New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1896-10-07

pIUOIS IllaI t0k3# 6uG1JVI " NJ avery 468IuEe
man; only he was not the poet who couIe
with the faintesi hope Of success try {.
initiate Homer, i. e. the poetical frulto
the race while it was young. For it wa.
now growing old. The pastoral poem.
of Theocritus may also be cited as show.
ing, BY their Every prominence at the time,
that the old age Of Greece was at hand
This fleeing into q fictitious work., into
the land OF poetical dreams, may arouse
some interest in works Of a real poet, as
he was, hut Sit becomes tiresome, not to
say SILL !, in the limitations Of inferior YER
sifers.
As to the poetry Of The Romans there
is before the civil wars SO little worth
mentioning, except Plantus and Terence,
two clever limitations Of the Greek COM
edians, that it is difficult to understand
how a nation could be so one-sided as to
be for hundreds of years without any
man Of superior poetical genius. There
were of course national war and 1eligi-
Gus songs; there was something Of a my
thology and stories CT heroes, but net SO
varied nor so full Of poetical magma
tion.-The next epoch then, from SO b.
G. to IA a. D. is usually called the gol-
den age Of Roman literature; and indeed
the development Of some kinds Of poetry,
besides that Of the language, rhetoric,
and history, is admirable. You have all
heard of, or read, Virgil, Ovid, and Hor-
ace, the first two principally epic poets,
the last a lyric talent. Dramatic poetry
never fourished among the Romans,
whose political and social conditions
were unfavorable to- it. And ever in
the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses, as.
we'll as in the grand odes of Horace,
there is nothing originally Roman except
the language and the manner of hand
ling the subjects. What was produced,
in this centur; can be called kind Of
cosmopolitan poetry of classic antiquity,
it being the outgsowth of the union of
Roman and Greek culture and refine
ment in the crime of society. This uni
on of already existing Roman elements
with Greek classicism is indeed some
thing new and, to say the least, very in
terestiEg.
AS the next century,, the silver age,
goes on, the minor kinds of poetry are
favored more. and more,- such as the ele-
gy, didactic~ poetry, the fable, the cpl
gram, the satire, and the epistle; but
these poetical productions are hardly
more than imitation Of limitations, which
plainly show the beginning decline of
Roman nationality. Itis unnecessary to
dwell upon the end of antiquity other
races with fresh. impulses had to, begin
anew and work themselves up to- a point
where the study Of classic poetry could
be help to them in reaching the high
est aims attainable for them in' their
turn. BY saying this do not wish to
suggest that modern poetry has reached
its greatest development already, and is
now declining; but then it is very doubt
full whether without great changes in our
political and social conditions vel
mean the civilized Ger1nanic and Ro-
manic na,ions-will as such. ever get
higher than we are or have been. While
our present plutocracy with its mercan-
tilism lasts, we certainly have 10" right
to expect a classic epoch of poetry in the
Union. Similarly as long. as things de-
velop further in Germany the way they
have done these last 25 years, no really
national and classic drama can appear,
which is wanting SO far
During the middle ages what constr
tutes progress in poetry is to be looked
for among the Arabs or Saracens, the
Persians, and a little later in Germany
France and Italy. Christendem was less
favorable to poetical activity than the
doctrine of Mohammed as long as it hac
to oppose paganism principally; it,
teaching that this life and this world il
nothing and that the hereafter is all, thai
the body is good fol the fire Of hell, anc
the soul alone worth anything, and final
ly its ascetic tendencies were destructiv,
to real poetry.
Arab or Saracen poetry begins t.
flourish more and more since about $50
they have first used the rhyme, whicl
then entered into the Latin church hymns
cultivated from the 10th to the 14t]
centuries. Hariri, who lived from 1O5
to 1921, brought up anew form, the SO
called Makamen, which have been trans
lated into modern languages during tn
first half Of this century; into Germa