clxxxvi. The Afghans have got to a Browning level in poetry, if we may
believe Captain Rafferty, _Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans_, London, 1862. “Shaida’s poetry ...” he says, “is deep and difficult.”
Footnote 986:
Ahlwardt, _über Poesie und Poetik der Araber_, Gotha, 1856, p. 7.
Footnote 987:
F. Michel, _Le Pays Basque_, Paris, 1857, pp. 214 f. The same is true of the Poles. See Talvj (here spelled Talvi) _Historical View of the Languages and Literatures of the Slavic Nations_, New York, 1850, Part IV., pp. 315 ff. Speaking of the Polish ballads, Mrs. Robinson says, “Their dances were formerly always accompanied by singing. _But these songs are always extemporized._ Among the country gentry ... the custom of extemporizing songs ... continued even down to the beginning of our own century.”
Footnote 988:
“Etwas über William Shakspeare,” _Werke_, VII. 57 f.
Footnote 989:
He refers to the Homeric hymn to Hermes, vv. 54-56: “The god sang to the playing what came into his mind, quickly, readily, just as at festal banquets youths tease one another with verses sung in turn.”
Footnote 990:
Quoted by Chappell, II. 623.
Footnote 991:
See the _Greville Memoirs_, III. 122, 202.
Footnote 992:
Spence, _Anecdotes_ (for Italy), pp. 116 ff., 120 note.
Footnote 993:
_Travels in Africa_, reprinted in Pinkerton, XVI. 844.
Footnote 994:
Improvisation of labour songs by women, solitary or in bands, is very common. See Bücher, _Arbeit u. Rhythmus_, passim, especially, p. 78, and above, p. 269.
Footnote 995:
Improvisations at dance, funeral, wedding, and the like, among these Africans, are summed up by Spencer in his unfinished _Descriptive Sociology_, pp. 24 f.
Footnote 996:
See above, p. 20.
Footnote 997:
_Compendium_, 4th ed., p. 641. Cf. Spencer, _Princ. Social._, II. 151, American ed.
Footnote 998:
_Mental Evolution in Man_, p. 358, American ed.
Footnote 999:
_Færøiske Quæder om Sigurd_, etc., Randers, 1822. P. E. Müller wrote the preface and made the extracts from Lyngbye’s journal; so that the evidence is at first hand and by an exact observer. The remoteness of the place is equivalent to centuries in point of time. See, too, V. U. Hammershaimb, _Færøsk Anthologi_, Copenhagen, I. xli ff.
Footnote 1000:
See the author’s _Old English Ballads_, p. xxxiv.
Footnote 1001:
_Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, 2d ed., IV. 164 f.
Footnote 1002:
Described at length by Möbius in the “Ergänzungsband” for Zacher’s _Zeitschrift f. d. deutsche Philologie_, 1874, p. 54. For the _débat_, _tenso_, _sirventes_, _jeu-parti_, _conflictos_, and all the rest on romance ground, see Jeanroy, pp. 48 f., and Greif, _Zst. f. vgl. Lit._, N. F., I. 289.
Footnote 1003:
For Portugal, see Dr. C. F. Bellermann, _Portug. Volkslieder u. Romanzen_, Leipzig, 1874, p. viii.
Footnote 1004:
On ease of improvisation among the Finns proper, see Comparetti, _Kalewala_, p. 17.
Footnote 1005:
Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, pp. 166 f.
Footnote 1006:
Coussemaker, p. 271.
Footnote 1007:
Wallace is thinking of music and song in the nobler sense when he denies them to primitive races; and Wallaschek’s answer is conclusive, for it is based on evidence that all goes one way, _Primitive Music_, pp. 277 f. Another absurd reaction against romantic ideas is to deny lyric propensity to primitive folk and substitute an acute sense of “business.” So Norden, work quoted, I. 156, says the prayer of early man was anything but a “lyrical outpouring”; it was “a contract with deity, give and take.” But emotional fear and emotional thanks precede any such shrewd rationalism as this, if psychology is to be regarded, let alone ethnological evidence.
Footnote 1008:
Schmid, 2d ed., p. 366.
Footnote 1009:
_Romanisches und Keltisches_, pp. 363 f. The four-line stanza, he says, is easy to compose, and one _pennill_ suggests another; so that each is half tradition, half improvisation, belonging “to everybody and nobody.” This description approaches very closely the hypothetical description given by Ten Brink in his sketch of Old English poetry for Paul’s _Grundriss_, of the making of ballads in a more primitive day.
Footnote 1010:
Mr. Gregory Smith’s facile explanation, _The Transition Period_, pp. 182 f.
Footnote 1011:
Ep. II. i. 145 f. See Zell, _Ferienschriften_, II. 122 ff. Soldiers sang in pairs, or in two sections, these alternate mocking verses.
Footnote 1012:
Douglas Hyde, _Love Songs of Connacht_, 1895, pp. 88 ff. The prose translation has less artificial suggestion than the translation in verses.
