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Title: Studies of the Greek Poets by John Addington Symonds ISBN: 0-89875-996-X Publisher: University Press of the Pacific Pub. Date: June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $34.50

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: "...the pure clear life of art made perfect in humanity..."
Comment: ..the most sublime aspirations... the subtlest intuitions...
the darkest forebodings...the audacities of passion...the
freedom of the senses... put on personality... and
assume a robe of carnal beauty.
-- John Addington Symonds, "The Genius of Greek Art."
* * * * * * * * *
The joy here is that this second volume is available in
this excellent reprint from the University Press of the
Pacific (Honolulu). The sadness is that, so far, Volume
I is not offered here.
Never having read anything by Symonds, I took a chance
based on my own love of Greek art and literature, and
several allusions to this work in studies on Victorian
aestheticism, and decided to order this volume. I am
glad that I did.
Symonds is a critic and a writer -- with a fine sense
of sight, and a poetic/artistic gift for expressing what
he sees in words. Almost every paragraph offers the
sort of lines or phrases that ring with a stirring sense
of beauty and aptness. I find myself underlining and
starring wondrous phrases and sentences.
This Volume 2 starts with Chapter XIV -- which means that
Volume 1 contains Chapters I-XIII. Also from Symonds'
introductory words, Volume I deals with the poet dramatists
Aeschylus and Sophocles. One has to remember that the Greek
dramatists were considered primarily POETS; the dramatic
form was the vehicle through which their poetry was
expressed.
The chapter titles of this Volume 2 tell us what
Symonds covers -- and it is both amazing and excellent,
in quality of focus and quality of expression. The
chapter titles going from Chapter XIV through Chapter
XXV are: Greek Tragedy and Euripides; The [Dramatic]
Fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; The
Fragments of the Lost Tragic Poets; Ancient and Modern
Tragedy; Aristophanes; The Comic Fragments; Herondas;
The Idyllists [poets who wrote idylls: Theocritus, Bion,
Moschus]; The [Greek]Anthology; Hero and Leander; The
Genius of Greek Art; Conclusion. Of course, all of
these chapters must be read -- but the chapter which
glows with light and poetry is "The Genius of Greek
Art."
Unfortunately, the considerate hosts for these reviews
only offer the option of a maximum of 20 words which
can be quoted. The temptation with Symonds' wonderful
insights expressed in poetic prose, is to quote, and
quote, and quote. But as Symonds says of the Greeks:
"License was reckoned barbarous.... Hellenes, born to
be free men, took pride in temperance." He goes on to
say that their "sophrosyne" or self-restraint was
co-extensive as a protective virtue with their "to
kalon" (ideal of form) -- and this was the essence of
their Greek-ness, the quality beloved by Phoebus [Apollo]
in whom there was no dark place or any flaw. Interestingly,
Symonds makes the case that we cannot perfectly understand
the Greek mindset completely, even if we look at similar
scenery (in Greece today) in similar light -- for they
were looking at it with Greek eyes and Greek minds. And
they lived with a different sense of themselves and of
the world -- not burdened by our cultural baggage
from doctrinaire prohibitions and moralistic damnings.
One of the excellent additonal features of this volume
is that the excerpts from the works which Symonds cites
in Greek are then translated, either in the text itself
or in footnotes. One of the most entrancing sections of
"The Genius of Greek Art" is that in which Symonds talks
of the olive tree -- Athene's gift to Hellas -- and he
describes its beauty against the landscape, in the light,
and against the color of the sea and sky. Then he relates
the qualities of that tree and its definition to the
Greek artistic values.
As he says, the Genius of the Greeks appears before
us like a young man newly come from the wrestling ground,
anointed, chapleted, and very calm...
* * * * * * * * *