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Title: Studies in the Poetry of Italy
       Part II. Italian

Author: Oscar Kuhns

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Language: English

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Studies in the Poetry of Italy

II. ITALIAN

BY

OSCAR KUHNS

Wesleyan University

Chautauqua Press
CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK
MCMXIII

---

Copyright, 1901, by

OSCAR KUHNS

Third Edition, 1913

The Chautauqua Print Shop

Chautauqua, New York

PREFACE

In writing this book the author has endeavored to give a connected story of the development of Italian literature from its origin down to the present. In so doing, however, he has laid chief stress on those writers whose fame is world-wide, and thus, owing to lack of space, has been obliged to treat in the briefest manner those writers who, although famous in Italy itself, are not generally known to the world at large. It is hoped that the reader may be led to study more in detail this literature, which although ranking with the greatest of the world-literatures, has been to a large degree neglected in England and America. The translations from Dante's New Life and of the story from Boccaccio have been made by the author, inasmuch as during the writing of this book he could not obtain access to the standard translations.

It is to be noted also, that owing to unavoidable delay in the transmission of the manuscript, the author has not been able to read the proof.

Florence, Italy.

CONTENTS

BOOK II. ITALIAN

[Pg 173]

STUDIES IN THE POETRY OF ITALY

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGINS OF ITALIAN LITERATURE

The first thing that strikes the attention of the student of Italian literature is its comparatively recent origin. In the north and south of France the Old French and Provençal languages had begun to develop a literature before the tenth century, which by the end of the twelfth had risen to a high degree of cultivation; indeed, by that time the Provençal had attained its highest point, and had already begun to decline. In Italy, however, we cannot trace the beginning of a literature, properly so-called, farther back than the thirteenth century.

Among the various causes which may be assigned for this phenomenon, the most important undoubtedly is the fact that the Italians have always looked upon themselves as of one race with the ancient Romans, and the heirs of all the glorious traditions attached to the names of the heroes, poets, and artists of the Eternal City. In similar manner they regarded Latin as their true mother-tongue, of which the vernacular was a mere corruption. Hence it came to pass that[Pg 174] all the literature which we find in Italy before the thirteenth century, and a large proportion of that written in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, was in Latin and not in Italian, which seemed to the writers of those days unworthy of forming the medium of poetry and learning.

This feeling of kinship was a natural one for those who lived in the same cities in which the Romans had lived, surrounded by the imposing ruins of the ancient world, speaking a language, which although essentially a modern one, with all its characteristics, was still nearer to Latin than French, Provençal, or Spanish. For these men the irruptions of the northern barbarians, the Goths, the Lombards, and later the Normans, were only a break in the continuity of the historical development of the Latin race in Italy. This spirit—which explains the popularity and temporary success of Arnold of Brescia, in the twelfth century, and of Cola di Rienzi, in the fourteenth, in their efforts to restore the old forms of the Roman republic—must be kept constantly in mind by the student, not only of the political history of Italy, but of its literature and art as well.

Yet this natural feeling does not rest altogether on fact. The Italians of to-day are not the pure descendants of the ancient Romans, but, like the other so-called Latin races, are of mixed origin, more nearly related, it is true, to the Romans, yet in general formed in the same ethnical way as their neighbors.

With the downfall of Rome, Italy, like France and Spain, was overrun by the hordes of German tribes, who, leaving the cold and inhospitable regions of the[Pg 175] North sought for more congenial climes in the sunny South. As the Franks in France, the Visigoths and Vandals in Spain, so the Ostrogoths in Italy, toward the end of the fifth century, conquered and colonized the country, and under Theodoric restored for a brief time an appearance of prosperity. In the sixth century came the Lombards, and after destroying and devastating city and country as far south as Rome, and even beyond, finally settled in upper Italy now known from them as Lombardy. Several centuries later came the Normans from France and conquered Sicily and the southern extremity of the peninsula. All these peoples were of German origin, and being gradually merged with the conquered race, formed what we now call the Italian people.[1]

It goes without saying that the Latin language was profoundly affected by all these changes. Although the German invaders gradually adopted the civilization of the conquered land, including the language, yet they could not help influencing this civilization and impressing it with their own individual stamp.

With regard to the language, we must bear in mind that even in the time of Vergil and Cicero, Latin had two forms, one the elegant and artificial language of literature, and the other the idiom of the common people, or the vernacular. Many of the peculiar phonetic, grammatical, and syntactical phenomena which characterize the modern Romance languages existed in this so-called "vulgar Latin," long before the fall of Rome, the irruption of the northern barbarians, and[Pg 176] the consequent formation of new nations and new tongues.

All the Romance languages have been derived from this "vulgar Latin," each one being specially moulded by its peculiar environments, and by the various German, Celtic, and other dialects by which it was influenced. Thus the "vulgar Latin" imported by Roman colonists into Gaul, and influenced by the Franks, produced the French language: in the same way "vulgar Latin" plus the various local and foreign influences to which it was subjected in Italy, produced the various dialects of that country—Venetian, Tuscan, Neapolitan, and Sicilian. While literary Latin, although becoming more and more corrupt as the years went by, continued in Italy to be the language of the church, of the courts of law, and of what literature there was, the vernacular—i. e., the various dialects—was used in all the operations of daily life.

We have evidence that this popular tongue must have been in existence as far back as the seventh century, for in Latin public documents dating from that period on, we find occasional words and fragments of phrases, especially the names of persons and places, which are marked by the special characteristics of the Italian language. These expressions, embedded in the Latin documents, like pebbles in sand, become more and more numerous as we approach the tenth century, until finally, in the year 960, we meet for the first time with a complete Italian sentence, in a legal document concerning the boundaries of a certain piece of property in Capua; four years later we find almost the same formula in a similar document. Toward the[Pg 177] end of the eleventh century certain frescoes were painted in the lower church of Saint Clement in Rome, where they may still be seen, and among them is one beneath which is found an explanation in Italian.

In spite of the fact, however, that these monuments of early Italian increase from year to year, they were not numerous before the thirteenth century. The very scarcity of them shows the tenacity with which the people clung to the traditions of Rome, since not only literature, but even public and private documents were written in Latin. This literary tradition never wholly died out in Italy, even in the darkest days of her history. It is true that in the terrible disorders that accompanied the slow agony of dying Rome, a long period of darkness and ignorance occurred. The empire was split into two parts and the seat of the emperor was transferred to Constantinople; the Goths and Lombards conquered Northern Italy, the Saracens and Normans the South. All through the Dark Ages Italy was the prey of foreign marauders; the Huns—those scourges of the nations—came as far as Rome; the Arabs obtained a foothold in Sicily, scoured the seas, and even ravaged the Campagna up to the very walls of the Eternal City.

Not only did devoted Italy suffer from outsiders, but discord and civil conflicts rent her very entrails. When Charlemagne was crowned emperor in 800 by Leo III., as a reward for having defended Rome against the incursions of the Lombards, it was thought that the reëstablishment of the Roman empire would bring in a new era of peace and glory. With the death of the great king, however, anarchy once more reigned[Pg 178] supreme. His successors in the empire (for the most part weaklings) were kept busy with the affairs of Germany, and regarded Italy, "the garden of the empire," as Dante calls it, with indifference. In Italy itself there was no such thing as patriotism or feeling of national unity. The people were oppressed by the nobles, who themselves were in a continual state of warfare with each other. In the eleventh century a new power arose in the form of free cities, chief among them being Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence. These, however, only increased the disorder which already existed; city fought with city, and even within the same walls the various families formed parties and feuds, which led to incessant strife, of which murder, rapine, and arson were the usual concomitants.

No wonder, then, that in the midst of all this anarchy and confusion Roman civilization almost died out. What the barbarians had spared, the church itself tried to destroy. Having finally triumphed over pagan Rome, it fought pagan civilization; the early Christian fathers looked upon art and literature as the work of demons; the clergy were forbidden to read the classic writers except for grammatical purposes, the subject matter being deemed poisonous to the souls of Christians. Even so great a man as Pope Gregory despised classical antiquity. During the long period when Italy was the prey of Saracen and Hun, when pestilence and famine stalked gauntly through the desolated land, civilization sank to its lowest point. Superstition and asceticism held full sway in religion; men sought relief from the sufferings of the life that now is in the contemplation of a new and happier state in the life to[Pg 179] come. Hence arose the widespread conviction that God is best pleased with those who despise this life, with all its beauty and pleasure, its pride and glory, its pomp and power.

In spite of this apparent death, however, a spark of life still existed. Through all this dolorous period, schools could be found, in which a half-barbarous Latin was rudely taught, as being the language of the church. There never was a time when Latin authors were not read to some extent in school and monastery.

With the eleventh century a change for the better began in the intellectual, as well as in the political life of Italy. The rise of cities, the crusades, even the unholy contest between pope and emperor gave new impulse to the minds of all, and led to the beginning of a new era. The defeat of the German emperors, through papal intrigue, added to the power of the free cities, which were thus made independent of trans-Alpine over-lordship, and now began to enter upon that long career of prosperity and intellectual conquest which is the wonder of the student of the history of medieval Italy.

This intellectual movement of the eleventh century, which gave a new and strong impulse to the study of philosophy and theology, resulted in a rich literature in these departments of learning. Peter Damian, the right hand of Gregory VII. in his war with the emperors, became a leader in the study of philosophy and wrote many celebrated works. Other Italian philosophers and theologians—Lanfranc, Anselm, and Peter Lombard—taught in foreign schools. In the thirteenth century Italy produced two of the greatest of the[Pg 180] medieval philosophers, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventura. Later the newly founded University of Bologna became the center of an eager study of law, which resulted in the writing of many books on jurisprudence.

This late and artificial bloom of Latin literature in theology and philosophy brought the necessity of a more satisfactory study of the Latin language itself. Hence arose many new grammars, rhetorics, and texts. In a similar manner the newly awakened interest in science (such as it was) brought in a new class of books, corresponding to our modern encyclopedias. From the twelfth century on, all over Europe, large numbers of these compendiums were compiled, containing a summary of all the knowledge of the times; chief among these encyclopedias was the vast Speculum Majus (the Greater Mirror) of Vincent of Beauvais, containing 82 books and 9,905 chapters. Very popular, also, were the moral and didactic treatises. Symbolism took possession of all literature. The phenomena of nature became types of religious life—even the writings of pagan antiquity were treated symbolically and made to reveal prophecies of Christian doctrine; Vergil, in a famous passage, was supposed to have foretold the coming of the Savior, and even the Ars Amatoria of Ovid, "of the earth earthy," if ever poem was, was interpreted in terms of Christian mysticism.

All the above-mentioned literature, however, so far as it existed in Italy before the thirteenth century, was written in Latin; we must dismiss it, therefore, with this brief mention, and pass on to the true subject of[Pg 181] this book, Italian literature properly so-called, which, as we have already seen, cannot be said to have existed before the thirteenth century.

One feature which is largely characteristic of all subsequent periods of Italian literature marks the formative period thereof, that is, the comparative lack of invention and originality, and the spirit of imitation of other literatures, distant either in time or space. In order to trace its early beginnings to their sources, we must go outside the borders of Italy. For nearly two hundred years the south of France had been the home of a large number of elegant lyrical poets, whose fame and influence had spread over all Europe. These troubadours, as they were called, were welcomed not only at the courts of princes and nobles in Provence, but were likewise honored guests in Northern France, in Spain, and in Italy. The latter country had long been closely connected with Southern France by means of commerce and politics. Hence it was natural for the troubadours to seek the rewards of their art in the brilliant courts of Italy. Toward the end of the twelfth century some of the best known of them, among them the famous Pierre Vidal and Rambaud de Vaqueiras, made their way thither. After the terrible crusades against the Albigenses—which not only cruelly slaughtered tens of thousands of earnest Christians, but likewise destroyed forever the independence and prosperity of Provence, and thus, by destroying the courts of noble families, put a sudden stop to the flourishing literature—large numbers of the wandering minstrels came to Northern Italy.

It was not long before their influence began to[Pg 182] manifest itself, first in Northern Italy, and later in the south and center. The north Italian poets began to imitate the troubadours, and soon a considerable body of poetry had been composed by native poets, in the manner and—a phenomenon worthy of note—in the language itself of the Provençal poets. This is due to the relationship between the dialects of Northern Italy and the Provençal, and also to the fact that at that time the latter tongue was far more elegant and cultivated than the other Romance languages. This north Italian poetry is always included in the Provençal collections and the writers are known as troubadours in spite of their Italian nationality. Among the most famous are Bartolomeo Zorzi of Venice, Bonifaccio Calvo of Genoa, and especially Sordello of Mantua, praised by Dante in a famous passage of the Purgatory, and the subject of Browning's well-known poem.

We see, then, that the above poets belong rather to the history of Provençal than that of Italian literature. To find the first springs of national poetry in Italy, we must traverse the whole length of the peninsula and arrive at the court of Frederick II. (1194-1250) in Sicily, which at this time was far ahead of the rest of the country in civilization, art, and literature. Frederick himself was a many-sided man, warrior, statesman, lawyer, and scholar, and stands out among his contemporaries, especially in matters of religious tolerance. He welcomed to his court not only the scholars, poets, and artists of Europe, but likewise Arabs, who were at that time in possession of a high degree of culture. He caused many Greek and Arab authors to be translated into Latin, among them Aristotle; he[Pg 183] founded the University of Naples; above all, by his own mighty personality, he made a deep impression on the times.

Frederick's ministers were, like himself, men of culture and learning. Chief among them was Pier delle Vigne, statesman and poet, the cause of whose tragic death by his own hand is told by Dante in the Inferno.

The influence of the troubadours made itself felt in Sicily about the same time as in Northern Italy, only here the imitation was in the Italian language and not in Provençal. Among the early Sicilian poets who wrote after the manner of the troubadours, was the Emperor Frederick II. himself, his son, Enzio, and Pier delle Vigne. From an æsthetic point of view, this early indigenous poetry is of little interest, but as the beginning of a movement which culminated in the New Life and Divine Comedy of Dante, it is of very great importance.

It had no originality or freshness, but was a slavish imitation of Provençal models, the conventions of which were transported bodily, without any change, except to be poorer. Love was the only theme, and the type always remains the same. The lover is humble, a feudal vassal of his lady who stands far above him, all beauty and virtue, but a cold and lifeless abstraction. She usually treats her lover with disdain or indifference, while he pours forth the protestations of his love, extols her beauty, and laments her hardness of heart. All these things, repeated countless times, in almost the same language, became monotonous in the Provençal poets, and naturally much more so in their Italian imitators.[Pg 184]

This Sicilian school of poetry did not last long; it perished with the downfall of the Hohenstaufens. It found a continuation, however, in middle Italy, especially in the province of Tuscany, which, from this time on, becomes the center of the literary and artistic life of Italy. The poetry of the court of Frederick had not been written in the Sicilian dialect, but in a sort of court language not very dissimilar to the Tuscan. It is probable that among the poets of the Sicilian school some were Tuscans, and that after the death of Frederick they returned home, bringing with them the poetical doctrines which they had learned.

However this may be, we find a direct continuation of the movement in Tuscany. We see the same slavish imitation of the troubadours, the same ideas, and the same poetical language and tricks of style. In addition to the influence of the Sicilian school, there was a direct imitation of the Provençal poets; thus Guittone d'Arezzo, the leader of the early Tuscan school, wrote and spoke Provençal, and Dante, in his Purgatory, introduces the Troubadour Arnaut Daniel, speaking in his native tongue.

One phase of Provençal poetry—the political—strangely enough considering the stormy times, had not been imitated by the poets at the court of Frederick II. From the first, however, the Tuscans included politics in their poetry, and one of the strongest of Guittone's poems is a song on the battle of Montaperti (1260).

Guittone d'Arezzo is the direct literary ancestor of Dante, and the first original Italian poet. Hence he deserves a word or two even in this brief sketch. He[Pg 185] was born in 1230 near Arezzo in Tuscany, hence his name; after a youth spent in the pursuit of pleasure, he was converted, and looking on all things earthly as mere vanities, he left his wife and family and joined the recently founded military-religious order of the Knights of Saint Mary. He died at Florence in 1294. In early life he had been gay and dissipated; his last years he spent in the exercises of religious asceticism. These two parts of his life correspond to two phases of his poetry. In the first he was a follower of the Sicilian school and wrote love poetry; in the second he discarded this "foolishness" and wrote political, moral, and theological discussions in verse. His poetry has little esthetic value, but is important as forming a transition between the early Sicilian school and the group of poets whose greatest member was Dante. His writings against earthly love and his praise of heavenly love mark an important change in the development of Italian poetry and open the path which leads up to Beatrice and the Divine Comedy.

The next important step in this progress is marked by Guido Guinicelli, a learned lawyer and judge of Bologna (situated in the province of Romagna and separated from Tuscany by the Apennines), a city which at that time was the seat of a flourishing university and the center of a keen intellectual life.

Guinicelli was born in 1220, was prominent in political as well as in literary circles, was banished in 1274, and died in 1276. He was a follower of Guittone, and like him his first poetry was in the manner of the Sicilian school. He changed later and began a new[Pg 186] school, the dolce stile nuova, as Dante calls it. The change shows itself especially in the new conception of love, and of its origin, growth, and effects. The troubadours and their Sicilian imitators declared that love came from seeing, that it entered through the eyes of the beholder, and thence descended to the heart. Guinicelli says, on the contrary, that love does not come from without, but dwells, "as a bird in its nest," in the heart and is an attribute thereof. This is not true, however, of all men, but only of those who are virtuous and good. Only the gentle heart can love, and a noble character is not the effect of love, but its cause. These sentiments are expressed in the following lines, translated by Rossetti:

Whereas the love of the troubadours was romantic and chivalrous, the love of Guinicelli was intellectual and philosophical. With him earthly affections become purified and spiritualized. The old repertory of conventional expressions is gradually discarded, and new forms take their place, soon to become conventional in their turn. Love and the poet's Lady remain abstract, but have now a different signification. The Lady is still treated as a perfect being, but she[Pg 187] becomes now a symbol of something higher. Love for her leads to virtue and to God; poetry now receives an allegorical character, and its real end becomes the inculcation of philosophical truth under the veil of earthly love. The importance of Guinicelli for us is his influence on Dante, for the new school was not continued in Bologna, but found its chief followers in Florence. We are thus led naturally up to the works of the great Florentine poet whom we shall study in the next two chapters.