Footnote 1013:
Athenæus and Diodorus are quoted as authorities for the Sicilian origin of such combats in verse; but Jeanroy disposes of this theory by an effective use of the argument from comparative literature. See his _Origines_, pp. 260 ff.
Footnote 1014:
On the meaning and relations of _strambotto_, _stornello_, _rispetto_, _ritornello_, and the other terms, see Count Nigra’s _Canti Popolari del Piemonte_, Torino, 1888, pp. xi ff. He corrects Schuchardt’s use of _ritornell_ for _stornello_. This latter is really an amœbean form of verse, has but one stanza, and this of three lines; the _strambotto_ is one stanza, too, but has four, six, ten, or even more lines. Still, the four-line stanza, as comparison shows, is clearly the primitive form. Southern Italy is, of course, far richer in these songs than Piedmont, the home of lyrical narrative or ballad.
Footnote 1015:
Found, too, in India; but here not in the really communal stage. See Gustav Meyer, _Essays und Studien_, pp. 293 f.
Footnote 1016:
_Bayerisches Wörterbuch_, III. 499, explaining them as _Schnitterhüpflein_, songs of the reapers.
Footnote 1017:
With references to the literature of these songs, work quoted, pp. 332 ff.
Footnote 1018:
On the form cf. O. Brenner, “Zum Versbau der Schnaderhüpfl,” in _Festschrift zur 50 jähr. Doktorjubelfeier Karl Weinholds_, Strassburg, 1896, who gives fresh references for the various subjects of discussion. He emphasizes the fact that these _schnaderhüpfl_ are always sung.
Footnote 1019:
Dr. H. Dunger, _Rundâs und Reimsprüche aus dem Vogtlande_, Plauen, 1876. A _rundâ_ is originally “a little song sung while drinking,” but is made to include the _schnaderhüpfl_; and in the author’s opinion all these forms go back to songs of reapers during harvest. That, however, is of no great moment here.
Footnote 1020:
“Ueber Poesie der Alpenländer,” in a reprint from a magazine whose title does not appear.
Footnote 1021:
Firmenich, _Germaniens Völkerstimmen_, II. 716. I have made these translations solely to reproduce, if possible, the spirit of the original, and have tried to keep the false “literary” note at arm’s length.
Footnote 1022:
_Ibid._, II. 715, 777.
Footnote 1023:
G. Meyer, p. 357, prints a number of such variations on the standing first verse:—
It is dark in the woods Because of the crows,— That my girl will be false, That every one knows.
It is dark in the woods Because of the firs,—
and so on.
Footnote 1024:
Firmenich, II. 779.
Footnote 1025:
Firmenich, II. 661.
Footnote 1026:
Of the dance,—the _vorsinger_.
Footnote 1027:
Variants of this are found in many places.
Footnote 1028:
Firmenich, III. 39.
Footnote 1029:
_Ibid._, II. 716.
Footnote 1030:
_Ibid._, II. 737.
Footnote 1031:
“Go from my window,” pp. 140 ff., with variations (as “Come up to my window”) and parodies.
Footnote 1032:
Firmenich, II. 715.
Footnote 1033:
_Od._, III. X.
Footnote 1034:
It is well to note here that development is one thing and imitation is another. The authorities agree that a _schnaderhüpfl_ cannot be imitated. See Gustav Meyer, p. 351.
Footnote 1035:
Firmenich, II. 717.
Footnote 1036:
Firmenich, III. 396.
Footnote 1037:
_Ibid._, II. 280. This is widespread. See Meyer, p. 356.
Footnote 1038:
Meyer, p. 341. The rimes are identical in the original. Meyer gives seven versions.
Footnote 1039:
Child, III. 236.
Footnote 1040:
On this opening touch from nature in the ballads, exemplified in English by the beautiful beginning of _Robin Hood and the Monk_, much has been written; but this use of the same device in a _schnaderhüpfl_ is very significant, and has aroused little comment. See Meyer, pp. 377 ff.
Footnote 1041:
Child, I. 399 ff.
Footnote 1042:
_Essays_, pp. 365 ff.
Footnote 1043:
On p. 358.
Footnote 1044:
When the Greek youth leaves his home, Fauriel says, his family sing songs of farewell, traditional and improvised, to which he often improvises a reply. Improvisation, too, and presumably once in the village throng, lies at the foundation of the German prentice songs of leave-taking, the eternal note of _scheiden, das thut grämen_, with culmination in that exquisite poem, probably not improvised, _Innsprück, ich muss dich lassen_. The ennobling process is interesting, and is of a piece with the process assumed by A. W. Schlegel for the ennobling of Greek epic out of rude improvisation.
