Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

INTRODUCTION.

THE

HE ancient classical writers of the world are thought to have shown but little sensibility to that natural beauty with which the earth has been clothed, as with a magnificent garment, by her Almighty Creator. Those of their works which have been preserved to us are declared by critics rarely to bear evidence of much depth of feeling of this kind. The German scholars are understood to have been the first to broach this opinion-the first to point out the fact, and to, comment on what appears a singular inconsistency.

"If we bear in mind," says Schiller, "the beautiful scenery with which the Greeks were surrounded, and remember the opportunities possessed by a people living in so genial a climate, of entering into the free enjoyment of the contemplation of nature, and observe how conformable were their mode of thought, the bent of their imaginations, and the habits of their lives to the simplicity of nature, which was so faithfully reflected in their poetic works, we can not fail to remark with surprise how few traces are to be met among them of the sentimental interest with which we in modern times attach ourselves to the individual characteristics of natural scenery. The Greek poet is certainly in the highest degree correct, faithful, and circumstantial in his descriptions of nature, but his heart has more share in his words than if he were treating Nature seems to of a garment, a shield, or a suit of armor. interest his understanding more than his moral perceptions ; he does not cling to her charms with the fervor and the plaintive passion of the poet of modern times."

This passage of Schiller, quoted in " Cosmos," is supported by similar observations of M. de Humboldt himself: "Specific descriptions of nature occur only as accessories, for in Grecian art all things are centered in the sphere of human life." And, again: "The description of nature in its manifold richness of form, as a distinct branch of poetic literature, was wholly unknown to the Greeks. The landscape appears among them merely as the background of the picture, of which human figures constitute the main subject." Touches of description must of course occasionally occur, and whenever these are found, the harmony of Grecian taste gives them the highest beauty possible. The many noble similes and comparisons scattered through the greater poems, form admirable detached pictures; but they occupy the attention very briefly; a rapid glance is thrown upon the hill, the river, or the wood, rather for the purpose of affording greater relief to the figures in the foreground than of enduing the sketch of these features of the earth with any charm or importance in itself. But it is quite impossible to believe for a moment that the Greeks, so fully alive to the spirit of beauty in all its other forms, should have been blind to its effects in the natural world. Other ways of accounting for the apparent inconsistency must be sought for, and the peculiar character and position of the people would seem to suggest these. It was quite consistent with the condition of the world at that early period, and of the Greeks in particular, that nature and art should not then hold the same relative places which they occupy to-day. Art was still in its youth, and of more importance to them than it is to us. Nature, with all her untold wealth, her unharvested magnificence, lay before them, close at hand, always within reach; there was no fear that she should fail them. But human Art was in its earliest stages of culture; every successive step was watched with most lively interest; every progressive movement became of great importance, while the genius of the Greeks particularly led them to feel extreme delight in every achievement of the kind. In fact, all their highest enjoyments flowed from this source, and into

this sphere they threw themselves with their whole soul. Whatever susceptibility to the grandeur and beauty of the inanimate creation was felt among them, sought therefore rather to express itself in forms more positive than the voice of song. What, for instance, was the most noble of their temples but the image in Dorian marble of some grand primeval grove, whose gray, columnar trunks they found reflected in the waves of the Egean Sea? What were the vase, and the vine wreathed about its lip, but the repetition of living forms of fruits and foliage growing in the vale of Tempe, or at the foot of Hymettus? The Greek mind thus beheld the whole external world chiefly through the medium of human Art. An interesting and very striking instance of this peculiarity occurs in the Iliad; no natural object which has a place in the poem-neither the sea nor the skies, neither the streams nor the mountains, all glowing as these were with the purple light of a Grecian atmosphere-could draw from Homer a description filling half the space allotted by him to the shield of Achilles; nay, more, observe that where rural life and its accessories appear the most distinctly in his verse, it is not the reality which he shows us; we do not ourselves tread the brown soil of the freshly-tilled fallow; we do not pass along the one narrow path in the vineyard, amid the purple clusters, but we are called upon to behold these objects-" sight to be admired of all!"-as they lie curiously graven by the hand of Vulcan on the bronze buckler of the hero, where he

