Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 8
ОглавлениеTHE DIM PRIMÆVAL WORLD.
“In even savage bosoms There are longings, yearnings, strivings, For the good they comprehend not.”—Longfellow.
Our pageant opens humbly. Certain wild, uncouth men, rugged in feature, misshapen in form, and furtive in gait, pass before us. Their long, unkempt hair hangs upon their shoulders; they are half-clad in skins that betray the animals which provided them, and they bear in their hands stone hatchets, flint-or bone-tipped spears and arrows, and bows of pliant wood. They and their mates and offspring are our remote ancestors, denizens of the dim, mysterious primæval world.
All the knowledge we possess of these distant forefathers has been slowly garnered from those relics of their weapons, household implements, and sepulchres which kindly earth has preserved from the tooth of time in river-beds, limestone caves, and lake-bottoms. By diligent groping and by the observation of races still deeply sunk in savagery we are able to picture, as in a glass darkly, the main features of their rude society.
As yet the earth was unsubdued; man strove with the brute for lordship. Monstrous and incredibly fierce beasts, “red in tooth and claw,” possessed the earth. The huge mammoth crashed through the forest like a tornado; the cave bear and the sabre-toothed tiger were the bloodthirsty tyrants of the jungle. Nevertheless, man had already begun that ceaseless warfare which was slowly but surely to dispossess the brute and to give to human beings mastery over the whole wide earth.
In this warfare he had special advantages over his foes. He alone amongst the animals walked wholly erect; he alone had hands to hold things large and small, to hurl them with force and sure aim, to shape wood and stone to serve his needs. Then, too, he possessed a higher order of brain than the brutes, and thus could defeat their mighty strength by cunning plot and artful device. They floundered into his concealed pits, and wrought their own destruction in his deadly snares. Further, he had the gift of speech, which enabled him to communicate with his fellows, and thus to co-operate with them in means of offence and defence.
In this unsubdued world he had to kill or be killed, and this fierce and constant struggle for life sharpened his wits and senses. He could see like the eagle, and hear like the stag. His eye was so true that he could bring down a flying bird with a hurled stone or with an arrow from his bow, and transfix with his spear the darting fish of the streams.
He and his fellows with their wives and children dwelt in caves. To these lairs they dragged their prey; here they ate and slept, cooked their food, fashioned their weapons, and prepared skins for clothing. They were not as yet strong enough to come out into the open; they had no skill to build houses of wood and stone; no knowledge of the means whereby they could ensure a supply of varied food without dangerous encounters and long searches for the berries and fruits of the forest.
Though they were skilful hunters and knew the haunts of beast, bird, and fish, their minds were as simple and childish as that of the infant who beats the table against which he hurts himself. They had life and being, and they could conceive of nothing that was not similarly endowed. They saw the spark leap from the flint; they saw the flame burn fiercely when fed, and flicker and die when deprived of fuel. They perceived the sun mounting in the heavens and descending to his nightly rest; they glanced fearfully at the shadow that lessened towards noon and lengthened towards sunset; they noted the waxing and waning of the moon, the slow passing of the stars across the dark heavens, the changeful clouds drifting across the sky, the mysterious mist that enfolded them and vanished when the masterful sun shot his glittering arrows earthward. They saw the trees put on their first green livery, break into blossom, glow with fruit, and robe themselves in scarlet and gold, ere they passed into the stark lifelessness of winter.
Primitive man perceived that the spirit of life was in all these things; they were as he was, different in form, but the same in essentials. He saw them living; he heard their voices. The rustle of the leaves, the waving of the grass, the moan of the reeds by the mere, the babble of the brook, the roar of the torrent, were ever in his ears. The wind came and went; its moods were more fickle than his own. Now it was soft and sighing, now it fretted in shrill petulance; now it roared in mighty rage, and now it tore up the forest oaks in its mad fury. Nothing was inanimate; even the big stones were the parents of the lesser stones. All had life; all had parts and passions just as he had.
