Books: The Interdependence of Literature
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Georgina Pell Curtis >> The Interdependence of Literature
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THE INTERDEPENDENCE of LITERATURE
By GEORGINA PELL CURTIS
"There is first, the literature of knowledge, and secondly the
literature of power. The function of the first is to teach, the
function or the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the
second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive
understanding, the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to
the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections
of pleasure and sympathy."
Thomas De Quincey "Essays on the Poets." (Alexander Pope.)
B. Herder,
17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo.
and 68 Great Russell St., London, W.C.
1917
PREFACE.
The author has endeavored in these pages to sketch, in outline, a
subject that has not, as far as she knows, been treated as an
exclusive work by the schoolmen.
Written more in the narrative style than as a textbook, it is
intended to awaken interest in the subject of the interdependence
of the literatures of all ages and peoples; and with the hope
that a larger and more exhaustive account of a very fascinating
subject may some day be published.
Chicago, Ill., June, 1916.
CONTENTS.
Ancient Babylonian and Early Hebrew
Sanskrit
Persian
Egyptian
Greek
Roman
Heroic Poetry
Scandinavian
Slavonic
Gothic
Chivalrous and Romantic
The Drama
Arabian
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Italian
Dutch
German
Latin Literature and the Reformation
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Philosophy
English
ANCIENT BABYLONIAN AND EARLY HEBREW.
From the misty ages of bygone centuries to the present day there
has been a gradual interlinking of the literatures of different
countries. From the Orient to the Occident, from Europe to
America, this slow weaving of the thoughts, tastes and beliefs of
people of widely different races has been going on, and forms,
indeed, a history by itself.
The forerunner and prophet of subsequent Christian literature is
the Hebrew. It is not, however, the first complete written
literature, as it was supposed to be until a few years ago.
The oldest Semitic texts reach back to the time of Anemurabi, who
was contemporaneous with Abraham, five hundred years before
Moses. These Semites possessed a literature and script which they
largely borrowed from the older non-Semitic races in the
localities where the posterity of Thare and Abraham settled.
Recent researches in Assyria, Egypt and Babylonia has brought
this older literature and civilization to light; a literature
from which the Hebrews themselves largely drew. Three thousand
years before Abraham emigrated from Chaldea there were sacred
poems in the East not unlike the psalms of David, as well as
heroic poetry describing the creation, and written in nearly the
same order as the Pentateuch of Moses.
The story of the Deluge, and other incidents recorded in the Old
Testament, together with numerous legends, were known and
treasured by the Ancients as sacred traditions from the earliest
ages of the world.
We learn from St. Paul that "Moses was skilled in all the
knowledge of the Egyptians." He must therefore have been familiar
not only with the ancient poems and sacred writings, but also
with the scientific, historical, legal and didactic literature of
the times, from which, no doubt, he borrowed all that was best in
the Mosiac Code that he drew up for the Chosen People of God.
This old literature Moses confirmed and purified, even as Christ
at a later period, confirmed and elevated all that was best in
the Hebrew belief. Hence from these Oriental scholars we learn
that the Hebrew was only one of several languages which enjoyed
at different times a development of the highest culture and
polish, although the teaching of the old Rabbis was that the
Bible was the first set of historical and religious books to be
written. Such was the current belief for many ages; and while
this view of the Scriptures is now known to be untrue, they are,
in fact, the most ancient and complete writings now in existence,
although the discovery in Jerusalem, thirty-five or forty years
ago, of the inscriptions of Siloe, take us back about eight
hundred years before Christ; but these Siloeian inscriptions are
not complete examples of literature.
"The Ancient culture of the East," says Professor A. H. Sayce,
"was pre-eminently a literary one. We have learned that long
before the day of Moses, or even Abraham, there were books and
libraries, readers and writers; that schools existed in which all
the arts and sciences of the day were taught, and that even a
postal service had been organized from one end of Western Asia to
the other. The world into which the Hebrew patriarchs were born,
and of which the book of Genesis tells us, was permeated with a
literary culture whose roots went back to an antiquity of which,
but a short time ago, we could not have dreamed. There were books
in Egypt and Babylonia long before the Pentateuch was written;
the Mosaic age was in fact an age of a widely extended literary
activity, and the Pentateuch was one of the latest fruits of long
centuries of literary growth."