Footnote 1045:
Uhland, _Volkslieder_, I. 78. In spite of the two melodies, I have put the refrain at the beginning, and slightly changed, as in Uhland’s B., at the end. The actual song is for the dance. See Böhme, _Altd. Liederb._, p. 268. Only two stanzas are given,—one for the happy girl and one for the lovelorn, one the _vortanz_, the other the _nachtanz_.
Footnote 1046:
See above, p. 208.
Footnote 1047:
Firmenich, II. 742.
Footnote 1048:
The translation fails to bring out the simplicity of these two stanzas; they run thus:—
Der Weg ös mer z’wait, Und der Wold ös mer z’dick, Bhüat di Gott, main liabs Schotzel, I wünsch dir viel Glück.
I wünsch dir viel Glück Und es sull dir guat gian, Für die Zeit, ols d’mi g’liabt host, Bedonk i mi schian.
Footnote 1049:
_Essays_, p. 370; and see also Kögel, _Gesch. d. d. Lit._, I. 7, who thinks that Scandinavian _ljóð_ (plural) meant once a series of these strophes composed by dancers and so coming to be a _lied_. E. H. Meyer, _Volkskunde_, p. 317, notes the independent quatrains combined into an _almlied_.
Footnote 1050:
Also G. Meyer, _Essays_, pp. 370, 375.
Footnote 1051:
_Ibid._, pp. 377 ff.
Footnote 1052:
_Norske Folkeviser_, Christiania, 1853. See especially pp. 365 ff., 423 ff.
Footnote 1053:
_Ibid._, p. 366.
Footnote 1054:
Lundell, Paul’s _Grundriss_, II. i. 730, says that even now any adult in Iceland can make verses.
Footnote 1055:
Landstad, pp. 370 ff.
Footnote 1056:
_Ibid._, p. 376.
Footnote 1057:
The _vocero_ is far less individual than this quatrain or stave just considered, because the former is an outburst rather of public grief than of private emotion.
Footnote 1058:
See above, p. 269.
Footnote 1059:
Definitions are notoriously unsatisfactory in poetics. Contrast Schleiermacher’s formula for lyric as poetry plus music, _Aesthetik_, p. 628, with the laborious definition in R. M. Werner’s _Lyrik und Lyriker_, Hamburg and Leipzig, 1890, p. 10, based mainly on the subjective element. Confusion of form and conditions, which makes lyric poetry one with music (see Döring, _Kunstlehre d. Aristoteles_, p. 88), with inner meaning and purpose, has caused most of the trouble. In one sense the old choral was the very foundation of lyric. The congregational psalm of the Hebrews is lyric, and so is the solitary cry of the modern poet.
Footnote 1060:
_Uralt_, says Usener, _Altgr. Versbau_, p. 45. See above, p. 95.
Footnote 1061:
As Matthew Arnold reminds us:—
Sophocles, long ago, Heard it on the Ægean.
For the prevailing tone of lyric is sad, and Euterpe treats her poet as Genevieve treated Coleridge:—
She loves me best whene’er I sing The songs that make her grieve.
Footnote 1062:
The claim of Usener may be noted (“Der Stoff des griechischen Epos,” _Sitzungsber. d. Kais. Acad. d. Wiss. zu Wien_, Bd. 137, pp. 18 ff.), where he puts the ceremonies at the hearthstone, primitive ancestor-worship, as the real beginning of epic song. The offering to an ancestor must have been made “with music, prayer, and song.” Hence the epos. It is true that a lyric of this sort is older than any epic,—the epic which Hegel pushed forward as earliest form of poetry, just as the renaissance had put it above the drama in dignity,—and may well have helped the later epic process. But the evidence of ethnology shows that rude songs at the tribal dance, which refer to tribal doings, must be far older than any ceremonies of the primitive _hausvater_ at his family altar.
Footnote 1063:
A. W. Schlegel said that the Homeric poems were improvised; but he distinguished between rude communal improvisation and that of incipient art. _Vorlesungen_, II. 119 f., 243.
Footnote 1064:
Livy, VII. 2, gives an account of this change.
Footnote 1065:
See Maurice Drack, _Le Théâtre de la Foire, la Comédie Italienne, et l’Opéra-comique_, Paris, 1889. Vol. I. has a sketch of the movement—from 1678 on—indicated in the title. It began with the _pièce à couplets_, and passed gradually into modern comic opera. The great popular fair of St. Lawrence, at Paris, was the scene of part of this development.
Footnote 1066:
Garnett, _Italian Literature_, p. 306, traces this comedy back through Tuscan and Neapolitan peasants to the “Greek rustics who smeared their faces with wine-lees at the Dionysiac festivals, and from whose improvised songs and gestures Greek comedy was developed.”
Footnote 1067:
Burckhardt, _Cultur der Ren._, II. 40, thinks that such well-known characters as Pantalone, the Doctor, Arlecchino, may be in some fashion connected with masked figures in the old Roman plays.
Footnote 1068:
Ticknor, _Spanish Literature_, I. 232 f.
