Part 10

And from their peak launched to the listening world Their sacred words; And died ’mid dreams and symphonies Bathed in bright sunlight.

* * * * *

Love for the Rebels! Heart-bitten, they, By sùpreme anguish; Linked in Love’s leash With those who weep, with those who tremble, With those, outcast, by Christ redeemed, By brethren betrayed.

By sea, by land, to thronging crowds New laws have they proclaimed; Have raised the hymn of coming ages, Sublimely frenzied For the ideal; and,—irons, rope or axe— Smiled at their torments.

* * * * *

But for the Great of Gloomy Places, Tears, heart-wrung. Such as are A-hungered, trodden down; and—venerable— Nor truce nor pardon knew From hostile, impious nature, Yet hated not.

Who saw the corn-ear spring for others, Yet thievèd not. Whose drink was gall and tears; who, traitorously Lashed in the face by blindfold Tyranny, Yet murmured not.

Who walked ’mid frosts and tempests Darkling and quite forgot; No sun, no bread, no clothing, Yet trusted God.

Who had a heap of straw to sleep on Loathsome and horrible; A lazar-house to die in, Yet loving died.

THE WORKMAN

AROUND me rose the city Stirring at the first glimpse of day; The great city, that gives bread, that labours, Rose, as the sun gleamed forth, to its gigantic toil.

There was a crying of clear voices, unknown voices, Beating waves of sound; A throwing wide of doors and windows, A whistling of trains, a whirling of wheels.

There was a hastening gaily, furiously, Of a thousand human forces Towards the work that gives health and food, That unfurls a thousand flags to the wind.

All things glittered, palpitated, laughed In the glory of the morning; All things seemed to open wings; Hope and joy gleamed on every visage.

Then I observed him. Powerful was he: his front— Pale with thought— Proudly and nobly bore he On the bronzed neck, free-moving.

Bull neck—breast of the savage— Bold glance and word; In his veins the surge of life, Billows of love and of bravery.

Resounding the footfall! Like a victor Advanced he in the light; And my heart murmured:—Is he not a leader? Amid the pandemonium

Of the workshop, proud in his workman’s blouse, Does he not tame the monsters To whom man meted claws and bills, Soul of flame and thews of steel?

Wells there not within him a fount of vigour, Leaping, overbearing, That shall fill with fresh life this languishing age, Sallow with vice and lack of blood?

Oh blessèd, blessèd to be beloved of him.... To wait for him each evening Before the frugal board, with all the true Sweet anxiousness of one who loves and waits.

Blessèd to cull from him, as the white lily Culls from the golden bee, The kiss of one who knows grim strife and toil; To be all his treasure, to bear a son to him:

And in this son, fair and blameless, Informed with all his father’s worth, To nurse a hope, a hope eternal, To find the joys of a falling world:

And to dream, through him continued In the centuries to come, Of the race of the unbowed, of the pure, Destined to dazzling days of light:

Of an unstained race of slaves redeemed Who amid songs shall reap Harvests of freedom born from the weeping, From the blood, from the very hearts, of their forerunners.

THREE LITERARY STUDIES

GIOSUÉ CARDUCCI

THE Roman historian Niebuhr reviewing the literature of the Augustan age, gave it as his opinion that epic poetry was dead, the lyric form of poetical expression being the only one adapted to the genius of the Romans at that period. Virgil’s “Æneid,” beautiful as are its details, he considers a failure as an epic; for an epic hero should, with fresh simple spontaneity, go straight home to the heart of the people at large, and this, he argues, the character of Æneas could never have done. Greek legends in Virgil’s poem are so dove-tailed into the Latin ones that the work loses its national character, loses therefore its spontaneity, and remains now, as it must have been from the beginning, an exquisite mosaic, to be appreciated only by the cultured; and appreciated, moreover, rather for the delicacy of the descriptions and the art of the versification, than for any inherent interest attaching to the principal characters. Roman literary society was, in fact, too positive to produce an epic poem. The sceptical spirit was uppermost. Legend, instead of firing the imagination, did but arouse the critical faculty. The story of Romulus, of his wondrous birth and preservation, of his building of the city, his government, and marvellous death, was neither believed in as fact nor treated as poetry. Men set to work to examine and to explain it; a useful task, no doubt, and one which Niebuhr himself has performed as well as anyone else, but one expressive of a spirit far removed from that which animates the writer of an epic poem. The death of the epic meant, however, the life of the lyric. Occupying themselves but little with the motives and actions of those who lived in other ages, men felt all the more need of uttering their own subjective feelings and impressions. For such utterances they naturally chose the lyric form, which the highly developed æsthetic sense of the time induced them to work to a high degree of perfection. This, in fact, was the age of Horace and Catullus.

