Livingstone, On the Ancient Greek Literature

Page 17

Nor again is the Greek truthfulness identical with objectivity. An objective writer tells his story and conveys his impressions, as far as possible, by relating facts without commenting upon them. Dramatists and novelists are compelled by the nature of their art to be objective in this sense of the word (though Fielding and Thackeray in the one field, and Ibsen and Shaw in the other, manage to make their comments with their own lips, not those of their characters). But such a writer would not of necessity be more truthful or impartial than any one else. He can distort truth as thoroughly by selecting certain facts and ignoring others as by making misleading comments. He may be violently one-sided and present only the facts that support his view, thus indirectly putting himself into what he writes quite as fully as a confessed partizan, though less openly. Such a writer is objective, but his objectivity with him is no more than a literary method. Now it is true that the Greeks use this method, telling a story without personal comments, not only in their epics and plays where this method is natural, but also in their histories and elsewhere. Thucydides for instance tells the story of a great war, yet his comments on it are few, and are mainly given in the dramatic and would-be objective form of speeches by leading men of the day. But the Greeks have objectivity in a far more important sense than this. Their objectivity is no literary device but a quality of mind. They have the power of standing aloof from matters in which they are personally interested, and surveying them from outside like impartial spectators, with the keenest interest, but without bias. As the Delphic priestess in the act of prophecy lost her individuality and became the mouthpiece of the god, so the Greek allowed facts to speak for themselves, became their mouthpiece and banished the intrusive ego. If therefore we call the Greeks objective, all this must be included in our definition of the word.

We shall understand Greek 'truthfulness' best, if, dropping philosophical terms, and forgetting modern meanings, we remember a saying of Anaxagoras, who, when asked for what purpose he was born, replied: 'To contemplate the works of nature.' The disinterested passion for contemplating things, which gathered inquiring groups round Socrates to discuss what justice and friendship mean, or whether goodness is knowledge and can be learnt, has its counterpart in literature. The Greeks were fascinated by the spectacle of man and the world, and their fascination is seen not only in their formal philosophy. Of their poets too it may be said that they were born to see the world and human life—not to moralize or to indulge in sentiment or rhetoric or mysticism about it, but to see it. Keats's description of the poetic temperament fits them closely: 'It has no self, it is everything and nothing.... It enjoys light and shade.... A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, he is continually in, for, and filling some other body.' In such a mood men will write literature that may justly be called truthful. Avoiding the didactic, they will not distort truth to suit personal bias; avoiding rhetoric, they will not sacrifice it to fine phrases; avoiding sentiment and fancy, they will not gratify their own or their hearer's feelings at the expense of truth; avoiding mysticism, they will not move away from facts into a world of emotions. Their care will be to see things, and their delight will be in the mere vision. They will echo the words of Keats, 'If a sparrow comes before my windows, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel'[117]: they will not treat it as Shelley treats the skylark, or even as Keats and Wordsworth treat the nightingale. Herein is one of the secrets of Greek poetry, for the Greek poets, more than any others, bring us in a manner entirely simple and natural into immediate contact with what they describe, and thus escape the thousand distortions for which epigram, rhetoric, sentiment, fancy, mysticism and romanticism are responsible. This secret may be called 'directness'. It is the habit of looking straight and steadily at things, and describing them as they are, the very contrary of the habit of didactic comment and of rhetorical or emotional inflation. The 'direct' writer, in the fullest extent that is possible, keeps himself and his feelings in the background. He does not allow the mists which rise from a man's personality to come between him and his subject.

[117] I have taken these quotations of Keats from Bradley, Oxford Lecture on Poetry, p. 238.

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R. W. Livingstone
On the Ancient Greek Literature

Learned Freeware

R. W. Livingstone On the Ancient Greek Literature

Learned Freeware

R. W. Livingstone
On the Ancient Greek Literature