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SATs ALUMNI WEEKLY
THE LITERATURE LECTURES.
Whey Set Forth Absolute Standards—
Of Much Value This Year and
Much Promise for the Next.
The tendency of modern life is toward
specialization. This is no less true in
the intellectual than in the mechanical
sphere; if it now takes forty men to
make a shoe, where one sufficed before,
so it takes twenty instructors to turn
out a Bachelor of Arts, in place of the
few tutors—‘men of all work’—of the
olden time. The demand on all sides
is for men who are masters, each in his
field; and thus it happens that in the
modern University every one of the
hundreds of instructors stands in the
eyes of the world for. one subject, which
he knows. As in the Faculty, so in
the student body, almost every serious
man is devoting his best energies to the
_ mastery of a single branch of learning;
the intellectual life of the whole Uni-
versity tends toward segregation.
Now this. state of things, while un-
questionably furnishing the best pos-
sible means to the development of
individual power, has been criticized as
cultivating intellectual narrowness—as
favoring absorption in details, and
blindness to the larger matters of litera-
ture and life. It has been said that this
analytical tendency in modern life is
opposed to the broad culture which
should be, after all, the peculiar mark
of the University man; and that a
professor who has a specialty is likely
to be unable to deal effectively with
subjects requiring breadth of grasp and
a large sympathy. | ;
But true synthesis must rest upon
analysis, and any real knowledge of the
generic is permitted only to him who
knows the species which make up the
genus. It is indeed probable that the
first impulse to specialization springs
from the desire for a more perfect
synthesis, and that men are led to the
study of the particular in the hope of
thus obtaining the means for a broader,
surer knowledge of the whole. Mas-
tery of details is the only sure road to
mastery of their sum; and-it is note-
worthy that, in this case, the whole is
greater than the mere sum of its parts,
for every part gains a larger meaning
by being brought into relation with the
rest.
These facts have received a striking
illustration in the course of lectures just
closed at Yale on the broad subject of
Literature. This course—which, it is
hoped, will be continued in future
years—was arranged with the object of
giving to an audience without special
training a view of Art—especially Lit-
erary Art— in its very broadest lines.
For the student-body in particular, the
course was of special value, inasmuch
as it attempted to present ideas about
Art and its significance, which should
supplement their individual. work,
whatever it might be,.and should make
apparent the harmony, the essential
unity, of the whole world of Art and
Literature. Such a task could not be
performed by any one man; it was
made possible only by focusing upon a
common topic choice rays of light from
the special studies of a number of
scholars. These scholars were all Yale
men, and all specialists, in the best
sense—men who know their subject by
virtue of having lived with it and lov-
ingly studied it for years; and the suc-
cess of this, perhaps the first attempt
at cooperation among) Yale specialists
in the service of Art, augurs well for
the future of both Art and specialism.
The lectures were held on six suc-
cessive Wednesday evenings, beginning
January 11, in the South Gallery of
the Art School. The first lecture, on
‘Literature,’ which served as an intro-
duction to the whole course, was
appropriately delivered by Professor
Cook, to whose initiative the Uni.
versity owes this series of lectures.
The course was closed by Professor
Ladd, who spoke on a similar general
topic, “The Philosophical Basis of
Literature.’ The four intervening lec-
tures were devoted to special phases of
the main’subject: the Epic, treated by
Professors Seymour and Gruener; and
Comedy, by Professors Morris and
Luquiens.
PROFESSOR COOK’S DEFINITION.
Professor Cook, after touching on the
necessity of definite standards in litera-
ture, as in other departments of
thought, proposed the following tenta-
tive definition:
‘Literature is so much of recorded
thought and sentiment as is deemed
worthy of reperusal and public recog-
nition by various generations of one
or several peoples, without being the
distinctive property of the specialist;
together with such record of thought
and sentiment as, in the judgment of
the best equipped and most dispassion-
ate experts, possesses in a high degree
the essential qualities which inhere in
the works thus accredited by the judg-
ment of mankind.’
