HIS ART, AND HIS GENIUS 143 tradition. The most careful thought, the nicest care, were required at every step. Stress must be laid upon this aspect of his work, because it is apt to be overlooked. But there is, of course, another aspect also. The torrent is not a good simile, but the boldness of Pindar's ori- His bold ginal genius is evident. The only rea- originality. son which moderns could find for doubting it is that he so often asserts it. It must be remembered, however, that Pindar is the inspired poet, who feels, as a Greek of his age would feel, that his gift is strictly divine, that Apollo or the Muse is speaking through his lips, and that to exalt his own gift is to honor the divinity who bestows it. Certainly it cannot have been altogether pleasant to be a minor poet in Pindar's time: he tells these struggling contemporaries, with a sublime candor, that he is the eagle, while they are ravens and daws. The impression given by Pindar's style is that he is borne onward by the breath of an irresistible power within him, eager to find ample utterance, immense in resources of imagery and expression, sustained on untiring wings. After the longest and highest flight he always seems to have strength in reserve; after the largest manifestations of his opulent fancy we can feel that there is inexhaustible wealth behind. It is the union of this mighty spirit and this magnificent abundance with the Greek artist's disciplined instinct of self-control and symmetry that renders Pindar unique. Particular notice is due to the stamp of his dic Pindaric diction. tion. Other great poets have been distinguished by more delicate felicity, more chastened beauty of phrase, more faultless and unimpeachable taste. Sappho and Simonides, to take only lyric examples, exhibit even in the few fragments that remain certain charms of this kind which Pindar lacks; but there is one gift in which he is absolutely alone. It is one which could find full scope only within the grand framework of the Dorian choral lyric, -the faculty of shaping magnificent phrases, and giving them exactly their right setting in the spacious verse, so that they at once delight the ear and charm the imagination. Consider, for instance, the line describing how Jason, protected by Medea's spells, was able to harness the fire-breathing bulls : εἴχετ ̓ ἔργου· πῦρ δέ νιν οὐκ ἐόλει παμφαρμάκου ξεινᾶς ἐφετμαῖς. Who but Pindar could have put the last three words together? In these carven marble blocks of language we often find some stately epithet, perhaps fashioned by the poet himself, as, dσtéwv ῥίζαν φυτεύσεσθαι μελησίμβροτον. But even the commonest words can be thus moulded by him into forms which haunt the memory, as when Medea says, referring to the piece of Libyan earth that was lost overboard from the Argo : ἐναλίαν βᾶμεν σὺν ἅλμα ἑσπέρας, ὑγρῷ πελάγει σπομέναν. It is in some of these phrases, where Pindar has HIS SPECIAL GIFT IN LANGUAGE 145 used long compound words, that he has more especially given occasion for the charge of bombast. Voltaire called him "this inflated Theban," and said that Pindar's French translator, M. de Chaumont, had endowed the turgid Greek with such clearness and beauty as he could claim. Mr. Matthew Arnold describes Pindar as "the poet on whom, above all other poets, the power of style seems to have exercised an inspiring and intoxicating effect,” — which implies at least a certain absence of due self-restraint. Few would contend that Pindar's marvellous wealth of ideas and words never betrayed him into excess. One remembers what Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare: "He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." Yet one would have been sorry, on the whole, to have had Shakespeare regulated by Ben Jonson; and surely we may be glad that Pindar was not governed by a modern standard of lyric sobriety. But what I wish to point out here is the intimate relation between the rhythmical structure of Pindar's odes and that moulding of phrases in which he is a very Michael Angelo of language. Learn a few strophes of the fourth Pythian by heart, carefully studying the metre at the same time, and then you will apprehend, more clearly than before, two things, - the plastic power over words which Pindar wields, and the extent to which even those phrases which modern criticism might deem somewhat turgid – ποικιλοφόρμιγγος doldâs, for instance are excused by the fact that they harmonize with the genius of these spacious measures which sustain the majestic structure of the Dorian ode. If we could hear such an ode performed with the music to which it was wedded by Pindar, this relation would undoubtedly be still more apparent. His feeling of music. Invocation of the lyre The power of poetry is inseparable, in Pindar's thought, from the power of music, for the power and both are symbolized by the lyre, "joint possession," as he calls it, "of Apollo and the Muses." “ O_ golden lyre, joint possession of Apollo and the darkhaired Muses, thou at whose bidding the dancer's step begins the festal dance, thou whose signs the singers obey, when thy quivering notes raise the prelude of the choral song! Thou canst quench even the thunderbolt, whose spear is of perennial fire; and the eagle, king of birds, slumbers on the sceptre of Zeus, suffering his swift wings to droop at his sides; for thou hast sent a mist of darkness on his arched head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he heaves his back with the rippling breath of sleep, spellbound by thy trembling strains. Yea, the violent god of war forgets the cruel sharpness of his spears, and yields his melting soul to slumber; for thy shafts subdue the minds of the immortals, by virtue of the art which is from Leto's son and the deep-bosomed Muses. FEELING FOR MUSIC, AND FOR NATURE 147 "But all creatures that Zeus loves not are dismayed when they hear the music of the Pierides, whether on land or on the raging deep; as that foe of the gods who lies in fearful Tartarus, Typhon of the hundred heads, reared of old in the famed Cilician cave. But now Sicily and the sea-restraining cliffs above Cumae press down his shaggy breast, and a pillar of heaven holds him fast, even hoary Aetna, nurse of keen snow through all the year; whose secret depths hurl upward pure fountains of unapproachable fire; in the daytime, those rivers pour forth a stream of lurid smoke, but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweeps rocks with a roar to the wide deep." His sense of grandeur or beauty in nature. We observe here Pindar's feeling for what is grand or terrible in nature, one which elsewhere finds only limited expression in Greek poetry of this age. Thus Aeschylus, who also speaks of Aetna in eruption, emphasizes rather its destructive effect on human labor: "Rivers of fire shall break forth, rending with fierce fangs the level meads of fruitful Sicily." Nor is Pindar less in sympathy with gentler aspects of natural beauty. In the fragment of a dithyramb he speaks of the season "when the chamber of the Hours is opened, and nectarbreathing plants perceive the fragrant spring. Then are the lovely tufts of violets strewn over the divine earth; then are roses twined in the hair, and voices of songs sound to the flute, and choruses chant of bright-wreathed Semele." |