He said: "This large-scale spread abroad is bound to have a major impact. Greek culture has been processed, transformed and revived by people who are sometimes not Greeks. At that time, great works were created in the form of today's European civilization. " However, regardless of their worldwide significance and value, Severus expressed a hesitation: their Greek themes were external and superficial. He said: "The Greek culture in Europe has been established, so what is the Greek culture of the Greeks?"
It was this question put forward by Severus that deepened the unusual experience we gained during our trip to Greece. How did the secular life of the Greeks turn into sacred glory in the city-states established from the 6th century BC to the 4th century BC? Since the great civilization once created by the Greeks can shine like the sun in the modern world for thousands of years, why is it not so dazzling? How did the Greeks maintain a realistic and symbolic relationship with this intellectual Sun?
Historian Kito's hint to the search for Greek culture is that nothing can express the Greek spirit better than tragedy, so the trip to Greece can start from the ruins of Dionysus Theatre on the south side of the Acropolis.
This theater named after Dionysus is the earliest one in Greece. It walks along the mountain, and the Acropolis is above the cliff backed by the audience on the 20th floor.
The earliest tragic competition took place in 534 BC, and all the great tragic poets of ancient Greece participated in the competition. Their statues were erected in the 4th century BC.
Known as the "father of tragedy", Aeschylus won the grand prize of 13 here before his death, and won it four times after his death. In 458 BC, his last trilogy Orestes (Agamemnon, Dionysus, Nemesis) was not only staged in this theater, but also seemed to be related to the spiritual ideal of this city-state. After Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, his son Orestes, under the instructions of Apollo, avenged his father and killed his mother. Although this behavior was affirmed by Apollo, it was not tolerated by Nemesis. For revenge, Orestes fled into the temple of Apollo. Thus, this behavior shows the conflict between Apollo and Nemesis: Apollo defended the order of the city-state, and if his wife's crime of killing her husband is not punished, it will threaten and disintegrate this order; Revenge guards the deepest instinct in human nature, while killing mother transcends this deep humanity and tramples on the sanctity of blood relationship. Orestes himself achieved the dual nature of revenge and crime in contradictory emotions. Finally, Athena decided to judge Orestes by a jury composed of Athenian citizens. This is the first gathering of the Supreme Court of Athens, and it is also the spiritual source of this gathering. Finally, the votes of both sides were equal, and Athena released Orestes out of concern for Athens. However, the ancient mission represented by Nemesis has not been abolished, but carried forward in the form of propaganda. From then on, Nemesis not only punishes violence in the family, but also punishes violence in the polis or destroys social order. Theater under the Acropolis, Nemesis settled in Athens. However, Agamemnon's daughter who sacrificed to God could not be resurrected, Agamemnon was killed by his wife to avenge his daughter, and his mother was killed by his son to avenge his father, all of which could not be resurrected. All hatred and desire for revenge are irresistible to human beings.
Greek tragedies are very different from Shakespeare's later tragedies, just as their plays are different from the audience. Dickinson, a British historian, said that Shakespeare's plays can transform people's lives at will, and he can create "tit-for-tat" cynicism, "Hamlet's disappointment" and "the storm's heroism, leaving a unique landscape. The function of Greek tragedy leaves a nautical chart of human destiny, so it is not to show the richness of life, but to give an explanation-"this is the universal nature of Greek tragedy." What Aeschylus wants to explain in his last tragedy is that in the polis, public justice is higher than private revenge, and the concept of order should be coordinated with human instinct. The most serious problem of human morality and social entanglement has been solved, and the solution is the polis.
This theater can accommodate tens of thousands of people, almost half of the number of citizens in Athens at that time. The scale of this building is usually judged by its splendor in today's perception, but in ancient Greece, it was not the audience who came here to watch the play. They don't have to buy tickets, but citizens. They must vote for the winner of this drama, the criterion is whether it warned human life and saved their city-state life with their Acropolis as the backing. The importance of the city-state to the citizens of ancient Greece can be imagined from the scale of this theater.
The ancient Greeks alone controlled the eastern Mediterranean for a long time, and they had enough space to do similar experiments in the laboratory to verify to what extent and under what conditions, what kind of civilization height human nature could create. This period is from the 6th century BC to the 4th century BC.
