The Literature of Ecstasy

ays begins with poetry in verse, and that good prose is a later development. England and Greece are espe

resy to question it. The best illustration of this is the almost universal adherence given to the idea that verse poetry came before prose, a view first set forth by the geographer Strabo in speaking of Homer in the beginning of

n which they imitated the poetic art, abandoning the use of metre, but in other respects preserving the qualities of poetry. Then subsequent writers took away, each in his turn, something of these qualities, and brought prose down to its present

of the sixteenth century repudiated it. He asked whether the first so-c

posing poetry for many ages back down into legendary times. The perfected poems in a pattern as regular as the dactylic hexameter were a stage of evolution and did not spring up out of the darkness of an age which had no literature. The Delphians claim that their first priestess invented the dactylic hexameter; the Delians said that Olen, a mythi

endary poets, antedating Homer,

fering from rhythmic prose. It is against all human experience to conclude that an elaborate work of art following laws of measure could precede the production in prose that represents the transcription of the natural language of people which is in prose. We shall di

turning to the primitive form of poetry written by the native Americans. Similarly the emotional outbursts of native African tribes are in rhythmical prose. The only form of pattern in the poems of savages as well as of people in an early stage of civilization is a tendency to repeat the same phrase. But in their most emotional stories, fables and legen

ed by a change of words, having a similar import. In short, we have the beginning of parallelism. There is parallelism in the poem

ular metre of any kind in these except parallelism. The works are all irregularly rhythmical and in

aying parallelism in arrangement of word, and thought-the form which is familiar to all in the Hebrew Psalms as 'parallelism of members.' It is carried back by its employment in the Pyramid Texts in the fourth millennium B.C., by far earlier than

e. Take up the love poems, elegies, fairy tales and prayers of the ancient Egyptians. They have no device of metre, rhythm or rhyme. The only pattern is the parallelism. A few hymns are arranged in stan

w they pronounced their vowels, we know enough of their literature to see that regula

ly prose with a rough rhythm, frequent parallelism, but no uniform device. The lines are arranged often like free verse. "It is difficult to draw the line between their poetry and the higher style of prose," says Francis Brown.[100-A] "There is a

ians and Babylonians the irregular rhythm and parallelis

the form of the p

prose. Rhythm is the measured rise and fall of feeling and utterance, to which the rhythm of sound is subordinate. Prosodic rules are not necessary, "for the words employed naturally group themselves in balanced members, in which the undulations o

he most ridiculous claims, at one time widely in vogue, was that the Greek metres were to be found in t

characteristic of the form of the poetry in

han rhythmical prose. Sir George A. Smith says, in his The Early Poetry of Israel, that the Hebrew poets indulged deliberately in the metrical irregularities of verse. They deviated more than Shakespeare, who did not always confine himself to the iambic foot and pentameter line in his blank verse. "In every form of Oriental art we trace the influence of what may be ca

e made up of lines of from two to five syllables, of which one to four are unaccented, the poet being bound by no definite numbers. This is the i

fessor Budde held that the Kinoth had a regular metre. But the discovery merely amounted to this: that a long line was followed regularly by a short line. Th

rhythm is never regular

elegies, songs, hymns, parables, and dialogues. The irregular

on to the parallelisms of Hebrew poetry. The importance of these in ancient Hebrew poetry has, however, been overestimated. Parallelism did not create poetry, but was often its garment. There are passages employing parallelisms that are not po

, is also a property of prose, we cannot say that parallelism alone is sufficient to distinguish poetry from prose, or even Hebrew poetry from Hebrew prose. Moulton finds that prose and poetry overlap each other in the Bible. Al

stem of chanting hymns where there was a response by the congregation, and that the practice of the parallelism soon extended to all poetry. But, for example, proverbs from their very epigrammatic nature te

nd even in prose. For it must be admitted that under emotion a man

tre with English poetry. There are poetical passages in the Bible containing no parallelisms. It should also be borne in mind that parallelism developed as a perfect pattern

though it can be found in all modern literature. Yet it is a mo

try of the Bible is in what may be called prose, for the repetition of the idea and language in the parallelism is natural even in prose. Parallelism in the Bible did not create a di

c prose used in the Bible and adopted first rhymed prose and the

unash ben Labrat. Both these poets followed Arabic models. Saadyah, the Hebrew philosopher, blamed Dunash for having ruined the beauty and naturalness of the Hebrew language for poetry. Even Je

cal prose. Goldziher calls the Saj the oldest form of poetic speech; it continued to exist even after the regular metres were establishe

is partly metrical, and forms the tran

scholars assume they were produced after a long period extending through many years of poetic practice. They were not rude products, bu

least in a rhythm that makes only a slight approach to metre. These are to be found in two

our lines, each of eleven syllables, the last four of which only have to follow a pattern, this consisting of two iambuses or an iambus and a spondee

h, the life agai

one away and l

athway for the

d where men pr

erse writers, merely arranged their lines to call attention to the rhythm, but it was really prose employing metrical rules only at the end of the line. It h

fixed by some sch

rk, the work of Zoroaster himself, have the same or nearly the same kind of metre as the Vedic hymns, but there is greater liberty. The syllables need not be of a uniform quantity at the end of the line, but each line, as in

formly be used. L. H. Mills in his translation of the Gathas keeps close, as he tells us, to the original metres. He wisely breaks

s appears in Martin Haug's Essays in the Sacre

eenth century B.C. by Zoroaster and hen

prose that only an arrangement into lines makes us call them metrical. After all, they do not differ much from the rhythmical prose in which the poetry of Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Hebrews was written. We see thus that rhythmical prose was the first lang

first in writing in prose, and later versions sometimes change the prose into meter. Often the ea

venth or eighth century. The versions of a few centuries later are the copies we now have in the epic Táin Bó Cualnge. According to Edmund C. Quiggin's article on Irish Literature in the Britannica, the original Tain consisted of prose interspersed with rhythmical prose called rhetoric. Later metrical poems were l

e few verse poems in the earlier Táin Bó Cualnge, most of the poetry being usually in decla

egarded by many as one of the fathers of English prose, wrote his Lives of the Saints in rhythmical prose, arranged in irregular lines just like our modern free verse. The

ry. Dr. Guest adds that in his opinion this rhythmical prose was one of the instruments in breaking up the alliterative system of the Anglo-Saxons. The passage he cites, however, is no more rhythmical than many passages in modern English prose. Anglo-Saxon prose, then, often was

se, "we see that it did not begin with any conscious art, but as Vigfussen had said, 'was simply excited and emphatic prose' uttered with the repetition of catch words and letters. The use of these was presently regulated." English poetry, then, began in the use of excited and emphatic prose. One of the best pieces of Anglo-Sa

s which the Sagas celebrate took place in the tenth century, and the following century was the period of their narration. They were written down in the present form chiefly in the thirteenth century. Ari Frodi (1067-1148) is

ed as early as the first part of the tenth century. It seems anomalous to the literary historian that a nation should at the very beginning of its literary history have developed prose before verse, that

s written, or that prose developed from verse. Prose was the original language

TNO

try of Babylonia." Presbyt

an English transl