CHIVALRIC POETRY
The history of the Italian chivalric epic is one of the most
interesting departments of the story of literature, both on its own
account, and because it reveals as in a mirror the growth of the more
important epic of the tale of Troy. It arose out of a real event of the
deepest importance to Europe, but this it so disfigured by romance and
imagination as to be hardly recognisable. Charles Martel, the deliverer
of France from the Saracens, is confounded with another and still more
illustrious Charles, whose relations with the Saracen monarchs were
usually amicable; and, by what seems to be a universal law, this hero
comes to occupy but a corner of the temple nominally dedicated to
him, and his renown is transferred to creatures of pure imagination.
As Agamemnon, who at all events personifies the most powerful state
of primitive Greece, yields as a poetic hero to such historically
subordinate, if not absolutely fictitious personages as Achilles and
Ulysses; as the terrible Attila, the portent of his time, shrinks in
the Nibelungen Lied into the insignificant figure of Etzel; so, in the
romancer’s eye, the real glories of Charlemagne dwindle to nothing
before the petty skirmish of Roncesvalles.
In all these instances, and equally so in the cycle of Arthur, a
germ of historical reality lies latent in the human consciousness
for centuries, and then suddenly becomes prolific of a wealth of
imaginative detail. There can be no reasonable doubt that the writers
of the Homeric epics, whether few or many, stood in the same relation
to their sources as Malory and Boiardo to theirs, inheritors of a
tradition in which they reposed genuine belief, but which at the same
time they thought themselves at liberty to embellish and diversify as
they deemed best. We should probably find the resemblance between the
development of Trojan and of Arthurian legend to be very close, had we
the same acquaintance with the intellectual history of ancient Greece
as we possess with that of the mediæval period. Both were the result of
a great poetical revival, when the awakening spirit grasped eagerly at
the nutriment nearest to hand; and the Celtic romancers of the twelfth
century were inspired by true Celtic yearnings for an irrevocable past,
finding much of their material in the national historian, Geoffrey of
Monmouth.
With the Italian romantic epic the case was somewhat different: it
was largely influenced by a single book, and one composed with a
direct polemical purpose. The fear and hatred entertained in the tenth
and eleventh centuries for the Saracen invaders and the Danes, and
other heathens frequently confounded with them, found expression at
last in a remarkable book, the Latin Chronicles attributed to Turpin,
Archbishop of Rheims in the eighth century, but really a fabrication
of the eleventh, in which Charlemagne and his paladins were idealised
as the vanquishers of the pagans. From the prominent position given
to Charlemagne’s imaginary Spanish expeditions, the author is thought
to have been a Spaniard, and he owed much to that “Iliad of the
Middle Ages,” the _Song of Roland_, also a production of the eleventh
century. The panic passed away, but left behind it a rich deposit of
romantic fiction, deriving a beauty unknown to former ages from the
high estimate of woman which Christianity and Teutonic feeling had
jointly contributed to the collective human consciousness. Utilised in
many French narrative poems, this chivalric element first appeared in
Italian in the elaborate prose-romance, _I Reali di Francia_. From this
the step to metrical epic was easy, but the awkwardness of the Italian
poets’ first attempts seems to indicate that it was not taken until
the poetic art had reached its period of deepest depression in the
early part of the fifteenth century, when the rude and tedious epics
_Buovo di Antona_ (Bevis of Hampton), _La Spagna_, _Febus_, and _Queen
Ancronja_ were probably composed.
