Rubijt Author:Omar Khayyam General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1902 Description: In Fitzgerald, Edward. Poetical and prose writings, 1902, I. 1-35. Subjects: Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the... more » General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: TERS RELATING TO "AGAMEMNON." To E. B. Cowell. [i848] . . . As to Sophocles, I will not give up my old Titan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon in Sophocles, as compared to sEschylus, -- a dilution? Sophocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but sEschylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and appalling? Or if one will have jffischylus too a work of man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Germans say did arise from the genius of man aspiring to the immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in complexity and gloom, according as Christianity elevated and widened mens minds. A dozen lines of Mschylus have a more Almighty power on me than all Sophocles' plays; though I would perhaps rather save Sophocles as the consummation of Greek art, than sEschylus' twelve lines, if it came to a choice which must be lost. Besides these sEschyluses trouble us with their grandeur and gloom; but Sophocles is always soothing, complete, and satisfactory. To E. B. Cowell. London, May 7, i857. . . . I think I want to turn his [JEschylus1] Trilogy into what shall be readable English Verse; a thingI have always thought of, but was frightened at the Chorus. So I am now; I can't think them so fine as People talk of: they are terribly maimed; and all such Lyrics require a better Poet than I am to s...« less