DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0090
70
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
membrance, or to point a religious moral; they only, so to speak,
hand one a cup of the nectar of life. They remind one of the
truly Hellenic sentiment of Spenser: " A grain of sweet is worth
a pound of sour." 1 The earlier epigrams usually dwell only
on the history of the deceased, or the circumstances of his death;
the later give utterance to the widespread notion that he or she
becomes united in a sort of wedlock to the deities of the lower
world. Some speak of the human spirit at death in the lan-
guage of pantheism or of the Mysteries, as returning to its divine
source, but not as consciously passing into a higher plane of
personal existence.
But if we turn from the strictly religious aspect of ancient
and modern cemeteries to their aesthetic charm, the balance
is all on the Greek side. Not only are the reliefs and figures of
our graveyards the work of inferior artists, but in their monot-
ony and frigidity they lack all attraction. Symbolic flowers,
conventional figures of Christian virtues, insipid angels, are
among their better forms: while realistic portraits, or even
photographs of the dead, give a painful though commonplace
aspect to the crowded rows of memorials in granite and marble.
Here and there a sculptor has been set consciously to copy the
design of a Greek tomb; and such monuments appear among
the rest like gleams of sunshine on a cloudy day. The occasional
beauty of an inscription may temper the commonplace or re-
lieve the monotony of our acres of stone; and the divine emblem
of the cross gives them a serious consecration. But few people
would care to linger there apart from personal motives.
A noteworthy respect in which modern sepulchral art
most clearly shows a loftier range of feeling than ancient, ap-
pears on the graves of those who have fallen in battle. The
Greeks on such graves usually represented the deceased as in
armour, and charging in the full tide of victory; they never
depicted him as overthrown or dying. On modern monuments
1 There is a chapter on these epigrams in my Sculptured Tombs of Hellas.
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
membrance, or to point a religious moral; they only, so to speak,
hand one a cup of the nectar of life. They remind one of the
truly Hellenic sentiment of Spenser: " A grain of sweet is worth
a pound of sour." 1 The earlier epigrams usually dwell only
on the history of the deceased, or the circumstances of his death;
the later give utterance to the widespread notion that he or she
becomes united in a sort of wedlock to the deities of the lower
world. Some speak of the human spirit at death in the lan-
guage of pantheism or of the Mysteries, as returning to its divine
source, but not as consciously passing into a higher plane of
personal existence.
But if we turn from the strictly religious aspect of ancient
and modern cemeteries to their aesthetic charm, the balance
is all on the Greek side. Not only are the reliefs and figures of
our graveyards the work of inferior artists, but in their monot-
ony and frigidity they lack all attraction. Symbolic flowers,
conventional figures of Christian virtues, insipid angels, are
among their better forms: while realistic portraits, or even
photographs of the dead, give a painful though commonplace
aspect to the crowded rows of memorials in granite and marble.
Here and there a sculptor has been set consciously to copy the
design of a Greek tomb; and such monuments appear among
the rest like gleams of sunshine on a cloudy day. The occasional
beauty of an inscription may temper the commonplace or re-
lieve the monotony of our acres of stone; and the divine emblem
of the cross gives them a serious consecration. But few people
would care to linger there apart from personal motives.
A noteworthy respect in which modern sepulchral art
most clearly shows a loftier range of feeling than ancient, ap-
pears on the graves of those who have fallen in battle. The
Greeks on such graves usually represented the deceased as in
armour, and charging in the full tide of victory; they never
depicted him as overthrown or dying. On modern monuments
1 There is a chapter on these epigrams in my Sculptured Tombs of Hellas.