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LILA MARAKA
FRENCH CLASSICISM IN 19TH-CENTURY
GREEK DRAMATIC THEORY
Given the indisputable prestige and influence of French culture: French aesthetics, art,
letters and above all drama and theatre following its first period of ascendancy in the
17th century (the “great”, as it is called) in all of Europe, and above all in the European
periphery where intellectual and cultural trends typically arrive late, but where the
French often acquires decisive influence and acts as a direct prototype, we propose to
focus our attention on a specific and truly noteworthy aspect of this phenomenon:
Greek dramatic theory’s insistent adherence throughout the 19th century to the model
of French Classicist dramatization that had prevailed a full two centuries earlier.
In the following study an attempt will be made on the one hand to trace the decisive
elements in the hegemonic ideological context informing this choice and on the other
to examine how the choice finds expression in dramatic theory, basing our investiga-
tion on two texts representative of the established modern Greek aesthetics of the
time, one from the beginning and one from the middle of the 19th century.
It is very characteristic and particularly useful from the viewpoint of the aims of the
present study that the writers of these texts did not confine themselves to elaborating
Classicist dramatic theory but aware of the developments in their own times they were
proceeding to oppose the arguments against Classicism formulating a polemic against
the contemporary newer forms and genres. Also characteristic is the fact that in both
instances, both in the expounding and in the refutation, they reflect the corresponding
French viewpoints. The intelligentsia of modern Greece (not only in the 19th century
which concerns us here but also in the 18th and indeed in the 20th) has taken its orien-
tation almost exclusively from French culture and letters, reproducing contemporary
intellectual and aesthetic tendencies as filtered through their specifically French re-
ception.
The intellectual awakening of modern Greece took place in the 18th century in the
framework of the Greek Enlightenment, stamped by the direct influence of the corre-
sponding and with pan-European brilliancy French Enlightenment. The decisive pa-
0324–4652/2004/$20.00 Akadémiai Kiadó© Akadémiai Kiadó Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht
Neohelicon XXXI (2004) 2, 109–120
Lila Maraka, University of Athens, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Theatre Studies, Univer-
sity Campus, Zografou, 157 84 Athens, Greece
E-mail: [email protected]
110 LILA MARAKA
rameters of the alignment with the Enlightened West and the turn towards the ideals of
Greek Antiquity were laid down by the intellectuals of the Greek Enlightenment. In
the field of aesthetics the alignment entailed Classicism on the French model. For
Modern Greek dramaturgy it became a defining element for the additional reason that
the great flowering of French dramatic art in the 17th century acquired a most power-
ful foothold in France itself in the 18th century, one that was further strengthened by
Voltaire’s choice of combining the standard Classicist form with the innovative ideas
of the Enlightenment in relation to content.
These general principles were subsequently to be consolidated following the estab-
lishment of the Greek state, impelled by specific peculiarities of Greece as a country,
the vital needs of the nation and priorities of Greek society. In the quest for national
identity, the only stable point of reference remained the unbroken link with the glori-
ous Greek past of Classical Antiquity, a foundation and point of departure of the claim
for a place among the European nation states. This priority was not called into ques-
tion by the conflict between the “progressives” who supported Europeanisation and
the “conservatives” who insisted on Greek tradition, because the dispute had to do
with the method and not in the first instance with the chief objective. Both parties to
the conflict accepted Greek Antiquity as their model and ideal; but the first regarded
the “enlightened” West as its historical heir and sought to effect the reconnection
through the transfusion of the European Lights,1 while the latter sought its renaissance
through the forces of the Greek nation themselves, finding it already present in exist-
ing manners and customs, in the continuation of ancient dialects in the forms of mod-
ern Greek, etc. In any case it was the positions of the former that were to prevail, since
the basic political choice of the newly constituted Greek state was to become inte-
grated into Western Europe, entailing forced Europeanisation from above, modern-
ization of the state and embourgeoisement of society.
In the field of aesthetics the aspiration was to effect a definitive imposition of the
neo-Classicist tendency and a revival of ancient Greek Classical art so as to draw at-
tention to the continuity between modern and ancient Greece. In this connection an ur-
gent need was perceived for a Greek theatrical tradition to be created that would make
absolutely clear the linkage between modern Greeks and their ancient ancestors in
a field where the glory of Greek achievement was indisputable, since even in the
West the theatrical writers of Greek Classical Antiquity were regarded as a model and
copied.
