The Third Ruskin Journey took place in 2008,and went from Northern Italy to Greece
(No : The Fourth Ruskin Journey will take place in 2009, to Greece)
Of course, Ruski never did go to Greece, due to parental concern.
Byt he was greatly influenced by Greek literature, philosophy and art
Greek literature, thought and art is closely linked to ruskin's deconversion and turning away from purism
List of most significant texts
MP 5, Part IX, chapter 2 : The Lance of Pallas,
The Queen of the Air
Aratra Pentelici
To begin with, here is a text from the preface to the Queen of the Air :
This first day of May, 1869, I am writing where my work was begun thirty-five years ago, within sight of the snows of the higher Alps.2 In that half of the permitted life of man, I have seen strange evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others.3 The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn, and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading,4 as if Hell had breathed on them; the waters that once sank at their feet into crystalline rest are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore. These are no careless words—they are accurately—horribly—true. I know what the Swiss lakes were; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source was clearer. This morning, on the Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep.lThe light, the air, the waters, all defiled! How of the earth itself?
Here is the Chapter The Lance of Pallas, from MP 5
CHAPTER II
THE LANCE OF PALLAS
§ 1. It might be thought that the tenor of the preceding chapter was in some sort adverse to my repeated statement1 that all great art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, not in his own. But observe, he is not himself his own work: he is himself precisely the most wonderful piece of God’s workmanship extant. In this best piece not only he is bound to take delight, but cannot, in a right state of thought, take delight in anything else, otherwise than through himself. Through himself, however, as the sun of creation, not as the creation. In himself, as the light of the world.* Not as being the world. Let him stand in his due relation to other creatures, and to inanimate things—know them all and love them, as made for him, and he for them;—and he becomes himself the greatest and holiest of them. But let him cast off this relation, despise and forget the less creation round him, and instead of being the light of the world, he is a sun in space—a fiery ball, spotted with storm.
§ 2. All the diseases of mind leading to fatalest ruin consist primarily in this isolation. They are the concentration of man upon himself, whether his heavenly interests or his worldly interests, matters not; it is the being his own interests which makes the regard of them so mortal. Every form of asceticism on one side, of sensualism on the other, is an isolation of his soul or of his body; the fixing his
* Matt. v. 14.
1 [See, for instance, Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 70); Harbours of England, § 19 (Vol. XIII. p. 29); Two Paths, § 48 (Vol. XVI. p. 290).]
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thoughts upon them alone; while every healthy state of nations and of individual minds consists in the unselfish presence of the human spirit everywhere, energizing over all things; speaking and living through all things.
§ 3. Man being thus the crowning and ruling work of God, it will follow that all his best art must have something to tell about himself, as the soul of things, and ruler of creatures. It must also make this reference to himself under a true conception of his own nature. Therefore all art which involves no reference to man is inferior or nugatory. And all art which involves misconception of man, or base thought of him, is in that degree false and base.
Now the basest thought possible concerning him is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other. All great art confesses and worships both.
§ 4. The art which, since the writings of Rio and Lord Lindsay,1 is specially known as “Christian,” erred by pride in its denial of the animal nature of man;—and, in connection with all monkish and fanatical forms of religion, by looking always to another world instead of this. It wasted its strength in visions, and was therefore swept away, notwithstanding all its good and glory, by the strong truth of the naturalist art of the sixteenth century. But that naturalist art erred on the other side; denied at last the spiritual nature of man, and perished in corruption.
A contemplative reaction is taking place in modern times, out of which it may be hoped a new spiritual art may be developed. The first school of landscape, named, in the foregoing chapter, the Heroic, is that of the noble naturalists. The second (Classical), and third (Pastoral), belong to the time of sensual decline. The fourth (Contemplative) is that of modern revival.
1 [For Rio’s book, see Vol. IV. p. xxiii.; and for Lord Lindsay’s, Vol. XII. p. xxxix.]
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§ 5. But why, the reader will ask, is no place given in this scheme to the “Christian” or spiritual art which preceded the naturalists? Because all landscape belonging to that art is subordinate, and in one essential principle false. It is subordinate, because intended only to exalt the conception of saintly or Divine presence:—rather therefore to be considered as a landscape decoration or type, than an effort to paint nature. If I included it in my list of schools, I should have to go still farther back, and include with it the conventional and illustrative landscape of the Greeks and Egyptians.
§ 6. But also it cannot constitute a real school, because its first assumption is false, namely, that the natural world can be represented without the element of death.
The real schools of landscape are primarily distinguished from the preceding unreal ones by their introduction of this element. They are not at first in any sort the worthier for it. But they are more true, and capable, therefore, in the issue, of becoming worthier.
It will be a hard piece of work for us to think this rightly out, but it must be done.
§ 7. Perhaps an accurate analysis of the schools of art of all time might show us that when the immortality of the soul was practically and completely believed, the elements of decay, danger, and grief in visible things were always disregarded. However this may be, it is assuredly so in the early Christian schools. The ideas of danger or decay seem not merely repugnant, but inconceivable to them; the expression of immortality and perpetuity is alone possible. I do not mean that they take no note of the absolute fact of corruption. This fact the early painters often compel themselves to look fuller in the front than any other men: as in the way they usually paint the Deluge (the raven feeding on the bodies), and in all the various triumphs and processions of the power of Death, which formed one great chapter of religious teaching and painting, from Orcagna’s1
1 [For Orcagna’s “Triumph of Death,” see Vol. XII. p. 224.]
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time to the close of the Purist epoch. But I mean that this external fact of corruption is separated in their minds from the main conditions of their work; and its horror enters no more into their general treatment of landscape than the fear of murder or martyrdom, both of which they had nevertheless continually to represent. None of these things appeared to them as affecting the general dealings of the Deity with His world. Death, pain, and decay were simply momentary accidents in the course of immortality, which never ought to exercise any depressing influence over the hearts of men, or in the life of Nature. God, in intense life, peace, and helping power, was always and everywhere. Human bodies, at one time or another, had indeed to be made dust of, and raised from it; and this becoming dust was hurtful and humiliating, but not in the least melancholy, nor, in any very high degree, important; except to thoughtless persons who needed sometimes to be reminded of it, and whom, not at all fearing the things much himself, the painter accordingly did remind of it, somewhat sharply.
§ 8. A similar condition of mind seems to have been attained, not unfrequently, in modern times, by persons whom either narrowness of circumstance or education, or vigorous moral efforts, have guarded from the troubling of the world, so as to give them firm and childlike trust in the power and presence of God, together with peace of conscience, and a belief in the passing of all evil into some form of good. It is impossible that a person thus disciplined should feel, in any of its more acute phases, the sorrow for any of the phenomena of nature, or terror in any material danger which would occur to another. The absence of personal fear, the consciousness of security as great in the midst of pestilence and storm, as amidst beds of flowers on a summer’s morning, and the certainty that whatever appeared evil, or was assuredly painful, must eventually issue in a far greater and enduring good—this general feeling and conviction, I say, would gradually lull, and at last put to
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entire rest, the physical sensations of grief and fear; so that the man would look upon danger without dread,—expect pain without lamentation.
