The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

happy blending of long and short syllables, had long since shaken off the servile yoke of rhyme. Now, by rhythm was understood the number and respective duration of the time of which a verse was composed. ' A long syllable was equal to a time divided in two instants, and equivalent to two short syllables. A foot was what we name today a measure. The foot contained two times, made up of two long, or of one long and two short syllables. The verse most commonly used was the hexameter, that is, that in which the extent was measured by six rhythmic feet and of which the whole duration was twelve times. Thus poetry received only the laws of rhythm; it was a kind of music whose particular harmony, free in its course, was subject only to measure.

I have never found any authentic evidence that the Greeks had ever used the rhyme in their verse. It is stated, however, that they have not differed from other nations in this respect. Voltaire said so but without proof. ^ What is most certain is that, taking the word epos* a verse, in its most restricted acceptance, expressing a turn, a turning around again, the early poets constructed their verse in form of furrows, going from right to left and returning from left to right.** Happily this bizarrerie did not last long. If the Greek verses had thus turned one upon another, or if the rhyme had forced them to proceed in couplets bent beneath a servile yoke. Homer wotild not have created the Epopceia, or these frivolous obstacles would have vanished before him. His genius, incapable of enduring chains, would have refused to clothe itself in a form capable of stifling it. But this celebrated man would no doubt have changed it;

" See in the collection of Meibomius, Aristides, Quintilianus, and Les Mem. de I'Acad. des Belles-Lettres, t. v., p. 152.

" Voltaire, Diet, philos., art. rime.

* Refer to what I have already said in last footnote p. 40.

** Fr6ret said that the verses of the poet Eumelus engraven upon the arch of the Cypselidae were thus represented. Voyez sa Dissert, sur I' Art de I' Equitation. II cite Pausanias, 1. v., p. 419.

42 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras one can judge by the energetic manner with which he attacked that which he found in use. The Greek language, which preserved still in his time something of the Phoenician stiffness and the Celtic roughness, obliged to adapt itself to all the movements of his imagination, became the most flexible and the most harmonious dialect of the earth. One is astonished, in reading his works, at the boldness of his composition.' One sees him without the least effort, bending words at his pleasure, lengthening them, shortening them to produce something new, reviving those no longer in use, uniting them, separating them, disposing of them in an unaccustomed order, forcing them to adapt themselves everywhere to the harmony that he wishes to depict, to sentiments of elevation, of pleasure or terror, that he wishes to inspire.

Thus genius, dominating form, creates master-pieces; form, on the contrary, commanding genius, produces only works of the mind. I must say finally and no longer veil from the attention of my judges, the aim of this discourse: whenever rhyme exists in the poetic form, it renders the form inflexible, it brings upon it only the effort of talent and renders that of intellectual inspiration useless. Never will the people who rhyme their verses attain to the height of poetic perfection ; never will real epopoeia flourish in their breasts. They will hear neither the accents inspired by Orpheus, nor the stirring and impassioned harmonies of Homer. Far from drawing the allegorical genius at its source and receiving the first inspiration, it will not even recognize the second one. Its poets will polish painfully certain impassioned or descriptive verses, and will call beautiful the works which will only be well done. A rapid glance over the poetic condition of the earth will prove what I have advanced. But I ought to explain beforehand what I understand by first and second inspiration; the moment

' Court de G6belin, Mond. primit., t. ix., p. 222. Conf^rez avec Aristotle, Post., p. 20, 21, 22.

The Essence and Form of Poetry 43 has arrived for holding to the promise that I made at the beginning of this discourse.

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