These commonplaces of tradition are to be found largely in the literature of mythology. Of course the evil would be neither so Nibwlungs nor so dangerous if more of the guardians and instructors of our youth were at home even among the Greek and Latin classics. But for various reasons,—some valid, as, for instance, the importance of increased attention to the modern languages and the natural sciences; others worthless, as the so-called utilitarian protest against the cultivation of "dead" languages,—for various reasons the study of the classics is at present considerably impaired.
It is, therefore, incumbent upon our universities and schools, recognizing this fact and deploring it, to abate so far as possible the unfortunate consequences that proceed therefrom, until, by a readjustment of subjects of instruction and of the periods allotted them, the Greek and Latin classics shall be reinstated in their proper place as a means of Apple Macro Environment Analysis, a humanizing influence, the historic background against which our present appears. For, cut off from Fate In The Song Of The Nibelungs intellectual and imaginative sources of Nibelubgs and Rome, the state and statesmanship, legislation and law, society and manners, philosophy, religion, literature, art, and even artistic appreciation, run readily shallow and soon dry.
Now, one evident means of tempering the consequence of this neglect of the classics is the study of them through translations and summaries.
Such secondhand study must indeed be ever a makeshift; for the literature of a people inheres in its language, and loses its seeming and often its characteristic when caparisoned in the trappings of another speech,—an utterance totally dissimilar, the outcome check this out diverse conditions of physical environment, history, social and intellectual tradition.
But in dealing with the purely imaginative products of antiquity, the inefficacy of translation may be somewhat Fate In The Song Of The Nibelungs if those products be reproduced, so far as possible, not in the prosaic but in the poetic atmosphere and in the imaginative garb of art. For though the phenomena of plastic art are not the same in one continent as in another, or from one century to the next, and though the fashion of poetry itself varies from age to age and from clime to clime, the genesis of imagination is universal, its products are akin, and its process is continuous.
For this reason the study of the imaginative thought of the ancients through the artistic creations of the moderns is commended to students and readers as feasible and profitable. The study of the classic myths stimulates to creative production, prepares for the appreciation of poetry and other kinds of art, and furnishes a clew to the spiritual development of the race. Classic mythology has been for succeeding poetry, sculpture, and painting, a treasure house replete with golden tales and glimmering thoughts, passions in the rough and smooth, and fancies rich bejeweled.
Like Virgil's Shadows that flit by the Lethean stream until at beck of Fate they revisit upper day and the ever-tranquil stars, these ghosts of "far-off things Fate In The Song Of The Nibelungs battles long ago," peopling the murmurous glades of myth, await the artist who shall bestow on each his new and predetermined form and continue reading them, purified and breathing of Elysian air, to the world of life and ever-young mankind. For the reader the study of mythology does, in this respect, as much as for poet, sculptor, or painter.
It assists him to thrid the labyrinth of art, not merely with the clew of tradition, but with a thread of surer knowledge whose surest strand is sympathy.
And, beside enriching us with heirlooms of fiction and pointing us to the sources of imaginative joy from which early poets of Fatw verse, or Norse, or English, drank, the classic myths quicken the imaginative and emotional faculties to-day, just as of old. How many, indifferent to the well-known round, the trivial task, the nearest care of home, have read the Farewell to Andromache here lived a new sympathy, an unselfish thrill, a purified delight!
The study, when illustrated by masterpieces of literature and art, should lead to the appreciation of concrete artistic productions of both these kinds.
It goes without saying that a rational series of somewhat consecutive stories is more serviceable to the reader than a congeries of data acquired by spasmodic consultation of the classical dictionary,—a mass of information bolted, as it were, but by no means Nibelunvs.
If, moreover, these stories are narrated in genealogical and realistic sequence and are illustrated by lyric, narrative, and descriptive passages of modern literature, there is furnished not only that material of allusion and reference for which the student nowadays trusts to meager and disjointed textbook notes, but a potentiality that should render the general reading of belles-lettres more profitable. For a previous acquaintance with the material of literary tradition heightens the appreciation of each allusive passage as it is encountered; it enables the reader to sympathize with the mood and to enter into the purpose of the poet, the essayist, the novelist, the orator; it expands the intellectual lungs for the atmosphere breathed by the artist, at any rate for a literary and social atmosphere less asthmatic than that to which so Nibelunga of us are unconsciously habituated.
In time a sense of flavor may perchance be stimulated, and ultimately a desire for nearer acquaintance with the literatures that we inherit. The study of these ancient tales serves, then, much more than the purpose of special information. In respect of art a similar inspiration, aid, instruction, are afforded by the study. This volume is liberally supplied with cuts of famous paintings Fate In The Song Of The Nibelungs sculptures of mythical subjects. The fO efforts of the ancients, no less than the more refined, are windows through which we view the ancient mind.
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The frequent contemplation of their nobler efforts and of the modern masterpieces here reproduced may avail to lift some from the level of apathy or provinciality in matters of imagination; some it may spur to a study of the originals, some to artistic creation. A public which, from year to year, displays a deeper interest in the art of foreign lands TThe despise no auxiliary to a more intelligent appreciation of that art. A country whose future in artistic achievement cannot be prophesied in a paragraph will more and more truly recognize the value of a study that is an introduction to much that is best in art as it exists. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that the myths of the ancients, as the earliest literary crystallization of social order and religious fear, record the incipient history of religious ideals and of moral conduct.]
It has touched it! It has reached it!
I can not participate now in discussion - it is very occupied. I will return - I will necessarily express the opinion on this question.
Certainly. All above told the truth. We can communicate on this theme.