orig., I. 38, 2, quoted and discussed by Norden, I. 32 f.

161. “I suppose, of course,” said a writer of considerable reputation, to whom the project of the present work was mentioned, “you will begin with Homer.”

162. Indeed, the very arguments from Greek oratory hardly seem convincing. Let any one read the section of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (III. viii.), where he speaks of prose rhythm. What is this rhythm without metre but the quality, far more musically developed in Greek, which one also recognizes in the harmony of any modern artistic prose?

163. Work quoted, I. 30 f. See also I. 37, note; I. 156 ff.; II. 813 f.

164. See, however, E. Schröder, “Ueber das Spell,” Zst. f. deutsches Alterthum, XXXVII. 241 ff. Spell and lied, he says, are related in terms of epic and lyric charms or incantations, and form the basis of the common antithesis of “say” and “sing” (p. 258). The epic part of a charm, he thinks, was recited, while the lyric part was sung. Unfortunately, Schröder comes to no very definite results; and, like most writers on early verse, he neglects the communal and choral conditions of primitive poetry.

165. Düntzer, Zeitschr. deutsch. Gymnasialwesen, 1857, pp. I ff., the unwearied commentator, who has had so much experience in the practical reduction of poetry to prose, decided for this view, and doubtless with some show of right. A carmen, he said, was anything,—oath, formula, law, incantation,—spoken in loud and solemn tones. So Livy, I. 26, on that lex horrendi carminis. This may be true for the medicine man, but it is not true for the throng.

166. The λέξις ειρομένη and the λέξις κατασταμμένη; down to Herodotus the Greeks, it is said, spoke and wrote in the former style: Norden, I. 37, note. He appeals to specimens gathered from folklore.

167. Altgriechischer Versbau, p. 55.

168. “Musikalische Bildung der Meistersänger,” in Haupt’s Zeitsch. f. deutsches Alterthum, XX. 80 f.

169. The reason why a folksong often fails to have a musical effect, says Böckel in the introduction to his collection of Hessian ballads, p. civ., is because it is taken down from a single singer, whereas all these songs are essentially choral, and need the voices of a throng. This hint is valuable in many directions; for example, see below on social singing at labour.

170. Zeitschrift f. Völkerpsychol. u. Sprachwissensch. IV. 85 ff. Comparetti is also unfortunate in his use of this essay to prove that poetic prose came before verse. See his Kalewala, p. 37.

171. English Fairy Tales, 1898, p. 247. Ferdinand Wolf, a man not given to hazy and romantic views, dismisses the cante-fable as “jedesfalls ... eine Entartung,” a degenerate state of the communal ballad. Proben port. u. catal. Volksromanzen, Wien, 1856, p. 20, note 2.

172. Alfred Nutt, Voyage of Bran, I. 135, citing Kuno Meyer, and saying that certain prose is “younger in appearance,” need not assume it to have “suffered from change,” but may take a simpler view. The verse may well be of older date.

173. This account is taken from Bruchmann’s Poetik, p. 217, and Letourneau, L’Évolution Littéraire, pp. 198 f., who gives other details. J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales, etc., 2d ed., IV. 84, mentions cases of dual performance in the Highlands, where a bard sang to his harp heroic passages, and a narrator “filled up the pauses by telling prose history.”

174. Altgermanische Metrik, pp. 165, 168.

175. Rudow, Verslehre und Stil der rumänischen Volkslieder, Halle, 1886, pp. 5, 28 f., 31.

176. Böckel, Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen ... mit kulturhistorisch-ethnographischer Einleitung (the latter a valuable collection of material), Marburg, 1885, pp. clxxxiii. f.

177. Mingled verse and prose has always a late, artificial manner; for example, the Satura Menippea, imitated in Latin by Varro and Petronius (Teuffel and Schwabe, Hist. Roman Literature, trans. Warr, I. 255), and claimed for the half-rhythmical portion of Swift’s Battle of the Books, by Feyerabend, Englische Studien, XI. 487 ff. Some of Feyerabend’s scanning, by the way, is highly adventurous.

178. Journal, 12 Mai, 1857.

179. De Arte Poet., I. 75.

180. In Grimm’s charming article on “Poetry in Law,” and in Kögel’s Geschichte der deutschen Litt. I.

181. Zeitschrift f. deutsche Philologie, XXIX. 405 ff.

182. See Norden’s Anhang on Rime, II. 810 ff. It may be noted here that the fact of which Norden makes so much, riming of inflectional endings, was pointed out by Masing, Ursprung des Reims, Dorpat, 1866, pp. 15 f.

