Wilhelm von Humboldt's Essays on the Greeks, in English for the First Time!

The current age finds itself in a situation with respect to antiquity, which was totally alien to antiquity. We have a nation before us, in the Greeks, under whose fortunate hands everything, judging by our innermost inclination, which preserves the highest and richest aspects of human existence, had already ripened to ultimate perfection. We look upon them as a branch of humanity formed from a nobler and purer material; looking back upon the centuries of their golden age as on an epoch, in which nature, freshly emerging from the workshop of creation, had maintained a still purer relationship with the Greeks; since they, scarcely looking backward or forward, planted everything anew, founded everything anew and, pursuing in peaceful simplicity their unrestrained endeavors, exhaling the natural longing of their breasts, established standards of eternal beauty and greatness.

Therefore the study of Greek history for us is not as that with the history of other peoples. The Greeks step forth entirely from the circle of the same; although their destinies belong equally to the general chain of events, herein lies only their least importance in regard to us; and we absolutely misjudge our relationship to them, if we dare to apply the yardstick of the rest of world history to them. Knowledge of the Greeks is not simply pleasing, useful and necessary to us, only in them we find the ideal that we ourselves would like to be and bring forth. Although every other period of history enriches us with human wisdom and human experience, we acquire from the contemplation of the Greeks something more than earthly, even almost godly.

For by what other name should one call a sublimity, whose unattainability, instead of discouraging, remoralizes and incites one to emulation? If we compare our restricted, narrow hearted situation, oppressed by a thousand shackles of capriciousness and habit, fragmented by countless petty occupations, which never delve deeply into life, with the Greeks free, pure activity whose sole goal is the highest in humanity; if we compare our laborious works, maturing slowly by repeated efforts, with theirs, which flow forth from the mind and spirit as if from free abundance; if we compare our gloomy brooding in monastic solitude or mindless intrigues during casual socializing with the serene cheerfulness of their community of citizens, who are bound by the holiest bonds, then one might think the memory of them must make us sad and depressed, as the prisoner becomes when recalling the unrestrained enjoyment of life, the ill man when remembering his robust health, the inhabitants of the north by thinking of the image of an Italian spring day.

But on the contrary, it is only the transposition to that time of antiquity which, uplifting our heart and widening our spirit, restores us to such a degree to our original, not so much lost as never possessed human freedom, such that we return to our ever so contrary situation with fresh courage and renewed strength and draw true inspiration only at that inexhustible spring. Even the deep awareness of the gap which fate has placed eternally between them and us, urges us to use the newly acquired power born of contemplating them, in order to uplift us to our allotted height. We imitate their models with the consciousness of their unattainability, we fill our imagination with the images of their free, richly endowed life with the feeling that it is likewise denied to us, as the easy existence of the inhabitants of their Olympus was denied to them.

For this can surely be considered as a suitable metaphor of our relation to them. Their gods wore human forms like them, and were created from human material; the same desires, passions and pains, moved their breast; also the troubles and hardship of life were not alien to them; hate and persecution stirred violently in the halls of the god's abode; Mars lay dying among slain warriors; Hermes wandered with trouble over the lonely wilderness of the sea; Latona felt all the afflictions of an expectant mother; Ceres all the anguish of the deserted mother. We find likewise in Hellas all the roughness of life; not only the hardships which befall individuals and nations, but also the most violent passions and excesses, even the brutality of man's unbridled nature. But just as the unique splendor of cloudless Olympus melted and dissolved all those dark colors, so there is something in the Greeks, which never actually let their spirit sink, which wipes away the harshness of the earthly, transforms the excessiveness of force into exuberant play and softens the harsh pressure of fate into gentle sternness.

This something is precisely the ideal in their nature. The whole remarkable appearance, the impression, which the works of no other people makes on us, even with the most sober and objective scrutiny, comes from the fact that the Greeks indeed touch the place in us which is the final goal of all of our striving. We feel ardently, that they have achieved the lot, reached the summit in their own way, wherein they can rest at the end of life's path. But their greatness arose so purely, truly, and genuinely from nature and humanity, that it doesn't force us to follow their way, but stimulates, entices us with enthusiasm to follow our own way, by heightening our independence. This greatness relates itself to us solely in the idea of ultimate perfection, of which it is an undeniable paradigm, but for which we are also allowed to strive, although by other paths.

Therefore, one must perhaps be intimately familiar with the works of the ancients, so as not to regard the assertion of the unattainability of their virtues as a biased exaggeration. However, what arouses a favorable bias towards them is that appreciation of the works of the ancients absolutely doesn't depend directly on learning or research. They make the most profound impression on the most unaffected souls that as yet are not committed to any particular way of thinking or style of art. It is furthermore remarkable, that the Greek works find access to every nation, every age, every state of emotion, whereas modern works, because they arise from a less universal and objective state of mind, equally demand a more particular and subjective state of mind. Shakespeare, Dante and Cervantes will never produce such a universally wide spread effect as Homer, Aeschylus or Aristophanes.

To compare the modern works of any type with those of antiquity, except as concerns positive knowledge and mechanical dexterity, demonstrates a similarly incorrect view of antiquity, in the same way an incorrect view of art is shown if a certain object of reality is compared to the beauty of a work of art. For, as art and reality lie in two different spheres, so do antiquity and modern times; they never touch in the realm of phenomena, but solely in truth, where only the idea reaches, never perception, in the original force of nature and humanity. Art and reality are two different images, just as antiquity and the moderns are two different efforts to assert their existence.

Reality, that is truth and nature itself, is certainly not less noble than art; it is rather the model of art. Its essence is so great and sublime, that, in order for us to approach reality only to some extent, the only way left for us is to forge a path as yet unknown to us, just as art does. The smallest object of reality is infused with this same essence, and it is absolutely wrong, that nature in its perfection would only be found in all its particular objects taken together, that the totality of the vital force would only be found in the sum of the particular moments of its being. They may both certainly appear that way, but one cannot think of space as being severed, or time as being separate. All in the universe is one and one all, otherwise there is no unity at all in the universe. The force pulsating in the plants is not simply a part of the force of nature, but all of it. Otherwise an unbridgable gap is opened between it and the rest of the world, and the harmony of organic forms is thereby destroyed irreparably. Each present moment contains all the past and future in itself, for there is nothing to which the fleetingness of the past can cling, as the perpetuity of living.

But reality is not the receptacle, in which this essence can be transmitted to us; rather its essence becomes manifest in reality only in its original truth and is, in this form, inaccessible to us. Therefore, because we don't grasp the existence of the actual objects through their inner life, we try to explain it through the influence of external forces, and that is why we misjudge both its completeness and its independence. Instead of believing reality's organic form to be determined through inner abundance, we consider it limited by external boundaries. These are fallacies, which don't exist in art, because art doesn't represent the essence of nature as such, but functions in a way designed to be understandable and harmonious for our sense organs.

However, our life is not endowed so stingily from destiny, that it also should not have been given something inside itself and entirely outside of the realm of art, that allows us to draw nigh to the essence of nature, and this something is passion. In no way should one squander this name to the inferior affects by which one usually loves and hates, strives and despises. Profound and rich emotions know a desire, for which the name of enthusiasm is too cold and for which longing is too tranquil and bland, under whose effect man still remains in perfect harmony with the whole of nature, in which instinct and idea become one in a way inconceivable with a cold prosaic approach, and which thereby brings for the most beautiful birth. In such emotional states of mind, the idea appearing in reality is more correctly recognized, and one can truthfully say that, in higher and purer enthusaism, friendship and love look upon their object, with a more profound and holier gaze than art does. But such is the fate of reality, that one moment it places the object too low, the next too high, it never allows the full and beautiful balance between the appearance of the object and the intellectual power of the observer, from which follows the inspired and fruitful, and yet always peaceful and calm enjoyment of art. Therefore it is not the fault of nature, but our own, if nature seems to be inferior to the work of art. If therefore esteem for art is a sign of a lofty age, then esteem for reality is the feature of an epoch having reached a still higher degree of loftiness.

We encounter that full and beautiful balance only in antiquity, never in modern times. In the way of thinking and activity of the ancients, mankind's pure and original natural force seems to have burst open all veils so happily, that it presents itself to our eyes in clearness and simplicity like a half opened blossom, easily understandable. Not laboriously scouting out the path which it will choose, and not anxious about what it leaves behind, it abandons itself trustingly and confidently to the unlimited longing for life's full abundance and expresses itself in a thousand always equally blessed images. We moderns only research, search, struggle and battle, often to know the bloody sweat, but seldom the joyful ease of victory, and slave away in lonely, scattered and isolated existence, never enjoying the beneficial bouyancy, with which a people in harmony uplift their fellow citizens, on soil strewn with monuments to their glory and art, under a heaven smiling brightly on them.