Footnote 1069:
Second Part, Chap. XX.
Footnote 1070:
Malone’s _Shakspere_, 1821, III. 131.
Footnote 1071:
_Tarlton’s Jests_ ... ed. J. O. Halliwell, London, 1844, pp. xviii f. (Shakspere Society). “As Antipater Sidonius,” says the comparative Meres, “was famous for extemporall verse in Greeke ... so was our Tarleton.”
Footnote 1072:
See Bolte, _Die Singspiele der englischen Komödianten und ihrer Nachfolger_, Hamburg u. Leipzig, 1893, pp. 50 ff. He prints parallel copies of “Singing Simpkin” and the German “Pickelhering in der Kiste.”
Footnote 1073:
“Passages were often left for the extempore declamation of the actors. Sometimes the whole conduct of the piece depended on their powers of improvisation.” Symonds, _Shakspere’s Predecessors_, p. 66.
Footnote 1074:
_Vorlesungen über Aesthetik_, pp. 84 f.
Footnote 1075:
Ed. Grosart, V. 200.
Footnote 1076:
Hazlitt-Dodsley, V. 149, 151.
Footnote 1077:
As, for example, Schwab takes it: _Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel_, Wien u. Leipzig, 1896, p. 32.
Footnote 1078:
Bruchmann, _Poetik_, p. 17.
Footnote 1079:
The material has been set forth above in the section on the communal dance; for early dramatic dances of fight, hunting, and the like, see especially pp. 336 ff., and the passage on _lâc_, p. 340.
Footnote 1080:
On gesture as common and universally understood expression, see Darwin, _Descent of Man_, 2d ed., I. 276 f. “Men of all races” have a “mutual comprehension of gesture-language”; they all have “the same expression on their features,” and “the same inarticulate cries when excited by the same emotions.” See also Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, chapters on Gesture-Language; and _American Antiquarian_, II. 219, G. Mallery on Indian Sign Language. This universal validity of gesture is highly significant for the beginnings of poetry, for the rude cries which precede language are probably of the same order as the gestures. See Chap. II., Wundt’s _Völkerpsychologie_.
Footnote 1081:
Bastian, “Masken und Maskereien,” _Zst. f. Völkerpsych._, XIV. 347.
Footnote 1082:
See Grosse on the two “roots” of the drama, _Anf. d. Kunst_, pp. 254 f. On the mimicry of different tribes in the communal dance, see Bruchmann, _Poetik_, pp. 208 ff.; Wallaschek, _Prim. Music_, Chap. VIII.
Footnote 1083:
The conspicuous performer,—the “entertainer” or soloist,—grows less and less prominent as one gets upon lower levels of culture. The earliest distinction of this sort was probably achieved by the priest, conjurer, medicine-man, shaman, or whatever his special function.
Footnote 1084:
As Wallaschek recedes from his proposition, the examples have more and more mention of words and song together with the action; for example, pp. 217 ff.
Footnote 1085:
This must always be taken into account. As Wallaschek says of an Australian “corrobberee,” however primitive it may seem, “it is a well-prepared and elaborated dance, which it takes both time and practice to excel in.”
Footnote 1086:
Wallaschek, pp. 223 f.
Footnote 1087:
From gesture back to facial expression and other signs now unknown because speech has taken their place, is an inviting path, but not to be trodden now. From the _Kansas City Star_, date unfortunately lost, may be quoted an interview with Hagenbeck, the lion-tamer. “We can’t see,” he said, “the expression of a lion’s face, except of rage, but his companions can.... Did you ever see one animal fail to understand another? I never saw such an instance.... I am inclined to think that what we call mind-reading is mere survival here and there of the lost sixth sense, which was probably common to primitive man, and which animals possess to this day.” Mr. Hagenbeck could furnish an interesting supplement to Darwin’s book _On the Expression of Emotions_.
Footnote 1088:
Work quoted, p. 28, speaking of Australian song and dance. See also p. 201.
Footnote 1089:
Sign-language of later date, as studied by Mallery among the American Indians, cannot be regarded as primitive in this genetic sense. It comes to be a highly developed art and calls for considerable skill in the making as well as acuteness in interpretation.
Footnote 1090:
As in dances of the Greeks, now felt to be a lost art. On this matter of gesture and signs, see an excellent book by Sittl, _Die Gebärden der Griechen und Römer_, Leipzig, 1890; his accounts of the attempt “die Völker durch die Zeichensprache zu verbrüdern,” with reference to Leibnitz and others; of orgiastic ecstasies; and, of course, the study of Greek gesture in art and poetry, are all instructive. For primitive relations, Darwin’s book _On the Expressions of Emotions_, etc., 1872, is still main authority. Gestures, like sounds, are either instinctive or called out by the will; and any study of progress in the dramatic art must concern itself with these fundamental elements of acting.
