The Tyranny of Greece Over Germany: A Study of the Influence Exercised by Greek Art and Poetry Over the Great German Writers of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries

by Elizabeth M. Butler

Originally published in 1935, this book provides a study of the powerful influence exercised by Ancient Greek culture on German writers from the eighteenth century onwards. The text takes as its starting point Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68), who was of fundamental importance to the introduction of Hellenistic ideas within the German intellectual tradition. This is followed by a chronological discussion of other key figures, such as Goethe, Schiller and Heine, revealing the complicated relationship between these ideas and the expression of an explicitly Germanic identity. A detailed index and bibliography are also included, together with illustrative figures. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in German literature, Ancient Greece and literary criticism.

Genres: History, Art, Germany, Romanticism

370 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Eliza Marian Butler was born in Lancashire England in 1885. She was a professor at Cambridge University. Her most famous books were The Myth of the Magus (1) & Ritual Magic. (2) She briefly cites the Great Beast, Aleister Edward Crowley. In her first book she casually mentioned him simply as "the amanuensis of Aiwaz." (3) She does not give any indication that she ever actually met or personally knew him. However, Butler did know Crowley & often used the name "Old Crow" when discussing him in her 1959 autobiography Paper Boats (4) which contains priceless stories which no biography on Crowley, to date, has ever bothered to review. She admits that she "cavalierly treated" him in her books & claims, "I have been blamed for this; but somehow, one way & another, I could not take him seriously." (5)
How did the two first meet? Well, it all began with her desire to visit Hastings & interview Crowley on the subject of magic while she was writing her first book, The Myth of the Magus. A friend who openly admired Old Crow gave her Crowley's address so that she could write him a letter. Crowley briefly mentions these letters in his diaries as "Chit from Prof Butler." (6) After corresponding she finally decided "to go down to Hastings & see what I could learn." (7)
On January 1st 1946, Butler found herself setting off from London by train to the Beast's lair at Netherwood. Upon arriving at Crowley's boarding house, a "small dark man, announcing himself as the manager, greeted me in the hall; & as we were exchanging banalities a seedy figure in light tweed knickerbockers materialised on the stairs & a grating voice was heard to utter: 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law'." Butler claims that her direct response to Crowley's statement was an unspoken comment which immediately ran through her mind: "In that case...I'm for the next train back"-but somehow she decided to stay. (8)
Her initial reaction to Crowley was that "he was more repulsive than I had expected, & his voice was the ugliest thing about him: thin, fretful, scratchy-a pedantic voice & a pretentious manner." (9) Unfortunately Crowley didn't give her time to get a second impression due to the fact that he quickly ran back upstairs to get an injection of heroin for his asthma.
Later they shared lunch together with Crowley discussing at length numerous theories regarding magick & "quoting grandiloquently from his own works." (10) While this was going on she states that "I began by detesting, loathing & abominating Old Crow, not so much on ethical as on aesthetic grounds." (11) After all the stories, rumors & horrendous things that Crowley had supposedly done throughout his life this woman simply didn't like his appearance! She describes Crowley as having "thick eye-glasses, a perpetual tear in the corner of one eye & a flattish yellow face." (12) During the meal she began to wonder what kind of pressure had been brought upon the management of such a nice, clean, cheerful little place as Netherwood which would have persuaded them to allow Crowley to establish residency there. His occult rambling attracted much attention in the commonplace British dining room, to the point of discomfort for Butler who watched several guests leave, wishing she could follow them.
Still, she stuck to her interview & after lunch she "followed the magus & the brandy-bottle up to his room." (13) As to Crowley's apartment, Butler states it had a feeling of "squalor, airlessness & indefinable atmosphere of pollution...it would need a Kafka to describe it." However, she later admitted she learned quite a lot from Crowley. All in all, Butler conducted four interviews that day from noon until 9:30pm with small breaks in between for Crowley to inject himself with heroin & for herself to clear her head & stiffen her morale.
At one point he tried to convince her that he was an instrument of Higher Beings & in order to prove this, he offered to make himself invisible on the spot! In some

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

07/23/2006

A Mournful Paean to German Scholarship on Greece

This is a delightful book, first published, I believe, in 1935. It includes chapters on Winckelmann, Lessing and Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Holderlin, Heine and a concluding chapter that includes a section on Nietzsche. A fine examination of the (over) 200 year fascination of Germany with ancient Greece. This wonderfully sentimental and evocative work, that is tinged throughout with the spice of despair, both examines and exhibits said fascination. See especially the chapters on Holderlin and Heine in this regard. I was still quite young (in high school) when I first read this book and it left me yearning for more Greece, and also, I add somewhat sheepishly, a bit of Ms. Butler too! Yes, of course it is not really serious scholarship, but rather a romance with and about such scholarship. But nonetheless, it is filled with fine observations. I pick two at (or near) random:

"Goethe and Shakespeare, Homer and Dante, tower above their fellows but stand with them on the earth. Their range is immeasurably wider than Holderlin's, but no one has ever reached the same dizzy heights. [...] Then came the time when this life in poetry gradually changed to a life in prophecy"

"Dionysus, who came late into Greece, came late into Germany too. Heine ushered him in and then left it to Nietzsche..."

Thus the Germans went from admiring the Greek gods to wanting to be them, which would not have been a problem if their conception of the gods did not go from the light of Apollo to the shadows of Dionysus. - With results that even today, in our dumbed-down world, are studied in civics classes throughout the land. 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' ...It really is such a pity that this bittersweet study is so long out of print.

[James Dempsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed passages from Goethe and Nietzsche.

“Excess, an inherent trait of the Germanic temperament, had been discernible in the inner lives of the Hellenists.”

Is this true? Or is it charming hyperbole?

[Luby K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tyranny of (Germany's (i.e. Wincklemann's) Ideal of) Greece Over Germany

[Gabriel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is dated, but if you suspend any resistance to history through character studies which was after all the prevailing method for centuries, you will learn from it. It will prepare you to understand German "Philhellenism" or "Graecophilia" which led to the Gymnasium system and underpins much of our liberal arts education. This Graecophilia, as demonstrated by the book I read alongside this one(Down From Olympus), has an ambivalent history as both a vector of liberal hope up until the 1830's, and a keystone of western chauvinism and false identity from then on.

The style reminded me a little of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, which I read more than forty years ago, portraying the psychology of a movement through a series of understated psychological portraits.

Among the protagonists are Winkelmann, Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and von Humboldt.

Winkelman, like that other art hustler Walter Pater, is somewhat loathsome.

[Pedro · Rating 2 out of 5]

O livro é estilisticamente muito elegante, mas não cumpre as funções de um bom ensaio, a saber, bagunçar o coreto, desestabilizar, propor uma nova interpretação. Mesmo com a beleza da escrita da sra. Butler, o livro acaba se perdendo na erudição pesada e sem direção. Vale apenas pela conclusão, uma idéia interessante que poderia ter servido de Leitmotiv desde o início: a obsessão dos alemães pelos gregos foi um mal. Pena que a autora foque mais no aspecto biográfico do que no conceitual e nas idéias.

[Christel Devlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, well-written, memorable.