In the sixth Epistle written in the Garfagnana, Ariosto still further develops the same theme. His friend, Pistofilo, had advised him to go to Rome and seek preferment from Clement VII. "What would be the use?" he argues. "I have as much of worldly honor as I care for; and if Leo did not find it in his power to help me, I cannot expect anything from the other Medici. Nay, my friend, bait your hook with more enticing dainties: remind me of Bembo, Sadoleto, Giovio, Vida, Molza, Tibaldeo; in whosecompany I might wander over the seven hills: or speak to me about the libraries of Rome. Not even these allurements would move me; for if I had to live away from Ferrara, I should not be happy in the lap of Jove. Existence is only made endurable by occasional visits to the town I love; and if the Duke wishes to fulfill my desires, he must recall me to himself and make me stationary at Ferrara. Why do I cling so to that place, you ask me? I would as lief tell you as confess my worst crimes to a friar. I am forty-nine years of age, and too old to be the slave of love." The conclusion of the sixth Epistle makes it clear that his residence at Castelnovo was irksome to the poet because it forced him to be absent from the woman he loved. But the fifth is even more explicit. "This day completes the first year of my exile among these barbarous mountains, dead to the Muses, divided by snows, fells, forests, rivers, from the mistress of my soul![622]I am nearly fifty, and yet love rules me like a beardless boy. Well: this weakness is at least pardonable. I do not commit murder; I do not smite or stab, or vex my neighbors. I am not consumed with avarice, ambition, prodigality, or monstrous lust. But in this doleful place my heart fails me. I cannot write poetry as I used to do at Reggio when life was young. Imprisoned between the naked heights of Pania and Pellegrino's precipices, the wild steeps of these woody Apennines inclose me in a living grave. Here in the castle, or out there in the open air, my ears are deafened with continual law-suits, accusations, brawls. Theft, murder, hatred, vengeance, anger, furnish me with occupation day and night. My time is spent in threatening, punishing, persuading, or acquitting. I write dispatches daily to the Duke for counsel or for aid against the bandits that encompass me. The whole province is disorganized with brigandage, and its eighty-three villages are in a state of chronic discord. Is it likely then that Phœbus, when I call him, will quit Delphi for this den? You ask me why I left my mistress and my studies for so dolorous a cave of care. I was never greedy of money, and my stipend at Ferrara satisfied me, until the war stopped it altogether, as well as my profits from the Chancery at Milan. When I asked the Duke for help, it so happened that the Garfagnana wanted a Governor, and he sent me here with more regard for my necessities than for the needs of the people under my care. I am grateful to him for his good will; but though his gift is costly, it is not to my mind. So I am like the cock who found a jewel on his dungheap, or like the Venetian who had a fine horse given him and could not ride it."
The satirical passages in this Epistle can be separated from its autobiography, and furnish striking specimens of Ariosto's style. In order to show how ill the world judges of the faults and follies of great men, he draws a series of portraits with a few but telling touches. Though furnished with fictitious names, they suit the persons of the time to a nicety. This, for example, is Francesco Guicciardini, as Pitti represented him:
And here, without doubt, is the elder Lorenzo de' Medici[623]:
Autobiography and satire are mingled in the same unequal proportions in the seventh Epistle, which is perhaps the most interesting poem of the series. "Bembo," so begins the letter, "I want my son Virginio to be well taught in the arts that elevate a man. You possess them all: I therefore ask you to recommend me a good Greek tutor at Venice or Padua, in whose house the youth may live and study. The Greek must be learned, but also of sound principles, for erudition without morality is worse than worthless. Unhappily, in these days it is difficult to find a teacher of this sort. Few humanists are free from the most infamous of vices, and intellectual vanity makes most of them skeptics also. Why is it that learning and infidelity go hand in hand? Why do our scholarsLatinize their names of baptism, changing Peter into Pierius, and John into Janus, or Jovianus? Plato was right when he expelled such poets from his State. Little have they in common with Phœbus and Amphion who taught civil life to barbarous races. For myself, it stings me to the quick when men of my own profession are proved thus vain and vicious. Find, then, an honest tutor to instruct Virginio in Greek. I have already taught him Latin; but the difficulties of my early manhood deprived me of Greek learning. My father drove me at the spear's point into legal studies. I wasted five years in that trifling, and it was not till I was twenty that I found a teacher in Gregorio da Spoleto. He began by grounding me in Latin; but before we had advanced to Greek, the good man was summoned to Milan. His pupil, Francesco Sforza, went with Il Moro, a prisoner, into France. Gregorio followed him, and died there. Then my father died and left me the charge of my younger brothers and sisters. I had to neglect study and become a strict economist. Next my dear relative Pandolfo Ariosto, the best and ablest of our house, died; and, as if these losses were not enough, I found myself beneath the yoke of Ippolito d'Este. All through the reign of Julius II. and for seven years of Leo's pontificate he kept me on the move from place to place, and made me courier instead of poet. Small chance had I of learning Greek or Hebrew on those mountain roads."
