Part 8 (1/2)

Thus, why not change such a pa.s.sage as this, ”That man is to be envied who so aims as to hit his wish,” to read, ”who so aims as to hit his advantage”? for to get and have things wrongly desired merits pity, not envy.[293]

But greater than the moral value of maxims in the poets is that of example. ”Philosophers employ examples from history for our correction and instruction, and the poets differ from them only by inventing and presenting fict.i.tious narratives.”[294] For instance, according to Plutarch, Homer introduces the story of Hera's vain endeavor to gain her ends from Zeus by means of wine and the girdle of Aphrodite to show that such conduct is not only immoral, but useless. Again we may conclude that frequenting women in the day time is a shame and a reproach because the only man who does such a thing in the _Iliad_ is that lascivious and adulterous fellow Paris.[295] It is interesting that this essay of Plutarch's, which gives probably the most complete cla.s.sical exposition of the moral use of poetry, should have been well known in the renaissance and translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1603.

The Romans had very much the same feeling about the moral value in poetry as had the Greeks. The only fundamental difference lay in that the Roman was less philosophical and more practical. This practical element in Roman criticism is well ill.u.s.trated by Horace, whose statements have sometimes been made to support opinions which Horace did not hold. Let it be noted, for one thing, that Horace is talking not about the purpose of poetry, but about the purpose of the poet.

Poets desire either to profit or to delight, or to tell things which are at once pleasant and profitable.

His reason for favoring the third view is important.

Old men reject poems which are void of instruction; the knights neglect austere poems: he who mixes the useful with the sweet wins the approval of all by delighting and at the same time admonis.h.i.+ng the reader. This book makes money for the book-sellers, and pa.s.ses over the sea, and prolongs the reputation of the well-known author.[296]

But aside from the desirability of mingling pleasure with profit in his poetry in order to gain the greatest popularity, the poet does have an educational value in the training of youths by presenting in an attractive manner examples of n.o.ble conduct which the young people may desire to emulate.

His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean The boyish ear from words and tales unclean; As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind, And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind; He tells of worthy precedents, displays The example of the past to after days, Consoles affliction, and disease allays.[297]

Moreover the consensus of conventional opinion in the Roman world was that the study of the poets did succeed in moulding the moral character of the youth. Apuleius, writing of a certain virtuous young man, the hero of one of the episodes of the _Metamorphoses_, makes the following incidental remark: ”The master of the house had a young son well instructed in good literature, and consequently remarkable for his piety and modesty.”[298]

Although Lucretius may not have been a.s.sured of the moral value, he was so convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately utilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay _On the Nature of Things_. The long pa.s.sage is worth quoting entire because his comparison is borrowed so frequently by renaissance critics to ill.u.s.trate the poetic doctrine of pleasurable profit. Lucretius says:

But as physicians, when they attempt to give bitter wormwood to children, first tinge the rim round the cup with the sweet and yellow liquid of honey, that the age of childhood, as yet unsuspicious, may find its lips deluded, and may in the meantime drink the bitter juice of the wormwood, and though deceived, may not be injured, but rather, being recruited by such a process, may acquire strength; so now I, since this argument seems generally too severe and forbidding to those by whom it has not been handled, and since the mult.i.tude shrink back from it, was desirous to set forth my chain of reasoning to thee, O Memmius, in sweetly-speaking Pierian verse, and, as it were, tinge it with the honey of the Muses.[299]

From this survey of cla.s.sical opinion we may conclude that the public looked for two things in poetry: pleasure and profit. Eratosthenes took an extreme view in seeking pleasure alone. Both Aristotle and Horace emphasized the pleasure to be derived from poetry, although neither denied that poetry is beneficial. Horace takes almost a cynical view in suggesting that, as some readers seek pleasure in poetry and others improvement, a poet will be more popular and make more money for the book-sellers if he mingles both elements. The extreme view of the moral value of poetry was taken by the educators of youth. This view is well exemplified in the quotations from Aristophanes, Xenophon, Strabo, and especially Plutarch. But even Plutarch, who goes so far as to suggest emending the poets to make their effect more moral, does not suggest that the purpose of poetry is to afford moral instruction. He distinguishes; some poetry is distinctly immoral and should be enjoyed only for its art.

Other poetry is moral in its effect, and consequently should be utilized extensively by the school-master in educating young men. For such purposes no poetry was thought to be better than Homer, whose epics furnish so many examples of heroic conduct.

3. Moral Improvement through Allegory

When the Roman arms conquered a new city, the story runs, the commander of the forces took over in the name of the Emperor the G.o.ds; but before the gates of Jerusalem this ceremony proved ineffective. The fathers of the Christian church, Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian, believing that all the truth was contained in Christianity, utterly condemned the philosophy and religion of the Greeks and consequently the poetry which, according to Greek popular belief, was the inspired vehicle for its presentation. Furthermore, the G.o.ds of the Greeks were immoral and furnished their wors.h.i.+ppers with bad examples of conduct. Long before Tertullian the moral philosophers of antiquity had already attacked the poetry of Greece and Rome on the ground of immorality. Plato in his day called the war between philosophy and poetry ”age-long.” The ancient Greeks had considered Homer and Hesiod as the inspired recorders of the facts of religion. They had looked to the poets for moral dogma and example. Of necessity the philosophers condemned the poets for the immorality of their thievish, lying, and adulterous pantheon.

When the Christian fathers were confronted with the Syriac gospel of the youth of Jesus, they called a council to declare it apochryphal. Lest some devout reader should take literally the love poetry of the Canticles, the fathers allegorized it as the love of Christ for his Church.

Unfortunately for Greek religion the philosophers did not determine which episodes in the histories of the G.o.ds were valid as doctrine and which were fict.i.tious. They did, however, antic.i.p.ate the fathers in their allegorical interpretations. Socrates in the _Phaedrus_ laughs at allegory;[300] and Plutarch believes that the poets intended to teach a moral idea by example instead of expressing a hidden meaning by allegory.

For him allegory involved distortion and perversion. ”For some men _distort_ these stories and _pervert_ them into allegories or what the men of old times called hidden meanings ?p????a?.”[301] But allegory none the less flourished. Theognis of Rhegium, Anaxagoras, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, were a.s.siduous and startling in their interpretations.[302] The Greek allegorical interpretations were of two kinds: one an explanation of the secrets of nature, the other the teaching of morality.[303]

Although the practice was very old, the word ”allegory” is not recorded before Cicero, who says:

When the imagery of the metaphor is sustained for a long time, the nature of the style a.s.suredly becomes changed. Consequently the Greeks call this sort of thing allegory.... But he is nearer the truth who calls all of these metaphors.[304]

From Cicero on, allegory has a long history as a rhetorical figure--a trope.[305] St. Augustine recommends that students of the scriptures study the rhetorical figures so that they may be able to interpret the tropes in the Bible, such as allegory.[306]

The result will always be the same whenever the poets are considered theologians and moral teachers. They will be condemned or allegorized.

Fortunate are the poets when they are not believed. ”How much better,”

exclaims St. Augustine, ”are these fables of the poets” than the false religious notions of the Manichees. ”But Medea flying, although I chanted sometimes, yet I maintained not the truth of; and though I heard it sung, I believed it not: but these phantasies I thoroughly believed.”[307] For it is only when one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks that Aristotle a.s.serts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the particular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, ”Poetry has little regard for the actuality of specific event, but aims at the reality of an eternal probability.”[310]

4. The Influence of Rhetoric