The greatest books in the world; interpretive studies

Front matter

THE GREATEST BOOKS nsf THE WORLD

LAURA SPENCER PORTOR

Pass V T'i E Rnnic :?i> GojMight }]?___ n

II

V. The Odyssey 23

VI. The Divine Comedy 47

VII. Goethe's Faust 82

VIII. The Arabian Nights 113

IX. Don Quixote 146

X. Pilgrim's Progress 185

XI. The Book of Job 216

Xn. Suggestions for Study 245

Xm. Suggestions for Further Study . . . 253 XIV. The Comparative Study of Great Books . 261

Lists of Collateral Reading 273

Introduction

When the average sincere person, wishing to inform himself concerning the world's masterpieces of literature or of any other art, seeks for books which will help him to gain the desired information, he finds a mass of works written by experts, treatises too voluminous and detailed and technical to be of help to the lay reader; or he finds a mass of "get-art-quick" books in which, in a perfunctory, guidebook fashion, he has pointed out to him the masterpieces he is expected to admire, with dates, a few guidebook facts, and now and then an anecdote or two as a means of lightening the general dullness. When he comes to look for a volume that shall treat seriously but not too seriously, interestingly but not too lightly, of the masterpieces of literature or sculpture, or any other great art, he finds such volumes, like angels' visits, very few and far between. Indeed, while there are a great many excellent text and reference books and a great many learned treatises on all the arts, and a goodly number of more or less light treatises on literature, I know of no volume which, while dealing particularly with the masterpieces of xii INTRODUCTION

literature, yet gives the reader at the same time a clear and connected survey of them in their relation both to literature and life, which will enable him to know why these are called masterpieces — and to accept them as such for himself.

What most of us need, I take it, is a book, sound in its treatment, by means of which we may readily and intelligently inform ourselves concerning the world's masterworks of literature, not as mere detached forms but as part of a great whole, a great art whose history and development are inwoven with the history and development of mankind; a book not dogmatic but one which rather will help us to discover and interpret some of the beauty of these masterpieces and will lead us to form our own opinions concerning them.

If the present volume, meeting this need, shall become a help to those interested in its subject; if by this means it shall add somewhat to their enjoyment of literature, I shall not regret that it is not called a scholarly, but rather, in the broadest sense, a popular discussion of the world's greatest books.

A further word is perhaps needed concerning the author's choice of the books here discussed.

From time to time there have been attempts to make a fairly comprehensive list of the "best

INTRODUCTION xiii

books of the world." Eminent men have consented to name what they beheve to be the five, ten, twenty, or one hundred "best books." Such lists are generally more fruitful of dispute than they are convincing.

It is not intended in the present volume to make or urge any arbitrary selection of "best books." The masterpieces chosen are seven in number. In each case they are books concerning whose greatness there is no dispute; all of them are widely admitted to be among the greatest books in the world.

Nor is the order in which these books stand in this volume intended to relate to their degrees of greatness. Each is studied merely with a view to a better understanding of the book itself, with the idea of discovering and realizing some of the reasons which underlie its lasting greatness.

In the present choice of famous great books, one is notably absent. But to those who may wonder why the Bible is not among the books chosen, it will, on reflection, be clear that it could not fairly be included in the present list. The Bible is not one book, but a collection of many books; not one exaanple of genius or revelation, but practically an entire literature. That it would not as a whole fall in with the general xiv INTRODUCTION

plan of study followed in this volume is obvious. Even a small portion of it, the Book of Job, which takes rank with the greatest books, is here dealt with all too briefly and inadequately.

THE GREATEST BOOKS IN THE WORLD

THE GREATEST BOOKS IN THE WORLD

Chapter I Our Heritage

It is a truth which needs no arguing that one who is with all certainty to inherit a vast fortune should be carefully and wisely trained with that fact in view; should be taught no little concerning the value and use and meaning of wealth; should be taught, not less, a respect for that importance and influence and place among his fellows which his inheritance will one day give him. He should, we concede, be taught ably to handle his own fortune, and warned against leaving the investing and spending of it in the hands of others who cannot have his interests sufficiently at heart. He should, with all this in view, be taught discretion and trained in judgment, so as to be able in time to make his own wise choice between good and evil, between wise and unwise. Thus his future will lay an admitted obligation even on his early life; and, from the first, he shall be trained in body and mind and somewhat, no doubt, in spirit for that larger responsibility which the years will deliver into his hands.

