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by Antoine; Pythagoras Fabre d'Olivet
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In: Poetry·Philosophy & Ethics·Religion/Spirituality
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #69174.
The opening · free to read
In this twentieth century, the sacred books of the ancients are undoubtedly better understood than they were even by their contemporaries, for their authors, by the greatness of their genius, are as much nearer to us, as they were distant from them. At the close of the eighteenth century, the light which came from the illimitable mind of Fabre d’Olivet shone with solitary splendour and was destined to be seen by only a few devoted followers. But history shows that a great inspirer always appears at the beginning of every great epoch, and however small the number of his disciples, these disciples with their pupils form the magnetic chain which, according to Plato, carries his thought out into the world.
Fabre d’Olivet, born at Ganges, Bas-Languedoc, Dec. 8, 1768, was distinguished even in his own day not only for the extent of his learning but for the rectitude of his judgment and the sublimity of his conceptions. If one can infer from the all too scarce records available since the calamitous fire which destroyed so many of his valued manuscripts, he evidently suffered keenly from the fetters of mortality, and sought with unfailing fervour what Porphyry so aptly called the “Olympia of the Soul.”
Saint Yves d’Alveydre, writing of him in La France vraie, says, that it was in 1790, while in Germany, he received his Pythagorean initiation, the profound imprint of which marked all his later productions. After returning to Paris he applied himself to philological and philosophical studies undisturbed by the terrible revolutionary storm. In obscure seclusion he amassed, to quote Sédir, “a disconcerting erudition.” He became familiar with all the Semitic tongues and dialects, the Aryan languages, and even penetrated the secrets of the Chinese hieroglyphics.
It was during these ten years of retirement that he wrote his Examinations of the Golden Verses which were not published until 1813, with its dedication to the Section of Literature of the Imperial Institute of France. It is known that the Golden Verses of Pythagoras were originally transcribed by Lysis and that it is to Hierocles we owe the version which has come down to us. Fabre d’Olivet has translated them into French verse, the style of which he calls eumolpique, that is, subject to measure and harmonious cadence but free from rhyme, with alternate masculine and feminine terminations. In the Essence and Form of Poetry which precedes the Golden Verses, he illustrates this melodious style, in applying it to the opening lines of some of the well-known classics, and to others not so well-known.
These Golden Verses, so remarkable for their moral elevation, present the most beautiful monument of antiquity raised in honour of Wisdom. They formed the credo of the adepts and initiates. In his recondite Examinations, Fabre d’Olivet has drawn the metaphysical correlation of Providence, Destiny, and the Will of Man, in which combined action Destiny reigns over the past, the Will of Man over the future, and Providence over the present, which, always existing, may be called Eternal. One will find this given at greater length in his Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Origin of the Social State of Man and the Destiny of the Adamic Race: admirable work of this little known theosophist, “to give him the name he loved best to hold,” says Pierre Leroux in De l’Humanité.
The inequality of human conditions, upon which depend the social and political questions, forms one of the vital subjects of these esoteric teachings. He has also endeavoured to explain the true opinion of Pythagoras concerning metempsychosis which was his sacred dogma, and said that the dogma of transmigration of souls, received by all peoples and revealed in the ancient mysteries, has been absolutely disfigured in what the moderns have called metempsychosis.
His strange death, which occurred March 25, 1825, is mentioned by des Essarts in Les Hiérophantes, and other authorities including Pierre Leroux, have asserted that he died at the foot of his altar.
NAYÁN LOUISE REDFIELD.
HARTFORD, CONN., October, 1916.
Before publishing the translation of the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, such as I have made it, in French verse which I have designated by the expression eumolpique,[2] I would have liked to be able to submit it to you and thus be enlightened by your counsels or sustained by your approbation; but academic laws and usages, whose justice I have felt, have prevented my enjoying this advantage. The innovation, however, which I have endeavoured to make in French poetry and the new explanation which I have tried to give of one of the most celebrated pieces of Greek poetry, have seemed to me to hold too closely to your labours and to enter too deeply into your literary provinces, for me to believe myself able to dispense with calling your attention to them. I crave your indulgence, if in the demonstration of a just deference to your judgment I involuntarily neglect certain formalities; and I beg you to judge the purity of my intentions.