In the meantime, however, we must cast a brief glance at certain other early phases of Italian literature, which later developed into important branches of poetry and prose.

Northern Italy, as we have seen, had no share in beginning an indigenous lyrical poetry. It did, however, have an early literature of its own, in the form of religious and didactic poetry, for the most part translations from Latin and French originals. In Umbria, the home of St. Francis, and the center of those waves of religious excitement which so profoundly affected Italy in the thirteenth century, a popular religious lyric arose. St. Francis himself deserves some mention in literary history, if only on account of his famous song of praise, which he instructed his followers to sing as they wandered, like spiritual troubadours, through the land. St. Francis was no mere ascetic, but loved the beauty of nature and had a tender love for all creatures. Quaintly enough he was wont to call birds and animals, and even inanimate objects, such as the sun and moon, by the name of brother and sister.[2] Among[Pg 188] his followers was Thomas of Celano, who wrote that most solemn and majestic of all Latin hymns, "Dies Iræ."

The astonishing popularity and spread of the new order founded by St. Francis can only be explained by the terrible sufferings of the times. All Italy was stirred by deep religious excitement. In 1233, the movement reached its high-water mark. Old and young, high and low, leaving their ordinary occupations and business, marched in processions through the land singing pious songs; the country folk streamed to the cities to hear the sermons which were given morning, noon, and night.

About the year 1260, a similar movement started, that of the Flagellants, so called from their custom of carrying whips with which they lashed themselves in token of repentance. The times were dark and stormy, the never-ending feuds between the papal and imperial parties brought in their train murder and rapine, while famine and pestilence stalked through the land. Suddenly a priest, named Fasani, appeared in Perugia, who said he had been sent by heaven to prophesy terrible punishments on a sinful world. Once more the processions began, and the aroused and penitent multitudes moved through the land, lashing themselves with whips and singing pious songs.

The literary effect of all this religious excitement was far-reaching, especially important for us in that it prepared the way for Dante, not only by creating the proper atmosphere, but by the production of hymns and visionary journeys into the unseen world. The[Pg 189] religious lyrics or hymns, which the multitudes sang, were known as Laudi, or songs of praise. They were not the artificial imitation of foreign poets, like the early Sicilian and Tuscan poetry, but the genuine product of the soil. They were composed for and sung by the great mass of the people who could not understand Latin. They were spread far and wide and made popular by the Flagellants, and thus became true folk-songs.

The most famous of the writers of these Laudi in the thirteenth century was Jacopone da Todi, the story of whose conversion is extremely touching. He was a rich young lawyer of Florence, full of the pride of life. At a certain festivity his wife was killed by an accident, and under her costly garments was found, next to her skin, a hair-shirt, such as was worn by penitents. The tragic death of his wife and this evidence of her religious feelings converted the once proud Jacopone, who joined a religious order and devoted the rest of his life to the service of God. Besides being the author of a number of Laudi and religious poems, he probably wrote the famous Latin hymn, Stabat Mater.

The Laudi, beginning in the thirteenth century, lasted down to the sixteenth century. As an example of them we give here the following stanzas, written by Girolamo Benivieni (1453-1542), and translated by John Addington Symonds:

Before we close this chapter we must say a word or two concerning another branch of early literature, whose influence is not great on Dante or his immediate successors, but which was destined to bloom forth later in a new kind of poetry, which has become the peculiar glory of Italy. The introduction into Italy of the French national heroic epic (the chansons de geste) began about the same time as the introduction of the Provençal lyric. In Northern Italy these romances were not only read but imitated, and about the second half of the thirteenth century, arose a mongrel sort of literature, written in a language, half French, half Italian. The most popular of these poems were those dealing with Charlemagne, who, as the protector of the pope and the restorer of the Roman empire, was looked upon by the Italians as one of their own race. These old chansons de geste, however, in coming to Italy, lost much of their original significance. The spirit and ideals could scarcely be understood by the Italians, to whom feudal society was largely unknown. What they liked in the French romances was not religious or patriotic sentiments, but adventures and the wonderful deeds of the heroes. The object, then, of the rude early writers of the Franco-Italian epic was[Pg 191] to interest the hearers and arouse curiosity. Hence these poems became monopolized by wandering minstrels, who sang in the streets and public squares to the people who gathered about them, much as their descendants gather about the Punch and Judy shows and the wandering musicians of to-day. For nearly two hundred years the French romances existed in Italy in this humble state, until, as we shall see later, they were incorporated into regular literature by Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto.

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

[Pg 192]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Pg 193]

CHAPTER II

DANTE: LIFE AND MINOR WORKS

In the preceding chapter we have outlined the development of early Italian poetry, endeavoring to show how from the Sicilian school it was carried over to Tuscany; how Guido Guinicelli, in Bologna, had transformed it from a slavish imitation of the troubadours into a new school of symbolical philosophical poetry, and finally, how from Bologna the new doctrines spread to Florence.

There were a number of early poets of Florence and other Tuscan cities who wrote in the manner of Guido Guinicelli, among the best known being Cino da Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, Dante da Majano, and especially worthy of note, Guido Cavalcanti. The latter, who was the intimate friend of Dante, was a member of a noble family, and was prominent in all the intellectual and political life of Florence. He was among those who were exiled from the city in 1300, and died soon after his return in the same year. Dante refers to him in the New Life as the "first of his friends," and records in the Inferno a pathetic interview with his father in the city of Dis. To him and a mutual friend, Lapo, he addressed the following beautiful sonnet, so well translated by Shelley:[Pg 194]

As a sample of Guido Cavalcanti's own poetical skill we may take the following sonnet, translated by Cary:

It is with Dante alone, however, that we can busy ourselves here, for in him are summed up all the various tendencies and characteristics of his predecessors and contemporaries.

The figure of Dante Alighieri is one of the saddest in literary history; his life seemed to contain all the[Pg 195] sorrow that can fall to the lot of humankind. An exile from his native city, separated from family and friends, deprived of his property, and thus forced to live in poverty or become the recipient of charity, disappointed in his patriotic hopes, the only thing left him to do was to turn his eyes inward and to build up out of his very sufferings and sorrow, his immortal poem:

We see, then, that even more important than in the case of other poets is some knowledge of the great Florentine.

Unfortunately we have not a reliable and complete record of that life. Legend and fancy have been interwoven with facts so closely that often it is hard to separate one from the other. The following data, however, are well established. Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in the year 1265, the day and month being uncertain, but probably falling between May 18th and June 17th. He belonged to a family which was counted among the lesser nobility. Dante himself does not seem to have been able to trace his ancestry further back than four generations. In the fifteenth canto of Paradise there is a famous passage where the poet tells how he meets in Mars his great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, who gives him certain autobiographical details: That he was baptized at the church of San Giovanni[Pg 196] in Florence; that he had two brothers; that his wife came from the Po valley (whence originated the name Alighieri); that he had gone on the crusades with the Emperor Conrad, by whom he had been dubbed knight, and finally, that he had been killed by the Arabs. This is all Dante knew, for he makes Cacciaguida say:

that is, in a certain quarter of Florence—

Of Dante's immediate family we know little. Strangely enough for one who reveals himself so completely in his poetry, he says nothing of either father or mother. As to his education we can only infer it from his works and the condition of the times. The statements made by Boccaccio and Villani concerning his early school life, are fables. He did not go to school under Brunetto Latini, for the latter had no school; although Dante was undoubtedly influenced by Latini's Trésor (a vast encyclopedical compilation of contemporary knowledge) which laid the foundations of the poet's learning. Moreover, it may well be that the distinguished statesman, judge, and writer directed by his personal counsel the studies of the bright young scholar, for whom he prophesied a brilliant career. Hence Dante's joy and gratitude at meeting in the Inferno the "dear paternal image of him who had taught him how man becomes eternal."[Pg 197]

It is certain that Dante studied the regular curriculum of medieval education, the so-called seven liberal arts, consisting of the Quadrivium and the Trivium.[3] He knew Latin, but no Greek; he quotes frequently Vergil, Horace, Statius, and others. He was a profound student of philosophy and theology; loved art, music, and poetry. In the Divine Comedy he shows a wide knowledge, embracing practically all the science and learning of the times. All this he largely taught himself, especially in his early life. Later he visited the universities of Padua and Bologna, and probably Paris. It is quite unlikely that he got as far as Oxford, as Mr. Gladstone endeavored to prove some years ago. He was not unacquainted with military life, having been present at the battle of Campaldino and at the surrender of Caprona.

He was married before 1298 to Gemma Donati, and thus became related to one of the most powerful families in Florence. Here again he shows a strange reticence, never mentioning his wife or children. We have no reason, however, to believe his marriage unhappy, or that he lacked affection for his children.

It is true that his wife did not follow him in exile, but there was reason enough for this in his poverty and wandering life. The apotheosis of Beatrice need not presuppose lack of conjugal affection, for his love for her was entirely Platonic and became later a mere symbol of the spiritual life. He had by Gemma several children, two sons, Pietro and Jacopo, and one daughter, Beatrice; that he had another daughter,[Pg 198] named Antonia, is probable, but not certain. His children joined him later in life in Ravenna.

Of the greatest importance for the understanding of the Divine Comedy is a knowledge of the political doctrines and public life of Dante. Tuscany at that time was in a wild and stormy condition. It shared in the terrible disorders of the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines (the former supporting the pope, the latter the emperor). It likewise had private quarrels of its own. The old feudal nobility had been repressed by the rise of the cities, into which the nobles themselves had migrated, and where they kept up an incessant series of quarrels among themselves or with the free citizens. Yet, in spite of this constant state of warfare, the cities of Tuscany increased in power and prosperity, especially Florence. We need only remember that at the time Dante entered public life (1300) an extraordinary activity manifested itself in all branches of public works; new streets, squares, and bridges were laid out and built; the foundations of the cathedral had been laid, and Santa Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio had been begun. Such extensive works of public improvement presuppose a high degree of prosperity and culture. The political condition of Florence itself at this time was something as follows: In 1265, to go back a few years in order to get the proper perspective, Charles of Anjou, brother of the king of France, had been called by Pope Urban IV. to Italy to aid him in the war with the house of Swabia, and through him the mighty imperial family of the Hohenstaufens, which had counted among its members Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II., was destroyed.[Pg 199] Manfred, the natural son of Frederick II., was killed at the battle of Beneventum (1260), and his nephew, the sixteen-year-old Conradin, the last member of the family, was betrayed into the hands of Charles after the battle of Tagliacozza and brutally beheaded in the public square of Naples (1268). It was through Charles of Anjou that the Ghibellines, who having been banished from Florence in 1258, had returned after the battle of Montaperti in 1260, were once more driven from the city; and the Guelphs, that is, the supporters of the pope, were restored to power.

The government was subject to frequent changes, becoming, however, more and more democratic in character. The decree of Gian della Bella had declared all nobles ineligible to public office, and granted the right to govern only to those who belonged to a guild or who exercised a profession. It was undoubtedly to render himself eligible to office that Dante joined the guild of physicians. In 1300 he was elected one of the six priors who ruled the city, for a period of two months only. From this brief term of office Dante himself dates all his later misfortunes.

At this time, in addition to the two great parties of Guelphs and Ghibellines, which existed in Florence as in the rest of Italy, there were in the city two minor parties, which at first had nothing to do with papal or imperial politics. These parties, known as Whites and Blacks, came from Pistoia, over which Florence exercised a sort of protectorate. The rulers of the latter city tried to smooth out the quarrels of the above local factions of Pistoia, by taking the chiefs of both parties to themselves; but the quarrels continued in[Pg 200] Florence, and soon the whole city was drawn into the contest, the Blacks being led by Corso Donati, and the Whites by the family of the Cerchi.

Pope Boniface VIII., who claimed Tuscany as the heir of the Countess Matilda, endeavored to take advantage of the state of discord in order to further his own selfish plans. For this purpose he sent the Cardinal Acquasparta to Florence, who, failing to accomplish his mission, excommunicated the recalcitrant city and left it in a rage. At this juncture the priors, of whom, as we have seen, Dante was one, thought to still the discord by banishing the leaders of the Whites and Blacks, an act, however, which only served to bring the hatred of both parties on the heads of the magistrates.

In 1301 Charles of Valois was called to Florence, ostensibly to pacify the divided city; he favored the party of the Blacks, however, and let in Corso Donati, who had been exiled the year before, and for five days murder, fire, and rapine raged through the streets of the devoted city. All the Whites who were not slain were exiled and their property confiscated or destroyed. Among the exiled was Dante. There are several decrees against him still extant in the archives of Florence. The first is dated January 27, 1302, and accuses him, with several others, of extortion, bribery, defalcation of public money, and hostility to the pope and the church. We need not say that of all these accusations the latter was alone true. In case the accused did not appear before the court to answer the charges, they were condemned in contumacy, to pay a fine of five hundred gold florins; if this was not paid within[Pg 201] three days, their property should be confiscated. This decree was followed by another, on March 10, 1302, in which the same charges were repeated, and in which Dante, as a delinquent, was declared an outlaw, and condemned to be burned alive if ever caught within Florentine territory.

Thus begins the poignant story of Dante's exile. We know but few definite details of that long period of wandering. He himself says, in his Banquet, that he traveled all over Italy, "a pilgrim, almost a beggar."

In the seventeenth canto of Paradise Cacciaguida gives a brief summary of Dante's exile in the form of a prophecy:

We see from these lines that Dante first went to Verona, the seat of Bartolommeo della Scala (the[Pg 202] "great Lombard," whose coat of arms was a ladder "scala," with an eagle perched upon it). From there he went to Bologna, thence to Padua, and thence to the Lunigiana. It is about this time that he is said to have gone to Paris (this is probable), and to Germany, Flanders, and England; it is not at all probable that he ever saw the last-mentioned place.

Dante never gave up altogether the hope that he might one day return to Florence. He yearned all his life for the "beautiful sheep-fold" where he had lived as a lamb. Yet even this happiness he would not accept at the price of dishonor. When, in 1312, a general amnesty was proclaimed by Florence, and he might have returned if he would consent to certain humiliating conditions, he wrote the following noble words to a friend in Florence:

A great hope rose above the horizon of his life when Henry VII., of Luxemburg, came to Italy to restore the ancient power of the empire. Dante's letters written at this time are couched in exultant, almost extravagant, language: "Rejoice, Oh! Italy," he cries, "for thy bridegroom, the comfort of the world, and the glory of the people, the most merciful Henry, the divine Augustus and Cæsar is hastening hither to[Pg 203] the wedding feast." His joy and exultation, alas! were doomed to a speedy end.

In 1312 Henry, who, after the murder of Albert, had been crowned emperor (in 1309), came to Pisa, thence to Rome. Then, after having in vain besieged Florence, which had become the leader of the anti-imperial movement, he retired to Buonconvento, where he died (probably from poison) August 24, 1313.

With the tragic death of Henry, Dante seems to have given up all hope of earthly happiness and from now on turned his eyes to heaven, from which alone he could hope for justice to himself and peace and righteousness for unhappy Italy. The composition of the Divine Comedy dates from this period. His final refuge and place of rest was at Ravenna, at the court of Guido da Polenta, uncle of Francesca da Rimini, whose pathetic story is quoted in the next chapter. Here, in comparative comfort and peace, he spent the evening of his life, occupying his time in writing the Divine Comedy and in occasional journeys in the interest of his patron. In 1321, while on one of these journeys to Venice, he caught fever and died on the 13th of September of that year.

Many anecdotes and legends are told of these years of exile. Thus it is said that while in Verona, as he was walking one day through the streets, some women saw him and said: "Behold, there is the man who has been in hell." A beautiful story is told in a letter, doubtful however, written by Fra Ilario of the Monastery of Santa Croce on Monte Corvo, to the effect that one day a dust-stained, travel-worn man, carrying a roll of manuscript under his arm, knocked at the door[Pg 204] of the monastery, and on being asked what he wanted, answered "pace, pace" (peace, peace). This legend has been beautifully rendered by Longfellow in the following lines:

Dante's character reveals itself in all its phases in his works. His youth as represented in the New Life was a happy one, filled with ardor for study, with affection for friends, and with the ecstasy of a pure and virtuous love. He needed, however, the death of Beatrice, the long years of exile, and the disappointment of all his hopes to develop that strong and noble character which the world admires almost as much as his poetry. He was an enthusiastic student, yet mingled with the affairs of men; never willingly doing wrong himself, he was unyielding in what he conceived to be right, and consecrated his consummate powers to the cause of the noble and the good. His own conscience was clear, and under this "breastplate," as he calls it, he went steadily on his way. He was proud of his learning, strong in his opinions, and does not hesitate to constitute himself the stern judge of all his contemporaries; this in a lesser man would have seemed presumptuous; in Dante it was only the prosecution of a solemn and, as he thought, a Godgiven duty. Yet, in spite of this sternness his heart was soft and tender.[Pg 205]

Like Tennyson's poet, Dante was "dowered with love of love," as well as "hate of hate and scorn of scorn."

