Chapter 2

The poet in one of his "Hundred Voices" pictures a clear Attic afternoon in February:

Even in the winter's heart, the almonds are ablossom! And lo, the angry month is gay with sunshine laughter, While to this beauty round about a crown you weave, O naked rocks and painted mountain slopes of Athens.

Even the snow on Parnes seems like fields in bloom; A timid greenish glow caresses like a dream The Heights of Corydallus; white Pentele smiles upon The Sacred Rock of Pallas; and old Hymettus stoops To listen to the love-song of Phaleron's sea.

It is its scanty vegetation that makes the southwestern region of Attica look like a mountain lake of light. The nakedness of the mountain ranges and the whiteness of the plains are vaulted over by a brilliant sky and surrounded by a sea of a splendid sapphire glow. Even the olive trees, which still grace the fields about Athens are bunches of silver rather than of green. In "The Satyr, or the Naked Song," taken from the volume of _Town and Wilderness_ we may detect the very spirit which, springing from the same soil thousands of years ago, created the song which gradually rose from primitive sensuousness to the heights of the Greek Tragedy:

All about us naked! All is naked here! Mountains, fields, and heavens wide! The day reigns uncontrolled; The world, transparent; and pellucid The thrice-deep palaces. Eyes, fill yourselves with light And ye, O Lyres, with rhythm!

Here, the trees are stains Out of tune and rare; The world is wine unmixed; And nakedness, a mistress. Here, the shade is but a dream; And even on the night's dim lips A golden laughter dawns!

Here all are stripped of cover And revel lustfully; The barren rock, a star! The body is a flame! Rubies here and things of gold, Priceless pearls and things of silver, Scatter, O divinely naked Land, Scatter, O thrice-noble Attica!

Here manhood is enchanting, And flesh is deified; Artemis is virginity, And Longing is a Hermes; And here, and every hour, Aphrodite rises bare, A marvel to the Sea-Things, And to the world, a wonder!

Come, lay aside thy mantle! Clothe thee with nakedness, O Soul, that art its priestess! For lo, thy body is thy temple. Pass unto me a magnet's stream, O amber of the flesh, And let me drink of nectar drawn From Nakedness Olympian!

Tear thy veil, and throw away Thy robe that flows discordantly! With nature only match thy form, With nature match thy plastic image. Loosen thy girdle! Cross Thy hands upon thy heart! Thy hair is purple royal, A mantle fairly flowing.

And be a tranquil statue; And let thy body take Of Art's perfection chiseled Upon the shining stone; And play, and sing, and mimic With thoughtful nakedness Lithe beasts and snakes and birds That dwell in wilderness.

And play, and sing, and mimic All things of joy, all things of beauty; And let thy nakedness Pale into light of living thought. Forms rounded and forms flat, Soft down, lines curved and straight, O shiverings divine, Dance on your dance of gladness!

Forehead, and eyes, and waves Of hair, and loins, ... And secret dales and places! Roses of love and myrtles! Ye feet that bind with chains! Hands, Fountains of caress, And Doves of longing sweet, And falcons of destruction!

Whole hearted are thy words, And bold, O mouth, O mouth, Like wax of honey bees, Like pomegranates in bloom. The alabaster lilies, April's own fragrant censers, Envy thy breast's full cups! Oh, let me drink from them!

Drink from the rosy tinged, Erect, enameled, fresh, The milk I dreamed and dreamed Of happiness. Thee! I am thy mystic priest, And altars are thy knees; And in thy warm embrace Gods work their miracles!

Away, all tuneless things! Hidden and covered things, away! Away, all crippled, shapeless things, And things profane and strange! Erect and naked all, and guileless, Bodies and breasts and earth and skies! Nakedness, too, is truth, And nakedness is beauty!

