Chorus gained a certain freedom in what might be called its
interjectional duty,--its duty, that is to say, of helping the plot
along by proper questions, and so forth. It gained also a Protean
freedom in its emotional interpretations during pauses. The playwrights
apparently discovered that by the use of music and dancing, the most
subtle and delicate, nay, the most whimsical varieties of lyrical mood
could be conveyed to great audiences. In spite of this license, however,
the old duties of the Chorus as guardians of conservative morality
remained unchanged; and the stock phrases of exhortation and warning
remained _de rigueur_ in the expectation of the audience. Their meaning
had become so well known that, by the time of AEschylus, they were
expressed in algebraic terms.
No man could to-day unravel a Chorus of AEschylus if only one such Chorus
existed. The truncated phrases and elliptical thoughts are clear, to us,
because we have learned their meaning through reiteration, and because
they always mean the same thing. The poet has a license to provide the
Chorus with dark sayings,--dark in form, but simple in import. It was,
indeed, his duty to give these phrases an oracular character. In the
course of time such phrases became the terror of the copyists. Obscure
passages became corrupt in process of transcription; and thus we have
inherited a whole class of choral wisdom which we understand _well
enough_ (just as the top gallery understood it _well enough_) to help us
in our enjoyment of the play. The obscurity, and perhaps even some part
of what we call 'corruption,' are here a part of the stage convention.
Now with regard to the _Bacchantes_--the scheme of having Maenads for a
Chorus gave splendid promise of scenic effect; and the fact that, as a
logical consequence, these ladies would have to give utterance to the
usual maxims of piety, mixed in with the rhapsodies of their
professional madness, did not daunt Euripides. He simply makes the
Chorus do the usual chorus work, without burdening his mind about
character-drawing. Thus the Maenads, at moments when they are not
pretending to be Maenads, and are not singing, 'Away to the mountains, O
the foot of the stag,' and so on, are obliged to turn the other cheek,
and pretend to be interested by-standers--old gaffers, wagging their
beards, and quoting the book of Proverbs. The transition from one mood
to the other is done in a stroke of lightning, and seems to be
independent of the music. That is, it _seems_ to make no difference, so
long as the musical schemes are filled out, whether the ladies are
singing, 'On with the dance, let joy be unconfined!' or, 'True wisdom
differs from sophistry, and consists in avoiding subjects that are
beyond mortal comprehension.' All such discrepancies would, no doubt,
have been explained if we possessed the music; but the music is lost. It
seems, at any rate, certain that the grand public was not expected to
understand the word-for-word meaning of choruses; hence their license to
be obscure. We get the same impression from the jibes of Aristophanes,
whose ridicule of the pompous obscurity of AEschylus makes us suspect
that the audiences could not follow the grammar in the lofty parts of
the tragedy. They accepted the drum-roll of horror, and understood the
larger grammar of tragedy, much as we are now forced to do in reading
the plays.
It would seem that by following the technique of tragedy, and by giving
no thought to small absurdities, Euripides got a double effect out of
his Maenads and no one observed that anything was wrong. In one place he
resorts to a dramatic device, which was perhaps well known in his day,
namely, the 'conversion' of a bystander. After the First Messenger has
given the great description of Dionysus's doings in the mountains, the
Chorus, or one of them, with overpowering yet controlled emotion, steps
forward and says, 'I tremble to speak free words in the presence of my
King; yet nevertheless be it said: Dionysus is no less a god than the
greatest of them!' This reference to the duty of a subject is probably
copied from a case where the Chorus was made up of local bystanders. In
the mouth of a Maenad the proclamation is logically ridiculous; yet so
strange are the laws of what 'goes' on the stage that it may have been
effective even here.
Some of the choruses in the _Bacchantes_ are miracles of poetic beauty,
of savage passion, of liquid power. It is hard to say exactly what they
are, but they are wonderful. And behind all, there gleams from the whole
play a sophistication as deep as the AEgean.