Those who read only the Inferno, may get the impression of a savage, revengeful spirit, but the Purgatory and Paradise are full of tenderest poetry of sublimest imagination, and show their author to have had a heart full of love and gentleness, sweetness and light. A deep melancholy weighed over the whole later life of Dante; his heart never ceased to long for home and friends, yet this melancholy is not pessimism; he never lost his confidence in God, never doubted right would win.

It is this inspiring combination of noble qualities in Dante's character, reflected in every page of the Divine Comedy, which makes the study of the latter not merely an æsthetic pleasure, but a spiritual exercise, ennobling and uplifting the minds of those who read it with the "spirit and with the understanding also."

The works of Dante are not many. They consist of prose and poetry, the former comprising the so-called Banquet (Convito) and the essay on Universal Monarchy. The former was to have been finished in fifteen books or chapters, but is only a fragment of four. It is a sort of encyclopedia of knowledge, such as were so popular in the Middle Ages, but written in Italian, in order to bring it within the reach of the unlearned reader. It is full of the scholastic learning of the times, and while not attractive to the ordinary reader, is of great importance for a complete understanding of the Divine Comedy. Likewise important[Pg 206] in this respect is the political treatise on the Monarchy, in which Dante sums up his theory of world-politics. This book, written in Latin, is divided into three parts: in Book I., the author shows the necessity of a universal empire; in Book II., he shows the right of Rome to be the seat of this empire; in Book III., he shows the independence of the emperor from the pope. This theory of the separation of the church and state runs like a thread through the whole of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante constantly attributes the sufferings of Italy to the lust for temporal power on the part of the pope and clergy.

For the general reader, however, the most interesting of Dante's writings, after the Divine Comedy, is the New Life, a strange and beautiful little book which serves as a prologue to the Divine Comedy. It is the story of Dante's love for Beatrice Portinari, the daughter of Folco, a neighbor and friend of the poet's father. It is a simple story, containing but few actual events, the details consisting for the most part of repetitions of the theory of love propounded by Guido Guinicelli, of analyses of Dante's own state of mind, and of mystical visions. The form of the book is peculiar, part prose, part poetry, the latter being accompanied by a brief commentary. Yet there is a truth and sincerity in the book which prove that it is no mere allegory or symbol, but the record of an actual love on the part of Dante for the fair young Florentine girl who is its heroine.

Dante tells us in quaint and scholastic language how he first saw Beatrice at a May festival, when she was at the beginning of her ninth year and he was at[Pg 207] the end of his. She was dressed in red, with ornaments suited to her youthful age, and was so beautiful "that surely one could say of her the words of the poet, Homer: 'She seemed not the daughter of mortal man but of God.'" He tells us, further, how he felt the spirit of love awaken within him and how, after that first meeting, he sought every opportunity of seeing her again.

Nine years later, again in May, he records another occasion when he met Beatrice, this time dressed in white and accompanied by two ladies, "and passing along the street she turned her eyes toward the place where I stood, very timid, and through her ineffable courtesy she gently saluted me, so that it seemed to me that I experienced all the depths of bliss. The hour was precisely the ninth of that day, and inasmuch as it was the first time that her words reached my ears, such sweetness came upon me that, intoxicated, as it were, with joy, I left the people and went to my solitary chamber, and began to muse upon this most courteous lady." This love, accompanied as it was with violent alternations of joy and sorrow, produced a strong effect on Dante; his health suffered, his nerves were shattered, and he became frail and weak. Yet he refused to tell her name, although he confessed that love was the cause of his sufferings: "And when they asked me by means of whom love brought me to this wretched state, I looked at them with a smile, but said nothing."

In order, however, to put people on the wrong track, he pretended to love another lady, and so successful was this subterfuge, that even Beatrice herself[Pg 208] believed it, so that one day, meeting Dante, she refused to salute him, an act which filled him with deepest affliction: "Now after my happiness was denied me, there came upon me so much grief that leaving all people I went my way to a solitary place to bathe the earth with bitterest tears; and when I was somewhat relieved by this weeping, I entered my chamber where I could lament without being heard. And there I began to call on my lady for mercy, and saying: 'Love, help thy faithful one,' I fell asleep in tears like a little, beaten child."

As we have already said, there is little action in this book, only a few meetings in the street, in church, or at funerals; even the death of Beatrice's father is spoken of vaguely and allusively. The importance of all lies in the psychological analysis of feelings and thoughts of the poet. The descriptions of Beatrice are vague and her figure is wrapped in an atmosphere of "vaporous twilight." Her beauty is not presented to us by means of word-painting, but rather by its effect on all who behold her. This is illustrated in the following sonnet, which is justly considered the most beautiful not only of Dante's poetry but of all Italian literature:

The effect of all the conflicting sentiments which agitated Dante's bosom was to throw him into a serious illness, in the course of which he had a terrible vision of the approaching death of Beatrice. "Now a few days after this, it happened that there came upon me a dolorous infirmity, whence for nine days I suffered most bitter pain; this led me to such weakness that I was not able to move from my bed. I say, then, that on the ninth day, feeling my pain almost intolerable, there came to me a thought concerning my lady. And when I had thought somewhat of her, and turned again in thought to my own weakened life, and considered how fragile is its duration, even though it be in health, I began to weep to myself over so much misery. Whence I said to myself with sighs: verily the most gentle Beatrice must sometime die. Wherefore there came upon me so great a depression that I closed my eyes and began to wander in mind, so that there appeared to me certain faces of ladies with disheveled hair, who said to me, 'Thou also shalt die.' And after these ladies certain other faces, horribly distorted, appeared and said: 'Thou art dead.' Then I seemed to see ladies with disheveled hair going along the street weeping, and wondrous sad; and the sun grew dark, so that the stars showed themselves, of such color that methought they wept; and the birds[Pg 210] as they flew fell dead; and there were mighty earthquakes; and as I wondered and was smitten with terror in such fancies, methought I saw a friend come to me and say: 'Dost thou not know? Thy peerless lady has departed this life.' Then I began to weep very piteously, and not only in dream, but bathing my cheeks in real tears. And I dreamed that I looked skyward and saw a multitude of angels flying upwards, and they had before them a small cloud, exceedingly white.[4] And the angels seemed to be singing gloriously, and the words which I seemed to hear were these: 'Hosanna in the Highest,' and naught else could I hear. Then it seemed to me that my heart, which was so full of love, said to me: 'It is true, indeed, that our lady lies dead.' And so strong was my wandering fancy that it showed me this lady dead; and I seemed to see ladies covering her head with a very white veil, and her face had so great an aspect of humility that she seemed to say: 'I have gone to behold the beginning of peace.' And then I seemed to have returned to my own room, and there I looked toward heaven and began to cry out in tears: 'O, soul most beautiful, how blessed is he who beholds thee.' And as I said these words with sobs and tears, and called on death to come to me, a young and gentle lady who was at my bedside, thinking that my tears and cries were for grief on account of my infirmity began also to weep in great fear. Whereupon other ladies who were in the room, noticed that I wept, and leading away from my bedside her who was joined to me by close ties of blood,[5] they came to me to wake[Pg 211] me from my dream, and saying: 'Weep no more,' and again: 'Be not so discomforted.' And as they thus spoke, my strong fancy ceased, and just as I was about to say: 'O, Beatrice, blessed art thou,' and I had already said, 'O, Beatrice—' giving a start I opened my eyes and saw that I had been dreaming."

The presentiment of Dante in the above exquisite passage came true. Beatrice, too fair and good for earth, was called by God to Himself. One day the poet sat down to write a poem in praise of her and had finished one stanza when the news came that Beatrice was dead. At first he seemed too benumbed even for tears, and after a quotation from Jeremiah—

at the beginning of the next paragraph, he gives a fantastic discussion of the symbolical figure nine and its connection with the life and death of Beatrice. Then the tears began to flow, and unutterable sadness took possession of his heart. A whole year after he tells us how one day he sat thinking of her and drawing the picture of an angel, a picture, alas! which was never finished, as he was interrupted by visitors.[6] At another time he tells how one day he saw a number of pilgrims passing through Florence on their way to Rome, and to them he addressed one of his most beautiful sonnets:

With these lines the New Life practically ends. After one more sonnet, in which he tells how he was lifted in spirit and had a vision of Beatrice in paradise, he concludes the book with the following paragraph, in which we first see a definite purpose on the part of Dante to write a long poem in praise of Beatrice: "After this sonnet there appeared to me a wonderful vision, in which I saw things which made me resolve to say no more of this blessed one until I should be able to treat more worthily of her, and to come to that I study as much as I can, as she truly knows. So that if it shall be the pleasure of Him in whom all things live that my life endure for some years more, I hope to say of her that which has never yet been said of mortal woman. And then may it please Him who is Lord of Courtesy, that my soul may go to see the glory of its lady, that is, the blessed Beatrice who gloriously looks on the face of him 'qui est per cuncta sæcula benedictus in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.'" (Who is blessed throughout all the ages.)[Pg 213]

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Pg 214]

CHAPTER III

THE DIVINE COMEDY

We have seen, at the end of the last chapter, how Dante had made a vow to glorify Beatrice, as no other woman had ever been glorified, and how he studied and labored to prepare himself for the lofty task. The Divine Comedy is the fulfilment of this "immense promise." Although it is probable that Dante did not begin to write this poem till after the death of Henry VII. (1313), yet there can be no doubt that it was slowly developing in his mind during all the years of his exile.

The Divine Comedy is divided into three parts or books, canticas, as they are called by Dante: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, each one containing thirty-three cantos, with one additional introductory canto prefixed to the Hell. Even the number of lines in the three canticas is approximately the same.[7] Dante's love for number-symbols was shown in the New Life, hence we are justified in accepting the theory that the threefold division of the poem is symbolical of the Trinity, and that the thirty-three cantos of each cantica represent the years of the Savior's life. It is worthy of note that the last word in each of the three books is "stars." [Pg 215]

The allegory of the Divine Comedy has been the subject of countless discussions. The consensus of the best modern commentators seems to be, however, that although the allegory is more or less political, it is chiefly religious. The great theme is the salvation of the human soul, represented by Dante himself, who is the protagonist of the poem. As he wanders first through hell, he sees in all its loathly horrors the "exceeding sinfulness of sin," and realizes its inevitable punishment; as he climbs the steep slopes of purgatory, at first with infinite difficulty, but with ever-increasing ease as he approaches the summit, he learns by his own experience how hard it is to root out the natural tendencies to sin that pull the soul downward; and finally, as he mounts from heaven to heaven, till he arrives in the very presence of God Himself, he experiences the joy unspeakable that comes to him who, having purged himself of all sin, is found worthy to join "the innumerable company of saints and the spirits of just men made perfect."

The Divine Comedy is a visionary journey through the three supernatural worlds, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Such visions were by no means infrequent in the Middle Ages, and Dante had many predecessors. He simply adopted a poetical device well known to his contemporaries. What differentiated him from others is the dramatic and intensely personal character of his vision; the consummate skill with which he interwove into this one poem all the science, learning, philosophy, and history of the times; and the lovely poetry in which all these things are embalmed. To appreciate the vast difference between the Divine Comedy[Pg 216] and previous works of a similar nature, we need only to read a few pages of such crude books as the Visions of Alberico, Tugdale, and Saint Brandon.

To Dante and his contemporaries the supernatural world was not what it is to us to-day, a vast, unbounded space filled with star-systems like our own: the topography of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise seemed to them as definite as that of our own planet. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy (overthrown by Copernicus, yet still forming the framework of Milton's Paradise Lost) was accepted with implicit confidence. According to this system the universe consisted of ten heavens or concentric spheres, in the center of which was our earth, immovable itself, while around it revolved the heavenly spheres. The earth was surrounded by an atmosphere of air, then one of fire, and then came in order the heavens of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile (the source of the motion of the spheres) beyond which stretched out to infinity the Empyrean, the heaven of light and love, the seat of God and the angels.

According to Dante, hell is situated in the interior of the earth, being in shape a sort of funnel with the point downward, and reaching to the center of the earth, which is also the center of the universe. Purgatory rises in the form of a truncated cone in the surface of the southern hemisphere, having in solid form, the same shape as the hollow funnel of hell. It was formed of the earth which fled before Lucifer, and splashed up behind him like water, when, after his revolt against the Almighty he was flung headlong[Pg 217] from heaven and became fixed in the center of the earth, as far as possible according to the Ptolemaic system from the Empyrean and God.

Hell is formed of nine concentric, ever-narrowing terraces, or circles, exhibiting a great variety of landscapes, rivers, and lakes, gloomy forests and sandy deserts, all shrouded in utter darkness except where flickering flames tear the thick pall of night, or the red-hot walls of Dis gleam balefully over the waters of the Stygian marsh. Here are punished the various groups of sinners, whom Dante sees, whose suffering he describes, and with whom he converses as he makes his way downward from circle to circle.

It was in the year 1300, at Easter time, when Dante began his strange and eventful pilgrimage, "midway in this our mortal life," he says in the first line of the poem, that is when he himself was thirty-five years old. He finds himself lost in a dense forest, not knowing how he came there, and after wandering for some time, reaches the foot of a lofty mountain, whose top is lighted by the rays of the morning sun. He is about to make his way thither, when he is stopped by the appearance, one after the other, of three terrible beasts, a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. He falls back in terror to the forest, when suddenly he sees a figure advancing toward him and learns that this is Vergil, who has been sent by Beatrice (now in heaven) to lead her lover from the wood of sin to salvation. To do this it will be necessary for Dante to pass through the infernal world, then up the craggy heights of purgatory to the earthly paradise, where Beatrice herself will take charge of him and lead him from heaven to[Pg 218] heaven, even to the presence of God Himself. Dante's courage and confidence fail at this prospect—he is not Æneas or St. Paul, he says, to undertake such supernatural journeys—but when Vergil tells him that Beatrice herself has sent him, Dante expresses his willingness to undertake the difficult and awe-inspiring task.

It is nightfall when they reach the gate of hell, over which is written the dread inscription:

Entering in they are met with the sound of sighs, moans, and lamentations, mingled with curses hoarse and deep, and the beating of hands, all making a hideous din in the starless air, in which a long train of spirits is whirled about hither and thither stung by wasps and hornets. These spirits are the souls of those ignoble ones who were neither for God nor against him.

Here Dante recognizes the soul of him who made the "great refusal," recalling thus the strange story of the aged hermit, Peter Murrone, who after fifty-five years and more of solitary life in a cave high up among the Abruzzi Mountains, was forced to ascend the papal throne, and who after a short period of ineffectual reign under the name of Celestine V., resigned, thus making way for Boniface VIII., Dante's bitter enemy. Vergil's contemptuous remark concerning these souls,

has become proverbial.

Soon after this the two poets reach the shores of the river Acheron, where Charon, the infernal boatman, is busy ferrying the souls of the damned to the other side. He refuses to take Dante in his boat, and the latter falls into a swoon, and being aroused by a clap of thunder, finds himself on the other side. How he was carried over we are not told. The wanderers are now in limbo or the first circle of hell, in which are contained the souls of unbaptized children and of the great and good of the pagan world, especially the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, who, having lived before the coming of Christ, had through no fault of their own died without faith in Him who alone can save. These souls are not punished by physical pain, as is the case with those in the following circles, but nourishing forever a desire which they have no hope of ever having satisfied, they pass the endless years of eternity in gentle melancholy. Here Dante meets the spirits of Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan, who treat him kindly and make him one of the band, thus consecrating him as a great poet.[Pg 220]

Leaving this beautiful oasis in the infernal desert, the poets enter the second circle, where Hell may be said really to begin. Here Dante sees the monster Minos, the judge of the infernal regions, who assigns to each soul its proper circle, indicating the number thereof by winding his tail about his body a corresponding number of times. In circle two are the souls of the licentious, blown about forever by a violent wind. Among them Dante recognizes the famous lovers of antiquity, Dido, Helen, Cleopatra. His attention is especially attracted toward two spirits,[Pg 221] who, locked closely in each other's arms, are blown hither and thither like chaff before the wind. Calling upon them to tell him who they are, he hears the pathetic story of Francesca da Rimini, perhaps the most famous and beautiful passage in all poetry:

Passing rapidly over circle three, in which the gluttons lie in mire under a pelting storm of hail, snow, and rain, torn to pieces by the three-throated Cerberus; and circle four, where misers and spendthrifts roll great weights against each other and upbraid each the other with his besetting sin; we come to circle five, where in the dark and dismal waters of the Styx the wrathful and the melancholy are plunged. It is singular that Dante makes low spirits or mental depression as much a sin as violence and lack of self-control:

As they stand at the foot of a dark tower, a light flashes from its top and another light, far off above the waters, sends back an answer through the murky air. Dante, full of curiosity, turns to Vergil for explanation:

Thus they cross the Styx, and soon approach the other shore, where luridly picturesque in the ink-black atmosphere rise the red-hot walls and towers of the city of Dis:

While not only Dante but Vergil himself stand in dismay before the closed gates of the city, and the threatening devils on the walls, they hear a roar like that of a mighty wind, and behold! over the waters of the Styx a celestial messenger comes dry-shod, puts to flight the recalcitrant devils, and opening the gates with a touch of his wand, departs without having uttered a word.

Entering the city, Dante sees a vast cemetery covered with tombs, whence issue flames, and in which are shut up the souls of those who denied the immortality of the soul. Here occurs the celebrated scene between Dante and Farinata degli Uberti, who alone, after the battle of Montaperti, in 1260 (when the victorious Ghibellines seriously contemplated razing Florence to the ground), opposed the motion, and thus saved his native city from destruction. Here also Dante sees the father of his friend, Guido Cavalcanti.

