DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4593#0075
58 THE ISLES AND SHRINES OF GREECE
Scott, as the peaks and crags and vales and meres
of the Lake District have felt the touch of Words-
worth, Southey and Coleridge. Paris means Victor
Hugo and Dumas as well as Napoleon, Richelieu
and the French kings; and with all its wonderful
shrines of religion and art, Florence, for the modern
traveller, means Dante and Browning as well as
Raphael and Savonarola. Has Phidias or Pericles
done more for Athens than Socrates, Sophocles,
^Eschylus and Plato? So Ithaca is a shrine, a mon-
ument of literature; and it has this peculiar interest,
that its fame lies wholly and absolutely in this direc-
tion. The Odyssey was built with Ithaca as one of
its foundation stones; but now it is Ithaca that rests
on the Odyssey, which Lowell has said is the one
long story that will bear continuous reading. It mat-
ters not whether it deals with history or romance,
the story of the Odyssey will continue to exert its
charm and Ithaca will loom up in the narrative just
as it looms up in the landscape. The picture is so
well fixed in the mind that now wc can seek with
enthusiasm for the easel and the canvas on which it
was painted. So long as the Odyssey continues to
be read, some Ithaca will possess an interest as the
home of its hero and his faithful Penelope, as the
abode of the devoted swineherd, and as the scene of
the wanton riot of the suitors and their tragic doom.
With it we shall connect the dutiful Telemachus, the
aged Laertes, and Argos the faithful dog.
One of the constant iterations in the Odyssey, so
often repeated that it becomes a kind of standing
joke, is the question addressed to every new-comer
in Ithaca. "But now, good stranger, tell me this:
Scott, as the peaks and crags and vales and meres
of the Lake District have felt the touch of Words-
worth, Southey and Coleridge. Paris means Victor
Hugo and Dumas as well as Napoleon, Richelieu
and the French kings; and with all its wonderful
shrines of religion and art, Florence, for the modern
traveller, means Dante and Browning as well as
Raphael and Savonarola. Has Phidias or Pericles
done more for Athens than Socrates, Sophocles,
^Eschylus and Plato? So Ithaca is a shrine, a mon-
ument of literature; and it has this peculiar interest,
that its fame lies wholly and absolutely in this direc-
tion. The Odyssey was built with Ithaca as one of
its foundation stones; but now it is Ithaca that rests
on the Odyssey, which Lowell has said is the one
long story that will bear continuous reading. It mat-
ters not whether it deals with history or romance,
the story of the Odyssey will continue to exert its
charm and Ithaca will loom up in the narrative just
as it looms up in the landscape. The picture is so
well fixed in the mind that now wc can seek with
enthusiasm for the easel and the canvas on which it
was painted. So long as the Odyssey continues to
be read, some Ithaca will possess an interest as the
home of its hero and his faithful Penelope, as the
abode of the devoted swineherd, and as the scene of
the wanton riot of the suitors and their tragic doom.
With it we shall connect the dutiful Telemachus, the
aged Laertes, and Argos the faithful dog.
One of the constant iterations in the Odyssey, so
often repeated that it becomes a kind of standing
joke, is the question addressed to every new-comer
in Ithaca. "But now, good stranger, tell me this: