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INITIATION INTO LITERATURE
By Émile Faguet
Translated From The French By Sir Home Gordon, Bart.
The Translator begs to acknowledge with appreciation the courtesy of the
Author in graciously consenting to make some valuable additions, at his
request, specially for the English version.
PREFACE
This volume, as indicated by the title, is designed to show the way to
the beginner, to satisfy and more especially to excite his initial
curiosity. It affords an adequate idea of the march of facts and of
ideas. The reader is led, somewhat rapidly, from the remote origins to
the most recent efforts of the human mind.
It should be a convenient repertory to which the mind may revert in order
to see broadly the general opinion of an epoch--and what connected it
with those that followed or preceded it. It aims above all at being _a
frame_ in which can conveniently be inscribed, in the course of
further studies, new conceptions more detailed and more thoroughly
examined.
It will have fulfilled its design should it incite to research and
meditation, and if it prepares for them correctly.
E. FAGUET.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT INDIA
The Vedas. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very Diverse, much
Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.
CHAPTER II
HEBRAIC LITERATURE
The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and Sententious
Writings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels.
CHAPTER III
THE GREEKS
Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers and
Historians. Lyric Poets, Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers.
CHAPTER IV
THE LATINS
The Latins, Imitators of the Greeks. Epic Poets. Dramatic Poets. Golden
Age: Virgil, Horace, Ovid. Silver Age: Prose Writers, Historians, and
Philosophers: Titus-Livy, Tacitus, Seneca. Decadence Still Brilliant.
CHAPTER V
THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE
_Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. Popular
Epopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables.
Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama.
CHAPTER VI
THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND
Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor of
English Literature: Chaucer.
CHAPTER VII
THE MIDDLE AGES: GERMANY
Epic Poems: _Nibelungen_. Popular Poems. Very Numerous Lyric Poems.
Drama.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MIDDLE AGES: ITALY
Troubadours of Southern Italy. Neapolitan and Sicilian Poets: Dante,
Petrarch, Boccaccio.
CHAPTER IX
THE MIDDLE AGES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Epic Poems: _Romanceros_. Didactic Books. Romances of Chivalry.
CHAPTER X
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; Prose
Writers: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets:
"The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe,
Corneille; Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine; Prose
Writers: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fénelon, etc.
CHAPTER XI
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND
Dramatists: Marlowe, Shakespeare. Prose Writers: Sidney, Francis Bacon,
etc. Epic Poet: Milton. Comic Poets.
CHAPTER XII
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY
Luther, Zwingli, Albert Dürer, Leibnitz, Gottsched.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY
Poets: Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, Folengo, Marini, etc. Prose Writers:
Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Davila.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
Poets: Quevedo, Gongora, Lope de Vega, Ercilla, Calderon, Rojas, etc.
Prose Writers: Montemayor, Cervantes, etc. Portugal: De Camoèns, etc. The
Stage.
CHAPTER XV
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of the
Eighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc.;
Prose Writers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc.
Of the Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny,
etc.; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Mérimée,
Renan, etc.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND
Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc. Prose
Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding,
Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron,
Shelley, the Lake Poets. Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: Walter
Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle.
CHAPTER XVII
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY
Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland. Prose
Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the Nineteenth
Century: Goethe, Schiller, Körner.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY
Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers:
Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc.
CHAPTER XIX
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN
The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers,
Novelists, Orators.
CHAPTER XX
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the Seventeenth
Century. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century.
Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century.
CHAPTER XXI
POLISH LITERATURE
At an Early Date Western Influence Sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth Century
Brilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries highly Cultured;
Nineteenth Century Notably Original.
INDEX
INITIATION INTO LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
ANCIENT INDIA
The _Vedas_. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very
Diverse, much Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.
THE _VEDAS_.--The ancient Indians, who spoke Sanscrit, possess a
literature which goes back, perhaps, to the fifteenth century before
Christ. At first, like all other races, they possessed a sacred
literature intimately bound up with their religion. The earliest volumes
of sacred literature are the _Vedas_. They describe and glorify the
gods then worshipped, to wit, Agni, god of fire, of the domestic hearth,
of the celestial fire (the sun), of the atmospheric fire (lightning);
Indra, god of atmosphere, analogous to Zeus of the Greeks; Soma, the
moon; Varuna, the nocturnal vault, the god who rewards the good and
punishes the evil; Rudra, the irascible god, more evil than well
disposed, though sometimes helpful; others too, very numerous.
The style of the _Vedas_ is continually poetic and metaphorical.
They contain a sort of metaphysics as well as continual allegories.
BUDDHA.--Buddhism, a philosophical religion, sufficiently analogous to
Christianity, which Sakyamuni, surnamed Buddha (the wise), spread through
India towards 550 B.C., created a new literature. It taught, as will be
remembered, the equality of all castes in the sight of religion,
metempsychosis, charity, and detachment from all passions and desires in
order to arrive at absolute calm (_nirvana_). The literature it
inspired was primarily _gnomic_, that is, sententious, analogous to
that of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales and
parables, as in the Gospel.
