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From, R. W. Livingstone, Literature,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 20
The art of Homer has the same quality of detachment. He is a Greek, writing of a ten years' war between Greeks and Asiatics, yet most of his readers sympathize with Hector rather than with Achilles. He himself preferred neither, but saw and felt equally with both; with the hero who fought the losing battle for Troy, and with him who lost his friend, and, intoxicated with sorrow, could see and feel nothing but a passion of revenge. It would seem hardly possible to write the close of the 22nd Book of the Iliad, where the heroes meet, without taking sides; we, no doubt, should take Hector's side. But Homer stands apart from the quarrel, and sees both men and the feelings of both, writing with the pen of the Recording Angel, not of the Judge. What he or Thucydides thought in each case can only be guessed at. They have presented the facts without comment, and the facts tell their own tale, explain themselves, carry with them the feelings they should evoke, and shine by their own light, like the phosphorescence of the sea.
Little thinking is needed to see that the direct, detached, objective temper is the generative principle of the Greek achievement, for it is the parent of science and philosophy, which are the children of a desire to see things in themselves as they are, and not as the seer might wish them to be. The effects of this temper in poetry can be appreciated by a comparison of certain phenomena of our own literature which are absent from Greek. The comparison will indicate, too, what modern writers can learn from the Greeks, and enable us to judge whether the lessons are needed.
The habit of keeping the eye on the subject, which is the essence of directness, discourages, and indeed excludes, conventionality, sentimentalism, fancifulness, which prevent a writer from seeing and recording life as it is. These failings are always with us, and as I have given one instance of their working in Ben Jonson's epigram and have discussed the matter elsewhere,[120] I shall pass to diseases which are more particularly modern, and with which directness is equally at war.
[120] The Greek Genius and its Meaning to us, pp. 74 ff.
Cf. Elpenor's Bilingual Anthology of Greek Literature * Greek History Resources
A History of Greek Philosophy * A Sketch of the history of Greek literature
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/livingstone-greek-literature.asp?pg=20
