Initiation into Literature | Page 2

CENTURIES: GERMANY
Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland. Prose Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Goethe, Schiller, K?rner.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ITALY
Poets: Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, Monti, Leopardi. Prose Writers: Silvio Pellico, Fogazzaro, etc.

CHAPTER XIX
THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: SPAIN
The Drama still Brilliant: Moratin. Historians and Philosophers, Novelists, Orators.

CHAPTER XX
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Middle Ages. Some Epic Narratives. Renaissance in the Seventeenth Century. Literature Imitative of the West in the Eighteenth Century. Original Literature in the Nineteenth Century.

CHAPTER XXI
POLISH LITERATURE
At an Early Date Western Influence Sufficiently Potent. Sixteenth Century Brilliant; Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries highly Cultured; Nineteenth Century Notably Original.
INDEX

INITIATION INTO LITERATURE

CHAPTER I
ANCIENT INDIA
The Vedas. Buddhist Literature. Great Epic Poems, then very Diverse, much Shorter Poems. Dramatic Literature. Moral Literature.
THE VEDAS.--The ancient Indians, who spoke Sanscrit, possess a literature which goes back, perhaps, to the fifteenth century before Christ. At first, like all other races, they possessed a sacred literature intimately bound up with their religion. The earliest volumes of sacred literature are the Vedas. They describe and glorify the gods then worshipped, to wit, Agni, god of fire, of the domestic hearth, of the celestial fire (the sun), of the atmospheric fire (lightning); Indra, god of atmosphere, analogous to Zeus of the Greeks; Soma, the moon; Varuna, the nocturnal vault, the god who rewards the good and punishes the evil; Rudra, the irascible god, more evil than well disposed, though sometimes helpful; others too, very numerous.
The style of the Vedas is continually poetic and metaphorical. They contain a sort of metaphysics as well as continual allegories.
BUDDHA.--Buddhism, a philosophical religion, sufficiently analogous to Christianity, which Sakyamuni, surnamed Buddha (the wise), spread through India towards 550 B.C., created a new literature. It taught, as will be remembered, the equality of all castes in the sight of religion, metempsychosis, charity, and detachment from all passions and desires in order to arrive at absolute calm (_nirvana_). The literature it inspired was primarily gnomic, that is, sententious, analogous to that of Pythagoras, with a tendency towards little moral tales and parables, as in the Gospel.
This literature subsequently expanded into large and even immense epic poems, of which the principal are the Mahabharata and the Ramayana.
THE _MAHABHARATA_; THE RAMAYANA.--The Mahabharata (that is, the _great history of the Bharatas_) is a legend or a novel in verse intersected with moral digressions, with episodes vaguely related to the subject, with discourses and prayers. There are charming episodes full of delicate sensibility, of moving tenderness--that is to say, of human beauty, comparable to the farewells of Hector and Andromache in Homer; and everywhere, amid tediousness and monotony, is found a powerful and superabundant imagination.
The Ramayana, the name of the author of which, Valmiki, has come down to us, is a poem yet more vast and unequal. There are portions which to us are quite unreadable, and there are others comparable to the most imposing and most touching in all epic poetry. Reduced to its theme, the subject of Mahabharata is extremely simple; it is the history of Prince Rama, dispossessed of his throne, who saw his beloved wife, Sita, ravished by the monstrous demon Ravana, who made alliance with the good monkeys and with them constructed a bridge over the sea to reach the island on which Sita was detained, who vanquished and slew Ravana, who re-found Sita, and finally went back happily to his kingdom, which had also been re-conquered.
The most noticeable exterior characteristic of the Mahabharata is the almost constant mingling of men and animals, a mingling which one feels is in conformity with the dogma of the transmigration of souls. Not only monkeys but vultures, eagles, gazelles, etc., are brought into the work and form important personages. We are in the epoch when the animals spoke. Battles are numerous and described in great detail; the Ramayana is the Iliad of the Indians; pathetic scenes, as well as those of love, of friendship, of gratitude are not rare, and are sometimes exquisite. The whole poem is imbued with a great feeling of humanity, heroism, and justice. Victory is to the good and right is triumphant; the gods permit that the just should suffer and be compelled to struggle; but invariably it is only for a time and the merited happiness is at the end of all.
After these two vast giant epics there were written among the Indians a number of shorter narrative poems, very varied both in tone and manner, which suggest an uninterrupted succession of highly important and animated schools of literature. Nearer to our own time--that is, towards the fifth or sixth century of our era, lyric poetry and the drama were, as it were, detached from the epopee and existed on their own merits. Songs of love, of hate, of sadness, or of triumph took ample scope; they