Catalogue of the officers and students in Marietta College, v. 2, Part 4

Author: Marietta College. cn
Publication date: 1853
Publisher: Marietta, Ohio : The Intelligence Office
Number of Pages: 186


USA > Ohio > Washington County > Marietta > Catalogue of the officers and students in Marietta College, v. 2 > Part 4


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But as preliminary to our investigation it will be neces- sary to inquire what literature implies; what is requisite for its creation. We use the term literature in its ordinary sense of polite literature, belles-lettres, but in a more re- stricted sense than as used by an English critic who de- fines literature as " the written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women, arranged in a way that will give pleasure to the reader." A newspaper editorial on some topic of transient interest, or a treatise on the nerv- ous ganglia of centipedes might fulfill all these conditions. Literature proper includes only works of taste, writings possessing ornamentation and beauty of style, that is, it is


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artistic and gives pleasure to the reader because of this quality as well as by reason of its content.


For the production of such literature, three elements or agencies are essential. These, though in a sense insepara- ble or involved in one another, are nevertheless distinct.


Before a literature can exist there must be something worthy of artistic expression, some inspiring thought, some noble deed, some soul-stirring emotion. There must be, in the second place, some suitable medium of expression, that is a word-language in a developed and mature state. And thirdly, some competent agent of expression, a writer or author as he is called. In other words literary material, a literary language, and a literary artist. These do not always co-exist. A people may have myths and legends suitable for poetic treatment, but have neither literary men nor a language sufficiently tractable to be used in po- etic composition. I need not stop to justify this statement to an audience as familiar as this one is with Longfellow's Hiawatha. The Dakotahs were doubtless noble savages but not poets. And even had there been a Milton among them he must forever have remained "mute and inglorious," for his language was not the language of song. While we may not be able to conceive of a people with a literary language and literary impulses, destitute of literary themes, nor of one having literary themes and a literary language who had never been favored with literary artists, we fully recognize the fact that the three are distinct agencies in the production of literature, and that it is by the combination of all and not of a part of these that the desired result is obtained; just as the chemical, the heat and the color ray, are all included in the white ray and are inherent in its very nature.


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If we study the character and endowments of primitive man, even as represented by the most degraded human beings of which we have any knowledge, we shall find that he possessed the rude beginnings of these three liter- ary elements.


Man's needs and desires early taught him to make use of his vocal organs. He thus created a rudimentary lan- guage; a literary language in embryo. He thought also. Not as the philosopher or the poet thinks, for his mind acted feebly, sluggishly; but he had thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences. These were literary material in em- bryo. And furthermore our examination will show that he was endowed with a peculiarity which still further dif- ferentiated him from the lower animals, and gave evidence of a literary artist in embryo. This unique characteristic was a fondness for noise. Instead of noise I might say sound. It would sound better, but would not be so accu- rate or expressive. The sweet song of the lark or the nightingale, the ceaseless roar of the cataract, the sighing of the wind in the forest, or the sound of the surging sea stirred no emotions sad or pleasant in his untutored soul. For pure sound as such he did not care; but pure noise, discordant, deafening, diabolical, was his delight.


If any one does not assent to the proposition that man in a state of nature is fond of noise, I could readily be- lieve that he never gave his boy a drum or even a tin horn for a birthday present. No other animal shows this pe- culiarity. Some one may think that his neighbors' dogs and cats, which oftentimes make night hideous, should be excepted from this statement. But even granting that these rude disturbers of night's sweet silence find pleasure in their howlings and miaulings, it is to be regarded as .a


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result of domestication and association with man rather than as a natural canine or feline trait. The lion does not roar because he enjoys the sound of his own voice; nor does it seem to afford pleasure to other animals. The bird may delight to pour forth its melodious lay, or the mouse be charmed by the soft tones of an instrument; but it is music or song that thus agrecably affects them. Not so uncultured man. The fierce beating of drums, the wild shouts and unearthly yells at the Indian war-dance or the bacchanalian orgies are to him more pleasing than the light strains of the harp or the deep tones of the or- gan, and exert a strange, almost fascinating influence over participants and non-participants; and not simply because this uproar is expressive of feelings which they have ex- perienced with pleasure, but because noise in itself exerts a subtle power over the uncultured mind and heart. Had it been otherwise there could have been no music, no poe- try, perhaps no literature. For this peculiarity developed into time and tune, two essential elements in poetry as well as in music.