In the center of the cemetery yawns a tremendous[Pg 226] abyss, which leads to the lower regions of hell. Before they descend this, however, Vergil explains to Dante the various kinds of sins which are punished in hell. Those he has seen hitherto (gluttony, licentiousness, avarice, wrath, and melancholy) all belong to the category of incontinence; those which are to come are due to malice, and harm not only oneself but others. The sixth circle, that of the heretics, in which they now are, forms a transition between the above two general divisions. In circle seven, the next one below them, are punished the violent, subdivided into three classes: 1, those who were violent against their fellow-men,—tyrants, murderers, and robbers; 2, those who were violent against themselves,—suicides and gamblers; 3, those who were violent against God, nature, and art,—blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers. In circles eight and nine are the fraudulent and traitors, the various classes of which are given later.

After this explanation, the two poets descend the rocky cliff, and find at the bottom a blood-red river, where, guarded by centaurs, are plunged the souls of murderers and robbers, in various depths according to the heinousness of their cruelty and crimes. Crossing this stream they come to a dark and gloomy wood, composed of trees gnarled and twisted into all sorts of fantastic shapes, grimly recalling the contortions of a human body in pain, and covered with poisonous thorns. On the branches sit hideous harpies, half woman, half bird. Each of these trees contains the soul of a suicide. Dante, breaking off a small branch, is horrified to see human blood slowly ooze from the break, and a hissing noise like escaping steam, which[Pg 227] resolves itself finally into words. From these he learns that the soul contained in this tree is that of Pier delle Vigne, prime minister of Frederick II., who tells his sad and pathetic story, how he became the victim of slander and court intrigue, and how, being unjustly imprisoned by his master, he committed suicide.

Beyond this gruesome forest the wanderers come out upon a vast sandy desert, utterly treeless, where they see many wretched souls, some lying supine, some crouching down in a sitting posture, some walking incessantly about, all, however, forever trying, but in vain, to ward off from their naked bodies countless flakes of flame which fall slowly and steadily like snow

Here are punished the blasphemers, violent against God; usurers, violent against art; and sodomites, violent against nature. Among the latter Dante recognizes and converses with his old friend, Brunetto Latini, who prophesies to him his future fame and his exile from Florence:

To which the poet answers with noble courage:

The poets then descend the tremendous cliff leading to circle eight, on the back of Geryon, a fantastic monster, with face of a good man, but body of a beast, many-colored and covered over with complicated figures, being a symbol of the fraud punished in the next circle. This is subdivided into ten concentric rings, or ditches, with the floor gradually descending to a well in the center, thus resembling the circular rows of seats in an amphitheater, converging to the arena. In these ten malebolge, as Dante calls them—i. e., evil pits—are ten different kinds of fraudulent, panderers, flatterers, those guilty of simony, false prophets, magicians, thieves, barterers (those who sell public offices), evil counselors, schismatics, and hypocrites, all punished with diabolic ingenuity, hewn asunder by the sword, boiled in lakes of burning pitch, bitten by poisonous snakes, wasted by dire and hideous disease. As an example of the horrors seen in these evil pits we give one vivid picture, that of the famous Troubadour Bertrand de Born, who, having incited the young son of Henry II., of England, to rebel against his father, is punished in hell by having his head cut off and carrying it in his hand:[Pg 229]

In the eighth pit are the souls of evil counselors, so completely swathed in flames that their forms cannot be seen. Dante's attention is especially attracted to one of these moving flames, with a double-tipped point, which proves to contain the souls of Diomede[Pg 230] and Ulysses, who, as they were together in fraud, are now inseparable in punishment. The story of his last voyage and final shipwreck, told by Ulysses, how in his old age, weary of the monotony of home life and longing to know the secret of the great Western ocean, he set sail with his old companions, is full of imaginative grandeur:

In the center of the amphitheater of Malebolge is a deep and vast well, guarded by giants, one of whom takes the poets in his arms and deposits them at the bottom. Here they find the ninth and last circle, where in four divisions the traitors against relatives, friends, country, and benefactors, are fixed like flies in amber in a solid lake of ice, swept by bitter, cold winds. Among the traitors to their country Dante sees one man who is gnawing in relentless rage at the head of another fixed in the ice in front of him. Inquiring the cause of this terrible cruelty, Dante hears the following story, couched in language which Goethe has declared to be without an equal in all poetry:[Pg 232]

Arriving at the very bottom of hell, the poets see the body of Lucifer fixed in the center thereof (which is at the same time the center of earth and of the universe), with its upper part projecting into the freezing air. This monstrous figure, as hideous now as it had been beautiful before his revolt against God, has three pairs of wings and three heads, in the mouths of which he tears to pieces the three arch-traitors, Judas, Brutus, and Cassius.

The wanderers climb along the hairy sides of Lucifer and finally reach a cavity which corresponds to the lowest part of hell, and up into which are thrust the legs of the monster. They have thus passed the center of earth and are now in the other or southern hemisphere. Making their way upward along the course of a stream they finally come out into the open air, where[Pg 235] the mount of purgatory rises sheer up from the surface of the great southern sea.

The first cantos of Purgatory are of wonderful beauty, and their loveliness is heightened by contrast, coming as it does after the darkness, filth, and horrors of hell. Issuing from the subterranean passage just before sunrise, the poets see before them a vast expanse of sea, lighted up by the soft rays of Venus, the morning star, and gradually becoming brighter as the dawn advances:

As they stand watching this scene, a venerable old man (Cato, the guardian of the island) approaches and tells them to go to the seashore and wipe off the stains of hell with the reeds that grow there:

As they linger by the seaside, they suddenly see a bright light far off over the waters, which, as it approaches nearer, turns out to be a boat wafted by angelic wings and bearing to purgatory the souls of the saved, among them a musician, a friend of Dante's who at his request, sings one of the poet's own songs:

Thus rebuked by Cato for delaying, even thus innocently, their first duty, which is to purge away their sins, the company of spirits breaks up and Dante and Vergil make their way to the mountain of purgatory, which lifts its seven terraces almost perpendicularly from the sea.

Before reaching the first of these terraces, however, they pass over a steep and rocky slope, ante-purgatory,[Pg 240] as it may be called, where linger the souls of those who, although saved, neglected their repentance till late in life, or who died in contumacy with Holy Church. Among the latter Dante sees Manfred, the unfortunate son of Frederick II.,

who was slain at Benevento, in 1266; and likewise Buonconte da Montefeltro, who was killed in the battle of Campaldino (1289), and whose account of the post-mortem fate of his body is singularly impressive; "There is nothing like it in literature," says Ruskin:

After leaving Buonconte, Dante and Vergil make their way upward and finally come across the spirit of Sordello, the famous troubadour, a native of Mantua and thus a fellow citizen of Vergil. The cordiality with which they greet each other gives Dante an opportunity to vent his indignation at the discord existing in Italy:

As night is now coming on, during which upward progress cannot be made, Sordello conducts Dante and Vergil to a pleasant valley:

Here Sordello points out the souls of mighty princes who left deep traces in the history of the times, among them the Emperor Rudolph of Germany, Peter of Aragon, Philip III. of France, and

Henry III. of England. The scene that follows is one of the most celebrated, as well as beautiful in the Divine Comedy:

After conversing with several friends whom he meets here, Dante falls asleep and is carried thus unconscious by Lucia (symbol of divine grace) to the gate of purgatory proper. When he awakes the sun is two hours high. Three steps lead to the gate, one dark and broken, symbol of a "broken and a contrite heart"; one of smooth, white marble, symbol of confession; and one purple, repentance. On the threshold of diamond (the immovable foundation of Holy Church) sits an angel with a sword and two keys; with the former he cuts seven P's on Dante's forehead (the Latin word for sin, peccatum), and with the latter he opens the gate, which as it swings open sends forth a sound of heavenly music:[Pg 245]

In Terrace I. are punished the proud, crushed beneath enormous weights. On the side of the mountain wall are sculptured wonderful bas-reliefs, representing examples of humility; especially famous is the one which tells the story of Trajan's justice, a story which led Pope Gregory to make a prayer to God, who granted it, for the release of the pagan emperor's soul from hell:

Farther on in the same terrace they see similar sculptures representing examples of punished pride, such as the fall of Lucifer, and the destruction of Niobe. In each of the following terraces these examples of sin and the opposite virtue are given, represented, however, by various means.

Among the proud, Dante sees the miniature painter, Oderisi of Adubbio, who pronounces those words on the vanity of earthly fame, which have been proverbial:

Passing through Terrace II., where the envious sit sadly against the rocky wall, with their eye-lids sewn together, and Terrace III., where the wrathful are shrouded in a black, stifling mist, the poets reach Terrace IV., where the slothful are punished. Here Vergil explains the apparent paradox that love is the root of all evil as well as good. Love, he says, is the desire for something; desire for those things which harm others—i. e., love for evil, produces pride, envy, and wrath. These are punished in the first three terraces.[Pg 247] Insufficient desire or love for that which is good—i. e., God—is punished in Terrace IV., that of the "slothful in well-doing"; excessive desire for merely earthly things, which are not evil in themselves, but only in their excess, produces avarice, gluttony, and licentiousness; these are punished in the last three terraces.

Ascending now to Terrace V., Dante sees the souls of Pope Adrian, and Hugh Capet, founder of the long dynasty of the kings of France, who gives a brief but admirable summary of the development of the monarchy in France. As they are walking along this terrace, suddenly a mighty earthquake shakes the whole mountain, and while Dante is still filled with amazement and dread at this strange phenomenon, they are overtaken by the spirit of Statius, who explains the cause of the earthquake, telling how, when a soul has been completely purged of its sins, and the time of its redemption has arrived, it rises spontaneously from its place, and joyfully makes its way toward the heavens above, while the whole mountain rejoices with him, and the souls along the slope above and below cry out: "Glory to God in the highest!"

Statius now accompanies Dante and Vergil and all three mount to Terrace VI., where the gluttons are punished, being worn to skin and bone by hunger and thirst, which are only increased by the sight of waterfalls and trees laden with fruit. The last terrace is swathed in flames of fire, within which move about the licentious. Here Dante sees many famous poets and greets with especial joy Guido Guinicelli of Bologna, who he says:[Pg 248]

Through this wall of living flame, Dante, too, must pass before he can reach the summit of purgatory. His spirit, indeed, is willing, but his flesh is weak; he hesitates long before daring to enter the fiery furnace. Vergil urges him on in the tenderest manner:

Above this last terrace stretches out the lovely earthly paradise, but before the poets can reach it night comes on, and Dante sleeps on the steps, guarded by Vergil and Statius, as a flock is watched over by its shepherd. The passage which describes this scene, and Dante's vision, is a beautiful one:

Thus Dante, having been led by reason (represented by Vergil) to purge himself of sin and vice, is now to put himself under the guidance of heavenly wisdom (represented by Beatrice), by whom he is to visit the homes of the blessed. First, however, he lingers in the earthly paradise which forms the summit of purgatory, and sees strange sights before Beatrice reveals herself to him.

The descriptions of the landscape in the earthly paradise are of surpassing beauty and choice of quotation is exceedingly difficult. Only a few passages can be given here:

The poet now beholds a mystical procession of strange and wonderful beasts, venerable old men, beautiful maidens dressed in red, white, green, and purple, all accompanying a chariot drawn by a griffin and representing the Church of Christ. On the chariot itself stands Beatrice.[Pg 255]

After Beatrice has rebuked Dante for his wayward conduct in life, and he repents in bitter tears, he is led by Matilda to the streams of Lethe and Eunoe, and bathing therein, is made "pure and apt for mounting to the stars."

As we have already seen, the paradise of Dante is composed of nine spheres enclosed by the Empyrean, which itself is boundless, and is the seat of the Godhead, surrounded by the celestial hierarchy of seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers,[Pg 256] principalities, archangels, and angels. The blessed are here arranged on seats in the form of a rose, surrounding a lake of liquid light, in which they, gazing, see all the fulness of the glory of God. These souls, however, by a mystical virtue of ubiquity, are likewise seen by Dante in the various heavens through which he, with Beatrice, passes, and manifest themselves to him in various forms of light, flames, flashes, sparkles, or shapes made of fiery particles. The souls of the blessed, which are thus distributed over the nine heavens, have varying degrees of felicity. Thus, in the first heaven—that of the moon—Piccarda, sister of Corso Donati, appears to Dante, faint and dim in that tenuous atmosphere, as a "pearl set on a white forehead," and tells him how, having been forced by her brother to break her vows as a nun, and not having shown tenacity of purpose in opposing his tyranny, she now occupies the lowest sphere of Paradise. Yet this she does with perfect content and happiness, since such is the will of God, for, she says, to quote that one incomparable line, as Matthew Arnold calls it:

Rising from heaven to heaven with Beatrice, Dante passes through Mercury and Venus, in the former of which are the souls of Christians who sought with over-much zeal for earthly glory, and in the latter those who were inclined too much to mere human love, and finally reaches the sun, where he sees the great doctors of theology. Here Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican himself, tells in beautiful language the story of St. Francis of Assisi and the establishment of[Pg 257] his order; while the Franciscan, St. Bonaventura, with the same exquisite courtesy, tells the story of St. Dominic.

In Mars, Dante sees the souls of Christian martyrs and warriors, many of whom form themselves before the eyes of the poet into a wonderful cross of roseate light, flashing in countless splendors. Here, as we have already seen, he meets and converses with his ancestor, Cacciaguida. In Saturn the poet beholds a wonderful ladder of light, with spirits mounting and descending upon it, a ladder such as

Here Peter Damian tells of the mystery of predestination, and St. Benedict describes the founding of his order at Montecassino.

In the heaven of the fixed stars Dante beholds the triumph of Christ:

After the passing away of this glorious vision Dante is examined as to his faith by St. Peter, his hope by St. James, and his love by St. John; then being found worthy of being admitted into the presence of God, he rises to the Empyrean, beholds the Blessed Rose, where are seated the saints of all ages, and finally catches an instantaneous glimpse of the glory and mystery of the Trinity. In this supreme vision his desires find full fruition, and his spirit, overcome by the overwhelming glory of the Godhead, fails him, and thus his vision comes to an end,

Such is the Divine Comedy of Dante, which has won the undying admiration of all great minds from[Pg 260] the poet's own time down to the present. It would lead us too far to go into a detailed analysis of its greatness here, but with one consent men like Carlyle, Ruskin, Gladstone, Browning, and Tennyson in England; Tholuck, Witte, and Kraus, in Germany; Longfellow and Lowell in America, attribute the title of supreme genius to this poem.

The Divine Comedy is universal in its compass, containing the elements of dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry; full of sublime imaginations, touching and pathetic episodes, and not deficient even in humor, grotesque at times, but often of a strangely sweet and tender nature. The language is astonishingly simple and concise, and invariably represents the thought of the poet with absolute truth and fidelity. We find in this wonderfully condensed poem no mere epithets, no mere arabesques of style such as adorn the lesser thoughts of lesser men. Each word is in its right place. "It is amazing," says Ruskin, "how every word, almost every syllable, reveals new meanings the more we study them." The metaphors of Dante are especially famous, for the most part simple and drawn from everyday life, yet unexcelled in beauty and especially in their perfect and complete adaptation to the point they are meant to illustrate. Such are those of the old tailor threading his needle, the sheep leaving the fold in huddling groups, the fish disappearing from view in the depths of clear water, and the pearl faintly discernible on a white forehead.

Above all, the personality of the author lends a dramatic interest to the poem and exercises a fascination on the reader. As Lowell says, "The man behind[Pg 261] the verse is far greater than the verse itself."[18] In the midst of the wonderful landscapes of his own creation, dark and terrible, soft and beautiful, he walks among the men and woman of all ages; he talks to them and hears their stories of half-forgotten crimes and tragedies; he brands them with infamy or sets upon their brows the wreath of praise. It is his love for Beatrice—now become the symbol of spiritual life—which leads him through the realms of sin over the steep rocks of Purgatory to the glory ineffable of God.

Completely a man of his age, Dante incorporates into the Divine Comedy all its science and learning, its theology, philosophy, astronomy, use of classical authors, way of looking at the insignificance of the present life in comparison with the life to come. All these things have still a distinct medieval stamp. Yet Dante is at the same time the most original of poets. It is his mighty individuality which, rising above the conventionality of his age and country, has made him a world-poet, as true to-day as ever in his depiction of the human heart in all its sin and sorrow, virtue, and vice, in its love and hate and its inextinguishable aspiration toward a better and happier existence in the world beyond the grave.

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(See Chapter II.)

[Pg 263]

CHAPTER IV

PETRARCH

It is hard for people to-day to realize the enormous difference between the medieval and modern world. The former was full of superstition and naïve belief; authority reigned supreme; in religion no one dreamed of questioning the decrees of church and pope; in philosophy a question was settled by a quotation from Aristotle or his scholastic representative, St. Thomas Aquinas. This same blind following of authority was exemplified in art—painters imitated slavishly their predecessors, and up to the appearance of Cimabue and Giotto no one dreamed of improving on the stiff conventionalities of the Byzantine artists. In scholarship, criticism—i. e., individual judgment—was unknown; in science, all such old-world fables as the mandragora, dragons, phenix, and unicorn were devoutly received as true zoölogy, while the Ptolemaic system of astronomy was unquestioned. The idea of progress was utterly unknown; the world had been created exactly as it was, and would remain so till the coming of Christ, when a new heaven and a new earth would be formed. So, in the political and social world, the thought that the existing state of things could change would have seemed absurd. It needs no words of mine to demonstrate the vast difference between these[Pg 264] conceptions and the present world, with its idea of illimitable progress, its criticism of all things high and low, its denial that authority in church and state is just, simply because it is old; its eager acceptation of all innovations; its cultivation of the individual in all departments of life; to say nothing of the vast field opened up by the discoveries of positive science.

Dante stands at the end of the old order of things, rising like a mighty mountain peak over the dead plain of medieval mediocrity.

