Greek tragedy

Name: Greek tragedy
Author: Norwood, Gilbert

Norwood, Gilbert

Greek drama (Tragedy) -- History and criticism; Mythology, Greek, in literature

The Mountain-Mother heard my vows,
      And saw my torch the darkness ride;
    The Hunter named me for his priest,
      A mail-clad Bacchant sanctified.

    Now robed in white I keep me pure
      From food that e’er has throbbed with breath;
    I shun the new-born infant’s cry,
      And gaze not on the couch of death.

It now remains for us to attempt a synthesis—to set before ourselves as
clearly as may be the whole personality of Euripides. We are studying
not the programme of a politician, but the spirit and method of a great
artist, the inspiration of a great teacher. An artist has other things
to heed than a superficial consistency of presentation; and a teacher
of permanent value shows his followers not what to think, but how to
think—not opinions, but the reasoned basis of opinion. Euripides is a man
not of dogmas, nor indeed of negations; he is the apostle of a spirit
which blows whither it lists, setting up a healthful circulation of
tingling life throughout regions which have languished in the heavy air
of convention. His work forces us to think and feel for ourselves, not
necessarily to think and feel with him.

The briefest description of his special quality is that he is in the same
moment a great artist and a great rationalist—a man profoundly conscious
of the beauty and value of all life, all existence, all energy, and yet
an uncompromising critic of the vesture which man throws around those
parts of the Universe which are subjected to him. No man has ever loved
and expressed beauty with a mind less swayed by illusion. These two
instincts, the instinct to study life in all its unforced manifestations,
and the instinct to question all conventions, lie at the root of his
work. It is in virtue of these that he has been called enigmatic. Like
Renan he was ἀνὴρ δίψυχος, a man of two souls[822]; but he is no more
an enigma than others. His peculiarity lies herein, that the duality of
nature often found in ordinary men was by him exhibited at the heights
of genius. That is why he so often seems labouring to destroy the effect
he has created; he is “inconsistent” because he is equally at home in
the two worlds of feeling and of thought. Precisely for this reason he
created a new type of drama. Horace Walpole wrote that “Life is a comedy
to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel”; thus, when a genius of
Euripides’ type addressed itself to the theatre, the result was drama
which could not but shock people who, bred in the school of Æschylus,
had no conception of “tragedy” which could be witty, light, modern,
destructive. Menander is the successor of Euripides, not of Aristophanes.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Greek tragedyNorwood, Gilbert

History

Greek tragedy

Norwood, Gilbert

Greek drama (Tragedy) -- History and criticism; Mythology, Greek, in literature

The Mountain-Mother heard my vows,
      And saw my torch the darkness ride;
    The Hunter named me for his priest,
      A mail-clad Bacchant sanctified.

    Now robed in white I keep me pure
      From food that e’er has throbbed with breath;
    I shun the new-born infant’s cry,
      And gaze not on the couch of death.

It now remains for us to attempt a synthesis—to set before ourselves as
clearly as may be the whole personality of Euripides. We are studying
not the programme of a politician, but the spirit and method of a great
artist, the inspiration of a great teacher. An artist has other things
to heed than a superficial consistency of presentation; and a teacher
of permanent value shows his followers not what to think, but how to
think—not opinions, but the reasoned basis of opinion. Euripides is a man
not of dogmas, nor indeed of negations; he is the apostle of a spirit
which blows whither it lists, setting up a healthful circulation of
tingling life throughout regions which have languished in the heavy air
of convention. His work forces us to think and feel for ourselves, not
necessarily to think and feel with him.

The briefest description of his special quality is that he is in the same
moment a great artist and a great rationalist—a man profoundly conscious
of the beauty and value of all life, all existence, all energy, and yet
an uncompromising critic of the vesture which man throws around those
parts of the Universe which are subjected to him. No man has ever loved
and expressed beauty with a mind less swayed by illusion. These two
instincts, the instinct to study life in all its unforced manifestations,
and the instinct to question all conventions, lie at the root of his
work. It is in virtue of these that he has been called enigmatic. Like
Renan he was ἀνὴρ δίψυχος, a man of two souls[822]; but he is no more
an enigma than others. His peculiarity lies herein, that the duality of
nature often found in ordinary men was by him exhibited at the heights
of genius. That is why he so often seems labouring to destroy the effect
he has created; he is “inconsistent” because he is equally at home in
the two worlds of feeling and of thought. Precisely for this reason he
created a new type of drama. Horace Walpole wrote that “Life is a comedy
to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel”; thus, when a genius of
Euripides’ type addressed itself to the theatre, the result was drama
which could not but shock people who, bred in the school of Æschylus,
had no conception of “tragedy” which could be witty, light, modern,
destructive. Menander is the successor of Euripides, not of Aristophanes.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Greek tragedy

Greek tragedy

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