“And look at the stars. Reflect that there was a time when they were
thought to be what they appear; small, mere atoms of light.... Instead,
it is the earth that is small, a mere grain of sand. To believe the
earth large and stars small; or to believe, as is the case, that the
stars are infinite in number and size, and the earth very small; these
are the two religions, this is the σκότος and the φῶς: darkness and
light. Look at Vesuvius the destroyer, the glare of the lava glowing in
the darkness. Look at Death. Look it in the face, without drooping the
head cowardly, without erecting it proudly. You will feel the necessity
of being at peace with your fellow-men. And say not that all men know
they are mortal, but that that has never kept anyone from doing ill. I
tell you it is not enough to know it; you must have your soul saturated
with it, and have but that in your soul. Men know, too, that the stars
are large, or rather they give an idle assent to the learned who say
so. They know it, that is, but they do not think it as yet. Will
the time come when they will think it?” And in the “_Era Nuova_” he
continues:—Man “sought illusions and found them. The brute knows not
that he will die: the man said to himself that he knows he will not
die. So they again came to be like each other.... And thenceforth Death
being denied, no longer received from man his sad and entire assent.
Man feared not to sadden his fellow, feared not to kill him, feared not
to kill himself, because he no longer felt the Irreparable. I know the
_Peisithanatos_ (Death-persuader) who it is. I know who persuaded man
to violate life in himself and in others. It is he, who, in our souls,
first violated Death.... This is light. Science is beneficent in that
in which she is said to have failed. She has confirmed the sanction of
Death. She has sealed up the tombs again.... The proof, moved against
her, is her boast. Or rather it will be when from this negation the
poet-priest shall have drawn the moral essence. Who can imagine the
words by which we shall feel ourselves whirling through space? by which
we shall feel ourselves mortal? We know this and that: we do not feel
it. The day we feel it ... we shall be better. And we shall be sadder.
But do you not see that it is exactly by his sadness that man differs
from the brute beasts? And that to advance in sadness is to advance
in humanity?... Man, embrace your destiny! Man, resign yourself to be
man! Think in your furrow, do not rave. Love—think it—is not only the
sweetest but the most tremendous of actions: it is adding new fuel to
the great pyre that flames in the darkness of our night.”
Many will not agree with Pascoli’s method of arriving at his
conclusions; for men’s minds are infinite in number, and but few think
alike. But all will recognise the reverent earnestness of his belief,
and respect the man whom hatred has moulded into a fervent apostle of
love.
To understand Pascoli’s power of differentiating character and
handling dialogue, we must turn, not to his Italian, but to his Latin
poems. These are not in any sense of the word academic exercises:
they are instinct with life and of extraordinary vivacity. The crowd
in which the laughing Horace finds himself wedged, in the “_Reditus
Augusti_”—the poetical rivalry in the tavern between Catullus and
Calvus, in the “_Catullo Calvos_”—the witty yet serious discussion
between Mæcenas, Varius, Virgil and Plotius in the “_Cena in Caudiano
Nervæ_”—these are charming in the extreme, and have all the
piquancy of the Horatian satire. The other two poems, “_Jugurtha_”
and “_Castanea_,” are of a different stamp. The first is a powerful
conception of the ravings and sufferings of the blinded Numidian king,
in the Roman dungeon where he dies of hunger and thirst; the second is
a description of the gathering and preparation of the chestnut crops,
with an invocation to the tree on which alone the inhabitants of the
Tuscan Apennines depend for warmth and food in winter. The peasant
household is truly Virgilian in the conciseness and sympathy with which
it is presented.
Truly Virgilian, too, is an Italian poem entitled “_La Sementa_” (The
Sowing) published in the “_Poemetti_.” There is a simple dignity in all
the actions and sayings of the peasants which prevents any feeling of
the triviality which the poet might so easily have suggested; prevents
at the same time that sentiment of unreality which enthusiastic and
romantic writers on the subject are so apt to provoke.
It is perhaps in the quiet intimateness of “_La Sementa_” that the
fundamental difference between the classic inspiration of Pascoli
and that of the older poet Carducci is epitomised. Carducci is a
born polemist. Son of the _Risorgimento_, he passed his youth in the
midst of a great epic movement, stigmatizing shams and tyrants with
the resources which a wide vocabulary placed at the disposal of an
exceptionally energetic and enthusiastic nature. Carducci’s classicism
is to a great extent formal. His verse imitates the Horatian metres,
his periods are often more Latin than Italian in their construction,
his women bear Latin names. And this Latin brevity, this careful
exclusion of all superfluous words, this precision in the use of
the smaller parts of speech (Carducci’s prepositions are a study in
themselves) combined with the broad imagery and ample conception that
seem inseparable from the age of Garibaldi, provoke in the reader a
sense of exquisite form and of impressive grandeur. The grandeur,
however, sometimes degenerates into rhetoric. Pascoli is more
reflective; he has more quiet sentiment. He lives in a quieter age,
when the enthusiastic hopefulness of the _Risorgimento_ has found
its reaction in a feeling of despondency concerning the accomplished
reality. He is in no sense of the word a polemist. The form of his
verse and of his period is Italian, though he has, it is true, revived
the Latin meaning of many Italian words. He has less grandeur than
Carducci, but on the other hand he is never rhetorical. The Latin
spirit has taken such complete possession of him that it has become
part of himself; it leavens his whole work, but leaves it strictly
individual in form and conception, and admits the expression of a sense
of mystery and vagueness which is rather of the romantic than of the
classic mind. As illustrative of the difference in conception between
the two poets we may compare their sonnets to “_The Ox_.”