CHAPTER VI

HISTORICAL DISASSOCIATIONS

From these last words, there can be no difficulty in seeing what must be our opinion as to the confrontations and comparative judgments instituted between Ariosto and Pulci or Boiardo, and even Cieco da Ferrara, and all the other Italian poets of chivalry. These have sometimes been extended so as to include poetical humourists, such as Folengo and Rabelais, or burlesque writers like Berni, Tassoni, Forteguerri, or neo-epical poets, like Tasso and Camoens, and finally to Cervantes, that direct and fully conscious ironist of chivalry. This is as perfectly admissible as it is natural that classes of "poems of chivalry" or "narrative poems" or "romances," should be formed, when once rhetoricians and writers of treatises have invented the genus and that these should be disposed in a series under such headings, thus forming a sort of artificial history, with no real foundation beyond the accidents of certain abstract literary forms, which are really representative of certain social tendencies and institutions. And it is equally, indeed more admissible, because relating to more nearly connected problems, that these documents afforded by poems of chivalry should be made use of among other documents in the investigation of the gradual dissolution of the ideal of chivalry in the first period of modern society. Salvemini has not neglected to do this in a temperate manner, in his monograph relating to "knightly dignity" in the commune of Florence. But the aesthetic judgment, which they strive to deduce from these comparisons, is inadmissible and illegitimate: when for instance they bestow the palm on this or that poet for having better observed than others the "genus" or a particular "species" and "variety" of the genus; or because chivalry or anti-chivalry has been better represented by one than by another. We can explain the fact that De Sanctis was sometimes entangled in this sociological net, in spite of his exquisite sense of individuality and poetry, when we consider the condition of studies in his time and his philosophical origins; but it is none the less true that the judgments which he pronounced upon this matter, deviate from true and proper aesthetic criticism, and carry with them the bad effects of every deviation.

Having ourselves refused to be among those whose feet are caught in the insidious net of Caligorante, we shall have nothing further to say as to comparisons with Ariosto, because the poet of the _Furioso_ has always come out of those maladroit confrontations and the arbitrary judgments of merit which result from them, crowned above all others with the sign of victory, or at least unconquered by any other, and admitting but a very few as his equals. The preference accorded by romantic German men of letters to Boiardo (recently revived to some extent in Italy, by Panzini) belongs rather to the domain of anecdote than to the history of criticism: Boiardo is looked upon by them as the poet of grand heroic dreams, while Ariosto is a mere citizen poet; or Boiardo again is lauded for having better represented the logical form of the Italian poem of chivalry, prescribed according to a chemical combination drawn up in the philological laboratory of the anti-Ariostesque Professor Rajna, who is in other respects a most worthy and well-deserving person. But there is no denying that the peculiar beauty of Ariosto has often injured Boiardo, Pulci, Tasso and other poets, who have been illegitimately compared with him; and therefore, without talking of Tasso--who has now won his case, although he numbered a Galilei among the ranks of those who under-estimated him when making the above-mentioned confrontation,--it will not be inopportune to cast a rapid glance upon Pulci and Boiardo.

