In this free handling, then, the artist takes up an entirely different position from that he occupies in the East. The Hindoo poets and sages have also to begin with material ready to work upon, such as the elements of Nature, the heavens, animals, streams, and so forth, or the pure abstraction of the formless and contentless Brahman. Their enthusiasm, however, is a confusion of the ideal character[181] of the subjectivity which accepts the difficult task of elaborating such an external material to it, an enthusiasm which, in the unmeasured expansion of its imagination, which excludes every secure and absolute[182] direction, is unable to mould its creations conformably to genuine freedom of expression and beauty, and remains the slave of that material in uncontrolled and roving productive activity. It resembles, in fact, a master-builder who has no firm foundation beneath him. Ancient ruins of half dismantled walls, mounds, and projecting rocks fetter him, quite apart from the particular aims according to which he desires to construct his building; and he can only create a wild, inharmonious, and fantastical fabric. In other words, that which he produces is not the result of his imagination freely acting under its own plastic genius. Conversely the Hebrew poets present us with revelations which, it is said, they deliver as the Lord's voice, so that here again the creative source is an enthusiasm not fully self-conscious; it is separated, that is, and distinct from individuality and the productive genius of the artist, as in the wisdom of the Sublime generally it is the abstract and eternal, essentially in its relation to something other than it and external, which is consciously or imaginatively conceived.
In classical art artists and poets are, it is true, also prophets and teachers, who declare and reveal to mankind the nature of the Absolute and Divine. But we must emphasize here the following distinctions:
(α) In the first place the content of their gods is neither that appearance of Nature which is external to humanity nor the mere abstraction of one Godhead, whereby merely a superficial formulation or an inwardness that is without content is preserved. Their content is, on the contrary, deduced from human life and existence, and for this reason is that which is peculiar to the human breast; a content, in short, with which man himself can freely coalesce as at home with himself, while that which he thus produces is the fairest product of his own activity.
(β) Secondly, these artists are at the same time poets, that is, men of creative talent who work the aforesaid material and its content into a free and substantially independent form. As thus regarded Greek artists are in all essential respects creative poets. They have brought together all the varied original ingredients into the melting-pot, but they have produced thereby no mere broth, such as might come from a witches' cauldron; rather they did away with all that is troubled, purely natural, unclean, foreign, and without rational measure in the pure flame of this more profound spirit; they made all glow together and permitted the form to appear at last purified, albeit it still retained a distant accord with the ruder material from which it was fashioned. What mainly concerned them in this work consisted partly in the winnowing away of all that was in their inherited material destitute of form and beauty, distorted and symbolical, and partly in the prominence they gave to what was really spiritual, which they set themselves to render under modes of individuality, and in the interest of which they had to discover gradually the external appearance most appropriate. Here for the first time we find that it is the human form and human actions and events, not merely made use of under the mode of personification, which, as we have already seen, necessarily stand forth as the uniquely adequate reality. No doubt the artist discovers these forms, too, in the real world; but he has at the same time to eradicate all that is accidental and incongruent in them, before they are entitled to appear as commensurable with that humanity, which, as essentially apprehended, shall offer to us the image of the eternal powers and gods. And this is what we call the free and spiritual, and not merely capricious production of the artist.
(γ) And, thirdly, for the reason that the gods are not merely stable existences in their own world, but also are active within the concrete reality of Nature and human, events, the poet is further concerned to recognize the presence and activity of the gods in this relation to human, fact, to interpret, that is, the particularity of natural event and human actions and destiny wherein the divine powers are apparently interfused, and to share thus the duties of the priest and the seer. We, from the point of view of our everyday prosaic reflection, explain the phenomena of Nature according to universal laws and forces, and interpret the actions of mankind as the product of their subjective intentions and self-proposed aims. The Greek poets, however, have their eyes everywhere directed toward the Divine, and create, by giving to human activities the loftier colour and habit of divine actions, and by means of such interpretation, the various aspects under which the power of the gods is made visible. For a number of such interpretations results in a number of actions, in which we are made aware of the character of this or that god. We have but to open, for example, the Homeric poems, and we shall scarcely meet with a single event of importance which is not more closely elucidated as proceeding from the volition or actual assistance of the gods. These expositions are, in fact, the insight, the independently created belief, the intuitive conceptions of the poet, just as Homer often, too, gives expression to them in his own name, and in part also places such in the mouth of his characters, whether priest or hero. Quite at the opening of the "Iliad," for example, he has himself explained the pestilence in the Greek camp as the result of the indignation of Apollo over Agamemnon, who refused to release to Chryses his daughters[183]; and, in a passage that follows, he makes Calchas transmit this very interpretation to the Greeks[184].
In a similar way Homer informs us in the concluding canto of the "Odyssey"—on the occasion when Hermes conducted the shades of the inanimate suitors to the meadows of Asphodel, and they find there Achilles and the other deceased heroes, who fought before Troy, and finally, too, Agamemnon joins them—how the last-mentioned describes the death of Achilles[185]:
"The whole day long had the Greeks fought; and when at last Zeus separated the combatants, they carried the noble body to the ships, and washed it, weeping often the while, and embalmed it. Then there arose a divine uproar on the sea, and the affrighted Achaeans would have been flung headlong into their hollow ships, had not an aged and much knowing man, Nestor to wit, restrained them, whose advice had also proved the wisest on former occasion." Nestor then interprets for them the phenomenon in the following terms: "The mother[186] comes forth from the sea with the immortal sea-goddesses, in order to meet her deceased son. And the great-hearted Achaeans at this word let their fear depart from them." That is to say, they knew then of what kind it was—of human origin—the mother in her grief comes toward him; what they shall see and hear is that which finds its response in themselves. Achilles is her son, she is herself full of grief. And in this vein Agamemnon, turning towards Achilles, continues his narrative with a description of the universal sorrow: "And around thee stood the daughters of the ancient of the sea, lamenting, and they robed themselves in ambrosial garments; and the Muses also, the nine in conclave, wailed by turns in beautiful song; and there was I ween no man of the Argives to be seen without tears, so greatly did the clear-toned song move all."
It is, however, another divine apparition in the "Odyssey" which has always in this connection most particularly fascinated me in my study of it. Odysseus in his sea-wanderings, insulted among the Phaeacians during the sports over which Euryalos presides, because he refused to take part in the rival throwing of the discus, makes answer indignantly with dark looks and hard words. He then stands up, seizes a disk, larger and heavier than the rest, and hurls it far and away over the mark. One of the Phaeacians marks down the throw and calls out: "Even a blind man could see the stone; it does not lie within the medley of the rest, but far beyond. Thou hast nothing to fear in this contest; there is no Phaeacian who will reach or surpass such a throw as thine is. So he spake; but the much-enduring divine Odysseus rejoiced to see a well-disposed friend in the lists." And this word, this friendly nod of the Phaeacian Homer interprets as the friendly apparition of Athene.
(b) Of what kind, then, we may further ask, are the products of this classical mode of artistic activity, of what type are the new gods of Greek art?