Greek poetry

“ Those unsuccessful attempts to articulate which are so delightful and interesting in a child shock and disgust us in an aged paralytic; and in the same way, those wild mythological fictions which charm us, when we hear them lisped by Greek poetry in its infancy, excite a mixed sensation of pity and loathing, when mumbled by Greek philosophy in its old age. ”

“ The general qualities, which must strike all in this history of Greek poetry are, a masterly acquaintance with classical literature—a wariness and circumspection of judgment, rare in any writer, especially in one so young—a critical perspicacity, that draws its conclusions from the widest range of observation—and a poetic flexibility of fancy, that can transport itself into the remotest periods of antiquity. In a word, the author analyzes as a critic, feels as a poet, and observes like a philosopher. ”

“ And just here lies much of the meaning of Greek poetry for the student of humanity. It is the spontaneous and universal expression of the life and character of the Greeks; it is the comprehensive interpretation of the essential qualities of the race; in it is sounded the diapason of the capacities of this people; it is, as Sir Richard Jebb has said, the "index of their capacity." Literature, especially poetry, is national life expressed, not, as to-day, an individual's "criticism of life." ”

“ But just there Greek thought finds its happy limit; it has not yet become too inward; the mind has not yet learned to boast its independence of the flesh; the spirit has not yet absorbed everything with its emotions, nor reflected its own colour everywhere. It has indeed committed itself to a train of reflexion which must end in defiance of form, of all that is outward, in an exaggerated idealism. ”

“ Thus, in the poetry of the first five centuries of Greek literature, especially at the close of this period, we find, instead of the calm enjoyment of outward nature which characterized the early epic poetry, a profound sense of the misery of human life, and an ardent longing for a condition of greater happiness. This feeling, indeed, was not so extended as to become common to the whole Greek nation, but it took deep root in individual minds, and was connected with more serious and spiritual views of human nature. ”

“ And to the second contention we can only answer that modern poetry is in no sense a substitute for Greek poetry. It has, it is true, much that Greek poetry has not; so has Greek poetry much, very much, that finds no echo nor counterpart in modern verse. Modern poetry, modern literature, is supplementary to that of the Greeks. And the liberal soul that covets earnestly the best gifts, and all the best gifts, will seek and study and cultivate them both, with equal assiduity and strong endeavor. ”

“ But this familiar view of Greek religion is based on a consideration of a part only of what is known [111] concerning it, and really involves a misconception, akin to that which underestimates the influence of the romantic spirit generally, in Greek poetry and art; as if Greek art had dealt exclusively with human nature in its sanity, suppressing all motives of strangeness, all the beauty which is born of difficulty, permitting nothing but an Olympian, though perhaps somewhat wearisome calm. ”

“ Their spirit is more authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry. They speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom that has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful representation of the tragic situations in human life ”

“ Greek epic and dramatic poetry and Greek philosophy appealed profoundly to him. Of the Greek poets he wrote: "No other poets have lived so much by the imaginative reason; no other poets have made their works so well balanced; no other poets have so well satisfied the thinking power; have so well satisfied the religious sense." More than any other English poet he prized the qualities of measure, proportion, and restraint; and to him lucidity, austerity, and high seriousness, conspicuous elements of classic verse, were the substance of true poetry. ”

“ WHAT a comfortable mental furniture the generalisations of a century ago must have afforded! What a right little, tight little, round little world it was when Greece was the only source of culture, when Greek art, even in Roman copies, was the only indisputable art, except for some Renaissance repetitions! Philosophy, the love of truth, liberty, architecture, poetry, drama, and for all we knew music—all these were the fruits of a special kind of life, each assisted the development of the other, each was really dependent on all the rest. ”

“ Greek poetry, likewise, is made out of "warm, swift, vibrating" words, thrilling with bodily sensation. Gilbert Murray [Footnote: "What English Poetry may Learn from Greek," Atlantic Monthly, November, 1912.] has described the weaving of these beautiful single words into patterns:
"The whole essence of lyric is rhythm. It is the weaving of words into a song-pattern, so that the mere arrangement of the syllables produces a kind of dancing joy.... Greek lyric is derived directly from the religious dance ”

“ The Beginnings of Greek Poetry are found in the sacred ode, [Pg 137] the metrical response of the oracle, the festal song, and the ballad immortalizing the deeds of heroes during the mythical ages. The art of poetry was coeval with the first settlement of the peninsula; but its higher development followed the transfusion of Hellenic genius into the older Pelasgian race.
The earliest forms of poetry were hymns to the deities. The religion of the Greeks was a worship of Nature. Imagination peopled every nook of their picturesque land with supernatural beings ”

“ But for this absence of authentic history, Greek literature could never have become what it was. By the purely fictitious character of its poetry, and its freedom from the shackles of particular truths, it acquired that general probability which led Aristotle to consider poetry as more philosophical than history. Greek art, likewise, from the lateness of the period at which it descended from the representation of gods and heroes to the portraits of real men, acquired a nobleness and beauty of form which it could not otherwise have obtained. ”

“ Greek literature—poetry, and to a certain extent prose also—has these peculiar excellences to so signal a degree, because it stood, as no other literature has since stood, in intimate relations with the whole of the life whence it sprung. Greek civilization had a solidarity and unity, and withal a noble simplicity, that gave to all parts and elements of it a vital interrelation and connection. Life, the whole life of the city-state, and sometimes of the whole nation, was the poet's inspirer, regulator, test. ”

