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Initiation into Literature

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INITIATION INTO LITERATURE

BY

ÉMILE FAGUET

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

SIR HOME GORDON, BART.




The Translator begs to acknowledge with appreciation the courtesy of the
Author in graciously consenting to make some valuable additions, at his
request, specially for the English version.




PREFACE


This volume, as indicated by the title, is designed to show the way to
the beginner, to satisfy and more especially to excite his initial
curiosity. It affords an adequate idea of the march of facts and of
ideas. The reader is led, somewhat rapidly, from the remote origins to
the most recent efforts of the human mind.

It should be a convenient repertory to which the mind may revert in order
to see broadly the general opinion of an epoch--and what connected it
with those that followed or preceded it. It aims above all at being _a
frame_ in which can conveniently be inscribed, in the course of
further studies, new conceptions more detailed and more thoroughly
examined.

It will have fulfilled its design should it incite to research and
meditation, and if it prepares for them correctly.

E. FAGUET.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

ANCIENT INDIA

The Vedas. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very Diverse, much
Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.


CHAPTER II

HEBRAIC LITERATURE

The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and Sententious
Writings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels.


CHAPTER III

THE GREEKS

Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers and
Historians. Lyric Poets, Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers.


CHAPTER IV

THE LATINS

The Latins, Imitators of the Greeks. Epic Poets. Dramatic Poets. Golden
Age: Virgil, Horace, Ovid. Silver Age: Prose Writers, Historians, and
Philosophers: Titus-Livy, Tacitus, Seneca. Decadence Still Brilliant.


CHAPTER V

THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE

_Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. Popular
Epopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables.
Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama.


CHAPTER VI

THE MIDDLE AGES: ENGLAND

Literature in Latin, in Anglo-Saxon, and in French. The Ancestor of
English Literature: Chaucer.


CHAPTER VII

THE MIDDLE AGES: GERMANY

Epic Poems: _Nibelungen_. Popular Poems. Very Numerous Lyric Poems.
Drama.


CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE AGES: ITALY

Troubadours of Southern Italy. Neapolitan and Sicilian Poets: Dante,
Petrarch, Boccaccio.


CHAPTER IX

THE MIDDLE AGES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Epic Poems: _Romanceros_. Didactic Books. Romances of Chivalry.


CHAPTER X

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE

First Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets: Marot, Saint-Gelais; Prose
Writers: Rabelais, Comines. Second Portion of Sixteenth Century: Poets:
"The Pleiade"; Prose Writers: Amyot, Montaigne. First Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Intellectual and Brilliant Poets: Malherbe,
Corneille; Great Prose Writers: Balzac, Descartes. Second Portion of
Seventeenth Century: Poets: Racine, Molière, Boileau, La Fontaine; Prose
Writers: Bossuet, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fénelon, etc.


CHAPTER XI

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Dramatists: Marlowe, Shakespeare. Prose Writers: Sidney, Francis Bacon,
etc. Epic Poet: Milton. Comic Poets.


CHAPTER XII

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Luther, Zwingli, Albert Dürer, Leibnitz, Gottsched.


CHAPTER XIII

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Ariosto, Tasso, Guarini, Folengo, Marini, etc. Prose Writers:
Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Davila.


CHAPTER XIV

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL

Poets: Quevedo, Gongora, Lope de Vega, Ercilla, Calderon, Rojas, etc.
Prose Writers: Montemayor, Cervantes, etc. Portugal: De Camoèns, etc. The
Stage.


CHAPTER XV

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE

Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of the
Eighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc.;
Prose Writers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc.
Of the Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny,
etc.; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Mérimée,
Renan, etc.


CHAPTER XVI

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc. Prose
Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding,
Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron,
Shelley, the Lake Poets. Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: Walter
Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, Carlyle.


CHAPTER XVII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland. Prose
Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the Nineteenth
Century: Goethe, Schiller, Körner.


CHAPTER XVIII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY

Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers:
Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc.


CHAPTER XIX

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN

The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers,
Novelists, Orators.


CHAPTER XX

RUSSIAN LITERATURE

Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the Seventeenth
Century. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century.
Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century.


CHAPTER XXI

POLISH LITERATURE

At an Early Date Western Influence Sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth Century
Brilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries highly Cultured;
Nineteenth Century Notably Original.


INDEX




INITIATION INTO
LITERATURE




CHAPTER I


ANCIENT INDIA

The _Vedas_. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very
Diverse, much Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.


