81.

Grecian Taste.—"What is beautiful in it?"—asked a certain geometrician, after a performance of the Iphigenia—"there is nothing proved in it!" Could the Greeks have been so far from this taste? In Sophocles at least "everything is proved."

82.

Esprit Un-Grecian.—The Greeks were exceedingly logical and plain in all their thinking; they did not get tired of it, at least during their long flourishing period, as is so often the case with the French; who too willingly made a little excursion into the opposite, and in fact endure the spirit of logic only when it betrays its sociable courtesy, its sociable self-renunciation, by a multitude of such little excursions into its opposite. Logic appears to them as necessary as bread and water, but also like these as a kind of prison-fare, as soon as it is to be taken pure and by itself. In good society one must never want to be in the right absolutely and solely, as all pure logic requires; hence, the little dose of irrationality in all French esprit.—The social sense of the Greeks was far less developed than that of the French in the present and the past; hence, so little esprit in their cleverest men, hence, so little wit, even in their wags, hence—alas! But people will not readily believe these tenets of mine, and how much of the kind I have still on my soul!—Est res magna tacere—says Martial, like all garrulous people.

83.

Translations.—One can estimate the amount of the historical sense which an age possesses by the way in which it makes translations and seeks to embody in itself past periods and literatures. The French of Corneille, and even the French of the Revolution, appropriated Roman antiquity in a manner for which we would no longer have the courage—owing to our superior historical sense. And Roman antiquity itself: how violently, and at the same time how naïvely, did it lay its hand on everything excellent and elevated belonging to the older Grecian antiquity! How they translated these writings into the Roman present! How they wiped away intentionally and unconcernedly the wing-dust of the butterfly moment! It is thus that Horace now and then translated Alcæus or Archilochus, it is thus that Propertius translated Callimachus and Philetas (poets of equal rank with Theocritus, if we be allowed to judge): of what consequence was it to them that the actual creator experienced this and that, and had inscribed the indication thereof in his poem!—as poets they were averse to the antiquarian, inquisitive spirit which precedes the historical sense; as poets they did not respect those essentially personal traits and names, nor anything peculiar to city, coast, or century, such as its costume and mask, but at once put the present and the Roman in its place. They seem to us to ask: "Should we not make the old new for ourselves, and adjust ourselves to it? Should we not be allowed to inspire this dead body with our soul? for it is dead indeed: how loathsome is everything dead!"—They did not know the pleasure of the historical sense; the past and the alien was painful to them, and as Romans it was an incitement to a Roman conquest. In fact, they conquered when they translated,—not only in that they omitted the historical: no, they added also allusions to the present; above all, they struck out the name of the poet and put their own in its place—not with the feeling of theft, but with the very best conscience of the imperium Romanum.

84.

The Origin of Poetry.—The lovers of the fantastic in man, who at the same time represent the doctrine of instinctive morality, draw this conclusion: "Granted that utility has been honoured at all times as the highest divinity, where then in all the world has poetry come from?—this rhythmising of speech which thwarts rather than furthers plainness of communication, and which, nevertheless, has sprung up everywhere on the earth, and still springs up, as a mockery of all useful purpose! The wildly beautiful irrationality of poetry refutes you, ye utilitarians! The wish to get rid of utility in some way—that is precisely what has elevated man, that is what has inspired him to morality and art!" Well, I must here speak for once to please the utilitarians,—they are so seldom in the right that it is pitiful! In the old times which called poetry into being, people had still utility in view with respect to it, and a very important utility—at the time when rhythm was introduced into speech, the force which arranges all the particles of the sentence anew, commands the choosing of the words, recolours the thought, and makes it more obscure, more foreign, and more distant: to be sure a superstitious utility! It was intended that a human entreaty should be more profoundly impressed upon the Gods by virtue of rhythm, after it had been observed that men could remember a verse better than an unmetrical speech. It was likewise thought that people could make themselves audible at greater distances by the rhythmical beat; the rhythmical prayer seemed to come nearer to the ear of the Gods. Above all, however, people wanted to have the advantage of the elementary conquest which man experiences in himself when he hears music: rhythm is a constraint; it produces an unconquerable desire to yield, to join in; not only the step of the foot, but also the soul itself follows the measure,—probably the soul of the Gods also, as people thought! They attempted, therefore, to constrain the Gods by rhythm and to exercise a power over them; they threw poetry around the Gods like a magic noose. There was a still more wonderful idea, and it has perhaps operated most powerfully of all in the originating of poetry. Among the Pythagoreans it made its appearance as a philosophical doctrine and as an artifice of teaching: but long before there were philosophers music was acknowledged to possess the power of unburdening the emotions, of purifying the soul, of soothing the ferocia animi—and this was owing to the rhythmical element in music. When the proper tension and harmony of the soul were lost a person had to dance to the measure of the singer,—that was the recipe of this medical art. By means of it Terpander quieted a tumult, Empedocles calmed a maniac, Damon purged a love-sick youth; by means of it even the maddened, revengeful Gods were treated for the purpose of a cure. First of all, it was by driving the frenzy and wantonness of their emotions to the highest pitch, by making the furious mad, and the revengeful intoxicated with vengeance:—all the orgiastic cults seek to discharge the ferocia of a deity all at once and thus make an orgy, so that the deity may feel freer and quieter afterwards, and leave man in peace. Melos, according to its root, signifies a soothing means, not because the song is gentle itself, but because its after-effect makes gentle.—And not only in the religious song, but also in the secular song of the most ancient times the prerequisite is that the rhythm should exercise a magical influence; for example, in drawing water, or in rowing: the song is for the enchanting of the spirits supposed to be active thereby; it makes them obliging, involuntary, and the instruments of man. And as often as a person acts he has occasion to sing, every action is dependent on the assistance of spirits: magic song and incantation appear to be the original form of poetry. When verse also came to be used in oracles—the Greeks said that the hexameter was invented at Delphi,—the rhythm was here also intended to exercise a compulsory influence. To make a prophecy—that means originally (according to what seems to me the probable derivation of the Greek word) to determine something; people thought they could determine the future by winning Apollo over to their side: he who, according to the most ancient idea, is far more than a foreseeing deity. According as the formula is pronounced with literal and rhythmical correctness, it determines the future: the formula, however, is the invention of Apollo, who as the God of rhythm, can also determine the goddesses of fate.—Looked at and investigated as a whole, was there ever anything more serviceable to the ancient superstitious species of human being than rhythm? People could do everything with it: they could make labour go on magically; they could compel a God to appear, to be near at hand, and listen to them; they could arrange the future for themselves according to their will; they could unburden their own souls of any kind of excess (of anxiety, of mania, of sympathy, of revenge), and not only their own soul, but the souls of the most evil spirits,—without verse a person was nothing, by means of verse a person became almost a God. Such a fundamental feeling no longer allows itself to be fully eradicated,—and even now, after millenniums of long labour in combating such superstition, the very wisest of us occasionally becomes the fool of rhythm, be it only that one perceives a thought to be truer when it has a metrical form and approaches with a divine hopping. Is it not a very funny thing that the most serious philosophers, however anxious they are in other respects for strict certainty, still appeal to poetical sayings in order to give their thoughts force and credibility?—and yet it is more dangerous to a truth when the poet assents to it than when he contradicts it! For, as Homer says, "The singers speak much falsehood!"—