There is no doubt that these discoveries of modern times have
been a distinct gain to Christianity, as well as to the older
Hebrew literature, for it confirms (if confirmation is needed),
the history of the creation, to find it was believed by the
ancient peoples, whom we have seen were a learned and cultivated
race.
In the present day the great College of St. Etienne in Jerusalem,
founded by the Dominicans expressly for the study of the
Scriptures, carries on a never ending and widely extended perusal
of the subject. Parties of students are taken over the Holy
Places to study the inscriptions and evidences of Christianity,
and the most learned and brilliant members of the Order are
engaged in research and study that fits them to combat the errors
of the Higher Criticism. Their work, which is of a very superior
order, has attracted attention among scholars of every country in
Europe.
In the ancient development of the world there came a time when
there was danger of truth being corrupted and mingled with fable
among those who did not follow the guidance of God, as did
Abraham and the patriarchs; then the great lawgiver, Moses, was
given the divine commission to make a written record of the
creation of the world and of man and to transmit it to later
ages; and because he was thus commanded and inspired by God, his
literature represents the most perfect and trustworthy expression
of the primitive revelations. From the very beginning, therefore,
we trace this interdependence of literature. Moses, authorized by
God, turns to all that is best in the older Babylonian, Egyptian
and Indic literature, and uses it to regenerate and uplift the
Hebrew race, so that we see the things contained in the Bible
remained the same truths that God had been teaching from the
beginning of time. The older Egyptian and Babylonian literature
became lost to the world for thousands of years until in the
nineteenth century modern research in the Pyramids and elsewhere,
brought it to light; but the Hebrew literature was passed down to
the Christian era, and thence to our own times, intact. It excels
in beauty, comprehensiveness, and a true religious spirit, any
other writing prior to the advent of Christ. Its poetry, which
ranges from the most extreme simplicity and clearness, to the
loftiest majesty of expression, depicts the pastoral life of the
Patriarchs, the marvellous history of the Hebrew nation, the
beautiful scenery in which they lived and moved, the stately
ceremonial of their liturgy, and the promise of a Messiah. Its
chief strength and charm is that it personifies inanimate
objects, as in the sixty-fourth Psalm, where David says:
"The beautiful places of the wilderness shall grow fat; and the
hills shall be girded about with joy. The rams of the flock are
clothed, and the vales shall abound with corn they shall shout,
yea they shall sing a hymn."
And again in the seventeenth Psalm, he says:
He bowed the Heavens and came down . . . and He flew upon the
wings of the winds . . . He made darkness His covert, His
pavilion round about Him: dark waters in the clouds of the air."
In time the Hebrew language began to be influenced by others,
although, as a people, they rank with the Greeks and Spaniards as
being very little moulded by any outside influence on their
literature. From the time of Abraham to the age of Moses the old
stock was changed by the intermarriage of some of their race with
the Egyptians and Arabians. During this period their literature
was influenced by Zoroaster, and by the Platonist and Pythagorean
schools. This is especially noticeable in the work of Philo of
Alexandria, who was born a few years B.C.
Josephus, who first saw the light in A.D. 37; and Numenius, who
lived in the second century, were Jews, who as such remained,
while adopting Greek philosophy. The learned writings of the
Rabbis became known as Rabbinical literature. It is written in a
language that has its roots in the Hebrew and Chaldaic; though it
has also borrowed largely from the Arabian, Greek and Latin. In
the sixteenth century Christian scholars began to make an
extensive study of Hebrew and Rabbinical literature, and they
were not slow to discover the value of these Oriental works.
These writings, however, are subject to change, and it is in the
Bible alone that we find the fundamental teaching of Hebrew
literature. Differing entirely from the Mythological and Oriental
Nations, it taught, as its cardinal principle, the unity of God.