Yet in a curiously similar case — similar save that the fortune in this case is not merely vast but incalculably vast — many of us are not yet awake to the necessity of training the individual in such a way that he may be a wise, not an unwise, inheritor. And if it be pointed out to us that that individual is yourself or myself, we are perhaps so little trained to a knowledge of our vast possessions that our first sensation is one of surprise; and our first mental act is to assure ourselves that here is some mistake, — we are not heirs to an immense fortune, this we would swear to. We are, rather, the mere average man or woman without present or future prospect of great wealth.

This is what you and I would very likely answer, and not only we but thousands of others if we were suddenly confronted with the fact that we are inheritors of fortunes to which that of the wealthiest of men is, when all is said and done, a mere pittance.

I say "fact," for here is indeed no metaphor or supposition, but a fact plain and simple. Each newcomer in the world, as he is reaching years of maturity, becomes gradually aware, or should

OUR HERITAGE 3

become aware, of a great wealth, a vast inheritance bequeathed him by the race of which he is a scion; a stupendous fortune accumulated through countless ages and intended and offered for his enjoyment and benefit, here and now.

Not only do most of us come to our inheritance unprepared; but a great number of us are not fitted, even to the last of our days, either to understand, first, what our fortune may be, or to use it wisely for our own benefit and the benefit of others.

Most of us, it is true, gain at one time or another — generally when we are young, and perhaps on windy, sunny mornings in spring, when the blood runs red — a mysterious, exhilarating sense of riches all about us, no matter how worldly poor we ourselves may be; a subtle, persistent sense of the world's unlimited, inexhaustible riches; but few of us think of them as our own particular inheritance, and few of us set about claiming them and using them as Siegfried claimed and forged and used that magic sword long kept from him.

We hear talk of the "mines of Golconda," of the "wealth of the Indies," of the "gold of King Midas," of the "hoards of the Nibelungs," but these stand to us as fables. And all the while.

over yonder beyond our intelligence and our schooling, lie riches which the toiling hands of all the men and women in the world shall never carry away, nor the devices of the minds of all men ever wholly spend or exhaust. To these treasures, so little appreciated by us, we hear, as we go on, frequent reference. We stumble on vague knowledge of them as we read books or meet with cultivated people, or view a great city in the dawn, or come for the j&rst time under the spell of memorable music. In occasional touch with richer lives than our own we gain hints of countries we have not explored, hear speech of certain Princes of the Earth whose provinces are strange to us; we catch the names of Homer, Phidias, Raphael, Michelangelo. We hear mention of the "Odyssey," of "Hamlet," of the dramas of iEschylus, of Sophocles; of the Madonna "Granduca," of the "Parthenon," the "Sistine Chapel," "Nike of the Sandal," of the "Taj Mahal," and "Temples of Karnak." We are envious of a knowledge of these things, we wonder about them, speculate about them, would gladly inform ourselves concerning them, if we could; we perhaps deplore and are a little ashamed of our provincial lives, and of our stay-at-home intelligence which has so rarely put to sea. There are all these things to know;

OUR HERITAGE 5

they are known to more traveled minds than ours, and we are in the main ignorant of them.

But as a matter of fact these are only a small part of the riches left to us in fee simple.

We are possessed of a vast fortune, that in time becomes clear; but we have not been trained or fitted either to the understanding of it or the use of it. Many of our possessions lie in foreign lands; but our lives speak only one language, as it were; or we are limited to the narrow province of our own experience. We are in the position of a man who, without previous education, finds himself on coming of age to be one of the richest men in the world, and knows not what to do with his riches.

And what follows? Generally speaking either our wealth is locked away from us all our days, usurped by others better fitted than ourselves to use it; or, because of our dullness, our lack of training, we use it unwisely and with little taste, as that class known as the nouveaux riches use their newly acquired riches, with a certain blundering and awkwardness. Or else — and this is the happiest chance — there awakens in us a great longing to know more concerning our inheritance, a curiosity which will not be gainsaid or denied. We determine to put off from the shore of our own limited experience, to sail somewhat the unlimited seas, to explore some of those foreign lands which await us and of which we have heard report.

Generally this curiosity and this determination come between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, although they may, of course, come earlier; and to some they do come later, entirely according as circumstances and environment hasten or retard them. This experience may be described as a kind of efflorescence of the mind resulting from an unconscious but growing desire to create in one's self a sort of secondary beauty by means of a fuller knowledge and appreciation of all that the world calls beautiful.

