Reviews

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 27, 1885.)

Odysseus, not Achilles, is the type of the modern Greek.  Merchandise has taken precedence of the Muses and politics are preferred to Parnassus.  Yet by the Illissus there are sweet singers; the nightingales are not silent in Colonus; and from the garden of Greek nineteenth-century poetry Miss Edmonds has made a very pleasing anthology; and in pouring the wine from the golden into the silver cup she has still kept much of the beauty of the original.  Even when translated into English, modern Greek lyrics are preferable to modern Greek loans.

As regards the quality of this poetry, if the old Greek spirit can be traced at all, it is the spirit of Tyrtæus and of Theocritus.  The warlike ballads of Rhigas and Aristotle Valaôritês have a fine ring of music and of passion in them, and the folk-songs of George Drosinês are full of charming pictures of rustic life and delicate idylls of shepherds’ courtships.  These we acknowledge that we prefer.  The flutes of the sheepfold are more delightful than the clarions of battle.  Still, poetry played such a noble part in the Greek War of Independence that it is impossible not to look with reverence on the spirited war-songs that meant so much to those who were righting for liberty and mean so much even now to their children.

Other poets besides Drosinês have taken the legends that linger among the peasants and given to them an artistic form.  The song of The Seasons is full of beauty, and there is a delightful poem on The Building of St. Sophia, which tells how the design of that noble building was suggested by the golden honeycomb of a bee which had flown from the king’s palace with a crumb of blessed bread that had fallen from the king’s hands.  The story is still to be found in Thrace.

One of the ballads, also, has a good deal of spirit.  It is by Kostês Palamas and was suggested by an interesting incident which occurred some years ago in Athens.  In the summer of 1881 there was borne through the streets the remains of an aged woman in the complete costume of a Pallikar, which dress she had worn at the siege of Missolonghi and in it had requested to be buried.  The life of this real Greek heroine should be studied by those who are investigating the question of wherein womanliness consists.  The view the poet takes of her is, we need hardly say, very different from that which Canon Liddon would entertain.  Yet it is none the less fine on this account, and we are glad that this old lady has been given a place in art.  The volume is, on the whole, delightful reading, and though not much can be said for lines like these:

There cometh from the West
The timid starry bands,

still, the translations are in many instances most felicitous and their style most pleasing.

Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, etc.  Translated by E. M. Edmonds.  (Trübner and Co.)

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