THE CRIME OF PROMETHEUS

images in religious practice, Greek art must constitute a spirit-
ual crime. Yet, could this art be cultivated purely for its own
sake or for curiosity’s sake, as a mere commodity of knowledge,
it would then entail no guilt and would be spirituatty uncom-
promising. To serve art, though, and not its gods—has one
ever done so without peril either to his conscience or to his art?

At any rate, as a result of an historical-Epicurean point
of view that regards art variously as illuston, the free prod-
uct of fancy, a picture of life, or as tonic to the emotions,
the stature of the ancient tragedies has diminished, even
though amidst the tenderest regard, 1n proportion to the dis-
tance and the disinteredness through which they are sur-
veyed.

The ghost of tragedy may haunt our theatres occasion-
ally, but its altar is tended elsewhere. Texts may be stud-
ied and glossed, but a Greek tragedy cannot be contained
by a text and much less can it be transiated onto a page.
Greek tragedy was, above all, a festival of seeing, a carni-
val, a plot for making a god visible, and it was celebrated
in broad daylight under the open sky. Modern taste, which
prefers to take its aesthetic fare in privacy and darkness for
the sake of an heightened illusion of naturalism and for a freer
play of fantasy, is too dainty to relish the sanguinary prod-
ucts of tragic artifice.

Drama, ancient or modern, is nevertheless a spectacle
of the human scene, designed for the public at large. The Athen-
" ian public, at home in the market place or assembly, was a
notoriousty word-intoxicated audience and one that never
ceased to admire the Word. Of all marvels, human speech,
the witness of reason,seemed to them the most wonderful,
because it was the instrument which could mediate between
men and gods. And because they believed, therefore, that
conversation was a way over which truth could be tracked
down, the Athenians resorted to the public places in order

- to speak and to listen to speech.
The modern public, composed of great urban masses that