Precisely the same characteristics which, upon observation, differentiate reality--in its particular, limited appearance--from art, likewise differentiate the ancient and the modern ages. Like art, everything ancient is always a pure and complete expression of something spiritual and leads to the unity of ideas. It entices one to become ever more deeply absorbed in each of its parts, and the spirit is voluntarily captivated by its magic in definite limits and then enlarged by it to infinity. The modern epoch, on the other hand, like reality, only hints at the spiritual, rather than portraying it actually and immediately, and often knows no other unity, than that where feeling gathers itself, only because of reality and at its behest. The modern often exercises its best and loftiest effect only by leading over and above itself and beyond its limits. Even when the modern is infused by the same spirit as the ancients, and when its effects remain close to the ancient, it still lacks the radiance that firmly unites and fuses everything by its own rays, just as a landscape on a cloudy day lacks brightness.

For however much man may muse and choose and labor, the most delicate and loftiest of his works flow from the hand of the artist even if he doesn't know it, and penetrate the mind of the observer, even if he is not aware of it. Certainly he owes this to nothing but the fortunate disposition of his nature and the propitiousness of the moment. He may be armed with genius and energy, as only the limits of human nature permit it, however that which especially radiates forth from him, is only what he directly is not--the power of humanity, which begat him; the earth, which supports him; the nation, whose language echoes around him. Man belongs to nature and is not destined to stand there isolated and alone; the word he utters is an element or resonance of nature's sounds; the image that he casts down is the outline of the mould, into which nature also poured her own image; his desires are directly the impulse of of nature's creative power. This doesn't lessen his independence; for in the totality of reality the power of nature is his own, whereas in appearance everthing is closed to him, nation, earth, heavens, surroundings, previous ages and present time. They remain speechless and dead, unless he is able, through his own inner power, to open, to examine and to enliven them. Therefore the most certain characteristic of genius is to bring out everywhere, in every expression of energy, but most especially in the most complicated of all which is life itself, that which inspires, admonishes, and urges, by means of admiration or contempt, love or hate. And where reality falls short, for genius to call forth a new and more beautiful world from the past--an aid, which contemporary man often feels compelled to use, whereas the ancients found absolutely everything they needed in their closest surroundings according to their innermost desires.

Nevertheless a modern artist, to go directly to the area in which it is most difficult to take on antiquity, could compete with the works of antiquity in an excellent way. Now as then, genius can still emerge, research has traversed many difficult paths since then, and skill, enriched by this and through experience, has made much progress. But what remains unreachable, what separates the ancients and moderns from each other through an unbridgeable gap, is the breath of antiquity, which envelops the slightest fragment, as well as the most perfect masterpiece, with inimitable magic. This breath is not part of the individual creator, it is not part of research, nor even of art itself; it is the reflection, the flowering of the nation and the epoch and, since they never return, also are lost irretrievably with them. For it is a nostalgic, but also noble privilege of the living, that they never recreate themselves in the same way and what is past in them remains gone forever.

Since any work expresses more than the object that it directly represents, everything that posesses a certain degree of characteristic peculiarity falls into place. But what distinguishes antiquity in this point, is two-fold: first, that in the momentary mood and the character of the artist and in him and his environment, his epoch and his nation, a wonderful and charming harmony reigns, and second, that all these things in turn are so much at One with the idea to be expressed, that they don't oppose the ideas as personality in the work, but unite with it to a higher effect, to make it more objective through subjective power. Neither would be the case, if the humanity which is expressed in antiquity, were not purer, clearer, or at least a more easily recognizable imprint of the ideas, which every genuine human breast longs for, or if these ideas didn't inflame them more fervently than one would suspect. That breath of antiquity is therefore the breath of a humanity made radiant by divinity--for what, if not the idea, is godly? Such a humanity it is that testifies loudly and spiritedly in the works of art, poetry, citizen's constitutions, battles, sarifices and festivals of the ancients, and actively bears witness to our dullness and pettiness, but shows at the same time what mankind could be and towards which we can struggle along differently traced paths. For it would be unfortunate, if the merits of antiquity were proclaimed only in dead marble statues and not also, in a way equally uplifting and inspiring in customs, thinking and deeds.

So once again: nothing modern is comparable with anything ancient;

with gods
should a man
not measure himself’;

and what distinguishes antiquity, is not merely a characteristic specificity, but a universally valid superiority, which compels recognition. It was a unique, but happy occurrence in the history of the development of mankind, that out of the ages, which should have matured through great effort, a people emerged, who grew out of the earth effortlessly and in most beautiful bloom. How this must be comprehensible to us already is indicative of the developments until our time, but the whole point of view, especially in its particular uses, can only be justified by the completion of our modern works. Meanwhile for here and now, also without further explanation, a thesis is posed which, for whomever accepts it as true, is already quite demonstrated. The test of modern nations is their feeling for antiquity and the more they value in the Greeks and Romans equally, or in the Romans over the Greeks, the more those nations will fail to achieve their characteristic, specially set goal. For in as much as antiquity can be called ideal, the Romans participate therein only to the extent that it is impossible to separate them from the Greeks.

Nothing would be so counterproductive as to begin an historic work from the viewpoint which owes more to a perhaps forgivable, but always ill conceived enthusiasm, than from calmer contemplation. We can’t gloss over this remark here, since here is where one is most likely to object that the assertion just made about the Greeks would be over-exaggerated and prejudiced.

And certainly it would be both over-exaggerated and prejudiced, if our argument would assume that the ancients were a superior, nobler branch of humanity than us, as some claim, who are more concerned to explain world history than to investigate it, in the first inhabitants of our globe. They were not divine creatures so to speak, but their epoch was so fortunate, that it expressed each beautiful characteristic that they possessed, completely and precisely; not what humanity can become in itself, separately and diffused and gradually and prior to cognition. They stand alone as an unreachable model, but only in how they can appear as a living and individual phenomenon.

For if we would summarize briefly, which particular merit in our opinion, distinguishes the Greeks above all other nations, it is that they seem inspired by a dominant instinct from the impulse to depict the highest life, as a nation, and grasped this task on the narrow boundary line, under which the solution would have been less successful, and over which it would have been less possible to them. In addition to the sensuous liveliness of all energies and passions and the beautiful inclination to always wed the earthly with the godly, their character also had in its form the singularity, that everything in it expressed itself purely and happily. Everything that presented itself outwardly in it, its inner content transferred with clear and certain outlines.

We pause a moment at this last point. That by that means the distinguishing characteristic of the Greeks lies more in the representation of what they were, than only through some particular, they absolutely deserve to be called the ideal, because also the conception of the ideal necessarily entails, yields to the possibility of the appearance of the idea. Indeed, what one would always choose as the predominant trait in their spirit, if one only had to name one, would be the attention to and delight in harmony and balance, and to want to absorb only the noblest and most sublime there, where it harmonizes with a totality. The disproportion between inner and outer being which agonizes the modern age so often, while on the other hand it becomes a fertile source for shocking or thrilling emotions for it, was absolutely alien to the Greeks; they didn’t know the preoccupation in thoughts and feelings which remains behind every expression, and what didn’t yield spontaneously and naturally to the twofold realm of life and the poetry, didn’t belong in their pure sunny horizon. Nemesis was a true Greek deity, and although its original idea is common to all times and nations, nowhere was it so delicately, widely and poetically elaborated as in Hellas. But the Greek’s aversion to the disproportionate didn’t actually spring from softness and weakness in the face of excessive imbalance or even from the customary alienation from nature, but springs directly from the necessity to break forth everywhere in the maximum life that only springs from the harmony which excludes nothing and is the universal organism from the profound feeling of nature. Thus they supported both elements of each truly good spiritual taste’s opposing side one against the other, since taste always remains one sided and corruptible, if it repulses or attracts excessiveness and force, taken absolutely and in themselves.