Footnote 1091:
It would be useless to attempt a bibliography of this subject. A. W. Schlegel’s historical account of the drama and its relations to epic and lyric is still useful. See especially _Vorles._, I. 124; II. 317, 321, 325. Eugen Wolff’s return to the priority of epic,—_Prolegomena_, etc., p. 10; “Vorstudien zur Poetik,” _Zst. f. vgl. Litt._, VI. 425,—fails to satisfy the student of ethnological evidence; like most writers from the æsthetic point of view, Wolff neglects to study the poetry of the throng, the choral, the dance. Barring this same fault, there is considerable truth in the view of Burdach (letter to Scherer, in the latter’s _Poetik_, pp. 296 f.), that epic and drama are wrongly taken as extreme antithesis in poetry, whereas lyric and drama are really “die beiden Urphänomene.” Little profit for the historical student of poetry is to be found in essays like Veit Valentin’s “Poetische Gattungen,” in _Zst. f. vgl. Litt._, N. F., V. 35 ff.
Footnote 1092:
See Blankenburg’s excellent article on the ballet in his _Zusätze_, I. 154 ff. La Motte, in his ballet of _Europe Galante_, 1697, made the ballet an object in itself and in its own action; here “entspringt Tanz und Gesang aus der eigenen Gemüthsstimmung der handelnden Personen.” This is communal revival.
Footnote 1093:
That is, ὄψις.
Footnote 1094:
“Daudet me dit ... ‘Je crois décidément avoir trouvé la formule; le livre c’est pour l’individu, le théâtre c’est pour la foule.’” _Journal des Goncourt_, VIII. (30 Jan., 1890), 129.
Footnote 1095:
_Vorlesungen_, Stuttgart, 1884, I. 329 ff., 342, 344 ff.
Footnote 1096:
_Ibid._, III. 110.
Footnote 1097:
See the present author’s article on “Mythology” in the new edition of Johnson’s _Cyclopædia_.
Footnote 1098:
A dozen years ago or more, a professor lecturing on this subject in a German university, after giving all the myths about a certain goddess, spoke somewhat as follows: “Gentlemen, this goddess is either a star or the early summer grass, I am not certain which. I am studying the matter carefully, and hope soon to reach a positive conclusion.”
Footnote 1099:
Compare Lucretius, dealing now lovingly with the Venus of myth—_alma Venus_, the beloved of Rome’s own god—and now, a few lines below, scornfully, passionately, with the cruel rites of the worship of Diana and the sacrifice of Iphigenia at her shrine: “_illa_ Religio,” he says, with a touch almost of blasphemy.
Footnote 1100:
See the chapters on animism and mythology in Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_. A. W. Schlegel was on this trail, but let himself be befogged by Schelling’s philosophy. See the _Vorlesungen_, I. 329, 337.
Footnote 1101:
See his _Germanische Mythen_.
Footnote 1102:
_Mythologische Forschungen_ (_Quellen u. Forschungen_, No. 51, Strassburg, 1884), Vorrede, p. xxv; the lesson came from Tylor’s book which Müllenhoff had set Mannhardt reading. This letter was written in 1876. See also Müllenhoff’s own definition of mythology in his _Deutsche Alterthumskunde_, V. 1, 157.
Footnote 1103:
_Cultur d. Ren. in Ital._, I. 288.
Footnote 1104:
_Zeitschrift f. Gymnasialwesen_, Berlin, Nov., 1861, p. 837.
Footnote 1105:
Mr. Tylor lets animism of this sort have too free a play among quite primitive men.
Footnote 1106:
Too much stress is laid by some writers on primitive studies of death, and of dreams about the dead, as productive of myth. Modern peasants, like savages, often show a heavy and stupid indifference in the presence of death; and its problem, though it doubtless suggested a cult of spirits, was far less insistent with early man than the problem of life. Before he thus worked out a world of dead spirits, he knew by instinctive, really unconscious inference, a world of living spirits, not of his own breed, but vaster, subtler, in those operations of nature which struck into his actual life, interfered with it, or conspicuously helped it.
Footnote 1107:
“_It_ hurts me; _it_ makes me cry,” says the child, pointing to the seat of affliction; this “it” corresponds with savage and primitive animism. It is not personification, as one is often told. Human beings do not crawl into other human beings and hurt them; not he or she, but “it” hurts. One remembers the remark of J. Grimm, that the neuter gender means not lack of sex, but the undeveloped, initial stage. _Deutsche Grammatik_, III. 315.
Footnote 1108:
Posnett, _Comparative Literature_, pp. 162 ff. The idea, however, is by no means as new as Posnett thinks it to be.
Footnote 1109:
See above, p. 380.
Footnote 1110:
Vignoli, in his _Myth and Science_, notes that a dog growls or bites at a stick thrust toward him, a kind of animism; although as Spencer said,—with quite unwarrantable inference in the denial of nature-myths among primitive men,—a dog takes no notice of ordinary natural doings, swaying boughs, sunrise, and all the rest.