Surely much the same causes are at work, in different forms of society, at the present day. The Italian critic Trezza sings the dirge of the epic, and proves that the lyric is the only form of poem possible to the society of the nineteenth century. Another authority besides Trezza makes a similar assertion.

“The epic,” he says, “was buried some time ago. To violate the tomb of the mighty dead by singing doggerel over it, even if it were not the sign of a depraved disinclination to undertake higher flights, would not be particularly diverting. The drama (referring to poetic drama) is _in extremis_, and the superabundance of doctors won’t even let it depart in peace. Lyric poetry, individual by nature, appears to stand its ground, and may still last some little while provided it does not forget it is an art. If it degrades itself into a mere secretion of the sensibility or sensuality of such and such an one, if it surrenders itself to all the unnatural licences which sensibility and sensuality allow themselves, then, poor lyric, she too is no longer recognisable.... To have adapted to the lyric this style of versification, fit only for narration and description, without verses, and with rhymes _a piacere_, is a sure sign that every idea of the true lyric has been lost.... An asthmatic lyric, paunch-bellied, in dressing-gown of ample girth, and slippers—tie upon it!... I, bending at the foot of the Italian Muse, first kiss it with respectful tenderness, then try to fit on the sapphic, alcaic, and asclepiadaic buskins in which her godlike sister led the choruses on the Parian marble of the Doric temples, which look down at themselves in the sea that was the fatherland of Aphrodite and Apollo.”

So writes the great Italian poet Carducci, using a similitude which might have come from the pen of Horace himself. The Augustan age produced a poet who measured the Greek lyric buskins on Latin measures; the nineteenth century has given birth to one who has fitted them on to Italian verse.

Giosué Carducci, whose poetical works have raised so much controversy in Italy, and occasioned a deluge of treatises on metre, Italian and Latin, was born at Valdicastello, in the classic Tuscan land, on July 27th, 1836, of a family which, in the days of the independence of the Tuscan cities, had given a Gonfaloniere to the Florentine Republic. His first impressions of Nature he received from the Pisan Maremma, here stretching away in “peaceful hills, with steaming mists, and green plains smiling in the morning showers”; there in “chalk-hills of malignant aspect, sparsely shaded by wood, with horses wandering under the guilty-looking cork-oaks that bristle, lowering, in the plain below”; or again in “cloud-swept unsown plains, by the widowed shores of the Tuscan sea,” scattered with the old-world feudal towers, and full of ancient memories of decayed cities and mediæval strife. It was among such surroundings that at the age of eleven Carducci wrote his first verses. These reveal at once the historical and classical tendency of his mind; for besides a few lines on the “Death of an Owl,” we find a poem on “The Fall of the Castle of Bolgheri into the hands of Ladislaus, King of Naples,” and another entitled “M. Brutus Meditating the Death of Cæsar.”

Those were unsettled times, however. Political revolution deprived Carducci’s father in 1849 of his post of village-doctor, and forced him to take refuge in Florence, where Giosué was put to school with the Scolopian Fathers. All readers of Ruffini will remember that author’s experience of the Scolopian convent school as described in “Lorenzo Benoni”; and can imagine that Carducci, accustomed to the open life of the Maremma, full of aspirations towards the freedom of classic times, did not feel himself altogether in his element as he sat learning from the black priest whose “clucking voice blasphemed _Io amo_,” and “whose face it was vexation to behold.”