An individual in reality is an embodied idea; the physical life force is in every moment renewed striving; the idea of organism is morally the same attempt to assert the particular spiritual character in reality. Therefore in so far as life appears as a continuous creation and the character appears as the result of it, life indeed can and must be considered as art and the character as an artwork. It now belongs to the genius of art to harmonically understand and to intensify the two fold condition of the idea and the phenomenon, which every work of art simultaneously subjugates (since, as come claim, the beautiful is never created by relaxation) such that they seem created one only for the other; as it discovers the indivisible point, in which, after an enormous struggle, the invisible is wed with the visible; likewise this adds to genius in life and the maximum of all genius, that of a totally lively and harmonious people.

Therefore, what the Greeks actually have superior to us, be it by merit or accident, and wherein exclusively we never may venture to rival them, was this inborn sense for the clearest, most precise and richest manifestation of the highest summation of human life in their individual and national character.

But that they found this maximum, they thanked the simple disposition of their nature; that they succeeded in the most difficult of all arts, life, they thanked the natural impulse to which they yielded freely and without reservation.

All individuality is based on or rather expresses itself in an impulse, and is one with that which is its particular characteristic. From the lowest up to the highest types of life we recognize each creature in its totality and in the idea of its nature less by its way of being, than by its striving. In its striving all its past, present and future conditions combine together as a unity. As life neither stands still nor can be thought moved by an external cause, so the entire universe exists only by impulse. Nothing lives and exists, except insofar as it strives to live and exist, and man would be absolute lord and master of his being and his perpetual existence, if he could destroy his life impulse by an order of his will. Of course, the impulse is self-determined and determines the forms of life in turn. All differences among the living, among plants and animals, among their manifold species, and between nations and individuals in humanity is therefore based solely on the difference of the life impulse and its ability to work through the resistance which it finds.

This impulse went directly to be pure and complete humanity with the Greeks, and they relished human existence with cheerfulness and joy. Like man, only because he is rooted firmly on earth to be able to lift himself to the heavens, actually the sublime quality in the Greek is nothing other than the fruit of natural instinct ennobled by heavenly ideas. The rough and completely unformed Greek undeniably also had two properties, which, as dangerous they may be in many regards, still certainly promote the development of mankind: Love of independence and dread before that one moment dark, the next moment dry and boring seriousness, which depends more on the business rather than the pleasures of life. Naturally love of independence ripened later on to the noblest liberty of the citizens, but in itself it was nevertheless generally more a distaste for every constraint, than a deeper aversion of their disposition to injustice alone. Therefore, it manifested itself, and only too often, against the constraint of prevailing laws, and led more to a capricious choice of a self pleasing lifestyle and activity, than to become an isolated and narrowly defined political passion, as was the case with the Romans. However, it removed constraint of caste, priest and custom, which otherwise stifled the spirit of so many ancient nations. It did away with the inequalities of status in life to the point of destruction and brought every citizen into the most diverse and universal contact with all. The other of the two aforementioned character traits was especially based on a rarely interrupted disposition to happiness, which, even still rough, is only a possession of one with a good natured soul, with a fortunate gift of unbelievably effortless excitability, which resonated in unfettered fantasies with the slightest touch of any object of nature, immediately sounding all strings of the spirit. Consequently the Greeks didn’t need savage and shocking entertainment as the more materialistic Romans—early on they had gladiator sports and bull fights, but they were never significant. The Greek happily let someone chatter to him, tell him fairy tales and stories, and even philosophize to him. Ossian and Atellanian plays and buffoons were no requirement for him. He didn’t like the dry seriousness of life’s business, the trade, agriculture, or the tribunals, according to the wearisome way the Romans exercised administration of justice. But he in no way avoided the more profound science and art. Lastly, endowed with a lively sense for everything, biased and prejudicial judgment of matters was alien to him, and already in Homer, Paris reminded Hector very beautifully not to scorn any gift of the heavenly. To identify the noblest jewel of a nation it is sometimes useful to see it in its distorted degeneration. The Romans describe the degeneration of the Greeks to us. Not, we would hope, all Greeks (since those who appreciate their forefathers will hide in solitude in the walls, made cold and empty by the destructive Roman emperor, as the one who is conquered does with self respect) but those Greeks, who since they sell themselves every day, like a high classed, contemptible sort of slave, covort in the houses of the rich Romans. They describe these Greeks as an idle, curious, talkative, agitated, and eternally changeable braggart. But even with these defects, justifiably despised, which Plato complained of so frequently and eloquently in the most beautiful time of Greece, a spark is still always visible of the old spirit. There was still freedom from the necessities of life, still a certain tendency to that which doesn’t physically flatter the senses, but as breath and fragrance as it were merely caresses the imagination and the spirit. Still something remains that, if it doesn’t lend the soul heavenly wings, it still throws off the burden of the body. Our own leisure time, banal with nosiness and chattering, can again return to that noble leisure, to the spiritual investigation, recitation of poetry, and such things. Our instability can also return everything to the beautiful concept still so diversely great and admirable in humanity and nature as well. In the most beautiful epoch of Greece desire for fame and love of sociability are closely united with each other, such that the former, instead of straying far and searching for its gratification in the distance, limited itself on those topics, which were situated immediately in the circle of its citizens and community, and immediately picked the fruit of its work at the same place. Therefore the victories of the great games were especially preferred to any other glories. Because it was achieved in the face of the Panhellenic, the name of the contestant and his city resounded loudly in the ears of friends and envious people, and since the victor returned to his fatherland, consequently the reflection of this glorification radiated to him eternally. Love of the fatherland is derived from this leisurely sociability, free from occupation, and since all Greeks knew a common fatherland, Greek soil and heavens received a particular character. The patriotic Gods also climbed down into the circle of the Greek inhabitants, and they did not desert their solidly established homes like unsettled humans, the native heroes didn’t abandon their graves. Thus one banished was not only separated simply from the lifeless fields of his homeland and the memories of his childhood and youth, but also from the loveliest joys of his life, the loftiest feelings of his breast. Consequently, frequent banishment became with the political establishment of Greece one of the richest sources of interesting feelings among the Greeks, and Pindar describes this, when he says:

[The quote is lost]

So Pindar expresses nothing more as the highest conception of happiness of every Greek. These few traits asserted here should only encounter the objection, that in the former perhaps too much, and something too sublime of the Greek character would be claimed, only they show, that the same original, even in its degeneration possessed still not entirely faded capabilities, which, with fortunate development, could grow upwards to the maximum and most beautiful. But man rarely knows the heavenliness of his pure and uncorrupted nature, and mistrusts it where he sees it, like a strange image or a deceitful illusion. However the Greeks were formed so fortunately, and so beneficially favored externally by fate, that that impulse just mentioned, rarely or never straying from its goal, made itself perfectly dominant. What seemed only to be capable of the work of genius, was therefore more the work of nature, as generally always in men the finest educated is joined directly to the source of what is originally the best in man, which is replicated in him with more clearness of consciousness. Also in society only the noblest and most sensitive individuals stand with the lowest, who are still the class of people living in natural simplicity in direct contact with the senses and perception. Only in those people suspended in the unblessed middle, in contact with neither, are equally strange to true nature and true refinement, one moment without shape, the next moment distorted.

Despite all this, no one easily mistakes or confuses the impulse, of which I speak, with instinctual natural force, or subordinate passions. Here what is important, once the heavenly and earthly material is combined in human beings, it is unfair, to separate either unilaterally. Nothing of human worth can arise in it, without freedom, that is without act, which solely pertains to the personality, consequently the least that whereupon its entire individuality depends, that is its personality itself. But on the other hand, the principle of life also must actively correspond to the sensation, as the first impulse corresponds to all action, as the idea legislating and ruling in us. Further, it can not be put forward by an arbitrary determination of the will, since it rather forgoes all expressed volitions.

Only once one is certain, not to mix the basic impulse of individuality (which can never purely and entirely manifest itself as something infinite in phenomenon) with what one naturally, also properly terms the original predisposition of a character, so what has just been said is designated with other words only as far as this basic impulse, the life principal of the individual, possesses freedom and necessity at the same time, according to the degree and the quality in it mutually demanding and determining. That is, that it must be situated in the regions, in which freedom and necessity perish in a third higher idea. Likewise in its creation: in the physical world of organism, in the aesthetical work of art, in which morally the spiritual individuality of its work is always a true infinity, is namely something, from which, regardless of the necessary connection of all parts, freedom doesn’t simply stream forth, but where that necessity itself is only comprehensible through freedom.

