Euripides--His Merits and Defects--Decline of Tragic Poetry through him.
When we consider Euripides by himself, without any comparison with his
predecessors, when we single out some of his better pieces, and particular
passages in others, we cannot refuse to him an extraordinary meed of
praise. But on the other hand, when we take him in his connexion with the
history of art, when we look at each of his pieces as a whole, and again
at the general scope of his labours, as revealed to us in the works which
have come down to us, we are forced to censure him severely on many
accounts. Of few writers can so much good and evil be said with truth. He
was a man of boundless ingenuity and most versatile talents; but he either
wanted the lofty earnestness of purpose, or the severe artistic wisdom,
which we reverence in Aeschylus and Sophocles, to regulate the luxuriance
of his certainly splendid and amiable qualities. His constant aim is to
please, he cares not by what means; hence is he so unequal: frequently he
has passages of overpowering beauty, but at other times he sinks into
downright mediocrity. With all his faults he possesses an admirable ease,
and a certain insinuating charm.
These preliminary observations I have judged necessary, since otherwise,
on account of what follows, it might be objected to me that I am at
variance with myself, having lately, in a short French essay, endeavoured
to show the superiority of a piece of Euripides to Racine's imitation of
it. There I fixed my attention on a single drama, and that one of the
poet's best; but here I consider everything from the most general points
of view, and relatively to the highest requisitions of art; and that my
enthusiasm for ancient tragedy may not appear blind and extravagant, I
must justify it by a keen examination into the traces of its degeneracy
and decline.
We may compare perfection in art and poetry to the summit of a steep
mountain, on which an uprolled load cannot long maintain its position, but
immediately rolls down again the other side irresistibly. It descends
according to the laws of gravity with quickness and ease, and one can
calmly look on while it is descending; for the mass follows its natural
tendency, while the laborious ascent is, in some degree, a painful
spectacle. Hence it is, for example, that the paintings which belong to
the age of declining art are much more pleasing to the unlearned eye, than
those which preceded the period of its perfection. The genuine
connoisseur, on the contrary, will hold the pictures of a Zuccheri and
others, who gave the tone when the great schools of the sixteenth century
were degenerating into empty and superficial mannerism, to be in real and
essential worth, far inferior to the works of a Mantegna, Perugino, and
their contemporaries. Or let us suppose the perfection of art a focus: at
equal distances on either side, the collected rays occupy equal spaces,
but on this side they converge towards a common effect; whereas, on the
other they diverge, till at last they are totally lost.
We have, besides, a particular reason for censuring without reserve the
errors of this poet; the fact, namely, that our own age is infected with
the same faults with those which procured for Euripides so much favour, if
not esteem, among his contemporaries. In our times we have been doomed to
witness a number of plays which, though in matter and form they are far
inferior to those of Euripides, bear yet in so far a resemblance to them,
that while they seduce the feelings and corrupt the judgment, by means of
weakly, and sometimes even tender, emotions, their general tendency is to
produce a downright moral licentiousness.
What I shall say on this subject will not, for the most part, possess even
the attraction of novelty. Although the moderns, attracted either by the
greater affinity of his views with their own sentiments, or led astray by
an ill-understood opinion of Aristotle, have not unfrequently preferred
Euripides to his two predecessors, and have unquestionably read, admired,
and imitated him much more; it admits of being shown, however, that many
of the ancients, and some even of the contemporaries of Euripides, held
the same opinion of him as myself. In _Anacharsis_ we find this mixture of
praise and censure at least alluded to, though the author softens
everything for the sake of his object of showing the productions of the
Greeks, in every department, under the most favourable light.