"With devices multiform, the disk

Capacious charged, toiling with skill divine."*

Their very religion was but a work of art, a brilliant web of the human imagination, into which, as on the metal of Vulcan, their poets had wrought

"Borders beauteous, dazzling bright,"

where Olympic deities passed to and fro, with grace and spirit unequaled, but moving ever by the springs of the most com* See Part XXIX. of the following selections.

mon of human passions. All the inanimate objects of the visible creation had their allotted places in this gorgeous, imaginative tissue, though still appearing under associations purely human. They had, in short, no conceptions of nature independent of man; to them the whole world was but the shield of Achilles.

With the same mythology, the same philosophy as the Greeks, the Romans are admitted to have been essentially plagiarists. They saw the earth, in this sense, with the eyes of the Greeks. Their literature has even been accused of a greater dearth of poetical observation, as regards the natural world, than that of their predecessors. The practical realities of life engrossed their attention more exclusively. A colossal selfishness was their striking national characteristic -a characteristic which was alike the cause, first, of their political prosperity, and later of their downfall. Rome was their deity; to her daily needs, or interests, or pleasures, all was sacrificed; they cared little for the mountains, and forests, and streams of the earth, provided all the wealth and magnificence of these were brought over Roman ways to swell the triumph of the Forum. It has been remarked that Cæsar could pass the Alps, then comparatively an unknown region, without one allusion to their sublime character. Still, a body of men like the great Latin writers could not, of course, exist devoid of susceptibility to the beauty of the inanimate world, and many passages may be drawn from their poems bearing witness to this fact. Although, says M. de Humboldt, there is no individual rural portraiture in the Eneid, yet "a deep and intimate comprehension of nature is depicted in soft colWhere, for instance, has the gentle play of the waves, or the stillness of night, been more happily described?" The modern reader, however, is still left to wonder that poets so great should not have delighted more frequently in enlarging upon similar topics, and that even in many of their elegiac works social life should so exclusively fill up the space.* We * Unwilling, for a moment, to be supposed entitled to credit to which she can lay no just claim, the writer of these remarks hastens to avow

ors.

should have rather supposed that when the earth stood in her primitive freshness, in the morning of her existence, her wealth of beauty as yet unsung, that the works of the first great poets would have been filled with the simple reflection of her natural glory. But, as we have seen, such was not the case with the writers of Greece or of Rome; and, as we have already ventured to intimate, it would appear that the great intellectual activity of those races, connected with the period of time filled by them, where so wide a field opened in every direction, became in itself a prominent cause of this peculiar deficiency of their literature. Whatever admiration they felt for nature expressed itself in positive forms of art, or in an imaginative system of mythology, rather than in song.

But something of a different spirit appears to have actuated the old Asiatic nations. The ancient Indian races, for instance, were more contemplative in character, and more vivid impressions of natural objects are revealed in their writings. The Sanscrit Hymns, and the heroic poems of the same language, are said to contain fine descriptive passages. "The main subject of these writings," says M. de Humboldt, speaking of the Sanscrit Vedas, "are the veneration and praise of Nature." A poem, called "The Seasons"—and one starts at the familiar name-with another work, called "The Messenger of the Clouds," are full, we are told, of the same spirit; they were written by Kalidasa, a cotemporary of Virgil and Horace. It would have given us pleasure to offer the reader a few fragments from writings so ancient and so interesting; one would have liked to compare a passage from the Sanscrit Seasons with those so celebrated and so familiar from our own language and modern time, but no English versions are found within reach. The fact, however, of this

that whatever opinions she may have formed on subjects connected with ancient literature, have been entirely drawn from translations. Although it is impossible to enjoy the full perfection of a great poem in any other than the original language, yet we are enabled, by means of the best versions, to form general views regarding a work, and to appreciate, at least, the spirit with which it is imbued.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »