Untitled - UTSC Humanities Research Projects server - University of ...

Mirage of Greek Continuity 279
precision, and beauty. According to Riedesel, the Turks, who,
together with the Venetians have polluted Greek blood, bear
the major reponsibility for this decline: they have sullied and
adulterated Greek grammar: ‘la langue grecque vulgaire est fille
de l’ancienne, mais elle a perdu sa finesse, sa précision et sa
beauté . . . sa construction est calquée sur celle de la langue
turque’ (Riedesel (1771), 334).
But at the same time some distanced themselves from these
disparaging and exaggeratedly negative comments : ‘nous avons
exagéré les funestes effets de leur cruelle situation’ (Choiseul-
Gouffier (1782), ii. 126). Besides, most of those who air these
complaints do not come to the same conclusion as their predecessors.
Instead of asserting that the virtues of ancient Greeks
have vanished and that ‘the present Greeks have not a trace of
them remaining’—this is still the conclusion reached by James
Porter (1768, ii. 123)—they eagerly search for relics. True, the
ancient Greek character is ‘altered’, but it is not totally ‘obliterated’,
still the characteristic marks remain’ (Charlemont
(1749), 119–20). True, the Greek nation ‘is now pretty much
estranged to all those splendid virtues and accomplishments
. . . yet Nature still manifests herself in their favour . . . yet they
manifest a great deal of cunning subtility and dexterity in all
parts of life’, according to Charles Perry, author of an important
book on the Levant (Perry (1743), 23). Their language is ‘disfigured
in appearance, yet preserving all the depths, richness
and harmony of the ancient Greek’ (Guys (1772), i. 115). There
are still ‘some sparks from the sacred fire that fly out’ and some
‘glow of the ancient spirit’ (Guys (1772), ii. 28). In the same way
Choiseul-Gouffier speaks of ‘un feu sacré qui s’est affaibli, mais
n’est pas éteint’ (1782, ii. 125).
Similes are even more significant. The same striking comparison
of modern Greece with an old man appears independently
in Guys’ Voyage littéraire de la Grèce and Riedesel’s
Remarques d’un voyageur moderne au Levant. But it is used in
two opposite ways. Guys emphasizes the continuity between
ancient and modern Greece: ‘[his] very wrinkles of caducity will
never be disfigured to the point of making [the old man] unrecognizable’
(Guys (1772), ii. 189–90), whereas Riedesel chooses
to stress decrepitude: ‘la Grèce moderne, si on la compare à
l’ancienne, ressemble à un vieillard qui après avoir été un héros