I claim not to be a poet; I had even long ago renounced the art of verse, but notwithstanding that, I am now presenting myself in the poetic career to solicit the hazardous success of an innovation! Is it the love of glory which inspires in me this temerity, which dazzles me today as my autumn advances, whereas it was unable to move me when the effervescence of my springtime ought to have doubled its strength? No: however flattering the wreaths that you award to talent, they would not concern me; and if an interest, as new as powerful, had not induced me to address you, I would keep silent. This interest, Messieurs, is that which science itself inspires in me, and the desire, perhaps inconsiderate but commendable, of co-operating with my limited ability for the development of a language whose literary and moral influence, emerging from the bourns of Europe and the present century, ought to invade the world and become universal like the renown of the hero who extends his conquests with those of the empire whose foundations he has laid.
I feel, Messieurs, that I should explain my thought. My assertion, well founded as it may be, appears none the less extraordinary, and I am bound to admit this. The disfavour which is attached to all new ideas, to all innovations, the just defiance that they inspire, the element of ridicule that springs from their downfall, would have arrested my audacity, if I had had audacity alone, and if the worthy ambition of effecting a general good had not raised me above a particular evil which might have resulted for me. Besides I have counted upon the judicious good-will of the two illustrious Academies to which I am addressing myself: I have thought that they would distinguish in the verse which I am presenting for their examination, both as a means of execution in French poetry and as a means of translation in ancient and foreign poetry, the real utility that they can offer, of the fortuitous beauty which they lack, and which a more capable hand would have been able to give them; I flatter myself, at length, that they would grant to the end, without prejudice, the attention which is necessary, and that if they refused an entire approbation to my efforts, they would at least render justice to my zeal and commend the motives which have made me attempt them.
When, after the revival of letters in Europe, Chancellor Bacon, legislator of thought, sketched with bold strokes the tree of human knowledge, and brought back each branch of science to that of the moral faculties upon which it depends, he did not fail to observe sagaciously that it was necessary to distinguish in poetry two things, its essence and its form[3]: its essence as pertaining wholly to the imagination, and composing by itself alone one of the principal branches of science[4]; its form, as making part of the grammar, and entering thus into the domain of philosophy and into the rational faculty of the understanding.[5] This celebrated man had borrowed this idea from a man much older and more celebrated than himself, Plato. According to this admirable philosopher, poetry is either a simple talent, an art which one uses to give to his own ideas a particular form, or it is a divine inspiration by means of which one clothes in the human language and transmits to men the ideas of the gods.[6] It is because, never having felt sufficiently this important distinction and having confused two ideas that ought to be separated, the essence and the form of poetry, which are as the soul and body of this science, that so many men among the modern nations proclaimed themselves poets, whereas they were, in strict truth, only clever versifiers. For it does not suffice, as Plato again said, to have poetic talent, it does not suffice to make verse and even good verse, to be called a poet[7]; it is necessary to possess that divine enthusiasm, that inspiration which elevates the soul, enlightens it, transports it, as it were, to intellectual regions and causes it to draw from its source the very essence of this science.
How they delude themselves, those who, habitually deceived, foolishly imagine that the lofty fame of Orpheus, Homer, Pindar, Æschylus, or Sophocles and the immortality which they enjoy, belongs only to the plan of their works, to the harmony of their verse, and to the happy use of their talent! These flattering appearances which constitute the form of their poetry would have disappeared long ago, they would have become broken, like fragile vases, upon the torrent of centuries, if the intelligence which animated them had not eternalized their duration. But this secret intelligence does not reside, as certain other superficial readers persuade themselves, being still deceived, in the simple interest that the characters mise en scène inspire; this interest, which results from their contrast and from the shock of the passions, is another sort of form, more hidden, and less frail, than the former, it is true, but as variable generally and subject to the great revolution of customs, laws, and usages. True poetry does not depend upon that; it depends upon the primordial ideas which the genius of the poet in his exaltation has seized in the intellectual nature, and which his talent has shown afterwards in the elementary nature, thus adapting the simulacra of physical things to the movement inspired by the soul, instead of adapting this movement to those same simulacra, as those who write history. This is what Bacon, the modern philosopher whom I have already cited, has felt so perfectly.[8] He says:
As the sentient world is inferior to the human soul, it is for poetry to give to this nature what reality has refused it, lending to it the faculties of the intellectual world; and as the acts and events which make the subject of true history have not that grandeur and that sublimity for which the human soul seeks, it is necessary that poetry create acts and events greater and more heroic. All must be increased and embellished by its voice and receive from it a new existence; it is necessary even that virtue shine with an éclat more pure; that the veil which covers truth be lifted from its eyes and that the course of Providence, better discerned, be allowed to penetrate into the most secret causes of events.
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