E-text prepared by
Turgut Dincer, Charlie Howard,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/dourispaintersof00pott |
DOURIS AND THE PAINTERS OF
GREEK VASES
Fig. 1. KANTHAROS AND KYLIX (Cup).
By Douris. Brussels and Louvre Museums.
DOURIS
AND THE PAINTERS
OF GREEK VASES
BY EDMOND POTTIER
MEMBRE DE L’INSTITUT
TRANSLATED BY
BETTINA KAHNWEILER
WITH A PREFACE BY
JANE ELLEN HARRISON
HON.D.LITT.DURHAM, HON.LL.D.ABERDEEN
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1909
DEDICATED
IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO
AUGUST LEWIS
PREFACE
The translator of M. Pottier’s monograph onDouris has kindly asked me to write, by wayof preface, a few words on the relation of Greekvase-painting to Greek literature and to Greekmythology. I do this with the more pleasurebecause this relation has, I think, been somewhatseriously misunderstood, and M. Pottier’sdelightful monograph which, thanks to MissKahnweiler, is now given to us in Englishform, should do much to clear away misconceptionand to set the matter before us in alight at once juster and more vivid.
First let us consider for a moment the relationbetween Greek art and Greek literature.
In classical matters we are all of us, scholarsand students alike, bred up in a tradition thatis literary. Our earliest contact with theGreek mind is through Greek poets, historians,philosophers. This is well, for these remain—allsaid—the supreme revelation. But this priorityof literary contact begets, almost inevitably, avicertain confusion of thought. Bred as we arein a literary tradition, we come later to beconfronted with other utterances of the Greekmind, for example graphic art—vase-painting.This we naturally seek to relate to our earlierand purely literary conceptions. What hascome to us second we instinctively make subordinate,ancillary. Greek art, and especiallywhat we call a “minor art,” such as vase-painting,is the “hand-maid” of Greekpoetry, or, to drop metaphor, the function ofGreek art, is, we think, to illustrate Greekliterature. Public and publisher alike demandnowadays that books on Greek literature, onGreek mythology, even editions of Greek plays,