anything that pleases everybody. There are on the one side scholars
who think that our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ are only the final versions
of two traditional poems, which were handled by many poets through
a long succession of years. On the other side are those who believe
that the two poems are entirely, or substantially, the work of a
single early poet, who rose so far above his predecessors as to
owe little or nothing to them. This makes it difficult to argue a
point in Homer with any general acceptance. But no student now seems
to deny that Homer—whether we give the name to the one exceptional
early poet or (tentatively) to the last of all those who worked on
the poems—inherited something of his material. He did not invent the
history of Troy, and he had to deal with it as he found it. Now all
this traditional matter—for the matter is traditional whether the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ themselves are traditional poems or not—must
to all appearance have been saturated in the magical. That is the
normal condition of the stuff in which poetry, so far as we can see,
everywhere takes its rise. Besides, the mythology of Greece, which
it is fair to call the stuff of Greek poetry, is full of magic. The
inference is that Homer and the Greek poets in general till the end
of the “Classical” period sought to work out of their matter all that
savoured of the magical.
I think it was Andrew Lang who first pointed out that Homer clearly
avoids telling stories which are “morally objectionable.” Still more
certainly we discover that stories which are quite inoffensive in Homer
are excessively “objectionable” in other writers. What is the meaning
of this? Is it that later generations defiled the golden innocence of
Homeric days in their baser imaginations, or that Homer knew the other,
more savage and ancient-seeming versions, and would not recount them?
For my part I think Homer knew! And I think he knew about the magic
also. There are constant transformations, particularly in the _Iliad_,
of gods into human and animal forms. Is that magic or is it not?
Surely it is all of a piece with the “shape-shiftings” of wizards, so
common in all mythologies; and these are admitted magic. But in the
first place these transformations, as we remarked, are treated with a
light and veiling hand, and secondly they are confined to the gods.
What Homer allows to them he will not allow to mortals. He or his
predecessors have erected the distinction between gods and men which
forms one of the bases of Greek religion. Nay, you can trace in him, I
believe, the beginnings of something more—a reluctance to speak even of
the gods as performing these metamorphoses into brutish form. As a rule
the Greeks did not mind such tales, or even clung to them from motives
which can only be described as “Romantic.” But Homer perhaps softens
them down a good deal, and scarcely deserves the censure of Plato, who
denounces them who would make a wizard of God. The metamorphoses in
Homer are singularly unobtrusive. But why are they there at all? The
answer must surely be because they were in the story and could not be
left out altogether.
Am I forgetting that Homer was a poet and not a moralist? I think not.
I might, with a show of reason, reply that the early Greek poet _was_
a moralist, his aim (as Aristophanes puts it) “to make men better
in their cities.” But I prefer to say that Homer’s objection to the
monstrous and the grossly magical is really an æsthetic one. Other
considerations come in as well, but the æsthetic consideration is
found to be in the long run predominant. I once pointed out that many
of the similes in Homer turn out, on closer examination, to involve
an actual metamorphosis. An actual transformation—say of Athena into
a shooting-star—imperceptibly passes into a mere comparison. This is
one device for reducing the magical element. But there are others.
_So spake she_, says the poet of Helen, when she wondered why her
brethren were not to be descried among the Greek host before Troy.
_So spake she, but them the life-breathing earth was now holding
fast in Lacedaemon, there, in their own native land._ φυσίζοος αἶα,
“life-breathing earth,” as unhappy translators must say, derives half
its poetical value as Ruskin saw (in this case at least justly enough)
from the ancient belief, very strong in old Greece, that Earth was
physically the mother of all life, the dear mother of gods and men.
Again, who cannot see the passage before his eyes of physical into
poetical magic in the lines where Zeus mourns the coming doom of his
son Sarpedon? _“When soul and life have left him, send Death and sweet
Sleep to carry him until they come to the land of broad Lycia, where
his brethren and his kin will make an abiding barrow and pillar for
him; for thus we honour the dead.” So Hera spake, and the Father of
Gods and men obeyed her counsel; and he let fall blood-drops on the
ground, honouring his son, that Patroklos was fated to slay in fruitful
Troyland far from his native land._ What is Romantic poetry if this
is not? And you see how it is produced? By a veiling of the crudely
magical.