§ 9. It may perhaps be thought that this is a very high and right state of mind.
Unfortunately, it appears that the attainment of it is never possible without inducing some form of intellectual weakness.
No painter belonging to the purist1 religious schools ever mastered his art. Perugino nearly did so; but it was because he was more rational—more a man of the world—than the rest. No literature exists of a high class produced by minds in the pure religious temper. On the contrary, a great deal of literature exists, produced by persons in that temper, which is markedly, and very far, below average literary work.
§ 10. The reason of this I believe to be, that the right faith of man is not intended to give him repose, but to enable him to do his work. It is not intended that he should look away from the place he lives in now, and cheer himself with thoughts of the place he is to live in next, but that he should look stoutly into this world, in faith that if he does his work thoroughly here, some good to others or himself, with which however he is not at present concerned, will come of it hereafter. And this kind of brave, but not very hopeful or cheerful faith, I perceive to be always rewarded by clear practical success and splendid intellectual power; while the faith which dwells on the future fades away into rosy mist, and emptiness of musical air. That result indeed follows naturally enough on its habit of assuming that things must be right, or must come right, when, probably, the fact is, that so far as we are concerned, they are entirely wrong; and going wrong: and also on its weak and false way of looking on what these religious persons call “the bright side of things,” that is to say, on
1 [“Purest” in all previous editions; but the MS. has “purist,” which is doubtless the word Ruskin intended: see the “Purist Ideal” in Modern Painters, vol. iii.]
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one side of them only, when God has given them two sides, and intended us to see both.
§ 11. I was reading but the other day, in a book by a zealous, useful, and able Scotch clergyman, one of these rhapsodies, in which he described a scene in the Highlands to show (he said) the goodness of God. In this Highland scene there was nothing but sunshine, and fresh breezes, and bleating lambs, and clean tartans, and all manner of pleasantness. Now a Highland scene is, beyond dispute, pleasant enough in its own way; but, looked close at, has its shadows.1 Here, for instance, is the very fact of one, as pretty as I can remember—having seen many. It is a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by jutting rocks and broad flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into quicker ripple as it reaches the end of the oval field, and then, first islanding a purple and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes away into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket of mountain-ash and alder. The autumn sun, low but clear, shines on the scarlet ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies of the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket, the carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first stayed it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current plunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on three sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which the foam slips in detached
1 [The passage “A Highland scene” down to “so sharp as they” is § 87 in Frondes Agrestes, where at this point Ruskin added the following footnote:—
“Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an amiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the Highlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of Italy.”
The “study of the sadness of Italy” (§ 88 in Frondes) is the description of the Campagna under evening light from the first volume of Modern Painters, preface to second edition, § 37 (Vol. III. p. 42).]
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snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool beneath, the water circles slowly, like black oil; a little butterfly lies on its back, its wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs feebly quivering; a fish rises, and it is gone. Lower down the stream, I can just see over a knoll, the green and damp turf roofs of four or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the cattle into a black Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed by a few ill-set stepping-stones, with here and there a flat slab on the tops, where they have sunk out of sight, and at the turn of the brook I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog—a picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I know them, and I know the dog’s ribs also, which are nearly as bare as the dead ewe’s; and the child’s wasted shoulders, cutting his old tartan jacket through, so sharp are they. We will go down and talk with the man.
§ 12. Or, that I may not piece pure truth with fancy, for I have none of his words set down, let us hear a word or two from another such, a Scotchman also, and as true-hearted, and in just as fair a scene. I write out the passage, in which I have kept his few sentences, word for word, as it stands in my private diary:—“22nd April (1851). Yesterday I had a long walk up the Via Gellia, at Matlock, coming down upon it from the hills above, all sown with anemones and violets, and murmuring with sweet springs. Above all the mills in the valley, the brook, in its first purity, forms a small shallow pool, with a sandy bottom covered with cresses and other water plants. A man was wading in it for cresses as I passed up the valley, and bade me good-day. I did not go much farther; he was there when I returned. I passed him again, about one hundred yards, when it struck me I might as well learn all I could about watercresses: so I turned back. I asked the man, among other questions, what he called the common weed, something like watercress, but with a serrated leaf, which grows at the edge of nearly all such pools. ‘We calls that
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brooklime, hereabouts,’ said a voice behind me. I turned, and saw three men, miners or manufacturers—two evidently Derbyshire men, and respectable-looking in their way; the third, thin, poor, old, and harder-featured, and utterly in rags. ‘Brooklime?’ I said. ‘What do you call it lime for?’ The man said he did not know; it was called that. ‘You’ll find that in the British ‘Erba,’ said the weak, calm voice of the old man. I turned to him in much surprise; but he went on saying something drily (I hardly understood what) to the cress-gatherer; who contradicting him, the old man said he ‘didn’t know fresh water,’ he ‘knew enough of sa’t.’ ‘Have you been a sailor?’ I asked. ‘I was a sailor for eleven years and ten months of my life,’ he said, in the same strangely quiet manner. ‘And what are you now?’ ‘I lived for ten years after my wife’s death by picking up rags and bones; I hadn’t much occasion afore.’ ‘And now how do you live?’ ‘Why, I lives hard and honest, and haven’t got to live long,’ or something to that effect. He then went on, in a kind of maundering way, about his wife. ‘She had rheumatism and fever very bad; and her second rib growed over her hench-bone. A’ was a clever woman, but a’ grow’d to be a very little one’ (this, with an expression of deep melancholy). ‘Eighteen years after her first lad she was in the family-way again, and they had doctors up from Lunnon about it. They wanted to rip her open, and take the child out of her side. But I never would give my consent.’ (Then, after a pause:) ‘She died twenty-six hours and ten minutes after it. I never cared much what come of me since; but I know that I shall soon reach her; that’s a knowledge I would na gie for the king’s crown.’ ‘You are a Scotchman, are not you?’ I asked. ‘I’m from the Isle of Skye, sir; I’m a McGregor.’ I said something about his religious faith. ‘Ye’ll know I was bred in the Church of Scotland, sir,’ he said, ‘and I love it as I love my own soul: but I think thae Wesleyan Methodists ha’ got salvation among them too.’ ”
Truly, this Highland and English hill-scenery is fair
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enough; but has its shadows; and deeper colouring, here and there, than that of heath and rose.