Yet he is not an innovator; he does not inaugurate a new period of civilization. When he died he left no school of followers to carry on his work; he closed an epoch rather than opened one. It is true that for a hundred years or more men did imitate his Divine Comedy, but only in the outward form thereof, neglecting the poetical and æsthetical side, for which indeed Dante's contemporaries had little or no appreciation. It is only in the nineteenth century that Dante has become a power in Italy as voicing the universal desire for a united fatherland.

The man who begins the mighty movement of the Renaissance, from which modern civilization takes its rise, is Francesco Petrarch. It is strange to think that he, so utterly different in mental attitude from Dante, was seventeen years old when the latter died. Yet the change which he represents was being slowly prepared by his predecessors. As we have seen, the study of the Latin language and authors had never fully died out in the Middle Ages; especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the classic writers—Vergil,[Pg 265] Ovid, Statius, Livy—were read more and more, not, however, as examples of literary excellence, or as revealing the culture of antiquity, but as mines of practical wisdom, or as supplying quotations and examples for philosophical and theological discussions. The classic writers were made to fit in with medieval ways of thinking, and thus subordinated to the then existing state of civilization. With Petrarch, however, comes a complete change in all these respects. For him the classic writers were the ne plus ultra of elegant form; he strove to penetrate into their spirit, to appreciate fully the peculiar excellence of each one; and above all to clear antiquity from its barnacle-like covering of medieval traditions and superstitions and to present Roman civilization, its learning, science, and art, as it was. To him the Middle Ages were a period of degradation, which had long hidden from view the past glories of Rome; and he now, for the first time in history, broke away from the present and immediate past, and turned his eyes back to ancient times. In so doing he founded the Renaissance in Italy, and laid down the lines along which all subsequent students of classical antiquity were to follow. In all these respects Petrarch is justly considered, not only the founder of modern classical scholarship, but the founder of modern civilization as well. He has been referred to by more than one historian as the Columbus of a new intellectual world.

The life of Petrarch is intensely interesting, and, contrary to the case of Dante, the difficulty in giving an outline of it consists not in the absence of well-ascertained facts, but in an embarrassment of riches.[Pg 266] For we know more of the details of Petrarch's life than we do of any other ancient writer.

Francesco Petrarch was born in 1304 at Arezzo, whither his father, a prominent lawyer of Florence, had gone on being exiled in 1302, at the same time as Dante. After moving about some time in Italy, the family finally settled at Avignon, in southern France, then famous as the seat of the Roman papacy during the so-called Babylonian captivity. From 1315 to 1319 Francesco was sent to school at the neighboring town of Charpentras; in 1319 he went to the University of Montpellier to study law, and in 1323 went to the University of Bologna. At the university, however, he neglected law for the classic writers, and he tells us how one day his father appeared and burnt all his Latin books, with the exception of Vergil and Cicero's Rhetoric, which by means of tears and entreaties he succeeded in saving from the flames.

After the death of his parents, in 1326, Petrarch settled down in Avignon and devoted himself to his favorite studies. As he was without means he entered the clergy and henceforth was relieved of all anxiety in regard to money. From this time on his life was spent in study, in the collection of a library, in writing books, in travel, and visits to his friends. Petrarch was very fond of traveling and his letters abound with interesting descriptions of the places he had seen. Yet, in spite of this passion for travel, he loved also the quiet and tranquil existence of country life. Here he could indulge to his heart's content his love for nature, the beauty of which he was practically the first to describe in sympathetic language. It was to[Pg 267] satisfy this love for nature and the "quiet life," that Petrarch bought a small property in Vaucluse, near Avignon, and here he never failed to return from time to time during all his later life, when tired of travel, weighed down by care, or depressed by the loss of friends and the "creeping steps of age."

Petrarch seemed to have had a peculiar faculty for making friends; he was loved and admired by high and low. Among these countless friends are worthy of especial mention the powerful Colonna family, father and two sons, who played so important a part in the history of Italy; King Robert of Naples; the Emperor Charles IV., who wished to have Petrarch accompany him to Germany; King John of France, who wished to retain him in Paris; Pope Urban IV., who offered him the position of papal secretary. There were scores of others of humbler rank, among them Boccaccio, his faithful admirer and lifelong friend. Not only kings and princes lavished honors on Petrarch, but cities as well: Florence offered to restore his father's property and make him professor at the university if he would live there; Venice gave him a palace in return for his library; and in 1340 the cities of Paris and Rome, at the same time, invited him to receive the laurel crown of poet.

After due deliberation Petrarch accepted the invitation of Rome, and on Easter Sunday, 1340, in the presence of an immense company of people, he was crowned at the capitol, amid the blare of trumpets and the acclamations of the assembled multitudes. This scene may be considered as the climax of Petrarch's victorious career.[Pg 268]

No man outwardly ever had a happier life than he. He was well-to-do; was handsome and amiable; surrounded by friends; admired and flattered by all Europe; looked on as a great poet and a prodigy of learning. Surely, if any man could be content, Petrarch was that man. And yet he was not happy—owing to his peculiar character, his sensitiveness, his streak of melancholy, his immense vanity which could never be fully satisfied, and especially owing to the constant struggle that went on in his soul between the medieval ascetic view of life (which he could never wholly shake off) and the more worldly modern view, which he himself inaugurated. Owing to all these things, I say, there is a tinge of sadness in all his writings. Perhaps no man ever lived who illustrated so well the beautiful words of the old Latin poet:

Indeed, Petrarch's character presents us with strange contrasts. He who loved travel so much is constantly writing about the joys of country life; constantly seen in the gay and often licentious courts of princes, he wrote a treatise in praise of the solitary life; receiving his living from the church and naturally religious, many of his acts were contrary to both religion and morality.

And yet Petrarch was not a hypocrite. No one can doubt his sincerity; these things are only the outward expression of that struggle which was constantly going on in his heart. Like St. Paul, he seemed always to be crying out, "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do."[Pg 269]

The latter part of his life was thus spent in ever-increasing sadness. In 1347 his friend, Colonna, died; in 1348, Laura; in 1347 his high hopes concerning the restoration of the ancient glory of the Roman Republic by Rienzi, the "last of the tribunes," were suddenly dashed by the fall and death of the latter. Henceforth Petrarch spent his life wandering from city to city, from court to court, surrounded by an aureole of glory, yet never at rest, except when he retired to the quiet seclusion of Vaucluse.

In 1370 he went to the university town of Padua, then the center of an active intellectual life. In the spring of the same year he started for Rome, in response to an invitation of the pope, but fell so grievously ill at Ferrara that he gave up his journey and settled down at Arquà, a village not far from Padua, where he died July 18, 1374. He was found dead in his library, bending over a folio volume.

As may be supposed from Petrarch's enthusiasm for the Latin authors, most of his own works were written in that language. It is a generous trait of literary and scholarly, as well as of religious, enthusiasts that they are not content to receive the treasures of art and learning, but feel impelled to impart their own joys to others. Petrarch was not only an eager student, but devoted his life to making known to others the riches and glory of ancient Rome. All this he does in his numerous Latin works. These include, in poetry, bucolics and eclogues, imitated from Vergil; poetic epistles, imitated from Horace; and especially his "Africa," from which he expected immortality, an epic poem on the life of Scipio Africanus.[Pg 270] Of especial importance in the development of the Renaissance and the Revival of Learning are his prose Latin works. Chief among these we may mention his history of Illustrious Men; his moral and religious tractates—The Remedy of Fortune, the Solitary Life; and especially his letters, six hundred in number, written in a Latin style which infinitely surpassed anything produced till then, and which founded a branch of literature which was most popular throughout all the Renaissance.

For our purpose here, however, we can only discuss in detail Petrarch's Italian poetry—he wrote no Italian prose. It is this which gives him his place in literature as the first great lyric poet of modern times.

We have seen that Italian lyrical poetry began in Sicily, and that, carried thence to Bologna and Tuscany, it formed a new school, which found its highest expression in Dante. Petrarch once more founds a new school of lyrics, which, while still in some respects recalling the writings of his predecessors, is yet in spirit far different from them. With him poetry is no longer a matter of chivalrous ideals, as with the troubadours, or of symbolism and philosophy, as with Guido Guinicelli and Dante, but the expression of his own genuine feelings. His Laura is not like the Beatrice of the Divine Comedy, a mere abstraction, a personification of virtue and symbol of religion, but is a woman of flesh and blood, beautiful and virtuous, but not ethereal and mystical—a woman, in fact,

In his songs, then, Petrarch describes real things—the beauty of Laura in all its details; her coldness and his suffering; and especially the conflicting feelings which tormented his soul. In his subjectivity, his psychological analysis of feelings, his use of poetry to express his own mental experiences; in his lovely descriptions of nature; and especially in his melancholy, the far-off anticipation of the "Weltschmerz,"[19] Petrarch is indeed the first modern lyrical poet.

He himself confidently expected immortality from his Latin works, which, alas! for the vanity of human expectations, are now forgotten by all except special students. He apparently looked with contempt on his Italian lyrics, yet this was only affectation, for even in his later years he carefully revised them. These songs and sonnets are still unsurpassed in Italian literature. Many, it is true, are artificial, and on account of puns, antitheses, and conceits are repugnant to modern taste; yet the large number of his best poems are exquisite pictures of womanly beauty, with a charming landscape as a background, all enveloped in an atmosphere of lovely poetry, full of tenderness, pathos, and genuine feeling. Above all, they are written in a style and with a harmony of numbers unknown till then and not surpassed since.

Petrarch's Italian poetry consists of some 375 sonnets, ballads, and songs (of which the vast majority are sonnets), and in the twelve chapters, or books, of the so-called Triumphs. These are, with but few exceptions, consecrated to the story of his love for a[Pg 272] certain woman named Laura, concerning whose actual existence as much contest has been waged as over that of Beatrice. It seems now pretty definitely ascertained that Laura was no mere fancy-picture, but a real being. She was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, and the wife of Ugo de Sade, to whom she bore eleven children. She died April 6, 1348, probably of the pest, which then was raging. Petrarch saw her for the first time April 6, 1327, and for twenty-one years worshiped her from a respectful distance. There is little story or event in all these sonnets. Petrarch's love is not returned by Laura, he makes no progress in her affections, and his poems are devoted for the most part to descriptions of her beauty, coldness, and indifference, and his own state of wretchedness.

Among the many sonnets descriptive of Laura's beauty we may take the following, in which she is declared to be the most perfect example of Nature's handiwork:

In another sonnet he tells how he was affected the first time he saw her:

Yet Laura is not only beautiful, but good; she unites in herself the highest excellencies of virtue as well as of beauty:

Petrarch not only gives general descriptions of the beauty of his lady and of its effect, as his predecessors had done, but he gives over and over again details thereof, especially her eyes and hair:

He is especially fond of describing the scenes where she is, thus combining with her own charms those of lovely nature. Thus he sees her on the banks of clear streams, sitting on the green grass, with blossoms falling upon her from the trees in springtime, as in the following lines from one of his most beautiful songs:

Yet, in spite of all her beauty, he is not happy; the thought of her never leaves him. When absent from her he is most miserable:

Above all, his torment is increased by the contest between his religious feelings and his love, which, earthly as it was, seemed to be inconsistent with his duty as a Christian. Yet he cannot tear his heart away from the object of his affection. Hence arises a constant warring of the flesh against the spirit, and a vacillation which finds expression in sentiments diametrically opposite. Thus at times he declares that his love for Laura is a blessing to him, leading him to a virtuous and religious life:

Then comes another mood, in which his love seems sinful and he prays God to lead him to a better life:

This state of his mind, divided against itself, finds its best expression in the song which is regarded as one of the most beautiful of his poems. In the various strophes conflicting sentiments arise, develop, and reach a climax, only to be overthrown by a sudden revulsion of feeling; fame, happiness, the sweetness of love beckon the poet on; then comes the chilling thought of death to show that all things earthly are nothing but vanity. Unfortunately this song is too long to be quoted here entire. We give the first strophe and the refrain:

The finest of Petrarch's sonnets are those written after the death of Laura. With this dread event he loses all joy in life; thought of her beauty returns softened by memory and the lapse of time:

Yet, in his affliction there is a certain comfort, for now that she is dead she seems no longer cold to him, and he often sees and converses with her in heaven:

But, when spring returns, it brings a renewal of his grief:

His only comfort now is in thinking that he, too, must soon die:

Weary of life, now that he is left alone, he devotes himself to God; he directs all his thought to heaven, where Laura awaits and beckons him:

His love thus purified and his thoughts now turned to God alone, the poet awaits in resignation the coming of the inevitable hour of death. The "Book of Songs and Sonnets," as his Italian poetry may be called, ends in a beautiful hymn to the Virgin Mary, in which the poet breathes forth all his chastened sorrow and hopes. From this we select the following lines:

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Pg 283]

CHAPTER V

BOCCACCIO

We have hitherto discussed the development of poetry almost exclusively; and this is justifiable, for in Italy, as in all other countries, the development of prose as a form of literature comes after that of poetry. Petrarch wrote no prose in Italian; and although Dante wrote his Banquet and, in part, his New Life in prose, yet the former is couched in scholastic phraseology and the prose portion of the latter is of small compass. Giovanni Boccaccio, although not so great a poet as Dante, or so great a scholar and master of form as Petrarch, is yet of high importance in the history of Italian literature from a double point of view, as the first great writer of prose and the founder of the modern novel.

We can only give here a brief outline of his life and character, before passing on to his works. He was born in Paris in 1313, the son of a Florentine merchant and a young French gentlewoman. Going to Florence with his father, he was sent to school and is said to have written verses before the age of seven. His father, a merchant himself, wished his son to follow the same career, and at the age of fourteen the boy was taken to Naples with this purpose in view. In this "great, sinful city" Boccaccio passed his youth,[Pg 284] at first in business, then in the study of law, both of which, however, he heartily disliked. Making the acquaintance of some well-known scholars, he was inducted into a love for study, and resolved to devote himself to a literary career.

About 1340 he left Naples and returned to Florence, which henceforth became his residence, although he was frequently absent from it on matters of business and pleasure. For he soon became known as a scholar and poet, and, in accordance with the customs of the times, he was honored by his city by being sent on frequent embassies. In this capacity he went, in 1350, to Ravenna, to the daughter of Dante; in 1354, to Pope Innocent VI., at Avignon; and in 1351, to Petrarch at Padua, in order to induce the great poet and scholar to reside in Florence. This meeting with the great apostle of the New Learning was an important event in Boccaccio's life, who from henceforth became an enthusiastic admirer of Petrarch. He plunged still more eagerly into the study of classic antiquity; and although not so great a scholar as Petrarch, he accomplished some things which the latter had not been able to do. Thus he learned Greek, imperfectly, however, and introduced to the western world a knowledge of that language (unknown to the Middle Ages) by bringing Leontius Pilatus to Florence as a professor in the university. It was at the dictation of the latter that Boccaccio wrote down his Latin translation of the Homeric poems, which, worthless as it now seems, then excited widespread admiration.

Boccaccio differed from Petrarch in being an ardent[Pg 285] admirer and indefatigable student of Dante. Petrarch had once declared that he had never read the Divine Comedy. The influence of Dante on Boccaccio is seen on almost every page of his poetry, and it was in reward of his services in promoting the study of the former's works that in 1373 he was invited by Florence to lecture on the Divine Comedy (for the first time in Italy) in the university.

Boccaccio's character was in many respects an attractive one; he was honest, sincere, and modest; a faithful friend, a lover of true literature; and, above all, of a lovable and gentle disposition; Giovanni della Tranquillità, his friends called him—"John of the quiet mind," as we may translate it. The gravest accusation made against him, and one, alas! only too well founded, is his immorality. In his early years, and even later in life, his manners were light, and the effects thereof are too often reflected in his books. Before condemning him too harshly, however, we must bear in mind the low state of morals that marked all society at that time. Toward the end of his life Boccaccio became converted by a strange event. It seems that a certain Carthusian monk, Pietro de' Petroni—who, by the austerity of his life and his religious exaltation, had won a reputation for holiness—died at Siena, May 29, 1361. Fourteen days before his death he entered into a trance, in which he had a vision of the saints in heaven and the damned in hell. When he awoke he declared that he had been commanded by Christ to warn a number of distinguished men of the error of their ways. Among these was Boccaccio. Being too sick to go himself, Petroni sent[Pg 286] his disciple, Gioachino Ciani, to fulfill his commission. The latter came to Florence, told Boccaccio of his master's vision, and then, in fiery language, urged him to see to the salvation of his soul, and to repudiate his immoral writings, else he would soon die and his soul be lost forever. Boccaccio was deeply affected by this strange embassy. In the first moments of depression he resolved to give up all study, burn his books, write no more, and spend the rest of life in religious exercises. From this violent action, however, he was saved by a sensible letter from Petrarch. Yet the effect did not pass away. Ever after this he was more serious and thought more of religious matters. He lost his former zest in life; his gaiety and serenity of temper became clouded. After a youth of enjoyment the evening of life came on gray and cold.

He died December 21, 1375, in Certaldo, not far from Florence.

Boccaccio, like Petrarch, wrote much in Latin, chief among such writings being the historical or biographical compilations on Illustrious Women and the Vicissitudes of Great Men, and especially his Genealogy of the Gods, which for one hundred years and more became the standard hand-book of mythology. In Italian poetry he was far more voluminous than Petrarch. Among the best known of his poems are the Vision of Love; Filostrato, which tells the story of Troilus and Cressida, afterwards imitated by Chaucer and Shakespeare; and the Theseid, imitated by Chaucer in his Knight's Tale. His Ninfale Fiesolana describes the beautiful suburbs of Florence, while his pastoral poem, Ameto, is the first example of that[Pg 287] popular branch of poetry, which found its highest development in Sannazaro's Arcadia, Tasso's Aminta, and Guarini's Pastor Fido.