It is impossible to resist a little more quotation. _Father_, cries
Telemachus to Odysseus, _verily a great marvel is this that I behold
with mine eyes. Truly, the walls of the chambers, and the fair bases
of the pillars, and the roof-beams of fir, and the columns that hold
all on high are shining to my sight as if from flaming fire. Doubtless
some god is in the house!_ It is in just such a light that we see all
the Homeric world. It is not the witch’s firelight, but it is the light
in which the true poetical magic works. _Unhappy, what curse hath come
upon you? In darkness your heads are rolled, and your faces, and your
knees beneath you; a moan is enkindled, and cheeks are wet, and blood
is on the walls and fair pedestals; ghosts in the doorway, ghosts in
the courtyard of them that hasten to the dark world below; the sun hath
perished out of heaven, and an evil mist is over you!_ So cries in the
_Odyssey_ the man with second sight. Is it not all very “Celtic”?
In the ancient _Hymn to Demeter_ Persephone is described as _playing
with the deep-bosomed daughters of Ocean and culling flowers—rose and
crocus and violet over the soft meadow, and iris and hyacinth and
narcissus, which, by the will of Zeus, Earth, favouring Him of the Many
Guests, sent up to snare the flower-faced maiden a glittering marvel
for all to see with wondering eyes, both gods immortal and mortal
men:—from the one root an hundred heads of blossom; very sweet the
fragrance of that flower, and the delight of it made laugh wide heaven
above, and all the earth, and the salt and surging waters._
If this be not “natural magic,” where shall we find it? And is there
not something exquisite in the sense or tact which tells the Greek when
to stop before the magic becomes too crude or obvious? The Greek poet
knows when to stop, the Romantic not always. Here, in another of the
_Hymns_, the _Hymn to Dionysus_ (VII), is the frank description of a
miracle. _But soon marvellous things were shown among them. First, over
the swift black ship sweet, odorous wine was plashing, and a divine
perfume arose; and amaze took hold of all the gazing mariners. Anon,
along the topmost edge of the sail a vine laid out its tendrils here
and there; thick hung the clusters; and round the mast dark ivy twined,
deep in flowers and pleasant with berries, and all the thole-pins were
garlanded._ For sheer loveliness of fancy it would not be easy to beat
that. And how great an effect is gained by temperance! A little more
detail and the charm would be dissolved—the ship would be too like
a Christmas tree. It is in such wise economies that Greek art is so
great. It is just in them that the Romantic is apt to fail. Therein he
bewrays his Barbarism.
I will no longer doubt that the reader (who probably did not require
the demonstration) is convinced that Greek poetry occasionally attains
those very effects of “natural magic” which Arnold denied it. What has
happened is merely this: Greek poetry has carried farther than any
other a process of refining out some elements in the crude material in
which it began. That it may have lost in the process a certain amount
of the purest gold I am not denying. I am not pleading the cause of
Greek poetry, I am trying to understand it. It is thought by scholars
that poetry has everywhere been developed out of a kind of song or
chorus, which (to put it gently) is very often magical in character.
One at last gets things like some of the Russian folk-songs or the
Finnish lays which Lönnrot collected to form the _Kalevala_. It is
a pity the _Kalevala_ has not found an adequate English translator.
One may honestly wish that Longfellow had translated it instead of
giving us _Hiawatha,_ which is a somewhat close imitation. One may
delight in _Hiawatha_, but one can see in the baldest translation
(as it were with half an eye) that _Kalevala_ is fifty times better.
If you want magic, and very delightful magic, go there! It seems to
me, remembering, that all the chief characters in the _Kalevala_
are sorcerers. In the very first lay you are lost in the forest of
enchantment, and you never get out of it. The _Kalevala_ is not the
highest kind of poetry of course; it is (as Mrs. Barbauld complained of
_The Ancient Mariner_) too “improbable” for that. But it pleases our
taste because it is so desperately “Romantic.”—But you are not going to
say that it is as good as the _Odyssey_?