§ 13. Now, as far as I have watched the main powers of human mind, they have risen first from the resolution to see fearlessly, pitifully, and to its very worst, what these deep colours mean, wheresoever they fall; not by any means to pass on the other side, looking pleasantly up to the sky, but to stoop to the horror, and let the sky, for the present, take care of its own clouds. However this may be in moral matters, with which I have nothing here to do, in my own field of inquiry the fact is so; and all great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness. If, having done so, the human spirit can, by its courage and faith, conquer the evil, it rises into conceptions of victorious and consummated beauty. It is then the spirit of the highest Greek and Venetian Art. If unable to conquer the evil, but remaining in strong though melancholy war with it, not rising into supreme beauty, it is the spirit of the best northern art, typically represented by that of Holbein and Dürer. If, itself conquered by the evil, infected by the dragon breath of it, and at last brought into captivity, so as to take delight in evil for ever, it becomes the spirit of the dark, but still powerful sensualistic art, represented typically by that of Salvator. We must trace this fact briefly through Greek, Venetian, and Düreresque art; we shall then see how the art of decline came of avoiding the evil, and seeking pleasure only; and thus obtain, at last, some power of judging whether the tendency of our own contemplative art be right or ignoble.
§ 14. The ruling purpose of Greek poetry is the assertion of victory, by heroism, over fate, sin, and death. The terror of these great enemies is dwelt upon chiefly by the tragedians. The victory over them, by Homer.
The adversary chiefly contemplated by the tragedians is Fate, or predestinate misfortune. And that under three principal forms.
(a) Blindness or ignorance; not in itself guilty, but
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inducing acts which otherwise would have been guilty; and leading, no less than guilt, to destruction.*
(b) Visitation upon one person of the sin of another.
(c) Repression by brutal, or tyrannous strength, of a benevolent will.
§ 15. In all these cases sorrow is much more definitely connected with sin by the Greek tragedians than by Shakspere. The “fate” of Shakspere is, indeed, a form of blindness, but it issues in little more than haste or indiscretion. It is, in the literal sense, “fatal,” but hardly criminal.
The “I am fortune’s fool” of Romeo,1 expresses Shakspere’s primary idea of tragic circumstance. Often his victims are entirely innocent, swept away by mere current of strong encompassing calamity (Ophelia, Cordelia, Arthur, Queen Katherine). This is rarely so with the Greeks. The victim may indeed be innocent, as Antigone, but is in some way resolutely entangled with crime, and destroyed by it, as if it struck by pollution, no less than participation.
The victory over sin and death is therefore also with the Greek tragedians more complete than with Shakspere. As the enemy has more direct moral personality,—as it is sinfulness more than mischance, it is met by a higher moral resolve, a greater preparation of heart, a more solemn patience and purposed self-sacrifice. At the close of a Shakspere tragedy, nothing remains but dead march and clothes of burial. At the close of a Greek tragedy there
* The speech of Achilles to Priam expresses this idea of fatality and submission clearly, there being two vessels—one full of sorrow, the other of great and noble gifts (a sense of disgrace mixing with that of sorrow, and of honour with that of joy), from which Jupiter pours forth the destinies of men;2 the idea partly corresponding to the scriptural—“In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full mixed, and He poureth out of the same.” But the title of the gods, nevertheless, both with Homer and Hesiod, is given not from the cup of sorrow, but of good: “givers of good” (dwthreV eawn).—Hes. Theog. 664; Odyss. viii. 325.
1 [Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1.]
2 [Iliad, xxiv. 527 seq.; Psalms lxxv. 8.]
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are far-off sounds of a divine triumph, and a glory as of resurrection.*
§ 16. The Homeric temper is wholly different. Far more tender, more practical, more cheerful; bent chiefly on present things and giving victory now, and here, rather than in hope, and hereafter. The enemies of mankind, in Homer’s conception, are more distinctly conquerable; they are ungoverned passions, especially anger, and unreasonable impulse generally (ath). Hence the anger of Achilles, misdirected by pride, but rightly directed by friendship, is the subject of the Iliad. The anger of Ulysses (OdusseuV, “the angry”1), misdirected at first into idle and irregular hostilities, directed at last to execution of sternest justice, is the subject of the Odyssey.
Though this is the central idea of the two poems, it is connected with general display of the evil of all unbridled passions, pride, sensuality, indolence, or curiosity. The pride of Atrides, the passion of Paris, the sluggishness of Elpenor, the curiosity of Ulysses himself about the Cyclops, the impatience of his sailors in untying the winds, and all other faults or follies down to that—(evidently no small one in Homer’s mind)—of domestic disorderliness, are throughout shown in contrast with conditions of patient affection and household peace.
Also, the wild powers and mysteries of Nature are in the Homeric mind among the enemies of man;2 so that
* The Alcestis is perhaps the central example of the idea of all Greek drama.
1 [Ruskin, it will be seen, makes Odysseus the “man of wrath” actively, not passively (for the alternatives, see the passage from Ruskin’s MS. given in the note on p. 274; and for the other interpretation, see The Queen of the Air, § 16); thus accepting the mythic derivation of the name (from sdussomai)—which Homer often makes Odysseus play upon—most plainly in Odyssey, xix. 407:—
polloisin gar egwge odussamenos tod ikanw
andraoin hde gunaixin ana Cqona pouluboteiran
tw d Oduseus onom estw epwnumon.]
2 [In the first draft of the chapter Ruskin proposed to enter more fully into various points in the Odyssey. Thus he added here:—
“. . . enemies of man; so that all whirlpools, desolate islands, and enchanted shades among which Ulysses meets with misfortune or delay are directly contrasted with the trim gardens and orderly palace of Alcinous (Strength with Prudence), where he finds at last effective help.”]
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all the labours of Ulysses are an expression of the contest of manhood, not only with its own passions or with the folly of others, but with the merciless and mysterious powers of the natural world.1
§ 17. This is perhaps the chief signification of the seven years’ stay with Calypso, “the concealer.” Not, as vulgarly thought, the concealer of Ulysses, but the great concealer—the hidden power of natural things. She is the daughter of Atlas and the Sea (Atlas, the sustainer of heaven, and the Sea, the disturber of the Earth). She dwells in the island of Ogygia (“the ancient or venerable”). (Whenever Athens, or any other Greek city, is spoken of with any peculiar reverence, it is called “Ogygian.”2) Escaping from this goddess of secrets, and from other spirits, some of destructive natural force (Scylla), others signifying the enchantment of mere natural beauty (Circe, daughter of the Sun and Sea), he arrives at last at the Phæacian land, whose king is “strength with intellect,” and whose queen “virtue.”3 These restore him to his country.
