HELEN OF TROY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2805, 18 December 1907, Page 82

HELEN OF TROY.

By Jessie Mackat.

H. Towards the close of the eighteenth century some research had been made by men of learning to identify the site of Troy. Attempts, both, then and later, were made to reconcile the Homeric geography with modern features, but the usual heart-breaking difficulties familiar to all explorers iHTjjirTdsh territory were experienced, and; though theories were formulated by the Frenchmen Lechevalier, Champollion, and others, no serioua work was undertaken on the Troad till the I wealthy enthusiast, Dr Schliemann, took the matter in hand. The life of Schlie- ' maun was in itself both a romance and a triumph of perseverance. Of humble and poor parentage, SchKemarin in the German : home of his boyhood was fired with the ! tale of Troy, and bent " the whole remarkable powers of his mind and will to i the one end of classic exploration. By dint of close study, he acquired i«ven or eight languages, and was recommended to a business post in St. Petersburg, where he settled and became a ritih man. When well on in middle age, he felt himself ; free to follow hie cherished ambitions, and ! removed to Athens, where he jnade his home henceforth, marrying a Greek lady, who became his realous assistant. He began work on the Troad about 1871, choosing the Mound of Hissarlik for- the scene of his explorations. By 1873 he had laio bare the 'remains of an ancient and wealthy city which had been destroyed by fire. This city he pronounced to be Troy, amid the jubilation 'of European scholars, among whom Mr Gladstone's Homeric .. studies gave him an honoured place. In 1876 he turned his attention to the Peloponnesus, and there, in the extremity of South Greece, discovered the remains of what he and others believed to be Mycenae, the city of Agamemnon. The greatest treasure trove the world has seen -rewarded his search ; the gold of Mycenae was like the fabulous treasures of the Incas, save in its fashioning, and the museums of Athens were enriched beyond their wildest dreams. More enriched still was the . world of letters by this apparent confirmation *of the Troy legend. But Schliemann lacked the training and method of a professional archaeologist, and before long a fatal discrepancy was discovered, which threw all these pleasing assumptions into confusion. Schliemann's Troy was proved to be a settlement of the Stone Age : the city he called Mycense belonged to the Bronte Age. But the intrepid German worked on, excavating on one historic field after another till his death in 1890. During the two years that followed, his' assistant Dorpfeld made important discoveries on the Mound of Hiasarlik. Schliemann had assumed the lowest remains must be Troy. But Hissarlik; like the mounds of NorttolPaJK^^^lay^cily^tipbrf^ity, an age between each layer and the next. The patient skill of ' Dorpfeld disclosed one of these forgotten towns to be contemporary.% TWjjh. My_cense. -; was j Homer's' 'city— if Ho'iner'sT city eVer existed! on earth.

.But what of Helen? The Greek Rationalists, as we have seen, denied her a reasonable shred of historical existence centuries before our era ; and it can scarcely be said that these provisional results of research on the Troad have given her a firmer hold on reality. It may be that tradition is s truer guide than the bookworm fraternity can be got to confess ; that there is that in humanity which perpetuates the great human dramas of the world, only enshrouding them in a mist of glory through which the outlines are yet seen. It is far more natural to believe in a glorified. Helen who once lived than in the fine-spun fantasy that makes her a maiden of light. Whether ahe so lived or not, Helen is still a Queen of Dream, whose realm neither fades nor passes while love and song endure. The poets cannot let her die. Homer gave them the deathless word out of his own bright veil of vapour — shadow lady- sung by shadow bard three millenniums ago!" If the* man Shakespeare, who certainly lived three hundred years back, be a myth to half of us already, what wonder that literary rationalists deny name and form to the blind old father of song, despite the championship of such large literal souls as Blackie and Gladstone?

