THOROUGHLY Italian and of the best period is Pascoli in the exquisite
propriety of his words; in the sharpness with which he outlines the
little pictures, which are characteristic, especially, of his earlier
work. In these respects one feels his close affinity with the Latin
poets—above all Virgil—who are his Gods, and from whom the early
Italian poets immediately derive. Less Italian—using the word in
the stereotyped sense which would exclude Leopardi altogether from
Italian song—less Italian is he in the mode and direction of his
thought. No gay love-songs, no easy sentimentality have come from his
pen: the passion of love is in fact strangely absent from his work.
He is a child not so much of Italy, as of his age, in his attitude of
enquiry towards the great questions of life and death; in the gravity,
the earnestness resulting, especially in his later works, from this
attitude.
Nor is this individuality to be wondered at; for Pascoli’s muse was
cradled in sorrow. He was but a lad when his father, returning home,
among the hills of Romagna and within sight of the mediæval republic of
S. Marino, was treacherously murdered by an unknown hand. His mother
died not very long after, having never really recovered from the shock;
then three brothers and a sister; so that Giovanni found himself at a
very early age head of a family of a brother and two sisters.
A hard struggle enabled him to form a home for them. One of the little
poems to his mother which mark, year after year, the anniversary of her
death, refers to this struggle as follows:—
Know—and perhaps thou dost know in the churchyard—
the child with long gold ringlets
and that other for whom thy last tear fell—
know that I fostered them, that I adore them.
For them I gathered up my shattered courage
and I wiped clear my soul for them;
they have a roof, they have a nest—my boast:
my love it is that feeds them, and my toil.
They are not happy, know it, but serene;
theirs is the smile but of a pious sadness:
I look on them—my sole, lone family—
and ever to my eyes I feel there comes
that last unfinished tear that wet thy lids
in the death-agony.
He now lives either at Messina, where he is Professor of Latin, or
among the chestnut woods that clothe the hills round Barga near Lucca,
with one of his sisters. This is Maria, the careful, winning housewife
whom all readers of her brother’s poems love—herself known also in
the world of letters as a graceful poetess and an accomplished Latin
scholar. Two or three verses of the little poem entitled “_Sorella_”
reflect the bond that unites them.
I know not if she be to him more mother
or more daughter, the sister, gently serious;
she—sweet, and grave and pious—
corrects, consoles and counsels;
Presses his hair, embraces him
care-burdened; speaks:—“_What is it?_”
Conceals her face against his breast,
Speaks, in confusion:—“_Know’st not?_”
She keeps on her pale face
and in her eyes quick glancing,
ah! for when he leaves, the smile;
the tears for his return.
Two principal influences, then, have gone to the moulding of Pascoli’s
genius: one, the potent attraction of the Augustan poets; the other,
the shock, strain and struggle which have fixed his thoughts on the
most painful problems of existence; which have, by the very breaking up
of his home, accentuated the longing for the domestic affections above
that for amorous passion; and have tinged the whole of his work with an
autumn-like sadness.
Both these influences reveal themselves in Pascoli’s first published
work; a small volume of little poems entitled _Myricæ_, and bearing
the legend _Arbusta juvant, humilesque myricæ_. The shock was at that
time, however, still too near to have exerted its full influence
on the poet’s character. It kept his mind fixed not so much on the
philosophical as on the sentimental and physical side of death: on
the churchyard with its cypresses, its driving showers and gleams of
golden sunshine, its rainbow, its groups of merry children playing
“Touch” round the great cross—but, also, with its dead lying through
the long nights of rain and wind. Even here, however, where triteness
would seem inevitable, Pascoli is individual. He never contemplates
physical decay: worms and skulls are not so much as hinted at. It is
the loneliness of his dead that rivets the poet’s thoughts, their vain
longing for news of those they left on earth:—
Oh, children—groans the father ’mid the black
swish of the water—ye whom I hear no more
for many years! Another churchyard
perhaps received you, and maybe you call
your mother as you shiver naked
’neath the black hissing rainstorms.
And from your far-off dwelling you stretch out
your arms to me, as I do mine to you,
oh sons, in vain despair.
Oh, children, children! Could I only see you!
For I would tell you how in that one instant
for an entire eternity I loved you.
In that one minute ere I died
I raised my hand up to my bleeding head,
and blessed you all, my children.