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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/17087-0.txt b/17087-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5cf2980 --- /dev/null +++ b/17087-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5563 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ancient Art and Ritual + +Author: Jane Ellen Harrison + +Release Date: November 18, 2005 [EBook #17087] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +{Transcriber's Note: + This e-text contains a number of unusual characters: + ā a-macron + ē e-macron + ĕ e-breve + ī i-macron + œ oe ligature + If they do not display properly, use the transliterated version + instead.} + + + + +_Ancient Art and Ritual_ + +JANE ELLEN HARRISON + + + + +_Geoffrey Cumberlege_ +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS +LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO + + + + +_First published in 1913, and reprinted in 1918 (revised), 1919, 1927, +1935 and 1948_ + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +It may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the +present volume. The title is _Ancient Art and Ritual_, but the reader +will find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of +either ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible +in handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie +perhaps in the word "_and_"--that is, in the intimate connection which I +have tried to show exists between ritual and art. This connection has, I +believe, an important bearing on questions vital to-day, as, for +example, the question of the place of art in our modern civilization, +its relation to and its difference from religion and morality; in a +word, on the whole enquiry as to what the nature of art is and how it +can help or hinder spiritual life. + + * * * * * + +I have taken Greek drama as a typical instance, because in it we have +the clear historical case of a great art, which arose out of a very +primitive and almost world-wide ritual. The rise of the Indian drama, or +the mediæval and from it the modern stage, would have told us the same +tale and served the like purpose. But Greece is nearer to us to-day than +either India or the Middle Ages. + + * * * * * + +Greece and the Greek drama remind me that I should like to offer my +thanks to Professor Gilbert Murray, for help and criticism which has far +outrun the limits of editorial duty. + +J.E.H. + +_Newnham College, +Cambridge, June 1913._ + + * * * * * + +NOTE TO THE FIFTH IMPRESSION + +The original text has been reprinted without change except for the +correction of misprints. A few additions (enclosed in square brackets) +have been made to the Bibliography. + +1947 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I ART AND RITUAL 9 + + II PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES 29 + +III PERIODIC CEREMONIES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL 49 + + IV THE PRIMITIVE SPRING DANCE OR DITHYRAMB, + IN GREECE 75 + + V THE TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE + _DROMENON_ AND THE DRAMA 119 + + VI GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE + AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE 170 + +VII RITUAL, ART AND LIFE 204 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 + + INDEX 255 + + + + +ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL + +CHAPTER I + +ART AND RITUAL + + +The title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even +dissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to +the modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and +ceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a +church or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in +thought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is +towards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day; +but the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show +that these two divergent developments have a common root, and that +neither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one +and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre. + + * * * * * + +Such a statement may sound to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to +the Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century B.C., it would +have been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an +Athenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival of +Dionysos. + +Passing through the entrance-gate to the theatre on the south side of +the Acropolis, our Athenian citizen will find himself at once on holy +ground. He is within a _temenos_ or precinct, a place "cut off" from the +common land and dedicated to a god. He will pass to the left (Fig. 2, p. +144) two temples standing near to each other, one of earlier, the other +of later date, for a temple, once built, was so sacred that it would +only be reluctantly destroyed. As he enters the actual theatre he will +pay nothing for his seat; his attendance is an act of worship, and from +the social point of view obligatory; the entrance fee is therefore paid +for him by the State. + +The theatre is open to all Athenian citizens, but the ordinary man will +not venture to seat himself in the front row. In the front row, and +that only, the seats have backs, and the central seat of this row is an +armchair; the whole of the front row is permanently reserved, not for +individual rich men who can afford to hire "boxes," but for certain +State officials, and these officials are all priests. On each seat the +name of the owner is inscribed; the central seat is "of the priest of +Dionysos Eleuthereus," the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat "of +the priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer," and again "of the priest of +Asklepios," and "of the priest of Olympian Zeus," and so on round the +whole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty's the front row +of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the +Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall. + +The theatre at Athens is not open night by night, nor even day by day. +Dramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of +Dionysos in winter and spring. It is, again, as though the modern +theatre was open only at the festivals of the Epiphany and of Easter. +Our modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We +tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our +theatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the +performance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is +done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for +us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day +was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the +five or six days of the great _Dionysia_, the whole city was in a state +of unwonted sanctity, under a _taboo_. To distrain a debtor was illegal; +any personal assault, however trifling, was sacrilege. + +Most impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on +the eve of the performance. By torchlight, accompanied by a great +procession, the image of the god Dionysos himself was brought to the +theatre and placed in the orchestra. Moreover, he came not only in human +but in animal form. Chosen young men of the Athenians in the flower of +their youth--_epheboi_--escorted to the precinct a splendid bull. It was +expressly ordained that the bull should be "worthy of the god"; he was, +in fact, as we shall presently see, the primitive incarnation of the +god. It is, again, as though in our modern theatre there stood, +"sanctifying all things to our use and us to His service," the human +figure of the Saviour, and beside him the Paschal Lamb. + + * * * * * + +But now we come to a strange thing. A god presides over the theatre, to +go to the theatre is an act of worship to the god Dionysos, and yet, +when the play begins, three times out of four of Dionysos we hear +nothing. We see, it may be, Agamemnon returning from Troy, Clytemnestra +waiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Phædra for +Hippolytos, the hate of Medea and the slaying of her children: stories +beautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be, but scarcely, we feel, +religious. The orthodox Greeks themselves sometimes complained that in +the plays enacted before them there was "nothing to do with Dionysos." + +If drama be at the outset divine, with its roots in ritual, why does it +issue in an art profoundly solemn, tragic, yet purely human? The actors +wear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the Eleusinian +mysteries. Why, then, do we find them, not executing a religious +service or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating +mere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to +give us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks +down, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves +us with our problem on our hands. + +Had we only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a +people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always +obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their +cloud-capp'd towers that they distract our minds from the task of +digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of +Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of +Greek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so +swiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek +material only to hand, we might never have marked the transition. +Happily, however, we are not confined within the Greek paradise. Wider +fields are open to us; our subject is not only Greek, but ancient art +and ritual. We can turn at once to the Egyptians, a people +slower-witted than the Greeks, and watch their sluggish but more +instructive operations. To one who is studying the development of the +human mind the average or even stupid child is often more illuminating +than the abnormally brilliant. Greece is often too near to us, too +advanced, too modern, to be for comparative purposes instructive. + + * * * * * + +Of all Egyptian, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so +long or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the +prototype of the great class of resurrection-gods who die that they may +live again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted +year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos. In that mystery-play was +set forth, first, what the Greeks call his _agon_, his contest with his +enemy Set; then his _pathos_, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his +wounding, his death, and his burial; finally, his resurrection and +"recognition," his _anagnorisis_ either as himself or as his only +begotten son Horus. Now the meaning of this thrice-told tale we shall +consider later: for the moment we are concerned only with the fact that +it is set forth both in art and ritual. + +At the festival of Osiris small images of the god were made of sand and +vegetable earth, his cheek bones were painted green and his face yellow. +The images were cast in a mould of pure gold, representing the god as a +mummy. After sunset on the 24th day of the month Choiak, the effigy of +Osiris was laid in a grave and the image of the previous year was +removed. The intent of all this was made transparently clear by other +rites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of +ploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the +other with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the +chief priest recited the ritual of the "sowing of the fields." Into the +"garden" of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand +and barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was +poured out of a golden vase over the "garden" and the barley was allowed +to grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his +burial, "for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine +substance." + +The death and resurrection of the gods, and _pari passu_ of the life and +fruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but--and this is our +immediate point--it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In +the great temple of Isis at Philæ there is a chamber dedicated to +Osiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears +of corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The +inscription to the picture reads: _This is the form of him whom one may +not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning +waters._ It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month +Choiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. +When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had +sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the +grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the +cause of the growth of the crops."[1] + +Even more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that +accompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is +represented at first as a mummy swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit +by bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically +impossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl--perhaps his +"garden"--all but erect, between the outspread wings of Isis, while +before him a male figure holds the _crux ansata_, the "cross with a +handle," the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired, +_i.e._ the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented. + +No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt, +then, we have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and +ritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian +tombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This, +as we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art +and ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually +explain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they +actually arise out of a common human impulse. + + * * * * * + +The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he +is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) "came to the gate of the Lord's +house which was toward the north" he beheld there the "women weeping for +Tammuz." This "abomination" the house of Judah had brought with them +from Babylon. Tammuz is _Dumuzi_, "the true son," or more fully, +_Dumuzi-absu_, "true son of the waters." He too, like Osiris, is a god +of the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat +of the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods, + + "Thammuz came next behind, + Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured + The Syrian damsels to lament his fate + In amorous ditties all a summer's day." + +Tammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died and +passed below the earth to the place of dust and death, "the land from +which there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies on +door and bolt." And the goddess went after him, and while she was below, +life ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of animal or +man was born. + +We know Tammuz, "the true son," best by one of his titles, Adonis, the +Lord or King. The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at midsummer. That is +certain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail +on its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were +thronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of the +dead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping women. +Thucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but Plutarch[2] +tells us those who took account of omens were full of concern for the +fate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the day of the +funeral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish "Lord," was no luckier than to +set sail on a Friday, the death-day of the "Lord" of Christendom. + +The rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were rites +of death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading and +dying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The reason of +this is simple and will soon become manifest. For the moment we have +only to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are represented as +much by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the feasts of +Tammuz and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains. + + * * * * * + +We have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and +ritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely +linked. So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to +suspect they may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it +that links art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common? +Do they start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they +develop, fall so widely asunder? + +It will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art, +and also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual. + + * * * * * + +Art, Plato[3] tells us in a famous passage of the _Republic_, is +imitation; the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in +his philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is +to make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he +turns it whither he will, "are reflected sun and heavens and earth and +man," anything and everything. Never did a statement so false, so +wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth--truth which, by the +help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But +first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as +Plato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not +long ago thus defined his own art: "The art of painting is the art of +imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments." A +sorry life-work! Few people to-day, perhaps, regard art as the close and +realistic copy of Nature; photography has at least scotched, if not +slain, that error; but many people still regard art as a sort of +improvement on or an "idealization" of Nature. It is the part of the +artist, they think, to take suggestions and materials from Nature, and +from these to build up, as it were, a revised version. It is, perhaps, +only by studying those rudimentary forms of art that are closely akin to +ritual that we come to see how utterly wrong-headed is this conception. + +Take the representations of Osiris that we have just described--the +mummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain that art is +here a copy or imitation of reality? However "realistic" the painting, +it represents a thing imagined not actual. There never was any such +person as Osiris, and if there had been, he would certainly never, once +mummified, have risen from his tomb. There is no question of fact, and +the copy of fact, in the matter. Moreover, had there been, why should +anyone desire to make a copy of natural fact? The whole "imitation" +theory, to which, and to the element of truth it contains, we shall +later have occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no +adequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack +of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is +idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to +improve on Nature. + + * * * * * + +Modern science, confronted with a problem like that of the rise of art, +no longer casts about to conjecture how art _might_ have arisen, she +examines how it actually _did_ arise. Abundant material has now been +collected from among savage peoples of an art so primitive that we +hesitate to call it art at all, and it is in these inchoate efforts +that we are able to track the secret motive springs that move the artist +now as then. + +Among the Huichol Indians,[4] if the people fear a drought from the +extreme heat of the sun, they take a clay disk, and on one side of it +they paint the "face" of Father Sun, a circular space surrounded by rays +of red and blue and yellow which are called his "arrows," for the +Huichol sun, like Phœbus Apollo, has arrows for rays. On the reverse +side they will paint the progress of the sun through the four quarters +of the sky. The journey is symbolized by a large cross-like figure with +a central circle for midday. Round the edge are beehive-shaped mounds; +these represent the hills of earth. The red and yellow dots that +surround the hills are cornfields. The crosses on the hills are signs of +wealth and money. On some of the disks birds and scorpions are painted, +and on one are curving lines which mean rain. These disks are deposited +on the altar of the god-house and left, and then all is well. The +intention might be to us obscure, but a Huichol Indian would read it +thus: "Father Sun with his broad shield (or 'face') and his arrows rises +in the east, bringing money and wealth to the Huichols. His heat and the +light from his rays make the corn to grow, but he is asked not to +interfere with the clouds that are gathering on the hills." + +Now is this art or ritual? It is both and neither. _We_ distinguish +between a form of prayer and a work of art and count them in no danger +of confusion; but the Huichol goes back to that earlier thing, a +_presentation_. He utters, expresses his thought about the sun and his +emotion about the sun and his relation to the sun, and if "prayer is the +soul's sincere desire" he has painted a prayer. It is not a little +curious that the same notion comes out in the old Greek word for +"prayer," _euchè_. The Greek, when he wanted help in trouble from the +"Saviours," the Dioscuri, carved a picture of them, and, if he was a +sailor, added a ship. Underneath he inscribed the word _euchè_. It was +not to begin with a "vow" paid, it was a presentation of his strong +inner desire, it was a sculptured prayer. + +Ritual then involves _imitation_; but does not arise out of it. It +desires to recreate an emotion, not to reproduce an object. A rite is, +indeed, we shall later see (p. 42), a sort of stereotyped action, not +really practical, but yet not wholly cut loose from practice, a +reminiscence or an anticipation of actual practical doing; it is fitly, +though not quite correctly, called by the Greeks a _dromenon_, "a thing +done." + +At the bottom of art, as its motive power and its mainspring, lies, not +the wish to copy Nature or even improve on her--the Huichol Indian does +not vainly expend his energies on an effort so fruitless--but rather an +impulse shared by art with ritual, the desire, that is, to utter, to +give out a strongly felt emotion or desire by representing, by making or +doing or enriching the object or act desired. The common source of the +art and ritual of Osiris is the intense, world-wide desire that the life +of Nature which seemed dead should live again. This common _emotional_ +factor it is that makes art and ritual in their beginnings well-nigh +indistinguishable. Both, to begin with, copy an act, but not at first +for the sake of the copy. Only when the emotion dies down and is +forgotten does the copy become an end in itself, a mere mimicry. + +It is this downward path, this sinking of making to mimicry, that makes +us now-a-days think of ritual as a dull and formal thing. Because a rite +has ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it +will cease to be _done_. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of +habit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest +impulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only +others but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the +act is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it +becomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art. + + * * * * * + +It is not easy, as we saw, to classify the Huichol prayer-disks. As +prayers they are ritual, as surfaces decorated they are specimens of +primitive art. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a kind of +ceremony very instructive for our point, but again not very easy to +classify--the pantomimic dances which are, almost all over the world, so +striking a feature in savage social and religious life. Are they to be +classed as ritual or art? + +These pantomime dances lie, indeed, at the very heart and root of our +whole subject, and it is of the first importance that before going +further in our analysis of art and ritual, we should have some +familiarity with their general character and gist, the more so as they +are a class of ceremonies now practically extinct. We shall find in +these dances the meeting-point between art and ritual, or rather we +shall find in them the rude, inchoate material out of which both ritual +and art, at least in one of its forms, developed. Moreover, we shall +find in pantomimic dancing a ritual bridge, as it were, between actual +life and those representations of life which we call art. + +In our next chapter, therefore, we shall study the ritual dance in +general, and try to understand its psychological origin; in the +following chapter (III) we shall take a particular dance of special +importance, the Spring Dance as practised among various primitive +peoples. We shall then be prepared to approach the study of the Spring +Dance among the Greeks, which developed into their drama, and thereby +to, we hope, throw light on the relation between ritual and art. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_,^2 p. 324. + +[2] _Vit. Nik._, 13. + +[3] _Rep._ X, 596-9. + +[4] C.H. Lumholtz, _Symbolism of the Huichol Indians_, in _Mem. of the +Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist._, Vol. III, "Anthropology." (1900.) + + + + +CHAPTER II + +PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES + + +In books and hymns of bygone days, which dealt with the religion of "the +heathen in his blindness," he was pictured as a being of strange +perversity, apt to bow down to "gods of wood and stone." The question +_why_ he acted thus foolishly was never raised. It was just his +"blindness"; the light of the gospel had not yet reached him. Now-a-days +the savage has become material not only for conversion and hymn-writing +but for scientific observation. We want to understand his psychology, +_i.e._ how he behaves, not merely for his sake, that we may abruptly +and despotically convert or reform him, but for our own sakes; partly, +of course, for sheer love of knowing, but also,--since we realize that +our own behaviour is based on instincts kindred to his,--in order that, +by understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better, +our own. + +Anthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the +worship of false gods, bowing "down to wood and stone," bulks larger in +the mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for +temples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The +savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants +done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters +spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously +and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants +sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself +before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a +wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does +not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he +rehearses his hunt in a bear dance. + +Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to +overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the +quite young from sheer _joie de vivre_, and essentially inappropriate to +the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nolávoa_ +means both "to work" and "to dance." An old man will reproach a young +man saying, "Why do you not go and work?" (_nolávoa_). He means "Why do +you not dance instead of looking on?" It is strange to us to learn that +among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to +mature manhood, so the number of his "dances" increase, and the number +of these "dances" is the measure _pari passu_ of his social importance. +Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, _because +he cannot dance_; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to +another and a younger. + + * * * * * + +Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among the +Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5] for a +man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this +will make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and Austria the +peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high +or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller +will be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt as +to the practical reason of this mimic dancing. When Macedonian farmers +have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air +and, catching them again, exclaim, "May the crop grow as high as the +spade has gone." In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by +one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is decked +with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell +and some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her +arms vigorously and cry, "Flax, grow," or words to that effect. When she +has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her +partner. + +Is this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer "No." Is it ritual? With +some hesitation we shall probably again answer "No." It is, we think, +not a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and +women. But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North +America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the +sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four +times round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into +the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain. +Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon +the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their +faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would +describe such a ceremonial as "an interesting instance of primitive +_ritual_." The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one +the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the +other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially +for the public good. + +The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what +concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what +is indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing +in the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says, +"Flax, grow," prove the point. She _does_ what she _wants done_. Her +intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest +possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better +still perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself _doing_ in +sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where +the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the +suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology +teaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of +intellectual illusion, not even the exercise of a "mimetic instinct," +but simply, in its ultimate analysis, an utterance, a discharge of +emotion and longing. + +But though the utterance of emotion is the prime and moving, it is not +the sole, factor. We may utter emotion in a prolonged howl, we may even +utter it in a collective prolonged howl, yet we should scarcely call +this ritual, still less art. It is true that a prolonged _collective_ +howl will probably, because it is collective, develop a rhythm, a +regular recurrence, and hence probably issue in a kind of ritual music; +but for the further stage of development into art another step is +necessary. We must not only _utter_ emotion, we must _represent_ it, +that is, we must in some way reproduce or imitate or express the thought +which is causing us emotion. Art is not imitation, but art and also +ritual frequently and legitimately _contain an element of imitation_. +Plato was so far right. What exactly is imitated we shall see when we +come to discuss the precise difference between art and ritual. + + * * * * * + +The Greek word for a _rite_ as already noted is _dromenon_, "a thing +done"--and the word is full of instruction. The Greek had realized that +to perform a rite you must _do_ something, that is, you must not only +feel something but express it in action, or, to put it psychologically, +you must not only receive an impulse, you must react to it. The word for +rite, _dromenon_, "thing done," arose, of course, not from any +psychological analysis, but from the simple fact that rites among the +primitive Greeks were _things done_, mimetic dances and the like. It is +a fact of cardinal importance that their word for theatrical +representation, _drama_, is own cousin to their word for rite, +_dromenon_; _drama_ also means "thing done." Greek linguistic instinct +pointed plainly to the fact that art and ritual are near relations. To +this fact of crucial importance for our argument we shall return later. +But from the outset it should be borne in mind that in these two Greek +words, _dromenon_ and _drama_, in their exact meaning, their relation +and their distinction, we have the keynote and clue to our whole +discussion. + + * * * * * + +For the moment we have to note that the Greek word for rite, _dromenon_, +"thing done," is not strictly adequate. It omits a factor of prime +importance; it includes too much and not enough. All "things done" are +not rites. You may shrink back from a blow; that is the expression of an +emotion, that is a reaction to a stimulus, but that is not a rite. You +may digest your dinner; that is a thing done, and a thing of high +importance, but it is not a rite. + +One element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it +be done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion. A +meal digested alone is certainly no rite; a meal eaten in common, under +the influence of a common emotion, may, and often does, _tend_ to become +a rite. + +Collectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the +simple reaction into a rite, are--specially among primitive +peoples--closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual +among savages has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional +tension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially; +it is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual. He +may make by himself excited movements, he may leap for joy, for fear; +but unless these movements are made by the tribe together they will not +become rhythmical; they will probably lack intensity, and certainly +permanence. Intensity, then, and collectivity go together, and both are +necessary for ritual, but both may be present without constituting art; +we have not yet touched the dividing line between art and ritual. When +and how does the _dromenon_, the _rite done_, pass over into the +_drama_? + +The genius of the Greek language _felt_, before it consciously _knew_, +the difference. This feeling ahead for distinctions is characteristic of +all languages, as has been well shown by Mr. Pearsall Smith[6] in +another manual of our series. It is an instinctive process arising +independently of reason, though afterwards justified by it. What, then, +is the distinction between art and ritual which the genius of the Greek +language felt after, when it used the two words _dromenon_ and _drama_ +for two different sorts of "things done"? To answer our question we must +turn for a brief moment to psychology, the science of human behaviour. + + * * * * * + +We are accustomed for practical convenience to divide up our human +nature into partitions--intellect, will, the emotions, the +passions--with further subdivisions, _e.g._ of the intellect into +reason, imagination, and the like. These partitions we are apt to +arrange into a sort of order of merit or as it is called a hierarchy, +with Reason as head and crown, and under her sway the emotions and +passions. The result of establishing this hierarchy is that the +impulsive side of our nature comes off badly, the passions and even the +emotions lying under a certain ban. This popular psychology is really a +convenient and perhaps indispensable mythology. Reason, the emotions, +and the will have no more separate existences than Jupiter, Juno, and +Minerva. + +A more fruitful way of looking at our human constitution is to see it, +not as a bundle of separate faculties, but as a sort of continuous +cycle of activities. What really happens is, putting it very roughly, +something of this sort. To each one of us the world is, or seems to be, +eternally divided into two halves. On the one side is ourself, on the +other all the rest of things. All our action, our behaviour, our life, +is a relation between these two halves, and that behaviour seems to have +three, not divisions, but stages. The outside world, the other half, the +object if we like so to call it, acts upon us, gets at us through our +senses. We hear or see or taste or feel something; to put it roughly, we +perceive something, and as we perceive it, so, instantly, we feel about +it, towards it, we have emotion. And, instantly again, that emotion +becomes a motive-power, we _re_-act towards the object that got at us, +we want to alter it or our relation to it. If we did not perceive we +should not feel, if we did not feel we should not act. When we talk--as +we almost must talk--of Reason, the Emotions, or the Passions and the +Will leading to action, we think of the three stages or aspects of our +behaviour as separable and even perhaps hostile; we want, perhaps, to +purge the intellect from all infection of the emotions. But in reality, +though at a given moment one or the other element, knowing, feeling, or +acting, may be dominant in our consciousness, the rest are always +immanent. + +When we think of the three elements or stages, knowing, feeling, +striving, as all being necessary factors in any complete bit of human +behaviour, we no longer try to arrange them in a hierarchy with knowing +or reason at the head. Knowing--that is, receiving and recognizing a +stimulus from without--would seem to come first; we must be acted on +before we can _re_-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look +at it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads +to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the +primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our +discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at human +behaviour. + + * * * * * + +Movement, then, action, is, as it were, the goal and the end of thought. +Perception finds its natural outlet and completion in doing. But here +comes in a curious consideration important for our purpose. In animals, +in so far as they act by "instinct," as we say, perception, knowing, is +usually followed immediately and inevitably by doing, by such doing as +is calculated to conserve the animal and his species; but in some of the +higher animals, and especially in man, where the nervous system is more +complex, perception is not instantly transformed into action; there is +an interval for choice between several possible actions. Perception is +pent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious _representation_. Now +it is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between +perception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life, +our images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and +our art, is built up. If the cycle of knowing, feeling, acting, were +instantly fulfilled, that is, if we were a mass of well-contrived +instincts, we should hardly have _dromena_, and we should certainly +never pass from _dromena_ to _drama_. Art and religion, though perhaps +not wholly ritual, spring from the incomplete cycle, from unsatisfied +desire, from perception and emotion that have somehow not found +immediate outlet in practical action. When we come later to establish +the dividing line between art and ritual we shall find this fact to be +cardinal. + +We have next to watch how out of _representation repeated_ there grows +up a kind of _abstraction_ which helps the transition from ritual to +art. When the men of a tribe return from a hunt, a journey, a battle, or +any event that has caused them keen and pleasant emotion, they will +often re-act their doings round the camp-fire at night to an attentive +audience of women and young boys. The cause of this world-wide custom is +no doubt in great part the desire to repeat a pleasant experience; the +battle or the hunt will not be re-enacted unless it has been successful. +Together with this must be reckoned a motive seldom absent from human +endeavour, the desire for self-exhibition, self-enhancement. But in this +re-enactment, we see at once, lies the germ of history and of +commemorative ceremonial, and also, oddly enough, an impulse emotional +in itself begets a process we think of as characteristically and +exclusively intellectual, the process of abstraction. The savage begins +with the particular battle that actually _did_ happen; but, it is easy +to see that if he re-enacts it again and again the _particular_ battle +or hunt will be forgotten, the representation cuts itself loose from +the particular action from which it arose, and becomes generalized, as +it were abstracted. Like children he plays not at a funeral, but at +"funerals," not at a battle, but at battles; and so arises the +war-dance, or the death-dance, or the hunt-dance. This will serve to +show how inextricably the elements of knowing and feeling are +intertwined. + +So, too, with the element of action. If we consider the occasions when a +savage dances, it will soon appear that it is not only after a battle or +a hunt that he dances in order to commemorate it, but before. Once the +commemorative dance has got abstracted or generalized it becomes +material for the magical dance, the dance pre-done. A tribe about to go +to war will work itself up by a war dance; about to start out hunting +they will catch their game in pantomime. Here clearly the main emphasis +is on the practical, the active, doing-element in the cycle. The dance +is, as it were, a sort of precipitated desire, a discharge of pent-up +emotion into action. + +In both these kinds of dances, the dance that commemorates by +_re_-presenting and the dance that anticipates by _pre_-presenting, +Plato would have seen the element of imitation, what the Greeks called +_mimesis_, which we saw he believed to be the very source and essence of +all art. In a sense he would have been right. The commemorative dance +does especially _re_-present; it reproduces the past hunt or battle; but +if we analyse a little more closely we see it is not for the sake of +copying the actual battle itself, but for the _emotion felt about the +battle_. This they desire to re-live. The emotional element is seen +still more clearly in the dance _fore_-done for magical purposes. +Success in war or in the hunt is keenly, intensely desired. The hunt or +the battle cannot take place at the moment, so the cycle cannot complete +itself. The desire cannot find utterance in the actual act; it grows and +accumulates by inhibition, till at last the exasperated nerves and +muscles can bear it no longer; it breaks out into mimetic anticipatory +action. But, and this is the important point, the action is mimetic, not +of what you see done by another; but of what you desire to do yourself. +The habit of this _mimesis_ of the thing desired, is set up, and ritual +begins. Ritual, then, does imitate, but for an emotional, not an +altogether practical, end. + +Plato never saw a savage war-dance or a hunt-dance or a rain-dance, and +it is not likely that, if he had seen one, he would have allowed it to +be art at all. But he must often have seen a class of performances very +similar, to which unquestionably he would give the name of art. He must +have seen plays like those of Aristophanes, with the chorus dressed up +as Birds or Clouds or Frogs or Wasps, and he might undoubtedly have +claimed such plays as evidence of the rightness of his definition. Here +were men _imitating_ birds and beasts, dressed in their skins and +feathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would +have been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning +of things, we find an origin and an impulse much deeper, vaguer, and +more emotional. + +The beast dances found widespread over the savage world took their rise +when men really believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts +and birds and fishes were his "little brothers." Or rather, perhaps, +more strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers, +for the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North +American towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep +religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of +civilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call +_totemism_. "Totem" means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as +men. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as +men-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not +to _imitate_ kangaroos--you cannot imitate yourself--but just for +natural joy of heart because they _were_ kangaroos; they belonged to the +Kangaroo tribe, they bore the tribal marks and delighted to assert their +tribal unity. What they felt was not _mimesis_ but "participation," +unity, and community. Later, when man begins to distinguish between +himself and his strange fellow-tribesmen, to realize that he is _not_ a +kangaroo like other kangaroos, he will try to revive his old faith, his +old sense of participation and oneness, by conscious imitation. Thus +though imitation is not the object of these dances, it grows up in and +through them. It is the same with art. The origin of art is not +_mimesis_, but _mimesis_ springs up out of art, out of emotional +expression, and constantly and closely neighbours it. Art and ritual +are at the outset alike in this, that they do not seek to copy a fact, +but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion. + + * * * * * + +We shall see this more clearly if we examine for a moment this Greek +word _mimesis_. We translate mīmēsis by "imitation," and we do very +wrongly. The word _mimesis_ means the action or doing of a person called +a _mime_. Now a _mime_ was simply a person who dressed up and acted in a +pantomime or primitive drama. He was roughly what we should call an +_actor_, and it is significant that in the word _actor_ we stress not +imitating but acting, doing, just what the Greek stressed in his words +_dromenon_ and _drama_. The actor dresses up, puts on a mask, wears the +skin of a beast or the feathers of a bird, not, as we have seen, to copy +something or some one who is not himself, but to emphasize, enlarge, +enhance, his own personality; he masquerades, he does not mimic. + +The celebrants in the very primitive ritual of the Mountain-Mother in +Thrace were, we know, called _mimes_. In the fragment of his lost play, +Æschylus, after describing the din made by the "mountain gear" of the +Mother, the maddening hum of the _bombykes_, a sort of spinning-top, +the clash of the brazen cymbals and the twang of the strings, thus goes +on: + + "And bull-voices roar thereto from somewhere out of the unseen, + fearful _mimes_, and from a drum an image, as it were, of thunder + underground is borne on the air heavy with dread." + +Here we have undoubtedly some sort of "bull-roaring," thunder-and +wind-making ceremony, like those that go on in Australia to-day. The +_mimes_ are not mimicking thunder out of curiosity, they are making it +and enacting and uttering it for magical purposes. When a sailor wants a +wind he makes it, or, as he later says, he whistles _for_ it; when a +savage or a Greek wants thunder to bring rain he makes it, becomes it. +But it is easy to see that as the belief in magic declines, what was +once intense desire, issuing in the making of or the being of a thing, +becomes mere copying of it; the mime, the maker, sinks to be in our +modern sense the mimic; as faith declines, folly and futility set in; +the earnest, zealous _act_ sinks into a frivolous mimicry, a sort of +child's-play. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[5] These instances are all taken from _The Golden Bough,^3 The Magic +Art_, I, 139 _ff._ + +[6] "The English Language," _Home University Library_, p. 28. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +SEASONAL RITES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL + + +We have seen in the last chapter that whatever interests primitive man, +whatever makes him feel strongly, he tends to re-enact. Any one of his +manifold occupations, hunting, fighting, later ploughing and sowing, +provided it be of sufficient interest and importance, is material for a +_dromenon_ or rite. We have also seen that, weak as he is in +individuality, it is not his private and personal emotions that tend to +become ritual, but those that are public, felt and expressed officially, +that is, by the whole tribe or community. It is further obvious that +such dances, when they develop into actual rites, tend to be performed +at fixed times. We have now to consider when and why. The element of +fixity and regular repetition in rites cannot be too strongly +emphasized. It is a factor of paramount importance, essential to the +development from ritual to art, from _dromenon_ to drama. + +The two great interests of primitive man are food and children. As Dr. +Frazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have +food; if his race is to persist he must have children. "To live and to +cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary +wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in +the future so long as the world lasts." Other things may be added to +enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first +satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, +therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by +the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They +are the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are +right, took its rise. From this need for food sprang seasonal, periodic +festivals. The fact that festivals are seasonal, constantly recurrent, +solidifies, makes permanent, and as already explained (p. 42), in a +sense intellectualizes and abstracts the emotion that prompts them. + +The seasons are indeed only of value to primitive man because they are +related, as he swiftly and necessarily finds out, to his food supply. +He has, it would seem, little sensitiveness to the æsthetic impulse of +the beauty of a spring morning, to the pathos of autumn. What he +realizes first and foremost is, that at certain times the animals, and +still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others +they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the +focuses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals. These +dates will vary, of course, in different countries and in different +climates. It is, therefore, idle to attempt a study of the ritual of a +people without knowing the facts of their climate and surroundings. In +Egypt the food supply will depend on the rise and fall of the Nile, and +on this rise and fall will depend the ritual and calendar of Osiris. And +yet treatises on Egyptian religion are still to be found which begin by +recounting the rites and mythology of Osiris, as though these were +primary, and then end with a corollary to the effect that these rites +and this calendar were "associated" with the worship of Osiris, or, even +worse still, "instituted by" the religion of Osiris. The Nile regulates +the food supply of Egypt, the monsoon that of certain South Pacific +islands; the calendar of Egypt depends on the Nile, of the South +Pacific islands on the monsoon. + + * * * * * + +In his recent _Introduction to Mathematics_[7] Dr. Whitehead has pointed +out how the "whole life of Nature is dominated by the existence of +periodic events." The rotation of the earth produces successive days; +the path of the earth round the sun leads to the yearly recurrence of +the seasons; the phases of the moon are recurrent, and though artificial +light has made these phases pass almost unnoticed to-day, in climates +where the skies are clear, human life was largely influenced by +moonlight. Even our own bodily life, with its recurrent heart-beats and +breathings, is essentially periodic.[8] The presupposition of +periodicity is indeed fundamental to our very conception of life, and +but for periodicity the very means of measuring time as a quantity would +be absent. + +Periodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that +is evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that +has gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art. +And yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual +calendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different +quality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on +periodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in +which periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen +already that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there +arises an idea or "presentation." A "presentation" is, indeed, it would +seem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire--a +desire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over +into a "presentation." An image conceived "presented," what we call an +_idea_ is, as it were, an act prefigured. + +Ritual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are +acts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is +more and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into +what we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an +unaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively +bloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse +in the cycle of activity. It will later (p. 70) be seen that these +periodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished +actions and desires which we call gods--Attis, Osiris, Dionysos--are +made. + + * * * * * + +To primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself +were not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for +all. It will depend on man's social and geographical conditions whether +he notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he +will note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children, +and will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident +that, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is +the periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on +moisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer, +trees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter, +and awakes in spring. + +Sometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is +very clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again, +essentially rites of lamentation. The details of the ritual show this +clearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the +"gardens" of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth, +and in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat, +fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and +tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but +as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the +eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and +thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis +became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay. + + * * * * * + +"What waste would it be," says Plutarch,[9] "what inconceivable waste, +for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the +women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of +Adonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish +but for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and +solid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment." + +Celebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the "gardens" were thrown +into water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at +least in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine +and Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough +to provoke expression, and we remember (p. 19) that the Sumerian Tammuz +was originally _Dumuzi-absu_, "True Son of the Waters." Water is the +first need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the +Madras Presidency.[10] At the marriage of a Brahman "seeds of five or +nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially +for the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water +the seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day +the seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank +or river." + +Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent--the promotion of +fertility in plants, animals and man--may occur at almost any time of +the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in +autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter +among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, +for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in +from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas +festival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice. +But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, +the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is +the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the +Greek of to-day the "ánoixis," "the Opening," and it was in spring and +with rites of spring that both Greek and Roman originally began their +year. It was this spring festival that gave to the Greek their god +Dionysos and in part his drama. + + * * * * * + +In Cambridge on May Day two or three puzzled and weary little boys and +girls are still to be sometimes seen dragging round a perambulator with +a doll on it bedecked with ribbons and a flower or two. That is all that +is left in most parts of England of the Queen of the May and +Jack-in-the-Green, though here and there a maypole survives and is +resuscitated by enthusiasts about folk-dances. But in the days of "Good +Queen Bess" merry England, it would seem, was lustier. The Puritan +Stubbs, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_,[11] thus describes the festival: + + "They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a + sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and + these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), + which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round + aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme + painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, + women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus + beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the + toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, + set up summer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall + they to banquet and feast, to leap and daunce aboute it, as the + heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this + is a perfect patterne or rather the thyng itself." + +The stern old Puritan was right, the maypole was the perfect pattern of +a heathen "idoll, or rather the thyng itself." He would have +exterminated it root and branch, but other and perhaps wiser divines +took the maypole into the service of the Christian Church, and still[12] +on May Day in Saffron Walden the spring song is heard with its Christian +moral-- + + "A branch of May we have brought you, + And at your door it stands; + It is a sprout that is well budded out, + The work of our Lord's hands." + +The maypole was of course at first no pole cut down and dried. The gist +of it was that it should be a "sprout, well budded out." The object of +carrying in the May was to bring the very spirit of life and greenery +into the village. When this was forgotten, idleness or economy would +prompt the villagers to use the same tree or branch year after year. In +the villages of Upper Bavaria Dr. Frazer[13] tells us the maypole is +renewed once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched +from the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with +which it is bedecked, an essential part is the bunch of dark green +foliage left at the top, "as a memento that in it we have to do, not +with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood." + +At the ritual of May Day not only was the fresh green bough or tree +carried into the village, but with it came a girl or a boy, the Queen or +King of the May. Sometimes the tree itself, as in Russia, is dressed up +in woman's clothes; more often a real man or maid, covered with flowers +and greenery, walks with the tree or carries the bough. Thus in +Thuringia,[14] as soon as the trees begin to be green in spring, the +children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they +choose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches +from the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are +left peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should +stumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking +for gifts of food, such as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes. Finally, they +sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food. Such a Leaf Man +is our English Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who, as late as +1892, was seen by Dr. Rouse walking about at Cheltenham encased in a +wooden framework covered with greenery. + +The bringing in of the new leafage in the form of a tree or flowers is +one, and perhaps the simplest, form of spring festival. It takes little +notice of death and winter, uttering and emphasizing only the desire for +the joy in life and spring. But in other and severer climates the +emotion is fiercer and more complex; it takes the form of a struggle or +contest, what the Greeks called an _agon_. Thus on May Day in the Isle +of Man a Queen of the May was chosen, and with her twenty maids of +honour, together with a troop of young men for escort. But there was not +only a Queen of the May, but a Queen of Winter, a man dressed as a +woman, loaded with warm clothes and wearing a woollen hood and fur +tippet. Winter, too, had attendants like the Queen of the May. The two +troops met and fought; and whichever Queen was taken prisoner had to pay +the expenses of the feast. + +In the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it +has become a mere play. But among the Esquimaux[15] there is still +carried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood. +In autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter +is at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties +called the Ptarmigans and the Ducks. The ptarmigans are the people born +in winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope +of sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the +other, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine +weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival +might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring, +but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice +and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of +spring. + + * * * * * + +The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these +magical _agones_, or "contests," is not very easy to realize. The +weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day's pleasuring or +raises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to +us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think +ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The +intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that +many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the +emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully +realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the +Central Australians. + +The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer, +from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season +short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden +fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a +marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, +the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched +acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life +save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. +Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. +Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the +thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation +bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs, +birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it +live quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short. + +It seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the +primitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and +magic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility +approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and +multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he +paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his +own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in +stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the +chrysalis of a Witchetty grub--his favourite food, and drags his body +through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. +Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain +in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main +emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and +admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the +singing of birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to an +All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to +the push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat +that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to +live, that he _utters and represents_. + + * * * * * + +The savage utters his will to live, his intense desire for food; but it +should be noted, it is desire and will and longing, not certainty and +satisfaction that he utters. In this respect it is interesting to note +that his rites and ceremonies, when periodic, are of fairly long +periods. Winter and summer are not the only natural periodic cycles; +there is the cycle of day and night, and yet among primitive peoples but +little ritual centres round day and night. The reason is simple. The +cycle of day and night is so short, it recurs so frequently, that man +naturally counted upon it and had no cause to be anxious. The emotional +tension necessary to ritual was absent. A few peoples, _e.g._ the +Egyptians, have practised daily incantations to bring back the sun. +Probably they had at first felt a real tension of anxiety, and +then--being a people hidebound by custom--had gone on from mere +conservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even, +as among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual +inevitably arises. They play at cat's-cradle to catch the ball of the +sun lest it should sink and be lost for ever. + +Round the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early +centred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was +first surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes +and wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and +wanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch[16] tells us, +is fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young +of animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon[17] held that +observations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the +grafting of trees were "not altogether frivolous." It cannot too often +be remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun +and moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he +cares for them, he holds them sacred, he performs rites in relation to +them mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for +the seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a +_Hora_ was at first to the Greeks, _the fruits of a season_, what our +farmers would call "a good _year_." + + * * * * * + +The sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the +seasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons +were annual, that they went round in a _ring_; and because that annual +ring was long in revolving, great was man's hope and fear in the winter, +great his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of +death and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes +represented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris. + +Adonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt +as to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in +Thüringen a ceremony is performed called "Driving out the Death." The +young people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry +it out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell the good +news to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia +the children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are +burning it they sing-- + + "Now carry we Death out of the village, + The new Summer into the village, + Welcome, dear Summer, + Green little corn." + +In other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes +back but Life. + + "We have carried away Death, + And brought back Life." + +In both these cases it is interesting to note that though Death is +dramatically carried out, the coming back of Life is only announced, not +enacted. + +Often, and it would seem quite naturally, the puppet representing Death +or Winter is reviled and roughly handled, or pelted with stones, and +treated in some way as a sort of scapegoat. But in not a few cases, and +these are of special interest, it seems to be the seat of a sort of +magical potency which can be and is transferred to the figure of Summer +or Life, thus causing, as it were, a sort of Resurrection. In Lusatia +the women only carry out the Death. They are dressed in black themselves +as mourners, but the puppet of straw which they dress up as the Death +wears a white shirt. They carry it to the village boundary, followed by +boys throwing stones, and there tear it to pieces. Then they cut down a +tree and dress it in the white shirt of the Death and carry it home +singing. + +So at the Feast of the Ascension in Transylvania. After morning service +the girls of the village dress up the Death; they tie a threshed-out +sheaf of corn into a rough copy of a head and body, and stick a +broomstick through the body for arms. Then they dress the figure up in +the ordinary holiday clothes of a peasant girl--a red hood, silver +brooches, and ribbons galore. They put the Death at an open window that +all the people when they go to vespers may see it. Vespers over, two +girls take the Death by the arms and walk in front; the rest follow. +They sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they +go to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes, +and throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it +into a river. Then one of the girls is dressed in the Death's discarded +clothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same +hymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated +Death. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new, +will be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos +and the Dithyramb. + +These ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple +carrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we +have these figures, these "impersonations," we are getting away from the +merely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor +discharge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to +personification. On this question of personification, in which so much +of art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear. + + * * * * * + +In discussions on such primitive rites as "Carrying out the Death," +"Bringing in Summer," we are often told that the puppet of the girl is +carried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it "personifies the +Spirit of Vegetation," or it "embodies the Spirit of Summer." The +Spirit of Vegetation is "incarnate in the puppet." We are led, by this +way of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms +an idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later +"embodies" it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act +so high and difficult as abstraction. + +A very little consideration shows that he performs at first no +abstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He +begins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance +has, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an +actual _person_, and he is the root and ground of _personification_. +There is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not +"embody" a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his +personality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from +the only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without +_per_ception there is no _con_ception. We noted in speaking of dances +(p. 43) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of +actual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance. +So, from many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many +actual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and +women, arises _the_ Tree Spirit, _the_ Vegetation Spirit, _the_ Death. + +At the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the +emotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus +who dance together _with a common leader_. Round that leader the emotion +centres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either +is himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band; +drama--doing--tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is +then remembered, thought of, imaged; from being _per_ceived year by +year, he is finally _con_ceived; but his basis is always in actual fact +of which he is but the reflection. + +Had there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have +halted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent _per_ception helps to +form a permanent abstract _con_ception. The different actual recurrent +May Kings and "Deaths," _because they recur_, get a sort of permanent +life of their own and become beings apart. In this way a conception, a +kind of _daimon_, or spirit, is fashioned, who dies and lives again in a +perpetual cycle. The periodic festival begets a kind of not immortal, +but perennial, god. + +Yet the faculty of conception is but dim and feeble in the mind even of +the peasant to-day; his function is to perceive the actual fact year by +year, and to feel about it. Perhaps a simple instance best makes this +clear. The Greek Church does not gladly suffer images in the round, +though she delights in picture-images, _eikons_. But at her great spring +festival of Easter she makes, in the remote villages, concession to a +strong, perhaps imperative, popular need; she allows an image, an actual +idol, of the dead Christ to be laid in the tomb that it may rise again. +A traveller in Eubœa[18] during Holy Week had been struck by the genuine +grief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter Eve there was the +same general gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman why it +was. She answered: "Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise +to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year." + +The old woman's state of mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old +emotion, not sorrow for the Christ the Son of Mary, but fear, imminent +fear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical +Christ of Judæa, still less the incarnation of the Godhead proceeding +from the Father; he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus +and laid by the priests, the leaders of that chorus, in the local +sepulchre. + + * * * * * + +So far, then, we have seen that the vague emotional dance tends to +become a periodic rite, performed at regular intervals. The periodic +rite may occur at any date of importance to the food-supply of the +community, in summer, in winter, at the coming of the annual rains, or +the regular rising of a river. Among Mediterranean peoples, both in +ancient days and at the present time, the Spring Festival arrests +attention. Having learnt the general characteristics of this Spring +Festival, we have now to turn to one particular case, the Spring +Festival of the Greeks. This is all-important to us because, as will be +seen, from the ritual of this and kindred festivals arose, we believe, a +great form of Art, the Greek drama. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] Chapter XII: "Periodicity in Nature." + +[8] _Ibid._ + +[9] _De Ser. Num._ 17. + +[10] Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_,^3 p. 200. + +[11] Quoted by Dr. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 203. + +[12] E.K. Chambers, _The Mediæval Stage_, I, p. 169. + +[13] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 205. + +[14] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 213. + +[15] Resumed from Dr. Frazer, _Golden Bough_,^2 II, p. 104. + +[16] _De Is. et Os._, p. 367. + +[17] _De Aug. Scient._, III, 4. + +[18] J.C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient Religion_, p. 573. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE + + +The tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed at +Athens at a festival known as the Great Dionysia. This took place early +in April, so that the time itself makes us suspect that its ceremonies +were connected with the spring. But we have more certain evidence. +Aristotle, in his treatise on the Art of Poetry, raises the question of +the origin of the drama. He was not specially interested in primitive +ritual; beast dances and spring mummeries might even have seemed to him +mere savagery, the lowest form of "imitation;" but he divined that a +structure so complex as Greek tragedy must have arisen out of a simpler +form; he saw, or felt, in fact, that art had in some way risen out of +ritual, and he has left us a memorable statement. + +In describing the "Carrying-out of Summer" we saw that the element of +real _drama_, real impersonation, began with the leaders of the band, +with the Queen of the May, and with the "Death" or the "Winter." Great +is our delight when we find that for Greek drama Aristotle[19] divined a +like beginning. He says: + + "Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation--the one + (tragedy) _originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb_." + +The further question faces us: What was the Dithyramb? We shall find to +our joy that this obscure-sounding Dithyramb, though before Aristotle's +time it had taken literary form, was in origin a festival closely akin +to those we have just been discussing. The Dithyramb was, to begin with, +a spring ritual; and when Aristotle tells us tragedy arose out of the +Dithyramb, he gives us, though perhaps half unconsciously, a clear +instance of a splendid art that arose from the simplest of rites; he +plants our theory of the connection of art with ritual firmly with its +feet on historical ground. + + * * * * * + +When we use the word "dithyrambic" we certainly do not ordinarily think +of spring. We say a style is "dithyrambic" when it is unmeasured, too +ornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that +the word _Dithyramb_ meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not +forgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a +Dithyramb for the Dionysiac festival at Athens, and his song is full of +springtime and flowers. He bids all the gods come to Athens to dance +flower-crowned. + + "Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye + gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are + treading and incense steams: in sacred Athens come to the holy + centre-stone. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations + poured from the culling of spring.... + + "Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name + Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his + Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the + purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the + fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth, + lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices + of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with + the calling of crowned Semele." + +Bromios, "He of the loud cry," is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his +mother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova _Zembla_, "New Earth." The +song might have been sung at a "Carrying-in of Summer." The Horæ, the +Seasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of +the May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the +earth, flower-crowned. + +You may _bring back_ the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a +maiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek +mythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the +daughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year +by year. On Greek vase-paintings[20] the scene occurs again and again. A +mound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of +the mound a woman's figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of +dancing dæmons waiting to welcome her. + +All this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and +poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual "things done," +_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where +to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing +men, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock +called "_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will +believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter +called her up there"; and he adds: "The women to this day perform rites +analogous to the story told." + +These rites of "Calling up" must have been spring rites, in which, in +some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted. + +Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive, +because it is near akin to the "Carrying out of Winter," and also +because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the +food-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years +at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a +word which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the +Russian word _yaro_, "Spring," and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_, +"grace," in the sense of increase, "Give us all _grace_." The rites of +_Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows: + + "The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and + pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of + _Charila_ is brought in. When they had all received their share, + the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the + Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place, + and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it." + +Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria +in honour of _Yarilo_, the Spring God. + +The image is beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is +clearly a "Carrying out the Death," though we do not know the exact date +at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at +Delphi called _Herois_, or the "Heroine." Plutarch[23] says it was too +mystical and secret to describe, but he lets us know the main gist. + + "Most of the ceremonies of the _Herois_ have a mystical reason + which is known to the Thyiades, but from the rites that are done in + public, one may conjecture it to be a 'Bringing up of Semele.'" + +Some one or something, a real woman, or more likely the buried puppet +_Charila_, the Spring-Maiden, was brought up from the ground to enact +and magically induce the coming of Spring. + + * * * * * + +These ceremonies of beating, driving out, burying, have all, with the +Greeks, as with the savage and the modern peasant, but one real object: +to get rid of the season that is bad for food, to bring in and revive +the new supply. This comes out very clearly in a ceremony that went on +down to Plutarch's time, and he tells us[24] it was "ancestral." It was +called "the Driving out of Ox-hunger." By Ox-hunger was meant any great +ravenous hunger, and the very intensity and monstrosity of the word +takes us back to days when famine was a grim reality. When Plutarch was +_archon_ he had, as chief official, to perform the ceremony at the +Prytaneion, or Common Hearth. A slave was taken, beaten with rods of a +magical plant, and driven out of doors to the words: "Out with +Ox-hunger! In with Wealth and Health!" Here we see the actual sensation, +or emotion, of ravenous hunger gets a name, and thereby a personality, +though a less completely abstracted one than Death or Summer. We do not +know that the ceremony of Driving out Ox-hunger was performed in the +spring, it is only instanced here because, more plainly even than the +Charila, when the king distributes pulse and peas, it shows the relation +of ancient mimic ritual to food-supply. + +If we keep clearly in mind the _object_ rather than the exact _date_ of +the Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties. A Dithyramb was sung +at Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd. But we +must remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical +ceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any +moment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown. The sowing of the +seed is its death and burial; "that which thou sowest is not quickened +except it die." When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope +of resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical +ceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope. The Sun is new-born in +midwinter, at the solstice, and our "New" year follows, yet it is in the +spring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival. + + * * * * * + +We return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this +connection. The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the +importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the +food-supply. + + * * * * * + +Do we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point +is as curious as significant. + +Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question: + + "Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos, + With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?" + +Scholars have broken their own heads and one another's to find a meaning +and an answer to the odd query. It is only quite lately that they have +come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive +rite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric +poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring +Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How +can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the +"slender-ankled" Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull? + +The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them, +is soon settled. They are the Seasons, or "Hours," and the chief Season, +or Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces, +because they are, in the words of the Collect, the "Givers of all +grace," that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they +want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all +grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their +"fruits in due season" is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the +Dithyramb "bull-driving"? Is this a mere "poetical" epithet? If it is, +it is not particularly poetical. + +But Pindar is not, we now know, merely being "poetical," which amounts, +according to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is +describing, alluding to, an actual rite or _dromenon_ in which a Bull is +summoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear. +Plutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise called +_Greek Questions_, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way +rites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they +meant. In his 36th _Question_ he asks: "Why do the women of Elis summon +Dionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?" And +then, by a piece of luck that almost makes one's heart stand still, he +gives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our +earliest "Bull-driving" Spring Song: + + "In Spring-time,[25] O Dionysos, + To thy holy temple come; + To Elis with thy Graces, + Rushing with thy bull-foot, come, + Noble Bull, Noble Bull." + +It is a strange primitive picture--the holy women standing in springtime +in front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and +filleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three +real women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But +what does it mean? + +Plutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused +fashion, succeeds. "Is it," he suggests, "that some entitle the god as +'Born of a Bull' and as a 'Bull' himself? ... or is it that many hold +the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?" We have seen how a +kind of _daimon_, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual +tree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god +Dionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning +year by year of some holy Bull? + +First, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull +appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive +_Question_:[26] "Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?" And we find +to our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull who not only is +holy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he +is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his +death in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, "at +the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants." + +We do not hear that the "Sanctifier" at Delphi was "driven," but in all +probability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake +in the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,[27] a city of +Asia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by +year the stewards of the city bought a Bull, "the finest that could be +got," and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they +dedicated it, for the city's welfare. The Bull's sanctified life began +with the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or +the autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a +high solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the +chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the +sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull +that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must +have both their parents alive, they must not have been under the +_taboo_, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer +for "the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the +women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of +grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle." All this longing for +fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose +holiness is his strength and fruitfulness. + +The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of +the whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with +his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and "it is good for +those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift," good for them +because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is +their own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but +early in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the +senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of +each class of the State--children and young boys, and youths just come +to manhood, _epheboi_, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is +sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the +term of his life? He dies because he _is_ so holy, that he may give his +holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to +his people. + + "When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up + among those who took part in the procession." + +The mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the +whole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten--to +every man his portion--by each and every citizen, that he may get his +share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State. + + * * * * * + +Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we +hear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin +again. But at Athens at the annual "Ox-murder," the _Bouphonia_, as it +was called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all +solemnity, and all those present partook of the flesh, and then--the +hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal +was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing. +The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We +are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the +renouncing of something. But _sacrifice_ does not mean "death" at all. +It means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man +just special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just +that special life and strength which all the year long they had put into +him, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could +not eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he +must die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed +him, not to "sacrifice" him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat +him, live _by_ him and through him, by his grace. + +And so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a +thing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not +looking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck +the blow. But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had +not, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself +in the _dromenon_ of his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how +could they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he +should, he _did_. + +The Athenians were a little ashamed of their "Ox-murder," with its +grotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of +us now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our +neighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly +about their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure. +Anyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though +from sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less +educated among them thought there "might be something in it," and anyhow +it was "as well to be on the safe side." The queer ceremony had got +associated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must +reckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow +it was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls +had to act as water-carriers. + +The Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is +alive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among +the Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main +"food focus," the chief "value centre." And well he may be. Bear's flesh +is the Ainos' staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins +are their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear's +fat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the +Bear. Yet we are told the Ainos "worship the Bear"; they apply to it the +name _Kamui_, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to +all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is +formidable. In the religion of the Ainos "the Bear plays a chief part," +says one writer. The Bear "receives idolatrous veneration," says +another. They "worship it after their fashion," says a third. Have we +another case of "the heathen in his blindness"? Only here he "bows down" +not to "gods of wood and stone," but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling +but gracious--a Bear. + +Instead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us +observe his _doings_, his _dromena_, his rites; and most of all his +great spring and autumn rite, the _dromenon_ of the Bear. We shall find +that, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greek _dromenon_ of +the Bull. + +As winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and +brought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her +breast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish--his tastes are +semi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens +to break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually +in September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting +begins. + +Before the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they +have been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill +him. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and +friends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends. +On the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were +present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes. +The woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and +silent, only now and then she burst into helpless tears. The ceremony +began with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in +a corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the +hut and offered libations in front of the Bear's cage. A few drops were +presented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women +and girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and +as they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant. +The mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched +out their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women +who had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear +began to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably. + +Next came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at +the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the _inabos_, sacred +wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet +high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. _Five new wands +with bamboo leaves attached to them_ are set up for the festival; the +leaves according to the Ainos mean _that the Bear may come to life +again_. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of +attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his +staple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of +the Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of +together. + +Then comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope +is thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood +of the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession +round the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern +Siberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be +specially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for +this will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then, +among the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy, +and other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate +themselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a +blessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too. + +To return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men, +headed by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tipped with buttons. +But the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to +irritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood, +and we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands, +a stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam; +he dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind +the men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The +body of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A +sword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it +is a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and +drink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as +an Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some +sense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the +Bear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep. + +Now that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting +and merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are +scrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is +severed from the head, to which the skin is left hanging. The blood, +which might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and +eagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up +and eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day +next but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast. +It is what the Greeks call a _dais_, a meal divided or distributed. +While the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the +sacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear's brain is +extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin, +is hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and +strength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves. +The stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and +with it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole +congregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a +great drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the +feast. + +The rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the +Bear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume and seated on a +bench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the +oldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There +all the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is +felled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull +wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull +disappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear's flesh +is eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at +it. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are +elaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices. + +Through all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is +identical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the +maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the +Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, +later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and +the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear +and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a +special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried +about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail +for all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to +pieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and +Tree die only that they may live again. + + * * * * * + +We have seen (p. 71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually +_per_ceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image, +an imagined Tree Spirit, or "Summer," or Death, a thing never actually +seen but _con_ceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various +villages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the +remembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again +each year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and +finally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea, +this _con_ception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some +places the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and +cows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls' horns +in imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having +a bull's head. _We_ know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a +bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the +rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, +may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why +should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of +a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the +worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an +imagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted, +imaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual +holy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the +succession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God. + + * * * * * + +We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not +obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of +spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were +performed at Athens, the young men (_epheboi_) brought in not only the +human figure of the god, but also a Bull "worthy" of the God. We +understand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the +great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung--"Bull-driving Dithyrambs." + + * * * * * + +We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the +most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the +drama. _The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth._ + +Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. "Some," he says, +"are prayers to the gods--these are called _hymns_; others of an +opposite sort might best be called _dirges_; another sort are _pæans_, +and another--the birth of Dionysos, I suppose--is called _Dithyramb_." +Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a +particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they +were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the +information carelessly--the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the +birth or coming to be, the _genesis_ of Dionysos. + +The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato's statement. When a +poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the +title _Dithyrambos_. Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens +thus: + + "Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come. + ... + Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring + Holy hours of thine own holy spring. + ... + All the stars danced for joy. Mirth + Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth." + +The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in +the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull. + + * * * * * + +And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a dæmon, +and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos +the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once +_per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is +but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual +holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived. But +the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental +image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the +_birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a +child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original +form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in +Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, "Him of the +Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child +Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women. + +But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship +and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in +the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when, +Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know +in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the +Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty +like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of +birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of +the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born. + +This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the +word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word +_thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken; +_Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer, +and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it +shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos +was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his +father's thigh, like no man. + +But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the +Tree-God, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second +birth from which it arises? + + * * * * * + +We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth +existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and +find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over +half the savage world. + +With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his +first birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his +tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; +at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society +of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult +for us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to +manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man. +Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social +privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters +a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession. +In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to +linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as +Coming Out. A girl's dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up, +she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign's hand, a dance +is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state +of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom, +with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does +not obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of +Confirmation. + +To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is +always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his +ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and +transitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to +man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months +of tremendous educational emphasis--of what is called "initiation," +"going in," that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the +gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish +things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to +cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him +for his two chief functions as a tribesman--to be a warrior, to be a +father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man. + +This "initiation" is of tremendous importance, and we should expect, +what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues +in _dromena_, "rites done." These rites are very various, but they all +point one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the +new-born man has entered on a new life. + +Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by +the Kikuyu of British East Africa,[30] who require that every boy, just +before circumcision, must be born again. "The mother stands up with the +boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour +pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed." + +More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a +resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their +presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east +Australia,[31] when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy +bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks +and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his +hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other +bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought +to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes +on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and +more and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave. + +The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The +boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with +blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first +gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to +cleanse themselves. + +Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death +that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is +practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram[32] boys at puberty +are admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold, +followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest +trees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high +priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is +heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo +trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the +priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of +chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with +blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's +head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the +other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men +who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a +half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the +good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys +themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they +go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate. +They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the +simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of +twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not +comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the +forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their +heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry. + +Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new +name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are +danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the +Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row +cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out. +The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of +each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of +spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the +society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house. +The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood +relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe. + +Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or +represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it +is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called +Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings +them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or +rite of swallowing we are not told. + +In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to +grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus +among the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or +Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a +bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four +days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to +find him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ ("Come on, Bear") and he answers +with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at +last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and +there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first +appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in +initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same +object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to +another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and +other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which +seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is +explained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a +passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in +every rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you +carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is +a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded, +under a _taboo_. + + * * * * * + +To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, +marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little +or no social emphasis. But _the_ rite which concerned the whole tribe, +the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of +initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and +significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word +for rite was _tělětē_. It was applied to all mysteries, and sometimes to +marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with death. It comes +from a root meaning "to grow up." The word _tělětē_ means _rite of +growing up_, becoming complete. It meant at first maturity, then rite of +maturity, then by a natural extension any rite of initiation that was +mysterious. The rites of puberty were in their essence mysterious, +because they consisted in initiation into the sanctities of the tribe, +the things which society sanctioned and protected, excluding the +uninitiated, whether they were young boys, women, or members of other +tribes. Then, by contagion, the mystery notion spread to other rites. + + * * * * * + +We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite, +the _dromenon_ of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second +birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells +us--Dio_nysos_, "Divine Young Man." + +When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of +the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that _image_ +which is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite +_must_ be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are +but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young _man_. Where +emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just +initiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of +quite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth +survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women +are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of +all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity. + +And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a +blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in +spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of +olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits, +_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it: + + "Eiresione brings + Figs and fat cakes, + And a pot of honey and oil to mix, + And a wine-cup strong and deep, + That she may drink and sleep." + +The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called +_Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a +Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people." + + * * * * * + +The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a +Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a +young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a +_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors: + + "Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet + and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Diktè + for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song." + +The leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual +leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a +daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in +the new year at spring. The real leader, the "first kouros" as the +Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of +leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all. +He is "lord of all that is wet and gleaming," for the May bough, we +remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and +blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away +from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing +their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough +remains to make the meaning clear. + +And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood: + + "The Horæ (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dikè to + possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by + wealth-loving Peace." + +We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dikè is strange. +We translate the word "Justice," but Dikè means, not Justice as between +man and man, but the order of the world, the _way_ of life. It is +through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the +seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that +order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion, +barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears: + + "To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and + leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase." + +And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. 32), who +throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian +peasant girls who leap high in the air crying, "Flax, grow." The +leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their +tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must +grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their +annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end: + + "Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, _and for + our young citizens_, and for goodly Themis." + +They are now young citizens of a fencèd city instead of young tribesmen +of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds +them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, "goodly +Themis." No man liveth to himself. + + * * * * * + +Crete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the +priest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful +carved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing +him a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed +dancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn. + +We have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A +Spring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth; +but all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama, +rather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the +Birth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know--with Agamemnon and +Iphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us, +and the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we +have seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of +emotion--emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that +ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the +chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the +Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that +is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before +us. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] _Poetics_, IV, 12. + +[20] See my _Themis_, p. 419. (1912.) + +[21] I, 43. 2. + +[22] _Quaest. Græc._ XII. + +[23] _Op. cit._ + +[24] _Quæst. Symp._, 693 f. + +[25] The words "in Spring-time" depend on an emendation to me +convincing. See my _Themis_, p. 205, note 1. + +[26] IX. + +[27] See my _Themis_, p. 151. + +[28] See my _Prolegomena_, p. 439. + +[29] _Prolegomena_, p. 402. + +[30] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 228. + +[31] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 424. + +[32] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 442. + +[33] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, p. 438. + +[34] See my _Themis_, p. 503. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON ("THING DONE") AND THE DRAMA + + +Probably most people when they go to a Greek play for the first time +think it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their +temperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or +very much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that, +whether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are +odd effects, conventions, suggestions. + +For example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or +heroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds +unconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine +thrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put +off with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is +regularly given, and usually at considerable length, in a "messenger's +speech." The messenger's speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and +though actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real +dramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has +sometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all +these, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation, +good taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he +finds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into +floods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in +silence. + +Then again, specially if the play be by Euripides, it ends not with a +"curtain," not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of +a god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or +reconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself, +strikes some people as rather stilted and formal, or as rather flat and +somehow unsatisfying. Worse still, there are in many of the scenes long +dialogues, in which the actors wrangle with each other, and in which the +action does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead of +beginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit +about the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole +thing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the +Greeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that +tragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of +lamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary +and wish that the chorus would stop lamenting and _do_ something. + + * * * * * + +At the back of our modern discontent there is lurking always this queer +anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and +when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the +ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the +intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and +pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble +to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the +choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them +alone commands a traditional respect; but if we are merely modern +spectators, we may be respectful, we may even feel strangely excited, +but we are certainly puzzled. The reason of our bewilderment is simple +enough. These prologues and messengers' speeches and ever-present +choruses that trouble us are ritual forms still surviving at a time when +the _drama_ has fully developed out of the _dromenon_. We cannot here +examine all these ritual forms in detail;[35] one, however, the chorus, +strangest and most beautiful of all, it is essential we should +understand. + +Suppose that these choral songs have been put into English that in any +way represents the beauty of the Greek; then certainly there will be +some among the spectators who get a thrill from the chorus quite unknown +to any modern stage effect, a feeling of emotion heightened yet +restrained, a sense of entering into higher places, filled with a larger +and a purer air--a sense of beauty born clean out of conflict and +disaster. + +A suspicion dawns upon the spectator that, great though the tragedies in +themselves are, they owe their peculiar, their incommunicable beauty +largely to this element of the chorus which seemed at first so strange. + +Now by examining this chorus and understanding its function--nay, more, +by considering the actual _orchestra_, the space on which the chorus +danced, and the relation of that space to the rest of the theatre, to +the stage and the place where the spectators sat--we shall get light at +last on our main central problem: How did art arise out of ritual, and +what is the relation of both to that actual life from which both art and +ritual sprang? + + * * * * * + +The dramas of Æschylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles +and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the _theatre_, +but, strange though it sounds to us, in the _orchestra_. The _theatre_ +to the Greeks was simply "the place of seeing," the place where the +spectators sat; what they called the skēnē or _scene_, was the tent or +hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of the whole +was the _orchestra_, the circular _dancing-place_ of the chorus; and, as +the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre, so the chorus, +the band of dancing and singing men--this chorus that seems to us so odd +and even superfluous--was the centre and kernel and starting-point of +the drama. The chorus danced and sang that Dithyramb we know so well, +and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember tragedy arose, and +the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells us, just men and +boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested from sowing and +ploughing. + +Now it is in the relation between the _orchestra_ or dancing-place of +the chorus, and the _theatre_ or place of the spectators, a relation +that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development +from ritual to art--from _dromenon_ to drama. + + * * * * * + +The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular +dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and +sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular +orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a +sketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a +splendid _theatron_, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above +tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or +dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors +are used in Greece to-day as convenient dancing-places. The dance +tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a +maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On +this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as +now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There +is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors, +all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at +initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are +the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage +thinks of building a _theatre_, a spectator place. It is in the common +act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must +never be forgotten. + +[Illustration: Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra.] + +The most convenient spot for a mere dancing-place is some flat place. +But any one who travels through Greece will notice instantly that all +the Greek theatres that remain at Athens, at Epidaurus, at Delos, +Syracuse, and elsewhere, are built against the side of hills. None of +these are very early; the earliest ancient orchestra we have is at +Athens. It is a simple stone ring, but it is built against the steep +south side of the Acropolis. The oldest festival of Dionysos was, as +will presently be seen, held in quite another spot, in the _agora_, or +market-place. The reason for moving the dance was that the wooden seats +that used to be set up on a sort of "grand stand" in the market-place +fell down, and it was seen how safely and comfortably the spectators +could be seated on the side of a steep hill. + +The spectators are a new and different element, the dance is not only +danced, but it is watched from a distance, it is a spectacle; whereas in +old days all or nearly all were worshippers acting, now many, indeed +most, are spectators, watching, feeling, thinking, not doing. It is in +this new attitude of the spectator that we touch on the difference +between ritual and art; the _dromenon_, the thing actually done by +yourself has become a _drama_, a thing also done, but abstracted from +your doing. Let us look for a moment at the psychology of the spectator, +at his behaviour. + + * * * * * + +Artists, it is often said, and usually felt, are so unpractical. They +are always late for dinner, they forget to post their letters and to +return the books or even money that is lent them. Art is to most +people's minds a sort of luxury, not a necessity. In but recently bygone +days music, drawing, and dancing were no part of a training for ordinary +life, they were taught at school as "accomplishments," paid for as +"extras." Poets on their side equally used to contrast art and life, as +though they were things essentially distinct. + + "Art is long, and Time is fleeting." + +Now commonplaces such as these, being unconscious utterances of the +collective mind, usually contain much truth, and are well worth +weighing. Art, we shall show later, is profoundly connected with life; +it is nowise superfluous. But, for all that, art, both its creation and +its enjoyment, is unpractical. Thanks be to God, life is not limited to +the practical. + +When we say art is unpractical, we mean that art is _cut loose from +immediate action_. Take a simple instance. A man--or perhaps still +better a child--sees a plate of cherries. Through his senses comes the +stimulus of the smell of the cherries, and their bright colour urging +him, luring him to eat. He eats and is satisfied; the cycle of normal +behaviour is complete; he is a man or a child of action, but he is no +artist, and no art-lover. Another man looks at the same plate of +cherries. His sight and his smell lure him and urge him to eat. He does +_not_ eat; the cycle is not completed, and, because he does not eat, the +sight of those cherries, though perhaps not the smell, is altered, +purified from desire, and in some way intensified, enlarged. If he is +just a man of taste, he will take what we call an "æsthetic" pleasure in +those cherries. If he is an actual artist, he will paint not the +cherries, but his vision of them, his purified emotion towards them. He +has, so to speak, come out from the chorus of actors, of cherry-eaters, +and become a spectator. + +I borrow, by his kind permission, a beautiful instance of what he well +calls "Psychical Distance" from the writings of a psychologist.[36] + +"Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute +unpleasantness. Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of +discomfort, such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar +anxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching and listening +for distant and unlocalized signals. The listless movements of the ship +and her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and +that special, expectant tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated +with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the +more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the +expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman. + +"Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and +enjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea-fog, for the moment, +its danger and practical unpleasantness; ... direct the attention to the +features 'objectively' constituting the phenomena--the veil surrounding +you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outlines of +things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesqueness; observe the +carrying power of the air, producing the impression as if you could +touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it +lose itself behind that white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness +of the water, hypercritically denying as it were, any suggestion of +danger; and, above all, the strange solitude and remoteness from the +world, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops; and the +experience may acquire, in its uncanny mingling of repose and terror, a +flavour of such concentrated poignancy and delight as to contrast +sharply with the blind and distempered anxiety of its other aspects. +This contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like the +momentary switching on of some new current, or the passing ray of a +brighter light, illuminating the outlook upon perhaps the most ordinary +and familiar objects--an impression which we experience sometimes in +instants of direst extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a +wire from sheer over-tension, and we watch the consummation of some +impending catastrophe with the marvelling unconcern of a mere +spectator." + + * * * * * + +It has often been noted that two, and two only, of our senses are the +channels of art and give us artistic material. These two senses are +sight and hearing. Touch and its special modifications, taste and smell, +do not go to the making of art. Decadent French novelists, such as +Huysmann, make their heroes revel in perfume-symphonies, but we feel +that the sentiment described is morbid and unreal, and we feel rightly. +Some people speak of a cook as an "artist," and a pudding as a "perfect +poem," but a healthy instinct rebels. Art, whether sculpture, painting, +drama, music, is of sight or hearing. The reason is simple. Sight and +hearing are the distant senses; sight is, as some one has well said, +"touch at a distance." Sight and hearing are of things already detached +and somewhat remote; they are the fitting channels for art which is cut +loose from immediate action and reaction. Taste and touch are too +intimate, too immediately vital. In Russian, as Tolstoi has pointed out +(and indeed in other languages the same is observable), the word for +beauty (_krasota_) means, to begin with, only that which pleases the +sight. Even hearing is excluded. And though latterly people have begun +to speak of an "ugly deed" or of "beautiful music," it is not good +Russian. The simple Russian does not make Plato's divine muddle between +the good and the beautiful. If a man gives his coat to another, the +Russian peasant, knowing no foreign language, will not say the man has +acted "beautifully." + +To see a thing, to feel a thing, as a work of art, we must, then, become +for the time unpractical, must be loosed from the fear and the flurry of +actual living, must become spectators. Why is this? Why can we not live +and look at once? The _fact_ that we cannot is clear. If we watch a +friend drowning we do not note the exquisite curve made by his body as +he falls into the water, nor the play of the sunlight on the ripples as +he disappears below the surface; we should be inhuman, æsthetic fiends +if we did. And again, why? It would do our friend no harm that we should +enjoy the curves and the sunlight, provided we also threw him a rope. +But the simple fact is that we _cannot_ look at the curves and the +sunlight because our whole being is centred on acting, on saving him; we +cannot even, at the moment, fully feel our own terror and impending +loss. So again if we want to see and to feel the splendour and vigour of +a lion, or even to watch the cumbrous grace of a bear, we prefer that a +cage should intervene. The cage cuts off the need for motor actions; it +interposes the needful physical and moral distance, and we are free for +contemplation. Released from our own terrors, we see more and better, +and we feel differently. A man intent on action is like a horse in +blinkers, he goes straight forward, seeing only the road ahead. + +Our brain is, indeed, it would seem, in part, an elaborate arrangement +for providing these blinkers. If we saw and realized the whole of +everything, we should want to do too many things. The brain allows us +not only to remember, but, which is quite as important, to forget and +neglect; it is an organ of oblivion. By neglecting most of the things we +see and hear, we can focus just on those which are important for action; +we can cease to be potential artists and become efficient practical +human beings; but it is only by limiting our view, by a great +renunciation as to the things we see and feel. The artist does just the +reverse. He renounces doing in order to practise seeing. He is by nature +what Professor Bergson calls "distrait," aloof, absent-minded, intent +only, or mainly, on contemplation. That is why the ordinary man often +thinks the artist a fool, or, if he does not go so far as that, is made +vaguely uncomfortable by him, never really understands him. The artist's +focus, all his system of values, is different, his world is a world of +images which are his realities. + + * * * * * + +The distinction between art and ritual, which has so long haunted and +puzzled us, now comes out quite clearly, and also in part the relation +of each to actual life. Ritual, we saw, was a re-presentation or a +pre-presentation, a re-doing or pre-doing, a copy or imitation of life, +but,--and this is the important point,--always with a practical end. Art +is also a representation of life and the emotions of life, but cut loose +from immediate action. Action may be and often is represented, but it is +not that it may lead on to a practical further end. The end of art is in +itself. Its value is not mediate but _im_mediate. Thus ritual _makes, as +it were, a bridge between real life and art_, a bridge over which in +primitive times it would seem man must pass. In his actual life he hunts +and fishes and ploughs and sows, being utterly intent on the practical +end of gaining his food; in the _dromenon_ of the Spring Festival, +though his _acts_ are unpractical, being mere singing and dancing and +mimicry, his _intent_ is practical, to induce the return of his +food-supply. In the drama the representation may remain for a time the +same, but the intent is altered: man has come out from action, he is +separate from the dancers, and has become a spectator. The drama is an +end in itself. + + * * * * * + +We know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a _dromenon_ +became the drama, and we have seen that the shift is symbolized and +expressed by the addition of the _theatre_, or spectator-place, to the +orchestra, or dancing-place. We have also tried to analyse the meaning +of the shift. It remains to ask what was its cause. Ritual does not +always develop into art, though in all probability dramatic art has +always to go through the stage of ritual. The leap from real life to the +emotional contemplation of life cut loose from action would otherwise be +too wide. Nature abhors a leap, she prefers to crawl over the ritual +bridge. There seem at Athens to have been two main causes why the +_dromenon_ passed swiftly, inevitably, into the drama. They are, first, +the decay of religious faith; second, the influx from abroad of a new +culture and new dramatic material. + +It may seem surprising to some that the decay of religious faith should +be an impulse to the birth of art. We are accustomed to talk rather +vaguely of art "as the handmaid of religion"; we think of art as +"inspired by" religion. But the decay of religious faith of which we now +speak is not the decay of faith in a god, or even the decay of some high +spiritual emotion; it is the decay of a belief in the efficacy of +certain magical rites, and especially of the Spring Rite. So long as +people believed that by excited dancing, by bringing in an image or +leading in a bull you could induce the coming of Spring, so long would +the _dromena_ of the Dithyramb be enacted with intense enthusiasm, and +with this enthusiasm would come an actual accession and invigoration of +vital force. But, once the faintest doubt crept in, once men began to be +guided by experience rather than custom, the enthusiasm would die down, +and the collective invigoration no longer be felt. Then some day there +will be a bad summer, things will go all wrong, and the chorus will +sadly ask: "Why should I dance my dance?" They will drift away or become +mere spectators of a rite established by custom. The rite itself will +die down, or it will live on only as the May Day rites of to-day, a +children's play, or at best a thing done vaguely "for luck." + +The spirit of the rite, the belief in its efficacy, dies, but the rite +itself, the actual mould, persists, and it is this ancient ritual mould, +foreign to our own usage, that strikes us to-day, when a Greek play is +revived, as odd and perhaps chill. A _chorus_, a band of dancers there +must be, because the drama arose out of a ritual dance. An _agon_, or +contest, or wrangling, there will probably be, because Summer contends +with Winter, Life with Death, the New Year with the Old. A tragedy must +be tragic, must have its _pathos_, because the Winter, the Old Year, +must die. There must needs be a swift transition, a clash and change +from sorrow to joy, what the Greeks called a _peripeteia_, a +_quick-turn-round_, because, though you carry out Winter, you bring in +Summer. At the end we shall have an Appearance, an Epiphany of a god, +because the whole gist of the ancient ritual was to summon the spirit of +life. All these ritual forms haunt and shadow the play, whatever its +plot, like ancient traditional ghosts; they underlie and sway the +movement and the speeches like some compelling rhythm. + +Now this ritual mould, this underlying rhythm, is a fine thing in +itself; and, moreover, it was once shaped and cast by a living spirit: +the intense immediate desire for food and life, and for the return of +the seasons which bring that food and life. But we have seen that, once +the faith in man's power magically to bring back these seasons waned, +once he began to doubt whether he could really carry out Winter and +bring in Summer, his emotion towards these rites would cool. Further, we +have seen that these rites repeated year by year ended, among an +imaginative people, in the mental creation of some sort of dæmon or god. +This dæmon, or god, was more and more held responsible on his own +account for the food-supply and the order of the Horæ, or Seasons; so we +get the notion that this dæmon or god himself led in the Seasons; Hermes +dances at the head of the Charites, or an Eiresione is carried to Helios +and the Horæ. The thought then arises that this man-like dæmon who rose +from a real King of the May, must himself be approached and dealt with +as a man, bargained with, sacrificed to. In a word, in place of +_dromena_, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments, +holy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern +sense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods. The relation of these +figures of gods to art we shall consider when we come to sculpture. + +So the _dromenon_, the thing done, wanes, the prayer, the praise, the +sacrifice waxes. Religion moves away from drama towards theology, but +the ritual mould of the _dromenon_ is left ready for a new content. + +Again, there is another point. The magical _dromenon_, the Carrying out +of Winter, the Bringing in of Spring, is doomed to an inherent and +deadly monotony. It is only when its magical efficacy is intensely +believed that it can go on. The life-history of a holy bull is always +the same; its magical essence is that it should be the same. Even when +the life-dæmon is human his career is unchequered. He is born, +initiated, or born again; he is married, grows old, dies, is buried; and +the old, old story is told again next year. There are no fresh personal +incidents, peculiar to one particular dæmon. If the drama rose from the +Spring Song only, beautiful it might be, but with a beauty that was +monotonous, a beauty doomed to sterility. + +We seem to have come to a sort of _impasse_, the spirit of the +_dromenon_ is dead or dying, the spectators will not stay long to watch +a doing doomed to monotony. The ancient moulds are there, the old +bottles, but where is the new wine? The pool is stagnant; what angel +will step down to trouble the waters? + + * * * * * + +Fortunately we are not left to conjecture what _might_ have happened. In +the case of Greece we know, though not as clearly as we wish, what did +happen. We can see in part why, though the _dromena_ of Adonis and +Osiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere +ritual; the _dromenon_ of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama. + +Let us look at the facts, and first at some structural facts in the +building of the theatre. + +We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for +ritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a +rite of practical intent. We further saw that the _theatre_, the place +for the spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and +dancing; the marble _seats_ are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from +action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in +importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and +give their name _theatre_ to the whole structure; action is swallowed up +in contemplation. But contemplation of what? At first, of course, of the +ritual dance, but not for long. That, we have seen, was doomed to a +deadly monotony. In a Greek theatre there was not only orchestra and a +spectator-place, there was also a _scene_ or _stage_. + +The Greek word for stage is, as we said, _skenè_, our scene. The _scene_ +was not a stage in our sense, _i.e._ a platform raised so that the +players might be better viewed. It was simply a tent, or rude hut, in +which the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses. +The fact that the Greek theatre had, to begin with, no permanent stage +in our sense, shows very clearly how little it was regarded as a +spectacle. The ritual dance was a _dromenon_, a thing to be done, not a +thing to be looked at. The history of the Greek stage is one long story +of the encroachment of the stage on the orchestra. At first a rude +platform or table is set up, then scenery is added; the movable tent is +translated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first +outside the orchestra; then bit by bit the _scene_ encroaches till the +sacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and +the stage wax, the _dromenon_ and the orchestra wane. + +This shift in the relation of dancing-place and stage is very clearly +seen in Fig. 2, a plan of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (p. 144). The +old circular orchestra shows the dominance of ritual; the new curtailed +orchestra of Roman times and semicircular shape shows the dominance of +the spectacle. + +[Illustration: Fig. 