In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, fabio paolo
barbieri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
Nobody has replied, so I guess it's up to me. And I have no answer,
only guesses. It seems to me that the invention of the distinction
between Classical and Hellenistic must be a feature of the late
eighteenth-early nineteenth sensibility that followed Winckelmann's
rediscovery - or is it an invention? - of the "noble simplicity" of
classical Greek art. Another essential stage in the invention of the
distinction must have been Schiller's famous essay on the distinction
between "naiv" and "sentimentalisch" poetry, a distinction that is
easily applied to any artform. Naiv means unselfconscious, direct, a
form of expression that does not reflect on its own being because it is
wholly concerned with the things it has to express; and sentimentalisch
means one in which the mode of expression, and the heritage of past
forms, are a major consideration, one that loses that clear directness
because the artist has too clear in his/her mind the need to work on
form as such and to react to the past. The very word "Hellenistic",
implying as it does a turning back to "Hellenism", a relationship that
is primarily with a past culture rather than with the living experience
of the present, seems to me to depend entirely on Schiller's
categories. I would, under correction, suggest that Hellenism as a
category must have come in in the first or second (at most) quarter of
the nineteenth century, and in Germany. At any rate, we all know what
an overwhelming influence on all modern thinking on the Classics
nineteenth-century Germany had.
The term Hellenismus/hellenistisch for the period between Alexander and
the Roman Empire goes back to J. G. Droysen's Geschichte Alexanders des
Großen of 1833. Before that, 'Hellenistic' had denoted the language of
Greek-speaking Jews (the Hellenistai of the New Testament), or what
passed for it before the papyri enabled us to distinguish between
specifically biblical usages and the general development of the
language; that sense, coupled with the fact of non-Greeks under Greek
rule and the racial commonplaces of the nineteenth century, coloured the
view of Hellenismus as Greek culture barbarized. When I was growing up,
the term used in the books I read at school for ultra-refined/precious
literature was not 'Hellenistic' but 'Alexandrian'.
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
--
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
Leofranc Holford-Strevens
67 St Bernard's Road usque adeone
Oxford scire MEVM nihil est, nisi ME scire hoc sciat alter?
OX2 6EJ
tel. +44 (0)1865 552808(home)/353865(work) fax +44 (0)1865 512237
email:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)/[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply.
Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message
"unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You
can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