The truth, of course, is that poetry like the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_
and the _Agamemnon_, just as much as _The Divine Comedy_ and _Hamlet_,
gets beyond these distinctions of Romantic and Classical. I daresay
there is as much, in proportion, of this kind of poetry in Greek as
even in our own literature. At any rate, there seems to be no doubt
that the greatest poetry is not written except on Greek principles.
There must be that “fundamental brain-work,” as Rossetti called it,
which is the characteristic Greek contribution to art. You may put a
less rigid interpretation upon the Hellenic maxims, you may apply them
in ever so many new fields, but the essence of them you must keep. The
Barbarian may be picturesque enough, but he is not an artist: he loses
his head.
It would be enormously interesting to consider how a passage like this—
_I was but seven year auld,
When my mither she did dee:
My father married the ae warst woman
The warld did ever see._
_For she changed me to the laily worm,
That lies at the fit o’ the tree,
And my sister Masery
To the machrel of the sea._
_And every Saturday at noon
The machrel comes to me,
An’ she takes my laily head
An’ lays it on her knee,
And kames it wi’ a siller kame,
And washes it i’ the sea_—
which is pure magic, such as you might find in the _Kalevala_, is
transformed into a passage like
_“O haud your tongue o’ weeping,” he says,
“Let a’ your follies a-bee;
I’ll show you where the white lilies grow
On the banks o’ Italie”_—
which is Romantic poetry at its best—or into
_Now Johnnie’s gude bend-bow is broke,
And his gude gray dogs are slain;
And his body lies dead in Durrisdeer;
And his hunting it is done_—
which is the Classical style very nearly at its best. But an essay must
end after a reasonable time. Besides there is something else I want to
say about the Classical and the Romantic.
II
Arnold expressed the difference between the Greek and the Celtic
or Romantic spirit by the word _Titanism_. That is a very happy
expression, happier even than Arnold knew, unless he knew what we said
about the Titans. For Titanism is just Barbarism in heroic proportions.
It is the spirit of the Old Kings—the “Strainers,” as Hesiod,
etymologizing, calls them—who failed because they would not discipline
their strength. With some of Arnold’s language about the Celtic
character, and the “failure” in practical affairs of the Celtic race,
it is unnecessary now for any one to concern himself, for no one now
uses that kind of language. Even if it were justified it would scarcely
be relevant, since success in literature depends (as of course Arnold
saw) on qualities quite other than those which may be relied upon to
give us success in life. It is the Titanism of the Celt, says Arnold,
which makes him a failure in the world of affairs, but in compensation
gives him the gift of style. We need not accept that way of putting the
matter, but I do not think we can fairly deny either the style or the
Titanism.
The Greeks had their measure of Titanism also, and very certainly their
measure of style. Arnold quotes from Henri Martin a description of
the Celt as _always ready to react against the despotism of fact_.
Whereupon the Greek student instantly remembers that this is just what
Cleon said about the Athenians. He will also remember that a Corinthian
politician said that they seemed to him to be _born neither to be
quiet themselves nor to let other people be quiet_. Any one who fails
to notice the unappeasable restlessness of the Greek temperament will
miss a great piece of its quality. It comes out in the Greek attitude
to Hope, which set ancient hearts beating with a violence which
frightened them and extremely surprises us. It comes out in the popular
conception of Alexander the Great as one marching on and on in a dream
of never-ending victories. It comes out in spite of Arnold. He quotes
from Byron:
_Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o’er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
’Tis something better not to be._
He thinks this characteristically Celtic. So perhaps it is. But it is
characteristically Greek too. It is a commonplace of Greek poetry. Then
he quotes:
_What though the field be lost,
All is not lost, the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
Or what is else not to be overcome._
This also he calls Celtic, although he knew his _Prometheus Bound_, and
might have reflected that Milton knew it too. At last Arnold flings up
his case, and describes a passage quoted to support his antithesis as,
up to a certain point, “Greek in its clear beauty”; and when he wishes
to find a name for the Celtic “intoxication of style” goes to a Greek
poet for his word and comes back with _Pindarism_.
That shows how impossible it is to press these critical distinctions.
