ARIOSTO AND HIS IMITATORS
Boiardo had accomplished a great work. He had raised the old chivalric
romance to epic dignity, and shown its capability of classic form.
This, impeded by his provincial education and the low standard of
poetry prevailing in his time, he had not himself been able to impart.
The achievement was reserved for one who has infinitely transcended
him in reputation, though it may be questioned whether he has indeed
greatly surpassed him in any respect but style and the gift of
story-telling, and who is certainly inferior to him in sincerity and
simplicity.
LODOVICO ARIOSTO was born at Reggio, near which town Boiardo also
had first seen the light, on September 8, 1474. His family was noble,
and his father, who survived his birth about twenty years, filled
many important offices. Like the fathers of Petrarch and Boccaccio,
he insisted that his son should follow the profession of the law,
which the youth renounced after five years of fruitless, perhaps
not very persevering study. His father’s death left Ariosto at the
head of a large family, for which he had to provide out of a scanty
patrimony. He solaced his cares by classical studies, which made him a
fair Latin poet. About 1503 he entered the service of the Cardinal of
Este, brother of the Duke of Ferrara, and hence a member of that house
whose glory it has been to have numbered two of the most illustrious
poets of Italy in its train, and whose infelicity to have derived more
obloquy than honour from the connection. Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_
had been designed for the glorification of the house of Este, but
the purpose is not sufficiently obtrusive to spoil our pleasure in
the poet’s ideal world. Ariosto took up the thread of the narrative
where his predecessor had dropped it, and writing in the spirit of
a courtier, produced in the _Orlando Furioso_ a sequel related to
Boiardo’s poem much as Virgil’s national epic on the wanderings of
Æneas is related to Homer’s artless tale of the wanderings of Ulysses.
In so far as Ariosto’s objects were poetical fame and the honour of
his native country they were attained to the full; but his toil was
almost vain as respected recompense from the princes for whose sake
he had blemished his poem. The Cardinal, a coarse, unscrupulous man,
fitter for a soldier than an ecclesiastic, was apparently unable to
discern any connection between Ruggiero’s hippogriff and the glories
of his descendants, and upon the publication of the _Orlando_ in
1510, asked the poet quite simply “where he had been for all that
rot?” He is stated, however, to have presented Ariosto with a golden
chain, rather for the ornament of his person than the relief of his
necessities, as he could not venture to turn it into money. Ariosto
further incurred his Eminence’s displeasure by hesitating to accompany
him on a mission to Hungary, and found it advisable to exchange his
service for the Duke’s. The Duke, a prince lavish in shows, economical
in salaries, thought the poet abundantly rewarded by the governorship
of the Garfagnana, which it was necessary to confer upon somebody. The
Garfagnana was a wild district overrun with poetical banditti, readers
and admirers of their governor’s epic. Here Ariosto gained much honour,
but little emolument.
His experience of his patrons generally justified his favourite motto,
_Pro bono malum_. Even the munificent Leo X. did nothing for him
but kiss him on both cheeks, and remit half the fees upon the brief
that assured his copyrights, his particular friend Cardinal Bibbiena
pocketing the other. His sole real benefactor was the Marquis del
Vasto, husband of the lady whom we shall find celebrated by Luigi
Tansillo, who settled an annuity of a hundred ducats upon him. Even
this was consideration for value to be received, the Marquis, himself a
poet, being properly impressed by the _Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_
maxim. Ariosto acquitted himself of his obligation like a man,
comparing his patron to Cæsar, Nestor, Achilles, Nireus, and Ladas.
Great as was the renown which his _Orlando_ procured for him in his
lifetime, its profits were not such as to render him independent of
patronage; yet, after all, he was able to boast that the modest house
which he built for himself, and where he died in 1533, was paid for
by his own money.[14] It is kept to this day by the municipality of
Ferrara; and Ariosto’s manuscripts, evincing his indefatigable care in
the revision of his poem, are preserved in the public library.