What here is called an impulse, is perhaps more accurately named a self acting idea. But I avoided this otherwise indeed synonymous expression, because it can lead to a misunderstanding that the idea would lie completed there and would carry itself out only gradually, and it is my conviction that the always acting fundamental power of nature, the epitome and the standard of all ideas, exists in an activity, determined at the outset by its own causes. Also the concept of an impulse would be more useful for an historical work (understood as always a free and legislative impulse), than a self acting idea, since history doesn’t as philosophy, go forth from nature’s laws, but towards them, supported on a substance thoughtful of collected phenomena. That primitive impulse arises afterwards, as will be shown subsequently by the example of the Greeks, in a multitude of subordinate inclinations and attempts, one moment as in brilliant reflections, the next as in half formless shadow images.

The irresistible impulse which still springs from the part of feeling, mind and soul (Gemuet), in which only the self given law rules, the German calls the word longing (Sehnsucht), which is not familiar or known to any other nation (since the German language is by preference at home in the region, which, to be entirely surveyed, requires the aid of feeling) and from that humanity has a determined character only insofar as it knows a definite longing. Such a longing bestirs itself in every human being, but few are fortunate enough, that they manifest it purely and defined, not dissolved in contradictory affects. Still fewer, are those that approach it on the true ideal paths of the archetypes of humanity. And most seldom is the fortune, that this two fold condition is achieved, along with the external conditions to please man sufficiently, that he gains new strength by satisfaction with this situation.

The ideal nature of a character depends on nothing so much as the depth and the type of longing that inspires it. For the expression of the ideal adds still something else to morality, not greater (for morality always remains the maximum), but more comprehensive, since an ideal character doesn’t merely subjugate itself to one idea, as duty subjugates the simple moral character, but conforms itself with all ideas of the whole invisible world. The ideal character strives to produce such a disposition to represent all humanity in one particular case (in its dignity and nobility), like the creative artist strives to produce a beautiful work of art. And there the ideal character finally is creative in the true sense, while it transforms the idea of maximum humanity, otherwise only intuited by thoughts, into a fact of nature. For this purpose simple adjustment of thinking and exercise of the will doesn’t suffice; the mind must be made capable of that which no conception and no feeling reaches and which, when it seems to freely form the imagination, is created by it from the depths of nature. In other words, the idea, which makes up the soul and the life of nature and from which comes all meaning and all form, must appear to the soul and mind and awaken the love (agape), whose immediate and natural fruit is that high and godly longing.

Perhaps longing seems to be a silly, trite expression of a frivolous era to many people, who would rather exchange it with the directly vivid and active term, striving. But longing and striving, both taken in their most sublime sense, are not synonymous. In the word longing, the unattainability of that which is longed for and the mysteriousness of its origin is expressed, while striving goes from a clearly thought out concept to a determined target. Striving can be weakened and thwarted by difficulties and obstacles, but in the face of longing every chain falls broken to the ground, as by a magic recumbent on itself. The artist who is creative longs for the achievement of beauty, which still floats in an unfixed image of his fantasy; but he strives after he formulates his thoughts to be faithful in their execution. The Roman had a zealous, earnest, powerful striving, from which grew a connected activity and steady, gradually progressive results. The Greek was inspired by longing, his deliberate and worldly activity was often very dispersed and cut into pieces, but by his side, unsought, that longing germinated heavenly and enchanting blossoms. This stands in relationship to the world, in that every greatest undertaking, be it addressed to freedom and fame of the fatherland or to the well being of humanity generally, is ennobled only more thereby; that longing above all imparts the idea to us, which should stamp reality. No man deserves being called great even if he would be the most blessed benefactor of mankind, if the breath of such a longing didn’t touch him. It would have to be discussed further somewhere else, if it wouldn’t be self-evident already.

Transferring these ideas to attentive contemplation of life, one soon becomes aware, mostly in himself, that there is a three fold type of education: one, the enlightenment of the understanding, second, the strengthening of the will, and third, the inclination to the never expressed and eternally unspeakable, such as physical and spiritual beauty, truth in its ultimate foundations, and the freedom by which form overcomes material in lifeless nature, and in the living, free thought overcomes blind force. The last would best be called the education of feeling towards religion, if this expression, religion, would not be at the same time so noble and so misused, that one must always be careful, not to desecrate religion one moment by the most sublime thought, the next (in its degradation) not to profane higher thoughts by the use of the word religion. The first two types of education can be both the work of instruction and example; but the latter belongs to the soul itself alone and the experience of life, especially to the fortunate inclination, to allow the world to operate on oneself and to assimilate its effect in self created solitude. Here it reveals, what a well tuned mind and soul, strong and gentle at the same time, knows to produce from the manifold emotions, like desire, love, admiration, adoration, joy, pain and by whatever names they might bear, which one moment visit the heart in friendly way, the next moment furiously attack it. For these and all other affects are the true means of awakening of that high and noble longing, just as longing purifies the affects in turn, by strength. In whose breast these emotions have raged most frequently and powerfully (wherefore women are better attuned and by their situation more favored than men for the most part), longing ripens to the noblest and most beneficial powers.

As therefore every worthy character demands power and energy of the will, so an ideal character demands still especially, that the intellectual impulse residing in every human being become such a definite and dominant longing, that it would give the individual person a specific form, and give the conception of humanity a more or less widened form. As life generally must be deemed as a partially successful war of the spiritual with the physical, so the formation of individuality by the ruling of the fundamental impulse guiding it is the utmost summit of victory achieved in life. Just for this reason it is the ultimate purpose of the universe; if one averts his glance from it, every apparently noble endeavor is also low, mechanical and earthly. The investigated, perceived, surveyed universe, the penetrated depth of truth, the soaring heights of feeling are wasted powers playing with vain shadow impressions, if they don’t ultimately reveal themselves vividly in the thinking, speaking, active human being, if what they effected in him, don’t reflect back from his glance, if his words and deeds don’t bear witness to them.

Indisputably such a determined character resides in everyone, as well as a definite impulse to physical organization. The difference between them is only, that, while the latter (a few cases exempted) always reaches its ultimate goal, the former only very rarely succeeds, to the extent, that the material, completely conquered, takes on its form, truly and purely. Aye, it can’t even properly be assumed, if one wanted to agree that there would have been in some epoch of creation a chaotic flood of organization of forms, and the outline of the present shapes and the present organs of life would have fluctuated back and forth for a long time, before they would withdraw into the now definite boundaries and rigidly divided species, I say, if we assumed that, we can’t now assume a similar epoch of the moral organization of forms presides, although, by the way, actually ideal characters indeed enjoy the privilege, as an individual, to be singled out as a species. Rather, for all time, the number of ideal characters will be small, the smallest number those who appear in active life in important ways, as Aristides, Socrates, Epaminondas, Philopomenes and others among the Greeks, Scipio and Cato among the Romans, Luther and Friedrich in modern history; with a larger number of ideal characters reflecting in their works, as with so many poets and sages, the form transposed more into a disposition than into action, and most will reflect only particular, prominently worked out features, mere elements of ideality, not the ideality itself, and entire nations fare no better.

However nations belong to the greater productions of the forces of nature, in which its effect remains more equal and strikes that which is effected similarly to the degree that the will of the particular loses itself in the masses. As nature crowds coral reefs together on certain shores, germinates families of plants in certain regions, it also scatters peoples and tribes, and when they also ere long wandered over the hills and rivers and finally also the mountains and seas which separate them, nature still acts on them continuously in two powerful matters; procreation and speech. Its dark and mysterious forces govern the former entirely and likewise give the latter that original expressiveness and color; the tone, the timing and the original spontaneous connection of the corporeal and spiritual belong to it. Therefore, if it is also difficult to find an ideal national character, and if one also, in order to be just, may put to the side that this virtue belongs exclusively to the Greeks, still one must admit nevertheless, that, to educate by having an ideal form of character in mind, to inspire and excite onself to reproduce it by particular discovered aspects and efforts, the contemplation of the Greeks is useful and indispensable.

Nature and idea are one and the same (if one may use the word idea, taken absolutely, for the type of universe, which bestowed with self acting energy, gradually forms and reveals itself vividly). Nature is idea, as acting power; idea is nature as reflective thought. In individual human beings they both occur separately, ideas as thought, nature as desire. They can only be associated imperfectly, by fortune in genius, or by exertion of the will, always possible to anyone. Therefore all ideal form reveals itself easier, where, as is the case in the character of whole nations, nature’s part is more prevalent.