On leaving school, young Carducci published his first volume of poems; and in 1858, together with some of his friends, started a review named after the famous sixteenth century poet “Il Poliziano.” The paper, as is usual with such juvenile ventures, was short-lived; but it is interesting as showing the efforts the young poet was already making towards the adaptation of classical forms to modern ideas. It was, however, impossible that any ardent youth should content himself with mere literary form during that period of ferment which resulted in the formation of a United Italy. He, like his contemporaries throughout the length and breadth of the land, was fired by the noble efforts made by Garibaldi and Mazzini for the redemption of their fatherland from the hated Austrian yoke; and, though republican by tradition (as all Italians must be) as well as by natural inclination, Carducci was yet willing to follow the moderate party and Garibaldi in their support of the monarchy of Savoy. Speaking of his political views at that time, he says:—

“I was one of the very many who in ’59 and ’60 adopted the formula of the Garibaldini, ‘Italy and Victor Emmanuel,’ without any enthusiasm for the moderate party and its leaders, but loyally. I was drawn to it partly from grateful affection for the King and Piedmont, in whose firmness I had found some consolation for the misery of the preceding ten years; partly from the idea that in the fusion of the noble with the burgher element, of the army with the people, of the monarchical traditions of one part of the country with the democratic traditions of other parts, in the intimate union of loyalty with liberty, of discipline with enthusiasm, of ancient tradition with modern belief, the history of Italy—that history of wondrous tissue, which bears within itself all the seeds, developments, blossomings, fadings of all political ideas, forms and phenomena—will at length find, better than the Greek could have done, its necessary unfolding and complement, achieving the liberation, the union, the greatness of the whole country by means of the valour and strength of the nation, without, and even in opposition to, any foreign interference.”

As this extract clearly shows, Carducci’s attachment to the Moderates (as he calls the Monarchists) was purely Platonic; his natural passion was for the Republicans. Such dualism between head and heart, such war between his just idea of the exigencies of modern times and his fervid admiration of the methods and life of the classic world, soon brought him into serious difficulties, and rendered his active participation in the military and political events of the Sixties null. For the men with whom he found himself associated as colleagues, though at one with him as regards the fundamental tenet of the necessity of a monarchy, had but little understanding of his idea that the valour and strength of the nation was to be the making of Italy, without foreign interference, or even in opposition to it. They relied more on modern methods of diplomacy than on Greek dash and daring; and, to gain their ends, were ready to compromise with other Powers and with the Church in a way that clashed with Carducci’s classic enthusiasm. Hence the poet was forced into opposition to the party to which his reflection politically attached him, and poured out the bitterness of his soul for the indignities inflicted on his ideal, in a series of poems afterwards collected and published in a little volume bearing the title of “Giambi ed Epodi” (“Iambics and Epodes”). This attitude naturally led the Moderate party into the belief that Carducci was a preacher of republicanism. As such they persecuted him, even suspending him from his chair of Italian Literature at Bologna; and as such he has ever been considered until he fell under the spell of the extraordinary fascination exerted by the grace and manners of Queen Margherita. Under this spell his old admiration for the House of Savoy revived, becoming, as many think, exaggerated. He was reproached as a turncoat by those who never fully understood his former opinions or his true attitude with regard to the Moderate party; he lost caste among the students, who once kept him for a whole hour in his lecture-room while they hissed him violently; and the people at large, finding him turned into a court poet, openly asserted that he was in his decadence, and that his latter end was not worthy his beginning. It is certainly a pity for his fame that it should have been, of all persons, the Queen in whom he found so warm and appreciative a friend; for his constant presence about her in the summer holidays doubtless laid him open, for many minds, to the charge of snobbism. Two things, however, must be remembered in his defence. Firstly, that he has always considered monarchy as necessary for Italy in her present condition; secondly, that the combination of military glory with grace and culture has been his ideal from boyhood; and this combination he found represented in King Umberto and Queen Margherita. One of his later poems, “War” (“La Guerra”) which hymns the praises of military enterprise, clearly shows that he has lost nothing of his ancient admiration for martial prowess; while others, addressed to Queen Margherita, prove also his poetic sensibility to feminine grace. It is thus easy to explain Carducci’s apparent change of attitude, while at the same time fully understanding that the masses—not apt to enquire into the workings of a man’s mind, not apt to read with much attention or reflection—are simply struck by the difference in tone between his earlier poems (the “Ça Ira” in honour of the French Revolution, for instance), and his later laudations of the House of Savoy, and launch against him the charge to which we have alluded.