Another epic of the same period, without a name, recently discovered,
is to a considerable extent the groundwork of the _Morgante
Maggiore_[11] of LUIGI PULCI (1432-87), a humorous poem with a
serious purpose, or, at least, unconsciously expressing some of the
most serious phenomena of the age. Its mixture of sincere religious
feeling and genuine humanity with the most irreverent buffoonery
has made it the stumbling-block of critics and literary historians,
whose interpretation of its tendencies and estimate of its author’s
character are usually determined by their own prepossessions. While it
is impossible to deny that Morgante’s companion, the epicurean gourmand
Margutte,[12] is the author’s special creation, and the object of his
chief predilection among his characters, other portions of the poem
are couched in so lofty a strain, that he has been supposed to have
had assistance from no less a philosopher than Ficino and no less a
poet than Politian. Sarcastic sallies at the expense of the popular
theology alternate with set passages of fervent orthodoxy. To us the
_Morgante_ appears a symbol of the intellectual anarchy then prevalent
among the most intelligent Italians, among whom the religious sentiment
survived, while its external vesture had become mere mythology; who
had neither, like Benivieni, fallen under the influence of Savonarola,
nor were disqualified by lack of classical culture from participating
in the humanistic revival. Pulci’s opinions are probably expressed by
Astaroth, a devil introduced to aid the paladins and talk divinity, and
whose discourse contains a marvellous foreshadowing of the discovery of
America.
There can, nevertheless, be no question that the frivolous and mocking
element in the _Morgante_ is the source of its celebrity and literary
importance. It is the first really great modern example of burlesque
poetry, and there are few literatures without traces of its influence.
In our own, it was the father of Frere’s _Whistlecraft_, which was the
father of _Beppo_ and the _Vision of Judgment_, the first stanza of
which latter poem inverts an idea of Pulci’s; and Byron accompanied
these masterpieces by a translation of Pulci’s first canto, upon which
he himself set a special value. It has been contended that Shakespeare
was acquainted with Pulci, and certainly Panizzi’s portrait of the
vindictive traitor Gano in the _Morgante_ might almost serve for one
of Iago, while Orlando’s unsuspecting magnanimity resembles Othello’s.
Panizzi justly praises the truth and dignity of the characters of
Orlando and Rinaldo, and says of the general economy of the poem:
“Pulci was the first who wrote a long and complicated poem which,
diversified as it is by many incidents, has a principal subject and a
principal character, on which all other parts and personages depend,
without which the poem could not subsist, and which by itself alone
forms an uninterrupted narrative. This hero and this subject are Gano
and his treachery, which brings on the defeat of Roncesvalles.”
These are great merits. The principal defects are summed up by a genial
admirer, Leigh Hunt (_Stories from the Italian Poets_, vol. i.), as the
want of fine imagery and natural description, and frequent triviality
and prolixity. The vulgarity objected to by the Italian critics must
exist, but is not equally offensive to a foreigner. The poem is fully
analysed by Panizzi in the first volume of his edition of Boiardo, and
its general character may be very well caught from Byron’s translation
of the first canto. Pulci’s higher strain is ably conveyed in the
following portion of a translation of an episode by Lady Dacre:
_And because Love not willingly excuses
One who is loved and loveth not again;
(For tyrannous were deemed the rule he uses,
Should they who sue for pity sue in vain;
What gracious lord his faithful liege refuses?)
So when the gentle dame perceived the pain
That well-nigh wrought to death her valiant knight,
Her melting heart began his love requite._
_And from her eyes soft beamed the answering ray
That Oliver’s soul-thrilling glance returns;
Love in these gleamy lightnings loves to play
Till but one flame two youthful bosoms burns.
To tend his grievous wounds she comes one day,
And towards him with greeting mute she turns;
For on her lips her voiceless words are stayed,
And her bright eyes are fain to lend their aid._
_When Oliver perceived that Forisene
Accosted him with shrinking, timid grace,
The pains which insupportable had been,
Vanished, and to far other ills gave place:
His soul is tost sweet hopes and doubts between,
And you might almost 'mid these flutterings trace
A dear assurance to be loved by her;
For silence is Love’s best interpreter._
Not much is known of Pulci’s life except that he was the intimate
friend, correspondent, and confidential agent of Lorenzo de’ Medici,
and is said to have composed his poem at the request of Lorenzo’s
mother, whom he celebrated after her death. The disposition of his
contemporaries to attribute the finest portions of his poem to Ficino
and Politian may indicate some failure on his part to sustain the
poetical character in his daily walk and conversation; while the more
serious passages of his poetry, especially the noble pathos of the
death of Orlando, disclose an elevated soul. Orlando, standing alone
among his slaughtered friends on the battlefield of Roncesvalles, is
visited by the angel Gabriel, who offers him a new army, and promises
that earth and sea shall tremble at his name. But Orlando prefers to
follow those who are gone. The _Morgante_ was not printed till the year
after Pulci’s death. His minor works include a poem of humble life,
in imitation of Lorenzo’s _Nencia_, and a series of polemical sonnets
against Matteo Franco, who was equally dyslogistic on his own part.