Before an ideal character emerges, one can’t divine its existence; it is a pure and new creation, it is not composed from already known elements. Rather an eternally young, eternally new, inexhaustible power recast the elements into a new form. Who would have anticipated beforehand, only to pause by poetic characters, an Oedipus by Sophocles, or an Othello by Shakespeare? Who would have considered a nation even possible, as history shows the Greeks to us? But this is the case with every individual; the idea of each individual is only possible in that it appears as fact. In this connection, we can not help commenting, how, when one looks on individuality merely like a coagulation of material around definite points of formation, as the determination of a force in an instant, at a place, which connects thousands and thousands of other points, out from which it roams and appropriates the universe; like an infinity, which never repeats and never exhausts itself; like a unity, which in the most wonderful diversity always travels the same course, from the same origin to the same target. I say, if one looks at individuality in this way, its contemplation has either the merits or demerits of its uniquely entire independent enticement.

But if individuality is to be ideal, it must surprise by more than mere novelty, it must reveal a great worthy, universal idea of humanity to such an extent, that it is only comprehensible by its form, that it seems created only by it. An ideal character must have enough vitality, to move himself and his observers with him from the narrow region of reality to the wide realm of ideas. It must perceive the seriousness of life only in the seriousness of ideas which it awakens, it must rescue its terrors and pains to sublimity, to widen its joys and pleasures to gracefulness and intellectual serenity, to appear as a victor in all life’s battles and dangers, who is certain to secure victory for the great noble and immortal in humanity over the low, limited and mortal. Therefore freedom is its essential condition in every noble sense of the word, profound love for wisdom and art its true companions, gentleness and grace its unmistakable characteristics.

Previously, we mentioned Epaminondas, as an ideal character, and if one goes back to the times of the heroes, where fable and history are mixed together, in fact I don’t know if the whole of antiquity proves to be more perfect and more poetic than his era. Praise of his polis, earned nobly, and the freedoms of Hellas are the particular feelings that inspire him. No blood stains his sword, than that shed for Greece. As soon as their war was hard won, he becomes the happy founder of peaceful cities. As Greece needs no more of him, he returns to the humble circle of his citizens and contentedly practices wisdom and art. He allays the risks of the people’s tribunal and death by calm serenity and silent serious pride and dissolves them in a pleasant joke. No fortune makes him presumptuous, and no misfortune clouds the sparkle of his glory; yet he embraces death, and squanders life first, since he is certain of the victory of his citizens. Where is there a more uplifting drama, than the building of the city of Messenes? After the successful war for freedom, Epaminondas had returned to one of the noblest, most peaceful nations of Greece, and by their innocent misfortune, and the failure of all utmost efforts of heroic, most moving patriotism, after an absence of centuries, again repatriated to their fatherland, and gave them, not without favorable promises of the heavens, a new polis. After the sacrifices were made to the gods, by Epaminondas and the Thebans to Bacchus and Ismenian Apollo, by the Argive to Juno and the Nemean Jupiter, by the Messenians to Ithomenian and the hero’s twins, whose anger was now silently appeased, and by the priests, who were deeply initiated in the great goddesses and the bearers of mysterious rites. They invited the heroes to live in the future walls, first Messene, the daughter of Triopis, then Eurytus, Aphareus and his sons, the Heralids Cresphontes and Aepytus and above all the noble but unlucky Aristomenes. And now the three united nations spend the day, repatriators and repatriatees, in joint sacrifice and prayer. Next, in the wake, the circumference of the walls rose, and in the walls the houses and temples climbed upwards. Argive and Theban flutes rang out to the chaos of work, where the old Sacadas with his simple music, and later, Pronomos, with his artful music struggled, competing for the prize. The blooming under Epaminondas caring hands, was the last genuine beautiful blossoms of the Greek spirit, and died there with him, afterwards never returning again.

Two reasons made it necessary, even with the risk of digressing from the main topic, to enter into these deep reflections. Otherwise it would have neither the most essential feature of the Greek character, nor could our view of its relation to the present epoch be clearly recognized.

For if the existence of such a deep and pure longing belonging to every noble human breast wouldn’t be touched upon, if we wouldn’t have drawn attention to it as the principle through which each individuality receives its befitting completion, it would never become sufficiently clear, how the ideality of the Greek character was possible only by the nature and character of these incessantly blazing, eternally warming and inspiring flames. Above, we have located the particular characteristic of the Greeks in a certain impulse inspiring them to represent the pinnacle of life, as a nation. We have further said, that the natural inclination of their very being led them, because the longing itself, to be absolutely pure and full humanity, expressed itself with inner determination and externally more by favorable circumstances.

But this striving already carried the stamp of that higher longing in itself from the earliest times that we know. For the more the Greek man was, the more he walked on the ground with his feet so to speak, only to raise himself over it by his spirit. He connects everything to the heavenly; he creates an independent realm of ideas and fantasies from out of every point; his dearest enjoyment was sociality, communication of ideas and feelings; in work he esteemed the process more than the result. Too movable, to let anyone shackle him, he carried over more freedom into both family and political relations than was associated with stability of either. His patriotism was more love of fame than for the prosperity and the preservation of the fatherland.

Several of these traits, especially the latter ones, usually belong only to savage nations prior to the development of civilization, and vanish with the advent of society. But the Greek distinguished himself precisely, in that he, in the midst of civilization, maintained and developed them, and his natural character immediately became his ideal character. This confirms anew the presence of that longing faithfully accompanying him, in both his raw and his finely cultured condition, whose aim was intellectual and divine, but among these that which mind and imagination formed in sound and shape. Thence, he was fortunate enough, to be able to aspire to the ultimate goal to which a nation would want to be elevated, as it were instinctually, without internal contradiction and strife. For destiny rules over nations, as it does over individuals; the one it equips more sparsely, the other more richly, and only a few become conscious of the efforts, directly and without confusion, which they are destined to perform.

But secondly, a somewhat detailed illustration of the nature of individuality was necessary, because the investigation of the economy of destiny with individuality, if the expression is permitted, and the investigation, of which character types were produced by the nations and the centuries, which are the subject of our consideration, and how much to rescue from the rubble for ourselves today, to apply to our prosperity, always remains a main goal of this type of work. For since herein exists the goal of all human striving—namely that the course of centuries, be it in individuals or nations, an ever higher conception of humanity gradually builds up as hard facts, thus no investigation even remotely touching history may turn its gaze elsewhere, least of all one concerning the history of the Greeks, which undeniably connects antiquity to the modern time. And this is now still the view from which we proceed. Life should stitch and create ideas by the fullness of its movement, by ideas superior to itself and to every activity. Man should possess a power, both by his own effort and the favor of fate, to produce spiritual phenomena, which, measured by the past are new, and measured by the future are fertile. And as art seeks out, or better generates an ideal beauty in a pure and incorporeal idea, in the same way philosophy should be able to generate truth, and active life generate greatness of character. Everything should therefore constantly remain in activity—creative activity; everything should amount to the fathoming of the still unknown and the birth of the not yet seen; everyone to believe himself now to be standing at a point which he must leave far behind.

Who hereby doesn’t agree, whoever imagines, that superior art would exist only in the attainment of a pleasing truth, that superior philosophy would exist only in the ordering of clearly developed conceptions, that superior moral value would exist only in well ordered happiness or in private- and social perfection attainable by mere lawfulness, without feeling that beauty, truth and content of character spring from an effort incomprehensible in its character and method, which cannot be judged with existing yardsticks-—whoever doesn’t agree, we must part company with him here. Everything said about the Greeks and their relationship to us up to this point must seem to him to be exaggerated and chimerical, and since the point at which for us the truth first begins, designates precisely the end of the truth to him, so his and our paths absolutely couldn’t meet at any step.

Having not proved it up to this point since it actually required no proof, as it is generally shown from the undeniable impression that the Greeks possess an ideal character, and after indicating where it in effect lies, we shall now still have to define the nature of its ideality still more precisely, and especially in contrast with our modern character. For what is intended here is not an actual description of the Greek character as such, but only an investigation of its ideality, to answer the questions: It is true? Or only apparently so? Upon what it is based? And how must we deal with it for our benefit?

