A pasztorál és az idill: szemben a történelemmel

Beside Paul Alpers’ essential anthropological and Wolfgang Iser’s art-theoretical insights, it should be pointed out that a fundamental characteristic of the pastoral, the Georgics and the idyll that emerges from them is the exclusion of history from their world. In the beginning, shepherds and peasants live below history, whose noise filters into their world only from a distance. When history comes closer to them, as with the Augustan redistribution of the land in Virgil’s Eclogue I, it is perceived as a natural disaster. Later, as historical consciousness grows, types emerge which position the idyll above or alongside history. Still, it can be argued that just as there is no idyllic history, there is no historical idyll.