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VII. — On the Latest Phases of Literary Style in Greece. By Emeritus Professor 



Blackie. 



(Read 4th April 1892.) 



In the two papers which I had the honour of reading to the Society in the spring of 

 1890, my object was, in the first place, to combat the vulgar idea that modern Greek is a 

 corrupt and barbarous language, almost as far removed from classical Greek as Italian is 

 from the dialect used by Horace and Virgil ; and, secondly, to show that, between the 

 two distinct strata in which Greek had flowed down continuously from Constantinople 

 in a.d. 333 to the present day, — the literary structure used by educated men, and the 

 Greek of the popular ballads used by the uneducated masses, — a compromise had been 

 achieved by that great scholar and patriot, Adamantius Coraes. This compromise was 

 made on the principle that the unity of action on which Greek nationality depends, 

 requires that the learned classes should cheerfully adopt those few idiomatic peculiarities 

 which had asserted themselves in the thought and expression of the great mass of the 

 people ; while the great body of the language bore visibly the stamp of those whose 

 genius in Church and State had shaped it forth in the Attic and Byzantine periods. On 

 this basis the modern Greek language was left at the death of Coraes in 1833. But it is 

 not to be imagined that a formative rule of this kind, in the mode of national speech, 

 could be established at a stroke. All living language, like all living things, is a growth ; 

 and besides, no exact law could be laid down for the limits of the compromise ; and the 

 practical result of this giving and taking on both sides during the course of two genera- 

 tions, from the establishment of the Greek kingdom in 1830 to the present hour, is what 

 in this paper I intend to lay in some detail before the Society. Of course, in such 

 circumstances there would naturally grow up two styles of literary expression, the one 

 inclining more to the popular side, the other to the side of the higher culture ; and these 

 two tendencies exist to the present hour, one class of writers inclining more to the 

 •Xy&ala, or vulgar, and the other to the KaOapevovo-a, or the usage of classical purity. But 

 though there are two distinct tendencies, with some intermediate shades of variation, it was 

 not difficult to prophesy on which side, under the action of powerful forces, the ultimate 

 preponderance would be. These forces were three : — first, the natural tendency of the 

 lower stratum of society, in proportion as intelligence and education advance, to imitate 

 the style of their social superiors ; second, the pride that the Greeks felt, especially after 

 the glorious result of the War of Independence, in their inheritance of a language which 

 had conquered the world by its wisdom, and triumphantly refused to be corrupted by 

 centuries of Roman, Italian, and Turkish domination ; and third, perhaps most powerful 



VOL. XXXVII. PART I. (NO. 7). S 



