Is Polite Society Polite? Part 10

Euripides says that he found the Muse

Puffed and pampered With pompous sentences, a c.u.mbrous huge virago.

In order to bring her to a more genteel figure:

I fed her with plain household phrase and cool familiar salad, With water gruel episode, with sentimental jelly, With moral mince-meat, till at length I brought her into compa.s.s.

I kept my plots distinct and clear to prevent confusion.

My leading characters rehea.r.s.ed their pedigrees for prologues.

"For all this," says aeschylus, "you ought to have been hanged." aeschylus now speaks of the grand old days, of the great themes and works of early poetry:

Such is the duty, the task of a poet, Fulfilling in honor his duty and trust.

Look to traditional history, look; See what a blessing ill.u.s.trious poets Conferred on mankind in the centuries past.

Orpheus instructed mankind in religion, Reclaimed them from bloodshed and barbarous rites.

Musaeus delivered the doctrine of medicine, And warnings prophetic for ages to come.

Next came old Hesiod, teaching us husbandry, Rural economy, rural astronomy, Homely morality, labor and thrift.

Homer himself, our adorable Homer, What was his t.i.tle to praise and renown?

What but the worth of the lessons he taught us, Discipline, arms, and equipment of war.

And here the poet comes to speak of a question which is surely prominent to-day in the minds of thoughtful people. aeschylus, in his argument against Euripides, speaks of the n.o.ble examples which he himself has brought upon the stage, reproaches his adversary with the objectionable stories of Sthen.o.baeus and Phaedra, with which he, Euripides has corrupted the public taste.

Euripides alleges in his own defence that he did not invent those stories. "Phaedra's affair was a matter of fact." aeschylus rejoins:

A fact with a vengeance, but horrible facts Should be buried in silence, not bruited abroad, Nor brought forth on the stage, nor emblazoned in poetry.

Children and boys have a teacher a.s.signed them; The bard is a master for manhood and youth, Bound to instruct them in virtue and truth Beholden and bound.

I do not know which of the plays of Aristophanes is considered the best by those who are competent to speak authoritatively upon their merits; but of those that I know, this drama of "The Frogs" seems to me to exhibit most fully the scope and extent of his comic power.

Condescending in parts to what is called low comedy,--_i.e._, the farcical, based upon the sense of what all know and experience,--it rises elsewhere to the highest domain of literary criticism and expression.

The action between Bacchus and his slave forcibly reminds us of Cervantes, though master and man alike have in them more of Sancho Panza than of Quixote. In the journey to the palace of Pluto, I see the prototype of what the great mediaeval poet called "The Divine Comedy." I find in both the same weird imagination, the same curious interbraiding of the ridiculous and the grandiose. This, of course, with the difference that the Greek poet affords us only a brief view of h.e.l.l, while Dante detains us long enough to give us a realizing sense of what it is, or might be. This same mingling of the awful and the grotesque suggests to me pa.s.sages in our own Hawthorne, similarly at home with the supernatural, which underlies the story of "The Scarlet Letter,"

and flashes out in "The Celestial Railroad." But I must come back to Dante, who can amuse us with the tricks of demons, and can lift us to the music of the spheres. So Aristophanes can show us, on the one hand, the humorous relations of a coward and a clown; and, on the other, can put into the mouth of the great aeschylus such words as he might fitly have spoken.

Perhaps the very extravagance of fun is carried even further in the drama of "The Birds" than in those already quoted from. Its conceits are, at any rate, most original, and, so far as I know, it is without prototype or parallel in its matter and manner.

The argument of the play can be briefly stated. Peisthetairus, an Athenian citizen, dissatisfied with the state of things in his own country, visits the Hoop with the intention of securing his a.s.sistance in founding a new state, the dominion of the birds. He takes with him a good-natured simpleton of a friend, Well-hoping, by name. Now the Hoop in question, according to the old legend, had been known in a previous state of being as Tereus, King of Thrace, and the metamorphosis which changed him to a bird had changed his subjects also into representatives of the various feathered tribes. These, however, far from sharing the polite and hospitable character of their master, become enraged at the intrusion of the strangers, and propose to attack them in military style. The visitors seize a spit, the lid of a pot, and various other culinary articles, and prepare to make what defence they may, while the birds "present beaks," and prepare to charge. The Hoop here interposes, and claims their attention for the project which Peisthetairus has to unfold.

The wily Athenian begins his address with prodigious flattery, calling the feathered folk "a people of sovereigns," more ancient of origin than man, his deities, or his world. In support of this last clause, he quotes a fable of aesop, who narrates that the lark was embarra.s.sed to bury his father, because the earth did not exist at the time of his death. Sovereignty, of old, belonged to the birds. The stride of the c.o.c.k sufficiently shows his royal origin, and his authority is still made evident by the alacrity with which the whole slumbering world responds to his morning reveille. The kite once reigned in Greece; the cuckoo in Sidon and Egypt. Jupiter has usurped the eagle's command, but dares not appear without him, while

Each of the G.o.ds had his separate fowl,-- Apollo the hawk and Minerva the owl.