We possess some cutting sayings of Sophocles respecting Euripides, though
he was so far from being actuated by anything like the jealousy of
authorship, that he mourned his death, and, in a piece which he exhibited
shortly after, he did not allow his actors the usual ornament of the
wreath. The charge which Plato brings against the tragic poets, as tending
to give men entirely up to the dominion of the passions, and to render
them effeminate, by putting extravagant lamentations in the mouths of
their heroes, may, I think, be justly referred to Euripides alone; for,
with respect to his predecessors, the injustice of it would have been
universally apparent. The derisive attacks of Aristophanes are well known,
though not sufficiently understood and appreciated. Aristotle bestows on
him many a severe censure, and when he calls Euripides "the most tragic
poet," he by no means ascribes to him the greatest perfection in the
tragic art in general, but merely alludes to the moving effect which is
produced by unfortunate catastrophes; for he immediately adds, "although
he does not well arrange the rest." Lastly, the Scholiast on Euripides
contains many concise and stringent criticisms on particular pieces, among
which perhaps are preserved the opinions of Alexandrian critics--those
critics who reckoned among them that Aristarchus, who, for the solidity
and acuteness of his critical powers, has had his name transmitted to
posterity as the proverbial designation of a judge of art.
In Euripides we find the essence of the ancient tragedy no longer pure and
unmixed; its characteristical features are already in part defaced. We
have already placed this essence in the prevailing idea of Destiny, in the
Ideality of the composition, and in the significance of the Chorus.
Euripides inherited, it is true, the idea of Destiny from his
predecessors, and the belief of it was inculcated in him by the tragic
usage; but yet in him fate is seldom the invisible spirit of the whole
composition, the fundamental thought of the tragic world. We have seen
that this idea may be exhibited under severer or milder aspects; that the
midnight terrors of destiny may, in the courses of a whole trilogy,
brighten into indications of a wise and beneficent Providence. Euripides,
however, has drawn it down from the region of the infinite; and with him
inevitable necessity not unfrequently degenerates into the caprice of
chance. Accordingly, he can no longer apply it to its proper purpose,
namely, by contrast with it, to heighten the moral liberty of man. How few
of his pieces turn upon a steadfast resistance to the decrees of fate, or
an equally heroic submission to them! His characters generally suffer
because they must, and not because they will.
The mutual subordination, between character and passion and ideal
elevation, which we find observed in the same order in Sophocles, and in
the sculpture of Greece, Euripides has completely reversed. Passion with
him is the first thing; his next care is for character, and when these
endeavours leave him still further scope, he occasionally seeks to lay on
a touch of grandeur and dignity, but more frequently a display of
amiableness.
It has been already admitted that the persons in tragedy ought not to be
all alike faultless, as there would then be no opposition among them, and
consequently no room for a complication of plot. But (as Aristotle
observes) Euripides has, without any necessity, frequently painted his
characters in the blackest colours, as, for example, his Menelaus in
_Orestes_. The traditions indeed, sanctioned by popular belief, warranted
him in attributing great crimes to many of the old heroes, but he has also
palmed upon them many base and paltry traits of his own arbitrary
invention. It was by no means the object of Euripides to represent the
race of heroes as towering in their majestic stature above the men of his
own age; he rather endeavours to fill up, or to build over the chasm that
yawned between his contemporaries and that wondrous olden world, and to
come upon the gods and heroes in their undress, a surprise of which no
greatness, it is said, can stand the test. He introduces his spectators to
a sort of familiar acquaintance with them; he does not draw the
supernatural and fabulous into the circle of humanity (a proceeding
which we praised in Sophocles), but within the limits of the imperfect
individuality. This is the meaning of Sophocles, when he said that "he
drew men such as they ought to be, Euripides such as they are." Not that
his own personages are always represented as irreproachable models; his
expression referred merely to ideal elevation and sweetness of character
and manners. It seems as if Euripides took a pleasure in being able
perpetually to remind his spectators--"See! those beings were men, subject
to the very same weaknesses, acting from the same motives as yourselves,
and even as the meanest among you." Accordingly, he takes delight in
depicting the defects and moral failings of his characters; nay, he often
makes them disclose them for themselves in the most _naïve_ confession.
They are frequently not merely undignified, but they even boast of their
imperfections as that which ought to be.
The Chorus with him is for the most part an unessential ornament; its
songs are frequently wholly episodical, without reference to the action,
and more distinguished for brilliancy than for sublimity and true
inspiration. "The Chorus," says Aristotle, "must be considered as one of
the actors, and as a part of the whole; it must co-operate in the action--
not as Euripides, but as Sophocles manages it." The older comedians
enjoyed the privilege of allowing the Chorus occasionally to address the
spectators in its own name; this was called a Parabasis, and, as I shall
afterwards show, was in accordance with the spirit of comedy. Although the
practice is by no means tragical, it was, however, according to Julius
Pollux, frequently adopted by Euripides in his tragedies, who so far
forgot himself on some of these occasions, that in the _Danaidae_, for
instance, the chorus, which consisted of females, made use of grammatical
inflections which belonged only to the male sex.
