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The World's Great Epics Told in Story
by
Author of Myths of Greece and Rome, Myths of Northern Lands,Legends of the Middle Ages, etc.
With an Introduction by J. Berg Esenwein, Litt. D.
With Sixteen Illustrations from the Masters of Painting
1913
Every now and then in our reading we come suddenly face to face withfirst things,—the very elemental sources beyond which no man maygo. There is a distinct satisfaction in dealing with such beginnings,and, when they are those of literature, the sense of freshness isnothing short of inspiring. To share the same lofty outlook, tobreathe the same high air with those who first sensed a whole era ofcreative thoughts, is the next thing to being the gods' chosen mediumfor those primal expressions.
All this is not to say that the epic is the oldest form of literaryexpression, but it is the expression of the oldest literary ideas,for, even when the epic is not at all primitive in form, it dealsessentially with elemental moods and ideals. Epical poetry is poeticnot because it is metrical and conformative to rhythmicalstandards,—though it usually is both,—but it is poetry because ofthe high sweep of its emotional outlook, the bigness of its thought,the untamed passion of its language, and the musical flow of itsutterance.
Here, then, we have a veritable source book of the oldest ideas of therace; but not only that—we are also led into the penetralia of theearliest thought of many separate nations, for when the epic isnational, it is true to the earliest genius of the people whose spiritit depicts.
To be sure, much of literature, and particularly the literature of theepic, is true rather to the tone of a nation than to its literalhistory—by which I mean that Achilles was more really a Greek herothan any Greek who ever lived, because he was the apotheosis of Greekchivalry, and as such was the expression of the Greeks rather thanmerely a Greek. The Iliad and the Odyssey are not merely epics ofGreece—they are Greek.
This is an age of story-telling. Never before has the world turned soattentively to the shorter forms of fiction. Not only is this true ofthe printed short-story, of which some thousands, more or less new,are issued every year in English, but oral story-telling is taking itsdeserved place in the school, the home, and among clubs speciallyorganized for its cultivation. Teachers and parents must therefore beincreasingly alert, not only to invent new stories, but—this evenchiefly—to familiarize themselves with the oldest stories in theworld.
So it is to such sources as these race-narratives that allstory-telling must come for recurrent inspirations. The setting ofeach new story may be tinged with what wild or sophisticated lifesoever, yet must the narrator find the big, heart-swelling movementsand passions and thraldoms and conquests and sufferings and elationsof mankind stored in the great epics of the world.
It were a life-labor to become familiar with all of these in theirexpressive originals; even in translation it would be a titanic taskto read each one. Therefore how great is our indebtedness to the ripescholarship and discreet choice of the author of this "Book of theEpic" for having brought to us not only the arguments b