At such a time the intelligence and the emotions may leap enthusiastically to the acceptance of any great form of beauty, whether the form be fully understood or not. It is a common thing, for instance, to find the mind and emotions at such a time accepting as beautiful, and with an almost overwrought enthusiasm, such great art forms as the "Venus de Milo," the "Apollo Belvedere," "Tristan and Isolde," "Lohengrin," "Faust," etc., etc. These immediately exert an influence over us, they directly ajffect us, and begin already to mould us. We find ourselves able to talk of them; we enthuse over them; we feel them, so to speak; and

OUR HERITAGE 7

we rejoice, and believe ourselves honestly appreciative of great art; and in a measure we are.

But while all this is as it should be, it is by no means sufficient. The influence we feel falls short, indeed, of that broader, less emotional, and more intellectual influence of all great art, that influence which comes only with a more intellectual and less emotional understanding and enjoyment of art. While the great and familiar forms that we have named rouse us and accomplish their purpose in us, yet we find, perhaps, that certain others, reputed equally great, fail to move us. The "Theseus" of the Parthenon; the "Torso" of the Vatican; the "Three Fates" of the East Pediment; the "Lemnian Athena"; the Russian Symphonies of Tschaikowsky; the "Requiem Mass" of Bach; the "Divine Comedy"; these bewilder us and leave us unstirred. We are not prepared to like these great forms. Yet there they are, unquestionably great, a very present rebuke to the slenderness of our knowledge. In other words, we have sailed the seas to some purpose, it would seem; have known that joy, at last, of discovering land lying low on the horizon; have attained to it and made it ours, with no little thankfulness; but there are still vast stretches lying in the interior of our newly discovered countries which 'our feet have not yet traveled.

If we are to enjoy not merely some few given forms of art but art itself, not only some examples of beauty but beauty, we shall have need to go deeper than a mere superficial and popular study of a few given art forms; we shall have need to explore and to learn to judge somewhat of art for ourselves.

Chapter II On Judging Of Great Books

It is not possible to lay down any laws to which the varied manifestations of beauty in life or art will inevitably conform; nor can beauty be so exactly defined that, having got the definition by heart, we can recognize the quality by applying the definition. No touchstone of taste can be found, even by the most zealous, whereby we may know infallibly the great and separate it from the less great. There are, of course, many opinions to help us form our own. Many people before us have examined and studied our great art forms and have recorded their opinions of them; men better equipped than ourselves have judged and passed sentence; yet it is not entirely from these that we shall learn to appreciate great art.

Ruskin tells us that to use books rightly is to be led by them into a wider sight and purer conception than our own; to receive from them "the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time against our solitary and unstable opinion."

While this is sound in a measure, it is incomplete; it leaves out of account the value of what he calls our unstable opinion. For our opinion has, indeed, a value which lies not so much in the character of the opinion itself, perhaps, as in the fact that it is our own. Our opinion of any work of art, if that opinion is truly our own, results from our individual response to the beauty or power contained in that particular form of art. A great book, for instance, produces on us a certain effect; our translation of that effect into ideas, words, and opinions of our own, is of some value. To be of an open mind, receptive of beauty, to be desirous of it, affected by it, responsive to it, — here is the beginning of all criticism and appreciation of any art form whatsoever.

In a few beautiful paragraphs in his preface to the "Renaissance," Pater speaks of this, our personal relation to art, and notes the value of it. He urges that not only is it essential to the understanding and realization of beautiful art forms to "see the object as in itself it really is," but it is further essential to know one's own impression of any given art form, to "discriminate" this impression, "to realize it distinctly." This is, of course, but another way of saying that we are not to follow blindly another's opinions, but are to have an opinion of our own; we are

ON JUDGING OF GREAT BOOKS 11

to analyze and "realize" the impression made on ourselves by the work of art; we are to read, if it be literature, or see, if it be sculpture or painting, or listen, if it be music, thinkingly and realizingly. With clear insight he points out that "music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life . . . possess, like the products of nature, so many virtues and qualities."

(That great form of architecture and art which we call the Taj Mahal, for instance, is as a cup holding a different wine and a quite different "virtue" from that held by the art form known as the "Divine Comedy," the "Venus de Milo." A realizing sense must come, first of all, then, of this distinction, this "virtue" and "quality," and then a realizing sense of the effect of this "virtue" and "quality" on ourselves.)