The chief literary occupations of his latter years had been the
composition of comedies, the superintendence of theatrical performances
for the entertainment of the Duke, and the incessant revision of the
_Orlando Furioso_, enlarged from forty to forty-six cantos. The last
edition published under his own inspection appeared in 1532, and was
not regarded by him as definitive. He also began a continuation,
intended to narrate the death of Ruggiero by the treachery of Gano, of
which only five cantos were written.
So great is the variety of the _Orlando Furioso_, that it appears
difficult at first to discover a clue to a main action among its
thronging and complicated adventures. Ginguené and Panizzi, however,
have shown that one exists, and that this is the union of Ruggiero and
Bradamante, the fabulous ancestors of the house of Este. All the poet’s
skill is exerted to keep them apart, that he may bring them together
at last. Orlando, Rinaldo, Angelica, the chief personages of the
_Innamorato_, have become subordinate characters; and, notwithstanding
the title of the poem, Orlando’s madness is but an episode. The
unfortunate consequence is the transfer of the main interest from
personages whom Boiardo had made highly attractive, to Ruggiero and
Bradamante, less impressive in the hands of Ariosto, whose forte is
rather in depicting tender or humorous than heroic character. It would
not be just to say that this occasions the chief disadvantage of the
poem in comparison with the _Innamorato_, the loss of the elder poet’s
delightful naïveté. Rather the change of plan and the falling off in
simplicity spring from the same root, the taste and character of the
author.
Ariosto was more of a courtier than a knight, and thought more of
the house of Este than of the paladins of Charlemagne. He wrought
upon Boiardo in the spirit of Dryden adapting Chaucer; while his
predecessor, though himself courtly, may rather be likened to William
Morris. Boiardo, though also purposing the panegyric of the house of
Este, sings for the delight of singing, and introduces no incongruous
fifteenth-century figures into his romantic pageant. Ariosto mars
his epic by contemporary allusions, as Spenser and Tennyson marred
theirs by far-fetched allegory. It must be remembered, in justice to
him, that his perpetual adulation of the court of Ferrara seemed less
extravagant then than now. To us the importance attached to a family
which would be forgotten if Ariosto and Tasso had not swelled its
retinue, and if Lucrezia Borgia had not married into it, borders on the
absurd. It seems preposterous that hosts should be equipped, and giants
and dragons and enchanters set in motion, and paladins despatched on
errands to the moon, that Ariosto may compliment a cardinal whose
want of culture rather than his penetration led him to rate these
compliments at their worth. But in Ariosto’s day that court was a
bright and dazzling reality, and almost every member of his immediate
circle depended upon it for his bread.
If we can forget his servility, or persuade ourselves to deem it
loyalty, we shall find little to censure in Ariosto. Shelley’s
assertion that he is only sometimes a poet implies a narrow conception
of the nature of poetry. Rather may it be said that he is always a
poet, always fanciful, always musical, always elevated, though not
always to a very great altitude, above the level of the choicest prose.
It is true that he has nothing of the seer in his composition, that
his perfect technical mastery is rarely either exalted or disturbed by
any gleam of the light that never was on sea or land, that his poem
is destitute of moral or patriotic purpose, and that his standard in
all things is that of his age. This merely proves that he is not in
the rank of supremely great poets--a position which he would not have
claimed for himself; nor have his countrymen paralleled him with Dante.
He is hardly to be called Homeric, though endowed with the Homeric
rapidity, directness, conciseness, and, except when he voluntarily
turns to humour and burlesque, much of the Homeric nobility.
Perhaps the nearest literary analogy to the _Orlando Furioso_ in
another language is the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. In both poems appear
the same perspicuity and facility of narration, the same sweetness of
versification, the same art of interweaving episodes into a whole.