This literature subsequently expanded into large and even immense epic
poems, of which the principal are the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_.
THE _MAHABHARATA_; THE _RAMAYANA_.--The _Mahabharata_ (that is, the
_great history of the Bharatas_) is a legend or a novel in verse
intersected with moral digressions, with episodes vaguely related to the
subject, with discourses and prayers. There are charming episodes full of
delicate sensibility, of moving tenderness--that is to say, of human
beauty, comparable to the farewells of Hector and Andromache in Homer;
and everywhere, amid tediousness and monotony, is found a powerful and
superabundant imagination.
The _Ramayana_, the name of the author of which, Valmiki, has come
down to us, is a poem yet more vast and unequal. There are portions which
to us are quite unreadable, and there are others comparable to the most
imposing and most touching in all epic poetry. Reduced to its theme, the
subject of _Mahabharata_ is extremely simple; it is the history of
Prince Rama, dispossessed of his throne, who saw his beloved wife, Sita,
ravished by the monstrous demon Ravana, who made alliance with the good
monkeys and with them constructed a bridge over the sea to reach the
island on which Sita was detained, who vanquished and slew Ravana, who
re-found Sita, and finally went back happily to his kingdom, which had
also been re-conquered.
The most noticeable exterior characteristic of the _Mahabharata_ is
the almost constant mingling of men and animals, a mingling which one
feels is in conformity with the dogma of the transmigration of souls. Not
only monkeys but vultures, eagles, gazelles, etc., are brought into the
work and form important personages. We are in the epoch when the animals
spoke. Battles are numerous and described in great detail; the
_Ramayana_ is the _Iliad_ of the Indians; pathetic scenes, as
well as those of love, of friendship, of gratitude are not rare, and are
sometimes exquisite. The whole poem is imbued with a great feeling of
humanity, heroism, and justice. Victory is to the good and right is
triumphant; the gods permit that the just should suffer and be compelled
to struggle; but invariably it is only for a time and the merited
happiness is at the end of all.
After these two vast giant epics there were written among the Indians a
number of shorter narrative poems, very varied both in tone and manner,
which suggest an uninterrupted succession of highly important and
animated schools of literature. Nearer to our own time--that is, towards
the fifth or sixth century of our era, lyric poetry and the drama were,
as it were, detached from the epopee and existed on their own merits.
Songs of love, of hate, of sadness, or of triumph took ample scope; they
were more often melancholy than sad, for India is the land of optimism,
or at least of resignation.
DRAMATIC POETRY.--As for the dramatic poetry, that is very curious; it is
not mixed with epopee in the precise sense of the word; but it is
continually mingled with descriptions of nature, with word-paintings of
nature and invocations to nature. The Indian dramatic poet did not
separate man from the air he breathed nor from the world around him; in
recalling the moment of the day or night in which the scene takes place,
_the actual hour_, the poet, no doubt in obedience to a law dictated
to him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earth
and heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the evening
he caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving,
the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning to their
habitation, etc.
From the purely dramatic aspect, these plays are often affecting or
curious, possessing penetrating and thoughtful psychology. The most
celebrated dramas still left to us of the Indian stage are _The Chariot
of Baked Clay_ and the affecting and delicate _Sakuntala_ the gem
of Indian literature, the work of the poet Kalidas, who was also a
remarkable lyric poet.
GNOMIC POETRY.--Gnomic, that is sententious, poetry, which, it has been
indicated, very early enjoyed high appreciation among the Indians, long
continued to obtain their approval. It was always wise and often
intellectual. The collection of Barthari, who belonged to the sixth or
seventh century A.D., contains thoughts which would do honour to the
highest moralists of the most enlightened epochs. "The fortune, ample or
restricted, which the Creator hath inscribed on thy forehead thou wilt
assuredly attain; wert thou in the desert or in the gold-mines of Meru,
more couldst thou not acquire. Therefore, of what avail to torment
thyself and to humiliate thyself before the powerful. A pot does not draw
more water from the sea than from a well."
And this might be by a modern man opposing La Rochefoucauld: "The modest
man is one poor in spirit, the devout a hypocrite, the honest man is
artful, the hero is a barbarian, the ascetic is a fool, the unreserved
a chatterbox, the prudent a waverer. Tell me, which is the virtue among
all the virtues that human malice cannot vilify?"
Here, finally, is a truth for all time: "It is easy to persuade the
ignorant, still easier to persuade the very wise; but he who hath a
commencement of wisdom Brahma himself could not cajole."
Indian literature continued to be productive, though losing much of its
fecundity, until the fifteenth or sixteenth century of our era. Without
exaggeration, it is permissible to conject that its scope extended over
twenty-five centuries. It possesses the uniquely honourable trait that it
is, assuredly, the only one which owes nothing to any other and is
literally indigenous.