"What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me? What effect does it really produce on me? Does it give me pleasure? and if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence and under its influence?"

(The lover and seeker after beauty and he who would study intelligently any of its forms feels the peculiar influence of beauty and strives to realize that influence, and interpret it to himself; strives to translate, as it were, his impression into the language of ideals.)

"To him the picture, the landscape, the engaging personality in life or in a book, 'LaGioconda,' the hills of Carrara, Pico of Mirandola, are valuable for their virtues, as we say in speaking of an herb, a wine, a gem; for the property each has of affecting one with a special, a unique, impression of pleasure."

Pater goes further to say that "our education becomes complete in proportion as our susceptibility to these impressions increases in depth and variety"; and there might be added, what is inferred, in proportion as our realization of these impressions augments.

In our study of great books, then, it were well to remember that each of the books studied has a "quality," a " virtue," a personality of its own; it were wise to realize this quality and to note its effect on ourselves.

Analytic studies of great books are valuable; scholarly treatises on the meaning and intent of the author is of help; elucidation of difficult passages is necessary, perhaps, to a com^plete understanding of the work; but these alone are but as a valley of dry bones, until there is breathed into them that fine spirit of personal interpretation which gives life and meaning to

ON JUDGmG OF GREAT BOOKS 13

the whole. The present studies of great books do not pretend to be either exhaustive or complete. They are meant, rather, to be suggestive. Being in themselves interpretive it is hoped they will suggest and stimulate further interpretation on the part of the reader and so enable him to come into a more personal relationship with the forms of art here treated of. Those who wish to carry their studies further will find helpful many of the volumes mentioned in the lists of collateral reading.

It should not be forgotten that the several books here written of are so many forms of a great art, and that each form is in itself worthy of extended study. It should be noted that each form differs much from the others. One is clearly classic, another mediaeval and wrought with many a strange device; still another is like a cup overlaid with delicate tracery and arabesque. The form, the touch, as it were, of each will be an experience of exquisite pleasure to the sensitive and discriminating hand. Yet, while we should be sensitive to the beauty of the form, it should be remembered that these books are as cups wrought to hold that more precious wine of man's knowledge, pressed from what varied fruit of experience, in what diverse climes and under what different skies of chance. To taste that wine, to "discriminate" it, to judge somewhat of the flavor and "virtue" of it for ourselves, and to apprehend — subtly distilled in it, and with a special meaning for us — the sunshine and storm, the winds and rains, the growth and stress, and patience and distillation of hope and beauty which went in ages gone to the making of it, — this should be the task, and will be the pleasure, of all those who study thinkingly and realizingly the world's great books.

Chapter III Great Writers As Interpreters

The writer like the painter is an interpreter rather than a creator. He selects and interprets and reveals. He takes from the mass of human experience such things as seem to him especially noteworthy, or beautiful or proven true. These he sets before us in certain relations; to these he calls our attention; and, in whatever form pleasing to himself, shows us or interprets for us their meaning. However great he may seem to be in himself, he is great only as he interprets greatly human experience, not as it has been known to himself only, but as it has been tested and tried and proven by thousands since the world began.

The ages lie immediately back of every great book. Before Ulysses could set sail for Troy to redeem with other kings his promise of loyalty, thousands of other men, in ages past, had sailed the seas and redeemed their promises as faithfully. Before Ulysses set his wandering sails hopefully toward home, countless others, unnamed, in the glimmering distant ages had turned white faces homeward, hopefully, and dreamed of wife and children and welcome hearth. Before Ulysses deafened his companions' ears to the fatal voices of the sirens and had himself bound with cords that he might not yield to their sweetness, and often — before he forbore to taste of the lotos — others, long dead and as brave and wise as he, had fortified themselves against temptation not less, and had resisted the allurement of dreams, to take up, instead, the active toil of difficult life. Before Ulysses ever came and strove and despaired and hoped again, and attained at last, men as many as the stars of the heavens had striven and done battle; had been struck down and had risen again; and had grasped at last, for a little time of respite, and after much suffering, the dear rewards of life.

We think of the creator of Ulysses as Homer; we think of his father as Laertes; but in reality the father of Ulysses is human suffering, and his mother the ages of the world; and but for the thousands of men and women who had gone before, testing life, pitting their strength against life's natural forces, failing and succeeding and out of these attaining to knowledge and wisdom, but for these, Ulysses would never have been.

