Aspects, Aorists and the Classical Tripos

Viac o knihe

Excerpt from Aspects, Aorists and the Classical Tripos in my life, only twice, it has happened to me to fall in love with a language. Once, long ago, with Greek, again, only yesterday as it seems to me, with Russian. To fall in love with a language is an enchanting experience. You feel as though you were born again, you wonder how you could ever have lived without your new love; life seems growing richer every moment, you pity all the poor heathen who have never found the light. It is well to be off with the old love before you are on with the new'. Not so. In the free spaces of the spirit there are no exclusions, no jealousies. People come to me and say 'I hear- you have given up Greek and are devoting yourself to Russian' As if I could give up Greek. It is part of my body and bones. No, thank heaven, the new love has only given new life to the old. First, to clear the ground, to fall in love with a language is not to fall in love with a literature. It is well to note - a fact too often forgotten - that a rich language does not necessarily mean a rich literature. The stock and notable example is drawn from Semitic languages. Arabic is exceedingly rich in vocabulary, its literature wrell - of great specialist interest but singularly jejune. Hebrew is poor and sparse as a language, but its literature - incomparable. The reason of this distinction is clear enough and for my argument important. Language is the tmconscious or at least subconscious product of the group, the herd, the race, the nation. Literature is the product more or less conscious of the individual genius, using of course the tools made by the blind herd, but, after the manner of live organisms, shaping these tools even as he uses them. When we love a language as contrasted with a literature, we fall under the spell not of a person, an individual genius, but of a people imaged in the speech they have made. What was the spell cast by Greek? It was not the spell of Homer or AEschylus or Plato, I could not read them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."