Footnote 1111:
Max Müller’s “disease of language” as source of myth is absurd; the myth does not wait for the misunderstanding of a metaphor, but begins with the metaphor and lives with its life,—both being, of course, unconscious at the start.
Footnote 1112:
A child who saw a flash of lightning once said, “God is winking at me”; and the phrase was seized upon as a fine illustration of primitive myth-making. But the child had been presented, by the whole process of human culture and thought, with at least two-thirds of this “myth,”—the idea of God, of a distinct, supreme personality, and the reference to God of whatever goes on in the sky.
Footnote 1113:
See E. H. Meyer, _Indogerm. Mythen_, Berlin, 1883, I. 87.
Footnote 1114:
In the reaction from ideas of a golden age one must not go too far, and “call names” which now mean vice, degeneration, rottenness. It is possible that even earliest myth touched here and there a chord of poetry as we now know poetry, and appealed to that constant element which belongs to our humanity and not to our history.
Footnote 1115:
Or, of course, a tradition; so Prometheus and the origin of fire may account for the stealing of fire from some neighbouring tribe. See Gruppe, _Griechische Culte and Mythen_, p. 206.
Footnote 1116:
See above, p. 236.
Footnote 1117:
Comparetti, _Kalewala_, pp. 154 f., in his excellent remarks on popular myth and popular poetry, has left his analysis incomplete by leaving throng-poetry quite out of the account.
Footnote 1118:
Grimm’s chapter on gender in the third volume of his _Grammar_ remains the masterpiece of investigation in this subject; but his theory has been attacked by Brugmann. See, too, President Wheeler, “Origin of Grammatical Gender,” _Journal Germanic Philology_, II. 528 ff. Grimm defines gender, III. 346, “eine in der phantasie der menschlichen Sprache entsprungene ausdehnung des natürlichen auf alle und jede gegenstände.”
Footnote 1119:
_Ibid._, III. 354.
Footnote 1120:
Grimm says the Englishman calls “she” whatever is dear to him—the sailor his ship, the miller his mill; III. 546.
Footnote 1121:
_Reflexions Critiques_, ed. 1770, I. 298. “La Poësie du style fait la plus grande différence qui soit entre les vers et la prose.... Les images et les figures doivent être encore plus fréquentes dans la plupart des genres de la Poësie, que dans les discours oratoires.... C’est donc la Poësie du style qui fait le Poëte, plutôt que la rime et la césure.... Cette Partie de la Poësie la plus importante.” See also p. 312, in § xxxv.
Footnote 1122:
_Essay on Poetry with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics_, ed. Cook, p. 11.
Footnote 1123:
Some representative definitions of this sort are collected and quoted by Dr. Gertrude Buck in an interesting paper, _The Metaphor: a Study on the Psychology of Rhetoric_, being No. 5 of the “Contributions to Rhetorical Theory,” edited by Professor Scott, Ann Arbor,—no date, but about 1899,—p. 40.
Footnote 1124:
_Poetik_, p. 87 f. See also p. 83. On p. 262 he opens, however, a dangerous door for the interests of this theory.
Footnote 1125:
_Altgermanische Poesie_, p. 20.
Footnote 1126:
Modern writers on æsthetics make the same error: so Biese, “Das Metaphorische in der dichterischen Phantasie,” _Zst. f. vgl. Lit._, N. F. II. 320, makes the primitive process from simile to metaphor.
Footnote 1127:
On pp. 90 ff.
Footnote 1128:
St. Evremond thinks them distracting; in any case he will banish such things from drama. _Œuvres Meslées_, London, Tonson, 1709, III. 72 f., in an essay, “Sur les poëmes des Anciens.”
Footnote 1129:
See above, p. 190.
Footnote 1130:
It is the case with later reaches of poetry. Chaucer, for example, offers very few figures or metaphors as compared with later poets; “no other author in our tongue,” says Professor Lounsbury, _Stud._, III. 441, “has clung so persistently to the language of common life.”
Footnote 1131:
_The Anglo-Saxon Metaphor_, Halle, 1881. The theory of the metaphor there advanced was due to the study of poetical material alone, and had no help from psychology. The latter, however, is quite favourable to the theory of poetic evolution as stated in the text. See the quotations from Taine and others in the essay of Dr. Buck. The false conclusions of Heinzel in regard to simile and metaphor are of little moment compared with the general value of the essay which contains them: _Ueber den Stil der altgermanischen Poesie_, Strassburg, Q. F., 1875, a stimulating piece of work.
Footnote 1132:
_Modern Language Notes_, I. 83.
Footnote 1133:
Logically Gerber is right, _Die Sprache als Kunst_, I. 256, in putting interjections at one end of the linguistic process and metaphor at the other; but chronologically, historically, genetically, the assumption fails to hold.
