III. Speech as a Formed Gesture

For narrating we make use of the senses and the understanding, which belong to the head. Consequently prose has perforce to express itself in such form as the head can provide. It should, however, also be continually making the effort to reach out with what has been perceived by the head and let it take hold of the arms, and more especially of the legs. Then in the rendering of epic (and epic exists to tell and narrate), the sort of pointed style that belongs to the head becomes modified by the attempt to seize hold of the legs—no occasion of course to do so literally, with brute force!