Tradition and Progress: -1922 by Gilbert Murray

Author:Gilbert Murray [murray, gilbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Social Science, Anthropology, Literary Collections, Essays
ISBN: 9781112264986
Publisher: Cornell University Library
Published: 2009-07-23T04:00:00+00:00

Where, like an anodyne for a gnawing pain, he tried to forget himself in verses and yet more verses, until he died.

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What a world it is that he has created in the Metamorphoses! It draws its denizens from all the boundless resources of Greek mythology, a world of live forests and mountains and rivers, in which every plant and flower has a story, and nearly always a love story; where the moon is indeed not a moon but an orbèd maiden, and the Sunrise weeps because she is still young and her belovèd is old; and the stars are human souls; and the Sun sees human virgins in the depths of forests and almost swoons at their beauty and pursues them; and other virgins, who feel in the same way about him, commit great sins from jealousy and then fling themselves on the ground in grief and fix their eyes on him, weeping and weeping till they waste away and turn into flowers; and all the youths and maidens are indescribably beautiful and adventurous and passionate, though not well brought up, and, I fear, somewhat lacking in the first elements of self-control; and they all fall in love with each other, or, failing that, with fountains or stars or trees; and are always met by enormous obstacles, and are liable to commit crimes and cause tragedies, but always forgive each other, or else die. A world of wonderful children where nobody is really cross or wicked except the grown-ups; Juno, for instance, and people's parents, and of course a certain number of Furies and Witches. I think among all the poets who take rank merely as storytellers and creators of mimic worlds, Ovid still stands supreme. His criticism of life is very slight; it is the criticism passed by a child, playing alone and peopling the summer evening with delightful shapes, upon the stupid nurse who drags it off to bed. And that too is a criticism that deserves attention.

We have spoken of one side of Poetry; the side particularly meant by Aristotle when he says that poets are only makers "by imitation"; makers, that is, of imitation persons and imitation worlds, which may or may not involve criticism upon our existing life. He dissented, we remember, from the view of those who thought that a poet was principally a maker because he made verses. But after all there is obviously something in their view, and in a later part of the Poetics Aristotle pays a good deal of attention to

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