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Gilbert Murray

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Gilbert Murray (January 2, 1866 – May 20 1957) was a British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century.

Early life

He was born George Gilbert Aimé Murray in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. His father, Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, was a Member of the New South Wales Parliament who died in 1873; his mother, Agnes Ann Murray (nee Edwards), ran a girls' school in Sydney for a few years. Then, in 1877, Agnes emigrated with Gilbert to the UK, where she died in 1891.

Gilbert was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford.

Classicist

Academic career

In 1889-99, he was Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow. There was a break in his academic career from 1899 to 1905, when he returned to Oxford; he interested himself in dramatic and political writing. After 1908 he was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford.

Greek drama

Murray is perhaps now best known for his verse translations of Greek drama, which were popular and prominent in their time. As a poet he was generally taken to be a follower of Swinburne; and had little sympathy from the modernist poets of the rising generation. The staging of Athenian drama in English did have its own cultural impact. He had earlier experimented with his own prose dramas, without much success.

Over time he worked through almost the entire canon of Athenian dramas (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in tragedy; Aristophanes in comedy). From Euripides, the Hippolytus and the Bacchœ (together with the Frogs of Aristophanes; third edition, 1906); the Medea, Trojan Women, and Electra (1905-07); Iphigenia in Tauris (1910); The Rhesus (1913) were presented at the Court Theatre, in London. In the United States Granville Barker and his wife Lillah McCarthy gave outdoor performances of The Trojan Women and Iphigenia in Tauris at various colleges (1915).

The translation of Œdipus Rex was a commission from W. B. Yeats. Until 1912 this could not have been staged for a British audience. Murray was drawn into the public debate on censorship that came to a head in 1907 and was pushed by William Archer, whom he knew well from Glasgow , George Bernard Shaw, and others such as John Galsworthy, J. M. Barrie and Edward Garnett. A petition was taken to Herbert Gladstone, then Home Secretary, early in 1908.

The Ritualists

He was one of the scholars associated with Jane Harrison in the myth-ritual school of mythography. They met first in 1900.. He wrote an appendix on the Orphic tablets for her 1903 book Prolegomena; he later contributed to her Themis (1912).

Francis Fergusson wrote

In general the ritual had its agon, or sacred combat, between the old King, or god or hero, and the new, corresponding to the agons in the tragedies, and the clear "purpose" moment of the tragic rhythm. It had its Sparagmos, in which the royal victim was literally or symbolically torn asunder, followed by the lamentation and/or rejoicing of the chorus: elements which correspond to the moments of "passion". The ritual had its messenger, its recognition scene and its epiphany; various plot devices for representing the moment of "perception" which follows the "pathos". Professor Murray, in a word, studies the art of tragedy in the light of ritual forms, and thus, throws a really new light onto Aristotle's Poetics.

In public life

Liberal Party politics

He was a lifelong supporter of the Liberal Party, lining up on the Irish Home Rule and non-imperialist sides of the splits in the party of the late nineneeth century. He supported temperance, and married into a prominent Liberal, aristocratic and temperance family, the Carlisles. He made a number of moves that might have taken him into parliamentary politics, initially by tentative thoughts about standing in elections during the 1890s. In 1901-2 he was in close contact with the Independent Labour Party. But the overall effect of the Second Boer War was to drive him back into the academic career he had put on hold in 1898, resigning his Glasgow chair (effective from April 1899).

He stood five times unsuccessfully for the University constituency of Oxford between 1919 and 1929. He continued support for the Asquith faction of Liberals, after the party was split again by Lloyd George. During the 1930s the Liberals as a party were crushed electorally, but Liberal thinkers continued to write; Murray was one of the signatory Next Five Years Group formed around Clifford Allen.

Activist

As Regius Professor and literary figure, he had a platform to promote his views, which were many-sided but Whig-liberal. In 1912 he wrote an introduction to The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order, by his friend William Archer. During World War I he became a pamphleteer, putting a reasoned war case. He also defended C. K. Ogden against criticism, and took a public interest in conscientious objection. Murray never took a pacifist line himself, and in fact broke an old friendship with Bertrand Russell early in the war.

He was also involved as an internationalist in the League of Nations. He was a Vice President of the League of Nations Society from 1916,, and in 1917 wrote influential articles in the Daily News. At the invitation of Jan Smuts he acted in 1921/2 as a League delegate for South Africa. Later he was a major influence in the setting-up of Oxfam and of the Students' International Union (later the Institute for World Affairs).