Ariosto’s vigour and directness, nevertheless, are wanting to Ovid, and
the palm of invention and of the delineation of character undoubtedly
belongs to him, for Ovid was forbidden to introduce a new incident, or
vary any of the personages afforded by his mythological repertory. The
fact that the _Orlando_ is not, like the _Jerusalem_, a new _Æneid_,
but a new _Metamorphoses_, entirely justifies the introduction of
such burlesque satire as the abode of Discord among the monks, or
such delightful extravagance as Astolfo’s flight to the moon in quest
of Orlando’s brains, resulting in the recovery of no inconsiderable
portion of his own. Such episodes are, indeed, the most characteristic
passages of the _Furioso_; yet in others, such as the siege of Paris
and the madness of Orlando, Ariosto shows himself capable of rising to
epical dignity, which he could have assumed more frequently if it had
entered into his plan. This rather required the gifts of the painter,
whether of natural scenery or of human emotion, which he possessed in
the most eminent degree; and of the ironic but kindly observer of human
life, which he exhibited so fully that even his descriptions are less
popular and admired than the reflective and moralising introductions to
his cantos. Never was such wildness of imagination ballasted with such
solid good sense. Yet, when all is said, his most distinctive merit
remains his unsurpassed talent of exposition, his unfaltering flow of
energetic, perspicuous, melodious narrative; excellence apparently
spontaneous and unstudied, but in truth due to the strenuous revision
of one who judged himself severely, and deemed with Michael Angelo that
trifles made perfection, and perfection was no trifle. Mr. Courthope,
in an admirable parallel, has pointed out his great superiority as a
narrator to his disciple Spenser, whose pictures, nevertheless, glow
with deeper and softer tints, and whose voluminous melody tills the ear
more perfectly than Ariosto’s ringing stanza.
The controversy whether Ariosto or Tasso’s poem is the greater epic,
as it was one of the most obstinately interminable ever raised by
academic pedantry, is also one of the idlest. They belong to different
departments of art; it would be as reasonable to compare a picture
with a statue. The question, nevertheless, which of the men was the
greater poet, does admit of profitable discussion, though it may be
difficult to establish any but a subjective criterion. If endowment
with the poetical temperament is to be taken as the test, the palm
certainly belongs to Tasso, whose actions, thoughts, and misfortunes
are invariably those of a poet, and whose inward music is constantly
finding expression in lyrical verse. Ariosto’s comparatively few lyrics
generally wear a less spontaneous aspect than Tasso’s; the incidents of
his life rather bespeak the man of affairs than the man of books; and
if his _Orlando_ had perished, we should hardly have surmised how great
a poet had been lost in him.
If, on the other hand, the palm should be bestowed for mastery of
art, it seems rather due to Ariosto, who handles his theme with
more vigour, and has it more thoroughly under control. He is not
obliged, like Tasso, to embellish his poem with episodes which, by
their superior attractiveness, almost eclipse the main action: the
few passages of the kind in the _Orlando_ are strictly subordinate,
and not among its principal ornaments. The chief artistic blots upon
his poem could not well have been avoided. So completely, though
unjustly, has he overshadowed his predecessor Boiardo, that we are apt
to forget that his work is an example, unique in literature, of the
successful continuation of another’s. The adulation of the house of
Este was an inheritance from his precursor; it is only to be regretted
that, contrary to the example of Boiardo and the subsequent practice
of Tasso, he should have given it disproportionate prominence. The
incurable defect of the action of the _Furioso_ is also a legacy from
the _Innamorato_. Ruggiero, the real hero of Ariosto’s part of the
poem, wins the hand of Bradamante, and becomes the ancestor of the
house of Este, by apostasy. The poem finds him a pagan, and leaves him
a Christian. All that ingenuity can effect is employed to extenuate his
desertion; nevertheless, the sympathies of every reader must be with
the Saracen Rodomonte when he appears in the last canto to tax Ruggiero
with his change of sides, and necessarily (for otherwise what would
have become of the house of Este?) is slain for his loyalty, to the
scandal of poetical justice.
