The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
the early style of his author, another in the
mature style, just as surely as your banker knows
when you have signed a cheque with an unfamiliar
pen or under the stress of emotion.
Le style,
in fact, c'est Vhomme. It is the personality
of the individual author gleaming through
his words that stamps the poems with his signmanual.
Now, the first and foremost quality about the
Ballad, in any language, is not its personality, but
its impersonality. There can be no disagreement
about that. But we need not at once jump to
the conclusion that the author was no-person
:
it is conceivable that an artistic composition
might acquire, in the process of oral tradition, a
similar impersonality. Yet this elusive Author of
the Ballads must have lived a very long while
ago for his works have
;
thoroughly permeated
the world, and in each language appear to be so
native to that tongue that it is
impossible to say
which is the original and which the translation.
Possibly he was an Aryan bard, who from the
primeval Pamir sang songs for all time, songs of
universal popularity, songs which despite their
origin in his one mouth have never since borne
any appearance of having an author. Again,
this supposed individual put a style into his
works, a style unique in the fact that it
does not suffer by translation, a style which
reveals not a
personality, but a universality.
ii