aforetime. But when Ulysses praises
the tables laden with bread and meat, and the cupbearer filling the
wine-cups of the guests, saying, "This seems to me the best thing,"
strong opposition has been aroused, shown even in antiquity by the
sharp protest of Plato and Lucian. Still this Phaeacian enjoyment is
innocent enough; not ascetic is the trait, yet not sensual; to-day good
people usually eat and drink without the song of bard or other
spiritual entertainment accompanying the material one of gustation.

Now comes the change, Ulysses is to give a song, he is to sing his own
deeds, the story of his trials, "which will wake fresh sorrow in me."
Clearly this will be a different song from the preceding one of
Demodocus; not now an heroic tale of Troy, but an account of the Return
therefrom; a tale in which endurance is the theme rather than action.
The hero is more the sufferer than the doer; he is to meet the hostile
blows of Fate and to master it by his ability to bear as well as by his
ability to act. A new poetic form will gradually rise out of the theme
and in harmony with the same; the present movement runs counter to the
Trojan story both in space and in spirit.

The first act of Ulysses in this novel procedure is to be duly noted:
he declares who he is, gives his father's name and utters a hint of his
own character. Very great surprise must the announcement have created
among those Phaeacians--a veritable sensation, as we say in these times;
for Ulysses had been the real hero of the songs of Demodocus just sung;
behold, that hero himself is present and has been listening all the
while. The dramatic disguise, in which the interest of the hearer has
centered hitherto, is thrown off, the concealed man shows himself.

Still deeper must we look into this act of self-revelation. "I am
Ulysses," says the bard now, proposing to sing of Ulysses. I am myself,
I know what I have done and I am the man to tell it. Really here is a
statement of self-consciousness; the singer is no longer a Demodocus
singing of another man, of Ulysses, at Troy, but it is Ulysses himself,
now singing of himself, of his profoundest experiences, which none
other but he can tell. His internal life opens, not that active heroic
one; the trials of his spirit are the theme, therewith must follow a
new manner of utterance, a poetic form which can express what is within
and still remain in the domain of the imagination. A self-conscious art
we must no