Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

guinary character. It was meant from the first to be a war of extermination. At the outbreak of the revolution, in April, 1821, at least twenty thousand Mussulmans were living dispersed in Greece. Before two months were past, the greater part were massacred, without mercy and without remorse. But the fury of the Turks was not less intense or less barbarous; and their revenge might have been as complete and as appalling in the Peloponnesus as in the unhappy island of Chios, if the battle of Navarin in 1827, between the Turks and the allied powers of England, France, and Russia, had not put an end forever to the naval power of the Porte. The formal recognition of Greece was not long delayed. After eight years of determined and heroic, if often bloodthirsty and ferocious struggling, the independence of the Greeks was acknowledged in 1829.

Exactly one generation has passed away since that event; and the condition of Greece is still one of disquiet and discontent. Yet for that the Greeks seem to us rather to be commended than blamed; it is a token at once of those noble aims and that restless activity without which a nation can never move on to greatness. Politically, indeed, Greece is a kingdom, but from the beginning it has lacked a king. The creation of the three great powers of Europe, not from any impulse of generous sentiments, but the calculation of interests and the balancing of fears, it has never ceased to be the theatre of their painful rivalries in being educated to be the tool of their ultimate designs. Its territory was unfairly restricted at the outset, the kingdom of Greece as now constituted being but a small part of ancient Greece. There are more Greeks out of Greece than in it, and no inducements whatever have ever been held out to the former to gather again in the ancient homes of the race. The country is poor, and the effort of the government seems to have been to make it poorer. The genius of the people has been wholly misunderstood, or wilfully disregarded, from the beginning. Capodistrias, their first President, is charged, indeed, with a deliberate, if honest, intention to paralyze the mind of the nation, in order to sustain his own despotic power, with prohibiting Plato from being read in the college established

almost in view of the site of the Academy where the great Athenian philosopher once instructed the civilized world and the after ages.* It reminds us how, from his republic, Plato would also have banished Homer. Yet the despotism of Capodistrias could hardly have been worse than that of King Otho, who now for almost thirty years has stolidly kept the Greeks from a government adapted either to the necessities of their position or the peculiarities of their character. For ten years he governed without a constitution, till in 1843 one was extorted from him in a bloodless revolution. They have tried him with that for twenty years, and now at length, even while we write these words, there comes over the sea the rumble of another revolution, perhaps not bloodless, which means, if it means anything, that King Otho has been thoroughly tried and found thoroughly wanting, -is in fact insufferable any longer; that the kingdom of Greece is not to be an appendage to the House of the Wittelbachs, but that the Greeks must struggle on to the consummation of their destiny, as grand now as at the beginning,—in their own way, with a king of their own and ideas of their own, if they who developed the first will share in no inconsiderable degree in the grandeur of the last European civilization.

[ocr errors]

Our imperfect remarks do but little justice to the value of Mr. Finlay's work. Fuller justice and a more scholarly greeting would have been accorded to him upon the completion of his great undertaking by that kindred genius, now lost to us on earth, who so well appreciated and applauded him at the beginning. Yet with the humble tribute we send across the sea there mingle for us some of the brightest memories of travel and companionship. We linger again on the Bema of Demosthenes, or stray among the ruins of the Acropolis with a kindly silver-haired old man, fresh with the earnestness of youth, wise with the seriousness of age, whose gracious presence and charm of speech will blend for us ever with the story

*Thiersch, De l'État actuel de la Grèce, &c., II. 121.

We allude to the late distinguished President Felton of Harvard University; an article by whom on the first volume of Mr. Finlay's work, the History of Greece under the Romans, is to be found in the North American Review, Vol. LXII. pp. 1-22 (January, 1846).

VOL. LXXII. 5TH S. VOL. X. NO. III.

[ocr errors]

36

[ocr errors]

of that illustrious race, whose fortunes during twenty centuries of foreign domination, - from which it has risen at last triumphant over time and over calamity, he has traced and illustrated under the very shadow of the Parthenon, with a justice and wisdom which find their parallel only in Thucydides, who too may have finished his work on that very spot, and who, it may be added, like George Finlay, fought in his youth in the sacred cause of the country of which in his age he was to be the great historian.

[merged small][ocr errors]

1. Joseph im Schnee, Eine Erzählung. Von BERTHOLD AUErbach. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta'scher, Verlag. 1860.

2. François le Champi. Par GEORGE SAND. Nouvelle Edition. Paris.

1858.

bale.

IN her Introduction to the story of François le Champi, George Sand discusses most agreeably the question, whether the simple stories and ways of peasant life can best be told by the peasants themselves, or whether the more cultivated intellect has the advantage in relating them. It is a question to which she does not attempt to give a definitive answer, where discussion draws a part of its charm from the fact that we would not settle it if we could. Of what advantage to decide in favor of the one, to the exclusion of the other? We could not spare George Sand's stories of peasant-life, those of Auerbach, of Gotthelf, and others, from our literature, any more than we could give up Robert Burns, Jasmin, or the many unnamed story-tellers that light up village firesides, or sailors' stories, or mountain tales. In the words of the poet, "Both is as good as one."