In the most general sense the Enlightenment, whose spirit comprised the basis for
the shaping of theoretical inquiry in Greece, wholeheartedly supported the creation of
national theatres in all of Europe which would function as forums for the spreading of
1 Of decisive importance for the evolution of this tendency is the Metakenosis-idea of Adamantios
Korais. In accordance with this conceptualisation the Enlightened West is recognized as the his-
torical heir (through the Renaissance) of Greek Antiquity, from which Greece was cut off by vir-
tue of the centuries-long obscurantism of its history, and with which it is to be reconnected, re-
ceiving the Lights from the West.
ideas and media of popular education. Greek proponents of Enlightenment similarly
saw in the 18th century and continued in the 19th century to see the theatre as an insti-
tution with an educational and moral mission, serving the spiritual and moral progress
of mankind and making the greatest possible contribution to the development of na-
tional consciousness, the shaping of the national language, the advancement of patri-
otic ideals, etc.
For all these reasons, the spirit of the Enlightenment in its belated modern Greek
variant as elaborated by Korais and his students and followers, remained strong and
continued throughout the 19th century to be the basis for every attempt at synthesizing
aesthetics or philology, notwithstanding its unmistakeably conservative coloration.
On the aesthetic level this conservatism prolonged the influence of the 17th- and
18th-century European models. Its predominating element is Classicism and it em-
braces the ideal of regularity in every domain: language, style and indeed art in gen-
eral. In the service of this ideal, foundations and institutions were established (like-
wise on the 17th-century French model) with a regulatory function, such as poetry
contests and the University.
From the contemporary European intellectual currents, without in any way threat-
ening the basic Classicist stance, there is selective co-optation of isolated elements
which are perceived as supporting Greek positions in relation to contemporary needs
and demands. The development of ethnicity, for example, in the Europe of the time
within the context of Romanticism’s turn to the People and to the ethnic peculiarities
of each country (its History, its populace, its traditions, etc.),2 in combination with the
romantic ideals of Liberty and its revolutionary spirit, contributed to focusing national
consciousness, heightening patriotic feelings and legitimating the demand for libera-
tion of the Greek populations still in subjugation. At the same time, Romanticism’s
turn towards the Middle Ages was grist to the mill of those on the lookout for argu-
ments against Fallmerayer,3 making possible a rehabilitation of Byzantium4 as the
Greek Middle Ages which becomes the connecting link between Classical Antiquity
and modern Greece, so as to indicate the historical continuity of a unified Greek his-
tory.
To provide an illustration of these basic tendencies at the theoretical level of dra-
matic theory, there will be an examination of two authoritative texts, one, as indicated,
from the beginning and a second from the middle of the 19th century. The first, the
FRENCH CLASSICISM IN 19TH-CENTURY GREEK DRAMATIC THEORY 111
2 The philosophical ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) on the language, art and cul-
tural history of peoples, etc. which exerted a wide influence generally, were not unknown in the
Greece of the time and the name of the writer is often referred to alongside Goethe and Schiller in
the relatively few publications that discussed intellectual movements in Germany.3 Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters, Stutt-
gart–Tübingen, 1830.4 By contrast, for the writers of the 18th century Enlightenment, Byzantium was a dark period of
decline of the Classical spirit and of Greek civilization, since here too what was reflected was
European Enlightenment’s corresponding conception of the Middle Ages as a period of barbaric
theocratic obscurantism.
Grammatika of Oikonomos Konstantinos,5 expresses the crystallized aesthetics of the
Classicist Greek Enlightenment. In the second, Ioannis Minotos’ History of FrenchLiterature,6 there are traces of the evolution which followed, necessitating a settling
of accounts with Romanticism.
The cornerstone of Greek theory of letters in the 19th century was arguably the
Grammatika, published in 1817, that is to say written before Konstantinos’ turn to
conservatism (which dates from 1834, following the writer’s visit to Russia and did
not even begin to appear on the horizon before 1820). At the time of writing it he was
still a militant exponent of Greek Enlightenment, a dyed-in-the-wool Classicist, an
admirer and follower of Korais, whose example he followed both in his embrace of
the ideals of Greek Classical Antiquity and in his orientation towards French educa-
tion and thought.