In the spatial expression of the polis, the Greeks expressed their sense of existence as a unity and realized secular life under the protection of God. This is a space of life and a space of Greek spirit.
As Aeschylus' plays show, Athena, as the patron saint of Athens city-state, balances the conflicts of various emotions and desires in the city-state, and the temple of Athena seems to be the spiritual guardian on the Acropolis. In the south of the Acropolis, there are tragic poets explaining the life of the Acropolis every year. Farther away is the stadium of the first modern Olympic Games, which was built on the ruins of the Pan-Athena Stadium more than 2,000 years ago. On the northwest side of the Acropolis, daily life is carried out with Agora Square as the center, and a citizens' meeting is held.
Take a restoration map of Athens in the 5th century BC, and now you can find some relics. Walking northwest along the gate of the Acropolis, there is a rugged mountain road covered by rocks and trees. This used to be the Pan-Athena Avenue. The Athenians must have taken this road to the Pan-Athenian Festival on the Acropolis to worship the gods. This road is also connected with the square related to the essence of city-state life. The square used to be a gathering area for courts, prisons, parliaments, mint and craftsmen's workshops, but now only the square and hephaestus Temple can be seen relatively completely. This is the best preserved ancient Greek site in Greece, although its interior was rebuilt during the Byzantine period. Hephaestus is one of the gods in Greek mythology. He was born lame, but he is a famous craftsman. He struck two stones and made a skyfire.
This is the center of the life of the Athens city-state, and all citizens of the Athens city-state should participate in the affairs of the Athens city-state. Perikles, the consul of the heyday of Greece, said that people who don't participate in public affairs are called peaceful people, and in Athens they are called wastes. Aristotle put it even more extreme: "Outside the polis, there are either gods or beasts." Therefore, we can say that we can't understand Greek culture without understanding the meaning of polis to Greeks.
The polis is not a management machine, but a matter related to all aspects of life. The Athenians accepted Solon's justice and moderate reform. There is no single supreme leader in the polis, and the highest position is nine joint consuls. In Solon, the Senate with 400 people, and in Perikles, it was changed to a parliament with 500 people. Members of the Senate are decided by lot, not elected, which means that all citizens can enter the Senate without running for election. The chairman of the Senate is the symbolic supreme leader, but all the members take turns to be on duty for one day. This city-state system is called democratic politics, because the power is in the hands of all citizens, so the life of the city-state is free and open, and all secular affairs can be discussed in public squares. Every year, there are 10 citizen meetings, in addition to dozens of ordinary citizen meetings. In principle, all citizens can attend the citizens' meeting. At the citizens' meeting, all people can put forward their own plans for city-state affairs, and different opinions can be compared and argued together. The public space of the polis pushed Greece into a "world of opinions", and all kinds of conflicting opinions tested each other, thus controlling any radical and rash actions and reaching a just solution.
In the Iliad, Homer pays attention to the vast human life. He didn't ignore the sadness that one person's glory brought to others, but the meaning of the doctrine of the mean seems vague. When he arrived in Heraclitus, he expressed it more clearly: "Even the sun god will not cross his boundary, otherwise the vengeance and the gods who uphold justice will expose him." Greek tragic poets preached similar warnings year after year: the beauty of justice, the danger of ambition and the stupidity of violence.
The Greeks generally accepted the hypothesis that the polis originated from the demand for justice and could also form a complete and just life. They have a good interest in all kinds of natural, spiritual and emotional activities, and have endless interest in observing people's behavior. The Greeks didn't think everything was empty. The democratic form of city-state stimulates and satisfies people's instinct and talent, and becomes the focus of people's multi-level life such as morality, rationality, aesthetics and skills.