VI
There is one thing that we should never do in dealing with anything
Greek. We should not take a scrap of the Greek mind and keep on
examining it until we find a familiar thought in it. No bit of Greek
art is to be viewed as a thing in itself. It is always a fragment, and
gets its value from the whole. Every bit of carved stone picked up in
Athens is a piece of architecture; so is every speech in a play, every
phrase in a dialogue. You must go back and bring in the whole Theatre or
the whole Academy, and put back the fragment in its place by means of
ladders, before you can guess at its meaning. The inordinate
significance that seems to gleam from every broken toy of Greece,
results from this very quality--that the object is a part of something
else. Just because the thing has no meaning by itself, it implies so
much. Somehow it drags the whole life of the Greek nation before you.
The favorite Greek maxim, 'Avoid excess,' does the same. It keeps
telling you to remember yesterday and to-morrow; to remember the
_palaestra_ and the market-place; above all to remember that the very
opposite of what you say is also true. Wherever you are, and whatever
doing, you must remember the _rest_ of the Greek world.
It is no wonder that the Greeks could not adopt the standards and
contrivances of other nations, while their own standards and
contrivances resulted from such refined and perpetual balancing and
shaving of values. This refinement has become part of their daily life;
and whether one examines a drinking cup or a dialogue or a lyric, and
whether the thing be from the age of Homer or from the age of
Alexander, the fragment always gives us a glimpse into the same Greek
world. The foundation of this world seems to be the Myth; and as the
world grew it developed in terms of Myth. The Greek mind had only one
background. Athletics and Statuary, Epic and Drama, Religion and Art,
Skepticism and Science expressed themselves through the same myths. In
this lies the fascination of Greece for us. What a complete cosmos it
is! And how different from any other civilization! Modern life, like
modern language, is a monstrous amalgam, a conglomeration and mess of
idioms from every age and every clime. The classic Greek hangs together
like a wreath. It has been developed rapidly, during a few hundred
years, and has an inner harmony like the temple. Language and
temple--each was an apparition; each is, in its own way, perfect.
Consider wherein Rome differed from Greece. The life of the Romans was a
patchwork, like our own. Their religion was formal, their art imported,
their literature imitative, their aims were practical, their interests
unimaginative. All social needs were controlled by political
considerations. This sounds almost like a description of modern life;
and it explains why the Romans are so close to us. Cicero, Horace,
Caesar, Antony, are moderns. But Alcibiades, Socrates, Pericles, and the
rest take their stand in Greek fable. Like Pisistratus, Solon, and
Lycurgus, they melt into legend and belong to the realms of the
imagination.
No other people ever bore the same relation to their arts that the
Greeks bore; and in this lies their charm. When the Alexandrine critics
began to classify poetry and to discuss perfection, they never even
mentioned the Roman poetry, although all of the greatest of it was in
existence. Why is this? It is because no Roman poem is a poem at all
from the Greek point of view. It is too individual, too clever, and,
generally, too political. Besides, it is not in Greek. The nearest
modern equivalent to the development of the whole Greek world of art is
to be found in German contrapuntal music. No one except a German has
ever written a true sonata or a symphony, in the true polyphonic German
style. There are _tours de force_ done by other nationalities; but the
natural idiom of this music is Teutonic.
I am not condemning the Latins, or the moderns. Indeed, there is in
Horace something nobler and more humane than in all Olympus. The Greeks,
moreover, seem in their civic incompetence like children, when
contrasted with the Romans or with the moderns. But in power of
utterance, within their own crafts, the Greeks are unapproachable. Let
us now speak of matters of which we know very little.