Its historical worth has been recognized by the greatest scholars
in all ages, and it has influenced not only the ancient world,
but also the literature and poetry of the Middle Ages and of
modern times. It forms a contrast to the philosophy of the
Greeks, and to that of Europeans of a later age. When the latter
have tried to explain the great mystery of God and man, they have
invariably failed. In the beautiful writings of the Greeks,
wherein we find the height of artistic expression and polish,
there is a subsequent gradual decline; but such is not the case
in the Old Testament. In every age fresh beauty and hidden
treasure is found in its pages. Another phase of the Bible which
has had a far reaching and lasting effect upon all language and
literature, is its prevailing spirit of types and symbols. This
is conspicuous both in the poetical books and in those that are
didactic or historical. It has had the same influence on the
thoughts and imagination of all Christian people and upon the
poetry and imitative arts of the Middle Ages (and nearly the same
upon later and more cultivated times) that Homer had upon the
Ancients. For in it we find the standard of all our Christian
images and figures, and it gives us a model of imitation that is
far more beautiful in itself, and far more world-wide in its
application than anything we can borrow from the Greeks. We see
this in Dante and Tasso, and in other Christian poets. To the
Hebrew, as the original custodians of the Old Testament, we are
indebted for keeping the faith pure when all other nations either
forgot or abandoned it, or else mixed it up with errors and
idolatry. What Moses records of the creation of the world and the
first ten Fathers, is embodied by the Persians, Indians and
Chinese in whole volumes of mythology, and surrounded by a host
of fanciful traditions. Thus we see in the Hebrew as the chosen
people of God, a nation able to preserve its literature intact
through captivity, dispersion and persecution, for a period of
four thousand years.
SANSKRIT.
Sanskrit has only recently become known to Europe through the
researches of English and German Oriental scholars. It is now
acknowledged to be the auxiliary and foundation of all civilized
speech, and is important as being the language of an extensive
literature which records the life of a wonderful people from a
remote age nearly to the present time.
The ancient home of the Aryan, or Indo-European race, was in
Central Asia, whence many of its people migrated to the West, and
became the founders of the Persian, Greek and Roman Nations,
besides settling in Spain and England. Other offshoots of the
original Aryans took their lives in their hands and penetrated
the passes of the Himalayas, spreading all over India. Wherever
they went, they seem to have held themselves superior to the
aboriginal people whom they found in possession of the soil.
"The history of civilization," says a well-known authority on
literature, "is everywhere the history of the Aryan race. The
forefathers of the Greek and Roman, of the Englishman and the
Hindu, dwelt together in India, spoke the same language, and
worshipped the same gods. The languages of Europe and India are
merely different forms of the original Aryan speech. This is
especially true of the words of common family life. Father,
Mother, brother, sister and widow, are substantially the same in
most of the Aryan languages whether spoken on the banks of the
Ganges, the Tiber or the Thames. The word daughter, which occurs
in nearly all of them, is derived from the Sanskrit word
signifying to draw milk, and preserves the memory of the time
when the daughter was the little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan
household."
The Hindu language is founded on the Sanskrit, of which we may
name the books of the Vedas, 1500 B.C.
All the poetical works of Asia, China and Japan are taken almost
entirely from the Hindu, while in Southern Russia the meagre
literature of the Kalmucks is borrowed entirely from the same
source. The Ramayana, or great Hindu poem, must have had its
origin in the history-to-be of Christ. It has been translated
into Italian and published in Paris. The Hitopadesa, a collection
of fables and apologues, has been translated into more languages
than any book except the Bible. It has found its way all over the
civilized world, and is the model of the fables of all countries.
The dramas of Kalidasa, the Hindu Shakespeare, contain many
episodes borrowed from the great Epic poems. The Messenger Cloud
of this poet is not surpassed by any European writer of verse.
The Ramayon and the Mahabharata are the two great Epic poems of
India, and they exceed in conception and magnitude any of the
Epic poems in the world, surpassing the Iliad, the Odyssey and
the Jerusalem Delivered. The Ramayon, of seven Cantos, has
twenty-five thousand verses, and the hero, Rama, in his
wanderings and misfortunes, is not unlike Ulysses. The
Mahabharata records the doings of gods, giants, and heroes, who
are all fighting against each other. It contains two hundred
thousand verses, embodied in eighteen Cantos, and is thought to
be not the work of one man; but different songs sung from the
earliest ages by the people, and gradually blended into one poem.