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens.] + +Greek tragedy arose, Aristotle has told us, from the _leaders_ of the +Dithyramb, the leaders of the Spring Dance. The Spring Dance, the mime +of Summer and Winter, had, as we have seen, only one actor, one actor +with two parts--Death and Life. With only one play to be played, and +that a one-actor play, there was not much need for a stage. A _scene_, +that is a _tent_, was needed, as we saw, because all the dancers had to +put on their ritual gear, but scarcely a stage. From a rude platform +the prologue might be spoken, and on that platform the Epiphany or +Appearance of the New Year might take place; but the play played, the +life-history of the life-spirit, was all too familiar; there was no need +to look, the thing was to dance. You need a stage--not necessarily a +raised stage, but a place apart from the dancers--when you have new +material for your players, something you need to look at, to attend to. +In the sixth century B.C., at Athens, came _the_ great innovation. +Instead of the old plot, the life-history of the life-spirit, with its +deadly monotony, new plots were introduced, not of life-spirits but of +human individual heroes. In a word, Homer came to Athens, and out of +Homeric stories playwrights began to make their plots. This innovation +was the death of ritual monotony and the _dromenon_. It is not so much +the old that dies as the new that kills. + + * * * * * + +Æschylus himself is reported to have said that his tragedies were +"slices from the great banquet of Homer." The metaphor is not a very +pleasing one, but it expresses a truth. By Homer, Æschylus meant not +only our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but the whole body of Epic or Heroic +poetry which centred round not only the Siege of Troy but the great +expedition of the _Seven Against Thebes_, and which, moreover, contained +the stories of the heroes before the siege began, and their adventures +after it was ended. It was from these heroic sagas for the most part, +though not wholly, that the _myths_ or plots of not only Æschylus but +also Sophocles and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays +are lost to us, are taken. The new wine that was poured into the old +bottles of the _dromena_ at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga. We +know as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly +responsible for this inpouring--the great democratic tyrant +Peisistratos. We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and +then pass to what he did. + +He found an ancient Spring _dromenon_, perhaps well-nigh effete. Without +destroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old +plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and thereby arose +the drama. + +Let us look first, then, at what Peisistratos found. + +The April festival of Dionysos at which the great dramas were performed +was not the earliest festival of the god. Thucydides[37] expressly tells +us that on the 12th day of the month Anthesterion, that is in the quite +early spring, at the turn of our February and March, were celebrated +_the more ancient Dionysia_. It was a three-days' festival.[38] On the +first day, called "Cask-opening," the jars of new wine were broached. +Among the Bœotians the day was called not the day of Dionysos, but the +day of the Good or Wealthy Daimon. The next day was called the day of +the "Cups"--there was a contest or _agon_ of drinking. The last day was +called the "Pots," and it, too, had its "Pot-Contests." It is the +ceremonies of this day that we must notice a little in detail; for they +are very surprising. "Casks," "Cups," and "Pots," sound primitive +enough. "Casks" and "Cups" go well with the wine-god, but the "Pots" +call for explanation. + +The second day of the "Cups," joyful though it sounds, was by the +Athenians counted unlucky, because on that day they believed "the ghosts +of the dead rose up." The sanctuaries were roped in, each householder +anointed his door with pitch, that the ghost who tried to enter might +catch and stick there. Further, to make assurance doubly sure, from +early dawn he chewed a bit of buckthorn, a plant of strong purgative +powers, so that, if a ghost should by evil chance go down his throat, it +should at least be promptly expelled. + +For two, perhaps three, days of constant anxiety and ceaseless +precautions the ghosts fluttered about Athens. Men's hearts were full of +nameless dread, and, as we shall see, hope. At the close of the third +day the ghosts, or, as the Greeks called them, _Keres_, were bidden to +go. Some one, we do not know whom, it may be each father of a household, +pronounced the words: "Out of the door, ye Keres; it is no longer +Anthesteria," and, obedient, the Keres were gone. + +But before they went there was a supper for these souls. All the +citizens cooked a _panspermia_ or "Pot-of-all-Seeds," but of this +Pot-of-all-Seeds no citizen tasted. It was made over to the spirits of +the under-world and Hermes their daimon, Hermes "Psychopompos," +Conductor, Leader of the dead. + + * * * * * + +We have seen how a forest people, dependent on fruit trees and berries +for their food, will carry a maypole and imagine a tree-spirit. But a +people of agriculturists will feel and do and think quite otherwise; +they will look, not to the forest but to the earth for their returning +life and food; they will sow seeds and wait for their sprouting, as in +the gardens of Adonis. Adonis seems to have passed through the two +stages of Tree-Spirit and Seed-Spirit; his effigy was sometimes a tree +cut down, sometimes his planted "Gardens." Now seeds are many, +innumerable, and they are planted in the earth, and a people who bury +their dead know, or rather feel, that the earth is dead man's land. So, +when they prepare a pot of seeds on their All Souls' Day, it is not +really or merely as a "supper for the souls," though it may be that +kindly notion enters. The ghosts have other work to do than to eat their +supper and go. They take that supper "of all seeds," that _panspermia_, +with them down to the world below, that they may tend it and foster it +and bring it back in autumn as a pot of _all fruits_, a _pankarpia_. + + "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." + +The dead, then, as well as the living--this is for us the important +point--had their share in the _dromena_ of the "more ancient Dionysia." +These agricultural spring _dromena_ were celebrated just outside the +ancient city gates, in the _agora_, or place of assembly, on a circular +dancing-place, near to a very primitive sanctuary of Dionysos which was +opened only once in the year, at the Feast of Cups. Just outside the +gates was celebrated yet another festival of Dionysos equally primitive, +called the "Dionysia in the Fields." It had the form though not the date +of our May Day festival. Plutarch[39] thus laments over the "good old +times": "In ancient days," he says, "our fathers used to keep the feast +of Dionysos in homely, jovial fashion. There was a procession, a jar of +wine and a _branch_; then some one dragged in a goat, another followed +bringing a wicker basket of figs, and, to crown all, the phallos." It +was just a festival of the fruits of the whole earth: wine and the +basket of figs and the branch for vegetation, the goat for animal life, +the phallos for man. No thought here of the dead, it is all for the +living and his food. + + * * * * * + +Such sanctities even a great tyrant might not tamper with. But if you +may not upset the old you may without irreverence add the new. +Peisistratos probably cared little for, and believed less in, magical +ceremonies for the renewal of fruits, incantations of the dead. We can +scarcely picture him chewing buckthorn on the day of the "Cups," or +anointing his front door with pitch to keep out the ghosts. Very wisely +he left the Anthesteria and the kindred festival "in the fields" where +and as they were. But for his own purposes he wanted to do honour to +Dionysos, and also above all things to enlarge and improve the rites +done in the god's honour, so, leaving the old sanctuary to its fate, he +built a new temple on the south side of the Acropolis where the present +theatre now stands, and consecrated to the god a new and more splendid +precinct. + +He did not build the present theatre, we must always remember that. The +rows of stone seats, the chief priest's splendid marble chair, were not +erected till two centuries later. What Peisistratos did was to build a +small stone temple (see Fig. 2), and a great round orchestra of stone +close beside it. Small fragments of the circular foundation can still be +seen. The spectators sat on the hill-side or on wooden seats; there was +as yet no permanent _theātron_ or spectator-place, still less a stone +stage; the _dromena_ were done on the dancing-place. But for +spectator-place they had the south slope of the Acropolis. What kind of +wooden stage they had unhappily we cannot tell. It may be that only a +portion of the orchestra was marked off. + + * * * * * + +Why did Peisistratos, if he cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts, +take such trouble to foster and amplify the worship of this +maypole-spirit, Dionysos? Why did he add to the Anthesteria, the +festival of the family ghosts and the peasant festival "in the fields," +a new and splendid festival, a little later in the spring, the _Great +Dionysia_, or _Dionysia of the City_? One reason among others was +this--Peisistratos was a "tyrant." + +Now a Greek "tyrant" was not in our sense "tyrannical." He took his own +way, it is true, but that way was to help and serve the common people. +The tyrant was usually raised to his position by the people, and he +stood for democracy, for trade and industry, as against an idle +aristocracy. It was but a rudimentary democracy, a democratic tyranny, +the power vested in one man, but it stood for the rights of the many as +against the few. Moreover, Dionysos was always of the people, of the +"working classes," just as the King and Queen of the May are now. The +upper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but +_their own ancestors_. But--and this was what Peisistratos with great +insight saw--Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city. +The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed +aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts +and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not +inherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the +Dionysia "in the fields," but he added the Great Dionysia "in the city." + +Peisistratos was not the only tyrant who concerned himself with the +_dromena_ of Dionysos. Herodotos[40] tells the story of another tyrant, +a story which is like a window opening suddenly on a dark room. At +Sicyon, a town near Corinth, there was in the _agora_ a _heroon_, a +hero-tomb, of an Argive hero, Adrastos. + +"The Sicyonians," says Herodotos, "paid other honours to Adrastos, and, +moreover, they celebrated his death and disasters with tragic choruses, +not honouring Dionysos but Adrastos." We think of "tragic" choruses as +belonging exclusively to the theatre and Dionysos; so did Herodotus, but +clearly here they belonged to a local hero. His adventures and his death +were commemorated by choral dances and songs. Now when Cleisthenes +became tyrant of Sicyon he felt that the cult of the local hero was a +danger. What did he do? Very adroitly he brought in from Thebes another +hero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos; +part of his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new +Theban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people's god, +to Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and +die. No local hero can live on without his cult. + +The act of Cleisthenes seems to us a very drastic proceeding. But +perhaps it was not really so revolutionary as it seems. The local hero +was not so very unlike a local _dæmon_, a Spring or Winter spirit. We +have seen in the Anthesteria how the paternal ghosts are expected to +look after the seeds in spring. The more important the ghost the more +incumbent is this duty upon him. _Noblesse oblige_. On the river +Olynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos, +who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and +Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the +lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round +about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. "And it is a +wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They +say that formerly the people used to perform the accustomed rites to +the dead in the month Elaphebolion, but now they do them in +Anthesterion, _and that on this account the fish come up in those months +only_ in which they are wont to do honour to the dead." The river is the +chief source of the food-supply, so to send fish, not seeds and flowers, +is the dead hero's business. + +Peisistratos was not so daring as Cleisthenes. We do not hear that he +disturbed or diminished any local cult. He did not attempt to move the +Anthesteria with its ghost cult; he only added a new festival, and +trusted to its recent splendour gradually to efface the old. And at this +new festival he celebrated the deeds of other heroes, not local but of +greater splendour and of wider fame. If he did not bring Homer to +Athens, he at least gave Homer official recognition. Now to bring Homer +to Athens was like opening the eyes of the blind. + + * * * * * + +Cicero, in speaking of the influence of Peisistratos on literature, +says: "He is said to have arranged in their present order the works of +Homer, which were previously in confusion." He arranged them not for +what we should call "publication," but for public recitation, and +another tradition adds that he or his son fixed the order of their +recitation at the great festival of "All Athens," the Panathenaia. +Homer, of course, was known before in Athens in a scrappy way; now he +was publicly, officially promulgated. It is probable, though not +certain, that the "Homer" which Peisistratos prescribed for recitation +at the Panathenaia was just our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and that the rest +of the heroic cycle, all the remaining "slices" from the heroic banquet, +remained as material for dithyrambs and dramas. The "tyranny" of +Peisistratos and his son lasted from 560 to 501 B.C.; tradition said +that the first dramatic contest was held in the new theatre built by +Peisistratos in 535 B.C., when Thespis won the prize. Æschylus was born +in 525 B.C.; his first play, with a plot from the heroic saga, the +_Seven Against Thebes_, was produced in 467 B.C. It all came very +swiftly, the shift from the dithyramb as Spring Song to the heroic drama +was accomplished in something much under a century. Its effect on the +whole of Greek life and religion--nay, on the whole of subsequent +literature and thought--was incalculable. Let us try to see why. + + * * * * * + +Homer was the outcome, the expression, of an "heroic" age. When we use +the word "heroic" we think vaguely of something brave, brilliant, +splendid, something exciting and invigorating. A hero is to us a man of +clear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a +good friend and a good hater. The word "hero" calls up such figures as +Achilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure. Now such +figures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are +not confined to Homer. They occur in any and every heroic age. We are +beginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic characters, do not arise +from any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings, but, +given certain social conditions, they may, and do, appear anywhere and +at any time. The world has seen several heroic ages, though it is, +perhaps, doubtful if it will ever see another. What, then, are the +conditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic +poetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence on, and +importance to, the development of Greek dramatic art? Why had it power +to change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living +drama? Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so +eagerly welcome it to Athens? + +In the old ritual dance the individual was nothing, the choral band, the +group, everything, and in this it did but reflect primitive tribal life. +Now in the heroic _saga_ the individual is everything, the mass of the +people, the tribe, or the group, are but a shadowy background which +throws up the brilliant, clear-cut personality into a more vivid light. +The epic poet is all taken up with what he called _klea andron_, +"glorious deeds of men," of individual heroes; and what these heroes +themselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal +distinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies +meet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes +are for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not +hereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility. +Rather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage paid them is a +personal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his +followers by bravery, he must keep them by personal generosity. +Moreover, heroic wars are oftenest not tribal feuds consequent on tribal +raids, more often they arise from personal grievances, personal +jealousies; the siege of Troy is undertaken not because the Trojans have +raided the cattle of the Achæans, but because a single Trojan, Paris, +has carried off Helen, a single Achæan's wife. + +Another noticeable point is that in heroic poems scarcely any one is +safely and quietly at home. The heroes are fighting in far-off lands or +voyaging by sea; hence we hear little of tribal and even of family ties. +The real centre is not the hearth, but the leader's tent or ship. Local +ties that bind to particular spots of earth are cut, local differences +fall into abeyance, a sort of cosmopolitanism, a forecast of +pan-Hellenism, begins to arise. And a curious point--all this is +reflected in the gods. We hear scarcely anything of local cults, nothing +at all of local magical maypoles and Carryings-out of Winter and +Bringings-in of Summer, nothing whatever of "Suppers" for the souls, or +even of worship paid to particular local heroes. A man's ghost when he +dies does not abide in its grave ready to rise at springtime and help +the seeds to sprout; it goes to a remote and shadowy region, a common, +pan-Hellenic Hades. And so with the gods themselves; they are cut clean +from earth and from the local bits of earth out of which they grew--the +sacred trees and holy stones and rivers and still holier beasts. There +is not a holy Bull to be found in all Olympus, only figures of men, +bright and vivid and intensely personal, like so many glorified, +transfigured Homeric heroes. + +In a word, the heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, is the outcome +of a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the +shifting of populations.[42] But more is needed, and just this something +more the age that gave birth to Homer had. We know now that before the +northern people whom we call Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes, +came down into Greece, there had grown up in the basin of the Ægean a +civilization splendid, wealthy, rich in art and already ancient, the +civilization that has come to light at Troy, Mycenæ, Tiryns, and most of +all in Crete. The adventurers from North and South came upon a land +rich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might +sack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth. Such +conditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by +unbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and +its vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness. In settled, +social conditions, as has been well remarked, "most of the heroes would +sooner or later have found themselves in prison." + +A heroic age, happily for society, cannot last long; it has about it +while it does last a sheen of passing and pathetic splendour, such as +that which lights up the figure of Achilles, but it is bound to fade and +pass. A heroic _society_ is almost a contradiction in terms. Heroism is +for individuals. If a society is to go on at all it must strike its +roots deep in some soil, native or alien. The bands of adventurers must +disband and go home, or settle anew on the land they have conquered. +They must beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into +pruning-hooks. Their gallant, glorious leader must become a sober, +home-keeping, law-giving and law-abiding king; his followers must abate +their individuality and make it subserve a common social purpose. + +Athens, in her sheltered peninsula, lay somewhat outside the tide of +migrations and heroic exploits. Her population and that of all Attica +remained comparatively unchanged; her kings are kings of the stationary, +law-abiding, state-reforming type; Cecrops, Erechtheus, Theseus, are not +splendid, flashing, all-conquering figures like Achilles and Agamemnon. +Athens might, it would seem, but for the coming of Homer, have lain +stagnant in a backwater of conservatism, content to go on chanting her +traditional Spring Songs year by year. It is a wonderful thing that this +city of Athens, beloved of the gods, should have been saved from the +storm and stress, sheltered from what might have broken, even shattered +her, spared the actual horrors of a heroic _age_, yet given heroic +_poetry_, given the clear wine-cup poured when the ferment was over. She +drank of it deep and was glad and rose up like a giant refreshed. + + * * * * * + +We have seen that to make up a heroic age there must be two factors, the +new and the old; the young, vigorous, warlike people must seize on, +appropriate, in part assimilate, an old and wealthy civilization. It +almost seems as if we might go a step farther, and say that for every +great movement in art or literature we must have the same conditions, a +contact of new and old, of a new spirit seizing or appropriated by an +old established order. Anyhow for Athens the historical fact stands +certain. The amazing development of the fifth-century drama is just +this, the old vessel of the ritual Dithyramb filled to the full with the +new wine of the heroic _saga_; and it would seem that it was by the hand +of Peisistratos, the great democratic tyrant, that the new wine was +outpoured. + + * * * * * + +Such were roughly the outside conditions under which the drama of art +grew out of the _dromena_ of ritual. The racial secret of the individual +genius of Æschylus and the forgotten men who preceded him we cannot hope +to touch. We can only try to see the conditions in which they worked and +mark the splendid new material that lay to their hands. Above all things +we can see that this material, these Homeric _saga_, were just fitted +to give the needed impulse to art. The Homeric _saga_ had for an +Athenian poet just that remoteness from immediate action which, as we +have seen, is the essence of art as contrasted with ritual. + +Tradition says that the Athenians fined the dramatic poet Phrynichus for +choosing as the plot of one of his tragedies the Taking of Miletus. +Probably the fine was inflicted for political party reasons, and had +nothing whatever to do with the question of whether the subject was +"artistic" or not. But the story may stand, and indeed was later +understood to be, a sort of allegory as to the attitude of art towards +life. To understand and still more to contemplate life you must come out +from the choral dance of life and stand apart. In the case of one's own +sorrows, be they national or personal, this is all but impossible. We +can ritualize our sorrows, but not turn them into tragedies. We cannot +stand back far enough to see the picture; we want to be doing, or at +least lamenting. In the case of the sorrows of others this standing back +is all too easy. We not only bear their pain with easy stoicism, but we +picture it dispassionately at a safe distance; we feel _about_ rather +than _with_ it. The trouble is that we do not feel enough. Such was the +attitude of the Athenian towards the doings and sufferings of Homeric +heroes. They stood towards them as spectators. These heroes had not the +intimate sanctity of home-grown things, but they had sufficient +traditional sanctity to make them acceptable as the material of drama. + +Adequately sacred though they were, they were yet free and flexible. It +is impiety to alter the myth of your local hero, it is impossible to +recast the myth of your local dæmon--that is fixed forever--his +conflict, his _agon_, his death, his _pathos_, his Resurrection and its +heralding, his Epiphany. But the stories of Agamemnon and Achilles, +though at home these heroes were local _daimones_, have already been +variously told in their wanderings from place to place, and you can +mould them more or less to your will. Moreover, these figures are +already personal and individual, not representative puppets, mere +functionaries like the May Queen and Winter; they have life-histories of +their own, never quite to be repeated. It is in this blend of the +individual and the general, the personal and the universal, that one +element at least of all really great art will be found to lie; and just +here at Athens we get a glimpse of the moment of fusion; we see a +definite historical reason why and how the universal in _dromena_ came +to include the particular in drama. We see, moreover, how in place of +the old monotonous plots, intimately connected with actual practical +needs, we get material cut off from immediate reactions, seen as it were +at the right distance, remote yet not too remote. We see, in a word, how +a ritual enacted year by year became a work of art that was a +"possession for ever." + + * * * * * + +Possibly in the mind of the reader there may have been for some time a +growing discomfort, an inarticulate protest. All this about _dromena_ +and drama and dithyrambs, bears and bulls, May Queens and Tree-Spirits, +even about Homeric heroes, is all very well, curious and perhaps even in +a way interesting, but it is not at all what he expected, still less +what he wants. When he bought a book with the odd incongruous title, +_Ancient Art and Ritual_, he was prepared to put up with some remarks on +the artistic side of ritual, but he did expect to be told something +about what the ordinary man calls art, that is, statues and pictures. +Greek drama is no doubt a form of ancient art, but acting is not to the +reader's mind the chief of arts. Nay, more, he has heard doubts raised +lately--and he shares them--as to whether acting and dancing, about +which so much has been said, are properly speaking arts at all. Now +about painting and sculpture there is no doubt. Let us come to business. + +To a business so beautiful and pleasant as Greek sculpture we shall +gladly come, but a word must first be said to explain the reason of our +long delay. The main contention of the present book is that ritual and +art have, in emotion towards life, a common root, and further, that +primitive art develops normally, at least in the case of the drama, +straight out of ritual. The nature of that primitive ritual from which +the drama arose is not very familiar to English readers. It has been +necessary to stress its characteristics. Almost everywhere, all over the +world, it is found that primitive ritual consists, not in prayer and +praise and sacrifice, but in mimetic dancing. But it is in Greece, and +perhaps Greece only, in the religion of Dionysos, that we can actually +trace, if dimly, the transition steps that led from dance to drama, from +ritual to art. It was, therefore, of the first importance to realize the +nature of the dithyramb from which the drama rose, and so far as might +be to mark the cause and circumstances of the transition. + +Leaving the drama, we come in the next chapter to Sculpture; and here, +too, we shall see how closely art was shadowed by that ritual out of +which she sprang. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[35] See Bibliography at end for Professor Murray's examination. + +[36] Mr. Edward Bullough, _The British Journal of Psychology_ (1912), p. +88. + +[37] II, 15. + +[38] See my _Themis_, p. 289, and _Prolegomena_, p. 35. + +[39] _De Cupid. div._ 8. + +[40] V, 66. + +[41] _Athen._, VIII, ii, 334 f. See my _Prolegomena_, p. 54. + +[42] Thanks to Mr. H.M. Chadwick's _Heroic Age_ (1912). + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE + + +In passing from the drama to Sculpture we make a great leap. We pass +from the living thing, the dance or the play acted by real people, the +thing _done_, whether as ritual or art, whether _dromenon_ or _drama_, +to the thing _made_, cast in outside material rigid form, a thing that +can be looked at again and again, but the making of which can never +actually be re-lived whether by artist or spectator. + +Moreover, we come to a clear threefold distinction and division hitherto +neglected. We must at last sharply differentiate the artist, the work of +art, and the spectator. The artist may, and usually indeed does, become +the spectator of his own work, but the spectator is not the artist. The +work of art is, once executed, forever distinct both from artist and +spectator. In the primitive choral dance all three--artist, work of art, +spectator--were fused, or rather not yet differentiated. Handbooks on +art are apt to begin with the discussion of rude decorative patterns, +and after leading up through sculpture and painting, something vague is +said at the end about the primitiveness of the ritual dance. But +historically and also genetically or logically the dance in its +inchoateness, its undifferentiatedness, comes first. It has in it a +larger element of emotion, and less of presentation. It is this +inchoateness, this undifferentiatedness, that, apart from historical +fact, makes us feel sure that logically the dance is primitive. + + * * * * * + +To illustrate the meaning of Greek sculpture and show its close affinity +with ritual, we shall take two instances, perhaps the best-known of +those that survive, one of them in relief, the other in the round, the +Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon at Athens and the Apollo Belvedere, +and we shall take them in chronological order. As the actual frieze and +the statue cannot be before us, we shall discuss no technical questions +of style or treatment, but simply ask how they came to be, what human +need do they express. The Parthenon frieze is in the British Museum, the +Apollo Belvedere is in the Vatican at Rome, but is readily accessible +in casts or photographs. The outlines given in Figs. 5 and 6 can of +course only serve to recall subject-matter and design. + + * * * * * + +The Panathenaic frieze once decorated the _cella_ or innermost shrine of +the Parthenon, the temple of the Maiden Goddess Athena. It twined like a +ribbon round the brow of the building and thence it was torn by Lord +Elgin and brought home to the British Museum as a national trophy, for +the price of a few hundred pounds of coffee and yards of scarlet cloth. +To realize its meaning we must always think it back into its place. +Inside the _cella_, or shrine, dwelt the goddess herself, her great +image in gold and ivory; outside the shrine was sculptured her worship +by the whole of her people. For the frieze is nothing but a great ritual +procession translated into stone, the Panathenaic procession, or +procession of _all_ the Athenians, of all Athens, in honour of the +goddess who was but the city incarnate, Athena. + + "A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea, + A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory, + That none from the pride of her head may rend; + Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary, + Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame, + Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend, + A light upon earth as the sun's own flame, + A name as his name-- + Athens, a praise without end." + +SWINBURNE: _Erechtheus_, 141. + +Sculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has +ritual as its subject, _is_ embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this +point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the +thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has +been selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has +only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author +is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain +to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at +later date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual +reliefs, "votive" reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises +translated into stone. + +[Illustration: Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession.] + +Of the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little, +yet its ritual importance was great. In religion to-day the dance is +dead save for the dance of the choristers before the altar at Seville. +But the procession lives on, has even taken to itself new life. It is a +means of bringing masses of people together, of ordering them and +co-ordinating them. It is a means for the magical spread of supposed +good influence, of "grace." Witness the "Beating of the Bounds" and the +frequent processions of the Blessed Sacrament in Roman Catholic lands. +The Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to +house. Now-a-days it is to collect pence; once it was to diffuse "grace" +and increase. We remember the procession of the holy Bull at Magnesia +and the holy Bear at Saghalien (pp. 92-100). + +[Illustration: Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession.] + +What, then, was the object of the Panathenaic procession? It was first, +as its name indicates, a procession that brought all Athens together. +Its object was social and political, to express the unity of Athens. +Ritual in primitive times is always social, collective. + +The arrangement of the procession is shown in Figs. 3 and 4 (pp. 174, +175). In Fig. 3 we see the procession as it were in real life, just as +it is about to enter the temple and the presence of the Twelve Gods. +These gods are shaded black because in reality invisible. Fig. 4 is a +diagram showing the position of the various parts of the procession in +the sculptural frieze. At the west end of the temple the procession +begins to form: the youths of Athens are mounting their horses. It +divides, as it needs must, into two halves, one sculptured on the north, +one on the south side of the _cella_. After the throng of the cavalry +getting denser and denser we come to the chariots, next the sacrificial +animals, sheep and restive cows, then the instruments of sacrifice, +flutes and lyres and baskets and trays for offerings; men who carry +blossoming olive-boughs; maidens with water-vessels and drinking-cups. +The whole tumult of the gathering is marshalled and at last met and, as +it were, held in check, by a band of magistrates who face the procession +just as it enters the presence of the twelve seated gods, at the east +end. The whole body politic of the gods has come down to feast with the +whole body politic of Athens and her allies, of whom these gods are but +the projection and reflection. The gods are there together because man +is collectively assembled. + +The great procession culminates in a sacrifice and a communal feast, a +sacramental feast like that on the flesh of the holy Bull at Magnesia. +The Panathenaia was a high festival including rites and ceremonies of +diverse dates, an armed dance of immemorial antiquity that may have +dated from the days when Athens was subject to Crete, and a recitation +ordered by Peisistratos of the poems of Homer. + + * * * * * + +Some theorists have seen in art only an extension of the "play +instinct," just a liberation of superfluous vitality and energies, as it +were a rehearsing for life. This is not our view, but into all art, in +so far as it is a cutting off of motor reactions, there certainly enters +an element of recreation. It is interesting to note that to the Greek +mind religion was specially connected with the notion rather of a +festival than a fast. Thucydides[43] is assuredly by nature no reveller, +yet religion is to him mainly a "rest from toil." He makes Perikles say: +"Moreover, we have provided for our spirit by many opportunities of +recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the +year." To the anonymous writer known as the "Old Oligarch" the main gist +of religion appears to be a decorous social enjoyment. In easy +aristocratic fashion he rejoices that religious ceremonials exist to +provide for the less well-to-do citizens suitable amusements that they +would otherwise lack. "As to sacrifices and sanctuaries and festivals +and precincts, the People, knowing that it is impossible for each man +individually to sacrifice and feast and have sacrifices and an ample and +beautiful city, has discovered by what means he may enjoy these +privileges." + + * * * * * + +In the procession of the Panathenaia all Athens was gathered together, +but--and this is important--for a special purpose, more primitive than +any great political or social union. Happily this purpose is clear; it +is depicted in the central slab of the east end of the frieze (Fig. 5). +A priest is there represented receiving from the hands of a boy a great +_peplos_ or robe. It is the sacred robe of Athena woven for her and +embroidered by young Athenian maidens and offered to her every five +years. The great gold and ivory statue in the Parthenon itself had no +need of a robe; she would scarcely have known what to do with one; her +raiment was already of wrought gold, she carried helmet and spear and +shield. But there was an ancient image of Athena, an old Madonna of the +people, fashioned before Athena became a warrior maiden. This image was +rudely hewn in wood, it was dressed and decked doll-fashion like a May +Queen, and to her the great _peplos_ was dedicated. The _peplos_ was +hoisted as a sail on the Panathenaic ship, and this ship Athena had +borrowed from Dionysos himself, who went every spring in procession in a +ship-car on wheels to open the season for sailing. To a seafaring people +like the Athenians the opening of the sailing season was all-important, +and naturally began not at midsummer but in spring. + +[Illustration: Fig. 5.] + +The sacred _peplos_, or robe, takes us back to the old days when the +spirit of the year and the "luck" of the people was bound up with a rude +image. The life of the year died out each year and had to be renewed. To +make a new image was expensive and inconvenient, so, with primitive +economy it was decided that the life and luck of the image should be +renewed by re-dressing it, by offering to it each year a new robe. We +remember (p. 60) how in Thuringia the new puppet wore the shirt of the +old and thereby new life was passed from one to the other. But behind +the old image we can get to a stage still earlier, when there was at the +Panathenaia no image at all, only a yearly maypole; a bough hung with +ribbons and cakes and fruits and the like. A bough was cut from the +sacred olive tree of Athens, called the _Moria_ or Fate Tree. It was +bound about with fillets and hung with fruit and nuts and, in the +festival of the Panathenaia, they carried it up to the Acropolis to give +to Athena _Polias_, "Her-of-the-City," and as they went they sang the +old Eiresione song (p. 114). _Polias_ is but the city, the _Polis_ +incarnate. + +This _Moria_, or Fate Tree, was the very life of Athens; the life of the +olive which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. When +the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it +seemed that all was over. But next day it put forth a new shoot and the +people knew that the city's life still lived. Sophocles[44] sang of the +glory of the wondrous life tree of Athens: + + "The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe, + Sea-gray, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow, + None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold. + For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old; + He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold." + +The holy tree carried in procession is, like the image of Athena, made +of olive-wood, just the incarnate life of Athens ever renewed. + +The Panathenaia was not, like the Dithyramb, a spring festival. It took +place in July at the height of the summer heat, when need for rain was +the greatest. But the month Hecatombaion, in which it was celebrated, +was the first month of the Athenian year and the day of the festival was +the birthday of the goddess. When the goddess became a war-goddess, it +was fabled that she was born in Olympus, and that she sprang full grown +from her father's head in glittering armour. But she was really born on +earth, and the day of her birth was the birthday of every earthborn +goddess, the day of the beginning of the new year, with its returning +life. When men observe only the actual growth of new green life from the +ground, this birthday will be in spring; when they begin to know that +the seasons depend on the sun, or when the heat of the sun causes great +need of rain, it will be at midsummer, at the solstice, or in northern +regions where men fear to lose the sun in midwinter, as with us. The +frieze of the Parthenon is, then, but a primitive festival translated +into stone, a rite frozen to a monument. + + * * * * * + +Passing over a long space of time we come to our next illustration, the +Apollo Belvedere (Fig. 6). + +It might seem that here at last we have nothing primitive; here we have +art pure and simple, ideal art utterly cut loose from ritual, "art for +art's sake." Yet in this Apollo Belvedere, this product of late and +accomplished, even decadent art, we shall see most clearly the intimate +relation of art and ritual; we shall, as it were, walk actually across +that transition bridge of ritual which leads from actual life to art. + +[Illustration: Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere.] + +The date of this famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy +of a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure +is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is +caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be +about to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will +have left the earth. The Greek sculptor's genius was all focussed, as we +shall presently see, on the human figure and on the mastery of its many +possibilities of movement and action. Greek statues can roughly be dated +by the way they stand. At first, in the archaic period, they stand +firmly planted with equal weight on either foot, the feet close +together. Then one foot is advanced, but the weight still equally +divided, an almost impossible position. Next, the weight is thrown on +the right foot; and the left knee is bent. This is of all positions the +loveliest for the human body. We allow it to women, forbid it to men +save to "æsthetes." If the back numbers of _Punch_ be examined for the +figure of "Postlethwaite" it will be seen that he always stands in this +characteristic relaxed pose. + +When the sculptor has mastered the possible he bethinks him of the +impossible. He will render the human body flying. It may have been the +accident of a mythological subject that first suggested the motive. +Leochares, a famous artist of the fourth century B.C., made a group of +Zeus in the form of an eagle carrying off Ganymede. A replica of the +group is preserved in the Vatican, and should stand for comparison near +the Apollo. We have the same tiptoe poise, the figure just about to +leave the earth. Again, it is not a dance, but a flight. This poise is +suggestive to us because it marks an art cut loose, as far as may be, +from earth and its realities, even its rituals. + +What is it that Apollo is doing? The question and suggested answers have +occupied many treatises. There is only one answer: We do not know. It +was at first thought that the Apollo had just drawn his bow and shot an +arrow. This suggestion was made to account for the pose; but that, as we +have seen, is sufficiently explained by the flight-motive. Another +possible solution is that Apollo brandishes in his uplifted hand the +ægis, or goatskin shield, of Zeus. Another suggestion is that he holds +as often a lustral, or laurel bough, that he is figured as Daphnephoros, +"Laurel-Bearer." + +We do not know if the Belvedere Apollo carried a laurel, but we _do_ +know that it was of the very essence of the god to be a Laurel-Bearer. +That, as we shall see in a moment, he, like Dionysos, arose in part out +of a rite, a rite of Laurel-Bearing--a _Daphnephoria_. We have not got +clear of ritual yet. When Pausanias,[45] the ancient traveller, whose +notebook is our chief source about these early festivals, came to Thebes +he saw a hill sacred to Apollo, and after describing the temple on the +hill he says: + + "The following custom is still, I know, observed at Thebes. A boy + of distinguished family and himself well-looking and strong is made + the priest of Apollo, _for the space of a year_. The title given + him is Laurel-Bearer (Daphnephoros), for these boys wear wreaths + made of laurel." + +We know for certain now what these yearly priests are: they are the Kings +of the Year, the Spirits of the Year, May-Kings, Jacks-o'-the-Green. +The name given to the boy is enough to show he carried a laurel branch, +though Pausanias only mentions a wreath. Another ancient writer gives us +more details.[46] He says in describing the festival of the +Laurel-Bearing: + + "They wreathe a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers. + On the top is fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend + smaller ones. Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe, + binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked + with saffron. By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they + actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath this is the moon; the + smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the + fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in + number. The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are + alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole. The + Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he + has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is + dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light + shoes. There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs + before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns." + +This is the most elaborate maypole ceremony that we know of in ancient +times. The globes representing sun and moon show us that we have come to +a time when men know that the fruits of the earth in due season depended +on the heavenly bodies. The year with its 365 days is a Sun-Year. Once +this Sun-Year established and we find that the times of the solstices, +midwinter and midsummer became as, or even more, important than the +spring itself. The date of the _Daphnephoria_ is not known. + +At Delphi itself, the centre of Apollo-worship, there was a festival +called the _Stepteria_, or festival "of those who make the wreathes," in +which "mystery" a Christian Bishop, St. Cyprian, tells us he was +initiated. In far-off Tempe--that wonderful valley that is still the +greenest spot in stony, barren Greece, and where the laurel trees still +cluster--there was an altar, and near it a laurel tree. The story went +that Apollo had made himself a crown from this very laurel, and _taking +in his hand a branch of this same laurel_, i.e. as Laurel-Bearer, had +come to Delphi and taken over the oracle. + +"And to this day the people of Delphi send high-born boys in procession +there. And they, when they have reached Tempe and made a splendid +sacrifice return back, after wearing themselves wreaths from the very +laurel from which the god made himself a wreath." + +We are inclined to think of the Greeks as a people apt to indulge in the +singular practice of wearing wreaths in public, a practice among us +confined to children on their birthdays and a few eccentric people on +their wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the +custom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because +they were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that +they might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek +bridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his +marriage may be the beginning of new life, that his "wife may be as the +fruitful vine, and his children as the olive branches round about his +table." And our children to-day, though they do not know it, wear +wreaths on their birthdays because with each new year their life is +re-born. + + * * * * * + +Apollo then, was, like Dionysos, King of the May and--saving his +presence--Jack-in-the-Green. The god manifestly arose out of the rite. For +a moment let us see _how_ he arose. It will be remembered that in a +previous chapter (p. 70) we spoke of "personification." We think of the +god Apollo as an abstraction, an unreal thing, perhaps as a "false god." +The god Apollo does not, and never did, exist. He is an idea--a thing made +by the imagination. But primitive man does not deal with abstractions, +does not worship them. What happens is, as we saw (p. 71), something like +this: Year by year a boy is chosen to carry the laurel, to bring in the +May, and later year by year a puppet is made. It is a different boy each +year, carrying a different laurel branch. And yet in a sense it is the +same boy; he is always the Laurel-Bearer--"Daphnephoros," always the +"Luck" of the village or city. This Laurel-Bearer, the same yesterday, +to-day, and forever, is the stuff of which the god is made. The god arises +from the rite, he is gradually detached from the rite, and as soon as he +gets a life and being of his own, apart from the rite, he is a first stage +in art, a work of art existing in the mind, gradually detached from even +the faded action of ritual, and later to be the model of the actual work +of art, the copy in stone. + +The stages, it would seem, are: actual life with its motor reactions, +the ritual copy of life with its faded reactions, the image of the god +projected by the rite, and, last, the copy of that image, the work of +art. + + * * * * * + +We see now why in the history of all ages and every place art is what is +called the "handmaid of religion." She is not really the "handmaid" at +all. She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is +the image of the god. Primitive art in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria,[47] +represents either rites, processions, sacrifices, magical ceremonies, +embodied prayers; or else it represents the images of the gods who +spring from those rites. Track any god right home, and you will find him +lurking in a ritual sheath, from which he slowly emerges, first as a +_dæmon_, or spirit, of the year, then as a full-blown divinity. + + * * * * * + +In Chapter II we saw how the _dromenon_ gave birth to the _drama_, how, +bit by bit, out of the chorus of dancers some dancers withdrew and +became spectators sitting apart, and on the other hand others of the +dancers drew apart on to the stage and presented to the spectators a +spectacle, a thing to be looked _at_, not joined _in_. And we saw how in +this spectacular mood, this being cut loose from immediate action, lay +the very essence of the artist and the art-lover. Now in the drama of +Thespis there was at first, we are told, but one actor; later Æschylus +added a second. It is clear who this actor, this _protagonist_ or "first +contender" was, the one actor with the double part, who was Death to be +carried out and Summer to be carried in. He was the Bough-Bearer, the +only possible actor in the one-part play of the renewal of life and the +return of the year. + + * * * * * + +The May-King, the leader of the choral dance gave birth not only to the +first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the god, be +he Dionysos or be he Apollo; and this figure of the god thus imagined +out of the year-spirit was perhaps more fertile for art than even the +protagonist of the drama. It may seem strange to us that a god should +rise up out of a dance or a procession, because dances and processions +are not an integral part of our national life, and do not call up any +very strong and instant emotion. The old instinct lingers, it is true, +and emerges at critical moments; when a king dies we form a great +procession to carry him to the grave, but we do not dance. We have court +balls, and these with their stately ordered ceremonials are perhaps the +last survival of the genuinely civic dance, but a court ball is not +given at a king's funeral nor in honour of a god. + +But to the Greek the god and the dance were never quite sundered. It +almost seems as if in the minds of Greek poets and philosophers there +lingered some dim half-conscious remembrance that some of these gods at +least actually came out of the ritual dance. Thus, Plato,[48] in +treating of the importance of rhythm in education says: "The gods, +pitying the toilsome race of men, have appointed the sequence of +religious festivals to give them times of rest, and have given them the +Muses and Apollo, the Muse-Leader, as fellow-revellers." + +"The young of all animals," he goes on to say, "cannot keep quiet, +either in body or voice. They must leap and skip and overflow with +gamesomeness and sheer joy, and they must utter all sorts of cries. But +whereas animals have no perception of order or disorder in their +motions, the gods who have been appointed to men as our fellow-dancers +have given to us a sense of pleasure in rhythm and harmony. And so they +move us and lead our bands, knitting us together with songs and in +dances, and these we call _choruses_." Nor was it only Apollo and +Dionysos who led the dance. Athena herself danced the Pyrrhic dance. +"Our virgin lady," says Plato, "delighting in the sports of the dance, +thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in +full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and +maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the +goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the +festivals." + +Plato is unconsciously inverting the order of things, natural +happenings. Take the armed dance. There is, first, the "actual necessity +of war." Men go to war armed, to face actual dangers, and at their head +is a leader in full armour. That is real life. There is then the festal +re-enactment of war, when the fight is not actually fought, but there is +an imitation of war. That is the ritual stage, the _dromenon_. Here, +too, there is a leader. More and more this dance becomes a spectacle, +less and less an action. Then from the periodic _dromenon_, the ritual +enacted year by year, emerges an imagined permanent leader; a dæmon, or +god--a Dionysos, an Apollo, an Athena. Finally the account of what +actually happens is thrown into the past, into a remote distance, and we +have an "ætiological" myth--a story told to give a cause or reason. The +whole natural process is inverted. + +And last, as already seen, the god, the first work of art, the thing +unseen, imagined out of the ritual of the dance, is cast back into the +visible world and fixed in space. Can we wonder that a classical +writer[49] should say "the statues of the craftsmen of old times are the +relics of ancient dancing." That is just what they are, rites caught and +fixed and frozen. "Drawing," says a modern critic,[50] "is at bottom, +like all the arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper." +Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the +dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. +"The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, +not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth +will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." +Art, that is, gradually dominates mere ritual. + + * * * * * + +We come to another point. The Greek gods as we know them in classical +sculpture are always imaged in human shape. This was not of course +always the case with other nations. We have seen how among savages the +totem, that is, the emblem of tribal unity, was usually an animal or a +plant. We have seen how the emotions of the Siberian tribe in Saghalien +focussed on a bear. The savage totem, the Saghalien Bear, is on the way +to be, but is not quite, a god; he is not personal enough. The +Egyptians, and in part the Assyrians, halted half-way and made their +gods into monstrous shapes, half-animal, half-man, which have their own +mystical grandeur. But since we are men ourselves, feeling human +emotion, if our gods are in great part projected emotions, the natural +form for them to take is human shape. + +"Art imitates Nature," says Aristotle, in a phrase that has been much +misunderstood. It has been taken to mean that art is a copy or +reproduction of natural objects. But by "Nature" Aristotle never means +the outside world of created things, he means rather creative force, +what produces, not what has been produced. We might almost translate the +Greek phrase, "Art, like Nature, creates things," "Art acts like Nature +in producing things." These things are, first and foremost, human +things, human action. The drama, with which Aristotle is so much +concerned, invents human action like real, _natural_ action. Dancing +"imitates character, emotion, action." Art is to Aristotle almost wholly +bound by the limitations of _human_ nature. + +This is, of course, characteristically a Greek limitation. "Man is the +measure of all things," said the old Greek sophist, but modern science +has taught us another lesson. Man may be in the foreground, but the +drama of man's life is acted out for us against a tremendous background +of natural happenings: a background that preceded man and will outlast +him; and this background profoundly affects our imagination, and hence +our art. We moderns are in love with the background. Our art is a +landscape art. The ancient landscape painter could not, or would not, +trust the background to tell its own tale: if he painted a mountain he +set up a mountain-god to make it real; if he outlined a coast he set +human coast-nymphs on its shore to make clear the meaning. + +Contrast with this our modern landscape, from which bit by bit the nymph +has been wholly banished. It is the art of a stage, without actors, a +scene which is all background, all suggestion. It is an art given us by +sheer recoil from science, which has dwarfed actual human life almost to +imaginative extinction. + + "Landscape, then, offered to the modern imagination a scene empty + of definite actors, superhuman or human, that yielded to reverie + without challenge all that is in a moral without a creed, tension + or ambush of the dark, threat of ominous gloom, the relenting and + tender return or overwhelming outburst of light, the pageantry of + clouds above a world turned quaker, the monstrous weeds of trees + outside the town, the sea that is obstinately epic still."[51] + +It was to this world of backgrounds that men fled, hunted by the sense +of their own insignificance. + +"Minds the most strictly bound in their acts by civil life, in their +fancy by the shrivelled look of destiny under scientific speculation, +felt on solitary hill or shore those tides of the blood stir again that +are ruled by the sun and the moon and travelled as if to tryst where an +apparition might take form. Poets ordained themselves to this vigil, +haunters of a desert church, prompters of an elemental theatre, +listeners in solitary places for intimations from a spirit in hiding; +and painters followed the impulse of Wordsworth." + +We can only see the strength and weakness of Greek sculpture, feel the +emotion of which it was the utterance, if we realize clearly this modern +spirit of the background. All great modern, and perhaps even ancient, +poets are touched by it. Drama itself, as Nietzsche showed, "hankers +after dissolution into mystery. Shakespeare would occasionally knock the +back out of the stage with a window opening on the 'cloud-capp'd +towers.'" But Maeterlinck is the best example, because his genius is +less. He is the embodiment, almost the caricature, of a tendency. + + "Maeterlinck sets us figures in the foreground only to launch us + into that limbus. The supers jabbering on the scene are there, + children of presentiment and fear, to make us aware of a third, the + mysterious one, whose name is not on the bills. They come to warn + us by the nervous check and hurry of their gossip of the approach + of that background power. Omen after omen announces him, the talk + starts and drops at his approach, a door shuts and the thrill of + his passage is the play."[52] + +It is, perhaps, the temperaments that are most allured and terrified by +this art of the bogey and the background that most feel the need of and +best appreciate the calm and level, rational dignity of Greek naturalism +and especially the naturalism of Greek sculpture. + +For it is naturalism, not realism, not imitation. By all manner of +renunciations Greek sculpture is what it is. The material, itself +marble, is utterly unlike life, it is perfectly cold and still, it has +neither the texture nor the colouring of life. The story of Pygmalion +who fell in love with the statue he had himself sculptured is as false +as it is tasteless. Greek sculpture is the last form of art to incite +physical reaction. It is remote almost to the point of chill +abstraction. The statue in the round renounces not only human life +itself, but all the natural background and setting of life. The statues +of the Greek gods are Olympian in spirit as well as subject. They are +like the gods of Epicurus, cut loose alike from the affairs of men, and +even the ordered ways of Nature. So Lucretius[53] pictures them: + + "The divinity of the gods is revealed and their tranquil abodes, + which neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow + congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless + ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely + around. Nature, too, supplies all their wants, and nothing ever + impairs their peace of mind." + +Greek art moves on through a long course of technical accomplishment, of +ever-increasing mastery over materials and methods. But this course we +need not follow. For our argument the last word is said in the figures +of these Olympians translated into stone. Born of pressing human needs +and desires, images projected by active and even anxious ritual, they +pass into the upper air and dwell aloof, spectator-like and all but +spectral. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[43] II, 38. + +[44] _Oed. Col._ 694, trans. D.S. MacColl. + +[45] IX, 10, 4. + +[46] See my _Themis_, p. 438. + +[47] It is now held by some and good authorities that the prehistoric +paintings of cave-dwelling man had also a ritual origin; that is, that +the representations of animals were intended to act magically, to +increase the "supply of the animal or help the hunter to catch him." +But, as this question is still pending, I prefer, tempting though they +are, not to use prehistoric paintings as material for my argument. + +[48] _Laws_, 653. + +[49] _Athen._ XIV, 26, p. 629. + +[50] D.S. MacColl, "A Year of Post-Impressionism," _Nineteenth Century_, +p. 29. (1912.) + +[51] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 20. (1902.) + +[52] D.S. MacColl, _op. cit._, p. 18. + +[53] II, 18. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +RITUAL, ART AND LIFE + + +In the preceding chapters we have seen ritual emerge from the practical +doings of life. We have noted that in ritual we have the beginning of a +detachment from practical ends; we have watched the merely emotional +dance develop from an undifferentiated chorus into a spectacle performed +by actors and watched by spectators, a spectacle cut off, not only from +real life, but also from ritual issues; a spectacle, in a word, that has +become an end in itself. We have further seen that the choral dance is +an undifferentiated whole which later divides out into three clearly +articulate parts, the artist, the work of art, the spectator or art +lover. We are now in a position to ask what is the good of all this +antiquarian enquiry? Why is it, apart from the mere delight of +scientific enquiry, important to have seen that art arose from ritual? + +The answer is simple-- + +The object of this book, as stated in the preface, is to try to throw +some light on the function of art, that is on what it has done, and +still does to-day, for life. Now in the case of a complex growth like +art, it is rarely if ever possible to understand its function--what it +does, how it works--unless we know something of how that growth began, +or, if its origin is hid, at least of the simpler forms of activity that +preceded it. For art, this earlier stage, this simpler form, which is +indeed itself as it were an embryo and rudimentary art, we found to +be--ritual. + +Ritual, then, has not been studied for its own sake, still less for its +connection with any particular dogma, though, as a subject of singular +gravity and beauty, ritual is well worth a lifetime's study. It has been +studied because ritual is, we believe, a frequent and perhaps universal +transition stage between actual life and that peculiar contemplation of +or emotion towards life which we call art. All our long examination of +beast-dances, May-day festivals and even of Greek drama has had just +this for its object--to make clear that art--save perhaps in a few +specially gifted natures--did not arise straight out of life, but out +of that collective emphasis of the needs and desires of life which we +have agreed to call ritual. + + * * * * * + +Our formal argument is now over and ritual may drop out of the +discussion. But we would guard against a possible misunderstanding. We +would not be taken to imply that ritual is obsolete and must drop out of +life, giving place to the art it has engendered. It may well be that, +for certain temperaments, ritual is a perennial need. Natures specially +gifted can live lives that are emotionally vivid, even in the rare high +air of art or science; but many, perhaps most of us, breathe more freely +in the _medium_, literally the _midway_ space, of some collective +ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original +thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been +perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready +made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a +host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and +freer, and every manifestation of life is regarded with a new reverence. +With this fresh outpouring of the spirit, this fuller consciousness of +life, there comes a need for _first-hand_ emotion and expression, and +that expression is found for all classes in a revival of the ritual +dance. Some of the strenuous, exciting, self-expressive dances of to-day +are of the soil and some exotic, but, based as they mostly are on very +primitive ritual, they stand as singular evidence of this real recurrent +need. Art in these latter days goes back as it were on her own steps, +recrossing the ritual bridge back to life. + + * * * * * + +It remains to ask what, in the light of this ritual origin, is the +function of art? How do we relate it to other forms of life, to science, +to religion, to morality, to philosophy? These are big-sounding +questions, and towards their solution only hints here and there can be +offered, stray thoughts that have grown up out of this study of ritual +origins and which, because they have helped the writer, are offered, +with no thought of dogmatism, to the reader. + + * * * * * + +We English are not supposed to be an artistic people, yet art, in some +form or another, bulks large in the national life. We have theatres, a +National Gallery, we have art-schools, our tradesmen provide for us +"art-furniture," we even hear, absurdly enough, of "art-colours." +Moreover, all this is not a matter of mere antiquarian interest, we do +not simply go and admire the beauty of the past in museums; a movement +towards or about art is all alive and astir among us. We have new +developments of the theatre, problem plays, Reinhardt productions, +Gordon Craig scenery, Russian ballets. We have new schools of painting +treading on each other's heels with breathless rapidity: Impressionists, +Post-Impressionists, Futurists. Art--or at least the desire for, the +interest in, art--is assuredly not dead. + +Moreover, and this is very important, we all feel about art a certain +obligation, such as some of us feel about religion. There is an "ought" +about it. Perhaps we do not really care much about pictures and poetry +and music, but we feel we "ought to." In the case of music it has +happily been at last recognized that if you have not an "ear" you cannot +care for it, but two generations ago, owing to the unfortunate cheapness +and popularity of keyed instruments, it was widely held that one half of +humanity, the feminine half, "ought" to play the piano. This "ought" +is, of course, like most social "oughts," a very complex product, but +its existence is well worth noting. + +It is worth noting because it indicates a vague feeling that art has a +real value, that art is not a mere luxury, nor even a rarefied form of +pleasure. No one feels they _ought_ to take pleasure in beautiful scents +or in the touch of velvet; they either do or they don't. The first +point, then, that must be made clear is that art is of real value to +life in a perfectly clear biological sense; it invigorates, enhances, +promotes actual, spiritual, and through it physical life. + +This from our historical account we should at the outset expect, because +we have seen art, by way of ritual, arose out of life. And yet the +statement is a sort of paradox, for we have seen also that art differs +from ritual just in this, that in art, whether of the spectator or the +creator, the "motor reactions," _i.e._ practical life, the life of +doing, is for the time checked. This is of the essence of the artist's +vision, that he sees things detached and therefore more vividly, more +completely, and in a different light. This is of the essence of the +artist's emotion, that it is purified from personal desire. + +But, though the artist's vision and emotion alike are modified, +purified, they are not devitalized. Far from that, by detachment from +action they are focussed and intensified. Life is enhanced, only it is a +different kind of life, it is the life of the image-world, of the +_imag_ination; it is the spiritual and human life, as differentiated +from the life we share with animals. It is a life we all, as human +beings, possess in some, but very varying, degrees; and the natural man +will always view the spiritual man askance, because he is not +"practical." But the life of imagination, cut off from practical +reaction as it is, becomes in turn a motor-force causing new emotions, +and so pervading the general life, and thus ultimately becoming +"practical." No one function is completely cut off from another. The +main function of art is probably to intensify and purify emotion, but it +is substantially certain that, if we did not feel, we could not think +and should not act. Still it remains true that, in artistic +contemplation and in the realms of the artist's imagination not only are +practical motor-reactions cut off, but intelligence is suffused in, and +to some extent subordinated to, emotion. + + * * * * * + +One function, then, of art is to feed and nurture the imagination and +the spirit, and thereby enhance and invigorate the whole of human life. +This is far removed from the view that the end of art is to give +pleasure. Art does usually cause pleasure, singular and intense, and to +that which causes such pleasure we give the name of Beauty. But to +produce and enjoy Beauty is not the function of art. Beauty--or rather, +the sensation of Beauty--is what the Greeks would call an _epigignomenon +ti telos_, words hard to translate, something between a by-product and a +supervening perfection, a thing like--as Aristotle[54] for once +beautifully says of pleasure--"the bloom of youth to a healthy young +body." + +That this is so we see most clearly in the simple fact that, when the +artist begins to aim direct at Beauty, he usually misses it. We all +know, perhaps by sad experience, that the man who seeks out pleasure for +herself fails to find her. Let him do his work well for that work's +sake, exercise his faculties, "energize" as Aristotle would say, and he +will find pleasure come out unawares to meet him with her shining face; +but let him look for her, think of her, even desire her, and she hides +her head. A man goes out hunting, thinks of nothing but following the +hounds and taking his fences, being in at the death: his day is +full--alas! of pleasure, though he has scarcely known it. Let him forget +the fox and the fences, think of pleasure, desire her, and he will be in +at pleasure's death. + +So it is with the artist. Let him feel strongly, and see raptly--that +is, in complete detachment. Let him cast this, his rapt vision and his +intense emotion, into outside form, a statue or a painting; that form +will have about it a nameless thing, an unearthly aroma, which we call +beauty; this nameless presence will cause in the spectator a sensation +too rare to be called pleasure, and we shall call it a "sense of +beauty." But let the artist aim direct at Beauty, and she is gone, gone +before we hear the flutter of her wings. + + * * * * * + +The sign manual, the banner, as it were, of artistic creation is for the +creative artist not pleasure, but something better called joy. +Pleasure, it has been well said, is no more than an instrument contrived +by Nature to obtain from the individual the preservation and the +propagation of life. True joy is not the lure of life, but the +consciousness of the triumph of creation. Wherever joy is, creation has +been.[55] It may be the joy of a mother in the physical creation of a +child; it may be the joy of the merchant adventurer in pushing out new +enterprise, or of the engineer in building a bridge, or of the artist in +a masterpiece accomplished; but it is always of the thing created. +Again, contrast joy with glory. Glory comes with success and is +exceedingly _pleasant_; it is not joyous. Some men say an artist's crown +is glory; his deepest satisfaction is in the applause of his fellows. +There is no greater mistake; we care for praise just in proportion as we +are not sure we have succeeded. To the real creative artist even praise +and glory are swallowed up in the supreme joy of creation. Only the +artist himself feels the real divine fire, but it flames over into the +work of art, and even the spectator warms his hands at the glow. + +We can now, I think, understand the difference between the artist and +true lover of art on the one hand, and the mere æsthete on the other. +The æsthete does not produce, or, if he produces, his work is thin and +scanty. In this he differs from the artist; he does not feel so strongly +and see so clearly that he is forced to utterance. He has no joy, only +pleasure. He cannot even feel the reflection of this creative joy. In +fact, he does not so much feel as want to feel. He seeks for pleasure, +for sensual pleasure as his name says, not for the grosser kinds, but +for pleasure of that rarefied kind that we call a sense of beauty. The +æsthete, like the flirt, is cold. It is not even that his senses are +easily stirred, but he seeks the sensation of stirring, and most often +feigns it, not finds it. The æsthete is no more released from his own +desires than the practical man, and he is without the practical man's +healthy outlet in action. He sees life, not indeed in relation to +action, but to his own personal sensation. By this alone he is debarred +for ever from being an artist. As M. André Beaunier has well observed, +by the irony of things, when we see life in relation to ourselves we +cannot really represent it at all. The profligate thinks he knows women. +It is his irony, his curse that, because he sees them always in relation +to his own desires, his own pleasure, he never really knows them at all. + +There is another important point. We have seen that art promotes a part +of life, the spiritual, image-making side. But this side, wonderful +though it is, is never the whole of actual life. There is always the +practical side. The artist is always also a man. Now the æsthete tries +to make his whole attitude artistic--that is, contemplative. He is +always looking and prying and savouring, _savourant_, as he would say, +when he ought to be living. The result is that there is nothing to +_savourer_. All art springs by way of ritual out of keen emotion towards +life, and even the power to appreciate art needs this emotional reality +in the spectator. The æsthete leads at best a parasite, artistic life, +dogged always by death and corruption. + + * * * * * + +This brings us straight on to another question: What about Art and +Morality? Is Art immoral, or non-moral, or highly moral? Here again +public opinion is worth examining. Artists, we are told, are bad +husbands, and they do not pay their debts. Or if they become good +husbands and take to paying their debts, they take also to wallowing in +domesticity and produce bad art or none at all; they get tangled in the +machinery of practical reactions. Art, again, is apt to deal with risky +subjects. Where should we be if there were not a Censor of Plays? Many +of these instructive attitudes about artists as immoral or non-moral, +explain themselves instantly if we remember that the artist is _ipso +facto_ detached from practical life. In so far as he is an artist, for +each and every creative moment he is inevitably a bad husband, if being +a good husband means constant attention to your wife and her interests. +Spiritual creation _à deux_ is a happening so rare as to be negligible. + +The remoteness of the artist, his essential inherent detachment from +motor-reaction, explains the perplexities of the normal censor. He, +being a "practical man," regards emotion and vision, feeling and ideas, +as leading to action. He does not see that art arises out of ritual and +that even ritual is one remove from practical life. In the censor's +world the spectacle of the nude leads straight to desire, so the dancer +must be draped; the problem-play leads straight to the Divorce Court, +therefore it must be censored. The normal censor apparently knows +nothing of that world where motor-reactions are cut off, that house made +without hands, whose doors are closed on desire, eternal in the heavens. +The censor is not for the moment a _persona grata_, but let us give him +his due. He acts according to his lights and these often quite +adequately represent the average darkness. A normal audience contains +many "practical" men whose standard is the same as that of the normal +censor. Art--that is vision detached from practical reactions--is to +them an unknown world full of moral risks from which the artist is _quâ_ +artist immune. + +So far we might perhaps say that art was non-moral. But the statement +would be misleading, since, as we have seen, art is in its very origin +social, and social means human and collective. Moral and social are, in +their final analysis, the same. That human, collective emotion, out of +which we have seen the choral dance arise, is in its essence moral; that +is, it unites. "Art," says Tolstoy, "has this characteristic, that it +unites people." In this conviction, as we shall later see, he +anticipates the modern movement of the Unanimists (p. 249). + +But there is another, and perhaps simpler, way in which art is moral. As +already suggested, it purifies by cutting off the motor-reactions of +personal desire. An artist deeply in love with his friend's wife once +said: "If only I could paint her and get what I want from her, I could +bear it." His wish strikes a chill at first; it sounds egotistic; it has +the peculiar, instinctive, inevitable cruelty of the artist, seeing in +human nature material for his art. But it shows us the moral side of +art. The artist was a good and sensitive man; he saw the misery he had +brought and would bring to people he loved, and he saw, or rather felt, +a way of escape; he saw that through art, through vision, through +detachment, desire might be slain, and the man within him find peace. To +some natures this instinct after art is almost their sole morality. If +they find themselves intimately entangled in hate or jealousy or even +contempt, so that they are unable to see the object of their hate or +jealousy or contempt in a clear, quiet and lovely light, they are +restless, miserable, morally out of gear, and they are constrained to +fetter or slay personal desire and so find rest. + + * * * * * + +This aloofness, this purgation of emotion from personal passion, art has +in common with philosophy. If the philosopher will seek after truth, +there must be, says Plotinus, a "turning away" of the spirit, a +detachment. He must aim at contemplation; action, he says, is "a +weakening of contemplation." Our word _theory_, which we use in +connection with reasoning and which comes from the same Greek root as +_theatre_, means really looking fixedly at, contemplation; it is very +near in meaning to our _imagination_. But the philosopher differs from +the artist in this: he aims not only at the contemplation of truth, but +at the ordering of truths, he seeks to make of the whole universe an +intelligible structure. Further, he is not driven by the gadfly of +creation, he is not forced to cast his images into visible or audible +shape. He is remoter from the push of life. Still, the philosopher, +like the artist, lives in a world of his own, with a spell of its own +near akin to beauty, and the secret of that spell is the same detachment +from the tyranny of practical life. The essence of art, says Santayana, +is "the steady contemplation of things in their order and worth." He +might have been defining philosophy. + + * * * * * + +If art and philosophy are thus near akin, art and science are in their +beginning, though not in their final development, contrasted. Science, +it seems, begins with the desire for practical utility. Science, as +Professor Bergson has told us, has for its initial aim the making of +tools for life. Man tries to find out the laws of Nature, that is, how +natural things behave, in order primarily that he may get the better of +them, rule over them, shape them to his ends. That is why science is at +first so near akin to magic--the cry of both is: + + "I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." + +But, though the feet of science are thus firmly planted on the solid +ground of practical action, her head, too, sometimes touches the +highest heavens. The real man of science, like the philosopher, soon +comes to seek truth and knowledge for their own sake. In art, in +science, in philosophy, there come eventually the same detachment from +personal desire and practical reaction; and to artist, man of science, +and philosopher alike, through this detachment there comes at times the +same peace that passeth all understanding. + +Attempts have been often made to claim for art the utility, the +tool-making property, that characterizes the beginnings of science. +Nothing is beautiful, it is sometimes said, that is not useful; the +beauty of a jug or a table depends, we are often told, on its perfect +adaptation to its use. There is here some confusion of thought and some +obvious, but possibly unconscious, special pleading. Much of art, +specially decorative art, arises out of utilities, but its aim and its +criterion is not utility. Art may be structural, commemorative, magical, +what-not, may grow up out of all manner of practical needs, but it is +not till it is cut loose from these practical needs that Art is herself +and comes to her own. This does not mean that the jugs or tables are to +be bad jugs or tables, still less does it mean that the jugs or tables +should be covered with senseless machine-made ornament; but the utility +of the jug or table is a good in itself independent of, though often +associated with, its merit as art. + +No one has, I think, ever called Art "the handmaid of Science." There +is, indeed, no need to establish a hierarchy. Yet in a sense the +converse is true and Science is the handmaid of Art. Art is only +practicable as we have seen, when it is possible safely to cut off +motor-reactions. By the long discipline of ritual man accustomed himself +to slacken his hold on action, and be content with a shadowy counterfeit +practice. Then last, when through knowledge he was relieved from the +need of immediate reaction to imminent realities, he loosed hold for a +moment altogether, and was free to look, and art was born. He can never +quit his hold for long; but it would seem that, as science advances and +life gets easier and easier, safer and safer, he may loose his hold for +longer spaces. Man subdues the world about him first by force and then +by reason; and when the material world is mastered and lies at his beck, +he needs brute force no longer, and needs reason no more to make tools +for conquest. He is free to think for thought's sake, he may trust +intuition once again, and above all dare to lose himself in +contemplation, dare to be more and more an artist. Only here there lurks +an almost ironical danger. Emotion towards life is the primary stuff of +which art is made; there might be a shortage of this very emotional +stuff of which art herself is ultimately compacted. + +Science, then, helps to make art possible by making life safer and +easier, it "makes straight in the desert a highway for our God." But +only rarely and with special limitations easily understood does it +provide actual material for art. Science deals with abstractions, +concepts, class names, made by the intellect for convenience, that we +may handle life on the side desirable to us. When we classify things, +give them class-names, we simply mean that we note for convenience that +certain actually existing objects have similar qualities, a fact it is +convenient for us to know and register. These class-names being +_abstract_--that is, bundles of qualities rent away from living actual +objects, do not easily stir emotion, and, therefore, do not easily +become material for art whose function it is to express and communicate +emotion. Particular qualities, like love, honour, faith, may and _do_ +stir emotion; and certain bundles of qualities like, for example, +motherhood tend towards personification; but the normal class label like +horse, man, triangle does not easily become material for art; it remains +a practical utility for science. + +The abstractions, the class-names of science are in this respect quite +different from those other abstractions or unrealities already +studied--the gods of primitive religion. The very term we use shows +this. _Abstractions_ are things, qualities, _dragged away_ consciously +by the intellect, from actual things objectively existing. The primitive +gods are personifications--_i.e._ collective emotions taking shape in +imagined form. Dionysos has no more actual, objective existence than the +abstract horse. But the god Dionysos was not made by the intellect for +practical convenience, he was begotten by emotion, and, therefore, he +re-begets it. He and all the other gods are, therefore, the proper +material for art; he is, indeed, one of the earliest forms of art. The +abstract horse, on the other hand, is the outcome of reflection. We +must honour him as of quite extraordinary use for the purposes of +practical life, but he leaves us cold and, by the artist, is best +neglected. + + * * * * * + +There remains the relation of Art to Religion.[56] By now, it may be +hoped, this relation is transparently clear. The whole object of the +present book has been to show how primitive art grew out of ritual, how +art is in fact but a later and more sublimated, more detached form of +ritual. We saw further that the primitive gods themselves were but +projections or, if we like it better, personifications of the rite. They +arose straight out of it. + +Now we say advisedly "primitive gods," and this with no intention of +obscurantism. The god of later days, the unknown source of life, the +unresolved mystery of the world, is not begotten of a rite, is not, +essentially not, the occasion or object of art. With his relation to +art--which is indeed practically non-existent--we have nothing to do. Of +the other gods we may safely say that not only are they objects of art, +they are its prime material; in a word, primitive theology is an early +stage in the formation of art. Each primitive god, like the rite from +which he sprang, is a half-way house between practical life and art; he +comes into being from a half, but only half, inhibited desire. + + * * * * * + +Is there, then, no difference, except in degree of detachment, between +religion and art? Both have the like emotional power; both carry with +them a sense of obligation, though the obligation of religion is the +stronger. But there is one infallible criterion between the two which is +all-important, and of wide-reaching consequences. Primitive religion +asserts that her imaginations have objective existence; art more happily +makes no such claim. The worshipper of Apollo believes, not only that he +has imagined the lovely figure of the god and cast a copy of its shape +in stone, but he also believes that in the outside world the god Apollo +exists as an object. Now this is certainly untrue; that is, it does not +correspond with fact. There is no such thing as the god Apollo, and +science makes a clean sweep of Apollo and Dionysos and all such +fictitious objectivities; they are _eidola_, idols, phantasms, not +objective realities. Apollo fades earlier than Dionysos because the +worshipper of Dionysos keeps hold of _the_ reality that he and his +church or group have projected the god. He knows that _prier, c'est +élaborer Dieu_; or, as he would put it, he is "one with" his god. +Religion has this in common with art, that it discredits the actual +practical world; but only because it creates a new world and insists on +its actuality and objectivity. + +Why does the conception of a god impose obligation? Just because and in +so far as he claims to have objective existence. By giving to his god +from the outset objective existence the worshipper prevents his god from +taking his place in that high kingdom of spiritual realities which is +the imagination, and sets him down in that lower objective world which +always compels practical reaction. What might have been an ideal becomes +an idol. Straightway this objectified idol compels all sorts of ritual +reactions of prayer and praise and sacrifice. It is as though another +and a more exacting and commanding fellow-man were added to the +universe. But a moment's reflection will show that, when we pass from +the vague sense of power or _mana_ felt by the savage to the personal +god, to Dionysos or Apollo, though it may seem a set back it is a real +advance. It is the substitution of a human and tolerably humane power +for an incalculable whimsical and often cruel force. The idol is a step +towards, not a step from, the ideal. Ritual makes these idols, and it is +the business of science to shatter them and set the spirit free for +contemplation. Ritual must wane that art may wax. + +But we must never forget that ritual is the bridge by which man passes, +the ladder by which he climbs from earth to heaven. The bridge must not +be broken till the transit is made. And the time is not yet. We must not +pull down the ladder till we are sure the last angel has climbed. Only +then, at last, we dare not leave it standing. Earth pulls hard, and it +may be that the angels who ascended might _de_scend and be for ever +fallen. + + * * * * * + +It may be well at the close of our enquiry to test the conclusions at +which we have arrived by comparing them with certain _endoxa_, as +Aristotle would call them, that is, opinions and theories actually +current at the present moment. We take these contemporary controversies, +not implying that they are necessarily of high moment in the history of +art, or that they are in any fundamental sense new discoveries; but +because they are at this moment current and vital, and consequently form +a good test for the adequacy of our doctrines. It will be satisfactory +if we find our view includes these current opinions, even if it to some +extent modifies them and, it may be hoped, sets them in a new light. + +We have already considered the theory that holds art to be the creation +or pursuit or enjoyment of beauty. The other view falls readily into two +groups: + +(1) The "imitation" theory, with its modification, the idealization +theory, which holds that art either copies Nature, or, out of natural +materials, improves on her. + +(2) The "expression" theory, which holds that the aim of art is to +express the emotions and thoughts of the artist. + +The "Imitation" theory is out of fashion now-a-days. Plato and Aristotle +held it; though Aristotle, as we have seen, did not mean by "imitating +Nature" quite what we mean to-day. The Imitation theory began to die +down with the rise of Romanticism, which stressed the personal, +individual emotion of the artist. Whistler dealt it a rude, +ill-considered blow by his effective, but really foolish and irrelevant, +remark that to attempt to create Art by imitating Nature was "like +trying to make music by sitting on the piano." But, as already noted, +the Imitation theory of art was really killed by the invention of +photography. It was impossible for the most insensate not to see that in +a work of art, of sculpture or painting, there was an element of value +not to be found in the exact transcript of a photograph. Henceforth the +Imitation theory lived on only in the weakened form of Idealization. + +The reaction against the Imitation theory has naturally and inevitably +gone much too far. We have "thrown out the child with the bath-water." +All through the present book we have tried to show that art _arises +from_ ritual, and ritual is in its essence a faded action, an +imitation. Moreover, every work of art _is_ a copy of something, only +not a copy of anything having actual existence in the outside world. +Rather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the +artist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is +released from certain practical reactions. + + * * * * * + +The Impressionism that dominated the pictorial art of the later years of +the nineteenth century was largely a modified and very delicate +imitation. Breaking with conventions as to how things are _supposed to +be_--conventions mainly based not on seeing but on knowing or +imagining--the Impressionist insists on purging his vision from +knowledge, and representing things not as they are but as they really +_look_. He imitates Nature not as a whole, but as she presents herself +to his eyes. It was a most needful and valuable purgation, since +painting is the art proper of the eye. But, when the new effects of the +world as simply _seen_, the new material of light and shadow and tone, +had been to some extent--never completely--mastered, there was +inevitable reaction. Up sprang Post-Impressionists and Futurists. They +will not gladly be classed together, but both have this in common--they +are Expressionists, not Impressionists, not Imitators. + +The Expressionists, no matter by what name they call themselves, have +one criterion. They believe that art is not the copying or idealizing of +Nature, or of any aspect of Nature, but the expression and communication +of the artist's emotion. We can see that, between them and the +Imitationists, the Impressionists form a delicate bridge. They, too, +focus their attention on the artist rather than the object, only it is +on the artist's particular _vision_, his impression, what he actually +sees, not on his emotion, what he feels. + +Modern life is _not_ simple--cannot be simple--ought not to be; it is +not for nothing that we are heirs to the ages. Therefore the art that +utters and expresses our emotion towards modern life cannot be simple; +and, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living +tangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and +order it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One +art, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous, +unconscious life to-day, and that is Music; the other arts stand round +arrayed, half paralyzed, with drooping, empty hands. The nineteenth +century saw vast developments in an art that could express abstract, +unlocalized, unpersonified feelings more completely than painting or +poetry, the art of Music. + + * * * * * + +As a modern critic[57] has well observed: "In tone and rhythm music has +a notation for every kind and degree of action and passion, presenting +abstract moulds of its excitement, fluctuation, suspense, crisis, +appeasement; and all this _anonymously_, without place, actors, +circumstances, named or described, without a word spoken. Poetry has to +supply definite thought, arguments driving at a conclusion, ideas +mortgaged to this or that creed or system; and to give force to these +can command only a few rhythms limited by the duration of a human breath +and the pitch of an octave. The little effects worked out in this small +compass music sweeps up and builds into vast fabrics of emotion with a +dissolute freedom undreamed of in any other art." + +It may be that music provides for a century too stagnant and listless to +act out its own emotions, too reflective to be frankly sensuous, a +shadowy pageant of sense and emotion, that serves as a _katharsis_ or +purgation. + +Anyhow, "an art that came out of the old world two centuries ago, with a +few chants, love-songs, and dances; that a century ago was still tied to +the words of a mass or an opera; or threading little dance-movements +together in a 'suite,' became in the last century this extraordinary +debauch, in which the man who has never seen a battle, loved a woman, or +worshipped a god, may not only ideally, but through the response of his +nerves and pulses to immediate rhythmical attack, enjoy the ghosts of +struggle, rapture, and exaltation with a volume and intricacy, an +anguish, a triumph, an irresponsibility, unheard of. An amplified +pattern of action and emotion is given: each man may fit to it what +images he will."[58] + + * * * * * + +If our contention throughout this book be correct the Expressionists are +in one matter abundantly right. Art, we have seen, again and again +rises by way of ritual out of emotion, out of life keenly and vividly +livid. The younger generation are always talking of life; they have a +sort of cult of life. Some of the more valorous spirits among them even +tend to disparage art that life may be the more exalted. "Stop painting +and sculping," they cry, "and go and see a football match." There you +have life! Life is, undoubtedly, essential to art because life is the +stuff of emotion, but some thinkers and artists have an oddly limited +notion of what life is. It must, it seems, in the first place, be +essentially physical. To sit and dream in your study is not to live. The +reason of this odd limitation is easy to see. We all think life is +especially the sort of life we are _not_ living ourselves. The +hard-worked University professor thinks that "Life" is to be found in a +French _café_; the polished London journalist looks for "Life" among the +naked Polynesians. The cult of savagery, and even of simplicity, in +every form, simply spells complex civilization and diminished physical +vitality. + +The Expressionist is, then, triumphantly right in the stress he lays on +emotion; but he is not right if he limits life to certain of its more +elementary manifestations; and still less is he right, to our minds, in +making life and art in any sense coextensive. Art, as we have seen, +sustains and invigorates life, but only does it by withdrawal from these +very same elementary forms of life, by inhibiting certain sensuous +reactions. + + * * * * * + +In another matter one section of Expressionists, the Futurists, are in +the main right. The emotion to be expressed is the emotion of to-day, or +still better to-morrow. The mimetic dance arose not only nor chiefly out +of reflection on the past; but out of either immediate joy or imminent +fear or insistent hope for the future. We are not prepared perhaps to go +all lengths, to "burn all museums" because of their contagious +corruption, though we might be prepared to "banish the nude for the +space of ten years." If there is to be any true living art, it must +arise, not from the contemplation of Greek statues, not from the revival +of folk-songs, not even from the re-enacting of Greek plays, but from a +keen emotion felt towards things and people living to-day, in modern +conditions, including, among other and deeper forms of life, the haste +and hurry of the modern street, the whirr of motor cars and aeroplanes. + +There are artists alive to-day, strayed revellers, who wish themselves +back in the Middle Ages, who long for the time when each man would have +his house carved with a bit of lovely ornament, when every village +church had its Madonna and Child, when, in a word, art and life and +religion went hand in hand, not sharply sundered by castes and +professions. But we may not put back the clock, and, if by +differentiation we lose something, we gain much. The old choral dance on +the orchestral floor was an undifferentiated thing, it had a beauty of +its own; but by its differentiation, by the severance of artist and +actors and spectators, we have gained--the drama. We may not cast +reluctant eyes backwards; the world goes forward to new forms of life, +and the Churches of to-day must and should become the Museums of +to-morrow. + + * * * * * + +It is curious and instructive to note that Tolstoy's theory of Art, +though not his practice, is essentially Expressive and even approaches +the dogmas of the Futurist. Art is to him just the transmission of +personal emotion to others. It may be bad emotion or it may be good +emotion, emotion it must be. To take his simple and instructive +instance: a boy goes out into a wood and meets a wolf, he is frightened, +he comes back and tells the other villagers what he felt, how he went to +the wood feeling happy and light-hearted and the wolf came, and what the +wolf looked like, and how he began to be frightened. This is, according +to Tolstoy, art. Even if the boy never saw a wolf at all, if he had +really at another time been frightened, and if he was able to conjure up +fear in himself and communicate it to others--that also would be art. +The essential is, according to Tolstoy, that he should feel himself and +so represent his feeling that he communicates it to others.[59] +Art-schools, art-professionalism, art-criticism are all useless or worse +than useless, because they cannot teach a man to feel. Only life can do +that. + +All art is, according to Tolstoy, good _quâ_ art that succeeds in +transmitting emotion. But there is good emotion and bad emotion, and the +only right material for art is good emotion, and the only good emotion, +the only emotion worth expressing, is subsumed, according to Tolstoy, in +the religion of the day. This is how he explains the constant affinity +in nearly all ages of art and religion. Instead of regarding religion as +an early phase of art, he proceeds to define religious perception as the +highest social ideal of the moment, as that "understanding of the +meaning of life which represents the highest level to which men of that +society have attained, an understanding defining the highest good at +which that society aims." "Religious perception in a society," he +beautifully adds, "is like the direction of a flowing river. If the +river flows at all, it must have a direction." Thus, religion, to +Tolstoy, is not dogma, not petrifaction, it makes indeed dogma +impossible. The religious perception of to-day flows, Tolstoi says, in +the Christian channel towards the union of man in a common brotherhood. +It is the business of the modern artist to feel and transmit emotion +towards this unity of man. + +Now it is not our purpose to examine whether Tolstoy's definition of +religion is adequate or indeed illuminating. What we wish to note is +that he grasps the truth that in art we must look and feel, and look and +feel forward, not backward, if we would live. Art somehow, like +language, is always feeling forward to newer, fuller, subtler emotions. +She seems indeed in a way to feel ahead even of science; a poet will +forecast dimly what a later discovery will confirm. Whether and how long +old channels, old forms will suffice for the new spirit can never be +foreseen. + + * * * * * + +We end with a point of great importance, though the doctrine we would +emphasize may be to some a hard saying, even a stumbling-block. Art, as +Tolstoy divined, is social, not individual. Art is, as we have seen, +social in origin, it remains and must remain social in function. The +dance from which the drama rose was a choral dance, the dance of a band, +a group, a church, a community, what the Greeks called a _thiasos_. The +word means a _band_ and a _thing of devotion_; and reverence, devotion, +collective emotion, is social in its very being. That band was, to +begin with, as we saw, the whole collection of initiated tribesmen, +linked by a common name, rallying round a common symbol. + +Even to-day, when individualism is rampant, art bears traces of its +collective, social origin. We feel about it, as noted before, a certain +"ought" which always spells social obligation. Moreover, whenever we +have a new movement in art, it issues from a group, usually from a small +professional coterie, but marked by strong social instincts, by a +missionary spirit, by intemperate zeal in propaganda, by a tendency, +always social, to crystallize conviction into dogma. We can scarcely, +unless we are as high-hearted as Tolstoy, hope now-a-days for an art +that shall be world-wide. The tribe is extinct, the family in its old +rigid form moribund, the social groups we now look to as centres of +emotion are the groups of industry, of professionalism and of sheer +mutual attraction. Small and strange though such groups may appear, they +are real social factors. + +Now this social, collective element in art is too apt to be forgotten. +When an artist claims that expression is the aim of art he is too apt to +mean self-expression only--utterance of individual emotion. Utterance +of individual emotion is very closely neighboured by, is almost +identical with, self-enhancement. What should be a generous, and in part +altruistic, exaltation becomes mere _megalomania_. This egotism is, of +course, a danger inherent in all art. The suspension of motor-reactions +to the practical world isolates the artist, cuts him off from his +fellow-men, makes him in a sense an egotist. Art, said Zola, is "the +world seen through a temperament." But this suspension is, not that he +should turn inward to feed on his own vitals, but rather to free him for +contemplation. All great art releases from self. + + * * * * * + +The young are often temporary artists: art, being based on life, calls +for a strong vitality. The young are also self-centred and seek +self-enhancement. This need of self-expression is a sort of artistic +impulse. The young are, partly from sheer immaturity, still more through +a foolish convention, shut out from real life; they are secluded, forced +to become in a sense artists, or, if they have not the power for that, +at least self-aggrandizers. They write lyric poems, they love +masquerading, they focus life on to themselves in a way which, later +on, life itself makes impossible. This pseudo-art, this +self-aggrandizement usually dies a natural death before the age of +thirty. If it live on, one remedy is, of course, the scientific +attitude; that attitude which is bent on considering and discovering the +relations of things among themselves, not their personal relation to us. +The study of science is a priceless discipline in self-abnegation, but +only in negation; it looses us from self, it does not link us to others. +The real and natural remedy for the egotism of youth is Life, not +necessarily the haunting of _cafés_, or even the watching of football +matches, but strenuous activity in the simplest human relations of daily +happenings. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." + + * * * * * + +There is always apt to be some discord between the artist and the large +practical world in which he lives, but those ages are happiest in which +the discord is least. The nineteenth century, amid its splendid +achievements in science and industry, in government and learning, and +above all in humanity, illustrates this conflict in an interesting way. +To literature, an art which can explain itself, the great public world +lent on the whole a reverent and intelligent ear. Its great prose +writers were at peace with their audience and were inspired by great +public interests. Some of the greatest, for example Tolstoy, produced +their finest work on widely human subjects, and numbered their readers +and admirers probably by the million. Writers like Dickens, Thackeray, +Kingsley, Mill, and Carlyle, even poets like Tennyson and Browning, were +full of great public interests and causes, and, in different degrees and +at different stages of their lives, were thoroughly and immensely +popular. On the other hand, one can find, at the beginning of the +period, figures like Blake and Shelley, and all through it a number of +painters--the pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists--walking like aliens +in a Philistine world. Even great figures like Burne-Jones and Whistler +were for the greater part of their lives unrecognized or mocked at. +Millais reached the attention of the world, but was thought by the +stricter fraternity to have in some sense or other sold his soul and +committed the great sin of considering the bourgeois. The bourgeois +should be despised not partially but completely. His life, his +interests, his code of ethics and conduct must all be matters of entire +indifference or amused contempt, to the true artist who intends to do +his own true work and call his soul his own. + +At a certain moment, during the eighties and nineties, it looked as if +these doctrines were generally accepted, and the divorce between art and +the community had become permanent. But it seems as if this attitude, +which coincided with a period of reaction in political matters and a +recrudescence of a belief in force and on unreasoned authority, is +already passing away. There are not wanting signs that art, both in +painting and sculpture, and in poetry and novel-writing, is beginning +again to realize its social function, beginning to be impatient of mere +individual emotion, beginning to aim at something bigger, more bound up +with a feeling towards and for the common weal. + +Take work like that of Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. Masefield or Mr. Arnold +Bennett. Without appraising its merits or demerits we cannot but note +that the social sense is always there, whether it be of a class or of a +whole community. In a play like _Justice_ the writer does not "express" +himself, he does not even merely show the pathos of a single human +being's destiny, he sets before us a much bigger thing--man tragically +caught and torn in the iron hands of a man-made machine, Society itself. +Incarnate Law is the protagonist, and, as it happens, the villain of the +piece. It is a fragment of _Les Misérables_ over again, in a severer and +more restrained technique. An art like this starts, no doubt, from +emotion towards personal happenings--there is nothing else from which it +can start; but, even as it sets sail for wider seas, it is loosed from +personal moorings. + +Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul, and art +is beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is +exposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness +tends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of +creation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the +reformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that +the artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not at +the moment of creation. + +The art of Mr. Arnold Bennett gets its bigness, its collectivity, in +part--from extension over time. Far from seeking after beauty, he almost +goes out to embrace ugliness. He does not spare us even dullness, that +we may get a sense of the long, waste spaces of life, their dreary +reality. We are keenly interested in the loves of hero and heroine, but +all the time something much bigger is going on, generation after +generation rolls by in ceaseless panorama; it is the life not of Edwin +and Hilda, it is the life of the Five Towns. After a vision so big, to +come back to the ordinary individualistic love-story is like looking +through the wrong end of a telescope. + +Art of high quality and calibre is seldom obscure. The great popular +writers of the nineteenth century--Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, +Tolstoy--wrote so that all could understand. A really big artist has +something important to say, something vast to show, something that moves +him and presses on him; and he will say it simply because he must get it +said. He will trick it out with no devices, most of all with no +obscurities. It has vexed and torn him enough while it was pushing its +way to be born. He has no peace till it is said, and said as clearly as +he may. He says it, not consciously for the sake of others, but for +himself, to ease him from the burden of big thought. Moreover, art, +whose business is to transmit emotion, should need no commentary. Art +comes out of _theoria_, contemplation, steady looking at, but never out +of _theory_. Theory can neither engender nor finally support it. An +exhibition of pictures with an explanatory catalogue, scientifically +interesting though it may be, stands, in a sense, self-condemned. + +We must, however, remember that all art is not of the whole community. +There are small groups feeling their own small but still collective +emotion, fashioning their own language, obscure sometimes to all but +themselves. They are right so to fashion it, but, if they appeal to a +wider world, they must strive to speak in the vulgar tongue, +understanded of the people. + + * * * * * + +It is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the times, a mark of the revival of +social as contrasted with merely individualistic instincts that a +younger generation of poets, at least in France, tend to form themselves +into small groups, held together not merely by eccentricities of +language or garb, but by some deep inner conviction strongly held in +common. Such a unity of spirit is seen in the works of the latter group +of thinkers and writers known as _Unanimists_. They tried and failed to +found a community. Their doctrine, if doctrine convictions so fluid can +be called, is strangely like the old group-religion of the common dance, +only more articulate. Of the Unanimist it might truly be said, "_il +buvait l'indistinction_." To him the harsh old Roman mandate _Divide et +impera_, "Divide men that you may rule them," spells death. His dream is +not of empire and personal property but of the realization of life, +common to all. To this school the great reality is the social group, +whatever form it take, family, village or town. Their only dogma is the +unity and immeasurable sanctity of life. In practice they are Christian, +yet wholly free from the asceticism of modern Christianity. Their +attitude in art is as remote as possible from, it is indeed the very +antithesis to, the æsthetic exclusiveness of the close of last century. +Like St. Peter, the Unanimists have seen a sheet let down and heard a +voice from heaven saying: "Call thou nothing common nor unclean." + +Above all, the Unanimist remembers and realizes afresh the old truth +that "no man liveth unto himself." According to the Expressionist's +creed, as we have seen, the end of art is to utter and communicate +emotion. The fullest and finest emotions are those one human being feels +towards another. Every sympathy is an enrichment of life, every +antipathy a negation. It follows then, that, for the Unanimist, Love is +the fulfilling of his Law. + +It is a beautiful and life-giving faith, felt and with a perfect +sincerity expressed towards all nature by the Indian poet Tagore, and +towards humanity especially by M. Vildrac in his _Book of Love_ ("Livre +d'Amour"). He tells us in his "Commentary" how to-day the poet, sitting +at home with pen and paper before him, feels that he is pent in, stifled +by himself. He had been about to re-tell the old, old story of himself, +to set himself once more on the stage of his poem--the same old dusty +self tricked out, costumed anew. Suddenly he knows the figure to be +tawdry and shameful. He is hot all over when he looks at it; he must out +into the air, into the street, out of the stuffy museum where so long +he has stirred the dead egotist ashes, out into the bigger life, the +life of his fellows; he must live, with them, by them, in them. + + "I am weary of deeds done inside myself, + I am weary of voyages inside myself, + And of heroism wrought by strokes of the pen, + And of a beauty made up of formulæ. + + "I am ashamed of lying to my work, + Of my work lying to my life, + And of being able to content myself, + By burning sweet spices, + With the mouldering smell that is master here." + +Again, in "The Conquerors," the poet dreams of the Victorious One who +has no army, the Knight who rides afoot, the Crusader without breviary +or scrip, the Pilgrim of Love who, by the shining in his eyes, draws all +men to him, and they in turn draw other men until, at last: + + "The time came in the land, + The time of the Great Conquest, + When the people with this desire + Left the threshold of their door + To go forth towards one another. + + "And the time came in the land + When to fill all its story + There was nothing but songs in unison, + _One round danced about the houses_, + One battle and one victory." + +And so our tale ends where it began, with the Choral Dance. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[54] _Ethics_, X, 4. + +[55] H. Bergson, _Life and Consciousness_, Huxley Lecture, May 29, 1911. + +[56] Religion is here used as meaning the worship of some form of god, +as the practical counterpart of theology. + +[57] Mr. D.S. MacColl. + +[58] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 21. (1902.) + +[59] It is interesting to find, since the above was written, that the +Confession of Faith published in the catalogue of the Second +Post-Impressionist Exhibition (1912, p. 21) reproduces, consciously or +unconsciously, Tolstoy's view: _We have ceased to ask, "What does this +picture represent?" and ask instead, "What does it make us feel?"_ + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +For Ancient and Primitive Ritual the best general book of reference is: + +FRAZER, J.G. _The Golden Bough_, 3rd edition, 1911, from which most of + the instances in the present manual are taken. Part IV of _The Golden + Bough_, i.e. the section dealing with _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_, + should especially be consulted. + +Also an earlier, epoch-making book: + +ROBERTSON SMITH, W. _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_, 1889 [3rd + edition, 1927]. For certain fundamental ritual notions, _e.g._ + sacrifice, holiness, etc. + +[For Egyptian and Babylonian ritual: _Myth and Ritual_, edited by +S.H. HOOKE, 1933.] + +For the Greek Drama, as arising out of the ritual dance: Professor +GILBERT MURRAY'S _Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek +Tragedy_ in J.E. HARRISON'S _Themis_, 1912, and pp. 327-40 in the same +book; and for the religion of Dionysos and the drama, J.E. HARRISON'S +_Prolegomena_, 1907, Chapters VIII and X. For the fusion of the ritual +dance and hero-worship, see W. LEAF, _Homer and History_, 1915, Chapter +VII. For a quite different view of drama as arising wholly from the +worship of the dead, see Professor W. RIDGEWAY, _The Origin of Tragedy_, +1910. An important discussion of the relation of _tragedy_ to the winter +festival of the _Lenaia_ appears in A.B. COOK'S _Zeus_, vol. i, sec. 6 +(xxi) [1914]. + +[More recent works on Greek drama: A.W. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE, _Dithyramb_, +_Tragedy and Comedy_, 1927; G. THOMSON, _Aeschylus and Athens_, 1941.] + +For Primitive Art: + +HIRN, Y. _The Origins of Art_, 1900. The main theory of the book the + present writer believes to be inadequate, but it contains an + excellent collection of facts relating to Art, Magic, Art and Work, + Mimetic Dances, etc., and much valuable discussion of principles. + +GROSSE, E. _The Beginnings of Art_, 1897, in the Chicago Anthropological + Series. Valuable for its full illustrations of primitive art, as + well as for text. + +[BOAS, F., _Primitive Art_, 1927.] + +For the Theory of Art: + +TOLSTOY, L. _What is Art?_ Translated by Aylmer Maude, in the Scott + Library. + +FRY, ROGER E. _An Essay in Æsthetics_, in the _New Quarterly_, April 1909, + p. 174. + +This is the best general statement of the function of Art known to me. +It should be read in connection with Mr. Bullough's article, quoted on +p. 129, which gives the psychological basis of a similar view of the +nature of art. My own theory was formulated independently, in relation +to the development of the Greek theatre, but I am very glad to find that +it is in substantial agreement with those of two such distinguished +authorities on æsthetics. For my later conclusions on art, see _Alpha +and Omega_, 1915, pp. 208-220. + +[CAUDWELL, C., _Illusion and Reality_, 1937.] + +For more advanced students: + +DUSSAUZE, HENRI. _Les Règles esthétiques et les lois du sentiment_, 1911. + +MÜLLER-FREIENFELS, R. _Psychologie der Kunst_, 1912. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abstraction, 224 + +Adonis, rites of, 19, 20, 54-56 +----, gardens of, 149 +----, as tree spirit, 149 + +Æschylus, 47 + +Aesthete, not artist, 214-215 + +Agon, 15 + +Anagnorisis, or recognition, 15 + +Anthesteria, spring festival of, 147-149 + +Apollo Belvedere, 171 + +Aristotle on art, 198 + +Art and beauty, 213 +---- and imitation, 230 +---- and morality, 215 +---- and nature, 198 +---- and religion, 225 +----, emotional factor in, 26 +----, social elements in, 241-248 + +Ascension festival, 69 + + +Bear, Aino festival, 92-99 + +Beast dances, 45, 46 + +Beauty and art, 211 + +Bergson on art, 134 + +Birth, rites of new, 104-113 + +Bouphonia, 91-92 + +Bull-driving in spring, 85 +----, festival at Magnesia, 87 + + +Cat's-cradle, as magical charm, 66 + +Censor, function of, 216 + +Charila, spring festival, 80 + +Chorus in Greek drama, 121-128 + + +Dancing, a work, 30-31 +----, magical, 31-35 +----, commemorative, 44 + +Daphnephoros, 186 + +Death and winter, 67-72 + +Dikè as _way of life_, 116 + +Dionysis, 12, 150 + +Dionysis as Holy Child, 103 +---- as tree god, 102 +---- as young man, 113-115 + +Dithyramb, 75-89 + +Drama and Dromenon, 35-38 + + +Easter, in Modern Greece, 73 + +Eiresione, 114 + +Epheboi, Athenian, 12 + +Euchè, meaning of, 25 + +Expressionists, 232 + + +Futurists, 232 + + +Ghosts as fertilizers, 149 + + +Homer, influence on drama, 145-166 + +Horæ or seasons, 116 + + +Idol and ideal, 227 + +Impressionism, 231 + +Imitation, 21-23 +----, ceremonies in Australia, 64 + +Individualism, 241 + +Initiation ceremonies, 64, 106-113 + + +Jack-in-the-Green, 60, 187, 190 + + +Kangaroos, dance of, 46 + + +Landscape, art of, 199-201 + + +Maeterlinck, 200 + +May-day at Cambridge, 57 + +May, queen of the, 57-61 +----, king of the, 193 + +Mime, meaning of, 47 + +Mimesis, 43-47 + +Music, function of, 233 + + +New birth, 106-113 + + +Olympian gods, 202 + +Orchestra, meaning of, 123-127 + +Osiris, rites of, 15-23, 51 + +Ox-hunger, 81 + + +Panathenaia, 178 + +Panspermia, 148 + +Parthenon frieze, 176 + +Peisistratos, 146 + +Peplos of Athena, 180 + +Pericles on religion, 178 + +Personification and conception, 70-73 + +Plato on art, 21-23 + +Pleasure not joy, 213 + +Post-impressionists, 238 + +Prayer discs, 24 + +Presentation, meaning of, 53 + +Psychical distance, 129-134 + + +Representation, 34-41 + +Resurrection, rites of, 100 + +Rites, periodicity of, 52 + +Ritual forms in drama, 188-189 + + +Santayana on art, 220 + +Semelè, bringing up of, 81 + +Spring song at Saffron Walden, 59 +---- at Athens, 77 + +Stage or scene, 142-145 + +Summer, bringing in of, 67-71 + + +Tammuz, rites of, 18-20 + +Tělětē, _rite of growing up_, 112 + +Theatre, 10-13, 136 + +Themis, as ritual custom, 117 + +Theoria and theory, 248 + +Threshing-floor at dancing-place, 124 + +Tolstoy on art, 132, 238-241 + +Totemism and beast dances, 46, 47 + +Tragedy, ritual forms in, 119-122 +----, origin of, 76 + +Tug of war, among Esquimaux, 62 + + +Unanimism, 249-252 + + +Vegetation spirit, 72 + + +Winter, carrying out of, 68-72 + +Wool, sacred, 12 + +World-soul, 246 + +Wreaths, festival of, 189 +----, at Greek weddings, 190 + + +Zola on art, 242 + + * * * * * + +Printed in Great Britain by The Camelot Press Ltd., London and +Southampton + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 17087-0.txt or 17087-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/0/8/17087/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/17087-0.zip b/17087-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5964595 --- /dev/null +++ b/17087-0.zip diff --git a/17087-8.txt b/17087-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ab5c4d --- /dev/null +++ b/17087-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5563 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ancient Art and Ritual + +Author: Jane Ellen Harrison + +Release Date: November 18, 2005 [EBook #17087] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +{Transcriber's Note: + This e-text contains a number of unusual characters which are + represented as follows: + {-a} a-macron + {-e} e-macron + {)e} e-caron + {-i} i-macron + oe ligatures have been unpacked.} + + + + +_Ancient Art and Ritual_ + +JANE ELLEN HARRISON + + + + +_Geoffrey Cumberlege_ +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS +LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO + + + + +_First published in 1913, and reprinted in 1918 (revised), 1919, 1927, +1935 and 1948_ + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +It may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the +present volume. The title is _Ancient Art and Ritual_, but the reader +will find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of +either ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible +in handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie +perhaps in the word "_and_"--that is, in the intimate connection which I +have tried to show exists between ritual and art. This connection has, I +believe, an important bearing on questions vital to-day, as, for +example, the question of the place of art in our modern civilization, +its relation to and its difference from religion and morality; in a +word, on the whole enquiry as to what the nature of art is and how it +can help or hinder spiritual life. + + * * * * * + +I have taken Greek drama as a typical instance, because in it we have +the clear historical case of a great art, which arose out of a very +primitive and almost world-wide ritual. The rise of the Indian drama, or +the medival and from it the modern stage, would have told us the same +tale and served the like purpose. But Greece is nearer to us to-day than +either India or the Middle Ages. + + * * * * * + +Greece and the Greek drama remind me that I should like to offer my +thanks to Professor Gilbert Murray, for help and criticism which has far +outrun the limits of editorial duty. + +J.E.H. + +_Newnham College, +Cambridge, June 1913._ + + * * * * * + +NOTE TO THE FIFTH IMPRESSION + +The original text has been reprinted without change except for the +correction of misprints. A few additions (enclosed in square brackets) +have been made to the Bibliography. + +1947 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I ART AND RITUAL 9 + + II PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES 29 + +III PERIODIC CEREMONIES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL 49 + + IV THE PRIMITIVE SPRING DANCE OR DITHYRAMB, + IN GREECE 75 + + V THE TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE + _DROMENON_ AND THE DRAMA 119 + + VI GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE + AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE 170 + +VII RITUAL, ART AND LIFE 204 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 + + INDEX 255 + + + + +ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL + +CHAPTER I + +ART AND RITUAL + + +The title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even +dissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to +the modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and +ceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a +church or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in +thought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is +towards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day; +but the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show +that these two divergent developments have a common root, and that +neither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one +and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre. + + * * * * * + +Such a statement may sound to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to +the Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century B.C., it would +have been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an +Athenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival of +Dionysos. + +Passing through the entrance-gate to the theatre on the south side of +the Acropolis, our Athenian citizen will find himself at once on holy +ground. He is within a _temenos_ or precinct, a place "cut off" from the +common land and dedicated to a god. He will pass to the left (Fig. 2, p. +144) two temples standing near to each other, one of earlier, the other +of later date, for a temple, once built, was so sacred that it would +only be reluctantly destroyed. As he enters the actual theatre he will +pay nothing for his seat; his attendance is an act of worship, and from +the social point of view obligatory; the entrance fee is therefore paid +for him by the State. + +The theatre is open to all Athenian citizens, but the ordinary man will +not venture to seat himself in the front row. In the front row, and +that only, the seats have backs, and the central seat of this row is an +armchair; the whole of the front row is permanently reserved, not for +individual rich men who can afford to hire "boxes," but for certain +State officials, and these officials are all priests. On each seat the +name of the owner is inscribed; the central seat is "of the priest of +Dionysos Eleuthereus," the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat "of +the priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer," and again "of the priest of +Asklepios," and "of the priest of Olympian Zeus," and so on round the +whole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty's the front row +of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the +Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall. + +The theatre at Athens is not open night by night, nor even day by day. +Dramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of +Dionysos in winter and spring. It is, again, as though the modern +theatre was open only at the festivals of the Epiphany and of Easter. +Our modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We +tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our +theatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the +performance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is +done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for +us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day +was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the +five or six days of the great _Dionysia_, the whole city was in a state +of unwonted sanctity, under a _taboo_. To distrain a debtor was illegal; +any personal assault, however trifling, was sacrilege. + +Most impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on +the eve of the performance. By torchlight, accompanied by a great +procession, the image of the god Dionysos himself was brought to the +theatre and placed in the orchestra. Moreover, he came not only in human +but in animal form. Chosen young men of the Athenians in the flower of +their youth--_epheboi_--escorted to the precinct a splendid bull. It was +expressly ordained that the bull should be "worthy of the god"; he was, +in fact, as we shall presently see, the primitive incarnation of the +god. It is, again, as though in our modern theatre there stood, +"sanctifying all things to our use and us to His service," the human +figure of the Saviour, and beside him the Paschal Lamb. + + * * * * * + +But now we come to a strange thing. A god presides over the theatre, to +go to the theatre is an act of worship to the god Dionysos, and yet, +when the play begins, three times out of four of Dionysos we hear +nothing. We see, it may be, Agamemnon returning from Troy, Clytemnestra +waiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Phdra for +Hippolytos, the hate of Medea and the slaying of her children: stories +beautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be, but scarcely, we feel, +religious. The orthodox Greeks themselves sometimes complained that in +the plays enacted before them there was "nothing to do with Dionysos." + +If drama be at the outset divine, with its roots in ritual, why does it +issue in an art profoundly solemn, tragic, yet purely human? The actors +wear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the Eleusinian +mysteries. Why, then, do we find them, not executing a religious +service or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating +mere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to +give us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks +down, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves +us with our problem on our hands. + +Had we only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a +people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always +obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their +cloud-capp'd towers that they distract our minds from the task of +digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of +Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of +Greek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so +swiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek +material only to hand, we might never have marked the transition. +Happily, however, we are not confined within the Greek paradise. Wider +fields are open to us; our subject is not only Greek, but ancient art +and ritual. We can turn at once to the Egyptians, a people +slower-witted than the Greeks, and watch their sluggish but more +instructive operations. To one who is studying the development of the +human mind the average or even stupid child is often more illuminating +than the abnormally brilliant. Greece is often too near to us, too +advanced, too modern, to be for comparative purposes instructive. + + * * * * * + +Of all Egyptian, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so +long or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the +prototype of the great class of resurrection-gods who die that they may +live again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted +year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos. In that mystery-play was +set forth, first, what the Greeks call his _agon_, his contest with his +enemy Set; then his _pathos_, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his +wounding, his death, and his burial; finally, his resurrection and +"recognition," his _anagnorisis_ either as himself or as his only +begotten son Horus. Now the meaning of this thrice-told tale we shall +consider later: for the moment we are concerned only with the fact that +it is set forth both in art and ritual. + +At the festival of Osiris small images of the god were made of sand and +vegetable earth, his cheek bones were painted green and his face yellow. +The images were cast in a mould of pure gold, representing the god as a +mummy. After sunset on the 24th day of the month Choiak, the effigy of +Osiris was laid in a grave and the image of the previous year was +removed. The intent of all this was made transparently clear by other +rites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of +ploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the +other with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the +chief priest recited the ritual of the "sowing of the fields." Into the +"garden" of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand +and barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was +poured out of a golden vase over the "garden" and the barley was allowed +to grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his +burial, "for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine +substance." + +The death and resurrection of the gods, and _pari passu_ of the life and +fruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but--and this is our +immediate point--it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In +the great temple of Isis at Phil there is a chamber dedicated to +Osiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears +of corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The +inscription to the picture reads: _This is the form of him whom one may +not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning +waters._ It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month +Choiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. +When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had +sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the +grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the +cause of the growth of the crops."