Footnote 1134:
The subject is too wide for further treatment, and can be regarded here only in its relations to the beginnings of poetry. See, however, for the early stages of a metaphor, J. Grimm’s essay on “Die Fünf Sinne,” _Kleinere Schriften_, VII. 193 ff.; and F. Bechtel, _Ueber die Bezeichnungen der sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen in den indogerm Sprachen_, Weimar, 1879, where he shows how the idea of “bright” underlies so many of our words,—“glad,” for instance, which even in Anglo-Saxon meant “gleaming.” See, too, in this book the confusion, or flexibility, of words for the “bright” and the “loud,” seeing and hearing; also J. Grimm, “Die Wörter des Leuchtens und Brennens,” _Kl. Schr._, VIII. 263 ff.
Footnote 1135:
Allegory, now a huge projection of metaphor from the style into the subject-matter, is a consistent series of personifications not unlike the later stages of myth; in fact, late myth is allegory.
Footnote 1136:
On the tendency of rhythm and music to suggest images and stir the powers of language, see the wild but interesting words of Nietzsche, _Geburt d. Tragödie_, p. 48.
Footnote 1137:
See above, p. 211.
Footnote 1138:
Joshua Poole, _English Parnassus_, London, 1677, like Italians just before him, and like Vinesauf and others of earlier time, has an array of kennings whence the poet may pick and choose. Abel, for example (pp. 221 ff.), you may call “death’s first fruit,” or “death’s handsel.” Then there are “forms of invocating Muses” (p. 630), followed, alas, by “forms of concluding letters”—in prose.
Footnote 1139:
“The language of the age,” wrote Gray to West, April, 1742, “is never the language of poetry.”
Footnote 1140:
Kennings often read like riddles: so in Finnish, “contents of Wainamoinen’s milk-bowl,”—the sunshine. See, moreover, Scherer, _Geschichte d. deutsch. Lit._, pp. 7, 15; and R. M. Meyer, _Altgerm. Poesie_, p. 160.
Footnote 1141:
In this sketch of differentiation in poetic style only outlines are essayed. The subject is uncommonly attractive, and a book on the history of metaphor would be welcomed by all students of style. Nothing has been said here of symbolic metaphor from animals and the like. See Brinkmann’s study of “Thierbilder in der Sprache,” _Die Metaphern_, Bd. I. Bonn, 1878. His researches in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, should be extended to half civilized and savage conditions, and should take a historical and genetic range. Of course, the æsthetic side of this whole subject is treated in Gerber’s well known book, quoted several times on preceding pages, _Die Sprache als Kunst_.
Footnote 1142:
It is noteworthy that Aristotle excludes improvisation from poetry; and in modern times Gerber (_Die Sprache als Kunst_) finds this rude kind of verse so opposed to his definition of poetry (“die Kunst des Gedankens,” _ibid._, I. 50; “enthusiasm plus deliberation,” I. 77), that he too rules it out, and says it belongs simply to “the art of language.” It is not well to drag such a ball-and-chain by way of definition when one is dealing with primitive poetry.
Footnote 1143:
See above, p. 215. There is a lively if exaggerated account of the rhapsode in Blackwell’s _Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer_, pp. 104 ff. Limits already transgressed forbid the author to add any material on the minstrel in his relations to the making of poetry. See a brief account, with a few references, in _Old English Ballads_, pp. 310 ff. Further, see Piper, _Spielmannsdichtung_ (Vol. 2 of the _Deutsche National-Litteratur_); Scherer, _Gesch. d. deutsch. Dichtung im 11 u. 12 Jhrh._ (_Quellen. u. Forschungen_, XII.); Wilmanns, _Walther v. d. Vogelweide_, especially pp. 39 ff.; the general account in Axel Olrik’s _Middelalderens Vandrende Spillemaend_ (_Opuscula Philologica_), Copenhagen, 1887; Freymond, _Jongleurs und Menestrels_, Halle, 1883 (for the Romance side of the question); and portions of many other works, such as Jusserand, _Théatre en Angleterre_, p. 23, note; F. Vogt, _Salman und Morolf_, pp. cxxiii f.; notes here and there on Widsith and Déor, the earliest types of English minstrel; and so on.
Footnote 1144:
There were pedants before paper, however, in the days of great mnemonic feats. See Max Müller, in the _Nineteenth Century_, November, 1899, pp. 798 ff.
Footnote 1145:
This evolution of the solitary and deliberate poet has been outlined in Chap. IV.
Footnote 1146:
Burckhardt, _Ren._, I. 172. See also p. 250.
Footnote 1147:
_Della Storia e della Ragione d’ogni Poesia_, Vol. I., Bologna, 1739, pp. 155 ff.
