The Epic in Nineteenth-Century France: A Study in Heroic and Humanitarian Poetry from Les Martyrs to Les Siecles Morts

Abstract

The Epic in Nineteenth-Century France. A Study in Heroic and Humanitarian poetry from ' Les Martyrs' to ' Les Siecles Morts'. By HERBERT J. HUNT.; Oxford: Blackwell. 1941. xiii+446 pp. 25s. This is a great book. I would apply to it in all seriousness the epithets with which Pip airily describes Mr Wopsle's 'Hamlet'-'massive and concrete'. Massive, because despite Dr Hunt's modest disclaimer, there is no chink in the structure through which a poetaster of the period can escape his vigilant eye; concrete, because the argument is supported and confirmed by facts. I do not say 'founded' on fact, because the point de depart is abstraction. This is sufficiently declared by the sub-title: 'a study in heroic and humanitarian poetry' (by the by, I do not understand the 'and'. It is humanitarian poetry cast in heroic form). It must not, however, be assumed that massivity here means heaviness. Dr Hunt's immense learning is not oppressive. He writes pleasantly and easily-too easily perhaps; he lays himself open sometimes to the charge of an abus des adjectifs-and without a trace of pretention or pretence. What does he mean by 'humanitarian poetry'? He means that poets and prose-writers who felt the itch to compose an epic sought their subject, not in national happenings, but in the chequered history of mankind, seen in the light of the Christian idea. Christian and NeoChristian and Anti-Christian, each in turn takes up the tale; and as Professor Rudler says in his brilliant Preface,1 'La religion de l'humanite est une conception anti-chretienne. II n'en est pas moins vrai qu'en s'eloignant de lui l'epopee humanitaire continue a pousser dans le christianisme des racines profondes et diverses; par exemple, elle se centre souvent-sa maniere-sur le dogme de la Chute et de la Redemption.' Indeed the theme may be reduced to the two parts into which Pascal divides his Apology: 'I, L'homme sans Dieu; II, L'homme avec Dieu.' It is significant, and Dr Hunt duly notes it, that whereas the period under review, especially in its latter part, records repeated and increasing effort to depict man as struggling single-handed against the forces of evil, it ends as it began with belief in a divine co-operation. Hugo joins hands with Chateaubriand across the generation of Positivists. Although the curtain drops upon the depressing Siecles morts of A. de Guerne,2 I think we may fairly class that author with his master, de Lisle, to whom he forms a kind of appendage, and regard 'Dieu' as the last word of nineteenth-century heroic endeavour. Indeed, the dross (and how much