Neither poet need be taken very seriously.
The year preceding the appearance of the _Morgante_ (1486) saw the
posthumous publication of the first part of another poem, which, from
some points of view, is entitled to rank at the very head of romantic
poetry. This is the _Orlando Innamorato_ of MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO, Count
of Scandiano. Little is known of his life except its simple and noble
outline. He was born at his family seat of Scandiano, near Reggio, in
the Modenese, about 1434. Like his successors, Ariosto and Tasso, he
was a favourite at the court of the Duke of Ferrara, his sovereign. He
celebrated Antonia Caprara in his lyrics, and bestowed his hand upon
Taddea Novellara. In his later years he was successively governor of
Modena and Reggio. In his disposition he was most generous, and too
clement for his arduous public duties. He composed Latin poetry, and
translated several classical and other authors; and died in 1494, on
the eve of the invasion of Charles VIII., prophetically bewailing
the consequent ruin of Italy at the end of his unfinished _Orlando
Innamorato_, which he is supposed to have begun about 1472. The greater
part of this poem had been published in 1486, the continuation is said
to have appeared in 1495, but the edition of 1506 is the earliest now
extant.
Although Orlando and Rinaldo are the heroes, the story of Boiardo’s
poem is original. “_Turpino istesso la nascose_,” he says. It is
exceedingly graceful and ingenious. Argalia and his sister Angelica,
the children of the King of Cathay, present themselves at Charlemagne’s
court. The former has an enchanted lance, by the virtue of which he
might have overthrown all Charles’s paladins; but the pig-headed
Saracen Feraù persists, like Monsieur Jourdain’s servant, in thrusting
tierce when he ought to thrust quarte, and Argalia is glad to make
his escape, leaving the lance behind him. It falls into the hands of
Astolfo, the English knight, not hitherto especially distinguished
in battle or tourney, but who at least possesses his countrymen’s
characteristic of not knowing when they are beaten.
_Solea dir, ch’ egli era per sciagura,
E tornava a cader senza paura._
By means of this lance Astolfo performs the most signal exploits,
delivering Charles from the invasion of Gradasso, King of Sericana, who
makes war upon him to obtain Rinaldo’s steed Bajardo, and Orlando’s
sword Durindana. Rinaldo and Orlando themselves are absent in pursuit
of Angelica, who has returned to her own country. Angelica and Rinaldo
are alternately wrought to fondness and antipathy through the spell of
enchanted potions supplied by the poet _ad libitum_. Orlando, without
obtaining any share of her affections, remains her humble slave. All
are involved in a maze of adventures, most cunningly interwoven,
replete with the endless delight of inexhaustible invention and the
surprise of perpetual novelty. No motto for the poem could be more
appropriate than that with which Panizzi prefaces his edition:
_Ille per extentum funem mihi posse videtur
Ire poeta, meum qui pectus inaniter angit,
Irritat, mulcet, falsis terroribus implet,
Ut magus, et modo me Thebis, modo ponit Athenis._
In spite of the wild and fanciful character of the incidents, a deep
interest is excited for the principal personages, who are truly human,
except when avowedly of the _fortisque Gyas fortisque Cloanthus_ order,
or, as the Italian poet himself has it,
_Avino, Avolio, Ottone, e Berlinghiero._
In this respect Boiardo has a great advantage over Spenser; his
characters are actual people, not mere abstractions, and he is
unencumbered with allegory. As a master of poetic language he is
greatly inferior. Though both picturesque and tuneful, he is far from
rivalling the colour and music of the Englishman. Compared to the
_Faerie Queene_ his poem is as his own clear-chiming octave to the
sonorous magnificence of the Spenserian stanza. In general, his tone is
much more easy and familiar than Spenser’s; when he chooses, however,
his sentiment is more elevated and his pathos more moving. Poetry has
few passages at once so nobly heroic and so exquisitely touching as
the combat between Orlando and Agricane, epitomised by Leigh Hunt in
his _Stories from the Italian Poets_. The pen fell from Boiardo’s hand
just as he was bringing his errant heroes back to encounter the new
invasion of the African king Agramante, and the powerful hand that took
it up used it to delay the approaching denouement, and superimpose a
new structure upon the original foundation. In every literary quality
Ariosto excels Boiardo, but he is a remove further from the realms of
chivalry and fairie, and
_Never can recapture
The first fine careless rapture._
Both are poets of the Renaissance, but Ariosto has more of that
aspect of pomp and luxury which estranged Ruskin, and Boiardo of
that half-erudite, half-ignorant naïveté which so fascinates in the
pictures of Botticelli and Roselli. The following stanzas, translated
by Miss Ellen Clerke, form an excellent specimen of Boiardo’s manner in
general, and exemplify that delightful blending of classic and romantic
feeling only possible in the youth of a literature:
_In the glade’s heart a youth upon the sward,
All nude, disported him with song and jest;
Three ladies fair, to serve their love and lord,
Danced round him, they, too, nude and all undrest.