Involvement with Wells

For a brief period Murray became closely involved with the novelist H. G. Wells. Initially this was in 1917 and connection with groups supporting a future League: Wells promoted a League of Free Nations Association (LFNA), an idea not in fact exclusive to him, since it had been 'up in the air' since Woodrow Wilson had started considering post-war settlements. Wells applied through the British propaganda office with which Murray had been connected since 1914. The two men corresponded from 1917 about League matters. Wells was bullish about pushing ahead with a British LFNA, Murray was involved already in the League of Nations Society (LNS), though not active. The political position was delicate, as Murray understood and Wells may not have: the LNS overlapped with the Union of Democratic Control, which was too far towards the pacifist end of the spectrum of opinion to be effective. Eventually in 1918 the LFNA was set up around Welsh Liberal MP David Davies, and then shortly the LFNA and LNS merged as the League of Nations Union.

Two years later, Wells called on Murray, and Murray's New College colleague Ernest Barker, to lend their names as advisers on his Outline of History. Their names duly appeared on the title page. Murray had to give evidence in the plagiarism case Deeks v. Wells that arose in 1925.

Humanism

Murray is often identified as a humanist, typically with some qualification ('classical', 'scholarly', 'engaged', 'liberal'). He joined the Rationalist Press Association, and in 1952 attended a major humanist conference. He wrote and broadcast extensively on religion (Greek, Stoic and Christian); and wrote several books dealing with his version of humanism.

A phrase from his 1910 lectures Four Stages of Greek Religion enjoyed public prominence: the "failure of nerve" of the Hellenistic world, of which a turn to irrationalism was symptomatic. His daughter Rosalind (later Rosalind Toynbee), a Catholic convert, attacked his secularism in her book of apologetics, The Good Pagan's Failure (1939).

Murray was baptised as a Roman Catholic; his father was a Catholic, his mother a Protestant. About a month before he died, when he was bedridden, his daughter Rosalind called the local Catholic priest to see him. While Rosalind subsequently claimed that Murray was then reconciled to the Catholic Church; other family members contested Rosalind's version of the events.

Awards and honours

He refused an knighthood in 1912. He received honorary degrees from Glasgow, Birmingham, and Oxford.

He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1941.

He gave the 1941 Andrew Lang lecture.

Family

Gilbert's father was Sir Terence Aubrey Murray and his brother Sir Hubert Murray.

He married Lady Mary Henrietta Howard (1865 - 1956), daughter of George Howard, 9th Earl of Carlisle. When her mother Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle died in 1921, Castle Howard was bequeathed to Lady Mary. She arranged to exchange it with other property, however, with her brother Geoffrey.

Gilbert and Lady Mary had five children, three daughters and two sons, including:

Works

Translation

  • Andromache (1900)
  • A text edition of Euripides, Fabulae, in three volumes (1901, 1904, 1910)
  • Euripides Translated Into English Rhyming Verse (1902)
  • Euripides, The Trojan Women (1905)
  • Electra of Euripides (1905)
  • Euripides Medea (1910)
  • Iphigenia in Tauris (1911)
  • Oedipus King of Thebes (1911)
  • The Story of Nefrekepta. From a Demotic Papyrus. (1911)
  • Rhesus of Euripides (1913)
  • Andromache (1913)
  • Alcestis (1915)
  • Agamemnon (1920)
  • Choephoroe (1923)
  • Eumenides of Aeschylus (1926)
  • The Oresteia (1928)
  • The Suppliant Women (1930)
  • Seven Against Thebes (1935)
  • The Frogs (1938)
  • The Persians (1939)
  • Antigone (1941)
  • Bacchae (1941)
  • The Rape of the Locks: The Perikeiromene of Menander (1942)
  • Fifteen Greek Plays (1943) with others
  • The Arbitration: the Epitrepontes of Menander (1945)
  • Euripides Hippolytus (1945)
  • Oedipus at Colonus (1948)
  • The Birds (1950)
  • Euripides, Ion (1954)
  • Collected Plays of Euripides (1954)
  • The Knights (1956)