§ 18. Now observe that in their dealing with all these subjects the Greeks never shrink from horror; down to its uttermost depth, to its most appalling physical detail, they strive to sound the secrets of sorrow. For them there is no passing by on the other side, no turning away the eyes to vanity from pain. Literally, they have not “lifted up
1 [Here again the MS. adds:—
“It may be well briefly to glance at the course of Ulysses in this light. His name may mean either the Angry or the Much-enduring: it has probably always the double sense in Homer’s mind. His passionateness is never lost sight of, nor his power of restraining it—a slight provocation enrages him, but he always governs his rage. Yet three times in the Odyssey he loses to my mind all heroic character by this passionateness; first, when Eurylochus disobeys him; again, when he is taunted by Euryalus at the court of Alcinous; and last and chiefly, in the scene with Euryclea. His calamities begin in consequence of the wanton attack on the Cicones.”
For the references, see Odyssey, x. 266; viii. 166 seq.; and xix. 479 seq.; and ix. 40 seq.]
2 [See, for instance, Æschylus, Pers. 37 and 974; and Sophocles, Œd. Col. 1770.]
3 [See Odyssey, book vii., for his reception by King Alcinous and Queen Arete. For another reference to the name of the Queen, and the significance of Phæacia generally, see Munera Pulveris, § 101. In the same book (§§ 93–94) is a fuller discussion of the meanings of Scylla and Circe.]
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from us even the things that belong to that peace? May not chance and the whirl of passion govern us there: when there shall be no thought, nor work, nor wisdom, nor breathing of the soul?*
Be it so. With no better reward, no brighter hope, we will be men while we may: men, just, and strong, and fearless, and up to our power, perfect. Athena herself, our wisdom and our strength, may betray us:—Phœbus, our sun, smite us with plague, or hide his face from us helpless;—Jove and all the powers of fate oppress us, or give us up to destruction. While we live, we will hold fast our integrity; no weak tears shall blind us, no untimely tremors abate our strength of arm nor swiftness of limb. The gods have given us at least this glorious body and this righteous conscience; these will we keep bright and pure to the end. So may we fall to misery, but not to baseness; so may we sink to sleep, but not to shame.
§ 20. And herein was conquest. So defied, the betraying and accusing shadows shrank back; the mysterious horror subdued itself to majestic sorrow. Death was swallowed up in victory.1 Their blood, which seemed to be poured out upon the ground, rose into hyacinthine flowers.2 All the beauty of earth opened to them; they had ploughed into its darkness, and they reaped its gold; the gods, in whom they had trusted through all semblance of oppression, came down to love them and be their helpmates. All nature round them became divine,—one harmony of power and peace. The sun hurt them not by day, nor the moon by night;3 the earth opened no more her jaws into the pit:
* tw kai teqnhwti noon pore IIersefoneia,
oiw pepnusQai toi de skiai aissousin.
Od. x. 495.
1 [1 Corinthians xv. 54.]
2 [See Queen of the Air, § 83, where Ruskin refers to the hyacinth, fabled to have sprung from the blood of Hyacinthus, as connected with Greek thoughts of immortality.]
3 [See Psalms cxxi. 6.]
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the sea whitened no more against them the teeth of his devouring waves. Sun, and moon, and earth, and sea,—all melted into grace and love; the fatal arrows rang not now at the shoulders of Apollo, the healer; lord of life, and of the three great spirits of life—Care, Memory, and Melody. Great Artemis guarded their flocks by night; Selene kissed in love the eyes of those who slept. And from all came the help of heaven to body and soul; a strange spirit lifting the lovely limbs; strange light glowing on the golden hair; and strangest comfort filling the trustful heart, so that they could put off their armour, and lie down to sleep,—their work well done, whether at the gates of their temples* or of their mountains; † accepting the death they once thought terrible, as the gift of Him who knew and granted what was best.1
* ouketi anesthsan, all en telei toutw esconto. Herod. i. 31.
† o de apopempomenoV autoV men ouk apelipeto, ton de paida sustrateuomenon eonta oi mounogenea apepemye. Herod. vii. 221.2
1 [The first draft of § 20 is here given, as an example of how carefully Ruskin revised his work:—
“And herein was victory. So defied, the betraying and accusing shadows sank back; the deathful horror subdued itself into majestic sorrow. The grisly death was swallowed up in victory. All the beauty of earth opened upon them; as they had ploughed into its darkness, they reaped its gold; the gods in whom they had trusted came down to be their companions.* All nature round them seemed divine and one harmony of power and peace. The sun could not hurt them by day, nor the moon by night; the earth opened no more her mouth into the pit; the sea shook no more against them the teeth of his gnawing waves. Sun, and moon, and earth, and sea—all melted into grace and love; the fatal arrows rang no more at the shoulders of Apollo, the healer; lord of life, leader of the three great muses—Care, Memory, and Melody. Artemis, the huntress, watched their flocks by night; Selene kissed the eyes of all who slept. And from all came the help of heaven to body and soul; a strange spirit lifting the earthly limbs; strange light floating from the fiery crest; and strangest comfort filling the trustful heart of those who put off their armour, and lay down to rest—their work well done, by gates of their temples or their mountains, in worship or war; accepting the gift of death they once thought terrible, as the gift of Him who knew what was happiest for them.”
At the point marked* the same draft has this footnote: “Remember always in order to mark the reality of Greek belief, how Pisistratus was restored to the tyranny of Athens”—the reference being to the device of obtaining a woman of noble form to personate Athena and accompany Pisistratus to Athens (Herod. i. 60).]
2 [The first of these instances is again a reference to the story of Cleobis and Bito, victors in the games, of whom, moreover, the following tale is told: “It was
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with the Argives a feast to Juno, and for all manner of cause it was needful that their mother should be carried to the temple by a yoke of oxen. But the oxen came not to them in time out of the field. Then the youths, pushed to extremity by the hour, stooping down under the yoke themselves, drew the chariot, and on the chariot their mother was carried by them. And traversing five-and-forty stadia, they reached the temple. And to them, having done this and been seen by all the solemn multitude, there came, thereupon, the noblest end of life, and the Goddess showed in this that it was better for man to die than to live. For the Argive men stood round and gave glory to the youths for their strength; and the Argive women gave glory to their mother for the children that she had received. But their mother, being full of great joy in the deed and in the fame, stood before the image, and prayed: ‘To Cleobis and Bito, my sons, who have honoured thee greatly, do thou, oh Goddess, give what it is best should chance to men.’ And after this her prayer, when the youths had sacrificed and feasted, they lay down to sleep in the temple itself, and rose no more but were held in that end. And the Argives made statues of them and gave them to the treasury at Delphi, as of noblest men.” (Ruskin’s translation, here copied from one of his notebooks; he refers to the story also in A Joy for Ever, §§ 109, 183, Vol. XVI. pp. 92, 167; and Ethics of the Dust, § 117.) The second reference is to Thermopylæ and the story of Megistias, the soothsayer, whom Leonidas endeavoured to dismiss that he might not perish with the rest; “but he would not himself depart, but sent away his son who was with him in the army, besides whom he had no other child.”]