These abstracts of Ariosto's so-called Satires will not be reckoned superfluous when we consider the clear light they cast upon his personal character andphilosophy. The note of sincerity throughout is unmistakable. No one can read the pure and simple language of the poet without feeling that his mind was as transparent as his style, his character as ingenuous as his diction was perspicuous. When he tells us, for example, that he does not care for honors, that he prefers his study to the halls of princes, and that a turnip in his own house tastes better than the pheasants of a ducal table, we believe him. His confession of unseasonable love, and his acknowledgment that he has none of the qualities of judge or ruler, are a security for equal frankness when he professes himself free from avarice and the common vices of his age. His satire upon women, his picture of the Roman prelates, his portraits of great men, and his condemnation of the humanists are convincing by their very moderation. Like Horace, he plays about the heart instead of wielding the whip of Lucilius. This parsimony of expression adds weight to his censure, and renders these epistles more decisive than the invectives in which contemporary authors indulged. We doubt the calumnies of Poggio and Filelfo until we read the well-considered passage of the seventh Epistle, which includes them all.[624]In like manner the last lines of the fourth Epistle confirm the Diaries of Burchard and Infessura, while the first contains an epitome of all that could be said of Alexander's nepotism. These familiar poems have, therefore, a singular value for the illustration of the Italian Renaissance in general no less than for that of Ariosto's own life. Furthermore, they are unique in the annals of Italian literature.Theterza rimaof Dante's vision has here become a vehicle for poetry separated by the narrowest interval from prose. It no longer lends itself to parody, as in theBeoniof Lorenzo de' Medici. It is not contaminated by the foul frivolities of the BernesqueCapitoli. It takes with accuracy the impress of the writer's common thought and feeling. The meter designed to express a sublime belief, adapts itself to the discursive utterance of a man of sense and culture in a disillusioned age; and thus we might use the varying fortunes ofterza rimato symbolize the passage from thetrecentoto thecinque cento, from Dante to Ariosto, from faith and inspiration to art and reflection.
Ariosto's minor poems, with but one or two exceptions, have direct reference to the circumstances of his life. They consist of Elegies, Capitoli, and an Eclogue composed interza rima, with Canzoni, Sonnets, and Madrigals of the type made obligatory by Petrarch. The poet of theOrlandowas not great in lyric verse. These lesser compositions show his mastery of simple and perspicuous style; but the specific qualities of his best work, its color and imagery and pointed humor, are absent. The language is sometimes pedestrian in directness, sometimes encumbered with conceits that anticipate the taste of the seventeenth century.[625]Where it is plainest, we lack the seasoning of epigram and illustration which enlivens the Satires; and though the sincere feeling and Ovidian fluency of the more ambitious lyrics render them delightful reading,we acknowledge that a wider channel of description or narrative or reflection was needed for the full tide of the poet's eloquence. The purely subjective style was hardly suited to his genius.
Only threeCanzoniare admitted into the canon of Ariosto's works. The first relates the origin of his love for Alessandra Benucci, wife of Tito Strozzi, whom he admired as wife and married as widow. It was on S. John's Day in the year 1513 that he saw her at Florence among the gay crowd of the midsummer festival. She was dressed in black silk embroidered with two vines, her golden hair twisted into heavy braids, and her forehead overshadowed with a jeweled laurel-wreath. The brightness of the scene was blotted out for the poet, and swallowed in the intense luster of her beauty:
How much he admired Florence, he tells us in the fourteenth elegy, where this famous compliment occurs:
The secondCanzoneis supposed to be spoken by the soul of Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, to his widow, Filiberta of Savoy. Elevation of conception raises the language of this poem to occasional sublimity, as in the passage where he speaks of immortality:
The undulation of rhythm obeying the thought renders these lines in a high sense musical.
