HUMOROUS POETRY--THE MOCK-HEROIC
Numerous as are the poets we have briefly passed in review, many
more might have been added whom it would have been agreeable to have
met in the barren fifteenth century. The Renaissance had by this
time entered into the blood of Italy, and produced one of the best
effects of impregnation with the classical spirit--a passion for fame.
This we find as constantly assigned as a motive of action in public
affairs in that day as humanitarian inducements are in ours; and when
it is considered that the sincerity of the former motive is much
less questionable than that of the latter, it is not clear that the
comparison is wholly to the advantage of the nineteenth century. Almost
every man of any mark was deeply influenced by it, and it was one of
the most potent instruments in stimulating both literary and artistic
production. The drawback was that the aspirant to fame was naturally
inclined to take the easiest and most fashionable path, and thus the
same impulse which braced effort suppressed originality.
The sentiment of an age mainly under the sway of Petrarch naturally
encouraged the production of lyrical poetry, and other styles were
neglected in comparison. Apart from the epical attempts which have
been mentioned, and the dramatic and humorous poems to which allusion
remains to be made, the period has little to show apart from the
lyric, with the exception of some didactic poems--the _Balía_ and the
_Podere_ of Luigi Tansillo, the _Nautica_ of Baldi, the _Caccia_ of
Valvasone, and two others modelled after Virgil, the _Coltivazione_
of Luca Alamanni, and the _Api_ of Giovanni Rucellai, both excellent
examples of the description of poetry which owes most to artifice and
least to inspiration. This might perhaps pass for a general character
of the poetry of the period, which ranks with the ages of Augustus and
Anne as an example of what exquisite culture can and cannot effect
in the absence of creative power. It was of high value to succeeding
periods by bequeathing to them a norm and standard of good taste by
which to chasten their frequent aberrations; and, notwithstanding its
almost academical character, it was actually in vital relation with the
literary appetite of its limited but highly accomplished public. There
was not, says Dolce, a cultivated person in Italy who could not repeat
before it was in print Bernardo Tasso’s sonnet resigning his mistress
to his successful rival, a fact which proves not only the existence
of a general appreciation of poetry independent of the machinery of
reviewing and the printing-press itself, but also a general preference
for its most refined and dignified examples.
The didactic poems of which we have spoken claim the less attention,
inasmuch as they were in no respect national. The rules for good
didactic poetry are the same in all languages, and any accomplished
versifier will instruct in agriculture or the chase in much the
same manner in any country, however his local colouring may vary
with his climate. It is otherwise with satirical, familiar, and
mock-heroic poetry. In all these styles Italian work is individual
and characteristic. Satiric traits are frequent enough in the
contemporaries of Dante, and from one point of view Dante himself may
be regarded as a great satirist. The professed satire, nevertheless,
of modern Italy derives from Horace rather than Juvenal; it aims at
good-humoured raillery rather than scathing vehemence or corroding
virulence; and its impetus is further moderated by its being generally
composed in the easy and garrulous _terza rima_. Alessandro Vinciguerra
(born 1480) appears to have first imparted this stamp; but the great
exemplar is Ariosto, whose satires are not the least ornament of his
poetic crown, yielding little in facetious urbanity to his model Horace.
The vigorous satires of Luigi Alamanni, imitated in English by Sir
Thomas Wyat, evince a remarkable freedom of speech. Bentivoglio,
Aretino, Anguillara, and other writers of note followed in his track
with varying success. The first to employ blank verse in satire was
Lodovico Paterno, who is perhaps more exceptionally distinguished for
having achieved an epithalamium to Queen Mary of England without the
least allusion to her restoration of the Roman Catholic religion.
The _Decennali_ of Machiavelli, a highly-condensed sketch in verse
of the events of his time, may also be regarded as a satire; but his
reputation as a poet rather arises from his _Capitoli_, disquisitions
in verse in which Tansillo and many others also excelled, and whose
easy familiarity is hardly to be paralleled in any other literature,
and from his elegant versification of portions of Apuleius’s _Golden
Ass_. FRANCESCO COPPETTA (1510-1554), an excellent writer of sonnets,
extended the domain of poetry by constituting himself the first
laureate of the feline species. His ode on the loss of his cat (_di
tutta la Soria gloria e splendore_, and consequently an Angora) is
a curious blending of parodies of Petrarch with genuine feeling. He
eventually finds comfort in the conclusion that the object of his
affections has been appropriated by Jupiter and placed among the
constellations. Two brilliant stars never seen before have of late been
observable in the firmament, and the inference is obvious.