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In nakedness, with sunshine graced, That fills the Attic day, If thou beholdest stand before thee Something like a monster bare, Something that like a leafless tree Stands stripped of shadow's grace, And like a stone unwrought, His body is rough and gaunt,

Something that naked, bare, and nude Roams in the thrice-wide spaces, Something whose life is told in flames That light beneath his eyelids, Akin to the old Satyrs' breed And tameless like a beast, A singer silver-voiced, Flee not in fear! 'Tis I!

The Satyr! I have taken here Roots like an olive tree, And with my flute deep-sounding, I make the breezes languish. I play and lo, all things are mated, Love giving, love receiving. I play and lo, all things are dancing, All: Men and beasts and spirits!

ATHENS, THE CENTRE OF GREECE

So much of the natural atmosphere of Athens and Attica. But the Athenians themselves, their thoughts, life, and dreams have not proved less important nor less effective for the poet's growth. The spiritual and intellectual currents moving the Greek nation of today start from this city. Here politics, poetry, and philosophy are still discussed in the old way at the various shops, the coffee houses, and under the plane trees by the banks of Ilissus. The "boulé" is the centre of the political activity of the state. The University with its democratic faculty and still more democratic student body is certainly a "flaming" hearth of culture. Only, its flames are sometimes so ventilated by current events and political developments that the students often assume the functions of the old Athenian Assembly. In the riotous expression of their temporary feelings, the students are not very different from the ancient demesmen. In my days, at least, the most frequent greeting among students was "How is politics today?", with the word "politics" used in its ancient meaning. Any question of general interest might easily be regarded as a national issue to be treated on a political basis. Thus it happened that when the question of language was brought to the foreground by Pallis' vernacular translation of the New Testament, the students took up arms rather than argument.

Into this world, the poet came to finish his education. In one of his critical essays (_Grammata_, vol. i), he tells us of the literary atmosphere prevailing in Athens at that time, about 1879. That year, Valaorites, the second great poet of the people's language, died, and his death renewed with vigor the controversy that had continued even after the death of Solomos, the earliest great poet of Modern Greece. The passing away of Valaorites left Rangabes, the relentless purist, the monarch of the literary world. He was considered as the master whom every one should aspire to imitate. His language, ultra-puristic, had travelled leagues away from the people without approaching at all the splendor of the ancient speech. But the purists drew great delight from reading his works and clapped their hands with satisfaction on seeing how near Plato and Aeschylus they had managed to come.

Young and susceptible to the popular currents of the literary world, Palamas, too, worshipped the established idol, and offered his frankincense in verses modelled after Rangabean conceptions. In the same essay to which I have just referred, he tells us of the life he led with another young friend, likewise a literary aspirant, during the years of his attendance at the University. The two lived and worked together. They wrote poems in the puristic language and compared their works in stimulating friendliness. But soon they realized the truth that if poetry is to be eternal, it must express the individual through the voice of the world to which the individual belongs and through the language which the people speak.

This truth took deep roots in the mind of Palamas. His conviction grew into a religion permeated with the warmth, earnestness, and devotion that martyrs only have shown to their cause. Believing that purism was nothing but a blind attempt to drown the living traditions of the people and to conceal its nature under a specious mantle of shallow gorgeousness, he has given his talent and his heart to save his nation from such a calamity. In this great struggle, he has suffered not a little. When the popular fury rose against his cause, and he was blackened as a traitor and a renegade, he wrote in words illustrating his inner agony:

I labored long to create the statue for the Temple Of stone that I had found, To set it up in nakedness, and then to pass; To pass but not to die.

And I created it. But narrow men who bow To worship shapeless wooden images, ill clad, With hostile glances and with shudderings of fear, Looked down upon us, work and worker, angrily.

My statue in the rubbish thrown! And I, an exile! To foreign lands I led my restless wanderings; But ere I left, a sacrifice unheard I offered: I dug a pit, and in the pit I laid my statue.

And then I whispered: "Here, lie low unseen and live With things deep-rooted and among the ancient ruins Until thine hour comes. Immortal flower thou art! A Temple waits to clothe thy nakedness divine!"