183. In a review of Bücher’s Arbeit und Rhythmus; see Zeitschr. f. vergl. Litteraturgesch., N. F. II. (1897) 369 ff. This is another darling heresy,—to break up the old tradition of evolution, and to deny that dance, song, poetry, began as a single art. Yet ethnology, as it will be seen, supports this tradition; so does a study of popular poetry. Compare, too, Iliad, XVIII. 569 ff., and other commonplaces, for the classic traditions, and Aristotle’s famous passage on Origins, for older science in the case.

184. “Dass ... Musik aus dem Gefallen an selbst hervorgerufenen Lärm sich entwickelt hat....”

185. “Essai de Rythmique Comparée,” in Le Museon, X. 299 ff., 419 ff., 589 ff.

186. Used to explain the actual origin of rhythm by Müller and Schumann, Zeitschr. f. Psychol. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane, VI. 282 f., quoted by Meumann, Untersuchungen, etc., pp. 10 f.

187. See Hoffmann’s similar theory, quoted below.

188. The old mistake of confounding literal chronology with evolution. As if the Avesta were primitive!

189. So M. de la Grasserie asserts in an ingenious account of the retrograde process by which in modern times poetry has retraced its old evolution, passing from verse back through rhythmic prose to prose outright. The only use which he now concedes to verse is in ... the opera. In all other fields,—epic, drama, lyric,—he thinks it is dead as King Pandion.

190. Die Entstehung der arabischen Versmasse, Giessen, 1896.

191. A remarkable passage. See the translation of Roberts, p. 149.

192. Evelyn’s Diary, 24 February, 1664-1665: “Dr. Fell, Canon of Christ Church, preached before the king ... a very formal discourse, and in blank verse, according to his manner.”

193. The whole passage is interesting with its fling at poetry, not, however, to be taken as a serious indictment: Table Talk, ed. Arber, p. 85: “’Tis a fine thing for children to learn to make verse; but when they come to be men, they must speak like other men, or else they will be laugh’t at. ’Tis ridiculous to speak, or write, or preach in verse.” Again, “’Tis ridiculous for a Lord to print verses, ’tis well enough to make them to please himself, but to make them publick is foolish. If a man in his private chamber twirls his bandstrings, or plays with a rush to please himself, ’tis well enough; but if he should go into Fleet Street,”—and so on. He thinks there is no reason why plays should be in verse; but he rescues the old poets who were forced to write verse “because their verse was sung to music.”

194. Untersuchungen zur Psychologic und Aesthetik des Rhythmus, Leipzig, 1894; reprinted from Vol. X. of Wundt’s Philosophische Studien.

195. See p. 77, where he chooses “die Freiheit des declamirten Rhythmus gegenüber dem allgemeinen rhythmischen Princip der Regelmässigkeit.” See also pp. 82, 87, 101, and especially 91.

196. For example, classical rendering of verse, and even modern recitation, as among the Italians. “La plupart des Italiens ont, en lisant les vers, une sorte de chant monotone, appelé cantilene, qui détruit toute émotion,” says Mme. de Staël, Corinne, Chap. III.; but the “elocutionary” emotion is usually an impertinence in simple and cadenced lyric.

197. Compare Lessing’s different but analogous antithesis in the Laokoon, XI.: “Bei dem Artisten dünkt uns die Ausführung schwerer als die Erfindung; bei dem Dichter, hingegen, ist es umgekehrt.”

198. See his article in Kuhn’s Zeitschr. f. vergl. Sprach., IX. 437 ff.; and the second volume of his Metrik der Griechen. For the four-accent verse as popular measure, see H. Usener, Altgriechischer Versbau, Bonn, 1887, a suggestive book. For the same verse in Russian, see Bistrom in the Zeitsch. f. Völkerpsychol., V. 185.

199. Wilmanns thinks the case for this “original” verse has not been made out in any convincing way.

200. F. D. Allen, in Kuhn’s Zeitsch. f. vergl. Sprach., XXIV. 558 ff., showed that this Iranian syllable-counting verse, one of the oldest of metres, is not merely counting, but a rhythmic affair, and that the rhythm lay in successive equal intervals marked by verse accent.

201. Zur althochdeutchen Alliterationspoesie, 1888, pp. 109 ff., particularly 146 ff., “über den Takt.”

202. Beiträge zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Litteratur, III., “Der altdeutsche Reimvers,” Bonn, 1887, pp. 141 f.

203. Sievers, Altgermanische Metrik, 1893, pp. 172 ff.

204. That strophic hymns were known in earliest Germanic poetry is shown, Sievers points out, by the fact that Middle High German liet is the same as Old Norse ljóð, “strophe.” For the old choral poetry, he says, “wird ein im gleichen Takte fortschreitender Sangesvortrag ohne weiteres zuzugeben sein,” Ibid., p. 20.