He took up this definition, point by
point, defending it, and then went on
to apply it to a number of works of
literature, ancient and modern, show-
ing, among other things, the supreme
place which this test gives to the Bible.
Supporting his statements by quota-
tions from Tolstoi’s What is Art? ‘he’
showed that catholicity is the essential
feature of a classic, and then proceeded
to distinguish between the classics of
all the world and the classics of the
world’s rulers, that is, of the people
whose convictions are among the most
powerful of the forces that mold their
own and_ succeeding times.’ He
pointed out the scholar’s duty and
privilege to secure a wider public for
these ‘classics of the few’—that is, to
increase the number of those who truly
rule the world, in that they ‘think and
feel and plan for the well-being of
others.’
He then passed to a consideration of
the subdivisions of literature, prose and
poetry—a distinction which was shown
to be based upon relative power, not
upon form. ‘Poetry is more powerful
than prose, first, by reason of its greater
intensity, and, secondly, by reason of
its greater scope.’ After giving various
definitions of poetry the speaker said
that it is ‘the quintessence of literature.’
Poetry falls into two classes, lyric and
non-lyric: in the one, the poet seeks
primarily to reveal himself; in the
other, to ‘make us acquainted with the
feelings, the motives, and the characters
of others.’ The method of the first is
direct, that of the second indirect; here,
character is portrayed largely by means
of action. Non-lyric poetry, dealing
largely with acts, is either narrative or
representative, according as the action
is thought of as past or present; in the
one case, we have the epic; in the other,
the drama. The latter, always depicting,
as it does, a struggle, demands ‘com-
pression, the most careful selection of
significant incidents, the profoundest
knowledge of the human heart, sequence
according to the logic of the emotions
and the outcome discerned by the
dramatist, constant movement, and
undeviating progression to a climax’;
it offers the most difficult problem
which man can set before his creative
faculty. The speaker closed by touch-
ing upon other forms of literature,
which should sometime in the future
- find treatment in this course of lectures.
THE EPIC IN ITS GREEK FORM.
Professor Seymour spoke on ‘The
Epic in its Greek Form—Homer.’ He
began with a discussion of the epic in
general, and showed how all epic
poetry, save the ‘natural, unstudied
epics of the Hindus, Finns, Russians,
Germans, and Spaniards,’ goes back to
Homer, whose name now stands for the
Greek epic. Homer differs from all
other epic writers in that he is ‘so
openly interested in the scenes of war
and of adventure which he depicts: he
is unconscious, naive, and thinks little
of the form of his poem.’ ‘A great
poem must be the work of a great poet,’
and this general statement must be true
also of the Iliad and Odyssey; but to
the personality of Homer, or even to
his home, we have not the slightest
2: es:
clue. The speaker touched on the
‘Homeric question,’ and said that men
are no longer inclined to credit extreme
theories, either of a single or of a
multiple authorship for the poems. He
was guarded in the statement of his
own views, but expressed the belief that
epic poetry was first cultivated by the
fLolian Greeks, from whom there de-
scended to Homer many lays with re-
gard to the wars before. Troy and other
similar expeditions involving battle and
stirring adventure; these lays were com-
posed in a heroic verse with laws well
established, and with many epithets and
formulas already fixed.
‘Three stages have been noted in the
development of the natural epic of the
people: first, disconnected songs;
second, similar disconnected songs, all
having to do with the same person or
event; third, an organic cycle of song,
with beginning, middle and end, like
every other work of art.’ The speaker
believes the poems of Homer to have ©
been developed from within, each out
of a single lay, thus passing directly
from the first to the third of the above
A single canto was first pro-
duced; this proving popular, others of
allied subject followed, not probably,
in the order in which they now stand.