Enthusiasm is inflamed only by enthusiasm, and only the Greeks exercise such a wonderful effect on us, because that heavenly longing shining out through them expresses itself vividly. Otherwise it would be incomprehensible, how often their insignificant fragments so deeply move our soul, or how various contradictions, deficiencies and defects which we come across in them don’t disturb that effect on us. It was a mistake for a long time and often still now, to compare their works with the types which one can classify in a scientific respect; to want to search for rules and theories in them, instead of purely and clearly acquiring the great and graceful spirit of their creators. As long as a nation looks upon ancient Greek works like literature, as having an intention to produce something scientific (like one can with the modems, the Latins, the Hellenics themselves since Alexander), it erects a brass wall between true Greekness and itself and Homer and Pindar and all those heroes of Greek antiquity remain silent to it.

It is only the spirit, only the way of thinking, only the view of humanity, of life and of destiny, that attracts and fascinates us in the remains of that epoch, which possessed the wonderful secret of simultaneously unfurling life in its total multiplicity, to deeply move the breast in its mighty depths and then to control the upsurge of such excited imagination and feeling by a rhythm, always simultaneously moving and calming. One must be to some extent be in tune with them already, in order to understand them, not to overlook their profoundness one moment, the next to recognize their delicacy. But it is noteworthy, that nothing is so injurious to this understanding as a narrowly defined education, and nothing is less essential than knowledge or scholarship. With the Romans, for example, it is difficult to believe that they were only somewhat profoundly affected by the spirit of the Greeks. With Cicero, Horace, Virgil, up to the Augustinian and following eras the opposite is actually evidenced by particular facts, and if perhaps the Romans grasped the Greeks in some period more simply and naturally, it was in that of Ennius, Plautus and Terence. Even in modern nations, that early on were familiar mainly with the Latin authors, is it still obvious that the Greek authors were understood only partially or incorrectly. On the other hand, no one can deny that the Germans know them truly and genuinely. Yet the Romans were themselves descendants of the Greeks, lived at the same time with them and possessed a language, which can be accounted to a certain extent as a dialect of Greek, and we are more than 2000 years distant from their most beautiful age, and speak a language, which can be praised only perhaps as a later formed and less favored sister of the same extraction with that of theirs. Such a wonderful difference in the destiny of the formation of the nations deserved a more exact illumination and an exhaustive search for its causes, if this wouldn’t lead too far from the objective.

If man is interested in man, it is not in his bodily pleasure and pain or his external activities and impulses, which usurp the participation of the highest in our feelings, but the universal human nature in him, the interplay of its energy in deeds and activities. When history appeals to us, we demand not just to know how this or that mass of people was oppressed or oppressed others, was victorious or defeated, but we want to know, as in a great panorama, and to the enrichment of our simple cognitive reason, what fate is capable of over man, and yet more, what man is capable of over fate. Nothing is more tiring than the multiplicity of reality and the countless number of its chance events, if in the end the Idea doesn’t flow forth. But reality’s greatest amount of chance events seems little to us, when our mind, guided by objects, discovers its way to the idea. For the simplicity of the idea allows itself, like a minor cut with many sides, to be recognized only in the multipicity of phenomena. Therefore, where a man, a human activity or a human event carries an idea corresponding most visibly to it, as a transparent veil, it seizes the mind, soul and feelings most vividly and effects them most beneficially.

And this is the case with the Greeks. The Greek treated everything symbolically, and he creates a symbol of everything that nears his circle. He becomes a symbol of humanity himself, and indeed in its most delicate, purest, and most perfect form.

The conception of symbol is not always correctly understood, and is often interchanged with allegory. Of course, both express an invisible idea in a visible form, but in very different ways. When the Greeks named Bacchus for his wings, or portrayed Mars in chains, these were allegorical representations, and such was Diana of Epheseus. For it was a clearly thought out idea arbitrarily attached to an image. On the other hand, Bacchus and Venus, Sleep as the pet of the Muses, and so many other figures of antiquity are true and genuine symbols. They originate from simple and natural objects--Bacchus from a youth overflowing with well-developed strength; Venus from a maiden, that, just blossoming, becomes conscious of these blossoms with displeasure; the freedom, with which the soul in sleep unfetterered from all worries, roams through the delicately connected realm of dreams. As they start, I would say with these objects, the Greeks arrive at ideas which they couldn’t know to before, ideas which eternally remain inconceivable in themselves and separated from their sensuousness never can be purely comprehended, without being robbed of their individuality and true being. As for example, that which the source of poetic inspiration breaks forth, which, as Schiller so beautifully expresses it, first then even powerfully bestirs itself. Like in sleep, the limbs, the colder powers so to speak rest numbly, and life, like a dream, overflows with a new brilliance. In the last case, one grasps the idea of sleep more deeply and more beautifully. Man, with trust in the deities who weave protecting laws, closes his wakeful eyes, and withdraws and abandons himself, where he happily withdraws from the tumult of life to the womb of lonely night, joyfully forsakes even pleasure and the purest and most ethereal part of his being, the never sleeping power of imagination. He awakens, one moment moved by delightful dreams with melancholy emotion, that first he must annihilate his being as it were, in order to taste godly blessedness, the next moment shutters deeply from fright, that spirit and fate perhaps treacherously lie in wait for him, where he finally, with each rising and setting of the sun, as in a short prelude, always completes anew and begins the great part of his being again-–the idea, expressed in this image, appears more profound and more substantial to him. For the symbol has the uniqueness, that the representation and that which is represented, always alternately invite the spirit to linger longer and to delve deeper into it. On the contrary, allegory, once the mediating idea is discovered, like a solved puzzle, leaves behind only cold admiration or the banal pleasure of a gracefully successful form.

Mere and genuine allegory is alien to the Greeks. Where it is found, it belongs for the most part to a later epoch. For where the mind gives up perceiving symbols, symbols are easily degraded to mere allegory.

The ancient poets generally can only be judged with regard to their individual situation, otherwise the merely accidental characteristics would be confused with the truly singular ones in determining the character of their products.

In a totally excellent sense we find this situation with Pindar, since he was a venerated religious figure and public person at the same time. – He was the appointed poet of Phobos – he was gifted by the gods – and his widespread fame made him the voice of every celebration at victories and festivals in the entirety of Greece.

From this the festive dignity and sublimity originates which distinguished him especially, and which was enhanced by his national and individual character.

The main traits of the Boeotian character are awkward seriousness and physical strength. Moreover inclination to music, especially the flute.

If one combines these traits, the inclination for physical activity and physical enjoyment seems to follow. Generally one can judge the Boeotian national traits from other nations of the same Aeolian tribe. Indisputably, on the whole the Aeolian character came closer to the Dorian than the Attic. The great similarity of the dialects bespeaks it, such that both tribes possessed so many poets, who were almost exclusively lyrical. Hence one may also attribute the Dorian to the main trait of the Aeolian, since this trait belonged was concerned less with fancy and idle speculation than to reality and actual relationships of practical life. In the Dorian, at least in the Lacedaemonian, however these practical traits had achieved a very refined form. Therefore, on the one hand, courage of soul and strength of customs were more dominate, but on the other hand also rigidity and less tendency of artistic talent. Lesbos displays the opposite of both the Aeolian and Dorian, and the tendency for music in the Thebans points to this kinship, the same strokes of heaven and type of land enclosed this artistic tendency in unfavorable limits.

Having become understandable in this manner, by aid of the poetry school of Lesbos, how a Pindar could arise in Thebes, one sees at the same time a distinct lyrical mood and tendency for communal joy at family and citizen’s festivals would be confirmed by the national character in Pindar. But in addition traces of these latter traits also allow themselves in the patriarchical sentiment of the poet, as it were, his almost austere piety, his bitterness in the frequent mention of those who hated and envied him and the frequently meddled in his affairs, those who got pleasure imputing guilt to him, and these traces reveal the festivity or intensity of his actions.

Pindar’s individual character also suits that of a herald of the gods and heroes. Deep reverence for greatness of soul and virtue; consciousness of his own dignity bound with noble pride; finally the gentle and serene cheerfulness, which invited the free outpouring of feelings, formed the main characteristics which his poetry typifies.

First his piety distinguished him, which exhibits more seriousness, dignity and awe, than one normally encounters in Greek poets. Therefore he took care not to offend the gods by any expression, and he prudently rejected unholy or vulgar fables. – historical proofs.

Above all, the worship of the heroes is associated with this, whom he often makes use of as the mediator between the gods and the victors of the contest. He attributes the utmost bravery and greatest strength to the victors. Therefore Hercules, Achilles, Ajax, Jason are recurring figures in Pindar: in contrast even Homer’s name couldn’t protect Odysseus from Pindar’s reproach.