In it we find the ancient traditions which nearly all people
possess, of a more free, active and primitive state of nature,
whose world of greatness and heroism has been suppressed in later
ages. Among the Hindustans there exists a religion resembling in
part that of Greece, with traces of the Egyptian; and yet
containing in itself many ideas, both moral and philosophical,
which in spite of dissimilarity in detail, is evidently akin to
our doctrines of the Christian religion. In fact, the resemblance
between the Hindu and Christian religion is so remarkable that
some scholars think the Hindu was taken from the Christian. It is
more probable that it was of greater antiquity, and that the
similarity between them springs from the seed of all truth and
all Nature implanted in man by God. Indian and Christian both
teach regeneration. In the Indian creed, as soon as the soul is
touched with the love of divine things it is supposed to drop its
life of sin and become "new born."
In a higher region all these truths in the lower world which have
to do with divine things, are mysteriously akin to each other. It
needs only the first spark of light from above to make them
instinct with life.
The Recluses or Gymnosophists of India are not unlike the first
Recluses of Egypt, and the first hermits of the desert in the
Christian era.
The doctrines of India first obtained a foothold in Europe
through the dogma of Metempsychosis. It was introduced into the
Hellenes by Pythagoras; but never became popular among the
Greeks. This Metempsychosis (or the transmigration of souls) was
believed by the Indians from the earliest period, and their whole
history is built upon it. A very ancient connection can be traced
between India and Egypt, manifested by Castes, which are found
equally in both countries, and by similiar Mythologies. When
Alexander the Great invaded Northern India from Persia, the
Greeks found an Indian Mythology far more like their own than the
Persian or Hebrew. They thought they had met with the same gods
they had been accustomed to worship, though clothed in a
different form and color. They showed their faith in this
discovery by the names of the Indian Hercules and the Indian
Bacchus, later so common among them.
The worship of Vishnoo and Krishnoo in Hindostan differs very
little from the religion of Buddha and Fo which was established
in China and Thibet during the first century of Christianity. The
former retained caste, while the latter, following the teaching
of Buddha, have repudiated any class distinctions.
Decimal cyphers originated in Hindostan.
PERSIAN.
In everything appertaining to their religious belief the Persians
bear a close resemblance to the Hebrew, but the poetical part of
their mythology is more similiar to the Northern theology, while
their manners bear a strong resemblance to the Germans. The
spiritual worship of nature, light, fire, and of other pure
elements, is embodied in both the Zend Avesta (Persian) and the
Edda (Scandinavian). The two nations have the same opinion
concerning spirits which rule and fill nature, and this has given
rise to poetical fancies about giants, dwarfs and other beings,
found equally in Persian and Northern Sagas.
The work of Lokman, existing now only in Arabic, has caused some
people to think that it is of Arabian origin; but it is really
Persian, and of the tenth century B.C. His Apologues are
considered the foundation on which Greek fable was reared. The
Code of Zoroaster, in which the two great principles of the world
are represented by Ormuzd (goodness and light), and Ahriman
(darkness and sin) are as old as the creation.
Ormuzd is worshiped in the sun, the stars, and in fire. Zoroaster
explained the history of man as being one long contest between
these two powers until a time to come when Ormuzd would be
victorious over Ahriman. Ormuzd, as the ruler of the universe,
seeks to draw men to the light, to dispel the darkness of
ignorance, and to extend the triumph of virtue over the material
and spiritual world. It may be said of the Persians, as
Tertullian said of the Roman Pagans, "that in their highest moods
and beliefs they were naturally Christian." Among a Persian sect
called the Sufis' there is a belief that nothing exists
absolutely but God; that the human soul is an emanation from His
essence, and will ultimately be restored to Him, and that the
supreme object of life should be a daily approach to the eternal
spirit, so as to form as perfect a union with the divine nature
as possible. How nearly this belief approaches the Christian
doctrine, will be easily seen.
Persian poetry is nearly all in the form of love stories, of
which the "Misfortunes of Mejnoun and Leila" represent the
Eastern Romeo and Juliet, and may have been known to Shakespeare
in the writing of his own drama.
EGYPTIAN.
Egypt shared with ancient Babylon and Assyria in the civilization
of its primitive literature. It is from five of its Pyramids,
opened in 1881, that valuable writings have been brought to light
that carry us back one thousand years before the time of Moses.