Peisthetairus proposes that, in order to recover their lost sovereignty, the birds shall build in the air a strongly fortified city. This done, they shall send a herald to Jove to demand his immediate abdication. If the celestials refuse to govern themselves accordingly, they are to be blockaded. This blockade seems presently to obtain, and heavenly Iris, flying across the sky on a message from the G.o.ds, is caught, arraigned, and declared worthy of death,--the penalty of non-observance. The prospective city receives the name of "Nephelococcagia," and this is scarcely decided upon before a poet arrives to celebrate in an ode the mighty Nephelococcagia state.

Then comes a soothsayer to order the appropriate sacrifices; then an astronomer, with instruments to measure the due proportions of the city; then a would-be parricide, who announces himself as a lover of the bird empire, and especially of that law which allows a man to beat his father. Peisthetairus confesses that, in the bird domain, the chicken is sometimes applauded for clapper-clawing the old c.o.c.k. When, however, his visitor expresses a wish to throttle his parent and seize upon his estate, Peisthetairus refers him to the law of the storks, by which the son is under obligation to feed and maintain the parent. This law, he says, prevails in Nephelococcagia, and the parricide accordingly betakes himself elsewhere.

All this admirable fooling ends in the complete success of the birds.

Jupiter sends an emba.s.sy to treat for peace, and by a curious juggle, imitating, no doubt, the political processes of those days, Peisthetairus becomes recognized as the lawful sovereign of Nephelococcagia, and receives, on his demand, the hand of Jupiter's favorite queen in marriage.

I have given my time too fully to the Greek poet to be able to make any extended comparison between his works and those of the Elizabethan dramatists. But from the plays which trifle so with the grim facts of nature, I can fly to the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and alight for a moment on one of its golden branches. Shakespeare's Athenian clowns are rather Aristophanic in color. The play of "Pyramus and Thisbe" might have formed one interlude on that very stage which had in sight the glories of the Parthenon. The exquisite poetry which redeems their nonsense has its parallel in the lovely "Chorus of the Clouds," the ode to Peace, and other glimpses of the serious Aristophanes, which here and there look out from behind the mask of the comedian.

I am very doubtful whether good Greek scholars will think my selections given here at all the best that could be made. I will remind them of an Eastern tale in which a party of travellers were led, in the dark, through an enchanted region in which showers of some unknown substance fell around them, while a voice cried: "They that do not gather any will grieve, and they who do gather will grieve that they did not gather more, for these that fall are diamonds." So, of these bright diamonds of matchless Greek wit, I have tried to gather some, but may well say I grieve that I have not gathered more, and more wisely.

These works are to us exquisite pieces of humoristic extravagance, but to the people of the time they were far more than this; _viz._, the lesson of ridicule for what was tasteless and ridiculous in Athenian society, and the punishment of scathing satire for what was unworthy.

Annotators tell us that the plays are full of allusions to prominent characters of the day. Some of these, as is well known, the poet sets upon the stage in masquerades which reveal, more than they conceal, their true personality. For the demagogue Cleon, and for the playwright Euripides, he has no mercy.

The patient student of Aristophanes and his commentators will acquire a very competent knowledge of the politics of the wise little city at the time of which he treats, also of its literary personages, pedants or sophists. The works give us, I think, a very favorable impression of the public to whose apprehension they were presented,--a quick-witted people, surely, able to follow the sudden turns and doublings of the poet's fancy; not to be surprised into stupidity by any ambush sprung upon them out of obscurity.

Compare with this the difficulty of commending anything worth thinking of to the attention of a modern theatre audience. It is true that much of this Greek wit must needs have been _caviare_ to the mult.i.tude, but its seasoning, no doubt, penetrated the body politic. I remember, a score or more of years ago, that a friend said that it was good and useful to have some public characters Beecherized, alluding to the broad and bold presentment of them given from time to time by our great clerical humorist, Henry Ward Beecher. Very efficacious, one thinks, must have been this scourge which the Greek comic muse wielded so merrily, but so unmercifully.

Although Aristophanes is very severe upon individuals, he does not, I think, foster any cla.s.s enmities, except, perhaps, against the sophists.

Although a city man, he treats the rustic population with great tenderness, and the glimpses he gives us of country life are sweet and genial. In this, he contrasts with the French playwrights of our time, to whom city life is everything, and the province synonymous with all that is dull and empty of interest.

How can I dismiss the comedy of that day without one word concerning its immortal tragedy,--Socrates, the divine man, compared and comparable to Christ, chained in his dungeon and condemned to die? The most blameless life could not save that sacred head. Its illumination, in which we sit here to-day, drew to it the shafts of superst.i.tion, malice, and wickedness. The comic poet might present on the stage such pictures of the popular deities as would make the welkin ring with the roar of laughter. This was not impiety. But Socrates, showing no disrespect to these idols of the current persuasion, only daring to discern beyond them G.o.d in his divineness, truth in her awful beauty,--_he_ must die the death of the profane.

It is a bitter story, surely, but "it must needs be that offences come."

Where should we be to-day if no one in human history had loved high doctrine well enough to die for it? At such cost were these great lessons given us. How can we thank G.o.d or man enough for them?