205. Above, p. 8, and Grosse, Anfänge, p. 233.

206. See above, p. 8, note.

207. Other motions than that of the communal dance may induce rhythm. The movement of labour will be considered in detail; but it may be noted here that swinging, a solitary performance, tempts the savage of Borneo to sing a monotonous song and ask the spirits for a good crop (Bruchmann, Poetik, p. 18).

208. See “The Origin and Function of Music,” Essays, 1857; “The Origin of Music,” in Mind, XV. (1890) 449 ff.; and a note on certain criticisms of this article, Mind, XVI. 535 ff.

209. The Power of Sound, London, 1880, pp. 476 ff.

210. This is the basis of Wallaschek’s convincing argument against Mr. Spencer’s theory: Primitive Music, London, 1893, pp. 251 ff.

211. Anfänge der Kunst, p. 206, note.

212. Wallaschek, Primitive Music, p. 11.

213. See the positive statement of Dr. Jacobsthal, quoted above, p. 69.

214. Work quoted, pp. 31, 42, 68, 180 f. 184, 186, 252. The evidence collected in this interesting book is so varied, so extensive, and so impartially set forth, that the conclusions drawn by Wallaschek ought to be convincing.

215. Gustaf von Düben, Om Lappland och Lapparne, ... Stockholm, 1873 (colophon), p. 319.

216. As impossible, says one authority, quoted by Wallaschek, Primitive Music, p. 187, “as to separate the colour from the skin.”

217. Ibid., p. 186.

218. It is the neglect of choral conditions and communal consent which takes away the value for general purposes from Dr. Otto Hoffman’s otherwise praiseworthy study of the Reimformeln im Westgermanischen (Leipzig, 1886, pp. 9 ff.). Man, he says, naturally speaks in breath-lengths, in periods which tend to be of equal duration. “Whoever could give to these periods, with their tendency to equal quantities, the most symmetrical and equal portions of actual speech, passed for an artist.” To this symmetry in duration was added similarity of sound; so came the short riming phrases, as well as the verse-lengths themselves. But poetry did not wait until clever artists furbished up into verse-lengths and attractive harmonies these breath-lengths of a spoken sentence. Language itself, as one will presently see, had more a festal than an individual origin; and long before the artist was practising his breath-lengths for a connected story, the rhythm of verse was fixed by the muscular rhythm of steps in a communal dance accompanied by words, often by one sound, repeated indefinitely, but in exact cadence with the steps.

219. Dr. Paul Ehrenrcich, “über die Botocuden,” in the Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie, XIX. 30 ff.

220. The gnomic verses preserved in Anglo-Saxon, especially the shorter sentences in the Exeter Ms. (see Grein-Wülker, Biblioth., I. 345 f.) are a curious instance of the survival of quasi-Botocudan maxims on a higher plane of culture. As to the æsthetic value of the South American utterance, how far is it inferior to the sonorous commonplaces of our own verse,—say The Psalm of Life?

221. “The Central Eskimo,” by Dr. F. Boas, Sixth Annual Report, Bureau of Ethnology, 1884-1885, Washington, 1888, pp. 409 ff.

222. Atlantic Monthly, XIX. (1867), 685 ff.

223. See below, on Cumulative Songs.

224. See the marching song, p. 690, Go in the Wilderness. Thanks to the repetitions, it “scans” correctly enough, even when it is read.

225. Meumann’s remarks on this subject are good, though they apply no further than the narrow circle of his experiments. See Untersuchungen, pp. 26, 35, 77. Grant Allen, Physiological Æsthetics, London, 1887, pp. 114 f., 118, is quite wide of the mark; facts of physiology, in this case, need very careful testing by the facts of poetry.

226. Mind, N. S., IV. (1895), 28 ff., “On the Difference of Time and Rhythm in Music,” supplementing researches in his Primitive Music.

227. Psychology of the Emotions, p. 104.

228. See his Primitive Music, pp. 239, 236, note; and Grosse, Anfänge, p. 213.

229. The theory of breath-lengths, often noted, comes here into play. Under high excitement breathing grows abnormally loud, and the recurring pauses are regular. Play-excitement, festal shouting and leaping, would of course bring this about; but the individual must be studied. Strongly accented verses result from such a process, as any one can see who undertakes to recite poetry during violent but regular exercise,—say, in swinging Indian clubs. Here, too, one learns how rhythm preceded pitch and quantity; the jerked-out accents leave little room for measuring either height or length of tones. But the throng and its consent brought out this rhythm, not oratory; and one must keep in mind the remark of Hamann, after his famous phrase about poetry as the mother-tongue of man, “wie Gesang älter als Declamation.”