As epic must encompass the language of its originating society somewhat
full-on I cannot see how any contemporary epic can extricate itself from the
dominance of prose. Les Murray's Fred Neptune works by simulating the novel.
David Jones dug into the footnotes of archaeologos its strata, but still the
most conspicuous attempt at poetic epic of the century leaving harbour has
to be, in English, the most conspicuously flawed. I mean, of course, the
split and fragmented Cantos.
The stillbirths of the feted like Omeros point how unreachable the epos is
without prose. And prose, without wishing to labour the so often stated, is
where the epic mode now finds its measure, its tread. As in the path through
a day in Dublin. Or other, more recent, long-in-memory journeys.
Memory, of course, being what the epic performs. Demanding eh we demand it,
epic performance.
david bircumshaw
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