The Cosmopolitan

by Theodor Mommsen

 

 

The Greek tragedy made its appearance in Rome at the same time as the Greek comedy. It was a more valuable and in a certain sense easier acquisition than the comedy.

The foundation for a Greek tragedy - the Homeric epics - was not entirely alien to the audience and indeed connected with the etiological legends native to Romans. Generally speaking, an attentive Roman would feel much more at ease in an idealized world of heroic myths, than on the fish market in Athens. However, the tragedy as well, only not so blunt and without the vulgarities, advanced the anti-national and Hellenizing trends, and it is of great importance, that the Greek stage of the era had been mostly dominated by Euripides (c.484-406 BC.). The spirit of the later Hellenism and of the Greco-Roman period was influenced by him to such extent, that it makes it necessary to sketch out at least some of his basic characteristics.

Euripides belongs to the class of poets who bring poetry to a higher level, yet their progress reveals far more instinct for what ought to be achieved, than actual powers of poetic execution. The profound expression, which ethically as well as poetically sums up a tragedy - meaning, that decisive action is identical with suffering - has is of course the accomplishment of the Greek tragedy; it shows the heroic stature of humanity. But it seems its actual character remained an alien concept.

In Aeschylus’ plays, the unsurpassed grandeur in which the conflict between men and destiny are carried out, depends mainly on the fact that the struggling powers are conceived as forces of nature; the human element in "Prometheus" and "Agamemnon" is only lightly touched in the poetic presentation of the individual characters. Sophocles shows understanding for the condition of human nature - as a king, as an elderly, as a sister - but the human microcosm in its universality he fails to depict in even a single person. So a great aim had been accomplished, but not the ultimate.

If compared with Shakespeare, Aeschylus and Sophocles have been merely the imperfect stepping stones in a development, which presents the human condition in its totality and weaves together each of the rounded characters into a greater poetic picture.

Just how Euripides manages to show humanity as it is, represents more a logical and in some way historical achievement, than a progress in poetry. He brought the antique tragedy to a conclusion, but did not create the modern play.

Everywhere he came halfway to a halt.

The masks - which translate the expressions of the inner life from the specific into the general - are as necessary for the typical tragedy in Antiquity, as they are incompatible with a modern character play; yet Euripides kept them in use. With a marvelously discerning instinct, because it never managed to give the dramatic element free reign and present it in its purity, the older tragedy had the good sense to subject itself to the vehicle of epic stories from the superhuman world of gods and heroes and to the lyrical chorus. In Euripides’ work one can feel him jerking his chains; in his stories at least, he went as far down as to half historical times, and his choral lyrics receded into the background; so much so, that in later performances they often had been left out altogether and hardly to the plays' detriment, yet he never brought his characters entirely down to earth nor did away with the chorus altogether.

In every way and everywhere he is the comprehensive expression of an era, which on one hand accomplished the greatest motions in history and philosophy and on the other hand clouded the purity and simplicity of national poetry.

If the reverent piety of the older tragic playwrights, whose plays seemed to shine with an overflow from heaven itself, endow the enclosure into the older Greek's narrow horizon still with a satisfyingly powerful sway over the audience, then Euripides' world appears in the treacherous twilight of speculation, as far removed from divinity as it is a matter of intellect, and murky passions illuminate like lightening strokes the dank and grey cloud cover.

The old deep seated faith in destiny has vanished. Now fortune is ruling in all its incarnations as a despotic power, and gnashing their teeth, its slaves rattle the chains.

The kind of scepticism which is the disguise of faith in despair, has found in this poet a voice of demonic power. By necessity, the poet never achieves a creative conception that would transcend his own capacities and he never develops a truly poetic effect from the composition as a whole. That is why in a manner of speaking, he appeared to be indifferent to the composition of his tragedies, even downright blundering, as he fails to center his plays around a plot or character. The slipshod way of introducing the plot in a prologue and resolve it by divine fiat or by similar crude means, had been Euripides' very own innovation.

All his effects flow from the detail, and with great skill indeed, he has mustered every means to cover up the irreplaceable want of poetic totality. Euripides is the past master in the kind of effects which as a rule originate from the sensual and sentimental and often titillate the sensitivity with a peculiar odor, as for instance, in love stories that combine murder with incest.

In their own way, Polyxena's dying on her free will, or Phaedra, who is secretly consumed by her pains of love, and especially the mystically enchanted "Bacchants," command performances of great beauty, but it is neither morally nor artistically pure, and Aristophanes' observation, that this poet would never be able to present us with a Penelope, is perfectly justified.

For this reason it turns the appeal to compassion in Euripides' tragedies to a mere convention. His underdeveloped heroes often appear to be disgusting or ludicrous, or both, like Menelaos in Helena, or Andromache and Electra as poor dairymaids, or the sick and ruined merchant Telephos. So plays which live more in a down to earth atmosphere make perhaps the most delightful impression of his many works and turn tragedy into a moving family saga and almost into a sentimental comedy, such as Iphigenia in Aulis, Ion, Alcestis.

Almost as often, but with lesser luck, the poet tries to bring intellectual interests into play.

That is what causes the complications in his plots, calculated not, as in the older tragedy, to move the mind, but instead to flex our curiosity. It gives reason for the pointed controversy of the dialogues, which is almost unbearably for the rest of us, who are not born in Athens. It explains the sententious sound-bites, which litter Euripides' plays like flowers in a shop window. And it especially opens the road for Euripides' psychology which is not at all based on immediate empathy, but a product of reason and rationalizing.

His Medea is indeed cut out from real life, in as much as the heroine was concerned before her travel to supply herself with sufficient funds; of the conflict between motherly love and jealousy, the incidental reader will find in Euripides not a whole lot. Most of the time, the poetic effect in Euripides’ tragedies has been replaced by the tendentious and ideological.

Without actually commenting on immediate concerns of the day and quite resolutely focusing more on social than political matters, Euripides inner disposition in the end holds common ground with the political and philosophical radicalism of the period and makes him the first and foremost apostle of a new cosmopolitan humanitarianism, which decomposes the old national values of Athens.

For this reason, the irreligious and un-Athenian poet ran into the opposition of his peers, while everywhere the younger generation, at home and abroad, with a moving enthusiasm gave in to the poet of sentimentality and love, to the smart sound-bite and the tendentious aphorism, to philosophy and humanitarianism. With Euripides, the Greek tragedy overreached itself and finally collapsed, but the success of the cosmopolitan poet profited from this even more, since at the same time the nation too overstepped its boundaries and collapsed. The criticism by Aristophanes might have been correct all the way, ethically as well as poetically; but in history the impact of poetry is rarely linked to its absolute quality, and rather to the extent with which it manages to anticipate the zeitgeist; and under this aspect, Euripides is without equal.

So it eventually came to it, that Alexander [the Great] did read him studiously, that Aristotle formed his definition of the tragic effect with Euripides in mind, that in Athens the latest generation of poets and artists somehow referred to him as their model, that Athens' "New Comedy" is nothing but a transformation of Euripides into the comic genre, and that the latest decorations on Athenian ceramics no longer drew their ideas from Homer's epics but from Euripides' plays, and finally, when old Greece gave way to the new Hellenism, that the poet's fame and influence was more and more on the ascend and the Greek enclaves in foreign countries, in Egypt as well as Rome, found their new identity mainly under Euripides' influence.

 

by Theodor Mommsen, 1868

© - 1/12/2002 - translated by michael sympson,

1,600 words, all rights reserved