The Greek Spirit

Southland Times, Issue 24769, 13 June 1942, Page 4

The Greek Spirit

GILBERT MURRAY, whose death was reported this week, combined in his life’s work two interests which came naturally from his essential humanism. He was a Greek scholar, passionately addicted to interpretation, and at the same time a Liberal in both the political and cultural application of that indefinite term. His work for the League of Nations placed him among those British thinkers (and they include some illustrious names) who dared to believe that a great ideal could be given its political expression in a new international order. How could it have been otherwise in a man steeped so deeply in the Greek tradition? It is true, of

course, that Greece means many different things to those who study her influence. Professor Murray has himself done much to establish a clearer view of political and religious evolution in the Greek citystates. There are wide gaps and profound changes in the Greece of Homer and the age of Athenian dominance under the leadership of Pericles. The mythology of a lush polytheism evolved through dimly marked stages into the scepticism of the sophists. And the early tribal culture, known to us through the Homeric legends, became the democracy of Athens —although even in its best days it had to exist under the shadow of the primitive fascism of Sparta. But if there was a Greek spirit, a surviving and developing way of life in that ancient civilization, it could be said most accurately to have been a marvellous curiosity, a faith in human reason, a zealous and delighted cultivation of the mind. Gilbert Murray was a true representative of the modern scholars who find in Greek literature the sources of enrichment for their own age and culture. The purists have argued that his verse translations depart too widely from the originals. But there are many thousands of readers, undisturbed by the niceties of scholarship, who have found his Greek plays the gateway to a unique imaginative experience. The colouring may be too bright to belong to the cool spirit of Attica. But no impressionable reader can discover Murray’s Euripides without feeling a magic that draws him deeper into the classic world. The famous translations were made a long time ago: most of them were produced on the London stage as early as 1902-7. Yet in spite of his more recent activities in advanced liberalism it is the thought of Euripides which comes immediately to the mind when Gilbert Murray’s name is mentioned. The interpreters of the Greek spirit deserve well of their country and generation. And in this company of humanists the translator of Euripides will have his honoured place.