Sharp claws
Peter Levi
Mood for the Ghosts Hugh Lloyd-Jones (Duckworth £24)
These books are not only lively, but thril- ling to read. It is lucky for Oxford that its Regius Professor of Greek is appointed by the monarch, and not just elected by one Of those processes that ensure the triumph of compromise candidates. In this century, both Gilbert Murray and E. R. Dodds have had wide interests and most unusual qualities, and for the outstanding literary Powers and the vast range of these three volumes one might reasonably class Hugh
Lloyd-Jones with his astonishing predecessors. The intellectual interests of these men are never vague; they are ivy- footed, their mass of tentacles creep Precisely and delicately across the ruined
stones.
Theirs is a world in which normal dullness is abnormal. But Regius Professors are only the tip of the iceberg. Hugh Lloyd- Jones's studies of individual great scholars, and the classic history of scholarship of which he introduces the first English ver- s!on, disclose a formidable and a roman- tically potent tradition. To the casually in- formed reader, this may emerge as pro- foundly exciting, like the world of
philosophers or of poets which it somewhat resembles. Scholarship is sufficiently scien- tific to be capable of objective assessment, but it has its romantic thrill, just as the history of science has. More than one English poet in the 18th century aspired to record the history of scholarship.
Wilamowitz traced it in his brief and brilliant sketch in 1921 with a sureness of
hand that makes his work unique. His quirks, his occasional roars of fury and his more frequent ironies enliven and entertain the reader, while his searching and sober in- tellectual power reveals an important and at- tractive part of human history. Who was it who said old books were dirty and new ones smell? But the history of scholarship is not the record of tranquilly accumulating dust. Its product is a quality of human spirit. Wilamowitz's book is, among other things, an awe-inspiring and lovable self-portrait. I had never. realised until this edition how closely Professor Lloyd-Jones is his dis- ciple.
Of course he is writing in a different period. Now the days are gone when classical literature was thought to be uni- quely valuable, let alone classical educa- tion. That may be in itself all to the good, though some of its cultural consequences are less acceptable. Modern sages are such men as Jan Kott, whose book about tragedy Hugh Lloyd-Jones has quietly and utterly destroyed in one and a half pages, or in a higher class of performance Frank Ker- mode who, in The Classic, seems to have misquoted nearly every piece of Latin he cited. Still, some of the specialised Greek and Latin sages of our day are just as vulnerable, and receive harsh treatment here. It is justly remarked of Sir K. J. Dover's Greek Homosexuality that 'Not surprisingly, this work has received the honour of an unfavourable notice from Ar- thur W. H. Adkins, who, having preached in his doctoral thesis the gospel that Greek ethics are deficient by the standards of modern provincial nonconformity, had repeated it in a series of writings that supply a staple protein for Bien-pensant readers.'
Professor Lloyd-Jones is often at his best, as A. E. Housman was, when his tail is twitching and his claws are sharp. He is par- ticularly enjoyable where his indignation is rightly engaged, as about the monks who assisted the Goths (and one might add the landslides) to destroy Delphi. 'It is easier now than it was a few years ago to imagine these, barefooted, covered with hair, stink- ing with the odour of sanctity and eagerly destroying the treasures of centuries in the name of their own sacred dogmas and emo- tions.' It can be seen that his sharp words are the product of generosity of heart and accuracy of mind; they are not a mean cavilling. Indeed it is possible here and there to feel Professor Lloyd-Jones was driven to attenuate his destructive force almost too much, to avoid impoliteness. Be that as it may, these are substantial pieces which are as fascinating now as when they were writ- ten. They are constantly instructive, con- tinually original, and blessedly readable.
Their probing authority is in the end more memorable than their wit, their pleasant weightiness more than their elegance.
Though he writes brilliantly about Roman and Renaissance history in Classical Survivals, the most impressive pieces are the treatments of individuals in Blood for the Ghosts. No one else alive could have writ- ten so well in one book about Goethe, about German scholars of this century, about Housman and Gladstone and Leopardi and Wagner and about 19th- century Oxford. It is also continually evi- dent that these subjects do not limit him, that he knows and has thought a lot about the theatre, that he is happy in many bran- ches of European poetry, in modern English literature, and in many areas of history, both ancient and modern. Even to attempt to put together a book like this would, in most specialised scholars, have been an impertinence. As things are, it is a triumph of humanism, a triumph of life.
And does he never trip up at all? Of course he must; different sorts of readers will have different reservations. I would not personally recommend Kimon Friar's translation of the awful poetry of Kazant- zakis even to the ostrich appetite of George Steiner. One flat sentence is not enough to rebut Fontenrose's cynicism about our evidence for the Delphic Oracle. Modern free verse is not the blessing to translators of Greek tragedy that it might seem. I suspect Professor Lloyd-Jones's estimate of Winckelmann is too high, and of early British archeologists like W. M. Leake too low, but there the prejudice is probably mine. Set against these objections, which are no more than quibbles against foot- notes, the achievement of these essays is towering.
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