And with a mouth thrice-wide, and with the voice of prophets, The pit spoke: "Temple, none! Nor pedestal! Nor light! In vain! For nowhere is thy flower fit, O maker! Better for ever lost in these unlighted depths.

"Its hour may never come! And if it come, and if Thy work be raised, the Temple will be radiant With a great host of statues, statues of no blemish, And works of thrice-great makers unapproachable.

"To-day was soon for thee; to-morrow will be late. Thy dream is vain; the dawn thou longest will not dawn; Thus, burning for eternities thou mayest not reach, Remain, Cloud-Hunter and Praxiteles of shadows!

"To-morrow and to-day for thee are snares and seas. All are but traps for drowning thee and visions false. Longer than thy glory is the violet's in thy garden! And thou shalt pass away; hear this, and thou shalt die!"

And then I answered: "Let me pass away and die! Creator am I, too, with all my heart and mind; Let pits devour my work. Of all eternal things, My restless wandering may have the greatest worth."

The same idea, though expressed in a more familiar figure, is found in another poem published among _The Lagoon's Regrets_.

THE GUITAR

In the old attic of the humble house, The guitar hangs in cobwebs wrapped: Softly, oh, softly touch her! Listen! You have awaked the sleeping one!

She is awake, and with her waking, Something like distant humming bees Creeps far away and weeps about her; Something that lives while ruins choke it.

Something like moans, like humming bees, Thy sickened children, old guitar, Thy words and airs. What evil pest, What blight is eating thine old age!

In the old attic of the humble house, Thou hast awaked; but who will tend thee? O Mother, wilderness about thee! Thy children, withering; and something, Like humming bees, sounds far away!

A distinct note of pessimism is found in the lines of both these poems. In the latter, it becomes a helpless cry of anguish. But despair seems to cure the poet rather than drown his faith in hopelessness. As a critic, he encourages every initiate of the cause. As a "soldier of the verse," he himself fights his battles of song in every field. In short story, in drama, in epic poetry, and above all in lyrics, he creates work after work. From the _Songs of my Country_, the _Hymn to Athena_, the _Eyes of my Soul_ and the _Iambs and Anapaests_, he rises gradually and steadily to the tragic drama of the _Thrice Noble-One_, to the epic of _The King's Flute_, and to the splendid lyrics of _Life Immovable_ and _The Twelve Words of the Gypsy_ which are his masterpieces.

Nor does he always meet adversity with songs of resignation. At times, he faces indignantly the hostile world with a satire as stinging as that of Juvenal. He dares attack with Byronic boldness every idol that his enemies worship. Often he strikes at the whole people with Archilochean bitterness and parries blow for blow like Hipponax. At times, he even seems to approach the rancor of Swift. But then he immediately throws away his whip and transcends his satire with a loftier thought, a soothing moral, a note of lyricism, and above all with an unshaken faith in the new day for which he works. The eighth and ninth poems of the first book of his "Satires" are good illustrations of this side of his work:

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The lazy drones! The frogs! The locusts! Big men! Politicians! Men who draw Their learning from the thoughtless journals!

A crowd of stupid, haughty blockheads! Unworthily, thy name is set By each as target for blind blows;

But forward still thy steps thou leadest, Up toward the high bell-tower above, And climbest: Spaces spread about thee,

And at thy feet, a world of scorners. Though thou rainest not the godsent manna, A great Life-giver still, thou tollest

With a new bell a new-born creed.

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Aye! Break the tyrant's hated chains! But with their breaking go not drunk! The world is always slaves and lords:

Though free, chain-bound your life must be; Other kinds of chains are there For you: Kneel down! For lo, I bring them!

They fit you, redeemers or redeemed! Bind with these chains your golden youth; I bring you cares and sacrifices.

And you shall call them Truth and Beauty, Modesty, Knowledge, Discipline! To one command obey last, first,

The world's great laws, and men, and nations.

