Part 8

It was this hope which made me follow up the missile I had cast into the wasp's nest of bad authorship by a pleasant retort against Goldoni's strictures on my _Tartana_. Goldoni was a good fellow at bottom, but splenetic, and a miserable writer. Having begun life as a pleader at the bar of Venice, he never succeeded in throwing off a certain air of professional coarseness and a tincture of forensic rhetoric. I seized upon this point of weakness, and indited an epistle, which he was supposed to have written me, larded with all the jargon of the law-courts. The object of the letter was to introduce his terzets to my notice. I gave it the following title: _Scrittura contestativa al taglio della Tartana degli Influssi stampata a Parigi l'anno 1757_. After this I set myself to examine his _terza-rima_ poem, and had no difficulty in exposing a long list of stupidities, improprieties, puerilities, and injustices. Without altering the low and trivial sentiments expressed in it, I rewrote the whole in a style of greater elegance and elevation, so as to prove that even the most plebeian thoughts may acquire harmony and decent grace by choiceness of diction. Finally, I dissuaded him from sending his unhappy pamphlet to the press, and concluded by addressing some octave stanzas to the public, in which I begged them to set him free in future from his self-imposed obligation of composing in verse.

I did not stop here. My _Tartana_ contained some satirical sallies against the comedies in vogue upon our stage; and Goldoni had appropriated these to himself. In his invective he inserted a couple of forensic lines against me, which conveyed a kind of challenge. Here they are:--

"Chi non prova l'assunto e l'argomento, Fa come il cane che abbaja alla luna."

("He who proves not both theme and argument, Acts like the dog who barks against the moon.")

This excited me to write another little book, in which I proved the proposition and the argument, and at the same time afforded my readers food for mirth.

I feigned that the Granelleschi were assembled one day during Carnival, to dine at the tavern of the Pellegrino, which looks out upon the Piazza di San Marco. My comrades gathered round the windows to observe the passing masqueraders, when a monstrous creature, wearing a mask of four strongly-marked and different faces, entered the inn. They entreated it to come up into our room, in order that they might examine it at leisure. This mask of the the four faces and four mouths represented the Comic Theatre of Goldoni, personified by me in the way I shall explain. As soon as it caught sight of me, the author of _Tartana_, it turned to fly off in a rage, but was forced to stay and sustain an argument with me upon the theme of its dramatic productions.

In the dialogue which ensued, I maintained and proved that Goldoni had striven to gain popularity rather by changing the aspect of his wares than by any real merit which they possessed. After scribbling plots in outline for the old-fashioned comedy of improvisation, which he afterwards attacked and repudiated, he had begun by putting into written dialogue certain motives neglected by that kind of drama. Then seeing that this first manner began to pall, he dropped his so-called Reform of the Stage, and assailed the public with his _Pamelas_ and other romances. When this novelty in its turn ceased to draw, he bethought himself of those Venetian farces, which were indeed the best and longest-lived of his dramatic hashes. In time they suffered the fate of their predecessors, because such vulgar scenes from life could not fail to be monotonous. Accordingly, he tried another novelty, tickling the ears of his audience with rhymed Martellian verses and semi-tragic pieces, stuffed out with absurdities, improprieties, and the licentiousness of Oriental manners. These _Spose Persiane_, brutal _Ircane_, dirty _Eunuchi_, and unspeakable _Curcume_, by the mere fact of their bad morality, monstrosity, and improbability, raised Goldoni's fame among a crowd of fools and fanatics, who learned his long-winded Martellian lines by heart, and went about the alleys of the town reciting them aloud, to the annoyance of people who knew what good poetry really is.

I maintained and proved that he had rashly essayed tragedy of the sublime style, but had prudently fallen back on such plebeian representations as the _Pettegolezzi delle Donne_, the _Femmine gelose della Signora Lucrezia_, the _Putta Onorata_, the _Bona Muger_, the _Rusteghi_, the _Todero Brontolone_. The arguments of comedies like these were well adapted to his talent. He displayed in them a really extraordinary ability for interweaving dialogues in the Venetian dialect, taken down by him with pencil and notebook in the houses of the common people, taverns, gaming hells, _traghetti_, coffee-houses, places of ill-fame, and the most obscure alleys of our city. Audiences were delighted by the realism of these plays, a realism which had never before been so brilliantly illustrated, illuminated, and adorned, as it now was by the ability of actors who faithfully responded to the spirit of this new and popular type of farce.