CHAPTER II
THE LANCE OF PALLAS
§ 1. It might be thought that the tenor of the preceding chapter was in some sort adverse to my repeated statement1 that all great art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, not in his own. But observe, he is not himself his own work: he is himself precisely the most wonderful piece of God’s workmanship extant. In this best piece not only he is bound to take delight, but cannot, in a right state of thought, take delight in anything else, otherwise than through himself. Through himself, however, as the sun of creation, not as the creation. In himself, as the light of the world.* Not as being the world. Let him stand in his due relation to other creatures, and to inanimate things—know them all and love them, as made for him, and he for them;—and he becomes himself the greatest and holiest of them. But let him cast off this relation, despise and forget the less creation round him, and instead of being the light of the world, he is a sun in space—a fiery ball, spotted with storm.
§ 2. All the diseases of mind leading to fatalest ruin consist primarily in this isolation. They are the concentration of man upon himself, whether his heavenly interests or his worldly interests, matters not; it is the being his own interests which makes the regard of them so mortal. Every form of asceticism on one side, of sensualism on the other, is an isolation of his soul or of his body; the fixing his
* Matt. v. 14.
1 [See, for instance, Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 70); Harbours of England, § 19 (Vol. XIII. p. 29); Two Paths, § 48 (Vol. XVI. p. 290).]
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thoughts upon them alone; while every healthy state of nations and of individual minds consists in the unselfish presence of the human spirit everywhere, energizing over all things; speaking and living through all things.
§ 3. Man being thus the crowning and ruling work of God, it will follow that all his best art must have something to tell about himself, as the soul of things, and ruler of creatures. It must also make this reference to himself under a true conception of his own nature. Therefore all art which involves no reference to man is inferior or nugatory. And all art which involves misconception of man, or base thought of him, is in that degree false and base.
Now the basest thought possible concerning him is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other. All great art confesses and worships both.
§ 4. The art which, since the writings of Rio and Lord Lindsay,1 is specially known as “Christian,” erred by pride in its denial of the animal nature of man;—and, in connection with all monkish and fanatical forms of religion, by looking always to another world instead of this. It wasted its strength in visions, and was therefore swept away, notwithstanding all its good and glory, by the strong truth of the naturalist art of the sixteenth century. But that naturalist art erred on the other side; denied at last the spiritual nature of man, and perished in corruption.
A contemplative reaction is taking place in modern times, out of which it may be hoped a new spiritual art may be developed. The first school of landscape, named, in the foregoing chapter, the Heroic, is that of the noble naturalists. The second (Classical), and third (Pastoral), belong to the time of sensual decline. The fourth (Contemplative) is that of modern revival.
1 [For Rio’s book, see Vol. IV. p. xxiii.; and for Lord Lindsay’s, Vol. XII. p. xxxix.]
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§ 5. But why, the reader will ask, is no place given in this scheme to the “Christian” or spiritual art which preceded the naturalists? Because all landscape belonging to that art is subordinate, and in one essential principle false. It is subordinate, because intended only to exalt the conception of saintly or Divine presence:—rather therefore to be considered as a landscape decoration or type, than an effort to paint nature. If I included it in my list of schools, I should have to go still farther back, and include with it the conventional and illustrative landscape of the Greeks and Egyptians.
§ 6. But also it cannot constitute a real school, because its first assumption is false, namely, that the natural world can be represented without the element of death.
The real schools of landscape are primarily distinguished from the preceding unreal ones by their introduction of this element. They are not at first in any sort the worthier for it. But they are more true, and capable, therefore, in the issue, of becoming worthier.
It will be a hard piece of work for us to think this rightly out, but it must be done.
§ 7. Perhaps an accurate analysis of the schools of art of all time might show us that when the immortality of the soul was practically and completely believed, the elements of decay, danger, and grief in visible things were always disregarded. However this may be, it is assuredly so in the early Christian schools. The ideas of danger or decay seem not merely repugnant, but inconceivable to them; the expression of immortality and perpetuity is alone possible. I do not mean that they take no note of the absolute fact of corruption. This fact the early painters often compel themselves to look fuller in the front than any other men: as in the way they usually paint the Deluge (the raven feeding on the bodies), and in all the various triumphs and processions of the power of Death, which formed one great chapter of religious teaching and painting, from Orcagna’s1
1 [For Orcagna’s “Triumph of Death,” see Vol. XII. p. 224.]
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time to the close of the Purist epoch. But I mean that this external fact of corruption is separated in their minds from the main conditions of their work; and its horror enters no more into their general treatment of landscape than the fear of murder or martyrdom, both of which they had nevertheless continually to represent. None of these things appeared to them as affecting the general dealings of the Deity with His world. Death, pain, and decay were simply momentary accidents in the course of immortality, which never ought to exercise any depressing influence over the hearts of men, or in the life of Nature. God, in intense life, peace, and helping power, was always and everywhere. Human bodies, at one time or another, had indeed to be made dust of, and raised from it; and this becoming dust was hurtful and humiliating, but not in the least melancholy, nor, in any very high degree, important; except to thoughtless persons who needed sometimes to be reminded of it, and whom, not at all fearing the things much himself, the painter accordingly did remind of it, somewhat sharply.
§ 8. A similar condition of mind seems to have been attained, not unfrequently, in modern times, by persons whom either narrowness of circumstance or education, or vigorous moral efforts, have guarded from the troubling of the world, so as to give them firm and childlike trust in the power and presence of God, together with peace of conscience, and a belief in the passing of all evil into some form of good. It is impossible that a person thus disciplined should feel, in any of its more acute phases, the sorrow for any of the phenomena of nature, or terror in any material danger which would occur to another. The absence of personal fear, the consciousness of security as great in the midst of pestilence and storm, as amidst beds of flowers on a summer’s morning, and the certainty that whatever appeared evil, or was assuredly painful, must eventually issue in a far greater and enduring good—this general feeling and conviction, I say, would gradually lull, and at last put to
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entire rest, the physical sensations of grief and fear; so that the man would look upon danger without dread,—expect pain without lamentation.
§ 9. It may perhaps be thought that this is a very high and right state of mind.
Unfortunately, it appears that the attainment of it is never possible without inducing some form of intellectual weakness.
No painter belonging to the purist1 religious schools ever mastered his art. Perugino nearly did so; but it was because he was more rational—more a man of the world—than the rest. No literature exists of a high class produced by minds in the pure religious temper. On the contrary, a great deal of literature exists, produced by persons in that temper, which is markedly, and very far, below average literary work.
