Greek

I’m often fascinated by languages, particularly Greek, so when I ran across this poem, I knew I had to share it.

I write this letter to you on my knees

In the night, O people of a thousand Thermopylaes,

And every word I write,

If it be worthy somehow in your sight—

Sons of Solon, daughters of Pericles—

Will blaze with light.

Regard this letter

As token payment long since overdue

From your eternal debtor—

An echo burning through

The silence and the death piled thick on you

By fire and sword, by famine and by fetter—

An echo of the trumpet Plato blew

Across the darkness that men knew

Not by an honorable foe,

In equal combat, blow for blow,

Under a decent sky,

Beneath the impartial sun,

Were you undone

And left to die.

Ah, no!

But by each slippery ruse

The wolf and buzzard use;

Stalked by that obscene pack

In stealthy and abominable attack

Struck down at last when, faint with hunger,

You could no longer

Stand and strike back

And when you fell, you fell like some great star,

Not broken by defeat or pale surrender,

But falling in dreadful splendour,

Forever falling and falling,

And earth and heaven and the towers of time,

          both near and far,

Were shaken with the shouts of terror calling,

And the blood-red wheels of war,

Bright and brawling,

Across the firmament streaked a livid scar.

So you went down; yet, in your dying, cast

A shadow across the craters of the moon as vast

As bright,

As the Archangel’s trumpet blast

Of light,

A shadow upon the hearts of men as well,

To stretch our souls from heaven down to hell!

This we declare:

By all men in extremity everywhere,

By earth and water, by fire and air,

We solemnly swear:

Homer is not dead,

The loins that bred

Ulysses will again

Beget such men

(The spirit of Bozzaris, of Byron,

The Mavrocordato breed

Of Iron).

This is our creed:

The sun

That sees

Fascist and Hun

Cleansed from the land of Demosthenes

Will once more in amazement stare upon

The Parthenon!

This, then, is all;

I have said everything:

The wormwood, the gall,

The courage, the suffering;

Nothing can be

As big as agony,

And agony is king, and can speak

Only in Greek.

 – An Open Letter to the Unconquerable Greeks,

Joseph Auslander

I find Greek amazing because it’s a language of ambition. It seeks to encompass weighty concepts in simple words, and easily enjoys extremes of passion which contemporary languages are hard pressed to muster. Auslander refers to it above, illustrating that the courage and suffering of the second world war can only be fully realized by such an ambitious language. It has words like κοσμος (kosmos), which seek to encompass everything, and makes fine distinctions, such as with εροσ (eros),  αγαπε (agape), and πιλε (phile) each of which refers to a specific kind of love. Love is one of many words which, in English, has practically lost its meaning due to overuse. We love hot dogs, or a television show, or our partner and, linguistically crippled, have no way to draw a distinction between the kinds of love and intimacy which we mean. The character of Greek is expressed in its literature, showing a people of highs and lows, of great ambitious phrases and the finest of distinctions. It’s no wonder at all why Greek was the language of science, literature, and philosophy for centuries.

So if you really mean it, say it in Greek.

Auslander, Joseph. “An open letter to the unconquerable Greeks.” Grass of Parnassus. Ed. W. F. Langford. Toronto: Longmans, Green & Company, 1946.