"THE MOLPE" IS TOPIC OF SECOND MURRAY TALK

"Inspiration and craftmanship must combine to produce great poetry," said Professor Gilbert Murray last night in the second lecture of his series as occupant of the Charles Elict Norten Chair of Poetry.

The announced subject of the lecture was "The Molpe," which Professor Murray and was a very early Greek ritual of song and dance. This molpe he considers the fountain-head of poetry in the European world.

Molpe Antedates Iliad

"Most histories of Greek Literature," he said, "take it as an established fact that the Homeric epics were the earliest crystallization of folk-song in the ancient world that might properly be termed poetry, and that all poetic song has descended from them and from them alcne. As a matter of fact, the molpe, antedating the Iliad and Odyssey by many years, is the true spring of song for which the historians are looking.

"In all early Greek literature we find constant reference to singing and dancing together; they seem to have been inseparably wedded. Most true is this in the religious ceremony, and indeed it was in worship of the gods that the molpe was most generally employed. A bard, with a lyre, stood in the center of the dancing ring, and instituted the dance, and conducted and led the movements, singing to his lyre, and accompanied by the dancers themselves. Later, the dancing chorus was divided into singing and dancing units; from this division came the use of the chorus as in Greek drama of a later period, and finally the song-and-dance motive was entirely gone from Greek poetry in its decadent stage. The chorus sang of the things which touch the deepest chord in the human soul,--dove, strife, death, and immortality. The natural expression of such thoughts was song and motion.

"Nature-worship, as manifested in this deification of the revolving year, was not purely worship of the aesthetic. The people felt that behind it all was a sprit of eternal goodness and truth and beauty that breaks the yearning heart. Contemplation of this beauty lifted the worshipper to such raptures of desire and abortion that mere words could not express the feelings, and motion was the natural outlet, however feel, for the pent-up emotions. So in the Molpe we find the primal expression of exaltation and worship that is present in all better poetry since.

"But this poetry does not come alone from a transient emotional flash. The bard in the Molpe did not compose his song on the spur of the moment. He had a helper who wrote out the lines. To properly write the lines of the song, the composer had to experience the inspirational cesiasy of the bard just as the bard needed some consciousness of craff as he sang. This refutes those who say that long and careful foil is foreign to poetry; through the mind of the poet as he works over his lines, rewriting and correcting, there is a subconscious current of his inspiration ever buoying him up. Just as the song of the Molpe was the product of inspiration and craftsmanship, so have all the great poems come from such a combination. There must be the emotional ecstasy, the detachment from self, and the sense of worship of something fair and supernal and immortal, but with this, hand in hand, must march a care and pride in craft, that keeps the mind and spirit working together that the result may be as lofty as possible.