Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/148

 degree of individual independence without which the drama has little or no place.

§ 35. Thus, looking on choral songs of war or peace as the primary sources from which literature has everywhere been developed, we may accept the vulgar canon that all literature begins in song; but it is song widely differing in nature and in impersonal authorship from any to which modern art is accustomed; it is a hymn strangely unlike the choral services of our civilised religions both in form and spirit. In this primitive song the words, the dance, the music (such as it is), and gesticulations contribute to make a unity nameless in the languages of peoples far removed from the beginnings of social life. These curious combinations of mimicry and music, dancing and words, vary in their purposes. Sometimes they are magic incantations, sometimes theyare war-songs, sometimes they are songs of marriage, sometimes they are dirges of death. In some the gestures predominate, in others the rude music, in others the refrain of a few simple words. But the main points to be borne in mind are that these elements are confused together, and that the mere preservation of the words alone cannot enable us to imagine the true nature of primitive song. Hence the impossibility of applying our highly-developed modern ideas of prose or verse to such performances. For not only have dance and gesticulation among us ceased to convey any sacred meaning, not only have we long distinguished these from the mimetic action of the regular drama, but we have also separated words from any accompaniment of music or dance, poetry from recitation as well as from these accompaniments, and prose from metrical forms which, far from being joined to dance and melody, or sustaining the memory in an age when writing was unknown,