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Home , Alexandros Mavrokordatos, Greece, Greeks, Greek art, Greek language, Greek literature

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Hellenism, and other movements Introduction

• One of the most significant aspects of Greek is the sense of continuity of Greek and from the ancient to modern . • This continuity is demonstrated in , customs and traditions, and even religion. • One common mistake of the Greeks: • They tend to consider their relationship to their ancient heritage to be exclusive. • One common mistake of the Westerners: • They tend to separate into ancient and modern. Panygerikus 50

• "And so much did our city [] bequeath to the other peoples in the ways of and speech, that her disciples did in turn enlighten others, and the of the Hellenes is now considered pertinent not to race but rather to spirit, to the point of calling Hellenes those with whom we share education and upbringing, rather than those with whom we share in ." Percy Shelley

• “We are all Greeks. Our , our , our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece." and Fathers

• "Throughout the Byzantine millennium, paideia -education rested on two legs: Christian and Hellenic, , and Patristic and the Greek from the Homeric epics down to the philosophers, , and historians of late antiquity." Greekness

• Greekness should not be viewed in isolation from its historical context but as an evolutionary process of Hellenic and Eastern Orthodox religious and cultural tradition. • "Immortal like the yearning implicit in Romiosyni, that invisible and unbroken thread of Greek actualities which, as Seferis says with a profound sense of piety, is seated in the lap of the Virgin Mother." Hélène Ahrweiler Philhellenism

• Philos+hellenism= of the Greek culture • Intellectual and cultural movement at the turn of the 19th . that led to active support of the Greek war of independence. • Philhellenism came out of the Hellenism= the study and admiration of the , civilization and culture

Hellenism

• A movement in 18th and 19th c. Western , mostly and • figures of hellenism in Germany: • Hegel, Schlegel, Schelling and Schiller. • Major figures of hellenism in England • John Keats, Percy Shelley, and

Hellenism

• Hellenism is a multifaceted movement since it expresses itself though , , , and • The movement develops in parallel with the growing interest in literature, mythology, art, and culture in • The birth of the Classical Studies Hellenism in Germany

• Johann Winckelmann (1717-1768), a Saxon cobbler's son was the greatest European authority of his on , especially hellenistic. • His writings influenced Goethe, Lessing, and Schiller • He never visited Greece • Friedrich August Wolf publishes the Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795) applying for the first time to the works of Hellenism in Germany

• The ideals of neo-classical art according to Winckelmann: • “Noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" • His most famous work: • Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works • “The only way for us to become great and, if possible, inimitable, lies in the imitation of the Greeks”. Hall, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire 1760 Osterley Park 1761-1780 by Canova, early .

Travel literature

• Through traveling, foreign travelers construct their own image of Greece. • They reinvented the glorious origins, part historical, part mythical not only of Greece but also of their own . • At the time they acknowledge Greece as a living nation and create sympathy for the forecoming Greek War of Independence. François-René de Chateaubriand

• He is considered the founder of French romantic movement. • Chateaubriand visited Greece in 1806 • Itinéraire de à Jérusalem • It is stricken by the gap between the “eternal Greece” and the modern .

Conceptions of Greece

• "I have seen Greece! I visited , Argos, , , Athens; beautiful , alas! nothing . . . Never see Greece," Chateaubriand wrote to a friend in 1806, "except in Homer. It is the best way." • "The famous of Greece are, indeed, rather to be considered as places where recollections and trains of thought are excited, than as affording spectacles deserving notice. . . . Antiquity is a wrinkled and aged dame; and it is only by her tales that she interests us" on Greece in 1813 Hellenism in England

• Two British artists, James Stuart and Revett traveled to Greece and set out to measure the and other Greek structures. • The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated (1762) • Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman from 1799 to 1803 removed the most impressive from Parthenon and moved them to England Elgin

• The so-called represent more than half of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon. • In 1816 were purchased for the country by the British for £35,000 and now are in the British . • The British society was impressed and amazed and the marbles created significant sensation in the English intellectual . Criticism

• Lord Byron was among the few Englishmen protested the removal of the marbles. – Dull is the eye that will not weep to see – Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed – By British hands, which it had best behoved – To guard those ne’er to be restored. – Curst be the hour when from their isle they roved, – And once again thy hapless bosom gored, – And snatch'd thy shrinking to northern climes abhorred! – —"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" Criticism

• "The Honourable Lord has taken advantage of the most unjustifiable means and has committed the most flagrant pillages. It was, it seems, fatal that a representative of our country loot those objects that the and other had considered sacred" – Sir John Newport Hellenism in England

• The romantic John Keats was one of those who saw them privately exhibited in London, after which he wrote two famous sonnets about the marbles. On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time

• My spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick looking at the sky. Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceived glories of the brain Bring round the heart an indescribable ; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old Time -with a billowy main, A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) • The most important of the French Romantic painters • Massacre at (1824) created a unique impression and sympathy for the Greek War of Independence with its depiction of sick, dying Greek civilians about to be slaughtered by the Turks

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) • Greece Expiring on the Ruins of shows a woman in Greek costume with her arms raised in a powerless gesture toward the horrible scene: the suicide of the Greeks, who chose to kill themselves and destroy their city rather than surrender to the Turks. A hand is seen at the bottom, the body having crushed by the rubble of the city. The whole picture serves as a monument to the people of Messolonghi and to the idea of freedom against tyrannical rule. This event interested Delacroix not only for his sympathies with the Greeks, but also because the poet Byron, whom Delacroix greatly admired, had died there.

