Quotes from Jane Ellen Harrison

There was an odd rule throughout the College that no girl might buy a book.

The dramas of Æschylus certainly, and perhaps also those of Sophocles and Euripides, were played not upon the stage, and not in the theatre, but, strange though it sounds to us, in the orchestra.

When we say art is unpractical, we mean that art is cut loose from immediate action.

We know from tradition that in Athens ritual became art, a dromenon became the drama, and we have seen that the shift is symbolized and expressed by the addition of the theatre, or spectator-place, to the orchestra, or dancing-place.

An agon, or contest, or wrangling, there will probably be, because Summer contends with Winter, Life with Death, the New Year with the Old. A tragedy must be tragic, must have its pathos, because the Winter, the Old Year, must die.

The more primitive a language is the less it abstracts. [...] As the language with its people advances in civilization it classifies, i.e. abstracts and simplifies more and more; it sees common qualities and drops out those distinctions that do not subserve life. A similar process may be observed in the formation of what we call Parts of Speech.

In a word, in place of dromena, things done, we get gods worshipped; in place of sacraments, holy bulls killed and eaten in common, we get sacrifices in the modern sense, holy bulls offered to yet holier gods.

So the dromenon, the thing done, wanes, the prayer, the praise, the sacrifice waxes.

There is a sort of spasmodic movement, as if the figures were electrified into action, but no real, organic life or motion. This comes from a lack of what Greek critics call rhythm , that is, consistent flow, the action of one part of the body permeating the rest of the body even when inert.

The magical dromenon, the Carrying out of Winter, the Bringing in of Spring, is doomed to an inherent and deadly monotony.

We can see in part why, though the dromena of Adonis and Osiris, emotional as they were and intensely picturesque, remained mere ritual; the dromenon of Dionysos, his Dithyramb, blossomed into drama.