For the whole background of art and the source of all literature is human experience. The poet but selects from this experience this or that. Let me repeat that he has originated

GREAT WRITERS AS INTERPRETERS 17

nothing. He has at the best but "discriminated " and interpreted and been a voice and mouthpiece for some of those enacted truths so far greater than himself.

This same thing has been said often enough before. But it should be realized newly by every one who has a desire or love for art in any form. Plato, in the dialogue between Ion and Socrates, observed it when he said: "The poets are only the interpreters of the gods, by whom they are severally possessed." It is only another way of saying that the great underlying experiences and truths of life "possess" the poet and find in him a tongue and a language. Moses was in this sense a poet as well as a prophet, interpreting to his people the meanings of the Most High.

Browning calls attention to the interpretive office of the painter, similar in all essentials to that of the poet, when in the person of Lippo Lippi, he says : —

We're made so that we love

First when we see them painted, things we have passed

Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;

And so they are better, painted — better to us.

Which is the same thing. Art was given for thaty

God uses us to help each other 50,

Lending our minds out.

This, too, of Carlyle, when he speaks of the poet and the poet's office: —

He [the poet] is to reveal that to us — that sacred mystery which he more than others lives ever present with, . . . Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things.

Nor is the poet less but greater by the fact that he is a revealer and interpreter rather than what we are wont to call an originator. We call original, generally, people who are distinguished by peculiar and different and extraordinary views and opinions; but the great poet is distinguished by no such things. He deals, rather, in the familiar and universal. He does not interpret or reveal what is peculiar either to himself or to any one person or sect, but he interprets rather the usual, the human, the daily, God's great commonplaces. And though he gives a particular name to his hero, look close and you will find that hero to be not Ulysses, or Faust, or Christian, — but mankind. Homer does not lose but is the greater by this, that Ulysses is his brother in the human race rather than a mere ethereal creation of his fancy. Dante is the greater because his "Divine Comedy" is not built from airy imaginings, but is constructed from the bottom up of human sins and human sufferings, human rewards which he saw and sensed and observed in the very materials of

GREAT WRITERS AS INTERPRETERS 19

human life, and called their names "Hell" and "Purgatory" and "Paradise."

This broader conception of the poet's office as interpreter rather than originator is necessary to a broad understanding of the world's great books. We should understand once for all that it is life itself that all great poets are interpreting for us, and that it is life itself that we shall better understand in reading and understanding any great book.

Chapter IV The Writer's Message

It is obvious that a poet can interpret for us not all of life, only life in part. It is of interest, therefore, to note what part or parts of life the poet selects. It is presumable he will select that which has impressed him most strongly, some truth and beauty to which he has especially responded and responded perhaps most often. It is not unlikely he will choose from the general experience of humanity those experiences to which his own are most akin. The sorrows or joys he tells of, and the spiritual truths he sets out, are likely to be those to which his own joys and sorrows and wisdom are closely allied.

Hence, while great art is never drawn from personal sources, yet it is intricately inwoven with the artist's personality; some touch of himself is in it. He has interpreted this and not that phase of human experience. The selection is his; the selection glows with his personality, and so conveys his rather than another's message. Homer has one message, Goethe another; yet both draw for their facts from the same great source — life itself and human experience.

THE WRITER'S MESSAGE 21

As we study the matter carefully it is interesting to note that the message of all great books, however widely these books may differ, is rooted in some moral conception of the author. No one can look deeply into life without coming upon what we take to be its underlying moral purposes; and poets look into life very deeply. Even Goethe, who contended that "the Beautiful is higher than the Good," adds that the Beautiful includes in it the Good. However we may gauge any of the great books by standards of Aesthetics and find them beautiful, we shall have to admit, as Goethe did, that there, too, the Beautiful includes in it the Good.

Carlyle, in his "Heroes and Hero Worship," notes that the calling of the Prophet, the Man of God, — the man, that is, who speaks to the people of God, — and that of the Poet, — the man who speaks to the people of life and human experience, — merge into one. Both "have penetrated into the sacred mystery of the Universe. . . . The Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side as Good and Evil, Duty and Prohibition; the . . . Poet on what the Germans call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful and the like. The one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what we are to love." Then follows this.

significantly: ''But indeed these two provinces run into one another and cannot be disjoined."