It is difficult to choose, from the scathing scorn of the “Giambi” (“Iambics”), poured out in the incisive terseness of Carducci’s verse, any short passage which should give an idea of the whole series. We may mention, however, the terrible little poem entitled “Meminisse Horret,” written in 1867 while the Court was at Florence. He describes a horrible nightmare in which he sees Italy giving the lie to all her past traditions. Her ancient heroes are turned into cowards and supplicate those whom once they proudly defied; Dante, dressed like a clown, obsequiously shows strangers round Santa Croce; while Machiavelli, peeping slyly from behind a tomb, proclaims with a wink the adulteries of his mother-country in few words which cut to the quick. In the poem, written on the death of Giovanni Cairoli, the youth who, like his three brothers before him, died in battle for the unity of his country, to the grief yet glory of his widowed mother, the poet, branding, as Dante might have done, the infamy of those who dance and make love, and bring Italy to shame on the very graves of her heroes, goes so far as to curse his fatherland:—

.... Cursed be thou, my ancient fatherland, on whom to-day’s shame and the vengeance of the centuries lie heaped!

The plant of valour grows here yet but for thy mules to bed on; here the violet’s perfume ends in the dung-heap.

Bitter, too, are the verses entitled “Italy’s Song as she goes up the Campidoglio.” The mode, namely, in which the Italian Government, after promising in the September Convention that it would not occupy Rome, slunk into the city while France and Germany were busy with their own affairs, revolted Carducci’s whole soul, much as he, like all true Italian patriots, desired to set the Capitol as crown and seal on United Italy. He represents the army as entering stealthily by night, and calling on the Capitoline geese not to make such a dreadful clatter; it’s only “Italy, great and united,” who is coming back to her own again, and they’ll wake Cardinal Antonelli if they cackle so. We might quote endlessly to show how intensely despicable Carducci considered the diplomats of the Moderate party, who tried to gain their ends by crooked negotiations now with one Power, now with another, boasting that they had “read their Machiavelli”; and its generals who led out the fiery Italian youth to be slaughtered by the enemy. Nothing can equal, however, the concentration of scorn to be found in the sonnet “Heu Pudor”:—

He lies who says that, when the heart flares up, the breath of heated genius fans it. With the eternal stamp of infamy had I too branded the front of this unworthy herd.

As fierce mayhap as thine, oh Dante father, the hate and scorn that camp within my heart; But their voracious flaming roars enclosed, destroying me, and ne’er attains its aim.

New lakes of pitch, made thick with serpents, monsters, and with demons harsh a new and twofold bolgia had I dug; and, with its hills and with its walls, cast in— like to a loathsome tatter— this fatherland of Fucci and Bonturi.[18]

It must not be thought, however, that Carducci can emit nothing but fire and smoke. From the lurid “Giambi” we can turn for relief to the exquisite little word-pictures of the “Odi Barbare” and of many of the poems published in the collections entitled “Levia Gravia” and “Rime Nuove.” It is in these that Carducci’s sense of nature, frank classic paganism, united curiously, however, to a certain German sentimental pessimism, and his extraordinary power of word-sculpture reveal themselves.

