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Title: Homer And Theocritus
Author: William Ernest Henley [
More Titles by Henley]
The Odyssey.
I think that of all recent books the two that have pleased me best and longest are those delightful renderings into English prose of the Greek of Homer and Theocritus, which we owe, the one to Messrs. Henry Butcher and Andrew Lang and the other to Mr. Lang's unaided genius. To read this Odyssey of theirs is to have a breath of the clear, serene airs that blew through the antique Hellas; to catch a glimpse of the large, new morning light that bathes the seas and highlands of the young heroic world. In a space of shining and fragrant clarity you have a vision of marble columns and stately cities, of men august in single-heartedness and strength and women comely and simple and superb as goddesses; and with a music of leaves and winds and waters, of plunging ships and clanging armours, of girls at song and kindly gods discoursing, the sunny- eyed heroic age is revealed in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its candour, and its charm. The air is yet plangent with echoes of the leaguer of Troy, and Odysseus the ready-at-need goes forth upon his wanderings: into the cave of Polypheme, into the land of giants, into the very regions of the dead: to hear among the olive trees the voice of Circe, the sweet witch, singing her magic song as she fares to and fro before her golden loom; to rest and pine in the islet of Calypso, the kind sea-goddess; to meet with Nausicaa, loveliest of mortal maids; to reach his Ithaca, and do battle with the Wooers, and age in peace and honour by the side of the wise Penelope. The day is yet afar when, as he sailed out to the sunset and the mysterious west,
Sol con un legno, e con quella compagna
Picciola, dalla qual non fue deserto,
the great wind rushed upon him from the new-discovered land, and so ended his journeyings for ever; and all with him is energy and tact and valour and resource, as becomes the captain of an indomitable human soul. His society is like old d'Artagnan's: it invigorates, renews, inspires. I had rather lack the friendship of the good Alonso Quijada himself than the brave example of these two.
The Idylls.
With certain differences it is the same with our Theocritus. From him, too, the mind is borne back to a 'happier age of gold,' when the world was younger than now, and men were not so weary nor so jaded nor so highly civilised as they choose to think themselves. Shepherds still piped, and maidens still listened to their piping. The old gods had not been discrowned and banished; and to fishers drawing their nets the coasts yet kept a something of the trace of amorous Polypheme, the rocks were peopled with memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours of Pan; and dwellers under thatch--the goatherd mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, the girls who busked them for the vintaging--were conscious, as the wind went by among the beeches and the pines, and brought with it the sounds of a lonely and mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about the base of AEtna she and her forest maids drove the chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm of Adonis brought back from 'the stream eternal of Acheron.' Under the mystic moon love-lorn damsels did their magic rites, and knit up spells of power to bring home the men they loved. Among the vines and under the grey olives songs were singing of Daphnis all day long. There were junketings and dancings and harvest-homes for ever toward; the youths went by to the gymnasium, and the girls stood near to watch them as they went; the cicalas sang, the air was fragrant with apples and musical with the sound of flutes and running water; while the blue Sicilian sky laughed over all, and the soft Sicilian sea encircled the land and its lovers with a ring of sapphire and silver. To translate Theocritus, wrote Sainte-Beuve, is as if one sought to carry away in one's hand a patch of snow that has lain forgotten through the summer in a cranny of the rocks of AEtna:--'On a fait trois pas a peine, que cette neige deja est fondue. On est heureux s'il en reste assez du moins pour donner le vif sentiment de la fraicheur.' But Mr. Lang has so rendered into English the graces of the loveliest of Dorian singers that he has earned the thanks of every lover of true literature. Every one should read his book, for it will bring him face to face with a very prince among poets and with a very summer among centuries. That Theocritus was a rare and beautiful master there is even in this English transcript an abundance of evidence. Melancholy apart, he was the Watteau of the old Greek world--an exquisite artist, a rare poet, a true and kindly soul; and it is very good to be with him. We have changed it all of course, and are as fortunate as we can expect. But it is good to be with Theocritus, for he lets you live awhile in the happy age and under the happy heaven that were his. He gives you leave and opportunity to listen to the tuneful strife of Lacon and Comatas; to witness the duel in song between Corydon and Battus; to talk of Galatea pelting with apples the barking dog of her love-lorn Polypheme; under the whispering elms, to lie drinking with Eucritus and Lycidas by the altar of Demeter, 'while she stands smiling by, with sheaves and poppies in her hand.'
Old Lamps and New.
It is relief unspeakable to turn from the dust and din and chatter of modern life, with its growing trade in heroes and its poverty of men, its innumerable regrets and ambitions and desires, to this immense tranquillity, this candid and shining calm. They had no Irish Question then, you can reflect, nor was theology invented. Men were not afraid of life nor ashamed of death; and you could be heroic without a dread of clever editors, and hospitable without fear of rogues, and dutiful for no hope of illuminated scrolls. Odysseus disguised as Irus is still Odysseus and august. How comes it that Mr. Gladstone in rags and singing ballads would be only fit for a police-station? that Lord Salisbury hawking cocoa-nuts would instantly suggest the purlieus of Petticoat Lane? Is the fault in ourselves? Can it be that we have deteriorated so much as that? Nerves, nerves, nerves! . . . These many centuries the world has had neuralgia; and what has come of it is that Robert Elsmere is an ideal, and the bleat of the sentimentalist might almost be mistaken for the voice of living England.
[The end]
William Ernest Henley's essay: Homer And Theocritus
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