Classical studies

  • The Place of Greek in Education (1889) Inaugural Lecture
  • A History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897)
  • The Rise of the Greek Epic (1907; second edition, 1911) Harvard University lectures
  • Greek Historical Writing, and Apollo: Two Lectures (1908) with Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
  • The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature (1909) Inaugural Lecture
  • Ancient Greek Literature (1911)
  • English Literature and the Classics (1912) section on Tragedy, editor George Stuart Gordon
  • Four Stages of Greek Religion (1913)
  • Euripides and his Age (1913) in Home University Library
  • Hamlet and Orestes: A Study in Traditional Types (1914) Annual Shakespeare Lecture 1914
  • The Stoic Philosophy (1915) Conway Lecture
  • Aristophanes and the War Party, A Study in the Contemporary Criticism of the Peloponnesian War (1919) Creighton Lecture 1918, as Our Great War and The Great War of the Ancient Greeks (US, 1920)
  • Greek Historical Thought: from Homer to the Age of Heraclius (1924) with Arnold J. Toynbee
  • Five Stages of Greek Religion (1925)
  • The Classical Tradition in Poetry (1927) Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
  • Aristophanes: A Study (1933)
  • Aeschylus: The Creator of Tragedy (1940)
  • The Wife of Heracles (1947)
  • Greek Studies (1947)
  • Hellenism and the Modern World (1953) radio talksFestschrift:
  • Greek Poetry and Life, Essays presented to Gilbert Murray on his Seventieth Birthday, January 2, 1936 (1936)

Other

  • Gobi or Shamo (1889) novel
  • Carlyon Sahib (1899), play
  • Liberalism and the Empire: Three Essays (1900) with Francis W. Hirst and John L. Hammond
  • Thoughts on the War (1914) pamphlet
  • The Foreign Policy of Sir Edward Grey, 1906-1915 (1915), online text
  • The International Crisis in Its Ethical and Psychological Aspects (1915) with others
  • How Can War Ever Be Right? Oxford Pamphlets No 18/Ist Krieg je berechtigt?/La guerre. Peut-elle jamais se justifier? (1915)
  • Impressions of Scandinavia in War Time (1916) pamphlet, reprint from the Westminster Gazette
  • The United States and the War (1916) pamphlet
  • The Way Forward: Three Articles on Liberal Policy (1917) pamphlet
  • Great Britain's Sea Policy - A Reply to an American Critic (1917) pamphlet, reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly
  • Faith, War and Policy (1917)
  • Religio Grammatici: The Religion Of A Man Of Letters (1918) Presidential Address to the Classical Association January 8, 1918.
  • Foreword to My mission to London 1912-1914 by Prince Lichnowsky, the German ambassador in London who had warned Berlin that Britain would fight in August 1914. Cassel & Co. London. (1918)
  • Satanism and the World Order (1920) Adamson Lecture
  • The League and Its Guarantees (1920) League of Nations Union pamphlet
  • Essays and Addresses (1921)
  • The Problem of Foreign Policy: A Consideration of Present Dangers and the Best Methods for Meeting Them (1921)
  • Tradition and Progress (1922)
  • The Ordeal of This Generation: The War, the League and the Future (1930) Halley Stewart Lectures 1928
  • Augustan Book of Poetry (1931) vol. 41
  • The Intelligent Man's Way To Prevent War (1933) with others
  • Problems of Peace (Eighth Series) (1933) with others
  • Then and Now (1935)
  • Liberality and Civilisation (1938) 1937 Hibbert Lectures
  • Stoic, Christian and Humanist (1940)
  • The Deeper Causes of the War and its Issues (1940) with others
  • World Order Papers, No. 2 (1940) pamphlet, The Royal Institute of International Affairs
  • Anchor of Civilisation (1942) Philip Maurice Deneke Lecture 1942
  • A Conversation with Bryce (1943) James Bryce Memorial Lecture, 12 November 1943
  • Myths And Ethics, or Humanism And The World's Need (1944) Conway Hall lecture
  • Humanism: Three B.B.C. talks (1944) with Julian Huxley and Joseph Houldsworth Oldham
  • Victory and After (1945)
  • From the League to the U.N. (1948)
  • Spires of Liberty (1948) with others
  • Andrew Lang: The Poet (1948) Andrew Lang Lecture 1947
  • The Meaning of Freedom (1956) essays, with others
  • Humanist Essays (1964) taken from Essays and Addresses, Stoic, Christian and Humanist

References

Notes

External links



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