Some of the Elegies have been already used in illustration of other poems. There remain a group apart, which seem to have been directly modeled upon Ovid. Of these the sixth, describing a night of love, and the seventh, when the lover dares not enter his lady's door in moonlight lest he should be seen, are among the finest. The ninth, upon fidelity in love, contains these noble lines:
The second is written on the famous black pen fringed with gold, which Ariosto adopted for his device and wore embroidered on his clothes. He declines to explain the meaning of this bearing; but it is commonly believed to have referred in some way to his love for Alessandra Strozzi. Baruffaldi conjectures that her black dress and golden hair suggested the two colors. But since this elegy threatens curious inquirers with Actæon's fate, we may leave his device to the obscurityhe sought. Secrecy in respect to the great passion of his life was jealously maintained by Ariosto. His ink-stand at Ferrara still bears a Cupid with one finger on his lip, as though to bid posterity observe the reticence adopted by the poet in his lifetime.
The Madrigals and Sonnets do not add much to our conception of Ariosto's genius. It has been well remarked that while his Latin love-poems echo the style of Horace, these are imitations of Petrarch's manner.[626]In the former he celebrates the facile attractions of Lydia and Megilla, or confesses that he is inconstant in every thing except in always varying his loves.[627]In the latter he professes to admire a beautiful soul and eloquent lips more than physical charms, praises the spiritual excellences of his mistress, and writes complimentary sonnets on her golden hair.[628]In neither case is there any insincerity. Ariosto never pretended to be a platonic lover, nor did he credit women with great nobility of nature. Yet on the other hand it is certain that he was no less tenderly than passionately attached to Alessandra; and this serious love, of which the Sonnets are perhaps the record, triumphed over the volatility of his earlier affections.
It is enough in this chapter to have dealt with Ariosto's life and minor writings. TheOrlando Furioso, considered both as the masterpiece of his genius and also as the representative poem of the Italian Renaissance, must form the subject of a separate study.
(See above,p. 24.)
TheItalian hendecasyllable is an accentual iambic line of five feet with one unaccented syllable over and included in the rhyme. Thus the first line of theInfernomay be divided:—
Nel mez|zo del | cammin | di nos|tra vita.
When the verse is so constructed, it is said to bepiano, the rhyme being what in English we call double. When the rhyme is single, the verse istronco, and the rhythm corresponds to that of our heroic, as in the following instance (Par.xxv. 102):
Il ver|no avreb|be un me|se d'un | sol dì.
When the rhyme is treble, the verse issdrucciolo, of which form this is a specimen (Par.xxvi. 78):
Che ri|fulge|va più | di mil|le milia.
It is clear that the quality of the verse is not affected by the number of syllables in the rhyme; and the line is called hendecasyllabic becauseversi pianiare immeasurably more frequent and more agreeable to the ear than eitherversi tronchiorsdruccioli.
If we inquire into the origin of the meter, the first remark we have to make is that lines of similar construction were used by poets of Provence. Dante, for example, quotes (De Vulg. Eloq.ii. 2) from Bertram:
Non puesc mudar q'un chantar non esparja.
This fact will seem to many minds conclusive on the point in question. But, following the investigations of recent scholars, we find this form of verse pretty generally referred to the watch-song of the Modenese soldiers. Thus Professor Adolfo Bartoli, after quoting two lines of that song,
adds: "quì apparisce per la prima volta il nostro verso endecasillabo, regolarmente accentato." If this, which is the view accepted by Italian critics, be right, he ought to have added that each line of the Modenese watch-song is asdruccioloverse. Otherwise, the rhythm bears the appearance of a six-foot accentual iambic, an appearance which is confirmed by the recurrence of a single rhyme or assonance inathroughout the poem. Still the strong accent on the antepenultimate syllable of every verse is sufficient to justify us in regarding the meter asendecasillabo sdrucciolo.
Going further back than the Modenese watch-song (date about 924), the next question is whether any of the classic meters supplied its precedent. By reading either Horatian Sapphics or Catullian hendecasyllables without attention to quantity, we may succeed in marking the beat of theendecasillabo piano.[629]Thus:
Cui do|no lep|idum | novum | libellum?
and:
When these lines are translated into literal Italian, the metamorphosis is complete. Thus:
Cui don|o il lep|ido | nuovo | libretto?
and:
Even Alcaics, unceremoniously handled by a shifting of the accent, which is violent disregard of quantity, yield like results. Thus:
Atqui | scie | bat quæ | sibi | barbarus.