All these, however, are now almost forgotten. The one book by which Boccaccio is known to-day, not only in Italy, but the world over, is his Decameron, a collection of short stories in prose. In this book he becomes epoch-making in a double sense, for it begins both Italian prose and the modern novel. The name of the book is composed of two Greek words, meaning "ten days," and is explained by the fact that there are one hundred stories in all, told ten at a time, on ten successive days.

Neither the various stories themselves nor the idea of uniting them in a framework is original with Boccaccio. The latter device was especially popular in the Orient, and is illustrated in the Seven Wise Men, so vastly popular in the Middle Ages. Chaucer imitated Boccaccio in this respect in his Canterbury Tales. The sources of the stories in the Decameron are various. Such tales were among the most popular kinds of literature of the times, as may be seen in the Fabliaux in France and the well-known collections, the Novellino and Cento Novelle, in Italy. Boccaccio gathers them from all sides and adds many he had heard told orally, especially anecdotes of his contemporaries. All these are changed, however, by the alchemy of his own genius, and become original in style, in delineation of character, and in local color.

The framework of the Decameron is as follows: During the terrible pestilence which raged in Europe in 1348, a famous description of which is given in the[Pg 288] opening chapter of the book, seven young ladies and three young men meet in one of the churches at Florence and agree to forsake the plague-stricken city, retire to their villas in the country and try to forget in pleasant converse the terrors that surround them. The plan is carried out. Each day a leader is chosen, whom all must obey. After breakfast they betake themselves to the garden, and here on green lawns covered with flowers, beneath shady trees and beside clear-running streams, they dance, play, and sing; and then, comfortably seated on the soft grass, they pass the hours away in cheerful conversation and story-telling.

Each one of these one hundred stories has an individual character of its own. While reading them we see passing in picturesque procession before our eyes the whole of Italian society of the times, kings and princes, knights and peasants, merchant, artist, mechanic, priest, and monk. There are not wanting earnest and serious stories, but the comic and satirical element prevails; especially are the vices of the clergy scourged, that fruitful source of all European medieval literature. The avaricious and licentious priests and monks are everywhere held up to the scornful laughter of his readers.

All this is expressed in an admirable prose style, with perfect adaptation of local color, with excellent delineation of character and insight into human nature, and with the inimitable skill in narration of the born story-teller.

The popularity of Boccaccio was, and is still, enormous, in spite of the immorality of certain of his[Pg 289] stories. He is read to-day in the elementary schools of Italy (in emendated editions), and his influence on modern literature is incalculable. In English literature alone most of the great writers have found subjects for poems, stories, and dramas in the Decameron, among them Chaucer, Dryden, Shakespeare, Keats, Tennyson, and Longfellow.

The following story, which I have translated with some slight condensation, is not only the best and most famous of the Decameron, but it illustrates on the one hand the vast antiquity of the short-story (existing, as it does, not only in all European languages in the Middle Ages, but running back its roots to the early antiquity of India), and on the other hand, the influence of Boccaccio, "Patient Griselda" having become almost a household word in modern literature, and having furnished themes for poet, painter, and sculptor. John Addington Symonds has declared that no Greek poem equals Boccaccio's story of Griselda for tenderness.

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Pg 297]

CHAPTER VI

THE RENAISSANCE AND ARIOSTO

We have seen that Petrarch is considered the founder of the Renaissance in Italy. He died in 1374, and it took a century and more to complete the work he inaugurated. The whole of the fifteenth century is of importance in the history of Italian literature, not so much for what it produced, as for the fact that it prepared the way for the so-called "Golden Age" of the sixteenth century. During these hundred years classical scholarship became more and more widely diffused, being no longer confined to a few cities or princely courts, but spread over all Italy and through all classes of society.

Yet Florence still remained the great center of this influence. Under the powerful family of the Medici the city had risen to great power and prosperity, and amid all the political confusion of the times it continued to be characterized by a keen intellectual and æsthetic life. The immediate successors of Petrarch and Boccaccio in the spread of the new learning, Luigi Marsili and Coluccio Salutati, lived and worked at Florence. Later came Poggio Bracciolini, who equaled Petrarch himself as an eager and successful collector of manuscripts; Marsilio Ficino, who founded under Cosimo de' Medici the famous Platonic academy; Pico[Pg 298] della Mirandola, the youthful prodigy of learning and mystical enthusiast; and Politian, the greatest scholar and most elegant poet of his day. These men studied not only Latin as Petrarch had done, but obtained a good knowledge of Greek. They plunged eagerly into the study of Plato, who for so many centuries had been unknown to western Europe, and who now threatened to take the place of Aristotle in the world of philosophy. They gathered statues, coins, and inscriptions, and studied ruins in order to obtain as clear an idea as possible of the ancient world. It is hard for us to-day to get an idea of the eager enthusiasm and intense delight in study of these men of the Renaissance; they must have felt as Wordsworth did when he cried out:

The scholars of the time enjoyed an immense popularity. A new caste of society arose, not dependent on birth or wealth, but on learning and intelligence. Princes and cities sought for their services, for which they paid large sums. Everywhere they were received as equal to the noblest in the land. The movement reached its highest point in the first half of the sixteenth century, when the intellectual and artistic life of Italy was of almost incredible greatness. In proof of this statement we need only mention a few names, such as Michel Angelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Ariosto, and Macchiavelli; Tasso belongs to the same group, though born out of due season.

Naturally enough the early Humanists wrote for the most part in Latin, which they still looked upon[Pg 299] as the language of their ancestors and thus, in a certain sense, their mother-tongue. Indeed, many at first despised the vernacular as a base corruption. Later, however, a reaction set in; the example of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio induced others to write in Italian, which now became more and more polished and adapted to become the medium of a great literature. This new impulse toward a national literature was first given at Florence, at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who himself, next to Politian, was the greatest poet of his day. We cannot linger, however, over these fifteenth century writers, but must hasten on to the next century and to the consideration of Ariosto, the supreme poet of the Renaissance.

In discussing the romantic poetry of Ariosto, however, we must go back a number of years in order to get the proper perspective. Among the brilliant men of letters of the court of the Medici was a certain Luigi Pulci, of a poor but noble family. It was he who was the first to introduce into elegant literature the old romances of the Carlovingian cycle, which for centuries had been sung and recited by rude, wandering minstrels in the public streets of Italy.

We have seen in Chapter I. how in the thirteenth century the old French chansons de gestes had been introduced into North Italy and had there become popular; these had been rewritten and worked over in rude forms for the amusement of the common folk, but up to the time of Pulci had found no place in literature proper. Now it is the glory of Pulci to have brought this popular material into the realm of artistic poetry. This he is said to have done at the request[Pg 300] of Lorenzo's mother, the result being the poem known as Morgante. In this poem Pulci introduces as the chief character Orlando, the Italian form of Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, and the hero of Roncesvalles, who plays so large a rôle in the French romances. The title is derived from the name of a giant whose life has been saved by Orlando, whom he, in gratitude therefor, follows as a faithful servant; he drops out of the story in the twentieth canto.

Pulci, in his Morgante, follows closely the popular poetry of his predecessors, but differs from them in language, style, and especially in the comic treatment of his theme; in all these respects he is the forerunner of Boiardo and Ariosto. As we have seen, he was a native of Florence, which, up to the end of the fifteenth century, had been the chief center of the literary glory of Italy. The scene now changes to Ferrara, where the house of Este had for generations held a brilliant court. It was here that the three great poets, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, lived and produced their works.

Boiardo has been so eclipsed by Ariosto that he is not known as well as he ought to be, when we consider his services to Italian literature. To him belongs the credit of having invented the romantic epic, and Ariosto, who followed in the same lines, added but little to the general groundwork of his predecessor.

Matteo Maria Boiardo was born of a noble family at Reggio in 1434, and having early gone to Ferrara, remained there till his death in 1494. A scholar, poet, administrator, and courtier, his position at the court of the duke of Este reminds us involuntarily of[Pg 301] that of Goethe, three hundred years later, at Weimar. His first essays in literature were in Latin, but when he was about forty years old he began his poem of Orlando Innamorato (Roland in Love). He was led naturally thereto. Ferrara had early favored chivalrous poetry, and the library of the duke contained a large number of romances, belonging especially to the Arthurian cycle, which pleased the elegant society of the court more than the Carlovingian stories so popular with the common people. These romances of King Arthur and the Round Table, however, were in French.

Boiardo's great merit consists in the fact that he united in one the various characteristics of both the Carlovingian and the Arthurian romances, and thus combined the popular and the courtly element. He chose the characters of his poem from the former, but changed them to true knights of chivalry, and added all the paraphernalia of the Arthurian tales. Of especial importance was the introduction of romantic love as the motive of all action.

The general theme of Orlando Innamorato is the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens, yet there is no one definite action, as in the case of the regular epic. Rather the poem consists of a series of independent, or at least very loosely connected, episodes, in which the adventures of the various knights errant are recounted with great skill and interest. Chief among these episodes is that of Orlando and his love for Angelica, the daughter of the king of Cathay, who comes to the court of Charlemagne in Paris, and by means of her beauty and coquetry succeeds in drawing away a number of the best Christian warriors.[Pg 302] Other important characters are Astolfo, Rodomonte, Rinaldo, and the latter's sister, Brandiamente, who falls in love with the pagan Roger, who, according to Boiardo, was the founder of the house of Este. Vast as the poem is in its present state, Boiardo left it only half finished when he died in 1494.

At the time of Boiardo's death Ludovico Ariosto was a youth of twenty. Born in Reggio, in 1474, of a family that had long been in the service of the Este family, he too, after an irregular and tardy education came to Ferrara and entered the service of the Cardinal Este. At the death of his father, in 1500, Ariosto found himself at the head of a family of ten, and nobly performed his duty by caring and providing for all his brothers and sisters. His position in the household of the cardinal was not at all to his liking; he was often sent on embassies and business trips, a function which, to a man who loved quiet and leisure as much as Ariosto did, was utterly distasteful. In 1517 he refused to accompany the cardinal to Hungary, on the ground of ill-health, and was thereupon summarily dismissed. He found soon, however, more congenial employment in the household of Duke Alfonso. His life now was more quiet and afforded him more opportunity for study and writing. Yet even here he was not content. His inclinations were all against court life, and he only retained his position on account of his poverty. His character, as depicted in his satires, was very different from that of Petrarch, who was a successful courtier. Ariosto could not bow and smile and make himself agreeable. He was sincere and independent by nature, modest in his desires, kindly and[Pg 303] amiable, loved nature, quiet study, and rural occupations. In 1527 he succeeded in saving enough to buy a small house at Ferrara, with a garden attached. Over the door he placed the inscription which has become famous: "Small, but suited to me; harmful to no one; bought with my own money." Here he spent the remainder of his days, happy and contented, amusing himself with almost childish joy in the cultivation of his garden. He died June 6, 1533.

Ariosto's literary work consists of comedies, which are among the very first of modern literature; satires and the Orlando Furioso (Mad Roland). The satires rank next in literary value to his masterpiece, and are charming examples of the poetic epistle rather than biting satire. They contain many details of the society of the day, and are our best source for the life and character of their author. They are all inspired with kindly humor and full of worldly wisdom and common sense. No one can read these satires without feeling a respect and affection for the poet who wrote them.

Ariosto's most famous work, however, is the Orlando Furioso. When he came to Ferrara everybody was talking about the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo. Ariosto himself admired it immensely, for it harmonized perfectly with his own genius and literary tastes. Hence when there came to him that mysterious command, "Write," which all men of poetical genius hear some day or other, it was only natural that he should turn to the unfinished poem of his predecessor, with the thought of completing it.

Yet it would be a mistake to think Ariosto was a mere plagiarist or that he lacked originality. No[Pg 304] writer ever lived who has so impressed his own individuality on his works as he. He took the data furnished by his predecessors and joined to them all the culture of the times, ideas, aspirations, conception of life; all these he fused into one vast work which reflects the age of the Renaissance as truly as the Divine Comedy reflects the closing period of the Middle Ages.

It is practically impossible to give a clear yet brief outline of Orlando Furioso. It does not, like the Iliad, Æneid, Paradise Lost, and Jerusalem Delivered, contain one central action, with which all parts are logically connected, but is rather a vast arena on which take place many different and independent actions at the same time. The wars between Charlemagne and the Saracens, which had been begun in Boiardo's poem, are here continued and carried to an end. In similar manner Ariosto takes up the history of the various knights errant introduced by his predecessor, and either continues their adventures or introduces new ones himself. In the first canto the poet shows us the army of Agramante before the walls of Paris, in which Charlemagne and his army are shut up, and in the course of the poem he shows us the city freed, the enemy defeated, and Christianity saved from the dominion of the Saracen. Yet this is not the real center of action; often it is entirely lost sight of in the confusing crowd of individual adventures. It only serves as a factitious means of joining from time to time the scattered threads of the various episodes. When the poet does not know what to do with any particular character, he despatches him forthwith to Paris, there to await the final dénouement.[Pg 305]

The individual heroes are free, not bound by any ties of discipline to Charlemagne; they leave at any moment, in obedience to individual caprice, and wander forth in search of love and honor. It is in these various episodes or adventures that the true interest of the poem resides. At first sight there seems to be an inextricable confusion in the way they are told; but after careful study we find that the poet always controls them with a firm hand. A constant change goes on before our eyes. When one story has been told for some time, the poet, fearing to weary the reader, breaks it off, always at an interesting point, to begin another, which, in its turn, yields to another, and this to still another; from time to time these stories are taken up again, continued, and finished. All these transitions are marvels of skill and ingenuity.

Among the crowd of minor episodes three stand out with especial distinctness, the story of Cloridan and Medoro, Angelica's love for the latter and the consequent madness of Orlando; and the death of Zerbino.

Cloridan and Medoro are two brave young pagans, whose lord and master, Dardinello, has been slain in battle with Charlemagne's army outside the walls of Paris. Now the two youths, as they stand on guard at night, lament that their master's body lies unburied and dishonored on the field of battle, and resolve to go and find it and bring it back to camp.

So they go forth on their generous enterprise, and after slaying many distinguished warriors among the Christians, as they lay asleep, they approach the tent of Charlemagne, near which they find the body of their master:

Enraged at this, Zerbino leaps forward to wreak revenge on Medoro, but he, begging to be allowed to bury his master so touches Zerbino with his youthful beauty that he is inclined to spare him, and one of his own followers smiting Medoro, who stands in suppliant attitude, Zerbino, in a rage, pursues him and followed by his companions, disappears, leaving Cloridan dead and Medoro gravely wounded.

In the meantime—

This is Angelica, who having despised the love of Orlando, now finally meets her fate in the person of Medoro:[Pg 310]

She succeeds in curing him, and falling desperately in love, marries him and departs for Cathay, of which she designs making her husband king.

After some time Orlando comes that way and finds engraved on trees in love-knots and intertwined names, the evidence of the love of Angelica and Medoro:

He tries to convince himself that there is no truth in all this, but in vain, for meeting the shepherd at whose house Angelica had brought Medoro, he learns in detail the whole story. Upon hearing this he rushes forth from the cottage and hastens to the forest, where he can give full vent to the sorrow that fills his heart, and where he gradually loses all control of himself, and finally becomes raging mad:

Thus begins the madness of Orlando, who, after performing prodigious deeds of strength on men, cattle, and trees, is seized with restlessness, and wanders far and wide:

The Scottish prince, to whom the poet refers in these last lines, is the same Zerbino whom we have left pursuing the wretch who wounded the young Medoro. Zerbino is young, handsome, and brave, and has married Isabella, daughter of the king of Gallicia, whom he loves and by whom he is loved with tender conjugal affection. Now his time has come to die. He, with Isabella, arrives on the scene of Orlando's madness and finds the scattered arms of Orlando, which he gathers together and hangs on a tree, with an inscription telling whose they are, and forbidding all to touch them. Just then up comes Mandricardo, emperor of Tartary, accompanied by[Pg 313] Doralice, his lady-love, and attempts to take Orlando's sword Durindane. The two warriors fight, and Zerbino being fatally wounded, Doralice, at the prayer of Isabella, prevails on Mandricardo to end the battle: yet it is too late to save the life of Zerbino.

Neither the wars of Charlemagne nor the madness of Orlando gives a real unity to the poem; the nearest thing to such a unity is to be found in the story of Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan, the latter a Christian, daughter of Aymon and sister to Rinaldo. They love each other, seek each other, and after countless adventures by land and sea, are united in marriage, thus founding the house of Este. It is with Roger's conversion to Christianity and his marriage that the poem ends. All the different heroes are gathered together before the walls of Paris, Orlando's madness has been cured by Astolfo, who has made his famous visit to the moon, where, in the paradise of fools, he recovers the lost brain of his friend; Rinaldo, on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte, the truculent and hitherto unconquerable enemy of the Christians, and with his fall the war and the poem are ended.

Hard as it is to give a clear conception of the complicated adventures told in the Orlando Furioso, it is perhaps still harder to give an idea of its charm to these who have not read it. We are introduced at once into a world of fancy, a sort of fairy-book for grown-up people. The poem is not deeply impressive like the Divine Comedy, it has no elements of tragedy. Ariosto did not aim at moral effect, but merely sought to amuse his readers. Dante represents the deep,[Pg 314] mystical religious feeling of his times; Ariosto represents the worldliness of the neo-paganism of the Renaissance. The asceticism of the Middle Ages now gives way to intense delight in the life that now is. The artist and poet sought to represent the pomp and circumstance of life, man in his physical and intellectual power, woman in her beauty, nature in all its picturesque variety, art in its magnificence. This was the ideal followed by Ariosto; this was the ideal of the Italian Renaissance.

