The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1937-02-05
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masterpiece about the historic nature
OF the Homeric legends. The great
masterpiece never appeared suppose
u got lost in a welter of source mate
rla!s and footnotes-but in a sense,
Helen was Schlumbacher's materpiece.
year after year, tended her altar, made
her into what his moonstruck imagin-
alton had conceived as the perfect
classic heroine.
DO you see that girl?" he would
demand fiercely, peering at you through
gold-rimmed spectacles and frowning
with concentration. There is beauty.
Homer's beauty. Ach! What do you
people know about it? Nothing, moth
ing, nothing! Wait and see! Just you
wait and see!"
The little inn stood on the dusty
road beneath the hill of Mycenae,
nj it was a place of no particular
beauty in ITSELF. but it had olive trees
n tamarisks growing near it, and
for a good part of the year the ole
anders lowered in all the shades from
white to red against it's walls. Against
this dusty, tumbledown setting, with
its flowers and its dirt, Helen grew
up. learning whole lengthy passages
of the Iliad, waiting on the guests in
the inn, carrying cans of water and
matching her lovely head against the
lovely skies and lights of imniemorial
Greece. BY the time she was IA she had
OF a beautiful woman. and n of the
oldest things about her beauty was
that although she looked young-at
least whenever I saw her-she had the
peculiar dateless youth of fifth cen
fury sculpture, so that you would
have been quite unable to say whether
she was IA or rs.
Ono yoor r. v,oe tho ,oo~ 1,l INV
Helen was 16-I arrived. at Mycenae
for my annual stay, early in the aft
ernoon. had a rest, and started to
walk up to the Acropolis toward sun
set. About halfway up I perceived the
figure of the girl herself. I soon
caught up with her.
o,a Helen ellen Of Troy" I said, making the
You look very pensive."
She eyed me strangely, half resent
full of the WORKOUT pleasantly. But
she was q good-natured girl; in a mo-
ment she smiled and gave me her
hand-regally, in salute.
1T is good to see you again, Mr..
Harvey she said, her dark eyes still
we may walk together up to the Aero
polls? I am going there"
It was the rarest of all things for
any native of Mycenae to visit the
ruins without a definite reason for do
ing so.
Working on the dig" pp0'' lie '''t'
She glanced at me in quick reproof
my brother is not there" she said.
Her voice was full of dignity, and, I
thought, offended dignity at that. my
brother is at the inn. I do not require
such an excuse for visiting the ruins of
the city of Agamemnon, MIR. Harvey.
After all, it is the city of our an
The speech sounds priggish as I re-
port it, but somehow or other it wasn't.
It was the speech of simple self-re-
spect and good sense, for, when you
come to think of it, the city really
was the city of her ancestors-certainly
not Of mine. She made me fully con-
scious of my American brashness; she
there, and I was ashamed.
The feeling did not leave me as we
climbed to the crest of the hill on
which the city of Agamemnon lay.
Helen's dreaming head was set with
almost intolerable loneliness. It was
too much even for me; like the cal
lowest OF youths, I set to mumbling
poetry.
Helen, thy beauty is to me-" said I,
"as those Nicaean barks of yore . -
To my establishment, she interrupt
ed. II know that" she said. That's
English. That's by Poe" CShe pro-
nounced it Po-ay). II don't like that
much. MI. Schlumbacher has said it
to me many times, and told me what
it means. I prefer Homer"
She paused, gazing steadily away,
across hill and valley, to the last col
ors of the evening sky. And then, in
a voice quite unlike her ordinary can