§ 10. The reason of this I believe to be, that the right faith of man is not intended to give him repose, but to enable him to do his work. It is not intended that he should look away from the place he lives in now, and cheer himself with thoughts of the place he is to live in next, but that he should look stoutly into this world, in faith that if he does his work thoroughly here, some good to others or himself, with which however he is not at present concerned, will come of it hereafter. And this kind of brave, but not very hopeful or cheerful faith, I perceive to be always rewarded by clear practical success and splendid intellectual power; while the faith which dwells on the future fades away into rosy mist, and emptiness of musical air. That result indeed follows naturally enough on its habit of assuming that things must be right, or must come right, when, probably, the fact is, that so far as we are concerned, they are entirely wrong; and going wrong: and also on its weak and false way of looking on what these religious persons call “the bright side of things,” that is to say, on
1 [“Purest” in all previous editions; but the MS. has “purist,” which is doubtless the word Ruskin intended: see the “Purist Ideal” in Modern Painters, vol. iii.]
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one side of them only, when God has given them two sides, and intended us to see both.
§ 11. I was reading but the other day, in a book by a zealous, useful, and able Scotch clergyman, one of these rhapsodies, in which he described a scene in the Highlands to show (he said) the goodness of God. In this Highland scene there was nothing but sunshine, and fresh breezes, and bleating lambs, and clean tartans, and all manner of pleasantness. Now a Highland scene is, beyond dispute, pleasant enough in its own way; but, looked close at, has its shadows.1 Here, for instance, is the very fact of one, as pretty as I can remember—having seen many. It is a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by jutting rocks and broad flakes of nodding fern. From one side of it to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into quicker ripple as it reaches the end of the oval field, and then, first islanding a purple and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes away into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket of mountain-ash and alder. The autumn sun, low but clear, shines on the scarlet ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies of the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket, the carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first stayed it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current plunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on three sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which the foam slips in detached
1 [The passage “A Highland scene” down to “so sharp as they” is § 87 in Frondes Agrestes, where at this point Ruskin added the following footnote:—
“Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an amiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the Highlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of Italy.”
The “study of the sadness of Italy” (§ 88 in Frondes) is the description of the Campagna under evening light from the first volume of Modern Painters, preface to second edition, § 37 (Vol. III. p. 42).]
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Ch. II THE LANCE OF PALLAS 269
snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool beneath, the water circles slowly, like black oil; a little butterfly lies on its back, its wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs feebly quivering; a fish rises, and it is gone. Lower down the stream, I can just see over a knoll, the green and damp turf roofs of four or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the cattle into a black Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed by a few ill-set stepping-stones, with here and there a flat slab on the tops, where they have sunk out of sight, and at the turn of the brook I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog—a picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I know them, and I know the dog’s ribs also, which are nearly as bare as the dead ewe’s; and the child’s wasted shoulders, cutting his old tartan jacket through, so sharp are they. We will go down and talk with the man.
§ 12. Or, that I may not piece pure truth with fancy, for I have none of his words set down, let us hear a word or two from another such, a Scotchman also, and as true-hearted, and in just as fair a scene. I write out the passage, in which I have kept his few sentences, word for word, as it stands in my private diary:—“22nd April (1851). Yesterday I had a long walk up the Via Gellia, at Matlock, coming down upon it from the hills above, all sown with anemones and violets, and murmuring with sweet springs. Above all the mills in the valley, the brook, in its first purity, forms a small shallow pool, with a sandy bottom covered with cresses and other water plants. A man was wading in it for cresses as I passed up the valley, and bade me good-day. I did not go much farther; he was there when I returned. I passed him again, about one hundred yards, when it struck me I might as well learn all I could about watercresses: so I turned back. I asked the man, among other questions, what he called the common weed, something like watercress, but with a serrated leaf, which grows at the edge of nearly all such pools. ‘We calls that
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brooklime, hereabouts,’ said a voice behind me. I turned, and saw three men, miners or manufacturers—two evidently Derbyshire men, and respectable-looking in their way; the third, thin, poor, old, and harder-featured, and utterly in rags. ‘Brooklime?’ I said. ‘What do you call it lime for?’ The man said he did not know; it was called that. ‘You’ll find that in the British ‘Erba,’ said the weak, calm voice of the old man. I turned to him in much surprise; but he went on saying something drily (I hardly understood what) to the cress-gatherer; who contradicting him, the old man said he ‘didn’t know fresh water,’ he ‘knew enough of sa’t.’ ‘Have you been a sailor?’ I asked. ‘I was a sailor for eleven years and ten months of my life,’ he said, in the same strangely quiet manner. ‘And what are you now?’ ‘I lived for ten years after my wife’s death by picking up rags and bones; I hadn’t much occasion afore.’ ‘And now how do you live?’ ‘Why, I lives hard and honest, and haven’t got to live long,’ or something to that effect. He then went on, in a kind of maundering way, about his wife. ‘She had rheumatism and fever very bad; and her second rib growed over her hench-bone. A’ was a clever woman, but a’ grow’d to be a very little one’ (this, with an expression of deep melancholy). ‘Eighteen years after her first lad she was in the family-way again, and they had doctors up from Lunnon about it. They wanted to rip her open, and take the child out of her side. But I never would give my consent.’ (Then, after a pause:) ‘She died twenty-six hours and ten minutes after it. I never cared much what come of me since; but I know that I shall soon reach her; that’s a knowledge I would na gie for the king’s crown.’ ‘You are a Scotchman, are not you?’ I asked. ‘I’m from the Isle of Skye, sir; I’m a McGregor.’ I said something about his religious faith. ‘Ye’ll know I was bred in the Church of Scotland, sir,’ he said, ‘and I love it as I love my own soul: but I think thae Wesleyan Methodists ha’ got salvation among them too.’ ”
Truly, this Highland and English hill-scenery is fair
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enough; but has its shadows; and deeper colouring, here and there, than that of heath and rose.
§ 13. Now, as far as I have watched the main powers of human mind, they have risen first from the resolution to see fearlessly, pitifully, and to its very worst, what these deep colours mean, wheresoever they fall; not by any means to pass on the other side, looking pleasantly up to the sky, but to stoop to the horror, and let the sky, for the present, take care of its own clouds. However this may be in moral matters, with which I have nothing here to do, in my own field of inquiry the fact is so; and all great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness. If, having done so, the human spirit can, by its courage and faith, conquer the evil, it rises into conceptions of victorious and consummated beauty. It is then the spirit of the highest Greek and Venetian Art. If unable to conquer the evil, but remaining in strong though melancholy war with it, not rising into supreme beauty, it is the spirit of the best northern art, typically represented by that of Holbein and Dürer. If, itself conquered by the evil, infected by the dragon breath of it, and at last brought into captivity, so as to take delight in evil for ever, it becomes the spirit of the dark, but still powerful sensualistic art, represented typically by that of Salvator. We must trace this fact briefly through Greek, Venetian, and Düreresque art; we shall then see how the art of decline came of avoiding the evil, and seeking pleasure only; and thus obtain, at last, some power of judging whether the tendency of our own contemplative art be right or ignoble.