[1] + +Even more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that +accompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is +represented at first as a mummy swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit +by bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically +impossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl--perhaps his +"garden"--all but erect, between the outspread wings of Isis, while +before him a male figure holds the _crux ansata_, the "cross with a +handle," the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired, +_i.e._ the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented. + +No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt, +then, we have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and +ritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian +tombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This, +as we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art +and ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually +explain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they +actually arise out of a common human impulse. + + * * * * * + +The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he +is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) "came to the gate of the Lord's +house which was toward the north" he beheld there the "women weeping for +Tammuz." This "abomination" the house of Judah had brought with them +from Babylon. Tammuz is _Dumuzi_, "the true son," or more fully, +_Dumuzi-absu_, "true son of the waters." He too, like Osiris, is a god +of the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat +of the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods, + + "Thammuz came next behind, + Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured + The Syrian damsels to lament his fate + In amorous ditties all a summer's day." + +Tammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died and +passed below the earth to the place of dust and death, "the land from +which there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies on +door and bolt." And the goddess went after him, and while she was below, +life ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of animal or +man was born. + +We know Tammuz, "the true son," best by one of his titles, Adonis, the +Lord or King. The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at midsummer. That is +certain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail +on its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were +thronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of the +dead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping women. +Thucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but Plutarch[2] +tells us those who took account of omens were full of concern for the +fate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the day of the +funeral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish "Lord," was no luckier than to +set sail on a Friday, the death-day of the "Lord" of Christendom. + +The rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were rites +of death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading and +dying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The reason of +this is simple and will soon become manifest. For the moment we have +only to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are represented as +much by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the feasts of +Tammuz and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains. + + * * * * * + +We have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and +ritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely +linked. So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to +suspect they may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it +that links art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common? +Do they start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they +develop, fall so widely asunder? + +It will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art, +and also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual. + + * * * * * + +Art, Plato[3] tells us in a famous passage of the _Republic_, is +imitation; the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in +his philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is +to make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he +turns it whither he will, "are reflected sun and heavens and earth and +man," anything and everything. Never did a statement so false, so +wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth--truth which, by the +help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But +first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as +Plato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not +long ago thus defined his own art: "The art of painting is the art of +imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments." A +sorry life-work! Few people to-day, perhaps, regard art as the close and +realistic copy of Nature; photography has at least scotched, if not +slain, that error; but many people still regard art as a sort of +improvement on or an "idealization" of Nature. It is the part of the +artist, they think, to take suggestions and materials from Nature, and +from these to build up, as it were, a revised version. It is, perhaps, +only by studying those rudimentary forms of art that are closely akin to +ritual that we come to see how utterly wrong-headed is this conception. + +Take the representations of Osiris that we have just described--the +mummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain that art is +here a copy or imitation of reality? However "realistic" the painting, +it represents a thing imagined not actual. There never was any such +person as Osiris, and if there had been, he would certainly never, once +mummified, have risen from his tomb. There is no question of fact, and +the copy of fact, in the matter. Moreover, had there been, why should +anyone desire to make a copy of natural fact? The whole "imitation" +theory, to which, and to the element of truth it contains, we shall +later have occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no +adequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack +of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is +idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to +improve on Nature. + + * * * * * + +Modern science, confronted with a problem like that of the rise of art, +no longer casts about to conjecture how art _might_ have arisen, she +examines how it actually _did_ arise. Abundant material has now been +collected from among savage peoples of an art so primitive that we +hesitate to call it art at all, and it is in these inchoate efforts +that we are able to track the secret motive springs that move the artist +now as then. + +Among the Huichol Indians,[4] if the people fear a drought from the +extreme heat of the sun, they take a clay disk, and on one side of it +they paint the "face" of Father Sun, a circular space surrounded by rays +of red and blue and yellow which are called his "arrows," for the +Huichol sun, like Phoebus Apollo, has arrows for rays. On the reverse +side they will paint the progress of the sun through the four quarters +of the sky. The journey is symbolized by a large cross-like figure with +a central circle for midday. Round the edge are beehive-shaped mounds; +these represent the hills of earth. The red and yellow dots that +surround the hills are cornfields. The crosses on the hills are signs of +wealth and money. On some of the disks birds and scorpions are painted, +and on one are curving lines which mean rain. These disks are deposited +on the altar of the god-house and left, and then all is well. The +intention might be to us obscure, but a Huichol Indian would read it +thus: "Father Sun with his broad shield (or 'face') and his arrows rises +in the east, bringing money and wealth to the Huichols. His heat and the +light from his rays make the corn to grow, but he is asked not to +interfere with the clouds that are gathering on the hills." + +Now is this art or ritual? It is both and neither. _We_ distinguish +between a form of prayer and a work of art and count them in no danger +of confusion; but the Huichol goes back to that earlier thing, a +_presentation_. He utters, expresses his thought about the sun and his +emotion about the sun and his relation to the sun, and if "prayer is the +soul's sincere desire" he has painted a prayer. It is not a little +curious that the same notion comes out in the old Greek word for +"prayer," _euch_. The Greek, when he wanted help in trouble from the +"Saviours," the Dioscuri, carved a picture of them, and, if he was a +sailor, added a ship. Underneath he inscribed the word _euch_. It was +not to begin with a "vow" paid, it was a presentation of his strong +inner desire, it was a sculptured prayer. + +Ritual then involves _imitation_; but does not arise out of it. It +desires to recreate an emotion, not to reproduce an object. A rite is, +indeed, we shall later see (p. 42), a sort of stereotyped action, not +really practical, but yet not wholly cut loose from practice, a +reminiscence or an anticipation of actual practical doing; it is fitly, +though not quite correctly, called by the Greeks a _dromenon_, "a thing +done." + +At the bottom of art, as its motive power and its mainspring, lies, not +the wish to copy Nature or even improve on her--the Huichol Indian does +not vainly expend his energies on an effort so fruitless--but rather an +impulse shared by art with ritual, the desire, that is, to utter, to +give out a strongly felt emotion or desire by representing, by making or +doing or enriching the object or act desired. The common source of the +art and ritual of Osiris is the intense, world-wide desire that the life +of Nature which seemed dead should live again. This common _emotional_ +factor it is that makes art and ritual in their beginnings well-nigh +indistinguishable. Both, to begin with, copy an act, but not at first +for the sake of the copy. Only when the emotion dies down and is +forgotten does the copy become an end in itself, a mere mimicry. + +It is this downward path, this sinking of making to mimicry, that makes +us now-a-days think of ritual as a dull and formal thing. Because a rite +has ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it +will cease to be _done_. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of +habit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest +impulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only +others but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the +act is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it +becomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art. + + * * * * * + +It is not easy, as we saw, to classify the Huichol prayer-disks. As +prayers they are ritual, as surfaces decorated they are specimens of +primitive art. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a kind of +ceremony very instructive for our point, but again not very easy to +classify--the pantomimic dances which are, almost all over the world, so +striking a feature in savage social and religious life. Are they to be +classed as ritual or art? + +These pantomime dances lie, indeed, at the very heart and root of our +whole subject, and it is of the first importance that before going +further in our analysis of art and ritual, we should have some +familiarity with their general character and gist, the more so as they +are a class of ceremonies now practically extinct. We shall find in +these dances the meeting-point between art and ritual, or rather we +shall find in them the rude, inchoate material out of which both ritual +and art, at least in one of its forms, developed. Moreover, we shall +find in pantomimic dancing a ritual bridge, as it were, between actual +life and those representations of life which we call art. + +In our next chapter, therefore, we shall study the ritual dance in +general, and try to understand its psychological origin; in the +following chapter (III) we shall take a particular dance of special +importance, the Spring Dance as practised among various primitive +peoples. We shall then be prepared to approach the study of the Spring +Dance among the Greeks, which developed into their drama, and thereby +to, we hope, throw light on the relation between ritual and art. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_,^2 p. 324. + +[2] _Vit. Nik._, 13. + +[3] _Rep._ X, 596-9. + +[4] C.H. Lumholtz, _Symbolism of the Huichol Indians_, in _Mem. of the +Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist._, Vol. III, "Anthropology." (1900.) + + + + +CHAPTER II + +PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES + + +In books and hymns of bygone days, which dealt with the religion of "the +heathen in his blindness," he was pictured as a being of strange +perversity, apt to bow down to "gods of wood and stone." The question +_why_ he acted thus foolishly was never raised. It was just his +"blindness"; the light of the gospel had not yet reached him. Now-a-days +the savage has become material not only for conversion and hymn-writing +but for scientific observation. We want to understand his psychology, +_i.e._ how he behaves, not merely for his sake, that we may abruptly +and despotically convert or reform him, but for our own sakes; partly, +of course, for sheer love of knowing, but also,--since we realize that +our own behaviour is based on instincts kindred to his,--in order that, +by understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better, +our own. + +Anthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the +worship of false gods, bowing "down to wood and stone," bulks larger in +the mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for +temples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The +savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants +done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters +spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously +and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants +sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself +before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a +wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does +not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he +rehearses his hunt in a bear dance. + +Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to +overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the +quite young from sheer _joie de vivre_, and essentially inappropriate to +the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nolvoa_ +means both "to work" and "to dance." An old man will reproach a young +man saying, "Why do you not go and work?" (_nolvoa_). He means "Why do +you not dance instead of looking on?" It is strange to us to learn that +among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to +mature manhood, so the number of his "dances" increase, and the number +of these "dances" is the measure _pari passu_ of his social importance. +Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, _because +he cannot dance_; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to +another and a younger. + + * * * * * + +Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among the +Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5] for a +man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this +will make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and Austria the +peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high +or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller +will be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt as +to the practical reason of this mimic dancing. When Macedonian farmers +have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air +and, catching them again, exclaim, "May the crop grow as high as the +spade has gone." In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by +one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is decked +with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell +and some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her +arms vigorously and cry, "Flax, grow," or words to that effect. When she +has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her +partner. + +Is this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer "No." Is it ritual? With +some hesitation we shall probably again answer "No." It is, we think, +not a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and +women. But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North +America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the +sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four +times round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into +the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain. +Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon +the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their +faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would +describe such a ceremonial as "an interesting instance of primitive +_ritual_." The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one +the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the +other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially +for the public good. + +The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what +concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what +is indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing +in the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says, +"Flax, grow," prove the point. She _does_ what she _wants done_. Her +intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest +possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better +still perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself _doing_ in +sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where +the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the +suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology +teaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of +intellectual illusion, not even the exercise of a "mimetic instinct," +but simply, in its ultimate analysis, an utterance, a discharge of +emotion and longing. + +But though the utterance of emotion is the prime and moving, it is not +the sole, factor. We may utter emotion in a prolonged howl, we may even +utter it in a collective prolonged howl, yet we should scarcely call +this ritual, still less art. It is true that a prolonged _collective_ +howl will probably, because it is collective, develop a rhythm, a +regular recurrence, and hence probably issue in a kind of ritual music; +but for the further stage of development into art another step is +necessary. We must not only _utter_ emotion, we must _represent_ it, +that is, we must in some way reproduce or imitate or express the thought +which is causing us emotion. Art is not imitation, but art and also +ritual frequently and legitimately _contain an element of imitation_. +Plato was so far right. What exactly is imitated we shall see when we +come to discuss the precise difference between art and ritual. + + * * * * * + +The Greek word for a _rite_ as already noted is _dromenon_, "a thing +done"--and the word is full of instruction. The Greek had realized that +to perform a rite you must _do_ something, that is, you must not only +feel something but express it in action, or, to put it psychologically, +you must not only receive an impulse, you must react to it. The word for +rite, _dromenon_, "thing done," arose, of course, not from any +psychological analysis, but from the simple fact that rites among the +primitive Greeks were _things done_, mimetic dances and the like. It is +a fact of cardinal importance that their word for theatrical +representation, _drama_, is own cousin to their word for rite, +_dromenon_; _drama_ also means "thing done." Greek linguistic instinct +pointed plainly to the fact that art and ritual are near relations. To +this fact of crucial importance for our argument we shall return later. +But from the outset it should be borne in mind that in these two Greek +words, _dromenon_ and _drama_, in their exact meaning, their relation +and their distinction, we have the keynote and clue to our whole +discussion. + + * * * * * + +For the moment we have to note that the Greek word for rite, _dromenon_, +"thing done," is not strictly adequate. It omits a factor of prime +importance; it includes too much and not enough. All "things done" are +not rites. You may shrink back from a blow; that is the expression of an +emotion, that is a reaction to a stimulus, but that is not a rite. You +may digest your dinner; that is a thing done, and a thing of high +importance, but it is not a rite. + +One element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it +be done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion. A +meal digested alone is certainly no rite; a meal eaten in common, under +the influence of a common emotion, may, and often does, _tend_ to become +a rite. + +Collectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the +simple reaction into a rite, are--specially among primitive +peoples--closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual +among savages has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional +tension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially; +it is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual. He +may make by himself excited movements, he may leap for joy, for fear; +but unless these movements are made by the tribe together they will not +become rhythmical; they will probably lack intensity, and certainly +permanence. Intensity, then, and collectivity go together, and both are +necessary for ritual, but both may be present without constituting art; +we have not yet touched the dividing line between art and ritual. When +and how does the _dromenon_, the _rite done_, pass over into the +_drama_? + +The genius of the Greek language _felt_, before it consciously _knew_, +the difference. This feeling ahead for distinctions is characteristic of +all languages, as has been well shown by Mr. Pearsall Smith[6] in +another manual of our series. It is an instinctive process arising +independently of reason, though afterwards justified by it. What, then, +is the distinction between art and ritual which the genius of the Greek +language felt after, when it used the two words _dromenon_ and _drama_ +for two different sorts of "things done"? To answer our question we must +turn for a brief moment to psychology, the science of human behaviour. + + * * * * * + +We are accustomed for practical convenience to divide up our human +nature into partitions--intellect, will, the emotions, the +passions--with further subdivisions, _e.g._ of the intellect into +reason, imagination, and the like. These partitions we are apt to +arrange into a sort of order of merit or as it is called a hierarchy, +with Reason as head and crown, and under her sway the emotions and +passions. The result of establishing this hierarchy is that the +impulsive side of our nature comes off badly, the passions and even the +emotions lying under a certain ban. This popular psychology is really a +convenient and perhaps indispensable mythology. Reason, the emotions, +and the will have no more separate existences than Jupiter, Juno, and +Minerva. + +A more fruitful way of looking at our human constitution is to see it, +not as a bundle of separate faculties, but as a sort of continuous +cycle of activities. What really happens is, putting it very roughly, +something of this sort. To each one of us the world is, or seems to be, +eternally divided into two halves. On the one side is ourself, on the +other all the rest of things. All our action, our behaviour, our life, +is a relation between these two halves, and that behaviour seems to have +three, not divisions, but stages. The outside world, the other half, the +object if we like so to call it, acts upon us, gets at us through our +senses. We hear or see or taste or feel something; to put it roughly, we +perceive something, and as we perceive it, so, instantly, we feel about +it, towards it, we have emotion. And, instantly again, that emotion +becomes a motive-power, we _re_-act towards the object that got at us, +we want to alter it or our relation to it. If we did not perceive we +should not feel, if we did not feel we should not act. When we talk--as +we almost must talk--of Reason, the Emotions, or the Passions and the +Will leading to action, we think of the three stages or aspects of our +behaviour as separable and even perhaps hostile; we want, perhaps, to +purge the intellect from all infection of the emotions. But in reality, +though at a given moment one or the other element, knowing, feeling, or +acting, may be dominant in our consciousness, the rest are always +immanent. + +When we think of the three elements or stages, knowing, feeling, +striving, as all being necessary factors in any complete bit of human +behaviour, we no longer try to arrange them in a hierarchy with knowing +or reason at the head. Knowing--that is, receiving and recognizing a +stimulus from without--would seem to come first; we must be acted on +before we can _re_-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look +at it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads +to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the +primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our +discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at human +behaviour. + + * * * * * + +Movement, then, action, is, as it were, the goal and the end of thought. +Perception finds its natural outlet and completion in doing. But here +comes in a curious consideration important for our purpose. In animals, +in so far as they act by "instinct," as we say, perception, knowing, is +usually followed immediately and inevitably by doing, by such doing as +is calculated to conserve the animal and his species; but in some of the +higher animals, and especially in man, where the nervous system is more +complex, perception is not instantly transformed into action; there is +an interval for choice between several possible actions. Perception is +pent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious _representation_. Now +it is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between +perception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life, +our images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and +our art, is built up. If the cycle of knowing, feeling, acting, were +instantly fulfilled, that is, if we were a mass of well-contrived +instincts, we should hardly have _dromena_, and we should certainly +never pass from _dromena_ to _drama_. Art and religion, though perhaps +not wholly ritual, spring from the incomplete cycle, from unsatisfied +desire, from perception and emotion that have somehow not found +immediate outlet in practical action. When we come later to establish +the dividing line between art and ritual we shall find this fact to be +cardinal. + +We have next to watch how out of _representation repeated_ there grows +up a kind of _abstraction_ which helps the transition from ritual to +art. When the men of a tribe return from a hunt, a journey, a battle, or +any event that has caused them keen and pleasant emotion, they will +often re-act their doings round the camp-fire at night to an attentive +audience of women and young boys. The cause of this world-wide custom is +no doubt in great part the desire to repeat a pleasant experience; the +battle or the hunt will not be re-enacted unless it has been successful. +Together with this must be reckoned a motive seldom absent from human +endeavour, the desire for self-exhibition, self-enhancement. But in this +re-enactment, we see at once, lies the germ of history and of +commemorative ceremonial, and also, oddly enough, an impulse emotional +in itself begets a process we think of as characteristically and +exclusively intellectual, the process of abstraction. The savage begins +with the particular battle that actually _did_ happen; but, it is easy +to see that if he re-enacts it again and again the _particular_ battle +or hunt will be forgotten, the representation cuts itself loose from +the particular action from which it arose, and becomes generalized, as +it were abstracted. Like children he plays not at a funeral, but at +"funerals," not at a battle, but at battles; and so arises the +war-dance, or the death-dance, or the hunt-dance. This will serve to +show how inextricably the elements of knowing and feeling are +intertwined. + +So, too, with the element of action. If we consider the occasions when a +savage dances, it will soon appear that it is not only after a battle or +a hunt that he dances in order to commemorate it, but before. Once the +commemorative dance has got abstracted or generalized it becomes +material for the magical dance, the dance pre-done. A tribe about to go +to war will work itself up by a war dance; about to start out hunting +they will catch their game in pantomime. Here clearly the main emphasis +is on the practical, the active, doing-element in the cycle. The dance +is, as it were, a sort of precipitated desire, a discharge of pent-up +emotion into action. + +In both these kinds of dances, the dance that commemorates by +_re_-presenting and the dance that anticipates by _pre_-presenting, +Plato would have seen the element of imitation, what the Greeks called +_mimesis_, which we saw he believed to be the very source and essence of +all art. In a sense he would have been right. The commemorative dance +does especially _re_-present; it reproduces the past hunt or battle; but +if we analyse a little more closely we see it is not for the sake of +copying the actual battle itself, but for the _emotion felt about the +battle_. This they desire to re-live. The emotional element is seen +still more clearly in the dance _fore_-done for magical purposes. +Success in war or in the hunt is keenly, intensely desired. The hunt or +the battle cannot take place at the moment, so the cycle cannot complete +itself. The desire cannot find utterance in the actual act; it grows and +accumulates by inhibition, till at last the exasperated nerves and +muscles can bear it no longer; it breaks out into mimetic anticipatory +action. But, and this is the important point, the action is mimetic, not +of what you see done by another; but of what you desire to do yourself. +The habit of this _mimesis_ of the thing desired, is set up, and ritual +begins. Ritual, then, does imitate, but for an emotional, not an +altogether practical, end. + +Plato never saw a savage war-dance or a hunt-dance or a rain-dance, and +it is not likely that, if he had seen one, he would have allowed it to +be art at all. But he must often have seen a class of performances very +similar, to which unquestionably he would give the name of art. He must +have seen plays like those of Aristophanes, with the chorus dressed up +as Birds or Clouds or Frogs or Wasps, and he might undoubtedly have +claimed such plays as evidence of the rightness of his definition. Here +were men _imitating_ birds and beasts, dressed in their skins and +feathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would +have been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning +of things, we find an origin and an impulse much deeper, vaguer, and +more emotional. + +The beast dances found widespread over the savage world took their rise +when men really believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts +and birds and fishes were his "little brothers." Or rather, perhaps, +more strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers, +for the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North +American towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep +religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of +civilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call +_totemism_. "Totem" means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as +men. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as +men-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not +to _imitate_ kangaroos--you cannot imitate yourself--but just for +natural joy of heart because they _were_ kangaroos; they belonged to the +Kangaroo tribe, they bore the tribal marks and delighted to assert their +tribal unity. What they felt was not _mimesis_ but "participation," +unity, and community. Later, when man begins to distinguish between +himself and his strange fellow-tribesmen, to realize that he is _not_ a +kangaroo like other kangaroos, he will try to revive his old faith, his +old sense of participation and oneness, by conscious imitation. Thus +though imitation is not the object of these dances, it grows up in and +through them. It is the same with art. The origin of art is not +_mimesis_, but _mimesis_ springs up out of art, out of emotional +expression, and constantly and closely neighbours it. Art and ritual +are at the outset alike in this, that they do not seek to copy a fact, +but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion. + + * * * * * + +We shall see this more clearly if we examine for a moment this Greek +word _mimesis_. We translate m{-i}m{-e}sis by "imitation," and we do very +wrongly. The word _mimesis_ means the action or doing of a person called +a _mime_. Now a _mime_ was simply a person who dressed up and acted in a +pantomime or primitive drama. He was roughly what we should call an +_actor_, and it is significant that in the word _actor_ we stress not +imitating but acting, doing, just what the Greek stressed in his words +_dromenon_ and _drama_. The actor dresses up, puts on a mask, wears the +skin of a beast or the feathers of a bird, not, as we have seen, to copy +something or some one who is not himself, but to emphasize, enlarge, +enhance, his own personality; he masquerades, he does not mimic. + +The celebrants in the very primitive ritual of the Mountain-Mother in +Thrace were, we know, called _mimes_. In the fragment of his lost play, +schylus, after describing the din made by the "mountain gear" of the +Mother, the maddening hum of the _bombykes_, a sort of spinning-top, +the clash of the brazen cymbals and the twang of the strings, thus goes +on: + + "And bull-voices roar thereto from somewhere out of the unseen, + fearful _mimes_, and from a drum an image, as it were, of thunder + underground is borne on the air heavy with dread." + +Here we have undoubtedly some sort of "bull-roaring," thunder-and +wind-making ceremony, like those that go on in Australia to-day. The +_mimes_ are not mimicking thunder out of curiosity, they are making it +and enacting and uttering it for magical purposes. When a sailor wants a +wind he makes it, or, as he later says, he whistles _for_ it; when a +savage or a Greek wants thunder to bring rain he makes it, becomes it. +But it is easy to see that as the belief in magic declines, what was +once intense desire, issuing in the making of or the being of a thing, +becomes mere copying of it; the mime, the maker, sinks to be in our +modern sense the mimic; as faith declines, folly and futility set in; +the earnest, zealous _act_ sinks into a frivolous mimicry, a sort of +child's-play. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[5] These instances are all taken from _The Golden Bough,^3 The Magic +Art_, I, 139 _ff._ + +[6] "The English Language," _Home University Library_, p. 28. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +SEASONAL RITES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL + + +We have seen in the last chapter that whatever interests primitive man, +whatever makes him feel strongly, he tends to re-enact. Any one of his +manifold occupations, hunting, fighting, later ploughing and sowing, +provided it be of sufficient interest and importance, is material for a +_dromenon_ or rite. We have also seen that, weak as he is in +individuality, it is not his private and personal emotions that tend to +become ritual, but those that are public, felt and expressed officially, +that is, by the whole tribe or community. It is further obvious that +such dances, when they develop into actual rites, tend to be performed +at fixed times. We have now to consider when and why. The element of +fixity and regular repetition in rites cannot be too strongly +emphasized. It is a factor of paramount importance, essential to the +development from ritual to art, from _dromenon_ to drama. + +The two great interests of primitive man are food and children. As Dr. +Frazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have +food; if his race is to persist he must have children. "To live and to +cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary +wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in +the future so long as the world lasts." Other things may be added to +enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first +satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, +therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by +the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They +are the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are +right, took its rise. From this need for food sprang seasonal, periodic +festivals. The fact that festivals are seasonal, constantly recurrent, +solidifies, makes permanent, and as already explained (p. 42), in a +sense intellectualizes and abstracts the emotion that prompts them. + +The seasons are indeed only of value to primitive man because they are +related, as he swiftly and necessarily finds out, to his food supply. +He has, it would seem, little sensitiveness to the sthetic impulse of +the beauty of a spring morning, to the pathos of autumn. What he +realizes first and foremost is, that at certain times the animals, and +still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others +they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the +focuses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals. These +dates will vary, of course, in different countries and in different +climates. It is, therefore, idle to attempt a study of the ritual of a +people without knowing the facts of their climate and surroundings. In +Egypt the food supply will depend on the rise and fall of the Nile, and +on this rise and fall will depend the ritual and calendar of Osiris. And +yet treatises on Egyptian religion are still to be found which begin by +recounting the rites and mythology of Osiris, as though these were +primary, and then end with a corollary to the effect that these rites +and this calendar were "associated" with the worship of Osiris, or, even +worse still, "instituted by" the religion of Osiris. The Nile regulates +the food supply of Egypt, the monsoon that of certain South Pacific +islands; the calendar of Egypt depends on the Nile, of the South +Pacific islands on the monsoon. + + * * * * * + +In his recent _Introduction to Mathematics_[7] Dr. Whitehead has pointed +out how the "whole life of Nature is dominated by the existence of +periodic events." The rotation of the earth produces successive days; +the path of the earth round the sun leads to the yearly recurrence of +the seasons; the phases of the moon are recurrent, and though artificial +light has made these phases pass almost unnoticed to-day, in climates +where the skies are clear, human life was largely influenced by +moonlight. Even our own bodily life, with its recurrent heart-beats and +breathings, is essentially periodic.[8] The presupposition of +periodicity is indeed fundamental to our very conception of life, and +but for periodicity the very means of measuring time as a quantity would +be absent. + +Periodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that +is evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that +has gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art. +And yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual +calendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different +quality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on +periodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in +which periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen +already that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there +arises an idea or "presentation." A "presentation" is, indeed, it would +seem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire--a +desire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over +into a "presentation." An image conceived "presented," what we call an +_idea_ is, as it were, an act prefigured. + +Ritual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are +acts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is +more and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into +what we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an +unaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively +bloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse +in the cycle of activity. It will later (p. 70) be seen that these +periodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished +actions and desires which we call gods--Attis, Osiris, Dionysos--are +made. + + * * * * * + +To primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself +were not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for +all. It will depend on man's social and geographical conditions whether +he notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he +will note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children, +and will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident +that, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is +the periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on +moisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer, +trees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter, +and awakes in spring. + +Sometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is +very clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again, +essentially rites of lamentation. The details of the ritual show this +clearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the +"gardens" of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth, +and in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat, +fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and +tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but +as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the +eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and +thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis +became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay. + + * * * * * + +"What waste would it be," says Plutarch,[9] "what inconceivable waste, +for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the +women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of +Adonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish +but for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and +solid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment." + +Celebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the "gardens" were thrown +into water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at +least in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine +and Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough +to provoke expression, and we remember (p. 19) that the Sumerian Tammuz +was originally _Dumuzi-absu_, "True Son of the Waters." Water is the +first need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the +Madras Presidency.[10] At the marriage of a Brahman "seeds of five or +nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially +for the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water +the seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day +the seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank +or river." + +Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent--the promotion of +fertility in plants, animals and man--may occur at almost any time of +the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in +autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter +among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, +for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in +from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas +festival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice. +But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, +the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is +the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the +Greek of to-day the "noixis," "the Opening," and it was in spring and +with rites of spring that both Greek and Roman originally began their +year. It was this spring festival that gave to the Greek their god +Dionysos and in part his drama. + + * * * * * + +In Cambridge on May Day two or three puzzled and weary little boys and +girls are still to be sometimes seen dragging round a perambulator with +a doll on it bedecked with ribbons and a flower or two. That is all that +is left in most parts of England of the Queen of the May and +Jack-in-the-Green, though here and there a maypole survives and is +resuscitated by enthusiasts about folk-dances. But in the days of "Good +Queen Bess" merry England, it would seem, was lustier. The Puritan +Stubbs, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_,[11] thus describes the festival: + + "They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a + sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and + these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), + which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round + aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme + painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, + women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus + beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the + toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, + set up summer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall + they to banquet and feast, to leap and daunce aboute it, as the + heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this + is a perfect patterne or rather the thyng itself." + +The stern old Puritan was right, the maypole was the perfect pattern of +a heathen "idoll, or rather the thyng itself." He would have +exterminated it root and branch, but other and perhaps wiser divines +took the maypole into the service of the Christian Church, and still[12] +on May Day in Saffron Walden the spring song is heard with its Christian +moral-- + + "A branch of May we have brought you, + And at your door it stands; + It is a sprout that is well budded out, + The work of our Lord's hands." + +The maypole was of course at first no pole cut down and dried. The gist +of it was that it should be a "sprout, well budded out." The object of +carrying in the May was to bring the very spirit of life and greenery +into the village. When this was forgotten, idleness or economy would +prompt the villagers to use the same tree or branch year after year. In +the villages of Upper Bavaria Dr. Frazer[13] tells us the maypole is +renewed once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched +from the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with +which it is bedecked, an essential part is the bunch of dark green +foliage left at the top, "as a memento that in it we have to do, not +with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood." + +At the ritual of May Day not only was the fresh green bough or tree +carried into the village, but with it came a girl or a boy, the Queen or +King of the May. Sometimes the tree itself, as in Russia, is dressed up +in woman's clothes; more often a real man or maid, covered with flowers +and greenery, walks with the tree or carries the bough. Thus in +Thuringia,[14] as soon as the trees begin to be green in spring, the +children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they +choose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches +from the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are +left peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should +stumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking +for gifts of food, such as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes. Finally, they +sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food. Such a Leaf Man +is our English Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who, as late as +1892, was seen by Dr. Rouse walking about at Cheltenham encased in a +wooden framework covered with greenery. + +The bringing in of the new leafage in the form of a tree or flowers is +one, and perhaps the simplest, form of spring festival. It takes little +notice of death and winter, uttering and emphasizing only the desire for +the joy in life and spring. But in other and severer climates the +emotion is fiercer and more complex; it takes the form of a struggle or +contest, what the Greeks called an _agon_. Thus on May Day in the Isle +of Man a Queen of the May was chosen, and with her twenty maids of +honour, together with a troop of young men for escort. But there was not +only a Queen of the May, but a Queen of Winter, a man dressed as a +woman, loaded with warm clothes and wearing a woollen hood and fur +tippet. Winter, too, had attendants like the Queen of the May. The two +troops met and fought; and whichever Queen was taken prisoner had to pay +the expenses of the feast. + +In the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it +has become a mere play. But among the Esquimaux[15] there is still +carried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood. +In autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter +is at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties +called the Ptarmigans and the Ducks. The ptarmigans are the people born +in winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope +of sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the +other, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine +weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival +might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring, +but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice +and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of +spring. + + * * * * * + +The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these +magical _agones_, or "contests," is not very easy to realize. The +weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day's pleasuring or +raises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to +us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think +ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The +intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that +many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the +emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully +realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the +Central Australians. + +The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer, +from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season +short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden +fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a +marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, +the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched +acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life +save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. +Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. +Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the +thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation +bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs, +birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it +live quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short. + +It seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the +primitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and +magic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility +approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and +multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he +paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his +own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in +stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the +chrysalis of a Witchetty grub--his favourite food, and drags his body +through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. +Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain +in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main +emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and +admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the +singing of birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to an +All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to +the push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat +that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to +live, that he _utters and represents_. + + * * * * * + +The savage utters his will to live, his intense desire for food; but it +should be noted, it is desire and will and longing, not certainty and +satisfaction that he utters. In this respect it is interesting to note +that his rites and ceremonies, when periodic, are of fairly long +periods. Winter and summer are not the only natural periodic cycles; +there is the cycle of day and night, and yet among primitive peoples but +little ritual centres round day and night. The reason is simple. The +cycle of day and night is so short, it recurs so frequently, that man +naturally counted upon it and had no cause to be anxious. The emotional +tension necessary to ritual was absent. A few peoples, _e.g._ the +Egyptians, have practised daily incantations to bring back the sun. +Probably they had at first felt a real tension of anxiety, and +then--being a people hidebound by custom--had gone on from mere +conservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even, +as among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual +inevitably arises. They play at cat's-cradle to catch the ball of the +sun lest it should sink and be lost for ever. + +Round the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early +centred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was +first surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes +and wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and +wanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch[16] tells us, +is fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young +of animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon[17] held that +observations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the +grafting of trees were "not altogether frivolous." It cannot too often +be remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun +and moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he +cares for them, he holds them sacred, he performs rites in relation to +them mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for +the seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a +_Hora_ was at first to the Greeks, _the fruits of a season_, what our +farmers would call "a good _year_." + + * * * * * + +The sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the +seasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons +were annual, that they went round in a _ring_; and because that annual +ring was long in revolving, great was man's hope and fear in the winter, +great his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of +death and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes +represented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris. + +Adonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt +as to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in +Thringen a ceremony is performed called "Driving out the Death." The +young people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry +it out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell the good +news to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia +the children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are +burning it they sing-- + + "Now carry we Death out of the village, + The new Summer into the village, + Welcome, dear Summer, + Green little corn." + +In other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes +back but Life. + + "We have carried away Death, + And brought back Life." + +In both these cases it is interesting to note that though Death is +dramatically carried out, the coming back of Life is only announced, not +enacted. + +Often, and it would seem quite naturally, the puppet representing Death +or Winter is reviled and roughly handled, or pelted with stones, and +treated in some way as a sort of scapegoat. But in not a few cases, and +these are of special interest, it seems to be the seat of a sort of +magical potency which can be and is transferred to the figure of Summer +or Life, thus causing, as it were, a sort of Resurrection. In Lusatia +the women only carry out the Death. They are dressed in black themselves +as mourners, but the puppet of straw which they dress up as the Death +wears a white shirt. They carry it to the village boundary, followed by +boys throwing stones, and there tear it to pieces. Then they cut down a +tree and dress it in the white shirt of the Death and carry it home +singing. + +So at the Feast of the Ascension in Transylvania. After morning service +the girls of the village dress up the Death; they tie a threshed-out +sheaf of corn into a rough copy of a head and body, and stick a +broomstick through the body for arms. Then they dress the figure up in +the ordinary holiday clothes of a peasant girl--a red hood, silver +brooches, and ribbons galore. They put the Death at an open window that +all the people when they go to vespers may see it. Vespers over, two +girls take the Death by the arms and walk in front; the rest follow. +They sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they +go to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes, +and throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it +into a river. Then one of the girls is dressed in the Death's discarded +clothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same +hymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated +Death. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new, +will be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos +and the Dithyramb. + +These ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple +carrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we +have these figures, these "impersonations," we are getting away from the +merely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor +discharge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to +personification. On this question of personification, in which so much +of art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear. + + * * * * * + +In discussions on such primitive rites as "Carrying out the Death," +"Bringing in Summer," we are often told that the puppet of the girl is +carried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it "personifies the +Spirit of Vegetation," or it "embodies the Spirit of Summer." The +Spirit of Vegetation is "incarnate in the puppet." We are led, by this +way of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms +an idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later +"embodies" it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act +so high and difficult as abstraction. + +A very little consideration shows that he performs at first no +abstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He +begins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance +has, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an +actual _person_, and he is the root and ground of _personification_. +There is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not +"embody" a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his +personality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from +the only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without +_per_ception there is no _con_ception. We noted in speaking of dances +(p. 43) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of +actual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance. +So, from many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many +actual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and +women, arises _the_ Tree Spirit, _the_ Vegetation Spirit, _the_ Death. + +At the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the +emotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus +who dance together _with a common leader_. Round that leader the emotion +centres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either +is himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band; +drama--doing--tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is +then remembered, thought of, imaged; from being _per_ceived year by +year, he is finally _con_ceived; but his basis is always in actual fact +of which he is but the reflection. + +Had there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have +halted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent _per_ception helps to +form a permanent abstract _con_ception. The different actual recurrent +May Kings and "Deaths," _because they recur_, get a sort of permanent +life of their own and become beings apart. In this way a conception, a +kind of _daimon_, or spirit, is fashioned, who dies and lives again in a +perpetual cycle. The periodic festival begets a kind of not immortal, +but perennial, god. + +Yet the faculty of conception is but dim and feeble in the mind even of +the peasant to-day; his function is to perceive the actual fact year by +year, and to feel about it. Perhaps a simple instance best makes this +clear. The Greek Church does not gladly suffer images in the round, +though she delights in picture-images, _eikons_. But at her great spring +festival of Easter she makes, in the remote villages, concession to a +strong, perhaps imperative, popular need; she allows an image, an actual +idol, of the dead Christ to be laid in the tomb that it may rise again. +A traveller in Euboea[18] during Holy Week had been struck by the genuine +grief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter Eve there was the +same general gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman why it +was. She answered: "Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise +to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year." + +The old woman's state of mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old +emotion, not sorrow for the Christ the Son of Mary, but fear, imminent +fear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical +Christ of Juda, still less the incarnation of the Godhead proceeding +from the Father; he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus +and laid by the priests, the leaders of that chorus, in the local +sepulchre. + + * * * * * + +So far, then, we have seen that the vague emotional dance tends to +become a periodic rite, performed at regular intervals. The periodic +rite may occur at any date of importance to the food-supply of the +community, in summer, in winter, at the coming of the annual rains, or +the regular rising of a river. Among Mediterranean peoples, both in +ancient days and at the present time, the Spring Festival arrests +attention. Having learnt the general characteristics of this Spring +Festival, we have now to turn to one particular case, the Spring +Festival of the Greeks. This is all-important to us because, as will be +seen, from the ritual of this and kindred festivals arose, we believe, a +great form of Art, the Greek drama. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] Chapter XII: "Periodicity in Nature." + +[8] _Ibid._ + +[9] _De Ser. Num._ 17. + +[10] Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_,^3 p. 200. + +[11] Quoted by Dr. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 203. + +[12] E.K. Chambers, _The Medival Stage_, I, p. 169. + +[13] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 205. + +[14] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 213. + +[15] Resumed from Dr. Frazer, _Golden Bough_,^2 II, p. 104. + +[16] _De Is. et Os._, p. 367. + +[17] _De Aug. Scient._, III, 4. + +[18] J.C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient Religion_, p. 573. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE + + +The tragedies of schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed at +Athens at a festival known as the Great Dionysia. This took place early +in April, so that the time itself makes us suspect that its ceremonies +were connected with the spring. But we have more certain evidence. +Aristotle, in his treatise on the Art of Poetry, raises the question of +the origin of the drama. He was not specially interested in primitive +ritual; beast dances and spring mummeries might even have seemed to him +mere savagery, the lowest form of "imitation;" but he divined that a +structure so complex as Greek tragedy must have arisen out of a simpler +form; he saw, or felt, in fact, that art had in some way risen out of +ritual, and he has left us a memorable statement. + +In describing the "Carrying-out of Summer" we saw that the element of +real _drama_, real impersonation, began with the leaders of the band, +with the Queen of the May, and with the "Death" or the "Winter." Great +is our delight when we find that for Greek drama Aristotle[19] divined a +like beginning. He says: + + "Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation--the one + (tragedy) _originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb_." + +The further question faces us: What was the Dithyramb? We shall find to +our joy that this obscure-sounding Dithyramb, though before Aristotle's +time it had taken literary form, was in origin a festival closely akin +to those we have just been discussing. The Dithyramb was, to begin with, +a spring ritual; and when Aristotle tells us tragedy arose out of the +Dithyramb, he gives us, though perhaps half unconsciously, a clear +instance of a splendid art that arose from the simplest of rites; he +plants our theory of the connection of art with ritual firmly with its +feet on historical ground. + + * * * * * + +When we use the word "dithyrambic" we certainly do not ordinarily think +of spring. We say a style is "dithyrambic" when it is unmeasured, too +ornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that +the word _Dithyramb_ meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not +forgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a +Dithyramb for the Dionysiac festival at Athens, and his song is full of +springtime and flowers. He bids all the gods come to Athens to dance +flower-crowned. + + "Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye + gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are + treading and incense steams: in sacred Athens come to the holy + centre-stone. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations + poured from the culling of spring.... + + "Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name + Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his + Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the + purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the + fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth, + lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices + of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with + the calling of crowned Semele." + +Bromios, "He of the loud cry," is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his +mother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova _Zembla_, "New Earth." The +song might have been sung at a "Carrying-in of Summer." The Hor, the +Seasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of +the May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the +earth, flower-crowned. + +You may _bring back_ the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a +maiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek +mythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the +daughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year +by year. On Greek vase-paintings[20] the scene occurs again and again. A +mound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of +the mound a woman's figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of +dancing dmons waiting to welcome her. + +All this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and +poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual "things done," +_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where +to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing +men, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock +called "_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will +believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter +called her up there"; and he adds: "The women to this day perform rites +analogous to the story told." + +These rites of "Calling up" must have been spring rites, in which, in +some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted. + +Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive, +because it is near akin to the "Carrying out of Winter," and also +because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the +food-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years +at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a +word which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the +Russian word _yaro_, "Spring," and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_, +"grace," in the sense of increase, "Give us all _grace_." The rites of +_Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows: + + "The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and + pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of + _Charila_ is brought in. When they had all received their share, + the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the + Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place, + and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it." + +Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria +in honour of _Yarilo_, the Spring God. + +The image is beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is +clearly a "Carrying out the Death," though we do not know the exact date +at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at +Delphi called _Herois_, or the "Heroine." Plutarch[23] says it was too +mystical and secret to describe, but he lets us know the main gist. + + "Most of the ceremonies of the _Herois_ have a mystical reason + which is known to the Thyiades, but from the rites that are done in + public, one may conjecture it to be a 'Bringing up of Semele.'" + +Some one or something, a real woman, or more likely the buried puppet +_Charila_, the Spring-Maiden, was brought up from the ground to enact +and magically induce the coming of Spring. + + * * * * * + +These ceremonies of beating, driving out, burying, have all, with the +Greeks, as with the savage and the modern peasant, but one real object: +to get rid of the season that is bad for food, to bring in and revive +the new supply. This comes out very clearly in a ceremony that went on +down to Plutarch's time, and he tells us[24] it was "ancestral." It was +called "the Driving out of Ox-hunger." By Ox-hunger was meant any great +ravenous hunger, and the very intensity and monstrosity of the word +takes us back to days when famine was a grim reality. When Plutarch was +_archon_ he had, as chief official, to perform the ceremony at the +Prytaneion, or Common Hearth. A slave was taken, beaten with rods of a +magical plant, and driven out of doors to the words: "Out with +Ox-hunger! In with Wealth and Health!" Here we see the actual sensation, +or emotion, of ravenous hunger gets a name, and thereby a personality, +though a less completely abstracted one than Death or Summer. We do not +know that the ceremony of Driving out Ox-hunger was performed in the +spring, it is only instanced here because, more plainly even than the +Charila, when the king distributes pulse and peas, it shows the relation +of ancient mimic ritual to food-supply. + +If we keep clearly in mind the _object_ rather than the exact _date_ of +the Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties. A Dithyramb was sung +at Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd. But we +must remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical +ceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any +moment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown. The sowing of the +seed is its death and burial; "that which thou sowest is not quickened +except it die." When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope +of resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical +ceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope. The Sun is new-born in +midwinter, at the solstice, and our "New" year follows, yet it is in the +spring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival. + + * * * * * + +We return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this +connection. The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the +importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the +food-supply. + + * * * * * + +Do we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point +is as curious as significant. + +Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question: + + "Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos, + With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?" + +Scholars have broken their own heads and one another's to find a meaning +and an answer to the odd query. It is only quite lately that they have +come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive +rite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric +poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring +Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How +can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the +"slender-ankled" Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull? + +The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them, +is soon settled. They are the Seasons, or "Hours," and the chief Season, +or Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces, +because they are, in the words of the Collect, the "Givers of all +grace," that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they +want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all +grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their +"fruits in due season" is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the +Dithyramb "bull-driving"? Is this a mere "poetical" epithet? If it is, +it is not particularly poetical. + +But Pindar is not, we now know, merely being "poetical," which amounts, +according to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is +describing, alluding to, an actual rite or _dromenon_ in which a Bull is +summoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear. +Plutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise called +_Greek Questions_, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way +rites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they +meant. In his 36th _Question_ he asks: "Why do the women of Elis summon +Dionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?" And +then, by a piece of luck that almost makes one's heart stand still, he +gives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our +earliest "Bull-driving" Spring Song: + + "In Spring-time,[25] O Dionysos, + To thy holy temple come; + To Elis with thy Graces, + Rushing with thy bull-foot, come, + Noble Bull, Noble Bull." + +It is a strange primitive picture--the holy women standing in springtime +in front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and +filleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three +real women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But +what does it mean? + +Plutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused +fashion, succeeds. "Is it," he suggests, "that some entitle the god as +'Born of a Bull' and as a 'Bull' himself? ... or is it that many hold +the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?" We have seen how a +kind of _daimon_, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual +tree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god +Dionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning +year by year of some holy Bull? + +First, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull +appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive +_Question_:[26] "Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?" And we find +to our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull who not only is +holy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he +is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his +death in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, "at +the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants." + +We do not hear that the "Sanctifier" at Delphi was "driven," but in all +probability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake +in the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,[27] a city of +Asia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by +year the stewards of the city bought a Bull, "the finest that could be +got," and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they +dedicated it, for the city's welfare. The Bull's sanctified life began +with the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or +the autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a +high solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the +chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the +sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull +that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must +have both their parents alive, they must not have been under the +_taboo_, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer +for "the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the +women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of +grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle." All this longing for +fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose +holiness is his strength and fruitfulness. + +The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of +the whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with +his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and "it is good for +those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift," good for them +because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is +their own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but +early in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the +senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of +each class of the State--children and young boys, and youths just come +to manhood, _epheboi_, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is +sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the +term of his life? He dies because he _is_ so holy, that he may give his +holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to +his people. + + "When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up + among those who took part in the procession." + +The mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the +whole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten--to +every man his portion--by each and every citizen, that he may get his +share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State. + + * * * * * + +Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we +hear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin +again. But at Athens at the annual "Ox-murder," the _Bouphonia_, as it +was called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all +solemnity, and all those present partook of the flesh, and then--the +hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal +was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing. +The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We +are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the +renouncing of something. But _sacrifice_ does not mean "death" at all. +It means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man +just special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just +that special life and strength which all the year long they had put into +him, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could +not eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he +must die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed +him, not to "sacrifice" him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat +him, live _by_ him and through him, by his grace. + +And so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a +thing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not +looking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck +the blow. But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had +not, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself +in the _dromenon_ of his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how +could they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he +should, he _did_. + +The Athenians were a little ashamed of their "Ox-murder," with its +grotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of +us now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our +neighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly +about their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure. +Anyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though +from sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less +educated among them thought there "might be something in it," and anyhow +it was "as well to be on the safe side." The queer ceremony had got +associated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must +reckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow +it was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls +had to act as water-carriers. + +The Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is +alive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among +the Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main +"food focus," the chief "value centre." And well he may be. Bear's flesh +is the Ainos' staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins +are their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear's +fat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the +Bear. Yet we are told the Ainos "worship the Bear"; they apply to it the +name _Kamui_, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to +all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is +formidable. In the religion of the Ainos "the Bear plays a chief part," +says one writer. The Bear "receives idolatrous veneration," says +another. They "worship it after their fashion," says a third. Have we +another case of "the heathen in his blindness"? Only here he "bows down" +not to "gods of wood and stone," but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling +but gracious--a Bear. + +Instead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us +observe his _doings_, his _dromena_, his rites; and most of all his +great spring and autumn rite, the _dromenon_ of the Bear. We shall find +that, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greek _dromenon_ of +the Bull. + +As winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and +brought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her +breast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish--his tastes are +semi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens +to break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually +in September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting +begins. + +Before the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they +have been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill +him. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and +friends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends. +On the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were +present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes. +The woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and +silent, only now and then she burst into helpless tears. The ceremony +began with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in +a corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the +hut and offered libations in front of the Bear's cage. A few drops were +presented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women +and girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and +as they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant. +The mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched +out their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women +who had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear +began to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably. + +Next came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at +the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the _inabos_, sacred +wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet +high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. _Five new wands +with bamboo leaves attached to them_ are set up for the festival; the +leaves according to the Ainos mean _that the Bear may come to life +again_. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of +attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his +staple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of +the Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of +together. + +Then comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope +is thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood +of the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession +round the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern +Siberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be +specially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for +this will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then, +among the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy, +and other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate +themselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a +blessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too. + +To return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men, +headed by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tipped with buttons. +But the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to +irritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood, +and we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands, +a stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam; +he dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind +the men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The +body of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A +sword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it +is a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and +drink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as +an Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some +sense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the +Bear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep. + +Now that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting +and merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are +scrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is +severed from the head, to which the skin is left hanging. The blood, +which might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and +eagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up +and eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day +next but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast. +It is what the Greeks call a _dais_, a meal divided or distributed. +While the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the +sacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear's brain is +extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin, +is hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and +strength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves. +The stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and +with it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole +congregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a +great drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the +feast. + +The rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the +Bear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume and seated on a +bench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the +oldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There +all the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is +felled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull +wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull +disappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear's flesh +is eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at +it. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are +elaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices. + +Through all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is +identical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the +maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the +Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, +later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and +the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear +and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a +special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried +about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail +for all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to +pieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and +Tree die only that they may live again. + + * * * * * + +We have seen (p. 71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually +_per_ceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image, +an imagined Tree Spirit, or "Summer," or Death, a thing never actually +seen but _con_ceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various +villages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the +remembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again +each year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and +finally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea, +this _con_ception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some +places the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and +cows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls' horns +in imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having +a bull's head. _We_ know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a +bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the +rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, +may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why +should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of +a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the +worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an +imagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted, +imaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual +holy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the +succession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God. + + * * * * * + +We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not +obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of +spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were +performed at Athens, the young men (_epheboi_) brought in not only the +human figure of the god, but also a Bull "worthy" of the God. We +understand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the +great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung--"Bull-driving Dithyrambs." + + * * * * * + +We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the +most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the +drama. _The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth._ + +Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. "Some," he says, +"are prayers to the gods--these are called _hymns_; others of an +opposite sort might best be called _dirges_; another sort are _pans_, +and another--the birth of Dionysos, I suppose--is called _Dithyramb_." +Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a +particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they +were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the +information carelessly--the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the +birth or coming to be, the _genesis_ of Dionysos. + +The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato's statement. When a +poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the +title _Dithyrambos_. Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens +thus: + + "Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come. + ... + Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring + Holy hours of thine own holy spring. + ... + All the stars danced for joy. Mirth + Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth." + +The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in +the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull. + + * * * * * + +And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a dmon, +and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos +the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once +_per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is +but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual +holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived. But +the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental +image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the +_birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a +child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original +form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in +Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, "Him of the +Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child +Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women. + +But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship +and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in +the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when, +Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know +in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the +Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty +like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of +birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of +the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born. + +This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the +word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word +_thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken; +_Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer, +and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it +shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos +was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his +father's thigh, like no man. + +But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the +Tree-God, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second +birth from which it arises? + + * * * * * + +We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth +existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and +find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over +half the savage world. + +With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his +first birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his +tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; +at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society +of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult +for us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to +manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man. +Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social +privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters +a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession. +In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to +linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as +Coming Out. A girl's dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up, +she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign's hand, a dance +is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state +of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom, +with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does +not obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of +Confirmation. + +To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is +always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his +ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and +transitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to +man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months +of tremendous educational emphasis--of what is called "initiation," +"going in," that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the +gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish +things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to +cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him +for his two chief functions as a tribesman--to be a warrior, to be a +father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man. + +This "initiation" is of tremendous importance, and we should expect, +what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues +in _dromena_, "rites done." These rites are very various, but they all +point one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the +new-born man has entered on a new life. + +Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by +the Kikuyu of British East Africa,[30] who require that every boy, just +before circumcision, must be born again. "The mother stands up with the +boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour +pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed." + +More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a +resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their +presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east +Australia,[31] when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy +bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks +and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his +hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other +bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought +to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes +on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and +more and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave. + +The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The +boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with +blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first +gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to +cleanse themselves. + +Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death +that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is +practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram[32] boys at puberty +are admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold, +followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest +trees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high +priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is +heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo +trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the +priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of +chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with +blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's +head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the +other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men +who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a +half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the +good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys +themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they +go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate. +They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the +simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of +twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not +comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the +forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their +heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry. + +Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new +name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are +danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the +Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row +cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out. +The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of +each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of +spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the +society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house. +The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood +relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe. + +Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or +represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it +is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called +Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings +them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or +rite of swallowing we are not told. + +In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to +grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus +among the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or +Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a +bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four +days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to +find him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ ("Come on, Bear") and he answers +with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at +last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and +there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first +appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in +initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same +object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to +another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and +other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which +seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is +explained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a +passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in +every rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you +carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is +a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded, +under a _taboo_. + + * * * * * + +To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, +marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little +or no social emphasis. But _the_ rite which concerned the whole tribe, +the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of +initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and +significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word +for rite was _t{)e}l{)e}t{-e}_. It was applied to all mysteries, and +sometimes to marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with +death. It comes from a root meaning "to grow up." The word +_t{)e}l{)e}t{-e}_ means _rite of growing up_, becoming complete. It +meant at first maturity, then rite of maturity, then by a natural +extension any rite of initiation that was mysterious. The rites of +puberty were in their essence mysterious, because they consisted in +initiation into the sanctities of the tribe, the things which society +sanctioned and protected, excluding the uninitiated, whether they were +young boys, women, or members of other tribes. Then, by contagion, the +mystery notion spread to other rites. + + * * * * * + +We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite, +the _dromenon_ of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second +birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells +us--Dio_nysos_, "Divine Young Man." + +When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of +the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that _image_ +which is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite +_must_ be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are +but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young _man_. Where +emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just +initiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of +quite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth +survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women +are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of +all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity. + +And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a +blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in +spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of +olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits, +_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it: + + "Eiresione brings + Figs and fat cakes, + And a pot of honey and oil to mix, + And a wine-cup strong and deep, + That she may drink and sleep." + +The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called +_Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a +Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people." + + * * * * * + +The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a +Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a +young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a +_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors: + + "Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet + and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Dikt + for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song." + +The leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual +leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a +daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in +the new year at spring. The real leader, the "first kouros" as the +Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of +leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all. +He is "lord of all that is wet and gleaming," for the May bough, we +remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and +blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away +from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing +their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough +remains to make the meaning clear. + +And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood: + + "The Hor (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dik to + possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by + wealth-loving Peace." + +We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dik is strange. +We translate the word "Justice," but Dik means, not Justice as between +man and man, but the order of the world, the _way_ of life. It is +through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the +seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that +order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion, +barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears: + + "To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and + leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase." + +And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. 32), who +throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian +peasant girls who leap high in the air crying, "Flax, grow." The +leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their +tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must +grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their +annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end: + + "Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, _and for + our young citizens_, and for goodly Themis." + +They are now young citizens of a fencd city instead of young tribesmen +of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds +them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, "goodly +Themis." No man liveth to himself. + + * * * * * + +Crete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the +priest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful +carved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing +him a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed +dancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn. + +We have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A +Spring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth; +but all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama, +rather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the +Birth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know--with Agamemnon and +Iphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us, +and the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we +have seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of +emotion--emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that +ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the +chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the +Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that +is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before +us. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] _Poetics_, IV, 12. + +[20] See my _Themis_, p. 419. (1912.) + +[21] I, 43. 2. + +[22] _Quaest. Grc._ XII. + +[23] _Op. cit._ + +[24] _Qust. Symp._, 693 f. + +[25] The words "in Spring-time" depend on an emendation to me +convincing. See my _Themis_, p. 205, note 1. + +[26] IX. + +[27] See my _Themis_, p. 151. + +[28] See my _Prolegomena_, p. 439. + +[29] _Prolegomena_, p. 402. + +[30] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 228. + +[31] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 424. + +[32] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 442. + +[33] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, p. 438. + +[34] See my _Themis_, p. 503. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON ("THING DONE") AND THE DRAMA + + +Probably most people when they go to a Greek play for the first time +think it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their +temperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or +very much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that, +whether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are +odd effects, conventions, suggestions. + +For example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or +heroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds +unconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine +thrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put +off with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is +regularly given, and usually at considerable length, in a "messenger's +speech." The messenger's speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and +though actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real +dramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has +sometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all +these, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation, +good taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he +finds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into +floods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in +silence. + +Then again, specially if the play be by Euripides, it ends not with a +"curtain," not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of +a god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or +reconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself, +strikes some people as rather stilted and formal, or as rather flat and +somehow unsatisfying. Worse still, there are in many of the scenes long +dialogues, in which the actors wrangle with each other, and in which the +action does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead of +beginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit +about the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole +thing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the +Greeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that +tragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of +lamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary +and wish that the chorus would stop lamenting and _do_ something. + + * * * * * + +At the back of our modern discontent there is lurking always this queer +anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and +when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the +ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the +intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and +pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble +to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the +choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them +alone commands a traditional respect; but if we are merely modern +spectators, we may be respectful, we may even feel strangely excited, +but we are certainly puzzled. The reason of our bewilderment is simple +enough. These prologues and messengers' speeches and ever-present +choruses that trouble us are ritual forms still surviving at a time when +the _drama_ has fully developed out of the _dromenon_. We cannot here +examine all these ritual forms in detail;[35] one, however, the chorus, +strangest and most beautiful of all, it is essential we should +understand. + +Suppose that these choral songs have been put into English that in any +way represents the beauty of the Greek; then certainly there will be +some among the spectators who get a thrill from the chorus quite unknown +to any modern stage effect, a feeling of emotion heightened yet +restrained, a sense of entering into higher places, filled with a larger +and a purer air--a sense of beauty born clean out of conflict and +disaster. + +A suspicion dawns upon the spectator that, great though the tragedies in +themselves are, they owe their peculiar, their incommunicable beauty +largely to this element of the chorus which seemed at first so strange. + +Now by examining this chorus and understanding its function--nay, more, +by considering the actual _orchestra_, the space on which the chorus +danced, and the relation of that space to the rest of the theatre, to +the stage and the place where the spectators sat--we shall get light at +last on our main central problem: How did art arise out of ritual, and +what is the relation of both to that actual life from which both art and +ritual sprang? + + * * * * * + +The dramas of schylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles +and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the _theatre_, +but, strange though it sounds to us, in the _orchestra_. The _theatre_ +to the Greeks was simply "the place of seeing," the place where the +spectators sat; what they called the sk{-e}n{-e} or _scene_, was the +tent or hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of +the whole was the _orchestra_, the circular _dancing-place_ of the +chorus; and, as the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre, +so the chorus, the band of dancing and singing men--this chorus that +seems to us so odd and even superfluous--was the centre and kernel and +starting-point of the drama. The chorus danced and sang that Dithyramb +we know so well, and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember +tragedy arose, and the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells +us, just men and boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested +from sowing and ploughing. + +Now it is in the relation between the _orchestra_ or dancing-place of +the chorus, and the _theatre_ or place of the spectators, a relation +that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development +from ritual to art--from _dromenon_ to drama. + + * * * * * + +The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular +dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and +sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular +orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a +sketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a +splendid _theatron_, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above +tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or +dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors +are used in Greece to-day as convenient dancing-places. The dance +tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a +maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On +this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as +now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There +is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors, +all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at +initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are +the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage +thinks of building a _theatre_, a spectator place. It is in the common +act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must +never be forgotten. + +[Illustration: Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra.] + +The most convenient spot for a mere dancing-place is some flat place. +But any one who travels through Greece will notice instantly that all +the Greek theatres that remain at Athens, at Epidaurus, at Delos, +Syracuse, and elsewhere, are built against the side of hills. None of +these are very early; the earliest ancient orchestra we have is at +Athens. It is a simple stone ring, but it is built against the steep +south side of the Acropolis. The oldest festival of Dionysos was, as +will presently be seen, held in quite another spot, in the _agora_, or +market-place. The reason for moving the dance was that the wooden seats +that used to be set up on a sort of "grand stand" in the market-place +fell down, and it was seen how safely and comfortably the spectators +could be seated on the side of a steep hill. + +The spectators are a new and different element, the dance is not only +danced, but it is watched from a distance, it is a spectacle; whereas in +old days all or nearly all were worshippers acting, now many, indeed +most, are spectators, watching, feeling, thinking, not doing. It is in +this new attitude of the spectator that we touch on the difference +between ritual and art; the _dromenon_, the thing actually done by +yourself has become a _drama_, a thing also done, but abstracted from +your doing. Let us look for a moment at the psychology of the spectator, +at his behaviour. + + * * * * * + +Artists, it is often said, and usually felt, are so unpractical. They +are always late for dinner, they forget to post their letters and to +return the books or even money that is lent them. Art is to most +people's minds a sort of luxury, not a necessity. In but recently bygone +days music, drawing, and dancing were no part of a training for ordinary +life, they were taught at school as "accomplishments," paid for as +"extras." Poets on their side equally used to contrast art and life, as +though they were things essentially distinct. + + "Art is long, and Time is fleeting." + +Now commonplaces such as these, being unconscious utterances of the +collective mind, usually contain much truth, and are well worth +weighing. Art, we shall show later, is profoundly connected with life; +it is nowise superfluous. But, for all that, art, both its creation and +its enjoyment, is unpractical. Thanks be to God, life is not limited to +the practical. + +When we say art is unpractical, we mean that art is _cut loose from +immediate action_. Take a simple instance. A man--or perhaps still +better a child--sees a plate of cherries. Through his senses comes the +stimulus of the smell of the cherries, and their bright colour urging +him, luring him to eat. He eats and is satisfied; the cycle of normal +behaviour is complete; he is a man or a child of action, but he is no +artist, and no art-lover. Another man looks at the same plate of +cherries. His sight and his smell lure him and urge him to eat. He does +_not_ eat; the cycle is not completed, and, because he does not eat, the +sight of those cherries, though perhaps not the smell, is altered, +purified from desire, and in some way intensified, enlarged. If he is +just a man of taste, he will take what we call an "sthetic" pleasure in +those cherries. If he is an actual artist, he will paint not the +cherries, but his vision of them, his purified emotion towards them. He +has, so to speak, come out from the chorus of actors, of cherry-eaters, +and become a spectator. + +I borrow, by his kind permission, a beautiful instance of what he well +calls "Psychical Distance" from the writings of a psychologist.[36] + +"Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute +unpleasantness. Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of +discomfort, such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar +anxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching and listening +for distant and unlocalized signals. The listless movements of the ship +and her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and +that special, expectant tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated +with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the +more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the +expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman. + +"Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and +enjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea-fog, for the moment, +its danger and practical unpleasantness; ... direct the attention to the +features 'objectively' constituting the phenomena--the veil surrounding +you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outlines of +things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesqueness; observe the +carrying power of the air, producing the impression as if you could +touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it +lose itself behind that white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness +of the water, hypercritically denying as it were, any suggestion of +danger; and, above all, the strange solitude and remoteness from the +world, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops; and the +experience may acquire, in its uncanny mingling of repose and terror, a +flavour of such concentrated poignancy and delight as to contrast +sharply with the blind and distempered anxiety of its other aspects. +This contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like the +momentary switching on of some new current, or the passing ray of a +brighter light, illuminating the outlook upon perhaps the most ordinary +and familiar objects--an impression which we experience sometimes in +instants of direst extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a +wire from sheer over-tension, and we watch the consummation of some +impending catastrophe with the marvelling unconcern of a mere +spectator." + + * * * * * + +It has often been noted that two, and two only, of our senses are the +channels of art and give us artistic material. These two senses are +sight and hearing. Touch and its special modifications, taste and smell, +do not go to the making of art. Decadent French novelists, such as +Huysmann, make their heroes revel in perfume-symphonies, but we feel +that the sentiment described is morbid and unreal, and we feel rightly. +Some people speak of a cook as an "artist," and a pudding as a "perfect +poem," but a healthy instinct rebels. Art, whether sculpture, painting, +drama, music, is of sight or hearing. The reason is simple. Sight and +hearing are the distant senses; sight is, as some one has well said, +"touch at a distance." Sight and hearing are of things already detached +and somewhat remote; they are the fitting channels for art which is cut +loose from immediate action and reaction. Taste and touch are too +intimate, too immediately vital. In Russian, as Tolstoi has pointed out +(and indeed in other languages the same is observable), the word for +beauty (_krasota_) means, to begin with, only that which pleases the +sight. Even hearing is excluded. And though latterly people have begun +to speak of an "ugly deed" or of "beautiful music," it is not good +Russian. The simple Russian does not make Plato's divine muddle between +the good and the beautiful. If a man gives his coat to another, the +Russian peasant, knowing no foreign language, will not say the man has +acted "beautifully." + +To see a thing, to feel a thing, as a work of art, we must, then, become +for the time unpractical, must be loosed from the fear and the flurry of +actual living, must become spectators. Why is this? Why can we not live +and look at once? The _fact_ that we cannot is clear. If we watch a +friend drowning we do not note the exquisite curve made by his body as +he falls into the water, nor the play of the sunlight on the ripples as +he disappears below the surface; we should be inhuman, sthetic fiends +if we did. And again, why? It would do our friend no harm that we should +enjoy the curves and the sunlight, provided we also threw him a rope. +But the simple fact is that we _cannot_ look at the curves and the +sunlight because our whole being is centred on acting, on saving him; we +cannot even, at the moment, fully feel our own terror and impending +loss. So again if we want to see and to feel the splendour and vigour of +a lion, or even to watch the cumbrous grace of a bear, we prefer that a +cage should intervene. The cage cuts off the need for motor actions; it +interposes the needful physical and moral distance, and we are free for +contemplation. Released from our own terrors, we see more and better, +and we feel differently. A man intent on action is like a horse in +blinkers, he goes straight forward, seeing only the road ahead. + +Our brain is, indeed, it would seem, in part, an elaborate arrangement +for providing these blinkers. If we saw and realized the whole of +everything, we should want to do too many things. The brain allows us +not only to remember, but, which is quite as important, to forget and +neglect; it is an organ of oblivion. By neglecting most of the things we +see and hear, we can focus just on those which are important for action; +we can cease to be potential artists and become efficient practical +human beings; but it is only by limiting our view, by a great +renunciation as to the things we see and feel. The artist does just the +reverse. He renounces doing in order to practise seeing. He is by nature +what Professor Bergson calls "distrait," aloof, absent-minded, intent +only, or mainly, on contemplation. That is why the ordinary man often +thinks the artist a fool, or, if he does not go so far as that, is made +vaguely uncomfortable by him, never really understands him. The artist's +focus, all his system of values, is different, his world is a world of +images which are his realities. + + * * * * * + +The distinction between art and ritual, which has so long haunted and +puzzled us, now comes out quite clearly, and also in part the relation +of each to actual life. Ritual, we saw, was a re-presentation or a +pre-presentation, a re-doing or pre-doing, a copy or imitation of life, +but,--and this is the important point,--always with a practical end. Art +is also a representation of life and the emotions of life, but cut loose +from immediate action. Action may be and often is represented, but it is +not that it may lead on to a practical further end. The end of art is in +itself. Its value is not mediate but _im_mediate. Thus ritual _makes, as +it were, a bridge between real life and art_, a bridge over which in +primitive times it would seem man must pass. In his actual life he hunts +and fishes and ploughs and sows, being utterly intent on the practical +end of gaining his food; in the _dromenon_ of the Spring Festival, +though his _acts_ are unpractical, being mere singing and dancing and +mimicry, his _intent_ is practical, to induce the return of his +food-supply. In the drama the representation may remain for a time the +same, but the intent is altered: man has come out from action, he is +separate from the dancers, and has become a spectator. The drama is an +end in itself. + + * * * * * + +We know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a _dromenon_ +became the drama, and we have seen that the shift is symbolized and +expressed by the addition of the _theatre_, or spectator-place, to the +orchestra, or dancing-place. We have also tried to analyse the meaning +of the shift. It remains to ask what was its cause. Ritual does not +always develop into art, though in all probability dramatic art has +always to go through the stage of ritual. The leap from real life to the +emotional contemplation of life cut loose from action would otherwise be +too wide. Nature abhors a leap, she prefers to crawl over the ritual +bridge. There seem at Athens to have been two main causes why the +_dromenon_ passed swiftly, inevitably, into the drama. They are, first, +the decay of religious faith; second, the influx from abroad of a new +culture and new dramatic material. + +It may seem surprising to some that the decay of religious faith should +be an impulse to the birth of art. We are accustomed to talk rather +vaguely of art "as the handmaid of religion"; we think of art as +"inspired by" religion. But the decay of religious faith of which we now +speak is not the decay of faith in a god, or even the decay of some high +spiritual emotion; it is the decay of a belief in the efficacy of +certain magical rites, and especially of the Spring Rite. So long as +people believed that by excited dancing, by bringing in an image or +leading in a bull you could induce the coming of Spring, so long would +the _dromena_ of the Dithyramb be enacted with intense enthusiasm, and +with this enthusiasm would come an actual accession and invigoration of +vital force. But, once the faintest doubt crept in, once men began to be +guided by experience rather than custom, the enthusiasm would die down, +and the collective invigoration no longer be felt. Then some day there +will be a bad summer, things will go all wrong, and the chorus will +sadly ask: "Why should I dance my dance?" They will drift away or become +mere spectators of a rite established by custom. The rite itself will +die down, or it will live on only as the May Day rites of to-day, a +children's play, or at best a thing done vaguely "for luck." + +The spirit of the rite, the belief in its efficacy, dies, but the rite +itself, the actual mould, persists, and it is this ancient ritual mould, +foreign to our own usage, that strikes us to-day, when a Greek play is +revived, as odd and perhaps chill. A _chorus_, a band of dancers there +must be, because the drama arose out of a ritual dance. An _agon_, or +contest, or wrangling, there will probably be, because Summer contends +with Winter, Life with Death, the New Year with the Old. A tragedy must +be tragic, must have its _pathos_, because the Winter, the Old Year, +must die. There must needs be a swift transition, a clash and change +from sorrow to joy, what the Greeks called a _peripeteia_, a +_quick-turn-round_, because, though you carry out Winter, you bring in +Summer. At the end we shall have an Appearance, an Epiphany of a god, +because the whole gist of the ancient ritual was to summon the spirit of +life. All these ritual forms haunt and shadow the play, whatever its +plot, like ancient traditional ghosts; they underlie and sway the +movement and the speeches like some compelling rhythm. + +Now this ritual mould, this underlying rhythm, is a fine thing in +itself; and, moreover, it was once shaped and cast by a living spirit: +the intense immediate desire for food and life, and for the return of +the seasons which bring that food and life. But we have seen that, once +the faith in man's power magically to bring back these seasons waned, +once he began to doubt whether he could really carry out Winter and +bring in Summer, his emotion towards these rites would cool. Further, we +have seen that these rites repeated year by year ended, among an +imaginative people, in the mental creation of some sort of dmon or god. +This dmon, or god, was more and more held responsible on his own +account for the food-supply and the order of the Hor, or Seasons; so we +get the notion that this dmon or god himself led in the Seasons; Hermes +dances at the head of the Charites, or an Eiresione is carried to Helios +and the Hor. The thought then arises that this man-like dmon who rose +from a real King of the May, must himself be approached and dealt with +as a man, bargained with, sacrificed to. In a word, in place of +_dromena_, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments, +holy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern +sense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods. The relation of these +figures of gods to art we shall consider when we come to sculpture. + +So the _dromenon_, the thing done, wanes, the prayer, the praise, the +sacrifice waxes. Religion moves away from drama towards theology, but +the ritual mould of the _dromenon_ is left ready for a new content. + +Again, there is another point. The magical _dromenon_, the Carrying out +of Winter, the Bringing in of Spring, is doomed to an inherent and +deadly monotony. It is only when its magical efficacy is intensely +believed that it can go on. The life-history of a holy bull is always +the same; its magical essence is that it should be the same. Even when +the life-dmon is human his career is unchequered. He is born, +initiated, or born again; he is married, grows old, dies, is buried; and +the old, old story is told again next year. There are no fresh personal +incidents, peculiar to one particular dmon. If the drama rose from the +Spring Song only, beautiful it might be, but with a beauty that was +monotonous, a beauty doomed to sterility. + +We seem to have come to a sort of _impasse_, the spirit of the +_dromenon_ is dead or dying, the spectators will not stay long to watch +a doing doomed to monotony. The ancient moulds are there, the old +bottles, but where is the new wine? The pool is stagnant; what angel +will step down to trouble the waters? + + * * * * * + +Fortunately we are not left to conjecture what _might_ have happened. In +the case of Greece we know, though not as clearly as we wish, what did +happen. We can see in part why, though the _dromena_ of Adonis and +Osiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere +ritual; the _dromenon_ of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama. + +Let us look at the facts, and first at some structural facts in the +building of the theatre. + +We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for +ritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a +rite of practical intent. We further saw that the _theatre_, the place +for the spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and +dancing; the marble _seats_ are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from +action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in +importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and +give their name _theatre_ to the whole structure; action is swallowed up +in contemplation. But contemplation of what? At first, of course, of the +ritual dance, but not for long. That, we have seen, was doomed to a +deadly monotony. In a Greek theatre there was not only orchestra and a +spectator-place, there was also a _scene_ or _stage_. + +The Greek word for stage is, as we said, _sken_, our scene. The _scene_ +was not a stage in our sense, _i.e._ a platform raised so that the +players might be better viewed. It was simply a tent, or rude hut, in +which the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses. +The fact that the Greek theatre had, to begin with, no permanent stage +in our sense, shows very clearly how little it was regarded as a +spectacle. The ritual dance was a _dromenon_, a thing to be done, not a +thing to be looked at. The history of the Greek stage is one long story +of the encroachment of the stage on the orchestra. At first a rude +platform or table is set up, then scenery is added; the movable tent is +translated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first +outside the orchestra; then bit by bit the _scene_ encroaches till the +sacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and +the stage wax, the _dromenon_ and the orchestra wane. + +This shift in the relation of dancing-place and stage is very clearly +seen in Fig. 2, a plan of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (p. 144). The +old circular orchestra shows the dominance of ritual; the new curtailed +orchestra of Roman times and semicircular shape shows the dominance of +the spectacle. + +[Illustration: Fig. 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens.] + +Greek tragedy arose, Aristotle has told us, from the _leaders_ of the +Dithyramb, the leaders of the Spring Dance. The Spring Dance, the mime +of Summer and Winter, had, as we have seen, only one actor, one actor +with two parts--Death and Life. With only one play to be played, and +that a one-actor play, there was not much need for a stage. A _scene_, +that is a _tent_, was needed, as we saw, because all the dancers had to +put on their ritual gear, but scarcely a stage. From a rude platform +the prologue might be spoken, and on that platform the Epiphany or +Appearance of the New Year might take place; but the play played, the +life-history of the life-spirit, was all too familiar; there was no need +to look, the thing was to dance. You need a stage--not necessarily a +raised stage, but a place apart from the dancers--when you have new +material for your players, something you need to look at, to attend to. +In the sixth century B.C., at Athens, came _the_ great innovation. +Instead of the old plot, the life-history of the life-spirit, with its +deadly monotony, new plots were introduced, not of life-spirits but of +human individual heroes. In a word, Homer came to Athens, and out of +Homeric stories playwrights began to make their plots. This innovation +was the death of ritual monotony and the _dromenon_. It is not so much +the old that dies as the new that kills. + + * * * * * + +schylus himself is reported to have said that his tragedies were +"slices from the great banquet of Homer." The metaphor is not a very +pleasing one, but it expresses a truth. By Homer, schylus meant not +only our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but the whole body of Epic or Heroic +poetry which centred round not only the Siege of Troy but the great +expedition of the _Seven Against Thebes_, and which, moreover, contained +the stories of the heroes before the siege began, and their adventures +after it was ended. It was from these heroic sagas for the most part, +though not wholly, that the _myths_ or plots of not only schylus but +also Sophocles and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays +are lost to us, are taken. The new wine that was poured into the old +bottles of the _dromena_ at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga. We +know as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly +responsible for this inpouring--the great democratic tyrant +Peisistratos. We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and +then pass to what he did. + +He found an ancient Spring _dromenon_, perhaps well-nigh effete. Without +destroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old +plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and thereby arose +the drama. + +Let us look first, then, at what Peisistratos found. + +The April festival of Dionysos at which the great dramas were performed +was not the earliest festival of the god. Thucydides[37] expressly tells +us that on the 12th day of the month Anthesterion, that is in the quite +early spring, at the turn of our February and March, were celebrated +_the more ancient Dionysia_. It was a three-days' festival.