BOOKS.
THE birth of tragedy is one of the wonders of literature. From obscure and rude beginnings, of little interest except to scholars, it seems to leap Pallas-like into the full dignity of divine life. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides emerge suddenly from the darkness, not as novices, but as masters in a new art. They rise at once to a height of tragic power which in all after centuries has never, except in a single instance, been surpassed. Prometheus and Cassandra, Oedipus and Antigone, Medea and Phaedra, are dramatic creations born to immortality. They are figures wrought in "such stuff as dreams are made of," but so wrought that they defy time, and, to the eye of the mind, are the most living of realities. For generations the plays in which they appear have, to use Aristotle's famous phrase, "purged with pity and terror" the hearts of thousands who never saw, or needed to see, them performed. And why is this ? What is the secret of this imperishable power ? Simply that the Greek drama-
tists were great poets, and also fully grasped that the essential object of tragedy is to appeal, not to the senses, but to the imagination. Indeed, though it may seem a paradox, the truest dramatic art has little to do with scenic repre- sentation, as any one may see who will examine the wonderful second chapter of that noblest of spiritual dramas, the Book of Job. A tragedian must, no doubt, write so as to suit the stage ; but he must also transcend it. He may compose scenes which are eminently spectacular, or which lend them- selves to fine acting ; but he must know that his real appeal is neither to eye nor ear, but to the mind,—and this the Greeks fully understood. They describe, indeed, the proper effect of tragedy by a single and unique word,-4/vxayrovice. It is a term, derived from necromancy, which describes "the casting of a charm" or "spell upon the soul" ; and it is exactly in this power that the genius of Sophocles consists. With the sole magic of woven words he masters the spirit and leads it into another world. He writes, no doubt, for the stage. The Ajax, for instance, was famous throughout antiquity for its scenic effect; the Oedipus Ilex is rich in dramatic situations, and there is no more tragic picture than that where Antigone comes forward reciting her own dirge "Unwept, unfriended, unwedded I pass," she says, "upon my last way to my bridal with Death," even because, she adds in her last words, "I have held holiness in honour
ebes131av asiVateact)." Not even Lady Jane Grey, as she
stands upon the scaffold and speaks to the people, saying, "I doo wash my handes in innocencie," seems a figure more real or more pathetic. And yet even the part of Antigone is one which appeals chiefly to the mind. It is such a fine portrayal of a pure soul brought into sharpest conflict with circumstance, whose strength is made perfect in weakness ; it is such a delicate image of quiet, timid, but unsbrink- ing obedience to what, amid all trouble and perplexity, seems duty, that it almost refuses material embodiment. Or take the contrasted case of Philoctetes. With his gangrened wounds and suffering soul, with his pain and passion, he is a figure that appals the mind, but on the stage would only horrify, while the whole interest of the play consists in the skill with which the mental attitude of Neoptolemus towards him is depicted. And in the Oedipus at Colanus, the masterpiece of the poet's old age, the same spiritual
element is still more predominant. There is almost no plot in the piece, while the setting is of the simplest, and yet it is a great play. Blind, bent, and an outcast, Oedipus is led forward by his daughter, a being overburdened with horrors unspeakable, whose very name stirs loathing, and whose presence is pollution. And then Sophocles begins to raise that bowed and blighted form until it attains the full stature of tragic greatness. As Oedipus melts with tenderest pity for his daughters or burns with unrelenting anger against his sons, as he confronts Creon with passionate scorn or greets Theseus with princely courtesy, we begin to see the man. As he discloses the dark unpitying doom which has dogged his life, horror and repulsion are transformed into awe and pity. The beggar's garb seems to drop away from him, and we The Tragedies of Sophoetes. Translated into English Prose by Sir Richard C. Jobb. Cambridge: at the University Press. [ha. net.]
behold a mighty spirit which even the gods cannot crush. There is no defiance or complaining; he only knows that he has not willingly done evil, that he "is more sinned against than sinning," and that at last there comes "a ceasing" even to misery. "Not to be born is, past all prizing, best," but now the gods have granted him that which is "next best by
far to pass thither, whence he came." Not by dying but by strange translation shall his passing be, and, when the hour comes, he leads the way to the place of his departure erect, unfaltering, and unguided, a royal figure clothed by the poet's art in all the majesty of mysterious suffering. And then there is no more. The final scene is not shown, it is not even related. "We looked back," says the messenger, "and Oedipus we saw nowhere any more, but Theseus alone, holding his hand before his face to screen his eyes, as if some dread sight had been seen, and such as none might endure to behold." This is true tragic art, appealing not to the senses, but to the imagination. The Oedipus at Colonies seems now to many a dull play, but an age which considers that the scene-painter can improve Hamlet, The Tempest, or King Lear would do well to search for the secret of its power.
Sophocles, however, has not only that imaginative power which is the essential quality in a tragedian, but he has also, what is its necessary complement, a great mastery of style. Aristophanes, who can parody Aeschylus and Euripides, ventures on no such attempt in the case of their great rival, and indeed his style is not easy either to parody or describe. It is equally removed from the grandiloquence of the platform and the chatter of the market-place ; there is neither ostenta- tion nor cleverness, but for the most part, except of course in some lyric passages, that great simplicity which is the true "echo of a great soul." And yet this simplicity is not the direct expression of feeling, such as we find in Hebrew poetry, but the ultimate result of the highest art controlled by the purest taste. To take a single instance, when Antigone, in answer to Creon's plea that she ought to detest the brother who had been her country's foe, justifies herself in the line,-
s-or seeiedap ciaci avtgPIAEiv gpuv the apparent simplicity of these five words conceals as much craftsmanship as Virgil's famous line—Bunt lacrimae rerum, et nienteni inortalia tangunt. To translate such words is impossible. Inward thought and outward form are so interwoven that to divide is to destroy, and throughout Sophocles this difficulty recurs. If any one could produce a prose rendering of his plays, it is such a scholar as Sir R. Jebb, whose version now almost ranks as "authorised." And yet it may, perhaps, be doubted whether he has been wise to publish it apart from the text. It was written, to use his own words, "from the standpoint of the commentator, as an indispensable instrument of lucid interpretation"; but that standpoint is not the one from which a version for English readers should be produced. The minute accuracy of the critic must often be incompatible with real effectiveness, and the self-suppression which Sir R. Jebb exhibits perhaps too scrupulously, even as a commentator, becomes a positive injury in an independent translation where his poetic or creative powers need freer play. But, above all, we regret that he leaves this volume entirely without an introduction. To estimate correctly a writer so simple and yet so subtle, so strong and yet so reserved, as Sophocles is the hardest of tasks. It is a task which has never yet been adequately accomplished, and half-a-dozen pages from the Attic pen of his greatest editor would have made this volume a treasure of great price.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.*
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