The poems were not written down until
about four hundred years after Homer’s
time, and, during this period of oral
transmission, extensive additions were
made, some extracted from earlier lays,
others the work of later poets. The
speaker went on to define Epic Poetry
as ‘a narrative in heroic verse of a
dignified story, of considerable extent,
with organic relation of parts.’ Fur-
ther, ‘the story is to be told so far as
possible by the words of its persons,
and should not be so long that it can-
not be brought easily under a single
glance of the mind’s eye.’
Homer’s poems are marked by great
compression, and are very dramatic—
about one-half their entire length con-
sists of speeches, not reckoning the
long narrative speech of Odysseus.
The lecturer drew a sharp distinction
between the epic, which is essentially
narrative, and descriptive poetry, illus-
trating the point by considerable pas-
sages of his own masterly translation.
The whole lecture was rendered more
illuminative by continuous references to
parallels in other literatures, and by the
application to all epic poetry of the
principles deduced from Homer.
THE EPIC IN ITS GERMAN FORM.
Professor Gruener’s subject was ‘The
Epic in its German Form—the Nibe-
lungen Lied.’ This poem—the greatest
among twenty German epics—is the
Iliad of the German race; in the
Napoleonic era, when the people of the
German states suffered so sorely be-
cause of their divided condition, the
Nibelungen Lied served as a bond to
unify them and give them again a truly
racial feeling. The lecturer pointed out
three stages in the development of the
Northern Epic: first, a story, as of
Siegfried, found among all the Ger-
manic tribes, exists without any his-
toric basis—a pure nature-myth; second,
such a story is localized, and“its hero
identified with a historic personage, as
in the Beowulf; third, such a localized
myth, with many real historic elements
added, is developed from within into an
artistic whole—an indistinguishable
compound of myth and history—the
Nibelungen Lied. This poem, which
was first worked up into a whole in the
twelfth century, is the most highly
developed specimen of the true popular
epic which the Germanic races have
produced.
The first part of the poem—the Sieg-
fried-Briinhilde story—is pure myth,
either of the sun, or of winter and
summer; the second part—the story of
Kriemhild and Etzel—is founded on
history, though a strong mythical ele-
ment is interwoven with it. The poem
contains many incongruities, but is
none the less effective for that. The
story of Kriemhild’s vengeance, in
particular, is ‘a splendid torrent, moving
by leaps, but moving ever in one
direction.’
The Greek poet was an inspired bard:
the German poet only a reporter of
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facts. He always refers to a source—
often non-existent—and intrudes him-
self only to foretell an event, or empha-
size a statement. His poem contains
no long speeches: the epic hero is a
man of deeds. The German epic poet
lacks sense of form and proportion, as
compared with the Greek; he is over-
fond of incident, and uses little decora-
tion—his longest similes are but three
lines each. He is, in general, incapable
of the grand style.
After some remarks on the Nibelun-
gen metre, the lecturer proceeded to
speak of the moral depth of the poem,
of the gloom of its atmosphere, and of
its essentially tragic nature. This is the
tragedy which was inherent in early
German life—the spirit of the time of
Tacitus, when life was one long strug-
gle. This tragedy was, however, not
sad to the Germans, to whom death
meant glory at the hands of the
Valkyrs.
The poem is, in essence, heathen and
savage; the elements of chivalry and
Christianity are applied from without.
The characters are well differentiated:
but all are elemental, mighty, Titanic,
each dominated by a single passion;
the German epic is A‘schylean in spirit,
while the tone of the Homeric epic is
more nearly that of Sophocles. The
speaker closed by showing how each
important characters of the
Nibelungen Lied personifies some type
of loyalty, which, he said, is the soul
of German epic poetry.
COMEDY IN ITS LATIN FORM.
Professor Morris spoke on ‘Comedy
in its Latin Form—Plautus and Ter-
ence. He said that it would be his
task to show that. broad farce may be
worthy the name of literature. Al-
though there was no permanent theatre
[Continued on 20rst page.]
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