§ 14. The ruling purpose of Greek poetry is the assertion of victory, by heroism, over fate, sin, and death. The terror of these great enemies is dwelt upon chiefly by the tragedians. The victory over them, by Homer.
The adversary chiefly contemplated by the tragedians is Fate, or predestinate misfortune. And that under three principal forms.
(a) Blindness or ignorance; not in itself guilty, but
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inducing acts which otherwise would have been guilty; and leading, no less than guilt, to destruction.*
(b) Visitation upon one person of the sin of another.
(c) Repression by brutal, or tyrannous strength, of a benevolent will.
§ 15. In all these cases sorrow is much more definitely connected with sin by the Greek tragedians than by Shakspere. The “fate” of Shakspere is, indeed, a form of blindness, but it issues in little more than haste or indiscretion. It is, in the literal sense, “fatal,” but hardly criminal.
The “I am fortune’s fool” of Romeo,1 expresses Shakspere’s primary idea of tragic circumstance. Often his victims are entirely innocent, swept away by mere current of strong encompassing calamity (Ophelia, Cordelia, Arthur, Queen Katherine). This is rarely so with the Greeks. The victim may indeed be innocent, as Antigone, but is in some way resolutely entangled with crime, and destroyed by it, as if it struck by pollution, no less than participation.
The victory over sin and death is therefore also with the Greek tragedians more complete than with Shakspere. As the enemy has more direct moral personality,—as it is sinfulness more than mischance, it is met by a higher moral resolve, a greater preparation of heart, a more solemn patience and purposed self-sacrifice. At the close of a Shakspere tragedy, nothing remains but dead march and clothes of burial. At the close of a Greek tragedy there
* The speech of Achilles to Priam expresses this idea of fatality and submission clearly, there being two vessels—one full of sorrow, the other of great and noble gifts (a sense of disgrace mixing with that of sorrow, and of honour with that of joy), from which Jupiter pours forth the destinies of men;2 the idea partly corresponding to the scriptural—“In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full mixed, and He poureth out of the same.” But the title of the gods, nevertheless, both with Homer and Hesiod, is given not from the cup of sorrow, but of good: “givers of good” (dwthreV eawn).—Hes. Theog. 664; Odyss. viii. 325.
1 [Romeo and Juliet, iii. 1.]
2 [Iliad, xxiv. 527 seq.; Psalms lxxv. 8.]
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are far-off sounds of a divine triumph, and a glory as of resurrection.*
§ 16. The Homeric temper is wholly different. Far more tender, more practical, more cheerful; bent chiefly on present things and giving victory now, and here, rather than in hope, and hereafter. The enemies of mankind, in Homer’s conception, are more distinctly conquerable; they are ungoverned passions, especially anger, and unreasonable impulse generally (ath). Hence the anger of Achilles, misdirected by pride, but rightly directed by friendship, is the subject of the Iliad. The anger of Ulysses (OdusseuV, “the angry”1), misdirected at first into idle and irregular hostilities, directed at last to execution of sternest justice, is the subject of the Odyssey.
Though this is the central idea of the two poems, it is connected with general display of the evil of all unbridled passions, pride, sensuality, indolence, or curiosity. The pride of Atrides, the passion of Paris, the sluggishness of Elpenor, the curiosity of Ulysses himself about the Cyclops, the impatience of his sailors in untying the winds, and all other faults or follies down to that—(evidently no small one in Homer’s mind)—of domestic disorderliness, are throughout shown in contrast with conditions of patient affection and household peace.
Also, the wild powers and mysteries of Nature are in the Homeric mind among the enemies of man;2 so that
* The Alcestis is perhaps the central example of the idea of all Greek drama.
1 [Ruskin, it will be seen, makes Odysseus the “man of wrath” actively, not passively (for the alternatives, see the passage from Ruskin’s MS. given in the note on p. 274; and for the other interpretation, see The Queen of the Air, § 16); thus accepting the mythic derivation of the name (from sdussomai)—which Homer often makes Odysseus play upon—most plainly in Odyssey, xix. 407:—
polloisin gar egwge odussamenos tod ikanw
andraoin hde gunaixin ana Cqona pouluboteiran
tw d Oduseus onom estw epwnumon.]
2 [In the first draft of the chapter Ruskin proposed to enter more fully into various points in the Odyssey. Thus he added here:—
“. . . enemies of man; so that all whirlpools, desolate islands, and enchanted shades among which Ulysses meets with misfortune or delay are directly contrasted with the trim gardens and orderly palace of Alcinous (Strength with Prudence), where he finds at last effective help.”]
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all the labours of Ulysses are an expression of the contest of manhood, not only with its own passions or with the folly of others, but with the merciless and mysterious powers of the natural world.1
§ 17. This is perhaps the chief signification of the seven years’ stay with Calypso, “the concealer.” Not, as vulgarly thought, the concealer of Ulysses, but the great concealer—the hidden power of natural things. She is the daughter of Atlas and the Sea (Atlas, the sustainer of heaven, and the Sea, the disturber of the Earth). She dwells in the island of Ogygia (“the ancient or venerable”). (Whenever Athens, or any other Greek city, is spoken of with any peculiar reverence, it is called “Ogygian.”2) Escaping from this goddess of secrets, and from other spirits, some of destructive natural force (Scylla), others signifying the enchantment of mere natural beauty (Circe, daughter of the Sun and Sea), he arrives at last at the Phæacian land, whose king is “strength with intellect,” and whose queen “virtue.”3 These restore him to his country.
§ 18. Now observe that in their dealing with all these subjects the Greeks never shrink from horror; down to its uttermost depth, to its most appalling physical detail, they strive to sound the secrets of sorrow. For them there is no passing by on the other side, no turning away the eyes to vanity from pain. Literally, they have not “lifted up
1 [Here again the MS. adds:—
“It may be well briefly to glance at the course of Ulysses in this light. His name may mean either the Angry or the Much-enduring: it has probably always the double sense in Homer’s mind. His passionateness is never lost sight of, nor his power of restraining it—a slight provocation enrages him, but he always governs his rage. Yet three times in the Odyssey he loses to my mind all heroic character by this passionateness; first, when Eurylochus disobeys him; again, when he is taunted by Euryalus at the court of Alcinous; and last and chiefly, in the scene with Euryclea. His calamities begin in consequence of the wanton attack on the Cicones.”
