Livingstone, On the Ancient Greek Literature

Page 29

Could I take me to some cavern for mine hiding, In the hill-tops where the Sun scarce hath trod; Or a cloud make the home of mine abiding, As a bird among the bird-droves of God! Could I wing me to my rest amid the roar Of the deep Adriatic on the shore, Where the water of Eridanus is clear, And Phaëthon's sad sisters by his grave Weep into the river, and each tear Gleams, a drop of amber, in the wave.[124]

[124] ll. 732 f. (tr. Murray).

The union of beauty and tragedy may be a paradox, but no reader can miss its power. The mere story of Hector's death as told by Homer is poignant, even when read in an English translation: the magic of the original language and metre doubles the effect. The combination of these two apparently inconsistent things, which is one of the marks of Greek poetry, is, of course, found in other literatures; the description of Ophelia's death in Hamlet is an instance of it. But no drama except Greek has that regular interweaving of tragedy with exquisite lyrics by which some of its most powerful effects are secured.

Effect is the wrong word to use, for we have here no literary trick, but a view of life, which is naturally complete and clearsighted, which is sensitive to the beauty that no evil can destroy, which sees the splendour in tragedy itself, and remembers that though the days of darkness are many it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun. This philosophy, implied throughout Greek literature, commends it to many people. Those who disagree with the philosophy will not quarrel with the beauty itself. Hellenism is one of the forces which are continually being buried and re-found, and which, like talismans, have a disturbing power when they fall afresh into human hands. Those who read the literature of the age which rediscovered Greek will see that it brought above all a sense of liberation and expansion. At the Renaissance as in the eighteenth century, Greece found the world in chains, and broke them and threw down the prison walls. The fetters of the two epochs were different, but freedom was brought, at the Renaissance partly, and in the age of Winckelmann entirely, by the vision of beauty which Greece exhibited. Our own age has many chains and knows well the burden of which Goethe spoke. It has multiplied ugliness far faster than beauty, and its writers, prolific, interesting, and thoughtful as they are, do not help it here. It may well find, as other ages have found, in this quality of Greek literature a healing and liberating power.

Previous Page / First / Next

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