The statues on the Parthenon stand in a region where direct criticism
cannot reach them, but which trigonometry may, to some extent,
determine. Their beauty probably results from an artistic knowledge so
refined, a sophistication so exact, that, as we gaze, we lose the
process and see only results. A Greek architect could have told you just
what lines of analysis must be followed in order to get these effects in
grouping and in relief. It is all, no doubt, built up out of _tonic_ and
_dominant_--but the manual of counter-point has been lost. As the tragic
poet fills the stage with the legend, so the sculptor fills the metope
with the legend. Both are closely following artistic usage: each is
merely telling the old story with new refinement. And whether we gaze at
the actors on the stage or at the figures in the metope, whether we
study a lyric or listen to a dialogue, we are in communion with the same
genius, the same legend. The thing which moves and delights us is a
unity.
This Genius is not hard to understand. Any one can understand it. That
is the proof of its greatness. As Boccaccio said of Dante, not learning
but good wits are needed to appreciate him. One cannot safely look
toward the mind of the modern scholar for an understanding of the Greek
mind, because the modern scholar is a specialist--a thing the Greek
abhors. If a scholar to-day knows the acoustics of the Greek stage, that
is thought to be a large enough province for him. He is not allowed to
be an authority on the scenery. In the modern scholar's mind everything
is in cubby-holes; and everybody to-day wants to become an authority.
Every one, moreover, is very serious to-day; and it does not do to be
too serious about Greek things, because the very genius of Greece has in
it a touch of irony, which combines with our seriousness to make a
heavy, indigestible paste. The Greek will always laugh at you if he can,
and the only hope is to keep him at arm's length, and deal with him in
the spirit of social life, of the world, of the _beau monde_, and of
large conversation. His chief merit is to stimulate this spirit. The
less we dogmatize about his works and ways, the freer will the world be
of secondary, second-rate commentaries. The more we study his works and
ways, the fuller will the world become of intellectual force.
The Greek classics are a great help in tearing open those strong
envelopes in which the cultivation of the world is constantly getting
glued up. They helped Europe to cut free from theocratic tyranny in the
late Middle Ages. They held the Western world together after the fall of
the Papacy. They gave us modern literature: indeed, if one considers all
that comes from Greece, one can hardly imagine what the world would have
been like without her. The lamps of Greek thought are still burning in
marble and in letters. The complete little microcosm of that Greek
society hangs forever in the great macrocosm of the moving world, and
sheds rays which dissolve prejudice, making men thoughtful, rational,
and gay. The greatest intellects are ever the most powerfully affected
by it; but no one escapes. Nor can the world ever lose this benign
influence, which must, so far as philosophy can imagine, qualify human
life forever.
[Illustration]
In Praise of Old Ladies
By Lucy Martin Donnelly
It is everywhere the custom, in life, in literature, to celebrate the
young girl; to praise her pink cheeks, her shining hair, her innocence,
her gayeties--her muslins, even, and blue ribbons. She has become in
these latter days a proverb, a type--_la jeune fille_. Yet, to the
discreet observer how gaudy is her charm, how showy and unsubstantial,
and of the day only, when matched with graces like those of the truly
incomparable old lady! It is an antique convention that hurries off old
age with decrepitude and care and quavering palsy. And it may be that
the old gentleman is unamiable; that, his days of strenuousness fairly
over, he becomes crabbed, a lover of snuff, and unpoetical. But the old
lady is a creature of another quality. The refinements of age only
enhance the femininity of her charm; to her, whimsicalities, delicate
occupations, the fine lines that etch themselves expressively across her
brow and about her mouth, are all vastly becoming. With what ineffable
grace, moreover, she pronounces certain words in the elegant fashion of
an age ago! How softly the old Indian shawls she wears fall about her
shoulders! What strange, unlikely stories she tells of the beginning of
the century!
I am indeed no novice to her charms. I have been victim to the
enchantments of a long line of old ladies from my earliest years upward.