THE _VEDAS_.--The ancient Indians, who spoke Sanscrit, possess a
literature which goes back, perhaps, to the fifteenth century before
Christ. At first, like all other races, they possessed a sacred
literature intimately bound up with their religion. The earliest volumes
of sacred literature are the _Vedas_. They describe and glorify the
gods then worshipped, to wit, Agni, god of fire, of the domestic hearth,
of the celestial fire (the sun), of the atmospheric fire (lightning);
Indra, god of atmosphere, analogous to Zeus of the Greeks; Soma, the
moon; Varuna, the nocturnal vault, the god who rewards the good and
punishes the evil; Rudra, the irascible god, more evil than well
disposed, though sometimes helpful; others too, very numerous.

The style of the _Vedas_ is continually poetic and metaphorical.
They contain a sort of metaphysics as well as continual allegories.

BUDDHA.--Buddhism, a philosophical religion, sufficiently analogous to
Christianity, which Sakyamuni, surnamed Buddha (the wise), spread through
India towards 550 B.C., created a new literature. It taught, as will be
remembered, the equality of all castes in the sight of religion,
metempsychosis, charity, and detachment from all passions and desires in
order to arrive at absolute calm (_nirvana_). The literature it
inspired was primarily _gnomic_, that is, sententious, analogous to
that of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales and
parables, as in the Gospel.

This literature subsequently expanded into large and even immense epic
poems, of which the principal are the _Mahabharata_ and the _Ramayana_.

THE _MAHABHARATA_; THE _RAMAYANA_.--The _Mahabharata_ (that is, the
_great history of the Bharatas_) is a legend or a novel in verse
intersected with moral digressions, with episodes vaguely related to the
subject, with discourses and prayers. There are charming episodes full of
delicate sensibility, of moving tenderness--that is to say, of human
beauty, comparable to the farewells of Hector and Andromache in Homer;
and everywhere, amid tediousness and monotony, is found a powerful and
superabundant imagination.

The _Ramayana_, the name of the author of which, Valmiki, has come
down to us, is a poem yet more vast and unequal. There are portions which
to us are quite unreadable, and there are others comparable to the most
imposing and most touching in all epic poetry. Reduced to its theme, the
subject of _Mahabharata_ is extremely simple; it is the history of
Prince Rama, dispossessed of his throne, who saw his beloved wife, Sita,
ravished by the monstrous demon Ravana, who made alliance with the good
monkeys and with them constructed a bridge over the sea to reach the
island on which Sita was detained, who vanquished and slew Ravana, who
re-found Sita, and finally went back happily to his kingdom, which had
also been re-conquered.

The most noticeable exterior characteristic of the _Mahabharata_ is
the almost constant mingling of men and animals, a mingling which one
feels is in conformity with the dogma of the transmigration of souls. Not
only monkeys but vultures, eagles, gazelles, etc., are brought into the
work and form important personages. We are in the epoch when the animals
spoke. Battles are numerous and described in great detail; the
_Ramayana_ is the _Iliad_ of the Indians; pathetic scenes, as
well as those of love, of friendship, of gratitude are not rare, and are
sometimes exquisite. The whole poem is imbued with a great feeling of
humanity, heroism, and justice. Victory is to the good and right is
triumphant; the gods permit that the just should suffer and be compelled
to struggle; but invariably it is only for a time and the merited
happiness is at the end of all.

After these two vast giant epics there were written among the Indians a
number of shorter narrative poems, very varied both in tone and manner,
which suggest an uninterrupted succession of highly important and
animated schools of literature. Nearer to our own time--that is, towards
the fifth or sixth century of our era, lyric poetry and the drama were,
as it were, detached from the epopee and existed on their own merits.
Songs of love, of hate, of sadness, or of triumph took ample scope; they
were more often melancholy than sad, for India is the land of optimism,
or at least of resignation.

DRAMATIC POETRY.--As for the dramatic poetry, that is very curious; it is
not mixed with epopee in the precise sense of the word; but it is
continually mingled with descriptions of nature, with word-paintings of
nature and invocations to nature. The Indian dramatic poet did not
separate man from the air he breathed nor from the world around him; in
recalling the moment of the day or night in which the scene takes place,
_the actual hour_, the poet, no doubt in obedience to a law dictated
to him by his public, kept his characters in communication with earth
and heaven, with the dawn he described, the moon he painted, the evening
he caused to be seen, the plants he portrayed as withering or reviving,
the birds which he showed everywhere in the country or returning to their
habitation, etc.