This poet has thus at once destroyed the internal essence of tragedy, and
sinned against the laws of beauty and proportion in its external
structure. He generally sacrifices the whole to the parts, and in these
again he is more ambitious of foreign attractions, than of genuine poetic
beauty.
In the accompanying music, he adopted all the innovations invented by
Timotheus, and chose those melodies which were most in unison with the
effeminacy of his own poetry. He proceeded in the same manner with his
metres; his versification is luxuriant, and runs into anomaly. The same
diluted and effeminate character would, on a more profound investigation,
be unquestionably found in the rhythms of his choral songs likewise.
On all occasions he lays on, even to overloading, those merely corporeal
charms which Winkelmann calls a "flattery of the gross external senses;"
whatever is exciting, striking--in a word, all that produces a vivid
effect, though without true worth for the mind and the feelings. He
labours for effect to a degree which cannot be allowed even to the
dramatic poet. For example, he hardly ever omits an opportunity of
throwing his characters into a sudden and useless terror; his old men are
everlastingly bemoaning the infirmities of age, and, in particular, are
made to crawl with trembling limbs, and sighing at the fatigue, up the
ascent from the orchestra to the stage, which frequently represented the
slope of a hill. He is always endeavouring to move, and for the sake of
emotion, he not only violates probability, but even sacrifices the
coherence of the piece. He is strong in his pictures of misfortune; but he
often claims our compassion not for inward agony of the soul, nor for pain
which the sufferer endures with manly fortitude, but for mere bodily
wretchedness. He is fond of reducing his heroes to the condition of
beggars, of making them suffer hunger and want, and bringing them on the
stage with all the outward signs of it, and clad in rags and tatters, for
which Aristophanes, in his _Acharnians_, has so humorously taken him
to task.
Euripides was a frequenter of the schools of the philosophers (he had been
a scholar of Anaxagoras, and not, as many have erroneously stated, of
Socrates, with whom he was only connected by social intercourse): and
accordingly he indulges his vanity in introducing philosophical doctrines
on all occasions; in my opinion, in a very imperfect manner, as we should
not be able to understand these doctrines from his statements of them, if
we were not previously acquainted with them. He thinks it too vulgar a
thing to believe in the gods after the simple manner of the people, and he
therefore seizes every opportunity of interspersing something of the
allegorical interpretation of them, and carefully gives his spectators to
understand that the sincerity of his own belief was very problematical. We
may distinguish in him a twofold character: the _poet_, whose productions
were consecrated to a religious solemnity, who stood under the protection
of religion and who, therefore, on his part, was bound to honour it; and
the _sophist_, with his philosophical _dicta_, who endeavoured to
insinuate his sceptical opinions and doubts into the fabulous marvels of
religion, from which he derived the subjects of his pieces. But while he
is shaking the ground-works of religion, he at the same time acts the
moralist; and, for the sake of popularity, he applies to the heroic life
and the heroic ages maxims which could only apply to the social relations
of his own times. He throws out a multitude of moral apophthegms, many of
which he often repeats, and which are mostly trite, and not seldom
fundamentally false. With all this parade of morality, the aim of his
pieces, the general impression which they are calculated to produce is
sometimes extremely immoral. A pleasant anecdote is told of his having put
into the mouth of Bellerophon a silly eulogium on wealth, in which he
declares it to be preferable to all domestic happiness, and ends with
observing, "If Aphrodite (who bore the epithet _golden_) be indeed
glittering as gold, she well deserves the love of Mortals:" which
so offended the spectators, that they raised a great outcry, and would
have stoned both actor and poet, out Euripides sprang forward, and called
out, "Wait only till the end--he will be requited accordingly!" In like
manner he defended himself against the objection that his Ixion expressed
himself in too disgusting and abominable language, by observing that the
piece concluded with his being broken on the wheel. But even this plea
that the represented villany is requited by the final retribution of
poetical justice, is not available in defence of all his tragedies. In
some the wicked escape altogether untouched. Lying and other infamous
practices are openly protected, especially when he can manage to palm them
upon a supposed noble motive. He has also perfectly at command the
seductive sophistry of the passions, which can lend a plausible appearance
to everything. The following verse in justification of perjury, and in
which the _reservatio mentalis_ of the casuists seems to be substantially
expressed, is well known:
The tongue swore, but the mind was unsworn.