The Grammatika is a compendium of “the most necessary rules in the grammatical
arts” (p. æ´) whose declared aim is on the one hand “to arouse sensitivity to the good in
the young people of Greece, and emulation of the virtues of our ancestors” (p. ç´) and
on the other to teach young poets the “eternal and immutable laws of art from its earli-
est originators” (p. ëâ´). The recourse to Greek Antiquity is not a peculiarity of
Oikonomos. It is certainly one of the most pronounced characteristics of Greek En-
lightenment. Nevertheless, the turn from Latin to Greek classical Antiquity is an
achievement of the European Enlightenment, which, in contradistinction to the pre-
ceding Baroque period, in its Poetics projects as its model the writers and the works of
the classical Greek literary canon.7
Within this framework the model establishing the salient criteria for Oikonomos
Constantinos was thus Greek Antiquity, with the beauty of its natural simplicity, or-
ganic unity and measure. He drew the immutable laws of art not only from the ancient
writers themselves, first and foremost the supremely authoritative Aristotle, but also
from the writings of more recent theoreticians, almost all of them French Classicists.8
Nevertheless it is basically Aristotle who provides the support for Oikonomos’
views on aesthetics. Oikonomos’ interpretation of him follows the general guidelines
laid down by the European Enlightenment with its characteristic purely Gallic devia-
112 LILA MARAKA
5 Oikonomos Konstantinos, Grammatikon e Engyklion paideymaton Biblia 4, vol. 1, Viena, 1817.6 Ioannis Minotos, Dokimion Istorikon peri tes Gallikes Philologias, vol. 1, Athens, 1845.7 In relation to the turn towards Greek classical Antiquity a catalytic influence on the Europe of the
time was exerted by Johann Jakob Winckelmann’s (1717–1768) view of the art of the ancient
world as set out in his Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1762), where he distinguishes be-
tween the classical art of ancient Greece and the Romaic, highlighting the superiority of the for-
mer through the epigrammatic characterization: “noble simplicity and calm grandeur”.8 In a footnote of Oikonomos these writers and their works are mentioned, with particular empha-
sis on Charles Batteux (1713–1780): “We followed him in a number of different matters in the
Poetics, as a faithful interpreter and supporter of Aristotle.” (p. 14, note a). – It is worth pointing
out that the text by Hugo Blair (1718–1800) too is referred to its French translation, like most
works by writers of other nationalities (few incidentally) who in one way or another have found
their way into the Grammatika filtrated through their circulation in France.
tion concerning formal regularity. A host of observations on Tragedy refer one di-
rectly to the poetics of the Enlightenment, with its own specific interpretation of Aris-
totle. One indicative interpretation, for example, is that of the Aristotelian catharsis:
The aim of Tragedy is to provide catharsis from the fear and pity it engenders in the audience.
This catharsis means nothing more than moderation and sweetening of these two passions.
[…]. Representing fantastic actions, Tragedy awakens pity and fear, but at the same time
moderates these passions, averting the shattering effect they would have on the soul of the
spectator if the actions were real (p. 337).
Likewise very characteristic of the spirit of Enlightenment is the emphasis placed on
the benefit of the audience by this procedure, since the representation of fictitious mis-
fortunes
teaches a person to be philanthropic and magnanimous in cases of real misfortune […] and
not succumb […] to immoderate fear […] and unavailing pity, and though idle and at a loss
[…] to fear rationally and to pity […] with compassion (p. 338).
In this way Tragedy trains the person to distinguish between
fear and terror, pity and petty-mindedness […] and the theatre becomes a most beneficial and
edifying school (p. 339).9
To summarise, the key points of the Aesthetics of Enlightenment as reproduced in
the Grammatica are mimesis of nature, truthfulness, apparent truthfulness and proba-
bility. Emphasis is placed on the dual character of Art, which delights but is also use-
ful. Similarly emphasised is Art’s objective of refining human morals and exciting
sympathy, generosity and philanthropic instincts and there is mention of the tears of
emotion which the drama can evoke in an audience and an underlining of the pleasure
to be derived from the moral edification of poetry. Particular importance was attached
to the disciplinary role of poetry in sharpening the aesthetic judgement that can distin-
guish between “the virtuous and the vicious” […], discerning “that which is right and
proper” (p. 45) and is for the poet just as indispensible as poetic genius and the im-
pulse of fantasy because it safeguards the aesthetic standard of art with the assistance
of rules on the basis of which its regulatory work is instituted.