Let no reader of Burns or Hogg expect to find in Carducci, however, the same type of nature-sense as abounds in the Saxon poets. The clear sky and sharp outlines of Italy do not encourage that gentle sentiment produced by the misty vagueness of hills and plains in the rain-laden atmosphere of the north. A poet of Greek-Latin race is not likely to give us the “Address to a Mountain Daisy,” the sweet tenderness of “Kilmeny,” the undefined melancholy of Tennyson’s “Dying Swan,” or even the cradling lusciousness of “Haroun Al-Raschid.” His landscape is altogether larger; his sky, clear, “stripped to its depths,” as Shelley says of that of Venice, renders distinct even small distant details of scarped or forest-clad hill, and, reflected in lake or sea or lighting up the mountains with amethyst and topaz, gives colours of greater brilliancy, though of less mystic warmth and depth, than does the ever-varying atmosphere of the British Isles. Macaulay and Longfellow have already observed the difference of the two types of mind in the exactitude of detail to be observed in Dante’s “Inferno” as compared with the vagueness of Milton’s “Hell,” and it is very noticeable also in the nature-descriptions of lyric poets. Take as an instance the opening of the following poem “All’Aurora” “To the Dawn”:—

“Thou risest and kissest the clouds with thy rosy breath, O Goddess, Kissest the darkling tops of marble temples.

The woods feel thee and rouse with a chilly shudder, The falcon springs upon the wing with robber joy,

Whilst the garrulous nests are full of whisperings among the damp leaves, And the sea-gull screams grey over the purple sea.

In the laborious plain the first to rejoice in thee are the rivers, Glittering tremulously among the murmurs of the poplars:

The sorrel foal runs joyfully towards the deep-flowing streams, His maned head erect, neighing to the winds:

The watchful valour of the dogs gives answer from the cabins And the whole valley resounds with lusty lowings.

But man, whom thou awakenest to consume his life in work, Still regards thee with thoughtful admiration,

Just as, in time gone by, the noble Aryan fathers Upright among their white flocks adored thee on the mountain.”

It is a pity that it is impossible for us to give the subtle melody of Carducci’s verse. Although French and German poets have recognised the master and translated some of his works, no Englishman appears to have as yet shown this mark of appreciation. Nevertheless, the characteristic way of treating the subject is clearly visible. The hawk, emblem of freedom and strife, is the first living creature that strikes the poet’s eye and mind. The sea-gull, the galloping foal, then the baying of the dogs and the “lusty lowings,” render an impression rather of grandeur than tenderness; the smaller birds are hardly mentioned, the landscape is clear and exact. At the same time there are little touches of exquisite beauty, worthy of Virgil himself, as in the “rosy breath” with which the Dawn kisses the clouds, the “chilly shudder of the woods,” “the garrulous nests whispering among the damp leaves.” Such jewels of expression are indeed scattered throughout the whole of Carducci’s work, their conciseness rendering very apparent the classicality of the models on which Carducci formed his style. Of him, indeed, Tennyson might have said, as he did of Virgil—

“All the wealth of all the Muses, often flowering in a lonely word.”

Spring sets Carducci’s heart beating in dithyrambs; it is in his spring songs that he abandons himself most completely to the joy of life as life, and attains, perhaps, some of his highest flights of lyric song. Very beautiful, for instance, are the three poems entitled “Greek Spring Songs”: i. Æolic; ii. Doric; iii. Alexandrine. From the first of these we may quote the return of Apollo

“from the hyperborean shores to the pious soil of Greece, to the laurels from the sluggish cold; two white swans draw him as they fly: the sky smiles. On his head he bears Jove’s golden fillet, but the air sighs in his thick-growing locks, and the lyre moves in his hand with amorous trembling. Around him circle in light dance the Cyclades, fatherland of the deity; from afar Cyprus and Cythera send up white foam of applause. And a slight skiff follows throughout the great Ægean, purple-sailed, harmonious: Alcæus of the golden plectrum, bearing arms, guides it through the waters. Sappho sits in the midst of it, with soft smile and hyacinthine tresses, her white breast heaving in the ambrosial air which streams from the god.”

The poet is not always so classical as this, however. Of a very different stamp, to select one other out of many spring poems, is his “Brindisi d’Aprile” (“April Drinking Song”)—