Taken in its context, this verse, on account of which he was so often
ridiculed by Aristophanes, may, indeed, be justified; but the formula is,
nevertheless, bad, on account of the possible abuse of its application.
Another verse of Euripides: "For a kingdom it is worth while to commit
injustice, but in other cases it is well to be just," was frequently in
the mouth of Caesar, with the like intention of making a bad use of it.
Euripides was frequently condemned even by the ancients for his seductive
invitations to the enjoyment of sensual love. Every one must be disgusted
when Hecuba, in order to induce Agamemnon to punish Polymestor, reminds
him of the pleasures which he has enjoyed in the arms of Cassandra, his
captive, and, therefore, by the laws of the heroic ages his concubine: she
would purchase revenge for a murdered son with the acknowledged and
permitted degradation of a living daughter. He was the first to make the
unbridled passion of a Medea, and the unnatural love of a Phaedra, the
main subject of his dramas, whereas from the manners of the ancients, we
may easily conceive why love, which among them was much less dignified by
tender feelings than among ourselves, should hold only a subordinate place
in the older tragedies. With all the importance which he has assigned to
his female characters, he is notorious for his hatred of women; and it is
impossible to deny that he abounds in passages descanting on the frailties
of the female sex, and the superior excellence of the male; together with
many maxims of household wisdom: with all which he was evidently
endeavouring to pay court to the men, who formed, if not the whole,
certainly the most considerable portion of his audience. A cutting saying
and an epigram of Sophocles, on this subject, have been preserved, in
which he accounts for the (pretended) misogyny of Euripides by his
experience of their seductibility in the course of his own illicit amours.
In the manner in which women are painted by Euripides, we may observe,
upon the whole, much sensibility even for the more noble graces of female
modesty, but no genuine esteem.
The substantial freedom in treating the fables, which was one of the
prerogatives of the tragic art, is frequently carried by Euripides to the
extreme of licence. It is well known, that the fables of Hyginus, which
differ so essentially from those generally received, were partly extracted
from his pieces. As he frequently rejected all the incidents which were
generally known, and to which the people were accustomed, Le was reduced
to the necessity of explaining in a prologue the situation of things in
his drama, and the course which they were to take. Lessing, in his
_Dramaturgie_, has hazarded the singular opinion that it is a proof
of an advance in the dramatic art, that Euripides should have trusted
wholly to the effect of situations, without calculating on the excitement
of curiosity. For my part I cannot see why, amidst the impressions which a
dramatic poem produces, the uncertainty of expectation should not be
allowed a legitimate place. The objection that a piece will only please in
this respect for the first time, because on an acquaintance with it we
know the result beforehand, may be easily answered: if the representation
be truly energetic, it will always rivet the attention of the spectator in
such a manner that he will forget what he already knew, and be again
excited to the same stretch of expectation. Moreover, these prologues give
to the openings of Euripides' plays a very uniform and monotonous
appearance: nothing can have a more awkward effect than for a person to
come forward and say, I am so and so; this and that has already happened,
and what is next to come is as follows. It resembles the labels in the
mouths of the figures in old paintings, which nothing but the great
simplicity of style in ancient times can excuse. But then all the rest
ought to correspond, which is by no means the case with Euripides, whose
characters always speak in the newest mode of the day. Both in his
prologues and denouements he is very lavish of unmeaning appearances of
the gods, who are only elevated above men by the machine in which they are
suspended, and who might certainly well be spared.