From the purely dramatic aspect, these plays are often affecting or
curious, possessing penetrating and thoughtful psychology. The most
celebrated dramas still left to us of the Indian stage are _The Chariot
of Baked Clay_ and the affecting and delicate _Sakuntala_ the gem
of Indian literature, the work of the poet Kalidas, who was also a
remarkable lyric poet.

GNOMIC POETRY.--Gnomic, that is sententious, poetry, which, it has been
indicated, very early enjoyed high appreciation among the Indians, long
continued to obtain their approval. It was always wise and often
intellectual. The collection of Barthari, who belonged to the sixth or
seventh century A.D., contains thoughts which would do honour to the
highest moralists of the most enlightened epochs. "The fortune, ample or
restricted, which the Creator hath inscribed on thy forehead thou wilt
assuredly attain; wert thou in the desert or in the gold-mines of Meru,
more couldst thou not acquire. Therefore, of what avail to torment
thyself and to humiliate thyself before the powerful. A pot does not draw
more water from the sea than from a well."

And this might be by a modern man opposing La Rochefoucauld: "The modest
man is one poor in spirit, the devout a hypocrite, the honest man is
artful, the hero is a barbarian, the ascetic is a fool, the unreserved
a chatterbox, the prudent a waverer. Tell me, which is the virtue among
all the virtues that human malice cannot vilify?"

Here, finally, is a truth for all time: "It is easy to persuade the
ignorant, still easier to persuade the very wise; but he who hath a
commencement of wisdom Brahma himself could not cajole."

Indian literature continued to be productive, though losing much of its
fecundity, until the fifteenth or sixteenth century of our era. Without
exaggeration, it is permissible to conject that its scope extended over
twenty-five centuries. It possesses the uniquely honourable trait that it
is, assuredly, the only one which owes nothing to any other and is
literally indigenous.




CHAPTER II


HEBRAIC LITERATURE

The Bible, a Collection of Epic, Lyric, Elegiac, and Sententious
Writings. The Talmud, Book of Ordinances. The Gospels.


THE BIBLE.--The Hebrew race possessed a literature from about 1050 B.C.
It embodied in poems the legends which had circulated among the people
since the most remote epoch of their existence. It was those poems,
gathered later into one collection, which formed what, since
approximately the year 400, we call the Bible--that is, the Book of
books.

In the Bible there are histories (_Genesis_, _History of the Jews
up to Joshua_, the _Book of Joshua_, _Judges_, _Kings_, etc.), then
anecdotal episodes (_Ruth_, _Esdras_, _Tobit_, _Judith_, _Esther_), then
books of moral philosophy(_Proverbs of Solomon_, _Ecclesiastes_,
_Wisdom_, _Ecclesiasticus_), then books of an oratorical and lyrical
character (_Psalms of David_ and all the _Prophets_). Finally, a single
work, still lyrical but in which there are marked traces of the dramatic
type (the _Song of Songs_).

THE TALMUD.--To the works which have been gathered into the Bible, it is
necessary to add the Talmud, a collection of commentaries on the civil
and religious laws of the Jews, which forms an indispensable supplement
to the Bible, to anyone desiring to understand the Hebraic civilisation.

THE GOSPELS.--The Gospels, published in the Greek tongue, have nothing
Hebraic except that they were compiled by Jews or by their immediate
disciples and that they have preserved something of the manner of writing
of the Jews.

BIBLICAL WRITINGS.--The Biblical writings, regarded solely from the
literary point of view, form one of the finest monuments of human
thought. The sentiment of grandeur and even of infinity in _Genesis_;
the profound and simple sensibility as in the _History of Joseph_,
_Tobit_, and _Esther_; eloquence and exquisite religious sentiment as in
the _Book of Job_ and the _Psalms of David_; ecstatic lyricism, vehement
and fiery, accompanied with incredible satiric force as in the
_Prophets_; wisdom alike equal to that of the Stoics and of the serious
Epicureans as in _Ecclesiastes_ and the _Proverbs_; everywhere
marvellous imagination, always concise at least, if not restrained;
lyrical sensuality which recalls the most perturbed creations of erotic
Greeks and Latins, whilst surpassing them in beauty as in the _Song of
Songs_; and throughout there is this grandeur, this simple majesty, this
easy and natural sublimity which in the same degree is to be found only
occasionally in Homer and which appears to be the privilege of the
people who were the first to believe in a single God. That is what
makes, almost in a continuous way, the astonishing beauty of the Bible,
and which explains how whole nations, of other origin, have made down to
our own day, and still continue to make, the Bible their uninterrupted
study, and draw from it courage, serenity, exaltation of soul, and a
singular ferment of their poetic and literary genius.

