by Walter Pater
Must our poets, then, alone be under control, and compelled to work the image of the good into their poetic works, or not to work among us at all; or must the other craftsmen too be controlled, and restrained from working this faultiness and intemperance and illiberality and formlessness of character whether into the images of living creatures, or the houses they build, or any other product of their craft whatever; or must he who is unable so to do be forbidden to practise his art among us, to the end that our guardians may not, nurtured in images of vice as in a vicious pasture, cropping and culling much every day little by little from many sources, composing together some one great evil in their own souls, go undetected? Must we not rather seek for those craftsmen who have the power, by way of their own natural virtue, to track out the nature of the beautiful and seemly, to the end that, living as in some wholesome place, the young men may receive good from every side, whencesoever, from fair works of art, either upon sight or upon hearing anything may strike, as it were a breeze bearing health from kindly places, and from childhood straightway bring them unaware to likeness and friendship and harmony with fair reason? — Yes: he answered: in this way they would be by far best educated. — Well then, I said, Glaucon, on these grounds is not education in music of the greatest importance — because, more than anything else, rhythm and harmony make their way down into the inmost part of the soul, and take hold upon it with the utmost force, bringing with them rightness of form, and rendering its form right, if one be correctly trained; if not, the opposite? and again because he who has been trained in that department duly, would have the sharpest sense of oversights (tôn paraleipomenôn)+ and of things not fairly turned out, whether by art or nature (mę kalôs dęmiourgęthentôn ę mę kalôs phyntôn)+ and disliking them, as he should, would commend things beautiful, and, by reason of his delight in these, receiving them into his soul, be nurtured of them, and become kalokagathos,+ while he blamed the base, as he should, and hated it, while still young, before he was able to apprehend a reason, and when reason comes would welcome it, recognising it by its kinship to himself — most of all one thus taught? — Yes: he answered: it seems to me that for reasons such as these their education should be in music. Republic, 400.
Understand, then, the poetry and music, the arts and crafts, of the City of the Perfect — what is left of them there, and remember how the Greeks themselves were used to say that “the half is more than the whole.” Liken its music, if you will, to Gregorian music, and call to mind the kind of architecture, military or monastic again, that must be built to such music, and then the kind of colouring that will fill its jealously allotted space upon the walls, the sort of carving that will venture to display itself on cornice or capital. The walls, the pillars, the streets — you see them in thought! nay, the very trees and animals, the attire of those who move along the streets, their looks and voices, their style — the hieratic Dorian architecture, to speak precisely, the Dorian manner everywhere, in possession of the whole of life. Compare it, for further vividness of effect, to Gothic building, to the Cistercian Gothic, if you will, when Saint Bernard had purged it of a still barbaric superfluity of ornament. It seems a long way from the Parthenon to Saint Ouen “of the aisles and arches,” or Notre-Dame de Bourges; yet they illustrate almost equally the direction of the Platonic aesthetics. Those churches of the Middle Age have, as we all feel, their loveliness, yet of a stern sort, which fascinates while perhaps it repels us. We may try hard to like as well or better architecture of a more or less different kind, but coming back to them again find that the secret of final success is theirs. The rigid logic of their charm controls our taste, as logic proper binds the intelligence: we would have something of that quality, if we might, for ourselves, in what we do or make; feel, under its influence, very diffident of our own loose, or gaudy, or literally insignificant, decorations. “Stay then,” says the Platonist, too sanguine perhaps,— “Abide,” he says to youth, “in these places, and the like of them, and mechanically, irresistibly, the soul of them will impregnate yours. With whatever beside is in congruity with them in the order of hearing and sight, they will tell (despite, it may be, of unkindly nature at your first making) upon your very countenance, your walk and gestures, in the course and concatenation of your inmost thoughts.”
