Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/39

Rh varied forces, historical, religious, philosophic, scientific, and literary, to which Semitic peoples have been subject which have produced the varying character that we see exhibited in Semitic Literatures.

Of all the literary forms in which mankind has clothed its thought and its feeling, one has been entirely wanting among the Semites. They have never developed a drama of their own. From time to time attempts have been made to vindicate for the Semitic people a sense of the beautiful inherent in dramatic presentation; notably in connection with some particular explanation of such books in our Bible as the "Song of Solomon" and the tragedy of Job. But, apart from the difficulties of exegesis inherent in this theory, no such claim has ever been made by the people itself out of whose loins these books have issued, and it is quite plain that they were never consciously intended to be put upon the stage. Nor have other Semitic peoples ever attempted to fill up the void. The Turkish Karakoz or Shadow-play, which of late years has made its way into Syria and Egypt, is of non-Semitic origin, and the attempt even to adapt Moliere for the Egyptian stage has remained little more than a literary curiosity. There must be some reasons inherent in the development of Semitic culture that are opposed to the development of the drama, and which successfully withstood the infectious influence of the greatest dramatic influence which the world has seen. One is led to suppose, then, that the mythological element which is present to such a degree in the ancient drama has made it repellent to the austere monotheism of the Semites. It is true that the ancient Semites had their mythology as well as the ancient Greeks; that they deified their kings and humanized their gods. Babylonian religious culture is full of it. But even Babylonian religion, as it proceeded on the road from polytheism to henotheism, gradually sublimated these mythological elements. Traces of them, only, are to be found in our Bible; and the severe monotheism of later official