[38] On the +first day, called "Cask-opening," the jars of new wine were broached. +Among the Boeotians the day was called not the day of Dionysos, but the +day of the Good or Wealthy Daimon. The next day was called the day of +the "Cups"--there was a contest or _agon_ of drinking. The last day was +called the "Pots," and it, too, had its "Pot-Contests." It is the +ceremonies of this day that we must notice a little in detail; for they +are very surprising. "Casks," "Cups," and "Pots," sound primitive +enough. "Casks" and "Cups" go well with the wine-god, but the "Pots" +call for explanation. + +The second day of the "Cups," joyful though it sounds, was by the +Athenians counted unlucky, because on that day they believed "the ghosts +of the dead rose up." The sanctuaries were roped in, each householder +anointed his door with pitch, that the ghost who tried to enter might +catch and stick there. Further, to make assurance doubly sure, from +early dawn he chewed a bit of buckthorn, a plant of strong purgative +powers, so that, if a ghost should by evil chance go down his throat, it +should at least be promptly expelled. + +For two, perhaps three, days of constant anxiety and ceaseless +precautions the ghosts fluttered about Athens. Men's hearts were full of +nameless dread, and, as we shall see, hope. At the close of the third +day the ghosts, or, as the Greeks called them, _Keres_, were bidden to +go. Some one, we do not know whom, it may be each father of a household, +pronounced the words: "Out of the door, ye Keres; it is no longer +Anthesteria," and, obedient, the Keres were gone. + +But before they went there was a supper for these souls. All the +citizens cooked a _panspermia_ or "Pot-of-all-Seeds," but of this +Pot-of-all-Seeds no citizen tasted. It was made over to the spirits of +the under-world and Hermes their daimon, Hermes "Psychopompos," +Conductor, Leader of the dead. + + * * * * * + +We have seen how a forest people, dependent on fruit trees and berries +for their food, will carry a maypole and imagine a tree-spirit. But a +people of agriculturists will feel and do and think quite otherwise; +they will look, not to the forest but to the earth for their returning +life and food; they will sow seeds and wait for their sprouting, as in +the gardens of Adonis. Adonis seems to have passed through the two +stages of Tree-Spirit and Seed-Spirit; his effigy was sometimes a tree +cut down, sometimes his planted "Gardens." Now seeds are many, +innumerable, and they are planted in the earth, and a people who bury +their dead know, or rather feel, that the earth is dead man's land. So, +when they prepare a pot of seeds on their All Souls' Day, it is not +really or merely as a "supper for the souls," though it may be that +kindly notion enters. The ghosts have other work to do than to eat their +supper and go. They take that supper "of all seeds," that _panspermia_, +with them down to the world below, that they may tend it and foster it +and bring it back in autumn as a pot of _all fruits_, a _pankarpia_. + + "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." + +The dead, then, as well as the living--this is for us the important +point--had their share in the _dromena_ of the "more ancient Dionysia." +These agricultural spring _dromena_ were celebrated just outside the +ancient city gates, in the _agora_, or place of assembly, on a circular +dancing-place, near to a very primitive sanctuary of Dionysos which was +opened only once in the year, at the Feast of Cups. Just outside the +gates was celebrated yet another festival of Dionysos equally primitive, +called the "Dionysia in the Fields." It had the form though not the date +of our May Day festival. Plutarch[39] thus laments over the "good old +times": "In ancient days," he says, "our fathers used to keep the feast +of Dionysos in homely, jovial fashion. There was a procession, a jar of +wine and a _branch_; then some one dragged in a goat, another followed +bringing a wicker basket of figs, and, to crown all, the phallos." It +was just a festival of the fruits of the whole earth: wine and the +basket of figs and the branch for vegetation, the goat for animal life, +the phallos for man. No thought here of the dead, it is all for the +living and his food. + + * * * * * + +Such sanctities even a great tyrant might not tamper with. But if you +may not upset the old you may without irreverence add the new. +Peisistratos probably cared little for, and believed less in, magical +ceremonies for the renewal of fruits, incantations of the dead. We can +scarcely picture him chewing buckthorn on the day of the "Cups," or +anointing his front door with pitch to keep out the ghosts. Very wisely +he left the Anthesteria and the kindred festival "in the fields" where +and as they were. But for his own purposes he wanted to do honour to +Dionysos, and also above all things to enlarge and improve the rites +done in the god's honour, so, leaving the old sanctuary to its fate, he +built a new temple on the south side of the Acropolis where the present +theatre now stands, and consecrated to the god a new and more splendid +precinct. + +He did not build the present theatre, we must always remember that. The +rows of stone seats, the chief priest's splendid marble chair, were not +erected till two centuries later. What Peisistratos did was to build a +small stone temple (see Fig. 2), and a great round orchestra of stone +close beside it. Small fragments of the circular foundation can still be +seen. The spectators sat on the hill-side or on wooden seats; there was +as yet no permanent _the{-a}tron_ or spectator-place, still less a stone +stage; the _dromena_ were done on the dancing-place. But for +spectator-place they had the south slope of the Acropolis. What kind of +wooden stage they had unhappily we cannot tell. It may be that only a +portion of the orchestra was marked off. + + * * * * * + +Why did Peisistratos, if he cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts, +take such trouble to foster and amplify the worship of this +maypole-spirit, Dionysos? Why did he add to the Anthesteria, the +festival of the family ghosts and the peasant festival "in the fields," +a new and splendid festival, a little later in the spring, the _Great +Dionysia_, or _Dionysia of the City_? One reason among others was +this--Peisistratos was a "tyrant." + +Now a Greek "tyrant" was not in our sense "tyrannical." He took his own +way, it is true, but that way was to help and serve the common people. +The tyrant was usually raised to his position by the people, and he +stood for democracy, for trade and industry, as against an idle +aristocracy. It was but a rudimentary democracy, a democratic tyranny, +the power vested in one man, but it stood for the rights of the many as +against the few. Moreover, Dionysos was always of the people, of the +"working classes," just as the King and Queen of the May are now. The +upper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but +_their own ancestors_. But--and this was what Peisistratos with great +insight saw--Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city. +The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed +aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts +and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not +inherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the +Dionysia "in the fields," but he added the Great Dionysia "in the city." + +Peisistratos was not the only tyrant who concerned himself with the +_dromena_ of Dionysos. Herodotos[40] tells the story of another tyrant, +a story which is like a window opening suddenly on a dark room. At +Sicyon, a town near Corinth, there was in the _agora_ a _heroon_, a +hero-tomb, of an Argive hero, Adrastos. + +"The Sicyonians," says Herodotos, "paid other honours to Adrastos, and, +moreover, they celebrated his death and disasters with tragic choruses, +not honouring Dionysos but Adrastos." We think of "tragic" choruses as +belonging exclusively to the theatre and Dionysos; so did Herodotus, but +clearly here they belonged to a local hero. His adventures and his death +were commemorated by choral dances and songs. Now when Cleisthenes +became tyrant of Sicyon he felt that the cult of the local hero was a +danger. What did he do? Very adroitly he brought in from Thebes another +hero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos; +part of his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new +Theban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people's god, +to Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and +die. No local hero can live on without his cult. + +The act of Cleisthenes seems to us a very drastic proceeding. But +perhaps it was not really so revolutionary as it seems. The local hero +was not so very unlike a local _dmon_, a Spring or Winter spirit. We +have seen in the Anthesteria how the paternal ghosts are expected to +look after the seeds in spring. The more important the ghost the more +incumbent is this duty upon him. _Noblesse oblige_. On the river +Olynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos, +who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and +Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the +lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round +about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. "And it is a +wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They +say that formerly the people used to perform the accustomed rites to +the dead in the month Elaphebolion, but now they do them in +Anthesterion, _and that on this account the fish come up in those months +only_ in which they are wont to do honour to the dead." The river is the +chief source of the food-supply, so to send fish, not seeds and flowers, +is the dead hero's business. + +Peisistratos was not so daring as Cleisthenes. We do not hear that he +disturbed or diminished any local cult. He did not attempt to move the +Anthesteria with its ghost cult; he only added a new festival, and +trusted to its recent splendour gradually to efface the old. And at this +new festival he celebrated the deeds of other heroes, not local but of +greater splendour and of wider fame. If he did not bring Homer to +Athens, he at least gave Homer official recognition. Now to bring Homer +to Athens was like opening the eyes of the blind. + + * * * * * + +Cicero, in speaking of the influence of Peisistratos on literature, +says: "He is said to have arranged in their present order the works of +Homer, which were previously in confusion." He arranged them not for +what we should call "publication," but for public recitation, and +another tradition adds that he or his son fixed the order of their +recitation at the great festival of "All Athens," the Panathenaia. +Homer, of course, was known before in Athens in a scrappy way; now he +was publicly, officially promulgated. It is probable, though not +certain, that the "Homer" which Peisistratos prescribed for recitation +at the Panathenaia was just our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and that the rest +of the heroic cycle, all the remaining "slices" from the heroic banquet, +remained as material for dithyrambs and dramas. The "tyranny" of +Peisistratos and his son lasted from 560 to 501 B.C.; tradition said +that the first dramatic contest was held in the new theatre built by +Peisistratos in 535 B.C., when Thespis won the prize. schylus was born +in 525 B.C.; his first play, with a plot from the heroic saga, the +_Seven Against Thebes_, was produced in 467 B.C. It all came very +swiftly, the shift from the dithyramb as Spring Song to the heroic drama +was accomplished in something much under a century. Its effect on the +whole of Greek life and religion--nay, on the whole of subsequent +literature and thought--was incalculable. Let us try to see why. + + * * * * * + +Homer was the outcome, the expression, of an "heroic" age. When we use +the word "heroic" we think vaguely of something brave, brilliant, +splendid, something exciting and invigorating. A hero is to us a man of +clear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a +good friend and a good hater. The word "hero" calls up such figures as +Achilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure. Now such +figures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are +not confined to Homer. They occur in any and every heroic age. We are +beginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic characters, do not arise +from any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings, but, +given certain social conditions, they may, and do, appear anywhere and +at any time. The world has seen several heroic ages, though it is, +perhaps, doubtful if it will ever see another. What, then, are the +conditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic +poetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence on, and +importance to, the development of Greek dramatic art? Why had it power +to change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living +drama? Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so +eagerly welcome it to Athens? + +In the old ritual dance the individual was nothing, the choral band, the +group, everything, and in this it did but reflect primitive tribal life. +Now in the heroic _saga_ the individual is everything, the mass of the +people, the tribe, or the group, are but a shadowy background which +throws up the brilliant, clear-cut personality into a more vivid light. +The epic poet is all taken up with what he called _klea andron_, +"glorious deeds of men," of individual heroes; and what these heroes +themselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal +distinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies +meet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes +are for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not +hereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility. +Rather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage paid them is a +personal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his +followers by bravery, he must keep them by personal generosity. +Moreover, heroic wars are oftenest not tribal feuds consequent on tribal +raids, more often they arise from personal grievances, personal +jealousies; the siege of Troy is undertaken not because the Trojans have +raided the cattle of the Achans, but because a single Trojan, Paris, +has carried off Helen, a single Achan's wife. + +Another noticeable point is that in heroic poems scarcely any one is +safely and quietly at home. The heroes are fighting in far-off lands or +voyaging by sea; hence we hear little of tribal and even of family ties. +The real centre is not the hearth, but the leader's tent or ship. Local +ties that bind to particular spots of earth are cut, local differences +fall into abeyance, a sort of cosmopolitanism, a forecast of +pan-Hellenism, begins to arise. And a curious point--all this is +reflected in the gods. We hear scarcely anything of local cults, nothing +at all of local magical maypoles and Carryings-out of Winter and +Bringings-in of Summer, nothing whatever of "Suppers" for the souls, or +even of worship paid to particular local heroes. A man's ghost when he +dies does not abide in its grave ready to rise at springtime and help +the seeds to sprout; it goes to a remote and shadowy region, a common, +pan-Hellenic Hades. And so with the gods themselves; they are cut clean +from earth and from the local bits of earth out of which they grew--the +sacred trees and holy stones and rivers and still holier beasts. There +is not a holy Bull to be found in all Olympus, only figures of men, +bright and vivid and intensely personal, like so many glorified, +transfigured Homeric heroes. + +In a word, the heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, is the outcome +of a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the +shifting of populations.[42] But more is needed, and just this something +more the age that gave birth to Homer had. We know now that before the +northern people whom we call Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes, +came down into Greece, there had grown up in the basin of the gean a +civilization splendid, wealthy, rich in art and already ancient, the +civilization that has come to light at Troy, Mycen, Tiryns, and most of +all in Crete. The adventurers from North and South came upon a land +rich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might +sack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth. Such +conditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by +unbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and +its vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness. In settled, +social conditions, as has been well remarked, "most of the heroes would +sooner or later have found themselves in prison." + +A heroic age, happily for society, cannot last long; it has about it +while it does last a sheen of passing and pathetic splendour, such as +that which lights up the figure of Achilles, but it is bound to fade and +pass. A heroic _society_ is almost a contradiction in terms. Heroism is +for individuals. If a society is to go on at all it must strike its +roots deep in some soil, native or alien. The bands of adventurers must +disband and go home, or settle anew on the land they have conquered. +They must beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into +pruning-hooks. Their gallant, glorious leader must become a sober, +home-keeping, law-giving and law-abiding king; his followers must abate +their individuality and make it subserve a common social purpose. + +Athens, in her sheltered peninsula, lay somewhat outside the tide of +migrations and heroic exploits. Her population and that of all Attica +remained comparatively unchanged; her kings are kings of the stationary, +law-abiding, state-reforming type; Cecrops, Erechtheus, Theseus, are not +splendid, flashing, all-conquering figures like Achilles and Agamemnon. +Athens might, it would seem, but for the coming of Homer, have lain +stagnant in a backwater of conservatism, content to go on chanting her +traditional Spring Songs year by year. It is a wonderful thing that this +city of Athens, beloved of the gods, should have been saved from the +storm and stress, sheltered from what might have broken, even shattered +her, spared the actual horrors of a heroic _age_, yet given heroic +_poetry_, given the clear wine-cup poured when the ferment was over. She +drank of it deep and was glad and rose up like a giant refreshed. + + * * * * * + +We have seen that to make up a heroic age there must be two factors, the +new and the old; the young, vigorous, warlike people must seize on, +appropriate, in part assimilate, an old and wealthy civilization. It +almost seems as if we might go a step farther, and say that for every +great movement in art or literature we must have the same conditions, a +contact of new and old, of a new spirit seizing or appropriated by an +old established order. Anyhow for Athens the historical fact stands +certain. The amazing development of the fifth-century drama is just +this, the old vessel of the ritual Dithyramb filled to the full with the +new wine of the heroic _saga_; and it would seem that it was by the hand +of Peisistratos, the great democratic tyrant, that the new wine was +outpoured. + + * * * * * + +Such were roughly the outside conditions under which the drama of art +grew out of the _dromena_ of ritual. The racial secret of the individual +genius of schylus and the forgotten men who preceded him we cannot hope +to touch. We can only try to see the conditions in which they worked and +mark the splendid new material that lay to their hands. Above all things +we can see that this material, these Homeric _saga_, were just fitted +to give the needed impulse to art. The Homeric _saga_ had for an +Athenian poet just that remoteness from immediate action which, as we +have seen, is the essence of art as contrasted with ritual. + +Tradition says that the Athenians fined the dramatic poet Phrynichus for +choosing as the plot of one of his tragedies the Taking of Miletus. +Probably the fine was inflicted for political party reasons, and had +nothing whatever to do with the question of whether the subject was +"artistic" or not. But the story may stand, and indeed was later +understood to be, a sort of allegory as to the attitude of art towards +life. To understand and still more to contemplate life you must come out +from the choral dance of life and stand apart. In the case of one's own +sorrows, be they national or personal, this is all but impossible. We +can ritualize our sorrows, but not turn them into tragedies. We cannot +stand back far enough to see the picture; we want to be doing, or at +least lamenting. In the case of the sorrows of others this standing back +is all too easy. We not only bear their pain with easy stoicism, but we +picture it dispassionately at a safe distance; we feel _about_ rather +than _with_ it. The trouble is that we do not feel enough. Such was the +attitude of the Athenian towards the doings and sufferings of Homeric +heroes. They stood towards them as spectators. These heroes had not the +intimate sanctity of home-grown things, but they had sufficient +traditional sanctity to make them acceptable as the material of drama. + +Adequately sacred though they were, they were yet free and flexible. It +is impiety to alter the myth of your local hero, it is impossible to +recast the myth of your local dmon--that is fixed forever--his +conflict, his _agon_, his death, his _pathos_, his Resurrection and its +heralding, his Epiphany. But the stories of Agamemnon and Achilles, +though at home these heroes were local _daimones_, have already been +variously told in their wanderings from place to place, and you can +mould them more or less to your will. Moreover, these figures are +already personal and individual, not representative puppets, mere +functionaries like the May Queen and Winter; they have life-histories of +their own, never quite to be repeated. It is in this blend of the +individual and the general, the personal and the universal, that one +element at least of all really great art will be found to lie; and just +here at Athens we get a glimpse of the moment of fusion; we see a +definite historical reason why and how the universal in _dromena_ came +to include the particular in drama. We see, moreover, how in place of +the old monotonous plots, intimately connected with actual practical +needs, we get material cut off from immediate reactions, seen as it were +at the right distance, remote yet not too remote. We see, in a word, how +a ritual enacted year by year became a work of art that was a +"possession for ever." + + * * * * * + +Possibly in the mind of the reader there may have been for some time a +growing discomfort, an inarticulate protest. All this about _dromena_ +and drama and dithyrambs, bears and bulls, May Queens and Tree-Spirits, +even about Homeric heroes, is all very well, curious and perhaps even in +a way interesting, but it is not at all what he expected, still less +what he wants. When he bought a book with the odd incongruous title, +_Ancient Art and Ritual_, he was prepared to put up with some remarks on +the artistic side of ritual, but he did expect to be told something +about what the ordinary man calls art, that is, statues and pictures. +Greek drama is no doubt a form of ancient art, but acting is not to the +reader's mind the chief of arts. Nay, more, he has heard doubts raised +lately--and he shares them--as to whether acting and dancing, about +which so much has been said, are properly speaking arts at all. Now +about painting and sculpture there is no doubt. Let us come to business. + +To a business so beautiful and pleasant as Greek sculpture we shall +gladly come, but a word must first be said to explain the reason of our +long delay. The main contention of the present book is that ritual and +art have, in emotion towards life, a common root, and further, that +primitive art develops normally, at least in the case of the drama, +straight out of ritual. The nature of that primitive ritual from which +the drama arose is not very familiar to English readers. It has been +necessary to stress its characteristics. Almost everywhere, all over the +world, it is found that primitive ritual consists, not in prayer and +praise and sacrifice, but in mimetic dancing. But it is in Greece, and +perhaps Greece only, in the religion of Dionysos, that we can actually +trace, if dimly, the transition steps that led from dance to drama, from +ritual to art. It was, therefore, of the first importance to realize the +nature of the dithyramb from which the drama rose, and so far as might +be to mark the cause and circumstances of the transition. + +Leaving the drama, we come in the next chapter to Sculpture; and here, +too, we shall see how closely art was shadowed by that ritual out of +which she sprang. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[35] See Bibliography at end for Professor Murray's examination. + +[36] Mr. Edward Bullough, _The British Journal of Psychology_ (1912), p. +88. + +[37] II, 15. + +[38] See my _Themis_, p. 289, and _Prolegomena_, p. 35. + +[39] _De Cupid. div._ 8. + +[40] V, 66. + +[41] _Athen._, VIII, ii, 334 f. See my _Prolegomena_, p. 54. + +[42] Thanks to Mr. H.M. Chadwick's _Heroic Age_ (1912). + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE + + +In passing from the drama to Sculpture we make a great leap. We pass +from the living thing, the dance or the play acted by real people, the +thing _done_, whether as ritual or art, whether _dromenon_ or _drama_, +to the thing _made_, cast in outside material rigid form, a thing that +can be looked at again and again, but the making of which can never +actually be re-lived whether by artist or spectator. + +Moreover, we come to a clear threefold distinction and division hitherto +neglected. We must at last sharply differentiate the artist, the work of +art, and the spectator. The artist may, and usually indeed does, become +the spectator of his own work, but the spectator is not the artist. The +work of art is, once executed, forever distinct both from artist and +spectator. In the primitive choral dance all three--artist, work of art, +spectator--were fused, or rather not yet differentiated. Handbooks on +art are apt to begin with the discussion of rude decorative patterns, +and after leading up through sculpture and painting, something vague is +said at the end about the primitiveness of the ritual dance. But +historically and also genetically or logically the dance in its +inchoateness, its undifferentiatedness, comes first. It has in it a +larger element of emotion, and less of presentation. It is this +inchoateness, this undifferentiatedness, that, apart from historical +fact, makes us feel sure that logically the dance is primitive. + + * * * * * + +To illustrate the meaning of Greek sculpture and show its close affinity +with ritual, we shall take two instances, perhaps the best-known of +those that survive, one of them in relief, the other in the round, the +Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon at Athens and the Apollo Belvedere, +and we shall take them in chronological order. As the actual frieze and +the statue cannot be before us, we shall discuss no technical questions +of style or treatment, but simply ask how they came to be, what human +need do they express. The Parthenon frieze is in the British Museum, the +Apollo Belvedere is in the Vatican at Rome, but is readily accessible +in casts or photographs. The outlines given in Figs. 5 and 6 can of +course only serve to recall subject-matter and design. + + * * * * * + +The Panathenaic frieze once decorated the _cella_ or innermost shrine of +the Parthenon, the temple of the Maiden Goddess Athena. It twined like a +ribbon round the brow of the building and thence it was torn by Lord +Elgin and brought home to the British Museum as a national trophy, for +the price of a few hundred pounds of coffee and yards of scarlet cloth. +To realize its meaning we must always think it back into its place. +Inside the _cella_, or shrine, dwelt the goddess herself, her great +image in gold and ivory; outside the shrine was sculptured her worship +by the whole of her people. For the frieze is nothing but a great ritual +procession translated into stone, the Panathenaic procession, or +procession of _all_ the Athenians, of all Athens, in honour of the +goddess who was but the city incarnate, Athena. + + "A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea, + A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory, + That none from the pride of her head may rend; + Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary, + Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame, + Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend, + A light upon earth as the sun's own flame, + A name as his name-- + Athens, a praise without end." + +SWINBURNE: _Erechtheus_, 141. + +Sculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has +ritual as its subject, _is_ embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this +point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the +thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has +been selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has +only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author +is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain +to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at +later date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual +reliefs, "votive" reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises +translated into stone. + +[Illustration: Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession.] + +Of the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little, +yet its ritual importance was great. In religion to-day the dance is +dead save for the dance of the choristers before the altar at Seville. +But the procession lives on, has even taken to itself new life. It is a +means of bringing masses of people together, of ordering them and +co-ordinating them. It is a means for the magical spread of supposed +good influence, of "grace." Witness the "Beating of the Bounds" and the +frequent processions of the Blessed Sacrament in Roman Catholic lands. +The Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to +house. Now-a-days it is to collect pence; once it was to diffuse "grace" +and increase. We remember the procession of the holy Bull at Magnesia +and the holy Bear at Saghalien (pp. 92-100). + +[Illustration: Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession.] + +What, then, was the object of the Panathenaic procession? It was first, +as its name indicates, a procession that brought all Athens together. +Its object was social and political, to express the unity of Athens. +Ritual in primitive times is always social, collective. + +The arrangement of the procession is shown in Figs. 3 and 4 (pp. 174, +175). In Fig. 3 we see the procession as it were in real life, just as +it is about to enter the temple and the presence of the Twelve Gods. +These gods are shaded black because in reality invisible. Fig. 4 is a +diagram showing the position of the various parts of the procession in +the sculptural frieze. At the west end of the temple the procession +begins to form: the youths of Athens are mounting their horses. It +divides, as it needs must, into two halves, one sculptured on the north, +one on the south side of the _cella_. After the throng of the cavalry +getting denser and denser we come to the chariots, next the sacrificial +animals, sheep and restive cows, then the instruments of sacrifice, +flutes and lyres and baskets and trays for offerings; men who carry +blossoming olive-boughs; maidens with water-vessels and drinking-cups. +The whole tumult of the gathering is marshalled and at last met and, as +it were, held in check, by a band of magistrates who face the procession +just as it enters the presence of the twelve seated gods, at the east +end. The whole body politic of the gods has come down to feast with the +whole body politic of Athens and her allies, of whom these gods are but +the projection and reflection. The gods are there together because man +is collectively assembled. + +The great procession culminates in a sacrifice and a communal feast, a +sacramental feast like that on the flesh of the holy Bull at Magnesia. +The Panathenaia was a high festival including rites and ceremonies of +diverse dates, an armed dance of immemorial antiquity that may have +dated from the days when Athens was subject to Crete, and a recitation +ordered by Peisistratos of the poems of Homer. + + * * * * * + +Some theorists have seen in art only an extension of the "play +instinct," just a liberation of superfluous vitality and energies, as it +were a rehearsing for life. This is not our view, but into all art, in +so far as it is a cutting off of motor reactions, there certainly enters +an element of recreation. It is interesting to note that to the Greek +mind religion was specially connected with the notion rather of a +festival than a fast. Thucydides[43] is assuredly by nature no reveller, +yet religion is to him mainly a "rest from toil." He makes Perikles say: +"Moreover, we have provided for our spirit by many opportunities of +recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the +year." To the anonymous writer known as the "Old Oligarch" the main gist +of religion appears to be a decorous social enjoyment. In easy +aristocratic fashion he rejoices that religious ceremonials exist to +provide for the less well-to-do citizens suitable amusements that they +would otherwise lack. "As to sacrifices and sanctuaries and festivals +and precincts, the People, knowing that it is impossible for each man +individually to sacrifice and feast and have sacrifices and an ample and +beautiful city, has discovered by what means he may enjoy these +privileges." + + * * * * * + +In the procession of the Panathenaia all Athens was gathered together, +but--and this is important--for a special purpose, more primitive than +any great political or social union. Happily this purpose is clear; it +is depicted in the central slab of the east end of the frieze (Fig. 5). +A priest is there represented receiving from the hands of a boy a great +_peplos_ or robe. It is the sacred robe of Athena woven for her and +embroidered by young Athenian maidens and offered to her every five +years. The great gold and ivory statue in the Parthenon itself had no +need of a robe; she would scarcely have known what to do with one; her +raiment was already of wrought gold, she carried helmet and spear and +shield. But there was an ancient image of Athena, an old Madonna of the +people, fashioned before Athena became a warrior maiden. This image was +rudely hewn in wood, it was dressed and decked doll-fashion like a May +Queen, and to her the great _peplos_ was dedicated. The _peplos_ was +hoisted as a sail on the Panathenaic ship, and this ship Athena had +borrowed from Dionysos himself, who went every spring in procession in a +ship-car on wheels to open the season for sailing. To a seafaring people +like the Athenians the opening of the sailing season was all-important, +and naturally began not at midsummer but in spring. + +[Illustration: Fig. 5.] + +The sacred _peplos_, or robe, takes us back to the old days when the +spirit of the year and the "luck" of the people was bound up with a rude +image. The life of the year died out each year and had to be renewed. To +make a new image was expensive and inconvenient, so, with primitive +economy it was decided that the life and luck of the image should be +renewed by re-dressing it, by offering to it each year a new robe. We +remember (p. 60) how in Thuringia the new puppet wore the shirt of the +old and thereby new life was passed from one to the other. But behind +the old image we can get to a stage still earlier, when there was at the +Panathenaia no image at all, only a yearly maypole; a bough hung with +ribbons and cakes and fruits and the like. A bough was cut from the +sacred olive tree of Athens, called the _Moria_ or Fate Tree. It was +bound about with fillets and hung with fruit and nuts and, in the +festival of the Panathenaia, they carried it up to the Acropolis to give +to Athena _Polias_, "Her-of-the-City," and as they went they sang the +old Eiresione song (p. 114). _Polias_ is but the city, the _Polis_ +incarnate. + +This _Moria_, or Fate Tree, was the very life of Athens; the life of the +olive which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. When +the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it +seemed that all was over. But next day it put forth a new shoot and the +people knew that the city's life still lived. Sophocles[44] sang of the +glory of the wondrous life tree of Athens: + + "The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe, + Sea-gray, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow, + None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold. + For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old; + He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold." + +The holy tree carried in procession is, like the image of Athena, made +of olive-wood, just the incarnate life of Athens ever renewed. + +The Panathenaia was not, like the Dithyramb, a spring festival. It took +place in July at the height of the summer heat, when need for rain was +the greatest. But the month Hecatombaion, in which it was celebrated, +was the first month of the Athenian year and the day of the festival was +the birthday of the goddess. When the goddess became a war-goddess, it +was fabled that she was born in Olympus, and that she sprang full grown +from her father's head in glittering armour. But she was really born on +earth, and the day of her birth was the birthday of every earthborn +goddess, the day of the beginning of the new year, with its returning +life. When men observe only the actual growth of new green life from the +ground, this birthday will be in spring; when they begin to know that +the seasons depend on the sun, or when the heat of the sun causes great +need of rain, it will be at midsummer, at the solstice, or in northern +regions where men fear to lose the sun in midwinter, as with us. The +frieze of the Parthenon is, then, but a primitive festival translated +into stone, a rite frozen to a monument. + + * * * * * + +Passing over a long space of time we come to our next illustration, the +Apollo Belvedere (Fig. 6). + +It might seem that here at last we have nothing primitive; here we have +art pure and simple, ideal art utterly cut loose from ritual, "art for +art's sake." Yet in this Apollo Belvedere, this product of late and +accomplished, even decadent art, we shall see most clearly the intimate +relation of art and ritual; we shall, as it were, walk actually across +that transition bridge of ritual which leads from actual life to art. + +[Illustration: Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere.] + +The date of this famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy +of a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure +is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is +caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be +about to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will +have left the earth. The Greek sculptor's genius was all focussed, as we +shall presently see, on the human figure and on the mastery of its many +possibilities of movement and action. Greek statues can roughly be dated +by the way they stand. At first, in the archaic period, they stand +firmly planted with equal weight on either foot, the feet close +together. Then one foot is advanced, but the weight still equally +divided, an almost impossible position. Next, the weight is thrown on +the right foot; and the left knee is bent. This is of all positions the +loveliest for the human body. We allow it to women, forbid it to men +save to "sthetes." If the back numbers of _Punch_ be examined for the +figure of "Postlethwaite" it will be seen that he always stands in this +characteristic relaxed pose. + +When the sculptor has mastered the possible he bethinks him of the +impossible. He will render the human body flying. It may have been the +accident of a mythological subject that first suggested the motive. +Leochares, a famous artist of the fourth century B.C., made a group of +Zeus in the form of an eagle carrying off Ganymede. A replica of the +group is preserved in the Vatican, and should stand for comparison near +the Apollo. We have the same tiptoe poise, the figure just about to +leave the earth. Again, it is not a dance, but a flight. This poise is +suggestive to us because it marks an art cut loose, as far as may be, +from earth and its realities, even its rituals. + +What is it that Apollo is doing? The question and suggested answers have +occupied many treatises. There is only one answer: We do not know. It +was at first thought that the Apollo had just drawn his bow and shot an +arrow. This suggestion was made to account for the pose; but that, as we +have seen, is sufficiently explained by the flight-motive. Another +possible solution is that Apollo brandishes in his uplifted hand the +gis, or goatskin shield, of Zeus. Another suggestion is that he holds +as often a lustral, or laurel bough, that he is figured as Daphnephoros, +"Laurel-Bearer." + +We do not know if the Belvedere Apollo carried a laurel, but we _do_ +know that it was of the very essence of the god to be a Laurel-Bearer. +That, as we shall see in a moment, he, like Dionysos, arose in part out +of a rite, a rite of Laurel-Bearing--a _Daphnephoria_. We have not got +clear of ritual yet. When Pausanias,[45] the ancient traveller, whose +notebook is our chief source about these early festivals, came to Thebes +he saw a hill sacred to Apollo, and after describing the temple on the +hill he says: + + "The following custom is still, I know, observed at Thebes. A boy + of distinguished family and himself well-looking and strong is made + the priest of Apollo, _for the space of a year_. The title given + him is Laurel-Bearer (Daphnephoros), for these boys wear wreaths + made of laurel." + +We know for certain now what these yearly priests are: they are the Kings +of the Year, the Spirits of the Year, May-Kings, Jacks-o'-the-Green. +The name given to the boy is enough to show he carried a laurel branch, +though Pausanias only mentions a wreath. Another ancient writer gives us +more details.[46] He says in describing the festival of the +Laurel-Bearing: + + "They wreathe a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers. + On the top is fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend + smaller ones. Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe, + binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked + with saffron. By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they + actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath this is the moon; the + smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the + fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in + number. The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are + alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole. The + Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he + has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is + dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light + shoes. There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs + before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns." + +This is the most elaborate maypole ceremony that we know of in ancient +times. The globes representing sun and moon show us that we have come to +a time when men know that the fruits of the earth in due season depended +on the heavenly bodies. The year with its 365 days is a Sun-Year. Once +this Sun-Year established and we find that the times of the solstices, +midwinter and midsummer became as, or even more, important than the +spring itself. The date of the _Daphnephoria_ is not known. + +At Delphi itself, the centre of Apollo-worship, there was a festival +called the _Stepteria_, or festival "of those who make the wreathes," in +which "mystery" a Christian Bishop, St. Cyprian, tells us he was +initiated. In far-off Tempe--that wonderful valley that is still the +greenest spot in stony, barren Greece, and where the laurel trees still +cluster--there was an altar, and near it a laurel tree. The story went +that Apollo had made himself a crown from this very laurel, and _taking +in his hand a branch of this same laurel_, i.e. as Laurel-Bearer, had +come to Delphi and taken over the oracle. + +"And to this day the people of Delphi send high-born boys in procession +there. And they, when they have reached Tempe and made a splendid +sacrifice return back, after wearing themselves wreaths from the very +laurel from which the god made himself a wreath." + +We are inclined to think of the Greeks as a people apt to indulge in the +singular practice of wearing wreaths in public, a practice among us +confined to children on their birthdays and a few eccentric people on +their wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the +custom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because +they were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that +they might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek +bridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his +marriage may be the beginning of new life, that his "wife may be as the +fruitful vine, and his children as the olive branches round about his +table." And our children to-day, though they do not know it, wear +wreaths on their birthdays because with each new year their life is +re-born. + + * * * * * + +Apollo then, was, like Dionysos, King of the May and--saving his +presence--Jack-in-the-Green. The god manifestly arose out of the rite. For +a moment let us see _how_ he arose. It will be remembered that in a +previous chapter (p. 70) we spoke of "personification." We think of the +god Apollo as an abstraction, an unreal thing, perhaps as a "false god." +The god Apollo does not, and never did, exist. He is an idea--a thing made +by the imagination. But primitive man does not deal with abstractions, +does not worship them. What happens is, as we saw (p. 71), something like +this: Year by year a boy is chosen to carry the laurel, to bring in the +May, and later year by year a puppet is made. It is a different boy each +year, carrying a different laurel branch. And yet in a sense it is the +same boy; he is always the Laurel-Bearer--"Daphnephoros," always the +"Luck" of the village or city. This Laurel-Bearer, the same yesterday, +to-day, and forever, is the stuff of which the god is made. The god arises +from the rite, he is gradually detached from the rite, and as soon as he +gets a life and being of his own, apart from the rite, he is a first stage +in art, a work of art existing in the mind, gradually detached from even +the faded action of ritual, and later to be the model of the actual work +of art, the copy in stone. + +The stages, it would seem, are: actual life with its motor reactions, +the ritual copy of life with its faded reactions, the image of the god +projected by the rite, and, last, the copy of that image, the work of +art. + + * * * * * + +We see now why in the history of all ages and every place art is what is +called the "handmaid of religion." She is not really the "handmaid" at +all. She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is +the image of the god. Primitive art in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria,[47] +represents either rites, processions, sacrifices, magical ceremonies, +embodied prayers; or else it represents the images of the gods who +spring from those rites. Track any god right home, and you will find him +lurking in a ritual sheath, from which he slowly emerges, first as a +_dmon_, or spirit, of the year, then as a full-blown divinity. + + * * * * * + +In Chapter II we saw how the _dromenon_ gave birth to the _drama_, how, +bit by bit, out of the chorus of dancers some dancers withdrew and +became spectators sitting apart, and on the other hand others of the +dancers drew apart on to the stage and presented to the spectators a +spectacle, a thing to be looked _at_, not joined _in_. And we saw how in +this spectacular mood, this being cut loose from immediate action, lay +the very essence of the artist and the art-lover. Now in the drama of +Thespis there was at first, we are told, but one actor; later schylus +added a second. It is clear who this actor, this _protagonist_ or "first +contender" was, the one actor with the double part, who was Death to be +carried out and Summer to be carried in. He was the Bough-Bearer, the +only possible actor in the one-part play of the renewal of life and the +return of the year. + + * * * * * + +The May-King, the leader of the choral dance gave birth not only to the +first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the god, be +he Dionysos or be he Apollo; and this figure of the god thus imagined +out of the year-spirit was perhaps more fertile for art than even the +protagonist of the drama. It may seem strange to us that a god should +rise up out of a dance or a procession, because dances and processions +are not an integral part of our national life, and do not call up any +very strong and instant emotion. The old instinct lingers, it is true, +and emerges at critical moments; when a king dies we form a great +procession to carry him to the grave, but we do not dance. We have court +balls, and these with their stately ordered ceremonials are perhaps the +last survival of the genuinely civic dance, but a court ball is not +given at a king's funeral nor in honour of a god. + +But to the Greek the god and the dance were never quite sundered. It +almost seems as if in the minds of Greek poets and philosophers there +lingered some dim half-conscious remembrance that some of these gods at +least actually came out of the ritual dance. Thus, Plato,[48] in +treating of the importance of rhythm in education says: "The gods, +pitying the toilsome race of men, have appointed the sequence of +religious festivals to give them times of rest, and have given them the +Muses and Apollo, the Muse-Leader, as fellow-revellers." + +"The young of all animals," he goes on to say, "cannot keep quiet, +either in body or voice. They must leap and skip and overflow with +gamesomeness and sheer joy, and they must utter all sorts of cries. But +whereas animals have no perception of order or disorder in their +motions, the gods who have been appointed to men as our fellow-dancers +have given to us a sense of pleasure in rhythm and harmony. And so they +move us and lead our bands, knitting us together with songs and in +dances, and these we call _choruses_." Nor was it only Apollo and +Dionysos who led the dance. Athena herself danced the Pyrrhic dance. +"Our virgin lady," says Plato, "delighting in the sports of the dance, +thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in +full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and +maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the +goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the +festivals." + +Plato is unconsciously inverting the order of things, natural +happenings. Take the armed dance. There is, first, the "actual necessity +of war." Men go to war armed, to face actual dangers, and at their head +is a leader in full armour. That is real life. There is then the festal +re-enactment of war, when the fight is not actually fought, but there is +an imitation of war. That is the ritual stage, the _dromenon_. Here, +too, there is a leader. More and more this dance becomes a spectacle, +less and less an action. Then from the periodic _dromenon_, the ritual +enacted year by year, emerges an imagined permanent leader; a dmon, or +god--a Dionysos, an Apollo, an Athena. Finally the account of what +actually happens is thrown into the past, into a remote distance, and we +have an "tiological" myth--a story told to give a cause or reason. The +whole natural process is inverted. + +And last, as already seen, the god, the first work of art, the thing +unseen, imagined out of the ritual of the dance, is cast back into the +visible world and fixed in space. Can we wonder that a classical +writer[49] should say "the statues of the craftsmen of old times are the +relics of ancient dancing." That is just what they are, rites caught and +fixed and frozen. "Drawing," says a modern critic,[50] "is at bottom, +like all the arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper." +Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the +dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. +"The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, +not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth +will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." +Art, that is, gradually dominates mere ritual. + + * * * * * + +We come to another point. The Greek gods as we know them in classical +sculpture are always imaged in human shape. This was not of course +always the case with other nations. We have seen how among savages the +totem, that is, the emblem of tribal unity, was usually an animal or a +plant. We have seen how the emotions of the Siberian tribe in Saghalien +focussed on a bear. The savage totem, the Saghalien Bear, is on the way +to be, but is not quite, a god; he is not personal enough. The +Egyptians, and in part the Assyrians, halted half-way and made their +gods into monstrous shapes, half-animal, half-man, which have their own +mystical grandeur. But since we are men ourselves, feeling human +emotion, if our gods are in great part projected emotions, the natural +form for them to take is human shape. + +"Art imitates Nature," says Aristotle, in a phrase that has been much +misunderstood. It has been taken to mean that art is a copy or +reproduction of natural objects. But by "Nature" Aristotle never means +the outside world of created things, he means rather creative force, +what produces, not what has been produced. We might almost translate the +Greek phrase, "Art, like Nature, creates things," "Art acts like Nature +in producing things." These things are, first and foremost, human +things, human action. The drama, with which Aristotle is so much +concerned, invents human action like real, _natural_ action. Dancing +"imitates character, emotion, action." Art is to Aristotle almost wholly +bound by the limitations of _human_ nature. + +This is, of course, characteristically a Greek limitation. "Man is the +measure of all things," said the old Greek sophist, but modern science +has taught us another lesson. Man may be in the foreground, but the +drama of man's life is acted out for us against a tremendous background +of natural happenings: a background that preceded man and will outlast +him; and this background profoundly affects our imagination, and hence +our art. We moderns are in love with the background. Our art is a +landscape art. The ancient landscape painter could not, or would not, +trust the background to tell its own tale: if he painted a mountain he +set up a mountain-god to make it real; if he outlined a coast he set +human coast-nymphs on its shore to make clear the meaning. + +Contrast with this our modern landscape, from which bit by bit the nymph +has been wholly banished. It is the art of a stage, without actors, a +scene which is all background, all suggestion. It is an art given us by +sheer recoil from science, which has dwarfed actual human life almost to +imaginative extinction. + + "Landscape, then, offered to the modern imagination a scene empty + of definite actors, superhuman or human, that yielded to reverie + without challenge all that is in a moral without a creed, tension + or ambush of the dark, threat of ominous gloom, the relenting and + tender return or overwhelming outburst of light, the pageantry of + clouds above a world turned quaker, the monstrous weeds of trees + outside the town, the sea that is obstinately epic still."[51] + +It was to this world of backgrounds that men fled, hunted by the sense +of their own insignificance. + +"Minds the most strictly bound in their acts by civil life, in their +fancy by the shrivelled look of destiny under scientific speculation, +felt on solitary hill or shore those tides of the blood stir again that +are ruled by the sun and the moon and travelled as if to tryst where an +apparition might take form. Poets ordained themselves to this vigil, +haunters of a desert church, prompters of an elemental theatre, +listeners in solitary places for intimations from a spirit in hiding; +and painters followed the impulse of Wordsworth." + +We can only see the strength and weakness of Greek sculpture, feel the +emotion of which it was the utterance, if we realize clearly this modern +spirit of the background. All great modern, and perhaps even ancient, +poets are touched by it. Drama itself, as Nietzsche showed, "hankers +after dissolution into mystery. Shakespeare would occasionally knock the +back out of the stage with a window opening on the 'cloud-capp'd +towers.'" But Maeterlinck is the best example, because his genius is +less. He is the embodiment, almost the caricature, of a tendency. + + "Maeterlinck sets us figures in the foreground only to launch us + into that limbus. The supers jabbering on the scene are there, + children of presentiment and fear, to make us aware of a third, the + mysterious one, whose name is not on the bills. They come to warn + us by the nervous check and hurry of their gossip of the approach + of that background power. Omen after omen announces him, the talk + starts and drops at his approach, a door shuts and the thrill of + his passage is the play."[52] + +It is, perhaps, the temperaments that are most allured and terrified by +this art of the bogey and the background that most feel the need of and +best appreciate the calm and level, rational dignity of Greek naturalism +and especially the naturalism of Greek sculpture. + +For it is naturalism, not realism, not imitation. By all manner of +renunciations Greek sculpture is what it is. The material, itself +marble, is utterly unlike life, it is perfectly cold and still, it has +neither the texture nor the colouring of life. The story of Pygmalion +who fell in love with the statue he had himself sculptured is as false +as it is tasteless. Greek sculpture is the last form of art to incite +physical reaction. It is remote almost to the point of chill +abstraction. The statue in the round renounces not only human life +itself, but all the natural background and setting of life. The statues +of the Greek gods are Olympian in spirit as well as subject. They are +like the gods of Epicurus, cut loose alike from the affairs of men, and +even the ordered ways of Nature. So Lucretius[53] pictures them: + + "The divinity of the gods is revealed and their tranquil abodes, + which neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow + congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless + ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely + around. Nature, too, supplies all their wants, and nothing ever + impairs their peace of mind." + +Greek art moves on through a long course of technical accomplishment, of +ever-increasing mastery over materials and methods. But this course we +need not follow. For our argument the last word is said in the figures +of these Olympians translated into stone. Born of pressing human needs +and desires, images projected by active and even anxious ritual, they +pass into the upper air and dwell aloof, spectator-like and all but +spectral. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[43] II, 38. + +[44] _Oed. Col._ 694, trans. D.S. MacColl. + +[45] IX, 10, 4. + +[46] See my _Themis_, p. 438. + +[47] It is now held by some and good authorities that the prehistoric +paintings of cave-dwelling man had also a ritual origin; that is, that +the representations of animals were intended to act magically, to +increase the "supply of the animal or help the hunter to catch him." +But, as this question is still pending, I prefer, tempting though they +are, not to use prehistoric paintings as material for my argument. + +[48] _Laws_, 653. + +[49] _Athen._ XIV, 26, p. 629. + +[50] D.S. MacColl, "A Year of Post-Impressionism," _Nineteenth Century_, +p. 29. (1912.) + +[51] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 20. (1902.) + +[52] D.S. MacColl, _op. cit._, p. 18. + +[53] II, 18. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +RITUAL, ART AND LIFE + + +In the preceding chapters we have seen ritual emerge from the practical +doings of life. We have noted that in ritual we have the beginning of a +detachment from practical ends; we have watched the merely emotional +dance develop from an undifferentiated chorus into a spectacle performed +by actors and watched by spectators, a spectacle cut off, not only from +real life, but also from ritual issues; a spectacle, in a word, that has +become an end in itself. We have further seen that the choral dance is +an undifferentiated whole which later divides out into three clearly +articulate parts, the artist, the work of art, the spectator or art +lover. We are now in a position to ask what is the good of all this +antiquarian enquiry? Why is it, apart from the mere delight of +scientific enquiry, important to have seen that art arose from ritual? + +The answer is simple-- + +The object of this book, as stated in the preface, is to try to throw +some light on the function of art, that is on what it has done, and +still does to-day, for life. Now in the case of a complex growth like +art, it is rarely if ever possible to understand its function--what it +does, how it works--unless we know something of how that growth began, +or, if its origin is hid, at least of the simpler forms of activity that +preceded it. For art, this earlier stage, this simpler form, which is +indeed itself as it were an embryo and rudimentary art, we found to +be--ritual. + +Ritual, then, has not been studied for its own sake, still less for its +connection with any particular dogma, though, as a subject of singular +gravity and beauty, ritual is well worth a lifetime's study. It has been +studied because ritual is, we believe, a frequent and perhaps universal +transition stage between actual life and that peculiar contemplation of +or emotion towards life which we call art. All our long examination of +beast-dances, May-day festivals and even of Greek drama has had just +this for its object--to make clear that art--save perhaps in a few +specially gifted natures--did not arise straight out of life, but out +of that collective emphasis of the needs and desires of life which we +have agreed to call ritual. + + * * * * * + +Our formal argument is now over and ritual may drop out of the +discussion. But we would guard against a possible misunderstanding. We +would not be taken to imply that ritual is obsolete and must drop out of +life, giving place to the art it has engendered. It may well be that, +for certain temperaments, ritual is a perennial need. Natures specially +gifted can live lives that are emotionally vivid, even in the rare high +air of art or science; but many, perhaps most of us, breathe more freely +in the _medium_, literally the _midway_ space, of some collective +ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original +thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been +perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready +made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a +host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and +freer, and every manifestation of life is regarded with a new reverence. +With this fresh outpouring of the spirit, this fuller consciousness of +life, there comes a need for _first-hand_ emotion and expression, and +that expression is found for all classes in a revival of the ritual +dance. Some of the strenuous, exciting, self-expressive dances of to-day +are of the soil and some exotic, but, based as they mostly are on very +primitive ritual, they stand as singular evidence of this real recurrent +need. Art in these latter days goes back as it were on her own steps, +recrossing the ritual bridge back to life. + + * * * * * + +It remains to ask what, in the light of this ritual origin, is the +function of art? How do we relate it to other forms of life, to science, +to religion, to morality, to philosophy? These are big-sounding +questions, and towards their solution only hints here and there can be +offered, stray thoughts that have grown up out of this study of ritual +origins and which, because they have helped the writer, are offered, +with no thought of dogmatism, to the reader. + + * * * * * + +We English are not supposed to be an artistic people, yet art, in some +form or another, bulks large in the national life. We have theatres, a +National Gallery, we have art-schools, our tradesmen provide for us +"art-furniture," we even hear, absurdly enough, of "art-colours." +Moreover, all this is not a matter of mere antiquarian interest, we do +not simply go and admire the beauty of the past in museums; a movement +towards or about art is all alive and astir among us. We have new +developments of the theatre, problem plays, Reinhardt productions, +Gordon Craig scenery, Russian ballets. We have new schools of painting +treading on each other's heels with breathless rapidity: Impressionists, +Post-Impressionists, Futurists. Art--or at least the desire for, the +interest in, art--is assuredly not dead. + +Moreover, and this is very important, we all feel about art a certain +obligation, such as some of us feel about religion. There is an "ought" +about it. Perhaps we do not really care much about pictures and poetry +and music, but we feel we "ought to." In the case of music it has +happily been at last recognized that if you have not an "ear" you cannot +care for it, but two generations ago, owing to the unfortunate cheapness +and popularity of keyed instruments, it was widely held that one half of +humanity, the feminine half, "ought" to play the piano. This "ought" +is, of course, like most social "oughts," a very complex product, but +its existence is well worth noting. + +It is worth noting because it indicates a vague feeling that art has a +real value, that art is not a mere luxury, nor even a rarefied form of +pleasure. No one feels they _ought_ to take pleasure in beautiful scents +or in the touch of velvet; they either do or they don't. The first +point, then, that must be made clear is that art is of real value to +life in a perfectly clear biological sense; it invigorates, enhances, +promotes actual, spiritual, and through it physical life. + +This from our historical account we should at the outset expect, because +we have seen art, by way of ritual, arose out of life. And yet the +statement is a sort of paradox, for we have seen also that art differs +from ritual just in this, that in art, whether of the spectator or the +creator, the "motor reactions," _i.e._ practical life, the life of +doing, is for the time checked. This is of the essence of the artist's +vision, that he sees things detached and therefore more vividly, more +completely, and in a different light. This is of the essence of the +artist's emotion, that it is purified from personal desire. + +But, though the artist's vision and emotion alike are modified, +purified, they are not devitalized. Far from that, by detachment from +action they are focussed and intensified. Life is enhanced, only it is a +different kind of life, it is the life of the image-world, of the +_imag_ination; it is the spiritual and human life, as differentiated +from the life we share with animals. It is a life we all, as human +beings, possess in some, but very varying, degrees; and the natural man +will always view the spiritual man askance, because he is not +"practical." But the life of imagination, cut off from practical +reaction as it is, becomes in turn a motor-force causing new emotions, +and so pervading the general life, and thus ultimately becoming +"practical." No one function is completely cut off from another. The +main function of art is probably to intensify and purify emotion, but it +is substantially certain that, if we did not feel, we could not think +and should not act. Still it remains true that, in artistic +contemplation and in the realms of the artist's imagination not only are +practical motor-reactions cut off, but intelligence is suffused in, and +to some extent subordinated to, emotion. + + * * * * * + +One function, then, of art is to feed and nurture the imagination and +the spirit, and thereby enhance and invigorate the whole of human life. +This is far removed from the view that the end of art is to give +pleasure. Art does usually cause pleasure, singular and intense, and to +that which causes such pleasure we give the name of Beauty. But to +produce and enjoy Beauty is not the function of art. Beauty--or rather, +the sensation of Beauty--is what the Greeks would call an _epigignomenon +ti telos_, words hard to translate, something between a by-product and a +supervening perfection, a thing like--as Aristotle[54] for once +beautifully says of pleasure--"the bloom of youth to a healthy young +body." + +That this is so we see most clearly in the simple fact that, when the +artist begins to aim direct at Beauty, he usually misses it. We all +know, perhaps by sad experience, that the man who seeks out pleasure for +herself fails to find her. Let him do his work well for that work's +sake, exercise his faculties, "energize" as Aristotle would say, and he +will find pleasure come out unawares to meet him with her shining face; +but let him look for her, think of her, even desire her, and she hides +her head. A man goes out hunting, thinks of nothing but following the +hounds and taking his fences, being in at the death: his day is +full--alas! of pleasure, though he has scarcely known it. Let him forget +the fox and the fences, think of pleasure, desire her, and he will be in +at pleasure's death. + +So it is with the artist. Let him feel strongly, and see raptly--that +is, in complete detachment. Let him cast this, his rapt vision and his +intense emotion, into outside form, a statue or a painting; that form +will have about it a nameless thing, an unearthly aroma, which we call +beauty; this nameless presence will cause in the spectator a sensation +too rare to be called pleasure, and we shall call it a "sense of +beauty." But let the artist aim direct at Beauty, and she is gone, gone +before we hear the flutter of her wings. + + * * * * * + +The sign manual, the banner, as it were, of artistic creation is for the +creative artist not pleasure, but something better called joy. +Pleasure, it has been well said, is no more than an instrument contrived +by Nature to obtain from the individual the preservation and the +propagation of life. True joy is not the lure of life, but the +consciousness of the triumph of creation. Wherever joy is, creation has +been.[55] It may be the joy of a mother in the physical creation of a +child; it may be the joy of the merchant adventurer in pushing out new +enterprise, or of the engineer in building a bridge, or of the artist in +a masterpiece accomplished; but it is always of the thing created. +Again, contrast joy with glory. Glory comes with success and is +exceedingly _pleasant_; it is not joyous. Some men say an artist's crown +is glory; his deepest satisfaction is in the applause of his fellows. +There is no greater mistake; we care for praise just in proportion as we +are not sure we have succeeded. To the real creative artist even praise +and glory are swallowed up in the supreme joy of creation. Only the +artist himself feels the real divine fire, but it flames over into the +work of art, and even the spectator warms his hands at the glow. + +We can now, I think, understand the difference between the artist and +true lover of art on the one hand, and the mere sthete on the other. +The sthete does not produce, or, if he produces, his work is thin and +scanty. In this he differs from the artist; he does not feel so strongly +and see so clearly that he is forced to utterance. He has no joy, only +pleasure. He cannot even feel the reflection of this creative joy. In +fact, he does not so much feel as want to feel. He seeks for pleasure, +for sensual pleasure as his name says, not for the grosser kinds, but +for pleasure of that rarefied kind that we call a sense of beauty. The +sthete, like the flirt, is cold. It is not even that his senses are +easily stirred, but he seeks the sensation of stirring, and most often +feigns it, not finds it. The sthete is no more released from his own +desires than the practical man, and he is without the practical man's +healthy outlet in action. He sees life, not indeed in relation to +action, but to his own personal sensation. By this alone he is debarred +for ever from being an artist. As M. Andr Beaunier has well observed, +by the irony of things, when we see life in relation to ourselves we +cannot really represent it at all. The profligate thinks he knows women. +It is his irony, his curse that, because he sees them always in relation +to his own desires, his own pleasure, he never really knows them at all. + +There is another important point. We have seen that art promotes a part +of life, the spiritual, image-making side. But this side, wonderful +though it is, is never the whole of actual life. There is always the +practical side. The artist is always also a man. Now the sthete tries +to make his whole attitude artistic--that is, contemplative. He is +always looking and prying and savouring, _savourant_, as he would say, +when he ought to be living. The result is that there is nothing to +_savourer_. All art springs by way of ritual out of keen emotion towards +life, and even the power to appreciate art needs this emotional reality +in the spectator. The sthete leads at best a parasite, artistic life, +dogged always by death and corruption. + + * * * * * + +This brings us straight on to another question: What about Art and +Morality? Is Art immoral, or non-moral, or highly moral? Here again +public opinion is worth examining. Artists, we are told, are bad +husbands, and they do not pay their debts. Or if they become good +husbands and take to paying their debts, they take also to wallowing in +domesticity and produce bad art or none at all; they get tangled in the +machinery of practical reactions. Art, again, is apt to deal with risky +subjects. Where should we be if there were not a Censor of Plays? Many +of these instructive attitudes about artists as immoral or non-moral, +explain themselves instantly if we remember that the artist is _ipso +facto_ detached from practical life. In so far as he is an artist, for +each and every creative moment he is inevitably a bad husband, if being +a good husband means constant attention to your wife and her interests. +Spiritual creation _ deux_ is a happening so rare as to be negligible. + +The remoteness of the artist, his essential inherent detachment from +motor-reaction, explains the perplexities of the normal censor. He, +being a "practical man," regards emotion and vision, feeling and ideas, +as leading to action. He does not see that art arises out of ritual and +that even ritual is one remove from practical life. In the censor's +world the spectacle of the nude leads straight to desire, so the dancer +must be draped; the problem-play leads straight to the Divorce Court, +therefore it must be censored. The normal censor apparently knows +nothing of that world where motor-reactions are cut off, that house made +without hands, whose doors are closed on desire, eternal in the heavens. +The censor is not for the moment a _persona grata_, but let us give him +his due. He acts according to his lights and these often quite +adequately represent the average darkness. A normal audience contains +many "practical" men whose standard is the same as that of the normal +censor. Art--that is vision detached from practical reactions--is to +them an unknown world full of moral risks from which the artist is _qu_ +artist immune. + +So far we might perhaps say that art was non-moral. But the statement +would be misleading, since, as we have seen, art is in its very origin +social, and social means human and collective. Moral and social are, in +their final analysis, the same. That human, collective emotion, out of +which we have seen the choral dance arise, is in its essence moral; that +is, it unites. "Art," says Tolstoy, "has this characteristic, that it +unites people." In this conviction, as we shall later see, he +anticipates the modern movement of the Unanimists (p. 249). + +But there is another, and perhaps simpler, way in which art is moral. As +already suggested, it purifies by cutting off the motor-reactions of +personal desire. An artist deeply in love with his friend's wife once +said: "If only I could paint her and get what I want from her, I could +bear it." His wish strikes a chill at first; it sounds egotistic; it has +the peculiar, instinctive, inevitable cruelty of the artist, seeing in +human nature material for his art. But it shows us the moral side of +art. The artist was a good and sensitive man; he saw the misery he had +brought and would bring to people he loved, and he saw, or rather felt, +a way of escape; he saw that through art, through vision, through +detachment, desire might be slain, and the man within him find peace. To +some natures this instinct after art is almost their sole morality. If +they find themselves intimately entangled in hate or jealousy or even +contempt, so that they are unable to see the object of their hate or +jealousy or contempt in a clear, quiet and lovely light, they are +restless, miserable, morally out of gear, and they are constrained to +fetter or slay personal desire and so find rest. + + * * * * * + +This aloofness, this purgation of emotion from personal passion, art has +in common with philosophy. If the philosopher will seek after truth, +there must be, says Plotinus, a "turning away" of the spirit, a +detachment. He must aim at contemplation; action, he says, is "a +weakening of contemplation." Our word _theory_, which we use in +connection with reasoning and which comes from the same Greek root as +_theatre_, means really looking fixedly at, contemplation; it is very +near in meaning to our _imagination_. But the philosopher differs from +the artist in this: he aims not only at the contemplation of truth, but +at the ordering of truths, he seeks to make of the whole universe an +intelligible structure. Further, he is not driven by the gadfly of +creation, he is not forced to cast his images into visible or audible +shape. He is remoter from the push of life. Still, the philosopher, +like the artist, lives in a world of his own, with a spell of its own +near akin to beauty, and the secret of that spell is the same detachment +from the tyranny of practical life. The essence of art, says Santayana, +is "the steady contemplation of things in their order and worth." He +might have been defining philosophy. + + * * * * * + +If art and philosophy are thus near akin, art and science are in their +beginning, though not in their final development, contrasted. Science, +it seems, begins with the desire for practical utility. Science, as +Professor Bergson has told us, has for its initial aim the making of +tools for life. Man tries to find out the laws of Nature, that is, how +natural things behave, in order primarily that he may get the better of +them, rule over them, shape them to his ends. That is why science is at +first so near akin to magic--the cry of both is: + + "I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." + +But, though the feet of science are thus firmly planted on the solid +ground of practical action, her head, too, sometimes touches the +highest heavens. The real man of science, like the philosopher, soon +comes to seek truth and knowledge for their own sake. In art, in +science, in philosophy, there come eventually the same detachment from +personal desire and practical reaction; and to artist, man of science, +and philosopher alike, through this detachment there comes at times the +same peace that passeth all understanding. + +Attempts have been often made to claim for art the utility, the +tool-making property, that characterizes the beginnings of science. +Nothing is beautiful, it is sometimes said, that is not useful; the +beauty of a jug or a table depends, we are often told, on its perfect +adaptation to its use. There is here some confusion of thought and some +obvious, but possibly unconscious, special pleading. Much of art, +specially decorative art, arises out of utilities, but its aim and its +criterion is not utility. Art may be structural, commemorative, magical, +what-not, may grow up out of all manner of practical needs, but it is +not till it is cut loose from these practical needs that Art is herself +and comes to her own. This does not mean that the jugs or tables are to +be bad jugs or tables, still less does it mean that the jugs or tables +should be covered with senseless machine-made ornament; but the utility +of the jug or table is a good in itself independent of, though often +associated with, its merit as art. + +No one has, I think, ever called Art "the handmaid of Science." There +is, indeed, no need to establish a hierarchy. Yet in a sense the +converse is true and Science is the handmaid of Art. Art is only +practicable as we have seen, when it is possible safely to cut off +motor-reactions. By the long discipline of ritual man accustomed himself +to slacken his hold on action, and be content with a shadowy counterfeit +practice. Then last, when through knowledge he was relieved from the +need of immediate reaction to imminent realities, he loosed hold for a +moment altogether, and was free to look, and art was born. He can never +quit his hold for long; but it would seem that, as science advances and +life gets easier and easier, safer and safer, he may loose his hold for +longer spaces. Man subdues the world about him first by force and then +by reason; and when the material world is mastered and lies at his beck, +he needs brute force no longer, and needs reason no more to make tools +for conquest. He is free to think for thought's sake, he may trust +intuition once again, and above all dare to lose himself in +contemplation, dare to be more and more an artist. Only here there lurks +an almost ironical danger. Emotion towards life is the primary stuff of +which art is made; there might be a shortage of this very emotional +stuff of which art herself is ultimately compacted. + +Science, then, helps to make art possible by making life safer and +easier, it "makes straight in the desert a highway for our God." But +only rarely and with special limitations easily understood does it +provide actual material for art. Science deals with abstractions, +concepts, class names, made by the intellect for convenience, that we +may handle life on the side desirable to us. When we classify things, +give them class-names, we simply mean that we note for convenience that +certain actually existing objects have similar qualities, a fact it is +convenient for us to know and register. These class-names being +_abstract_--that is, bundles of qualities rent away from living actual +objects, do not easily stir emotion, and, therefore, do not easily +become material for art whose function it is to express and communicate +emotion. Particular qualities, like love, honour, faith, may and _do_ +stir emotion; and certain bundles of qualities like, for example, +motherhood tend towards personification; but the normal class label like +horse, man, triangle does not easily become material for art; it remains +a practical utility for science. + +The abstractions, the class-names of science are in this respect quite +different from those other abstractions or unrealities already +studied--the gods of primitive religion. The very term we use shows +this. _Abstractions_ are things, qualities, _dragged away_ consciously +by the intellect, from actual things objectively existing. The primitive +gods are personifications--_i.e._ collective emotions taking shape in +imagined form. Dionysos has no more actual, objective existence than the +abstract horse. But the god Dionysos was not made by the intellect for +practical convenience, he was begotten by emotion, and, therefore, he +re-begets it. He and all the other gods are, therefore, the proper +material for art; he is, indeed, one of the earliest forms of art. The +abstract horse, on the other hand, is the outcome of reflection. We +must honour him as of quite extraordinary use for the purposes of +practical life, but he leaves us cold and, by the artist, is best +neglected. + + * * * * * + +There remains the relation of Art to Religion.[56] By now, it may be +hoped, this relation is transparently clear. The whole object of the +present book has been to show how primitive art grew out of ritual, how +art is in fact but a later and more sublimated, more detached form of +ritual. We saw further that the primitive gods themselves were but +projections or, if we like it better, personifications of the rite. They +arose straight out of it. + +Now we say advisedly "primitive gods," and this with no intention of +obscurantism. The god of later days, the unknown source of life, the +unresolved mystery of the world, is not begotten of a rite, is not, +essentially not, the occasion or object of art. With his relation to +art--which is indeed practically non-existent--we have nothing to do. Of +the other gods we may safely say that not only are they objects of art, +they are its prime material; in a word, primitive theology is an early +stage in the formation of art. Each primitive god, like the rite from +which he sprang, is a half-way house between practical life and art; he +comes into being from a half, but only half, inhibited desire. + + * * * * * + +Is there, then, no difference, except in degree of detachment, between +religion and art? Both have the like emotional power; both carry with +them a sense of obligation, though the obligation of religion is the +stronger. But there is one infallible criterion between the two which is +all-important, and of wide-reaching consequences. Primitive religion +asserts that her imaginations have objective existence; art more happily +makes no such claim. The worshipper of Apollo believes, not only that he +has imagined the lovely figure of the god and cast a copy of its shape +in stone, but he also believes that in the outside world the god Apollo +exists as an object. Now this is certainly untrue; that is, it does not +correspond with fact. There is no such thing as the god Apollo, and +science makes a clean sweep of Apollo and Dionysos and all such +fictitious objectivities; they are _eidola_, idols, phantasms, not +objective realities. Apollo fades earlier than Dionysos because the +worshipper of Dionysos keeps hold of _the_ reality that he and his +church or group have projected the god. He knows that _prier, c'est +laborer Dieu_; or, as he would put it, he is "one with" his god. +Religion has this in common with art, that it discredits the actual +practical world; but only because it creates a new world and insists on +its actuality and objectivity. + +Why does the conception of a god impose obligation? Just because and in +so far as he claims to have objective existence. By giving to his god +from the outset objective existence the worshipper prevents his god from +taking his place in that high kingdom of spiritual realities which is +the imagination, and sets him down in that lower objective world which +always compels practical reaction. What might have been an ideal becomes +an idol. Straightway this objectified idol compels all sorts of ritual +reactions of prayer and praise and sacrifice. It is as though another +and a more exacting and commanding fellow-man were added to the +universe. But a moment's reflection will show that, when we pass from +the vague sense of power or _mana_ felt by the savage to the personal +god, to Dionysos or Apollo, though it may seem a set back it is a real +advance. It is the substitution of a human and tolerably humane power +for an incalculable whimsical and often cruel force. The idol is a step +towards, not a step from, the ideal. Ritual makes these idols, and it is +the business of science to shatter them and set the spirit free for +contemplation. Ritual must wane that art may wax. + +But we must never forget that ritual is the bridge by which man passes, +the ladder by which he climbs from earth to heaven. The bridge must not +be broken till the transit is made. And the time is not yet. We must not +pull down the ladder till we are sure the last angel has climbed. Only +then, at last, we dare not leave it standing. Earth pulls hard, and it +may be that the angels who ascended might _de_scend and be for ever +fallen. + + * * * * * + +It may be well at the close of our enquiry to test the conclusions at +which we have arrived by comparing them with certain _endoxa_, as +Aristotle would call them, that is, opinions and theories actually +current at the present moment. We take these contemporary controversies, +not implying that they are necessarily of high moment in the history of +art, or that they are in any fundamental sense new discoveries; but +because they are at this moment current and vital, and consequently form +a good test for the adequacy of our doctrines. It will be satisfactory +if we find our view includes these current opinions, even if it to some +extent modifies them and, it may be hoped, sets them in a new light. + +We have already considered the theory that holds art to be the creation +or pursuit or enjoyment of beauty. The other view falls readily into two +groups: + +(1) The "imitation" theory, with its modification, the idealization +theory, which holds that art either copies Nature, or, out of natural +materials, improves on her. + +(2) The "expression" theory, which holds that the aim of art is to +express the emotions and thoughts of the artist. + +The "Imitation" theory is out of fashion now-a-days. Plato and Aristotle +held it; though Aristotle, as we have seen, did not mean by "imitating +Nature" quite what we mean to-day. The Imitation theory began to die +down with the rise of Romanticism, which stressed the personal, +individual emotion of the artist. Whistler dealt it a rude, +ill-considered blow by his effective, but really foolish and irrelevant, +remark that to attempt to create Art by imitating Nature was "like +trying to make music by sitting on the piano." But, as already noted, +the Imitation theory of art was really killed by the invention of +photography. It was impossible for the most insensate not to see that in +a work of art, of sculpture or painting, there was an element of value +not to be found in the exact transcript of a photograph. Henceforth the +Imitation theory lived on only in the weakened form of Idealization. + +The reaction against the Imitation theory has naturally and inevitably +gone much too far. We have "thrown out the child with the bath-water." +All through the present book we have tried to show that art _arises +from_ ritual, and ritual is in its essence a faded action, an +imitation. Moreover, every work of art _is_ a copy of something, only +not a copy of anything having actual existence in the outside world. +Rather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the +artist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is +released from certain practical reactions. + + * * * * * + +The Impressionism that dominated the pictorial art of the later years of +the nineteenth century was largely a modified and very delicate +imitation. Breaking with conventions as to how things are _supposed to +be_--conventions mainly based not on seeing but on knowing or +imagining--the Impressionist insists on purging his vision from +knowledge, and representing things not as they are but as they really +_look_. He imitates Nature not as a whole, but as she presents herself +to his eyes. It was a most needful and valuable purgation, since +painting is the art proper of the eye. But, when the new effects of the +world as simply _seen_, the new material of light and shadow and tone, +had been to some extent--never completely--mastered, there was +inevitable reaction. Up sprang Post-Impressionists and Futurists. They +will not gladly be classed together, but both have this in common--they +are Expressionists, not Impressionists, not Imitators. + +The Expressionists, no matter by what name they call themselves, have +one criterion. They believe that art is not the copying or idealizing of +Nature, or of any aspect of Nature, but the expression and communication +of the artist's emotion. We can see that, between them and the +Imitationists, the Impressionists form a delicate bridge. They, too, +focus their attention on the artist rather than the object, only it is +on the artist's particular _vision_, his impression, what he actually +sees, not on his emotion, what he feels. + +Modern life is _not_ simple--cannot be simple--ought not to be; it is +not for nothing that we are heirs to the ages. Therefore the art that +utters and expresses our emotion towards modern life cannot be simple; +and, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living +tangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and +order it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One +art, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous, +unconscious life to-day, and that is Music; the other arts stand round +arrayed, half paralyzed, with drooping, empty hands. The nineteenth +century saw vast developments in an art that could express abstract, +unlocalized, unpersonified feelings more completely than painting or +poetry, the art of Music. + + * * * * * + +As a modern critic[57] has well observed: "In tone and rhythm music has +a notation for every kind and degree of action and passion, presenting +abstract moulds of its excitement, fluctuation, suspense, crisis, +appeasement; and all this _anonymously_, without place, actors, +circumstances, named or described, without a word spoken. Poetry has to +supply definite thought, arguments driving at a conclusion, ideas +mortgaged to this or that creed or system; and to give force to these +can command only a few rhythms limited by the duration of a human breath +and the pitch of an octave. The little effects worked out in this small +compass music sweeps up and builds into vast fabrics of emotion with a +dissolute freedom undreamed of in any other art." + +It may be that music provides for a century too stagnant and listless to +act out its own emotions, too reflective to be frankly sensuous, a +shadowy pageant of sense and emotion, that serves as a _katharsis_ or +purgation. + +Anyhow, "an art that came out of the old world two centuries ago, with a +few chants, love-songs, and dances; that a century ago was still tied to +the words of a mass or an opera; or threading little dance-movements +together in a 'suite,' became in the last century this extraordinary +debauch, in which the man who has never seen a battle, loved a woman, or +worshipped a god, may not only ideally, but through the response of his +nerves and pulses to immediate rhythmical attack, enjoy the ghosts of +struggle, rapture, and exaltation with a volume and intricacy, an +anguish, a triumph, an irresponsibility, unheard of. An amplified +pattern of action and emotion is given: each man may fit to it what +images he will."[58] + + * * * * * + +If our contention throughout this book be correct the Expressionists are +in one matter abundantly right. Art, we have seen, again and again +rises by way of ritual out of emotion, out of life keenly and vividly +livid. The younger generation are always talking of life; they have a +sort of cult of life. Some of the more valorous spirits among them even +tend to disparage art that life may be the more exalted. "Stop painting +and sculping," they cry, "and go and see a football match." There you +have life! Life is, undoubtedly, essential to art because life is the +stuff of emotion, but some thinkers and artists have an oddly limited +notion of what life is. It must, it seems, in the first place, be +essentially physical. To sit and dream in your study is not to live. The +reason of this odd limitation is easy to see. We all think life is +especially the sort of life we are _not_ living ourselves. The +hard-worked University professor thinks that "Life" is to be found in a +French _caf_; the polished London journalist looks for "Life" among the +naked Polynesians. The cult of savagery, and even of simplicity, in +every form, simply spells complex civilization and diminished physical +vitality. + +The Expressionist is, then, triumphantly right in the stress he lays on +emotion; but he is not right if he limits life to certain of its more +elementary manifestations; and still less is he right, to our minds, in +making life and art in any sense coextensive. Art, as we have seen, +sustains and invigorates life, but only does it by withdrawal from these +very same elementary forms of life, by inhibiting certain sensuous +reactions. + + * * * * * + +In another matter one section of Expressionists, the Futurists, are in +the main right. The emotion to be expressed is the emotion of to-day, or +still better to-morrow. The mimetic dance arose not only nor chiefly out +of reflection on the past; but out of either immediate joy or imminent +fear or insistent hope for the future. We are not prepared perhaps to go +all lengths, to "burn all museums" because of their contagious +corruption, though we might be prepared to "banish the nude for the +space of ten years." If there is to be any true living art, it must +arise, not from the contemplation of Greek statues, not from the revival +of folk-songs, not even from the re-enacting of Greek plays, but from a +keen emotion felt towards things and people living to-day, in modern +conditions, including, among other and deeper forms of life, the haste +and hurry of the modern street, the whirr of motor cars and aeroplanes. + +There are artists alive to-day, strayed revellers, who wish themselves +back in the Middle Ages, who long for the time when each man would have +his house carved with a bit of lovely ornament, when every village +church had its Madonna and Child, when, in a word, art and life and +religion went hand in hand, not sharply sundered by castes and +professions. But we may not put back the clock, and, if by +differentiation we lose something, we gain much. The old choral dance on +the orchestral floor was an undifferentiated thing, it had a beauty of +its own; but by its differentiation, by the severance of artist and +actors and spectators, we have gained--the drama. We may not cast +reluctant eyes backwards; the world goes forward to new forms of life, +and the Churches of to-day must and should become the Museums of +to-morrow. + + * * * * * + +It is curious and instructive to note that Tolstoy's theory of Art, +though not his practice, is essentially Expressive and even approaches +the dogmas of the Futurist. Art is to him just the transmission of +personal emotion to others. It may be bad emotion or it may be good +emotion, emotion it must be. To take his simple and instructive +instance: a boy goes out into a wood and meets a wolf, he is frightened, +he comes back and tells the other villagers what he felt, how he went to +the wood feeling happy and light-hearted and the wolf came, and what the +wolf looked like, and how he began to be frightened. This is, according +to Tolstoy, art. Even if the boy never saw a wolf at all, if he had +really at another time been frightened, and if he was able to conjure up +fear in himself and communicate it to others--that also would be art. +The essential is, according to Tolstoy, that he should feel himself and +so represent his feeling that he communicates it to others.[59] +Art-schools, art-professionalism, art-criticism are all useless or worse +than useless, because they cannot teach a man to feel. Only life can do +that. + +All art is, according to Tolstoy, good _qu_ art that succeeds in +transmitting emotion. But there is good emotion and bad emotion, and the +only right material for art is good emotion, and the only good emotion, +the only emotion worth expressing, is subsumed, according to Tolstoy, in +the religion of the day. This is how he explains the constant affinity +in nearly all ages of art and religion. Instead of regarding religion as +an early phase of art, he proceeds to define religious perception as the +highest social ideal of the moment, as that "understanding of the +meaning of life which represents the highest level to which men of that +society have attained, an understanding defining the highest good at +which that society aims." "Religious perception in a society," he +beautifully adds, "is like the direction of a flowing river. If the +river flows at all, it must have a direction." Thus, religion, to +Tolstoy, is not dogma, not petrifaction, it makes indeed dogma +impossible. The religious perception of to-day flows, Tolstoi says, in +the Christian channel towards the union of man in a common brotherhood. +It is the business of the modern artist to feel and transmit emotion +towards this unity of man. + +Now it is not our purpose to examine whether Tolstoy's definition of +religion is adequate or indeed illuminating. What we wish to note is +that he grasps the truth that in art we must look and feel, and look and +feel forward, not backward, if we would live. Art somehow, like +language, is always feeling forward to newer, fuller, subtler emotions. +She seems indeed in a way to feel ahead even of science; a poet will +forecast dimly what a later discovery will confirm. Whether and how long +old channels, old forms will suffice for the new spirit can never be +foreseen. + + * * * * * + +We end with a point of great importance, though the doctrine we would +emphasize may be to some a hard saying, even a stumbling-block. Art, as +Tolstoy divined, is social, not individual. Art is, as we have seen, +social in origin, it remains and must remain social in function. The +dance from which the drama rose was a choral dance, the dance of a band, +a group, a church, a community, what the Greeks called a _thiasos_. The +word means a _band_ and a _thing of devotion_; and reverence, devotion, +collective emotion, is social in its very being. That band was, to +begin with, as we saw, the whole collection of initiated tribesmen, +linked by a common name, rallying round a common symbol. + +Even to-day, when individualism is rampant, art bears traces of its +collective, social origin. We feel about it, as noted before, a certain +"ought" which always spells social obligation. Moreover, whenever we +have a new movement in art, it issues from a group, usually from a small +professional coterie, but marked by strong social instincts, by a +missionary spirit, by intemperate zeal in propaganda, by a tendency, +always social, to crystallize conviction into dogma. We can scarcely, +unless we are as high-hearted as Tolstoy, hope now-a-days for an art +that shall be world-wide. The tribe is extinct, the family in its old +rigid form moribund, the social groups we now look to as centres of +emotion are the groups of industry, of professionalism and of sheer +mutual attraction. Small and strange though such groups may appear, they +are real social factors. + +Now this social, collective element in art is too apt to be forgotten. +When an artist claims that expression is the aim of art he is too apt to +mean self-expression only--utterance of individual emotion. Utterance +of individual emotion is very closely neighboured by, is almost +identical with, self-enhancement. What should be a generous, and in part +altruistic, exaltation becomes mere _megalomania_. This egotism is, of +course, a danger inherent in all art. The suspension of motor-reactions +to the practical world isolates the artist, cuts him off from his +fellow-men, makes him in a sense an egotist. Art, said Zola, is "the +world seen through a temperament." But this suspension is, not that he +should turn inward to feed on his own vitals, but rather to free him for +contemplation. All great art releases from self. + + * * * * * + +The young are often temporary artists: art, being based on life, calls +for a strong vitality. The young are also self-centred and seek +self-enhancement. This need of self-expression is a sort of artistic +impulse. The young are, partly from sheer immaturity, still more through +a foolish convention, shut out from real life; they are secluded, forced +to become in a sense artists, or, if they have not the power for that, +at least self-aggrandizers. They write lyric poems, they love +masquerading, they focus life on to themselves in a way which, later +on, life itself makes impossible. This pseudo-art, this +self-aggrandizement usually dies a natural death before the age of +thirty. If it live on, one remedy is, of course, the scientific +attitude; that attitude which is bent on considering and discovering the +relations of things among themselves, not their personal relation to us. +The study of science is a priceless discipline in self-abnegation, but +only in negation; it looses us from self, it does not link us to others. +The real and natural remedy for the egotism of youth is Life, not +necessarily the haunting of _cafs_, or even the watching of football +matches, but strenuous activity in the simplest human relations of daily +happenings. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." + + * * * * * + +There is always apt to be some discord between the artist and the large +practical world in which he lives, but those ages are happiest in which +the discord is least. The nineteenth century, amid its splendid +achievements in science and industry, in government and learning, and +above all in humanity, illustrates this conflict in an interesting way. +To literature, an art which can explain itself, the great public world +lent on the whole a reverent and intelligent ear. Its great prose +writers were at peace with their audience and were inspired by great +public interests. Some of the greatest, for example Tolstoy, produced +their finest work on widely human subjects, and numbered their readers +and admirers probably by the million. Writers like Dickens, Thackeray, +Kingsley, Mill, and Carlyle, even poets like Tennyson and Browning, were +full of great public interests and causes, and, in different degrees and +at different stages of their lives, were thoroughly and immensely +popular. On the other hand, one can find, at the beginning of the +period, figures like Blake and Shelley, and all through it a number of +painters--the pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists--walking like aliens +in a Philistine world. Even great figures like Burne-Jones and Whistler +were for the greater part of their lives unrecognized or mocked at. +Millais reached the attention of the world, but was thought by the +stricter fraternity to have in some sense or other sold his soul and +committed the great sin of considering the bourgeois. The bourgeois +should be despised not partially but completely. His life, his +interests, his code of ethics and conduct must all be matters of entire +indifference or amused contempt, to the true artist who intends to do +his own true work and call his soul his own. + +At a certain moment, during the eighties and nineties, it looked as if +these doctrines were generally accepted, and the divorce between art and +the community had become permanent. But it seems as if this attitude, +which coincided with a period of reaction in political matters and a +recrudescence of a belief in force and on unreasoned authority, is +already passing away. There are not wanting signs that art, both in +painting and sculpture, and in poetry and novel-writing, is beginning +again to realize its social function, beginning to be impatient of mere +individual emotion, beginning to aim at something bigger, more bound up +with a feeling towards and for the common weal. + +Take work like that of Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. Masefield or Mr. Arnold +Bennett. Without appraising its merits or demerits we cannot but note +that the social sense is always there, whether it be of a class or of a +whole community. In a play like _Justice_ the writer does not "express" +himself, he does not even merely show the pathos of a single human +being's destiny, he sets before us a much bigger thing--man tragically +caught and torn in the iron hands of a man-made machine, Society itself. +Incarnate Law is the protagonist, and, as it happens, the villain of the +piece. It is a fragment of _Les Misrables_ over again, in a severer and +more restrained technique. An art like this starts, no doubt, from +emotion towards personal happenings--there is nothing else from which it +can start; but, even as it sets sail for wider seas, it is loosed from +personal moorings. + +Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul, and art +is beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is +exposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness +tends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of +creation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the +reformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that +the artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not at +the moment of creation. + +The art of Mr. Arnold Bennett gets its bigness, its collectivity, in +part--from extension over time. Far from seeking after beauty, he almost +goes out to embrace ugliness. He does not spare us even dullness, that +we may get a sense of the long, waste spaces of life, their dreary +reality. We are keenly interested in the loves of hero and heroine, but +all the time something much bigger is going on, generation after +generation rolls by in ceaseless panorama; it is the life not of Edwin +and Hilda, it is the life of the Five Towns. After a vision so big, to +come back to the ordinary individualistic love-story is like looking +through the wrong end of a telescope. + +Art of high quality and calibre is seldom obscure. The great popular +writers of the nineteenth century--Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, +Tolstoy--wrote so that all could understand. A really big artist has +something important to say, something vast to show, something that moves +him and presses on him; and he will say it simply because he must get it +said. He will trick it out with no devices, most of all with no +obscurities. It has vexed and torn him enough while it was pushing its +way to be born. He has no peace till it is said, and said as clearly as +he may. He says it, not consciously for the sake of others, but for +himself, to ease him from the burden of big thought. Moreover, art, +whose business is to transmit emotion, should need no commentary. Art +comes out of _theoria_, contemplation, steady looking at, but never out +of _theory_. Theory can neither engender nor finally support it. An +exhibition of pictures with an explanatory catalogue, scientifically +interesting though it may be, stands, in a sense, self-condemned. + +We must, however, remember that all art is not of the whole community. +There are small groups feeling their own small but still collective +emotion, fashioning their own language, obscure sometimes to all but +themselves. They are right so to fashion it, but, if they appeal to a +wider world, they must strive to speak in the vulgar tongue, +understanded of the people. + + * * * * * + +It is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the times, a mark of the revival of +social as contrasted with merely individualistic instincts that a +younger generation of poets, at least in France, tend to form themselves +into small groups, held together not merely by eccentricities of +language or garb, but by some deep inner conviction strongly held in +common. Such a unity of spirit is seen in the works of the latter group +of thinkers and writers known as _Unanimists_. They tried and failed to +found a community. Their doctrine, if doctrine convictions so fluid can +be called, is strangely like the old group-religion of the common dance, +only more articulate. Of the Unanimist it might truly be said, "_il +buvait l'indistinction_." To him the harsh old Roman mandate _Divide et +impera_, "Divide men that you may rule them," spells death. His dream is +not of empire and personal property but of the realization of life, +common to all. To this school the great reality is the social group, +whatever form it take, family, village or town. Their only dogma is the +unity and immeasurable sanctity of life. In practice they are Christian, +yet wholly free from the asceticism of modern Christianity. Their +attitude in art is as remote as possible from, it is indeed the very +antithesis to, the sthetic exclusiveness of the close of last century. +Like St. Peter, the Unanimists have seen a sheet let down and heard a +voice from heaven saying: "Call thou nothing common nor unclean." + +Above all, the Unanimist remembers and realizes afresh the old truth +that "no man liveth unto himself." According to the Expressionist's +creed, as we have seen, the end of art is to utter and communicate +emotion. The fullest and finest emotions are those one human being feels +towards another. Every sympathy is an enrichment of life, every +antipathy a negation. It follows then, that, for the Unanimist, Love is +the fulfilling of his Law. + +It is a beautiful and life-giving faith, felt and with a perfect +sincerity expressed towards all nature by the Indian poet Tagore, and +towards humanity especially by M. Vildrac in his _Book of Love_ ("Livre +d'Amour"). He tells us in his "Commentary" how to-day the poet, sitting +at home with pen and paper before him, feels that he is pent in, stifled +by himself. He had been about to re-tell the old, old story of himself, +to set himself once more on the stage of his poem--the same old dusty +self tricked out, costumed anew. Suddenly he knows the figure to be +tawdry and shameful. He is hot all over when he looks at it; he must out +into the air, into the street, out of the stuffy museum where so long +he has stirred the dead egotist ashes, out into the bigger life, the +life of his fellows; he must live, with them, by them, in them. + + "I am weary of deeds done inside myself, + I am weary of voyages inside myself, + And of heroism wrought by strokes of the pen, + And of a beauty made up of formul. + + "I am ashamed of lying to my work, + Of my work lying to my life, + And of being able to content myself, + By burning sweet spices, + With the mouldering smell that is master here." + +Again, in "The Conquerors," the poet dreams of the Victorious One who +has no army, the Knight who rides afoot, the Crusader without breviary +or scrip, the Pilgrim of Love who, by the shining in his eyes, draws all +men to him, and they in turn draw other men until, at last: + + "The time came in the land, + The time of the Great Conquest, + When the people with this desire + Left the threshold of their door + To go forth towards one another. + + "And the time came in the land + When to fill all its story + There was nothing but songs in unison, + _One round danced about the houses_, + One battle and one victory." + +And so our tale ends where it began, with the Choral Dance. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[54] _Ethics_, X, 4. + +[55] H. Bergson, _Life and Consciousness_, Huxley Lecture, May 29, 1911. + +[56] Religion is here used as meaning the worship of some form of god, +as the practical counterpart of theology. + +[57] Mr. D.S. MacColl. + +[58] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 21. (1902.) + +[59] It is interesting to find, since the above was written, that the +Confession of Faith published in the catalogue of the Second +Post-Impressionist Exhibition (1912, p. 21) reproduces, consciously or +unconsciously, Tolstoy's view: _We have ceased to ask, "What does this +picture represent?" and ask instead, "What does it make us feel?"_ + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +For Ancient and Primitive Ritual the best general book of reference is: + +FRAZER, J.G. _The Golden Bough_, 3rd edition, 1911, from which most of + the instances in the present manual are taken. Part IV of _The Golden + Bough_, i.e. the section dealing with _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_, + should especially be consulted. + +Also an earlier, epoch-making book: + +ROBERTSON SMITH, W. _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_, 1889 [3rd + edition, 1927]. For certain fundamental ritual notions, _e.g._ + sacrifice, holiness, etc. + +[For Egyptian and Babylonian ritual: _Myth and Ritual_, edited by +S.H. HOOKE, 1933.] + +For the Greek Drama, as arising out of the ritual dance: Professor +GILBERT MURRAY'S _Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek +Tragedy_ in J.E. HARRISON'S _Themis_, 1912, and pp. 327-40 in the same +book; and for the religion of Dionysos and the drama, J.E. HARRISON'S +_Prolegomena_, 1907, Chapters VIII and X. For the fusion of the ritual +dance and hero-worship, see W. LEAF, _Homer and History_, 1915, Chapter +VII. For a quite different view of drama as arising wholly from the +worship of the dead, see Professor W. RIDGEWAY, _The Origin of Tragedy_, +1910. An important discussion of the relation of _tragedy_ to the winter +festival of the _Lenaia_ appears in A.B. COOK'S _Zeus_, vol. i, sec. 6 +(xxi) [1914]. + +[More recent works on Greek drama: A.W. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE, _Dithyramb_, +_Tragedy and Comedy_, 1927; G. THOMSON, _Aeschylus and Athens_, 1941.] + +For Primitive Art: + +HIRN, Y. _The Origins of Art_, 1900. The main theory of the book the + present writer believes to be inadequate, but it contains an + excellent collection of facts relating to Art, Magic, Art and Work, + Mimetic Dances, etc., and much valuable discussion of principles. + +GROSSE, E. _The Beginnings of Art_, 1897, in the Chicago Anthropological + Series. Valuable for its full illustrations of primitive art, as + well as for text. + +[BOAS, F., _Primitive Art_, 1927.] + +For the Theory of Art: + +TOLSTOY, L. _What is Art?_ Translated by Aylmer Maude, in the Scott + Library. + +FRY, ROGER E. _An Essay in sthetics_, in the _New Quarterly_, April 1909, + p. 174. + +This is the best general statement of the function of Art known to me. +It should be read in connection with Mr. Bullough's article, quoted on +p. 129, which gives the psychological basis of a similar view of the +nature of art. My own theory was formulated independently, in relation +to the development of the Greek theatre, but I am very glad to find that +it is in substantial agreement with those of two such distinguished +authorities on sthetics. For my later conclusions on art, see _Alpha +and Omega_, 1915, pp. 208-220. + +[CAUDWELL, C., _Illusion and Reality_, 1937.] + +For more advanced students: + +DUSSAUZE, HENRI. _Les Rgles esthtiques et les lois du sentiment_, 1911. + +MLLER-FREIENFELS, R. _Psychologie der Kunst_, 1912. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abstraction, 224 + +Adonis, rites of, 19, 20, 54-56 +----, gardens of, 149 +----, as tree spirit, 149 + +schylus, 47 + +Aesthete, not artist, 214-215 + +Agon, 15 + +Anagnorisis, or recognition, 15 + +Anthesteria, spring festival of, 147-149 + +Apollo Belvedere, 171 + +Aristotle on art, 198 + +Art and beauty, 213 +---- and imitation, 230 +---- and morality, 215 +---- and nature, 198 +---- and religion, 225 +----, emotional factor in, 26 +----, social elements in, 241-248 + +Ascension festival, 69 + + +Bear, Aino festival, 92-99 + +Beast dances, 45, 46 + +Beauty and art, 211 + +Bergson on art, 134 + +Birth, rites of new, 104-113 + +Bouphonia, 91-92 + +Bull-driving in spring, 85 +----, festival at Magnesia, 87 + + +Cat's-cradle, as magical charm, 66 + +Censor, function of, 216 + +Charila, spring festival, 80 + +Chorus in Greek drama, 121-128 + + +Dancing, a work, 30-31 +----, magical, 31-35 +----, commemorative, 44 + +Daphnephoros, 186 + +Death and winter, 67-72 + +Dik as _way of life_, 116 + +Dionysis, 12, 150 + +Dionysis as Holy Child, 103 +---- as tree god, 102 +---- as young man, 113-115 + +Dithyramb, 75-89 + +Drama and Dromenon, 35-38 + + +Easter, in Modern Greece, 73 + +Eiresione, 114 + +Epheboi, Athenian, 12 + +Euch, meaning of, 25 + +Expressionists, 232 + + +Futurists, 232 + + +Ghosts as fertilizers, 149 + + +Homer, influence on drama, 145-166 + +Hor or seasons, 116 + + +Idol and ideal, 227 + +Impressionism, 231 + +Imitation, 21-23 +----, ceremonies in Australia, 64 + +Individualism, 241 + +Initiation ceremonies, 64, 106-113 + + +Jack-in-the-Green, 60, 187, 190 + + +Kangaroos, dance of, 46 + + +Landscape, art of, 199-201 + + +Maeterlinck, 200 + +May-day at Cambridge, 57 + +May, queen of the, 57-61 +----, king of the, 193 + +Mime, meaning of, 47 + +Mimesis, 43-47 + +Music, function of, 233 + + +New birth, 106-113 + + +Olympian gods, 202 + +Orchestra, meaning of, 123-127 + +Osiris, rites of, 15-23, 51 + +Ox-hunger, 81 + + +Panathenaia, 178 + +Panspermia, 148 + +Parthenon frieze, 176 + +Peisistratos, 146 + +Peplos of Athena, 180 + +Pericles on religion, 178 + +Personification and conception, 70-73 + +Plato on art, 21-23 + +Pleasure not joy, 213 + +Post-impressionists, 238 + +Prayer discs, 24 + +Presentation, meaning of, 53 + +Psychical distance, 129-134 + + +Representation, 34-41 + +Resurrection, rites of, 100 + +Rites, periodicity of, 52 + +Ritual forms in drama, 188-189 + + +Santayana on art, 220 + +Semel, bringing up of, 81 + +Spring song at Saffron Walden, 59 +---- at Athens, 77 + +Stage or scene, 142-145 + +Summer, bringing in of, 67-71 + + +Tammuz, rites of, 18-20 + +T{)e}l{)e}t{-e}, _rite of growing up_, 112 + +Theatre, 10-13, 136 + +Themis, as ritual custom, 117 + +Theoria and theory, 248 + +Threshing-floor at dancing-place, 124 + +Tolstoy on art, 132, 238-241 + +Totemism and beast dances, 46, 47 + +Tragedy, ritual forms in, 119-122 +----, origin of, 76 + +Tug of war, among Esquimaux, 62 + + +Unanimism, 249-252 + + +Vegetation spirit, 72 + + +Winter, carrying out of, 68-72 + +Wool, sacred, 12 + +World-soul, 246 + +Wreaths, festival of, 189 +----, at Greek weddings, 190 + + +Zola on art, 242 + + * * * * * + +Printed in Great Britain by The Camelot Press Ltd., London and +Southampton + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 17087-8.txt or 17087-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/0/8/17087/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ancient Art and Ritual + +Author: Jane Ellen Harrison + +Release Date: November 18, 2005 [EBook #17087] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<h1><i>Ancient Art and Ritual</i></h1> +<hr /> +<p class="center">JANE ELLEN HARRISON</p> + +<p class="center biggap"><i>Geoffrey Cumberlege</i><br /> + +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS<br /> + +<span class="little">LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO</span></p> + +<p class="biggap center little"> +<i>First published in 1913, and reprinted in 1918 (revised), 1919, 1927, +1935 and 1948</i></p> + +<p class="biggap center little">PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN</p> + + + + +<h2><a name="pgv" id="pgv"></a><span class="pagenum">v</span><a name="PREFATORY_NOTE" id="PREFATORY_NOTE"></a>PREFATORY NOTE</h2> + + +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the +present volume. The title is <i>Ancient Art and Ritual</i>, but the reader +will find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of +either ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible +in handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie +perhaps in the word “<i>and</i>”—that is, in the intimate connection which I +have tried to show exists between ritual and art. This connection has, I +believe, an important bearing on questions vital to-day, as, for +example, the question of the place of art in our modern civilization, +its relation to and its difference from religion and morality; in a +word, on the whole enquiry as to what the nature of art is and how it +can help or hinder spiritual life.</p> + + +<p class="gap">I have taken Greek drama as a typical instance, because in it we have +the clear historical case of a great art, which arose out of a very +primitive and almost world-wide ritual. The rise of the Indian drama, or +the mediæval and from it the modern stage, would have told us the same<a name="pgvi" id="pgvi"></a><span class="pagenum">vi</span> +tale and served the like purpose. But Greece is nearer to us to-day than +either India or the Middle Ages.</p> + + + +<p class="gap">Greece and the Greek drama remind me that I should like to offer my +thanks to Professor Gilbert Murray, for help and criticism which has far +outrun the limits of editorial duty.</p> + +<p class="toright"> +J. E. H.</p> +<p> +<i>Newnham College,<br /> +Cambridge, June 1913.</i><br /> +</p> + + + +<h3 class="gap">NOTE TO THE FIFTH IMPRESSION</h3> + +<p>The original text has been reprinted without change except for the +correction of misprints. A few additions (enclosed in square brackets) +have been made to the Bibliography.</p> + +<p>1947</p> + + + +<h2 class="biggap"><a name="pgvii" id="pgvii"></a><span class="pagenum">vii</span> +<a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<div class="center"> +<table summary="Table of contents"> + <tr><td></td><td>CHAP.</td><td class="toright">PAGE</td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I</a></td><td>ART AND RITUAL</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg9">9</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II</a></td><td>PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg29">29</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a + href="#CHAPTER_III">III</a></td><td>PERIODIC CEREMONIES: THE + SPRING FESTIVAL</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg49">49</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV</a></td><td>THE PRIMITIVE SPRING DANCE OR + DITHYRAMB, IN GREECE</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg75">75</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V</a></td><td>THE TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: + THE <i>DROMENON</i> AND THE DRAMA</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg119">119</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI</a></td><td>GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC + FRIEZE AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg170">170</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII</a></td><td>RITUAL, ART AND LIFE</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg204">204</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"></td><td>BIBLIOGRAPHY</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg253">253</a></td></tr> + <tr><td class="toright"></td><td>INDEX</td><td class="toright bottom"><a href="#pg255">255</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> + + + +<h1><a name="pg9" id="pg9"></a><span class="pagenum">9</span> +<a name="ANCIENT_ART_AND_RITUAL" id="ANCIENT_ART_AND_RITUAL"></a>ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL</h1> + +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>ART AND RITUAL</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even +dissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to +the modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and +ceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a +church or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in +thought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is +towards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day; +but the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show +that these two divergent developments have a common root, and that +neither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one +<a name="pg10" id="pg10"></a><span class="pagenum">10</span>and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre.</p> + + +<p class="gap">Such a statement may sound to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to +the Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century <span class="little">B.C.</span>, it +would have been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an +Athenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival of +Dionysos.</p> + +<p>Passing through the entrance-gate to the theatre on the south side of +the Acropolis, our Athenian citizen will find himself at once on holy +ground. He is within a <i>temenos</i> or precinct, a place “cut off” from the +common land and dedicated to a god. He will pass to the left (Fig. <a +href="#fig2" >2</a>, p. 144) two temples standing near to each other, one of earlier, the other +of later date, for a temple, once built, was so sacred that it would +only be reluctantly destroyed. As he enters the actual theatre he will +pay nothing for his seat; his attendance is an act of worship, and from +the social point of view obligatory; the entrance fee is therefore paid +for him by the State.</p> + +<p>The theatre is open to all Athenian citizens, but the ordinary man will +not venture to <a name="pg11" id="pg11"></a><span class="pagenum">11</span>seat himself in the front row. In the front row, and +that only, the seats have backs, and the central seat of this row is an +armchair; the whole of the front row is permanently reserved, not for +individual rich men who can afford to hire “boxes,” but for certain +State officials, and these officials are all priests. On each seat the +name of the owner is inscribed; the central seat is “of the priest of +Dionysos Eleuthereus,” the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat “of +the priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer,” and again “of the priest of +Asklepios,” and “of the priest of Olympian Zeus,” and so on round the +whole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty’s the front row +of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the +Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall.</p> + +<p>The theatre at Athens is not open night by night, nor even day by day. +Dramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of +Dionysos in winter and spring. It is, again, as though the modern +theatre was open only at the festivals of the Epiphany and of Easter. +Our modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We +<a name="pg12" id="pg12"></a><span class="pagenum">12</span>tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our +theatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the +performance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is +done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for +us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day +was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the +five or six days of the great <i>Dionysia</i>, the whole city was in a state +of unwonted sanctity, under a <i>taboo</i>. To distrain a debtor was illegal; +any personal assault, however trifling, was sacrilege.</p> + +<p>Most impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on +the eve of the performance. By torchlight, accompanied by a great +procession, the image of the god Dionysos himself was brought to the +theatre and placed in the orchestra. Moreover, he came not only in human +but in animal form. Chosen young men of the Athenians in the flower of +their youth—<i>epheboi</i>—escorted to the precinct a splendid bull. It was +expressly ordained that the bull should be “worthy of the god”; he was, +<a name="pg13" id="pg13"></a><span class="pagenum">13</span>in fact, as we shall presently see, the primitive incarnation of the +god. It is, again, as though in our modern theatre there stood, +“sanctifying all things to our use and us to His service,” the human +figure of the Saviour, and beside him the Paschal Lamb.</p> + + +<p class="gap">But now we come to a strange thing. A god presides over the theatre, to +go to the theatre is an act of worship to the god Dionysos, and yet, +when the play begins, three times out of four of Dionysos we hear +nothing. We see, it may be, Agamemnon returning from Troy, Clytemnestra +waiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Phædra for +Hippolytos, the hate of Medea and the slaying of her children: stories +beautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be, but scarcely, we feel, +religious. The orthodox Greeks themselves sometimes complained that in +the plays enacted before them there was “nothing to do with Dionysos.”</p> + +<p>If drama be at the outset divine, with its roots in ritual, why does it +issue in an art profoundly solemn, tragic, yet purely human? The actors +wear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the Eleusinian +mysteries.<a name="pg14" id="pg14"></a><span class="pagenum">14</span> Why, then, do we find them, not executing a religious +service or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating +mere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to +give us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks +down, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves +us with our problem on our hands.</p> + +<p>Had we only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a +people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always +obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their +cloud-capp’d towers that they distract our minds from the task of +digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of +Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of +Greek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so +swiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek +material only to hand, we might never have marked the transition. +Happily, however, we are not confined within the Greek paradise. Wider +fields are open to us; our subject is not only Greek, but ancient art +and ritual. We can turn at <a name="pg15" id="pg15"></a><span class="pagenum">15</span>once to the Egyptians, a people +slower-witted than the Greeks, and watch their sluggish but more +instructive operations. To one who is studying the development of the +human mind the average or even stupid child is often more illuminating +than the abnormally brilliant. Greece is often too near to us, too +advanced, too modern, to be for comparative purposes instructive.</p> + + + +<p class="gap">Of all Egyptian, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so +long or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the +prototype of the great class of resurrection-gods who die that they may +live again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted +year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos. In that mystery-play was +set forth, first, what the Greeks call his <i>agon</i>, his contest with his +enemy Set; then his <i>pathos</i>, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his +wounding, his death, and his burial; finally, his resurrection and +“recognition,” his <i>anagnorisis</i> either as himself or as his only +begotten son Horus. Now the meaning of this thrice-told tale we shall +consider later: for the moment we are concerned <a name="pg16" id="pg16"></a><span class="pagenum">16</span>only with the fact that +it is set forth both in art and ritual.</p> + +<p>At the festival of Osiris small images of the god were made of sand and +vegetable earth, his cheek bones were painted green and his face yellow. +The images were cast in a mould of pure gold, representing the god as a +mummy. After sunset on the 24th day of the month Choiak, the effigy of +Osiris was laid in a grave and the image of the previous year was +removed. The intent of all this was made transparently clear by other +rites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of +ploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the +other with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the +chief priest recited the ritual of the “sowing of the fields.” Into the +“garden” of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand +and barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was +poured out of a golden vase over the “garden” and the barley was allowed +to grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his +burial, “for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine +substance.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg17" id="pg17"></a><span class="pagenum">17</span>The death and resurrection of the gods, and <i>pari passu</i> of the life and +fruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but—and this is our +immediate point—it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In +the great temple of Isis at Philæ there is a chamber dedicated to +Osiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears +of corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The +inscription to the picture reads: <i>This is the form of him whom one may +not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning +waters.</i> It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month +Choiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. +When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had +sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the +grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be “hailed as an omen, or rather as the +cause of the growth of the crops.”<a name="fnm1" id="fnm1"></a><a href="#fn1" class="fnnum">1</a></p> + +<p>Even more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that +accompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is +represented at first as a mummy <a name="pg18" id="pg18"></a><span class="pagenum">18</span>swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit +by bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically +impossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl—perhaps his +“garden”—all but erect, between the outspread wings of Isis, while +before him a male figure holds the <i>crux ansata</i>, the “cross with a +handle,” the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired, <i>i.e.</i> the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented.</p> + +<p>No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt, +then, we have clearly an instance—only one out of many—where art and +ritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian +tombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This, +as we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art +and ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually +explain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they +actually arise out of a common human impulse.</p> + + +<p class="gap">The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he +is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) “came to the gate of <a name="pg19" id="pg19"></a><span class="pagenum">19</span>the Lord’s +house which was toward the north” he beheld there the “women weeping for +Tammuz.” This “abomination” the house of Judah had brought with them +from Babylon. Tammuz is <i>Dumuzi</i>, “the true son,” or more fully, +<i>Dumuzi-absu</i>, “true son of the waters.” He too, like Osiris, is a god +of the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat +of the summer. In Milton’s procession of false gods,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">“Thammuz came next behind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Syrian damsels to lament his fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In amorous ditties all a summer’s day.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Tammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died and +passed below the earth to the place of dust and death, “the land from +which there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies on +door and bolt.” And the goddess went after him, and while she was below, +life ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of animal or +man was born.</p> + +<p>We know Tammuz, “the true son,” best by one of his titles, Adonis, the +Lord or King.<a name="pg20" id="pg20"></a><span class="pagenum">20</span> The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at midsummer. That is +certain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail +on its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were +thronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of the +dead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping women. +Thucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but Plutarch<a name="fnm2" id="fnm2"></a><a href="#fn2" class="fnnum">2</a> +tells us those who took account of omens were full of concern for the +fate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the day of the +funeral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish “Lord,” was no luckier than to +set sail on a Friday, the death-day of the “Lord” of Christendom.</p> + +<p>The rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were rites +of death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading and +dying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The reason of +this is simple and will soon become manifest. For the moment we have +only to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are represented as +much by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the feasts of +Tammuz <a name="pg21" id="pg21"></a><span class="pagenum">21</span>and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains.</p> + +<p class="gap">We have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and +ritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely +linked. So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to +suspect they may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it +that links art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common? +Do they start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they +develop, fall so widely asunder?</p> + +<p>It will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art, +and also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual.</p> + + +<p class="gap">Art, Plato<a name="fnm3" id="fnm3"></a><a href="#fn3" class="fnnum">3</a> tells us in a famous passage of the <i>Republic</i>, is +imitation; the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in +his philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is +to make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he +turns it whither he will, “are reflected sun and heavens and earth and +man,” any<a name="pg22" id="pg22"></a><span class="pagenum">22</span>thing and everything. Never did a statement so false, so +wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth—truth which, by the +help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But +first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as +Plato’s misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not +long ago thus defined his own art: “The art of painting is the art of +imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments.” A +sorry life-work! Few people to-day, perhaps, regard art as the close and +realistic copy of Nature; photography has at least scotched, if not +slain, that error; but many people still regard art as a sort of +improvement on or an “idealization” of Nature. It is the part of the +artist, they think, to take suggestions and materials from Nature, and +from these to build up, as it were, a revised version. It is, perhaps, +only by studying those rudimentary forms of art that are closely akin to +ritual that we come to see how utterly wrong-headed is this conception.</p> + +<p>Take the representations of Osiris that we have just described—the +mummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain <a name="pg23" id="pg23"></a><span class="pagenum">23</span>that art is +here a copy or imitation of reality? However “realistic” the painting, +it represents a thing imagined not actual. There never was any such +person as Osiris, and if there had been, he would certainly never, once +mummified, have risen from his tomb. There is no question of fact, and +the copy of fact, in the matter. Moreover, had there been, why should +anyone desire to make a copy of natural fact? The whole “imitation” +theory, to which, and to the element of truth it contains, we shall +later have occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no +adequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack +of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is +idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to +improve on Nature.</p> + +<p class="gap">Modern science, confronted with a problem like that of the rise of art, +no longer casts about to conjecture how art <i>might</i> have arisen, she +examines how it actually <i>did</i> arise. Abundant material has now been +collected from among savage peoples of an art so primitive that we +hesitate to call it art at <a name="pg24" id="pg24"></a><span class="pagenum">24</span>all, and it is in these inchoate efforts +that we are able to track the secret motive springs that move the artist +now as then.</p> + +<p>Among the Huichol Indians,<a name="fnm4" id="fnm4"></a><a href="#fn4" class="fnnum">4</a> if the people fear a drought from the +extreme heat of the sun, they take a clay disk, and on one side of it +they paint the “face” of Father Sun, a circular space surrounded by rays +of red and blue and yellow which are called his “arrows,” for the +Huichol sun, like Ph<span title="oe ligature">œ</span>bus Apollo, has arrows for rays. On the reverse +side they will paint the progress of the sun through the four quarters +of the sky. The journey is symbolized by a large cross-like figure with +a central circle for midday. Round the edge are beehive-shaped mounds; +these represent the hills of earth. The red and yellow dots that +surround the hills are cornfields. The crosses on the hills are signs of +wealth and money. On some of the disks birds and scorpions are painted, +and on one are curving lines which mean rain. These disks are deposited +on the altar of the god-house and left, and then all is well. The +intention might <a name="pg25" id="pg25"></a><span class="pagenum">25</span>be to us obscure, but a Huichol Indian would read it +thus: “Father Sun with his broad shield (or ‘face’) and his arrows rises +in the east, bringing money and wealth to the Huichols. His heat and the +light from his rays make the corn to grow, but he is asked not to +interfere with the clouds that are gathering on the hills.”