It may not be amiss, io conclusion, to note a flying line here and there, showing how the character; of Helen has been drawn by one and -another of the masters of poetry. Homer leads the way, where he depicts her the victim of Aphrodite's will, loathing the soft supineness of Paris, .and openly bewailing the harm she has been constrained to bring upon Greece and Troy. Her noble speech to Hector is tlie culmination of the Homeric idea of her, and not urSjuetly merits Gladstone's eulogium upon her as a prototype of Christian humility and repentance : Oh, generous brother! (If the guilty dame That caused these woes deserves a sister's

name !) Would heaven, ere all these dreadful deeds

were done, The day that showed me to the golden sun Had seen my death! "Why did not whirlwinds bear The fatal infant io the fowls of air? Why sunk I not beneath the whelming tide, And 'midst the roaring of the waters died? Heaven filled up all my ills, and I accurst Bore all, and Paris of those ills the worst. Helen at least a braver spouse might claim, Warmed with some virtue, some desire of

fame! Now, tired with toils, thy fainting limbs xeoline, With toils sustained for Paris' sake and

mine: The gods have linked our . miserable doom, Our present woe and infamy to come: Wide shall it spread, and last through ages long, „ Example' sad! and theme of future song.

{ Euripides' estimate of Helen varies in his dramas ; now he speaks of her as i blameless s>nd far in' Egypt while her

cloud-shape deludes the people of Troy ; now he treats her with scant respect as the light cause of all the woes of the war. Nor does Virgil convey any exalted view of her when in the JEneid he depicts her crouching in the temple of Vesta, and only saved from the avenging sword of his hero by the intervention of Aphrodite. Many poets of the Middle Ages, as well as of classic times, divorce their conception of her from ethical considerations, and' simply descant on her beauty. The thrilling lines of Marlowe on Faustus' dream of Helen may be taken as the keynote of this school: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a -thousand stars! I Goethe's Jack o' Lantern fantasy, , which ' weds tl*e spirit of (Faust to the

beauteous shade of Helen, is defined "as

the union of the classic with the romantic • spirit" ; a definition which sets the mere ! man wondering at the metaphysical j Teutonism who so. dilutes an. ounce of meaning- in a hogshead of words, j More humanely intelligible is the tragedy of Helen in the "Epic of Hadea." 1 A strange doom truly does Lewis Morris depict — a doom of a woman loved by all and) 'loving none ; a wasted ~ life out of which one youthful passion for an unI known Argine shepherd had burnt out all capacity for love for ever after. Sorrowful as winter rain fall her words to the embattled Greeks whom she implores to leave their quest: I have nought to give, No heart, nor prize of love for any man, i' Nor recompense. I am the ghost alone i Of the fair girl ye knew; she still abides, If she still lives and is not wholly dead, ! Stretched on a flowery bank upon the sea I In fair heroic Argos. j And again she sighs to her last ' minstrel :

But thou, if e'er There come a daughter of thy love. oh. pray To all thy gods, lest haply they should mar Her life with too great beauty.

Shakespeare, with the perversity .or the despair of genius, one knows not which,

i makes nothing of Helen in "Troilus-and i Cressida." A thing of easy, airy content, I tinselled over with conventional conipli- ; menfc 'and soulless word-play, this is all he troubles to call up under the, wonder- ! name .of Helen ! . Well, he served Joan of Arc worse. , - - Lastly, Tennyson in his "Dream x>f Fair Women" holds close to the Homerio ideal when he meets in the enchanted wood 1 A daughter of the god's divinely tall, ' And" most divinely fair. I She, turning on my face I -The star-like sorrows of "immortal eyes, 1 i Spoke, slowly iri.her place. • ■>' ', "I--Had great beauty,; ia?k nofcfhou'my name; No one* can 'Tie more wise* than destiny. Many drew swords and died. Where'er I came ! I brought calamity. "t would the white, cold, heavy-plunging foam, Whirled by the wind, had rolled' me deep below. Then, when I left my home." ■ ; ?.i. -The utter absence of poetic unity and justice implied in the Homeric tale of Helen's return and peaceful life in Sparta is used as an argument by the solar mythologists, who acquit the powers of light from moral complicity in the temporary overthrow by night. But this happy ending is a phase of the tale that modern singers have avoided. Joy needs no chronicle, stirs only the reeds on the surface of the life-river. Poetry goes deeper. Humanity moves in a cycle, a spiral, and modern poetry where it touches the "world-wdde theme of Helen of Troy meets the Homeric art that counted all her life worth hearing of a long fate and sorrow. Helor* of Troy lives for ever in a rainbow of love and grief and fire.