For Oikonomos Konstantinos the rules “were and are, both then and now, and al-
ways, a necessity” (p. 6). He accepts the objection that the models existed before the
rules, that the works of Sophocles and Euripides were written before Aristotle’s
“Poetics”, but argues that the rules emerged from them, i.e., they had prior existence
only from the fact of their later formulation. He also accepts that Homer, and of more
recent writers Dante, Milton, Shakespeare and Lope de Vega “neither knew nor ob-
served the rules of art” (p. 8), but as a riposte then asks: “What are the Rules if not reli-
able directions for successful imitation of Homer?” (ibid.), leading to the conclusion
that where those who wrote without rules have succeeded, it is where their work has
complied coincidentally with them.
FRENCH CLASSICISM IN 19TH-CENTURY GREEK DRAMATIC THEORY 113
9 Emphasis added.
With Greek Classical Antiquity an absolutely decisive model for imitation, re-
flected through the prism of Enlightenment with declared sources of almost exclu-
sively French Classicist orientation to underwrite the validity of his literary work, for
Oikonomos Konstantinos the highest criterion in art is that of regularity and the extent
to which the work of art, following the rules extracted from the masterpieces of Antiq-
uity, approximates the ancient Classical ideal.
For dramatic writing the Classicist dramaturgical rules are unconditionally appli-
cable, so much the rule of the three unities as the rule of class determination of the
heroes in terms of the dramatic genre, not to mention the strict separation of the genres
in general and the different style prescribed for each: lofty in the case of Tragedy and
humble in that of Comedy.
Thus, whatever does not correspond to the ideal archetype of Classical Antiquity:
imitation of nature, the beauty of simplicity, unity, economy, symmetry and propor-
tion between the component parts, etc., or contravenes the regularity that renders pos-
sible the faithful imitation of ancient models, is frowned upon, or even condemned, by
Oikonomos Konstantinos. On the one hand as a Classicist he has his critical faculties
focused on the period of the 16th century preceding the imposition of the classicistic
aesthetic order, on the other as an exponent of Enlightenment he rejects the European
Gothic Middle Ages. Moreover the ideal of Classical simplicity leads him to dissoci-
ate himself from the overblown Baroque style and its excesses, its purposeless and un-
justified complexity, its intercalation of the marvellous and the improbable, its dis-
placement of Aristotelian fear by terror, etc.
The imperative prescription of regularity means not only rejection in toto of ep-
ochs, periods and aesthetic manners, such as the Middle Ages and its Gothic, or the
cloying Baroque style: it also means rejection of whatever else goes against Classicist
rules. Starting from the axiom that the heroic element and the loftiness of its passions
and convictions is the distinctive characteristic of tragic genre, he deems it improper
for ordinary people to be heroes of tragedy. He exercises thus a sharp polemic against
the dramaturgic reform of the Enlightenment which, overturning the Classicist
dramaturgic rule of class determination of heroes, introduced the bourgeois tragic
hero, so creating the type of bourgeois tragedy that Oikonomos Konstantinos saw as
symptomatic of degeneration of tragedy as an aesthetic genre.
On the question of regularity it is arguable that in Oikonomos the Classicist over-
shadowed the Enlightener, insofar as he did not accept the irregular even where it was
expressive of the bourgeois ideology of Enlightenment to which he himself sub-
scribed. Indeed he did not hesitate to turn rhetorically against itself the argumentation
of Enlightenment that the spectator feels pity for the unhappiness of kings only in their
capacity as human beings, adopting – this exponent of Enlightenment – the view of
the Baroque concerning the proportionality between the eminence of him who is un-
happy and the fear which his fall arouses in the audience:
For where else can Poetry find the consummation of the tragic, if not in royalty. Like us, they
are people too, […] but also there is a loftiness to them which, when they fall from it, makes
their unhappiness more excellent and all the more piteous (p. 347).
114 LILA MARAKA
Along with his observations on the unacceptability of bourgeois tragedy and iro-
nies on its private vile murders and lamentations there are also disparaging references
to that other similarly modern Enlightenment genre, the tearful comedy (Comédie
larmoyante).
