Ancient Art and Ritual (Illustrated) E-Book

Jane Ellen Harrison

• Herausgeber: Bauer Books
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

"Every dogma religion has hitherto produced is probably false, but for all that the religious or mystical spirit may be the only way of apprehending some things, and these of enormous importance. It may also be that the contents of this mystical apprehension cannot be put into language without being falsified and misstated, that they have rather to be felt and lived than uttered and intellectually analyzed; yet they are somehow true and necessary to life."

Leseprobe

Jane Ellen

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Table of contents

PREFATORY NOTE

I T may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the present volume. The title is Ancient Art and Ritual, but the reader will find in it no general summary or even outline of the facts of either ancient art or ancient ritual. These facts are easily accessible in handbooks. The point of my title and the real gist of my argument lie perhaps in the word “ and”—that is, in the intimate connection which I have tried to show exists between ritual and art. This connection has, I believe, an important bearing on questions vital to-day, as, for example, the question of the place of art in our modern civilization, its relation to and its difference from religion and morality; in a word, on the whole enquiry as to what the nature of art is and how it can help or hinder spiritual life.

I have taken Greek drama as a typical instance, because in it we have the clear historical case of a great art, which arose out of a very primitive and almost world-wide ritual. The rise of the Indian drama, or the mediæval and from it the modern stage, would have told us the same tale and served the like purpose. But Greece is nearer to us to-day than either India or the Middle Ages.

Greece and the Greek drama remind me that I should like to offer my thanks to Professor Gilbert Murray, for help and criticism which has far outrun the limits of editorial duty.

J. E. H. Newnham College, Cambridge, June 1913. CHAPTER I ART AND RITUAL

T title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even dissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to the modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and ceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly prescribed ordinances of a church or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in thought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is towards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day; but the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show that these two divergent developments have a common root, and that neither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre.

, p. 324. , 13. X, 596-9. C. H. Lumholtz, , in , Vol. III, “Anthropology.” (1900.) CHAPTER II PRIMITIVE RITUAL: PANTOMIMIC DANCES These instances are all taken from , I, 139 “The English Language,” , p. 28. CHAPTER III SEASONAL RITES: THE SPRING FESTIVAL And at your door it stands; It is a sprout that is well budded out, The work of our Lord’s hands.” In other parts of Bohemia the song varies; it is not Summer that comes back but Life. “We have carried away Death, And brought back Life.” Chapter XII: “Periodicity in Nature.” 17. Frazer, , p. 200. E. K. Chambers, , I, p. 169. , p. 205. , p. 213. Resumed from Dr. Frazer, , II, p. 104. , p. 367. , III, 4. J. C. Lawson, , p. 573. CHAPTER IV THE SPRING FESTIVAL IN GREECE “Tragedy—as also Comedy—was at first mere improvisation— the one (tragedy) .” Mr. Calderon has shown that very similar rites go on to-day in Bulgaria in honour of , the Spring God. Do we know any more about the Dithyramb? Happily yes, and the next point is as curious as significant. Pindar, in one of his Odes, asks a strange question: “Whence did appear the Graces of Dionysos, With the Bull-driving Dithyramb?” The Dithyramb is the song of the birth, and the birth of Dionysos is in the spring, the time of the maypole, the time of the holy Bull. “To us also leap for full jars, and leap for fleecy flocks, and leap for fields of fruit and for hives to bring increase.” “Leap for our cities, and leap for our sea-borne ships, , and for goodly Themis.” , IV, 12. See my , p. 419. (1912.) I, 43. 2. XII. , 693 f. The words “in Spring-time” depend on an emendation to me convincing. See my , p. 205, note 1. IX. See my , p. 151. See my , p. 439. , p. 402. Frazer, , Vol. I, p. 228. , III, 424. , III, p. 438. See my , p. 503. CHAPTER V TRANSITION FROM RITUAL TO ART: THE DROMENON (“THING DONE”) AND THE DRAMA