And equation being duly made of what is merely personal and temporary in Plato’s view of the arts, it may be salutary to return from time to time to the Platonic aesthetics, to find ourselves under the more exclusive influence of those qualities in the Hellenic genius he has thus emphasised. What he would promote, then, is the art, the literature, of which among other things it may be said that it solicits a certain effort from the reader or spectator, who is promised a great expressiveness on the part of the writer, the artist, if he for his part will bring with him a great attentiveness. And how satisfying, how reassuring, how flattering to himself after all, such work really is — the work which deals with one as a scholar, formed, mature and manly. Bravery — andreia+ or manliness — manliness and temperance, as we know, were the two characteristic virtues of that old pagan world; and in art certainly they seem to be involved in one another. Manliness in art, what can it be, as distinct from that which in opposition to it must be called the feminine quality there, — what but a full consciousness of what one does, of art itself in the work of art, tenacity of intuition and of consequent purpose, the spirit of construction as opposed to what is literally incoherent or ready to fall to pieces, and, in opposition to what is hysteric or works at random, the maintenance of a standard. Of such art ęthos+ rather than pathos+ will be the predominant mood. To use Plato’s own expression there will be here no paraleipomena,+ no “negligences,” no feminine forgetfulness of one’s self, nothing in the work of art unconformed to the leading intention of the artist, who will but increase his power by reserve. An artist of that kind will be apt, of course, to express more than he seems actually to say. He economises. He will not spoil good things by exaggeration. The rough, promiscuous wealth of nature he reduces to grace and order: reduces, it may be, lax verse to staid and temperate prose. With him, the rhythm, the music, the notes, will be felt to follow, or rather literally accompany as ministers, the sense, — akolouthein ton logon.+
We may fairly prefer the broad daylight of Veronese to the contrasted light and shade of Rembrandt even; and a painter will tell you that the former is actually more difficult to attain. Temperance, the temperance of the youthful Charmides, super-induced on a nature originally rich and impassioned, — Plato’s own native preference for that is only reinforced by the special needs of his time, and the very conditions of the ideal state. The diamond, we are told, if it be a fine one, may gain in value by what is cut away. It was after such fashion that the manly youth of Lacedaemon had been cut and carved. Lenten or monastic colours, brown and black, white and grey, give their utmost value for the eye (so much is obvious) to the scarlet flower, the lighted candle, the cloth of gold. And Platonic aesthetics, remember! as such, are ever in close connexion with Plato’s ethics. It is life itself, action and character, he proposes to colour; to get something of that irrepressible conscience of art, that spirit of control, into the general course of life, above all into its energetic or impassioned acts.
Such Platonic quality you may trace of course not only in work of Doric, or, more largely, of Hellenic lineage, but at all times, as the very conscience of art, its saving salt, even in ages of decadence. You may analyse it, as a condition of literary style, in historic narrative, for instance; and then you have the stringent, shorthand art of Thucydides at his best, his masterly feeling for master-facts, and the half as so much more than the whole. Pindar is in a certain sense his analogue in verse. Think of the amount of attention he must have looked for, in those who were, not to read, but to sing him, or to listen while he was sung, and to understand. With those fine, sharp-cut gems or chasings of his, so sparely set, how much he leaves for a well-drilled intelligence to supply in the way of connecting thought.
1891-1892.
NOTES
267. +Transliteration: Ta terpna en Helladi. Pater’s translation: “all the delightful things in Hellas.” Pindar, though I have not located the poem to which Pater refers.
267. +Transliteration: to ta hautou prattein. E-text editor’s translation: “to do only things proper to oneself.” Plato, Republic 369e.
267. +Transliteration: poikilia. Liddell and Scott definition: “metaph: cunning.”
268. +Transliteration: Ar’ oun kai hekastę tôn technôn esti ti sympheron allo ę hoti malista telean einai. E-text editor’s translation: “Does there belong to each of the arts any advantage other than perfection?” Plato, Republic 341d. Pater’s reading is perhaps anachronistic in suggesting that Plato anticipated modern thinking about the autonomy of art.
269. +Transliteration: lexis. Liddell and Scott definition: “a speaking, speech . . . a way of speaking, diction, style.”
269. +Transliteration: logoi. Pater’s contextual translation: “matter.”
270. +Transliteration: mousikę. Liddell and Scott definition: “any art over which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung to music….”
271. +Transliteration: metabasis eis allo genos. Pater’s translation: “a derivation into another kind of matter.”
272. +Transliteration: Hina mę ek tęs mimęseôs tou einai apolausôsin. E-text editor’s translation: “lest they draw the reality only from their imitation of it.” Plato, Republic 395c.
274. +Transliteration: Smikrai hai metabolai. E-text editor’s translation: “our senses are inapt or untrained.” Plato, Republic 397c.
275. +Transliteration: Basilikę phylę. E-text editor’s translation: “royal tribe.”
275. +Transliteration: oudeni prosechein ton voun. Pater’s translation: “[they] would not be permitted even to think of any of those things.” Plato, Republic 396b.
275. +Transliteration: Alla męn, ô Adeimante, hędys ge kai ho kekramenos. E-text editor’s translation: “But indeed, Adeimantus, the mixed kind of art also is pleasant.” Plato, Republic 397d.
276. +Transliteration: mousikę. Liddell and Scott definition: “any art over which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and sung to music….”
277. +Transliteration: Tô austęroterô kai aędesterô poiętę, ôphelias heneka. Pater’s translation: “some more austere and less pleasing sort of poet, for his practical uses.” Plato, Republic 398a.
278. +Transliteration: tôn paraleipomenôn. Pater’s translation: “oversights.” The verb paraleipô means, “to leave on one side . . . leave unnoticed.” Plato, Republic 401e.
278. +Transliteration: mę kalôs dęmiourgęthentôn ę mę kalôs phyntôn. Pater’s translation: “not fairly turned out, whether by art or nature.” Plato, Republic 401e.
278. +Transliteration: kalokagathos. Liddell and Scott definition: “beautiful and good, noble and good.” Plato, Republic 401e.
280. +Transliteration: andreia. Pater’s translation: “manliness.”
281. +Transliteration: ęthos. Liddell and Scott definition: “an accustomed place . . . custom, usage, habit.”