As has been the case with many other literary monuments, it is possible,
without owning that it is desirable, that the Bible may even survive the
numerous and important religions which have been born from it.




CHAPTER III


THE GREEKS

Homer. Hesiod. Elegiac and Lyric Poets. Prose Writers. Philosophers and
Historians. Lyric Poets. Dramatic Poets. Comic Poets. Orators. Romancers.


HOMER.--The most ancient Greek writer known is Homer, and it cannot be
absolutely stated in what epoch he lived.

Since the seventeenth century it has even been asked if he ever existed
and if his poems are not collections of epic songs which had circulated
in ancient Greece and which at a very recent epoch, that of Pisistratus,
had been gathered into two grand consecutive poems, thanks to some
rearrangement and editing. At the commencement of the nineteenth century
the erudite were generally agreed that Homer had never existed. Now
they are reverting to the belief that there were only two Homers, one the
author of the _Iliad_ and the other of the _Odyssey_.

THE _ILIAD_.--The _Iliad_ is the story of the wrath of Achilles, of his
retreat far from his friends who were endeavouring to capture Troy and of
his return to them.

It is the poem of patriotism. It is filled with the spirit that when a
people is divided against itself, all misfortunes fall on and overwhelm
it. Achilles, unjustly offended, deprived his fellow-countrymen of his
support; they are all on the point of perishing; he returns to them in
order to avenge the death of his dearest friend and they are saved.

The _Iliad_ is almost entirely filled with battles, which are very
skillfully diversified. Some episodes, such as the farewell of Hector to
his wife Andromache when he quits her for the fight, or King Priam
coming, in tears, to ask Achilles for the corpse of his son Hector that
he may piously inter it, are among the most beautiful passages that ever
came from a human inspiration.

THE _ODYSSEY_.--The _Odyssey_ is also the poem of patriotism,
of the _little homeland_, of the native land. It is the story of
Ulysses, after the siege of Troy, reconquering Ithaca, the small island
of which he is king, and taking ten years to acquire it. What makes the
unity of the poem, what forms the backbone of the poem, is the smoke
which rises above the house of Ulysses, which he always perceives in the
dream of his hopes and desires, which invincibly attracts him, which he
desires to see again before he dies, and the thought of which sustains
him in his trials and causes him to scorn all joys on his road thither.
The thousand adventures of Ulysses, his sojourn with the nymph Calypso,
his terrible perils in the cave of the giant Polyphemus and near the isle
of the Sirens, the tempests which he survives, the hospitality he
receives from King Alcinoüs, the visit he pays to the dead--among whom is
Achilles regretting the earth and preferring to be a ploughman among the
living rather than king among the dead; these are vigorous, curious,
interesting, touching, picturesque scenes from which all subsequent
literatures have drawn inspiration and which still delight all races.

HESIOD.--Posterior, very probably, to Homer, Hesiod has left two great
poems, one on the families of the gods (_Theogenia_) and the other
on the works of man (_Works and Days_). The _Theogenia_ is very
valuable to us because we learn from it and it makes us understand how
the Greeks understood the divinity, its different manifestations, and, so
to say, its evolution through the world. _Works and Days_ is a poem
filled with both sadness and courage, the author finding the world wicked
and men unjust; but always concluding that with energy, perseverance, and
obstinacy it is possible to save oneself from anything, and that there is
only one real misfortune, which is to know despair.

ELEGIACAL AND LYRICAL POETS.--Almost from the most remote antiquity, from
the seventh century, perhaps the eighth century before the Christian era,
the Greeks possessed elegiacal and lyrical poets--that is to say, poets
who put into verse their personal sentiments, the joys and sorrows which
they felt as men. Such were Callinos, the satiric Archilochus, the
satiric Simonides of Amorgos, the martial Tyrtaeus. Then there were
the poets who made verses to be set to music: Alcaeus, Sappho, Anacreon,
Alcman. Alcaeus appears to have been the greatest lyrical Greek poet
judging by the fragments we possess by him and by the lyrical poems of
Horace, which there are reasons for believing were imitated from Alcaeus.

