Homer and Classical Philology | Page 4

of mouth, as opposed to the habits of a book-learned age,
shows in particular a depth of ancient sagacity worthy of our admiration. From those
times until the generation that produced Friedrich August Wolf we must take a jump over
a long historical vacuum; but in our own age we find the argument left just as it was at
the time when the power of controversy departed from antiquity, and it is a matter of
indifference to us that Wolf accepted as certain tradition what antiquity itself had set up
only as a hypothesis. It may be remarked as most characteristic of this hypothesis that, in
the strictest sense, the personality of Homer is treated seriously; that a certain standard of
inner harmony is everywhere presupposed in the manifestations of the personality; and
that, with these two excellent auxiliary hypotheses, whatever is seen to be below this
standard and opposed to this inner harmony is at once swept aside as un-Homeric. But
even this distinguishing characteristic, in place of wishing to recognise the supernatural
existence of a tangible personality, ascends likewise through all the stages that lead to
that zenith, with ever-increasing energy and clearness. Individuality is ever more strongly
felt and accentuated; the psychological possibility of a single Homer is ever more
forcibly demanded. If we descend backwards from this zenith, step by step, we find a
guide to the understanding of the Homeric problem in the person of Aristotle. Homer was
for him the flawless and untiring artist who knew his end and the means to attain it; but
there is still a trace of infantile criticism to be found in Aristotle--i.e., in the naive
concession he made to the public opinion that considered Homer as the author of the
original of all comic epics, the Margites. If we go still further backwards from Aristotle,
the inability to create a personality is seen to increase; more and more poems are

attributed to Homer; and every period lets us see its degree of criticism by how much and
what it considers as Homeric. In this backward examination, we instinctively feel that
away beyond Herodotus there lies a period in which an immense flood of great epics has
been identified with the name of Homer.
Let us imagine ourselves as living in the time of Pisistratus: the word "Homer" then
comprehended an abundance of dissimilarities. What was meant by "Homer" at that time?
It is evident that that generation found itself unable to grasp a personality and the limits
of its manifestations. Homer had now become of small consequence. And then we meet
with the weighty question: What lies before this period? Has Homer's personality,
because it cannot be grasped, gradually faded away into an empty name? Or had all the
Homeric poems been gathered together in a body, the nation naively representing itself
by the figure of Homer? _Was the person created out of a conception, or the conception
out of a person?_ This is the real "Homeric question," the central problem of the
personality.
The difficulty of answering this question, however, is increased when we seek a reply in
another direction, from the standpoint of the poems themselves which have come down to
us. As it is difficult for us at the present day, and necessitates a serious effort on our part,
to understand the law of gravitation clearly--that the earth alters its form of motion when
another heavenly body changes its position in space, although no material connection
unites one to the other--it likewise costs us some trouble to obtain a clear impression of
that wonderful problem which, like a coin long passed from hand to hand, has lost its
original and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical works, which cause the hearts of even
the greatest geniuses to fail when they endeavour to vie with them, and in which
unsurpassable images are held up for the admiration of posterity--and yet the poet who
wrote them with only a hollow, shaky name, whenever we do lay hold on him; nowhere
the solid kernel of a powerful personality. "For who would wage war with the gods: who,
even with the one god?" asks Goethe even, who, though a genius, strove in vain to solve
that mysterious problem of the Homeric inaccessibility.
The conception of popular poetry seemed to lead like a bridge over this problem--a
deeper and more original power than that of every single creative individual was said to
have become active; the happiest people, in the happiest period of its existence, in the
highest activity of fantasy and formative power, was said to have created those
immeasurable poems. In this universality there is something almost intoxicating in the
thought of a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure, the broad, overpowering
liberation of a popular gift, and we delight