Footnote 1148:
“Tutta volta bisogna ancor confessare, che questo fu il primo genere di Poesia, che fosse al Mondo.” There is a long account of improvisation in Crescimbeni, _L’Istoria della Volgar Poesia_, Venice, 1731 (written in 1697), pp. 219 ff. An old and very interesting _gradus ad Parnassum_ is Ruscelli, _Del Modo di Comporre in Versi nella Lingua Italiana_, Venice, 1582 (a new edition), “nel quale va compreso un pieno ordinatissimo Rimario,” and there are directions for using the voice both for prose and for verse. The seventh chapter is on the “stanze d’ottava Rima,” and treats of improvisation, mentioning even an infant phenomenon in this art (“essendo ancor fanciullo ... non arrivava ai sedici anni”), who made verses off-hand on any subject which was given to him.
Footnote 1149:
From two books, one Italian, _Saggi di Poesie parte dette all’ improvviso e parte scritte dal Cavaliere Perfetti patrizio Sanese ed insigne Poeta estemporaneo coronato di laurea in Campidoglio_ ... dal Dottor Domenico Cianfogni, 2 vols., Florence, 1748 (Vol. II. has the account of the crowning); and a Latin pamphlet of 56 pp., _Josephi Mariani Parthenii S. J. de Vita et Studiis Bernadini Perfetti Senensis Poetae Laureati_, Rome, 1771. They are interesting in many ways.
Footnote 1150:
Latin, xix.
Footnote 1151:
The pious father tells elsewhere of mitigating contrivances: “Frigida inter canendum uti solebat, ad fauces nimirum recreandas et ad nimium fervorem, quo incendebatur, restringuendum!”
Footnote 1152:
Along with Perfetti’s moribund art of individual improvisation dies as well the improvised flyting, even in its more complicated and artistic phases. Through sundry references made above (pp. 208, note, 325, 416 f.) in regard to the interlaced stanzas of ballad and song. I have come into a bit of unintentional and quite explicable confusion. These _serranas_ were called artificial, and yet were cited in the proof of communal origins. Artistic and even artificial these _serranas_ undoubtedly become; and yet so does the refrain. They are very common; as Professor Lang points out in his _Liederbuch des Königs Denis von Portugal_, Halle, 1894, pp. xlvii, lxiii, they make “die Norm des altportugiesischen Kunstgedichtes,” and are found alike in songs of love and in the various kinds of flyting. Here, in the public song-duel, one crosses into communal territory; and the _serranas_ go back to that rivalry of variation based upon a refrain or a repeated traditional verse.
Footnote 1153:
See above, p. 349.
Footnote 1154:
I regret that all references to Bücher’s _Arbeit und Rhythmus_ have been made from the first edition, and not from the second, which came to my hands after the foregoing chapters were printed. In bulk the book has more than doubled, increase lying mainly in new songs and refrains of labour, particularly of _Bittarbeit_ and _Frohnarbeit_. Neither this new edition, however, nor the new edition of Bücher’s _Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft_ (see my note above, p. 107) changes materially his theory as quoted in defence of communal poetry. Not so much the priority of play is conceded as the early lack of a definite boundary between play and work. Again, references have been made above to Yrjö Hirn’s book, _Förstudier till en Konstfilosofi_; this material, and much more of the sort, are now to be found in the same author’s _Origins of Art_, London and New York, 1900. Possibly some modification, due to the chapter on “Erotic Art,” should be made in the statements of ethnologists with regard to the lack of this motive in savage poetry.
Footnote 1155:
The science of poetry has had its share of wild theories meant to establish “laws” of progress. See Tarde, _Les Lois Sociales_, pp. 24 ff. But the play of collective and individual forces is too evident, too reasonable, to be classed with Vico’s _Ricorsi_ and with Plato’s or Bacon’s cycles.
Footnote 1156:
In Chapters III and VII.
Footnote 1157:
See the brilliant description of this epoch in the opening chapter of Pellissier’s _Mouvement Littéraire au XIXᵉ Siècle_, 5th ed., Paris, 1898.
Footnote 1158:
Notably Bücher, _Entstehung der Volkswirthschaft_,² Tübingen, 1898, “Der Urzustand.”
Footnote 1159:
See Professor Keasbey, _International Monthly_, April, 1900: “The Institution of Society.”
Footnote 1160:
_Arbeit u. Rhythmus_, 2nd ed., p. 340.
Footnote 1161:
In dances, of course, as well. To references scattered through the preceding pages, add Mommsen on the Camenae, _Hist. Rome_, trans. Dickson, 2d ed. London, 1864, I. 240.
Footnote 1162:
See above, p. 155.
Footnote 1163:
You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand ...
—_Merch. Ven._ III. 2.
Footnote 1164:
See above, pp. 140, 155.
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Transcriber's Notes
_Italic_ words in the original text have been marked in this version with underscores.
In addition to a few minor typographical errors which have been silently corrected, the following changes were made:
Missing footnote anchor added on page 158.
Missing page numbers added to the entry “Lithuania, songs of,” in the index.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Beginnings of Poetry, by Francis Barton Gummere