A Companion to Homer

At the sources of Western civilization, themselves its main source, stand two poems on the grand scale which for sustained beauty and splendour have found no superior, perhaps no equal, in all poetry that has followed them. This is the most remarkable fact in the history of literature. If it seems to contradict what Aristotle regards as almost a law of nature — that the arts progress by degrees — we may discover the explanation in this, that the Iliad and the Odyssey are not the beginning but the consummation of an artistic process of which the earlier stages are no longer discernible. But, while this would explain the fact, it does not explain the miracle. The miracle is the quality of poetry, and miracles cannot be explained. They may, however, be described and their effects observed.