Philhellenism

• Philhellenes took the Hellenists' idealized portrait of Greece. • This portrait associated with the ideals of freedom and . • This vision was transformed into a call for the liberation of Greece from the • Philhellenism finally became a political movement, designed to bring pressure on the of the time to free the country that was seen as the foundation of European values from eastern . Philhellenism in USA

• In December 1822, President Monroe gave a speech favorable to the Greek cause and wished the Greek nation -speed on its road to independence. • “A strong hope is entertained that the Greeks will recover their independence and assume their equal station among the nations of the earth.”

Philhellenism in USA

• On December 8, 1823, Webster, a Congressman from , made a motion in Congress for the appropriation of money to send an American envoy to Greece and for the support of the Greek struggle for independence. • On 19. 1824, Webster gave a powerful and resonating speech in defense of his proposal. • "1 have in the modern not the ancient, the alive and not the dead Greece... today's Greece, fighting against unprecedented difficulties... a Greece fighting for its existence and for the common privilege of human existence," said Webster. Philhellenism in USA

• The earliest American play about revolutionary Greece was "The Grecian Captive, or the Fall of Athens", by a Jewish author, Mordecai Noah. It was performed at the New York in 1822. The year appeared " Pacha, or The Signet Ring", by a more famous playwright, John Howard Payne. The Grecian Captive, or the Fall of Athens" • “Behold a glorious termination to all our painful struggles! Greece is free! The land of the great, the home of the brave. The queen of has broken the bonds of tyranny and - and a glorious day succeeds to a long night of peril and calamity. Now to freedom by the establishment of just laws - a free and benevolent spirit to all.” American volunteers in the Greek war of Independence • The first American to travel to Greece and join the Greek War of Independence as a volunteer was George Jarvis, a New Yorker, who went toGreece in 1822. • In 1824, Captain Jonathan P. Miller of Vermont arrived in Greece. • Dr. Gridley Howe, a Bostonian physician. Upon his arrival in Greece, he enlisted in the Greek Army and for six years he served as soldier and a chief surgeon. • Founded the first U.S. college for the blind, later named Perkins Institute and was the first U.S. Educator to the Blind (1832)

Julia Ward Howe

• His , Ward Howe, was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet most famous as the author of "The Battle of the ." • During Howe's last years younger women sought her out and interviewed her. Her advice to one visitor was "Study Greek, my dear, it's better than a diamond necklace."

The Greek Slave

• A statue carved in Florence by the American sculptor Hiram Powers in 1844 • Neo-classical nudity • When the work was first exhibited, many people were scandalized The Greek Slave

• The Slave has been taken from one of the Greek by the Turks, in the time of the Greek Revolution; the of which is familiar to all. Her father and mother, and perhaps all her kindred, have been destroyed by her foes, and she alone preserved as a treasure too valuable to be thrown away. She is now among strangers, under the pressure of a full recollection of the calamitous events which have brought her to her present state; and she stands exposed to the gaze of the people she abhors, and awaits her with intense anxiety, tempered indeed by the support of her reliance upon the goodness of God. Gather all these afflictions together, and add to them the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, and no room will be left for shame

George Byron, 6th Baron Byron

• One of the leading figures of British • Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Juan. • Extraordinary life full of adventures • He fought in under the revolutionary group of the against • He fought in Greece against the Turks George Byron, 6th Baron Byron

• In 1823, representatives of the Greek movement for independence contacted Byron to ask for his support. • On 16 July, Byron left on the ship , arriving at the of Kefalonia on 4 August. He spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet, then sailed for Messolonghi in , arriving on 29 December to join , leader of the Greek rebel forces. The Isles of Greece

• The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece ! Where burning loved and sung, Where grew the arts of War and , Where , and Phœbus sprung ! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their Sun, is set. Don Juan, Canto the Third - LXXXVI

George Byron, 6th Baron Byron

• Byron entered into the plans to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto. He employed a fire master to prepare artillery and took under his own command and pay certain Greek soldiers. George Byron, 6th Baron Byron

• On 15 February 1824, Byron fell ill. • He died on 19 April by an violent fever. • The Greeks declared him a national hero • The name Viron (Byron) is a very popular Greek first name even today. • There is also a large suburb of Athens by the name Viron (Byron).

Philhellenism and Greek

• Greek culture and civilization becomes the cornerstone of western civilization • Europeans, especially English and Germans, develop an extreme enthusiasm for Greek antiquity and literature • is inspired by Philhellenism and so it turns also to the glory of the Greek past. Major contributions of Philhellenism to the Greek cause • The “glorious past” of Greece as it was idealized by the Philhellenes: • Elevated the sense of Greek dignity • Provided historical significance to the Greek War of Independence • Provided meaning to the Greek national Identity