For the references, see Odyssey, x. 266; viii. 166 seq.; and xix. 479 seq.; and ix. 40 seq.]
2 [See, for instance, Æschylus, Pers. 37 and 974; and Sophocles, Œd. Col. 1770.]
3 [See Odyssey, book vii., for his reception by King Alcinous and Queen Arete. For another reference to the name of the Queen, and the significance of Phæacia generally, see Munera Pulveris, § 101. In the same book (§§ 93–94) is a fuller discussion of the meanings of Scylla and Circe.]
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from us even the things that belong to that peace? May not chance and the whirl of passion govern us there: when there shall be no thought, nor work, nor wisdom, nor breathing of the soul?*
Be it so. With no better reward, no brighter hope, we will be men while we may: men, just, and strong, and fearless, and up to our power, perfect. Athena herself, our wisdom and our strength, may betray us:—Phœbus, our sun, smite us with plague, or hide his face from us helpless;—Jove and all the powers of fate oppress us, or give us up to destruction. While we live, we will hold fast our integrity; no weak tears shall blind us, no untimely tremors abate our strength of arm nor swiftness of limb. The gods have given us at least this glorious body and this righteous conscience; these will we keep bright and pure to the end. So may we fall to misery, but not to baseness; so may we sink to sleep, but not to shame.
§ 20. And herein was conquest. So defied, the betraying and accusing shadows shrank back; the mysterious horror subdued itself to majestic sorrow. Death was swallowed up in victory.1 Their blood, which seemed to be poured out upon the ground, rose into hyacinthine flowers.2 All the beauty of earth opened to them; they had ploughed into its darkness, and they reaped its gold; the gods, in whom they had trusted through all semblance of oppression, came down to love them and be their helpmates. All nature round them became divine,—one harmony of power and peace. The sun hurt them not by day, nor the moon by night;3 the earth opened no more her jaws into the pit:
* tw kai teqnhwti noon pore IIersefoneia,
oiw pepnusQai toi de skiai aissousin.
Od. x. 495.
1 [1 Corinthians xv. 54.]
2 [See Queen of the Air, § 83, where Ruskin refers to the hyacinth, fabled to have sprung from the blood of Hyacinthus, as connected with Greek thoughts of immortality.]
3 [See Psalms cxxi. 6.]
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the sea whitened no more against them the teeth of his devouring waves. Sun, and moon, and earth, and sea,—all melted into grace and love; the fatal arrows rang not now at the shoulders of Apollo, the healer; lord of life, and of the three great spirits of life—Care, Memory, and Melody. Great Artemis guarded their flocks by night; Selene kissed in love the eyes of those who slept. And from all came the help of heaven to body and soul; a strange spirit lifting the lovely limbs; strange light glowing on the golden hair; and strangest comfort filling the trustful heart, so that they could put off their armour, and lie down to sleep,—their work well done, whether at the gates of their temples* or of their mountains; † accepting the death they once thought terrible, as the gift of Him who knew and granted what was best.1
* ouketi anesthsan, all en telei toutw esconto. Herod. i. 31.
† o de apopempomenoV autoV men ouk apelipeto, ton de paida sustrateuomenon eonta oi mounogenea apepemye. Herod. vii. 221.2
1 [The first draft of § 20 is here given, as an example of how carefully Ruskin revised his work:—
“And herein was victory. So defied, the betraying and accusing shadows sank back; the deathful horror subdued itself into majestic sorrow. The grisly death was swallowed up in victory. All the beauty of earth opened upon them; as they had ploughed into its darkness, they reaped its gold; the gods in whom they had trusted came down to be their companions.* All nature round them seemed divine and one harmony of power and peace. The sun could not hurt them by day, nor the moon by night; the earth opened no more her mouth into the pit; the sea shook no more against them the teeth of his gnawing waves. Sun, and moon, and earth, and sea—all melted into grace and love; the fatal arrows rang no more at the shoulders of Apollo, the healer; lord of life, leader of the three great muses—Care, Memory, and Melody. Artemis, the huntress, watched their flocks by night; Selene kissed the eyes of all who slept. And from all came the help of heaven to body and soul; a strange spirit lifting the earthly limbs; strange light floating from the fiery crest; and strangest comfort filling the trustful heart of those who put off their armour, and lay down to rest—their work well done, by gates of their temples or their mountains, in worship or war; accepting the gift of death they once thought terrible, as the gift of Him who knew what was happiest for them.”
At the point marked* the same draft has this footnote: “Remember always in order to mark the reality of Greek belief, how Pisistratus was restored to the tyranny of Athens”—the reference being to the device of obtaining a woman of noble form to personate Athena and accompany Pisistratus to Athens (Herod. i. 60).]
2 [The first of these instances is again a reference to the story of Cleobis and Bito, victors in the games, of whom, moreover, the following tale is told: “It was
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with the Argives a feast to Juno, and for all manner of cause it was needful that their mother should be carried to the temple by a yoke of oxen. But the oxen came not to them in time out of the field. Then the youths, pushed to extremity by the hour, stooping down under the yoke themselves, drew the chariot, and on the chariot their mother was carried by them. And traversing five-and-forty stadia, they reached the temple. And to them, having done this and been seen by all the solemn multitude, there came, thereupon, the noblest end of life, and the Goddess showed in this that it was better for man to die than to live. For the Argive men stood round and gave glory to the youths for their strength; and the Argive women gave glory to their mother for the children that she had received. But their mother, being full of great joy in the deed and in the fame, stood before the image, and prayed: ‘To Cleobis and Bito, my sons, who have honoured thee greatly, do thou, oh Goddess, give what it is best should chance to men.’ And after this her prayer, when the youths had sacrificed and feasted, they lay down to sleep in the temple itself, and rose no more but were held in that end. And the Argives made statues of them and gave them to the treasury at Delphi, as of noblest men.” (Ruskin’s translation, here copied from one of his notebooks; he refers to the story also in A Joy for Ever, §§ 109, 183, Vol. XVI. pp. 92, 167; and Ethics of the Dust, § 117.) The second reference is to Thermopylæ and the story of Megistias, the soothsayer, whom Leonidas endeavoured to dismiss that he might not perish with the rest; “but he would not himself depart, but sent away his son who was with him in the army, besides whom he had no other child.”]
Here is a brief video of Jim leaving Assisi for Rome and Greece :
http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-1551339741372329009&hl=fr#
Jim was asked to read the following passage from Plato, on the Acropolis, but he apparently he never got around to doing it. Here it is nevertheless :
Republic on forms to surround young during their education : ( quoted by Ruskin in Lectures on Art )
