54) Some milestones in the history of European literature Written by Rainer: rainer.lehrer@yahoo.com Learn languages (via Skype): Rainer: + 36 20 549 52 97 or + 36 20 334 79 74

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Some milestones in the history of European literature In Homer's work, the gods fight humans and are sometimes killed by them if they have a sensitive or unprotected heel of the foot. Why do they participate in it at all? Perhaps life on Mount Olympus with its eternal life is just too boring. It is not enough to steal each other’s woman, especially when the husband is very ugly (Vulcanus) and is only interested in his ironwork and the wife (Venus), the goddess of beauty and love, is in love with the most beautiful of all immortal males. What a dream couple! Then, democracy came to Athens and later the Persians. One brought freer thinking and thus criticism and the other the teaching of Zarathustra (the world consists of a good and a bad power). The annual festivities, at which religious rites and stories were performed, degenerated and became a social and political criticism: - Why does Iphigenia have to die to appease a god (Poseidon)? - Why does Athens send her soldiers to Sicily when Spartans are at the front door? (The realm of birds) And philosophers were concerned with dividing life into branches of knowledge and establishing rules or giving advice. The Romans at first tried to take over the dramatic art of the Greeks quite unsuccessfully before they found their own style. Cicero the philosophy of state, Titus Livius the historiography, Ovid, Virgil and Horace the poems and their latest representative Boethius in the 5th century, who sat in a dungeon for months waiting for his own execution to comment on how beautiful life is. Then almost nothing happened for a long time, until troubadours in France rediscovered the beauty of women and old, pagan legends mixed with Christian elements. In Spain, it was Alfonso the Wise, who during the 13th century ensured that Europe could take on her lost, ancient heritage. He had a lot of Arabic writings translated and a huge library created. The Renaissance is said to having fed on it throughout Europe. In Italy, the comedia del arte springs from the passion plays (above all, the passion of Jesus was played. For the Messiah actor’s life often ended in the same way: on the cross.). In his "Comedia divina", Dante makes fun of everybody who wants to be a dignitary and complains that his Virgil, who leads him through purgatory, cannot enter paradise because there was no Christianity in his ancient days. It continues with Pietro Aretino, who in one of his works has a mother explain to her daughter how to become a successful prostitute and Petrarch's Decameron. Descartes soon opens the new thinking "Cogito, ergo sum!" = "I think, therefore I am" or "I only accept what I can prove", instead of "God created me, therefore I am" of the dark Medieval (Saint Francis of Assisi). Montesquieu teaches us the democratic principles of separation of power, Shakespeare wants to throw all the theatre art established by Aristotle on the dung heap, Locke talks about human understanding, Hume about the state as a contract between members of a society, Rousseau about education and Beaumarchais about the marriage of Figaro with satirical criticism of the outdated customs and manners of societies. Lessing establishes German theatre criticism, and a little later Goethe summarizes 2,500 years of the history of European knowledge in his Faust II, while Schiller storms the world with exuberant feelings. Back to list!

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