The Greeks and the Europeans

The Greeks and the West Hellenism, Philhellenism and other movements Introduction • One of the most significant aspects of Greek identity is the sense of continuity of Greek culture and civilization from the ancient to modern times. • This continuity is demonstrated in language, 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 Greece into ancient and modern. Isocrates Panygerikus 50 • "And so much did our city [Athens] bequeath to the other peoples in the ways of reason and speech, that her disciples did in turn enlighten others, and the name 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 nature." Percy Shelley • “We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece." Hellenic Paideia and Church Fathers • "Throughout the Byzantine millennium, paideia -education rested on two legs: Christian and Hellenic, the Bible, and Patristic writings and the Greek classics from the Homeric epics down to the philosophers, poets, 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= love of the Greek culture • Intellectual and cultural movement at the turn of the 19th c. that led to active support of the Greek war of independence. • Philhellenism came out of the Hellenism= the study and admiration of the Greek language, civilization and culture Hellenism • A movement in 18th and 19th c. Western Europe, mostly Germany and England • Major figures of hellenism in Germany: • Hegel, Schlegel, Schelling and Schiller. • Major figures of hellenism in England • John Keats, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron Hellenism • Hellenism is a multifaceted movement since it expresses itself though poetry, prose, sculpture, and architecture • The movement develops in parallel with the growing interest in ancient Greek literature, mythology, art, and culture in western Europe • The birth of the Classical Studies Hellenism in Germany • Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), a Saxon cobbler's son was the greatest European authority of his time on Greek art, 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 textual criticism to the works of Homer 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”. Marble Hall, Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire 1760 Osterley Park House Middlesex 1761-1780 Perseus by Canova, early 19th century. 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 cultures. • At the same 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 Paris à Jérusalem • It is stricken by the gap between the “eternal Greece” and the modern reality. Conceptions of Greece • "I have seen Greece! I visited Sparta, Argos, Mycenae, Corinth, Athens; beautiful names, alas! nothing more. Never see Greece," Chateaubriand wrote to a friend in 1806, "except in Homer. It is the best way." • "The famous towns 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" John Galt on Greece in 1813 Hellenism in England • Two British artists, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett traveled to Greece and set out to measure the Parthenon and other Greek structures. • The Antiquities of Athens, Measured and Delineated (1762) • Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the most impressive sculptures from Parthenon and moved them to England Elgin Marbles • The so-called Elgin Marbles represent more than half of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon. • In 1816 were purchased for the country by the British government for £35,000 and now are in the British Museum. • The British society was impressed and amazed and the marbles created significant sensation in the English intellectual world. Criticism • Lord Byron was among the few Englishmen who 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 relics 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 gods 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 Turks and other barbarians had considered sacred" – Sir John Newport Hellenism in England • The romantic poet 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 eagle 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 feud; 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 Chios (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 Missolonghi 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 being 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 ancient Greece with the ideals of freedom and democracy. • This vision was transformed into a call for the liberation of Greece from the Ottoman Empire • Philhellenism finally became a political movement, designed to bring pressure on the superpowers of the time to free the country that was seen as the foundation of European values from eastern despotism. Philhellenism in USA • In December 1822, President Monroe gave a speech favorable to the Greek cause and wished the Greek nation god-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, Daniel Webster, a Congressman from Massachusetts, 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 January 19. 1824, Webster gave a powerful and resonating speech in defense of his proposal. • "1 have in mind 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 Theatre in 1822. The next year appeared "Ali 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 the Arts has broken the bonds of tyranny and slavery - and a glorious day succeeds to a long night of peril and calamity. Now to merit 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.

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