Looking at Pulci in Pulci and not at Ariosto, since to place one physiognomy on the top of another is not a good way of seeing, what do we find? What is the _Morgante?_ It is above all a whimsicality, one of those works, born of a caprice or a bet, to which the author neither devotes himself after the necessary previous meditations, nor works at with the scrupulosity of the artist, who expends his powers and employs his utmost endeavour to do the best he can everywhere. But the occasion or the inspiration is never the substance of a work, which on the contrary always consists of what the author really brings to it in the course of his labour; and the mention of the occasional origin of the _Morgante_ only avails here to account for its ill-digested and undoubtedly chaotic nature. Nor is it to the purpose to recall what certainly seems to have been Pulci's intention, namely, to satisfy in his own way a wish of the pious Lucrezia Tornabuoni, by composing or re-writing a Christian poem of chivalry, for this in its turn only explains certain superficialities and extrinsicalities, such as the general plan of the poem and the parts of it possessing religious tone, which are successful to the extent that they could be successful with such a brain as Pulci's. A commencement will have been made towards a proper understanding of the substance of the _Morgante,_ its proper and intrinsic inspiration, by referring it first to the curiosity with which educated Florentine citizens observed and reproduced the customs and the psychology of the people of the city and the surrounding districts, productive of the poetry of Politian, of Lorenzo and of Pulci himself, author of the _Beca di Dicomano,_ each with its various popular appeal. That inspiration contains something both of the sympathetic and of the ironical, as we observe in all poetry based upon popular themes and use of dialect, in the German romantic _Lieder_ and _Balladen_ and in the dialect literature of the Italy of to-day (one feels inclined to call the _Morgante_ "dialect" and not "Italian"): and in Pulci there vibrated a sympathetic-ironic chord, peculiar to himself and therefore naturally not exactly the same as in Lorenzo, or still less in Politian. But it did not vibrate pure and clear, being prevented from doing so, not so much owing to initial eccentricity and to the intention above-mentioned, as to the accumulation of other inspirations, arising in the fertile spirit of Pulci. For Pulci had in mind, in addition to the reconstruction of a sympathetic-ironic popular poem of the popular story-tellers, something that might be called a "Picaresque romance," understanding thereby not only tales of the sort to be found in Spanish literature, but also certain other tales of Boccaccio and a great part of Folengo's _Baldus._ Picaresque romance asked in its turn sympathy and irony, but of a different sort to the preceding, no longer sympathy for popular ingenuity, but for cleverness, trickiness, for an irony, which should no longer be simply that of superior culture, but also of superior morality; and this too was in some measure and in his own way in Pulci; but he often spoilt this disposition of mind by inadvertently passing, like a person lacking refinement of education, from Picaresque romance to Picaresque intonation, from the representation of a blackguard to the blackguard himself. And there is something else also in the _Morgante_: the imaginings and caprices of Pulci himself, his own personal moral opinions, religious or philosophical; things that are sometimes thought about even by those who do not think much about them, and which, owing to this casual hasty thinking, become nevertheless opinions or semi-opinions. Finally the _Morgante_ is a skein formed of strands of different colour and make, some of them thicker or thinner than others: it is a poem that is not in tune with a single dominant inspiration, and if we take one of those elements that we have described and transport it to the principal place, we immediately have the feeling that we are depriving the complex nature of the work of its vigour. Nevertheless the _Morgante_ must be looked upon as one of the most richly endowed works of our literature, where we meet at every step with delightful figures and traits of expression: Morgante, Margutte, Fiorinetta, Astarotte, Farfarello, Archbishop Turpin, certain touches of character in Orlando, and especially in Rinaldo, and also in Antea, together with certain descriptions, anecdotes and acute remarks. Margutte, plunged deep in vice, but quite shameless and aware that he cannot be other than what nature made him, is also human, incapable of treachery, capable of affection for Morgante and of enduring his all-consuming voracity; so that when his companion dies, he never ceases recalling him to mind, and talking about him even with Orlando:

E conta d'ogni sua piacevolezza, E lacrimava ancor di tenerezza.[1]

Rinaldo, ardent and furious for revenge, seeks to slay Carlo Magno, who has been hidden from him; but after a few days Orlando leads him to believe that the Emperor has died of desperation, and tells him that he has appeared to him in vision, whereupon Rinaldo changes countenance and begins to wish him alive again, to feel pity for him, to repent him of his fury, so that in this way peace and reconciliation are effected. After a great battle, the conquered as they leave the field, recognise their dead ones where they lie, and we hear them lamenting a father, a brother or a friend:

Eravi alcun che cavava l'elmetto al suo figliolo, al suo cognato, o padre; poi lo baciava con pietoso affetto, E dicea: "Lasso, fra le nostre squadre non tornerai in Soria più, poveretto; che dirén noî alla tua afflitta madre, o chi sarà più quel che la conforti? Tu ti riman cogli altri al campo morti."[2]

And this is an apology, by means of which Orlando explains to Rinaldo that he has remarked his new affection, and that it is of no use that he should try to deceive him with words:

Rispose Orlando:--Noi sarem que' frati che mangiando il migliaccio, l'un si cosse; l'altro gli vede gli occhi imbambolati, e domando quel che la cagion fosse. Colui rispose: "Noi sián due restati a mensa, e gli altri sono or per le fosse, ché trentatré fummo e tu lo sia: Quand' io vi penso, io piango sempre mai." Quell' altro, che vedea che lo 'ngannava, finse di pianger, mostrando dolore; e disse a quel che di ciò domandava: "E anco io piango, anzi mi scoppia il core, che noi sián due restati"; e sospirava, "Ed è già l'uno all' altro traditore." Cosi mi par che faccian noi, Rinaldo: "che nol di tu che'l migliaccio era caldo?"[3]

And here is an octave in which Pulci makes it psychologically clear why King Carlo allowed himself to be led astray and deceived by Gano:

Molte volte, anzi spesso, c'interviene che tu t'arrecchi un amico e fratello, e ciò che fa ti par che facci bene, dipinto e colorito col pennallo. Questo primo legame tanto tiene, che, s' altra volta ti dispiace quello, e qualcha cosa ti parà molesta, sempre la prima impression pur resta.[4]

"These are not the octaves of Ariosto ": we have said as much. Certainly they are not, just as the octaves of Ariosto are not those of Pulci, and Ariosto, whatever trouble he might have taken, could never have attained to the inventions, the emotions, the clevernesses and the accents of the _Morgante,_ which are just as inimitable in their way as are the graces of the _Furioso._ And it is really unjust and almost odious that the reader, face to face with the treasures of fresh and original poetry, which Pulci throws without counting into his lap, should pull a wry face and ungratefully remark that Pulci's poetry is not that other poetry which he is now thinking about, and that it should be abolished, or made perfect by the other poetry!

Almost the same thing is to be repeated about the author of the _Innamorato,_ who has also been tormented, condemned and executed by means of a comparison with the author of the _Furioso,_ sometimes conducted with such a refinement of cruelty that the strophes of the one are printed facing the strophes of the other, and selected as bearing upon similar situations, so that every word and syllable may be weighed; as though the strophes of a poet are not to be considered solely in themselves and in the poem of which they form part, and to be condemned, if occasion arise for condemnation, within that circle to which are confined the real conditions of judgment. Boiardo, to one who reads him without any sort of preconception and abandons himself to the simple impressions of reading, immediately shows himself to be altogether different from what some critics maintain, the pedantic singer of chivalry taken seriously, who gives way now and then to involuntary laughter and to a harsh intonation which should be toned down and softened by the skill of an Ariosto. He is quite other also than the epic bard, which some people have imagined him to be; he could not be epic, because he had no national sentiment, no feeling for class or religion, and the marvellous in him is all fancy, a marvel of the fairies; nor was he a pedant, for he obviously follows his own spontaneous inclinations, without any secondary purpose. No, Boiardo was on the contrary a soul passionately devoted to the primitive and the energetic, his was the energy of the lance-thrust, of the brand wielded, but also the energy of a proud will, of ferocious courage, of intransigent honour, of marvellous devices. And it is owing just to this energy, which has a value of its own, that he lives to unite poetically the cycles of Charlemagne and of Arthur, the Carlovingian and the Breton traditions, arms and adventures and love, both of them primitive cycles, the second being remarkable for the extraordinary nature of its adventures and the violence of its loves; whereas, if that heroism had continued to be full and substantial, it would have been difficult to make it a theme for erotic treatment, representing a different and opposed sentiment. To ask of him delicacy of treatment in the representation of his knights, or delicacy of thoughts and words in his treatment of women and love, and in general, beauty of sentiment, is to ask of him what is external to his fundamental motive. To be astonished that he sometimes laughs or smiles, is to be astonished at what happens every day among the people (and there are traces of it in the ingenuous epic) when they are listening to the recital of great deeds, which do not forbid an occasional comic remark. To lament his supposed neglect of art, his lack of polish of language and versification, is to censure him as a grammarian who employs pre-established models or dwells upon minute details to which he attributes sovereign importance. How on the other hand can it be forgotten, when praise of his rich fancy and robust frankness of style and composition is opposed to censures or interlarded among them, that we must explain whence came to him these merits, for they are not to be snatched, but are born only of the soul. Whence came they, if not from true poetical inspiration and from his already mentioned passion for the energetic and the primitive? Hence the admiration aroused by his vast canvases, his vivid narratives:--Angelica, who by merely appearing at Carlo's banquet, makes everyone fall in love with her, and whom even the Emperor himself cannot refrain from admiring, though with discretion, lest he should compromise his gravity, Angelica, whom the greatest champions of Christianity and Paganism follow with admiration, refusing herself to all and loving only him who alone abhors her;--the solemn council of war, held by Agramante previous to entering France, with the speeches of the kings who surround him, courageous or prudent, the sudden appearance of the youthful Rodomonte, who dominates all with his tremendous energy;--the joyful courage of Astolfo, never disconcerted by headlong mishaps, whom fortune succours by furnishing him with a lance, by means of which, to the astonishment of all, he accomplishes prodigies, while he himself remains unastonished;--Brunello, as to whose doings one would like to apply Vico's phrase about "heroic thieving," Brunello, who wanders about the earth, stealing the most carefully guarded objects, with an audacious dexterity and so comic an imagination, Brunello, revelling in his joyous virtuosity and vainly-pursued over the whole world by Marfisa of the viper's eye, which spirts venom, Marfisa who wishes to put him to death; but he flies from her, turning from time to time in his flight to laugh in her face and make gestures of mockery;--Then again there are the colloquies of Orlando and Agricane, during the pauses in their bitter duel, which must end in the death of one of them; Rinaldo's caustic reply to Orlando, who has reproved him for wishing to carry away the golden couch from the fairy's garden; and that other no less caustic repartee of the courageous highway robber to Brandimarte; and many and many another most beautiful passage?--Yet the _Innamorato,_ notwithstanding its poetical abundance, has never been numbered among really classical works, so that after the vogue which for ephemeral reasons it enjoyed in its own day, it has not received and does not receive the affection and homage of any but those who love what is little loved and prize what is pure, spontaneous and rude. The poem does not conclude in itself; it is not satisfied with itself: there is a break somewhere in the circle: the representation of the energetic and primitive, which is a sort of formal epicity, has something in it of the monotonous and arid, and the pleasure derived from it has something of the solitary and sterile. Like the charger that sniffs the battle, so says Boiardo:

Ad ogni atto degno e signorile, Quai se raconti di cavalleria, sempre se allegra l'animo gentile, come nel fatto fusse tuttavia, manifestando fuore il cor virile....[5]

That is well, but the manly heart is not slow to express a certain feeling of delusion, when it recognises that the images in question are all body, without depth of soul, and without the guidance and inspiration of a superior spirit. He says somewhere else:

Già molto tempo m'han tenuto a bada Morgana, Alcina e le incantazioni, Nè ve ho mostrato un bel colpo di spada, E pieno il cel de lancie e de tronconi....[6]

But there are too many lances that meet and clash, too many limbs flying about without our ever seeing the cause, the meaning or the justification of all that fighting--even Boiardo himself becomes melancholy, when he thinks of those blows exchanged in a spiritual void, exclaiming in one of those frequent purely spontaneous epigrams, which invest his noble person with sympathy:

Fama, seguace degli imperatori, Ninfa, che e' gesti a' dolci versi canti, che dopo morte ancor gli uomini onori, e fai coloro eterni, che tu vanti, ove sei giunta? a dir gli antichi amori, e a narrar battaglie de' giganti; mercè del mondo, che al tuo tempo è tale, che più di fama o di virtù non cale. Lascia a Parnaso quella verde pianta, che da salvivi ormai perso è il cammino, e meco al basso questa istoria canta del re Agramante, il forte Saracino....[7]