One of his "Hundred Voices" has something of this satiric note. It is a blow against a worthless pretender of the art of verse, who courts popularity with strains not worthy of the sacred Muse. Palamas, acting with greater wisdom than Pope, does not give the name of this unknown pretender:

Bad? Would that thou wert bad; but something worse thou art: Thou stretchedst an unworthy hand to the sacred lyre, And the untaught mob took thy reeling in the dust For the true song of golden wings; and thou didst take Thy seat close by the poet's side so thoughtlessly, And none dared rise and come to drag thee thence away. And see, instead of scorning thee, the just was angry; Yet, even his verse's arrow is for thee a glory!

_The Grave_

In tracing the great life influences of our poet, we must not pass over the loss of his third child, "the child without a peer," as he says in one of his poems addressed to his wife, "who changed the worldly air about us into divine nectar, a worthy offering to the spotless-white light of Olympus." To this loss, the poet has never reconciled himself. The sorrow finds expression in direct or covert strains in every work he has written. But its lasting monument was created soon after the child's death. A collection of poems, entitled _The Grave_, entirely devoted to his memory, is overflowing with an unique intensity of feeling. The poems are composed in short quatrains of a slowly moving rhythm restrained by frequent pauses and occasional metrical irregularities, and thus they reflect with faithfulness the paternal agony with which they are filled. They belong to the earlier works of the poet, but they disclose great lyric power and are the first deep notes of the poet's genius. A few lines from the dedication follow:

Neither with iron, Nor with gold, Nor with the colors That the painters scatter,

Nor with marble Carved with art, Your little house I built For you to dwell for ever;

With spirit charms alone I raised it in a land That knows no matter nor The withering touch of Time.

With all my tears, With all my blood, I founded it And built its vault....

In another poem, in similar strains, he paints the ominous tranquility with which the child's birth and parting were attended:

Tranquilly, silently, Thirsting for our kisses, Unknown you glided Into our bosom;

Even the heavy winter Suddenly smiled Tranquilly, silently, But to receive you;

Tranquilly, silently, The breeze caressed you, O Sunlight of Night And Dream of the Day;

Tranquilly, silently, Our home was gladdened With sweetness of amber With your grace magnetic;

Tranquilly, silently, Our home beheld you, Beauty of the morning star, Light of the star of evening;

Tranquilly, silently, Little moons, mouth and eyes, One dawn you vanished Upon a cruel deathbed;

Tranquilly, silently, In spite of all our kisses, Away you wandered Torn from our bosom;

Tranquilly, silently, O word, O verse, O rime, Your witherless flowers Sow on his grave faith-shaking.

In another poem reminiscent of Tibullean tenderness, the corners of the deserted home, in which the child, during his life, had lingered to play, laugh, or weep, converse with each other about their absent guest:

Things living weep for you, And lifeless things are mourning; The corners, too, forlorn, Remember you with longing:

"One evening, angry here he sat, And slept in bitterness." "Here, often he sat listening Enchanted to the tale."

"Here, I beheld with pride The grace of Love half-naked; An empty bed and stripped Is all that now is left me."

"I always looked for him; He held a book; how often He sat by me to read With singing tongue its pages!"

"What is this pile of toys? Why are they piled before me As if I were a grave? Are they his little playthings?

"The little man comes not; For death with early frost Has nipped his little dreams And chilled his little doings."

"His little sword is idle, And here has come to rest." "And here his little ship Without its captain waits."

"To me, they brought him sick And took him away extinguished." "They watered me with tears And perfumed me with incense."

"The dead child's taper burns Consuming and consumed." "The tempest wildly beats Upon the doors and windows, And deep into our breasts The tempest's moan is echoed."

And all the house about For thee, my child, is groaning ...

THE WORLD BEYOND GREECE

Greece seems to encompass the physical world with which Palamas has come in contact. He does not seem to have travelled beyond its borders, and even within them, he has moved little about. With him scenery must grow with age before it speaks to his heart. Fleeting impressions are of little value, and the appearance of things without the forces of tradition and experience behind it does not attract him:

Others, who wander far in distant lands may seek On Alpine Mountains high the magic Edelweis; I am an Element Immovable; each year, April delights me in my garden, and the May In my own village. O lakes and fiords, O palaces of France and shrines And harbors, Northern Lights and tropic flowers and forests, O wonders of art, and beauties of the world unthought,-- A little Island here I love that always lies before me.