In the spatial expression of this city-state, we can imagine that ancient Greece had an active outdoor life, and political issues, dramas, sacrifices to gods, sports competitions and important city-state affairs were all carried out outdoors. In the Greek city-state, having a theater, a temple and a stadium is just like having a square, which constitutes a complete space of the city-state and also shapes the personality of body and mind as a whole. Sports competition is a form of showing people's "Excellence" to God, and it is a respect for God and heroes. Therefore, sports competitions show people's overall Excellence, strength, courage and tenacity, not skills. So, Kito said, the Greeks would think that it is commendable, if nothing else, for a slave to master the skills displayed by the champions of modern golf. The Greeks believed that if a person could master this strange skill, he could not live a noble life as a citizen. The champions of the sports meeting will be regarded as heroes, and poets will write carols for them. When a person becomes a professional gold medal player, euripides will think that he is too addicted to it, so he wrote a bitter article to satirize him. As Aristotle thought, one should be able to play the flute, but not too proficient. The requirements of the city-state for citizens take care of the public affairs of the city-state, peace of mind and restraint as the standard of physical and mental integrity. It is hard to imagine that Greeks are fanatics. Although they have impulsive moments, wise balance is their criterion.
Perikles proudly commented on Greek citizens: "We love wisdom, but we will not become weak; We love art, but we don't show it off. " So we can understand that Greek statues, whether gods or heroes, always have symmetrical faces and stretched bodies. No matter when playing the flute or fighting, they don't laugh, and their expressions are as quiet and serious. This image was regarded as a model in that era and even in the Hellenistic era. Even Dionysus never overdoes it. There is a sculpture of Dionysus on the triangular lintel of the Parthenon, which is now in the British Museum. His body is balanced and quiet, showing at most an extremely internal sense of enjoyment. Although Spartan architecture and sculpture were steeper, and Ionian lines were elegant, Athens gained a kind of harmony, but their differences did not exceed the boundary of balance. A large number of Greek sculptures are scattered in the Louvre, British Museum and Art Gallery in Italy, but only in the corresponding positions of ancient Greek temple ruins can we get a complete understanding. In the polis, the temple carved with statues is the direction of rational spirit, and the art mentioned by Perikles is not the narrow art we understand today, which includes sculpture, music, handicrafts, agriculture, medicine, archery, cooking and so on.
Everything is regarded as a whole intuition, which is the source of wisdom in Greek life. In the 6th century BC, Thales, a citizen of Miletus, Ionia, was determined to find the only intelligent thing to silence the rapper. He found that "water" is the only source of the world, leaving the first clue for future generations to look at the world as a whole. He was also the first Greek who used logic instead of myth to express his firm belief in reason. Although he gave a wrong answer, the most important thing is that he realized a Greek spirit: regardless of the appearance of things, he sought the internal basis of world unity and simple truth. For the Greeks, this is obviously an exciting ideological road, and Heraclitus showed the harmony between two opposing tensions on this road.
When the Greek city-states showed weakness, aristophanes attributed it to the result that the Greeks were too clever.
The democratic life in Athens reached a logical climax, and they found the best way of life, according to Aristotle.
Debate is the most important form of city-state life. Any knowledge, values and ideas are brought to the square for debate and argument. When the public square of the city-state becomes a "world of opinions", all kinds of opinions can be fully displayed, and the speech about the future of the city-state, the lawsuit about past events and the praise of realistic achievements will all focus on value judgment. If the assembly agrees to a verdict, rhetoric becomes more and more important, and there is also a special debate gentleman. There is a story about sophistry that may be exaggerated, and the Greeks may use this exaggerated story to warn citizens of excessive debate. This story is about a young man who asks the wise man protagoras for debate and legal advice. They signed a contract that students will repay their tuition after winning the first lawsuit after graduation. However, the students did not become lawyers after completing their studies, so they did not pay back the money. Protagoras sued the court, and the student replied: "If I win, according to the winning judgment, I don't have to give money; If I lose, according to the contract, I haven't won the lawsuit yet, so I don't have to pay. " Protagoras argued: "If I lose, according to the contract, the disciple must pay if he wins the lawsuit;" If I win, according to the winning judgment, the disciple must also give money. "It is said that the judge can't handle this matter.