The names mentioned among the preferences of Oikonomos Konstantinos as the
more illustrious European tragic dramatists10 include only those of older classicists
and more contemporary neo-classicists, namely the Italians Metastasio and Alfieri,
the Germans Lessing, Schiller and Collin and of course the Frenchmen Corneille and
Racine and the later Voltaire and Crébillon. In his attitude to Shakespeare, of whose
stature he was in no doubt (“the most sublime genius”, p. 406) there is a latent ambigu-
ity: he is “paradoxical” (ibid.), because of his irregularity, to be contrasted, appar-
ently, with the work of Addison, which is characterized as “more regular” (ibid.),while for the other great practitioner of irregularity in European dramatology, Lope de
Vega, who is mentioned immediately after them in the list of the most illustrious
tragic dramatists, Konstantinos had already formulated strong reservations about the
way and the reasons for not applying the dramaturgically necessary rules, but writing
“poetry erratic and improbable […] written to please women and his uneducated fel-
low-countrymen” (p. 10).
In conclusion it is arguable that following the criteria of Oikonomos Konstantinos
(Enlightenment, Antiquity, Classicism) the order of priorities means rejection of the
Middle Ages and also of the anarchic popular traditions of the Renaissance prior to the
imposition of regulatory order as part of literature’s turn to ancient artistic models. It
also means opposition to the stylistic elements of the Baroque (“weightiness”,
“inflatedness”, “Asiatic bulkiness” are some of the characterizations he deploys),
even where complete regularity is observed from the viewpoint of the Classicist
dramaturgical rules. The Enlightener’s opposition to the Baroque style is so powerful
that it is easier for him to accept irregularity in its Renaissance aspect. Thus the Re-
naissance character of Shakespeare’s work makes his recognition possible,11 and sim-
ilarly allows a recognition of Lope de Vega, albeit with reservations. Not to mention
Oikonomos’ complete ignoring of Calderon, in whose writing the Baroque element is
very conspicuous. No less absolute, finally, was his condemnation of bourgeois
FRENCH CLASSICISM IN 19TH-CENTURY GREEK DRAMATIC THEORY 115
10 A corresponding catalogue of contemporary European comic writers includes, apart from
Molière, the Englishmen Congreve and Vambrugh, the German Kotzebue and the Italian Gol-
doni.11 Recognition of Shakespeare is universal among the writers of the Enlightenment. This is mainly
due to the declared affinity of the 18th century with the Renaissance and its opposition to the im-
mediately preceding period of Baroque, but also to the historical fact that in shaping European
Enlightenment England had chronological precedence, establishing the model for other coun-
tries too. And in England there was never any questioning of the stature of Shakespeare. Thus not
only the modernists of Enlightenment aesthetics legitimated their views with the example of
Shakespeare (i.e., Lessing), but also Voltaire, who on the subject of aesthetics was not a modern-
ist, did the same. Although his own works never transcended the limits of traditional forms and
genres, he actively propagated the work of Shakespeare in France.
drama, either as Tragedy or as sentimental Comedy, signalling an overthow of Classi-
cist dramaturgical conventions.
The Grammatika, perhaps justifiably in the light of its character as a didactic work,
ends chronologically at the Enlightenment period. The writer does not discuss Ro-
manticism,12 unless one considers that the relatively extensive reference to Ossian,
with all the related argumentation on the climate and the peoples of the “arktos”(p. éç´, that is of the bear, in other words of the north), not only reflects the Enlighten-
ment stance of opposition to the Middle Ages but also touches the turn of Romanti-
cism towards the Mediaeval period and its poetry and that Oikonomos Konstantinos is
taking it into account indirectly contesting the elevation and promotion of Middle
Ages by Romanticism.
