The Writing-Practice Journal

Grandeur in Literature -- article

Grandeur and illusion go hand in hand. When Edgar Allen Poe wrote, “The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” he was not exaggerating. If grandeur is the quality or state of being impressive or awesome, in western civilization, Greeks and Romans own that crown, for they created great literature from the illusions of mythology.

“If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: "Thou shalt not ration justice." Sophocles
How humble Sophocles was, but how majestic is his work!

Accordingly, the Romans who followed on the footsteps of the Greeks also feared them. Virgil said:
I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.

Still, at the east side of the world, alongside the Greeks and the Romans, the culture of China, India and the entire orient should not be cast aside. They, too, possessed grandeur and illusions.

After China entered the world history around eighteenth century B.C. and the Shang dynasty held power over he lesser tribes, the Chinese civilization gained a regal importance. With the advent of a unique writing system of 5000 characters, the literature of China was born on 'oracle bones'.

Oracle bones were fragments of animal bones and tortoise shells on which questions to gods were inscribed. To this day, I-Ching, or "The Book of the Change" has been the oracular tool for the people of China. A quote from the I-Ching asserts:
He who possesses the source of enthusiasm will achieve great things. Doubt not. You will gather friends around you as a hair clasp gathers the hair.

In India, too, the oldest known language Sanskrit produced majestic works such as Veda and the Upanishads, the Mahabharata , the Ramayana, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, and Jayadeva. A quote from the Bhagavad-Gita attests to the majesty of Indian stories, of kings and their sons fathered by the gods:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty one ...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.

Closer to the West, Egyptian writing and literature flourished dating back to 3000 B.C., but the West only found out about it when the hierglyphs were decoded in 1812. Among the sun-kings of early Egypt, Akhnaton was the only monotheist. Some historians claim Akhnaton to be the same person as Moses and Oedipus, because of the coincidence of the time-frame inside which all three existed.

Yet, the grandeur did not stop with the Orientals or with works of the Greeks and Romans. It seeped through the centuries to reach the pens of the writers of the Renaissance, and it found fresh voices to sing through, like that of Cervantes who gave new life to chivalry in Don Quixote.

The Russian screenwriter and composer Samuel Hoffenstein said: Our grandeur lies in our illusions. As mad as Don Quixote might seem, he fought for his illusions. Without them, he would not have existed.

Thus, the majestic human drama was handed down over the centuries, from Aeschylus to Shakespeare, and the foreboding for the man's fate was sealed in grandeur.
Macbeth: Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

As Dante penned it down, the grandeur in literature is inseparable from the illusions and achievements of man, even though the man's fall is sometimes inevitable.
"Oh human race, born to fly upward,
wherefore at but a little wind
does thou so easily fall?"