Pulci and Boiardo then, not to mention others, are to be placed neither above nor below Ariosto, for they are not even related to him. Proof of this is to be found in the fact that thought has gone to other artists, to Ovid for example, in the search for his parallel in literature among the Latins, to Petrarch and to Politian among Italians, or to architects like Bramante and Leon Baptista Alberti, and yet more to painters, like Raphael, Correggio and Titian, comparisons having been instituted with all of these and with others whom it is unnecessary to mention. Now as regards quality of artistic inspiration, affinity is certainly more intrinsic than are relations established from the use of similar abstract material; yet it is itself abstract and extrinsic, because it always accepts one or certain aspects of inspiration, not the full inspiration. Thus, for example, when a comparison is drawn between Ariosto and Ovid, who was a story-teller, lacking altogether in religious feeling for mythological fables and attracted to them solely by their beauty and variety, we must immediately hasten to add that with the exception of this side, which they share in common, Ariosto is different and superior to the Latin poet in every other, for Ovid had not a delicate taste in art, being merged altogether in his pleasing and delightful themes. He improvised and overflowed, owing to his incapacity for firm design and lack of control: he would be better described as the model of the luxurious Italian versifiers of the seventeenth century than as the model of Ariosto, whose art was most chaste. If again he be superficially compared with Politian, the comparison breaks up immediately, because the _Stanze_ are inspired by the voluptuousness of the sensible world, contemplated in all its fugitive brilliance and with that trembling accompaniment of anxiety and suffering, inseparable from it, while Ariosto soars above the pathos of voluptuousness. To note affinities is of avail in a work introductory to the general study of literature, and to draw comparisons and point out contrasts and successive approximations may also serve as a useful aid to the accurate description of an artist's special character. But we do not propose to supply here such a didactic introduction, for the use of such a method is superfluous, as we have already described Ariosto's characteristics in the manner proposed. We shall not therefore form a group of artists, as related to him in this or that respect, for such cannot be expected of us, nor has it for us any special attraction.

Observations as to affinities have another use also, as providing a basis for sparkling and resonant metaphors, as when it is observed of an artist that he is the "Raphael of poetry," of another that he is "the Dante of sculpture," or of a third that he is "the Michael Angelo of sound," or as was said (by Torquato Tasso, perhaps as a witticism, and certainly with little truth), that Ariosto is "the Ferrarese Homer." We already possess many pages of magnificent metaphors to the honour and glory of the author of the _Furioso,_ nor do we intend to depreciate their merit; but the present writer begs to be excused from the labour of increasing their number, since he is in general little disposed to oratory and has allowed what slight gift of the sort he might have possessed to flow away and lose itself, while conversing with so unrhetorical and so conversational a poet as was Ludovico Ariosto.

[Footnote 1: Saying how delightful he was and still weeping for tender recollection.]

[Footnote 2: Sometimes one would remove the helmet from his son, his cousin, or his father, kissing him with pious affection, and saying "alas, poor fellow, never again will he return to our ranks in Soria; what shall we say to his afflicted mother, who among us can comfort her? But thou remainest with the others who lie dead on the field."]

[Footnote 3: Orlando answered:--We shall be like the friars one of whom burnt himself in eating his gruel; the other seeing his eyes watering asked the reason. His neighbour replied: "Here we are, two of us remained sitting at table, while the others are in the tomb; well thou knowest that we were thirty-three; it always makes me weep to think of it." The other, who saw the deception, in his turn made belief to lament and grieve and when asked the reason: "Yea, I also weep; my heart indeed is bursting to think that we two remain"; then sighing he continued, "And that one of us two is betraying the other. We seem to be doing much the same thing, Rinaldo: why won't you confess that the gruel was hot?"]

[Footnote 4: It often happens that a friend becomes like a brother to you, and whatever he does seems to be so well done as to deserve being made a picture. This first bond holds so firmly that when he finally does something you do not like--injures you in some way--nevertheless the first impression remains the same.]

[Footnote 5: The gentle soul rejoices at every worthy, noble deed recounted of knighthood, as it does when the deed was accomplished, which revealed the manly heart.]

[Footnote 6: Morgana, Alcina and their incantations have long held me in their chains, so that I have been unable to show you aught of fine sword play, the sky full of lances and limbs....]

[Footnote 7: Where art thou gone, O fame that followest emperors and singest their brave deeds in gentle verse, thou that honorest men after death and conferrest eternity upon those thou vauntest? This is the fault of the world. Thou art gone to sing of ancient loves and to tell of the battles of the giants, thanks to this world of ours that cares no longer for courage or for fame. Leave upon Parnassus that growth of green, since none knows now the upward path that leadeth thither, and sing here below with me this history of King Agramante, the mighty Saracen....]