Of the poetess Sappho we have too little to enable us to judge her very
exactly; but throughout antiquity she enjoyed a glory equal to that of
the greatest. She specially sang of love and in such a manner as to lead
to the belief that she herself had not escaped the passion.

Anacreon sang after the same fashion and with a charm, a grace, a witty
ingenuity which are fascinating. He was the epicurean of poetry (before
the birth of Epicurus) and from him was born a type of literature known
as anacreonotic, which extended right through ancient times and has been
prolonged to modern times.

PROSE WRITERS.--Finally prose was born, in the sixth century before
Christ, with the philosophers Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and with
the historians, of whom only one of that epoch has remained famous,
namely Herodotus.

HERODOTUS.--Herodotus, in a general history of his own time and of that
immediately preceding it, is often not far from epic poetry. His style is
at once limpid and warm, he possesses a pleasing power of distinction,
the taste for and curiosity about the manners of foreign peoples, a
laughing and easy imagination without any pretence at the philosophy of
history or of moralising through history. He was, above all, a delightful
writer.

AESOP.--To this period (albeit somewhat at hazard) it is possible to
ascribe Aesop, about whom nothing is known except that he wrote the
fables which have been imitated from generation to generation. The
collection that we possess under his name is one of these imitations,
perpetrated long after his death, but as to which it is impossible to
assign a date.

PINDAR.--Pindar, the Theban, broadened and extended the lyrical type.
Under him it preserved its power, its high spirits, its verse and, so to
say, its fine fury; but he introduced into the epic the narration of
ancient legends, the acts and gestures of the ancient heroes, and
effected this so admirably that the most lyrical of Grecian lyricists is
an historian. Capable of sustained elevation, of sublime thoughts and
expressions, of a fine disorder which has been overpraised, and which on
close expression is found to be very careful, he has been regarded as the
very type of dignified and poetic style, and more or less to be imitated
by all ambitious poets commencing with Ronsard. The wise, like Horace,
have contented themselves with praising him. From fragments left to us he
is infinitely impassioned to read.

GREEK TRAGEDY.--Greek tragedy, which is one of the miracles of the human
brain, began in the sixth century B.C. It was born of the dithyramb. The
dithyramb is a chant in chorus in honour of a god or a hero. From this
chorus emerged a single actor who sang the praises of the god, and to
which the choir replied. When, instead of one actor, there were two who
addressed one another in dialogue and were answered by the choir, the
dramatic poem was founded. When there were three--and there were hardly
ever any more--tragedy, as the Greeks understood it, existed.

THESPIS; AESCHYLUS; SOPHOCLES.--Thespis was the earliest known to us who
took rudimentary tragedies from town to town in Attica. Then came
Aeschylus, whose tragedy, already rigid and hieratical, was very
powerful, imbued with terrible majesty; then came Sophocles, a religious
philosopher, having a feeling for the old religion and the art of giving
it a moral character, great lyrical poet, master of dialogue, eloquent,
moving, knowing how to construct and carry on a dramatic poem with
infinite skill, to whom, in fact, can be denied no quality of dramatic
poetry and who attains a conception of perfection.

EURIPIDES.--Euripides, less religious as a philosopher, sometimes
suggesting the sophist and a little the rhetorician, but full of ideas,
eloquent, affecting, "the most tragic" (that is, the most pathetic) of
all the acting dramatists, as Aristotle observed, the most modern, too,
and the one we best understand, has been the true source whence have been
freely drawn the tragedies of modern times, more particularly of our own.

The greatest works of Aeschylus are _Seven Against Thebes_ and
_Prometheus Bound_; the greatest of Sophocles: _Antigone_, _Oedipus
the Tyrant_ and _Oedipus at Colonos_; the greatest of Euripides:
_Hippolytus_ and _Iphigenia_.

After Euripides tragedy was exhausted and only produced very second-rate
works.

COMEDY.--Comedy enjoyed a longer existence. Very obscure in origin, no
doubt proceeding from the opprobrious jests exchanged by the lower
classes in mirthful hours, it was at first freely fantastical, composed
in dialogue, oratorical, lyrical, satirical, even epical at times. Like
tragedy, it possessed a chorus for which the lyrical part was specially
reserved. It was personal--that is, it directly attacked known
contemporaries, often by name and often by bringing them on the stage.
The celebrated authors of this "ancient comedy" were Eupolis, Cratinos,
of whom we have only fragments, and Aristophanes, whose work has come
down to us.

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