281. +Transliteration: pathos. Liddell and Scott definition “1. anything that befalls one, a suffering, misfortune, calamity; 2. a passive condition: a passion, affection; 3. an incident.”
281. +Transliteration: paraleipomena. Pater’s translation: “oversights.”
281. +Transliteration: akolouthein ton logon. Pater’s translation: “follow the sense.” Plato, Republic 398d.
283. +Transliteration: Chalepa ta kala. E.” Plato, Republic 435c.
283. +Transliteration: Isôs to legomenon alęthes, hoti chalepa ta kala. E-text editor’s translation: “Perhaps the saying is true — namely, that fine things are hard [to obtain or understand].” Plato, Republic 435c.
GREEK STUDIES: A SERIES OF ESSAYS
On 30 July 1894, Pater died suddenly in his Oxford home of heart failure brought on by rheumatic fever, at the age of fifty-four. He was buried at Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. The following year, a friend and former student of Pater’s, Charles Lancelot Shadwell, a Fellow and later Provost of Oriel, collected and published as Greek Studies Pater’s essays on Greek mythology, religion, art and literature. The volume contains a reverie on the boyhood of Hippolytus, Hippolytus Veiled (first published in Macmillan’s Magazine in 1889). The sketch, in essence another ‘imaginary portrait’, illustrates a paradox central to Pater’s sensibility and writings: a leaning towards ascetic beauty apprehended sensuously. The volume also reprints Pater’s 1876 Study of Dionysus.
Charles Lancelot Shadwell (1840-1919) was a scholar and college head.
CONTENTS
A STUDY OF DIONYSUS: THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF FIRE AND DEW
THE BACCHANALS OF EURIPIDES
THE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: I
THE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: II
HIPPOLYTUS VEILED: A STUDY FROM EURIPIDES
THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCULPTURE I: THE HEROIC AGE OF GREEK ART
BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCULPTURE II: THE AGE OF GRAVEN IMAGES
THE MARBLES OF AEGINA
THE AGE OF ATHLETIC PRIZEMEN: A CHAPTER IN GREEK ART
PREFACE BY CHARLES L. SHADWELL
THE present volume consists of a collection of essays by the late Mr. Pater, all of which have already been given to the public in various Magazines; and it is owing to the kindness of the several proprietors of those Magazines that they can now be brought together in a collected shape. It will, it is believed, be felt, that their value is considerably enhanced by their appearance in a single volume, where they can throw light upon one another, and exhibit by their connexion a more complete view of the scope and purpose of Mr. Pater in dealing with the art and literature of the ancient world.
The essays fall into two distinct groups, one dealing with the subjects of Greek mythology and Greek poetry, the other with the history of Greek sculpture and Greek architecture. But these two groups are not wholly distinct; they mutually illustrate one another, and serve to enforce Mr. Pater’s conception of the essential unity, in all its many-sidedness, of the Greek character. The god understood as the “spiritual form” of the things of nature is not only the key-note of the “Study of Dionysus”* and “The Myth of Demeter and Persephone,”* but reappears as contributing to the interpretation of the growth of Greek sculpture.* Thus, though in the bibliography of his writings, the two groups are separated by a considerable interval, there is no change of view; he had already reached the centre of the problem, and, the secret once gained, his mode of treatment of the different aspects of Greek life and thought is permanent and consistent.
The essay on “The Myth of Demeter and Persephone” was originally prepared as two lectures, for delivery, in 1875, at the Birmingham and Midland Institute. These lectures were published in the Fortnightly Review, in Jan. and Feb. 1876. The “Study of Dionysus” appeared in the same Review in Dec. 1876. “The Bacchanals of Euripides” must have been written about the
same time, as a sequel to the “Study of Dionysus”; for, in 1878, Mr. Pater revised the four essays, with the intention, apparently, of publishing them collectively in a volume, an intention afterwards abandoned. The text now printed has, except that of “The Bacchanals,” been taken from proofs then set up, further corrected in manuscript. “The Bacchanals,” written long before, was not published until 1889, when it appeared in Macmillan’s Magazine for May. It was reprinted, without alteration, prefixed to Dr. Tyrrell’s edition of the Bacchae. “Hippolytus Veiled” first appeared in August 1889, in Macmillan’s Magazine. It was afterwards rewritten, but with only a few substantial alterations, in Mr. Pater’s own hand, with a view, probably, of republishing it with other essays. This last revise has been followed in the text now printed.
The papers on Greek sculpture* are all that remain of a series which, if Mr. Pater had lived, would, probably, have grown into a still more important work. Such a work would have included one or more essays on Phidias and the Parthenon, of which only a fragment, though an important fragment, can be found amongst his papers; and it was to have been prefaced by an Introduction to Greek Studies, only a page or two of which was ever written.
This is not the place to speak of Mr. Pater’s private virtues, the personal charm of his character, the brightness of his talk, the warmth of his friendship, the devotion of his family life. But a few words may be permitted on the value of the work by which he will be known to those who never saw him.