Faced with this situation, Creon, a staunch supporter of democracy and a military strategist, said that these people are becoming connoisseurs, not citizens. Socrates, who has always been dissatisfied with democracy, criticized that people would consult experts for such small things as building docks and walls, but when dealing with such extremely important things as morality and conduct, they let anyone express ignorant ideas. Socrates developed a dialectics, which is different from the narrative discourse of debate. Dialectics advances questions through dialogue and question-and-answer, in order to make virtue acquire a more solid and irrefutable logical foundation, rather than an untested concept. Socrates did successfully refute many fallacies, but hardly reached a positive conclusion. The only conclusion is the Oracle from the temple of Apollo: I know I know nothing. However, it caused an unsolved "Minos Paradox" in the history of philosophy. Minos asked him, "How can you study something you know nothing about? You don't know what that is. How can you find it? Even if you do, how do you know that's what you're looking for? "
During this period, Greek comedies were very active, mainly political satire, so aristophanes's comedies were often explored as historical materials. Different from tragedy, comedy focuses on the power relationship between people, the grumpy personality, the vulgar taste, the emotional troubles and tensions, and the resulting entanglements and dilemmas, but all these are still in the grasp of human reason, and it is wisdom that makes people out of the predicament.
Aristophanes's comedy Birds, which was performed in Beijing at the end of February this year, tells the story of two Athenian citizens who were tired of the city-state life with constant lawsuits and decided to find a carefree place to settle down. With the help of crows and magpies, they found the legendary bird country and established an ideal city-state. This play was staged in Athens in 4 15 BC, when the war of Athens, which caused heavy losses to Greece, was going on. The play is full of subtle melancholy, which may be a mockery of the political decision-making of the city-state. Aristophanes satirized a large number of people at that time, including Socrates, in the play Birds. Later, he wrote Cloud to satirize Socrates. My father had a personal hobby of equestrian addiction, which was difficult for him to accept. In order to change him, his father sent him to Socrates for ideological training. As a result, he learned dialectics and asked his father, "The law allows fathers to beat their sons. Socrates taught me that law is a norm made by human beings, not truth. Can we also make a law that can beat his father? "
Aristophanes admired Athens' glorious past and loved democracy in the marathon era. He criticized Socrates for inciting young people to be impious, and accused Socrates of questioning and interfering with debating skills, which shook people's trust in the moral foundation. Therefore, aristophanes attributed the depressed atmosphere in the polis to the consequences of the Greeks' excessive cleverness. Perhaps this is aristophanes's angry words, but the insistence on the concept of moderation and balance and even the pursuit of human wisdom reflected that another force invaded Greece at that time.
The ideal of city-state life comes from a lofty concept "arete" in Homer's Iliad. For citizens, this word is regarded as a concept containing all virtues, vitality and wisdom. The pursuit of "arete" leads the Greeks to respect the integrity of life from another level, which is also the source of strength and simplicity shown by Greek art, accompanied by disgust for specialization and contempt for efficiency, while the strength from another pursuit must be improved and developed to achieve high efficiency and strength, and this strength must be used at all costs. Strong desire, extreme means and fanatical religion are also doomed to the destructive power of moderation, balance and harmony. In the analysis of historians, this is the tragic reason for the collapse of the city-state.
The Greek spirit "has experienced the changes experienced by all living things and has never been interrupted." Severus saw in modern Greece: "Those who died in ancient times escaped reincarnation and stood up again, showing mysterious and peaceful smiles."
Under the impact of destructive forces, these great and glorious achievements have long been reduced to ruins. For strangers who are used to rapid and exciting changes, in modern Greece, they often feel that there is a background of slow breathing and resignation in the city. In fact, perhaps this is precisely the wisdom that the Greeks inherited from their ancestors. On the way to Greece, I took the poems of contemporary Greek poets Severus and Egri Tis, which can make this understanding somewhat circumstantial. The poems of these two generations of poets consistently put their feelings under rationality and repeatedly wrote about light and the sun, which obviously inherited the spirit of their ancestors. At the Nobel Prize awarding ceremony, Egalitis bluntly said, "Please allow me to speak for the light and clarity". The tenderness and joy in Severus' poems are particularly noble under the dual background of reality and history.
At the same time, they found their own way of poetry. After becoming famous, Severus changed the writing of "I" to "we", while Eglitis did not publish a poem in 10, and finally "was able to surpass himself". Although it is difficult to find the great names of ancient Greece in their poems, even the Greek mythical figures in various languages do not occupy much ink in their poems, but the Greek tradition of treating the world as a whole has enabled all their consciousness to be carried forward and purified under the sunshine.