In harmony with what has been said we will seek to trace the genesis of literature in the growth of language and of the artistic faculty. These are parallel lines of as- cent; agencies mutually interactive. We cannot deter- mine the influence of one upon the other, nor assign to cach its due meed of honor in effecting the final result. Nor in giving these the preeminence, would we ignore man's intellectual and spiritual enlargement in every di- rection in its relation to literature. Whatever tended to develope, ennoble, civilize, idealize man, physiologically and scientifically speaking, whatever tended to produce enlargement of the cerebrum, and to multiply and deepen


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its irregular creases and furrows, in a word, all the means and agencies that operated through long ages to raise man from his primal barbarism to that high estate in which he is justly called the " beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! so noble in reason, so infinite in faculties! in ap- prehension so like a god!" cach and all of these influ- ences contributed to the genesis of literature. But time forbids our speaking of them in detail. We shall content ourselves with following through that immense and almost trackless region that separates the savage from the man of letters, the two lines of development already indicated, the artistic and the linguistic.


In considering the former we must confine ourselves chicfly to the musical and poetic arts, never forgetful how- ever of the other members of the aesthetic family we call Art, and their influence upon these two.


It has been said that poctry and music had their origin in "dance and march." Whether this statement be. true or false, there can be no question as to their common or- igin. They were twin sisters, and during the long period of their minority lived together in harmony, or more strictly speaking, without harmony, and in mutual de- pendence. They had not yet parted company at the dawn of the literary age, and still remain united in lyric song. That they were in any sense natural gifts to man, few, if any, will maintain. Even the statement of Dr. Brown, that a "natural passion for melody and dance, which necessarily throws the accompanying song into a correspondent rythm," is found to be "universally pre- dominant in savage life," can be truc only in regard to the more advanced stages of barbarism. Primitive man was incapable of producing or appreciating either melody or


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rythm. His vocal organs were very imperfect in struc- ture, inflexible, unmanageable, and with very limited range. The sounds issuing from them were harsh, dis- cordant ejaculations, most frequently composed of incon- gruous elements. Constant use of these organs rendered them more pliant and the vibrations more harmonious; the resulting sounds became less and less discordant. Pure tones began to replace those that had been mixed and unmusical. In process of time the ear was able to mark the distinctions between the impure and the pure tones, and to find the latter more agreeable. Effort would then naturally be put forth to gratify this incipient pleas- ure. Some tone or combination more pleasant than the rest would be indefinitely repeated, and then additions would be made. Who has not observed a child passing this stage of its mental growth?


That barbarians are fond of repeating the same sound or group of sounds is very evident from their war cries. Take for example some used by certain African tribes. One is Ooh-hu-hu! thrice repeated. Another, Bo-bo, bo- bo, bo-bo-o-o-oh! or varied a little, Bo-bo-bo-bo, Bo-bo- bo-bo-o-o-oh! And still another, Yaha-ha-ha, Ya Banga- la! Ya Bangala! Yaha-ha-ha.


A different kind of war-shout is that of the Waganda tribes. This begins with the full titles of their chiefs and ends with a repetition of the last syllables. For ex- ample, Mukavya, kavya, kavya. Chamburango, ango, ango. Sekibobo, bobo, bobo.


Lullabies and ululations furnish further illustrations. A death dirge of the Senel of California will serve as an example of these. Its vowel variation is noteworthy and indicates an advance upon the simpler war-cries, and if


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properly intoned would undoubtedly be quite affecting. It runs as follows :


Hel-le-li-ly Hel-lel-lo Hel-lel-lu.