</p> + +<p>Now is this art or ritual? It is both and neither. <i>We</i> distinguish +between a form of prayer and a work of art and count them in no danger +of confusion; but the Huichol goes back to that earlier thing, a +<i>presentation</i>. He utters, expresses his thought about the sun and his +emotion about the sun and his relation to the sun, and if “prayer is the +soul’s sincere desire” he has painted a prayer. It is not a little +curious that the same notion comes out in the old Greek word for +“prayer,” <i>euchè</i>. The Greek, when he wanted help in trouble from the +“Saviours,” the Dioscuri, carved a picture of them, and, if he was a +sailor, added a ship. Underneath he inscribed the word <i>euchè</i>. It was +not to begin with a “vow” paid, it was a presentation of his strong +inner desire, it was a sculptured prayer.</p> + +<p>Ritual then involves <i>imitation</i>; but does <a name="pg26" id="pg26"></a><span class="pagenum">26</span>not arise out of it. It +desires to recreate an emotion, not to reproduce an object. A rite is, +indeed, we shall later see (p. <a href="#pg42">42</a>), a sort of stereotyped action, not +really practical, but yet not wholly cut loose from practice, a +reminiscence or an anticipation of actual practical doing; it is fitly, +though not quite correctly, called by the Greeks a <i>dromenon</i>, “a thing +done.”</p> + +<p>At the bottom of art, as its motive power and its mainspring, lies, not +the wish to copy Nature or even improve on her—the Huichol Indian does +not vainly expend his energies on an effort so fruitless—but rather an +impulse shared by art with ritual, the desire, that is, to utter, to +give out a strongly felt emotion or desire by representing, by making or +doing or enriching the object or act desired. The common source of the +art and ritual of Osiris is the intense, world-wide desire that the life +of Nature which seemed dead should live again. This common <i>emotional</i> +factor it is that makes art and ritual in their beginnings well-nigh +indistinguishable. Both, to begin with, copy an act, but not at first +for the sake of the copy. Only when the emotion dies down and is +<a name="pg27" id="pg27"></a><span class="pagenum">27</span>forgotten does the copy become an end in itself, a mere mimicry.</p> + +<p>It is this downward path, this sinking of making to mimicry, that makes +us now-a-days think of ritual as a dull and formal thing. Because a rite +has ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it +will cease to be <i>done</i>. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of +habit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest +impulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only +others but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the +act is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it +becomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art.</p> + +<p class="gap">It is not easy, as we saw, to classify the Huichol prayer-disks. As +prayers they are ritual, as surfaces decorated they are specimens of +primitive art. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a kind of +ceremony very instructive for our point, but again not very easy to +classify—the pantomimic dances which are, almost all over the world, so +striking a feature in savage social and religious life. Are they to be +classed as ritual or art?</p> + +<p><a name="pg28" id="pg28"></a><span class="pagenum">28</span>These pantomime dances lie, indeed, at the very heart and root of our +whole subject, and it is of the first importance that before going +further in our analysis of art and ritual, we should have some +familiarity with their general character and gist, the more so as they +are a class of ceremonies now practically extinct. We shall find in +these dances the meeting-point between art and ritual, or rather we +shall find in them the rude, inchoate material out of which both ritual +and art, at least in one of its forms, developed. Moreover, we shall +find in pantomimic dancing a ritual bridge, as it were, between actual +life and those representations of life which we call art.</p> + +<p>In our next chapter, therefore, we shall study the ritual dance in +general, and try to understand its psychological origin; in the +following chapter (<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III</a>) we shall take a particular dance of special +importance, the Spring Dance as practised among various primitive +peoples. We shall then be prepared to approach the study of the Spring +Dance among the Greeks, which developed into their drama, and thereby +to, we hope, throw light on the relation between ritual and art.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn1" id="fn1"></a><span +class="label"><a href="#fnm1">1</a></span> <i>Adonis, Attis, +Osiris</i>,<span class="up">2</span> p. 324.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn2" id="fn2"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm2">2</a></span> <i>Vit. Nik.</i>, 13.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn3" id="fn3"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm3">3</a></span> <i>Rep.</i> X, 596-9.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn4" id="fn4"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm4">4</a></span> C. H. Lumholtz, <i>Symbolism of the Huichol Indians</i>, in <i>Mem. +of the Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist.</i>, Vol. III, “Anthropology.” (1900.)</p></div> +</div> + + +<h2><a name="pg29" id="pg29"></a><span class="pagenum">29</span><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<h3>PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> books and hymns of bygone days, which dealt with the religion of “the +heathen in his blindness,” he was pictured as a being of strange +perversity, apt to bow down to “gods of wood and stone.” The question +<i>why</i> he acted thus foolishly was never raised. It was just his +“blindness”; the light of the gospel had not yet reached him. Now-a-days +the savage has become material not only for conversion and hymn-writing +but for scientific observation. We want to understand his psychology, +<i>i.e.</i> how he behaves, not merely for his sake, that we may abruptly +and despotically convert or reform him, but for our own sakes; partly, +of course, for sheer love of knowing, but also,—since we realize that +our own behaviour is based on instincts kindred to his,—in order that, +by understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better, +our own.</p> + +<p><a name="pg30" id="pg30"></a><span class="pagenum">30</span>Anthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the +worship of false gods, bowing “down to wood and stone,” bulks larger in +the mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for +temples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The +savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants +done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters +spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously +and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants +sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself +before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a +wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does +not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he +rehearses his hunt in a bear dance.</p> + +<p>Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to +overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the +quite young from sheer <i>joie de vivre</i>, and essentially inappropriate to +the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word<a name="pg31" id="pg31"></a><span class="pagenum">31</span> <i>nolávoa</i> +means both “to work” and “to dance.” An old man will reproach a young +man saying, “Why do you not go and work?” (<i>nolávoa</i>). He means “Why do +you not dance instead of looking on?” It is strange to us to learn that +among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to +mature manhood, so the number of his “dances” increase, and the number +of these “dances” is the measure <i>pari passu</i> of his social importance. +Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, <i>because +he cannot dance</i>; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to +another and a younger.</p> + +<p class="gap">Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among the +Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,<a name="fnm5" id="fnm5"></a><a href="#fn5" class="fnnum">5</a> for a +man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this +will make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and Austria the +peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high +or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller +will <a name="pg32" id="pg32"></a><span class="pagenum">32</span>be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt as +to the practical reason of this mimic dancing. When Macedonian farmers +have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air +and, catching them again, exclaim, “May the crop grow as high as the +spade has gone.” In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by +one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is decked +with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell +and some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her +arms vigorously and cry, “Flax, grow,” or words to that effect. When she +has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her +partner.</p> + +<p>Is this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer “No.” Is it ritual? With +some hesitation we shall probably again answer “No.” It is, we think, +not a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and +women. But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North +America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the +sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four +times <a name="pg33" id="pg33"></a><span class="pagenum">33</span>round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into +the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain. +Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon +the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their +faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would +describe such a ceremonial as “an interesting instance of primitive +<i>ritual</i>.” The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one +the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the +other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially +for the public good.</p> + +<p>The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what +concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what +is indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing +in the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says, +“Flax, grow,” prove the point. She <i>does</i> what she <i>wants done</i>. Her +intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest +possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better +still perhaps a game of billiards, he <a name="pg34" id="pg34"></a><span class="pagenum">34</span>will find himself <i>doing</i> in +sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where +the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the +suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology +teaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of +intellectual illusion, not even the exercise of a “mimetic instinct,” +but simply, in its ultimate analysis, an utterance, a discharge of +emotion and longing.</p> + +<p>But though the utterance of emotion is the prime and moving, it is not +the sole, factor. We may utter emotion in a prolonged howl, we may even +utter it in a collective prolonged howl, yet we should scarcely call +this ritual, still less art. It is true that a prolonged <i>collective</i> +howl will probably, because it is collective, develop a rhythm, a +regular recurrence, and hence probably issue in a kind of ritual music; +but for the further stage of development into art another step is +necessary. We must not only <i>utter</i> emotion, we must <i>represent</i> it, +that is, we must in some way reproduce or imitate or express the thought +which is causing us emotion. Art is not imitation, but art and also +ritual frequently and legitimately <i>contain an element of imita<a name="pg35" id="pg35"></a><span class="pagenum">35</span>tion</i>. +Plato was so far right. What exactly is imitated we shall see when we +come to discuss the precise difference between art and ritual.</p> + +<p class="gap">The Greek word for a <i>rite</i> as already noted is <i>dromenon</i>, “a thing +done”—and the word is full of instruction. The Greek had realized that +to perform a rite you must <i>do</i> something, that is, you must not only +feel something but express it in action, or, to put it psychologically, +you must not only receive an impulse, you must react to it. The word for +rite, <i>dromenon</i>, “thing done,” arose, of course, not from any +psychological analysis, but from the simple fact that rites among the +primitive Greeks were <i>things done</i>, mimetic dances and the like. It is +a fact of cardinal importance that their word for theatrical +representation, <i>drama</i>, is own cousin to their word for rite, +<i>dromenon</i>; <i>drama</i> also means “thing done.” Greek linguistic instinct +pointed plainly to the fact that art and ritual are near relations. To +this fact of crucial importance for our argument we shall return later. +But from the outset it should be borne in mind that in these two Greek +words, <i>dromenon</i> and<a name="pg36" id="pg36"></a><span class="pagenum">36</span> <i>drama</i>, in their exact meaning, their relation +and their distinction, we have the keynote and clue to our whole +discussion.</p> + +<p class="gap">For the moment we have to note that the Greek word for rite, <i>dromenon</i>, +“thing done,” is not strictly adequate. It omits a factor of prime +importance; it includes too much and not enough. All “things done” are +not rites. You may shrink back from a blow; that is the expression of an +emotion, that is a reaction to a stimulus, but that is not a rite. You +may digest your dinner; that is a thing done, and a thing of high +importance, but it is not a rite.</p> + +<p>One element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it +be done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion. A +meal digested alone is certainly no rite; a meal eaten in common, under +the influence of a common emotion, may, and often does, <i>tend</i> to become +a rite.</p> + +<p>Collectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the +simple reaction into a rite, are—specially among primitive +peoples—closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual +among savages <a name="pg37" id="pg37"></a><span class="pagenum">37</span>has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional +tension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially; +it is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual. He +may make by himself excited movements, he may leap for joy, for fear; +but unless these movements are made by the tribe together they will not +become rhythmical; they will probably lack intensity, and certainly +permanence. Intensity, then, and collectivity go together, and both are +necessary for ritual, but both may be present without constituting art; +we have not yet touched the dividing line between art and ritual. When +and how does the <i>dromenon</i>, the <i>rite done</i>, pass over into the +<i>drama</i>?</p> + +<p>The genius of the Greek language <i>felt</i>, before it consciously <i>knew</i>, +the difference. This feeling ahead for distinctions is characteristic of +all languages, as has been well shown by Mr. Pearsall Smith<a name="fnm6" id="fnm6"></a><a href="#fn6" class="fnnum">6</a> in +another manual of our series. It is an instinctive process arising +independently of reason, though afterwards justified by it. What, then, +is the distinction between art and ritual which the genius of the<a name="pg38" id="pg38"></a><span class="pagenum">38</span> Greek +language felt after, when it used the two words <i>dromenon</i> and <i>drama</i> +for two different sorts of “things done”? To answer our question we must +turn for a brief moment to psychology, the science of human behaviour.</p> + +<p class="gap">We are accustomed for practical convenience to divide up our human +nature into partitions—intellect, will, the emotions, the +passions—with further subdivisions, <i>e.g.</i> of the intellect into +reason, imagination, and the like. These partitions we are apt to +arrange into a sort of order of merit or as it is called a hierarchy, +with Reason as head and crown, and under her sway the emotions and +passions. The result of establishing this hierarchy is that the +impulsive side of our nature comes off badly, the passions and even the +emotions lying under a certain ban. This popular psychology is really a +convenient and perhaps indispensable mythology. Reason, the emotions, +and the will have no more separate existences than Jupiter, Juno, and +Minerva.</p> + +<p>A more fruitful way of looking at our human constitution is to see it, +not as a bundle of separate faculties, but as a sort of <a name="pg39" id="pg39"></a><span class="pagenum">39</span>continuous +cycle of activities. What really happens is, putting it very roughly, +something of this sort. To each one of us the world is, or seems to be, +eternally divided into two halves. On the one side is ourself, on the +other all the rest of things. All our action, our behaviour, our life, +is a relation between these two halves, and that behaviour seems to have +three, not divisions, but stages. The outside world, the other half, the +object if we like so to call it, acts upon us, gets at us through our +senses. We hear or see or taste or feel something; to put it roughly, we +perceive something, and as we perceive it, so, instantly, we feel about +it, towards it, we have emotion. And, instantly again, that emotion +becomes a motive-power, we <i>re</i>-act towards the object that got at us, +we want to alter it or our relation to it. If we did not perceive we +should not feel, if we did not feel we should not act. When we talk—as +we almost must talk—of Reason, the Emotions, or the Passions and the +Will leading to action, we think of the three stages or aspects of our +behaviour as separable and even perhaps hostile; we want, perhaps, to +purge the intellect from all infection of the emotions. But in reality, +though at a given <a name="pg40" id="pg40"></a><span class="pagenum">40</span>moment one or the other element, knowing, feeling, or +acting, may be dominant in our consciousness, the rest are always +immanent.</p> + +<p>When we think of the three elements or stages, knowing, feeling, +striving, as all being necessary factors in any complete bit of human +behaviour, we no longer try to arrange them in a hierarchy with knowing +or reason at the head. Knowing—that is, receiving and recognizing a +stimulus from without—would seem to come first; we must be acted on +before we can <i>re</i>-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look +at it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads +to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the +primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our +discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at human +behaviour.</p> + +<p class="gap">Movement, then, action, is, as it were, the goal and the end of thought. +Perception finds its natural outlet and completion in doing. But here +comes in a curious consideration important for our purpose. In animals, +in so far as they act by “instinct,” as we say, perception, knowing, is +usually followed im<a name="pg41" id="pg41"></a><span class="pagenum">41</span>mediately and inevitably by doing, by such doing as +is calculated to conserve the animal and his species; but in some of the +higher animals, and especially in man, where the nervous system is more +complex, perception is not instantly transformed into action; there is +an interval for choice between several possible actions. Perception is +pent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious <i>representation</i>. Now +it is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between +perception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life, +our images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and +our art, is built up. If the cycle of knowing, feeling, acting, were +instantly fulfilled, that is, if we were a mass of well-contrived +instincts, we should hardly have <i>dromena</i>, and we should certainly +never pass from <i>dromena</i> to <i>drama</i>. Art and religion, though perhaps +not wholly ritual, spring from the incomplete cycle, from unsatisfied +desire, from perception and emotion that have somehow not found +immediate outlet in practical action. When we come later to establish +the dividing line between art and ritual we shall find this fact to be +cardinal.</p> + +<p><a name="pg42" id="pg42"></a><span class="pagenum">42</span>We have next to watch how out of <i>representation repeated</i> there grows +up a kind of <i>abstraction</i> which helps the transition from ritual to +art. When the men of a tribe return from a hunt, a journey, a battle, or +any event that has caused them keen and pleasant emotion, they will +often re-act their doings round the camp-fire at night to an attentive +audience of women and young boys. The cause of this world-wide custom is +no doubt in great part the desire to repeat a pleasant experience; the +battle or the hunt will not be re-enacted unless it has been successful. +Together with this must be reckoned a motive seldom absent from human +endeavour, the desire for self-exhibition, self-enhancement. But in this +re-enactment, we see at once, lies the germ of history and of +commemorative ceremonial, and also, oddly enough, an impulse emotional +in itself begets a process we think of as characteristically and +exclusively intellectual, the process of abstraction. The savage begins +with the particular battle that actually <i>did</i> happen; but, it is easy +to see that if he re-enacts it again and again the <i>particular</i> battle +or hunt will be forgotten, the representation <a name="pg43" id="pg43"></a><span class="pagenum">43</span>cuts itself loose from +the particular action from which it arose, and becomes generalized, as +it were abstracted. Like children he plays not at a funeral, but at +“funerals,” not at a battle, but at battles; and so arises the +war-dance, or the death-dance, or the hunt-dance. This will serve to +show how inextricably the elements of knowing and feeling are +intertwined.</p> + +<p>So, too, with the element of action. If we consider the occasions when a +savage dances, it will soon appear that it is not only after a battle or +a hunt that he dances in order to commemorate it, but before. Once the +commemorative dance has got abstracted or generalized it becomes +material for the magical dance, the dance pre-done. A tribe about to go +to war will work itself up by a war dance; about to start out hunting +they will catch their game in pantomime. Here clearly the main emphasis +is on the practical, the active, doing-element in the cycle. The dance +is, as it were, a sort of precipitated desire, a discharge of pent-up +emotion into action.</p> + +<p>In both these kinds of dances, the dance that commemorates by +<i>re</i>-presenting and the dance that anticipates by <i>pre</i>-presenting, +Plato would have seen the element of imitation, <a name="pg44" id="pg44"></a><span class="pagenum">44</span>what the Greeks called +<i>mimesis</i>, which we saw he believed to be the very source and essence of +all art. In a sense he would have been right. The commemorative dance +does especially <i>re</i>-present; it reproduces the past hunt or battle; but +if we analyse a little more closely we see it is not for the sake of +copying the actual battle itself, but for the <i>emotion felt about the +battle</i>. This they desire to re-live. The emotional element is seen +still more clearly in the dance <i>fore</i>-done for magical purposes. +Success in war or in the hunt is keenly, intensely desired. The hunt or +the battle cannot take place at the moment, so the cycle cannot complete +itself. The desire cannot find utterance in the actual act; it grows and +accumulates by inhibition, till at last the exasperated nerves and +muscles can bear it no longer; it breaks out into mimetic anticipatory +action. But, and this is the important point, the action is mimetic, not +of what you see done by another; but of what you desire to do yourself. +The habit of this <i>mimesis</i> of the thing desired, is set up, and ritual +begins. Ritual, then, does imitate, but for an emotional, not an +altogether practical, end.</p> + +<p><a name="pg45" id="pg45"></a><span class="pagenum">45</span>Plato never saw a savage war-dance or a hunt-dance or a rain-dance, and +it is not likely that, if he had seen one, he would have allowed it to +be art at all. But he must often have seen a class of performances very +similar, to which unquestionably he would give the name of art. He must +have seen plays like those of Aristophanes, with the chorus dressed up +as Birds or Clouds or Frogs or Wasps, and he might undoubtedly have +claimed such plays as evidence of the rightness of his definition. Here +were men <i>imitating</i> birds and beasts, dressed in their skins and +feathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would +have been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning +of things, we find an origin and an impulse much deeper, vaguer, and +more emotional.</p> + +<p>The beast dances found widespread over the savage world took their rise +when men really believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts +and birds and fishes were his “little brothers.” Or rather, perhaps, +more strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers, +for the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North +American towards the grizzly bear, is one of <a name="pg46" id="pg46"></a><span class="pagenum">46</span>affection tempered by deep +religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of +civilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call +<i>totemism</i>. “Totem” means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as +men. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as +men-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not +to <i>imitate</i> kangaroos—you cannot imitate yourself—but just for +natural joy of heart because they <i>were</i> kangaroos; they belonged to the +Kangaroo tribe, they bore the tribal marks and delighted to assert their +tribal unity. What they felt was not <i>mimesis</i> but “participation,” +unity, and community. Later, when man begins to distinguish between +himself and his strange fellow-tribesmen, to realize that he is <i>not</i> a +kangaroo like other kangaroos, he will try to revive his old faith, his +old sense of participation and oneness, by conscious imitation. Thus +though imitation is not the object of these dances, it grows up in and +through them. It is the same with art. The origin of art is not +<i>mimesis</i>, but <i>mimesis</i> springs up out of art, out of emotional +expression, and constantly and closely neigh<a name="pg47" id="pg47"></a><span class="pagenum">47</span>bours it. Art and ritual +are at the outset alike in this, that they do not seek to copy a fact, +but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion.</p> + +<p class="gap">We shall see this more clearly if we examine for a moment this Greek +word <i>mimesis</i>. We translate m<span title="i-macron">ī</span>m<span title="e-macron">ē</span>sis by “imitation,” and we do very +wrongly. The word <i>mimesis</i> means the action or doing of a person called +a <i>mime</i>. Now a <i>mime</i> was simply a person who dressed up and acted in a +pantomime or primitive drama. He was roughly what we should call an +<i>actor</i>, and it is significant that in the word <i>actor</i> we stress not +imitating but acting, doing, just what the Greek stressed in his words +<i>dromenon</i> and <i>drama</i>. The actor dresses up, puts on a mask, wears the +skin of a beast or the feathers of a bird, not, as we have seen, to copy +something or some one who is not himself, but to emphasize, enlarge, +enhance, his own personality; he masquerades, he does not mimic.</p> + +<p>The celebrants in the very primitive ritual of the Mountain-Mother in +Thrace were, we know, called <i>mimes</i>. In the fragment of his lost play, +Æschylus, after describing the din made by the “mountain gear” of the +Mother, <a name="pg48" id="pg48"></a><span class="pagenum">48</span>the maddening hum of the <i>bombykes</i>, a sort of spinning-top, +the clash of the brazen cymbals and the twang of the strings, thus goes +on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“And bull-voices roar thereto from somewhere out of the unseen, +fearful <i>mimes</i>, and from a drum an image, as it were, of thunder +underground is borne on the air heavy with dread.”</p></div> + +<p>Here we have undoubtedly some sort of “bull-roaring,” thunder-and +wind-making ceremony, like those that go on in Australia to-day. The +<i>mimes</i> are not mimicking thunder out of curiosity, they are making it +and enacting and uttering it for magical purposes. When a sailor wants a +wind he makes it, or, as he later says, he whistles <i>for</i> it; when a +savage or a Greek wants thunder to bring rain he makes it, becomes it. +But it is easy to see that as the belief in magic declines, what was +once intense desire, issuing in the making of or the being of a thing, +becomes mere copying of it; the mime, the maker, sinks to be in our +modern sense the mimic; as faith declines, folly and futility set in; +the earnest, zealous <i>act</i> sinks into a frivolous mimicry, a sort of +child’s-play.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn5" id="fn5"></a><span +class="label"><a href="#fnm5">5</a></span> These instances are all +taken from <i>The Golden Bough,<span class="up">3</span> The +Magic Art</i>, I, 139 <i>ff.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn6" id="fn6"></a><span +class="label"><a href="#fnm6">6</a></span> “The English Language,” +<i>Home University Library</i>, p. 28.</p></div> +</div> + + + + +<h2><a name="pg49" id="pg49"></a><span class="pagenum">49</span><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<h3>SEASONAL RITES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">We</span> have seen in the last chapter that whatever interests primitive man, +whatever makes him feel strongly, he tends to re-enact. Any one of his +manifold occupations, hunting, fighting, later ploughing and sowing, +provided it be of sufficient interest and importance, is material for a +<i>dromenon</i> or rite. We have also seen that, weak as he is in +individuality, it is not his private and personal emotions that tend to +become ritual, but those that are public, felt and expressed officially, +that is, by the whole tribe or community. It is further obvious that +such dances, when they develop into actual rites, tend to be performed +at fixed times. We have now to consider when and why. The element of +fixity and regular repetition in rites cannot be too strongly +emphasized. It is a factor of paramount importance, essential to the +development from ritual to art, from <i>dromenon</i> to drama.</p> + +<p><a name="pg50" id="pg50"></a><span class="pagenum">50</span>The two great interests of primitive man are food and children. As Dr. +Frazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have +food; if his race is to persist he must have children. “To live and to +cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary +wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in +the future so long as the world lasts.” Other things may be added to +enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first +satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, +therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by +the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They +are the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are +right, took its rise. From this need for food sprang seasonal, periodic +festivals. The fact that festivals are seasonal, constantly recurrent, +solidifies, makes permanent, and as already explained (p. <a href="#pg42">42</a>), in a +sense intellectualizes and abstracts the emotion that prompts them.</p> + +<p>The seasons are indeed only of value to primitive man because they are +related, as he swiftly and necessarily finds out, to his <a name="pg51" id="pg51"></a><span class="pagenum">51</span>food supply. +He has, it would seem, little sensitiveness to the æsthetic impulse of +the beauty of a spring morning, to the pathos of autumn. What he +realizes first and foremost is, that at certain times the animals, and +still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others +they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the +focuses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals. These +dates will vary, of course, in different countries and in different +climates. It is, therefore, idle to attempt a study of the ritual of a +people without knowing the facts of their climate and surroundings. In +Egypt the food supply will depend on the rise and fall of the Nile, and +on this rise and fall will depend the ritual and calendar of Osiris. And +yet treatises on Egyptian religion are still to be found which begin by +recounting the rites and mythology of Osiris, as though these were +primary, and then end with a corollary to the effect that these rites +and this calendar were “associated” with the worship of Osiris, or, even +worse still, “instituted by” the religion of Osiris. The Nile regulates +the food supply of Egypt, the monsoon that of certain South Pacific +islands; <a name="pg52" id="pg52"></a><span class="pagenum">52</span>the calendar of Egypt depends on the Nile, of the South +Pacific islands on the monsoon.</p> + +<p class="gap">In his recent <i>Introduction to Mathematics</i><a name="fnm7" id="fnm7"></a><a href="#fn7" class="fnnum">7</a> Dr. Whitehead has pointed +out how the “whole life of Nature is dominated by the existence of +periodic events.” The rotation of the earth produces successive days; +the path of the earth round the sun leads to the yearly recurrence of +the seasons; the phases of the moon are recurrent, and though artificial +light has made these phases pass almost unnoticed to-day, in climates +where the skies are clear, human life was largely influenced by +moonlight. Even our own bodily life, with its recurrent heart-beats and +breathings, is essentially periodic.<a name="fnm8" id="fnm8"></a><a href="#fn8" class="fnnum">8</a> The presupposition of +periodicity is indeed fundamental to our very conception of life, and +but for periodicity the very means of measuring time as a quantity would +be absent.</p> + +<p>Periodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that +is evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that +has gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art.<a name="pg53" id="pg53"></a><span class="pagenum">53</span> +And yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual +calendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different +quality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on +periodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in +which periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen +already that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there +arises an idea or “presentation.” A “presentation” is, indeed, it would +seem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire—a +desire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over +into a “presentation.” An image conceived “presented,” what we call an +<i>idea</i> is, as it were, an act prefigured.</p> + +<p>Ritual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are +acts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is +more and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into +what we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an +unaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively +bloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse +in the <a name="pg54" id="pg54"></a><span class="pagenum">54</span>cycle of activity. It will later (p. <a href="#pg70">70</a>) be seen that these +periodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished +actions and desires which we call gods—Attis, Osiris, Dionysos—are +made.</p> + +<p class="gap">To primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself +were not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for +all. It will depend on man’s social and geographical conditions whether +he notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he +will note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children, +and will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident +that, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is +the periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on +moisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer, +trees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter, +and awakes in spring.</p> + +<p>Sometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is +very clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again, +essentially rites of lamentation. The details <a name="pg55" id="pg55"></a><span class="pagenum">55</span>of the ritual show this +clearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the +“gardens” of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth, +and in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat, +fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and +tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but +as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the +eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and +thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The “gardens” of Adonis +became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay.</p> + +<p class="gap">“What waste would it be,” says Plutarch,<a name="fnm9" id="fnm9"></a><a href="#fn9" class="fnnum">9</a> “what inconceivable waste, +for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the +women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of +Adonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish +but for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and +solid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg56" id="pg56"></a><span class="pagenum">56</span>Celebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the “gardens” were thrown +into water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at +least in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine +and Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough +to provoke expression, and we remember (p. <a href="#pg19">19</a>) that the Sumerian Tammuz +was originally <i>Dumuzi-absu</i>, “True Son of the Waters.” Water is the +first need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the +Madras Presidency.<a name="fnm10" id="fnm10"></a><a href="#fn10" class="fnnum">10</a> At the marriage of a Brahman “seeds of five or +nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially +for the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water +the seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day +the seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank +or river.”</p> + +<p>Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent—the promotion of +fertility in plants, animals and man—may occur at almost any time of +the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in +autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn <a name="pg57" id="pg57"></a><span class="pagenum">57</span>and early winter +among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, +for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in +from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas +festival to promote and protect the sun’s heat at the winter solstice. +But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, +the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is +the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the +Greek of to-day the “ánoixis,” “the Opening,” and it was in spring and +with rites of spring that both Greek and Roman originally began their +year. It was this spring festival that gave to the Greek their god +Dionysos and in part his drama.</p> + +<p class="gap">In Cambridge on May Day two or three puzzled and weary little boys and +girls are still to be sometimes seen dragging round a perambulator with +a doll on it bedecked with ribbons and a flower or two. That is all that +is left in most parts of England of the Queen of the May and +Jack-in-the-Green, though here and there a maypole survives and is +resuscitated by enthusiasts about folk-<a name="pg58" id="pg58"></a><span class="pagenum">58</span>dances. But in the days of “Good +Queen Bess” merry England, it would seem, was lustier. The Puritan +Stubbs, in his <i>Anatomie of Abuses</i>,<a name="fnm11" id="fnm11"></a><a href="#fn11" class="fnnum">11</a> thus describes the festival:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a +sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and +these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), +which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round +aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme +painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, +women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus +beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the +toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, +set up summer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall +they to banquet and feast, to leap and daunce aboute it, as the +heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this +is a perfect patterne or rather the thyng itself.”</p></div> + +<p>The stern old Puritan was right, the maypole was the perfect pattern of +a heathen<a name="pg59" id="pg59"></a><span class="pagenum">59</span> “idoll, or rather the thyng itself.” He would have +exterminated it root and branch, but other and perhaps wiser divines +took the maypole into the service of the Christian Church, and still<a name="fnm12" id="fnm12"></a><a href="#fn12" class="fnnum">12</a> +on May Day in Saffron Walden the spring song is heard with its Christian +moral—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A branch of May we have brought you,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And at your door it stands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is a sprout that is well budded out,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The work of our Lord’s hands.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The maypole was of course at first no pole cut down and dried. The gist +of it was that it should be a “sprout, well budded out.” The object of +carrying in the May was to bring the very spirit of life and greenery +into the village. When this was forgotten, idleness or economy would +prompt the villagers to use the same tree or branch year after year. In +the villages of Upper Bavaria Dr. Frazer<a name="fnm13" id="fnm13"></a><a href="#fn13" class="fnnum">13</a> tells us the maypole is +renewed once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched +from the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with +which it is bedecked, an <a name="pg60" id="pg60"></a><span class="pagenum">60</span>essential part is the bunch of dark green +foliage left at the top, “as a memento that in it we have to do, not +with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood.”</p> + +<p>At the ritual of May Day not only was the fresh green bough or tree +carried into the village, but with it came a girl or a boy, the Queen or +King of the May. Sometimes the tree itself, as in Russia, is dressed up +in woman’s clothes; more often a real man or maid, covered with flowers +and greenery, walks with the tree or carries the bough. Thus in +Thuringia,<a name="fnm14" id="fnm14"></a><a href="#fn14" class="fnnum">14</a> as soon as the trees begin to be green in spring, the +children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they +choose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches +from the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are +left peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should +stumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking +for gifts of food, such as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes. Finally, they +sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food. Such a Leaf Man +is our English Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper <a name="pg61" id="pg61"></a><span class="pagenum">61</span>who, as late as +1892, was seen by Dr. Rouse walking about at Cheltenham encased in a +wooden framework covered with greenery.</p> + +<p>The bringing in of the new leafage in the form of a tree or flowers is +one, and perhaps the simplest, form of spring festival. It takes little +notice of death and winter, uttering and emphasizing only the desire for +the joy in life and spring. But in other and severer climates the +emotion is fiercer and more complex; it takes the form of a struggle or +contest, what the Greeks called an <i>agon</i>. Thus on May Day in the Isle +of Man a Queen of the May was chosen, and with her twenty maids of +honour, together with a troop of young men for escort. But there was not +only a Queen of the May, but a Queen of Winter, a man dressed as a +woman, loaded with warm clothes and wearing a woollen hood and fur +tippet. Winter, too, had attendants like the Queen of the May. The two +troops met and fought; and whichever Queen was taken prisoner had to pay +the expenses of the feast.</p> + +<p>In the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it +has become a mere play. But among the Esquimaux<a name="fnm15" id="fnm15"></a><a href="#fn15" class="fnnum">15</a><a name="pg62" id="pg62"></a><span class="pagenum">62</span> there is still +carried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood. +In autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter +is at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties +called the Ptarmigans and the Ducks. The ptarmigans are the people born +in winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope +of sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the +other, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine +weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival +might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring, +but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice +and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of +spring.</p> + +<p class="gap">The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these +magical <i>agones</i>, or “contests,” is not very easy to realize. The +weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day’s pleasuring or +raises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to +us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think +<a name="pg63" id="pg63"></a><span class="pagenum">63</span>ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The +intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that +many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the +emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully +realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the +Central Australians.</p> + +<p>The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer, +from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season +short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden +fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a +marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, +the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched +acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life +save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. +Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. +Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the +thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation +bursts forth, the desert blossoms <a name="pg64" id="pg64"></a><span class="pagenum">64</span>as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs, +birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it +live quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short.</p> + +<p>It seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the +primitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and +magic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility +approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and +multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he +paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his +own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in +stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the +chrysalis of a Witchetty grub—his favourite food, and drags his body +through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. +Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain +in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main +emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and +admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the +singing of birds; it is not <a name="pg65" id="pg65"></a><span class="pagenum">65</span>that his heart goes out in gratitude to an +All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to +the push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat +that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to +live, that he <i>utters and represents</i>.</p> + +<p class="gap">The savage utters his will to live, his intense desire for food; but it +should be noted, it is desire and will and longing, not certainty and +satisfaction that he utters. In this respect it is interesting to note +that his rites and ceremonies, when periodic, are of fairly long +periods. Winter and summer are not the only natural periodic cycles; +there is the cycle of day and night, and yet among primitive peoples but +little ritual centres round day and night. The reason is simple. The +cycle of day and night is so short, it recurs so frequently, that man +naturally counted upon it and had no cause to be anxious. The emotional +tension necessary to ritual was absent. A few peoples, <i>e.g.</i> the +Egyptians, have practised daily incantations to bring back the sun. +Probably they had at first felt a real tension of anxiety, and +then—being <a name="pg66" id="pg66"></a><span class="pagenum">66</span>a people hidebound by custom—had gone on from mere +conservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even, +as among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual +inevitably arises. They play at cat’s-cradle to catch the ball of the +sun lest it should sink and be lost for ever.</p> + +<p>Round the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early +centred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was +first surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes +and wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and +wanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch<a name="fnm16" id="fnm16"></a><a href="#fn16" class="fnnum">16</a> tells us, +is fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young +of animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon<a name="fnm17" id="fnm17"></a><a href="#fn17" class="fnnum">17</a> held that +observations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the +grafting of trees were “not altogether frivolous.” It cannot too often +be remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun +and moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he +cares for them, he holds them <a name="pg67" id="pg67"></a><span class="pagenum">67</span>sacred, he performs rites in relation to +them mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for +the seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a +<i>Hora</i> was at first to the Greeks, <i>the fruits of a season</i>, what our +farmers would call “a good <i>year</i>.”</p> + +<p class="gap">The sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the +seasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons +were annual, that they went round in a <i>ring</i>; and because that annual +ring was long in revolving, great was man’s hope and fear in the winter, +great his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of +death and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes +represented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris.</p> + +<p>Adonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt +as to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in +Thüringen a ceremony is performed called “Driving out the Death.” The +young people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry +it out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell <a name="pg68" id="pg68"></a><span class="pagenum">68</span>the good +news to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia +the children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are +burning it they sing—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Now carry we Death out of the village,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The new Summer into the village,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Welcome, dear Summer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Green little corn.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes +back but Life.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“We have carried away Death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And brought back Life.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In both these cases it is interesting to note that though Death is +dramatically carried out, the coming back of Life is only announced, not +enacted.</p> + +<p>Often, and it would seem quite naturally, the puppet representing Death +or Winter is reviled and roughly handled, or pelted with stones, and +treated in some way as a sort of scapegoat. But in not a few cases, and +these are of special interest, it seems to be the seat of a sort of +magical potency which can be and is transferred to the figure of Summer +or Life, thus causing, as it were, a sort of Resur<a name="pg69" id="pg69"></a><span class="pagenum">69</span>rection. In Lusatia +the women only carry out the Death. They are dressed in black themselves +as mourners, but the puppet of straw which they dress up as the Death +wears a white shirt. They carry it to the village boundary, followed by +boys throwing stones, and there tear it to pieces. Then they cut down a +tree and dress it in the white shirt of the Death and carry it home +singing.</p> + +<p>So at the Feast of the Ascension in Transylvania. After morning service +the girls of the village dress up the Death; they tie a threshed-out +sheaf of corn into a rough copy of a head and body, and stick a +broomstick through the body for arms. Then they dress the figure up in +the ordinary holiday clothes of a peasant girl—a red hood, silver +brooches, and ribbons galore. They put the Death at an open window that +all the people when they go to vespers may see it. Vespers over, two +girls take the Death by the arms and walk in front; the rest follow. +They sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they +go to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes, +and throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it +into a river. Then <a name="pg70" id="pg70"></a><span class="pagenum">70</span>one of the girls is dressed in the Death’s discarded +clothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same +hymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated +Death. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new, +will be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos +and the Dithyramb.</p> + +<p>These ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple +carrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we +have these figures, these “impersonations,” we are getting away from the +merely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor +discharge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to +personification. On this question of personification, in which so much +of art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear.</p> + +<p class="gap">In discussions on such primitive rites as “Carrying out the Death,” +“Bringing in Summer,” we are often told that the puppet of the girl is +carried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it “personifies the +Spirit of Vegetation,” or it “embodies the<a name="pg71" id="pg71"></a><span class="pagenum">71</span> Spirit of Summer.” The +Spirit of Vegetation is “incarnate in the puppet.” We are led, by this +way of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms +an idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later +“embodies” it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act +so high and difficult as abstraction.</p> + +<p>A very little consideration shows that he performs at first no +abstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He +begins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance +has, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an +actual <i>person</i>, and he is the root and ground of <i>personification</i>. +There is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not +“embody” a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his +personality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from +the only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without +<i>per</i>ception there is no <i>con</i>ception. We noted in speaking of dances +(p. <a href="#pg43">43</a>) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of +actual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance. +So, from <a name="pg72" id="pg72"></a><span class="pagenum">72</span>many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many +actual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and +women, arises <i>the</i> Tree Spirit, <i>the</i> Vegetation Spirit, <i>the</i> Death.</p> + +<p>At the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the +emotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus +who dance together <i>with a common leader</i>. Round that leader the emotion +centres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either +is himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band; +drama—doing—tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is +then remembered, thought of, imaged; from being <i>per</i>ceived year by +year, he is finally <i>con</i>ceived; but his basis is always in actual fact +of which he is but the reflection.</p> + +<p>Had there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have +halted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent <i>per</i>ception helps to +form a permanent abstract <i>con</i>ception. The different actual recurrent +May Kings and “Deaths,” <i>because they recur</i>, get a sort of permanent +life of their own and become beings apart. In this way a concep<a name="pg73" id="pg73"></a><span class="pagenum">73</span>tion, a +kind of <i>daimon</i>, or spirit, is fashioned, who dies and lives again in a +perpetual cycle. The periodic festival begets a kind of not immortal, +but perennial, god.</p> + +<p>Yet the faculty of conception is but dim and feeble in the mind even of +the peasant to-day; his function is to perceive the actual fact year by +year, and to feel about it. Perhaps a simple instance best makes this +clear. The Greek Church does not gladly suffer images in the round, +though she delights in picture-images, <i>eikons</i>. But at her great spring +festival of Easter she makes, in the remote villages, concession to a +strong, perhaps imperative, popular need; she allows an image, an actual +idol, of the dead Christ to be laid in the tomb that it may rise again. +A traveller in Eub<span title="oe ligature">œ</span>a<a name="fnm18" id="fnm18"></a><a href="#fn18" class="fnnum">18</a> during Holy Week had been struck by the genuine +grief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter Eve there was the +same general gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman why it +was. She answered: “Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise +to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg74" id="pg74"></a><span class="pagenum">74</span>The old woman’s state of mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old +emotion, not sorrow for the Christ the Son of Mary, but fear, imminent +fear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical +Christ of Judæa, still less the incarnation of the Godhead proceeding +from the Father; he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus +and laid by the priests, the leaders of that chorus, in the local +sepulchre.</p> + +<p class="gap">So far, then, we have seen that the vague emotional dance tends to +become a periodic rite, performed at regular intervals. The periodic +rite may occur at any date of importance to the food-supply of the +community, in summer, in winter, at the coming of the annual rains, or +the regular rising of a river. Among Mediterranean peoples, both in +ancient days and at the present time, the Spring Festival arrests +attention. Having learnt the general characteristics of this Spring +Festival, we have now to turn to one particular case, the Spring +Festival of the Greeks. This is all-important to us because, as will be +seen, from the ritual of this and kindred festivals arose, we believe, a +great form of Art, the Greek drama.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn7" id="fn7"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm7">7</a></span> Chapter XII: “Periodicity in Nature.”</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn8" id="fn8"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm8">8</a></span> <i>Ibid.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn9" id="fn9"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm9">9</a></span> <i>De Ser. Num.</i> 17.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn10" id="fn10"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm10">10</a></span> Frazer, <i>Adonis, Attis, and Osiris</i>,<span class="up">3</span> p. 200.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn11" id="fn11"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm11">11</a></span> Quoted by Dr. Frazer, <i>The Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> p. 203.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn12" id="fn12"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm12">12</a></span> E. K. Chambers, <i>The Mediæval Stage</i>, I, p. 169.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn13" id="fn13"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm13">13</a></span> <i>The Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> p. 205.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn14" id="fn14"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm14">14</a></span> <i>The Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> p. 213.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn15" id="fn15"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm15">15</a></span> Resumed from Dr. Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> II, p. 104.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn16" id="fn16"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm16">16</a></span> <i>De Is. et Os.</i>, p. 367.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn17" id="fn17"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm17">17</a></span> <i>De Aug. Scient.</i>, III, 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn18" id="fn18"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm18">18</a></span> J. C. Lawson, <i>Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient +Religion</i>, p. 573.</p></div> +</div> + + + +<h2><a name="pg75" id="pg75"></a><span class="pagenum">75</span><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + + +<h3>THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed at +Athens at a festival known as the Great Dionysia. This took place early +in April, so that the time itself makes us suspect that its ceremonies +were connected with the spring. But we have more certain evidence. +Aristotle, in his treatise on the Art of Poetry, raises the question of +the origin of the drama. He was not specially interested in primitive +ritual; beast dances and spring mummeries might even have seemed to him +mere savagery, the lowest form of “imitation;” but he divined that a +structure so complex as Greek tragedy must have arisen out of a simpler +form; he saw, or felt, in fact, that art had in some way risen out of +ritual, and he has left us a memorable statement.</p> + +<p>In describing the “Carrying-out of Summer” we saw that the element of +real <i>drama</i>, real <a name="pg76" id="pg76"></a><span class="pagenum">76</span>impersonation, began with the leaders of the band, +with the Queen of the May, and with the “Death” or the “Winter.” Great +is our delight when we find that for Greek drama Aristotle<a name="fnm19" id="fnm19"></a><a href="#fn19" class="fnnum">19</a> divined a +like beginning. He says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Tragedy—as also Comedy—was at first mere improvisation—the one +(tragedy) <i>originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb</i>.”</p></div> + +<p>The further question faces us: What was the Dithyramb? We shall find to +our joy that this obscure-sounding Dithyramb, though before Aristotle’s +time it had taken literary form, was in origin a festival closely akin +to those we have just been discussing. The Dithyramb was, to begin with, +a spring ritual; and when Aristotle tells us tragedy arose out of the +Dithyramb, he gives us, though perhaps half unconsciously, a clear +instance of a splendid art that arose from the simplest of rites; he +plants our theory of the connection of art with ritual firmly with its +feet on historical ground.</p> + +<p class="gap">When we use the word “dithyrambic” we certainly do not ordinarily think +of spring.<a name="pg77" id="pg77"></a><span class="pagenum">77</span> We say a style is “dithyrambic” when it is unmeasured, too +ornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that +the word <i>Dithyramb</i> meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not +forgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a +Dithyramb for the Dionysiac festival at Athens, and his song is full of +springtime and flowers. He bids all the gods come to Athens to dance +flower-crowned.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye +gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are +treading and incense steams: in sacred Athens come to the holy +centre-stone. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations +poured from the culling of spring....</p> + +<p>“Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name +Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his +Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the +purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the +fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth, +lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices +of song <a name="pg78" id="pg78"></a><span class="pagenum">78</span>are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with +the calling of crowned Semele.”</p></div> + +<p>Bromios, “He of the loud cry,” is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his +mother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova <i>Zembla</i>, “New Earth.” The +song might have been sung at a “Carrying-in of Summer.” The Horæ, the +Seasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of +the May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the +earth, flower-crowned.</p> + +<p>You may <i>bring back</i> the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a +maiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek +mythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the +daughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year +by year. On Greek vase-paintings<a name="fnm20" id="fnm20"></a><a href="#fn20" class="fnnum">20</a> the scene occurs again and again. A +mound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of +the mound a woman’s figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of +dancing dæmons waiting to welcome her.</p> + +<p><a name="pg79" id="pg79"></a><span class="pagenum">79</span>All this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and +poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual “things done,” +<i>dromena</i>. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where +to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing +men, and specially women, Pausanias<a name="fnm21" id="fnm21"></a><a href="#fn21" class="fnnum">21</a> saw near the City Hearth a rock +called “<i>Anaklethra</i>, ‘Place of Calling-up,’ because, if any one will +believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter +called her up there”; and he adds: “The women to this day perform rites +analogous to the story told.”</p> + +<p>These rites of “Calling up” must have been spring rites, in which, in +some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted.</p> + +<p>Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive, +because it is near akin to the “Carrying out of Winter,” and also +because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the +food-supply. Plutarch<a name="fnm22" id="fnm22"></a><a href="#fn22" class="fnnum">22</a> tells us of a festival held every nine years +at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used <i>Charila</i>, a +word <a name="pg80" id="pg80"></a><span class="pagenum">80</span>which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the +Russian word <i>yaro</i>, “Spring,” and is also akin to the Greek <i>Charis</i>, +“grace,” in the sense of increase, “Give us all <i>grace</i>.” The rites of +<i>Charila</i>, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and +pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of +<i>Charila</i> is brought in. When they had all received their share, +the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the +Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place, +and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it.”</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria +in honour of <i>Yarilo</i>, the Spring God.</p> + +<p>The image is beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is +clearly a “Carrying out the Death,” though we do not know the exact date +at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at +Delphi called <i>Herois</i>, or the “Heroine.” Plutarch<a name="fnm23" id="fnm23"></a><a href="#fn23" class="fnnum">23</a> says it <a name="pg81" id="pg81"></a><span class="pagenum">81</span>was too +mystical and secret to describe, but he lets us know the main gist.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Most of the ceremonies of the <i>Herois</i> have a mystical reason +which is known to the Thyiades, but from the rites that are done in +public, one may conjecture it to be a ‘Bringing up of Semele.’”</p></div> + +<p>Some one or something, a real woman, or more likely the buried puppet +<i>Charila</i>, the Spring-Maiden, was brought up from the ground to enact +and magically induce the coming of Spring.</p> + +<p class="gap">These ceremonies of beating, driving out, burying, have all, with the +Greeks, as with the savage and the modern peasant, but one real object: +to get rid of the season that is bad for food, to bring in and revive +the new supply. This comes out very clearly in a ceremony that went on +down to Plutarch’s time, and he tells us<a name="fnm24" id="fnm24"></a><a href="#fn24" class="fnnum">24</a> it was “ancestral.” It was +called “the Driving out of Ox-hunger.” By Ox-hunger was meant any great +ravenous hunger, and the very intensity and monstrosity of the word +takes us back to days when <a name="pg82" id="pg82"></a><span class="pagenum">82</span>famine was a grim reality. When Plutarch was +<i>archon</i> he had, as chief official, to perform the ceremony at the +Prytaneion, or Common Hearth. A slave was taken, beaten with rods of a +magical plant, and driven out of doors to the words: “Out with +Ox-hunger! In with Wealth and Health!” Here we see the actual sensation, +or emotion, of ravenous hunger gets a name, and thereby a personality, +though a less completely abstracted one than Death or Summer. We do not +know that the ceremony of Driving out Ox-hunger was performed in the +spring, it is only instanced here because, more plainly even than the +Charila, when the king distributes pulse and peas, it shows the relation +of ancient mimic ritual to food-supply.</p> + +<p>If we keep clearly in mind the <i>object</i> rather than the exact <i>date</i> of +the Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties. A Dithyramb was sung +at Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd. But we +must remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical +ceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any +moment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown. The sowing of the +seed is its death <a name="pg83" id="pg83"></a><span class="pagenum">83</span>and burial; “that which thou sowest is not quickened +except it die.” When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope +of resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical +ceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope. The Sun is new-born in +midwinter, at the solstice, and our “New” year follows, yet it is in the +spring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival.</p> + +<p class="gap">We return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this +connection. The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the +importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the +food-supply.</p> + +<p class="gap">Do we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point +is as curious as significant.</p> + +<p>Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Scholars have broken their own heads and one another’s to find a meaning +and an answer to the odd query. It is only quite <a name="pg84" id="pg84"></a><span class="pagenum">84</span>lately that they have +come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive +rite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric +poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring +Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How +can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the +“slender-ankled” Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull?</p> + +<p>The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them, +is soon settled. They are the Seasons, or “Hours,” and the chief Season, +or Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces, +because they are, in the words of the Collect, the “Givers of all +grace,” that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they +want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all +grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their +“fruits in due season” is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the +Dithyramb “bull-driving”? Is this a mere “poetical” epithet? If it is, +it is not particularly poetical.</p> + +<p><a name="pg85" id="pg85"></a><span class="pagenum">85</span>But Pindar is not, we now know, merely being “poetical,” which amounts, +according to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is +describing, alluding to, an actual rite or <i>dromenon</i> in which a Bull is +summoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear. +Plutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise called +<i>Greek Questions</i>, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way +rites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they +meant. In his 36th <i>Question</i> he asks: “Why do the women of Elis summon +Dionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?” And +then, by a piece of luck that almost makes one’s heart stand still, he +gives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our +earliest “Bull-driving” Spring Song:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“In Spring-time,<a name="fnm25" id="fnm25"></a><a href="#fn25" class="fnnum">25</a> O Dionysos,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To thy holy temple come;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Elis with thy Graces,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Rushing with thy bull-foot, come,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Noble Bull, Noble Bull.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<p><a name="pg86" id="pg86"></a><span class="pagenum">86</span>It is a strange primitive picture—the holy women standing in springtime +in front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and +filleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three +real women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But +what does it mean?</p> + +<p>Plutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused +fashion, succeeds. “Is it,” he suggests, “that some entitle the god as +‘Born of a Bull’ and as a ‘Bull’ himself? ... or is it that many hold +the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?” We have seen how a +kind of <i>daimon</i>, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual +tree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god +Dionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning +year by year of some holy Bull?</p> + +<p>First, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull +appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive +<i>Question</i>:<a name="fnm26" id="fnm26"></a><a href="#fn26" class="fnnum">26</a> “Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?” And we find +to our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull <a name="pg87" id="pg87"></a><span class="pagenum">87</span>who not only is +holy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he +is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his +death in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, “at +the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants.”</p> + +<p>We do not hear that the “Sanctifier” at Delphi was “driven,” but in all +probability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake +in the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,<a name="fnm27" id="fnm27"></a><a href="#fn27" class="fnnum">27</a> a city of +Asia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by +year the stewards of the city bought a Bull, “the finest that could be +got,” and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they +dedicated it, for the city’s welfare. The Bull’s sanctified life began +with the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or +the autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a +high solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the +chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the +sacrificer, and two bands of youths and <a name="pg88" id="pg88"></a><span class="pagenum">88</span>maidens. So holy was the Bull +that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must +have both their parents alive, they must not have been under the +<i>taboo</i>, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer +for “the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the +women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of +grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle.” All this longing for +fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose +holiness is his strength and fruitfulness.</p> + +<p>The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of +the whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with +his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and “it is good for +those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift,” good for them +because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is +their own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but +early in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the +senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of +each class of the State—children and young <a name="pg89" id="pg89"></a><span class="pagenum">89</span>boys, and youths just come +to manhood, <i>epheboi</i>, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is +sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the +term of his life? He dies because he <i>is</i> so holy, that he may give his +holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to +his people.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up +among those who took part in the procession.”</p></div> + +<p>The mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the +whole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten—to +every man his portion—by each and every citizen, that he may get his +share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State.</p> + +<p class="gap">Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we +hear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin +again. But at Athens at the annual “Ox-murder,” the <i>Bouphonia</i>, as it +was called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all +solemnity, and all <a name="pg90" id="pg90"></a><span class="pagenum">90</span>those present partook of the flesh, and then—the +hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal +was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing. +The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We +are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the +renouncing of something. But <i>sacrifice</i> does not mean “death” at all. +It means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man +just special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just +that special life and strength which all the year long they had put into +him, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could +not eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he +must die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed +him, not to “sacrifice” him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat +him, live <i>by</i> him and through him, by his grace.</p> + +<p>And so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a +thing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not +looking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck +the blow.<a name="pg91" id="pg91"></a><span class="pagenum">91</span> But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had +not, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself +in the <i>dromenon</i> of his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how +could they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he +should, he <i>did</i>.</p> + +<p>The Athenians were a little ashamed of their “Ox-murder,” with its +grotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of +us now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our +neighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly +about their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure. +Anyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though +from sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less +educated among them thought there “might be something in it,” and anyhow +it was “as well to be on the safe side.” The queer ceremony had got +associated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must +reckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow +it was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls +had to act as water-carriers.</p> + +<p><a name="pg92" id="pg92"></a><span class="pagenum">92</span>The Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is +alive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among +the Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main +“food focus,” the chief “value centre.” And well he may be. Bear’s flesh +is the Ainos’ staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins +are their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear’s +fat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the +Bear. Yet we are told the Ainos “worship the Bear”; they apply to it the +name <i>Kamui</i>, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to +all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is +formidable. In the religion of the Ainos “the Bear plays a chief part,” +says one writer. The Bear “receives idolatrous veneration,” says +another. They “worship it after their fashion,” says a third. Have we +another case of “the heathen in his blindness”? Only here he “bows down” +not to “gods of wood and stone,” but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling +but gracious—a Bear.</p> + +<p>Instead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us +observe his <i>doings</i>, <a name="pg93" id="pg93"></a><span class="pagenum">93</span>his <i>dromena</i>, his rites; and most of all his +great spring and autumn rite, the <i>dromenon</i> of the Bear. We shall find +that, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greek <i>dromenon</i> of +the Bull.</p> + +<p>As winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and +brought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her +breast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish—his tastes are +semi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens +to break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually +in September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting +begins.</p> + +<p>Before the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they +have been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill +him. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and +friends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends. +On the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were +present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes. +The woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and +silent, only now and then she <a name="pg94" id="pg94"></a><span class="pagenum">94</span>burst into helpless tears. The ceremony +began with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in +a corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the +hut and offered libations in front of the Bear’s cage. A few drops were +presented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women +and girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and +as they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant. +The mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched +out their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women +who had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear +began to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably.</p> + +<p>Next came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at +the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the <i>inabos</i>, sacred +wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet +high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. <i>Five new wands +with bamboo leaves attached to them</i> are set up for the festival; the +leaves according to the Ainos mean <i>that the Bear <a name="pg95" id="pg95"></a><span class="pagenum">95</span>may come to life +again</i>. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of +attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his +staple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of +the Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of +together.</p> + +<p>Then comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope +is thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood +of the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession +round the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern +Siberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be +specially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for +this will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then, +among the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy, +and other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate +themselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a +blessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too.</p> + +<p>To return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men, +headed by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tipped <a name="pg96" id="pg96"></a><span class="pagenum">96</span>with buttons. +But the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to +irritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood, +and we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands, +a stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam; +he dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind +the men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The +body of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A +sword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it +is a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and +drink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as +an Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some +sense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the +Bear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep.</p> + +<p>Now that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting +and merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are +scrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is +severed from the head, to which the skin is <a name="pg97" id="pg97"></a><span class="pagenum">97</span>left hanging. The blood, +which might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and +eagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up +and eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day +next but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast. +It is what the Greeks call a <i>dais</i>, a meal divided or distributed. +While the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the +sacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear’s brain is +extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin, +is hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and +strength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves. +The stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and +with it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole +congregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a +great drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the +feast.</p> + +<p>The rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the +Bear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume and <a name="pg98" id="pg98"></a><span class="pagenum">98</span>seated on a +bench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the +oldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There +all the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is +felled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull +wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull +disappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear’s flesh +is eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at +it. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are +elaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices.</p> + +<p>Through all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is +identical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the +maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the +Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, +later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and +the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear +and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a +special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and <a name="pg99" id="pg99"></a><span class="pagenum">99</span>carried +about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail +for all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to +pieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and +Tree die only that they may live again.</p> + +<p class="gap">We have seen (p. <a href="#pg71">71</a>) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually +<i>per</i>ceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image, +an imagined Tree Spirit, or “Summer,” or Death, a thing never actually +seen but <i>con</i>ceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various +villages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the +remembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again +each year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and +finally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea, +this <i>con</i>ception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some +places the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and +cows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls’ horns +in imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having +a bull’s head. <i>We</i><a name="pg100" id="pg100"></a><span class="pagenum">100</span> know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a +bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the +rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, +may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why +should she not? It is not, then, that a god ‘takes upon him the form of +a bull,’ or is ‘incarnate in a bull,’ but that the real Bull and the +worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an +imagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted, +imaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual +holy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the +succession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God.</p> + +<p class="gap">We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not +obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of +spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were +performed at Athens, the young men (<i>epheboi</i>) brought in not only the +human figure of the god, but also a Bull “worthy” of the God. We +understand, too, why in addition to the <a name="pg101" id="pg101"></a><span class="pagenum">101</span>tragedies performed at the +great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung—“Bull-driving Dithyrambs.”</p> + +<p class="gap">We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the +most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the +drama. <i>The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth.</i></p> + +<p>Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. “Some,” he says, +“are prayers to the gods—these are called <i>hymns</i>; others of an +opposite sort might best be called <i>dirges</i>; another sort are <i>pæans</i>, +and another—the birth of Dionysos, I suppose—is called <i>Dithyramb</i>.” +Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a +particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they +were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the +information carelessly—the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the +birth or coming to be, the <i>genesis</i> of Dionysos.</p> + +<p>The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato’s statement. When a +poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the +title <i>Dithyrambos</i>. Thus <a name="pg102" id="pg102"></a><span class="pagenum">102</span>an inscribed hymn found at Delphi<a name="fnm28" id="fnm28"></a><a href="#fn28" class="fnnum">28</a> opens +thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holy hours of thine own holy spring.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the stars danced for joy. Mirth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in +the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull.</p> + +<p class="gap">And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a dæmon, +and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos +the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once +<i>per</i>ceived, then remembered and <i>con</i>ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is +but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual +holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, <a name="pg103" id="pg103"></a><span class="pagenum">103</span>generalized, conceived. But +the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental +image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the +<i>birth</i> of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a +child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original +form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in +Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called <i>Liknites</i>, “Him of the +Cradle.”<a name="fnm29" id="fnm29"></a><a href="#fn29" class="fnnum">29</a> The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child +Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women.</p> + +<p>But it is equally clear and certain that <i>the</i> Dionysos of Greek worship +and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in +the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when, +Homer says, “youth is most gracious.” This is the Dionysos that we know +in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the +Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty +like a woman’s. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of +birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song <a name="pg104" id="pg104"></a><span class="pagenum">104</span>of +the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born.</p> + +<p>This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the +word <i>Dithyrambos</i> as meaning “He of the double door,” their word +<i>thyra</i> being the same as our <i>door</i>. They were quite mistaken; +<i>Dithyrambos</i>, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer, +and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it +shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos +was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his +father’s thigh, like no man.</p> + +<p>But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the +Tree-God, arises from a <i>dromenon</i>, a rite, what is the rite of second +birth from which it arises?</p> + +<p class="gap">We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth +existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and +find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over +half the savage world.</p> + +<p>With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his +first birth he <a name="pg105" id="pg105"></a><span class="pagenum">105</span>comes into the world, by his second he is born into his +tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; +at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society +of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult +for us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to +manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man. +Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social +privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters +a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession. +In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to +linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as +Coming Out. A girl’s dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up, +she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign’s hand, a dance +is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state +of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom, +with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does +not obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of +Confirmation.</p> + +<p><a name="pg106" id="pg106"></a><span class="pagenum">106</span>To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is +always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his +ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and +transitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to +man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months +of tremendous educational emphasis—of what is called “initiation,” +“going in,” that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the +gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish +things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to +cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him +for his two chief functions as a tribesman—to be a warrior, to be a +father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man.</p> + +<p>This “initiation” is of tremendous importance, and we should expect, +what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues +in <i>dromena</i>, “rites done.” These rites are very various, but they all +point one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the +new-born man has entered on a new life.</p> + +<p><a name="pg107" id="pg107"></a><span class="pagenum">107</span>Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by +the Kikuyu of British East Africa,<a name="fnm30" id="fnm30"></a><a href="#fn30" class="fnnum">30</a> who require that every boy, just +before circumcision, must be born again. “The mother stands up with the +boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour +pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed.”</p> + +<p>More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a +resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their +presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east +Australia,<a name="fnm31" id="fnm31"></a><a href="#fn31" class="fnnum">31</a> when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy +bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks +and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his +hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other +bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought +to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes +on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and +<a name="pg108" id="pg108"></a><span class="pagenum">108</span>more and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave.</p> + +<p>The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The +boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with +blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first +gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to +cleanse themselves.</p> + +<p>Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death +that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is +practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram<a name="fnm32" id="fnm32"></a><a href="#fn32" class="fnnum">32</a> boys at puberty +are admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold, +followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest +trees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high +priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is +heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo +trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the +priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of +chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings <a name="pg109" id="pg109"></a><span class="pagenum">109</span>out, and a sword dripping with +blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy’s +head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the +other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men +who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a +half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the +good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys +themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they +go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate. +They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the +simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of +twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not +comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the +forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their +heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry.</p> + +<p>Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new +name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, <a name="pg110" id="pg110"></a><span class="pagenum">110</span>new dances are +danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the +Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row +cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out. +The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of +each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of +spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the +society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house. +The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood +relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe.</p> + +<p>Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or +represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it +is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called +Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings +them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a <i>dromenon</i> or +rite of swallowing we are not told.</p> + +<p>In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to +grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal.<a name="pg111" id="pg111"></a><span class="pagenum">111</span> Thus +among the Carrier Indians<a name="fnm33" id="fnm33"></a><a href="#fn33" class="fnnum">33</a> when a man wants to become a <i>Lulem</i>, or +Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a +bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four +days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to +find him. They cry out <i>Yi! Kelulem</i> (“Come on, Bear”) and he answers +with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at +last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and +there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first +appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in +initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same +object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to +another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and +other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which +seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is +explained if we see that in intent they <i>are</i> all the same, all a +passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in +every rite, the putting off <a name="pg112" id="pg112"></a><span class="pagenum">112</span>of the old, the putting on of the new; you +carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is +a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded, +under a <i>taboo</i>.</p> + +<p class="gap">To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, +marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little +or no social emphasis. But <i>the</i> rite which concerned the whole tribe, +the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of +initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and +significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word +for rite was <i>t<span title="e-caron">ě</span>l<span title="e-caron">ě</span>t<span title="e-macron">ē</span></i>. It was applied to all mysteries, and sometimes to +marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with death. It comes +from a root meaning “to grow up.” The word <i>t<span title="e-caron">ě</span>l<span title="e-caron">ě</span>t<span title="e-macron">ē</span></i> means <i>rite of +growing up</i>, becoming complete. It meant at first maturity, then rite of +maturity, then by a natural extension any rite of initiation that was +mysterious. The rites of puberty were in their essence mysterious, +because they consisted in initiation into the sanctities of the tribe, +the things which society sanctioned <a name="pg113" id="pg113"></a><span class="pagenum">113</span>and protected, excluding the +uninitiated, whether they were young boys, women, or members of other +tribes. Then, by contagion, the mystery notion spread to other rites.</p> + +<p class="gap">We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite, +the <i>dromenon</i> of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second +birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells +us—Dio<i>nysos</i>, “Divine Young Man.”</p> + +<p>When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of +the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that <i>image</i> +which is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite +<i>must</i> be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are +but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young <i>man</i>. Where +emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just +initiated, what the Greeks called a <i>kouros</i>, or <i>ephebos</i>, a youth of +quite different social status from a mere <i>pais</i> or boy. Such a youth +survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women +are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of +<a name="pg114" id="pg114"></a><span class="pagenum">114</span>all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.</p> + +<p>And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a +blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in +spring and autumn alike “they carry out the <i>Eiresione</i>, a branch of +olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits, +<i>that scarcity may cease</i>, and they sing over it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Eiresione brings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Figs and fat cakes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a pot of honey and oil to mix,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a wine-cup strong and deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That she may drink and sleep.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called +<i>Korythalia</i>,<a name="fnm34" id="fnm34"></a><a href="#fn34" class="fnnum">34</a> “Branch of blooming youth.” The young men, says a +Greek orator, are “the Spring of the people.”</p> + +<p class="gap">The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a +Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a +young man-song. The god here <a name="pg115" id="pg115"></a><span class="pagenum">115</span>invoked is what the Greeks call a +<i>kouros</i>, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet +and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Diktè +for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song.”</p></div> + +<p>The leader of the band of <i>kouroi</i>, of young men, the real actual +leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a +daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in +the new year at spring. The real leader, the “first kouros” as the +Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of +leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all. +He is “lord of all that is wet and gleaming,” for the May bough, we +remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and +blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away +from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing +their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough +remains to make the meaning clear.</p> + +<p><a name="pg116" id="pg116"></a><span class="pagenum">116</span>And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Horæ (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dikè to +possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by +wealth-loving Peace.”</p></div> + +<p>We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dikè is strange. +We translate the word “Justice,” but Dikè means, not Justice as between +man and man, but the order of the world, the <i>way</i> of life. It is +through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the +seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that +order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion, +barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and +leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase.”</p></div> + +<p>And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. <a href="#pg32">32</a>), who +throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian +peasant girls who leap high <a name="pg117" id="pg117"></a><span class="pagenum">117</span>in the air crying, “Flax, grow.” The +leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their +tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must +grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their +annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, <i>and for +our young citizens</i>, and for goodly Themis.”</p></div> + +<p>They are now young citizens of a fencèd city instead of young tribesmen +of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds +them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, “goodly +Themis.” No man liveth to himself.</p> + +<p class="gap">Crete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the +priest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful +carved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing +him a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed +dancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn.</p> + +<p><a name="pg118" id="pg118"></a><span class="pagenum">118</span>We have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A +Spring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth; +but all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama, +rather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the +Birth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know—with Agamemnon and +Iphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us, +and the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we +have seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of +emotion—emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that +ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the +chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the +Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy—that +is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before +us.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn19" id="fn19"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm19">19</a></span> <i>Poetics</i>, IV, 12.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn20" id="fn20"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm20">20</a></span> See my <i>Themis</i>, p. 419. (1912.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn21" id="fn21"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm21">21</a></span> I, 43. 2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn22" id="fn22"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm22">22</a></span> <i>Quaest. Græc.</i> XII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn23" id="fn23"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm23">23</a></span> <i>Op. cit.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn24" id="fn24"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm24">24</a></span> <i>Quæst. Symp.</i>, 693 f.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn25" id="fn25"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm25">25</a></span> The words “in Spring-time” depend on an emendation to me +convincing. See my <i>Themis</i>, p. 205, note 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn26" id="fn26"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm26">26</a></span> IX.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn27" id="fn27"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm27">27</a></span> See my <i>Themis</i>, p. 151.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn28" id="fn28"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm28">28</a></span> See my <i>Prolegomena</i>, p. 439.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn29" id="fn29"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm29">29</a></span> <i>Prolegomena</i>, p. 402.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn30" id="fn30"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm30">30</a></span> Frazer, <i>Totemism and Exogamy</i>, Vol. I, p. 228.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn31" id="fn31"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm31">31</a></span> <i>The Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> III, 424.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn32" id="fn32"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm32">32</a></span> <i>The Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> III, 442.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn33" id="fn33"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm33">33</a></span> <i>The Golden Bough</i>,<span class="up">2</span> III, p. 438.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn34" id="fn34"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm34">34</a></span> See my <i>Themis</i>, p. 503.</p></div> +</div> + + + +<h2><a name="pg119" id="pg119"></a><span class="pagenum">119</span><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<h3>TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON (“THING DONE”) AND THE DRAMA</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Probably</span> most people when they go to a Greek play for the first time +think it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their +temperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or +very much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that, +whether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are +odd effects, conventions, suggestions.</p> + +<p>For example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or +heroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds +unconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine +thrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put +off with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is +regularly given, and usually at considerable <a name="pg120" id="pg120"></a><span class="pagenum">120</span>length, in a “messenger’s +speech.” The messenger’s speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and +though actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real +dramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has +sometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all +these, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation, +good taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he +finds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into +floods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in +silence.</p> + +<p>Then again, specially if the play be by Euripides, it ends not with a +“curtain,” not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of +a god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or +reconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself, +strikes some people as rather stilted and formal, or as rather flat and +somehow unsatisfying. Worse still, there are in many of the scenes long +dialogues, in which the actors wrangle with each other, and in which the +action does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead of +<a name="pg121" id="pg121"></a><span class="pagenum">121</span>beginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit +about the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole +thing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the +Greeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that +tragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of +lamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary +and wish that the chorus would stop lamenting and <i>do</i> something.</p> + +<p class="gap">At the back of our modern discontent there is lurking always this queer +anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and +when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the +ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the +intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and +pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble +to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the +choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them +alone commands a traditional respect; but if we are merely modern +spectators, we may be re<a name="pg122" id="pg122"></a><span class="pagenum">122</span>spectful, we may even feel strangely excited, +but we are certainly puzzled. The reason of our bewilderment is simple +enough. These prologues and messengers’ speeches and ever-present +choruses that trouble us are ritual forms still surviving at a time when +the <i>drama</i> has fully developed out of the <i>dromenon</i>. We cannot here +examine all these ritual forms in detail;<a name="fnm35" id="fnm35"></a><a href="#fn35" class="fnnum">35</a> one, however, the chorus, +strangest and most beautiful of all, it is essential we should +understand.</p> + +<p>Suppose that these choral songs have been put into English that in any +way represents the beauty of the Greek; then certainly there will be +some among the spectators who get a thrill from the chorus quite unknown +to any modern stage effect, a feeling of emotion heightened yet +restrained, a sense of entering into higher places, filled with a larger +and a purer air—a sense of beauty born clean out of conflict and +disaster.</p> + +<p>A suspicion dawns upon the spectator that, great though the tragedies in +themselves are, they owe their peculiar, their incommunicable beauty +largely to this element of the chorus which seemed at first so strange.</p> + +<p><a name="pg123" id="pg123"></a><span class="pagenum">123</span>Now by examining this chorus and understanding its function—nay, more, +by considering the actual <i>orchestra</i>, the space on which the chorus +danced, and the relation of that space to the rest of the theatre, to +the stage and the place where the spectators sat—we shall get light at +last on our main central problem: How did art arise out of ritual, and +what is the relation of both to that actual life from which both art and +ritual sprang?</p> + +<p class="gap">The dramas of Æschylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles +and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the <i>theatre</i>, +but, strange though it sounds to us, in the <i>orchestra</i>. The <i>theatre</i> +to the Greeks was simply “the place of seeing, the place where the +spectators sat; what they called the sk<span title="e-macron">ē</span>n<span title="e-macron">ē</span> or <i>scene</i>, was the tent or +hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of the whole +was the <i>orchestra</i>, the circular <i>dancing-place</i> of the chorus; and, as +the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre, so the chorus, +the band of dancing and singing men—this chorus that seems to us so odd +and even superfluous—was the centre and kernel and starting-point of +the drama. The chorus <a name="pg124" id="pg124"></a><span class="pagenum">124</span>danced and sang that Dithyramb we know so well, +and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember tragedy arose, and +the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells us, just men and +boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested from sowing and +ploughing.</p> + +<p>Now it is in the relation between the <i>orchestra</i> or dancing-place of +the chorus, and the <i>theatre</i> or place of the spectators, a relation +that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development +from ritual to art—from <i>dromenon</i> to drama.</p> + + + +<p class="gap">The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular +dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and +sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular +orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a +sketch is given in Fig. <a href="#fig1" >1</a>. The orchestra here is surrounded by a +splendid <i>theatron</i>, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above +tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or +dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors +are used in Greece to-day as <a name="pg125" id="pg125"></a><span +class="pagenum" style="display: none;">125</span><a name="pg126" id="pg126"></a><span class="pagenum">126</span>convenient dancing-places. The dance +tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a +maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On +this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as +now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There +is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors, +all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at +initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are +the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage +thinks of building a <i>theatre</i>, a spectator place. It is in the common +act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must +never be forgotten.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;"> +<a name="fig1" id="fig1"></a> +<img src="images/fig1.png" width="400" height="312" +alt="Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra." +title="Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra." /> +</div> + + +<p>The most convenient spot for a mere dancing-place is some flat place. +But any one who travels through Greece will notice instantly that all +the Greek theatres that remain at Athens, at Epidaurus, at Delos, +Syracuse, and elsewhere, are built against the side of hills. None of +these are very early; the earliest ancient orchestra we have is at +Athens. It is a simple stone ring, but it is built against the steep +south side of the<a name="pg127" id="pg127"></a><span class="pagenum">127</span> Acropolis. The oldest festival of Dionysos was, as +will presently be seen, held in quite another spot, in the <i>agora</i>, or +market-place. The reason for moving the dance was that the wooden seats +that used to be set up on a sort of “grand stand” in the market-place +fell down, and it was seen how safely and comfortably the spectators +could be seated on the side of a steep hill.</p> + +<p>The spectators are a new and different element, the dance is not only +danced, but it is watched from a distance, it is a spectacle; whereas in +old days all or nearly all were worshippers acting, now many, indeed +most, are spectators, watching, feeling, thinking, not doing. It is in +this new attitude of the spectator that we touch on the difference +between ritual and art; the <i>dromenon</i>, the thing actually done by +yourself has become a <i>drama</i>, a thing also done, but abstracted from +your doing. Let us look for a moment at the psychology of the spectator, +at his behaviour.</p> + +<p class="gap">Artists, it is often said, and usually felt, are so unpractical. They +are always late for dinner, they forget to post their letters and to +return the books or even money that is lent <a name="pg128" id="pg128"></a><span class="pagenum">128</span>them. Art is to most +people’s minds a sort of luxury, not a necessity. In but recently bygone +days music, drawing, and dancing were no part of a training for ordinary +life, they were taught at school as “accomplishments,” paid for as +“extras.” Poets on their side equally used to contrast art and life, as +though they were things essentially distinct.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Art is long, and Time is fleeting.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now commonplaces such as these, being unconscious utterances of the +collective mind, usually contain much truth, and are well worth +weighing. Art, we shall show later, is profoundly connected with life; +it is nowise superfluous. But, for all that, art, both its creation and +its enjoyment, is unpractical. Thanks be to God, life is not limited to +the practical.</p> + +<p>When we say art is unpractical, we mean that art is <i>cut loose from +immediate action</i>. Take a simple instance. A man—or perhaps still +better a child—sees a plate of cherries. Through his senses comes the +stimulus of the smell of the cherries, and their bright colour urging +him, luring him to eat. He eats and is satisfied; the cycle of normal +behaviour is <a name="pg129" id="pg129"></a><span class="pagenum">129</span>complete; he is a man or a child of action, but he is no +artist, and no art-lover. Another man looks at the same plate of +cherries. His sight and his smell lure him and urge him to eat. He does +<i>not</i> eat; the cycle is not completed, and, because he does not eat, the +sight of those cherries, though perhaps not the smell, is altered, +purified from desire, and in some way intensified, enlarged. If he is +just a man of taste, he will take what we call an “æsthetic” pleasure in +those cherries. If he is an actual artist, he will paint not the +cherries, but his vision of them, his purified emotion towards them. He +has, so to speak, come out from the chorus of actors, of cherry-eaters, +and become a spectator.</p> + +<p>I borrow, by his kind permission, a beautiful instance of what he well +calls “Psychical Distance” from the writings of a psychologist.<a name="fnm36" id="fnm36"></a><a href="#fn36" class="fnnum">36</a></p> + +<p>“Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute +unpleasantness. Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of +discomfort, such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar +anxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching <a name="pg130" id="pg130"></a><span class="pagenum">130</span>and listening +for distant and unlocalized signals. The listless movements of the ship +and her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and +that special, expectant tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated +with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the +more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the +expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman.</p> + +<p>“Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and +enjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea-fog, for the moment, +its danger and practical unpleasantness; ... direct the attention to the +features ‘objectively’ constituting the phenomena—the veil surrounding +you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outlines of +things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesqueness; observe the +carrying power of the air, producing the impression as if you could +touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it +lose itself behind that white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness +of the water, hypercritically denying as it were, any suggestion of +danger; and, above all, the strange <a name="pg131" id="pg131"></a><span class="pagenum">131</span>solitude and remoteness from the +world, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops; and the +experience may acquire, in its uncanny mingling of repose and terror, a +flavour of such concentrated poignancy and delight as to contrast +sharply with the blind and distempered anxiety of its other aspects. +This contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like the +momentary switching on of some new current, or the passing ray of a +brighter light, illuminating the outlook upon perhaps the most ordinary +and familiar objects—an impression which we experience sometimes in +instants of direst extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a +wire from sheer over-tension, and we watch the consummation of some +impending catastrophe with the marvelling unconcern of a mere +spectator.”</p> + +<p class="gap">It has often been noted that two, and two only, of our senses are the +channels of art and give us artistic material. These two senses are +sight and hearing. Touch and its special modifications, taste and smell, +do not go to the making of art. Decadent French novelists, such as +Huysmann, make their heroes <a name="pg132" id="pg132"></a><span class="pagenum">132</span>revel in perfume-symphonies, but we feel +that the sentiment described is morbid and unreal, and we feel rightly. +Some people speak of a cook as an “artist,” and a pudding as a “perfect +poem,” but a healthy instinct rebels. Art, whether sculpture, painting, +drama, music, is of sight or hearing. The reason is simple. Sight and +hearing are the distant senses; sight is, as some one has well said, +“touch at a distance.” Sight and hearing are of things already detached +and somewhat remote; they are the fitting channels for art which is cut +loose from immediate action and reaction. Taste and touch are too +intimate, too immediately vital. In Russian, as Tolstoi has pointed out +(and indeed in other languages the same is observable), the word for +beauty (<i>krasota</i>) means, to begin with, only that which pleases the +sight. Even hearing is excluded. And though latterly people have begun +to speak of an “ugly deed” or of “beautiful music,” it is not good +Russian. The simple Russian does not make Plato’s divine muddle between +the good and the beautiful. If a man gives his coat to another, the +Russian peasant, knowing no foreign language, will not say the man has +acted “beautifully.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg133" id="pg133"></a><span class="pagenum">133</span>To see a thing, to feel a thing, as a work of art, we must, then, become +for the time unpractical, must be loosed from the fear and the flurry of +actual living, must become spectators. Why is this? Why can we not live +and look at once? The <i>fact</i> that we cannot is clear. If we watch a +friend drowning we do not note the exquisite curve made by his body as +he falls into the water, nor the play of the sunlight on the ripples as +he disappears below the surface; we should be inhuman, æsthetic fiends +if we did. And again, why? It would do our friend no harm that we should +enjoy the curves and the sunlight, provided we also threw him a rope. +But the simple fact is that we <i>cannot</i> look at the curves and the +sunlight because our whole being is centred on acting, on saving him; we +cannot even, at the moment, fully feel our own terror and impending +loss. So again if we want to see and to feel the splendour and vigour of +a lion, or even to watch the cumbrous grace of a bear, we prefer that a +cage should intervene. The cage cuts off the need for motor actions; it +interposes the needful physical and moral distance, and we are free for +contemplation. Released from our own terrors, we see more and <a name="pg134" id="pg134"></a><span class="pagenum">134</span>better, +and we feel differently. A man intent on action is like a horse in +blinkers, he goes straight forward, seeing only the road ahead.</p> + +<p>Our brain is, indeed, it would seem, in part, an elaborate arrangement +for providing these blinkers. If we saw and realized the whole of +everything, we should want to do too many things. The brain allows us +not only to remember, but, which is quite as important, to forget and +neglect; it is an organ of oblivion. By neglecting most of the things we +see and hear, we can focus just on those which are important for action; +we can cease to be potential artists and become efficient practical +human beings; but it is only by limiting our view, by a great +renunciation as to the things we see and feel. The artist does just the +reverse. He renounces doing in order to practise seeing. He is by nature +what Professor Bergson calls “distrait,” aloof, absent-minded, intent +only, or mainly, on contemplation. That is why the ordinary man often +thinks the artist a fool, or, if he does not go so far as that, is made +vaguely uncomfortable by him, never really understands him. The artist’s +focus, all his system <a name="pg135" id="pg135"></a><span class="pagenum">135</span>of values, is different, his world is a world of +images which are his realities.</p> + +<p class="gap">The distinction between art and ritual, which has so long haunted and +puzzled us, now comes out quite clearly, and also in part the relation +of each to actual life. Ritual, we saw, was a re-presentation or a +pre-presentation, a re-doing or pre-doing, a copy or imitation of life, +but,—and this is the important point,—always with a practical end. Art +is also a representation of life and the emotions of life, but cut loose +from immediate action. Action may be and often is represented, but it is +not that it may lead on to a practical further end. The end of art is in +itself. Its value is not mediate but <i>im</i>mediate. Thus ritual <i>makes, as +it were, a bridge between real life and art</i>, a bridge over which in +primitive times it would seem man must pass. In his actual life he hunts +and fishes and ploughs and sows, being utterly intent on the practical +end of gaining his food; in the <i>dromenon</i> of the Spring Festival, +though his <i>acts</i> are unpractical, being mere singing and dancing and +mimicry, his <i>intent</i> is practical, to induce the return of his +food-supply.<a name="pg136" id="pg136"></a><span class="pagenum">136</span> In the drama the representation may remain for a time the +same, but the intent is altered: man has come out from action, he is +separate from the dancers, and has become a spectator. The drama is an +end in itself.</p> + +<p class="gap">We know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a <i>dromenon</i> +became the drama, and we have seen that the shift is symbolized and +expressed by the addition of the <i>theatre</i>, or spectator-place, to the +orchestra, or dancing-place. We have also tried to analyse the meaning +of the shift. It remains to ask what was its cause. Ritual does not +always develop into art, though in all probability dramatic art has +always to go through the stage of ritual. The leap from real life to the +emotional contemplation of life cut loose from action would otherwise be +too wide. Nature abhors a leap, she prefers to crawl over the ritual +bridge. There seem at Athens to have been two main causes why the +<i>dromenon</i> passed swiftly, inevitably, into the drama. They are, first, +the decay of religious faith; second, the influx from abroad of a new +culture and new dramatic material.</p> + +<p>It may seem surprising to some that the <a name="pg137" id="pg137"></a><span class="pagenum">137</span>decay of religious faith should +be an impulse to the birth of art. We are accustomed to talk rather +vaguely of art “as the handmaid of religion”; we think of art as +“inspired by” religion. But the decay of religious faith of which we now +speak is not the decay of faith in a god, or even the decay of some high +spiritual emotion; it is the decay of a belief in the efficacy of +certain magical rites, and especially of the Spring Rite. So long as +people believed that by excited dancing, by bringing in an image or +leading in a bull you could induce the coming of Spring, so long would +the <i>dromena</i> of the Dithyramb be enacted with intense enthusiasm, and +with this enthusiasm would come an actual accession and invigoration of +vital force. But, once the faintest doubt crept in, once men began to be +guided by experience rather than custom, the enthusiasm would die down, +and the collective invigoration no longer be felt. Then some day there +will be a bad summer, things will go all wrong, and the chorus will +sadly ask: “Why should I dance my dance?” They will drift away or become +mere spectators of a rite established by custom. The rite itself will +die down, or it will live on <a name="pg138" id="pg138"></a><span class="pagenum">138</span>only as the May Day rites of to-day, a +children’s play, or at best a thing done vaguely “for luck.”</p> + +<p>The spirit of the rite, the belief in its efficacy, dies, but the rite +itself, the actual mould, persists, and it is this ancient ritual mould, +foreign to our own usage, that strikes us to-day, when a Greek play is +revived, as odd and perhaps chill. A <i>chorus</i>, a band of dancers there +must be, because the drama arose out of a ritual dance. An <i>agon</i>, or +contest, or wrangling, there will probably be, because Summer contends +with Winter, Life with Death, the New Year with the Old. A tragedy must +be tragic, must have its <i>pathos</i>, because the Winter, the Old Year, +must die. There must needs be a swift transition, a clash and change +from sorrow to joy, what the Greeks called a <i>peripeteia</i>, a +<i>quick-turn-round</i>, because, though you carry out Winter, you bring in +Summer. At the end we shall have an Appearance, an Epiphany of a god, +because the whole gist of the ancient ritual was to summon the spirit of +life. All these ritual forms haunt and shadow the play, whatever its +plot, like ancient traditional ghosts; they underlie and <a name="pg139" id="pg139"></a><span class="pagenum">139</span>sway the +movement and the speeches like some compelling rhythm.</p> + +<p>Now this ritual mould, this underlying rhythm, is a fine thing in +itself; and, moreover, it was once shaped and cast by a living spirit: +the intense immediate desire for food and life, and for the return of +the seasons which bring that food and life. But we have seen that, once +the faith in man’s power magically to bring back these seasons waned, +once he began to doubt whether he could really carry out Winter and +bring in Summer, his emotion towards these rites would cool. Further, we +have seen that these rites repeated year by year ended, among an +imaginative people, in the mental creation of some sort of dæmon or god. +This dæmon, or god, was more and more held responsible on his own +account for the food-supply and the order of the Horæ, or Seasons; so we +get the notion that this dæmon or god himself led in the Seasons; Hermes +dances at the head of the Charites, or an Eiresione is carried to Helios +and the Horæ. The thought then arises that this man-like dæmon who rose +from a real King of the May, must himself be approached and dealt with +as a man, bargained with, <a name="pg140" id="pg140"></a><span class="pagenum">140</span>sacrificed to. In a word, in place of +<i>dromena</i>, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments, +holy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern +sense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods. The relation of these +figures of gods to art we shall consider when we come to sculpture.</p> + +<p>So the <i>dromenon</i>, the thing done, wanes, the prayer, the praise, the +sacrifice waxes. Religion moves away from drama towards theology, but +the ritual mould of the <i>dromenon</i> is left ready for a new content.</p> + +<p>Again, there is another point. The magical <i>dromenon</i>, the Carrying out +of Winter, the Bringing in of Spring, is doomed to an inherent and +deadly monotony. It is only when its magical efficacy is intensely +believed that it can go on. The life-history of a holy bull is always +the same; its magical essence is that it should be the same. Even when +the life-dæmon is human his career is unchequered. He is born, +initiated, or born again; he is married, grows old, dies, is buried; and +the old, old story is told again next year. There are no fresh personal +incidents, peculiar to one particular dæmon. If the drama rose from the +Spring Song only, beautiful it might <a name="pg141" id="pg141"></a><span class="pagenum">141</span>be, but with a beauty that was +monotonous, a beauty doomed to sterility.</p> + +<p>We seem to have come to a sort of <i>impasse</i>, the spirit of the +<i>dromenon</i> is dead or dying, the spectators will not stay long to watch +a doing doomed to monotony. The ancient moulds are there, the old +bottles, but where is the new wine? The pool is stagnant; what angel +will step down to trouble the waters?