Unmeet for sword and shield, for watch and ward,
He seemed, with eyes of brown, and sunny crest.
That yet the dim upon his cheek had sprouted,
By some might be averred, by others doubted._
_Of roses, violets, and all blossoms pied,
Full baskets holding, they their merry game
Of love and frolic on the greensward plied,
When Montalbano’s Lord upon them came.
'Behold the traitor!’ with one voice they cried;
'Behold the recreant!’ did all exclaim.
'Him, who all joy contemned of sense enraptured,
Now in his own despite our snare hath captured.’_
_And with their baskets, when these words were said,
They on Rinaldo flung themselves amain;
One violets threw, another roses red,
Lilies and hyacinths they strewed like rain;
Each blow unto his heart keen anguish sped,
The marrow of his bones was searched with pain,
With burning aches they sting where’er they settle,
As though of fire were leaf and flower and petal._
_The youth who nude had figured on the scene,
When all his basket he had emptied out,
With a tall lily-stem full-branched with green,
Rinaldo on Mambrino’s helm did flout.
No help availed that baron bold, I ween,
Felled like a four-year child beneath the clout,
Scarce touched he earth, ere he who thus had mauled him,
Caught by the heels and round the meadow hauled him._
_Each of those ladies three a garland wore,
Of roses twined, deep damask or snow-white;
Each from her head its garniture now tore,
Since other weapons failed them for the fight,
And though the knight cried mercy o’er and o’er,
They ceased not, e’en when tired, to scourge and smite,
And dragged him round, and did with blows belabour,
Until the noonday sun shone on their labour._
_Nor hauberk stout, nor iron plate of mail,
Those blows could fend, or parry their fierce might;
But all his flesh was bruised with wound and wale,
Beneath his arms, and with such fire alight,
That souls condemned, in the infernal vale,
Must of a surety suffer pains more slight
Than those in which this baron sore did languish,
When like to die of utter fear and anguish._
_Nor could he tell if gods or men were those,
Nor prayers availed, nor aught such foes could rout;
And thus continued they, nor took repose,
Till on their shoulders wings began to sprout,
Of white and gold, vermilion blent with rose;
While from each plume a living eye looked out,
Not peacock-orbed, or other fowl’s in seeming,
But like a lovely maiden’s softly gleaming._
_Then straight did they uplift themselves in flight,
And one by one unto high heaven upsoared,
Rinaldo, on the lawn, in doleful plight,
Now left alone, with tears his state deplored,
O’erwhelmed so sore with pain and woe that quite
His senses ebbed away, in grief outpoured;
And in the end such anguish did invade him,
That, as one dead, down on the sward he laid him._
The fastidious refinement of the Italians of the sixteenth century
for a time obscured the fame of one of their most delightful authors.