I maintained and proved that he had frequently charged the noble persons of his plays with fraud, absurdity, and baseness, reserving serious and heroic virtues for personages of the lower class, in order to curry favour with the multitude, who are always too disposed to envy and malign the great. I also showed that his _Putta Onorata_ was not honest, and that he had incited to vice while praising virtue with the dullness of a tiresome sermon. With regard to this point, the four-mouthed Comic Theatre kept protesting that it wished to drive the time-honoured masks of improvised comedy off the stage, accusing them of imposture, immodesty, and bad example for the public. I, on the other hand, clearly proved that Goldoni's plays were a hundred times more lascivious, more indecent, and more injurious to morals. My arguments were rendered irrefutable by a whole bundle of obscene expressions, dirty double-entendres, suggestive and equivocal situations, and other nastinesses, which I had collected and textually copied from his works. The monstrous mask defended itself but poorly, and at last fell to abusing me personally with all its four mouths at once. This did not serve it; and when I had argued it down and exposed it to the contempt of the Granelleschi, it lifted up its clothes in front, and exhibited a fifth mouth, which it carried in the middle of its stomach. This fifth allegorical mouth raised up its voice and wept, declaring itself beaten and begging for mercy. I admit that my satire here was somewhat harsh and broad; but it had been provoked by an expression of Goldoni's, who twitted me with being _a man out of temper with fortune_.

As a preface to these two little works, I composed an epistle in blank verse, in which I dedicated them to a certain well-known poverty-stricken citizen of Venice, called Pietro Carati. The man used to go about the streets, wrapt in a ragged mantle, with a rusty periwig, and black stockings, mended in a thousand places with green, grey, or white silk (the surest signs of beggary), modestly demanding from his acquaintances some trifle to support his dignity as cittadino.

In this epistle I repeated that I was not out of temper with fortune, that I sought no favours from that goddess by my writings, and that my only object was to carry on the war against bad authors, and to uphold the rules and purity of literature. These two little pamphlets became the property of the public before I had time and opportunity to print them. The stir they made while yet in manuscript occasioned a series of events which I will now relate.[24]

The noble gentleman, Giuseppe Farsetti, who was a member of our Academy, came to me one day, and told me that another patrician, Count Ludovico Widiman, and he would take it very kindly if I consented to withdraw my little works from publication. I was somewhat surprised, because I knew that the Cavaliere Farsetti was a lover of good literature. Count Widiman, on the other hand, had declared himself a partisan of Goldoni. Nevertheless, I readily assented to their request, and promised to bury my two pamphlets in oblivion. I added, at the same time, that I felt sure that Goldoni, when he was aware of this act of generosity on my part, would begin hostilities against me, trusting to his numerous and enthusiastic following.

I was not mistaken when I made this prophecy. It soon became evident that Goldoni intended to carry on the war against us lovers of pure writing in all the _Raccolte_ which appeared from time to time in Venice. He also introduced affected and unpleasant types of character upon the stage under Florentine names, and otherwise jeered at us in the coarse little poems which he styled his _Tavole Rotonde_. Confiding in his popularity and the influence of those fine gentlemen whom he called his "beloved patrons," he hoped to revenge himself on me and to suppress my _Tartana_.

To break my promise given to the two Cavalieri, and to publish the satirical pieces I have described above, was out of the question. So I prepared myself for a guerilla warfare, something after Goldoni's own kind, but more witty and amusing. I judged it better to fight the quarrel out with short and cutting pieces, which should throw ridicule upon my adversary and amuse the public, than to begin a critical controversy in due form. Squibs and satires were now exchanged daily between Polisseno Fegejo (such was Goldoni's high-sounding title in the Arcadi of Rome) and my humble self, the Solitario in our modest Academy of the Granelleschi.

To meet Goldoni's lumbering diatribes in verse, I brought out a little burlesque poem, which I called _Sudori d'Imeneo_. It was printed on the occasion of a wedding, and created a revolution among the wits which exceeded my most sanguine expectations. At this distance of time I find it impossible to render a precise account of the innumerable compositions which I produced in this controversy. They were read at the time with avidity, because of their novelty and audacity. I never cared to keep a register of my published or unpublished writings in prose and verse. If I were asked where these trifles could be found, I should reply: "Certainly not in my hands." Some of my friends, however--among them the Venetian gentleman, Raffaele Todeschini, and Sebastiano Muletti of Bergamo--thought it worth while to form complete collections of such pieces from my pen.

It must not be imagined that Abbe Chiari escaped without blows in this battle of the books. It so happened that an unknown writer subjected one of his prologues to a scathing satire in an essay called _Five Doubts_. The piece was mistakenly attributed to me; and Chiari answered it by six cowardly, filthy, satirical sonnets, which he circulated in manuscript, against myself and the Granelleschi. Upon this there arose a whole jungle of pens in our defence. The five doubts were multiplied by four, by six; and the Abbe was argued and twitted out of his wits. In these straits, he condescended to extend the kiss of peace to his old foe Goldoni, and Goldoni abased himself to the point of accepting the salute. Drowning their former rivalries and differences, they now entered into an offensive and defensive alliance against the Academy and me.