When he lay down to rest after gorging himself with broiled flesh, another phase of existence opened to him. He made long journeys, he feasted and danced with his friends afar off, he fought with monsters and struggled with horrors. He awoke in his cave, and his squaw told him that he had never left his couch. Other men had the same experiences, yet he knew that their bodies did not accompany them in their wanderings. What was the meaning of it all? There must be another self, a spirit within every man that gave him life. When the spirit left the body it was dead. The body seemed to die every night, but the spirit returned from its wanderings ere the morn. When, however, it failed to return, the heart ceased to beat, the pulses to throb, and the body perished in corruption.
It was the other-self, the spirit, then, that gave him and everything round him life. He lived in a world of spirits, ever present though unseen, and all the more awe-inspiring because unseen. Some spirits were vastly powerful; others were feeble. Some could reave his own spirit from him in a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. Of these he was terribly afraid.
The birds, beasts, fishes, and insects were much less to be feared than the unbodied spirits whose voices he heard and whose vengeance he dreaded. They were all his kin, though not of his kind, and from them or from the tree-spirits he believed himself to be descended. He would not in the least have marvelled had any of these creatures addressed him in his own speech. What could be more natural?
Now let us see primitive man in another aspect. He rests in his cave at nightfall, the flames of his wood fire leaping and crackling, and throwing monstrous shadows on the rocky walls. He has satisfied his hunger and has looked to his weapons, and now he sits at leisure. To while away the time, he seizes a sharpened flint and on a bone or an antler begins to scratch the outline of a mammoth, a horse, or a deer. How spirited and faithful is his drawing! His eye is so keen, his memory so retentive, that he can reproduce the exact posture of a running horse or a leaping hart, and portray the creature in phases only revealed to us dull-eyed moderns by the instantaneous photograph.
It may be that on the walls of the cave one of his fellows has ventured on even higher flights of pictorial art, and with brown and red earths has depicted the incidents of a memorable chase. Yes, strange as it may seem, these untamed, spirit-haunted savages feel within them the stirrings of that genius which will one day inspire a Phidias, a Raphael, a Michelangelo.
And now, to entertain his comrades, one of the throng begins to relate the story of his latest adventure in the forest, or, perhaps, describes the terrifying visions of a nightmare, or invents some fiction to explain the mysteries of sun, moon, stars, earth, air, fire, or water. Speech comes slowly to him, and is eked out by plentiful grimace and gesture. But with every recital his words flow more readily, and he gradually gains power to communicate the ideas struggling for expression, in a kind of measured song. His comrades listen. One day a certain rude lay, it may be of imminent peril and hairbreadth escape, fixes their wandering attention. They listen with parted lips and flashing eyes, and when the recital is over, the cave resounds with their guttural cries of satisfaction.
In succeeding hours of leisure they demand the same song. It is recited again and again, and each time the author improves on his original, adding a lifelike touch here, introducing a new incident there, until at last it assumes a fixed form and becomes a legendary ode, easily retained in the memory and handed down from father to son.
At all times these men of the ancient world feel themselves impelled to implore the more potent spirits to save and defend them. Some one of the group may call upon the spirits in a rhythmic appeal which his fellows recognize as most expressive of their needs, but beyond their power to imitate. This call to the spirits may become the prayer-song of all, and the maker of it the suppliant priest of his tribe.
In some such way we can also conceive these primitive men fashioning songs to win the hearts of women and to celebrate the deeds of heroes famous in hard-won fights. Tales of the spirits, of mighty hunters, of cunning tricksters, of talking birds and beasts, similarly arise. Groping guesses at the meaning of life and death grow into myths which the tribe believes and cherishes and hands on to future generations.
Thus we see the beginnings of literature even in the caves of primitive men. Their songs are the beginnings of lyric poetry; their legends, acted in weird dance or sung in barbaric strain, are the first forms of the drama. Their explanations of natural phenomena are the germs of fairy-tales which, in turn, give rise to the novel. Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, and Scott are as yet far down the ages, but they are already in the making.