The practice of the earlier tragedians, to combine all in large masses,
and to exhibit repose and motion in distinctly-marked contrast, was
carried by him to an unwarrantable extreme. If for the sake of giving
animation to the dialogue his predecessors occasionally employed an
alternation of single-line speeches, in which question and answer,
objection and retort, fly about like arrows from side to side, Euripides
makes so immoderate and arbitrary use of this poetical device that very
frequently one-half of his lines might be left out without detriment to
the sense. At another time he pours himself out in endless speeches, where
he sets himself to shew off his rhetorical powers in ingenious arguments,
or in pathetic appeals. Many of his scenes have altogether the appearance
of a lawsuit, where two persons, as the parties in the litigation, (with
sometimes a third for a judge,) do not confine themselves to the matter in
hand, but expatiate in a wide field, accusing their adversaries or
defending themselves with all the adroitness of practised advocates, and
not unfrequently with all the windings and subterfuges of pettifogging
sycophants. In this way the poet endeavoured to make his poetry
entertaining to the Athenians, by its resemblance to their favourite daily
occupation of conducting, deciding, or at least listening to lawsuits. On
this account Quinctilian expressly recommends him to the young orator, and
with great justice, as capable of furnishing him with more instruction
than the older tragedians. But such a recommendation it is evident is
little to his credit; for eloquence may, no doubt, have its place in the
drama when it is consistent with the character and the object of the
supposed speaker, yet to allow rhetoric to usurp the place of the simple
and spontaneous expression of the feelings, is anything but poetical.
The style of Euripides is upon the whole too loose, although he has many
happy images and ingenious turns: he has neither the dignity and energy of
Aeschylus, nor the chaste sweetness of Sophocles. In his expressions he
frequently affects the singular and the uncommon, but presently relapses
into the ordinary; the tone of the discourse often sounds very familiar,
and descends from the elevation of the cothurnus to the level ground. In
this respect, as well as in the attempt (which frequently borders only too
closely on the ludicrous,) to paint certain characteristic peculiarities,
(for instance, the awkward carriage of the Bacchus-stricken Pentheus in
his female attire, the gluttony of Hercules, and his boisterous demands on
the hospitality of Admetus,) Euripides was a precursor of the new comedy,
to which he had an evident inclination, as he frequently paints, under the
names of the heroic ages, the men and manners of his own times. Hence
Menander expressed a most marked admiration for him, and proclaimed
himself his scholar; and we have a fragment of Philemon, which displays
such an extravagant admiration, that it hardly appears to have been
seriously meant. "If the dead," he either himself says, or makes one of
his characters to say, "had indeed any sensation, as some people think
they have, I would hang myself for the sake of seeing Euripides."--With
this adoration of the later comic authors, the opinion of Aristophanes,
his contemporary, forms a striking contrast. Aristophanes persecutes him
bitterly and unceasingly; he seems almost ordained to be his perpetual
scourge, that none of his moral or poetical extravagances might go
unpunished. Although as a comic poet Aristophanes is, generally speaking,
in the relation of a parodist to the tragedians, yet he never attacks
Sophocles, and even where he lays hold of Aeschylus, on that side of his
character which certainly may excite a smile, his reverence for him is
still visible, and he takes every opportunity of contrasting his gigantic
grandeur with the petty refinements of Euripides. With infinite cleverness
and inexhaustible flow of wit, he has exposed the sophistical subtilty,
the rhetorical and philosophical pretensions, the immoral and seductive
effeminacy, and the excitations to undisguised sensuality of Euripides.
As, however, modern critics have generally looked upon Aristophanes as no
better than a writer of extravagant and libellous farces, and had no
notion of eliciting the serious truths which he veiled beneath his merry
disguises, it is no wonder if they have paid but little attention to his
opinion.
But with all this we must never forget that Euripides was still a Greek,
and the contemporary of many of the greatest names of Greece in politics,
philosophy, history, and the fine arts. If, when compared with his
predecessors, he must rank far below them, he appears in his turn great
when placed by the side of many of the moderns. He has a particular
strength in portraying the aberrations of a soul diseased, misguided, and
franticly abandoned to its passions. He is admirable where the subject
calls chiefly for emotion, and makes no higher requisitions; and he is
still more so where pathos and moral beauty are united. Few of his pieces
are without passages of the most ravishing beauty. It is by no means my
intention to deny him the possession of the most astonishing talents; I
have only stated that these talents were not united with a mind in which
the austerity of moral principles, and the sanctity of religious feelings,
were held in the highest honour.