In all these illustrations the tones are produced by reg- ular vibrations, the disagreeable elements having been eliminated. The ear is not offended with sounds produced by irregular and mixed vibrations, clashing with one an- other and resulting in noise as distinguished from pure sounds. These do not represent man in his lowest, most primitive condition. The tribal stage has been reached, and there is something of social and political organization. It is not implied that war-cries, ululations and lullabies actually preceded the formation and use of words. They are used only as illustrations of the early processes' of language development. As men advanced in civilization and could give better expression to better ideas, connected speech was substituted for syllables without significance, and for isolated words. The tendency to repeat a word of agreeable sound, or words of similar sound is seen in all periods of literature. That it indicates the first faint pulsations of the literary faculty is very evident from the songs of primitive peoples. Those of our American Indians frequently consist of only a few words. Thus hunting parties sing in chorus, Nyah eh wa! repeating the words indefinitely and accompanying their singing with rattles.


When the wild-cat becomes lonesome and longs for the society of the white rabbit, the Indians imagine that he repeats or sings this song :


He gah yah neh


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He gah yah! He gah yah. Di ho ni shu gua da-se He gah yah.


The meaning of all this is simply: "When you are frightened sweet rabbit you run in a circle."


The "medicine man " his poetic eye in a " fine frenzy rolling " says :


This mysterious medicine I take This mysterious medicine I take May this man mysteriously recover.


The following Chippewa love-song will also serve as another illustration, although it contains more substance, and a greater number of words:


Wi ha ya dinawido Wi ha ya dinawido Ki awa-we Wi ha ya dinawido


Wi ha ya dinawido Ki awa-we-yo


Ozam gosha kiwawa nishkom E do Kikona ninga nadin


Kikona ninga nadin Gosha we go.


This poetical effusion expresses ( for I beg to be excused from translating it) the injured feelings of some noble youth of the tribe, whose aesthetic nature had been sorely tried because his sweetheart persisted in walking with her toes turned in too much.


Longfellow, with the true poet's skill and quick percep- tion of the fitness of things, has imitated this tendency to repetition in his Song of Hiawatha. You will at once


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recall some of the clusters of slightly varying lines with which it is crowded. I quote one which occurs near the beginning of the poem:


O my children ! my poor children !


Listen to the words of wisdom,


Listen to the words of warning,


From the lips of the Great Spirit,


From the Master of Life who made you !


I have given you lands to hunt in,


I have given you streams to fish in,


I have given you bear and bison,


I have given you roe and reindeer,


I have given you brant and beaver,


Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,


Filled the rivers full of fishes ;


Why then are you not contented ? Why then will you hunt each other ?


Every reader has been conscious of the weird effect of this peculiarity of the poem though he may not have stopped to explain it. Had an inferior poet attempted what Longfellow accomplished so successfully, he would have produced only a monotonous caricature. Traces of this characteristic of the earliest compositions, of "rustici- ty" as Horace would say, "remained for a long time and still remain." They are found in choruses and refrains, in assonances and alliterations. Early Anglo-Saxon poe- try had neither rhyme nor rythm. Its form was based upon alliteration. The repetitious style of early Hebrew poetry is in perfect harmony with this principle. The negro songs of the South might also be cited in further illustration of this point.


But the repetition of the same word or group of words does not constitute literature, far removed as these may be from harsh tones and jangling noises. Other elements


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are necessary. Rythm is the controlling influence in poe- try and not without large influence on prose. We must therefore inquire into its nature, origin and growth.


An able writer makes the statement that "rythm and metre, are, in fact, a remnant of the dance which once formed an integral portion of poetry and music." This implies that rythm of motion preceded rythm of sound and language. An interesting fact if true. We know that the dance, that is, bodily movement, was a regular accompaniment of music and song in their rude begin- nings. And perhaps it is right to say that it was an "in- tegral part" of them, inasmuch as dance, song and music together formed only a wild medley which would not bear disintegration. But still the nature and origin of rythm are unexplained. We must analyze it more care- fully. The two factors of which it is composed are time and accent. The latter, which has exerted so marked an influence upon the growth of language, will be referred to under the second general division of our subject. The former claims our attention at this point.