Still one sees what Arnold is driving at, and one may go with him
most of the way. It is quite true that Celtic literature is full of
Titanism. But it is an error to say that Titanism is strange to Greek
art. There is far more of it in Celtic, and in Romantic literature
generally, than in classical literature, and this does produce a
striking difference between them. But it is only a difference of method
and emphasis. Titanism appeals to the Romantic, and he gives himself up
to it. The Greek feels the attraction too, but he fights against it,
and over Titanism he puts something which he thinks is better.
Thus it is part of the Romantic mood to love a strange and hyperbolical
speech. We see the Romantic poet or his hero like a man increased to
superhuman proportions and making enormous gestures in a mist. This
effect is not beyond the reach of any true poet, and it has been
achieved by Aeschylus better perhaps than by any one before or since.
We must return to this point. Here we need only remark that the Greeks
could manage the poetical hyperbole when they pleased. But it is only
the Romantic, or if you like the Celtic poets, who never tire of it.
Again, it is a mistake to believe that there is no symbolism in ancient
literature. But what there is differs greatly from modern “Symbolism.”
Our “Symbolism” employs certain accepted symbols, which allusively
and discreetly recombining it sets the spirit dreaming. Ancient art
kept its symbols—I do not know if the word be not misapplied—separate
and definite. But it had them. The background of the _Agamemnon_, for
instance, is crowded with symbols. It is all lit up by triumphal and
ruinous fires with (passing unscathed through it all) the phantasmal
beauty of Helen; while students of metre have observed that the heart
of the verse beats faster and slower as she comes and goes. This
symbolical use of fire, and Helen’s form, of dreams and tempest and
purple and much else, is profoundly and intricately studied in the
play. But it is not like modern Symbolism, which is often content
to gaze ecstatically on the symbol itself, instead of using it
dramatically to flood a situation with the light that is hidden in the
heart of Time.
So all these differences resolve themselves into a change of attitude,
which nevertheless is no small matter. Though not the foundations of
life itself, yet man’s reading of life changes; and it is just the
play of this inconstant factor upon the fixed bases of the soul which
produces that creative ferment from which all art is born.
This may be seen in one matter of peculiar interest in the history of
art—the passion of love. One constantly finds it said that Romantic
love is a purely mediæval and modern thing. Those who make this
statement might reflect that so profound and intimate an emotion is not
likely to have been discovered so late in the human story. And it was
not. Since there is perhaps a good deal of vagueness in our notions of
what Romantic love is, let us take it here to mean the passion whose
creed is, in Dryden’s phrase, _All for Love and the World well Lost_.
Was such a passion unknown in antiquity? Was not that very phrase of
_All for Love_ used of the Greek Cleopatra, who is one of the world’s
famous lovers? Did not Medea leave all for love’s sake, and Orpheus,
and the shepherd Daphnis, whose legend is the more significant because
it appears to be pure folk-story? Have not all poets of Romantic love
turned instinctively to Greek mythology as the inexhaustible quarry
of their lore? That they treat the myths in their own way is not to
be denied. But they would not turn to them at all if they felt that
those stories had been moulded by an alien spirit. Then, so far as
one can judge from the haplessly scanty fragments of Greek lyrical
poetry, the Romantic spirit was strong in that. Sappho and the fine
poet Ibykos were wholly given over and enslaved to love; and the great
and bitter heart of Archilochus hardly escaped from it with curses. In
the Alexandrian era it flowers in poetry anew. One might take perhaps
as typical of the extreme Romantic mood the considerable fragment left
us of Hermesianax. It is little more than a numbering of famous lovers
for pure delight in their names. There is a trifle of childishness
in the piece, and a trifle of artificiality, yet it is not without a
haunting loveliness like that which clings to the _Catalogue of the
Women_ in Homer. It is no accidental kinship. An underground river has
burst up again. One finds it flowing unchecked in the _Argonautika_ of
Apollonios.
You may have noticed that none of my examples was taken from the
greatest period of Greek literature, the Attic age. That also is no
accident. For it is then that the hostile spirit most effectively
comes in. The capacity for Romantic love was not at any time denied to
the Greek nature. But what happened was this: the great age applied,
as to the other passions, so to love, its doctrine of _Sophrosyne_.