The great charm of Ariosto is his style. Here form reaches its highest expression. He worked over and polished his verses unceasingly, yet so natural are they that they seem to have been written spontaneously. The Orlando is full of beautiful descriptions, of pathetic scenes, alternating skilfully with humorous ones. Ariosto's humor, however, is not coarse or grotesque, but refined and elegant. He does not caricature the stories of chivalry, as Cervantes does in Don Quixote; but living in a skeptical age he cannot take seriously the creatures of his own fancy, and accompanies the prodigious deeds of his heroes with a smile of good-natured irony.

We have already said that Ariosto was a man of good sense. From the quiet of his own home he looked out upon the ruffled sea of life and mused on what he saw. His reflections are contained in his satires; but they likewise add a peculiar and original charm to the Orlando Furioso. Among the parts most popular with the serious reader are the short introductions to the various cantos, each containing some wise reflection, some rule of life, or some kindly[Pg 315] satire; this charm is well known to the genuine lover of Thackeray.

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[Pg 316]

CHAPTER VII

TASSO

From the beginning of Italian literature to the death of Ariosto nearly three hundred years had elapsed. In that period four of its greatest writers had appeared. Yet no literature can attain the highest rank in which the drama and epic are not represented. Italy hitherto lacked these two important branches. The Divine Comedy of Dante is, strictly speaking, not an epic, but forms a class by itself, being an imaginative journey to the supernatural world, with a record of things seen and heard therein; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso was a revival of the old chivalrous romances in a new and elegant form, adapted to the conditions and taste of his times; a huge fresco, rather than an epic. As we shall see in the next chapter, comedy and tragedy had to wait nearly two hundred years after the death of Ariosto before finding worthy representatives in Alfieri and Goldoni. The regular epic, however, was given to Italy by Tasso at the end of the sixteenth century.

The story of Tasso's life is of great though painful interest. It is a tragedy of suffering like that of Dante; yet how vast the difference between the two. Dante bore his sufferings with unparalleled nobility of character, exciting our admiration. Tasso, weak and vacillating by nature, lives wretched and miserable,[Pg 317] not from the decrees of fortune, but owing to his unfitness to bear the trials of ordinary life.

He was born March 11, 1544, at Sorrento, near Naples, the son of Bernardo Tasso, a man of affairs, a courtier and a poet, who, although of noble family, was forced by straitened circumstances to pass his life in the service of others. Tasso's education was varied enough; a few years at a Jesuit school in Naples, an experience which left a lasting impression on his sensitive and melancholy temperament; then under private teachers at Rome; and finally, several years of study of law at the universities of Padua and Bologna. He was compelled to leave the latter as a result of certain satires against the university authorities, which he was accused of having written.

The important period of his life begins in 1565, when he went to Ferrara, then, as in the days of Boiardo and Ariosto, the center of a rich and brilliant court. His life here for the next seven or eight years was a prosperous one. Fortune seemed to have showered her fairest gifts on this young, handsome, and gentle-mannered poet. He was treated on terms of intimacy by the duke and his sisters, Lucretia and Leonora. He was accustomed to take his meals with the two ladies, and to them he read the poetry which he wrote from time to time. It was undoubtedly due to their influence that he composed his famous pastoral poem, Aminta (1572-73), full of exquisite pictures of rural life and bathed in an atmosphere of tender and refined love. This poem had an unprecedented success and made its author famous throughout all Europe.[Pg 318]

Not long after this, however, the first germs of the terrible mental disease which wrecked his life began to show themselves. For many years Tasso was made the hero of a romance, in which he was depicted as a martyr to social caste—the victim of his own love for a woman beyond his sphere. According to this romance Tasso fell in love with the sister of the duke of Ferrara, and for this crime was shut up in prison and falsely treated as insane. The results of modern scholarship, however, have dissipated the sentimental halo from the brow of the unfortunate poet, and reduced his case to one of pathological diagnosis. Leonora was some ten years older than Tasso, and the affection which at first undoubtedly existed between them was that of an elder sister and a younger brother. The duke was not cruel to Tasso, but on the contrary treated him at first kindly, and only when he was at last worn out by the vagaries of the poet, did he drop him and bother himself no more about him.

The secret of Tasso's sufferings and vicissitudes of fortune lay in himself; he was, during the latter part of his life, simply insane. All his actions during this period illustrate perfectly the various phases of the persecution mania, which in his case was aggravated by religious hallucination. To this terrible mental disease he was predisposed from early life; his Jesuit education, the mysterious death of his mother (suspected of having been poisoned), overwork and worriment, and especially his morbidly sensitive and melancholy temperament, all helped to prepare the way for the catastrophe that was to darken his life.

The first open manifestations of insanity occurred[Pg 319] in 1577 (probably as the result of a fever), about the time he had finished the first draft of the Jerusalem Delivered. Very foolishly for a man as sensitive as he was, he turned over the manuscript of his poem to a number of friends for suggestions. The heartless criticisms he thus received filled him with bitterness and fostered the rising irritability of his nascent disease. He was especially hurt by the brutal and stupid criticism of the Inquisitor Antoniano, who advised him to cut out all the romantic episodes, which form the real beauty of the poem. This put into his mind the thought that the Inquisition might refuse him permission to print his poem, and made him fear that he might be a heretic. The lessons of his early teachers, the Jesuits, now began to bear fruit. In 1577, tormented by religious doubts, he went to the inquisitor of Bologna and laid his case before him. Although the latter absolved him from his self-charge of heresy, Tasso was not satisfied. Henceforth religious fear was added to the fear of assassination—a double torment to his soul.

Under these circumstances he became more and more moody and irritable; he was suspicious of all about him and subject to frequent outbursts of violence. On the evening of June 17, 1577, he was discoursing of his troubles to the Princess Lucretia, when he suspected a passing servant of spying him, and flung a knife at him. In order to prevent further acts of violence he was shut up, at first in his room, and later in the monastery of St. Francis, under the care of a physician. On July 27 he broke the door and escaped. Horsemen were sent after him, but being[Pg 320] disguised as a peasant, he escaped, and after many adventures, often begging his way as a common beggar, he reached Sorrento, where, in the quiet seclusion of his sister's house, surrounded by all the tokens of her love and sympathy, he enjoyed a short period of rest and peace.

He soon became restless, however, and yearned for the brilliant life of the court, which presented itself to his fancy, enhanced by the charms of distance and of those things we have had and lost. He was like a butterfly, always attracted toward the light that was to destroy him. He returned to Ferrara, and again ran away, wandering from city to city, yet finding nowhere a warm welcome. "The world's rejected guest," Shelley called him, who knew himself only too well the meaning of these words.

In February, 1579, Tasso once more returned to Ferrara, this time without previous warning, and asked to be received by the duke. It was a singularly unpropitious moment; the duke was then in the midst of preparations for his marriage with Margaret Gonzaga, his third wife, and naturally enough the obscure, half-insane poet was neglected. This neglect completely turned his mind, and losing all self-control he broke out into violent invectives in the presence of the court. He was immediately taken out, shut up in the insane asylum of S. Anna, and in accordance with the barbarous customs of the age in the treatment of the insane, put in chains. Here he remained in utter misery, a prey to the double nightmare of his sick brain, fear of death by the assassin's knife, and of everlasting damnation as a heretic. The letters[Pg 321] which he wrote by scores during this period are of heartbreaking pathos.

He remained in S. Anna nearly eight years, being released in 1586 at the solicitation of Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga, brother-in-law of the duke of Ferrara. From now on to the end, the story of Tasso's life becomes a mere repetition of melancholy incidents. Once more he went from city to city, visiting in turn Milan, Florence, Naples, and Rome, and moving restlessly hither and thither

Finally fortune seemed about to smile upon him; a faint ray of sunshine broke through the thick clouds that for so long had hung over his life. In November, 1594, he was invited to Rome, there to be crowned poet, as Petrarch had been. The pope assigned him a pension, and it seemed as if at last some measure of happiness might again be his. It was only a brief gleam of sunshine, however; the clouds soon closed again, and the sun of Tasso's life hastened to its setting shrouded in gloom. The coronation was put off on account of the ill health of Cardinal Cinzio and the inclemency of the season. In March, 1595, he himself fell sick, and in April was taken to the monastery of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum hill. To the monks who came to meet him he uttered the pathetic words: "My fathers, I have come to die among you." The pope sent his own physician to attend him, but in vain. The world-weary poet passed away April 25, 1595. His body lies buried in the adjacent church. The visitor to-day can still see his room, furnished as in[Pg 322] his lifetime, and on the wall a copy of his last letter, in which he announces his speedy death.

Tasso's works are comparatively voluminous, and consist of lyrical poems, the pastoral poem, Aminta, a tragedy, Torrismondo, dialogues, letters, and the Jerusalem Delivered. In this brief sketch we can only discuss the latter, by which alone he is known the world over.

Already when only sixteen years old, he had felt the ambition to write a poem which should combine the merits of the regular epic (such as the Iliad and Æneid), and the romantic interest of the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. His Rinaldo, written when he was only nineteen years old, was remarkable both on account of the youth of its author and as a promise of what was to follow. For a number of years after this, however, he devoted himself almost exclusively to the task of preparing himself, by reading, study, and thought, to write the great poem which he had in mind.

His choice of a subject was a happy one. The fear of the Turk at that time was widespread; the wars between Christian and Saracen, which filled the old romances, were now occurring again on the eastern borders of Europe. The Turks had conquered Hungary, and their piratic ships had ravaged the coast of Italy, often destroying entire populations; a short time before Sorrento, Tasso's birthplace, had been attacked, and his sister escaped only by a miracle. Tasso himself must have heard many a story of the crusades, when a child at Sorrento, where Pope Urban, who had published the first crusade, was buried. His[Pg 323] choice of the deliverance of Jerusalem from the unbeliever then was a natural one.

Contrary to the Orlando Furioso, the story of Jerusalem Delivered, is a simple one. Yet the main plot, i. e., the military operations of Godfrey, the various battles, and the final capture of Jerusalem, are not so effective or interesting as the various romantic episodes introduced from time to time; the reader to-day is disposed to hurry over the early cantos and to linger over the beautiful pages which tell the loves of Tancred and Clorinda, Olindo and Sophronia, Rinaldo, Armida, and Erminia.

The poem begins with the usual invocation:

The poet then plunges into the midst of the action, We learn how the Christian army has been in Holy Land for six years and had made many conquests:[Pg 324]

In the spring of the seventh year the archangel Gabriel appears to Godfrey of Bouillon and orders him to assemble the chiefs of the army and prepare for a new and vigorous prosecution of the war. Godfrey obeys and is himself elected commander-in-chief. Then, after a review of the troops, which furnishes the poet an opportunity of giving a catalogue of the various Christian forces (after the manner of Homer), the whole army starts for Jerusalem.

The scene then changes to the Holy City itself, where King Aladine and his followers are seized with consternation at the news of the advance of the Christians. We now see the first of the famous episodes of the Jerusalem Delivered. The Magician Ismeno urges the king to seize a certain image of the Virgin Mary and shut it up in the royal mosque (thus converting it into a palladium for Jerusalem). The king does so; but immediately the image disappears from the mosque. Aladine is wild with rage and being unable to discover the perpetrator of the outrage, resolves to destroy all the Christians in the city. Now there was in the city a beautiful Christian girl:

Although she was unconscious of love herself, there was a noble Christian youth, Olindo, who had long loved her in secret. Sophronia resolves to save her people. She makes her way to the king's palace, and declares that she alone is guilty of having stolen the sacred image from the mosque.

At this moment Olindo approaches the spot, and discovering that the victim is Sophronia, bursts through the crowd, exclaiming that he himself is the author of the crime. Sophronia appeals to him not to sacrifice himself for her, but he remains firm until the king, angered at their apparent scorn of his power, condemns them both to be burned. Thus both are about to die, when a knight appears:

This is the first appearance of Clorinda, who is destined to play so large a part in the poem, and who shows the nobility of her character by interceding for the lovers with the king. The king, delighted at having so powerful an auxiliary in his hour of danger and need, willingly grants Clorinda's request, and the lovers are saved.

In the meantime the Christian army approach Jerusalem, which they reach at early dawn, and which they greet with deep emotion:

Erminia, daughter of the deceased king of Antioch, points out to King Aladine from a high tower the famous warriors among the Christians, and especially praises Tancred, who had conquered her father and taken her prisoner, and who, by his courtesy and gentle treatment, had won her love. A sortie is made from the city, and Tancred, finding himself engaged in battle with Clorinda, whom he esteems a man, breaks her helmet, and discovering her to be the maiden whom he loves, refuses to fight further with her.

Thus begins the most famous episode of the Jerusalem Delivered. For the next half of the poem Tancred and Clorinda are the real hero and heroine.

In the meantime Satan has called together his followers for consultation. Among the many plans for holding the Christian army in check is the sending of the beautiful enchantress Armida to the camp of Godfrey, where she succeeds by her wiles in drawing away from the army a number of the bravest warriors. The king of Egypt, with an immense army, announces his intention to help Jerusalem and from this time on, this menace hovers like a black cloud over the horizon of the poem, ever approaching nearer and nearer, till in[Pg 329] the last canto the storm is averted by the bravery of the Christian warriors and the aid of heaven.

Argantes, one of the pagan warriors of Jerusalem, sends a herald to Godfrey's camp, challenging any of his warriors to single combat. Tancred is appointed by Godfrey to accept the challenge, and the two doughty champions fight all day long with no result. When night comes on both retire, bearing away serious wounds. Erminia, who has been in a terrible state of anxiety during the combat, cannot rest content when night comes on, without learning the condition of Tancred's wounds. She puts on Clorinda's suit of armor, leaves the city, and makes her way to the Christian camp, first sending a messenger to Tancred, announcing that a lady desires to see him. The scene which follows is very picturesque, describing as it does the silence of the night and the distant view of the tents.

Two sentinels see her, and believing her to be Clorinda, pursue her. She flies and is carried by her horse many miles away, finally reaching a shepherd's cottage on the banks of the Jordan, where for some time she takes up her abode far from war's alarms and the "pangs of despised love." The description of Erminia's life here is much admired for its delineations of the charm of rural life.

The shepherd, pitying Erminia's distress, takes her to his wife, and she thus becomes a member of the humble but happy household.

In the meantime many events are taking place between the Christians and pagans, sorties, single combats, and attacks on the walls of the city. Godfrey has caused powerful engines of war to be built, especially a mighty movable tower, so high that it overtops the walls of the city. Clorinda, eager for glory, undertakes one night to destroy the tower, in spite of the warning of her old servant Arsetes, who tells her the story of her birth, and reveals the fact that she is of Christian parentage. She issues forth, succeeds in setting fire to the tower, but not being able to reënter the city, flies, followed by Tancred, who not recognizing her, fights with her and to his own eternal sorrow, slays her. This passage is regarded as the most beautiful of the whole poem:

Clorinda, being dead, Tancred has little desire to live, but is comforted by a vision of her in heaven:

Up to this time the most prominent characters in the poem have been Tancred and Clorinda. This state of things now changes and the real hero, Rinaldo, who like Achilles has long been absent from the field of action, reappears and brings matters to a climax.

We have already seen how Armida has come to camp and carried off a number of the Christian warriors. At the same time Rinaldo had, in a contest for the successor of Dudo (killed in the first skirmish between[Pg 334] the crusaders and the pagans), slain Gernando in the presence of the whole army, and was forced to fly the wrath of Godfrey. He, after having freed the fifty knights from the power of Armida, is himself caught by her wiles, and carried off by her to a gorgeous palace situated in the midst of a beautiful garden, on a high mountain in the island of Teneriffe. Here, lost in luxury and idleness, he sleeps out the thought of his duty as a Christian warrior.

In the meantime Godfrey, by various supernatural tokens, learns that Rinaldo alone can bring about the final success of the Christian arms. He is thus induced to pardon his crime, which indeed had in a certain sense been justified, and sends two messengers to bring him back. These embark on a magic vessel, traverse the Mediterranean, pass the strait of Gibraltar, enter the Atlantic, and reach the island of Teneriffe. The descriptions of this voyage and the allusion to Columbus, are famous and well deserve to be quoted, if we had the space. It is especially interesting to compare this fictitious voyage into the Atlantic Ocean with that of Ulysses in Dante's Inferno, the one written before, the other shortly after the discovery of America.

The ambassadors arrive at the island, climb the mountain, overcome all obstacles, enter the enchanted garden, and discover Rinaldo, surrounded by all the beauty of nature and magnificence of art.

The messengers succeed in arousing the dormant nobility of Rinaldo; he tears himself away, follows them to the camp of Godfrey, is pardoned by the latter, succeeds in breaking the spell of the enchanted forest, and thus prepares the way for the building of[Pg 335] new war machines. The city then is assaulted and taken, and finally the Egyptian army, which now appears on the scene, is defeated and the poem ends.

The literature of the Italian Renaissance, which was inaugurated by Petrarch and Boccaccio, reached its highest point with Ariosto. Tasso, equally great with Ariosto, lived at the beginning of a long period of decline; the Jerusalem Delivered projecting the last rays of the glories of the Renaissance into this new period. The sixteenth century, especially the first half, is the golden age of Italian literature, comparable to that of Augustus in Rome, Louis XIV. in France, and Queen Elizabeth in England. In the narrow confines of this sketch we have only been able to treat in some detail the great writers thereof, Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso. Yet the number of men of genius and talent is legion—giants indeed lived in those days—not only in the field of art and scholarship but in literature. In lyrical poetry were Pietro Bembo, the Petrarch of his times; Michel Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. In the pastoral poem, besides Tasso, there were Sannazaro and Guarini, the former (whose Arcadia was imitated in England by Sidney and Spenser) on the border-line between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the latter on that between the sixteenth and seventeenth. In comic poetry there was Francesco Berni, who worked over Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, which has since then been read almost wholly in this version. In prose was developed an especially rich literature, among the great masters of which we may mention in history, Nicholas Machiavelli, who, in his Prince, introduced a new philosophy of politics;[Pg 336] Guicciardini, Varchi, and Nardi; in the history of art, Vasari; in novels and stories, Luigi da Porto, who first told the story of Romeo and Juliet; Giraldo Cinzio, Matteo Bandello, who continued the work of Boccaccio and Sacchetti. Forming a special group are Benvenuto Cellini, whose autobiography has made him famous; Firenzuola, who wrote on the beauty of woman; Baldasarre Castiglione, the Lord Chesterfield of his day, who in his book on the Courtier, depicted the character of the perfect gentleman according to the ideals of the times.