“ How could such an one ever again endure the greyness of the ideal or spiritual world? The spiritualist is satisfied as he watches the escape of the sensuous elements from his conceptions; his interest grows, as the dyed garment bleaches in the keener air. But the artist steeps his thought again and again into the fire of colour. To the Greek this immersion in [222] the sensuous was, religiously, at least, indifferent. Greek sensuousness, therefore, does not fever the conscience: it is shameless and childlike. ”

“ As to their style, even a cursory reading reveals their extreme declamatory nature, the delight of the author in the horrible and weird, the pains he has taken to select from the Greek sources the most harrowing of all the tales as the foundation of his tragedies, the boldness with which he has broken over the time-honored rule that deeds of blood should not be done upon the stage, and his fondness for abstruse mythological allusions. ”

“ Greek literature was The arts. no longer synonymous with epic poetry. Some of its most distinctive forms had not yet been evolved; indeed, it is only quite at the end of the period that prose-writing begins; but both lyric and elegiac poetry had been brought to perfection. In art, statuary was still comparatively stiff and crude; but in other branches, in architecture, in vase-painting and in coin-types, the aesthetic genius of the race had asserted its pre-eminence. Philosophy, the supreme gift of Greece to the modern world, had become a living power. ”

“ The amount of latitude in literary expression varies no doubt with the prevalent popular morality of the period. But it would lead to infinite confusion to think of the poetry as a translation of conduct. A truer picture of Greek life is happily given us in those epigrams which deal with the material that history passes over and ideal poetry, at least in Greek literature, barely touches upon, the life of simple human relations from day to day within the circle of the family. ”

“ The author of the Platonic Epinomis felt this truth, which finds illustration not only in literature but in all other forms of artistic expression, when he said, "Whatever the Greeks take over from the foreign world they fashion into something far more beautiful." Other nations have struck out on new lines in many things, but in none has the world ever beheld such a transcendent wealth of original tendencies, impulses, products. Think of what—to speak of forms of poetry only—we owe in their beginnings to the Greeks: epic poetry, lyric poetry, tragedy, comedy. ”

“ And now, when at the summit of Greek civilization, in the very prime of Athenian power and freedom, we see dramatic poetry spring up as the organ of the prevailing thoughts and feelings of the time, we are naturally led to ask how it comes that this style of poetry agreed so well with the spirit of the age, and so far outstripped its competitors in the contest for public favor. ”

“ The Greeks had arrived at a high degree of civilization before they can be said to have possessed a history of their own. Nations far behind them in intellectual development have infinitely excelled them in this respect. The imagination seems to have been entirely dazzled and fascinated with the glories of the heroic ages, and to have taken but little interest in the events which were daily passing around them. Poetry constitutes the chief part of early Greek literature. We give specimens of both Greek poetry and prose. ”

“ If we may use a metaphor, in the Greek view art is the consciousness of life. Poetry is more philosophic and more highly serious than history, just as the mind of a man is more significant than his outward gestures. To make those gestures significant the art of the actor must be called into play. So to make the outward event of history significant the poet's art is needed. Therefore a criticism which is based on the Greek view is impelled to assign to art a place, the place of sovereignty in its scheme of values. ”

“ The Greek poet describes these things with the same vividness and freshness, the same kind of fondness, with which other poets speak of flowers; speaking of them poetically, indeed, but with that higher sort of poetry which seems full of the lively impression of delightful things recently seen. Genuine poetry, it is true, is always naturally sympathetic with all beautiful sensible things and qualities. ”

“ The beings of Greek, mythology are idealized and etherealized by the new souls which he puts into them, making them think his thoughts and say his words. In reading this, as in reading most of his poetry, we feel that, unable to cope with the evils and wrongs of the world as it and they are, he constructs a new universe, wherein he may rule according to his will; and a good will in the main it is—good always in intent, good generally in form and utterance. ”

“ Greek lyric poetry as we know it was in its beginning when the light of epic poetry was waning, and it passed its highest glory before dramatic poetry reached its zenith. And though the drama had but a short life, its glory was passing before the historian's art was perfected, and this in turn yielded to oratory and the dialogues of Philosophy. Bucolic poetry was the only new kind of literature to be developed after the middle of the fourth century before the beginning of our era. ”

“ Without a correct and thorough knowledge of Greek literature, no man can aspire to an exalted position in poetry and science; and without a correct and thorough study of Greek art, no man can become an artist. We do not recommend a slavish imitation of the Greeks, but a thorough understanding of their slow development, through the phases of unconscious reproduction and systematically conscious creation, to the philosophical appreciation of beauty, which enabled them to reflect in their works of art the eternal types of Nature in an idealised form. ”

“ There is, indeed, every proof that Greek art was the joint product of the Egyptian and Assyrian civilizations. Their amalgamation gave birth to the archaic style, struggling to express the strength and the beauty of [Pg 35] man—half heroic, half divine. Gradually, all the surrounding decorations of life assumed as a governing principle and motive, the worth of noble beauty.
The Greeks were the first artists. They broke away from the ancient trammels of customary forms, and replaced law with liberty of thought, and tradition with poetry. ”

“ In Greek thought, as elsewhere, there are periods of stagnation and apparent retrogression, yet their intellectual development, not merely in the question of historical criticism, but in their art, their poetry and their philosophy, seems so essentially normal, so free from all disturbing external influences, so peculiarly rational, that in following in the footsteps of time we shall really be progressing in the order sanctioned by reason. ”