The power to mark regular short intervals of time, whether by clapping the hands, stamping the feet, or by regular movements backwards and forwards, is early manifest in the history of civilization. The oldest musi- cal instruments are with good reason believed to have been instruments of percussion: drums, cymbals, bells; instruments with which to gratify man's innate love of noise. Wind and stringed instruments were devised later. That is, first time, then tune; first regularity of tone, then variety, or variation of pitch. Not that the faculty or or- gan of time was called into action before that of tune. Very possibly the opposite of this was true. But it de-


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veloped more rapidly. Drumming was no doubt the first-music shall I call it ?- made by man; the drum his first unmusical instrument. Whatever musical effect is produced by drumming results from a regular, or regular- ly irregular, repetition of the same sound. This marks one of the first steps in the development of the musical faculty. When man learned to drum, instead of beating his instrument furiously, he had made one step of progress toward the perception and enjoyment of perfect harmony.


Instead of din and discord we now have regular recur- rence of tone. Noise changed by the introduction of the time element into agreeable sound. The next step in this direction leads to musical sound, a periodic and rapid suc- cession of vibrations, and so in a sense an outgrowth and refinement of time. To trace further the development of music, whether vocal or instrumental, is aside from our present purpose.


The ancient and primitive pastime of dancing, also hastened the development of rythm. Unregulated move- ments are awkward and tiresome. They may answer for a war-dance or a bacchanalian revel, but not for respectful worship or subdued pleasure. These require regular movements. The chanting of the choral song, probably the immediate forerunner of true literature, was accom- panied with dancing, or at least regular movements of some kind. Thus music, song and dance were combined. But the music was without harmony, the song without beauty, and the dance without grace. Time was the con- trolling element.


We have now reached a deeply interesting point in our investigation. We are at the close of what may be termed the ante-literary age. Time has dealt kindly with


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a few songs of this period, and they shed a flood of light upon the beginnings of literature. The song of the Arval Brothers, one of the earliest compositions among the Ro- mans furnishes a good illustration :


Enos, Lases, juvate.


Neve lue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores.


Satur fu fere Mars. Limen sali. Sta. Berber.


Semunis alternei advocapit conctos.


Enos, Marmor, juvato.


Triumphe.


In this we have none of the exquisite harmony of Horace nor the melodious measures of Vergil. Nor has it grandeur of thought or beauty of imagery. It consists in part of a prayer to the household gods and to Mars for help, and in part of directions to the dancers or priests, as the following rendering will show:


" Help us, O Lares! and thou Marmar, suffer not plague and ruin to attack our folk. Be satiate, O fierce Mars! Leap o'er the threshold. Halt. Now beat the ground. Call in alternate strain upon all the heroes. Help us Marmor. Bound high in solemn measure." In order to adapt this song to the requirements of their energetic worship, and to satisfy their crude ideas of music and rythm, each line was repeated three times, and the last one five times. The effect of this is well reproduced in the following metrical translation borrowed from Wordsworth's Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin :


" Help us, O Lares, help us, Lares, help us ! And thou, O Marmar, suffer not


Fell plague and ruin's rot Our folk to devestate.


Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate !


Leap o'er the threshold ! Halt! Now beat the ground.


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Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate !


Leap o'er the threshold ! Halt! Now beat the ground. Be satiate, O fierce Mars, be satiate !


Leap o'er the threshold! Halt! Now beat the ground. Call to your aid the heroes all, call in alternate strain ;


Call, call the heroes all.


Call to your aid the heroes all, call in alternate strain.


Help us, O Marmar, help us, Marmar, help us !


Bound high in solemn measure, bound and bound again ; Bound high and bound again!"


The translation is more musical and poetic than the original, but even in this it is easily seen that the move- ment takes precedence of all else. The Salian Hymn must have been wholly analagous in character. The Li- nus Hymn of the Greeks, which was sung by a youth who also played the harp as an accompaniment, while others danced about shouting ai Line! shows a more ad- vanced stage of literary development. The thought and the metre of the song may be expressed as follows:


"O Linus, honored of all gods, For unto thee have they given, First among men to sing ditties Sung with the clear-sounding voices ; Phœbus in jealousy slays thee, Muses in sorrow lament thee."