With every advance in intellectual cultivation we wish to claim the simpler joys, as well as all those we are gaining, and prize our quiet meadow scattered over with buttercups, and roadside lighted up with dandelions, along with all descriptions and pictures that strive to paint the same.

It is, indeed, the possibility of retaining this simpler joy along with the more cultivated pleasure of reflecting upon what we enjoy, that Madame Sand touches upon in her Pref

ace:

"We were returning from walk, R. and myself, by the light of the moon, which silvered faintly our path across the sleeping country. It was an autumn evening, warm, and softly veiled. We noticed the sonorousness of the air at this season, and the indescribable mystery that reigns at this time over all nature. One would say that, at the approach of the deep sleep of winter, every being and thing composes itself stealthily to enjoy one remnant of life and animation before the fatal benumbing of the frost. And all beings and things of natureas though they would elude the step of time, as though they feared to be interrupted and surprised in these last frolics of their feast-dayproceed noiselessly and without activity to their nocturnal orgies. The birds send out stifled cries, instead of their joyous trumpet-notes of summer; the insect in the furrow sometimes allows an indiscreet exclamation to escape him; but immediately he interrupts himself, and hastens to carry his song or plaint to another point of call. The plants hasten to exhale a last perfume, as much more sweet as it is more subtile and restrained. The leaves, turning yellow, scarcely dare to tremble at a breath of air, and the flocks feed silently, without cry of love or comfort."

It is in the midst of this quiet and quieting landscape, of this "melancholy and pleasing andante of nature," as Madame Sand describes it, "leading admirably to the solemn adagio of winter," that the discussion takes place.

"All this is so calm,' said my friend, who, notwithstanding our silence had been pursuing the same thoughts with myself; 'all this is so calm, all this appears absorbed in a reverie so foreign and so indifferent to the labors, the foresights, and the cares of man, that I ask myself what expression, what color, what manifestation of art and poetry, could human intellect give, at this moment, to the appearance of nature? And better to define to you the object of my research, I compare this evening, this sky, this landscape, dim, yet harmonious and complete, to the soul of a wise and religious peasant, who labors and profits by his labor, who enjoys that life which is fit for him, without the want, without the desire, and without the means of expressing his inner life. I strive to place myself in the heart of this rustic and natural life, civilized as I am, -I who know not how to enjoy through instinct alone, and who

am always tormented with a desire to render account to others and to myself of my contemplation or my meditation.

"And then,' continued my friend, 'I seek with some difficulty what relation may be established between my intellect, which is too active, and that of the peasant, which does not act at all; in the same way I now ask myself what can painting, music, description, the translation of art, in short, — what can these add to the beauty of this autumn night, which reveals itself to me through a mysterious reticence, and which penetrates, I scarcely know by what magical communication.'

We do not follow the whole course of the conversation, but give some extracts from it, by way of illustration.

"You ask nothing less than the secret of art; seek it in the bosom of God, for no artist will reveal it to you. He does not know himself, and could never give account of the causes of his inspiration or his powerlessness. How must one set to work to express the beautiful, the simple, the true? Do I know? And who could teach us? The greatest artists could not, because if they sought to do it they would cease to be artists, they would become critics; and criticism

"I call in doubt the power of art, I scorn it, I annihilate it, I declare that art is not born, that it does not exist, or that, if it has lived, its time has passed. It is used up, it has no longer form, it has no longer inspiration, it has no longer means to sing the tune. Nature is a work of art; but God is the only artist who exists, and man is but a composer, in ill taste, too. Nature is beautiful; feeling exhales from every pore; love, youth, beauty, are imperishable there. But man

has only absurd means and miserable faculties with which to feel and express them. It would be much better if he did not mix himself up with it all, if he were silent, and shut himself up in contemplation.'

"That pleases me, and I would ask nothing better,' I replied.

666

"Ah!' he cried, 'you go too far, and you enter too completely into my paradox. I ask for an answer.'

"I will answer that a sonnet of Petrarch's has its relative beauty, which is equivalent to the beauty of the waters of Vaucluse; that a fine landscape by Ruysdael has its charm, which is equivalent to that of this very evening; that Mozart sings in the language of men as well as Philomel in that of birds; that Shakespeare gives force to passions, sentiments, and instincts, such as the most primitive and truest man is sensible of. This is art, the bond of union, - sentiment, in

short.'"

By way of conclusion to the argument, George Sand offers the story of François le Champi, to be written by her as

« AnteriorContinuar »