Meanwhile our party grew steadily in numbers. The head-quarters of the Granelleschi as a belligerent body were at this time established in the shop of the bookseller Paolo Colombani. Every month we issued here in parts a series of critical and satirical papers, which drew crowds of purchasers round Colombani's counter. The papers appeared under the title of _Atti Granelleschi_, and were prefaced with an introduction in octave stanzas from my pen. The noise they created all about the town was quite remarkable, and young men eagerly enrolled themselves under our standard of the Owl. Chiari and Goldoni, on their side, were not idle; but the alliance they had struck took off considerably from their vogue. This depended in no small measure on their former rivalry. The dropping fire which had been exchanged between their partisans kept their names and fames before the public. Now that they were fighting under one flag against us, the interest in their personalities declined.

Without pursuing the details of this literary war, which raged between the years 1757 and 1761, I will only touch upon those circumstances which led me to try my fortune on the stage as a dramatic writer. Both Goldoni and Chiari professed themselves the champions of theatrical reform; and part of their programme was to cut the throat of the innocent _Commedia dell'Arte_, which had been so well supported in Venice by four principal and deservedly popular masks: Sacchi, Fiorelli, Zannoni, and Derbes. It seemed to me that I could not castigate the arrogance of these self-styled Menanders better than by taking our old friends Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, Pantalone, and Smeraldina under my protection. Accordingly, I opened fire with a dithyrambic poem, praising the extempore comedians in question, and comparing their gay farces favourably with the dull and heavy pieces of the reformers.[25] Chiari and Goldoni replied to my attacks and those of my associates by challenging us to produce a comedy. Goldoni, in particular, called me a verbose word-monger, and kept asserting that the enormous crowds which flocked together to enjoy his plays constituted a convincing proof of their essential merit. It is one thing, he said, to write subtle verbal criticisms, another thing to compose dramas which shall fill the public theatres with enthusiastic audiences. Spurred by this continual appeal to popularity and vogue, I uttered the deliberate opinion that crowded theatres proved nothing with regard to the goodness or the badness of the plays which people came to see; and I further staked my reputation on drawing more folk together than he could do with all his scenic tricks, by simply putting the old wives' fairy-story of the _Love of the Three Oranges_ upon the boards.

Shouts of incredulous and mocking laughter, not unnaturally, greeted this Quixotic challenge. They stung my sense of honour, and made me gird up my loins for the perilous adventure. When I had composed the scheme of my strange drama, and had read it to the Granelleschi, I could see, by the laughter it excited, that there was stuff and bottom in the business. Yet my friends dissuaded me from producing such a piece of child's-play before the public; it would certainly be hissed, they said, and compromise the dignity of our Academy.

I replied that the whole public had to be attacked in front upon the theatre, in order to create a sensation, and to divert attention from our adversaries. I meant to give, and not to sell this play, which I hoped would vindicate the honour and revenge the insults of our Academy. Finally, I humbly submitted that men of culture and learning were not always profoundly acquainted with human nature and the foibles of their neighbours.

Well, I made a present of _L'Amore delle Tre Melarancie_ to Sacchi's company of comic players, and the extravaganza was produced in the theatre of San Samuele at Venice during the Carnival of 1761. Its novelty and unexpectedness,--the surprise created by a fairy-tale adapted to the drama, seasoned with trenchant parodies of both Chiari's and Goldoni's plays, and not withal devoid of moral allegory--created such a sudden and noisy revolution of taste that these poets saw in it the sentence of their doom.

Who could have imagined that this twinkling spark of a child's fable on the stage should have outshone the admired and universally applauded illumination of two famous talents, condemning them to obscurity, while my own dramatised fairy-tales throve and enthralled the public for a period of many years? So wags the world!

XXXIX.

_My plan of campaign for assailing Goldoni and Chiari through the militia of actors I had chosen.--The four Fiabe: Il Corvo, Il Re Cervo, La Turandotte, I Pitocchi Fortunati._

In the long course of my observations upon human nature and the different sorts of men, I had not as yet enjoyed an opportunity of studying the race of actors. I was curious to do so, and the time had come.

With the view of attacking my two poet adversaries in the theatre, I made choice of the comic troupe of Sacchi, the famous Truffaldino.[26] It was composed for the most part of close relatives, and bore the reputation of being better behaved and more honest than any others. Professionally, they sustained our old national comedy of improvisation with the greatest spirit. This type of drama, as I have said above, Goldoni and Chiari, under the mask of zeal for culture, but really with an eager eye to gain, had set themselves to ruin and abolish.