These songs and hymns are marks of the struggle of the human mind for fullness and beauty of expression ; milestones along its pathway to artistic perfection. When the idea of rythm was sufficiently developed and not till then was true poetry, the earliest form of literature, pos- sible. "The language of poets," says Shelley in his De- fence of Poetry, "has ever affected a sort of uniform and harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less indispensable to the


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communication of its influence than the words themselves without reference to that particular order." Much of the beauty of Shelley's own poetry, which abounds in "ex- quisite harmonies of word and thought," is due to his rare power of expressing the subtle relations of sound, speech and thought. In the choral song the ictus was strongly marked, just as in marching the movement is indicated by stress on the word left, as left, right, left, accompanied by a heavier tread with the left foot. The transition from this stage to rythmical accentuation was very naturally and easily accomplished after word-accent had been per- manently established.


But poetry of the highest type requires more than rythm. Every true poet must have a soul full of har- monies. He must have a quick perception of the delicate relations between the word and the idea, between the sen- tence and the thought, between the entire poem and the subject treated. The words, the sentences, the rythm, the movement, must be infinitely varied to express all his varying shades of thought and emotion. They must combine to reproduce to the reader or the hearer, the pa- thos, the beauty, the ugliness, the grotesqueness, the re- pulsiveness, the horror of the scenes and events described. But this requires a language of the highest perfection; one as responsive to the ever-changing moods of the poet, as the keys of an instrument to the touch of the perform- er; or as the photographers dry plate to the image which flashes upon it and is gone. Literature presupposes not simply a language, but a language which is flexible, har- monious, mature. Had language remained what it was in its earliest stages, man's heaven-born thoughts, his airy fancies, his throbbing emotions, could find no fitting em-


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bodiment; his delicate perception of harmony and rythm could not help him to clothe his thoughts in pleasing forms; for a crude and undeveloped language cannot be used as a medium of artistic expression. It therefore be- comes necessary to follow rapidly the course of language development, to note briefly the influences which operated upon language and rendered it capable of expressing ev- ery intellectual act and condition.


When men first began to talk they used a few mono- syllables which have been termed root-words. These ex- pressed only general ideas. They could not be used for literary purposes. Their form and signification both for- bade this. But change is as much a law of language as of all else earthly. Eyen the more permanent forms which literature fixes upon it are not able to resist entirely the operation of this law, so long as the language is used as a medium of oral communication. Three distinct stages mark the course of language-growth or change, the monosyllabic, the agglutinative or polysyllabic, and the inflective. This may be termed the inevitable course of language.


All languages except the Chinese, which, like the peo- ple using it, is anomalous, reached the third or inflective stage before they possessed a literature. This was to be pre- supposed. A language composed of such words as terk, vreg, sek, bhor, pu, glubh, all of which are theoretically root-words, does not seem pre-eminently adapted to poetic measures. At the same time a monosyllabic language may be used for literary purposes as the Chinese has been. By a slight change in the first line of Longfellow's Ex- celsior, the first and third lines of the first stanza will be composed entirely of monosyllables, and still be as rythmi-


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cal and flowing as they are now, or as the other two, however much the sense may be affected by the change: The shades of night had come at last,


As through an Alpine village passed


A youth who bore 'mid snow and ice


A banner with this strange device, Excelsior.


It will be observed that this poem was written in iambic measure, and that the words upon which the ictus does not fall in the monosyllabic lines, are, without exception, modifiers or connectives. But if all words had equal val- ue this could not be done.


The same difficulty in another form would be met with in the endeavor to use in verse a language in its second stage of development. Such a word as the Greenlandish, and I may add outlandish, aulisariartorasuarpok, or the Algonquin Amanganachqueminchi, or the Mexican Notlazomakuizteopixcatatzin, could hardly find a place in light and tripping measures.


But change of form was not the only prerequisite of literature. The sounds of the language must become smoother and rounder, less harsh and rasping, numerous and varied. Many of our Indian names are melodious in sound and picturesque in meaning and as such are ready for literary use. For example: Ticonderoga, the place of the separation of the waters; Saratoga, the place of the bursting out of the waters; Ohio, the beautiful river; Minnehaha, laughing water. Furthermore, words must not only be pleasant to the ear in themselves, they must also be so in combination with other words, so that a sentence rythm is possible. And there must be a vocabulary suf- ficient to express all the heights and depths of the thought and fancy of the writer. It was a long time before lan-




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