Of course this does not mean that in the Greece of that time there was no knowl-
edge of Romanticism, of its representatives and theory and the controversies it had ini-
tiated. Already Korais, who had introduced the name of the new current into Greek,
had taken a negative stance, stressing the opposition of Romanticism to Classicism
because of the Romantic impulse to depict nature “kakozilos”13 (that is lacking art-
istry and in bad taste). But in magazines also, if only from French sources, there are
references to the contemporary current of Romanticism.14
In any case, for established Greek philology, irrespective of the intervening devel-
opments in the first half of the 19th century in Europe, echoes of which can be de-
tected in information reaching Greece, the torch was handed over directly in mid-cen-
tury from Oikonomos Konstantinos to Ioannis Minotos with his History of French Lit-erature. Oikonomos, teacher and priest, in direct continuity with the 18th century, in a
general sense simply reproduces the Classicist viewpoint without concerning himself
with Romanticism. Minotos, from a similar point of departure but 30 years later and
younger (as he is still a student), feels obliged not only to support Classicism, but also
to launch an attack on the romantic tendency, still modern in Greece. If for the former
the formula Enlightenment ® Antiquity ® Classicism is employed, continuity with
the latter may be conveyed along the same lines as Classicism ¹ Romanticism.
The writer of the History of French Literature appears as a frank admirer of 17th-
century France, when French Literature was at its zenith. Afterwards came the Fall,
whose beginnings Minotos did not hesitate to place in the 18th century, ascertaining
progressive deterioration up to his own day when with “the newer dramatic genre
116 LILA MARAKA
12 Edward Young (1683–1765) and his Night Thoughts (1742–1744), mentioned by K. Dimaras
(see Hellinikos Romantismos, Athens 1994, pp. 15, 39 and especially 49), belong to the senti-
mental tendency of the later Enlightenment period in which the roots of Romanticism may be
found but which is not itself Romanticism.13 Adamantios Korais, Atakta, vol. B´, Prolegomena, p. êæ´.14 See for example a related article, published at almost the same time as the Grammatica in two
consecutive numbers of Logios Ermis (nr. 22, 15 Nov. 1819, pp. 853–863, and nr. 23, 1 Dec.
1819, pp. 893–902) under the title “Synopsis [= brief presentation] of the Present Situation of
Education in Germany”, and translated anonymously from the French periodical Bibliothéque
Universalle, 1816.
that by association was named drama, […] true dramatic art was ruined” (p. 333).
Throughout the book emphasis is placed on regularity, as measured against the mas-
terpieces of the 17th century and there is an examination of various writers, posing the
question of how far they wrote in accordance with Classical models, highlighting how
far there had already been a move away from these models (a fact which for him repre-
sented a corruption of French dramatic literature) and ending with a rejection of irreg-
ular forms and genres that went so far as to condemn Romanticism, that great oppo-
nent of Classicism, for specifically calling into question each and every rule.
Ioannis Minotos was in complete agreement with the general regulatory spirit of
his age, as mentioned in our introduction. In writing the History of French Literature
he placed, as he himself explains, particular emphasis on drama, with the declared aim
of presenting the model towards which Greece should orient itself:
given that in the shaping of our theatre […] of all the foreign theatres it is the French that we
shall imitate […], it is well that we should acquaint ourselves with it […] studying […] the
great examples it offers us (p. 74).
On the question of creating the national theatre some development is to be ob-
served in the 30 years separating the two texts. Oikonomos Konstantinos perceives
only the delay, voicing as a wish the hope that the theatre shall rise again, while
Minotos sees it as being already in creation and aspires to contribute to its regenera-
tion, intervening in the way it is being shaped and taking for granted that its orienta-
tion will be towards French Classicism, because he believes that only by following
that 17th-century model15 will Greek theatre in the mid-19th century become compa-
rable with the theatre of its illustrious ancestors.
In general the subject of antiquity and proper interpretation of the Ancients is a
question on which Minotos, like Oikonomos, feels competent to pass judgements,
even of a corrective nature, as descendant of the ancient Greeks and most authentic
heir to the ancient Greek spirit. The ideal of ancient Greece shines forth brightly in a
more modern era which feels neo-Classical and not Classicist and is for the historical
reasons cited above absolutely decisive in shaping the modern Greek outlook.
Minotos, therefore, as the person most competent to understand the ancient spirit not
only does not hesitate to correct those representing more contemporary inter-
pretations16 but evaluates and judges even his Classicist models on the basis of how
closely they approach the ancient tragic ideal.
FRENCH CLASSICISM IN 19TH-CENTURY GREEK DRAMATIC THEORY 117
15 Prescriptive imitation of 17th-century French Classicism is not only a Greek phenomenon but
elicits a response as early as in the first half of he 18th century in the theatrical reforms of Johann
Christoph Gottsched (1700–1766) in Germany too, which also manifests a significant delay in
theatrical developments compared to the rest of Europe.16 In relation, for example, to the element of admiration that is evident in the tragedies of Corneille,
he admonishes Voltaire and Laharpe’s presentation of it as an advance over ancient tragedy, al-
luding characteristically to “the chatter of the two writers about Greek tragedy, of whose spirit
they remained essentially ignorant” (p. 126).