Antonio Sacchi, Agostino Fiorelli, Atanagio Zannoni, and Cesare Derbes, all of them excellent players in their several lines, represented the four masks, Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, and Pantalone. Each of these men could boast of perfect practice in their art, readiness of wit, grace, fertility of ideas, variety of sallies, bye-play, drollery, naturalness, and some philosophy. The soubrette of the company, Andriana Sacchi-Zannoni, possessed the same qualities. Its other members, at the time when I took up their cause, were old men and women, persons of good parts but unattractive physique, lifeless sticks, and inexperienced children. Some time earlier, the troupe had been extremely well-to-do and popular in Italy. But the two playwrights in question, after having lived in partnership with them, had turned round and taken the bread out of their mouths. Sacchi, in these circumstances, withdrew his company to the Court of Portugal, where they prospered, until a far more formidable enemy than a brace of poets assailed them. The terrible earthquake of Lisbon put a stop to all amusements in that capital; and our poor players, having lost their occupation, returned to Venice after an absence of some four years, and encamped in the theatre of San Samuele.

Upon their arrival, they met with a temporary success. Many amateurs of the old drama, who were bored to death with Martellian verses and such plays as the _Filosofi Inglesi_, _Pamelas_, _Pastorelle Fedeli_, _Plautuses_, _Molieres_, _Terences_, and _Torquato Tassos_, then in vogue, hailed them with enthusiasm. During the first year the four masks and the soubrette, with some other actors of merit in the extempore style, took the wind out of Goldoni's and Chiari's sails. Little by little, however, the novelties poured forth by these two fertile writers, who kept on treating the clever fellows as contemptible mountebanks and insipid buffoons, prevailed, and reduced them to almost total neglect.

It seemed to me that I should be able to indulge my humour for laughter if I made myself the colonel of this regiment. I also hoped to score a victory for the insulted Granelleschi by drawing crowds to Sacchi's theatre with my dramatic allegories based on nursery-tales. The fable of _L'Amore delle Tre Melarancie_ made a good beginning. My adversaries were driven mad by the revolt it caused among playgoers, by its parodies and hidden meanings, which the newspapers industriously explained, describing many things which I had never put there. They attempted to hoot it down by clumsy abuse, affecting at the same time disgust and contempt for its literary triviality. Forgetting that it had been appreciated and enjoyed by people of good birth and culture, they called it a mere buffoonery to catch the vulgar. Its popularity they attributed to the co-operation of the four talented masks, whom they had sought to extirpate, and to the effect of the transformation scenes which it contained, ignoring the real spirit and intention of this comic sketch in a new style.

Laughing at their empty malice, I publicly maintained that art in the construction of a piece, well-managed conduct of its action, propriety of rhetoric and harmony of diction, were sufficient to invest a puerile fantastic motive, if taken seriously, with the illusion of reality, and to arrest the attention of the whole human race--excepting perhaps some thirty confirmed enemies, who would be sure, when my contention had been proved before their eyes and ears, to accuse a hundred thousand men of ignorance, and to renounce their sex rather than admit the truth.

This proposition was met with new gibes; and I found myself committed to make good my bold assertion. The fable of _Il Corvo_, extracted from a Neapolitan story-book, _Cunto delle cunte, trattenemiento pe le piccierelle_, and treated by me in the tone of lofty tragedy, wrought the miracle. I must add that I assigned some humorous passages to the four masks, whom I wished to keep upon the stage for the benefit of hypochondriacs, and in contempt of misunderstood and falsely applied rules from Aristotle.

The success of _Il Corvo_ was complete. The public wept and laughed at my bidding. Multitudes flocked to hear this old wives' tale, as though it had been solemn history. The play had a long run; and the two poets were seriously damaged in their interests, while the newspapers applauded and extolled the allegory as a splendid example of fraternal affection.

I wished to strike while the iron was hot. Accordingly, my third fable, the _Re Cervo_, appeared with similar results of popularity and sympathetic criticism. A thousand beauties were discovered, which I, who wrote it, had not seen. Folk regarded its allegory as a mirror for those monarchs who allow themselves to be blinded by their confidence in Ministers, and are in consequence transformed into the semblance of monsters. Meanwhile, my opponents persisted in ascribing the great success of these three pieces to stage decorations and the marvellous effect of magic metamorphoses, neglecting the writer's art and science, the charm of his verse, and his adroit employment of rhetoric, morality, and allegory. This impelled me to produce two more fables, _Turandotte_ and _I Pitocchi Fortunati_, in which magic marvels were conspicuous by their absence, while the literary art and science remained the same. A like success clinched my argument, without, however, disarming my antagonists.