We must not think, however, that the spirit of Palamas rests within the narrow confines of his native land. On the contrary, it knows no chains and travels freely about the earth. He is a faithful servant of "Melete," the Muse of contemplative study, a service which is very seldom liked by Modern Greeks. In his preface to his collection of critical essays entitled _Grammata_ he rebukes his fellow countrymen for this: "On an old attic vase," he says, "stand the three original Muses, the ones that were first worshipped, even before the Nine, who are now world-known: Mneme, Melete, Aoide--Memory, Study, Song. With the first and last, we have cultivated our acquaintance; and never must we show any contempt for the fruit of our love for them. Only with the middle one, we are not on good terms. She seems to be somewhat inaccessible, and she does not fill our eyes enough to attract us. We have always looked, and now still we look, for what is easiest or handiest. Is that, I wonder, a fault of our race or of our age? And is the French philosopher Fouillée somewhat right when in his book on the _Psychology of Races_ he counts among our defects our aversion to great and above all endless labors?" That Palamas is not subject to this fault, one has only to glance at his works to be convinced. There is hardly an important force in the world's thought and expression whether past or present, to which Palamas is a stranger. The literatures of Europe, America, or Asia are an open book for him. The pulses of the world's artists, the intellectual battles of the philosophers, the fears and hopes of the social unrest, the religious emancipation of our day, the far reaching conflict of individual and state, in short, all events of importance in the social, political, spiritual, literary, and artistic life are familiar sources of inspiration for him. With all, he shows the lofty spirit of a worshipper of greatness and depth wherever he finds them. Tolstoi or Aeschylus, Goethe or Dante, Ibsen or Poe, Swinburne or Walt Whitman, Leopardi or Rabelais, Hugo or Carlyle, Serbian Folk Lore or the Bible, Hindu legends or Italian songs, Antiquity or Middle Ages, Renaissance or Modernity, any nation or any lore are objects worthy of study and stores of wisdom for him. Indeed, very few living poets could be compared with him in scholarship and learning.

Nor does he lift his voice only for individual or national throbbings. He sings of the great and noble whenever he sees it. One of his best lyric creations is a song of praise to the valor of the champions of Transvaal's freedom, his "Hymn to the Valiant," the first of the collection entitled "From the Hymns and Wraths," a paean that has been most highly lauded by Professor D.C. Hesseling of the University of Leyden (_Nederlandsche Spectator_, March, 1901). Here is a fragment of it, the words which the Muse addresses to the poet:

... Awake! Thou art not maker of statues! Awake! For songs thou singest! And song is not for ever The heart's lament To fading leaves of autumn, Nor the secret speech thou speakest, A Soul of Dream, to the shadows of Night.

For suddenly there is a clash and groaning! The joy of birds sea-beaten, In storms of Elements And storms of Nations! Song is, too, The Marathonian Triumpher! Over the ashes of Sodoma, It is blown by the mouth of wrath!

Something great and something beautiful, Something from far away, Travelling Glory brings thee On her sky-wandering pinions.

Glory has come! On her wings and on her feet, Signs of her wanderings are shown, Dust gold-loaded and distant; And she brings aloes blossoming, first-seen, From the land that feeds the Kaffir's flocks.

In your aged summers, A new-born spring has spread! From North to South, The Atlantic Dragon groans a groan first-heard; To the African lakes and forests, His groan has spread and echoed; From the Red Sea, a Lamia's palace, To the foam-shaped breast of the White Sea, A Nereid's realm.

Thinly the plants were growing On the bosom of the ancient Motherland; Winds carried away the seed And brought it to the Libyan fields And scattered it into deep ravines And on the lofty mountain lawns.