The following extract from the hymn of Demeter may illustrate this beauty, though it is not one of the greatest passages of Greek literature and its writer is unknown. It is the story of the Earth Mother and her daughter Persephone:
ἡν Αιδωνευς
ἡρπαξεν, δωκεν δε βαρυκτυπος ευρυοπα Ζευς,
παιζουσαν κουρησι συν Ωκεανου βαθυκολποις
ανθεα τ’ αινυμενην, ῥοδα και κροκον ηδ’ ια καλα
λειμων’ αμ μαλακον και αγαλλιδας ηδ’ ὑακινθον
ναρκισσον θ’, ὁν φυσε δολον καλυκωπιδι κουρη
Γαια Διος βουλησι χαριζομενη Πολυδεκτη,
θαυμαστον γανοωντα· σεβας το γε πασιν ιδεσθαι
αθανατοις τε θεοις ηδε θνητοις ανθρωποις·
του και απο ῥιζης ἑκατον καρα εξεπεφυκει,
κωζ’ ἡδιστ’ οδμη, πας δ’ ουρανος ευρυς ὑπερθε
γαια τε πας’ εγελασσε και ἁλμυρον οιδμα θαλασσης.
ἡ δ’ αρα θαμβησας’ ωρεξατο χερσιν ἁμ’ αμφω
καλον αθυρμα λαβειν· χανε δε χθων ευρυαγυια
Νυσιον αμ πεδιον, τη ορουσεν αναξ Πολυδεγμων
ἱπποις αθανατοισι.[123]
{hên Aidôneus
hêrpaxen, dôken de baryktypos euryopa Zeus,
paizousan kourêsi syn Ôkeanou bathykolpois
anthea t' ainymenên, rhoda kai krokon êd' ia kala
leimôn' am malakon kai agallidas êd' hyakinthon
narkisson th', hon physe dolon kalukôpidi kourê
Gaia Dios boulêsi charizomenê Polydektê,
thaumaston ganoônta; sebas to ge pasin idesthai
athanatois te theois êde thnêtois anthrôpois;
tou kai apo rhizês hekaton kara exepephykei,
kôz' hêdist' odmê, pas d' ouranos eurys hyperthe
gaia te pas' egelasse kai halmyron oidma thalassês.
hê d' ara thambêsas' ôrexato chersin ham' amphô
kalon athyrma labein; chane de chthôn euryagyia
Nysion am pedion, tê orousen anax Polydegmôn
hippois athanatoisi.}
Turn from this to some parallel poem in English literature, such as Oenone or Tithonus. Beautiful as Tennyson is, the Greek has a better beauty, a beauty not of words or metaphors or highly-wrought art, but simpler, more spontaneous and more instinctive, as though not man but nature herself was speaking. Two writers, who are qualified to judge by being themselves among the great poets of the world, and who knew and appreciated other literatures, but speak in this way about Greek alone, have testified to the uniqueness of this beauty. Goethe says stiffly but precisely: ‘in the presence of antiquity the mind feels itself placed in the most ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the terrible burden which the tradition of many hundreds of years has rolled upon us.’ In these words Goethe has touched on the simplicity and the naturalness of Greek beauty, in contrast to the more exotic and elaborate beauty of which mediaeval and modern art and literature are full. Keats writing about the Grecian urn also had in his mind the liberating power of Greek beauty:
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity; Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’—that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.
These words point to another trait of Greek beauty, which any one who has seen Greek statues must have felt: it does not provoke speculation just as it does not excite desire, because no elements are mingled with it that might stir such feelings. It has no admixture, but is mere beauty, sought for itself.
Not only is Greek beauty different in quality from our own, but it is more abundant. This surely would be the verdict of an impartial critic who compared Homer, the lyrists, the tragedians, Plato, Theocritus, the epigrammatists, with the corresponding names in modern literatures. It amounts to a different way of viewing the world; the Greeks were more sensitive to beauty than we are, just as some people are more sensitive than others to colours or sounds, to moral or intellectual issues. This is curiously illustrated in their treatment of tragic themes. There is no want of tragedy in Homer or the dramatists—their view of life is probably darker than our own—and they have been praised for a pessimism that faced and admitted the black truth. Yet the cloud of evil is continually broken by rays of beauty. Thus Homer lights up the tragic parting of Hector and Andromache by the story of the child and the nodding plumes, yet does not use the incident, as many writers would have used it, to heighten the tragedy, which indeed it neither emphasizes nor diminishes: it is merely a gratuitous touch of delight in children, as accidental and natural as the brighter moments which, in life if not in realistic novels, diversify the darkest hours. Thus too Aeschylus preludes the bloody slaughter of Salamis with the white horses of the dawn, the echoes in the cliffs, the foam whitening beneath the oars, and when he speaks of the island where the Persians are butchered, does not forget the dances in which Pan rejoiced there of old. Thus, again, one of the most tragic moments in the Hippolytus is followed by the song,
Could I take me to some cavern for mine hiding,
In the hill-tops where the Sun scarce hath trod;
Or a cloud make the home of mine abiding,
As a bird among the bird-droves of God!
Could I wing me to my rest amid the roar
Of the deep Adriatic on the shore,
Where the water of Eridanus is clear,
And Phaëthon’s sad sisters by his grave
Weep into the river, and each tear
Gleams, a drop of amber, in the wave.[124]
The union of beauty and tragedy may be a paradox, but no reader can miss its power. The mere story of Hector’s death as told by Homer is poignant, even when read in an English translation: the magic of the original language and metre doubles the effect. The combination of these two apparently inconsistent things, which is one of the marks of Greek poetry, is, of course, found in other literatures; the description of Ophelia’s death in Hamlet is an instance of it. But no drama except Greek has that regular interweaving of tragedy with exquisite lyrics by which some of its most powerful effects are secured.
Effect is the wrong word to use, for we have here no literary trick, but a view of life, which is naturally complete and clearsighted, which is sensitive to the beauty that no evil can destroy, which sees the splendour in tragedy itself, and remembers that though the days of darkness are many it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun. This philosophy, implied throughout Greek literature, commends it to many people. Those who disagree with the philosophy will not quarrel with the beauty itself. Hellenism is one of the forces which are continually being buried and re-found, and which, like talismans, have a disturbing power when they fall afresh into human hands. Those who read the literature of the age which rediscovered Greek will see that it brought above all a sense of liberation and expansion. At the Renaissance as in the eighteenth century, Greece found the world in chains, and broke them and threw down the prison walls. The fetters of the two epochs were different, but freedom was brought, at the Renaissance partly, and in the age of Winckelmann entirely, by the vision of beauty which Greece exhibited. Our own age has many chains and knows well the burden of which Goethe spoke. It has multiplied ugliness far faster than beauty, and its writers, prolific, interesting, and thoughtful as they are, do not help it here. It may well find, as other ages have found, in this quality of Greek literature a healing and liberating power.