The athletics of human thought are the true Olympian games. Human error is wise and logical in its way. It confronts its antagonist with terrific weapons; it seizes and sways him with a t.i.tanic will force. It knows where to attack, and how. It knows the spirit that would be death to it, could that spirit prevail. It closes in the death grapple; the arena is red with the blood of its victim, but from that blood immortal springs a new world, a new society.

One word, in conclusion, about the Greek language. Valuable as translations are, they can never, to the student, take the place of originals. I have stumbled through these works with the lamest knowledge of Greek, and with no one to help me. I have quoted from admirable renderings of them into English. Yet, even in such delicate handling as that of Frere, the racy quality of the Greek phrase evaporates, like some subtle perfume; while the music of the grand rhythm, which the ear seems able to get through the eye, is lost.

The Greek tongue belongs to the history of thought. The language that gives us such distinctions as _nous_ and _logos_, as _gy_ and _kosmos_, has been the great pedagogue of our race, has laid the foundations of modern thought. Let us, by all means, help ourselves with Frere, with Jowett, and a mult.i.tude of other literary benefactors. But let us all get a little Greek on our own account, for the sake of our Socrates and of our Christ. And as the great but intolerant Aga.s.siz had it for his motto that "species do not trans.m.u.te," let this school have among its mottoes this one: "True learning does not de-h.e.l.lenize."

The Halfness of Nature

THE great office of ethics and aesthetics is the reconciliation of G.o.d and man; that is, of the divine and disinterested part of human nature with its selfish and animal opposite.

This opposition exists, primarily, in the individual; secondarily, in the society formed out of individuals. Human inst.i.tutions typify the two, with their mutual influence and contradictions. The church represents the one; the market, the other. The battle-field and the hospital, the school and the forum, are further terms of the same ant.i.thesis. Nature does so much for the man, and the material she furnishes is so indispensable to all the constructions which we found upon it, that the last thing a teacher can afford to do is to undervalue her gifts. When critical agencies go so far as to do this, revolution is imminent: Nature rea.s.serts herself.

Equally impotent is Nature where inst.i.tutions do not supply the help of Art. When this state of things perseveres, she dwindles instead of growing. She becomes meagre, not grandiose. Men hunt, but do not cultivate. Women drudge and bear offspring, but neither comfort nor inspire.

Let us examine a little into what Nature gives, and into what she does not give. In the domain of thought and religion, people dispute much on this head, and are mostly ranged in two parties, of which one claims for her everything, while the other allows her nothing.

In this controversy, we can begin with one point beyond dispute. Nature gives the man, but she certainly does not give the clothes. Having received his own body, he has to go far and work hard in order to cover it.

Nature again scarcely gives human food. Roots, berries, wild fruit, and raw flesh would not make a very luxurious diet for the king of creation.

Even this last staple Nature does not supply gratis, and the art of killing is man's earliest discovery in the lesson of self-sustenance. So Death becomes the succursal of life. The sense of this originates, first, the art of hunting; secondly, the art of war.

Nature gives the religious impulse, originating in the further pole of primal thought. The alternation of night and day may first suggest the opposition of things seen and not seen. The world exists while the man sleeps--exists independently of him. Sleep and its dreams are mysterious to the waking man. His first theology is borrowed from this conjunction of invisible might and irrational intellection.

But Nature does not afford the church. Art does this, laboring long and finishing never,--coming to a platform of rest, but coming at the same time to a higher view, inciting to higher effort. Temple after temple is raised. Juggernaut, Jove, Jesus! India does not get beyond Juggernaut.

Rome could not get beyond Jove. Christendom is far behind Jesus. In all religions, Art founds on Nature, and aspires to super-nature. In all, Art a.s.serts the superiority of thought over unthought, of measure over excess, of conscience over confidence. The latest evangel alone supplies a method of popularizing thought, of beautifying measure, of harmonizing conscience, and is, therefore, the religion that uses most largely from the race, and returns most largely to it.

Time permits me only a partial review of this great system of gifts and deficiencies. The secret of progress seems an infinitesimal seed, dropped in some bosoms to bear harvest for all. Seed and soil together give the product which is called genius. But genius is only half of the great man. No one works so hard as he does to obtain the result corresponding to his natural dimensions and obligations. The gift and the capacity to employ it are simply boons of Nature. The resolution to do so, the patience and perseverance, the long tasks bravely undertaken and painfully carried through--these come of the individual action of the moral man, and const.i.tute his moral life. The wonderfully clever people we all know, who fill the society toy-shop with what is needed in the society workshop, are people who have not consummated this resolution, who have not had this bravery, this perseverance. Death does not waste more of immature life than Indolence wastes of immature genius. The law of labor in ethics and aesthetics corresponds to the energetic necessities of hygiene, and is the most precious and indispensable gift of one generation to its successors.

In ethics, Nature supplies the first half, but Religion, or the law of duty, supplies the other. Nature gives the enthusiasm of love, but not the tender and persevering culture of friendship, which carries the light of that tropical summer into the winter of age, the icy recesses of death.