Greece seems to encompass the physical world with which Palamas has come
in contact. He does not seem to have travelled beyond its borders, and
even within them, he has moved little about. With him scenery must grow
with age before it speaks to his heart. Fleeting impressions are of
little value, and the appearance of things without the forces of
tradition and experience behind it does not attract him:
Others, who wander far in distant lands may seek
On Alpine Mountains high the magic Edelweis;
I am an Element Immovable; each year,
April delights me in my garden, and the May
In my own village.
O lakes and fiords, O palaces of France and shrines
And harbors, Northern Lights and tropic flowers and forests,
O wonders of art, and beauties of the world unthought,--
A little Island here I love that always lies before me.
We must not think, however, that the spirit of Palamas rests within the
narrow confines of his native land. On the contrary, it knows no chains
and travels freely about the earth. He is a faithful servant of
"Melete," the Muse of contemplative study, a service which is very
seldom liked by Modern Greeks. In his preface to his collection of
critical essays entitled _Grammata_ he rebukes his fellow countrymen for
this: "On an old attic vase," he says, "stand the three original Muses,
the ones that were first worshipped, even before the Nine, who are now
world-known: Mneme, Melete, Aoide--Memory, Study, Song. With the first
and last, we have cultivated our acquaintance; and never must we show
any contempt for the fruit of our love for them. Only with the middle
one, we are not on good terms. She seems to be somewhat inaccessible,
and she does not fill our eyes enough to attract us. We have always
looked, and now still we look, for what is easiest or handiest. Is that,
I wonder, a fault of our race or of our age? And is the French
philosopher Fouillée somewhat right when in his book on the _Psychology
of Races_ he counts among our defects our aversion to great and above
all endless labors?" That Palamas is not subject to this fault, one has
only to glance at his works to be convinced. There is hardly an
important force in the world's thought and expression whether past or
present, to which Palamas is a stranger. The literatures of Europe,
America, or Asia are an open book for him. The pulses of the world's
artists, the intellectual battles of the philosophers, the fears and
hopes of the social unrest, the religious emancipation of our day, the
far reaching conflict of individual and state, in short, all events of
importance in the social, political, spiritual, literary, and artistic
life are familiar sources of inspiration for him. With all, he shows the
lofty spirit of a worshipper of greatness and depth wherever he finds
them. Tolstoi or Aeschylus, Goethe or Dante, Ibsen or Poe, Swinburne or
Walt Whitman, Leopardi or Rabelais, Hugo or Carlyle, Serbian Folk Lore
or the Bible, Hindu legends or Italian songs, Antiquity or Middle Ages,
Renaissance or Modernity, any nation or any lore are objects worthy of
study and stores of wisdom for him. Indeed, very few living poets could
be compared with him in scholarship and learning.
Nor does he lift his voice only for individual or national throbbings.
He sings of the great and noble whenever he sees it. One of his best
lyric creations is a song of praise to the valor of the champions of
Transvaal's freedom, his "Hymn to the Valiant," the first of the
collection entitled "From the Hymns and Wraths," a paean that has been
most highly lauded by Professor D.C. Hesseling of the University of
Leyden (_Nederlandsche Spectator_, March, 1901). Here is a fragment of
it, the words which the Muse addresses to the poet:
... Awake! Thou art not maker of statues!
Awake! For songs thou singest!
And song is not for ever
The heart's lament
To fading leaves of autumn,
Nor the secret speech thou speakest,
A Soul of Dream, to the shadows of Night.
For suddenly there is a clash and groaning!
The joy of birds sea-beaten,
In storms of Elements
And storms of Nations!
Song is, too,
The Marathonian Triumpher!
Over the ashes of Sodoma,
It is blown by the mouth of wrath!
Something great and something beautiful,
Something from far away,
Travelling Glory brings thee
On her sky-wandering pinions.
Glory has come! On her wings and on her feet,
Signs of her wanderings are shown,
Dust gold-loaded and distant;
And she brings aloes blossoming, first-seen,
From the land that feeds the Kaffir's flocks.
In your aged summers,
A new-born spring has spread!
From North to South,
The Atlantic Dragon groans a groan first-heard;
To the African lakes and forests,
His groan has spread and echoed;
From the Red Sea, a Lamia's palace,
To the foam-shaped breast of the White Sea,
A Nereid's realm.
Thinly the plants were growing
On the bosom of the ancient Motherland;
Winds carried away the seed
And brought it to the Libyan fields
And scattered it into deep ravines
And on the lofty mountain lawns.
A new blood filled the herbs,
And even the strong-stemmed plants
Waxed stronger.
Men war-glad are risen!
And the waterfalls roar
In the mountain's heart;
Men war-glad are risen
Like diamonds rare to behold
That the earth begets!
You know them, heights, winds, horizons,
High tides and murmurings of restless waters,
Golden fountains, that shall become
Their crowns!
And you, O gold-built mountain passes,
Castles fit for them, you know them;
Their fame, thou heraldest with pride
From thy verdant distant country
To Europe Imperial,
O Africa, O slave unknown!
And first of all thou knowest,
O heartless tamer of continents and races,
Rider of Ocean's Bucephaluses,
Thou knowest the worth of the few,
Who dare live free ...
Within the limits of a general introduction it would be difficult to
enter every nook and corner of the poet's world. We must even pass over
some of the most potent influences of his life. The national dreams of
the Modern Greeks have a splendid dwelling in the thought of Palamas,
who follows with restlessness his people's woes and exults in their
joys. A group of poems dedicated to the "Land that Rose in Arms" and
published in the last volume of the poet's work, the _Town and
Wilderness_, form his noblest patriotic expression. The present
world-conflict has naturally stirred him to new compositions, of which
his "Europe" is preëminently noteworthy as illustrating faithfully the
various aspects of the poet's genius. This poem appeared first in the
_Noumas_, an Athenian periodical, and was then published in the last
volume of the poet's works, the _Altars_.[2]