When my frocks were still short and I still suffered under the ignominy
of pinafores, I remember very well following a friend of my
grandmother's about, and fetching big books for her. She was an
exceedingly learned old lady, I take it; indeed, my grandmother always
spoke of her as strong-minded, wherefore I am sometimes led to doubt
whether she would so unreservedly have pleased my maturer taste. But in
those early days my devotion impelled me even to the point of learning
the alphabets of the curious languages she read. What constituted her
peculiar, her romantic charm, however, was the fact that she had
traveled in many far-away countries. I always understood it was their
strange suns that had turned her skin the yellow color of old parchment,
and stopped the whitening of her hair at a grizzly gray. This particular
ugly gray I admired along with the rest: it suggested worldly
sophistication and a cosmopolitan experience, as did no less her deep
voice and blue-veined hands, and her habit of taking a vigorous walk in
the morning, before breakfast. Her daughter, she told me, was named
Aurore. How I wished that I myself had been favored with such a name!
My grandmother was very different--much prettier and gentler, no doubt;
but her daughters bore such stiff, old-fashioned names as Anne and
Emeline, and she herself had seldom left New England, and took only a
short walk in the sun at noonday, under a tiny black silk parasol. At
other times she sat beside her work-table, which had legs of twisted
mahogany, and a crimson silk bag hanging down from the middle in a way I
never understood. Out of this she occasionally brought scraps of faded
old brocades,--pink and green they would be, with a rare yellow, or a
blue still a little gay; and now and then, when the winter evenings
until my bedtime were long, she even found bright-colored beads in a
small drawer at the side. Although she had been 'a proficient' in music
as a girl, I think she knew no language save English. Emerson she read
chiefly; the prayers of Theodore Parker; black volumes of sermons by
William Ellery Channing; and sometimes, to me, in a very soft voice,
Whittier's poems. In the late afternoons she was accustomed to play at
solitaire, letting me sit at a corner of the table to look on. Not
infrequently, when excited by the odds against which we were fighting, I
forgot to hold up my head, and my long brown curls, falling down among
the cards, threw them into disarray, and obliged me to sit at a
penitential distance. My grandmother did not choose to be interrupted.
But all the games in turn she invariably won by a deft rearrangement of
the cards when she saw them going wrong. 'With one's self, you know, my
dear,' she would say, judiciously distributing diamonds among the
spades,--'with one's self it is quite understood.'
Since the days of my grandmother and her friends I have known a hundred
other old ladies, if none more charming. There are, I dare say, persons
who, in going about the world, meet people of other sorts: actors,
perhaps, or ladies of fashion, or diplomatists,--first of all, I fancy,
to be desired,--or spiritualists, or musicians. Personally, I never fall
in with any one except old ladies. In a railway train, for example, I am
sure to find myself opposite or beside one, and of late years they have
generally had birds with them.
The first I remember--with a bird, that is--was in a German railway
carriage going from Berlin to Hanover. At least, my destination was
Hanover; the old lady herself was on her way home to Duesseldorf. She had
been visiting her nephews and nieces in Berlin; she had a great many of
them, she told me. From her fingers, covered with old pearl and diamond
rings, I gathered that she was very rich; and from the bouquets of many
colors, ranged in the luggage-rack above her head, that the nephews and
nieces were trying to persuade her to leave them her fortune. She wore,
nevertheless, an air of extreme detachment, holding her long netted silk
purse--through whose meshes the Prussian gold gleamed--tightly clasped
between two fat fingers. Altogether she was a very portly and
regal-looking person, and gave you the impression of being dressed in
black velvet, though in point of fact I do not think that she was. But
her mantle was fringed heavily several times about, and her hat--for she
wore a hat with a brim that dropped slightly, discreetly, all
around--was also bordered by a black fringe that just cleared her faded
eyebrows and her black beady eyes. She had a gouty foot, too,--she was
quite complete,--that rested on a little folding stool she had brought
with her; and she rang imperiously for the guard. When he came she
ordered coffee, bullying the cream-faced Teuton into bringing a double
portion of sugar to feed her bird, a little green creature, disposed
among the flowers above her head. It was with a good deal of difficulty
that she struggled up to reach him, but to have him handed down would,
she said, excite him unnecessarily. 'Mein Maennchen, mein Maennchen,' she
murmured in a deep, tender tone, as she fed him each successive crumb.
