The Pittsburgh Press (November 1, 1940)
I DARE SAY —
…
Ah, Apollo!
…
By Florence Fisher Parry
The saddest book among my books is the little pale green book (so thumbed and written over in the margins) that you and I carried under our arms as we trudged to our art classes. The little dear “Apollo” with its lovely little cuts of the statues of Greece and of Rome! Some of these lovely Venuses have mustaches; some of the handsome Apollos and Joves have stove-top hats and draped torsos, for there is nothing so tempting to a pupil in art class as to render in Modern Dress the illustrations of nude statuary!
But back of our innocent vandalism lay true respect and humility. Something like reverence would enter our hearts when we contemplated even the “copies” of the Parthenon and the Venus of Samothrace. A curious poise and peace would pervade our spirits.
Perfection performs a strange therapy. Its presence removes us to a realm quite unattainable, and for the instant we sense what must be the lofty reaches of the gods…
Do you remember – I do – the ecstasy that sent its shiver through you when you first read these lines of Edgar Allan Poe:
To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!
Catastrophic Times
So – when I pick up the paper and read – when I tune into the radio and hear – that the Prime Minister of Greece’s plea to Rome that Athens be spared from bombing, has not been answered – that the terrible possibility of the Parthenon being destroyed after all is actually hanging suspended for the vandals to cut a t will – I know then, I know for a certainty – that I am living in the most catastrophic times in all history; and that no act of barbarism ever yet enacted can match the Threat implicit in that hideous silence out of Rome.
For if Athens is bombed, then Rome is bombed, then Paris is bombed, then the end of beauty has come and the long torturous process of civilization begins again, a swaddling, upon the funeral pyre.
We say in our hearts: Nothing must happen to Athens, for the cradle of art is there. We say: Nothing must happen to Rome, for the majesty of art is there. We say: Nothing must happen to Paris, for Paris is the blithe song of art.
But even as we say these words, we know that London has been bombed, which to the stout Briton heart is as much of a Temple as Athens is to the Greek or Rome to the Italian. Who is to say which Temple shall be singled out to be preserved? For all are equally dear to those who call them Home.
Now there are cities which are the museums of History, and so we say they belong to the world and to the ages. But however pure the appraisal, it does not entirely suffice. A city to endure through the ages must LIVE. It must have a pulse, it must continue to BELONG to human beings.
Do you think for a moment that Athens, to the Greeks, is more HOME and more dear than Rome is to Romans or Paris is to Parisiennes or London is to England – to All of Great Brtiain?
No. Then how can we know that Athens must somehow be saved? We have no certainty, no certainty at all, that this will indeed be.
What age this? What monstrous moment, this, that IT COULD BE that Athens could be destroyed, and Rome, even as London?
What distortion of man’s Destiny that today we do not know what is to be the fate of them? Of Paris, which if France joins the Axis indeed as well as acquiescence, could and no doubt WOULD be bombed by the RAF of Great Britain!
The Glory That Lives
But of them all, one image stands out clear, in bitter focus, its Parthenon upon her lonely and august plateau: Athens. Athens, which still encompasses the Glory that was Greek the Glory that must live, pure testimony of the highest Reach of Man.
…And I find tears in my eyes as I contemplate her Temple, immobile and Waiting under the autumn sun…For this morning I partook of some honey that is stored in a certain great Tree, which grows on the hill near the Parthenon, and is brooded over by a certain Greek family, Contos by name, now rent by the agony of War…
One of its members brought to me a little jar of this selfsame honey yesterday. He said, simply:
My mother sent it from Athens. Just before she died. She has been spared the last agony of seeing her Parthenon endangered…It is better so…There will be none now to care for the bees, and the flowers they sip are now crushed by marching feet…
I keep thinking of these Athenian bees, droning their thin, frightened echo to the hideous Buzz above them, as their monstrous counterparts above them zoom and dive…