That Ariosto, apart from his boundless invention and command of
language and narrative, was a true poet, is shown by the extreme beauty
of the majority of the introductions to his cantos, where he appears
even more at home than in the descriptions of the deeds of prowess
of which he was at bottom so sceptical. Another strong point is the
number, vividness, and originality of his similes, not in general
copied from ancient poets, but peculiar to himself, and perfectly
descriptive of the object designed to be illustrated. One of the
most apparently characteristic similes of a great master of quaint
comparison, the late Coventry Patmore, is borrowed from him.[15]
The sense of Ariosto is easily represented in English, but it is
another matter to reproduce his felicity of phrase. The following
stanzas in Miss Ellen Clerke’s version are from the description of
Angelica’s flight from Rinaldo:
_Through dark and fearsome woods she takes her flight,
By desert places wild, and lonely ways.
The stirring of the leaves and foliage light
Of oak, or elm, or beech that softly sways,
Doth startle her aside in sudden fright,
To wander here and there as in a maze;
While every shadow seen on hill or hollow
Seems to her fear Rinaldo’s who doth follow._
_As baby fawn, or tender bleating goat,
Which from its leafy cradle hath espied
Its hapless dam seized by the quivering throat,
By leopard fierce, and oped her breast or side,
Flees from the brute to sylvan depths remote,
Trembling with fears by fancy multiplied,
And at each stump that she in passing touches,
Deems that the monster grasps her in its clutches._
_That day and night, and all the next, sped she In circles round about,
she knew not where, But reached at last a grove right fair to see,
Stirred lightly by the cool and fragrant air. Two crystal streamlets,
murmuring o’er the lea, Perennially refreshed the herbage there, And a
sweet tune sang, in melodious treble, Their gentle current, chafed by
flint and pebble._
_And deeming that she here is safe indeed, A thousand miles beyond
Rinaldo’s quest, Weary of summer heat and travel speed, Resolves she
for brief spell to take a rest; 'Mid flowers dismounts, and looses in
the mead Her palfrey, and doth of the rein divest, To wander by the
wave pellucid flowing, With juicy grasses on its margin growing._
_A tempting bush site sees, not far away, Of thorn a-bloom with roses
blushing red, Which in the wave doth glass itself alway, Screened from
the sun by spreading oaks o’erhead. An empty space within it doth
display A chamber cool, with densest shade o’erspread, Where leaves and
branches roof so close have woven, Nor sun nor glance its dusk hath
ever cloven._
_A couch of softest grass within the lair Invites to rest upon its
herbage sweet. Down in its midst doth sink the lady fair, And lays her
there, and sleeps in that retreat; But not for long, for shortly she
was 'ware Of the approaching tread of coming feet. She softly rises,
and through leaves a-quiver A knight in armour sees draw near the
river._
The morality of the _Orlando Furioso_, some licentious episodes
excepted which stand quite apart from the main action, may be
considered good, being that of a refined and courtly circle where lofty
virtues were cordially recognised in theory, however they might fail to
be exemplified in practice. Ariosto does not, like Tasso, convey the
impression of a man above his time, and only depressed to its level by
unpropitious circumstances. He is the child of his age, at the summit
of its average elevation, but not transcending this. Yet it would have
been well for Italy if her princes and statesmen had generally acted
upon those ideas of honour and loyalty which they found and doubtless
admired in their favourite poet. Such precepts as the following, even
though enforced by the teacher’s example, were in their view much too
good for ordinary practice:
_Bundle with cord is not so bound, I ween,
Or plank to plank so riveted by nail,
As knightly troth that once hath plighted been,
Doth with the true and loyal soul prevail.
Nor is Fidelity depicted seen,
Save robed from head to foot in candid veil,
Visage enveloping and frame and limb,
Since but one stain would make her wholly dim._
_Pure must she ever be, and free from spot,
If to one only or to thousands plighted;
Nor less if vowed in woodland wild or grot
Far from men’s ways and dwellings disunited,
Than where the judge doth duly law allot,
And deeds are sealed, and testimonies cited.