</p> + +<p class="gap">Fortunately we are not left to conjecture what <i>might</i> have happened. In +the case of Greece we know, though not as clearly as we wish, what did +happen. We can see in part why, though the <i>dromena</i> of Adonis and +Osiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere +ritual; the <i>dromenon</i> of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama.</p> + +<p>Let us look at the facts, and first at some structural facts in the +building of the theatre.</p> + +<p>We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for +ritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a +rite of practical intent. We further saw that the <i>theatre</i>, the place +for the <a name="pg142" id="pg142"></a><span class="pagenum">142</span>spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and +dancing; the marble <i>seats</i> are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from +action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in +importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and +give their name <i>theatre</i> to the whole structure; action is swallowed up +in contemplation. But contemplation of what? At first, of course, of the +ritual dance, but not for long. That, we have seen, was doomed to a +deadly monotony. In a Greek theatre there was not only orchestra and a +spectator-place, there was also a <i>scene</i> or <i>stage</i>.</p> + +<p>The Greek word for stage is, as we said, <i>skenè</i>, our scene. The <i>scene</i> +was not a stage in our sense, <i>i.e.</i> a platform raised so that the +players might be better viewed. It was simply a tent, or rude hut, in +which the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses. +The fact that the Greek theatre had, to begin with, no permanent stage +in our sense, shows very clearly how little it was regarded as a +spectacle. The ritual dance was a <i>dromenon</i>, a thing to be done, not a +thing to be looked at. The history of the Greek stage is one long story +of the <a name="pg143" id="pg143"></a><span class="pagenum">143</span>encroachment of the stage on the orchestra. At first a rude +platform or table is set up, then scenery is added; the movable tent is +translated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first +outside the orchestra; then bit by bit the <i>scene</i> encroaches till the +sacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and +the stage wax, the <i>dromenon</i> and the orchestra wane.</p> + +<p>This shift in the relation of dancing-place and stage is very clearly +seen in Fig. <a href="#fig2" >2</a>, a plan of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (p. 144). The +old circular orchestra shows the dominance of ritual; the new curtailed +orchestra of Roman times and semicircular shape shows the dominance of +the spectacle.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;"> +<a name="fig2" id="fig2"></a> +<img src="images/fig2.png" width="350" height="450" alt="Fig 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens." title="Fig 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens." /> +</div> + +<p>Greek tragedy arose, Aristotle has told us, from the <i>leaders</i> of the +Dithyramb, the leaders of the Spring Dance. The Spring Dance, the mime +of Summer and Winter, had, as we have seen, only one actor, one actor +with two parts—Death and Life. With only one play to be played, and +that a one-actor play, there was not much need for a stage. A <i>scene</i>, +that is a <i>tent</i>, was needed, as we saw, because all the dancers had to +put on their <a name="pg144" id="pg144"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display:none;">144</span><a name="pg145" id="pg145"></a><span class="pagenum">145</span>rritual gear, but scarcely a stage. From a rude platform +the prologue might be spoken, and on that platform the Epiphany or +Appearance of the New Year might take place; but the play played, the +life-history of the life-spirit, was all too familiar; there was no need +to look, the thing was to dance. You need a stage—not necessarily a +raised stage, but a place apart from the dancers—when you have new +material for your players, something you need to look at, to attend to. +In the sixth century <span class="little">B.C.</span>, at Athens, came <i>the</i> great +innovation. Instead of the old plot, the life-history of the +life-spirit, with its deadly monotony, new plots were introduced, not of +life-spirits but of human individual heroes. In a word, Homer came to +Athens, and out of Homeric stories playwrights began to make their +plots. This innovation was the death of ritual monotony and the +<i>dromenon</i>. It is not so much the old that dies as the new that kills.</p> + +<p class="gap">Æschylus himself is reported to have said that his tragedies were +“slices from the great banquet of Homer.” The metaphor is not a very +pleasing one, but it expresses a truth.<a name="pg146" id="pg146"></a><span class="pagenum">146</span> By Homer, Æschylus meant not +only our <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, but the whole body of Epic or Heroic +poetry which centred round not only the Siege of Troy but the great +expedition of the <i>Seven Against Thebes</i>, and which, moreover, contained +the stories of the heroes before the siege began, and their adventures +after it was ended. It was from these heroic sagas for the most part, +though not wholly, that the <i>myths</i> or plots of not only Æschylus but +also Sophocles and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays +are lost to us, are taken. The new wine that was poured into the old +bottles of the <i>dromena</i> at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga. We +know as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly +responsible for this inpouring—the great democratic tyrant +Peisistratos. We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and +then pass to what he did.</p> + +<p>He found an ancient Spring <i>dromenon</i>, perhaps well-nigh effete. Without +destroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old +plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and thereby arose +the drama.</p> + +<p><a name="pg147" id="pg147"></a><span class="pagenum">147</span>Let us look first, then, at what Peisistratos found.</p> + +<p>The April festival of Dionysos at which the great dramas were performed +was not the earliest festival of the god. Thucydides<a name="fnm37" id="fnm37"></a><a href="#fn37" class="fnnum">37</a> expressly tells +us that on the 12th day of the month Anthesterion, that is in the quite +early spring, at the turn of our February and March, were celebrated +<i>the more ancient Dionysia</i>. It was a three-days’ festival.<a name="fnm38" id="fnm38"></a><a href="#fn38" class="fnnum">38</a> On the +first day, called “Cask-opening,” the jars of new wine were broached. +Among the B<span title="oe ligature">œ</span>otians the day was called not the day of Dionysos, but the +day of the Good or Wealthy Daimon. The next day was called the day of +the “Cups”—there was a contest or <i>agon</i> of drinking. The last day was +called the “Pots,” and it, too, had its “Pot-Contests.” It is the +ceremonies of this day that we must notice a little in detail; for they +are very surprising. “Casks,” “Cups,” and “Pots,” sound primitive +enough. “Casks” and “Cups” go well with the wine-god, but the “Pots” +call for explanation.</p> + +<p>The second day of the “Cups,” joyful <a name="pg148" id="pg148"></a><span class="pagenum">148</span>though it sounds, was by the +Athenians counted unlucky, because on that day they believed “the ghosts +of the dead rose up.” The sanctuaries were roped in, each householder +anointed his door with pitch, that the ghost who tried to enter might +catch and stick there. Further, to make assurance doubly sure, from +early dawn he chewed a bit of buckthorn, a plant of strong purgative +powers, so that, if a ghost should by evil chance go down his throat, it +should at least be promptly expelled.</p> + +<p>For two, perhaps three, days of constant anxiety and ceaseless +precautions the ghosts fluttered about Athens. Men’s hearts were full of +nameless dread, and, as we shall see, hope. At the close of the third +day the ghosts, or, as the Greeks called them, <i>Keres</i>, were bidden to +go. Some one, we do not know whom, it may be each father of a household, +pronounced the words: “Out of the door, ye Keres; it is no longer +Anthesteria,” and, obedient, the Keres were gone.</p> + +<p>But before they went there was a supper for these souls. All the +citizens cooked a <i>panspermia</i> or “Pot-of-all-Seeds,” but of this +Pot-of-all-Seeds no citizen tasted. It was made <a name="pg149" id="pg149"></a><span class="pagenum">149</span>over to the spirits of +the under-world and Hermes their daimon, Hermes “Psychopompos,” +Conductor, Leader of the dead.</p> + +<p class="gap">We have seen how a forest people, dependent on fruit trees and berries +for their food, will carry a maypole and imagine a tree-spirit. But a +people of agriculturists will feel and do and think quite otherwise; +they will look, not to the forest but to the earth for their returning +life and food; they will sow seeds and wait for their sprouting, as in +the gardens of Adonis. Adonis seems to have passed through the two +stages of Tree-Spirit and Seed-Spirit; his effigy was sometimes a tree +cut down, sometimes his planted “Gardens.” Now seeds are many, +innumerable, and they are planted in the earth, and a people who bury +their dead know, or rather feel, that the earth is dead man’s land. So, +when they prepare a pot of seeds on their All Souls’ Day, it is not +really or merely as a “supper for the souls,” though it may be that +kindly notion enters. The ghosts have other work to do than to eat their +supper and go. They take that supper “of all seeds,” that <i>panspermia</i>, +with them down to the world below, <a name="pg150" id="pg150"></a><span class="pagenum">150</span>that they may tend it and foster it +and bring it back in autumn as a pot of <i>all fruits</i>, a <i>pankarpia</i>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die.”</p></div> + +<p>The dead, then, as well as the living—this is for us the important +point—had their share in the <i>dromena</i> of the “more ancient Dionysia.” +These agricultural spring <i>dromena</i> were celebrated just outside the +ancient city gates, in the <i>agora</i>, or place of assembly, on a circular +dancing-place, near to a very primitive sanctuary of Dionysos which was +opened only once in the year, at the Feast of Cups. Just outside the +gates was celebrated yet another festival of Dionysos equally primitive, +called the “Dionysia in the Fields.” It had the form though not the date +of our May Day festival. Plutarch<a name="fnm39" id="fnm39"></a><a href="#fn39" class="fnnum">39</a> thus laments over the “good old +times”: “In ancient days,” he says, “our fathers used to keep the feast +of Dionysos in homely, jovial fashion. There was a procession, a jar of +wine and a <i>branch</i>; then some one dragged in a goat, <a name="pg151" id="pg151"></a><span class="pagenum">151</span>another followed +bringing a wicker basket of figs, and, to crown all, the phallos.” It +was just a festival of the fruits of the whole earth: wine and the +basket of figs and the branch for vegetation, the goat for animal life, +the phallos for man. No thought here of the dead, it is all for the +living and his food.</p> + +<p class="gap">Such sanctities even a great tyrant might not tamper with. But if you +may not upset the old you may without irreverence add the new. +Peisistratos probably cared little for, and believed less in, magical +ceremonies for the renewal of fruits, incantations of the dead. We can +scarcely picture him chewing buckthorn on the day of the “Cups,” or +anointing his front door with pitch to keep out the ghosts. Very wisely +he left the Anthesteria and the kindred festival “in the fields” where +and as they were. But for his own purposes he wanted to do honour to +Dionysos, and also above all things to enlarge and improve the rites +done in the god’s honour, so, leaving the old sanctuary to its fate, he +built a new temple on the south side of the Acropolis where the present +theatre <a name="pg152" id="pg152"></a><span class="pagenum">152</span>now stands, and consecrated to the god a new and more splendid +precinct.</p> + +<p>He did not build the present theatre, we must always remember that. The +rows of stone seats, the chief priest’s splendid marble chair, were not +erected till two centuries later. What Peisistratos did was to build a +small stone temple (see Fig. <a href="#fig2" >2</a>), and a great round orchestra of stone +close beside it. Small fragments of the circular foundation can still be +seen. The spectators sat on the hill-side or on wooden seats; there was +as yet no permanent <i>the<span title="a-macron">ā</span>tron</i> or spectator-place, still less a stone +stage; the <i>dromena</i> were done on the dancing-place. But for +spectator-place they had the south slope of the Acropolis. What kind of +wooden stage they had unhappily we cannot tell. It may be that only a +portion of the orchestra was marked off.</p> + +<p class="gap">Why did Peisistratos, if he cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts, +take such trouble to foster and amplify the worship of this +maypole-spirit, Dionysos? Why did he add to the Anthesteria, the +festival of the family ghosts and the peasant festival “in the fields,”<a name="pg153" id="pg153"></a><span class="pagenum">153</span> +a new and splendid festival, a little later in the spring, the <i>Great +Dionysia</i>, or <i>Dionysia of the City</i>? One reason among others was +this—Peisistratos was a “tyrant.”</p> + +<p>Now a Greek “tyrant” was not in our sense “tyrannical.” He took his own +way, it is true, but that way was to help and serve the common people. +The tyrant was usually raised to his position by the people, and he +stood for democracy, for trade and industry, as against an idle +aristocracy. It was but a rudimentary democracy, a democratic tyranny, +the power vested in one man, but it stood for the rights of the many as +against the few. Moreover, Dionysos was always of the people, of the +“working classes,” just as the King and Queen of the May are now. The +upper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but +<i>their own ancestors</i>. But—and this was what Peisistratos with great +insight saw—Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city. +The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed +aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts +and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not +inherited, wealth, tends towards <a name="pg154" id="pg154"></a><span class="pagenum">154</span>democracy. Peisistratos left the +Dionysia “in the fields,” but he added the Great Dionysia “in the city.”</p> + +<p>Peisistratos was not the only tyrant who concerned himself with the +<i>dromena</i> of Dionysos. Herodotos<a name="fnm40" id="fnm40"></a><a href="#fn40" class="fnnum">40</a> tells the story of another tyrant, +a story which is like a window opening suddenly on a dark room. At +Sicyon, a town near Corinth, there was in the <i>agora</i> a <i>heroon</i>, a +hero-tomb, of an Argive hero, Adrastos.</p> + +<p>“The Sicyonians,” says Herodotos, “paid other honours to Adrastos, and, +moreover, they celebrated his death and disasters with tragic choruses, +not honouring Dionysos but Adrastos.” We think of “tragic” choruses as +belonging exclusively to the theatre and Dionysos; so did Herodotus, but +clearly here they belonged to a local hero. His adventures and his death +were commemorated by choral dances and songs. Now when Cleisthenes +became tyrant of Sicyon he felt that the cult of the local hero was a +danger. What did he do? Very adroitly he brought in from Thebes another +hero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos; +part of <a name="pg155" id="pg155"></a><span class="pagenum">155</span>his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new +Theban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people’s god, +to Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and +die. No local hero can live on without his cult.</p> + +<p>The act of Cleisthenes seems to us a very drastic proceeding. But +perhaps it was not really so revolutionary as it seems. The local hero +was not so very unlike a local <i>dæmon</i>, a Spring or Winter spirit. We +have seen in the Anthesteria how the paternal ghosts are expected to +look after the seeds in spring. The more important the ghost the more +incumbent is this duty upon him. <i>Noblesse oblige</i>. On the river +Olynthiakos<a name="fnm41" id="fnm41"></a><a href="#fn41" class="fnnum">41</a> in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos, +who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and +Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the +lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round +about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. “And it is a +wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They +say that <a name="pg156" id="pg156"></a><span class="pagenum">156</span>formerly the people used to perform the accustomed rites to +the dead in the month Elaphebolion, but now they do them in +Anthesterion, <i>and that on this account the fish come up in those months +only</i> in which they are wont to do honour to the dead.” The river is the +chief source of the food-supply, so to send fish, not seeds and flowers, +is the dead hero’s business.</p> + +<p>Peisistratos was not so daring as Cleisthenes. We do not hear that he +disturbed or diminished any local cult. He did not attempt to move the +Anthesteria with its ghost cult; he only added a new festival, and +trusted to its recent splendour gradually to efface the old. And at this +new festival he celebrated the deeds of other heroes, not local but of +greater splendour and of wider fame. If he did not bring Homer to +Athens, he at least gave Homer official recognition. Now to bring Homer +to Athens was like opening the eyes of the blind.</p> + +<p class="gap">Cicero, in speaking of the influence of Peisistratos on literature, +says: “He is said to have arranged in their present order the works of +Homer, which were previously in <a name="pg157" id="pg157"></a><span class="pagenum">157</span>confusion.” He arranged them not for +what we should call “publication,” but for public recitation, and +another tradition adds that he or his son fixed the order of their +recitation at the great festival of “All Athens,” the Panathenaia. +Homer, of course, was known before in Athens in a scrappy way; now he +was publicly, officially promulgated. It is probable, though not +certain, that the “Homer” which Peisistratos prescribed for recitation +at the Panathenaia was just our <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, and that the rest +of the heroic cycle, all the remaining “slices” from the heroic banquet, +remained as material for dithyrambs and dramas. The “tyranny” of +Peisistratos and his son lasted from 560 to 501 <span class="little">B.C.</span>; tradition +said that the first dramatic contest was held in the new theatre built +by Peisistratos in 535 <span class="little">B.C.</span>, when Thespis won the prize. +Æschylus was born in 525 <span class="little">B.C.</span>; his first play, with a plot from +the heroic saga, the <i>Seven Against Thebes</i>, was produced in 467 +<span class="little">B.C.</span> It all came very swiftly, the shift from the dithyramb as +Spring Song to the heroic drama was accomplished in something much under +a century. Its effect on the whole of Greek life and religion—nay, on +the whole <a name="pg158" id="pg158"></a><span class="pagenum">158</span>of subsequent literature and thought—was incalculable. Let +us try to see why.</p> + +<p class="gap">Homer was the outcome, the expression, of an “heroic” age. When we use +the word “heroic” we think vaguely of something brave, brilliant, +splendid, something exciting and invigorating. A hero is to us a man of +clear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a +good friend and a good hater. The word “hero” calls up such figures as +Achilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure. Now such +figures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are +not confined to Homer. They occur in any and every heroic age. We are +beginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic characters, do not arise +from any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings, but, +given certain social conditions, they may, and do, appear anywhere and +at any time. The world has seen several heroic ages, though it is, +perhaps, doubtful if it will ever see another. What, then, are the +conditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic +poetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence <a name="pg159" id="pg159"></a><span class="pagenum">159</span>on, and +importance to, the development of Greek dramatic art? Why had it power +to change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living +drama? Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so +eagerly welcome it to Athens?</p> + +<p>In the old ritual dance the individual was nothing, the choral band, the +group, everything, and in this it did but reflect primitive tribal life. +Now in the heroic <i>saga</i> the individual is everything, the mass of the +people, the tribe, or the group, are but a shadowy background which +throws up the brilliant, clear-cut personality into a more vivid light. +The epic poet is all taken up with what he called <i>klea andron</i>, +“glorious deeds of men,” of individual heroes; and what these heroes +themselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal +distinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies +meet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes +are for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not +hereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility. +Rather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage <a name="pg160" id="pg160"></a><span class="pagenum">160</span>paid them is a +personal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his +followers by bravery, he must keep them by personal generosity. +Moreover, heroic wars are oftenest not tribal feuds consequent on tribal +raids, more often they arise from personal grievances, personal +jealousies; the siege of Troy is undertaken not because the Trojans have +raided the cattle of the Achæans, but because a single Trojan, Paris, +has carried off Helen, a single Achæan’s wife.</p> + +<p>Another noticeable point is that in heroic poems scarcely any one is +safely and quietly at home. The heroes are fighting in far-off lands or +voyaging by sea; hence we hear little of tribal and even of family ties. +The real centre is not the hearth, but the leader’s tent or ship. Local +ties that bind to particular spots of earth are cut, local differences +fall into abeyance, a sort of cosmopolitanism, a forecast of +pan-Hellenism, begins to arise. And a curious point—all this is +reflected in the gods. We hear scarcely anything of local cults, nothing +at all of local magical maypoles and Carryings-out of Winter and +Bringings-in of Summer, nothing whatever of “Suppers” for the souls, or +even of worship <a name="pg161" id="pg161"></a><span class="pagenum">161</span>paid to particular local heroes. A man’s ghost when he +dies does not abide in its grave ready to rise at springtime and help +the seeds to sprout; it goes to a remote and shadowy region, a common, +pan-Hellenic Hades. And so with the gods themselves; they are cut clean +from earth and from the local bits of earth out of which they grew—the +sacred trees and holy stones and rivers and still holier beasts. There +is not a holy Bull to be found in all Olympus, only figures of men, +bright and vivid and intensely personal, like so many glorified, +transfigured Homeric heroes.</p> + +<p>In a word, the heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, is the outcome +of a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the +shifting of populations.<a name="fnm42" id="fnm42"></a><a href="#fn42" class="fnnum">42</a> But more is needed, and just this something +more the age that gave birth to Homer had. We know now that before the +northern people whom we call Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes, +came down into Greece, there had grown up in the basin of the Ægean a +civilization splendid, wealthy, rich in art and already ancient, the +civilization that has come to light at Troy, Mycenæ, Tiryns, and most of +<a name="pg162" id="pg162"></a><span class="pagenum">162</span>all in Crete. The adventurers from North and South came upon a land +rich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might +sack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth. Such +conditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by +unbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and +its vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness. In settled, +social conditions, as has been well remarked, “most of the heroes would +sooner or later have found themselves in prison.”</p> + +<p>A heroic age, happily for society, cannot last long; it has about it +while it does last a sheen of passing and pathetic splendour, such as +that which lights up the figure of Achilles, but it is bound to fade and +pass. A heroic <i>society</i> is almost a contradiction in terms. Heroism is +for individuals. If a society is to go on at all it must strike its +roots deep in some soil, native or alien. The bands of adventurers must +disband and go home, or settle anew on the land they have conquered. +They must beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into +pruning-hooks. Their gallant, glorious leader must become a sober, +home-keeping, law-<a name="pg163" id="pg163"></a><span class="pagenum">163</span>giving and law-abiding king; his followers must abate +their individuality and make it subserve a common social purpose.</p> + +<p>Athens, in her sheltered peninsula, lay somewhat outside the tide of +migrations and heroic exploits. Her population and that of all Attica +remained comparatively unchanged; her kings are kings of the stationary, +law-abiding, state-reforming type; Cecrops, Erechtheus, Theseus, are not +splendid, flashing, all-conquering figures like Achilles and Agamemnon. +Athens might, it would seem, but for the coming of Homer, have lain +stagnant in a backwater of conservatism, content to go on chanting her +traditional Spring Songs year by year. It is a wonderful thing that this +city of Athens, beloved of the gods, should have been saved from the +storm and stress, sheltered from what might have broken, even shattered +her, spared the actual horrors of a heroic <i>age</i>, yet given heroic +<i>poetry</i>, given the clear wine-cup poured when the ferment was over. She +drank of it deep and was glad and rose up like a giant refreshed.</p> + +<p class="gap">We have seen that to make up a heroic age there must be two factors, the +new and the <a name="pg164" id="pg164"></a><span class="pagenum">164</span>old; the young, vigorous, warlike people must seize on, +appropriate, in part assimilate, an old and wealthy civilization. It +almost seems as if we might go a step farther, and say that for every +great movement in art or literature we must have the same conditions, a +contact of new and old, of a new spirit seizing or appropriated by an +old established order. Anyhow for Athens the historical fact stands +certain. The amazing development of the fifth-century drama is just +this, the old vessel of the ritual Dithyramb filled to the full with the +new wine of the heroic <i>saga</i>; and it would seem that it was by the hand +of Peisistratos, the great democratic tyrant, that the new wine was +outpoured.</p> + +<p class="gap">Such were roughly the outside conditions under which the drama of art +grew out of the <i>dromena</i> of ritual. The racial secret of the individual +genius of Æschylus and the forgotten men who preceded him we cannot hope +to touch. We can only try to see the conditions in which they worked and +mark the splendid new material that lay to their hands. Above all things +we can see that this material, these Homeric <i>saga</i>, were just fitted +<a name="pg165" id="pg165"></a><span class="pagenum">165</span>to give the needed impulse to art. The Homeric <i>saga</i> had for an +Athenian poet just that remoteness from immediate action which, as we +have seen, is the essence of art as contrasted with ritual.</p> + +<p>Tradition says that the Athenians fined the dramatic poet Phrynichus for +choosing as the plot of one of his tragedies the Taking of Miletus. +Probably the fine was inflicted for political party reasons, and had +nothing whatever to do with the question of whether the subject was +“artistic” or not. But the story may stand, and indeed was later +understood to be, a sort of allegory as to the attitude of art towards +life. To understand and still more to contemplate life you must come out +from the choral dance of life and stand apart. In the case of one’s own +sorrows, be they national or personal, this is all but impossible. We +can ritualize our sorrows, but not turn them into tragedies. We cannot +stand back far enough to see the picture; we want to be doing, or at +least lamenting. In the case of the sorrows of others this standing back +is all too easy. We not only bear their pain with easy stoicism, but we +picture it dispassionately at a safe distance; we feel<a name="pg166" id="pg166"></a><span class="pagenum">166</span> <i>about</i> rather +than <i>with</i> it. The trouble is that we do not feel enough. Such was the +attitude of the Athenian towards the doings and sufferings of Homeric +heroes. They stood towards them as spectators. These heroes had not the +intimate sanctity of home-grown things, but they had sufficient +traditional sanctity to make them acceptable as the material of drama.</p> + +<p>Adequately sacred though they were, they were yet free and flexible. It +is impiety to alter the myth of your local hero, it is impossible to +recast the myth of your local dæmon—that is fixed forever—his +conflict, his <i>agon</i>, his death, his <i>pathos</i>, his Resurrection and its +heralding, his Epiphany. But the stories of Agamemnon and Achilles, +though at home these heroes were local <i>daimones</i>, have already been +variously told in their wanderings from place to place, and you can +mould them more or less to your will. Moreover, these figures are +already personal and individual, not representative puppets, mere +functionaries like the May Queen and Winter; they have life-histories of +their own, never quite to be repeated. It is in this blend of the +individual and the general, the personal and <a name="pg167" id="pg167"></a><span class="pagenum">167</span>the universal, that one +element at least of all really great art will be found to lie; and just +here at Athens we get a glimpse of the moment of fusion; we see a +definite historical reason why and how the universal in <i>dromena</i> came +to include the particular in drama. We see, moreover, how in place of +the old monotonous plots, intimately connected with actual practical +needs, we get material cut off from immediate reactions, seen as it were +at the right distance, remote yet not too remote. We see, in a word, how +a ritual enacted year by year became a work of art that was a +“possession for ever.”</p> + +<p class="gap">Possibly in the mind of the reader there may have been for some time a +growing discomfort, an inarticulate protest. All this about <i>dromena</i> +and drama and dithyrambs, bears and bulls, May Queens and Tree-Spirits, +even about Homeric heroes, is all very well, curious and perhaps even in +a way interesting, but it is not at all what he expected, still less +what he wants. When he bought a book with the odd incongruous title, +<i>Ancient Art and Ritual</i>, he was prepared to put up with some remarks on +the artistic side of ritual, <a name="pg168" id="pg168"></a><span class="pagenum">168</span>but he did expect to be told something +about what the ordinary man calls art, that is, statues and pictures. +Greek drama is no doubt a form of ancient art, but acting is not to the +reader’s mind the chief of arts. Nay, more, he has heard doubts raised +lately—and he shares them—as to whether acting and dancing, about +which so much has been said, are properly speaking arts at all. Now +about painting and sculpture there is no doubt. Let us come to business.</p> + +<p>To a business so beautiful and pleasant as Greek sculpture we shall +gladly come, but a word must first be said to explain the reason of our +long delay. The main contention of the present book is that ritual and +art have, in emotion towards life, a common root, and further, that +primitive art develops normally, at least in the case of the drama, +straight out of ritual. The nature of that primitive ritual from which +the drama arose is not very familiar to English readers. It has been +necessary to stress its characteristics. Almost everywhere, all over the +world, it is found that primitive ritual consists, not in prayer and +praise and sacrifice, but in mimetic dancing. But it is in Greece, and +perhaps Greece only, <a name="pg169" id="pg169"></a><span class="pagenum">169</span>in the religion of Dionysos, that we can actually +trace, if dimly, the transition steps that led from dance to drama, from +ritual to art. It was, therefore, of the first importance to realize the +nature of the dithyramb from which the drama rose, and so far as might +be to mark the cause and circumstances of the transition.</p> + +<p>Leaving the drama, we come in the next chapter to Sculpture; and here, +too, we shall see how closely art was shadowed by that ritual out of +which she sprang.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn35" id="fn35"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm35">35</a></span> See Bibliography at end for Professor Murray’s +examination.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn36" id="fn36"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm36">36</a></span> Mr. Edward Bullough, <i>The British Journal of Psychology</i> +(1912), p. 88.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn37" id="fn37"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm37">37</a></span> II, 15.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn38" id="fn38"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm38">38</a></span> See my <i>Themis</i>, p. 289, and <i>Prolegomena</i>, p. 35.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn39" id="fn39"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm39">39</a></span> <i>De Cupid. div.</i> 8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn40" id="fn40"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm40">40</a></span> V, 66.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn41" id="fn41"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm41">41</a></span> <i>Athen.</i>, VIII, ii, 334 f. See my <i>Prolegomena</i>, p. 54.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn42" id="fn42"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm42">42</a></span> Thanks to Mr. H. M. Chadwick’s <i>Heroic Age</i> (1912).</p></div> +</div> + + +<h2><a name="pg170" id="pg170"></a><span class="pagenum">170</span><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<h3>GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> passing from the drama to Sculpture we make a great leap. We pass +from the living thing, the dance or the play acted by real people, the +thing <i>done</i>, whether as ritual or art, whether <i>dromenon</i> or <i>drama</i>, +to the thing <i>made</i>, cast in outside material rigid form, a thing that +can be looked at again and again, but the making of which can never +actually be re-lived whether by artist or spectator.</p> + +<p>Moreover, we come to a clear threefold distinction and division hitherto +neglected. We must at last sharply differentiate the artist, the work of +art, and the spectator. The artist may, and usually indeed does, become +the spectator of his own work, but the spectator is not the artist. The +work of art is, once executed, forever distinct both from artist and +spectator. In the primitive choral dance all three—artist, work of art, +spectator—were <a name="pg171" id="pg171"></a><span class="pagenum">171</span>fused, or rather not yet differentiated. Handbooks on +art are apt to begin with the discussion of rude decorative patterns, +and after leading up through sculpture and painting, something vague is +said at the end about the primitiveness of the ritual dance. But +historically and also genetically or logically the dance in its +inchoateness, its undifferentiatedness, comes first. It has in it a +larger element of emotion, and less of presentation. It is this +inchoateness, this undifferentiatedness, that, apart from historical +fact, makes us feel sure that logically the dance is primitive.</p> + +<p class="gap">To illustrate the meaning of Greek sculpture and show its close affinity +with ritual, we shall take two instances, perhaps the best-known of +those that survive, one of them in relief, the other in the round, the +Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon at Athens and the Apollo Belvedere, +and we shall take them in chronological order. As the actual frieze and +the statue cannot be before us, we shall discuss no technical questions +of style or treatment, but simply ask how they came to be, what human +need do they express. The Parthenon frieze is in the British Museum, the +Apollo<a name="pg172" id="pg172"></a><span class="pagenum">172</span> Belvedere is in the Vatican at Rome, but is readily accessible +in casts or photographs. The outlines given in Figs. <a href="#fig5" >5</a> and <a href="#fig6" >6</a> can of +course only serve to recall subject-matter and design.</p> + +<p class="gap">The Panathenaic frieze once decorated the <i>cella</i> or innermost shrine of +the Parthenon, the temple of the Maiden Goddess Athena. It twined like a +ribbon round the brow of the building and thence it was torn by Lord +Elgin and brought home to the British Museum as a national trophy, for +the price of a few hundred pounds of coffee and yards of scarlet cloth. +To realize its meaning we must always think it back into its place. +Inside the <i>cella</i>, or shrine, dwelt the goddess herself, her great +image in gold and ivory; outside the shrine was sculptured her worship +by the whole of her people. For the frieze is nothing but a great ritual +procession translated into stone, the Panathenaic procession, or +procession of <i>all</i> the Athenians, of all Athens, in honour of the +goddess who was but the city incarnate, Athena.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory,<br /></span><a name="pg173" id="pg173"></a><span class="pagenum">173</span> +<span class="i0">That none from the pride of her head may rend;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A light upon earth as the sun’s own flame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A name as his name—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Athens, a praise without end.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="toright"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span>: <i>Erechtheus</i>, 141.</p> + +<p>Sculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has +ritual as its subject, <i>is</i> embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this +point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the +thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has +been selected to bolster up the writer’s art and ritual theory. He has +only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author +is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain +to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at +later date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual +reliefs, “votive” reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises +translated into stone.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 396px;"> +<a name="fig3" id="fig3"></a> +<a name="pg174" id="pg174"></a><span class="pagenum">174</span> +<img src="images/fig3.png" width="396" height="250" alt="Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession." title="Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession." /> +<span class="caption">Fig. 3.</span> +</div> + + +<p>Of the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little, +yet its ritual importance was great. In religion to-day the dance is +dead save for the dance of the choristers before the altar at Seville. +But the procession lives on, has even taken to itself new life. It is a +means of bringing masses of people together, of ordering them and +co-ordinating them. It is a means for the magical spread of supposed +good influence, of “grace.” Witness the “Beating of the Bounds” and the +frequent processions of the Blessed Sacrament in Roman Catholic lands.<a name="pg175" id="pg175"></a><span class="pagenum">175</span> +The Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to +house. Now-a-days it is to collect pence; once it was to diffuse “grace” +and increase. We remember the procession of the holy Bull at Magnesia +and the holy Bear at Saghalien (pp. <a href="#pg92">92</a>-<a href="#pg100">100</a>).</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 260px;"> +<a name="fig4" id="fig4"></a> +<img src="images/fig4.png" width="260" height="500" alt="Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession." title="Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession." /> +<span class="caption">Fig. 4.</span> +</div> + + +<p><a name="pg176" id="pg176"></a><span class="pagenum">176</span>What, then, was the object of the Panathenaic procession? It was first, +as its name indicates, a procession that brought all Athens together. +Its object was social and political, to express the unity of Athens. +Ritual in primitive times is always social, collective.</p> + +<p>The arrangement of the procession is shown in Figs. <a href="#fig3" +>3</a> and <a href="#fig4" >4</a> (pp. 174, 175). In Fig. <a href="#fig3" +>3</a> we see the procession as it were in real life, just as +it is about to enter the temple and the presence of the Twelve Gods. +These gods are shaded black because in reality invisible. Fig. <a href="#fig4" >4</a> is a +diagram showing the position of the various parts of the procession in +the sculptural frieze. At the west end of the temple the procession +begins to form: the youths of Athens are mounting their horses. It +divides, as it needs must, into two halves, one sculptured on the north, +one on the south side of the <i>cella</i>. After the throng of the cavalry +getting denser and denser we come to the chariots, next the sacrificial +animals, sheep and restive cows, then the instruments of sacrifice, +flutes and lyres and baskets and trays for offerings; men who carry +blossoming olive-boughs; maidens with water-vessels and drinking-cups. +The whole <a name="pg177" id="pg177"></a><span class="pagenum">177</span>tumult of the gathering is marshalled and at last met and, as +it were, held in check, by a band of magistrates who face the procession +just as it enters the presence of the twelve seated gods, at the east +end. The whole body politic of the gods has come down to feast with the +whole body politic of Athens and her allies, of whom these gods are but +the projection and reflection. The gods are there together because man +is collectively assembled.</p> + +<p>The great procession culminates in a sacrifice and a communal feast, a +sacramental feast like that on the flesh of the holy Bull at Magnesia. +The Panathenaia was a high festival including rites and ceremonies of +diverse dates, an armed dance of immemorial antiquity that may have +dated from the days when Athens was subject to Crete, and a recitation +ordered by Peisistratos of the poems of Homer.</p> + +<p class="gap">Some theorists have seen in art only an extension of the “play +instinct,” just a liberation of superfluous vitality and energies, as it +were a rehearsing for life. This is not our view, but into all art, in +so far as it is a cutting off of motor reactions, there certainly enters +an element of recreation. It is interesting <a name="pg178" id="pg178"></a><span class="pagenum">178</span>to note that to the Greek +mind religion was specially connected with the notion rather of a +festival than a fast. Thucydides<a name="fnm43" id="fnm43"></a><a href="#fn43" class="fnnum">43</a> is assuredly by nature no reveller, +yet religion is to him mainly a “rest from toil.” He makes Perikles say: +“Moreover, we have provided for our spirit by many opportunities of +recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the +year.” To the anonymous writer known as the “Old Oligarch” the main gist +of religion appears to be a decorous social enjoyment. In easy +aristocratic fashion he rejoices that religious ceremonials exist to +provide for the less well-to-do citizens suitable amusements that they +would otherwise lack. “As to sacrifices and sanctuaries and festivals +and precincts, the People, knowing that it is impossible for each man +individually to sacrifice and feast and have sacrifices and an ample and +beautiful city, has discovered by what means he may enjoy these +privileges.”</p> + +<p class="gap">In the procession of the Panathenaia all Athens was gathered together, +but—and this is important—for a special purpose, more <a name="pg179" id="pg179"></a><span class="pagenum">179</span>primitive than +any great political or social union. Happily this purpose is clear; it +is depicted in the central slab of the east end of the frieze (Fig. <a href="#fig5" >5</a>). +A priest is there represented receiving from the hands of a boy a great +<i>peplos</i> or robe. It is the sacred robe of Athena woven for her and +embroidered by young Athenian maidens and offered to her every five +years. The great gold and ivory statue in the Parthenon itself had no +need of a robe; she would scarcely have known what to do with one; her +raiment was already of wrought gold, she carried helmet and spear and +shield. But there was an ancient image of Athena, an old Madonna of the +people, fashioned before Athena became a warrior maiden. This image was +rudely hewn in wood, it was dressed and decked doll-fashion <a name="pg180" id="pg180"></a><span class="pagenum">180</span>like a May +Queen, and to her the great <i>peplos</i> was dedicated. The <i>peplos</i> was +hoisted as a sail on the Panathenaic ship, and this ship Athena had +borrowed from Dionysos himself, who went every spring in procession in a +ship-car on wheels to open the season for sailing. To a seafaring people +like the Athenians the opening of the sailing season was all-important, +and naturally began not at midsummer but in spring.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 350px;"> +<a name="fig5" id="fig5"></a> +<img src="images/fig5.png" width="350" height="155" alt="Fig. 5." title="Fig 5." /> +<span class="caption">Fig. 5.</span> +</div> + +<p>The sacred <i>peplos</i>, or robe, takes us back to the old days when the +spirit of the year and the “luck” of the people was bound up with a rude +image. The life of the year died out each year and had to be renewed. To +make a new image was expensive and inconvenient, so, with primitive +economy it was decided that the life and luck of the image should be +renewed by re-dressing it, by offering to it each year a new robe. We +remember (p. <a href="#pg60">60</a>) how in Thuringia the new puppet wore the shirt of the +old and thereby new life was passed from one to the other. But behind +the old image we can get to a stage still earlier, when there was at the +Panathenaia no image at all, only a yearly maypole; a bough hung with +ribbons and <a name="pg181" id="pg181"></a><span class="pagenum">181</span>cakes and fruits and the like. A bough was cut from the +sacred olive tree of Athens, called the <i>Moria</i> or Fate Tree. It was +bound about with fillets and hung with fruit and nuts and, in the +festival of the Panathenaia, they carried it up to the Acropolis to give +to Athena <i>Polias</i>, “Her-of-the-City,” and as they went they sang the +old Eiresione song (p. <a href="#pg114">114</a>). <i>Polias</i> is but the city, the <i>Polis</i> +incarnate.</p> + +<p>This <i>Moria</i>, or Fate Tree, was the very life of Athens; the life of the +olive which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. When +the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it +seemed that all was over. But next day it put forth a new shoot and the +people knew that the city’s life still lived. Sophocles<a name="fnm44" id="fnm44"></a><a href="#fn44" class="fnnum">44</a> sang of the +glory of the wondrous life tree of Athens:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sea-gray, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth +nor age grown bold.<br /></span> +<a name="pg182" id="pg182"></a><span class="pagenum">182</span> +<span class="i0">For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The holy tree carried in procession is, like the image of Athena, made +of olive-wood, just the incarnate life of Athens ever renewed.</p> + +<p>The Panathenaia was not, like the Dithyramb, a spring festival. It took +place in July at the height of the summer heat, when need for rain was +the greatest. But the month Hecatombaion, in which it was celebrated, +was the first month of the Athenian year and the day of the festival was +the birthday of the goddess. When the goddess became a war-goddess, it +was fabled that she was born in Olympus, and that she sprang full grown +from her father’s head in glittering armour. But she was really born on +earth, and the day of her birth was the birthday of every earthborn +goddess, the day of the beginning of the new year, with its returning +life. When men observe only the actual growth of new green life from the +ground, this birthday will be in spring; when they begin to know that +the seasons depend on <a name="pg183" id="pg183"></a><span class="pagenum">183</span>the sun, or when the heat of the sun causes great +need of rain, it will be at midsummer, at the solstice, or in northern +regions where men fear to lose the sun in midwinter, as with us. The +frieze of the Parthenon is, then, but a primitive festival translated +into stone, a rite frozen to a monument.</p> + +<p class="gap">Passing over a long space of time we come to our next illustration, the +Apollo Belvedere (Fig. <a href="#fig6" >6</a>).</p> + + +<p>It might seem that here at last we have nothing primitive; here we have +art pure and simple, ideal art utterly cut loose from ritual, “art for +art’s sake.” Yet in this Apollo Belvedere, this product of late and +accomplished, even decadent art, we shall see most clearly the intimate +relation of art and ritual; we shall, as it were, walk actually across +that transition bridge of ritual which leads from actual life to +art.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 285px;"> +<a name="fig6" id="fig6"></a> +<img src="images/fig6.png" width="285" height="400" alt="Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere." title="Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere." /> +<span class="caption">Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere.</span> +</div> + +<p>The date of this famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy +of a type belonging to the fourth century <span class="little">B.C.</span> The poise of the +figure is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. +Apollo is caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately +poised, to be about to fly rather than to run.<a name="pg184" +id="pg184"></a><span class="pagenum" style="display: none;">184</span><a name="pg185" id="pg185"></a><span class="pagenum">185</span> He stands tiptoe and in +a moment will have left the earth. The Greek sculptor’s genius was all +focussed, as we shall presently see, on the human figure and on the +mastery of its many possibilities of movement and action. Greek statues +can roughly be dated by the way they stand. At first, in the archaic +period, they stand firmly planted with equal weight on either foot, the +feet close together. Then one foot is advanced, but the weight still +equally divided, an almost impossible position. Next, the weight is +thrown on the right foot; and the left knee is bent. This is of all +positions the loveliest for the human body. We allow it to women, forbid +it to men save to “æsthetes.” If the back numbers of <i>Punch</i> be examined +for the figure of “Postlethwaite” it will be seen that he always stands +in this characteristic relaxed pose.</p> + +<p>When the sculptor has mastered the possible he bethinks him of the +impossible. He will render the human body flying. It may have been the +accident of a mythological subject that first suggested the motive. +Leochares, a famous artist of the fourth century <span class="little">B.C.</span>, made a +group of Zeus in the form of an eagle carrying off Ganymede. A replica +of the <a name="pg186" id="pg186"></a><span class="pagenum">186</span>group is preserved in the Vatican, and should stand for +comparison near the Apollo. We have the same tiptoe poise, the figure +just about to leave the earth. Again, it is not a dance, but a flight. +This poise is suggestive to us because it marks an art cut loose, as far +as may be, from earth and its realities, even its rituals.</p> + +<p>What is it that Apollo is doing? The question and suggested answers have +occupied many treatises. There is only one answer: We do not know. It +was at first thought that the Apollo had just drawn his bow and shot an +arrow. This suggestion was made to account for the pose; but that, as we +have seen, is sufficiently explained by the flight-motive. Another +possible solution is that Apollo brandishes in his uplifted hand the +ægis, or goatskin shield, of Zeus. Another suggestion is that he holds +as often a lustral, or laurel bough, that he is figured as Daphnephoros, +“Laurel-Bearer.”</p> + +<p>We do not know if the Belvedere Apollo carried a laurel, but we <i>do</i> +know that it was of the very essence of the god to be a Laurel-Bearer. +That, as we shall see in a moment, he, like Dionysos, arose in part out +of a rite, <a name="pg187" id="pg187"></a><span class="pagenum">187</span>a rite of Laurel-Bearing—a <i>Daphnephoria</i>. We have not got +clear of ritual yet. When Pausanias,<a name="fnm45" id="fnm45"></a><a href="#fn45" class="fnnum">45</a> the ancient traveller, whose +notebook is our chief source about these early festivals, came to Thebes +he saw a hill sacred to Apollo, and after describing the temple on the +hill he says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The following custom is still, I know, observed at Thebes. A boy +of distinguished family and himself well-looking and strong is made +the priest of Apollo, <i>for the space of a year</i>. The title given +him is Laurel-Bearer (Daphnephoros), for these boys wear wreaths +made of laurel.”</p></div> + +<p>We know for certain now what these yearly priests are: they are the +Kings of the Year, the Spirits of the Year, May-Kings, +Jacks-o’-the-Green. The name given to the boy is enough to show he +carried a laurel branch, though Pausanias only mentions a wreath. +Another ancient writer gives us more details.<a name="fnm46" id="fnm46"></a><a href="#fn46" class="fnnum">46</a> He says in describing +the festival of the Laurel-Bearing:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“They wreathe a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers. +On the top is <a name="pg188" id="pg188"></a><span class="pagenum">188</span>fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend +smaller ones. Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe, +binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked +with saffron. By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they +actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath this is the moon; the +smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the +fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in +number. The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are +alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole. The +Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he +has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is +dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light +shoes. There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs +before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns.”</p></div> + +<p>This is the most elaborate maypole ceremony that we know of in ancient +times. The globes representing sun and moon show us that we have come to +a time when men know that the fruits of the earth in due season depended +on the heavenly bodies. The year <a name="pg189" id="pg189"></a><span class="pagenum">189</span>with its 365 days is a Sun-Year. Once +this Sun-Year established and we find that the times of the solstices, +midwinter and midsummer became as, or even more, important than the +spring itself. The date of the <i>Daphnephoria</i> is not known.</p> + +<p>At Delphi itself, the centre of Apollo-worship, there was a festival +called the <i>Stepteria</i>, or festival “of those who make the wreathes,” in +which “mystery” a Christian Bishop, St. Cyprian, tells us he was +initiated. In far-off Tempe—that wonderful valley that is still the +greenest spot in stony, barren Greece, and where the laurel trees still +cluster—there was an altar, and near it a laurel tree. The story went +that Apollo had made himself a crown from this very laurel, and <i>taking +in his hand a branch of this same laurel</i>, i.e. as Laurel-Bearer, had +come to Delphi and taken over the oracle.</p> + +<p>“And to this day the people of Delphi send high-born boys in procession +there. And they, when they have reached Tempe and made a splendid +sacrifice return back, after wearing themselves wreaths from the very +laurel from which the god made himself a wreath.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg190" id="pg190"></a><span class="pagenum">190</span>We are inclined to think of the Greeks as a people apt to indulge in the +singular practice of wearing wreaths in public, a practice among us +confined to children on their birthdays and a few eccentric people on +their wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the +custom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because +they were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that +they might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek +bridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his +marriage may be the beginning of new life, that his “wife may be as the +fruitful vine, and his children as the olive branches round about his +table.” And our children to-day, though they do not know it, wear +wreaths on their birthdays because with each new year their life is +re-born.</p> + +<p class="gap">Apollo then, was, like Dionysos, King of the May and—saving his +presence—Jack-in-the-Green. The god manifestly arose out of the rite. +For a moment let us see <i>how</i> he arose. It will be remembered that in a +previous chapter (p. <a href="#pg70">70</a>) we spoke of “personification.”<a name="pg191" id="pg191"></a><span class="pagenum">191</span> We think of the +god Apollo as an abstraction, an unreal thing, perhaps as a “false god.” +The god Apollo does not, and never did, exist. He is an idea—a thing +made by the imagination. But primitive man does not deal with +abstractions, does not worship them. What happens is, as we saw (p. <a href="#pg71">71</a>), +something like this: Year by year a boy is chosen to carry the laurel, +to bring in the May, and later year by year a puppet is made. It is a +different boy each year, carrying a different laurel branch. And yet in +a sense it is the same boy; he is always the +Laurel-Bearer—“Daphnephoros,” always the “Luck” of the village or city. +This Laurel-Bearer, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, is the +stuff of which the god is made. The god arises from the rite, he is +gradually detached from the rite, and as soon as he gets a life and +being of his own, apart from the rite, he is a first stage in art, a +work of art existing in the mind, gradually detached from even the faded +action of ritual, and later to be the model of the actual work of art, +the copy in stone.</p> + +<p>The stages, it would seem, are: actual life with its motor reactions, +the ritual copy of life with its faded reactions, the image of the <a name="pg192" id="pg192"></a><span class="pagenum">192</span>god +projected by the rite, and, last, the copy of that image, the work of +art.</p> + +<p class="gap">We see now why in the history of all ages and every place art is what is +called the “handmaid of religion.” She is not really the “handmaid” at +all. She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is +the image of the god. Primitive art in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria,<a name="fnm47" id="fnm47"></a><a href="#fn47" class="fnnum">47</a> +represents either rites, processions, sacrifices, magical ceremonies, +embodied prayers; or else it represents the images of the gods who +spring from those rites. Track any god right home, and you will find him +lurking in a ritual sheath, from which he slowly emerges, first as a +<i>dæmon</i>, or spirit, of the year, then as a full-blown divinity.</p> + +<p class="gap">In Chapter <a href="#CHAPTER_II">II</a> we saw how the <i>dromenon</i> gave birth to the <i>drama</i>, how, +bit by bit, out of the chorus of dancers some dancers with<a name="pg193" id="pg193"></a><span class="pagenum">193</span>drew and +became spectators sitting apart, and on the other hand others of the +dancers drew apart on to the stage and presented to the spectators a +spectacle, a thing to be looked <i>at</i>, not joined <i>in</i>. And we saw how in +this spectacular mood, this being cut loose from immediate action, lay +the very essence of the artist and the art-lover. Now in the drama of +Thespis there was at first, we are told, but one actor; later Æschylus +added a second. It is clear who this actor, this <i>protagonist</i> or “first +contender” was, the one actor with the double part, who was Death to be +carried out and Summer to be carried in. He was the Bough-Bearer, the +only possible actor in the one-part play of the renewal of life and the +return of the year.</p> + +<p class="gap">The May-King, the leader of the choral dance gave birth not only to the +first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the god, be +he Dionysos or be he Apollo; and this figure of the god thus imagined +out of the year-spirit was perhaps more fertile for art than even the +protagonist of the drama. It may seem strange to us that a god should +rise up out of a dance or a pro<a name="pg194" id="pg194"></a><span class="pagenum">194</span>cession, because dances and processions +are not an integral part of our national life, and do not call up any +very strong and instant emotion. The old instinct lingers, it is true, +and emerges at critical moments; when a king dies we form a great +procession to carry him to the grave, but we do not dance. We have court +balls, and these with their stately ordered ceremonials are perhaps the +last survival of the genuinely civic dance, but a court ball is not +given at a king’s funeral nor in honour of a god.</p> + +<p>But to the Greek the god and the dance were never quite sundered. It +almost seems as if in the minds of Greek poets and philosophers there +lingered some dim half-conscious remembrance that some of these gods at +least actually came out of the ritual dance. Thus, Plato,<a name="fnm48" id="fnm48"></a><a href="#fn48" class="fnnum">48</a> in +treating of the importance of rhythm in education says: “The gods, +pitying the toilsome race of men, have appointed the sequence of +religious festivals to give them times of rest, and have given them the +Muses and Apollo, the Muse-Leader, as fellow-revellers.”</p> + +<p>“The young of all animals,” he goes on to <a name="pg195" id="pg195"></a><span class="pagenum">195</span>say, “cannot keep quiet, +either in body or voice. They must leap and skip and overflow with +gamesomeness and sheer joy, and they must utter all sorts of cries. But +whereas animals have no perception of order or disorder in their +motions, the gods who have been appointed to men as our fellow-dancers +have given to us a sense of pleasure in rhythm and harmony. And so they +move us and lead our bands, knitting us together with songs and in +dances, and these we call <i>choruses</i>.” Nor was it only Apollo and +Dionysos who led the dance. Athena herself danced the Pyrrhic dance. +“Our virgin lady,” says Plato, “delighting in the sports of the dance, +thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in +full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and +maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the +goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the +festivals.”</p> + +<p>Plato is unconsciously inverting the order of things, natural +happenings. Take the armed dance. There is, first, the “actual necessity +of war.” Men go to war armed, to <a name="pg196" id="pg196"></a><span class="pagenum">196</span>face actual dangers, and at their head +is a leader in full armour. That is real life. There is then the festal +re-enactment of war, when the fight is not actually fought, but there is +an imitation of war. That is the ritual stage, the <i>dromenon</i>. Here, +too, there is a leader. More and more this dance becomes a spectacle, +less and less an action. Then from the periodic <i>dromenon</i>, the ritual +enacted year by year, emerges an imagined permanent leader; a dæmon, or +god—a Dionysos, an Apollo, an Athena. Finally the account of what +actually happens is thrown into the past, into a remote distance, and we +have an “ætiological” myth—a story told to give a cause or reason. The +whole natural process is inverted.</p> + +<p>And last, as already seen, the god, the first work of art, the thing +unseen, imagined out of the ritual of the dance, is cast back into the +visible world and fixed in space. Can we wonder that a classical +writer<a name="fnm49" id="fnm49"></a><a href="#fn49" class="fnnum">49</a> should say “the statues of the craftsmen of old times are the +relics of ancient dancing.” That is just what they are, rites caught and +fixed and frozen. “Drawing,” says a modern <a name="pg197" id="pg197"></a><span class="pagenum">197</span>critic,<a name="fnm50" id="fnm50"></a><a href="#fn50" class="fnnum">50</a> “is at bottom, +like all the arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper.” +Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the +dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. +“The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, +not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth +will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime.” +Art, that is, gradually dominates mere ritual.</p> + +<p class="gap">We come to another point. The Greek gods as we know them in classical +sculpture are always imaged in human shape. This was not of course +always the case with other nations. We have seen how among savages the +totem, that is, the emblem of tribal unity, was usually an animal or a +plant. We have seen how the emotions of the Siberian tribe in Saghalien +focussed on a bear. The savage totem, the Saghalien Bear, is on the way +to be, but is not quite, a god; he is not personal enough. The +Egyptians, and in <a name="pg198" id="pg198"></a><span class="pagenum">198</span>part the Assyrians, halted half-way and made their +gods into monstrous shapes, half-animal, half-man, which have their own +mystical grandeur. But since we are men ourselves, feeling human +emotion, if our gods are in great part projected emotions, the natural +form for them to take is human shape.</p> + +<p>“Art imitates Nature,” says Aristotle, in a phrase that has been much +misunderstood. It has been taken to mean that art is a copy or +reproduction of natural objects. But by “Nature” Aristotle never means +the outside world of created things, he means rather creative force, +what produces, not what has been produced. We might almost translate the +Greek phrase, “Art, like Nature, creates things,” “Art acts like Nature +in producing things.” These things are, first and foremost, human +things, human action. The drama, with which Aristotle is so much +concerned, invents human action like real, <i>natural</i> action. Dancing +“imitates character, emotion, action.” Art is to Aristotle almost wholly +bound by the limitations of <i>human</i> nature.</p> + +<p>This is, of course, characteristically a Greek limitation. “Man is the +measure of all <a name="pg199" id="pg199"></a><span class="pagenum">199</span>things,” said the old Greek sophist, but modern science +has taught us another lesson. Man may be in the foreground, but the +drama of man’s life is acted out for us against a tremendous background +of natural happenings: a background that preceded man and will outlast +him; and this background profoundly affects our imagination, and hence +our art. We moderns are in love with the background. Our art is a +landscape art. The ancient landscape painter could not, or would not, +trust the background to tell its own tale: if he painted a mountain he +set up a mountain-god to make it real; if he outlined a coast he set +human coast-nymphs on its shore to make clear the meaning.</p> + +<p>Contrast with this our modern landscape, from which bit by bit the nymph +has been wholly banished. It is the art of a stage, without actors, a +scene which is all background, all suggestion. It is an art given us by +sheer recoil from science, which has dwarfed actual human life almost to +imaginative extinction.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Landscape, then, offered to the modern imagination a scene empty +of definite actors, <a name="pg200" id="pg200"></a><span class="pagenum">200</span>superhuman or human, that yielded to reverie +without challenge all that is in a moral without a creed, tension +or ambush of the dark, threat of ominous gloom, the relenting and +tender return or overwhelming outburst of light, the pageantry of +clouds above a world turned quaker, the monstrous weeds of trees +outside the town, the sea that is obstinately epic still.”<a name="fnm51" id="fnm51"></a><a href="#fn51" class="fnnum">51</a></p></div> + +<p>It was to this world of backgrounds that men fled, hunted by the sense +of their own insignificance.</p> + +<p>“Minds the most strictly bound in their acts by civil life, in their +fancy by the shrivelled look of destiny under scientific speculation, +felt on solitary hill or shore those tides of the blood stir again that +are ruled by the sun and the moon and travelled as if to tryst where an +apparition might take form. Poets ordained themselves to this vigil, +haunters of a desert church, prompters of an elemental theatre, +listeners in solitary places for intimations from a spirit in hiding; +and painters followed the impulse of Wordsworth.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg201" id="pg201"></a><span class="pagenum">201</span>We can only see the strength and weakness of Greek sculpture, feel the +emotion of which it was the utterance, if we realize clearly this modern +spirit of the background. All great modern, and perhaps even ancient, +poets are touched by it. Drama itself, as Nietzsche showed, “hankers +after dissolution into mystery. Shakespeare would occasionally knock the +back out of the stage with a window opening on the ‘cloud-capp’d +towers.’” But Maeterlinck is the best example, because his genius is +less. He is the embodiment, almost the caricature, of a tendency.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Maeterlinck sets us figures in the foreground only to launch us +into that limbus. The supers jabbering on the scene are there, +children of presentiment and fear, to make us aware of a third, the +mysterious one, whose name is not on the bills. They come to warn +us by the nervous check and hurry of their gossip of the approach +of that background power. Omen after omen announces him, the talk +starts and drops at his approach, a door shuts and the thrill of +his passage is the play.”<a name="fnm52" id="fnm52"></a><a href="#fn52" class="fnnum">52</a></p></div> + + +<p><a name="pg202" id="pg202"></a><span class="pagenum">202</span>It is, perhaps, the temperaments that are most allured and terrified by +this art of the bogey and the background that most feel the need of and +best appreciate the calm and level, rational dignity of Greek naturalism +and especially the naturalism of Greek sculpture.</p> + +<p>For it is naturalism, not realism, not imitation. By all manner of +renunciations Greek sculpture is what it is. The material, itself +marble, is utterly unlike life, it is perfectly cold and still, it has +neither the texture nor the colouring of life. The story of Pygmalion +who fell in love with the statue he had himself sculptured is as false +as it is tasteless. Greek sculpture is the last form of art to incite +physical reaction. It is remote almost to the point of chill +abstraction. The statue in the round renounces not only human life +itself, but all the natural background and setting of life. The statues +of the Greek gods are Olympian in spirit as well as subject. They are +like the gods of Epicurus, cut loose alike from the affairs of men, and +even the ordered ways of Nature. So Lucretius<a name="fnm53" id="fnm53"></a><a href="#fn53" class="fnnum">53</a> pictures them:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><a name="pg203" id="pg203"></a><span class="pagenum">203</span>“The divinity of the gods is revealed and their tranquil abodes, +which neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow +congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless +ether o’ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely +around. Nature, too, supplies all their wants, and nothing ever +impairs their peace of mind.”</p></div> + +<p>Greek art moves on through a long course of technical accomplishment, of +ever-increasing mastery over materials and methods. But this course we +need not follow. For our argument the last word is said in the figures +of these Olympians translated into stone. Born of pressing human needs +and desires, images projected by active and even anxious ritual, they +pass into the upper air and dwell aloof, spectator-like and all but +spectral.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn43" id="fn43"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm43">43</a></span> II, 38.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn44" id="fn44"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm44">44</a></span> <i>Oed. Col.</i> 694, trans. D. S. MacColl.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn45" id="fn45"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm45">45</a></span> IX, 10, 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn46" id="fn46"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm46">46</a></span> See my <i>Themis</i>, p. 438.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn47" id="fn47"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm47">47</a></span> It is now held by some and good authorities that the +prehistoric paintings of cave-dwelling man had also a ritual origin; +that is, that the representations of animals were intended to act +magically, to increase the “supply of the animal or help the hunter to +catch him.” But, as this question is still pending, I prefer, tempting +though they are, not to use prehistoric paintings as material for my +argument.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn48" id="fn48"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm48">48</a></span> <i>Laws</i>, 653.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn49" id="fn49"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm49">49</a></span> <i>Athen.</i> XIV, 26, p. 629.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn50" id="fn50"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm50">50</a></span> D. S. MacColl, “A Year of Post-Impressionism,” <i>Nineteenth +Century</i>, p. 29. (1912.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn51" id="fn51"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm51">51</a></span> D. S. MacColl, <i>Nineteenth Century Art</i>, p. 20. (1902.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn52" id="fn52"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm52">52</a></span> D. S. MacColl, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 18.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn53" id="fn53"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm53">53</a></span> II, 18.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h2><a name="pg204" id="pg204"></a><span class="pagenum">204</span><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<h3>RITUAL, ART AND LIFE</h3> + + +<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the preceding chapters we have seen ritual emerge from the practical +doings of life. We have noted that in ritual we have the beginning of a +detachment from practical ends; we have watched the merely emotional +dance develop from an undifferentiated chorus into a spectacle performed +by actors and watched by spectators, a spectacle cut off, not only from +real life, but also from ritual issues; a spectacle, in a word, that has +become an end in itself. We have further seen that the choral dance is +an undifferentiated whole which later divides out into three clearly +articulate parts, the artist, the work of art, the spectator or art +lover. We are now in a position to ask what is the good of all this +antiquarian enquiry? Why is it, apart from the mere delight of +scientific enquiry, important to have seen that art arose from ritual?</p> + +<p><a name="pg205" id="pg205"></a><span class="pagenum">205</span>The answer is simple—</p> + +<p>The object of this book, as stated in the preface, is to try to throw +some light on the function of art, that is on what it has done, and +still does to-day, for life. Now in the case of a complex growth like +art, it is rarely if ever possible to understand its function—what it +does, how it works—unless we know something of how that growth began, +or, if its origin is hid, at least of the simpler forms of activity that +preceded it. For art, this earlier stage, this simpler form, which is +indeed itself as it were an embryo and rudimentary art, we found to +be—ritual.</p> + +<p>Ritual, then, has not been studied for its own sake, still less for its +connection with any particular dogma, though, as a subject of singular +gravity and beauty, ritual is well worth a lifetime’s study. It has been +studied because ritual is, we believe, a frequent and perhaps universal +transition stage between actual life and that peculiar contemplation of +or emotion towards life which we call art. All our long examination of +beast-dances, May-day festivals and even of Greek drama has had just +this for its object—to make clear that art—save perhaps in a few +specially <a name="pg206" id="pg206"></a><span class="pagenum">206</span>gifted natures—did not arise straight out of life, but out +of that collective emphasis of the needs and desires of life which we +have agreed to call ritual.</p> + +<p class="gap">Our formal argument is now over and ritual may drop out of the +discussion. But we would guard against a possible misunderstanding. We +would not be taken to imply that ritual is obsolete and must drop out of +life, giving place to the art it has engendered. It may well be that, +for certain temperaments, ritual is a perennial need. Natures specially +gifted can live lives that are emotionally vivid, even in the rare high +air of art or science; but many, perhaps most of us, breathe more freely +in the <i>medium</i>, literally the <i>midway</i> space, of some collective +ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original +thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been +perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready +made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a +host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and +freer, and every manifestation of life is regarded with a new reverence. +With<a name="pg207" id="pg207"></a><span class="pagenum">207</span> this fresh outpouring of the spirit, this fuller consciousness of +life, there comes a need for <i>first-hand</i> emotion and expression, and +that expression is found for all classes in a revival of the ritual +dance. Some of the strenuous, exciting, self-expressive dances of to-day +are of the soil and some exotic, but, based as they mostly are on very +primitive ritual, they stand as singular evidence of this real recurrent +need. Art in these latter days goes back as it were on her own steps, +recrossing the ritual bridge back to life.</p> + +<p class="gap">It remains to ask what, in the light of this ritual origin, is the +function of art? How do we relate it to other forms of life, to science, +to religion, to morality, to philosophy? These are big-sounding +questions, and towards their solution only hints here and there can be +offered, stray thoughts that have grown up out of this study of ritual +origins and which, because they have helped the writer, are offered, +with no thought of dogmatism, to the reader.</p> + +<p class="gap">We English are not supposed to be an artistic people, yet art, in some +form or another, bulks large in the national life. We have theatres, a +National Gallery, we have <a name="pg208" id="pg208"></a><span class="pagenum">208</span>art-schools, our tradesmen provide for us +“art-furniture,” we even hear, absurdly enough, of “art-colours.” +Moreover, all this is not a matter of mere antiquarian interest, we do +not simply go and admire the beauty of the past in museums; a movement +towards or about art is all alive and astir among us. We have new +developments of the theatre, problem plays, Reinhardt productions, +Gordon Craig scenery, Russian ballets. We have new schools of painting +treading on each other’s heels with breathless rapidity: Impressionists, +Post-Impressionists, Futurists. Art—or at least the desire for, the +interest in, art—is assuredly not dead.</p> + +<p>Moreover, and this is very important, we all feel about art a certain +obligation, such as some of us feel about religion. There is an “ought” +about it. Perhaps we do not really care much about pictures and poetry +and music, but we feel we “ought to.” In the case of music it has +happily been at last recognized that if you have not an “ear” you cannot +care for it, but two generations ago, owing to the unfortunate cheapness +and popularity of keyed instruments, it was widely held that one half of +humanity, the <a name="pg209" id="pg209"></a><span class="pagenum">209</span>feminine half, “ought” to play the piano. This “ought” +is, of course, like most social “oughts,” a very complex product, but +its existence is well worth noting.</p> + +<p>It is worth noting because it indicates a vague feeling that art has a +real value, that art is not a mere luxury, nor even a rarefied form of +pleasure. No one feels they <i>ought</i> to take pleasure in beautiful scents +or in the touch of velvet; they either do or they don’t. The first +point, then, that must be made clear is that art is of real value to +life in a perfectly clear biological sense; it invigorates, enhances, +promotes actual, spiritual, and through it physical life.</p> + +<p>This from our historical account we should at the outset expect, because +we have seen art, by way of ritual, arose out of life. And yet the +statement is a sort of paradox, for we have seen also that art differs +from ritual just in this, that in art, whether of the spectator or the +creator, the “motor reactions,” <i>i.e.</i> practical life, the life of +doing, is for the time checked. This is of the essence of the artist’s +vision, that he sees things detached and therefore more vividly, more +completely, and in a different light. This is <a name="pg210" id="pg210"></a><span class="pagenum">210</span>of the essence of the +artist’s emotion, that it is purified from personal desire.</p> + +<p>But, though the artist’s vision and emotion alike are modified, +purified, they are not devitalized. Far from that, by detachment from +action they are focussed and intensified. Life is enhanced, only it is a +different kind of life, it is the life of the image-world, of the +<i>imag</i>ination; it is the spiritual and human life, as differentiated +from the life we share with animals. It is a life we all, as human +beings, possess in some, but very varying, degrees; and the natural man +will always view the spiritual man askance, because he is not +“practical.” But the life of imagination, cut off from practical +reaction as it is, becomes in turn a motor-force causing new emotions, +and so pervading the general life, and thus ultimately becoming +“practical.” No one function is completely cut off from another. The +main function of art is probably to intensify and purify emotion, but it +is substantially certain that, if we did not feel, we could not think +and should not act. Still it remains true that, in artistic +contemplation and in the realms of the artist’s imagination not only are +practical motor-reactions cut off, <a name="pg211" id="pg211"></a><span class="pagenum">211</span>but intelligence is suffused in, and +to some extent subordinated to, emotion.</p> + +<p class="gap">One function, then, of art is to feed and nurture the imagination and +the spirit, and thereby enhance and invigorate the whole of human life. +This is far removed from the view that the end of art is to give +pleasure. Art does usually cause pleasure, singular and intense, and to +that which causes such pleasure we give the name of Beauty. But to +produce and enjoy Beauty is not the function of art. Beauty—or rather, +the sensation of Beauty—is what the Greeks would call an <i>epigignomenon +ti telos</i>, words hard to translate, something between a by-product and a +supervening perfection, a thing like—as Aristotle<a name="fnm54" id="fnm54"></a><a href="#fn54" class="fnnum">54</a> for once +beautifully says of pleasure—“the bloom of youth to a healthy young +body.”</p> + +<p>That this is so we see most clearly in the simple fact that, when the +artist begins to aim direct at Beauty, he usually misses it. We all +know, perhaps by sad experience, that the man who seeks out pleasure for +herself fails to find her. Let him do his work <a name="pg212" id="pg212"></a><span class="pagenum">212</span>well for that work’s +sake, exercise his faculties, “energize” as Aristotle would say, and he +will find pleasure come out unawares to meet him with her shining face; +but let him look for her, think of her, even desire her, and she hides +her head. A man goes out hunting, thinks of nothing but following the +hounds and taking his fences, being in at the death: his day is +full—alas! of pleasure, though he has scarcely known it. Let him forget +the fox and the fences, think of pleasure, desire her, and he will be in +at pleasure’s death.</p> + +<p>So it is with the artist. Let him feel strongly, and see raptly—that +is, in complete detachment. Let him cast this, his rapt vision and his +intense emotion, into outside form, a statue or a painting; that form +will have about it a nameless thing, an unearthly aroma, which we call +beauty; this nameless presence will cause in the spectator a sensation +too rare to be called pleasure, and we shall call it a “sense of +beauty.” But let the artist aim direct at Beauty, and she is gone, gone +before we hear the flutter of her wings.</p> + +<p class="gap">The sign manual, the banner, as it were, of artistic creation is for the +creative artist not <a name="pg213" id="pg213"></a><span class="pagenum">213</span>pleasure, but something better called joy. +Pleasure, it has been well said, is no more than an instrument contrived +by Nature to obtain from the individual the preservation and the +propagation of life. True joy is not the lure of life, but the +consciousness of the triumph of creation. Wherever joy is, creation has +been.<a name="fnm55" id="fnm55"></a><a href="#fn55" class="fnnum">55</a> It may be the joy of a mother in the physical creation of a +child; it may be the joy of the merchant adventurer in pushing out new +enterprise, or of the engineer in building a bridge, or of the artist in +a masterpiece accomplished; but it is always of the thing created. +Again, contrast joy with glory. Glory comes with success and is +exceedingly <i>pleasant</i>; it is not joyous. Some men say an artist’s crown +is glory; his deepest satisfaction is in the applause of his fellows. +There is no greater mistake; we care for praise just in proportion as we +are not sure we have succeeded. To the real creative artist even praise +and glory are swallowed up in the supreme joy of creation. Only the +artist himself feels the real divine fire, but it flames over into the +work of art, <a name="pg214" id="pg214"></a><span class="pagenum">214</span>and even the spectator warms his hands at the glow.</p> + +<p>We can now, I think, understand the difference between the artist and +true lover of art on the one hand, and the mere æsthete on the other. +The æsthete does not produce, or, if he produces, his work is thin and +scanty. In this he differs from the artist; he does not feel so strongly +and see so clearly that he is forced to utterance. He has no joy, only +pleasure. He cannot even feel the reflection of this creative joy. In +fact, he does not so much feel as want to feel. He seeks for pleasure, +for sensual pleasure as his name says, not for the grosser kinds, but +for pleasure of that rarefied kind that we call a sense of beauty. The +æsthete, like the flirt, is cold. It is not even that his senses are +easily stirred, but he seeks the sensation of stirring, and most often +feigns it, not finds it. The æsthete is no more released from his own +desires than the practical man, and he is without the practical man’s +healthy outlet in action. He sees life, not indeed in relation to +action, but to his own personal sensation. By this alone he is debarred +for ever from being an artist. As M. André Beaunier <a name="pg215" id="pg215"></a><span class="pagenum">215</span>has well observed, +by the irony of things, when we see life in relation to ourselves we +cannot really represent it at all. The profligate thinks he knows women. +It is his irony, his curse that, because he sees them always in relation +to his own desires, his own pleasure, he never really knows them at all.</p> + +<p>There is another important point. We have seen that art promotes a part +of life, the spiritual, image-making side. But this side, wonderful +though it is, is never the whole of actual life. There is always the +practical side. The artist is always also a man. Now the æsthete tries +to make his whole attitude artistic—that is, contemplative. He is +always looking and prying and savouring, <i>savourant</i>, as he would say, +when he ought to be living. The result is that there is nothing to +<i>savourer</i>. All art springs by way of ritual out of keen emotion towards +life, and even the power to appreciate art needs this emotional reality +in the spectator. The æsthete leads at best a parasite, artistic life, +dogged always by death and corruption.</p> + +<p class="gap">This brings us straight on to another question: What about Art and +Morality?<a name="pg216" id="pg216"></a><span class="pagenum">216</span> Is Art immoral, or non-moral, or highly moral? Here again +public opinion is worth examining. Artists, we are told, are bad +husbands, and they do not pay their debts. Or if they become good +husbands and take to paying their debts, they take also to wallowing in +domesticity and produce bad art or none at all; they get tangled in the +machinery of practical reactions. Art, again, is apt to deal with risky +subjects. Where should we be if there were not a Censor of Plays? Many +of these instructive attitudes about artists as immoral or non-moral, +explain themselves instantly if we remember that the artist is <i>ipso +facto</i> detached from practical life. In so far as he is an artist, for +each and every creative moment he is inevitably a bad husband, if being +a good husband means constant attention to your wife and her interests. +Spiritual creation <i>à deux</i> is a happening so rare as to be negligible.</p> + +<p>The remoteness of the artist, his essential inherent detachment from +motor-reaction, explains the perplexities of the normal censor. He, +being a “practical man,” regards emotion and vision, feeling and ideas, +as leading to action. He does not see that art arises out <a name="pg217" id="pg217"></a><span class="pagenum">217</span>of ritual and +that even ritual is one remove from practical life. In the censor’s +world the spectacle of the nude leads straight to desire, so the dancer +must be draped; the problem-play leads straight to the Divorce Court, +therefore it must be censored. The normal censor apparently knows +nothing of that world where motor-reactions are cut off, that house made +without hands, whose doors are closed on desire, eternal in the heavens. +The censor is not for the moment a <i>persona grata</i>, but let us give him +his due. He acts according to his lights and these often quite +adequately represent the average darkness. A normal audience contains +many “practical” men whose standard is the same as that of the normal +censor. Art—that is vision detached from practical reactions—is to +them an unknown world full of moral risks from which the artist is <i>quâ</i> +artist immune.</p> + +<p>So far we might perhaps say that art was non-moral. But the statement +would be misleading, since, as we have seen, art is in its very origin +social, and social means human and collective. Moral and social are, in +their final analysis, the same. That human, <a name="pg218" id="pg218"></a><span class="pagenum">218</span>collective emotion, out of +which we have seen the choral dance arise, is in its essence moral; that +is, it unites. “Art,” says Tolstoy, “has this characteristic, that it +unites people.” In this conviction, as we shall later see, he +anticipates the modern movement of the Unanimists (p. <a href="#pg249">249</a>).</p> + +<p>But there is another, and perhaps simpler, way in which art is moral. As +already suggested, it purifies by cutting off the motor-reactions of +personal desire. An artist deeply in love with his friend’s wife once +said: “If only I could paint her and get what I want from her, I could +bear it.” His wish strikes a chill at first; it sounds egotistic; it has +the peculiar, instinctive, inevitable cruelty of the artist, seeing in +human nature material for his art. But it shows us the moral side of +art. The artist was a good and sensitive man; he saw the misery he had +brought and would bring to people he loved, and he saw, or rather felt, +a way of escape; he saw that through art, through vision, through +detachment, desire might be slain, and the man within him find peace. To +some natures this instinct after art is almost their sole morality. If +they find themselves intimately entangled <a name="pg219" id="pg219"></a><span class="pagenum">219</span>in hate or jealousy or even +contempt, so that they are unable to see the object of their hate or +jealousy or contempt in a clear, quiet and lovely light, they are +restless, miserable, morally out of gear, and they are constrained to +fetter or slay personal desire and so find rest.</p> + +<p class="gap">This aloofness, this purgation of emotion from personal passion, art has +in common with philosophy. If the philosopher will seek after truth, +there must be, says Plotinus, a “turning away” of the spirit, a +detachment. He must aim at contemplation; action, he says, is “a +weakening of contemplation.” Our word <i>theory</i>, which we use in +connection with reasoning and which comes from the same Greek root as +<i>theatre</i>, means really looking fixedly at, contemplation; it is very +near in meaning to our <i>imagination</i>. But the philosopher differs from +the artist in this: he aims not only at the contemplation of truth, but +at the ordering of truths, he seeks to make of the whole universe an +intelligible structure. Further, he is not driven by the gadfly of +creation, he is not forced to cast his images into visible or audible +shape.<a name="pg220" id="pg220"></a><span class="pagenum">220</span> He is remoter from the push of life. Still, the philosopher, +like the artist, lives in a world of his own, with a spell of its own +near akin to beauty, and the secret of that spell is the same detachment +from the tyranny of practical life. The essence of art, says Santayana, +is “the steady contemplation of things in their order and worth.” He +might have been defining philosophy.</p> + +<p class="gap">If art and philosophy are thus near akin, art and science are in their +beginning, though not in their final development, contrasted. Science, +it seems, begins with the desire for practical utility. Science, as +Professor Bergson has told us, has for its initial aim the making of +tools for life. Man tries to find out the laws of Nature, that is, how +natural things behave, in order primarily that he may get the better of +them, rule over them, shape them to his ends. That is why science is at +first so near akin to magic—the cry of both is:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But, though the feet of science are thus firmly planted on the solid +ground of practical action, <a name="pg221" id="pg221"></a><span class="pagenum">221</span>her head, too, sometimes touches the +highest heavens. The real man of science, like the philosopher, soon +comes to seek truth and knowledge for their own sake. In art, in +science, in philosophy, there come eventually the same detachment from +personal desire and practical reaction; and to artist, man of science, +and philosopher alike, through this detachment there comes at times the +same peace that passeth all understanding.</p> + +<p>Attempts have been often made to claim for art the utility, the +tool-making property, that characterizes the beginnings of science. +Nothing is beautiful, it is sometimes said, that is not useful; the +beauty of a jug or a table depends, we are often told, on its perfect +adaptation to its use. There is here some confusion of thought and some +obvious, but possibly unconscious, special pleading. Much of art, +specially decorative art, arises out of utilities, but its aim and its +criterion is not utility. Art may be structural, commemorative, magical, +what-not, may grow up out of all manner of practical needs, but it is +not till it is cut loose from these practical needs that Art is herself +and comes to her own. This does not mean that the jugs or <a name="pg222" id="pg222"></a><span class="pagenum">222</span>tables are to +be bad jugs or tables, still less does it mean that the jugs or tables +should be covered with senseless machine-made ornament; but the utility +of the jug or table is a good in itself independent of, though often +associated with, its merit as art.</p> + +<p>No one has, I think, ever called Art “the handmaid of Science.” There +is, indeed, no need to establish a hierarchy. Yet in a sense the +converse is true and Science is the handmaid of Art. Art is only +practicable as we have seen, when it is possible safely to cut off +motor-reactions. By the long discipline of ritual man accustomed himself +to slacken his hold on action, and be content with a shadowy counterfeit +practice. Then last, when through knowledge he was relieved from the +need of immediate reaction to imminent realities, he loosed hold for a +moment altogether, and was free to look, and art was born. He can never +quit his hold for long; but it would seem that, as science advances and +life gets easier and easier, safer and safer, he may loose his hold for +longer spaces. Man subdues the world about him first by force and then +by reason; and when the material world is mastered and lies at his beck, +he needs brute force no longer, <a name="pg223" id="pg223"></a><span class="pagenum">223</span>and needs reason no more to make tools +for conquest. He is free to think for thought’s sake, he may trust +intuition once again, and above all dare to lose himself in +contemplation, dare to be more and more an artist. Only here there lurks +an almost ironical danger. Emotion towards life is the primary stuff of +which art is made; there might be a shortage of this very emotional +stuff of which art herself is ultimately compacted.</p> + +<p>Science, then, helps to make art possible by making life safer and +easier, it “makes straight in the desert a highway for our God.” But +only rarely and with special limitations easily understood does it +provide actual material for art. Science deals with abstractions, +concepts, class names, made by the intellect for convenience, that we +may handle life on the side desirable to us. When we classify things, +give them class-names, we simply mean that we note for convenience that +certain actually existing objects have similar qualities, a fact it is +convenient for us to know and register. These class-names being +<i>abstract</i>—that is, bundles of qualities rent away from living actual +objects, do not easily stir emotion, and, therefore, do not <a name="pg224" id="pg224"></a><span class="pagenum">224</span>easily +become material for art whose function it is to express and communicate +emotion. Particular qualities, like love, honour, faith, may and <i>do</i> +stir emotion; and certain bundles of qualities like, for example, +motherhood tend towards personification; but the normal class label like +horse, man, triangle does not easily become material for art; it remains +a practical utility for science.</p> + +<p>The abstractions, the class-names of science are in this respect quite +different from those other abstractions or unrealities already +studied—the gods of primitive religion. The very term we use shows +this. <i>Abstractions</i> are things, qualities, <i>dragged away</i> consciously +by the intellect, from actual things objectively existing. The primitive +gods are personifications—<i>i.e.</i> collective emotions taking shape in +imagined form. Dionysos has no more actual, objective existence than the +abstract horse. But the god Dionysos was not made by the intellect for +practical convenience, he was begotten by emotion, and, therefore, he +re-begets it. He and all the other gods are, therefore, the proper +material for art; he is, indeed, one of the earliest forms of art. The +abstract horse, <a name="pg225" id="pg225"></a><span class="pagenum">225</span>on the other hand, is the outcome of reflection. We +must honour him as of quite extraordinary use for the purposes of +practical life, but he leaves us cold and, by the artist, is best +neglected.</p> + +<p class="gap">There remains the relation of Art to Religion.<a name="fnm56" id="fnm56"></a><a href="#fn56" class="fnnum">56</a> By now, it may be +hoped, this relation is transparently clear. The whole object of the +present book has been to show how primitive art grew out of ritual, how +art is in fact but a later and more sublimated, more detached form of +ritual. We saw further that the primitive gods themselves were but +projections or, if we like it better, personifications of the rite. They +arose straight out of it.</p> + +<p>Now we say advisedly “primitive gods,” and this with no intention of +obscurantism. The god of later days, the unknown source of life, the +unresolved mystery of the world, is not begotten of a rite, is not, +essentially not, the occasion or object of art. With his relation to +art—which is indeed practically non-existent—we have nothing to do. Of +the other <a name="pg226" id="pg226"></a><span class="pagenum">226</span>gods we may safely say that not only are they objects of art, +they are its prime material; in a word, primitive theology is an early +stage in the formation of art. Each primitive god, like the rite from +which he sprang, is a half-way house between practical life and art; he +comes into being from a half, but only half, inhibited desire.</p> + +<p class="gap">Is there, then, no difference, except in degree of detachment, between +religion and art? Both have the like emotional power; both carry with +them a sense of obligation, though the obligation of religion is the +stronger. But there is one infallible criterion between the two which is +all-important, and of wide-reaching consequences. Primitive religion +asserts that her imaginations have objective existence; art more happily +makes no such claim. The worshipper of Apollo believes, not only that he +has imagined the lovely figure of the god and cast a copy of its shape +in stone, but he also believes that in the outside world the god Apollo +exists as an object. Now this is certainly untrue; that is, it does not +correspond with fact. There is no such thing as the god Apollo, and +<a name="pg227" id="pg227"></a><span class="pagenum">227</span>science makes a clean sweep of Apollo and Dionysos and all such +fictitious objectivities; they are <i>eidola</i>, idols, phantasms, not +objective realities. Apollo fades earlier than Dionysos because the +worshipper of Dionysos keeps hold of <i>the</i> reality that he and his +church or group have projected the god. He knows that <i>prier, c’est +élaborer Dieu</i>; or, as he would put it, he is “one with” his god. +Religion has this in common with art, that it discredits the actual +practical world; but only because it creates a new world and insists on +its actuality and objectivity.</p> + +<p>Why does the conception of a god impose obligation? Just because and in +so far as he claims to have objective existence. By giving to his god +from the outset objective existence the worshipper prevents his god from +taking his place in that high kingdom of spiritual realities which is +the imagination, and sets him down in that lower objective world which +always compels practical reaction. What might have been an ideal becomes +an idol. Straightway this objectified idol compels all sorts of ritual +reactions of prayer and praise and sacrifice. It is as though another +and a more exacting and <a name="pg228" id="pg228"></a><span class="pagenum">228</span>commanding fellow-man were added to the +universe. But a moment’s reflection will show that, when we pass from +the vague sense of power or <i>mana</i> felt by the savage to the personal +god, to Dionysos or Apollo, though it may seem a set back it is a real +advance. It is the substitution of a human and tolerably humane power +for an incalculable whimsical and often cruel force. The idol is a step +towards, not a step from, the ideal. Ritual makes these idols, and it is +the business of science to shatter them and set the spirit free for +contemplation. Ritual must wane that art may wax.</p> + +<p>But we must never forget that ritual is the bridge by which man passes, +the ladder by which he climbs from earth to heaven. The bridge must not +be broken till the transit is made. And the time is not yet. We must not +pull down the ladder till we are sure the last angel has climbed. Only +then, at last, we dare not leave it standing. Earth pulls hard, and it +may be that the angels who ascended might <i>de</i>scend and be for ever +fallen.</p> + +<p class="gap">It may be well at the close of our enquiry to test the conclusions at +which we have <a name="pg229" id="pg229"></a><span class="pagenum">229</span>arrived by comparing them with certain <i>endoxa</i>, as +Aristotle would call them, that is, opinions and theories actually +current at the present moment. We take these contemporary controversies, +not implying that they are necessarily of high moment in the history of +art, or that they are in any fundamental sense new discoveries; but +because they are at this moment current and vital, and consequently form +a good test for the adequacy of our doctrines. It will be satisfactory +if we find our view includes these current opinions, even if it to some +extent modifies them and, it may be hoped, sets them in a new light.</p> + +<p>We have already considered the theory that holds art to be the creation +or pursuit or enjoyment of beauty. The other view falls readily into two +groups:</p> + +<p>(1) The “imitation” theory, with its modification, the idealization +theory, which holds that art either copies Nature, or, out of natural +materials, improves on her.</p> + +<p>(2) The “expression” theory, which holds that the aim of art is to +express the emotions and thoughts of the artist.</p> + +<p><a name="pg230" id="pg230"></a><span class="pagenum">230</span>The “Imitation” theory is out of fashion now-a-days. Plato and Aristotle +held it; though Aristotle, as we have seen, did not mean by “imitating +Nature” quite what we mean to-day. The Imitation theory began to die +down with the rise of Romanticism, which stressed the personal, +individual emotion of the artist. Whistler dealt it a rude, +ill-considered blow by his effective, but really foolish and irrelevant, +remark that to attempt to create Art by imitating Nature was “like +trying to make music by sitting on the piano.” But, as already noted, +the Imitation theory of art was really killed by the invention of +photography. It was impossible for the most insensate not to see that in +a work of art, of sculpture or painting, there was an element of value +not to be found in the exact transcript of a photograph. Henceforth the +Imitation theory lived on only in the weakened form of Idealization.</p> + +<p>The reaction against the Imitation theory has naturally and inevitably +gone much too far. We have “thrown out the child with the bath-water.” +All through the present book we have tried to show that art <i>arises +from</i> ritual, and ritual is in its essence a faded <a name="pg231" id="pg231"></a><span class="pagenum">231</span>action, an +imitation. Moreover, every work of art <i>is</i> a copy of something, only +not a copy of anything having actual existence in the outside world. +Rather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the +artist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is +released from certain practical reactions.</p> + +<p class="gap">The Impressionism that dominated the pictorial art of the later years of +the nineteenth century was largely a modified and very delicate +imitation. Breaking with conventions as to how things are <i>supposed to +be</i>—conventions mainly based not on seeing but on knowing or +imagining—the Impressionist insists on purging his vision from +knowledge, and representing things not as they are but as they really +<i>look</i>. He imitates Nature not as a whole, but as she presents herself +to his eyes. It was a most needful and valuable purgation, since +painting is the art proper of the eye. But, when the new effects of the +world as simply <i>seen</i>, the new material of light and shadow and tone, +had been to some extent—never completely—mastered, there was +inevitable reaction. Up sprang Post-<a name="pg232" id="pg232"></a><span class="pagenum">232</span>Impressionists and Futurists. They +will not gladly be classed together, but both have this in common—they +are Expressionists, not Impressionists, not Imitators.</p> + +<p>The Expressionists, no matter by what name they call themselves, have +one criterion. They believe that art is not the copying or idealizing of +Nature, or of any aspect of Nature, but the expression and communication +of the artist’s emotion. We can see that, between them and the +Imitationists, the Impressionists form a delicate bridge. They, too, +focus their attention on the artist rather than the object, only it is +on the artist’s particular <i>vision</i>, his impression, what he actually +sees, not on his emotion, what he feels.</p> + +<p>Modern life is <i>not</i> simple—cannot be simple—ought not to be; it is +not for nothing that we are heirs to the ages. Therefore the art that +utters and expresses our emotion towards modern life cannot be simple; +and, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living +tangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and +order it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One +art, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous, +un<a name="pg233" id="pg233"></a><span class="pagenum">233</span>conscious life to-day, and that is Music; the other arts stand round +arrayed, half paralyzed, with drooping, empty hands. The nineteenth +century saw vast developments in an art that could express abstract, +unlocalized, unpersonified feelings more completely than painting or +poetry, the art of Music.</p> + +<p class="gap">As a modern critic<a name="fnm57" id="fnm57"></a><a href="#fn57" class="fnnum">57</a> has well observed: “In tone and rhythm music has +a notation for every kind and degree of action and passion, presenting +abstract moulds of its excitement, fluctuation, suspense, crisis, +appeasement; and all this <i>anonymously</i>, without place, actors, +circumstances, named or described, without a word spoken. Poetry has to +supply definite thought, arguments driving at a conclusion, ideas +mortgaged to this or that creed or system; and to give force to these +can command only a few rhythms limited by the duration of a human breath +and the pitch of an octave. The little effects worked out in this small +compass music sweeps up and builds into vast fabrics of emotion with a +dissolute freedom undreamed of in any other art.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg234" id="pg234"></a><span class="pagenum">234</span>It may be that music provides for a century too stagnant and listless to +act out its own emotions, too reflective to be frankly sensuous, a +shadowy pageant of sense and emotion, that serves as a <i>katharsis</i> or +purgation.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, “an art that came out of the old world two centuries ago, with a +few chants, love-songs, and dances; that a century ago was still tied to +the words of a mass or an opera; or threading little dance-movements +together in a ‘suite,’ became in the last century this extraordinary +debauch, in which the man who has never seen a battle, loved a woman, or +worshipped a god, may not only ideally, but through the response of his +nerves and pulses to immediate rhythmical attack, enjoy the ghosts of +struggle, rapture, and exaltation with a volume and intricacy, an +anguish, a triumph, an irresponsibility, unheard of. An amplified +pattern of action and emotion is given: each man may fit to it what +images he will.”<a name="fnm58" id="fnm58"></a><a href="#fn58" class="fnnum">58</a></p> + +<p class="gap">If our contention throughout this book be correct the Expressionists are +in one matter abundantly right. Art, we have seen, again <a name="pg235" id="pg235"></a><span class="pagenum">235</span>and again +rises by way of ritual out of emotion, out of life keenly and vividly +livid. The younger generation are always talking of life; they have a +sort of cult of life. Some of the more valorous spirits among them even +tend to disparage art that life may be the more exalted. “Stop painting +and sculping,” they cry, “and go and see a football match.” There you +have life! Life is, undoubtedly, essential to art because life is the +stuff of emotion, but some thinkers and artists have an oddly limited +notion of what life is. It must, it seems, in the first place, be +essentially physical. To sit and dream in your study is not to live. The +reason of this odd limitation is easy to see. We all think life is +especially the sort of life we are <i>not</i> living ourselves. The +hard-worked University professor thinks that “Life” is to be found in a +French <i>café</i>; the polished London journalist looks for “Life” among the +naked Polynesians. The cult of savagery, and even of simplicity, in +every form, simply spells complex civilization and diminished physical +vitality.</p> + +<p>The Expressionist is, then, triumphantly right in the stress he lays on +emotion; but he is not right if he limits life to certain of <a name="pg236" id="pg236"></a><span class="pagenum">236</span>its more +elementary manifestations; and still less is he right, to our minds, in +making life and art in any sense coextensive. Art, as we have seen, +sustains and invigorates life, but only does it by withdrawal from these +very same elementary forms of life, by inhibiting certain sensuous +reactions.</p> + +<p class="gap">In another matter one section of Expressionists, the Futurists, are in +the main right. The emotion to be expressed is the emotion of to-day, or +still better to-morrow. The mimetic dance arose not only nor chiefly out +of reflection on the past; but out of either immediate joy or imminent +fear or insistent hope for the future. We are not prepared perhaps to go +all lengths, to “burn all museums” because of their contagious +corruption, though we might be prepared to “banish the nude for the +space of ten years.” If there is to be any true living art, it must +arise, not from the contemplation of Greek statues, not from the revival +of folk-songs, not even from the re-enacting of Greek plays, but from a +keen emotion felt towards things and people living to-day, in modern +conditions, including, among other and deeper forms of life, the haste +and <a name="pg237" id="pg237"></a><span class="pagenum">237</span>hurry of the modern street, the whirr of motor cars and aeroplanes.</p> + +<p>There are artists alive to-day, strayed revellers, who wish themselves +back in the Middle Ages, who long for the time when each man would have +his house carved with a bit of lovely ornament, when every village +church had its Madonna and Child, when, in a word, art and life and +religion went hand in hand, not sharply sundered by castes and +professions. But we may not put back the clock, and, if by +differentiation we lose something, we gain much. The old choral dance on +the orchestral floor was an undifferentiated thing, it had a beauty of +its own; but by its differentiation, by the severance of artist and +actors and spectators, we have gained—the drama. We may not cast +reluctant eyes backwards; the world goes forward to new forms of life, +and the Churches of to-day must and should become the Museums of +to-morrow.</p> + +<p class="gap">It is curious and instructive to note that Tolstoy’s theory of Art, +though not his practice, is essentially Expressive and even approaches +the dogmas of the Futurist. Art is to him just the transmission of +personal <a name="pg238" id="pg238"></a><span class="pagenum">238</span>emotion to others. It may be bad emotion or it may be good +emotion, emotion it must be. To take his simple and instructive +instance: a boy goes out into a wood and meets a wolf, he is frightened, +he comes back and tells the other villagers what he felt, how he went to +the wood feeling happy and light-hearted and the wolf came, and what the +wolf looked like, and how he began to be frightened. This is, according +to Tolstoy, art. Even if the boy never saw a wolf at all, if he had +really at another time been frightened, and if he was able to conjure up +fear in himself and communicate it to others—that also would be art. +The essential is, according to Tolstoy, that he should feel himself and +so represent his feeling that he communicates it to others.<a name="fnm59" id="fnm59"></a><a href="#fn59" class="fnnum">59</a> +Art-schools, art-professionalism, art-criticism are all useless or worse +than useless, because they cannot teach a man to feel. Only life can do +that.</p> + +<p>All art is, according to Tolstoy, good <i>quâ</i><a name="pg239" id="pg239"></a><span class="pagenum">239</span> art that succeeds in +transmitting emotion. But there is good emotion and bad emotion, and the +only right material for art is good emotion, and the only good emotion, +the only emotion worth expressing, is subsumed, according to Tolstoy, in +the religion of the day. This is how he explains the constant affinity +in nearly all ages of art and religion. Instead of regarding religion as +an early phase of art, he proceeds to define religious perception as the +highest social ideal of the moment, as that “understanding of the +meaning of life which represents the highest level to which men of that +society have attained, an understanding defining the highest good at +which that society aims.” “Religious perception in a society,” he +beautifully adds, “is like the direction of a flowing river. If the +river flows at all, it must have a direction.” Thus, religion, to +Tolstoy, is not dogma, not petrifaction, it makes indeed dogma +impossible. The religious perception of to-day flows, Tolstoi says, in +the Christian channel towards the union of man in a common brotherhood. +It is the business of the modern artist to feel and transmit emotion +towards this unity of man.</p> + +<p><a name="pg240" id="pg240"></a><span class="pagenum">240</span>Now it is not our purpose to examine whether Tolstoy’s definition of +religion is adequate or indeed illuminating. What we wish to note is +that he grasps the truth that in art we must look and feel, and look and +feel forward, not backward, if we would live. Art somehow, like +language, is always feeling forward to newer, fuller, subtler emotions. +She seems indeed in a way to feel ahead even of science; a poet will +forecast dimly what a later discovery will confirm. Whether and how long +old channels, old forms will suffice for the new spirit can never be +foreseen.</p> + +<p class="gap">We end with a point of great importance, though the doctrine we would +emphasize may be to some a hard saying, even a stumbling-block. Art, as +Tolstoy divined, is social, not individual. Art is, as we have seen, +social in origin, it remains and must remain social in function. The +dance from which the drama rose was a choral dance, the dance of a band, +a group, a church, a community, what the Greeks called a <i>thiasos</i>. The +word means a <i>band</i> and a <i>thing of devotion</i>; and reverence, devotion, +collective emotion, is social in its very being. That band was, to +<a name="pg241" id="pg241"></a><span class="pagenum">241</span>begin with, as we saw, the whole collection of initiated tribesmen, +linked by a common name, rallying round a common symbol.</p> + +<p>Even to-day, when individualism is rampant, art bears traces of its +collective, social origin. We feel about it, as noted before, a certain +“ought” which always spells social obligation. Moreover, whenever we +have a new movement in art, it issues from a group, usually from a small +professional coterie, but marked by strong social instincts, by a +missionary spirit, by intemperate zeal in propaganda, by a tendency, +always social, to crystallize conviction into dogma. We can scarcely, +unless we are as high-hearted as Tolstoy, hope now-a-days for an art +that shall be world-wide. The tribe is extinct, the family in its old +rigid form moribund, the social groups we now look to as centres of +emotion are the groups of industry, of professionalism and of sheer +mutual attraction. Small and strange though such groups may appear, they +are real social factors.</p> + +<p>Now this social, collective element in art is too apt to be forgotten. +When an artist claims that expression is the aim of art he is too apt to +mean self-expression only—<a name="pg242" id="pg242"></a><span class="pagenum">242</span>utterance of individual emotion. Utterance +of individual emotion is very closely neighboured by, is almost +identical with, self-enhancement. What should be a generous, and in part +altruistic, exaltation becomes mere <i>megalomania</i>. This egotism is, of +course, a danger inherent in all art. The suspension of motor-reactions +to the practical world isolates the artist, cuts him off from his +fellow-men, makes him in a sense an egotist. Art, said Zola, is “the +world seen through a temperament.” But this suspension is, not that he +should turn inward to feed on his own vitals, but rather to free him for +contemplation. All great art releases from self.</p> + +<p class="gap">The young are often temporary artists: art, being based on life, calls +for a strong vitality. The young are also self-centred and seek +self-enhancement. This need of self-expression is a sort of artistic +impulse. The young are, partly from sheer immaturity, still more through +a foolish convention, shut out from real life; they are secluded, forced +to become in a sense artists, or, if they have not the power for that, +at least self-aggrandizers. They write lyric poems, they love +masquerad<a name="pg243" id="pg243"></a><span class="pagenum">243</span>ing, they focus life on to themselves in a way which, later +on, life itself makes impossible. This pseudo-art, this +self-aggrandizement usually dies a natural death before the age of +thirty. If it live on, one remedy is, of course, the scientific +attitude; that attitude which is bent on considering and discovering the +relations of things among themselves, not their personal relation to us. +The study of science is a priceless discipline in self-abnegation, but +only in negation; it looses us from self, it does not link us to others. +The real and natural remedy for the egotism of youth is Life, not +necessarily the haunting of <i>cafés</i>, or even the watching of football +matches, but strenuous activity in the simplest human relations of daily +happenings. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”</p> + +<p class="gap">There is always apt to be some discord between the artist and the large +practical world in which he lives, but those ages are happiest in which +the discord is least. The nineteenth century, amid its splendid +achievements in science and industry, in government and learning, and +above all in humanity, illustrates this conflict in an interesting way.<a name="pg244" id="pg244"></a><span class="pagenum">244</span> +To literature, an art which can explain itself, the great public world +lent on the whole a reverent and intelligent ear. Its great prose +writers were at peace with their audience and were inspired by great +public interests. Some of the greatest, for example Tolstoy, produced +their finest work on widely human subjects, and numbered their readers +and admirers probably by the million. Writers like Dickens, Thackeray, +Kingsley, Mill, and Carlyle, even poets like Tennyson and Browning, were +full of great public interests and causes, and, in different degrees and +at different stages of their lives, were thoroughly and immensely +popular. On the other hand, one can find, at the beginning of the +period, figures like Blake and Shelley, and all through it a number of +painters—the pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists—walking like aliens +in a Philistine world. Even great figures like Burne-Jones and Whistler +were for the greater part of their lives unrecognized or mocked at. +Millais reached the attention of the world, but was thought by the +stricter fraternity to have in some sense or other sold his soul and +committed the great sin of considering the bourgeois. The bourgeois +should be despised not partially <a name="pg245" id="pg245"></a><span class="pagenum">245</span>but completely. His life, his +interests, his code of ethics and conduct must all be matters of entire +indifference or amused contempt, to the true artist who intends to do +his own true work and call his soul his own.</p> + +<p>At a certain moment, during the eighties and nineties, it looked as if +these doctrines were generally accepted, and the divorce between art and +the community had become permanent. But it seems as if this attitude, +which coincided with a period of reaction in political matters and a +recrudescence of a belief in force and on unreasoned authority, is +already passing away. There are not wanting signs that art, both in +painting and sculpture, and in poetry and novel-writing, is beginning +again to realize its social function, beginning to be impatient of mere +individual emotion, beginning to aim at something bigger, more bound up +with a feeling towards and for the common weal.</p> + +<p>Take work like that of Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. Masefield or Mr. Arnold +Bennett. Without appraising its merits or demerits we cannot but note +that the social sense is always there, whether it be of a class or of a +whole community. In a play like <i>Justice</i> the writer <a name="pg246" id="pg246"></a><span class="pagenum">246</span>does not “express” +himself, he does not even merely show the pathos of a single human +being’s destiny, he sets before us a much bigger thing—man tragically +caught and torn in the iron hands of a man-made machine, Society itself. +Incarnate Law is the protagonist, and, as it happens, the villain of the +piece. It is a fragment of <i>Les Misérables</i> over again, in a severer and +more restrained technique. An art like this starts, no doubt, from +emotion towards personal happenings—there is nothing else from which it +can start; but, even as it sets sail for wider seas, it is loosed from +personal moorings.</p> + +<p>Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul, and art +is beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is +exposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness +tends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of +creation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the +reformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that +the artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not at +the moment of creation.</p> + +<p>The art of Mr. Arnold Bennett gets its <a name="pg247" id="pg247"></a><span class="pagenum">247</span>bigness, its collectivity, in +part—from extension over time. Far from seeking after beauty, he almost +goes out to embrace ugliness. He does not spare us even dullness, that +we may get a sense of the long, waste spaces of life, their dreary +reality. We are keenly interested in the loves of hero and heroine, but +all the time something much bigger is going on, generation after +generation rolls by in ceaseless panorama; it is the life not of Edwin +and Hilda, it is the life of the Five Towns. After a vision so big, to +come back to the ordinary individualistic love-story is like looking +through the wrong end of a telescope.</p> + +<p>Art of high quality and calibre is seldom obscure. The great popular +writers of the nineteenth century—Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, +Tolstoy—wrote so that all could understand. A really big artist has +something important to say, something vast to show, something that moves +him and presses on him; and he will say it simply because he must get it +said. He will trick it out with no devices, most of all with no +obscurities. It has vexed and torn him enough while it was pushing its +way to be born. He has no peace till it is said, and said as clearly as +he <a name="pg248" id="pg248"></a><span class="pagenum">248</span>may. He says it, not consciously for the sake of others, but for +himself, to ease him from the burden of big thought. Moreover, art, +whose business is to transmit emotion, should need no commentary. Art +comes out of <i>theoria</i>, contemplation, steady looking at, but never out +of <i>theory</i>. Theory can neither engender nor finally support it. An +exhibition of pictures with an explanatory catalogue, scientifically +interesting though it may be, stands, in a sense, self-condemned.</p> + +<p>We must, however, remember that all art is not of the whole community. +There are small groups feeling their own small but still collective +emotion, fashioning their own language, obscure sometimes to all but +themselves. They are right so to fashion it, but, if they appeal to a +wider world, they must strive to speak in the vulgar tongue, +understanded of the people.</p> + +<p class="gap">It is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the times, a mark of the revival of +social as contrasted with merely individualistic instincts that a +younger generation of poets, at least in France, tend to form themselves +into small groups, held together not merely by eccen<a name="pg249" id="pg249"></a><span class="pagenum">249</span>tricities of +language or garb, but by some deep inner conviction strongly held in +common. Such a unity of spirit is seen in the works of the latter group +of thinkers and writers known as <i>Unanimists</i>. They tried and failed to +found a community. Their doctrine, if doctrine convictions so fluid can +be called, is strangely like the old group-religion of the common dance, +only more articulate. Of the Unanimist it might truly be said, “<i>il +buvait l’indistinction</i>.” To him the harsh old Roman mandate <i>Divide et +impera</i>, “Divide men that you may rule them,” spells death. His dream is +not of empire and personal property but of the realization of life, +common to all. To this school the great reality is the social group, +whatever form it take, family, village or town. Their only dogma is the +unity and immeasurable sanctity of life. In practice they are Christian, +yet wholly free from the asceticism of modern Christianity. Their +attitude in art is as remote as possible from, it is indeed the very +antithesis to, the æsthetic exclusiveness of the close of last century. +Like St. Peter, the Unanimists have seen a sheet let down and heard a +voice from heaven saying: “Call thou nothing common nor unclean.”</p> + +<p><a name="pg250" id="pg250"></a><span class="pagenum">250</span>Above all, the Unanimist remembers and realizes afresh the old truth +that “no man liveth unto himself.” According to the Expressionist’s +creed, as we have seen, the end of art is to utter and communicate +emotion. The fullest and finest emotions are those one human being feels +towards another. Every sympathy is an enrichment of life, every +antipathy a negation. It follows then, that, for the Unanimist, Love is +the fulfilling of his Law.</p> + +<p>It is a beautiful and life-giving faith, felt and with a perfect +sincerity expressed towards all nature by the Indian poet Tagore, and +towards humanity especially by M. Vildrac in his <i>Book of Love</i> (“Livre +d’Amour”). He tells us in his “Commentary” how to-day the poet, sitting +at home with pen and paper before him, feels that he is pent in, stifled +by himself. He had been about to re-tell the old, old story of himself, +to set himself once more on the stage of his poem—the same old dusty +self tricked out, costumed anew. Suddenly he knows the figure to be +tawdry and shameful. He is hot all over when he looks at it; he must out +into the air, into the street, out of the stuffy museum <a name="pg251" id="pg251"></a><span class="pagenum">251</span>where so long +he has stirred the dead egotist ashes, out into the bigger life, the +life of his fellows; he must live, with them, by them, in them.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I am weary of deeds done inside myself,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am weary of voyages inside myself,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of heroism wrought by strokes of the pen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of a beauty made up of formulæ.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I am ashamed of lying to my work,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of my work lying to my life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And of being able to content myself,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By burning sweet spices,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the mouldering smell that is master here.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Again, in “The Conquerors,” the poet dreams of the Victorious One who +has no army, the Knight who rides afoot, the Crusader without breviary +or scrip, the Pilgrim of Love who, by the shining in his eyes, draws all +men to him, and they in turn draw other men until, at last:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“The time came in the land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The time of the Great Conquest,<br /></span><a name="pg252" id="pg252"></a><span class="pagenum">252</span> +<span class="i0">When the people with this desire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Left the threshold of their door<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To go forth towards one another.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“And the time came in the land<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When to fill all its story<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was nothing but songs in unison,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>One round danced about the houses</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One battle and one victory.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And so our tale ends where it began, with the Choral Dance.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn54" id="fn54"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm54">54</a></span> <i>Ethics</i>, X, 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn55" id="fn55"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm55">55</a></span> H. Bergson, <i>Life and Consciousness</i>, Huxley Lecture, May +29, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn56" id="fn56"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm56">56</a></span> Religion is here used as meaning the worship of some form +of god, as the practical counterpart of theology.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn57" id="fn57"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm57">57</a></span> Mr. D. S. MacColl.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn58" id="fn58"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm58">58</a></span> D. S. MacColl, <i>Nineteenth Century Art</i>, p. 21. (1902.)</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="fn59" id="fn59"></a><span class="label"><a href="#fnm59">59</a></span> It is interesting to find, since the above was written, +that the Confession of Faith published in the catalogue of the Second +Post-Impressionist Exhibition (1912, p. 21) reproduces, consciously or +unconsciously, Tolstoy’s view: <i>We have ceased to ask, “What does this +picture represent?” and ask instead, “What does it make us feel?”</i></p></div> +</div> + + +<h2><a name="pg253" id="pg253"></a><span class="pagenum">253</span><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2> + + +<p>For Ancient and Primitive Ritual the best general book of reference is:</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Frazer, J. G.</span> <i>The Golden Bough</i>, 3rd edition, 1911, from which +most of the instances in the present manual are taken. Part IV of +<i>The Golden Bough</i>, i.e. the section dealing with <i>Adonis, Attis, +and Osiris</i>, should especially be consulted.</p> + +<p>Also an earlier, epoch-making book:</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Robertson Smith, W.</span> <i>Lectures on the Religion of the Semites</i>, +1889 [3rd edition, 1927]. For certain fundamental ritual notions, +<i>e.g.</i> sacrifice, holiness, etc.</p> + +<p>[For Egyptian and Babylonian ritual: <i>Myth and Ritual</i>, edited by +<span class="smcap">S. H. Hooke</span>, 1933.]</p> + +<p>For the Greek Drama, as arising out of the ritual dance: Professor +<span class="smcap">Gilbert Murray’s</span> <i>Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in +Greek Tragedy</i> in <span class="smcap">J. E. Harrison’s</span> <i>Themis</i>, 1912, and pp. +327-40 in the same book; and for the religion of Dionysos and the drama, +<span class="smcap">J. E. Harrison’s</span> <i>Prolegomena</i>, 1907, Chapters VIII and X. For +the fusion of the ritual dance and hero-worship, see <span class="smcap">W. Leaf</span>, +<i>Homer and History</i>, 1915, Chapter VII. For a quite different view of +drama as arising wholly from the worship of the dead, see Professor +<span class="smcap">W. Ridgeway</span>, <i>The Origin of Tragedy</i>, 1910. An important +discussion of the relation of <i>tragedy</i> to the winter festival of the +<i>Lenaia</i> appears in <span class="smcap">A. B. Cook’s</span> <i>Zeus</i>, vol. i, sec. 6 (xxi) +[1914].</p> + +<p>[More recent works on Greek drama: <span class="smcap">A. W. Pickard-Cambridge</span>, +<i>Dithyramb</i>, <i>Tragedy and Comedy</i>, 1927; <span class="smcap">G. Thomson</span>, <i>Aeschylus +and Athens</i>, 1941.]</p> + +<p>For Primitive Art:</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Hirn, Y.</span> <i>The Origins of Art</i>, 1900. The main theory of the +book the present writer believes to be inadequate, but it contains +an excellent collection of facts relating to Art, Magic, Art and +Work, Mimetic Dances, etc., and much valuable discussion of +principles.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Grosse, E.</span> <i>The Beginnings of Art</i>, 1897, in the Chicago +Anthropological Series. Valuable for its full illustrations of +primitive art, as well as for text.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">Boas, F.</span>, <i>Primitive Art</i>, 1927.]</p> + +<p><a name="pg254" id="pg254"></a><span class="pagenum">254</span>For the Theory of Art:</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Tolstoy, L.</span> <i>What is Art?</i> Translated by Aylmer Maude, in the +Scott Library.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Fry, Roger E.</span> <i>An Essay in Æsthetics</i>, in the <i>New Quarterly</i>, +April 1909, p. 174.</p> + +<p>This is the best general statement of the function of Art known to me. +It should be read in connection with Mr. Bullough’s article, quoted on +p. <a href="#pg129">129</a>, which gives the psychological basis of a similar view of the +nature of art. My own theory was formulated independently, in relation +to the development of the Greek theatre, but I am very glad to find that +it is in substantial agreement with those of two such distinguished +authorities on æsthetics. For my later conclusions on art, see <i>Alpha +and Omega</i>, 1915, pp. 208-220.</p> + +<p>[<span class="smcap">Caudwell, C.</span>, <i>Illusion and Reality</i>, 1937.]</p> + +<p>For more advanced students:</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Dussauze, Henri.</span> <i>Les Règles esthétiques et les lois du +sentiment</i>, 1911.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><span class="smcap">Müller-Freienfels, R.</span> +<i>Psychologie der Kunst</i>, 1912.