The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

■ Voyez Anquetil Duperron, Zend-Avesta, t. iii., p. 527 et suiv. Voyez aussi un ouvrage allemand de Wahl, sur I'^tat de la Perse: PragmatischeGeografische und Statische Schilderung . . . etc. Leipzig, 1795, t. i., p. 198 k 204.

" Voyez plusieurs de leurs chansons rapport^s par Laborde, Essai sur la Musique, t. ii., p. 398.

' Laborde, ibid., t. i., p. 425.

The Essence and Form of Poetry 83 anything could, however, make one doubt that rhyme may be natural to Europe, it is that ancient Scandinavian, in which are written the precious fragments which have come down to us concerning the mythological cult of the Celts, our ancestors, does not rhyme; also it rises often to the sublimity of Eumolpoeia. ' This observation, which makes us reject Arabia, will take us back to India, if we consider that there is plausible presumption in believing that the Phoenicians and the Egyptians who had so much intercourse with the Arabs, did not rhyme, since the sacred book of the Hebrews, the Sepher, that we call the Bible, and which appears to have issued from the Egyptian sanctuaries, is written in cadenced rhyme, as the Zend-Avesta of the Parsees and the Vedas of the Indians. ^

The outline that I have just sketched confirms. Messieurs, what I have wished to prove to you and which is the subject of this discourse, the distinction that should be made between the essence and the form of poetry, and the reciprocal influence that should be recognized between these two parts of the science. You have seen that wherever rhyme has dominated exclusively, as in Asia among the

' I will give, later on, a strophe from Voluspa, a Scandinavian ode of eumolpique style, very beautiful, and of which I will, perhaps, one day make an entire translation.

" It was said long ago that a great number of rhymed verses were found in the Bible, and Voltaire even has cited a ridiculous example in his Dictionnaire philosophigue (art. Rime) : but it seems to me that before concerning oneself so much as one still does, whether the Hebraic text of the Sepher is in prose or in verse, whether or not one finds there rhymed verses after the manner of the Arabs, or measured after the manner of the Greeks, it would be well to observe whethter one understands this text. The language of Moses has been lost entirely for more than two thousand four hundred years, and unless it be restored withjan aptitude,' force, 'and constancy which is nowadays unusual, I doubt whethter it will be known exactly what the legislator of the Hebrews has said regarding the principles of the Universe, the origin of the earth, and the birth and vicissitudes of the beings who people it. These subjects are, however, worth thte pains if one would reflect upon them; I cannot prevent myself from thinking that it would be more fitting to be occupied with the meaning of the words, than their arrangements by long and short syllables, by regular or alternate rhymes, which is of no importance whatever.

84 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Chinese, Arabians, Persians; as in Europe among all the modern peoples, it has excluded epopceia and has replaced allegorical genius by the spirit of romantic fictions; you have seen that wherever eumolpique poetry has wished to appear, whether moral or rational, theosophical or philosophical, it has been obliged to have recourse to a particular prose, when the form of poetry has resisted it, as has happened in China for the Kings, in Persia for the Zend-Avesta, in Arabia for the Koran; you have seen that wherever poetry has been preserved purely rhythmical, as in Greece and with the Romans, it has admitted eumolpoeia and epopceia without mixture; and finally, that wherever the two forms meet each other with all their modifications, as in India, it gives way in turn to all the different kinds, intellectual and rational, epic, dramatic, and romantic.