Or in Italian:
Eppur | conob|be ciò | ch'il man|igoldo.
The accentual Sapphics of the middle ages throw some curious light upon these transmutations of meter. In a lament for Aquileia (tenth century) we find these lines:
Here, instead of the Latin Sapphic, we get a loosesdrucciolorhythm. The meter of the Serventese seems built upon this medieval Sapphic model. Here is an example[630]:
When the humanistic Italians tried to write Italian Sapphics, they produced a meter not very dissimilar. Thus in theCertamen Coronarium[631]:
What seems tolerably certain is that the modern Italian hendecasyllable was suggested by one of the Latin eleven-syllabled meters, but that, in the decay of quantitative prosody, an iambic rhythm asserted itself. It has no exact correspondence in any classic meter; but it was early developed out of the accentual Latin measures which replaced quantitative meter in the middle ages. Signor Rubieri points out that there may be traces of it in the verses of Etruscan inscriptions.[632]Nor is it impossible that the rhythm was indigenous, persisting through a long period of Græco-Roman culture, to reappear when the rustic language threw out a modern idiom.
(SeeChapter I.p. 55.)
(SeeChapter III.p. 157.)
(SeeChapter V.pp. 291et seq.)
Thoughjudging it impossible to preserve the least part of Jacopone's charm in a translation, I have made versions of the Christmas Carol, the Passion Poem, and the Hymn of Divine Love, alluded to inchapter v.,pp. 291-298. The metrical structure of the first is confused in the original; but I have adopted a stanza which follows the scheme pretty closely, and reproduces the exact number of the lines. In the second I have forced myself to repeat the same rhyme at the close of each of the thirty-four strophes, which in the Italian has a very fine effect—the sound beingato. No English equivalent can do it justice. The third poem I admit to be really untranslatable. The recurrences of strong voweled endings inore,are,ezza,atecannot be imitated.
Here the miserable translation ends. But I would that I could summon from the deeps of memory some echo of the voice I heard at Perugia, one dark Good Friday evening, singing Penitential Psalms. This made me feel of what sort was theCorrotto, chanted by the confraternities of Umbria. The psalms were sung on that occasion to a monotonous rhythm of melodiously simple outline by three solo voices in turn—soprano, tenor, and bass. At the ending of each psalm a candle before the high-altar was extinguished, until all light and hope and spiritual life went out for the damned soul. The soprano, who sustained the part of pathos, had the fullness of a powerful man's chest and larynx, with the pitch of a woman's and the timbre of a boy's voice. He seemed able to do what he chose in prolonging and sustaining notes, with wonderful effects ofcrescendoanddiminuendopassing from the wildest and most piercingforteto the tenderestpianissimo. He was hidden in the organ-loft; and as he sang, the organist sustained his cry with long-drawn shuddering chords and deep groans of the diapason. The whole church throbbed with the vibrations of the rising, falling melody; and the emotional thrill was as though Christ's or Mary's soul were speaking through the darkness to our hearts. I never elsewhere heard a soprano of this sort sing in tune so perfect or with so pure an intonation. The dramatic effect produced by the contrast between this soprano and the bass and tenor was simple but exceedingly striking. Englishmen, familiar with cathedral music, may have derived a somewhat similar impression from the more complex Motett of Mendelssohn upon Psalm xxii. I think that when the Umbrian Laud began to be dramatic, the parts in such a hymn as Jacopone'sCorrottomust have been distributed after the manner of these Perugian Good Friday services. Mary's was undoubtedly given to the soprano; that of the Jews, possibly, to the bass; Christ's, and perhaps the messenger's also, to the tenor. And it is possible that the rhythm was almost identical with what I heard; for that had every mark of venerable antiquity and popular sincerity.
I now pass to the Hymn of Divine Love, which Tresatti entitlesCantico dell'Amore Superardente(Book vi. 16). It consists of three hundred and seventy lines, all of which I have translated, though I content myself here with some extracts:
(SeeChapter VII.pp. 444et seq.) Morgante xviii. 115.