Similarly his entire moral conviction embodies frankness, loyalty and contentedness; harmony among citizens, peacefulness and happiness of family, but directed by a noble striving to great deeds, bound with a limitation of excessive passions. Envy, selfishness and insidious hypocrisy anger him to the utmost.

But his greatness vanishes to no purpose, if the voice of future generations doesn’t exalt it. He is certain his fame will resound; the muses assist him with this affair; and if the multitude of people who doesn’t grasp it isn’t pleased, he has still the acclaim of the wise men.

To this throughly serious, strong, solemn character one can add mild gentleness and serene cheerfulness. The poet most frequently makes offerings to the graces, and where he identifies the most noble ideals, he never forgets the sensuous pleasures of life, enhancing them with the joys of music and song. It was characteristic of his piety, since the worship of the gods was always connected at the same time with his love of art. – Song was his daughter of the night. Beautiful voices of the Boeotians.

Pindar’s gentler sentiments are manifested in his affection for the beautiful Theogenus. From what we can surmise it is based on the enthusiastic feeling of a charming and receptive soul for beauty and virtue, and has no similarity with the love of youth in Plato’s and Socrates’ time. He died in Theogenus’ arms in the theater.

In this manner a radiance imbued Pindar’s entire life, in which greatness and grace united. From this one must explain why he frequently praised wealth in his poetry, and why he admired the power of the king more than seems to befit a Greek. Generally he was not well disposed to democracy, and it can be concluded from the totality of his character, finally that he must have preferred the calm enjoyment of life in the security of peace to uncertain dangers. Perhaps that was why he advised against the Persian War. If there is something true in the anecdote of his desire for riches, as can scarcely be denied, this character trait belongs here, and the temples and statues which he consecrated show at least how this tendency combined with his striving for fame and his moral inclinations.

So Pindar, about whom it not is known, whether he otherwise might have held public office, is considered in the truest sense a public and a sacred poet, to appear somewhat as a priest. By that and by a proportion of Boeotian and Aeolian temperament he received a dignity, a seriousness, and a strictness, which would make the Hebrew poets almost similar in character to him, if the Greek ease, gentleness and sensuousness again didn’t blur every trace of actual equality.

History supplied virtually no information about his intellectual training. Meanwhile his teachers, to mention contemporaries, his contact with Aeschylus and his traveling need to be to researched. – Continuation of his education: Sequence of the odes.

Apart from the individual circumstances of the poet himself, the random and external circumstances of his poems must also be taken into account to judge his poetic character.

(Everything lyrical generally;)

All lyrical poems were to be recited and were destined for a kind of theatrical performance, so they were always accompanied by music, and frequently with dance. The poet taught the music to the performers, and more often than not he was the composer. To what extent did that hold true with Pindar? Did he merely send his poetry, or did he instruct choruses in foreign countries, for whom he wrote poetry?

19.

Therefore so much depended on the performance and on that part of the poetry which bears on it. The poet had to do justice to the sensuous part of art, and the higher requirements naturally followed. Also he was already called upon, as a Greek, by the uniqueness of his national character to appeal preferably to the sensuous.

20.
(Of his in particular)

But Pindar can be judged by us about this only by one type of his poems, and this is unfortunately constricted in so many accidental limits, that the impact of this one type must be separated from his pure character anew. We only possess his victory hymns. These victories were not directed to really great and deserving men, but to kings, their richly nurtured harnessed teams, or to an athlete, who won the prize by the strength of his limbs. (Deeper researches about the charioteers and athletes. Aristagoras in Nemean II.) Therefore the character of the hero was seldom remarkable, and only so far as he had won the victory. Only the fatherland, the family of the victor and the victory itself could be worthy of the prize.

21.

But likewise this victory itself had in itself nothing great and important, neither in the good that it created, nor in the powers which the victor gained by it. It was the fruit of the wealth of those who participated in the chariot and horse races, physical strengths and prolonged physical exercise, bordering to the extreme in the remaining competitions. Even where the competition concerned art (whereof in Pindar only one example occurs) is it very doubtful, if the prize was won more by the sheer magnitude of the art work or the talent of the artist.

22.

But on the other hand the prize which was achieved in these games was the highest which a Greek could boast. In contrast to it even the greatest service to the state and the most splendid military service fell short. Greece knew a particular thanks for every greatness. Quiet respect, love and trust awarded the highly regarded merits referred to above; but loud rejoicing, effusive enthusiasm, and a prize, in which sensuousness and fantasy predominated over the mind and heart, elevated the winner of the competitions.

23.

Their celebration was a celebration of fantasy. Everything that the excitable imagination of the Greeks was able to inspire, came together at the competitions. The enormous amount of people, the national bias (since only Hellenes could participate in this celebration), the close connection of the games with sacred customs, the ancient age of the institution, which went all the way back into the dark time of the heroes, the vying of different Greek tribes in the person of their competitors, finally the greatness of the spectacle itself, the beauty and strength of the wrestler’s bodies, the splendor of the harnessed teams of horses, the competing strain of the sinews.

24.

The circumstances contributed not little to enhance this sensuous and imaginative mood. The competition was not serious, but a mere game, an entirely uninhibited demonstration of athletic prowess. Every serious military fight would have the interested the intellect or the heart more, and suppressed or scattered the imagination, by consequence of its subject. Whereas on the contrary these circumstances lifted the imagination aloft in easy play, since it only had received the image of a battle, and the victor only pursued the simple resounding of fame in it.

24b.

What distinguished the glory in contests from every other type of honor, and made it especially into an object of fantasy and poetic treatment, was the way it was acquired. Every other type of fame was achieved slowly, gradually, by several coinciding actions and circumstances, which are always evaluated and appreciated unevenly. When it is acquired, it must be preserved, it continues to live only in the consciousness of the people, in whom it also must be affected. There was only one step to take with the contests, and everything was won. The victory had to be gained; this happened in a decidedly unmistakable way. All ideas of glory now only depended on the consciousness of the victory and here uncertainty of the judgement or fear of the loss of one’s life was not to be feared. (To research, if subsequent defeats, or any one type of action or behavior was able to curtail the honor of an Olympic winner once he won.) Therefore obtaining victory by fighting in the contest was so very similar to a deification, and Pindar made superb use of this.

25.

But if the glory which the victor enjoyed in the four great games is explainable, just by the excitement of the imagination of the Greeks, which was acted on from all aspects of their lives, this idea of the glory of victory interwove itself now in all civic and social institutions. Now the fame of the victor, which glorified his fatherland at the same time, was something great indeed, and however humble his actual and personal accomplishment might to be, thus he stood nevertheless simply at the place, to which he had vaulted, in an infinite height – Changes in the conception of the greatness of the contests. To what extent already in Pindar’s time?

26.

Therefore instead of the insignificance of the subject would have inspired the poet to create, the poet rather had to strengthen every power, to uplift the subject. Meanwhile since the subject’s greatness was only a sensuous one, it specified at the same time the character of the victory hymn. This subject agrees not little with Pindar’s individual and national character, his type of life and his occupations – although the entire comprehensiveness of his genius and character can’t be exactly measured, since the only source from which one can obtain it is the victory hymns.

II.
27.
(Inner nature and employment of the victory hymns in totality)

To portray Pindar’s poetic character is only possible in the victory hymns. The fragments of his remaining pieces are only material for speculation. The purpose of the victory hymns is to announce the accomplished victory, glorify the fame of the victor, and mostly serve as an expression of joy and call on God to celebrate the festivity of victory.

28.

The mood to which the poet had to transfer himself and his listeners, was therefore mixed with feelings of greatness and joy. This yielded the particular, individual victory nothing or only very little. This subject was too near and well-known to all Greeks, so that the poet didn’t have to dwell on it. Therefore absolutely no description of the contests themselves occurs in Pindar; only in special individual circumstances he hints at them here and there. The main thing which he can borrow from his subjects, is the general idea of fame and the greatness which were tied up with the victories, and the history of the victor’s ancestors and his home city.

29.

But here also a wide field for fantasy opened itself up to him. From the family of the victor or his home town he crosses over easily to the most famous heroes of Greece. By this he paves the way to the gods, and he ultimately connects the victor with them. Now he is in the area, which is suited more than any another for the poetic imagination, and especially of the inspired mood, which so excellently accompanied the contests. Therefore he also dwells on this most frequently and the longest, while on the contrary he mentions the greatest and most deserving deeds of the victor’s closest ancestors, even the war for freedom, only sparingly and in passing.

