426
PARTISAN REVIEW
past,
SO
much more distinct as individuals, than are the Homeric
heroes. Achilles and Ulysses are splendidly described in many well–
ordered words, epithets cling to them, their emotions are constantly
displayed in their words and deeds-but they have no development,
and their life histories are clearly set forth once and for all. So
little are the Homeric heroes presented as developing or having
developed, that most of them-Nestor, Agamemnon, Achilles-ap–
pear to be of an age established from the very first. Even Ulysses,
in
whose case the long lapse of time and the many events which occurred
offer so much opportunity for biographical development, shows al–
most nothing of this. Ulysses on his return
is
precisely the same as
when he left Ithaca two decades earlier. But what a road, what a
fate, lie between the Jacob who cheated his father out of his blessing
and the old man whose favorite son has been torn to pieces by a wild
beast- between David the harp player, persecuted by his lord's
jealousy, and the old king, surrounded by violent intrigues, whom
Abishag the Shunnamite warmed in his bed, and he knew her not!
The old man, of whom we know how he has become what he is,
is
more of an individual than the young man; for it
is
only during the
course of an eventful life that men are differentiated into full in–
dividuality; and it is this history of a personality which the Old
Testament offers us as the formation undergone by those whom
God has chosen to be examples. Heavy with their development,
sometimes even aged to the verge of disintegration, they show a dis–
tinct stamp of individuality entirely foreign to the Homeric heroes.
Time can touch the latter only outwardly, and even that change is
brought to our observation as little as possible; whereas the stern hand
of God is ever upon the Old Testament figures; he has not only made
them once and for all and chosen them, but he continues to work
upon them, bends them and kneads them, and, without destroying
them in essence, produces from them forms which their youth gave
no grounds for anticipating. The objection that the biographical
element of the Old Testament often arises from the combination of
several legendary personages, does not affect us; for this combination
is a part of the development of the text. And how much wider is the
pendulum swing of their lives than that of the Homeric heroes! For
they are bearers of the divine will, and yet they are fallible, subject
to misfortune and humiliation- in the midst of which their acts and
