... The poetic and mythical allusion at the
close of the letter falls on the Christian ear like an echo from
another and earlier world.
The Hellenic poets of the Anthology, and the younger Pliny in
Imperial days, held the same tone, elegiac and idyllic[5]; as
Villemain says, 'These pleasant pictures, these poetic allusions, do
not shew the austerity of the cloister.'[6] The specifically
Christian and monastic was hidden by the purely human.
Other writings of Basil's express still more strongly the mild
dejection which longs for solitude. For instance, when Gregory had
been dwelling upon the emptiness of all earthly things, he said in
reply, that peace of soul must be man's chief aim, and could only be
attained by separation from the world, by solitude; 'for the
contemplation of Nature abates the fever of the soul, and banishes
all insincerity and presumption.' Therefore he loved the quiet corner
where he was undisturbed by human intercourse.
He drew melancholy comparisons from Nature: men were compared to
wandering clouds that dissolve into nothing, to wavering shadows, and
shipwrecked beings, etc.
His homilies on the Hexameron, too, shew thought of Nature. There is
a fine sense for the play of colour on the sea here: 'A pleasant
sight is the glistening sea when a settled calm doth hold it; but
pleasant too it is to behold its surface ruffled by gentle breezes,
and its colour now purple, now white, now dark; when it dasheth not
with violence against the neighbouring coast, but holdeth it in
tranquil embrace.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54