30.

Thereby the main character of the poet becomes splendid, sublime and celebratory. But while he easily elevated and occupied the imagination in this way, he admixed the feeling at the same time with a greater and more dignified content. The victory, which was not achieved other than by contest, led naturally to the image of the exertion of the victor, and the dizzying height, on which the inspired poet saw the victor, recalled the danger, that the victory would be arrogant. From both of these sources spring the serious considerations, by which the feeling of joy was certainly moderated on the one hand, but on the other hand also was made nobler and more enduring.

31.

But here likewise the same sublimity reigns which distinguishes the poet everywhere. The unchanging nature of fate, the comparison of the nothingness of men with the power and greatness of the gods are themes which often return with diverse treatment. So substantial depth combines everywhere with charm and ease in the effect which Pindar brings forth. (Nemean IV. 10-14) The state of mind, in which his best pieces puts the reader, is caused by the greatest and most sublime ideas of reason, and the most splendid and delightful images of fantasy, and by the use of both he strives to one and the same goal.

32.

This goal is a feeling of peace and serenity, which also serves to support a sure and great foundation. Therefore at first he seizes the feeling of the listener powerfully by the serious notion of the tremendous power of the deity, and the fickleness of human fortune, by the reminder of unfavorable fate, which he mentions often, instead of avoiding it, by foreboding aphorisms; therefore he himself seeks the imagination so often, be it to shock by the content and the subject of his depictions, or by the presentation and the more vivid choice of the expression, than simply to move the soul in a pleasing fashion. But in the end these unsettling feelings are always balanced again and resolved in a harmonious mood, which contentedly surrenders to the constant way of destiny and the will of the gods, even to the pleasure of the moment, but with wise moderation. With the pleasure at the same time attention is always paid to noble activity, and internal greatness and eternal fame are always represented as self reflexive.

33.

By the intervention of serious and dignified reflections, Pindar succeeds in bestowing more dignity and solemnity to the mood of greatness, to which he transposes the reader. It is not an earthly, but a heavenly height, to which the poet sees himself transposed. But he illustrates this for the external sense, rather than the internal sense. Therefore the radiant brilliance which is poured about all his portrayals, and the fullness of the images and the expression, which his work exudes with sublime effortlessness. Therefore he lingers so gladly at objects of sensuous grandeur and greatness; and the splendor of gold, the power of the king, the sound of glory--pure objects, to which the subject of his poetry must inevitably lead him. Thus he weaves so much in the character of his poesy, that he seems to receive it not by his material, but to choose it arbitrarily.

34.

The feeling of greatness which the poet brings forth, is not just greatness of disposition, of sentiments and individual deeds, it is the greatness of existence, of being, of life generally. One possessing it enjoys unclouded peace, is kindred with all moral and physical greatness and brilliance, and is at one with the gods and fate. Therefore originates the peace, the cheerfulness, the radiant sublimity, which distinguishes Pindar preferentially, and which differs so totally from that other species of sublimity, which represents the moral greatness in war against the physical, and is otherwise often used by the lyrical poets.

35.

Associated with that, ...

[III. 40.]

. . . above all others Jason, and Hercules with Telamon. All remaining subjects which he presents are handled in a similar way, also if they also aren’t living beings. Everything emerges with a certain character; nothing is portrayed merely sensuously, everything is portrayed simultaneously of the mind and soul and sentiment. Almost the most exquisite character scene, the beginning of Apollo and the muses in the first Pythian ode.

41.

The milieu from which the Pindaric characteristics are taken, is admittedly not great. Power of the gods, greatness of heroes, unselfish desire for fame, prosecution of vice, protection of everything good, a strong sense of honesty and justice, disposition to harmony of citizens and love of family, and cheerful disposition to the enjoyment of life, along with the traits, which are contrasted to these, sum it up quite exactly. Nevertheless within this circle there is enough diversity.

42.

Main figures in Pindar. The Gods: in general, the highest power, impeccable wisdom, justice and goodness, but terrible and relentless fury against those who offend them. Individuals: Jupiter, the supreme paragon of that character. Apollo. Absolutely youthful, with great fierceness, but above all bestowed with art and wisdom. An entirely unique image is Apollo at Chiron (whether it probably is found somewhere else). The god’s nature, their power and wisdom is associated here with the inexperience of mortal youth, and the wise old man honors the one, while he instructs the other. The Charites, kindly and lovely forms, the bearers of everything magnificent, laughing and joyful. Several allegorical figures, for example, Hesychia. He mentions the remaining gods only in passing, according to their general character.

43.

The heroes. Hercules, the epitome of all strength and courage. Jason, next of these excellent heroes, especially tends towards peace, and unselfish generosity. Ajax, a remarkable image held in definite obscurity. The Dioscuri, gentle, from tender brotherly love, tend toward goodwill and helpfulness. Totally peaceful, disposed only to goodness, and characters predominated by wisdom are Chiron and Asclepias. Especially the first is beautifully and characteristically portrayed. The Titans, Trion, Pelias, Odysseus and others give the opposing image to these great and noble natures. Feminine characters were barely touched upon. The feminine characteristic in Cyrene is ignored completely in the character of the heroes. However some beautifully drawn traits of femininity are found with the instance of Coronis, the Graces, and in the fragment in Xenophon about the Corinthian maidens. Meanwhile in this he doesn’t differ from the usual viewpoint. More important are the depictions of some people and ways of life, especially the Hyperboreans and life on the happy islands. Now and then characters appear which could have been better used, neglected for example is Medea.

44.

Where the intervention of the epic in Pindar is really successful, he sets up several images there -- real persons and characters or deeds and occurrences – which, while they occupy the imagination, they simultaneously attune the mind and soul to his lyrical purpose accordingly. The individuality of the poet shows itself in that he on the one hand presents a more detailed, more brilliant, richer union depiction to the imagination, and on the other hand nevertheless strongly shocks the mind and soul by the solid and determined character of its traits, so that by taking both together, the state of mind which he evokes, and in the extensive wealth connects with intense strength, certainly less violently and suddenly, but more completely, more lastingly and more permeates through the entire soul than with other lyric poets. But the pitfall into which he often descends, is to weave in epic episodes, where they damage his lyrical purpose more than serve it, or to continue the epic section longer, than is advantageous in this respect.

45. (Pindar’s didactic part, his maxims)

The second principal means, which serves the poet’s purpose are the maxims. He uses these almost too freely on occasion, and almost everywhere they serve to connect the different parts of longer sections of his poems, or the whole poem itself.

46.

The maxim’s content is somewhat limited and is taken entirely from the sphere, from which he simultaneously creates his epic material. In this respect it carries the same character. Almost all are in effect sayings of wisdom, and often state the simple relationship, only in modified forms, which man has to the gods and fate on one hand, on the other to his fatherland, his fellow citizens, and his family. Only very few of the maxims (research more closely) refer to more hidden meanings, and also methods of presenting peculiar ideas. (Olympian II, v, 96-149. Nemean VI, v 1-13) The poet especially occupies himself frequently with the reciprocal situation of the gods and men, and while he continually brings them close to each other, nevertheless he still constantly portrays the superiority of the first, he satisfies the soul alternately with feelings of dignity and respect. Actually his maxims, intellectual arguments, subtle feelings are absolutely alien to him. A more direct and plainer pure moral sense speaks everywhere, led by experience, penetrating sharply and deeply into the true relationships of things, nowhere a pondering, nit picking or narrowly developed academic understanding.

47.

Thus his maxims never occupy the spirit separately. While they recall the most important relationships of human nature, and reveal their actual quality in simple truth, they stir the entire mind and soul and that feeling which exists by the influence of the actual situation of things, and return to this again and again. Their drift is absolutely moral. But while they remain totally close to nature, they nevertheless don’t miss nature in impetus for the ideal. For they place nature in an infinite expansion, a progressively exponential advancement, under which the image of the heroes and characters of the gods is brought closer to the imagination. Thus the total impression is all the greater, since the enthusiastic mood to which the imagination is transposed, by the truth and closeness of the natural feeling, which the poet uses from the beginning, embraces more content and lastingness. Pindar’s characteristic – for in totality the same character identifies all previous Greek poets – lies in that his wisdom is still more dignified and powerful, but is also limited to a simpler and yet smaller circle. The view into the ideal is depicted more for the imagination and the senses, more splendidly and laughingly.

MORE TO COME....