Читать книгу Greek Tragedy in the Light of Vase Paintings онлайн

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The closest parallel to Dante’s influence upon the trend of artistic notions must be looked for in ancient Greece; Homer must be named with Dante. The Homeric poetry has exercised a power which the Divina Commedia has scarcely surpassed; the thousand and more streams of influence which rose in the Greek epic literature went out in every direction to water the fields of art and letters in Greece and Rome, and flowed on again after Petrarch’s time, and are to-day mighty forces. Events and incidents of the Iliad and Odyssey have taken so permanent a place in modern art that one hardly stops to think that this or that is from Homer. But this company of persons which the world calls Homer was not the only vital force that shaped men’s thoughts and furnished the artist with fresh inspiration. The tragic poets are to be named with Homer. Had Aischylean, Sophoklean, and Euripidean elements not entered into ancient and modern works of art the world would never have known some of its most beautiful monuments. This is not, however, the place to linger over the influence of the Greek epic and tragic literature in modern times, interesting though this would be. It is in ancient times, when there was still among the people a peculiar interest in the mythic legends, that the contact of poet and artist is most apparent; it is with the three Greek tragedians that we have to do at present, and some traces of their work may be pointed out in the various classes of monuments before the vase paintings are examined.