Their famous "Book of the Dead,"of which many copies are found in
our museums of antiquities, is one instance of their older
civilization. These copies of the original, in the form of
scrolls, are some of them over a hundred feet long, and are
decorated with elaborate pictures and ornamentation. The book
gives conclusive proof of the teaching of the Egyptians of a life
beyond this. Their belief in the journey of the soul after death
to the Underworld, before it is admitted to the Hall of Osiris,
or the abode of light, is akin to the Catholic doctrine of
Purgatory and Heaven. The Egyptian literature is painted or
engraved on monuments, written on papyrus, and buried in tombs,
or under the ruins of temples, hence, as has been said elsewhere,
much of it remained hidden until nineteenth century research
brought it to light. Even at the present time many inscriptions
are still undeciphered.
Geometry originated with the Egyptians, and their knowledge of
hydrostatics and mechanics (shown in the building of the
Pyramids), and of astronomy and medicine, is of remotest
antiquity. The Greeks borrowed largely from them, and then became
in turn their teacher. The Egyptian priests, from the earliest
age, must have preserved the annals of their country; but they
were destroyed by Cambyses (500 B.C.), who burned the temples
where they were stored.
In the fourth century B.C., Egypt was conquered by Alexander the
Great, who left it under the rule of the Ptolemies. The next
century after the Alexandrian age the philosophy and literature
of Athens was transferred to Alexandria. The Alexandrian library,
completed by Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the third century before
Christ, was formed for the most part of Greek books and it also
had Greek librarians; so that in the learning and philosophy of
Alexandria at this time, the Eastern and Western systems were
combined. During the first century of the Christian era Egypt
passed from the control of the Greek Kings to that of the Roman
Emperors, under whom it continued to flourish. In the seventh
century the country was conquered by the Saracens, who burned the
great Alexandrian library. Following them came the Arabian
Princes, who protected literature, and revived the Alexandrian
schools, establishing also other seats of learning. But in the
thirteenth century the Turks conquered Egypt, and all its
literary glory henceforth departed. It has had no further
development, and no influence in shaping the literature of
foreign nations. What it might have been if the literary
treasures of Egypt had not been destroyed by Cambyses and the
Saracens, we can only guess. Great literary monuments must have
been lost, which would shed more light on the civilization of the
ancient world.
GREEK.
A modern writer says of the Greeks:
"All that could beautify the meagre, harmonize the incongruous,
enliven the dull, or convert the crude material of metaphysics
into an elegant department of literature, belongs to the Greeks
themselves, for they are preeminently the 'nation of beauty.'
Endowed with profound sensibility and a lively imagination,
surrounded by all the circumstances that could aid in perfecting
the physical and intellectual powers, the Greeks early acquired
that essential literary and artistic character which produced
their art and literature."
Whatever the Greeks learned or borrowed from others, by the skill
with which they improved, and the purposes to which they applied
it, became henceforth altogether their own. If they were under
any obligation to those who had lived before them for some few
ideas and hints, the great whole of their intellectual refinement
was undoubtedly the work of their own genius; for the Greeks are
the only people who may be said in almost every instance to have
given birth to their own literature. Their creations stand almost
entirely detached from the previous culture of other nations. At
the same time it is possible to trace a thread running back to
remote antiquity, to show that their first hints of a literature
came from Asia. Their oldest traditions and poems have many
points of resemblance to the most ancient remains of the Asiatic
nations. Some writers say that "this amounts to nothing more than
a few scattered hints or mutilated recollections, and may all be
referred to the common origin of mankind, and the necessary
influence of that district of the world in which mental
improvement of our species was first considered as an object of
general concern." But this proves at least that there was an
older civilization and literature than the Greeks, and that that
civilization had its root in the East. According to their own
testimony the Greeks derived their alphabet from the Phoenicians,
and the first principles of architecture, mathematical science,
detached ideas of philosophy, as well as many of the useful arts
of life, they learned from the Egyptians, or from the earliest
inhabitants of Asia.
The essential characteristic of the Greeks as a nation was the
development of their own idea, their departure from whatever
original tradition they may have had, and their far-reaching
influence on all subsequent literature throughout the world. They
differed in this from all other nations; for to quote again:
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