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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CHAPTER VIII

THE PERIOD OF DECADENCE AND THE REVIVAL

In the history of Italian literature, Dante, to expand a figure already used, stands at the end of the Middle Ages like a lofty, solitary mountain peak; behind him the low, level plain fades away into darkness; before him the landscape, shone upon by the first rays of a new epoch, slopes gradually upward until with Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the great writers of the Renaissance, we have a lofty and widely extended plateau. After Tasso there is a sudden descent to a low, level, uniform plain, in which Italian literature dragged itself along till the middle of the eighteenth century, when again an upward slope is noticed, which becomes more and more accentuated as we approach the present.

Among the causes of the period of degradation, from 1560 to 1750, the leading ones must be sought for in the political and religious condition of Italy at that time. Spain had become possessed of a large part of the country, especially in the north and south, while the pope, who ruled the center, in temporal as well as spiritual matters, was the firm ally of the Spaniards. The country thus under foreign dominion, was oppressed and robbed without mercy. The Spanish[Pg 338] viceroys, and their ignoble imitators, the Italian nobles, lived a life of luxury and vice, surrounded by bandits and brigands, and by paralyzing all commerce and industry, brought on famine and pestilence.

The religious condition was no better. The Catholic reaction, or counter reformation, which culminated in the Council of Trent, fastened still more firmly the chains of medieval superstition and dogmatism on the mass of the Italian people. The absolute power of the pope was reaffirmed; two mighty instruments were forged to crush out heresy and opposition—the Inquisition, which effectually choked out free thought, and the Jesuits, who found their way stealthily into all ranks and classes of society. Such was the condition of Italy at this time, "a prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heartrending tragedy." The effect on the social life of Italy was almost fatal. Everywhere, to use the almost exaggerated language of Symonds, were to be seen idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy, vice, ruin, pestilence, "while over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuit hypocrisy."

No wonder that in such a state of society, literature and art reached the lowest point in all its history. Scarcely a single man of genius or even of talent, can be found in the period between 1580 and 1750. All literature was marked by lack of originality of thought and by a style deformed by execrable taste, a style which consisted of wretched conceits, puns, antithesis, and gorgeous and far-fetched metaphors. This form of literary diction was not confined, however,[Pg 339] to Italy, being represented in Spain by Gongora, in France by the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and in England by Lyly's Euphues. In Italy it is known as Marinism from the poet Marini, whose Adone (in which is told the love of Venus for Adonis, a subject previously treated by Shakespeare) exemplifying all phases of the above-mentioned style, had enormous popularity not only in Italy but abroad.

During the period now under discussion, poets were not wanting, for the defect was in quality rather than quantity. Yet not all were entirely without merit, for some possessed a certain degree of talent, especially in the musical elements of their verse. Such were the lyrical poets, Chiabrera, Testi, and Filicaja. In prose literature a better and saner style prevailed, especially in the dialogues of Galileo, and in the historical and critical writings of Sarpi and Vico.

In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended Spanish rule in Italy, and the breath of free thought from England sweeping across the plains of France entered Italy and gradually weakened the power of the Jesuits, dissipated to a certain extent superstition and ignorance, and aroused the country to a sense of its degradation. By bringing Italy into connection with other nations, and with newer ideas, it planted the germs of a new intellectual life. The influence of France, England, and Germany began to make itself felt. Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire influenced Italian tragedy, while Molière, who himself had borrowed largely from the early Italian comedies, now returned the favor by becoming the master of Goldoni. English influence came later, first Addison, Pope, and Milton, then[Pg 340] toward the end of the eighteenth century, Young, Gray, Shakespeare, and Ossian. Last of all came the German influence, especially Klopstock and Goethe.

In this period of awakening the chief gain was in the field of the drama. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, Italy, in this branch of literature, could not even remotely be compared with France, Spain, or England. In the sixteenth century comedies had not been wanting, and beside the purely Italian creation of improvised farce (now represented in Punch and Judy shows, pantomimes, and harlequinades), Ariosto had written literary comedies in close imitation of Plautus and Terence. Yet, from Ariosto to Goldoni we find practically but one genuine writer of comedy; this singularly enough, was Machiavelli, whose Mandragora was enormously popular, and was declared by Voltaire to be better than Aristophanes and but little inferior to Molière. But one book does not make a literature any more than one swallow makes a summer. It was left for Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) to give his country a number of comedies worthy of being compared with those of Molière. Goldoni was a kindly, amiable man of the world as well as of letters, bright and witty but withal somewhat superficial. Although a keen observer of the outer form of society and human nature, he lacked the depth and insight, and especially the subtle pathos of Molière. He was greatly influenced by the latter, whom he looked upon as his master. Like him he began with light comedy, farcical in nature, and gradually produced more and more comedies of manner and character. Yet he is not a slavish imitator of the great Frenchman, to whom, while inferior[Pg 341] in earnestness and knowledge of the human heart, he was equal in dialogue, in development of plot, and in comic talent. Goldoni composed rapidly (once he wrote sixteen comedies in a year), and has left behind him one hundred and sixty plays and eighty musical dramas and opera texts.

The musical drama is a peculiar Italian invention, and almost immediately reached perfection in Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), after whom it began rapidly to decline. Metastasio was universally admired and was, before Goldoni and Alfieri, the only Italian that had a European reputation, and who thus won some measure of glory for his country in her period of deepest degradation. His plays, meant to be set to music—the modern opera text is a debased form of this—were superficial, had no real delineation of character, yet were written in verses which flowed softly along like a clear stream through flowery meads. Light, artificial in sentiment, often lax in morals, yet expressing the courtly conventionalities of the times, Metastasio's poetry enjoyed vast popularity, while he himself became the favorite of the aristocratic society of Vienna, where he lived for fifty years, and the pride and glory of Italy. After him music became the all-important element in this peculiar form of drama, which thus became the modern opera, while the poetical element was degraded to the text thereof.

More famous, perhaps, than either the above was Alfieri, the founder of modern Italian tragedy. In the intellectual movement of the sixteenth century, tragedy, like comedy, had not been neglected, and many translations and imitations had been made of[Pg 342] the Greek and Latin dramatists. The first regular tragedy, not only of Italian but of modern European literature, was the Sofonisba of Trissino, which became the model of all succeeding writers. Published first in 1524 it was soon translated into all European languages and has been imitated, among many others, by Corneille and Voltaire in France, Alfieri in Italy, and Geibel in Germany. In spite of this promising beginning, however, Italian tragedy did not develop as that of the neighboring countries did. Among the numberless writers of tragedy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scarcely one deserves mention. In the early part of the eighteenth century one name became famous, Scipio Maffei (1675-1755) the immediate predecessor of Alfieri, whose Merope was vastly popular throughout all Europe.

Yet Italy could not boast of a truly national drama before the appearance of Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), who gave her an honorable rank in this department of the world's literature. The story of his life, as told by himself in his autobiography, is exceedingly interesting. Born in Asti, near Turin, of a noble family, after a youth spent in idleness, ignorance, and selfish pleasure, he "found himself," at the age of twenty-six, and being fired with ambition to become a poet, he began a long period of self-education, in which he made especial effort to master the Italian language, which he, born in Piedmont, and long absent abroad, only half understood. The rest of his life was spent in this study and in writing his dramas.

In his reform of the Italian drama, Alfieri did not, like Manzoni later, try to introduce Shakesperean[Pg 343] methods. He went back to the tragic system of the Greeks and tried to improve on the French followers of the latter. He observed the three unities, especially that of action, even more strictly than Corneille or even Racine. Hence his plays are extraordinarily short (only one is of more than fifteen hundred lines). The action moves on swiftly to the climax with no effort at mere dramatic situation or stage effect.

Of especial interest are the subjects of Alfieri's tragedies, all of them having a political or social tendency. They all express the theories of the French philosophers then so popular in Italy, concerning freedom and the rights of the people in opposition to the divine right of kings. His heroes—Virginius, Brutus, Timoleon—all proclaim the liberty of man. It is interesting to note that he dedicated one of his plays to George Washington. To the reader of the present day even his best plays—Virginia, Orestes, Agamemnon, Myrra, and Saul—seem conventional, monotonous, and unreal. The characters are mere types of passion or sentiment; there is no variety of action, no episodes, and no poetical adornments. Yet in his own age Alfieri was regarded as a great tragic poet, not only in his own country, but beyond the Alps. His influence on Italian literature was very great. For the next two generations there was scarcely a poet who did not admire and imitate him. Parini, Foscolo, Monti, Manzoni, Leopardi, and Pellico, all looked up to him as their master.

Alfieri was the first to speak of a fatherland, a united Italy; he practically founded the patriotic school of literature which has lasted down to the[Pg 344] present time. Hence he is even more important from a political standpoint than from a literary one. He himself looked on his tragedies as a means of inspiring new and higher political ideas in his fellow-countrymen, degraded as they had been by the long oppression of Spain. "I wrote," he says, "because the sad conditions of the times did not allow me to act."

The literature of the first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by this political and patriotic spirit; Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, and Pellico, all wrote dramas in the spirit of Alfieri. Most of them, however, are better known in other accounts. Foscolo, through his letters of Jacopo Ortis, the Italian Werther, and his literary essays; Pellico for his My Prisons; Manzoni for his Betrothed, one of the great novels of modern times.

Greater than all of these, however, is Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who alone is worthy to be placed beside the four great Italian poets, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, the last three of whom, at least, he might under happier circumstances have equaled. The story of his life is a pathetic one. Born of a family noble but poor, with a sensitive and melancholy temperament, the circumstances of his life only added to his morbid tendency, and after a brief existence, passed in sickness, poverty, and gloom, he died. Leopardi was great as a poet, a philosopher, and scholar. His Ode to Italy is one of the noblest poems in the language, and his Solitary Shepherd of Asia, is full of incomparable beauty.

Other names of this later period crowd upon our attention, in political literature, Mazzini; in the novel,[Pg 345] D'Azeglio, Cantù, Guerazzi, and Gozzi; in history Botta, Balbo, and Cantù. But we must hasten to close this brief survey, with merely mentioning the names of a few of the more important writers of the present time; in poetry, Carducci, Ada Negri, D'Annunzio; in the novel, which in Italy as elsewhere has usurped the chief place, Fogazzaro, D'Annunzio. The latter, although still young, is, next to Carducci, the most considerable figure in Italian literature to-day. In his dramas, poetry, and novels he shows a wonderful command of language and descriptive imagination, and at one time bid fair to become a truly great writer. In his later works he shows retrogression rather than progress, and the taint of immorality and a certain exaggerated eccentricity of thought have vitiated his talent and tended to destroy his popularity.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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[Pg 347]

INDEX

• Accius, 5.
• Alexander, 7.
• Alfieri, Vittorio, 341, seq.
• Alighieri, Dante, 195, seq.; 299, 313, 337.
• Andronicus, 4, 39, 119.
• Angelo, Michel, 335.
• Annales, 124.
• Anselm, 179.
• Apollodorus, 39.
• Aquinas, St. Thomas, 180, 256, 263.
• Arezzo, Guittone d', 184, seq.
• Argo, 7.
• Argonautæ, 7.
• Ariosto, 191, Chap. VI. works; 303, 322, 335.
• Aristophanes, 39.

• Bandello, Matteo, 336.
• Beatrice, 197, 204, 206, seq.
• Bellum, Punicum, 119.
• Bembo, Pietro, 335.
• Benivieni, Girolamo, 189.
• Berni, Francesco, 335.
• Boccaccio, 196, 267, Chap. V. works; 286, seq.; 299, 335, 337.
• Boiardo, 191, 300, seq.; 322.
• Bonaventura, St., 180.
• Bracciolini, Poggio, 297.

• Cæsar, 82, 90, 129.
• Calvo, Bonifaccio, 182.
• Carducci, 345.
• Castiglione, Baldasarre, 335.
• Cato, 9, 72, 122.
• Catullus, 128.
• Cavalcanti, 193, seq.
• Cellini, Benvenuto, 335.
• Cervantes, 314.
• Chanson, de geste, 190, 299.
• Chaucer, 286, seq.; 289.
• Chiabrera, 339.
• Ciani, Gioachino, 286.
• Cicero, 129.
• Cino da Pistoia, 193.
• Cinzio, Giraldo, 335.
• Colonna, Vittoria, 335.
• Convito, 205.
• Cratinus, 39.

• Damian, Peter, 179, 257.
• Daniel, Arnaut, 184.
• D'Annunzio, 345.
• Dante da Majano, 193.
• Decameron, 287, seq.
• Dies, Iræ, 188.
• Divine Comedy, 205, Chap. III., 316.
• Domitian, 106.
• Domitius, 9.

• Eclogues of Vergil, 130.
• Ennius, 5, 74;
  • epitaph of, 75; 121.
• Epicharmus, 74.
• Eupolis, 39.

• Fabulæ prætextæ, 5.
• Fasani, 188.
• Ficino, Marsilio, 297.
• Filicaja, 339.
• Firenzuola, 335.
• Flagellants, 188, seq.
• Foscolo, 343, 344.
• Francesca da Rimini, 203, 221.
• Frederick II., 182, seq.
• Fulvius, 122, 123.

• Georgics of Vergil, 130.
• Gianni, Lapo, 193.
• Goldoni, Carlo, 339.
• Guarini, 335.[Pg 348]
• Guelphs and Ghibellines, 198, seq.
• Guicciardini, 335.
• Guinicelli, Guido, 185, seq.; 247.

• Hesiod, 72.
• Horace, 72, 80.

• Italian Renaissance, 314, 335.

• Jacopone da Todi, 189.
• Jerusalem Delivered, 304, 322, seq.
• Juvenal, 105.

• Lanfranc, 179.
• Latini, Brunetto, 196, 227.
• Laudi, 189.
• Laura, 269, seq.
• Leopardi, Giacomo, 344.
• Lombard, Peter, 179.
• Lucan, 9.
• Lucilius, 72, 73, 75, 76, 128.
• Lucretius, 128.

• Machiavelli, Nicholas, 335, 340.
• Mæcenas, 83, 91, 92, 95, 130.
• Maffei, Scipio, 342.
• Manzoni, 343, 344.
• Marini, 339.
• Marsili, Luigi, 297.
• Maternus, 9.
• Menander, 39.
• Metastasio, Pietro, 341.
• Mirandola, Pico della, 298.

• Nævius, 5, 40, 119.
• Nardi, 335.
• New Life, The, 206, seq.

• Octavia, 9.
• Odyssey, 4, 119.
• Œnomaus, 8.
• Orlando, 300;
  • Innamorato, 301;
  • Furioso, 303;
  • seq., 316.
• Ovid, 9, 72.

• Pacuvius, 5.
• Paris, 7.
• Pellico, 343, 344.
• Persius, 99.
• Petrarch, Chap. IV., 299, 335, 337.
• Petroni, Pietro de', 285.
• Pharsalia of Lucan, 127.
• Philemon, 39.
• Plautus, 40.
• Politian, 298, 299.
• Pollio, 8, 91.
• Pomponius Secundus, 9.
• Porto Luigi da, 335.
• Provençal, 173, 182, seq.
• Ptolemaic system, 216, 217.
• Pulci, Luigi, 191, 299.
• Punica, of Silius, 127.

• Sallust, 129.
• Salutati, Coluccio, 297.
• Sannazaro, 335.
• Sarpi, 339.
• Seneca, 9.
• Sordello, of Mantua, 182, 241.
• Speculum Majus, 180.
• Stabat Mater, 189.
• St. Francis, 187, 256.

• Tacitus, 107.
• Tasso, 298, Chapter VII.
  • Works, 322, 337.
• Terence, 40.
• Testi, 339.
• Thebaid, of Statius, 127.
• Thomas, of Celano, 188.
• Thyestes, 9.

• Uberti, Farinata degli, 225.
• Ulysses, 230.
• Universal Monarchy, 205;
  • political treatise on, 206.

• Vaqueiras, Rambaud de, 181.
• Varchi, 335.
• Varius, 8, 9.
• Varro, 72, 128.
• Vasari, 335.
• Vergil, 9, 72, 91, 128, Chap. III.
• Vico, 339.
• Vidal, Pierre, 181.
• Vigne, Pier delle, 183.
• Vincent of Beauvais, 180.

• Works and Days, 72.

• Zorzi, Bartolomeo, 182.

Transcriber's Notes

This is the second part of a larger work. The first part is "Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman" by Frank Justus Miller. References in the index to pages earlier than 173 refer the first part.

Page 261

'among the men and woman'

'woman' is likely 'women'. Unchanged.

Page 273

'noonday' rather that 'noon-day' as used elsewhere.

Unchanged.

Page 302

'Rinaldo, and the latter's sister, Brandiamente,'

Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.

Page 302

'Other important characters are Astolfo, Rodomonte,'

Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.

Pages 305-315

Medoro and Medore are used interchangeably. Unchanged.

Page 313

'Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan,'

Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.

Page 313

on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte,

'Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.'

Page 315

'For the romatic poets,'

May be 'romantic' vice 'romatic'. Unchanged.

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