It is to be expected that his judgements of the latter-day imitators of Classicism and
even more so of his detractors in the camp of the innovators who not only do not aspire
to faithful rendering of the ideals of Antiquity but also do not respect Classicist rules,
would be even harsher. Because it was through these rules (here he was in total agree-
ment with Oikonomos Konstantinos) that the Ancients discovered true nature “and
taught through the models they left us how we might imitate it” (p. 352).
The stance towards Voltaire, who as indicated above combined an exterior of con-
ventional regularity with a content of innovating Enlightenment, was correspondingly
double-edged. On the one hand Voltaire’s stature as the great 18th-century tragic dra-
matist was acknowledged. He was included, along with Corneille and Racine, in
the trinity of French masters of tragedy. On the other hand it was laid to his charge that
he had
contributed to the vitiation and descent into disrepute of Classical tragedy in France through
introduction at every point on the stage the philosophy of his age (pp. 203 f.).17
Given these it is no surprise that the revolutionary dramaturgical innovations that
accompanied the introduction of bourgeois tragedy, serious and tearful comedy, not to
mention drama which overrides any strict segregation of genres, were all resolutely
opposed by Minotos, as they had been by Oikonomos earlier. The stance was undiffer-
entiated, since for Minotos the defining characteristic of all these types of drama was
their non-regularity. He proclaimed his opposition to the content of the dramatic
which “presents distressing incidents or miserable scenes from everyday real life”
(p. 323), contrasting this to the very different objectives of the theatre of Antiquity:
But through the representation of spectacle the Hellenes aimed at the ideal, that is to say the
soul’s illusion through art, and thence to the ethical gratification of the soul (p. 324).
It was precisely this point: the ethical gratification of the soul as the aim of ancient
drama, something quite different from the utilitarian moral teachings to which En-
lightenment drama aspired, that explains the objection of Minotos, who – on the basis
of what he saw as proper understanding of the Ancients – rejects “such poetics as
might be penned by Diderot and his supporters” (pp. 325 f.) because it is one thing for
there to be coexistence of the emotionally moving element in Comedy, which is a rep-
resentation of human life, and another for a new genre to be created which has neither
the character nor the aims either of Comedy or of Tragedy, and which excites only
melancholy and reverie, for Minotos two decidedly negative psychological condi-
118 LILA MARAKA
17 It is worth pointing out that Minotos remains a proponent of the moral function of the theatre but
he does not subscribe to the way in which Voltaire and his supporters impart the lesson, nor to the
type of lesson imparted: Instead of spiritual uplift, with lofty emotions and passions, Minotos
thinks that what these authors offer is ideas, teachings and lectures, and so on. Probably he does
not subscribe to the content of this lesson either the subject matter of which was the ideas of
bourgeois Enlightenment. In general he considers that tragedy in France has lost its prestige, not
so much because of Voltaire but “perhaps because of the 18th century, a century of calculation
and scepticism, not of feeling and of art, as was the previous century, in particular” (p. 205).
tions, because “melancholy is no form of spiritual therapy and reverie is usually mere
idiocy” (p. 323).
Even sharper is the writer’s dispute with Romanticism, which in the first decades
of the 19th century had provoked intense literary controversies in France. Minotos did
not hesitate to take part personally in the contest of aesthetic systems which preoccu-
pied the French literary world, as a supporter and exponent of one side, the side which
admired the great traditions of the 17th century and beheld with anger and sorrow the
contemporary degeneration of aesthetics.
Minotos’ polemic against Romanticism starts from the Middle Ages, to which the
Romantics attach particular importance, situating in that era the roots of the ethnic po-
etry of European countries. Apart from the ideological condemnation of the Medieval
period as a time of obscurantism and theocracy (a view considered axiomatic by the
Enlightenment) and above and beyond disparagement of its aesthetics, Minotos also
disposes of the ethnicity argument by reducing Medieval art to influence from the
Arab world.