What was the result? Love became terrible and to be shunned in exact
proportion to its power over the soul. And on the Greek soul love had
great power; no one ought to be mistaken about that. _Of old He has
been called a tyrant_, says Plato of Eros. It is a famous saying of
Plato again that love is a form of madness. Sophocles, we remember,
compared it to a wild beast. Such language is habitual with the Attic
poets. (It is used, for example, by both Sophocles and Euripides in
the famous odes invoking Eros, the one in _Antigone_, the other in
_Hippolytus_.) It is not at all the language of Romance; it does not
say _All for Love_. Indeed when we consider it more closely, we find
that it means the exact opposite of what the extreme Romantic means.
The Greek means that he has conquered, the Romantic that he has
surrendered. There is, to be sure, in the Romantic theory, examined in
cold blood, a certain amount of bravado. A great imaginative passion is
rare enough to be more than a nine days’ wonder. Such an objection has
no weight in the world of art, but it is extremely in point when we are
contrasting the actual conditions of ancient and modern life. It will
turn out in the long run that in ancient Greece men felt love as much
as we, but felt about it differently. They were for self-mastery, we
for ecstasy. They were Greeks, and we are Barbarians.
They were also, one may believe, in this the truer artists. There is
nothing more characteristic of the artist than his capacity to bind
his emotions to the service of his art.
_To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you_
is his thought. The man who said that said also _The tigers of wrath
are wiser than the horses of instruction_. The two sentiments are
in fact not incompatible, but it takes an artist to reconcile them.
The poor plain modern man always divines something immoral in this
attitude. As to that, it is easiest to reply that it all depends. But
surely the Greek is the only sound artistic doctrine. No one will write
very well who cannot control his inspiration. A platitude no doubt, but
a platitude which in these days seems very easily forgotten. The mere
emotion is not enough. Tannhäuser has suggested great poetry; he could
not have written any, for that would have required moral energy.
It might be thought a subterfuge to leave this topic without a word
on a matter which cannot be ignored. I believe a very few words will
suffice. But it is as well to make clear a point which has not been
observed by those who claim the Greek example as a confirmation
of their view that all experiences are permissible to the artist.
The point is this. It was not in the artistic portion of the Greek
people that the kind of sexual perversity, so often indiscriminately
attributed to the Hellenes in general, was most widely prevalent.
It was chiefly a Dorian vice, fostered by the Dorian camp-life,
though I dare say it was to some extent endemic in the Near East. The
Ionians (including the Athenians), who inherited nine-tenths of the
Hellenic genius, unhesitatingly condemned such practices, even if they
themselves were somewhat infected by them. Athenian bourgeois morality
was quite sound on that point, as you may see by merely reading
Aristophanes. His attitude is really remarkable, and, so far as we can
see, there is only one possible explanation: the Athenian people would
not tolerate the Dorian sin upon the stage. Yet you know what they did
tolerate, and what the comic tradition tolerated. It would take a lot
to stop Aristophanes.
Another point may be put in the form of a question. How, on the
assumption of Greek perversity, are we to account for the exceptional
sanity of Greek thought and sentiment? It does not seem humanly
possible that a pathological condition of the body should not result
in a morbid state of the mind. Yet I never could hear of anybody who
called the Greeks morbid. It is to be surmised that certain passages in
Plato have been the chief source of the misconception, or exaggerated
impression, which is still perhaps too prevalent. Now with regard to
what is called Platonic Love, there are two things which ought not to
be forgotten. One is this. The young men with whom Socrates used to
talk—who were not, you know, in any proper sense, his disciples—were
apt to be members of a tiny minority, among what we should call the
upper classes at Athens, who professed what strikes us as a very
unnecessary “philolaconism” or cult of things Spartan. Some of these
young people certainly practised or trifled with the Dorian offence,
and Socrates was willing to discuss the matter with them. He was
the more willing to do this because he held a very definite view
himself. He condemned the fleshly sin outright, though not perhaps
uncompromisingly. But he attached the very highest value to the
association of friends, an older and a younger, and he wished this
comradeship to be intense enough to merit the name of love. This leads
to the second point. You must judge ancient love—I mean this love of
man and boy—by its ideal, as you insist on judging Romantic love. So
judged, it often appears a fine and noble thing. That it sometimes sank
in the mire is no more than can be said of modern love. Do not, at any
rate, let us be hypocritical.