The difficulty of answering this question, however, is increased when we
seek a reply in another direction, from the standpoint of the poems
themselves which have come down to us. As it is difficult for us at the
present day, and necessitates a serious effort on our part, to
understand the law of gravitation clearly--that the earth alters its
form of motion when another heavenly body changes its position in space,
although no material connection unites one to the other--it likewise
costs us some trouble to obtain a clear impression of that wonderful
problem which, like a coin long passed from hand to hand, has lost its
original and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical works, which cause the
hearts of even the greatest geniuses to fail when they endeavour to vie
with them, and in which unsurpassable images are held up for the
admiration of posterity--and yet the poet who wrote them with only a
hollow, shaky name, whenever we do lay hold on him; nowhere the solid
kernel of a powerful personality. "For who would wage war with the gods:
who, even with the one god?" asks Goethe even, who, though a genius,
strove in vain to solve that mysterious problem of the Homeric
inaccessibility.
Pages:
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26