After feasting the bird she turned her attention to me, and asking to
see the book that I was absorbed in, she kept it until we arrived at
Hanover. I had evidently read too much in trains, she remarked, alluding
to my eye-glasses. Americans, she knew, were very foolish. Then she
asked me the price of everything in the States, and of my traveling bag
in particular, and quarreled with me as to the number of marks in a
dollar. 'You'll find that I am right,' she assured me, as I was
squeezing myself and the brown leather bag she admired out of the narrow
door of the German coupe. 'You'll find there are six marks in every
dollar. Auf wiedersehen, Fraeulein.'
The last of my old ladies with birds I met only a month or two ago, on
the way from London down to Southsea,--the one place in all the world, I
suppose, whither a thin spinster, accompanied by a ragged-tailed bird
named Tip, should be traveling. She was, of course, very different from
the German dowager; not so far on in years, and, as I indicated,
exaggeratedly thin; shy, furthermore, and dressed in a worn black-silk
gown, with a lace collar at her throat drawn together by a hair brooch.
And she spoke only from time to time, to inquire if we must change
carriages at Woking; meanwhile looking a little greedily from Tip to the
seedcakes in the hands of three English schoolgirls, who, with shortish
frocks and longish hair hanging over their shoulders, sat in a row on my
side of the carriage, and scattered crumbs enough to have fattened a
family of partridges.
Old ladies at sea, though there without the embellishments of flowers
and birds, I have found no less attractive than on land. I fell in with
a party of them in the early summer, on their way to Carlsbad to drink
the waters; with the exception, that is, of two or three whose
destination was Kissingen, and who disbelieved altogether, I learned
when we were a few days out from New York, in the rheumatism of the
Carlsbad-bound ladies. Carlsbad, they assured me,--punctuating their
remarks with sniffs of their smelling-bottles as I tucked cushions
behind their poor backs,--Carlsbad was all fine clothes and frivolity
and band music (than which surely nothing has a more wicked sound), and
was by no means the place a person really ill would dream of retiring to
for her health's sake.
But it matters very little whether I travel in trains or in ships, or
whether I rest quietly at home, my companions are rarely of my own age.
If I am asked out to luncheon to meet the wife of a melancholy doubtful
poet who died young, and on my way to the house in question dwell, not
unnaturally, on her youthful tragic grief, on my arrival I find myself
confronted by a fat, kindly old lady, crowned with a large black-beaded
bonnet that shows a bunch of purple flowers above either ear. If I go to
visit some beautiful house secluded in the country, it is an old lady
who stands on the threshold. I remember such a mansion, built in Tudor
times, and topped with chimneys calculated to make you sigh your soul
away in longing; it had once been the dower house of an English queen,
and in front of it two peacocks paraded proudly all day long. Others, I
knew, went to admire it, and were entertained by the granddaughter, or
at least by the middle-aged daughter, of its mistress. Not so on the
sunny morning of my visit. Lady W---- herself was working among the
flowers in her garden, and herself showed me back to the cascade and the
tulip tree, stepping over the lawn with the spirit of a girl, and
apologizing with a girl's vanity, too, for her garden hat and gloves.
She was the very flower and mirror of all the old ladies I have ever
known; conscious, if you will, of her charm, and all the more charming
for that. She led me into the drawing room--she knew she held my heart
in her hand--to see her portrait, which, though painted by a celebrated
artist, made her look very like any other old lady in velvet and a
bonnet and furs. Her great gayety, her beautiful eyes, the sweet curving
lines about her mouth, were all forgotten. 'I don't know,' she said to
me a little stiffly, as she paused before it, and for a moment glanced
across to her maternal grandmother done by Reynolds, with pink cheeks,
and with a pink rose in her hand instead of a muff, 'I don't know, my
dear, whether it is like or not, but certainly it is a very odd
picture.'