Nor oath she needs, or like appeal to Heaven;
Enough the solemn word once gravely given._
_His pledge chivalric, and the faith he gave,
Zerbin in every circumstance defended;
But ne’er did prove himself their duteous slave
More than when now disconsolate he wended
With this detested hag, whom like the grave
His soul abhorred: by plague or death attended,
Full sooner had he fared; but honour’s claim
Bound him to that objectionable dame._
To appreciate Zerbino’s fidelity to his word, it must be known that,
having been vanquished in a joust, he has been compelled to vow to
escort a hideous old woman of singular depravity, and to maintain her
beauty and virtue against all comers, with the prospect of being killed
in her service. A more comic situation will hardly be found in any of
the romances.
Ariosto’s comedies must be considered along with the Italian drama
in general. The most important of his minor poetical works are the
Satires, rather in the vein of Horace than of Juvenal, and, in truth,
hardly satires at all in any proper sense of the term. They are good
metrical talk on light subjects, elegant, chatty, and discursive. His
own disappointments are alluded to very good-humouredly. His lyrical
pieces are not remarkable, except one impressive sonnet, in which he
appears to express compunction for the irregularities of his life:
_How may I deem That thou in heaven wilt hear,
O Lord divine, my fruitless prayer to Thee,
If for all clamour of the tongue Thou see
That yet unto the heart the net is dear?
Sunder it Thou, who all behold’st so clear,
Nor heed the stubborn will’s oppugnancy,
And this do Thou perform, ere, fraught with me,
Charon to Tartarus his pinnace steer.
By habitude of ill that veils Thy light,
And sensual lure, and paths in error trod,
Evil from good no more I know aright.
Ruth for frail soul submissive to the rod
May move a mortal; in her own despite
To drag her heavenward is work of God._
Late in life the poet married; whether he also reformed seems
doubtful. His amours, however, were unaccompanied by tragedy or
scandal. In fact, this most wildly imaginative of the Italian poets
seems to have had less than most poets of the poetic temperament, and
the amiability for which he is universally praised was not accompanied
by any remarkable acuteness of feeling. His virtues were those of an
excellent man of the world; he was liberal, courteous, sensible, just,
and sincere.
The success of the _Orlando Furioso_, which Bernardo Tasso, writing
in 1559, affirms to be better known and more talked of than Homer,
naturally produced the same effect as the popularity of Scott and
Byron produced in England--“All could raise the flower, for all
had got the seed.” The two most important of these imitations, the
_Girone il Cortese_ of Luigi Alamanni and the _Amadigi_ of Bernardo
Tasso--both good poets, to be mentioned again in other departments
of literature--resemble Pygmalion’s image before the interposition
of Venus; all the constituents of a fine poem are there, but the
breath of life is wanting. “The _Girone_,” says Ginguené, “is a very
dignified, very rational, and generally well-written poem, but cold
and consequently somewhat tiresome.” If there is more warmth in the
_Amadigi_, there is also more loquacity, and the power of the author,
an excellent writer on a small scale, is quite inadequate to sustain
continuous interest through a hundred cantos. The comparison which he
necessarily courts with the old romance of Vasco Lobeira, the best work
of its class, is always unfavourable to him. His copious employment
of elfin machinery gave him opportunities of which he failed to avail
himself. The best of him as an epic writer is his gift of brilliant
description. The younger Tasso’s _Rinaldo_ is a very extraordinary
production for a youth of eighteen, but the impulse towards the
chivalrous epic was exhausted by his time, and he wisely found another
way of rivalling Ariosto. The _Orlandino_ and the _Ricciardetto_ belong
rather to the class of the mock heroic, to be treated hereafter. The
names of a few of the most remarkable _bona-fide_ attempts at chivalric
poetry must suffice: the _Guerino il Meschino_ of Tullia d’Aragona,
the _Ogier the Dane_ of Cassiodoro Narni, the _Death of Ruggiero_ of
Giambatista Pescatore, the _Triumphs of Charlemagne_ of Francesco de’
Lodovici, the _First Exploits of Orlando_ of Lodovico Dolce, and the
_Angelica Innamorata_ of Vincenzo Brusantini.
