The Open Court Vol 44 PDF Download

Excerpt from The Open Court, Vol. 44: Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea; December, 1930 The Eclogues, begun in the country, were finished at Rome. For some time before their publication Virgil was one of a group of close friends who had in common a vision of new possibilities and a new meaning for poetry. The poetry then in vogue was of the stilted, scholastic Alexandrian school which could not develop any further. This group, which included the poets, Gallus, Varius, and Macer, produced a large amount of poetry. With the appear ance of the Eclogues, Virgil became the leader of the movement, now known as Virgilism. His fame and in uence were immediate. The new poetry in Greek literary forms, with simple musical rhythms, was not perfect in workmanship, but it was free and it was alive. In the Eclogues, as in all the writings of Virgil, there is a mystic and a prophetic note foretelling a Golden Age about to be realized. He is under the spell of the greatness of Rome, yet he is Italian in spirit and has that great quality of expressing the yearning of the soul in its deeper moods. The promises of the Eclogues are treated as actual facts in the Georgics, which were inspired by his friend Maecenas. In those days the in uence of a poet in moulding public opinion was very great. Italy was economically exhausted and needed men to develop her unused wealth which lay idle in virgin soil, forest and swamp. Virgil sought to awaken a new interest in the land with the little touches of genius which make poetry of everyday tasks, he trans figured the simple hard life of the farmer and idealized agriculture and industry, making the Georgics the most perfect poems of native Italian life. Shortly before the Georgics were finished Octavius was made supreme and the unification of Italy was complete. To celebrate this event Virgil started the Aeneid which became the complete expression of his profound thought and his philosophy of life, his dreams and his ideals. After eleven years, in 19 B. C. The epic was finished, and in order to perfect it Virgil visited Greece. He had planned to stay three years, but he met Augustus in Athens, and returned with him the same year. At Megara, where they stopped on the voyage, Virgil was taken sick. They hurried home. Virgil died a few days after reaching Brundisium and was buried at Naples, where his tomb was, for a long time, held in religious veneration. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."