</p> + + + + + +<h2><a name="pg255" id="pg255"></a><span class="pagenum">255</span><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> + +<div class="index"> + +<ul class="IX"><li>Abstraction, <a href="#pg224">224</a></li> + +<li>Adonis, rites of, <a href="#pg19">19</a>, <a href="#pg20">20</a>, <a href="#pg54">54</a>-<a href="#pg56">56</a> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>——, gardens of, <a href="#pg149">149</a></li> +<li>——, as tree spirit, <a href="#pg149">149</a></li> +</ul></li> +<li>Æschylus, <a href="#pg47">47</a></li> + +<li>Aesthete, not artist, <a href="#pg214">214</a>-<a href="#pg215">215</a></li> + +<li>Agon, <a href="#pg15">15</a></li> + +<li>Anagnorisis, or recognition, <a href="#pg15">15</a></li> + +<li>Anthesteria, spring festival of, <a href="#pg147">147</a>-<a href="#pg149">149</a></li> + +<li>Apollo Belvedere, <a href="#pg171">171</a></li> + +<li>Aristotle on art, <a href="#pg198">198</a></li> + +<li>Art and beauty, <a href="#pg213">213</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>—— and imitation, <a href="#pg230">230</a></li> +<li>—— and morality, <a href="#pg215">215</a></li> +<li>—— and nature, <a href="#pg198">198</a></li> +<li>—— and religion, <a href="#pg225">225</a></li> +<li>——, emotional factor in, <a href="#pg26">26</a></li> +<li>——, social elements in, <a href="#pg241">241</a>-<a href="#pg248">248</a></li> +</ul></li> +<li>Ascension festival, <a href="#pg69">69</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Bear, Aino festival, <a href="#pg92">92</a>-<a href="#pg99">99</a></li> + +<li>Beast dances, <a href="#pg45">45</a>, <a href="#pg46">46</a></li> + +<li>Beauty and art, <a href="#pg211">211</a></li> + +<li>Bergson on art, <a href="#pg134">134</a></li> + +<li>Birth, rites of new, <a href="#pg104">104</a>-<a href="#pg113">113</a></li> + +<li>Bouphonia, <a href="#pg91">91</a>-<a href="#pg92">92</a></li> + +<li>Bull-driving in spring, <a href="#pg85">85</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>——, festival at Magnesia, <a href="#pg87">87</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Cat’s-cradle, as magical charm, <a href="#pg66">66</a></li> + +<li>Censor, function of, <a href="#pg216">216</a></li> + +<li>Charila, spring festival, <a href="#pg80">80</a></li> + +<li>Chorus in Greek drama, <a href="#pg121">121</a>-<a href="#pg128">128</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Dancing, a work, <a href="#pg30">30</a>-<a href="#pg31">31</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>——, magical, <a href="#pg31">31</a>-<a href="#pg35">35</a></li> +<li>——, commemorative, <a href="#pg44">44</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Daphnephoros, <a href="#pg186">186</a></li> + +<li>Death and winter, <a href="#pg67">67</a>-<a href="#pg72">72</a></li> + +<li>Dikè as <i>way of life</i>, <a href="#pg116">116</a></li> + +<li>Dionysis, <a href="#pg12">12</a>, <a href="#pg150">150</a></li> + +<li>Dionysis as Holy Child, <a href="#pg103">103</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>—— as tree god, <a href="#pg102">102</a></li> +<li>—— as young man, <a href="#pg113">113</a>-<a href="#pg115">115</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Dithyramb, <a href="#pg75">75</a>-<a href="#pg89">89</a></li> + +<li>Drama and Dromenon, <a href="#pg35">35</a>-<a href="#pg38">38</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Easter, in Modern Greece, <a href="#pg73">73</a></li> + +<li>Eiresione, <a href="#pg114">114</a></li> + +<li>Epheboi, Athenian, <a href="#pg12">12</a></li> + +<li>Euchè, meaning of, <a href="#pg25">25</a></li> + +<li>Expressionists, <a href="#pg232">232</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Futurists, <a href="#pg232">232</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Ghosts as fertilizers, <a href="#pg149">149</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Homer, influence on drama, <a href="#pg145">145</a>-<a href="#pg166">166</a></li> + +<li>Horæ or seasons, <a href="#pg116">116</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Idol and ideal, <a href="#pg227">227</a></li> + +<li>Impressionism, <a href="#pg231">231</a></li> + +<li>Imitation, <a href="#pg21">21</a>-<a href="#pg23">23</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>——, ceremonies in Australia, <a href="#pg64">64</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Individualism, <a href="#pg241">241</a></li> + +<li>Initiation ceremonies, <a href="#pg64">64</a>, <a href="#pg106">106</a>-<a href="#pg113">113</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Jack-in-the-Green, <a href="#pg60">60</a>, <a href="#pg187">187</a>, <a href="#pg190">190</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Kangaroos, dance of, <a href="#pg46">46</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Landscape, art of, <a href="#pg199">199</a>-<a href="#pg201">201</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Maeterlinck, <a href="#pg200">200</a></li> + +<li>May-day at Cambridge, <a href="#pg57">57</a></li> + +<li><a name="pg256" id="pg256"></a><span class="pagenum">256</span>May, queen of the, <a href="#pg57">57</a>-<a href="#pg61">61</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>——, king of the, <a href="#pg193">193</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Mime, meaning of, <a href="#pg47">47</a></li> + +<li>Mimesis, <a href="#pg43">43</a>-<a href="#pg47">47</a></li> + +<li>Music, function of, <a href="#pg233">233</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>New birth, <a href="#pg106">106</a>-<a href="#pg113">113</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Olympian gods, <a href="#pg202">202</a></li> + +<li>Orchestra, meaning of, <a href="#pg123">123</a>-<a href="#pg127">127</a></li> + +<li>Osiris, rites of, <a href="#pg15">15</a>-<a href="#pg23">23</a>, <a href="#pg51">51</a></li> + +<li>Ox-hunger, <a href="#pg81">81</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Panathenaia, <a href="#pg178">178</a></li> + +<li>Panspermia, <a href="#pg148">148</a></li> + +<li>Parthenon frieze, <a href="#pg176">176</a></li> + +<li>Peisistratos, <a href="#pg146">146</a></li> + +<li>Peplos of Athena, <a href="#pg180">180</a></li> + +<li>Pericles on religion, <a href="#pg178">178</a></li> + +<li>Personification and conception, <a href="#pg70">70</a>-<a href="#pg73">73</a></li> + +<li>Plato on art, <a href="#pg21">21</a>-<a href="#pg23">23</a></li> + +<li>Pleasure not joy, <a href="#pg213">213</a></li> + +<li>Post-impressionists, <a href="#pg238">238</a></li> + +<li>Prayer discs, <a href="#pg24">24</a></li> + +<li>Presentation, meaning of, <a href="#pg53">53</a></li> + +<li>Psychical distance, <a href="#pg129">129</a>-<a href="#pg134">134</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Representation, <a href="#pg34">34</a>-<a href="#pg41">41</a></li> + +<li>Resurrection, rites of, <a href="#pg100">100</a></li> + +<li>Rites, periodicity of, <a href="#pg52">52</a></li> + +<li>Ritual forms in drama, <a href="#pg188">188</a>-<a href="#pg189">189</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Santayana on art, <a href="#pg220">220</a></li> + +<li>Semelè, bringing up of, <a href="#pg81">81</a></li> + +<li>Spring song at Saffron Walden, <a href="#pg59">59</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>—— at Athens, <a href="#pg77">77</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Stage or scene, <a href="#pg142">142</a>-<a href="#pg145">145</a></li> + +<li>Summer, bringing in of, <a href="#pg67">67</a>-<a href="#pg71">71</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Tammuz, rites of, <a href="#pg18">18</a>-<a href="#pg20">20</a></li> + +<li>T<span title="e-caron">ě</span>l<span title="e-caron">ě</span>t<span title="e-macron">ē</span>, <i>rite of growing up</i>, <a href="#pg112">112</a></li> + +<li>Theatre, <a href="#pg10">10</a>-<a href="#pg13">13</a>, <a href="#pg136">136</a></li> + +<li>Themis, as ritual custom, <a href="#pg117">117</a></li> + +<li>Theoria and theory, <a href="#pg248">248</a></li> + +<li>Threshing-floor at dancing-place, <a href="#pg124">124</a></li> + +<li>Tolstoy on art, <a href="#pg132">132</a>, <a href="#pg238">238</a>-<a href="#pg241">241</a></li> + +<li>Totemism and beast dances, <a href="#pg46">46</a>, <a href="#pg47">47</a></li> + +<li>Tragedy, ritual forms in, <a href="#pg119">119</a>-<a href="#pg122">122</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>——, origin of, <a href="#pg76">76</a></li> +</ul></li> + +<li>Tug of war, among Esquimaux, <a href="#pg62">62</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Unanimism, <a href="#pg249">249</a>-<a href="#pg252">252</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Vegetation spirit, <a href="#pg72">72</a></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Winter, carrying out of, <a href="#pg68">68</a>-<a href="#pg72">72</a></li> + +<li>Wool, sacred, <a href="#pg12">12</a></li> + +<li>World-soul, <a href="#pg246">246</a></li> + +<li>Wreaths, festival of, <a href="#pg189">189</a> +<ul class="IX"><li>——, at Greek weddings, <a href="#pg190">190</a></li> +</ul></li></ul> + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Zola on art, <a href="#pg242">242</a></li></ul> +</div> + + +<p class="gap center little bt">Printed in Great Britain by The Camelot Press Ltd., London and +Southampton</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 17087-h.htm or 17087-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/0/8/17087/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Ancient Art and Ritual + +Author: Jane Ellen Harrison + +Release Date: November 18, 2005 [EBook #17087] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +{Transcriber's Note: + This e-text contains a number of unusual characters which are + represented as follows: + {-a} a-macron + {-e} e-macron + {)e} e-caron + {-i} i-macron + oe ligatures have been unpacked.} + + + + +_Ancient Art and Ritual_ + +JANE ELLEN HARRISON + + + + +_Geoffrey Cumberlege_ +OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS +LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO + + + + +_First published in 1913, and reprinted in 1918 (revised), 1919, 1927, +1935 and 1948_ + +PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + +PREFATORY NOTE + + +It may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the +present volume. The title is _Ancient Art and Ritual_, but the reader +will find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of +either ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible +in handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie +perhaps in the word "_and_"--that is, in the intimate connection which I +have tried to show exists between ritual and art. This connection has, I +believe, an important bearing on questions vital to-day, as, for +example, the question of the place of art in our modern civilization, +its relation to and its difference from religion and morality; in a +word, on the whole enquiry as to what the nature of art is and how it +can help or hinder spiritual life. + + * * * * * + +I have taken Greek drama as a typical instance, because in it we have +the clear historical case of a great art, which arose out of a very +primitive and almost world-wide ritual. The rise of the Indian drama, or +the mediaeval and from it the modern stage, would have told us the same +tale and served the like purpose. But Greece is nearer to us to-day than +either India or the Middle Ages. + + * * * * * + +Greece and the Greek drama remind me that I should like to offer my +thanks to Professor Gilbert Murray, for help and criticism which has far +outrun the limits of editorial duty. + +J.E.H. + +_Newnham College, +Cambridge, June 1913._ + + * * * * * + +NOTE TO THE FIFTH IMPRESSION + +The original text has been reprinted without change except for the +correction of misprints. A few additions (enclosed in square brackets) +have been made to the Bibliography. + +1947 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + I ART AND RITUAL 9 + + II PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES 29 + +III PERIODIC CEREMONIES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL 49 + + IV THE PRIMITIVE SPRING DANCE OR DITHYRAMB, + IN GREECE 75 + + V THE TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE + _DROMENON_ AND THE DRAMA 119 + + VI GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE + AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE 170 + +VII RITUAL, ART AND LIFE 204 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 253 + + INDEX 255 + + + + +ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL + +CHAPTER I + +ART AND RITUAL + + +The title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even +dissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to +the modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and +ceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a +church or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in +thought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is +towards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day; +but the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show +that these two divergent developments have a common root, and that +neither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one +and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre. + + * * * * * + +Such a statement may sound to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to +the Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century B.C., it would +have been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an +Athenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival of +Dionysos. + +Passing through the entrance-gate to the theatre on the south side of +the Acropolis, our Athenian citizen will find himself at once on holy +ground. He is within a _temenos_ or precinct, a place "cut off" from the +common land and dedicated to a god. He will pass to the left (Fig. 2, p. +144) two temples standing near to each other, one of earlier, the other +of later date, for a temple, once built, was so sacred that it would +only be reluctantly destroyed. As he enters the actual theatre he will +pay nothing for his seat; his attendance is an act of worship, and from +the social point of view obligatory; the entrance fee is therefore paid +for him by the State. + +The theatre is open to all Athenian citizens, but the ordinary man will +not venture to seat himself in the front row. In the front row, and +that only, the seats have backs, and the central seat of this row is an +armchair; the whole of the front row is permanently reserved, not for +individual rich men who can afford to hire "boxes," but for certain +State officials, and these officials are all priests. On each seat the +name of the owner is inscribed; the central seat is "of the priest of +Dionysos Eleuthereus," the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat "of +the priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer," and again "of the priest of +Asklepios," and "of the priest of Olympian Zeus," and so on round the +whole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty's the front row +of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the +Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall. + +The theatre at Athens is not open night by night, nor even day by day. +Dramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of +Dionysos in winter and spring. It is, again, as though the modern +theatre was open only at the festivals of the Epiphany and of Easter. +Our modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We +tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our +theatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the +performance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is +done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for +us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day +was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the +five or six days of the great _Dionysia_, the whole city was in a state +of unwonted sanctity, under a _taboo_. To distrain a debtor was illegal; +any personal assault, however trifling, was sacrilege. + +Most impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on +the eve of the performance. By torchlight, accompanied by a great +procession, the image of the god Dionysos himself was brought to the +theatre and placed in the orchestra. Moreover, he came not only in human +but in animal form. Chosen young men of the Athenians in the flower of +their youth--_epheboi_--escorted to the precinct a splendid bull. It was +expressly ordained that the bull should be "worthy of the god"; he was, +in fact, as we shall presently see, the primitive incarnation of the +god. It is, again, as though in our modern theatre there stood, +"sanctifying all things to our use and us to His service," the human +figure of the Saviour, and beside him the Paschal Lamb. + + * * * * * + +But now we come to a strange thing. A god presides over the theatre, to +go to the theatre is an act of worship to the god Dionysos, and yet, +when the play begins, three times out of four of Dionysos we hear +nothing. We see, it may be, Agamemnon returning from Troy, Clytemnestra +waiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Phaedra for +Hippolytos, the hate of Medea and the slaying of her children: stories +beautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be, but scarcely, we feel, +religious. The orthodox Greeks themselves sometimes complained that in +the plays enacted before them there was "nothing to do with Dionysos." + +If drama be at the outset divine, with its roots in ritual, why does it +issue in an art profoundly solemn, tragic, yet purely human? The actors +wear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the Eleusinian +mysteries. Why, then, do we find them, not executing a religious +service or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating +mere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to +give us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks +down, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves +us with our problem on our hands. + +Had we only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a +people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always +obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their +cloud-capp'd towers that they distract our minds from the task of +digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of +Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of +Greek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so +swiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek +material only to hand, we might never have marked the transition. +Happily, however, we are not confined within the Greek paradise. Wider +fields are open to us; our subject is not only Greek, but ancient art +and ritual. We can turn at once to the Egyptians, a people +slower-witted than the Greeks, and watch their sluggish but more +instructive operations. To one who is studying the development of the +human mind the average or even stupid child is often more illuminating +than the abnormally brilliant. Greece is often too near to us, too +advanced, too modern, to be for comparative purposes instructive. + + * * * * * + +Of all Egyptian, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so +long or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the +prototype of the great class of resurrection-gods who die that they may +live again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted +year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos. In that mystery-play was +set forth, first, what the Greeks call his _agon_, his contest with his +enemy Set; then his _pathos_, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his +wounding, his death, and his burial; finally, his resurrection and +"recognition," his _anagnorisis_ either as himself or as his only +begotten son Horus. Now the meaning of this thrice-told tale we shall +consider later: for the moment we are concerned only with the fact that +it is set forth both in art and ritual. + +At the festival of Osiris small images of the god were made of sand and +vegetable earth, his cheek bones were painted green and his face yellow. +The images were cast in a mould of pure gold, representing the god as a +mummy. After sunset on the 24th day of the month Choiak, the effigy of +Osiris was laid in a grave and the image of the previous year was +removed. The intent of all this was made transparently clear by other +rites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of +ploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the +other with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the +chief priest recited the ritual of the "sowing of the fields." Into the +"garden" of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand +and barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was +poured out of a golden vase over the "garden" and the barley was allowed +to grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his +burial, "for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine +substance." + +The death and resurrection of the gods, and _pari passu_ of the life and +fruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but--and this is our +immediate point--it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In +the great temple of Isis at Philae there is a chamber dedicated to +Osiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears +of corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The +inscription to the picture reads: _This is the form of him whom one may +not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning +waters._ It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month +Choiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. +When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had +sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the +grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the +cause of the growth of the crops."[1] + +Even more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that +accompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is +represented at first as a mummy swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit +by bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically +impossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl--perhaps his +"garden"--all but erect, between the outspread wings of Isis, while +before him a male figure holds the _crux ansata_, the "cross with a +handle," the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired, +_i.e._ the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented. + +No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt, +then, we have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and +ritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian +tombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This, +as we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art +and ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually +explain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they +actually arise out of a common human impulse. + + * * * * * + +The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he +is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) "came to the gate of the Lord's +house which was toward the north" he beheld there the "women weeping for +Tammuz." This "abomination" the house of Judah had brought with them +from Babylon. Tammuz is _Dumuzi_, "the true son," or more fully, +_Dumuzi-absu_, "true son of the waters." He too, like Osiris, is a god +of the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat +of the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods, + + "Thammuz came next behind, + Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured + The Syrian damsels to lament his fate + In amorous ditties all a summer's day." + +Tammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died and +passed below the earth to the place of dust and death, "the land from +which there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies on +door and bolt." And the goddess went after him, and while she was below, +life ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of animal or +man was born. + +We know Tammuz, "the true son," best by one of his titles, Adonis, the +Lord or King. The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at midsummer. That is +certain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail +on its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were +thronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of the +dead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping women. +Thucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but Plutarch[2] +tells us those who took account of omens were full of concern for the +fate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the day of the +funeral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish "Lord," was no luckier than to +set sail on a Friday, the death-day of the "Lord" of Christendom. + +The rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were rites +of death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading and +dying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The reason of +this is simple and will soon become manifest. For the moment we have +only to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are represented as +much by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the feasts of +Tammuz and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains. + + * * * * * + +We have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and +ritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely +linked. So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to +suspect they may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it +that links art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common? +Do they start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they +develop, fall so widely asunder? + +It will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art, +and also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual. + + * * * * * + +Art, Plato[3] tells us in a famous passage of the _Republic_, is +imitation; the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in +his philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is +to make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he +turns it whither he will, "are reflected sun and heavens and earth and +man," anything and everything. Never did a statement so false, so +wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth--truth which, by the +help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But +first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as +Plato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not +long ago thus defined his own art: "The art of painting is the art of +imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments." A +sorry life-work! Few people to-day, perhaps, regard art as the close and +realistic copy of Nature; photography has at least scotched, if not +slain, that error; but many people still regard art as a sort of +improvement on or an "idealization" of Nature. It is the part of the +artist, they think, to take suggestions and materials from Nature, and +from these to build up, as it were, a revised version. It is, perhaps, +only by studying those rudimentary forms of art that are closely akin to +ritual that we come to see how utterly wrong-headed is this conception. + +Take the representations of Osiris that we have just described--the +mummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain that art is +here a copy or imitation of reality? However "realistic" the painting, +it represents a thing imagined not actual. There never was any such +person as Osiris, and if there had been, he would certainly never, once +mummified, have risen from his tomb. There is no question of fact, and +the copy of fact, in the matter. Moreover, had there been, why should +anyone desire to make a copy of natural fact? The whole "imitation" +theory, to which, and to the element of truth it contains, we shall +later have occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no +adequate motive for a widespread human energy. It is probably this lack +of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is +idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to +improve on Nature. + + * * * * * + +Modern science, confronted with a problem like that of the rise of art, +no longer casts about to conjecture how art _might_ have arisen, she +examines how it actually _did_ arise. Abundant material has now been +collected from among savage peoples of an art so primitive that we +hesitate to call it art at all, and it is in these inchoate efforts +that we are able to track the secret motive springs that move the artist +now as then. + +Among the Huichol Indians,[4] if the people fear a drought from the +extreme heat of the sun, they take a clay disk, and on one side of it +they paint the "face" of Father Sun, a circular space surrounded by rays +of red and blue and yellow which are called his "arrows," for the +Huichol sun, like Phoebus Apollo, has arrows for rays. On the reverse +side they will paint the progress of the sun through the four quarters +of the sky. The journey is symbolized by a large cross-like figure with +a central circle for midday. Round the edge are beehive-shaped mounds; +these represent the hills of earth. The red and yellow dots that +surround the hills are cornfields. The crosses on the hills are signs of +wealth and money. On some of the disks birds and scorpions are painted, +and on one are curving lines which mean rain. These disks are deposited +on the altar of the god-house and left, and then all is well. The +intention might be to us obscure, but a Huichol Indian would read it +thus: "Father Sun with his broad shield (or 'face') and his arrows rises +in the east, bringing money and wealth to the Huichols. His heat and the +light from his rays make the corn to grow, but he is asked not to +interfere with the clouds that are gathering on the hills." + +Now is this art or ritual? It is both and neither. _We_ distinguish +between a form of prayer and a work of art and count them in no danger +of confusion; but the Huichol goes back to that earlier thing, a +_presentation_. He utters, expresses his thought about the sun and his +emotion about the sun and his relation to the sun, and if "prayer is the +soul's sincere desire" he has painted a prayer. It is not a little +curious that the same notion comes out in the old Greek word for +"prayer," _euche_. The Greek, when he wanted help in trouble from the +"Saviours," the Dioscuri, carved a picture of them, and, if he was a +sailor, added a ship. Underneath he inscribed the word _euche_. It was +not to begin with a "vow" paid, it was a presentation of his strong +inner desire, it was a sculptured prayer. + +Ritual then involves _imitation_; but does not arise out of it. It +desires to recreate an emotion, not to reproduce an object. A rite is, +indeed, we shall later see (p. 42), a sort of stereotyped action, not +really practical, but yet not wholly cut loose from practice, a +reminiscence or an anticipation of actual practical doing; it is fitly, +though not quite correctly, called by the Greeks a _dromenon_, "a thing +done." + +At the bottom of art, as its motive power and its mainspring, lies, not +the wish to copy Nature or even improve on her--the Huichol Indian does +not vainly expend his energies on an effort so fruitless--but rather an +impulse shared by art with ritual, the desire, that is, to utter, to +give out a strongly felt emotion or desire by representing, by making or +doing or enriching the object or act desired. The common source of the +art and ritual of Osiris is the intense, world-wide desire that the life +of Nature which seemed dead should live again. This common _emotional_ +factor it is that makes art and ritual in their beginnings well-nigh +indistinguishable. Both, to begin with, copy an act, but not at first +for the sake of the copy. Only when the emotion dies down and is +forgotten does the copy become an end in itself, a mere mimicry. + +It is this downward path, this sinking of making to mimicry, that makes +us now-a-days think of ritual as a dull and formal thing. Because a rite +has ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it +will cease to be _done_. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of +habit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest +impulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only +others but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the +act is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it +becomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art. + + * * * * * + +It is not easy, as we saw, to classify the Huichol prayer-disks. As +prayers they are ritual, as surfaces decorated they are specimens of +primitive art. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a kind of +ceremony very instructive for our point, but again not very easy to +classify--the pantomimic dances which are, almost all over the world, so +striking a feature in savage social and religious life. Are they to be +classed as ritual or art? + +These pantomime dances lie, indeed, at the very heart and root of our +whole subject, and it is of the first importance that before going +further in our analysis of art and ritual, we should have some +familiarity with their general character and gist, the more so as they +are a class of ceremonies now practically extinct. We shall find in +these dances the meeting-point between art and ritual, or rather we +shall find in them the rude, inchoate material out of which both ritual +and art, at least in one of its forms, developed. Moreover, we shall +find in pantomimic dancing a ritual bridge, as it were, between actual +life and those representations of life which we call art. + +In our next chapter, therefore, we shall study the ritual dance in +general, and try to understand its psychological origin; in the +following chapter (III) we shall take a particular dance of special +importance, the Spring Dance as practised among various primitive +peoples. We shall then be prepared to approach the study of the Spring +Dance among the Greeks, which developed into their drama, and thereby +to, we hope, throw light on the relation between ritual and art. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_,^2 p. 324. + +[2] _Vit. Nik._, 13. + +[3] _Rep._ X, 596-9. + +[4] C.H. Lumholtz, _Symbolism of the Huichol Indians_, in _Mem. of the +Am. Mus. of Nat. Hist._, Vol. III, "Anthropology." (1900.) + + + + +CHAPTER II + +PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES + + +In books and hymns of bygone days, which dealt with the religion of "the +heathen in his blindness," he was pictured as a being of strange +perversity, apt to bow down to "gods of wood and stone." The question +_why_ he acted thus foolishly was never raised. It was just his +"blindness"; the light of the gospel had not yet reached him. Now-a-days +the savage has become material not only for conversion and hymn-writing +but for scientific observation. We want to understand his psychology, +_i.e._ how he behaves, not merely for his sake, that we may abruptly +and despotically convert or reform him, but for our own sakes; partly, +of course, for sheer love of knowing, but also,--since we realize that +our own behaviour is based on instincts kindred to his,--in order that, +by understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better, +our own. + +Anthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the +worship of false gods, bowing "down to wood and stone," bulks larger in +the mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for +temples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The +savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants +done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters +spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously +and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants +sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself +before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a +wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does +not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he +rehearses his hunt in a bear dance. + +Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to +overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the +quite young from sheer _joie de vivre_, and essentially inappropriate to +the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nolavoa_ +means both "to work" and "to dance." An old man will reproach a young +man saying, "Why do you not go and work?" (_nolavoa_). He means "Why do +you not dance instead of looking on?" It is strange to us to learn that +among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to +mature manhood, so the number of his "dances" increase, and the number +of these "dances" is the measure _pari passu_ of his social importance. +Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, _because +he cannot dance_; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to +another and a younger. + + * * * * * + +Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among the +Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5] for a +man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this +will make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and Austria the +peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high +or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller +will be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt as +to the practical reason of this mimic dancing. When Macedonian farmers +have done digging their fields they throw their spades up into the air +and, catching them again, exclaim, "May the crop grow as high as the +spade has gone." In some parts of Eastern Russia the girls dance one by +one in a large hoop at midnight on Shrove Tuesday. The hoop is decked +with leaves, flowers and ribbons, and attached to it are a small bell +and some flax. While dancing within the hoop each girl has to wave her +arms vigorously and cry, "Flax, grow," or words to that effect. When she +has done she leaps out of the hoop or is lifted out of it by her +partner. + +Is this art? We shall unhesitatingly answer "No." Is it ritual? With +some hesitation we shall probably again answer "No." It is, we think, +not a rite, but merely a superstitious practice of ignorant men and +women. But take another instance. Among the Omaha Indians of North +America, when the corn is withering for want of rain, the members of the +sacred Buffalo Society fill a large vessel with water and dance four +times round it. One of them drinks some of the water and spirts it into +the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain. +Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon +the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their +faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would +describe such a ceremonial as "an interesting instance of primitive +_ritual_." The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one +the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the +other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially +for the public good. + +The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what +concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what +is indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing +in the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says, +"Flax, grow," prove the point. She _does_ what she _wants done_. Her +intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest +possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better +still perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself _doing_ in +sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where +the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the +suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology +teaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of +intellectual illusion, not even the exercise of a "mimetic instinct," +but simply, in its ultimate analysis, an utterance, a discharge of +emotion and longing. + +But though the utterance of emotion is the prime and moving, it is not +the sole, factor. We may utter emotion in a prolonged howl, we may even +utter it in a collective prolonged howl, yet we should scarcely call +this ritual, still less art. It is true that a prolonged _collective_ +howl will probably, because it is collective, develop a rhythm, a +regular recurrence, and hence probably issue in a kind of ritual music; +but for the further stage of development into art another step is +necessary. We must not only _utter_ emotion, we must _represent_ it, +that is, we must in some way reproduce or imitate or express the thought +which is causing us emotion. Art is not imitation, but art and also +ritual frequently and legitimately _contain an element of imitation_. +Plato was so far right. What exactly is imitated we shall see when we +come to discuss the precise difference between art and ritual. + + * * * * * + +The Greek word for a _rite_ as already noted is _dromenon_, "a thing +done"--and the word is full of instruction. The Greek had realized that +to perform a rite you must _do_ something, that is, you must not only +feel something but express it in action, or, to put it psychologically, +you must not only receive an impulse, you must react to it. The word for +rite, _dromenon_, "thing done," arose, of course, not from any +psychological analysis, but from the simple fact that rites among the +primitive Greeks were _things done_, mimetic dances and the like. It is +a fact of cardinal importance that their word for theatrical +representation, _drama_, is own cousin to their word for rite, +_dromenon_; _drama_ also means "thing done." Greek linguistic instinct +pointed plainly to the fact that art and ritual are near relations. To +this fact of crucial importance for our argument we shall return later. +But from the outset it should be borne in mind that in these two Greek +words, _dromenon_ and _drama_, in their exact meaning, their relation +and their distinction, we have the keynote and clue to our whole +discussion. + + * * * * * + +For the moment we have to note that the Greek word for rite, _dromenon_, +"thing done," is not strictly adequate. It omits a factor of prime +importance; it includes too much and not enough. All "things done" are +not rites. You may shrink back from a blow; that is the expression of an +emotion, that is a reaction to a stimulus, but that is not a rite. You +may digest your dinner; that is a thing done, and a thing of high +importance, but it is not a rite. + +One element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it +be done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion. A +meal digested alone is certainly no rite; a meal eaten in common, under +the influence of a common emotion, may, and often does, _tend_ to become +a rite. + +Collectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the +simple reaction into a rite, are--specially among primitive +peoples--closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual +among savages has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional +tension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially; +it is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual. He +may make by himself excited movements, he may leap for joy, for fear; +but unless these movements are made by the tribe together they will not +become rhythmical; they will probably lack intensity, and certainly +permanence. Intensity, then, and collectivity go together, and both are +necessary for ritual, but both may be present without constituting art; +we have not yet touched the dividing line between art and ritual. When +and how does the _dromenon_, the _rite done_, pass over into the +_drama_? + +The genius of the Greek language _felt_, before it consciously _knew_, +the difference. This feeling ahead for distinctions is characteristic of +all languages, as has been well shown by Mr. Pearsall Smith[6] in +another manual of our series. It is an instinctive process arising +independently of reason, though afterwards justified by it. What, then, +is the distinction between art and ritual which the genius of the Greek +language felt after, when it used the two words _dromenon_ and _drama_ +for two different sorts of "things done"? To answer our question we must +turn for a brief moment to psychology, the science of human behaviour. + + * * * * * + +We are accustomed for practical convenience to divide up our human +nature into partitions--intellect, will, the emotions, the +passions--with further subdivisions, _e.g._ of the intellect into +reason, imagination, and the like. These partitions we are apt to +arrange into a sort of order of merit or as it is called a hierarchy, +with Reason as head and crown, and under her sway the emotions and +passions. The result of establishing this hierarchy is that the +impulsive side of our nature comes off badly, the passions and even the +emotions lying under a certain ban. This popular psychology is really a +convenient and perhaps indispensable mythology. Reason, the emotions, +and the will have no more separate existences than Jupiter, Juno, and +Minerva. + +A more fruitful way of looking at our human constitution is to see it, +not as a bundle of separate faculties, but as a sort of continuous +cycle of activities. What really happens is, putting it very roughly, +something of this sort. To each one of us the world is, or seems to be, +eternally divided into two halves. On the one side is ourself, on the +other all the rest of things. All our action, our behaviour, our life, +is a relation between these two halves, and that behaviour seems to have +three, not divisions, but stages. The outside world, the other half, the +object if we like so to call it, acts upon us, gets at us through our +senses. We hear or see or taste or feel something; to put it roughly, we +perceive something, and as we perceive it, so, instantly, we feel about +it, towards it, we have emotion. And, instantly again, that emotion +becomes a motive-power, we _re_-act towards the object that got at us, +we want to alter it or our relation to it. If we did not perceive we +should not feel, if we did not feel we should not act. When we talk--as +we almost must talk--of Reason, the Emotions, or the Passions and the +Will leading to action, we think of the three stages or aspects of our +behaviour as separable and even perhaps hostile; we want, perhaps, to +purge the intellect from all infection of the emotions. But in reality, +though at a given moment one or the other element, knowing, feeling, or +acting, may be dominant in our consciousness, the rest are always +immanent. + +When we think of the three elements or stages, knowing, feeling, +striving, as all being necessary factors in any complete bit of human +behaviour, we no longer try to arrange them in a hierarchy with knowing +or reason at the head. Knowing--that is, receiving and recognizing a +stimulus from without--would seem to come first; we must be acted on +before we can _re_-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look +at it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads +to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the +primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our +discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking at human +behaviour. + + * * * * * + +Movement, then, action, is, as it were, the goal and the end of thought. +Perception finds its natural outlet and completion in doing. But here +comes in a curious consideration important for our purpose. In animals, +in so far as they act by "instinct," as we say, perception, knowing, is +usually followed immediately and inevitably by doing, by such doing as +is calculated to conserve the animal and his species; but in some of the +higher animals, and especially in man, where the nervous system is more +complex, perception is not instantly transformed into action; there is +an interval for choice between several possible actions. Perception is +pent up and becomes, helped by emotion, conscious _representation_. Now +it is, psychologists tell us, just in this interval, this space between +perception and reaction, this momentary halt, that all our mental life, +our images, our ideas, our consciousness, and assuredly our religion and +our art, is built up. If the cycle of knowing, feeling, acting, were +instantly fulfilled, that is, if we were a mass of well-contrived +instincts, we should hardly have _dromena_, and we should certainly +never pass from _dromena_ to _drama_. Art and religion, though perhaps +not wholly ritual, spring from the incomplete cycle, from unsatisfied +desire, from perception and emotion that have somehow not found +immediate outlet in practical action. When we come later to establish +the dividing line between art and ritual we shall find this fact to be +cardinal. + +We have next to watch how out of _representation repeated_ there grows +up a kind of _abstraction_ which helps the transition from ritual to +art. When the men of a tribe return from a hunt, a journey, a battle, or +any event that has caused them keen and pleasant emotion, they will +often re-act their doings round the camp-fire at night to an attentive +audience of women and young boys. The cause of this world-wide custom is +no doubt in great part the desire to repeat a pleasant experience; the +battle or the hunt will not be re-enacted unless it has been successful. +Together with this must be reckoned a motive seldom absent from human +endeavour, the desire for self-exhibition, self-enhancement. But in this +re-enactment, we see at once, lies the germ of history and of +commemorative ceremonial, and also, oddly enough, an impulse emotional +in itself begets a process we think of as characteristically and +exclusively intellectual, the process of abstraction. The savage begins +with the particular battle that actually _did_ happen; but, it is easy +to see that if he re-enacts it again and again the _particular_ battle +or hunt will be forgotten, the representation cuts itself loose from +the particular action from which it arose, and becomes generalized, as +it were abstracted. Like children he plays not at a funeral, but at +"funerals," not at a battle, but at battles; and so arises the +war-dance, or the death-dance, or the hunt-dance. This will serve to +show how inextricably the elements of knowing and feeling are +intertwined. + +So, too, with the element of action. If we consider the occasions when a +savage dances, it will soon appear that it is not only after a battle or +a hunt that he dances in order to commemorate it, but before. Once the +commemorative dance has got abstracted or generalized it becomes +material for the magical dance, the dance pre-done. A tribe about to go +to war will work itself up by a war dance; about to start out hunting +they will catch their game in pantomime. Here clearly the main emphasis +is on the practical, the active, doing-element in the cycle. The dance +is, as it were, a sort of precipitated desire, a discharge of pent-up +emotion into action. + +In both these kinds of dances, the dance that commemorates by +_re_-presenting and the dance that anticipates by _pre_-presenting, +Plato would have seen the element of imitation, what the Greeks called +_mimesis_, which we saw he believed to be the very source and essence of +all art. In a sense he would have been right. The commemorative dance +does especially _re_-present; it reproduces the past hunt or battle; but +if we analyse a little more closely we see it is not for the sake of +copying the actual battle itself, but for the _emotion felt about the +battle_. This they desire to re-live. The emotional element is seen +still more clearly in the dance _fore_-done for magical purposes. +Success in war or in the hunt is keenly, intensely desired. The hunt or +the battle cannot take place at the moment, so the cycle cannot complete +itself. The desire cannot find utterance in the actual act; it grows and +accumulates by inhibition, till at last the exasperated nerves and +muscles can bear it no longer; it breaks out into mimetic anticipatory +action. But, and this is the important point, the action is mimetic, not +of what you see done by another; but of what you desire to do yourself. +The habit of this _mimesis_ of the thing desired, is set up, and ritual +begins. Ritual, then, does imitate, but for an emotional, not an +altogether practical, end. + +Plato never saw a savage war-dance or a hunt-dance or a rain-dance, and +it is not likely that, if he had seen one, he would have allowed it to +be art at all. But he must often have seen a class of performances very +similar, to which unquestionably he would give the name of art. He must +have seen plays like those of Aristophanes, with the chorus dressed up +as Birds or Clouds or Frogs or Wasps, and he might undoubtedly have +claimed such plays as evidence of the rightness of his definition. Here +were men _imitating_ birds and beasts, dressed in their skins and +feathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would +have been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning +of things, we find an origin and an impulse much deeper, vaguer, and +more emotional. + +The beast dances found widespread over the savage world took their rise +when men really believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts +and birds and fishes were his "little brothers." Or rather, perhaps, +more strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers, +for the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North +American towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep +religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of +civilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call +_totemism_. "Totem" means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as +men. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as +men-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not +to _imitate_ kangaroos--you cannot imitate yourself--but just for +natural joy of heart because they _were_ kangaroos; they belonged to the +Kangaroo tribe, they bore the tribal marks and delighted to assert their +tribal unity. What they felt was not _mimesis_ but "participation," +unity, and community. Later, when man begins to distinguish between +himself and his strange fellow-tribesmen, to realize that he is _not_ a +kangaroo like other kangaroos, he will try to revive his old faith, his +old sense of participation and oneness, by conscious imitation. Thus +though imitation is not the object of these dances, it grows up in and +through them. It is the same with art. The origin of art is not +_mimesis_, but _mimesis_ springs up out of art, out of emotional +expression, and constantly and closely neighbours it. Art and ritual +are at the outset alike in this, that they do not seek to copy a fact, +but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion. + + * * * * * + +We shall see this more clearly if we examine for a moment this Greek +word _mimesis_. We translate m{-i}m{-e}sis by "imitation," and we do very +wrongly. The word _mimesis_ means the action or doing of a person called +a _mime_. Now a _mime_ was simply a person who dressed up and acted in a +pantomime or primitive drama. He was roughly what we should call an +_actor_, and it is significant that in the word _actor_ we stress not +imitating but acting, doing, just what the Greek stressed in his words +_dromenon_ and _drama_. The actor dresses up, puts on a mask, wears the +skin of a beast or the feathers of a bird, not, as we have seen, to copy +something or some one who is not himself, but to emphasize, enlarge, +enhance, his own personality; he masquerades, he does not mimic. + +The celebrants in the very primitive ritual of the Mountain-Mother in +Thrace were, we know, called _mimes_. In the fragment of his lost play, +AEschylus, after describing the din made by the "mountain gear" of the +Mother, the maddening hum of the _bombykes_, a sort of spinning-top, +the clash of the brazen cymbals and the twang of the strings, thus goes +on: + + "And bull-voices roar thereto from somewhere out of the unseen, + fearful _mimes_, and from a drum an image, as it were, of thunder + underground is borne on the air heavy with dread." + +Here we have undoubtedly some sort of "bull-roaring," thunder-and +wind-making ceremony, like those that go on in Australia to-day. The +_mimes_ are not mimicking thunder out of curiosity, they are making it +and enacting and uttering it for magical purposes. When a sailor wants a +wind he makes it, or, as he later says, he whistles _for_ it; when a +savage or a Greek wants thunder to bring rain he makes it, becomes it. +But it is easy to see that as the belief in magic declines, what was +once intense desire, issuing in the making of or the being of a thing, +becomes mere copying of it; the mime, the maker, sinks to be in our +modern sense the mimic; as faith declines, folly and futility set in; +the earnest, zealous _act_ sinks into a frivolous mimicry, a sort of +child's-play. + + +FOOTNOTES + +[5] These instances are all taken from _The Golden Bough,^3 The Magic +Art_, I, 139 _ff._ + +[6] "The English Language," _Home University Library_, p. 28. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +SEASONAL RITES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL + + +We have seen in the last chapter that whatever interests primitive man, +whatever makes him feel strongly, he tends to re-enact. Any one of his +manifold occupations, hunting, fighting, later ploughing and sowing, +provided it be of sufficient interest and importance, is material for a +_dromenon_ or rite. We have also seen that, weak as he is in +individuality, it is not his private and personal emotions that tend to +become ritual, but those that are public, felt and expressed officially, +that is, by the whole tribe or community. It is further obvious that +such dances, when they develop into actual rites, tend to be performed +at fixed times. We have now to consider when and why. The element of +fixity and regular repetition in rites cannot be too strongly +emphasized. It is a factor of paramount importance, essential to the +development from ritual to art, from _dromenon_ to drama. + +The two great interests of primitive man are food and children. As Dr. +Frazer has well said, if man the individual is to live he must have +food; if his race is to persist he must have children. "To live and to +cause to live, to eat food and to beget children, these were the primary +wants of man in the past, and they will be the primary wants of men in +the future so long as the world lasts." Other things may be added to +enrich and beautify human life, but, unless these wants are first +satisfied, humanity itself must cease to exist. These two things, +therefore, food and children, were what men chiefly sought to procure by +the performance of magical rites for the regulation of the seasons. They +are the very foundation-stones of that ritual from which art, if we are +right, took its rise. From this need for food sprang seasonal, periodic +festivals. The fact that festivals are seasonal, constantly recurrent, +solidifies, makes permanent, and as already explained (p. 42), in a +sense intellectualizes and abstracts the emotion that prompts them. + +The seasons are indeed only of value to primitive man because they are +related, as he swiftly and necessarily finds out, to his food supply. +He has, it would seem, little sensitiveness to the aesthetic impulse of +the beauty of a spring morning, to the pathos of autumn. What he +realizes first and foremost is, that at certain times the animals, and +still more the plants, which form his food, appear, at certain others +they disappear. It is these times that become the central points, the +focuses of his interest, and the dates of his religious festivals. These +dates will vary, of course, in different countries and in different +climates. It is, therefore, idle to attempt a study of the ritual of a +people without knowing the facts of their climate and surroundings. In +Egypt the food supply will depend on the rise and fall of the Nile, and +on this rise and fall will depend the ritual and calendar of Osiris. And +yet treatises on Egyptian religion are still to be found which begin by +recounting the rites and mythology of Osiris, as though these were +primary, and then end with a corollary to the effect that these rites +and this calendar were "associated" with the worship of Osiris, or, even +worse still, "instituted by" the religion of Osiris. The Nile regulates +the food supply of Egypt, the monsoon that of certain South Pacific +islands; the calendar of Egypt depends on the Nile, of the South +Pacific islands on the monsoon. + + * * * * * + +In his recent _Introduction to Mathematics_[7] Dr. Whitehead has pointed +out how the "whole life of Nature is dominated by the existence of +periodic events." The rotation of the earth produces successive days; +the path of the earth round the sun leads to the yearly recurrence of +the seasons; the phases of the moon are recurrent, and though artificial +light has made these phases pass almost unnoticed to-day, in climates +where the skies are clear, human life was largely influenced by +moonlight. Even our own bodily life, with its recurrent heart-beats and +breathings, is essentially periodic.[8] The presupposition of +periodicity is indeed fundamental to our very conception of life, and +but for periodicity the very means of measuring time as a quantity would +be absent. + +Periodicity is fundamental to certain departments of mathematics, that +is evident; it is perhaps less evident that periodicity is a factor that +has gone to the making of ritual, and hence, as we shall see, of art. +And yet this is manifestly the case. All primitive calendars are ritual +calendars, successions of feast-days, a patchwork of days of different +quality and character recurring; pattern at least is based on +periodicity. But there is another and perhaps more important way in +which periodicity affects and in a sense causes ritual. We have seen +already that out of the space between an impulse and a reaction there +arises an idea or "presentation." A "presentation" is, indeed, it would +seem, in its final analysis, only a delayed, intensified desire--a +desire of which the active satisfaction is blocked, and which runs over +into a "presentation." An image conceived "presented," what we call an +_idea_ is, as it were, an act prefigured. + +Ritual acts, then, which depend on the periodicity of the seasons are +acts necessarily delayed. The thing delayed, expected, waited for, is +more and more a source of value, more and more apt to precipitate into +what we call an idea, which is in reality but the projected shadow of an +unaccomplished action. More beautiful it may be, but comparatively +bloodless, yet capable in its turn of acting as an initial motor impulse +in the cycle of activity. It will later (p. 70) be seen that these +periodic festivals are the stuff of which those faded, unaccomplished +actions and desires which we call gods--Attis, Osiris, Dionysos--are +made. + + * * * * * + +To primitive man, as we have seen, beast and bird and plant and himself +were not sharply divided, and the periodicity of the seasons was for +all. It will depend on man's social and geographical conditions whether +he notices periodicity most in plants or animals. If he is nomadic he +will note the recurrent births of other animals and of human children, +and will connect them with the lunar year. But it is at once evident +that, at least in Mediterranean lands, and probably everywhere, it is +the periodicity of plants and vegetation generally which depends on +moisture, that is most striking. Plants die down in the heat of summer, +trees shed their leaves in autumn, all Nature sleeps or dies in winter, +and awakes in spring. + +Sometimes it is the dying down that attracts most attention. This is +very clear in the rites of Adonis, which are, though he rises again, +essentially rites of lamentation. The details of the ritual show this +clearly, and specially as already seen in the cult of Osiris. For the +"gardens" of Adonis the women took baskets or pots filled with earth, +and in them, as children sow cress now-a-days, they planted wheat, +fennel, lettuce, and various kinds of flowers, which they watered and +tended for eight days. In hot countries the seeds sprang up rapidly, but +as the plants had no roots they withered quickly away. At the end of the +eight days they were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis and +thrown with them into the sea or into springs. The "gardens" of Adonis +became the type of transient loveliness and swift decay. + + * * * * * + +"What waste would it be," says Plutarch,[9] "what inconceivable waste, +for God to create man, had he not an immortal soul. He would be like the +women who make little gardens, not less pleasant than the gardens of +Adonis in earthen pots and pans; so would our souls blossom and flourish +but for a day in a soft and tender body of flesh without any firm and +solid root of life, and then be blasted and put out in a moment." + +Celebrated at midsummer as they were, and as the "gardens" were thrown +into water, it is probable that the rites of Adonis may have been, at +least in part, a rain-charm. In the long summer droughts of Palestine +and Babylonia the longing for rain must often have been intense enough +to provoke expression, and we remember (p. 19) that the Sumerian Tammuz +was originally _Dumuzi-absu_, "True Son of the Waters." Water is the +first need for vegetation. Gardens of Adonis are still in use in the +Madras Presidency.[10] At the marriage of a Brahman "seeds of five or +nine sorts are mixed and sown in earthen pots which are made specially +for the purpose, and are filled with earth. Bride and bridegroom water +the seeds both morning and evening for four days; and on the fifth day +the seedlings are thrown, like the real gardens of Adonis, into a tank +or river." + +Seasonal festivals with one and the same intent--the promotion of +fertility in plants, animals and man--may occur at almost any time of +the year. At midsummer, as we have seen, we may have rain-charms; in +autumn we shall have harvest festivals; in late autumn and early winter +among pastoral peoples we shall have festivals, like that of Martinmas, +for the blessing and purification of flocks and herds when they come in +from their summer pasture. In midwinter there will be a Christmas +festival to promote and protect the sun's heat at the winter solstice. +But in Southern Europe, to which we mainly owe our drama and our art, +the festival most widely celebrated, and that of which we know most, is +the Spring Festival, and to that we must turn. The spring is to the +Greek of to-day the "anoixis," "the Opening," and it was in spring and +with rites of spring that both Greek and Roman originally began their +year. It was this spring festival that gave to the Greek their god +Dionysos and in part his drama. + + * * * * * + +In Cambridge on May Day two or three puzzled and weary little boys and +girls are still to be sometimes seen dragging round a perambulator with +a doll on it bedecked with ribbons and a flower or two. That is all that +is left in most parts of England of the Queen of the May and +Jack-in-the-Green, though here and there a maypole survives and is +resuscitated by enthusiasts about folk-dances. But in the days of "Good +Queen Bess" merry England, it would seem, was lustier. The Puritan +Stubbs, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_,[11] thus describes the festival: + + "They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a + sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and + these oxen draw home this Maiepoole (this stinckying idoll rather), + which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bound round + aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme + painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, + women, and children, following it with great devotion. And thus + beyng reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streaming on the + toppe, they strewe the ground about, binde greene boughs about it, + set up summer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall + they to banquet and feast, to leap and daunce aboute it, as the + heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this + is a perfect patterne or rather the thyng itself." + +The stern old Puritan was right, the maypole was the perfect pattern of +a heathen "idoll, or rather the thyng itself." He would have +exterminated it root and branch, but other and perhaps wiser divines +took the maypole into the service of the Christian Church, and still[12] +on May Day in Saffron Walden the spring song is heard with its Christian +moral-- + + "A branch of May we have brought you, + And at your door it stands; + It is a sprout that is well budded out, + The work of our Lord's hands." + +The maypole was of course at first no pole cut down and dried. The gist +of it was that it should be a "sprout, well budded out." The object of +carrying in the May was to bring the very spirit of life and greenery +into the village. When this was forgotten, idleness or economy would +prompt the villagers to use the same tree or branch year after year. In +the villages of Upper Bavaria Dr. Frazer[13] tells us the maypole is +renewed once every three, four, or five years. It is a fir-tree fetched +from the forest, and amid all the wreaths, flags, and inscriptions with +which it is bedecked, an essential part is the bunch of dark green +foliage left at the top, "as a memento that in it we have to do, not +with a dead pole, but with a living tree from the greenwood." + +At the ritual of May Day not only was the fresh green bough or tree +carried into the village, but with it came a girl or a boy, the Queen or +King of the May. Sometimes the tree itself, as in Russia, is dressed up +in woman's clothes; more often a real man or maid, covered with flowers +and greenery, walks with the tree or carries the bough. Thus in +Thuringia,[14] as soon as the trees begin to be green in spring, the +children assemble on a Sunday and go out into the woods, where they +choose one of their playmates to be Little Leaf Man. They break branches +from the trees and twine them about the child, till only his shoes are +left peeping out. Two of the other children lead him for fear he should +stumble. They take him singing and dancing from house to house, asking +for gifts of food, such as eggs, cream, sausages, cakes. Finally, they +sprinkle the Leaf Man with water and feast on the food. Such a Leaf Man +is our English Jack-in-the-Green, a chimney-sweeper who, as late as +1892, was seen by Dr. Rouse walking about at Cheltenham encased in a +wooden framework covered with greenery. + +The bringing in of the new leafage in the form of a tree or flowers is +one, and perhaps the simplest, form of spring festival. It takes little +notice of death and winter, uttering and emphasizing only the desire for +the joy in life and spring. But in other and severer climates the +emotion is fiercer and more complex; it takes the form of a struggle or +contest, what the Greeks called an _agon_. Thus on May Day in the Isle +of Man a Queen of the May was chosen, and with her twenty maids of +honour, together with a troop of young men for escort. But there was not +only a Queen of the May, but a Queen of Winter, a man dressed as a +woman, loaded with warm clothes and wearing a woollen hood and fur +tippet. Winter, too, had attendants like the Queen of the May. The two +troops met and fought; and whichever Queen was taken prisoner had to pay +the expenses of the feast. + +In the Isle of Man the real gist of the ceremony is quite forgotten, it +has become a mere play. But among the Esquimaux[15] there is still +carried on a similar rite, and its magical intent is clearly understood. +In autumn, when the storms begin and the long and dismal Arctic winter +is at hand, the central Esquimaux divide themselves into two parties +called the Ptarmigans and the Ducks. The ptarmigans are the people born +in winter, the ducks those born in summer. They stretch out a long rope +of sealskin. The ducks take hold of one end, the ptarmigans of the +other, then comes a tug-of-war. If the ducks win there will be fine +weather through the winter; if the ptarmigans, bad. This autumn festival +might, of course, with equal magical intent be performed in the spring, +but probably autumn is chosen because, with the dread of the Arctic ice +and snow upon them, the fear of winter is stronger than the hope of +spring. + + * * * * * + +The intense emotion towards the weather, which breaks out into these +magical _agones_, or "contests," is not very easy to realize. The +weather to us now-a-days for the most part damps a day's pleasuring or +raises the price of fruit and vegetables. But our main supplies come to +us from other lands and other weathers, and we find it hard to think +ourselves back into the state when a bad harvest meant starvation. The +intensely practical attitude of man towards the seasons, the way that +many of these magical dramatic ceremonies rose straight out of the +emotion towards the food-supply, would perhaps never have been fully +realized but for the study of the food-producing ceremonies of the +Central Australians. + +The Central Australian spring is not the shift from winter to summer, +from cold to heat, but from a long, arid, and barren season to a season +short and often irregular in recurrence of torrential rain and sudden +fertility. The dry steppes of Central Australia are the scene of a +marvellous transformation. In the dry season all is hot and desolate, +the ground has only patches of wiry scrub, with an occasional parched +acacia tree, all is stones and sand; there is no sign of animal life +save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in. +Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water. +Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the +thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation +bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs, +birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it +live quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short. + +It seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the +primitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and +magic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility +approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and +multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he +paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his +own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in +stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the +chrysalis of a Witchetty grub--his favourite food, and drags his body +through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth. +Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain +in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main +emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and +admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the +singing of birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to an +All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to +the push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat +that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to +live, that he _utters and represents_. + + * * * * * + +The savage utters his will to live, his intense desire for food; but it +should be noted, it is desire and will and longing, not certainty and +satisfaction that he utters. In this respect it is interesting to note +that his rites and ceremonies, when periodic, are of fairly long +periods. Winter and summer are not the only natural periodic cycles; +there is the cycle of day and night, and yet among primitive peoples but +little ritual centres round day and night. The reason is simple. The +cycle of day and night is so short, it recurs so frequently, that man +naturally counted upon it and had no cause to be anxious. The emotional +tension necessary to ritual was absent. A few peoples, _e.g._ the +Egyptians, have practised daily incantations to bring back the sun. +Probably they had at first felt a real tension of anxiety, and +then--being a people hidebound by custom--had gone on from mere +conservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even, +as among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual +inevitably arises. They play at cat's-cradle to catch the ball of the +sun lest it should sink and be lost for ever. + +Round the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early +centred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was +first surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes +and wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and +wanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch[16] tells us, +is fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young +of animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon[17] held that +observations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the +grafting of trees were "not altogether frivolous." It cannot too often +be remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun +and moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he +cares for them, he holds them sacred, he performs rites in relation to +them mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for +the seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a +_Hora_ was at first to the Greeks, _the fruits of a season_, what our +farmers would call "a good _year_." + + * * * * * + +The sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the +seasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons +were annual, that they went round in a _ring_; and because that annual +ring was long in revolving, great was man's hope and fear in the winter, +great his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of +death and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes +represented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris. + +Adonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt +as to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in +Thueringen a ceremony is performed called "Driving out the Death." The +young people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry +it out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell the good +news to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia +the children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are +burning it they sing-- + + "Now carry we Death out of the village, + The new Summer into the village, + Welcome, dear Summer, + Green little corn." + +In other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes +back but Life. + + "We have carried away Death, + And brought back Life." + +In both these cases it is interesting to note that though Death is +dramatically carried out, the coming back of Life is only announced, not +enacted. + +Often, and it would seem quite naturally, the puppet representing Death +or Winter is reviled and roughly handled, or pelted with stones, and +treated in some way as a sort of scapegoat. But in not a few cases, and +these are of special interest, it seems to be the seat of a sort of +magical potency which can be and is transferred to the figure of Summer +or Life, thus causing, as it were, a sort of Resurrection. In Lusatia +the women only carry out the Death. They are dressed in black themselves +as mourners, but the puppet of straw which they dress up as the Death +wears a white shirt. They carry it to the village boundary, followed by +boys throwing stones, and there tear it to pieces. Then they cut down a +tree and dress it in the white shirt of the Death and carry it home +singing. + +So at the Feast of the Ascension in Transylvania. After morning service +the girls of the village dress up the Death; they tie a threshed-out +sheaf of corn into a rough copy of a head and body, and stick a +broomstick through the body for arms. Then they dress the figure up in +the ordinary holiday clothes of a peasant girl--a red hood, silver +brooches, and ribbons galore. They put the Death at an open window that +all the people when they go to vespers may see it. Vespers over, two +girls take the Death by the arms and walk in front; the rest follow. +They sing an ordinary church hymn. Having wound through the village they +go to another house, shut out the boys, strip the Death of its clothes, +and throw the straw body out of the window to the boys, who fling it +into a river. Then one of the girls is dressed in the Death's discarded +clothes, and the procession again winds through the village. The same +hymn is sung. Thus it is clear that the girl is a sort of resuscitated +Death. This resurrection aspect, this passing of the old into the new, +will be seen to be of great ritual importance when we come to Dionysos +and the Dithyramb. + +These ceremonies of Death and Life are more complex than the simple +carrying in of green boughs or even the dancing round maypoles. When we +have these figures, these "impersonations," we are getting away from the +merely emotional dance, from the domain of simple psychological motor +discharge to something that is very like rude art, at all events to +personification. On this question of personification, in which so much +of art and religion has its roots, it is all-important to be clear. + + * * * * * + +In discussions on such primitive rites as "Carrying out the Death," +"Bringing in Summer," we are often told that the puppet of the girl is +carried round, buried, burnt; brought back, because it "personifies the +Spirit of Vegetation," or it "embodies the Spirit of Summer." The +Spirit of Vegetation is "incarnate in the puppet." We are led, by this +way of speaking, to suppose that the savage or the villager first forms +an idea or conception of a Spirit of Vegetation and then later +"embodies" it. We naturally wonder that he should perform a mental act +so high and difficult as abstraction. + +A very little consideration shows that he performs at first no +abstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He +begins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance +has, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an +actual _person_, and he is the root and ground of _personification_. +There is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not +"embody" a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his +personality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from +the only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without +_per_ception there is no _con_ception. We noted in speaking of dances +(p. 43) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of +actual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance. +So, from many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many +actual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and +women, arises _the_ Tree Spirit, _the_ Vegetation Spirit, _the_ Death. + +At the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the +emotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus +who dance together _with a common leader_. Round that leader the emotion +centres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either +is himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band; +drama--doing--tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is +then remembered, thought of, imaged; from being _per_ceived year by +year, he is finally _con_ceived; but his basis is always in actual fact +of which he is but the reflection. + +Had there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have +halted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent _per_ception helps to +form a permanent abstract _con_ception. The different actual recurrent +May Kings and "Deaths," _because they recur_, get a sort of permanent +life of their own and become beings apart. In this way a conception, a +kind of _daimon_, or spirit, is fashioned, who dies and lives again in a +perpetual cycle. The periodic festival begets a kind of not immortal, +but perennial, god. + +Yet the faculty of conception is but dim and feeble in the mind even of +the peasant to-day; his function is to perceive the actual fact year by +year, and to feel about it. Perhaps a simple instance best makes this +clear. The Greek Church does not gladly suffer images in the round, +though she delights in picture-images, _eikons_. But at her great spring +festival of Easter she makes, in the remote villages, concession to a +strong, perhaps imperative, popular need; she allows an image, an actual +idol, of the dead Christ to be laid in the tomb that it may rise again. +A traveller in Euboea[18] during Holy Week had been struck by the genuine +grief shown at the Good Friday services. On Easter Eve there was the +same general gloom and despondency, and he asked an old woman why it +was. She answered: "Of course I am anxious; for if Christ does not rise +to-morrow, we shall have no corn this year." + +The old woman's state of mind is fairly clear. Her emotion is the old +emotion, not sorrow for the Christ the Son of Mary, but fear, imminent +fear for the failure of food. The Christ again is not the historical +Christ of Judaea, still less the incarnation of the Godhead proceeding +from the Father; he is the actual figure fashioned by his village chorus +and laid by the priests, the leaders of that chorus, in the local +sepulchre. + + * * * * * + +So far, then, we have seen that the vague emotional dance tends to +become a periodic rite, performed at regular intervals. The periodic +rite may occur at any date of importance to the food-supply of the +community, in summer, in winter, at the coming of the annual rains, or +the regular rising of a river. Among Mediterranean peoples, both in +ancient days and at the present time, the Spring Festival arrests +attention. Having learnt the general characteristics of this Spring +Festival, we have now to turn to one particular case, the Spring +Festival of the Greeks. This is all-important to us because, as will be +seen, from the ritual of this and kindred festivals arose, we believe, a +great form of Art, the Greek drama. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[7] Chapter XII: "Periodicity in Nature." + +[8] _Ibid._ + +[9] _De Ser. Num._ 17. + +[10] Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_,^3 p. 200. + +[11] Quoted by Dr. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 203. + +[12] E.K. Chambers, _The Mediaeval Stage_, I, p. 169. + +[13] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 205. + +[14] _The Golden Bough_,^2 p. 213. + +[15] Resumed from Dr. Frazer, _Golden Bough_,^2 II, p. 104. + +[16] _De Is. et Os._, p. 367. + +[17] _De Aug. Scient._, III, 4. + +[18] J.C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folk-lore and Ancient Religion_, p. 573. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE + + +The tragedies of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were performed at +Athens at a festival known as the Great Dionysia. This took place early +in April, so that the time itself makes us suspect that its ceremonies +were connected with the spring. But we have more certain evidence. +Aristotle, in his treatise on the Art of Poetry, raises the question of +the origin of the drama. He was not specially interested in primitive +ritual; beast dances and spring mummeries might even have seemed to him +mere savagery, the lowest form of "imitation;" but he divined that a +structure so complex as Greek tragedy must have arisen out of a simpler +form; he saw, or felt, in fact, that art had in some way risen out of +ritual, and he has left us a memorable statement. + +In describing the "Carrying-out of Summer" we saw that the element of +real _drama_, real impersonation, began with the leaders of the band, +with the Queen of the May, and with the "Death" or the "Winter." Great +is our delight when we find that for Greek drama Aristotle[19] divined a +like beginning. He says: + + "Tragedy--as also Comedy--was at first mere improvisation--the one + (tragedy) _originated with the leaders of the Dithyramb_." + +The further question faces us: What was the Dithyramb? We shall find to +our joy that this obscure-sounding Dithyramb, though before Aristotle's +time it had taken literary form, was in origin a festival closely akin +to those we have just been discussing. The Dithyramb was, to begin with, +a spring ritual; and when Aristotle tells us tragedy arose out of the +Dithyramb, he gives us, though perhaps half unconsciously, a clear +instance of a splendid art that arose from the simplest of rites; he +plants our theory of the connection of art with ritual firmly with its +feet on historical ground. + + * * * * * + +When we use the word "dithyrambic" we certainly do not ordinarily think +of spring. We say a style is "dithyrambic" when it is unmeasured, too +ornate, impassioned, flowery. The Greeks themselves had forgotten that +the word _Dithyramb_ meant a leaping, inspired dance. But they had not +forgotten on what occasion that dance was danced. Pindar wrote a +Dithyramb for the Dionysiac festival at Athens, and his song is full of +springtime and flowers. He bids all the gods come to Athens to dance +flower-crowned. + + "Look upon the dance, Olympians; send us the grace of Victory, ye + gods who come to the heart of our city, where many feet are + treading and incense steams: in sacred Athens come to the holy + centre-stone. Take your portion of garlands pansy-twined, libations + poured from the culling of spring.... + + "Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name + Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his + Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the + purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the + fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth, + lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices + of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with + the calling of crowned Semele." + +Bromios, "He of the loud cry," is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his +mother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova _Zembla_, "New Earth." The +song might have been sung at a "Carrying-in of Summer." The Horae, the +Seasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of +the May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the +earth, flower-crowned. + +You may _bring back_ the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a +maiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek +mythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the +daughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year +by year. On Greek vase-paintings[20] the scene occurs again and again. A +mound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of +the mound a woman's figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of +dancing daemons waiting to welcome her. + +All this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and +poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual "things done," +_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where +to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing +men, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock +called "_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will +believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter +called her up there"; and he adds: "The women to this day perform rites +analogous to the story told." + +These rites of "Calling up" must have been spring rites, in which, in +some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted. + +Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive, +because it is near akin to the "Carrying out of Winter," and also +because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the +food-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years +at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a +word which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the +Russian word _yaro_, "Spring," and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_, +"grace," in the sense of increase, "Give us all _grace_." The rites of +_Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows: + + "The king presided and made a distribution in public of grain and + pulse to all, both citizens and strangers. And the child-image of + _Charila_ is brought in. When they had all received their share, + the king struck the image with his sandal, the leader of the + Thyiades lifted the image and took it away to a precipitous place, + and there tied a rope round the neck of the image and buried it." + +Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria +in honour of _Yarilo_, the Spring God. + +The image is beaten, insulted, let down into some cleft or cave. It is +clearly a "Carrying out the Death," though we do not know the exact date +at which it was celebrated. It had its sequel in another festival at +Delphi called _Herois_, or the "Heroine." Plutarch[23] says it was too +mystical and secret to describe, but he lets us know the main gist. + + "Most of the ceremonies of the _Herois_ have a mystical reason + which is known to the Thyiades, but from the rites that are done in + public, one may conjecture it to be a 'Bringing up of Semele.'" + +Some one or something, a real woman, or more likely the buried puppet +_Charila_, the Spring-Maiden, was brought up from the ground to enact +and magically induce the coming of Spring. + + * * * * * + +These ceremonies of beating, driving out, burying, have all, with the +Greeks, as with the savage and the modern peasant, but one real object: +to get rid of the season that is bad for food, to bring in and revive +the new supply. This comes out very clearly in a ceremony that went on +down to Plutarch's time, and he tells us[24] it was "ancestral." It was +called "the Driving out of Ox-hunger." By Ox-hunger was meant any great +ravenous hunger, and the very intensity and monstrosity of the word +takes us back to days when famine was a grim reality. When Plutarch was +_archon_ he had, as chief official, to perform the ceremony at the +Prytaneion, or Common Hearth. A slave was taken, beaten with rods of a +magical plant, and driven out of doors to the words: "Out with +Ox-hunger! In with Wealth and Health!" Here we see the actual sensation, +or emotion, of ravenous hunger gets a name, and thereby a personality, +though a less completely abstracted one than Death or Summer. We do not +know that the ceremony of Driving out Ox-hunger was performed in the +spring, it is only instanced here because, more plainly even than the +Charila, when the king distributes pulse and peas, it shows the relation +of ancient mimic ritual to food-supply. + +If we keep clearly in mind the _object_ rather than the exact _date_ of +the Spring Song we shall avoid many difficulties. A Dithyramb was sung +at Delphi through the winter months, which at first seems odd. But we +must remember that among agricultural peoples the performance of magical +ceremonies to promote fertility and the food supply may begin at any +moment after the earth is ploughed and the seed sown. The sowing of the +seed is its death and burial; "that which thou sowest is not quickened +except it die." When the death and burial are once accomplished the hope +of resurrection and new birth begins, and with the hope the magical +ceremonies that may help to fulfil that hope. The Sun is new-born in +midwinter, at the solstice, and our "New" year follows, yet it is in the +spring that, to this day, we keep our great resurrection festival. + + * * * * * + +We return to our argument, holding steadily in our minds this +connection. The Dithyramb is a Spring Song at a Spring Festival, and the +importance of the Spring Festival is that it magically promotes the +food-supply. + + * * * * * + +Do we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point +is as curious as significant. + +Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question: + + "Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos, + With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?" + +Scholars have broken their own heads and one another's to find a meaning +and an answer to the odd query. It is only quite lately that they have +come at all to see that the Dithyramb was a Spring Song, a primitive +rite. Formerly it was considered to be a rather elaborate form of lyric +poetry invented comparatively late. But, even allowing it is the Spring +Song, are we much further? Why should the Dithyramb be bull-driving? How +can driving a Bull help the spring to come? And, above all, what are the +"slender-ankled" Graces doing, helping to drive the great unwieldy Bull? + +The difficulty about the Graces, or Charites, as the Greeks called them, +is soon settled. They are the Seasons, or "Hours," and the chief Season, +or Hour, was Spring herself. They are called Charites, or Graces, +because they are, in the words of the Collect, the "Givers of all +grace," that is, of all increase physical and spiritual. But why do they +want to come driving in a Bull? It is easy to see why the Givers of all +grace lead the Dithyramb, the Spring Song; their coming, with their +"fruits in due season" is the very gist of the Dithyramb; but why is the +Dithyramb "bull-driving"? Is this a mere "poetical" epithet? If it is, +it is not particularly poetical. + +But Pindar is not, we now know, merely being "poetical," which amounts, +according to some scholars, to meaning anything or nothing. He is +describing, alluding to, an actual rite or _dromenon_ in which a Bull is +summoned and driven to come in spring. About that we must be clear. +Plutarch, the first anthropologist, wrote a little treatise called +_Greek Questions_, in which he tells us all the strange out-of-the-way +rites and customs he saw in Greece, and then asks himself what they +meant. In his 36th _Question_ he asks: "Why do the women of Elis summon +Dionysos in their hymns to be present with them with his bull-foot?" And +then, by a piece of luck that almost makes one's heart stand still, he +gives us the very words of the little ritual hymn the women sang, our +earliest "Bull-driving" Spring Song: + + "In Spring-time,[25] O Dionysos, + To thy holy temple come; + To Elis with thy Graces, + Rushing with thy bull-foot, come, + Noble Bull, Noble Bull." + +It is a strange primitive picture--the holy women standing in springtime +in front of the temple, summoning the Bull; and the Bull, garlanded and +filleted, rushing towards them, driven by the Graces, probably three +real women, three Queens of the May, wreathed and flower-bedecked. But +what does it mean? + +Plutarch tries to answer his own question, and half, in a dim, confused +fashion, succeeds. "Is it," he suggests, "that some entitle the god as +'Born of a Bull' and as a 'Bull' himself? ... or is it that many hold +the god is the beginner of sowing and ploughing?" We have seen how a +kind of _daimon_, or spirit, of Winter or Summer arose from an actual +tree or maid or man disguised year by year as a tree. Did the god +Dionysos take his rise in like fashion from the driving and summoning +year by year of some holy Bull? + +First, we must notice that it was not only at Elis that a holy Bull +appears at the Spring Festival. Plutarch asks another instructive +_Question_:[26] "Who among the Delphians is the Sanctifier?" And we find +to our amazement that the sanctifier is a Bull. A Bull who not only is +holy himself, but is so holy that he has power to make others holy, he +is the Sanctifier; and, most important for us, he sanctifies by his +death in the month Bysios, the month that fell, Plutarch tells us, "at +the beginning of spring, the time of the blossoming of many plants." + +We do not hear that the "Sanctifier" at Delphi was "driven," but in all +probability he was led from house to house, that every one might partake +in the sanctity that simply exuded from him. At Magnesia,[27] a city of +Asia Minor, we have more particulars. There, at the annual fair year by +year the stewards of the city bought a Bull, "the finest that could be +got," and at the new moon of the month at the beginning of seedtime they +dedicated it, for the city's welfare. The Bull's sanctified life began +with the opening of the agricultural year, whether with the spring or +the autumn ploughing we do not know. The dedication of the Bull was a +high solemnity. He was led in procession, at the head of which went the +chief priest and priestess of the city. With them went a herald and the +sacrificer, and two bands of youths and maidens. So holy was the Bull +that nothing unlucky might come near him; the youths and maidens must +have both their parents alive, they must not have been under the +_taboo_, the infection, of death. The herald pronounced aloud a prayer +for "the safety of the city and the land, and the citizens, and the +women and children, for peace and wealth, and for the bringing forth of +grain and of all the other fruits, and of cattle." All this longing for +fertility, for food and children, focuses round the holy Bull, whose +holiness is his strength and fruitfulness. + +The Bull thus solemnly set apart, charged as it were with the luck of +the whole people, is fed at the public cost. The official charged with +his keep has to drive him into the market-place, and "it is good for +those corn-merchants who give the Bull grain as a gift," good for them +because they are feeding, nurturing, the luck of the State, which is +their own luck. So through autumn and winter the Bull lives on, but +early in April the end comes. Again a great procession is led forth, the +senate and the priests walk in it, and with them come representatives of +each class of the State--children and young boys, and youths just come +to manhood, _epheboi_, as the Greeks called them. The Bull is +sacrificed, and why? Why must a thing so holy die? Why not live out the +term of his life? He dies because he _is_ so holy, that he may give his +holiness, his strength, his life, just at the moment it is holiest, to +his people. + + "When they shall have sacrificed the Bull, let them divide it up + among those who took part in the procession." + +The mandate is clear. The procession included representatives of the +whole State. The holy flesh is not offered to a god, it is eaten--to +every man his portion--by each and every citizen, that he may get his +share of the strength of the Bull, of the luck of the State. + + * * * * * + +Now at Magnesia, after the holy civic communion, the meal shared, we +hear no more. Next year a fresh Bull will be chosen, and the cycle begin +again. But at Athens at the annual "Ox-murder," the _Bouphonia_, as it +was called, the scene did not so close. The ox was slain with all +solemnity, and all those present partook of the flesh, and then--the +hide was stuffed with straw and sewed up, and next the stuffed animal +was set on its feet and yoked to a plough as though it were ploughing. +The Death is followed by a Resurrection. Now this is all-important. We +are so accustomed to think of sacrifice as the death, the giving up, the +renouncing of something. But _sacrifice_ does not mean "death" at all. +It means making holy, sanctifying; and holiness was to primitive man +just special strength and life. What they wanted from the Bull was just +that special life and strength which all the year long they had put into +him, and nourished and fostered. That life was in his blood. They could +not eat that flesh nor drink that blood unless they killed him. So he +must die. But it was not to give him up to the gods that they killed +him, not to "sacrifice" him in our sense, but to have him, keep him, eat +him, live _by_ him and through him, by his grace. + +And so this killing of the sacred beast was always a terrible thing, a +thing they fain would have shirked. They fled away after the deed, not +looking backwards; they publicly tried and condemned the axe that struck +the blow. But their best hope, their strongest desire, was that he had +not, could not, really have died. So this intense desire uttered itself +in the _dromenon_ of his resurrection. If he did not rise again, how +could they plough and sow again next year? He must live again, he +should, he _did_. + +The Athenians were a little ashamed of their "Ox-murder," with its +grotesque pantomime of the stuffed, resurrected beast. Just so some of +us now-a-days are getting a little shy of deliberately cursing our +neighbours on Ash Wednesday. They probably did not feel very keenly +about their food-supply, they thought their daily dinner was secure. +Anyhow the emotion that had issued in the pantomime was dead, though +from sheer habit the pantomime went on. Probably some of the less +educated among them thought there "might be something in it," and anyhow +it was "as well to be on the safe side." The queer ceremony had got +associated with the worship of Olympian Zeus, and with him you must +reckon. Then perhaps your brother-in-law was the Ox-striker, and anyhow +it was desirable that the women should go; some of the well-born girls +had to act as water-carriers. + +The Ox-murder was obsolete at Athens, but the spirit of the rite is +alive to-day among the Ainos in the remote island of Saghalien. Among +the Ainos the Bear is what psychologists rather oddly call the main +"food focus," the chief "value centre." And well he may be. Bear's flesh +is the Ainos' staple food; they eat it both fresh and salted; bearskins +are their principal clothing; part of their taxes are paid in bear's +fat. The Aino men spend the autumn, winter and spring in hunting the +Bear. Yet we are told the Ainos "worship the Bear"; they apply to it the +name _Kamui_, which has been translated god; but it is a word applied to +all strangers, and so only means what catches attention, and hence is +formidable. In the religion of the Ainos "the Bear plays a chief part," +says one writer. The Bear "receives idolatrous veneration," says +another. They "worship it after their fashion," says a third. Have we +another case of "the heathen in his blindness"? Only here he "bows down" +not to "gods of wood and stone," but to a live thing, uncouth, shambling +but gracious--a Bear. + +Instead of theorizing as to what the Aino thinks and imagines, let us +observe his _doings_, his _dromena_, his rites; and most of all his +great spring and autumn rite, the _dromenon_ of the Bear. We shall find +that, detail for detail, it strangely resembles the Greek _dromenon_ of +the Bull. + +As winter draws to a close among the Ainos, a young Bear is trapped and +brought into the village. At first an Aino woman suckles him at her +breast, then later he is fed on his favourite food, fish--his tastes are +semi-polar. When he is at his full strength, that is, when he threatens +to break the cage in which he lives, the feast is held. This is usually +in September, or October, that is when the season of bear-hunting +begins. + +Before the feast begins the Ainos apologize profusely, saying that they +have been good to the Bear, they can feed him no longer, they must kill +him. Then the man who gives the Bear-feast invites his relations and +friends, and if the community be small nearly the whole village attends. +On the occasion described by Dr. Scheube about thirty Ainos were +present, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best clothes. +The woman of the house who had suckled the Bear sat by herself, sad and +silent, only now and then she burst into helpless tears. The ceremony +began with libations made to the fire-god and to the house-god set up in +a corner of the house. Next the master and some of the guests left the +hut and offered libations in front of the Bear's cage. A few drops were +presented to him in a saucer, which he promptly upset. Then the women +and girls danced round the cage, rising and hopping on their toes, and +as they danced they clapped their hands and chanted a monotonous chant. +The mother and some of the old women cried as they danced and stretched +out their arms to the Bear, calling him loving names. The young women +who had nursed no Bears laughed, after the manner of the young. The Bear +began to get upset, and rushed round his cage, howling lamentably. + +Next came a ceremony of special significance which is never omitted at +the sacrifice of a Bear. Libations were offered to the _inabos_, sacred +wands which stand outside the Aino hut. These wands are about two feet +high and are whittled at the top into spiral shavings. _Five new wands +with bamboo leaves attached to them_ are set up for the festival; the +leaves according to the Ainos mean _that the Bear may come to life +again_. These wands are specially interesting. The chief focus of +attention is of course the Bear, because his flesh is for the Aino his +staple food. But vegetation is not quite forgotten. The animal life of +the Bear and the vegetable life of the bamboo-leaves are thought of +together. + +Then comes the actual sacrifice. The Bear is led out of his cage, a rope +is thrown round his neck, and he is perambulated round the neighbourhood +of the hut. We do not hear that among the Ainos he goes in procession +round the village, but among the Gilyaks, not far away in Eastern +Siberia, the Bear is led about the villages, and it is held to be +specially important that he should be dragged down to the river, for +this will ensure the village a plentiful supply of fish. He is then, +among the Gilyaks, taken to each hut in the village, and fish, brandy, +and other delicacies are offered to him. Some of the people prostrate +themselves in front of him and his coming into a house brings a +blessing, and if he snuffs at the food, that brings a blessing too. + +To return to the Aino Bear. While he is being led about the hut the men, +headed by a chief, shoot at the Bear with arrows tipped with buttons. +But the object of the shooting is not to kill, only apparently to +irritate him. He is killed at last without shedding of his sacred blood, +and we hope without much pain. He is taken in front of the sacred wands, +a stick placed in his mouth, and nine men press his neck against a beam; +he dies without a sound. Meantime the women and girls, who stand behind +the men, dance, lament, and beat the men who are killing their Bear. The +body of the dead Bear is then laid on a mat before the sacred wands. A +sword and quiver, taken from the wands, are hung about the Bear. If it +is a She-Bear it is also bedecked with a necklace and rings. Food and +drink, millet broth and millet cakes are offered to it. It is decked as +an Aino, it is fed as an Aino. It is clear that the Bear is in some +sense a human Bear, an Aino. The men sit down on mats in front of the +Bear and offer libations, and themselves drink deep. + +Now that the death is fairly over the mourning ends, and all is feasting +and merriment. Even the old women lament no more. Cakes of millet are +scrambled for. The bear is skinned and disembowelled, the trunk is +severed from the head, to which the skin is left hanging. The blood, +which might not be shed before, is now carefully collected in cups and +eagerly drunk by the men, for the blood is the life. The liver is cut up +and eaten raw. The flesh and the rest of the vitals are kept for the day +next but one, when it is divided among all persons present at the feast. +It is what the Greeks call a _dais_, a meal divided or distributed. +While the Bear is being dismembered the girls dance, in front of the +sacred wands, and the old women again lament. The Bear's brain is +extracted from his head and eaten, and the skull, severed from the skin, +is hung on a pole near the sacred wands. Thus it would seem the life and +strength of the bear is brought near to the living growth of the leaves. +The stick with which the Bear was gagged is also hung on the pole, and +with it the sword and quiver he had worn after his death. The whole +congregation, men and women, dance about this strange maypole, and a +great drinking bout, in which all men and women alike join, ends the +feast. + +The rite varies as to detail in different places. Among the Gilyaks the +Bear is dressed after death in full Gilyak costume and seated on a +bench of honour. In one part the bones and skull are carried out by the +oldest people to a place in the forest not far from the village. There +all the bones except the skull are buried. After that a young tree is +felled a few inches above the ground, its stump is cleft, and the skull +wedged into the cleft. When the grass grows over the spot the skull +disappears and there is an end of the Bear. Sometimes the Bear's flesh +is eaten in special vessels prepared for this festival and only used at +it. These vessels, which include bowls, platters, spoons, are +elaborately carved with figures of bears and other devices. + +Through all varieties in detail the main intent is the same, and it is +identical with that of the rite of the holy Bull in Greece and the +maypole of our forefathers. Great is the sanctity of the Bear or the +Bull or the Tree; the Bear for a hunting people; the Bull for nomads, +later for agriculturists; the Tree for a forest folk. On the Bear and +the Bull and the Tree are focussed the desire of the whole people. Bear +and Bull and Tree are sacred, that is, set apart, because full of a +special life and strength intensely desired. They are led and carried +about from house to house that their sanctity may touch all, and avail +for all; the animal dies that he may be eaten; the Tree is torn to +pieces that all may have a fragment; and, above all, Bear and Bull and +Tree die only that they may live again. + + * * * * * + +We have seen (p. 71) that, out of the puppet or the May Queen, actually +_per_ceived year after year there arose a remembrance, a mental image, +an imagined Tree Spirit, or "Summer," or Death, a thing never actually +seen but _con_ceived. Just so with the Bull. Year by year in the various +villages of Greece was seen an actual holy Bull, and bit by bit from the +remembrance of these various holy Bulls, who only died to live again +each year, there arose the image of a Bull-Spirit, or Bull-Daimon, and +finally, if we like to call him so, a Bull-God. The growth of this idea, +this _con_ception, must have been much helped by the fact that in some +places the dancers attendant on the holy Bull dressed up as bulls and +cows. The women worshippers of Dionysos, we are told, wore bulls' horns +in imitation of the god, for they represented him in pictures as having +a bull's head. _We_ know that a man does not turn into a bull, or a +bull into a man, the line of demarcation is clearly drawn; but the +rustic has no such conviction even to-day. That crone, his aged aunt, +may any day come in at the window in the shape of a black cat; why +should she not? It is not, then, that a god 'takes upon him the form of +a bull,' or is 'incarnate in a bull,' but that the real Bull and the +worshipper dressed as a bull are seen and remembered and give rise to an +imagined Bull-God; but, it should be observed, only among gifted, +imaginative, that is, image-making, peoples. The Ainos have their actual +holy Bear, as the Greeks had their holy Bull; but with them out of the +succession of holy Bears there arises, alas! no Bear-God. + + * * * * * + +We have dwelt long on the Bull-driving Dithyramb, because it was not +obvious on the face of it how driving a bull could help the coming of +spring. We understand now why, on the day before the tragedies were +performed at Athens, the young men (_epheboi_) brought in not only the +human figure of the god, but also a Bull "worthy" of the God. We +understand, too, why in addition to the tragedies performed at the +great festival, Dithyrambs were also sung--"Bull-driving Dithyrambs." + + * * * * * + +We come next to a third aspect of the Dithyramb, and one perhaps the +most important of all for the understanding of art, and especially the +drama. _The Dithyramb was the Song and Dance of the New Birth._ + +Plato is discussing various sorts of odes or songs. "Some," he says, +"are prayers to the gods--these are called _hymns_; others of an +opposite sort might best be called _dirges_; another sort are _paeans_, +and another--the birth of Dionysos, I suppose--is called _Dithyramb_." +Plato is not much interested in Dithyrambs. To him they are just a +particular kind of choral song; it is doubtful if he even knew that they +were Spring Songs; but this he did know, though he throws out the +information carelessly--the Dithyramb had for its proper subject the +birth or coming to be, the _genesis_ of Dionysos. + +The common usage of Greek poetry bears out Plato's statement. When a +poet is going to describe the birth of Dionysos he calls the god by the +title _Dithyrambos_. Thus an inscribed hymn found at Delphi[28] opens +thus: + + "Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come. + ... + Bromios, come, and coming with thee bring + Holy hours of thine own holy spring. + ... + All the stars danced for joy. Mirth + Of mortals hailed thee, Bacchos, at thy birth." + +The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in +the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull. + + * * * * * + +And now we come to a curious thing. We have seen how a spirit, a daemon, +and perhaps ultimately a god, develops out of an actual rite. Dionysos +the Tree-God, the Spirit of Vegetation, is but a maypole once +_per_ceived, then remembered and _con_ceived. Dionysos, the Bull-God, is +but the actual holy Bull himself, or rather the succession of annual +holy Bulls once perceived, then remembered, generalized, conceived. But +the god conceived will surely always be made in the image, the mental +image, of the fact perceived. If, then, we have a song and dance of the +_birth_ of Dionysos, shall we not, as in the Christian religion, have a +child-god, a holy babe, a Saviour in the manger; at first in original +form as a calf, then as a human child? Now it is quite true that in +Greek religion there is a babe Dionysos called _Liknites_, "Him of the +Cradle."[29] The rite of waking up, or bringing to light, the child +Liknites was performed each year at Delphi by the holy women. + +But it is equally clear and certain that _the_ Dionysos of Greek worship +and of the drama was not a babe in the cradle. He was a goodly youth in +the first bloom of manhood, with the down upon his cheek, the time when, +Homer says, "youth is most gracious." This is the Dionysos that we know +in statuary, the fair, dreamy youth sunk in reverie; this is the +Dionysos whom Pentheus despised and insulted because of his young beauty +like a woman's. But how could such a Dionysos arise out of a rite of +birth? He could not, and he did not. The Dithyramb is also the song of +the second or new birth, the Dithyrambos is the twice-born. + +This the Greeks themselves knew. By a false etymology they explained the +word _Dithyrambos_ as meaning "He of the double door," their word +_thyra_ being the same as our _door_. They were quite mistaken; +_Dithyrambos_, modern philology tells us, is the Divine Leaper, Dancer, +and Lifegiver. But their false etymology is important to us, because it +shows that they believed the Dithyrambos was the twice-born. Dionysos +was born, they fabled, once of his mother, like all men, once of his +father's thigh, like no man. + +But if the Dithyrambos, the young Dionysos, like the Bull-God, the +Tree-God, arises from a _dromenon_, a rite, what is the rite of second +birth from which it arises? + + * * * * * + +We look in vain among our village customs. If ever rite of second birth +existed, it is dead and buried. We turn to anthropology for help, and +find this, the rite of the second birth, widespread, universal, over +half the savage world. + +With the savage, to be twice born is the rule, not the exception. By his +first birth he comes into the world, by his second he is born into his +tribe. At his first birth he belongs to his mother and the women-folk; +at his second he becomes a full-fledged man and passes into the society +of the warriors of his tribe. This second birth is a little difficult +for us to realize. A boy with us passes very gradually from childhood to +manhood, there is no definite moment when he suddenly emerges as a man. +Little by little as his education advances he is admitted to the social +privileges of the circle in which he is born. He goes to school, enters +a workshop or a university, and finally adopts a trade or a profession. +In the case of girls, in whose upbringing primitive savagery is apt to +linger, there is still, in certain social strata a ceremony known as +Coming Out. A girl's dress is suddenly lengthened, her hair is put up, +she is allowed to wear jewels, she kisses her sovereign's hand, a dance +is given in her honour; abruptly, from her seclusion in the cocoon state +of the schoolroom, she emerges full-blown into society. But the custom, +with its half-realized savagery, is already dying, and with boys it does +not obtain at all. Both sexes share, of course, the religious rite of +Confirmation. + +To avoid harsh distinctions, to bridge over abrupt transitions, is +always a mark of advancing civilization; but the savage, in his +ignorance and fear, lamentably over-stresses distinctions and +transitions. The long process of education, of passing from child to +man, is with him condensed into a few days, weeks, or sometimes months +of tremendous educational emphasis--of what is called "initiation," +"going in," that is, entering the tribe. The ceremonies vary, but the +gist is always substantially the same. The boy is to put away childish +things, and become a grown and competent tribesman. Above all he is to +cease to be a woman-thing and become a man. His initiation prepares him +for his two chief functions as a tribesman--to be a warrior, to be a +father. That to the savage is the main if not the whole Duty of Man. + +This "initiation" is of tremendous importance, and we should expect, +what in fact we find, that all this emotion that centres about it issues +in _dromena_, "rites done." These rites are very various, but they all +point one moral, that the former things are passed away and that the +new-born man has entered on a new life. + +Simplest perhaps of all, and most instructive, is the rite practised by +the Kikuyu of British East Africa,[30] who require that every boy, just +before circumcision, must be born again. "The mother stands up with the +boy crouching at her feet; she pretends to go through all the labour +pains, and the boy on being reborn cries like a babe and is washed." + +More often the new birth is simulated, or imagined, as a death and a +resurrection, either of the boys themselves or of some one else in their +presence. Thus at initiation among some tribes of South-east +Australia,[31] when the boys are assembled an old man dressed in stringy +bark fibre lies down in a grave. He is covered up lightly with sticks +and earth, and the grave is smoothed over. The buried man holds in his +hand a small bush which seems to be growing from the ground, and other +bushes are stuck in the ground round about. The novices are then brought +to the edge of the grave and a song is sung. Gradually, as the song goes +on, the bush held by the buried man begins to quiver. It moves more and +more and bit by bit the man himself starts up from the grave. + +The Fijians have a drastic and repulsive way of simulating death. The +boys are shown a row of seemingly dead men, their bodies covered with +blood and entrails, which are really those of a dead pig. The first +gives a sudden yell. Up start the men, and then run to the river to +cleanse themselves. + +Here the death is vicarious. Another goes through the simulated death +that the initiated boy may have new life. But often the mimicry is +practised on the boys themselves. Thus in West Ceram[32] boys at puberty +are admitted to the Kakian association. The boys are taken blindfold, +followed by their relations, to an oblong wooden shed under the darkest +trees in the depths of the forest. When all are assembled the high +priest calls aloud on the devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is +heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo +trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the +priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of +chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with +blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's +head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the +other world, whence he will return born again. In a day or two the men +who act as sponsors to the boys return daubed with mud, and in a +half-fainting state like messengers from another world. They bring the +good news that the devil has restored the boys to life. The boys +themselves appear, but when they return they totter as they walk; they +go into the house backwards. If food is given them they upset the plate. +They sit dumb and only make signs. The sponsors have to teach them the +simplest daily acts as though they were new-born children. At the end of +twenty to thirty days, during which their mothers and sisters may not +comb their hair, the high priest takes them to a lonely place in the +forest and cuts off a lock of hair from the crown of each of their +heads. At the close of these rites the boys are men and may marry. + +Sometimes the new birth is not simulated but merely suggested. A new +name is given, a new language taught, a new dress worn, new dances are +danced. Almost always it is accompanied by moral teaching. Thus in the +Kakian ceremony already described the boys have to sit in a row +cross-legged, without moving a muscle, with their hands stretched out. +The chief takes a trumpet, and placing the mouth of it on the hand of +each lad, he speaks through it in strange tones, imitating the voice of +spirits. He warns the boys on pain of death to observe the rules of the +society, and never to reveal what they have seen in the Kakian house. +The priests also instruct the boys on their duty to their blood +relations, and teach them the secrets of the tribe. + +Sometimes it is not clear whether the new birth is merely suggested or +represented in pantomime. Thus among the Binbinga of North Australia it +is generally believed that at initiation a monstrous being called +Katajalina, like the Kronos of the Greeks, swallows the boys and brings +them up again initiated; but whether there is or is not a _dromenon_ or +rite of swallowing we are not told. + +In totemistic societies, and in the animal secret societies that seem to +grow out of them, the novice is born again as the sacred animal. Thus +among the Carrier Indians[33] when a man wants to become a _Lulem_, or +Bear, however cold the season, he tears off his clothes, puts on a +bearskin and dashes into the woods, where he will stay for three or four +days. Every night his fellow-villagers will go out in search parties to +find him. They cry out _Yi! Kelulem_ ("Come on, Bear") and he answers +with angry growls. Usually they fail to find him, but he comes back at +last himself. He is met and conducted to the ceremonial lodge, and +there, in company with the rest of the Bears, dances solemnly his first +appearance. Disappearance and reappearance is as common a rite in +initiation as simulated killing and resurrection, and has the same +object. Both are rites of transition, of passing from one state to +another. It has often been remarked, by students of ancient Greek and +other ceremonies, that the rites of birth, marriage, and death, which +seem to us so different, are to primitive man oddly similar. This is +explained if we see that in intent they _are_ all the same, all a +passing from one social state to another. There are but two factors in +every rite, the putting off of the old, the putting on of the new; you +carry out Winter or Death, you bring in Summer or Life. Between them is +a midway state when you are neither here nor there, you are secluded, +under a _taboo_. + + * * * * * + +To the Greeks and to many primitive peoples the rites of birth, +marriage, and death were for the most part family rites needing little +or no social emphasis. But _the_ rite which concerned the whole tribe, +the essence of which was entrance into the tribe, was the rite of +initiation at puberty. This all-important fact is oddly and +significantly enshrined in the Greek language. The general Greek word +for rite was _t{)e}l{)e}t{-e}_. It was applied to all mysteries, and +sometimes to marriages and funerals. But it has nothing to do with +death. It comes from a root meaning "to grow up." The word +_t{)e}l{)e}t{-e}_ means _rite of growing up_, becoming complete. It +meant at first maturity, then rite of maturity, then by a natural +extension any rite of initiation that was mysterious. The rites of +puberty were in their essence mysterious, because they consisted in +initiation into the sanctities of the tribe, the things which society +sanctioned and protected, excluding the uninitiated, whether they were +young boys, women, or members of other tribes. Then, by contagion, the +mystery notion spread to other rites. + + * * * * * + +We understand now who and what was the god who arose out of the rite, +the _dromenon_ of tribal initiation, the rite of the new, the second +birth. He was Dionysos. His name, according to recent philology, tells +us--Dio_nysos_, "Divine Young Man." + +When once we see that out of the emotion of the rite and the facts of +the rite arises that remembrance and shadow of the rite, that _image_ +which is the god, we realize instantly that the god of the spring rite +_must_ be a young god, and in primitive societies, where young women are +but of secondary account, he will necessarily be a young _man_. Where +emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just +initiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of +quite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth +survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women +are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of +all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity. + +And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a +blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in +spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of +olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits, +_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it: + + "Eiresione brings + Figs and fat cakes, + And a pot of honey and oil to mix, + And a wine-cup strong and deep, + That she may drink and sleep." + +The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called +_Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a +Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people." + + * * * * * + +The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a +Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a +young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a +_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors: + + "Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet + and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Dikte + for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song." + +The leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual +leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a +daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in +the new year at spring. The real leader, the "first kouros" as the +Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of +leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all. +He is "lord of all that is wet and gleaming," for the May bough, we +remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and +blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away +from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing +their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough +remains to make the meaning clear. + +And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood: + + "The Horae (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dike to + possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by + wealth-loving Peace." + +We know the Seasons, the fruit and food bringers, but Dike is strange. +We translate the word "Justice," but Dike means, not Justice as between +man and man, but the order of the world, the _way_ of life. It is +through this way, this order, that the seasons go round. As long as the +seasons observe this order there is fruitfulness and peace. If once that +order were overstepped then would be disorder, strife, confusion, +barrenness. And next comes a mandate, strange to our modern ears: + + "To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and + leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase." + +And yet not strange if we remember the Macedonian farmer (p. 32), who +throws his spade into the air that the wheat may be tall, or the Russian +peasant girls who leap high in the air crying, "Flax, grow." The +leaping of the youths of the Cretan hymn is just the utterance of their +tense desire. They have grown up, and with them all live things must +grow. By their magic year by year the fruits of the earth come to their +annual new birth. And that there be no mistake they end: + + "Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, _and for + our young citizens_, and for goodly Themis." + +They are now young citizens of a fenced city instead of young tribesmen +of the bush, but their magic is the same, and the strength that holds +them together is the bond of social custom, social structure, "goodly +Themis." No man liveth to himself. + + * * * * * + +Crete is not Athens, but at Athens in the theatre of Dionysos, if the +priest of Dionysos, seated at the great Spring Festival in his beautiful +carved central seat, looked across the orchestra, he would see facing +him a stone frieze on which was sculptured the Cretan ritual, the armed +dancing youths and the child to be year by year reborn. + +We have seen what the Dithyramb, from which sprang the Drama, was. A +Spring song, a song of Bull-driving, a song and dance of Second Birth; +but all this seems, perhaps, not to bring us nearer to Greek drama, +rather to put us farther away. What have the Spring and the Bull and the +Birth Rite to do with the stately tragedies we know--with Agamemnon and +Iphigenia and Orestes and Hippolytos? That is the question before us, +and the answer will lead us to the very heart of our subject. So far we +have seen that ritual arose from the presentation and emphasis of +emotion--emotion felt mainly about food. We have further seen that +ritual develops out of and by means of periodic festivals. One of the +chief periodic festivals at Athens was the Spring Festival of the +Dithyramb. Out of this Dithyramb arose, Aristotle says, tragedy--that +is, out of Ritual arose Art. How and Why? That is the question before +us. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[19] _Poetics_, IV, 12. + +[20] See my _Themis_, p. 419. (1912.) + +[21] I, 43. 2. + +[22] _Quaest. Graec._ XII. + +[23] _Op. cit._ + +[24] _Quaest. Symp._, 693 f. + +[25] The words "in Spring-time" depend on an emendation to me +convincing. See my _Themis_, p. 205, note 1. + +[26] IX. + +[27] See my _Themis_, p. 151. + +[28] See my _Prolegomena_, p. 439. + +[29] _Prolegomena_, p. 402. + +[30] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 228. + +[31] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 424. + +[32] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, 442. + +[33] _The Golden Bough_,^2 III, p. 438. + +[34] See my _Themis_, p. 503. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON ("THING DONE") AND THE DRAMA + + +Probably most people when they go to a Greek play for the first time +think it a strange performance. According, perhaps, more to their +temperament than to their training, they are either very much excited or +very much bored. In many minds there will be left a feeling that, +whether they have enjoyed the play or not, they are puzzled: there are +odd effects, conventions, suggestions. + +For example, the main deed of the Tragedy, the slaying of hero or +heroine, is not done on the stage. That disappoints some modern minds +unconsciously avid of realism to the point of horror. Instead of a fine +thrilling murder or suicide before his very eyes, the spectator is put +off with an account of the murder done off the stage. This account is +regularly given, and usually at considerable length, in a "messenger's +speech." The messenger's speech is a regular item in a Greek play, and +though actually it gives scope not only for fine elocution, but for real +dramatic effect, in theory we feel it undramatic, and a modern actor has +sometimes much ado to make it acceptable. The spectator is told that all +these, to him, odd conventions are due to Greek restraint, moderation, +good taste, and yet for all their supposed restraint and reserve, he +finds when he reads his Homer that Greek heroes frequently burst into +floods of tears when a self-respecting Englishman would have suffered in +silence. + +Then again, specially if the play be by Euripides, it ends not with a +"curtain," not with a great decisive moment, but with the appearance of +a god who says a few lines of either exhortation or consolation or +reconciliation, which, after the strain and stress of the action itself, +strikes some people as rather stilted and formal, or as rather flat and +somehow unsatisfying. Worse still, there are in many of the scenes long +dialogues, in which the actors wrangle with each other, and in which the +action does not advance so quickly as we wish. Or again, instead of +beginning with the action, and having our curiosity excited bit by bit +about the plot, at the outset some one comes in and tells us the whole +thing in the prologue. Prologues we feel, are out of date, and the +Greeks ought to have known better. Or again, of course we admit that +tragedy must be tragic, and we are prepared for a decent amount of +lamentation, but when an antiphonal lament goes on for pages, we weary +and wish that the chorus would stop lamenting and _do_ something. + + * * * * * + +At the back of our modern discontent there is lurking always this queer +anomaly of the chorus. We have in our modern theatre no chorus, and +when, in the opera, something of the nature of a chorus appears in the +ballet, it is a chorus that really dances to amuse and excite us in the +intervals of operatic action; it is not a chorus of doddering and +pottering old men, moralizing on an action in which they are too feeble +to join. Of course if we are classical scholars we do not cavil at the +choral songs; the extreme difficulty of scanning and construing them +alone commands a traditional respect; but if we are merely modern +spectators, we may be respectful, we may even feel strangely excited, +but we are certainly puzzled. The reason of our bewilderment is simple +enough. These prologues and messengers' speeches and ever-present +choruses that trouble us are ritual forms still surviving at a time when +the _drama_ has fully developed out of the _dromenon_. We cannot here +examine all these ritual forms in detail;[35] one, however, the chorus, +strangest and most beautiful of all, it is essential we should +understand. + +Suppose that these choral songs have been put into English that in any +way represents the beauty of the Greek; then certainly there will be +some among the spectators who get a thrill from the chorus quite unknown +to any modern stage effect, a feeling of emotion heightened yet +restrained, a sense of entering into higher places, filled with a larger +and a purer air--a sense of beauty born clean out of conflict and +disaster. + +A suspicion dawns upon the spectator that, great though the tragedies in +themselves are, they owe their peculiar, their incommunicable beauty +largely to this element of the chorus which seemed at first so strange. + +Now by examining this chorus and understanding its function--nay, more, +by considering the actual _orchestra_, the space on which the chorus +danced, and the relation of that space to the rest of the theatre, to +the stage and the place where the spectators sat--we shall get light at +last on our main central problem: How did art arise out of ritual, and +what is the relation of both to that actual life from which both art and +ritual sprang? + + * * * * * + +The dramas of AEschylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles +and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the _theatre_, +but, strange though it sounds to us, in the _orchestra_. The _theatre_ +to the Greeks was simply "the place of seeing," the place where the +spectators sat; what they called the sk{-e}n{-e} or _scene_, was the +tent or hut in which the actors dressed. But the kernel and centre of +the whole was the _orchestra_, the circular _dancing-place_ of the +chorus; and, as the orchestra was the kernel and centre of the theatre, +so the chorus, the band of dancing and singing men--this chorus that +seems to us so odd and even superfluous--was the centre and kernel and +starting-point of the drama. The chorus danced and sang that Dithyramb +we know so well, and from the leaders of that Dithyramb we remember +tragedy arose, and the chorus were at first, as an ancient writer tells +us, just men and boys, tillers of the earth, who danced when they rested +from sowing and ploughing. + +Now it is in the relation between the _orchestra_ or dancing-place of +the chorus, and the _theatre_ or place of the spectators, a relation +that shifted as time went on, that we see mirrored the whole development +from ritual to art--from _dromenon_ to drama. + + * * * * * + +The orchestra on which the Dithyramb was danced was just a circular +dancing-place beaten flat for the convenience of the dancers, and +sometimes edged by a stone basement to mark the circle. This circular +orchestra is very well seen in the theatre of Epidaurus, of which a +sketch is given in Fig. 1. The orchestra here is surrounded by a +splendid _theatron_, or spectator place, with seats rising tier above +tier. If we want to realize the primitive Greek orchestra or +dancing-place, we must think these stone seats away. Threshing-floors +are used in Greece to-day as convenient dancing-places. The dance +tends to be circular because it is round some sacred thing, at first a +maypole, or the reaped corn, later the figure of a god or his altar. On +this dancing-place the whole body of worshippers would gather, just as +now-a-days the whole community will assemble on a village green. There +is no division at first between actors and spectators; all are actors, +all are doing the thing done, dancing the dance danced. Thus at +initiation ceremonies the whole tribe assembles, the only spectators are +the uninitiated, the women and children. No one at this early stage +thinks of building a _theatre_, a spectator place. It is in the common +act, the common or collective emotion, that ritual starts. This must +never be forgotten. + +[Illustration: Fig. 1. Theatre of Epidaurus Showing Circular Orchestra.] + +The most convenient spot for a mere dancing-place is some flat place. +But any one who travels through Greece will notice instantly that all +the Greek theatres that remain at Athens, at Epidaurus, at Delos, +Syracuse, and elsewhere, are built against the side of hills. None of +these are very early; the earliest ancient orchestra we have is at +Athens. It is a simple stone ring, but it is built against the steep +south side of the Acropolis. The oldest festival of Dionysos was, as +will presently be seen, held in quite another spot, in the _agora_, or +market-place. The reason for moving the dance was that the wooden seats +that used to be set up on a sort of "grand stand" in the market-place +fell down, and it was seen how safely and comfortably the spectators +could be seated on the side of a steep hill. + +The spectators are a new and different element, the dance is not only +danced, but it is watched from a distance, it is a spectacle; whereas in +old days all or nearly all were worshippers acting, now many, indeed +most, are spectators, watching, feeling, thinking, not doing. It is in +this new attitude of the spectator that we touch on the difference +between ritual and art; the _dromenon_, the thing actually done by +yourself has become a _drama_, a thing also done, but abstracted from +your doing. Let us look for a moment at the psychology of the spectator, +at his behaviour. + + * * * * * + +Artists, it is often said, and usually felt, are so unpractical. They +are always late for dinner, they forget to post their letters and to +return the books or even money that is lent them. Art is to most +people's minds a sort of luxury, not a necessity. In but recently bygone +days music, drawing, and dancing were no part of a training for ordinary +life, they were taught at school as "accomplishments," paid for as +"extras." Poets on their side equally used to contrast art and life, as +though they were things essentially distinct. + + "Art is long, and Time is fleeting." + +Now commonplaces such as these, being unconscious utterances of the +collective mind, usually contain much truth, and are well worth +weighing. Art, we shall show later, is profoundly connected with life; +it is nowise superfluous. But, for all that, art, both its creation and +its enjoyment, is unpractical. Thanks be to God, life is not limited to +the practical. + +When we say art is unpractical, we mean that art is _cut loose from +immediate action_. Take a simple instance. A man--or perhaps still +better a child--sees a plate of cherries. Through his senses comes the +stimulus of the smell of the cherries, and their bright colour urging +him, luring him to eat. He eats and is satisfied; the cycle of normal +behaviour is complete; he is a man or a child of action, but he is no +artist, and no art-lover. Another man looks at the same plate of +cherries. His sight and his smell lure him and urge him to eat. He does +_not_ eat; the cycle is not completed, and, because he does not eat, the +sight of those cherries, though perhaps not the smell, is altered, +purified from desire, and in some way intensified, enlarged. If he is +just a man of taste, he will take what we call an "aesthetic" pleasure in +those cherries. If he is an actual artist, he will paint not the +cherries, but his vision of them, his purified emotion towards them. He +has, so to speak, come out from the chorus of actors, of cherry-eaters, +and become a spectator. + +I borrow, by his kind permission, a beautiful instance of what he well +calls "Psychical Distance" from the writings of a psychologist.