Apart from the poems of the chivalric cycles, Italy witnessed but few
attempts at epic in the first half of the sixteenth century. Of the
author of one of these, however, it might be said, _Magnis excidit
ausis_. GIOVANNI GIORGIO TRISSINO was born of a noble family at Vicenza
in 1478. He repaired the defects of a neglected education with singular
industry, and endeared himself to the two Medici Popes, Leo and
Clement, who entrusted him with important diplomatic missions. His most
successful poetical work, the tragedy of _Sophonisba_ (1515), brought
him great fame, and actually does mark an era in the history of the
drama. He wrote much on grammar, but could effect only one reform, the
distinction between _i_ and _j_ and _u_ and _v_. After his retirement
from diplomacy Trissino lived many years among his fellow-citizens,
wealthy and honoured; but his later years were embittered by a painful
and disastrous lawsuit with his son by his first marriage. He died in
1549.
Trissino had commenced in 1525 the composition of his epic, _The
Deliverance of Italy from the Goths_, which was published in 1547 and
1548. It has some literary interest as the first attempt to write
Italian epic poetry in blank verse, but its great misfortune is to be
in verse of any kind. The diction is good, the exposition simple and
clear; if turned into prose it would make a pleasant story for youth,
something like Fénelon’s _Telemachus_. But how a man of Trissino’s
cultivation could have persuaded himself that a mere metrical form,
and this neither artful nor tuneful, could turn prose into poetry,
is indeed difficult to understand. The disyllabic termination of the
lines--almost inevitable in Italian--is not conducive to metrical
majesty at the best; and Trissino seems to have had no idea of cadence
or variety, and to have been content if he could scan his lines upon
his fingers. There is no inspiration, and no pretence to inspiration,
from exordium to peroration of his sober epic; his Pegasus is not only
a pack-horse, but a pack-horse without bells.
In truth, the displacement of the Goths, making room for the Pope, the
Lombard and the Byzantine Exarch, was no deliverance for Italy, but
her great misfortune. A poet, however, is not obliged like a historian
to distinguish nicely between Theodoric and Alaric; and Trissino, with
all his pedantry, might have ranked as a bard if he could have felt
as a patriot; if he could have depicted the Italy of the Goths as the
prototype of the Italy of his own age, rent amid French and Spaniards
and Germans. Whether he conceived the idea or not, he could not or
dared not give it utterance. He nevertheless energetically denounced
the abuses of the Papacy by a prophecy put into the mouth of an angel.
The history of chivalric poetry is especially interesting, as it in
all probability exactly repeats that of the Homeric epic. While the
great events, the siege of Troy and the Saracen invasion of France,
are being really enacted, we have no poetry at all. After two or three
centuries ballads appear, disfiguring genuine history, and shifting
its centre of gravity to incidents unimportant in themselves, but
susceptible of poetical treatment. After two or three more, poets arise
who embellish these romances, bestow poetical form upon them, and
work them into consistent wholes. Had Italy been no further advanced
than Greece at the corresponding epoch, the poems of Boiardo and
Ariosto would have braved two centuries of oral recitation, and come
much corrupted and interpolated into the hands of some Aristarchus
who would have given them their final form. The invention of printing
suppressed this ultimate stage of development, but encouraged the
growth of imitators, whom it preserved from annihilation, while unable
to preserve them from oblivion.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _Parva sed apta mihi, sed nulli obnoxia; sed non Sordida, parta
meo sed tamen aere domus._
[15] _Joltings of the heart, like wine Poured from a flask of narrow
neck._ See _Orlando Furioso_, canto xxiii. st. 113.