Our writer naturally does not omit to define his terms very explicitly from the out-
set:
Classical in the meaning of the word accepted here signifies everything in literature that is in
accordance with the examples and the rules of the ancients; Romantic signifies the opposite
(note ´, p. 348),
namely
that which is not good, not beautiful, not true, […] everything which goes contrary to nature
and to the rules and models which instil it (note ´, p. 351).18
On this basis he considers that the predominance in his day of the more modern
form of romantic Drama which confuses the genres, rescinds the rules and is an “inso-
lent frenzy of fantasy” is “the most sterile of all in France”. The Romantics, in
Minotos’ view, “on account of the spirit of innovation” violate the rules imparted by
the Ancients which secure the proper mimesis of nature, and while the poet should,
following the example of the Ancients, imitate only the good in nature, portraying the
higher emotions and so on, the Romantics seek, in the formulation of Korais which
Minotos quotes in support of his own argumentation to depict nature “kakozilos”, “so
as to express that which is unworthy of being expressed” (p. 350).
The “new Romantic genre in drama” (p. 270) is in any case a distortion of what was
laid down by Aristotle, because neither its dramatis personae nor its aim allow of its
FRENCH CLASSICISM IN 19TH-CENTURY GREEK DRAMATIC THEORY 119
18 This definition through antithesis to the Classical makes it possible to include a variety of mis-
cellaneous elements in Romanticism: widely different currents essentially antithetical to each
other, tendencies, styles, chronological periods, traditions, writers, etc., i.e., the Enlightenment
tendency towards sentimentality, the dramaturgical overturn that was effected in the 18th cen-
tury or the belated revolutionary phase of the Enlightenment by the movement of Storm und
Stress in Germany and of S. Mercier in France, as well as Shakespeare and Shakespeareanism or
the Middle Ages and Calderon.
being subsumed into one of the established dramatic genres, and because in the final
analysis it is neither Tragedy nor Comedy the general appelation “drama” has been
bestowed upon it:
because it has no stable rules and no distinctive character but is a chaos into which, higgle-
dy-piggledy, all the genres of drama have been emptied (p. 333).
The result of this confusion, and all the disintegrative features inherent in it, is that
“true dramatic art has been truly ruined” bringing in its wake “by means of the new
drama the total corruption of morality” (p. 334).
The association of irregularity, as aesthetic breakdown, with moral corruption, is
interesting, deriving as it does from what Classicists perceive as the characteristic Ro-
mantic stance of reflecting “kakozilos” not only the good but also the unworthy, the
unbecoming, that which is contrary to moral advantage, etc., so that the tendency to
immorality must be seen as inherent in Romanticism. And also the revolutionary spirit
that finds expression in Romantic drama (both from the aesthetic viewpoint with the
repudiation of rules, and by virtue of the liberal ideology that permeates it) is contrary
to moral order (both aesthetic and social). It is for this reason that amid the “social
chaos” (p. 332) that prevailed in the wake of the French Revolution “the modern-day
dramatic genre named simply ‘drama’ was able to thrive” (p. 333), because it re-
spected no rule either.
The question of morality is of particular interest because of its connection with the
problematic around the national theatre which, as indicated, very much preoccupied
the Greek intelligentsia of the time. The question of what is suitable and what is im-
proper or morally harmful was the most important source of friction between the vari-
ous parties and the multiplicity of viewpoints they professed. And it was around this
question also that the belated champions of Classicism in the 19th century focused
their polemic against latter-day drama.
For the established intelligentsia of 19th century Greece, of whom Ioannis Minotos
was a militant representative, the national theatre was enjoined to show itself worthy
of its illustrious past but also of its present-day mission, which was to educate the na-
tion and shape its ethics. For both of these reasons the contemporary Greek theatrical
repertoire must consist of works regular in form, edifying from the national and moral
viewpoint alike, able to inspire patriotism and other noble emotions, as did (both in the
past and in the present) not only the drama of Antiquity which through “awe and pity”
set “the example of endurance and patience […], and imparted the most sublime pre-
cept of duty” (p. 127) but also the older European drama which following its model
comprised the great tradition of Classicist dramaturgy. In this spirit, the French drama
of the 17th century appears in Greece of the 19th century as a model for imitation, as
being the most supreme, sublime and unique configuration of the Classicist current in
dramatic literature.
120 LILA MARAKA