We have seen that Boiardo was a native of the district of Reggio; we
have also seen that Reggio was among the places which, in the opinion
of no less eminent a judge than Dante, were disqualified by their
dialect from ever producing a poet. It is no wonder, therefore, that
the _Orlando Innamorato_ should teem with inelegances of diction,
scarcely perceptible to a foreigner, but which seemed most flagrant in
an age when priests pocketed their breviaries for fear of contaminating
their style. Two other poets independently addressed themselves to the
task of making Boiardo presentable. Domenichi, “a literary gentleman
by trade,” did little good or harm; he neither added nor omitted a
stanza, except in the first canto, and as he went on his emendations
fell off. Berni, a great writer in his way, of whom much must be said
when we treat of comic and familiar poetry, inserted many stanzas of
his own, and altered so many throughout as to metamorphose the spirit
no less than the diction of the poem. Chivalry and humour are nicely
balanced throughout the original; the poet occasionally smiles at the
extravagance of his own imaginations, but his irony never broadens
into burlesque. In Berni’s _rifacimento_ the element of humour greatly
preponderates, and the elegance and grace of the adulteration make no
sufficient amends for the transposition of a noble poem from an heroic
into a familiar key. Although his _rifacimento_ was not frequently
reprinted, it attained such celebrity in literary circles that Boiardo
was almost forgotten, and the _Orlando Innamorato_ commonly passed
under Berni’s name. No edition of the original as Boiardo wrote it was
published from 1544 to 1830, when Antonio Panizzi, doubtless stimulated
by the circumstance that he himself was born near Reggio,[13]
redeemed it from oblivion, and restored it to the place it has ever
since maintained as a star of at least the second magnitude in the
constellation of Italian epic poetry.
The almost simultaneous appearance of two such poems as the _Morgante_
and the _Orlando_ by two writers of such social and intellectual
distinction as Pulci and Boiardo, indicates that the love of chivalrous
fiction must have been very rife in Italy. It is remarkable that
the Italian writers should have so rarely essayed the easier path
of prose-romance, but this they left to the Spaniards, who on their
part, excepting in ballads, in that age rarely ventured upon poetical
composition. One only of the Italian romantic epics between Boiardo
and Ariosto deserves mention. It is the Mambriano of FRANCESCO BELLO,
known as _Il Cieco d’Adria_. The blind bard amused the court of Mantua
with recitations which he afterwards stitched together into a long poem
devoid of all pretence to epic unity. But, as he himself observes, he
thought he had done enough in bringing all the paladins back to Paris,
and rendering all the Saracens tributary to the Emperor. His diction is
often as unshapen as his story; nevertheless, he is a real poet, and
his description of the Temple of Mars in particular will compare not
unfavourably with those of Statius, Chaucer, and Boccaccio.
Before parting with the predecessors of Ariosto, a word should be said
of Boiardo’s minor poems. Besides a comedy, _Timone_, to be noticed
hereafter, he wrote numerous canzoni and sonnets. Of these Panizzi
justly says: “Boiardo’s poetry, although in the manner of Petrarch,
has all the marks of originality, and resembles more the character
of the predecessors of the Bard of Laura than of his successors. His
poetry was not written to be read, but to be sung, and was submitted
to those musical as well as metrical laws by which that of Petrarch
had been governed. In his day, music was still subject to poetry, and
the inanimate instruments were designed to support, not to drown, the
human voice.” Panizzi, therefore, seems to consider Boiardo the last
of the truly melodious lyrists of Italy; though it is just to point
out that his remark respecting the predominance of the instrument over
the voice did not become applicable until the seventeenth century, and
that he elsewhere seems to confine the decay of Italian melody to the
two centuries immediately preceding his own time (1830). His edition of
Boiardo’s lyrics is almost inaccessible; but he has quoted enough in
his memoir of the author to confirm his favourable judgment of their
literary qualities.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Morgante is the name of a giant converted to Christianity by
Orlando. He dies in the middle of the poem.
[12] The evident Greek derivation of this name from _margos_
(gluttonous) lends some countenance to the suspicion that Politian had
a hand in Pulci’s poem.
[13] It is curious to note in this connection that Rubiera, the
original seat of Boiardo’s family, having become a state prison under
the modern Dukes of Modena, gave Panizzi the subject for his first
publication, known under the abridged title of _I Processi di Rubiera_.