THE INTERDEPENDENCE of LITERATURE

By

GEORGINA PELL CURTIS

"There is first, the literature of knowledge, and secondly the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach, the function or the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding, the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy."

Thomas De Quincey "Essays on the Poets." (Alexander Pope.)

B. Herder,
17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo.
and 68 Great Russell St., London, W.C.

1917

PREFACE.

The author has endeavored in these pages to sketch, in outline, a subject that has not, as far as she knows, been treated as an exclusive work by the schoolmen.

Written more in the narrative style than as a textbook, it is intended to awaken interest in the subject of the interdependence of the literatures of all ages and peoples; and with the hope that a larger and more exhaustive account of a very fascinating subject may some day be published.

Chicago, Ill., June, 1916.

CONTENTS.

Ancient Babylonian and Early Hebrew
Sanskrit
Persian
Egyptian
Greek
The New Testament and the Greek Fathers
Roman
Heroic Poetry
Scandinavian
Slavonic
Serbian
Finnish
Hungarian
Gothic
Chivalrous and Romantic Literature of the Middle Ages
The Drama
Arabian
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Italian
Dutch
German
Latin Literature and the Reformation
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Philosophy
English

ANCIENT BABYLONIAN AND EARLY HEBREW.

From the misty ages of bygone centuries to the present day there has been a gradual interlinking of the literatures of different countries. From the Orient to the Occident, from Europe to America, this slow weaving of the thoughts, tastes and beliefs of people of widely different races has been going on, and forms, indeed, a history by itself.

The forerunner and prophet of subsequent Christian literature is the Hebrew. It is not, however, the first complete written literature, as it was supposed to be until a few years ago.

The oldest Semitic texts reach back to the time of Anemurabi, who was contemporaneous with Abraham, five hundred years before Moses. These Semites possessed a literature and script which they largely borrowed from the older non-Semitic races in the localities where the posterity of Thare and Abraham settled.

Recent researches in Assyria, Egypt and Babylonia has brought this older literature and civilization to light; a literature from which the Hebrews themselves largely drew. Three thousand years before Abraham emigrated from Chaldea there were sacred poems in the East not unlike the psalms of David, as well as heroic poetry describing the creation, and written in nearly the same order as the Pentateuch of Moses.

The story of the Deluge, and other incidents recorded in the Old Testament, together with numerous legends, were known and treasured by the Ancients as sacred traditions from the earliest ages of the world.

We learn from St. Paul that "Moses was skilled in all the knowledge of the Egyptians." He must therefore have been familiar not only with the ancient poems and sacred writings, but also with the scientific, historical, legal and didactic literature of the times, from which, no doubt, he borrowed all that was best in the Mosaic Code that he drew up for the Chosen People of God. This old literature Moses confirmed and purified, even as Christ at a later period, confirmed and elevated all that was best in the Hebrew belief. Hence from these Oriental scholars we learn that the Hebrew was only one of several languages which enjoyed at different times a