[36] + +"Imagine a fog at sea: for most people it is an experience of acute +unpleasantness. Apart from the physical annoyance and remoter forms of +discomfort, such as delays, it is apt to produce feelings of peculiar +anxiety, fears of invisible dangers, strains of watching and listening +for distant and unlocalized signals. The listless movements of the ship +and her warning calls soon tell upon the nerves of the passengers; and +that special, expectant tacit anxiety and nervousness, always associated +with this experience, make a fog the dreaded terror of the sea (all the +more terrifying because of its very silence and gentleness) for the +expert seafarer no less than the ignorant landsman. + +"Nevertheless, a fog at sea can be a source of intense relish and +enjoyment. Abstract from the experience of the sea-fog, for the moment, +its danger and practical unpleasantness; ... direct the attention to the +features 'objectively' constituting the phenomena--the veil surrounding +you with an opaqueness as of transparent milk, blurring the outlines of +things and distorting their shapes into weird grotesqueness; observe the +carrying power of the air, producing the impression as if you could +touch some far-off siren by merely putting out your hand and letting it +lose itself behind that white wall; note the curious creamy smoothness +of the water, hypercritically denying as it were, any suggestion of +danger; and, above all, the strange solitude and remoteness from the +world, as it can be found only on the highest mountain tops; and the +experience may acquire, in its uncanny mingling of repose and terror, a +flavour of such concentrated poignancy and delight as to contrast +sharply with the blind and distempered anxiety of its other aspects. +This contrast, often emerging with startling suddenness, is like the +momentary switching on of some new current, or the passing ray of a +brighter light, illuminating the outlook upon perhaps the most ordinary +and familiar objects--an impression which we experience sometimes in +instants of direst extremity, when our practical interest snaps like a +wire from sheer over-tension, and we watch the consummation of some +impending catastrophe with the marvelling unconcern of a mere +spectator." + + * * * * * + +It has often been noted that two, and two only, of our senses are the +channels of art and give us artistic material. These two senses are +sight and hearing. Touch and its special modifications, taste and smell, +do not go to the making of art. Decadent French novelists, such as +Huysmann, make their heroes revel in perfume-symphonies, but we feel +that the sentiment described is morbid and unreal, and we feel rightly. +Some people speak of a cook as an "artist," and a pudding as a "perfect +poem," but a healthy instinct rebels. Art, whether sculpture, painting, +drama, music, is of sight or hearing. The reason is simple. Sight and +hearing are the distant senses; sight is, as some one has well said, +"touch at a distance." Sight and hearing are of things already detached +and somewhat remote; they are the fitting channels for art which is cut +loose from immediate action and reaction. Taste and touch are too +intimate, too immediately vital. In Russian, as Tolstoi has pointed out +(and indeed in other languages the same is observable), the word for +beauty (_krasota_) means, to begin with, only that which pleases the +sight. Even hearing is excluded. And though latterly people have begun +to speak of an "ugly deed" or of "beautiful music," it is not good +Russian. The simple Russian does not make Plato's divine muddle between +the good and the beautiful. If a man gives his coat to another, the +Russian peasant, knowing no foreign language, will not say the man has +acted "beautifully." + +To see a thing, to feel a thing, as a work of art, we must, then, become +for the time unpractical, must be loosed from the fear and the flurry of +actual living, must become spectators. Why is this? Why can we not live +and look at once? The _fact_ that we cannot is clear. If we watch a +friend drowning we do not note the exquisite curve made by his body as +he falls into the water, nor the play of the sunlight on the ripples as +he disappears below the surface; we should be inhuman, aesthetic fiends +if we did. And again, why? It would do our friend no harm that we should +enjoy the curves and the sunlight, provided we also threw him a rope. +But the simple fact is that we _cannot_ look at the curves and the +sunlight because our whole being is centred on acting, on saving him; we +cannot even, at the moment, fully feel our own terror and impending +loss. So again if we want to see and to feel the splendour and vigour of +a lion, or even to watch the cumbrous grace of a bear, we prefer that a +cage should intervene. The cage cuts off the need for motor actions; it +interposes the needful physical and moral distance, and we are free for +contemplation. Released from our own terrors, we see more and better, +and we feel differently. A man intent on action is like a horse in +blinkers, he goes straight forward, seeing only the road ahead. + +Our brain is, indeed, it would seem, in part, an elaborate arrangement +for providing these blinkers. If we saw and realized the whole of +everything, we should want to do too many things. The brain allows us +not only to remember, but, which is quite as important, to forget and +neglect; it is an organ of oblivion. By neglecting most of the things we +see and hear, we can focus just on those which are important for action; +we can cease to be potential artists and become efficient practical +human beings; but it is only by limiting our view, by a great +renunciation as to the things we see and feel. The artist does just the +reverse. He renounces doing in order to practise seeing. He is by nature +what Professor Bergson calls "distrait," aloof, absent-minded, intent +only, or mainly, on contemplation. That is why the ordinary man often +thinks the artist a fool, or, if he does not go so far as that, is made +vaguely uncomfortable by him, never really understands him. The artist's +focus, all his system of values, is different, his world is a world of +images which are his realities. + + * * * * * + +The distinction between art and ritual, which has so long haunted and +puzzled us, now comes out quite clearly, and also in part the relation +of each to actual life. Ritual, we saw, was a re-presentation or a +pre-presentation, a re-doing or pre-doing, a copy or imitation of life, +but,--and this is the important point,--always with a practical end. Art +is also a representation of life and the emotions of life, but cut loose +from immediate action. Action may be and often is represented, but it is +not that it may lead on to a practical further end. The end of art is in +itself. Its value is not mediate but _im_mediate. Thus ritual _makes, as +it were, a bridge between real life and art_, a bridge over which in +primitive times it would seem man must pass. In his actual life he hunts +and fishes and ploughs and sows, being utterly intent on the practical +end of gaining his food; in the _dromenon_ of the Spring Festival, +though his _acts_ are unpractical, being mere singing and dancing and +mimicry, his _intent_ is practical, to induce the return of his +food-supply. In the drama the representation may remain for a time the +same, but the intent is altered: man has come out from action, he is +separate from the dancers, and has become a spectator. The drama is an +end in itself. + + * * * * * + +We know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a _dromenon_ +became the drama, and we have seen that the shift is symbolized and +expressed by the addition of the _theatre_, or spectator-place, to the +orchestra, or dancing-place. We have also tried to analyse the meaning +of the shift. It remains to ask what was its cause. Ritual does not +always develop into art, though in all probability dramatic art has +always to go through the stage of ritual. The leap from real life to the +emotional contemplation of life cut loose from action would otherwise be +too wide. Nature abhors a leap, she prefers to crawl over the ritual +bridge. There seem at Athens to have been two main causes why the +_dromenon_ passed swiftly, inevitably, into the drama. They are, first, +the decay of religious faith; second, the influx from abroad of a new +culture and new dramatic material. + +It may seem surprising to some that the decay of religious faith should +be an impulse to the birth of art. We are accustomed to talk rather +vaguely of art "as the handmaid of religion"; we think of art as +"inspired by" religion. But the decay of religious faith of which we now +speak is not the decay of faith in a god, or even the decay of some high +spiritual emotion; it is the decay of a belief in the efficacy of +certain magical rites, and especially of the Spring Rite. So long as +people believed that by excited dancing, by bringing in an image or +leading in a bull you could induce the coming of Spring, so long would +the _dromena_ of the Dithyramb be enacted with intense enthusiasm, and +with this enthusiasm would come an actual accession and invigoration of +vital force. But, once the faintest doubt crept in, once men began to be +guided by experience rather than custom, the enthusiasm would die down, +and the collective invigoration no longer be felt. Then some day there +will be a bad summer, things will go all wrong, and the chorus will +sadly ask: "Why should I dance my dance?" They will drift away or become +mere spectators of a rite established by custom. The rite itself will +die down, or it will live on only as the May Day rites of to-day, a +children's play, or at best a thing done vaguely "for luck." + +The spirit of the rite, the belief in its efficacy, dies, but the rite +itself, the actual mould, persists, and it is this ancient ritual mould, +foreign to our own usage, that strikes us to-day, when a Greek play is +revived, as odd and perhaps chill. A _chorus_, a band of dancers there +must be, because the drama arose out of a ritual dance. An _agon_, or +contest, or wrangling, there will probably be, because Summer contends +with Winter, Life with Death, the New Year with the Old. A tragedy must +be tragic, must have its _pathos_, because the Winter, the Old Year, +must die. There must needs be a swift transition, a clash and change +from sorrow to joy, what the Greeks called a _peripeteia_, a +_quick-turn-round_, because, though you carry out Winter, you bring in +Summer. At the end we shall have an Appearance, an Epiphany of a god, +because the whole gist of the ancient ritual was to summon the spirit of +life. All these ritual forms haunt and shadow the play, whatever its +plot, like ancient traditional ghosts; they underlie and sway the +movement and the speeches like some compelling rhythm. + +Now this ritual mould, this underlying rhythm, is a fine thing in +itself; and, moreover, it was once shaped and cast by a living spirit: +the intense immediate desire for food and life, and for the return of +the seasons which bring that food and life. But we have seen that, once +the faith in man's power magically to bring back these seasons waned, +once he began to doubt whether he could really carry out Winter and +bring in Summer, his emotion towards these rites would cool. Further, we +have seen that these rites repeated year by year ended, among an +imaginative people, in the mental creation of some sort of daemon or god. +This daemon, or god, was more and more held responsible on his own +account for the food-supply and the order of the Horae, or Seasons; so we +get the notion that this daemon or god himself led in the Seasons; Hermes +dances at the head of the Charites, or an Eiresione is carried to Helios +and the Horae. The thought then arises that this man-like daemon who rose +from a real King of the May, must himself be approached and dealt with +as a man, bargained with, sacrificed to. In a word, in place of +_dromena_, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments, +holy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern +sense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods. The relation of these +figures of gods to art we shall consider when we come to sculpture. + +So the _dromenon_, the thing done, wanes, the prayer, the praise, the +sacrifice waxes. Religion moves away from drama towards theology, but +the ritual mould of the _dromenon_ is left ready for a new content. + +Again, there is another point. The magical _dromenon_, the Carrying out +of Winter, the Bringing in of Spring, is doomed to an inherent and +deadly monotony. It is only when its magical efficacy is intensely +believed that it can go on. The life-history of a holy bull is always +the same; its magical essence is that it should be the same. Even when +the life-daemon is human his career is unchequered. He is born, +initiated, or born again; he is married, grows old, dies, is buried; and +the old, old story is told again next year. There are no fresh personal +incidents, peculiar to one particular daemon. If the drama rose from the +Spring Song only, beautiful it might be, but with a beauty that was +monotonous, a beauty doomed to sterility. + +We seem to have come to a sort of _impasse_, the spirit of the +_dromenon_ is dead or dying, the spectators will not stay long to watch +a doing doomed to monotony. The ancient moulds are there, the old +bottles, but where is the new wine? The pool is stagnant; what angel +will step down to trouble the waters? + + * * * * * + +Fortunately we are not left to conjecture what _might_ have happened. In +the case of Greece we know, though not as clearly as we wish, what did +happen. We can see in part why, though the _dromena_ of Adonis and +Osiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere +ritual; the _dromenon_ of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama. + +Let us look at the facts, and first at some structural facts in the +building of the theatre. + +We have seen that the orchestra, with its dancing chorus, stands for +ritual, for the stage in which all were worshippers, all joined in a +rite of practical intent. We further saw that the _theatre_, the place +for the spectators, stood for art. In the orchestra all is life and +dancing; the marble _seats_ are the very symbol of rest, aloofness from +action, contemplation. The seats for the spectators grow and grow in +importance till at last they absorb, as it were, the whole spirit, and +give their name _theatre_ to the whole structure; action is swallowed up +in contemplation. But contemplation of what? At first, of course, of the +ritual dance, but not for long. That, we have seen, was doomed to a +deadly monotony. In a Greek theatre there was not only orchestra and a +spectator-place, there was also a _scene_ or _stage_. + +The Greek word for stage is, as we said, _skene_, our scene. The _scene_ +was not a stage in our sense, _i.e._ a platform raised so that the +players might be better viewed. It was simply a tent, or rude hut, in +which the players, or rather dancers, could put on their ritual dresses. +The fact that the Greek theatre had, to begin with, no permanent stage +in our sense, shows very clearly how little it was regarded as a +spectacle. The ritual dance was a _dromenon_, a thing to be done, not a +thing to be looked at. The history of the Greek stage is one long story +of the encroachment of the stage on the orchestra. At first a rude +platform or table is set up, then scenery is added; the movable tent is +translated into a stone house or a temple front. This stands at first +outside the orchestra; then bit by bit the _scene_ encroaches till the +sacred circle of the dancing-place is cut clean across. As the drama and +the stage wax, the _dromenon_ and the orchestra wane. + +This shift in the relation of dancing-place and stage is very clearly +seen in Fig. 2, a plan of the Dionysiac theatre at Athens (p. 144). The +old circular orchestra shows the dominance of ritual; the new curtailed +orchestra of Roman times and semicircular shape shows the dominance of +the spectacle. + +[Illustration: Fig. 2. Dionysiac Theatre at Athens.] + +Greek tragedy arose, Aristotle has told us, from the _leaders_ of the +Dithyramb, the leaders of the Spring Dance. The Spring Dance, the mime +of Summer and Winter, had, as we have seen, only one actor, one actor +with two parts--Death and Life. With only one play to be played, and +that a one-actor play, there was not much need for a stage. A _scene_, +that is a _tent_, was needed, as we saw, because all the dancers had to +put on their ritual gear, but scarcely a stage. From a rude platform +the prologue might be spoken, and on that platform the Epiphany or +Appearance of the New Year might take place; but the play played, the +life-history of the life-spirit, was all too familiar; there was no need +to look, the thing was to dance. You need a stage--not necessarily a +raised stage, but a place apart from the dancers--when you have new +material for your players, something you need to look at, to attend to. +In the sixth century B.C., at Athens, came _the_ great innovation. +Instead of the old plot, the life-history of the life-spirit, with its +deadly monotony, new plots were introduced, not of life-spirits but of +human individual heroes. In a word, Homer came to Athens, and out of +Homeric stories playwrights began to make their plots. This innovation +was the death of ritual monotony and the _dromenon_. It is not so much +the old that dies as the new that kills. + + * * * * * + +AEschylus himself is reported to have said that his tragedies were +"slices from the great banquet of Homer." The metaphor is not a very +pleasing one, but it expresses a truth. By Homer, AEschylus meant not +only our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, but the whole body of Epic or Heroic +poetry which centred round not only the Siege of Troy but the great +expedition of the _Seven Against Thebes_, and which, moreover, contained +the stories of the heroes before the siege began, and their adventures +after it was ended. It was from these heroic sagas for the most part, +though not wholly, that the _myths_ or plots of not only AEschylus but +also Sophocles and Euripides, and a host of other writers whose plays +are lost to us, are taken. The new wine that was poured into the old +bottles of the _dromena_ at the Spring Festival was the heroic saga. We +know as an historical fact, the name of the man who was mainly +responsible for this inpouring--the great democratic tyrant +Peisistratos. We must look for a moment at what Peisistratos found, and +then pass to what he did. + +He found an ancient Spring _dromenon_, perhaps well-nigh effete. Without +destroying the old he contrived to introduce the new, to add to the old +plot of Summer and Winter the life-stories of heroes, and thereby arose +the drama. + +Let us look first, then, at what Peisistratos found. + +The April festival of Dionysos at which the great dramas were performed +was not the earliest festival of the god. Thucydides[37] expressly tells +us that on the 12th day of the month Anthesterion, that is in the quite +early spring, at the turn of our February and March, were celebrated +_the more ancient Dionysia_. It was a three-days' festival.[38] On the +first day, called "Cask-opening," the jars of new wine were broached. +Among the Boeotians the day was called not the day of Dionysos, but the +day of the Good or Wealthy Daimon. The next day was called the day of +the "Cups"--there was a contest or _agon_ of drinking. The last day was +called the "Pots," and it, too, had its "Pot-Contests." It is the +ceremonies of this day that we must notice a little in detail; for they +are very surprising. "Casks," "Cups," and "Pots," sound primitive +enough. "Casks" and "Cups" go well with the wine-god, but the "Pots" +call for explanation. + +The second day of the "Cups," joyful though it sounds, was by the +Athenians counted unlucky, because on that day they believed "the ghosts +of the dead rose up." The sanctuaries were roped in, each householder +anointed his door with pitch, that the ghost who tried to enter might +catch and stick there. Further, to make assurance doubly sure, from +early dawn he chewed a bit of buckthorn, a plant of strong purgative +powers, so that, if a ghost should by evil chance go down his throat, it +should at least be promptly expelled. + +For two, perhaps three, days of constant anxiety and ceaseless +precautions the ghosts fluttered about Athens. Men's hearts were full of +nameless dread, and, as we shall see, hope. At the close of the third +day the ghosts, or, as the Greeks called them, _Keres_, were bidden to +go. Some one, we do not know whom, it may be each father of a household, +pronounced the words: "Out of the door, ye Keres; it is no longer +Anthesteria," and, obedient, the Keres were gone. + +But before they went there was a supper for these souls. All the +citizens cooked a _panspermia_ or "Pot-of-all-Seeds," but of this +Pot-of-all-Seeds no citizen tasted. It was made over to the spirits of +the under-world and Hermes their daimon, Hermes "Psychopompos," +Conductor, Leader of the dead. + + * * * * * + +We have seen how a forest people, dependent on fruit trees and berries +for their food, will carry a maypole and imagine a tree-spirit. But a +people of agriculturists will feel and do and think quite otherwise; +they will look, not to the forest but to the earth for their returning +life and food; they will sow seeds and wait for their sprouting, as in +the gardens of Adonis. Adonis seems to have passed through the two +stages of Tree-Spirit and Seed-Spirit; his effigy was sometimes a tree +cut down, sometimes his planted "Gardens." Now seeds are many, +innumerable, and they are planted in the earth, and a people who bury +their dead know, or rather feel, that the earth is dead man's land. So, +when they prepare a pot of seeds on their All Souls' Day, it is not +really or merely as a "supper for the souls," though it may be that +kindly notion enters. The ghosts have other work to do than to eat their +supper and go. They take that supper "of all seeds," that _panspermia_, +with them down to the world below, that they may tend it and foster it +and bring it back in autumn as a pot of _all fruits_, a _pankarpia_. + + "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." + +The dead, then, as well as the living--this is for us the important +point--had their share in the _dromena_ of the "more ancient Dionysia." +These agricultural spring _dromena_ were celebrated just outside the +ancient city gates, in the _agora_, or place of assembly, on a circular +dancing-place, near to a very primitive sanctuary of Dionysos which was +opened only once in the year, at the Feast of Cups. Just outside the +gates was celebrated yet another festival of Dionysos equally primitive, +called the "Dionysia in the Fields." It had the form though not the date +of our May Day festival. Plutarch[39] thus laments over the "good old +times": "In ancient days," he says, "our fathers used to keep the feast +of Dionysos in homely, jovial fashion. There was a procession, a jar of +wine and a _branch_; then some one dragged in a goat, another followed +bringing a wicker basket of figs, and, to crown all, the phallos." It +was just a festival of the fruits of the whole earth: wine and the +basket of figs and the branch for vegetation, the goat for animal life, +the phallos for man. No thought here of the dead, it is all for the +living and his food. + + * * * * * + +Such sanctities even a great tyrant might not tamper with. But if you +may not upset the old you may without irreverence add the new. +Peisistratos probably cared little for, and believed less in, magical +ceremonies for the renewal of fruits, incantations of the dead. We can +scarcely picture him chewing buckthorn on the day of the "Cups," or +anointing his front door with pitch to keep out the ghosts. Very wisely +he left the Anthesteria and the kindred festival "in the fields" where +and as they were. But for his own purposes he wanted to do honour to +Dionysos, and also above all things to enlarge and improve the rites +done in the god's honour, so, leaving the old sanctuary to its fate, he +built a new temple on the south side of the Acropolis where the present +theatre now stands, and consecrated to the god a new and more splendid +precinct. + +He did not build the present theatre, we must always remember that. The +rows of stone seats, the chief priest's splendid marble chair, were not +erected till two centuries later. What Peisistratos did was to build a +small stone temple (see Fig. 2), and a great round orchestra of stone +close beside it. Small fragments of the circular foundation can still be +seen. The spectators sat on the hill-side or on wooden seats; there was +as yet no permanent _the{-a}tron_ or spectator-place, still less a stone +stage; the _dromena_ were done on the dancing-place. But for +spectator-place they had the south slope of the Acropolis. What kind of +wooden stage they had unhappily we cannot tell. It may be that only a +portion of the orchestra was marked off. + + * * * * * + +Why did Peisistratos, if he cared little for magic and ancestral ghosts, +take such trouble to foster and amplify the worship of this +maypole-spirit, Dionysos? Why did he add to the Anthesteria, the +festival of the family ghosts and the peasant festival "in the fields," +a new and splendid festival, a little later in the spring, the _Great +Dionysia_, or _Dionysia of the City_? One reason among others was +this--Peisistratos was a "tyrant." + +Now a Greek "tyrant" was not in our sense "tyrannical." He took his own +way, it is true, but that way was to help and serve the common people. +The tyrant was usually raised to his position by the people, and he +stood for democracy, for trade and industry, as against an idle +aristocracy. It was but a rudimentary democracy, a democratic tyranny, +the power vested in one man, but it stood for the rights of the many as +against the few. Moreover, Dionysos was always of the people, of the +"working classes," just as the King and Queen of the May are now. The +upper classes worshipped then, as now, not the Spirit of Spring but +_their own ancestors_. But--and this was what Peisistratos with great +insight saw--Dionysos must be transplanted from the fields to the city. +The country is always conservative, the natural stronghold of a landed +aristocracy, with fixed traditions; the city with its closer contacts +and consequent swifter changes, and, above all, with its acquired, not +inherited, wealth, tends towards democracy. Peisistratos left the +Dionysia "in the fields," but he added the Great Dionysia "in the city." + +Peisistratos was not the only tyrant who concerned himself with the +_dromena_ of Dionysos. Herodotos[40] tells the story of another tyrant, +a story which is like a window opening suddenly on a dark room. At +Sicyon, a town near Corinth, there was in the _agora_ a _heroon_, a +hero-tomb, of an Argive hero, Adrastos. + +"The Sicyonians," says Herodotos, "paid other honours to Adrastos, and, +moreover, they celebrated his death and disasters with tragic choruses, +not honouring Dionysos but Adrastos." We think of "tragic" choruses as +belonging exclusively to the theatre and Dionysos; so did Herodotus, but +clearly here they belonged to a local hero. His adventures and his death +were commemorated by choral dances and songs. Now when Cleisthenes +became tyrant of Sicyon he felt that the cult of the local hero was a +danger. What did he do? Very adroitly he brought in from Thebes another +hero as rival to Adrastos. He then split up the worship of Adrastos; +part of his worship, and especially his sacrifices, he gave to the new +Theban hero, but the tragic choruses he gave to the common people's god, +to Dionysos. Adrastos, the objectionable hero, was left to dwindle and +die. No local hero can live on without his cult. + +The act of Cleisthenes seems to us a very drastic proceeding. But +perhaps it was not really so revolutionary as it seems. The local hero +was not so very unlike a local _daemon_, a Spring or Winter spirit. We +have seen in the Anthesteria how the paternal ghosts are expected to +look after the seeds in spring. The more important the ghost the more +incumbent is this duty upon him. _Noblesse oblige_. On the river +Olynthiakos[41] in Northern Greece stood the tomb of the hero Olynthos, +who gave the river its name. In the spring months of Anthesterion and +Elaphebolion the river rises and an immense shoal of fish pass from the +lake of Bolbe to the river of Olynthiakos, and the inhabitants round +about can lay in a store of salt fish for all their needs. "And it is a +wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthus. They +say that formerly the people used to perform the accustomed rites to +the dead in the month Elaphebolion, but now they do them in +Anthesterion, _and that on this account the fish come up in those months +only_ in which they are wont to do honour to the dead." The river is the +chief source of the food-supply, so to send fish, not seeds and flowers, +is the dead hero's business. + +Peisistratos was not so daring as Cleisthenes. We do not hear that he +disturbed or diminished any local cult. He did not attempt to move the +Anthesteria with its ghost cult; he only added a new festival, and +trusted to its recent splendour gradually to efface the old. And at this +new festival he celebrated the deeds of other heroes, not local but of +greater splendour and of wider fame. If he did not bring Homer to +Athens, he at least gave Homer official recognition. Now to bring Homer +to Athens was like opening the eyes of the blind. + + * * * * * + +Cicero, in speaking of the influence of Peisistratos on literature, +says: "He is said to have arranged in their present order the works of +Homer, which were previously in confusion." He arranged them not for +what we should call "publication," but for public recitation, and +another tradition adds that he or his son fixed the order of their +recitation at the great festival of "All Athens," the Panathenaia. +Homer, of course, was known before in Athens in a scrappy way; now he +was publicly, officially promulgated. It is probable, though not +certain, that the "Homer" which Peisistratos prescribed for recitation +at the Panathenaia was just our _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, and that the rest +of the heroic cycle, all the remaining "slices" from the heroic banquet, +remained as material for dithyrambs and dramas. The "tyranny" of +Peisistratos and his son lasted from 560 to 501 B.C.; tradition said +that the first dramatic contest was held in the new theatre built by +Peisistratos in 535 B.C., when Thespis won the prize. AEschylus was born +in 525 B.C.; his first play, with a plot from the heroic saga, the +_Seven Against Thebes_, was produced in 467 B.C. It all came very +swiftly, the shift from the dithyramb as Spring Song to the heroic drama +was accomplished in something much under a century. Its effect on the +whole of Greek life and religion--nay, on the whole of subsequent +literature and thought--was incalculable. Let us try to see why. + + * * * * * + +Homer was the outcome, the expression, of an "heroic" age. When we use +the word "heroic" we think vaguely of something brave, brilliant, +splendid, something exciting and invigorating. A hero is to us a man of +clear, vivid personality, valiant, generous, perhaps hot-tempered, a +good friend and a good hater. The word "hero" calls up such figures as +Achilles, Patroklos, Hector, figures of passion and adventure. Now such +figures, with their special virtues, and perhaps their proper vices, are +not confined to Homer. They occur in any and every heroic age. We are +beginning now to see that heroic poetry, heroic characters, do not arise +from any peculiarity of race or even of geographical surroundings, but, +given certain social conditions, they may, and do, appear anywhere and +at any time. The world has seen several heroic ages, though it is, +perhaps, doubtful if it will ever see another. What, then, are the +conditions that produce an heroic age? and why was this influx of heroic +poetry, coming just when it did, of such immense influence on, and +importance to, the development of Greek dramatic art? Why had it power +to change the old, stiff, ritual dithyramb into the new and living +drama? Why, above all things, did the democratic tyrant Peisistratos so +eagerly welcome it to Athens? + +In the old ritual dance the individual was nothing, the choral band, the +group, everything, and in this it did but reflect primitive tribal life. +Now in the heroic _saga_ the individual is everything, the mass of the +people, the tribe, or the group, are but a shadowy background which +throws up the brilliant, clear-cut personality into a more vivid light. +The epic poet is all taken up with what he called _klea andron_, +"glorious deeds of men," of individual heroes; and what these heroes +themselves ardently long and pray for is just this glory, this personal +distinction, this deathless fame for their great deeds. When the armies +meet it is the leaders who fight in single combat. These glorious heroes +are for the most part kings, but not kings in the old sense, not +hereditary kings bound to the soil and responsible for its fertility. +Rather they are leaders in war and adventure; the homage paid them is a +personal devotion for personal character; the leader must win his +followers by bravery, he must keep them by personal generosity. +Moreover, heroic wars are oftenest not tribal feuds consequent on tribal +raids, more often they arise from personal grievances, personal +jealousies; the siege of Troy is undertaken not because the Trojans have +raided the cattle of the Achaeans, but because a single Trojan, Paris, +has carried off Helen, a single Achaean's wife. + +Another noticeable point is that in heroic poems scarcely any one is +safely and quietly at home. The heroes are fighting in far-off lands or +voyaging by sea; hence we hear little of tribal and even of family ties. +The real centre is not the hearth, but the leader's tent or ship. Local +ties that bind to particular spots of earth are cut, local differences +fall into abeyance, a sort of cosmopolitanism, a forecast of +pan-Hellenism, begins to arise. And a curious point--all this is +reflected in the gods. We hear scarcely anything of local cults, nothing +at all of local magical maypoles and Carryings-out of Winter and +Bringings-in of Summer, nothing whatever of "Suppers" for the souls, or +even of worship paid to particular local heroes. A man's ghost when he +dies does not abide in its grave ready to rise at springtime and help +the seeds to sprout; it goes to a remote and shadowy region, a common, +pan-Hellenic Hades. And so with the gods themselves; they are cut clean +from earth and from the local bits of earth out of which they grew--the +sacred trees and holy stones and rivers and still holier beasts. There +is not a holy Bull to be found in all Olympus, only figures of men, +bright and vivid and intensely personal, like so many glorified, +transfigured Homeric heroes. + +In a word, the heroic spirit, as seen in heroic poetry, is the outcome +of a society cut loose from its roots, of a time of migrations, of the +shifting of populations.[42] But more is needed, and just this something +more the age that gave birth to Homer had. We know now that before the +northern people whom we call Greeks, and who called themselves Hellenes, +came down into Greece, there had grown up in the basin of the AEgean a +civilization splendid, wealthy, rich in art and already ancient, the +civilization that has come to light at Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, and most of +all in Crete. The adventurers from North and South came upon a land +rich in spoils, where a chieftain with a band of hardy followers might +sack a city and dower himself and his men with sudden wealth. Such +conditions, such a contact of new and old, of settled splendour beset by +unbridled adventure, go to the making of a heroic age, its virtues and +its vices, its obvious beauty and its hidden ugliness. In settled, +social conditions, as has been well remarked, "most of the heroes would +sooner or later have found themselves in prison." + +A heroic age, happily for society, cannot last long; it has about it +while it does last a sheen of passing and pathetic splendour, such as +that which lights up the figure of Achilles, but it is bound to fade and +pass. A heroic _society_ is almost a contradiction in terms. Heroism is +for individuals. If a society is to go on at all it must strike its +roots deep in some soil, native or alien. The bands of adventurers must +disband and go home, or settle anew on the land they have conquered. +They must beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into +pruning-hooks. Their gallant, glorious leader must become a sober, +home-keeping, law-giving and law-abiding king; his followers must abate +their individuality and make it subserve a common social purpose. + +Athens, in her sheltered peninsula, lay somewhat outside the tide of +migrations and heroic exploits. Her population and that of all Attica +remained comparatively unchanged; her kings are kings of the stationary, +law-abiding, state-reforming type; Cecrops, Erechtheus, Theseus, are not +splendid, flashing, all-conquering figures like Achilles and Agamemnon. +Athens might, it would seem, but for the coming of Homer, have lain +stagnant in a backwater of conservatism, content to go on chanting her +traditional Spring Songs year by year. It is a wonderful thing that this +city of Athens, beloved of the gods, should have been saved from the +storm and stress, sheltered from what might have broken, even shattered +her, spared the actual horrors of a heroic _age_, yet given heroic +_poetry_, given the clear wine-cup poured when the ferment was over. She +drank of it deep and was glad and rose up like a giant refreshed. + + * * * * * + +We have seen that to make up a heroic age there must be two factors, the +new and the old; the young, vigorous, warlike people must seize on, +appropriate, in part assimilate, an old and wealthy civilization. It +almost seems as if we might go a step farther, and say that for every +great movement in art or literature we must have the same conditions, a +contact of new and old, of a new spirit seizing or appropriated by an +old established order. Anyhow for Athens the historical fact stands +certain. The amazing development of the fifth-century drama is just +this, the old vessel of the ritual Dithyramb filled to the full with the +new wine of the heroic _saga_; and it would seem that it was by the hand +of Peisistratos, the great democratic tyrant, that the new wine was +outpoured. + + * * * * * + +Such were roughly the outside conditions under which the drama of art +grew out of the _dromena_ of ritual. The racial secret of the individual +genius of AEschylus and the forgotten men who preceded him we cannot hope +to touch. We can only try to see the conditions in which they worked and +mark the splendid new material that lay to their hands. Above all things +we can see that this material, these Homeric _saga_, were just fitted +to give the needed impulse to art. The Homeric _saga_ had for an +Athenian poet just that remoteness from immediate action which, as we +have seen, is the essence of art as contrasted with ritual. + +Tradition says that the Athenians fined the dramatic poet Phrynichus for +choosing as the plot of one of his tragedies the Taking of Miletus. +Probably the fine was inflicted for political party reasons, and had +nothing whatever to do with the question of whether the subject was +"artistic" or not. But the story may stand, and indeed was later +understood to be, a sort of allegory as to the attitude of art towards +life. To understand and still more to contemplate life you must come out +from the choral dance of life and stand apart. In the case of one's own +sorrows, be they national or personal, this is all but impossible. We +can ritualize our sorrows, but not turn them into tragedies. We cannot +stand back far enough to see the picture; we want to be doing, or at +least lamenting. In the case of the sorrows of others this standing back +is all too easy. We not only bear their pain with easy stoicism, but we +picture it dispassionately at a safe distance; we feel _about_ rather +than _with_ it. The trouble is that we do not feel enough. Such was the +attitude of the Athenian towards the doings and sufferings of Homeric +heroes. They stood towards them as spectators. These heroes had not the +intimate sanctity of home-grown things, but they had sufficient +traditional sanctity to make them acceptable as the material of drama. + +Adequately sacred though they were, they were yet free and flexible. It +is impiety to alter the myth of your local hero, it is impossible to +recast the myth of your local daemon--that is fixed forever--his +conflict, his _agon_, his death, his _pathos_, his Resurrection and its +heralding, his Epiphany. But the stories of Agamemnon and Achilles, +though at home these heroes were local _daimones_, have already been +variously told in their wanderings from place to place, and you can +mould them more or less to your will. Moreover, these figures are +already personal and individual, not representative puppets, mere +functionaries like the May Queen and Winter; they have life-histories of +their own, never quite to be repeated. It is in this blend of the +individual and the general, the personal and the universal, that one +element at least of all really great art will be found to lie; and just +here at Athens we get a glimpse of the moment of fusion; we see a +definite historical reason why and how the universal in _dromena_ came +to include the particular in drama. We see, moreover, how in place of +the old monotonous plots, intimately connected with actual practical +needs, we get material cut off from immediate reactions, seen as it were +at the right distance, remote yet not too remote. We see, in a word, how +a ritual enacted year by year became a work of art that was a +"possession for ever." + + * * * * * + +Possibly in the mind of the reader there may have been for some time a +growing discomfort, an inarticulate protest. All this about _dromena_ +and drama and dithyrambs, bears and bulls, May Queens and Tree-Spirits, +even about Homeric heroes, is all very well, curious and perhaps even in +a way interesting, but it is not at all what he expected, still less +what he wants. When he bought a book with the odd incongruous title, +_Ancient Art and Ritual_, he was prepared to put up with some remarks on +the artistic side of ritual, but he did expect to be told something +about what the ordinary man calls art, that is, statues and pictures. +Greek drama is no doubt a form of ancient art, but acting is not to the +reader's mind the chief of arts. Nay, more, he has heard doubts raised +lately--and he shares them--as to whether acting and dancing, about +which so much has been said, are properly speaking arts at all. Now +about painting and sculpture there is no doubt. Let us come to business. + +To a business so beautiful and pleasant as Greek sculpture we shall +gladly come, but a word must first be said to explain the reason of our +long delay. The main contention of the present book is that ritual and +art have, in emotion towards life, a common root, and further, that +primitive art develops normally, at least in the case of the drama, +straight out of ritual. The nature of that primitive ritual from which +the drama arose is not very familiar to English readers. It has been +necessary to stress its characteristics. Almost everywhere, all over the +world, it is found that primitive ritual consists, not in prayer and +praise and sacrifice, but in mimetic dancing. But it is in Greece, and +perhaps Greece only, in the religion of Dionysos, that we can actually +trace, if dimly, the transition steps that led from dance to drama, from +ritual to art. It was, therefore, of the first importance to realize the +nature of the dithyramb from which the drama rose, and so far as might +be to mark the cause and circumstances of the transition. + +Leaving the drama, we come in the next chapter to Sculpture; and here, +too, we shall see how closely art was shadowed by that ritual out of +which she sprang. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[35] See Bibliography at end for Professor Murray's examination. + +[36] Mr. Edward Bullough, _The British Journal of Psychology_ (1912), p. +88. + +[37] II, 15. + +[38] See my _Themis_, p. 289, and _Prolegomena_, p. 35. + +[39] _De Cupid. div._ 8. + +[40] V, 66. + +[41] _Athen._, VIII, ii, 334 f. See my _Prolegomena_, p. 54. + +[42] Thanks to Mr. H.M. Chadwick's _Heroic Age_ (1912). + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +GREEK SCULPTURE: THE PANATHENAIC FRIEZE AND THE APOLLO BELVEDERE + + +In passing from the drama to Sculpture we make a great leap. We pass +from the living thing, the dance or the play acted by real people, the +thing _done_, whether as ritual or art, whether _dromenon_ or _drama_, +to the thing _made_, cast in outside material rigid form, a thing that +can be looked at again and again, but the making of which can never +actually be re-lived whether by artist or spectator. + +Moreover, we come to a clear threefold distinction and division hitherto +neglected. We must at last sharply differentiate the artist, the work of +art, and the spectator. The artist may, and usually indeed does, become +the spectator of his own work, but the spectator is not the artist. The +work of art is, once executed, forever distinct both from artist and +spectator. In the primitive choral dance all three--artist, work of art, +spectator--were fused, or rather not yet differentiated. Handbooks on +art are apt to begin with the discussion of rude decorative patterns, +and after leading up through sculpture and painting, something vague is +said at the end about the primitiveness of the ritual dance. But +historically and also genetically or logically the dance in its +inchoateness, its undifferentiatedness, comes first. It has in it a +larger element of emotion, and less of presentation. It is this +inchoateness, this undifferentiatedness, that, apart from historical +fact, makes us feel sure that logically the dance is primitive. + + * * * * * + +To illustrate the meaning of Greek sculpture and show its close affinity +with ritual, we shall take two instances, perhaps the best-known of +those that survive, one of them in relief, the other in the round, the +Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon at Athens and the Apollo Belvedere, +and we shall take them in chronological order. As the actual frieze and +the statue cannot be before us, we shall discuss no technical questions +of style or treatment, but simply ask how they came to be, what human +need do they express. The Parthenon frieze is in the British Museum, the +Apollo Belvedere is in the Vatican at Rome, but is readily accessible +in casts or photographs. The outlines given in Figs. 5 and 6 can of +course only serve to recall subject-matter and design. + + * * * * * + +The Panathenaic frieze once decorated the _cella_ or innermost shrine of +the Parthenon, the temple of the Maiden Goddess Athena. It twined like a +ribbon round the brow of the building and thence it was torn by Lord +Elgin and brought home to the British Museum as a national trophy, for +the price of a few hundred pounds of coffee and yards of scarlet cloth. +To realize its meaning we must always think it back into its place. +Inside the _cella_, or shrine, dwelt the goddess herself, her great +image in gold and ivory; outside the shrine was sculptured her worship +by the whole of her people. For the frieze is nothing but a great ritual +procession translated into stone, the Panathenaic procession, or +procession of _all_ the Athenians, of all Athens, in honour of the +goddess who was but the city incarnate, Athena. + + "A wonder enthroned on the hills and the sea, + A maiden crowned with a fourfold glory, + That none from the pride of her head may rend; + Violet and olive leaf, purple and hoary, + Song-wreath and story the fairest of fame, + Flowers that the winter can blast not nor bend, + A light upon earth as the sun's own flame, + A name as his name-- + Athens, a praise without end." + +SWINBURNE: _Erechtheus_, 141. + +Sculptural Art, at least in this instance, comes out of ritual, has +ritual as its subject, _is_ embodied ritual. The reader perhaps at this +point may suspect that he is being juggled with, that, out of the +thousands of Greek reliefs that remain to us, just this one instance has +been selected to bolster up the writer's art and ritual theory. He has +only to walk through any museum to be convinced at once that the author +is playing quite fair. Practically the whole of the reliefs that remain +to us from the archaic period, and a very large proportion of those at +later date, when they do not represent heroic mythology, are ritual +reliefs, "votive" reliefs as we call them; that is, prayers or praises +translated into stone. + +[Illustration: Fig. 3. Panathenaic Procession.] + +Of the choral dance we have heard much, of the procession but little, +yet its ritual importance was great. In religion to-day the dance is +dead save for the dance of the choristers before the altar at Seville. +But the procession lives on, has even taken to itself new life. It is a +means of bringing masses of people together, of ordering them and +co-ordinating them. It is a means for the magical spread of supposed +good influence, of "grace." Witness the "Beating of the Bounds" and the +frequent processions of the Blessed Sacrament in Roman Catholic lands. +The Queen of the May and the Jack-in-the-Green still go from house to +house. Now-a-days it is to collect pence; once it was to diffuse "grace" +and increase. We remember the procession of the holy Bull at Magnesia +and the holy Bear at Saghalien (pp. 92-100). + +[Illustration: Fig. 4. Panathenaic Procession.] + +What, then, was the object of the Panathenaic procession? It was first, +as its name indicates, a procession that brought all Athens together. +Its object was social and political, to express the unity of Athens. +Ritual in primitive times is always social, collective. + +The arrangement of the procession is shown in Figs. 3 and 4 (pp. 174, +175). In Fig. 3 we see the procession as it were in real life, just as +it is about to enter the temple and the presence of the Twelve Gods. +These gods are shaded black because in reality invisible. Fig. 4 is a +diagram showing the position of the various parts of the procession in +the sculptural frieze. At the west end of the temple the procession +begins to form: the youths of Athens are mounting their horses. It +divides, as it needs must, into two halves, one sculptured on the north, +one on the south side of the _cella_. After the throng of the cavalry +getting denser and denser we come to the chariots, next the sacrificial +animals, sheep and restive cows, then the instruments of sacrifice, +flutes and lyres and baskets and trays for offerings; men who carry +blossoming olive-boughs; maidens with water-vessels and drinking-cups. +The whole tumult of the gathering is marshalled and at last met and, as +it were, held in check, by a band of magistrates who face the procession +just as it enters the presence of the twelve seated gods, at the east +end. The whole body politic of the gods has come down to feast with the +whole body politic of Athens and her allies, of whom these gods are but +the projection and reflection. The gods are there together because man +is collectively assembled. + +The great procession culminates in a sacrifice and a communal feast, a +sacramental feast like that on the flesh of the holy Bull at Magnesia. +The Panathenaia was a high festival including rites and ceremonies of +diverse dates, an armed dance of immemorial antiquity that may have +dated from the days when Athens was subject to Crete, and a recitation +ordered by Peisistratos of the poems of Homer. + + * * * * * + +Some theorists have seen in art only an extension of the "play +instinct," just a liberation of superfluous vitality and energies, as it +were a rehearsing for life. This is not our view, but into all art, in +so far as it is a cutting off of motor reactions, there certainly enters +an element of recreation. It is interesting to note that to the Greek +mind religion was specially connected with the notion rather of a +festival than a fast. Thucydides[43] is assuredly by nature no reveller, +yet religion is to him mainly a "rest from toil." He makes Perikles say: +"Moreover, we have provided for our spirit by many opportunities of +recreation, by the celebration of games and sacrifices throughout the +year." To the anonymous writer known as the "Old Oligarch" the main gist +of religion appears to be a decorous social enjoyment. In easy +aristocratic fashion he rejoices that religious ceremonials exist to +provide for the less well-to-do citizens suitable amusements that they +would otherwise lack. "As to sacrifices and sanctuaries and festivals +and precincts, the People, knowing that it is impossible for each man +individually to sacrifice and feast and have sacrifices and an ample and +beautiful city, has discovered by what means he may enjoy these +privileges." + + * * * * * + +In the procession of the Panathenaia all Athens was gathered together, +but--and this is important--for a special purpose, more primitive than +any great political or social union. Happily this purpose is clear; it +is depicted in the central slab of the east end of the frieze (Fig. 5). +A priest is there represented receiving from the hands of a boy a great +_peplos_ or robe. It is the sacred robe of Athena woven for her and +embroidered by young Athenian maidens and offered to her every five +years. The great gold and ivory statue in the Parthenon itself had no +need of a robe; she would scarcely have known what to do with one; her +raiment was already of wrought gold, she carried helmet and spear and +shield. But there was an ancient image of Athena, an old Madonna of the +people, fashioned before Athena became a warrior maiden. This image was +rudely hewn in wood, it was dressed and decked doll-fashion like a May +Queen, and to her the great _peplos_ was dedicated. The _peplos_ was +hoisted as a sail on the Panathenaic ship, and this ship Athena had +borrowed from Dionysos himself, who went every spring in procession in a +ship-car on wheels to open the season for sailing. To a seafaring people +like the Athenians the opening of the sailing season was all-important, +and naturally began not at midsummer but in spring. + +[Illustration: Fig. 5.] + +The sacred _peplos_, or robe, takes us back to the old days when the +spirit of the year and the "luck" of the people was bound up with a rude +image. The life of the year died out each year and had to be renewed. To +make a new image was expensive and inconvenient, so, with primitive +economy it was decided that the life and luck of the image should be +renewed by re-dressing it, by offering to it each year a new robe. We +remember (p. 60) how in Thuringia the new puppet wore the shirt of the +old and thereby new life was passed from one to the other. But behind +the old image we can get to a stage still earlier, when there was at the +Panathenaia no image at all, only a yearly maypole; a bough hung with +ribbons and cakes and fruits and the like. A bough was cut from the +sacred olive tree of Athens, called the _Moria_ or Fate Tree. It was +bound about with fillets and hung with fruit and nuts and, in the +festival of the Panathenaia, they carried it up to the Acropolis to give +to Athena _Polias_, "Her-of-the-City," and as they went they sang the +old Eiresione song (p. 114). _Polias_ is but the city, the _Polis_ +incarnate. + +This _Moria_, or Fate Tree, was the very life of Athens; the life of the +olive which fed her and lighted her was the very life of the city. When +the Persian host sacked the Acropolis they burnt the holy olive, and it +seemed that all was over. But next day it put forth a new shoot and the +people knew that the city's life still lived. Sophocles[44] sang of the +glory of the wondrous life tree of Athens: + + "The untended, the self-planted, self-defended from the foe, + Sea-gray, children-nurturing olive tree that here delights to grow, + None may take nor touch nor harm it, headstrong youth nor age grown bold. + For the round of Morian Zeus has been its watcher from of old; + He beholds it, and, Athene, thy own sea-gray eyes behold." + +The holy tree carried in procession is, like the image of Athena, made +of olive-wood, just the incarnate life of Athens ever renewed. + +The Panathenaia was not, like the Dithyramb, a spring festival. It took +place in July at the height of the summer heat, when need for rain was +the greatest. But the month Hecatombaion, in which it was celebrated, +was the first month of the Athenian year and the day of the festival was +the birthday of the goddess. When the goddess became a war-goddess, it +was fabled that she was born in Olympus, and that she sprang full grown +from her father's head in glittering armour. But she was really born on +earth, and the day of her birth was the birthday of every earthborn +goddess, the day of the beginning of the new year, with its returning +life. When men observe only the actual growth of new green life from the +ground, this birthday will be in spring; when they begin to know that +the seasons depend on the sun, or when the heat of the sun causes great +need of rain, it will be at midsummer, at the solstice, or in northern +regions where men fear to lose the sun in midwinter, as with us. The +frieze of the Parthenon is, then, but a primitive festival translated +into stone, a rite frozen to a monument. + + * * * * * + +Passing over a long space of time we come to our next illustration, the +Apollo Belvedere (Fig. 6). + +It might seem that here at last we have nothing primitive; here we have +art pure and simple, ideal art utterly cut loose from ritual, "art for +art's sake." Yet in this Apollo Belvedere, this product of late and +accomplished, even decadent art, we shall see most clearly the intimate +relation of art and ritual; we shall, as it were, walk actually across +that transition bridge of ritual which leads from actual life to art. + +[Illustration: Fig. 6. The Apollo Belvedere.] + +The date of this famous Apollo cannot be fixed, but it is clearly a copy +of a type belonging to the fourth century B.C. The poise of the figure +is singular and, till its intent is grasped, unsatisfactory. Apollo is +caught in swift motion but seems, as he stands delicately poised, to be +about to fly rather than to run. He stands tiptoe and in a moment will +have left the earth. The Greek sculptor's genius was all focussed, as we +shall presently see, on the human figure and on the mastery of its many +possibilities of movement and action. Greek statues can roughly be dated +by the way they stand. At first, in the archaic period, they stand +firmly planted with equal weight on either foot, the feet close +together. Then one foot is advanced, but the weight still equally +divided, an almost impossible position. Next, the weight is thrown on +the right foot; and the left knee is bent. This is of all positions the +loveliest for the human body. We allow it to women, forbid it to men +save to "aesthetes." If the back numbers of _Punch_ be examined for the +figure of "Postlethwaite" it will be seen that he always stands in this +characteristic relaxed pose. + +When the sculptor has mastered the possible he bethinks him of the +impossible. He will render the human body flying. It may have been the +accident of a mythological subject that first suggested the motive. +Leochares, a famous artist of the fourth century B.C., made a group of +Zeus in the form of an eagle carrying off Ganymede. A replica of the +group is preserved in the Vatican, and should stand for comparison near +the Apollo. We have the same tiptoe poise, the figure just about to +leave the earth. Again, it is not a dance, but a flight. This poise is +suggestive to us because it marks an art cut loose, as far as may be, +from earth and its realities, even its rituals. + +What is it that Apollo is doing? The question and suggested answers have +occupied many treatises. There is only one answer: We do not know. It +was at first thought that the Apollo had just drawn his bow and shot an +arrow. This suggestion was made to account for the pose; but that, as we +have seen, is sufficiently explained by the flight-motive. Another +possible solution is that Apollo brandishes in his uplifted hand the +aegis, or goatskin shield, of Zeus. Another suggestion is that he holds +as often a lustral, or laurel bough, that he is figured as Daphnephoros, +"Laurel-Bearer." + +We do not know if the Belvedere Apollo carried a laurel, but we _do_ +know that it was of the very essence of the god to be a Laurel-Bearer. +That, as we shall see in a moment, he, like Dionysos, arose in part out +of a rite, a rite of Laurel-Bearing--a _Daphnephoria_. We have not got +clear of ritual yet. When Pausanias,[45] the ancient traveller, whose +notebook is our chief source about these early festivals, came to Thebes +he saw a hill sacred to Apollo, and after describing the temple on the +hill he says: + + "The following custom is still, I know, observed at Thebes. A boy + of distinguished family and himself well-looking and strong is made + the priest of Apollo, _for the space of a year_. The title given + him is Laurel-Bearer (Daphnephoros), for these boys wear wreaths + made of laurel." + +We know for certain now what these yearly priests are: they are the Kings +of the Year, the Spirits of the Year, May-Kings, Jacks-o'-the-Green. +The name given to the boy is enough to show he carried a laurel branch, +though Pausanias only mentions a wreath. Another ancient writer gives us +more details.[46] He says in describing the festival of the +Laurel-Bearing: + + "They wreathe a pole of olive wood with laurel and various flowers. + On the top is fitted a bronze globe from which they suspend + smaller ones. Midway round the pole they place a lesser globe, + binding it with purple fillets, but the end of the pole is decked + with saffron. By the topmost globe they mean the sun, to which they + actually compare Apollo. The globe beneath this is the moon; the + smaller globes hung on are the stars and constellations, and the + fillets are the course of the year, for they make them 365 in + number. The Daphnephoria is headed by a boy, both whose parents are + alive, and his nearest male relation carries the filleted pole. The + Laurel-Bearer himself, who follows next, holds on to the laurel; he + has his hair hanging loose, he wears a golden wreath, and he is + dressed out in a splendid robe to his feet and he wears light + shoes. There follows him a band of maidens holding out boughs + before them, to enforce the supplication of the hymns." + +This is the most elaborate maypole ceremony that we know of in ancient +times. The globes representing sun and moon show us that we have come to +a time when men know that the fruits of the earth in due season depended +on the heavenly bodies. The year with its 365 days is a Sun-Year. Once +this Sun-Year established and we find that the times of the solstices, +midwinter and midsummer became as, or even more, important than the +spring itself. The date of the _Daphnephoria_ is not known. + +At Delphi itself, the centre of Apollo-worship, there was a festival +called the _Stepteria_, or festival "of those who make the wreathes," in +which "mystery" a Christian Bishop, St. Cyprian, tells us he was +initiated. In far-off Tempe--that wonderful valley that is still the +greenest spot in stony, barren Greece, and where the laurel trees still +cluster--there was an altar, and near it a laurel tree. The story went +that Apollo had made himself a crown from this very laurel, and _taking +in his hand a branch of this same laurel_, i.e. as Laurel-Bearer, had +come to Delphi and taken over the oracle. + +"And to this day the people of Delphi send high-born boys in procession +there. And they, when they have reached Tempe and made a splendid +sacrifice return back, after wearing themselves wreaths from the very +laurel from which the god made himself a wreath." + +We are inclined to think of the Greeks as a people apt to indulge in the +singular practice of wearing wreaths in public, a practice among us +confined to children on their birthdays and a few eccentric people on +their wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the +custom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because +they were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that +they might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek +bridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his +marriage may be the beginning of new life, that his "wife may be as the +fruitful vine, and his children as the olive branches round about his +table." And our children to-day, though they do not know it, wear +wreaths on their birthdays because with each new year their life is +re-born. + + * * * * * + +Apollo then, was, like Dionysos, King of the May and--saving his +presence--Jack-in-the-Green. The god manifestly arose out of the rite. For +a moment let us see _how_ he arose. It will be remembered that in a +previous chapter (p. 70) we spoke of "personification." We think of the +god Apollo as an abstraction, an unreal thing, perhaps as a "false god." +The god Apollo does not, and never did, exist. He is an idea--a thing made +by the imagination. But primitive man does not deal with abstractions, +does not worship them. What happens is, as we saw (p. 71), something like +this: Year by year a boy is chosen to carry the laurel, to bring in the +May, and later year by year a puppet is made. It is a different boy each +year, carrying a different laurel branch. And yet in a sense it is the +same boy; he is always the Laurel-Bearer--"Daphnephoros," always the +"Luck" of the village or city. This Laurel-Bearer, the same yesterday, +to-day, and forever, is the stuff of which the god is made. The god arises +from the rite, he is gradually detached from the rite, and as soon as he +gets a life and being of his own, apart from the rite, he is a first stage +in art, a work of art existing in the mind, gradually detached from even +the faded action of ritual, and later to be the model of the actual work +of art, the copy in stone. + +The stages, it would seem, are: actual life with its motor reactions, +the ritual copy of life with its faded reactions, the image of the god +projected by the rite, and, last, the copy of that image, the work of +art. + + * * * * * + +We see now why in the history of all ages and every place art is what is +called the "handmaid of religion." She is not really the "handmaid" at +all. She springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is +the image of the god. Primitive art in Greece, in Egypt, in Assyria,[47] +represents either rites, processions, sacrifices, magical ceremonies, +embodied prayers; or else it represents the images of the gods who +spring from those rites. Track any god right home, and you will find him +lurking in a ritual sheath, from which he slowly emerges, first as a +_daemon_, or spirit, of the year, then as a full-blown divinity. + + * * * * * + +In Chapter II we saw how the _dromenon_ gave birth to the _drama_, how, +bit by bit, out of the chorus of dancers some dancers withdrew and +became spectators sitting apart, and on the other hand others of the +dancers drew apart on to the stage and presented to the spectators a +spectacle, a thing to be looked _at_, not joined _in_. And we saw how in +this spectacular mood, this being cut loose from immediate action, lay +the very essence of the artist and the art-lover. Now in the drama of +Thespis there was at first, we are told, but one actor; later AEschylus +added a second. It is clear who this actor, this _protagonist_ or "first +contender" was, the one actor with the double part, who was Death to be +carried out and Summer to be carried in. He was the Bough-Bearer, the +only possible actor in the one-part play of the renewal of life and the +return of the year. + + * * * * * + +The May-King, the leader of the choral dance gave birth not only to the +first actor of the drama, but also, as we have just seen, to the god, be +he Dionysos or be he Apollo; and this figure of the god thus imagined +out of the year-spirit was perhaps more fertile for art than even the +protagonist of the drama. It may seem strange to us that a god should +rise up out of a dance or a procession, because dances and processions +are not an integral part of our national life, and do not call up any +very strong and instant emotion. The old instinct lingers, it is true, +and emerges at critical moments; when a king dies we form a great +procession to carry him to the grave, but we do not dance. We have court +balls, and these with their stately ordered ceremonials are perhaps the +last survival of the genuinely civic dance, but a court ball is not +given at a king's funeral nor in honour of a god. + +But to the Greek the god and the dance were never quite sundered. It +almost seems as if in the minds of Greek poets and philosophers there +lingered some dim half-conscious remembrance that some of these gods at +least actually came out of the ritual dance. Thus, Plato,[48] in +treating of the importance of rhythm in education says: "The gods, +pitying the toilsome race of men, have appointed the sequence of +religious festivals to give them times of rest, and have given them the +Muses and Apollo, the Muse-Leader, as fellow-revellers." + +"The young of all animals," he goes on to say, "cannot keep quiet, +either in body or voice. They must leap and skip and overflow with +gamesomeness and sheer joy, and they must utter all sorts of cries. But +whereas animals have no perception of order or disorder in their +motions, the gods who have been appointed to men as our fellow-dancers +have given to us a sense of pleasure in rhythm and harmony. And so they +move us and lead our bands, knitting us together with songs and in +dances, and these we call _choruses_." Nor was it only Apollo and +Dionysos who led the dance. Athena herself danced the Pyrrhic dance. +"Our virgin lady," says Plato, "delighting in the sports of the dance, +thought it not meet to dance with empty hands; she must be clothed in +full armour, and in this attire go through the dance. And youths and +maidens should in every respect imitate her example, honouring the +goddess, both with a view to the actual necessities of war and to the +festivals." + +Plato is unconsciously inverting the order of things, natural +happenings. Take the armed dance. There is, first, the "actual necessity +of war." Men go to war armed, to face actual dangers, and at their head +is a leader in full armour. That is real life. There is then the festal +re-enactment of war, when the fight is not actually fought, but there is +an imitation of war. That is the ritual stage, the _dromenon_. Here, +too, there is a leader. More and more this dance becomes a spectacle, +less and less an action. Then from the periodic _dromenon_, the ritual +enacted year by year, emerges an imagined permanent leader; a daemon, or +god--a Dionysos, an Apollo, an Athena. Finally the account of what +actually happens is thrown into the past, into a remote distance, and we +have an "aetiological" myth--a story told to give a cause or reason. The +whole natural process is inverted. + +And last, as already seen, the god, the first work of art, the thing +unseen, imagined out of the ritual of the dance, is cast back into the +visible world and fixed in space. Can we wonder that a classical +writer[49] should say "the statues of the craftsmen of old times are the +relics of ancient dancing." That is just what they are, rites caught and +fixed and frozen. "Drawing," says a modern critic,[50] "is at bottom, +like all the arts, a kind of gesture, a method of dancing on paper." +Sculpture, drawing, all the arts save music are imitative; so was the +dance from which they sprang. But imitation is not all, or even first. +"The dance may be mimetic; but the beauty and verve of the performance, +not closeness of the imitation impresses; and tame additions of truth +will encumber and not convince. The dance must control the pantomime." +Art, that is, gradually dominates mere ritual. + + * * * * * + +We come to another point. The Greek gods as we know them in classical +sculpture are always imaged in human shape. This was not of course +always the case with other nations. We have seen how among savages the +totem, that is, the emblem of tribal unity, was usually an animal or a +plant. We have seen how the emotions of the Siberian tribe in Saghalien +focussed on a bear. The savage totem, the Saghalien Bear, is on the way +to be, but is not quite, a god; he is not personal enough. The +Egyptians, and in part the Assyrians, halted half-way and made their +gods into monstrous shapes, half-animal, half-man, which have their own +mystical grandeur. But since we are men ourselves, feeling human +emotion, if our gods are in great part projected emotions, the natural +form for them to take is human shape. + +"Art imitates Nature," says Aristotle, in a phrase that has been much +misunderstood. It has been taken to mean that art is a copy or +reproduction of natural objects. But by "Nature" Aristotle never means +the outside world of created things, he means rather creative force, +what produces, not what has been produced. We might almost translate the +Greek phrase, "Art, like Nature, creates things," "Art acts like Nature +in producing things." These things are, first and foremost, human +things, human action. The drama, with which Aristotle is so much +concerned, invents human action like real, _natural_ action. Dancing +"imitates character, emotion, action." Art is to Aristotle almost wholly +bound by the limitations of _human_ nature. + +This is, of course, characteristically a Greek limitation. "Man is the +measure of all things," said the old Greek sophist, but modern science +has taught us another lesson. Man may be in the foreground, but the +drama of man's life is acted out for us against a tremendous background +of natural happenings: a background that preceded man and will outlast +him; and this background profoundly affects our imagination, and hence +our art. We moderns are in love with the background. Our art is a +landscape art. The ancient landscape painter could not, or would not, +trust the background to tell its own tale: if he painted a mountain he +set up a mountain-god to make it real; if he outlined a coast he set +human coast-nymphs on its shore to make clear the meaning. + +Contrast with this our modern landscape, from which bit by bit the nymph +has been wholly banished. It is the art of a stage, without actors, a +scene which is all background, all suggestion. It is an art given us by +sheer recoil from science, which has dwarfed actual human life almost to +imaginative extinction. + + "Landscape, then, offered to the modern imagination a scene empty + of definite actors, superhuman or human, that yielded to reverie + without challenge all that is in a moral without a creed, tension + or ambush of the dark, threat of ominous gloom, the relenting and + tender return or overwhelming outburst of light, the pageantry of + clouds above a world turned quaker, the monstrous weeds of trees + outside the town, the sea that is obstinately epic still."[51] + +It was to this world of backgrounds that men fled, hunted by the sense +of their own insignificance. + +"Minds the most strictly bound in their acts by civil life, in their +fancy by the shrivelled look of destiny under scientific speculation, +felt on solitary hill or shore those tides of the blood stir again that +are ruled by the sun and the moon and travelled as if to tryst where an +apparition might take form. Poets ordained themselves to this vigil, +haunters of a desert church, prompters of an elemental theatre, +listeners in solitary places for intimations from a spirit in hiding; +and painters followed the impulse of Wordsworth." + +We can only see the strength and weakness of Greek sculpture, feel the +emotion of which it was the utterance, if we realize clearly this modern +spirit of the background. All great modern, and perhaps even ancient, +poets are touched by it. Drama itself, as Nietzsche showed, "hankers +after dissolution into mystery. Shakespeare would occasionally knock the +back out of the stage with a window opening on the 'cloud-capp'd +towers.'" But Maeterlinck is the best example, because his genius is +less. He is the embodiment, almost the caricature, of a tendency. + + "Maeterlinck sets us figures in the foreground only to launch us + into that limbus. The supers jabbering on the scene are there, + children of presentiment and fear, to make us aware of a third, the + mysterious one, whose name is not on the bills. They come to warn + us by the nervous check and hurry of their gossip of the approach + of that background power. Omen after omen announces him, the talk + starts and drops at his approach, a door shuts and the thrill of + his passage is the play."[52] + +It is, perhaps, the temperaments that are most allured and terrified by +this art of the bogey and the background that most feel the need of and +best appreciate the calm and level, rational dignity of Greek naturalism +and especially the naturalism of Greek sculpture. + +For it is naturalism, not realism, not imitation. By all manner of +renunciations Greek sculpture is what it is. The material, itself +marble, is utterly unlike life, it is perfectly cold and still, it has +neither the texture nor the colouring of life. The story of Pygmalion +who fell in love with the statue he had himself sculptured is as false +as it is tasteless. Greek sculpture is the last form of art to incite +physical reaction. It is remote almost to the point of chill +abstraction. The statue in the round renounces not only human life +itself, but all the natural background and setting of life. The statues +of the Greek gods are Olympian in spirit as well as subject. They are +like the gods of Epicurus, cut loose alike from the affairs of men, and +even the ordered ways of Nature. So Lucretius[53] pictures them: + + "The divinity of the gods is revealed and their tranquil abodes, + which neither winds do shake nor clouds drench with rains, nor snow + congealed by sharp frost harms with hoary fall: an ever cloudless + ether o'ercanopies them, and they laugh with light shed largely + around. Nature, too, supplies all their wants, and nothing ever + impairs their peace of mind." + +Greek art moves on through a long course of technical accomplishment, of +ever-increasing mastery over materials and methods. But this course we +need not follow. For our argument the last word is said in the figures +of these Olympians translated into stone. Born of pressing human needs +and desires, images projected by active and even anxious ritual, they +pass into the upper air and dwell aloof, spectator-like and all but +spectral. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[43] II, 38. + +[44] _Oed. Col._ 694, trans. D.S. MacColl. + +[45] IX, 10, 4. + +[46] See my _Themis_, p. 438. + +[47] It is now held by some and good authorities that the prehistoric +paintings of cave-dwelling man had also a ritual origin; that is, that +the representations of animals were intended to act magically, to +increase the "supply of the animal or help the hunter to catch him." +But, as this question is still pending, I prefer, tempting though they +are, not to use prehistoric paintings as material for my argument. + +[48] _Laws_, 653. + +[49] _Athen._ XIV, 26, p. 629. + +[50] D.S. MacColl, "A Year of Post-Impressionism," _Nineteenth Century_, +p. 29. (1912.) + +[51] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 20. (1902.) + +[52] D.S. MacColl, _op. cit._, p. 18. + +[53] II, 18. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +RITUAL, ART AND LIFE + + +In the preceding chapters we have seen ritual emerge from the practical +doings of life. We have noted that in ritual we have the beginning of a +detachment from practical ends; we have watched the merely emotional +dance develop from an undifferentiated chorus into a spectacle performed +by actors and watched by spectators, a spectacle cut off, not only from +real life, but also from ritual issues; a spectacle, in a word, that has +become an end in itself. We have further seen that the choral dance is +an undifferentiated whole which later divides out into three clearly +articulate parts, the artist, the work of art, the spectator or art +lover. We are now in a position to ask what is the good of all this +antiquarian enquiry? Why is it, apart from the mere delight of +scientific enquiry, important to have seen that art arose from ritual? + +The answer is simple-- + +The object of this book, as stated in the preface, is to try to throw +some light on the function of art, that is on what it has done, and +still does to-day, for life. Now in the case of a complex growth like +art, it is rarely if ever possible to understand its function--what it +does, how it works--unless we know something of how that growth began, +or, if its origin is hid, at least of the simpler forms of activity that +preceded it. For art, this earlier stage, this simpler form, which is +indeed itself as it were an embryo and rudimentary art, we found to +be--ritual. + +Ritual, then, has not been studied for its own sake, still less for its +connection with any particular dogma, though, as a subject of singular +gravity and beauty, ritual is well worth a lifetime's study. It has been +studied because ritual is, we believe, a frequent and perhaps universal +transition stage between actual life and that peculiar contemplation of +or emotion towards life which we call art. All our long examination of +beast-dances, May-day festivals and even of Greek drama has had just +this for its object--to make clear that art--save perhaps in a few +specially gifted natures--did not arise straight out of life, but out +of that collective emphasis of the needs and desires of life which we +have agreed to call ritual. + + * * * * * + +Our formal argument is now over and ritual may drop out of the +discussion. But we would guard against a possible misunderstanding. We +would not be taken to imply that ritual is obsolete and must drop out of +life, giving place to the art it has engendered. It may well be that, +for certain temperaments, ritual is a perennial need. Natures specially +gifted can live lives that are emotionally vivid, even in the rare high +air of art or science; but many, perhaps most of us, breathe more freely +in the _medium_, literally the _midway_ space, of some collective +ritual. Moreover, for those of us who are not artists or original +thinkers the life of the imagination, and even of the emotions, has been +perhaps too long lived at second hand, received from the artist ready +made and felt. To-day, owing largely to the progress of science, and a +host of other causes social and economic, life grows daily fuller and +freer, and every manifestation of life is regarded with a new reverence. +With this fresh outpouring of the spirit, this fuller consciousness of +life, there comes a need for _first-hand_ emotion and expression, and +that expression is found for all classes in a revival of the ritual +dance. Some of the strenuous, exciting, self-expressive dances of to-day +are of the soil and some exotic, but, based as they mostly are on very +primitive ritual, they stand as singular evidence of this real recurrent +need. Art in these latter days goes back as it were on her own steps, +recrossing the ritual bridge back to life. + + * * * * * + +It remains to ask what, in the light of this ritual origin, is the +function of art? How do we relate it to other forms of life, to science, +to religion, to morality, to philosophy? These are big-sounding +questions, and towards their solution only hints here and there can be +offered, stray thoughts that have grown up out of this study of ritual +origins and which, because they have helped the writer, are offered, +with no thought of dogmatism, to the reader. + + * * * * * + +We English are not supposed to be an artistic people, yet art, in some +form or another, bulks large in the national life. We have theatres, a +National Gallery, we have art-schools, our tradesmen provide for us +"art-furniture," we even hear, absurdly enough, of "art-colours." +Moreover, all this is not a matter of mere antiquarian interest, we do +not simply go and admire the beauty of the past in museums; a movement +towards or about art is all alive and astir among us. We have new +developments of the theatre, problem plays, Reinhardt productions, +Gordon Craig scenery, Russian ballets. We have new schools of painting +treading on each other's heels with breathless rapidity: Impressionists, +Post-Impressionists, Futurists. Art--or at least the desire for, the +interest in, art--is assuredly not dead. + +Moreover, and this is very important, we all feel about art a certain +obligation, such as some of us feel about religion. There is an "ought" +about it. Perhaps we do not really care much about pictures and poetry +and music, but we feel we "ought to." In the case of music it has +happily been at last recognized that if you have not an "ear" you cannot +care for it, but two generations ago, owing to the unfortunate cheapness +and popularity of keyed instruments, it was widely held that one half of +humanity, the feminine half, "ought" to play the piano. This "ought" +is, of course, like most social "oughts," a very complex product, but +its existence is well worth noting. + +It is worth noting because it indicates a vague feeling that art has a +real value, that art is not a mere luxury, nor even a rarefied form of +pleasure. No one feels they _ought_ to take pleasure in beautiful scents +or in the touch of velvet; they either do or they don't. The first +point, then, that must be made clear is that art is of real value to +life in a perfectly clear biological sense; it invigorates, enhances, +promotes actual, spiritual, and through it physical life. + +This from our historical account we should at the outset expect, because +we have seen art, by way of ritual, arose out of life. And yet the +statement is a sort of paradox, for we have seen also that art differs +from ritual just in this, that in art, whether of the spectator or the +creator, the "motor reactions," _i.e._ practical life, the life of +doing, is for the time checked. This is of the essence of the artist's +vision, that he sees things detached and therefore more vividly, more +completely, and in a different light. This is of the essence of the +artist's emotion, that it is purified from personal desire. + +But, though the artist's vision and emotion alike are modified, +purified, they are not devitalized. Far from that, by detachment from +action they are focussed and intensified. Life is enhanced, only it is a +different kind of life, it is the life of the image-world, of the +_imag_ination; it is the spiritual and human life, as differentiated +from the life we share with animals. It is a life we all, as human +beings, possess in some, but very varying, degrees; and the natural man +will always view the spiritual man askance, because he is not +"practical." But the life of imagination, cut off from practical +reaction as it is, becomes in turn a motor-force causing new emotions, +and so pervading the general life, and thus ultimately becoming +"practical." No one function is completely cut off from another. The +main function of art is probably to intensify and purify emotion, but it +is substantially certain that, if we did not feel, we could not think +and should not act. Still it remains true that, in artistic +contemplation and in the realms of the artist's imagination not only are +practical motor-reactions cut off, but intelligence is suffused in, and +to some extent subordinated to, emotion. + + * * * * * + +One function, then, of art is to feed and nurture the imagination and +the spirit, and thereby enhance and invigorate the whole of human life. +This is far removed from the view that the end of art is to give +pleasure. Art does usually cause pleasure, singular and intense, and to +that which causes such pleasure we give the name of Beauty. But to +produce and enjoy Beauty is not the function of art. Beauty--or rather, +the sensation of Beauty--is what the Greeks would call an _epigignomenon +ti telos_, words hard to translate, something between a by-product and a +supervening perfection, a thing like--as Aristotle[54] for once +beautifully says of pleasure--"the bloom of youth to a healthy young +body." + +That this is so we see most clearly in the simple fact that, when the +artist begins to aim direct at Beauty, he usually misses it. We all +know, perhaps by sad experience, that the man who seeks out pleasure for +herself fails to find her. Let him do his work well for that work's +sake, exercise his faculties, "energize" as Aristotle would say, and he +will find pleasure come out unawares to meet him with her shining face; +but let him look for her, think of her, even desire her, and she hides +her head. A man goes out hunting, thinks of nothing but following the +hounds and taking his fences, being in at the death: his day is +full--alas! of pleasure, though he has scarcely known it. Let him forget +the fox and the fences, think of pleasure, desire her, and he will be in +at pleasure's death. + +So it is with the artist. Let him feel strongly, and see raptly--that +is, in complete detachment. Let him cast this, his rapt vision and his +intense emotion, into outside form, a statue or a painting; that form +will have about it a nameless thing, an unearthly aroma, which we call +beauty; this nameless presence will cause in the spectator a sensation +too rare to be called pleasure, and we shall call it a "sense of +beauty." But let the artist aim direct at Beauty, and she is gone, gone +before we hear the flutter of her wings. + + * * * * * + +The sign manual, the banner, as it were, of artistic creation is for the +creative artist not pleasure, but something better called joy. +Pleasure, it has been well said, is no more than an instrument contrived +by Nature to obtain from the individual the preservation and the +propagation of life. True joy is not the lure of life, but the +consciousness of the triumph of creation. Wherever joy is, creation has +been.[55] It may be the joy of a mother in the physical creation of a +child; it may be the joy of the merchant adventurer in pushing out new +enterprise, or of the engineer in building a bridge, or of the artist in +a masterpiece accomplished; but it is always of the thing created. +Again, contrast joy with glory. Glory comes with success and is +exceedingly _pleasant_; it is not joyous. Some men say an artist's crown +is glory; his deepest satisfaction is in the applause of his fellows. +There is no greater mistake; we care for praise just in proportion as we +are not sure we have succeeded. To the real creative artist even praise +and glory are swallowed up in the supreme joy of creation. Only the +artist himself feels the real divine fire, but it flames over into the +work of art, and even the spectator warms his hands at the glow. + +We can now, I think, understand the difference between the artist and +true lover of art on the one hand, and the mere aesthete on the other. +The aesthete does not produce, or, if he produces, his work is thin and +scanty. In this he differs from the artist; he does not feel so strongly +and see so clearly that he is forced to utterance. He has no joy, only +pleasure. He cannot even feel the reflection of this creative joy. In +fact, he does not so much feel as want to feel. He seeks for pleasure, +for sensual pleasure as his name says, not for the grosser kinds, but +for pleasure of that rarefied kind that we call a sense of beauty. The +aesthete, like the flirt, is cold. It is not even that his senses are +easily stirred, but he seeks the sensation of stirring, and most often +feigns it, not finds it. The aesthete is no more released from his own +desires than the practical man, and he is without the practical man's +healthy outlet in action. He sees life, not indeed in relation to +action, but to his own personal sensation. By this alone he is debarred +for ever from being an artist. As M. Andre Beaunier has well observed, +by the irony of things, when we see life in relation to ourselves we +cannot really represent it at all. The profligate thinks he knows women. +It is his irony, his curse that, because he sees them always in relation +to his own desires, his own pleasure, he never really knows them at all. + +There is another important point. We have seen that art promotes a part +of life, the spiritual, image-making side. But this side, wonderful +though it is, is never the whole of actual life. There is always the +practical side. The artist is always also a man. Now the aesthete tries +to make his whole attitude artistic--that is, contemplative. He is +always looking and prying and savouring, _savourant_, as he would say, +when he ought to be living. The result is that there is nothing to +_savourer_. All art springs by way of ritual out of keen emotion towards +life, and even the power to appreciate art needs this emotional reality +in the spectator. The aesthete leads at best a parasite, artistic life, +dogged always by death and corruption. + + * * * * * + +This brings us straight on to another question: What about Art and +Morality? Is Art immoral, or non-moral, or highly moral? Here again +public opinion is worth examining. Artists, we are told, are bad +husbands, and they do not pay their debts. Or if they become good +husbands and take to paying their debts, they take also to wallowing in +domesticity and produce bad art or none at all; they get tangled in the +machinery of practical reactions. Art, again, is apt to deal with risky +subjects. Where should we be if there were not a Censor of Plays? Many +of these instructive attitudes about artists as immoral or non-moral, +explain themselves instantly if we remember that the artist is _ipso +facto_ detached from practical life. In so far as he is an artist, for +each and every creative moment he is inevitably a bad husband, if being +a good husband means constant attention to your wife and her interests. +Spiritual creation _a deux_ is a happening so rare as to be negligible. + +The remoteness of the artist, his essential inherent detachment from +motor-reaction, explains the perplexities of the normal censor. He, +being a "practical man," regards emotion and vision, feeling and ideas, +as leading to action. He does not see that art arises out of ritual and +that even ritual is one remove from practical life. In the censor's +world the spectacle of the nude leads straight to desire, so the dancer +must be draped; the problem-play leads straight to the Divorce Court, +therefore it must be censored. The normal censor apparently knows +nothing of that world where motor-reactions are cut off, that house made +without hands, whose doors are closed on desire, eternal in the heavens. +The censor is not for the moment a _persona grata_, but let us give him +his due. He acts according to his lights and these often quite +adequately represent the average darkness. A normal audience contains +many "practical" men whose standard is the same as that of the normal +censor. Art--that is vision detached from practical reactions--is to +them an unknown world full of moral risks from which the artist is _qua_ +artist immune. + +So far we might perhaps say that art was non-moral. But the statement +would be misleading, since, as we have seen, art is in its very origin +social, and social means human and collective. Moral and social are, in +their final analysis, the same. That human, collective emotion, out of +which we have seen the choral dance arise, is in its essence moral; that +is, it unites. "Art," says Tolstoy, "has this characteristic, that it +unites people." In this conviction, as we shall later see, he +anticipates the modern movement of the Unanimists (p. 249). + +But there is another, and perhaps simpler, way in which art is moral. As +already suggested, it purifies by cutting off the motor-reactions of +personal desire. An artist deeply in love with his friend's wife once +said: "If only I could paint her and get what I want from her, I could +bear it." His wish strikes a chill at first; it sounds egotistic; it has +the peculiar, instinctive, inevitable cruelty of the artist, seeing in +human nature material for his art. But it shows us the moral side of +art. The artist was a good and sensitive man; he saw the misery he had +brought and would bring to people he loved, and he saw, or rather felt, +a way of escape; he saw that through art, through vision, through +detachment, desire might be slain, and the man within him find peace. To +some natures this instinct after art is almost their sole morality. If +they find themselves intimately entangled in hate or jealousy or even +contempt, so that they are unable to see the object of their hate or +jealousy or contempt in a clear, quiet and lovely light, they are +restless, miserable, morally out of gear, and they are constrained to +fetter or slay personal desire and so find rest. + + * * * * * + +This aloofness, this purgation of emotion from personal passion, art has +in common with philosophy. If the philosopher will seek after truth, +there must be, says Plotinus, a "turning away" of the spirit, a +detachment. He must aim at contemplation; action, he says, is "a +weakening of contemplation." Our word _theory_, which we use in +connection with reasoning and which comes from the same Greek root as +_theatre_, means really looking fixedly at, contemplation; it is very +near in meaning to our _imagination_. But the philosopher differs from +the artist in this: he aims not only at the contemplation of truth, but +at the ordering of truths, he seeks to make of the whole universe an +intelligible structure. Further, he is not driven by the gadfly of +creation, he is not forced to cast his images into visible or audible +shape. He is remoter from the push of life. Still, the philosopher, +like the artist, lives in a world of his own, with a spell of its own +near akin to beauty, and the secret of that spell is the same detachment +from the tyranny of practical life. The essence of art, says Santayana, +is "the steady contemplation of things in their order and worth." He +might have been defining philosophy. + + * * * * * + +If art and philosophy are thus near akin, art and science are in their +beginning, though not in their final development, contrasted. Science, +it seems, begins with the desire for practical utility. Science, as +Professor Bergson has told us, has for its initial aim the making of +tools for life. Man tries to find out the laws of Nature, that is, how +natural things behave, in order primarily that he may get the better of +them, rule over them, shape them to his ends. That is why science is at +first so near akin to magic--the cry of both is: + + "I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." + +But, though the feet of science are thus firmly planted on the solid +ground of practical action, her head, too, sometimes touches the +highest heavens. The real man of science, like the philosopher, soon +comes to seek truth and knowledge for their own sake. In art, in +science, in philosophy, there come eventually the same detachment from +personal desire and practical reaction; and to artist, man of science, +and philosopher alike, through this detachment there comes at times the +same peace that passeth all understanding. + +Attempts have been often made to claim for art the utility, the +tool-making property, that characterizes the beginnings of science. +Nothing is beautiful, it is sometimes said, that is not useful; the +beauty of a jug or a table depends, we are often told, on its perfect +adaptation to its use. There is here some confusion of thought and some +obvious, but possibly unconscious, special pleading. Much of art, +specially decorative art, arises out of utilities, but its aim and its +criterion is not utility. Art may be structural, commemorative, magical, +what-not, may grow up out of all manner of practical needs, but it is +not till it is cut loose from these practical needs that Art is herself +and comes to her own. This does not mean that the jugs or tables are to +be bad jugs or tables, still less does it mean that the jugs or tables +should be covered with senseless machine-made ornament; but the utility +of the jug or table is a good in itself independent of, though often +associated with, its merit as art. + +No one has, I think, ever called Art "the handmaid of Science." There +is, indeed, no need to establish a hierarchy. Yet in a sense the +converse is true and Science is the handmaid of Art. Art is only +practicable as we have seen, when it is possible safely to cut off +motor-reactions. By the long discipline of ritual man accustomed himself +to slacken his hold on action, and be content with a shadowy counterfeit +practice. Then last, when through knowledge he was relieved from the +need of immediate reaction to imminent realities, he loosed hold for a +moment altogether, and was free to look, and art was born. He can never +quit his hold for long; but it would seem that, as science advances and +life gets easier and easier, safer and safer, he may loose his hold for +longer spaces. Man subdues the world about him first by force and then +by reason; and when the material world is mastered and lies at his beck, +he needs brute force no longer, and needs reason no more to make tools +for conquest. He is free to think for thought's sake, he may trust +intuition once again, and above all dare to lose himself in +contemplation, dare to be more and more an artist. Only here there lurks +an almost ironical danger. Emotion towards life is the primary stuff of +which art is made; there might be a shortage of this very emotional +stuff of which art herself is ultimately compacted. + +Science, then, helps to make art possible by making life safer and +easier, it "makes straight in the desert a highway for our God." But +only rarely and with special limitations easily understood does it +provide actual material for art. Science deals with abstractions, +concepts, class names, made by the intellect for convenience, that we +may handle life on the side desirable to us. When we classify things, +give them class-names, we simply mean that we note for convenience that +certain actually existing objects have similar qualities, a fact it is +convenient for us to know and register. These class-names being +_abstract_--that is, bundles of qualities rent away from living actual +objects, do not easily stir emotion, and, therefore, do not easily +become material for art whose function it is to express and communicate +emotion. Particular qualities, like love, honour, faith, may and _do_ +stir emotion; and certain bundles of qualities like, for example, +motherhood tend towards personification; but the normal class label like +horse, man, triangle does not easily become material for art; it remains +a practical utility for science. + +The abstractions, the class-names of science are in this respect quite +different from those other abstractions or unrealities already +studied--the gods of primitive religion. The very term we use shows +this. _Abstractions_ are things, qualities, _dragged away_ consciously +by the intellect, from actual things objectively existing. The primitive +gods are personifications--_i.e._ collective emotions taking shape in +imagined form. Dionysos has no more actual, objective existence than the +abstract horse. But the god Dionysos was not made by the intellect for +practical convenience, he was begotten by emotion, and, therefore, he +re-begets it. He and all the other gods are, therefore, the proper +material for art; he is, indeed, one of the earliest forms of art. The +abstract horse, on the other hand, is the outcome of reflection. We +must honour him as of quite extraordinary use for the purposes of +practical life, but he leaves us cold and, by the artist, is best +neglected. + + * * * * * + +There remains the relation of Art to Religion.[56] By now, it may be +hoped, this relation is transparently clear. The whole object of the +present book has been to show how primitive art grew out of ritual, how +art is in fact but a later and more sublimated, more detached form of +ritual. We saw further that the primitive gods themselves were but +projections or, if we like it better, personifications of the rite. They +arose straight out of it. + +Now we say advisedly "primitive gods," and this with no intention of +obscurantism. The god of later days, the unknown source of life, the +unresolved mystery of the world, is not begotten of a rite, is not, +essentially not, the occasion or object of art. With his relation to +art--which is indeed practically non-existent--we have nothing to do. Of +the other gods we may safely say that not only are they objects of art, +they are its prime material; in a word, primitive theology is an early +stage in the formation of art. Each primitive god, like the rite from +which he sprang, is a half-way house between practical life and art; he +comes into being from a half, but only half, inhibited desire. + + * * * * * + +Is there, then, no difference, except in degree of detachment, between +religion and art? Both have the like emotional power; both carry with +them a sense of obligation, though the obligation of religion is the +stronger. But there is one infallible criterion between the two which is +all-important, and of wide-reaching consequences. Primitive religion +asserts that her imaginations have objective existence; art more happily +makes no such claim. The worshipper of Apollo believes, not only that he +has imagined the lovely figure of the god and cast a copy of its shape +in stone, but he also believes that in the outside world the god Apollo +exists as an object. Now this is certainly untrue; that is, it does not +correspond with fact. There is no such thing as the god Apollo, and +science makes a clean sweep of Apollo and Dionysos and all such +fictitious objectivities; they are _eidola_, idols, phantasms, not +objective realities. Apollo fades earlier than Dionysos because the +worshipper of Dionysos keeps hold of _the_ reality that he and his +church or group have projected the god. He knows that _prier, c'est +elaborer Dieu_; or, as he would put it, he is "one with" his god. +Religion has this in common with art, that it discredits the actual +practical world; but only because it creates a new world and insists on +its actuality and objectivity. + +Why does the conception of a god impose obligation? Just because and in +so far as he claims to have objective existence. By giving to his god +from the outset objective existence the worshipper prevents his god from +taking his place in that high kingdom of spiritual realities which is +the imagination, and sets him down in that lower objective world which +always compels practical reaction. What might have been an ideal becomes +an idol. Straightway this objectified idol compels all sorts of ritual +reactions of prayer and praise and sacrifice. It is as though another +and a more exacting and commanding fellow-man were added to the +universe. But a moment's reflection will show that, when we pass from +the vague sense of power or _mana_ felt by the savage to the personal +god, to Dionysos or Apollo, though it may seem a set back it is a real +advance. It is the substitution of a human and tolerably humane power +for an incalculable whimsical and often cruel force. The idol is a step +towards, not a step from, the ideal. Ritual makes these idols, and it is +the business of science to shatter them and set the spirit free for +contemplation. Ritual must wane that art may wax. + +But we must never forget that ritual is the bridge by which man passes, +the ladder by which he climbs from earth to heaven. The bridge must not +be broken till the transit is made. And the time is not yet. We must not +pull down the ladder till we are sure the last angel has climbed. Only +then, at last, we dare not leave it standing. Earth pulls hard, and it +may be that the angels who ascended might _de_scend and be for ever +fallen. + + * * * * * + +It may be well at the close of our enquiry to test the conclusions at +which we have arrived by comparing them with certain _endoxa_, as +Aristotle would call them, that is, opinions and theories actually +current at the present moment. We take these contemporary controversies, +not implying that they are necessarily of high moment in the history of +art, or that they are in any fundamental sense new discoveries; but +because they are at this moment current and vital, and consequently form +a good test for the adequacy of our doctrines. It will be satisfactory +if we find our view includes these current opinions, even if it to some +extent modifies them and, it may be hoped, sets them in a new light. + +We have already considered the theory that holds art to be the creation +or pursuit or enjoyment of beauty. The other view falls readily into two +groups: + +(1) The "imitation" theory, with its modification, the idealization +theory, which holds that art either copies Nature, or, out of natural +materials, improves on her. + +(2) The "expression" theory, which holds that the aim of art is to +express the emotions and thoughts of the artist. + +The "Imitation" theory is out of fashion now-a-days. Plato and Aristotle +held it; though Aristotle, as we have seen, did not mean by "imitating +Nature" quite what we mean to-day. The Imitation theory began to die +down with the rise of Romanticism, which stressed the personal, +individual emotion of the artist. Whistler dealt it a rude, +ill-considered blow by his effective, but really foolish and irrelevant, +remark that to attempt to create Art by imitating Nature was "like +trying to make music by sitting on the piano." But, as already noted, +the Imitation theory of art was really killed by the invention of +photography. It was impossible for the most insensate not to see that in +a work of art, of sculpture or painting, there was an element of value +not to be found in the exact transcript of a photograph. Henceforth the +Imitation theory lived on only in the weakened form of Idealization. + +The reaction against the Imitation theory has naturally and inevitably +gone much too far. We have "thrown out the child with the bath-water." +All through the present book we have tried to show that art _arises +from_ ritual, and ritual is in its essence a faded action, an +imitation. Moreover, every work of art _is_ a copy of something, only +not a copy of anything having actual existence in the outside world. +Rather it is a copy of that inner and highly emotionalized vision of the +artist which it is granted to him to see and recreate when he is +released from certain practical reactions. + + * * * * * + +The Impressionism that dominated the pictorial art of the later years of +the nineteenth century was largely a modified and very delicate +imitation. Breaking with conventions as to how things are _supposed to +be_--conventions mainly based not on seeing but on knowing or +imagining--the Impressionist insists on purging his vision from +knowledge, and representing things not as they are but as they really +_look_. He imitates Nature not as a whole, but as she presents herself +to his eyes. It was a most needful and valuable purgation, since +painting is the art proper of the eye. But, when the new effects of the +world as simply _seen_, the new material of light and shadow and tone, +had been to some extent--never completely--mastered, there was +inevitable reaction. Up sprang Post-Impressionists and Futurists. They +will not gladly be classed together, but both have this in common--they +are Expressionists, not Impressionists, not Imitators. + +The Expressionists, no matter by what name they call themselves, have +one criterion. They believe that art is not the copying or idealizing of +Nature, or of any aspect of Nature, but the expression and communication +of the artist's emotion. We can see that, between them and the +Imitationists, the Impressionists form a delicate bridge. They, too, +focus their attention on the artist rather than the object, only it is +on the artist's particular _vision_, his impression, what he actually +sees, not on his emotion, what he feels. + +Modern life is _not_ simple--cannot be simple--ought not to be; it is +not for nothing that we are heirs to the ages. Therefore the art that +utters and expresses our emotion towards modern life cannot be simple; +and, moreover, it must before all things embody not only that living +tangle which is felt by the Futurists as so real, but it must purge and +order it, by complexities of tone and rhythm hitherto unattempted. One +art, beyond all others, has blossomed into real, spontaneous, +unconscious life to-day, and that is Music; the other arts stand round +arrayed, half paralyzed, with drooping, empty hands. The nineteenth +century saw vast developments in an art that could express abstract, +unlocalized, unpersonified feelings more completely than painting or +poetry, the art of Music. + + * * * * * + +As a modern critic[57] has well observed: "In tone and rhythm music has +a notation for every kind and degree of action and passion, presenting +abstract moulds of its excitement, fluctuation, suspense, crisis, +appeasement; and all this _anonymously_, without place, actors, +circumstances, named or described, without a word spoken. Poetry has to +supply definite thought, arguments driving at a conclusion, ideas +mortgaged to this or that creed or system; and to give force to these +can command only a few rhythms limited by the duration of a human breath +and the pitch of an octave. The little effects worked out in this small +compass music sweeps up and builds into vast fabrics of emotion with a +dissolute freedom undreamed of in any other art." + +It may be that music provides for a century too stagnant and listless to +act out its own emotions, too reflective to be frankly sensuous, a +shadowy pageant of sense and emotion, that serves as a _katharsis_ or +purgation. + +Anyhow, "an art that came out of the old world two centuries ago, with a +few chants, love-songs, and dances; that a century ago was still tied to +the words of a mass or an opera; or threading little dance-movements +together in a 'suite,' became in the last century this extraordinary +debauch, in which the man who has never seen a battle, loved a woman, or +worshipped a god, may not only ideally, but through the response of his +nerves and pulses to immediate rhythmical attack, enjoy the ghosts of +struggle, rapture, and exaltation with a volume and intricacy, an +anguish, a triumph, an irresponsibility, unheard of. An amplified +pattern of action and emotion is given: each man may fit to it what +images he will."[58] + + * * * * * + +If our contention throughout this book be correct the Expressionists are +in one matter abundantly right. Art, we have seen, again and again +rises by way of ritual out of emotion, out of life keenly and vividly +livid. The younger generation are always talking of life; they have a +sort of cult of life. Some of the more valorous spirits among them even +tend to disparage art that life may be the more exalted. "Stop painting +and sculping," they cry, "and go and see a football match." There you +have life! Life is, undoubtedly, essential to art because life is the +stuff of emotion, but some thinkers and artists have an oddly limited +notion of what life is. It must, it seems, in the first place, be +essentially physical. To sit and dream in your study is not to live. The +reason of this odd limitation is easy to see. We all think life is +especially the sort of life we are _not_ living ourselves. The +hard-worked University professor thinks that "Life" is to be found in a +French _cafe_; the polished London journalist looks for "Life" among the +naked Polynesians. The cult of savagery, and even of simplicity, in +every form, simply spells complex civilization and diminished physical +vitality. + +The Expressionist is, then, triumphantly right in the stress he lays on +emotion; but he is not right if he limits life to certain of its more +elementary manifestations; and still less is he right, to our minds, in +making life and art in any sense coextensive. Art, as we have seen, +sustains and invigorates life, but only does it by withdrawal from these +very same elementary forms of life, by inhibiting certain sensuous +reactions. + + * * * * * + +In another matter one section of Expressionists, the Futurists, are in +the main right. The emotion to be expressed is the emotion of to-day, or +still better to-morrow. The mimetic dance arose not only nor chiefly out +of reflection on the past; but out of either immediate joy or imminent +fear or insistent hope for the future. We are not prepared perhaps to go +all lengths, to "burn all museums" because of their contagious +corruption, though we might be prepared to "banish the nude for the +space of ten years." If there is to be any true living art, it must +arise, not from the contemplation of Greek statues, not from the revival +of folk-songs, not even from the re-enacting of Greek plays, but from a +keen emotion felt towards things and people living to-day, in modern +conditions, including, among other and deeper forms of life, the haste +and hurry of the modern street, the whirr of motor cars and aeroplanes. + +There are artists alive to-day, strayed revellers, who wish themselves +back in the Middle Ages, who long for the time when each man would have +his house carved with a bit of lovely ornament, when every village +church had its Madonna and Child, when, in a word, art and life and +religion went hand in hand, not sharply sundered by castes and +professions. But we may not put back the clock, and, if by +differentiation we lose something, we gain much. The old choral dance on +the orchestral floor was an undifferentiated thing, it had a beauty of +its own; but by its differentiation, by the severance of artist and +actors and spectators, we have gained--the drama. We may not cast +reluctant eyes backwards; the world goes forward to new forms of life, +and the Churches of to-day must and should become the Museums of +to-morrow. + + * * * * * + +It is curious and instructive to note that Tolstoy's theory of Art, +though not his practice, is essentially Expressive and even approaches +the dogmas of the Futurist. Art is to him just the transmission of +personal emotion to others. It may be bad emotion or it may be good +emotion, emotion it must be. To take his simple and instructive +instance: a boy goes out into a wood and meets a wolf, he is frightened, +he comes back and tells the other villagers what he felt, how he went to +the wood feeling happy and light-hearted and the wolf came, and what the +wolf looked like, and how he began to be frightened. This is, according +to Tolstoy, art. Even if the boy never saw a wolf at all, if he had +really at another time been frightened, and if he was able to conjure up +fear in himself and communicate it to others--that also would be art. +The essential is, according to Tolstoy, that he should feel himself and +so represent his feeling that he communicates it to others.[59] +Art-schools, art-professionalism, art-criticism are all useless or worse +than useless, because they cannot teach a man to feel. Only life can do +that. + +All art is, according to Tolstoy, good _qua_ art that succeeds in +transmitting emotion. But there is good emotion and bad emotion, and the +only right material for art is good emotion, and the only good emotion, +the only emotion worth expressing, is subsumed, according to Tolstoy, in +the religion of the day. This is how he explains the constant affinity +in nearly all ages of art and religion. Instead of regarding religion as +an early phase of art, he proceeds to define religious perception as the +highest social ideal of the moment, as that "understanding of the +meaning of life which represents the highest level to which men of that +society have attained, an understanding defining the highest good at +which that society aims." "Religious perception in a society," he +beautifully adds, "is like the direction of a flowing river. If the +river flows at all, it must have a direction." Thus, religion, to +Tolstoy, is not dogma, not petrifaction, it makes indeed dogma +impossible. The religious perception of to-day flows, Tolstoi says, in +the Christian channel towards the union of man in a common brotherhood. +It is the business of the modern artist to feel and transmit emotion +towards this unity of man. + +Now it is not our purpose to examine whether Tolstoy's definition of +religion is adequate or indeed illuminating. What we wish to note is +that he grasps the truth that in art we must look and feel, and look and +feel forward, not backward, if we would live. Art somehow, like +language, is always feeling forward to newer, fuller, subtler emotions. +She seems indeed in a way to feel ahead even of science; a poet will +forecast dimly what a later discovery will confirm. Whether and how long +old channels, old forms will suffice for the new spirit can never be +foreseen. + + * * * * * + +We end with a point of great importance, though the doctrine we would +emphasize may be to some a hard saying, even a stumbling-block. Art, as +Tolstoy divined, is social, not individual. Art is, as we have seen, +social in origin, it remains and must remain social in function. The +dance from which the drama rose was a choral dance, the dance of a band, +a group, a church, a community, what the Greeks called a _thiasos_. The +word means a _band_ and a _thing of devotion_; and reverence, devotion, +collective emotion, is social in its very being. That band was, to +begin with, as we saw, the whole collection of initiated tribesmen, +linked by a common name, rallying round a common symbol. + +Even to-day, when individualism is rampant, art bears traces of its +collective, social origin. We feel about it, as noted before, a certain +"ought" which always spells social obligation. Moreover, whenever we +have a new movement in art, it issues from a group, usually from a small +professional coterie, but marked by strong social instincts, by a +missionary spirit, by intemperate zeal in propaganda, by a tendency, +always social, to crystallize conviction into dogma. We can scarcely, +unless we are as high-hearted as Tolstoy, hope now-a-days for an art +that shall be world-wide. The tribe is extinct, the family in its old +rigid form moribund, the social groups we now look to as centres of +emotion are the groups of industry, of professionalism and of sheer +mutual attraction. Small and strange though such groups may appear, they +are real social factors. + +Now this social, collective element in art is too apt to be forgotten. +When an artist claims that expression is the aim of art he is too apt to +mean self-expression only--utterance of individual emotion. Utterance +of individual emotion is very closely neighboured by, is almost +identical with, self-enhancement. What should be a generous, and in part +altruistic, exaltation becomes mere _megalomania_. This egotism is, of +course, a danger inherent in all art. The suspension of motor-reactions +to the practical world isolates the artist, cuts him off from his +fellow-men, makes him in a sense an egotist. Art, said Zola, is "the +world seen through a temperament." But this suspension is, not that he +should turn inward to feed on his own vitals, but rather to free him for +contemplation. All great art releases from self. + + * * * * * + +The young are often temporary artists: art, being based on life, calls +for a strong vitality. The young are also self-centred and seek +self-enhancement. This need of self-expression is a sort of artistic +impulse. The young are, partly from sheer immaturity, still more through +a foolish convention, shut out from real life; they are secluded, forced +to become in a sense artists, or, if they have not the power for that, +at least self-aggrandizers. They write lyric poems, they love +masquerading, they focus life on to themselves in a way which, later +on, life itself makes impossible. This pseudo-art, this +self-aggrandizement usually dies a natural death before the age of +thirty. If it live on, one remedy is, of course, the scientific +attitude; that attitude which is bent on considering and discovering the +relations of things among themselves, not their personal relation to us. +The study of science is a priceless discipline in self-abnegation, but +only in negation; it looses us from self, it does not link us to others. +The real and natural remedy for the egotism of youth is Life, not +necessarily the haunting of _cafes_, or even the watching of football +matches, but strenuous activity in the simplest human relations of daily +happenings. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." + + * * * * * + +There is always apt to be some discord between the artist and the large +practical world in which he lives, but those ages are happiest in which +the discord is least. The nineteenth century, amid its splendid +achievements in science and industry, in government and learning, and +above all in humanity, illustrates this conflict in an interesting way. +To literature, an art which can explain itself, the great public world +lent on the whole a reverent and intelligent ear. Its great prose +writers were at peace with their audience and were inspired by great +public interests. Some of the greatest, for example Tolstoy, produced +their finest work on widely human subjects, and numbered their readers +and admirers probably by the million. Writers like Dickens, Thackeray, +Kingsley, Mill, and Carlyle, even poets like Tennyson and Browning, were +full of great public interests and causes, and, in different degrees and +at different stages of their lives, were thoroughly and immensely +popular. On the other hand, one can find, at the beginning of the +period, figures like Blake and Shelley, and all through it a number of +painters--the pre-Raphaelites, the Impressionists--walking like aliens +in a Philistine world. Even great figures like Burne-Jones and Whistler +were for the greater part of their lives unrecognized or mocked at. +Millais reached the attention of the world, but was thought by the +stricter fraternity to have in some sense or other sold his soul and +committed the great sin of considering the bourgeois. The bourgeois +should be despised not partially but completely. His life, his +interests, his code of ethics and conduct must all be matters of entire +indifference or amused contempt, to the true artist who intends to do +his own true work and call his soul his own. + +At a certain moment, during the eighties and nineties, it looked as if +these doctrines were generally accepted, and the divorce between art and +the community had become permanent. But it seems as if this attitude, +which coincided with a period of reaction in political matters and a +recrudescence of a belief in force and on unreasoned authority, is +already passing away. There are not wanting signs that art, both in +painting and sculpture, and in poetry and novel-writing, is beginning +again to realize its social function, beginning to be impatient of mere +individual emotion, beginning to aim at something bigger, more bound up +with a feeling towards and for the common weal. + +Take work like that of Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. Masefield or Mr. Arnold +Bennett. Without appraising its merits or demerits we cannot but note +that the social sense is always there, whether it be of a class or of a +whole community. In a play like _Justice_ the writer does not "express" +himself, he does not even merely show the pathos of a single human +being's destiny, he sets before us a much bigger thing--man tragically +caught and torn in the iron hands of a man-made machine, Society itself. +Incarnate Law is the protagonist, and, as it happens, the villain of the +piece. It is a fragment of _Les Miserables_ over again, in a severer and +more restrained technique. An art like this starts, no doubt, from +emotion towards personal happenings--there is nothing else from which it +can start; but, even as it sets sail for wider seas, it is loosed from +personal moorings. + +Science has given us back something strangely like a World-Soul, and art +is beginning to feel she must utter our emotion towards it. Such art is +exposed to an inherent and imminent peril. Its very bigness and newness +tends to set up fresh and powerful reactions. Unless, in the process of +creation, these can be inhibited, the artist will be lost in the +reformer, and the play or the novel turn tract. This does not mean that +the artist, if he is strong enough, may not be reformer too, only not at +the moment of creation. + +The art of Mr. Arnold Bennett gets its bigness, its collectivity, in +part--from extension over time. Far from seeking after beauty, he almost +goes out to embrace ugliness. He does not spare us even dullness, that +we may get a sense of the long, waste spaces of life, their dreary +reality. We are keenly interested in the loves of hero and heroine, but +all the time something much bigger is going on, generation after +generation rolls by in ceaseless panorama; it is the life not of Edwin +and Hilda, it is the life of the Five Towns. After a vision so big, to +come back to the ordinary individualistic love-story is like looking +through the wrong end of a telescope. + +Art of high quality and calibre is seldom obscure. The great popular +writers of the nineteenth century--Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, +Tolstoy--wrote so that all could understand. A really big artist has +something important to say, something vast to show, something that moves +him and presses on him; and he will say it simply because he must get it +said. He will trick it out with no devices, most of all with no +obscurities. It has vexed and torn him enough while it was pushing its +way to be born. He has no peace till it is said, and said as clearly as +he may. He says it, not consciously for the sake of others, but for +himself, to ease him from the burden of big thought. Moreover, art, +whose business is to transmit emotion, should need no commentary. Art +comes out of _theoria_, contemplation, steady looking at, but never out +of _theory_. Theory can neither engender nor finally support it. An +exhibition of pictures with an explanatory catalogue, scientifically +interesting though it may be, stands, in a sense, self-condemned. + +We must, however, remember that all art is not of the whole community. +There are small groups feeling their own small but still collective +emotion, fashioning their own language, obscure sometimes to all but +themselves. They are right so to fashion it, but, if they appeal to a +wider world, they must strive to speak in the vulgar tongue, +understanded of the people. + + * * * * * + +It is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the times, a mark of the revival of +social as contrasted with merely individualistic instincts that a +younger generation of poets, at least in France, tend to form themselves +into small groups, held together not merely by eccentricities of +language or garb, but by some deep inner conviction strongly held in +common. Such a unity of spirit is seen in the works of the latter group +of thinkers and writers known as _Unanimists_. They tried and failed to +found a community. Their doctrine, if doctrine convictions so fluid can +be called, is strangely like the old group-religion of the common dance, +only more articulate. Of the Unanimist it might truly be said, "_il +buvait l'indistinction_." To him the harsh old Roman mandate _Divide et +impera_, "Divide men that you may rule them," spells death. His dream is +not of empire and personal property but of the realization of life, +common to all. To this school the great reality is the social group, +whatever form it take, family, village or town. Their only dogma is the +unity and immeasurable sanctity of life. In practice they are Christian, +yet wholly free from the asceticism of modern Christianity. Their +attitude in art is as remote as possible from, it is indeed the very +antithesis to, the aesthetic exclusiveness of the close of last century. +Like St. Peter, the Unanimists have seen a sheet let down and heard a +voice from heaven saying: "Call thou nothing common nor unclean." + +Above all, the Unanimist remembers and realizes afresh the old truth +that "no man liveth unto himself." According to the Expressionist's +creed, as we have seen, the end of art is to utter and communicate +emotion. The fullest and finest emotions are those one human being feels +towards another. Every sympathy is an enrichment of life, every +antipathy a negation. It follows then, that, for the Unanimist, Love is +the fulfilling of his Law. + +It is a beautiful and life-giving faith, felt and with a perfect +sincerity expressed towards all nature by the Indian poet Tagore, and +towards humanity especially by M. Vildrac in his _Book of Love_ ("Livre +d'Amour"). He tells us in his "Commentary" how to-day the poet, sitting +at home with pen and paper before him, feels that he is pent in, stifled +by himself. He had been about to re-tell the old, old story of himself, +to set himself once more on the stage of his poem--the same old dusty +self tricked out, costumed anew. Suddenly he knows the figure to be +tawdry and shameful. He is hot all over when he looks at it; he must out +into the air, into the street, out of the stuffy museum where so long +he has stirred the dead egotist ashes, out into the bigger life, the +life of his fellows; he must live, with them, by them, in them. + + "I am weary of deeds done inside myself, + I am weary of voyages inside myself, + And of heroism wrought by strokes of the pen, + And of a beauty made up of formulae. + + "I am ashamed of lying to my work, + Of my work lying to my life, + And of being able to content myself, + By burning sweet spices, + With the mouldering smell that is master here." + +Again, in "The Conquerors," the poet dreams of the Victorious One who +has no army, the Knight who rides afoot, the Crusader without breviary +or scrip, the Pilgrim of Love who, by the shining in his eyes, draws all +men to him, and they in turn draw other men until, at last: + + "The time came in the land, + The time of the Great Conquest, + When the people with this desire + Left the threshold of their door + To go forth towards one another. + + "And the time came in the land + When to fill all its story + There was nothing but songs in unison, + _One round danced about the houses_, + One battle and one victory." + +And so our tale ends where it began, with the Choral Dance. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[54] _Ethics_, X, 4. + +[55] H. Bergson, _Life and Consciousness_, Huxley Lecture, May 29, 1911. + +[56] Religion is here used as meaning the worship of some form of god, +as the practical counterpart of theology. + +[57] Mr. D.S. MacColl. + +[58] D.S. MacColl, _Nineteenth Century Art_, p. 21. (1902.) + +[59] It is interesting to find, since the above was written, that the +Confession of Faith published in the catalogue of the Second +Post-Impressionist Exhibition (1912, p. 21) reproduces, consciously or +unconsciously, Tolstoy's view: _We have ceased to ask, "What does this +picture represent?" and ask instead, "What does it make us feel?"_ + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +For Ancient and Primitive Ritual the best general book of reference is: + +FRAZER, J.G. _The Golden Bough_, 3rd edition, 1911, from which most of + the instances in the present manual are taken. Part IV of _The Golden + Bough_, i.e. the section dealing with _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_, + should especially be consulted. + +Also an earlier, epoch-making book: + +ROBERTSON SMITH, W. _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_, 1889 [3rd + edition, 1927]. For certain fundamental ritual notions, _e.g._ + sacrifice, holiness, etc. + +[For Egyptian and Babylonian ritual: _Myth and Ritual_, edited by +S.H. HOOKE, 1933.] + +For the Greek Drama, as arising out of the ritual dance: Professor +GILBERT MURRAY'S _Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek +Tragedy_ in J.E. HARRISON'S _Themis_, 1912, and pp. 327-40 in the same +book; and for the religion of Dionysos and the drama, J.E. HARRISON'S +_Prolegomena_, 1907, Chapters VIII and X. For the fusion of the ritual +dance and hero-worship, see W. LEAF, _Homer and History_, 1915, Chapter +VII. For a quite different view of drama as arising wholly from the +worship of the dead, see Professor W. RIDGEWAY, _The Origin of Tragedy_, +1910. An important discussion of the relation of _tragedy_ to the winter +festival of the _Lenaia_ appears in A.B. COOK'S _Zeus_, vol. i, sec. 6 +(xxi) [1914]. + +[More recent works on Greek drama: A.W. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE, _Dithyramb_, +_Tragedy and Comedy_, 1927; G. THOMSON, _Aeschylus and Athens_, 1941.] + +For Primitive Art: + +HIRN, Y. _The Origins of Art_, 1900. The main theory of the book the + present writer believes to be inadequate, but it contains an + excellent collection of facts relating to Art, Magic, Art and Work, + Mimetic Dances, etc., and much valuable discussion of principles. + +GROSSE, E. _The Beginnings of Art_, 1897, in the Chicago Anthropological + Series. Valuable for its full illustrations of primitive art, as + well as for text. + +[BOAS, F., _Primitive Art_, 1927.] + +For the Theory of Art: + +TOLSTOY, L. _What is Art?_ Translated by Aylmer Maude, in the Scott + Library. + +FRY, ROGER E. _An Essay in AEsthetics_, in the _New Quarterly_, April 1909, + p. 174. + +This is the best general statement of the function of Art known to me. +It should be read in connection with Mr. Bullough's article, quoted on +p. 129, which gives the psychological basis of a similar view of the +nature of art. My own theory was formulated independently, in relation +to the development of the Greek theatre, but I am very glad to find that +it is in substantial agreement with those of two such distinguished +authorities on aesthetics. For my later conclusions on art, see _Alpha +and Omega_, 1915, pp. 208-220. + +[CAUDWELL, C., _Illusion and Reality_, 1937.] + +For more advanced students: + +DUSSAUZE, HENRI. _Les Regles esthetiques et les lois du sentiment_, 1911. + +MUeLLER-FREIENFELS, R. _Psychologie der Kunst_, 1912. + + + + +INDEX + + +Abstraction, 224 + +Adonis, rites of, 19, 20, 54-56 +----, gardens of, 149 +----, as tree spirit, 149 + +AEschylus, 47 + +Aesthete, not artist, 214-215 + +Agon, 15 + +Anagnorisis, or recognition, 15 + +Anthesteria, spring festival of, 147-149 + +Apollo Belvedere, 171 + +Aristotle on art, 198 + +Art and beauty, 213 +---- and imitation, 230 +---- and morality, 215 +---- and nature, 198 +---- and religion, 225 +----, emotional factor in, 26 +----, social elements in, 241-248 + +Ascension festival, 69 + + +Bear, Aino festival, 92-99 + +Beast dances, 45, 46 + +Beauty and art, 211 + +Bergson on art, 134 + +Birth, rites of new, 104-113 + +Bouphonia, 91-92 + +Bull-driving in spring, 85 +----, festival at Magnesia, 87 + + +Cat's-cradle, as magical charm, 66 + +Censor, function of, 216 + +Charila, spring festival, 80 + +Chorus in Greek drama, 121-128 + + +Dancing, a work, 30-31 +----, magical, 31-35 +----, commemorative, 44 + +Daphnephoros, 186 + +Death and winter, 67-72 + +Dike as _way of life_, 116 + +Dionysis, 12, 150 + +Dionysis as Holy Child, 103 +---- as tree god, 102 +---- as young man, 113-115 + +Dithyramb, 75-89 + +Drama and Dromenon, 35-38 + + +Easter, in Modern Greece, 73 + +Eiresione, 114 + +Epheboi, Athenian, 12 + +Euche, meaning of, 25 + +Expressionists, 232 + + +Futurists, 232 + + +Ghosts as fertilizers, 149 + + +Homer, influence on drama, 145-166 + +Horae or seasons, 116 + + +Idol and ideal, 227 + +Impressionism, 231 + +Imitation, 21-23 +----, ceremonies in Australia, 64 + +Individualism, 241 + +Initiation ceremonies, 64, 106-113 + + +Jack-in-the-Green, 60, 187, 190 + + +Kangaroos, dance of, 46 + + +Landscape, art of, 199-201 + + +Maeterlinck, 200 + +May-day at Cambridge, 57 + +May, queen of the, 57-61 +----, king of the, 193 + +Mime, meaning of, 47 + +Mimesis, 43-47 + +Music, function of, 233 + + +New birth, 106-113 + + +Olympian gods, 202 + +Orchestra, meaning of, 123-127 + +Osiris, rites of, 15-23, 51 + +Ox-hunger, 81 + + +Panathenaia, 178 + +Panspermia, 148 + +Parthenon frieze, 176 + +Peisistratos, 146 + +Peplos of Athena, 180 + +Pericles on religion, 178 + +Personification and conception, 70-73 + +Plato on art, 21-23 + +Pleasure not joy, 213 + +Post-impressionists, 238 + +Prayer discs, 24 + +Presentation, meaning of, 53 + +Psychical distance, 129-134 + + +Representation, 34-41 + +Resurrection, rites of, 100 + +Rites, periodicity of, 52 + +Ritual forms in drama, 188-189 + + +Santayana on art, 220 + +Semele, bringing up of, 81 + +Spring song at Saffron Walden, 59 +---- at Athens, 77 + +Stage or scene, 142-145 + +Summer, bringing in of, 67-71 + + +Tammuz, rites of, 18-20 + +T{)e}l{)e}t{-e}, _rite of growing up_, 112 + +Theatre, 10-13, 136 + +Themis, as ritual custom, 117 + +Theoria and theory, 248 + +Threshing-floor at dancing-place, 124 + +Tolstoy on art, 132, 238-241 + +Totemism and beast dances, 46, 47 + +Tragedy, ritual forms in, 119-122 +----, origin of, 76 + +Tug of war, among Esquimaux, 62 + + +Unanimism, 249-252 + + +Vegetation spirit, 72 + + +Winter, carrying out of, 68-72 + +Wool, sacred, 12 + +World-soul, 246 + +Wreaths, festival of, 189 +----, at Greek weddings, 190 + + +Zola on art, 242 + + * * * * * + +Printed in Great Britain by The Camelot Press Ltd., London and +Southampton + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient Art and Ritual, by Jane Ellen Harrison + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL *** + +***** This file should be named 17087.txt or 17087.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/0/8/17087/ + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Louise +Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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