Ariosto and Machiavelli, nevertheless, although geniuses of the
first order, rank in familiar poetry below FRANCESCO BERNI, better
equipped for it by nature and entirely devoted to its practice. Berni,
born at Lamporecchio, near Florence, about 1497, was a dependant of
the Medici, successively attached to Cardinal Bibbiena and to Bishop
Ghiberti, Papal datary. His life was consequently for a long time spent
at Rome, where he enjoyed the friendship of the most eminent men of
letters of the period, executed the remodelled version of Boiardo’s
_Orlando Innamorato_ by which his name is best known, and produced
the numerous _Capitoli_, which would stand high as examples of easy
familiar verse, were it not for their frequent indecency. They gave
the pattern of the style (_Bernesque_) which has derived its name from
him, and in which he has had many successors, but no absolute rival.
Humour, as Roscoe remarks, is very local. Berni loses much, not merely
by translation, but on perusal by a foreigner. It is enough for his
fame if he continues to be appreciated in his own country, and that
nothing worse happens to him abroad than must equally happen to the
author of a _Hudibras_ or a _Jobsiad_. How well some portions of his
work lend themselves to translation in congenial hands may appear
from a specimen, rendered by Leigh Hunt, of the poem whose subject is
the author’s own prodigious laziness. His portrait of himself is very
lifelike, and probably very accurate:
_The man, for all that, was a happy man;
Thought not too much; indulged no gloomy fit;
Folks wished him well. Prince, peasant, artisan,
Every one loved him; for the rogue had wit,
And knew how to amuse. His fancy ran
On thousands of odd things which he had writ:
Certain mad waggeries in the shape of poems,
With strange elaborations of their proems._
_Choleric he was withal, when fools reproved him;
Free of his tongue, as he was frank of heart;
Ambition, avarice, neither of these moved him;
True to his word; caressing without art;
A lover to excess of those that loved him;
Yet, if he met with hate, could play a part
Which showed the fiercest he had found his mate;
Still he was proner far to love than hate._
_In person he was big, yet tight and lean,
Had long thin legs, big nose, and a large face;
Eyebrows which there was little space between;
Deep-set, blue eyes; and beard in such good case
That the poor eyes would scarcely have been seen
Had it been suffered to forget its place;
But, not approving beards to that amount.
The owner brought it to a sharp account._
Berni’s death did him more honour than his life. The suppressed
dedication to the twentieth canto of his _Orlando_ seems to prove that
he had become serious in his later years, and fallen under Protestant
influences; but this was unknown to Cardinal Cibo, who deemed him the
right sort of man to commend a poisoned chalice to the lips of Cardinal
Salviati; and his refusal, there is every reason to believe, cost
him his own life (1535). He died with strong symptoms of poison, was
buried hastily without epitaph or monument, and, although his works
were collected, nothing was said of the author. This sudden silence
corroborates the suspicion of his Protestantism.
Berni’s chief characteristics as a poet are graceful ease and perfect
mastery of style and diction. He is fluent and entirely unembarrassed,
never at a loss for the right word, and handles the difficult _terza
rima_ with the facility of prose. This command of language would have
raised him high if he had possessed any of the elements of greatness;
but he is incapable of elevated sentiment, and has the good sense never
to aspire to it. What is most admirable in him, his poetical gift
apart, is the evident sincerity and consistency of his Epicurean view
of life, and his eupeptic sanity. As regards his strictly original
compositions, he occupies about the same position in Italian poetry
as Goldsmith would have filled in English if he had written nothing
but _Retaliations_ and _Haunches of Venison_. In his _rifacimento_
of Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_ he has attempted something more
considerable, and, from his own point of view, with much success.
Modern taste will hardly sympathise with his disfigurement of the
romantic grace and simple sincerity of the original, for the mere sake
of heightening the comic element and improving its style. In his own
day men thought differently, and it must be admitted that the disparity
between Boiardo’s comparatively unadorned groundwork and the brilliant
superstructure of Ariosto marred the continuity of the _Orlando_ as a
whole, and that the chasm may well have seemed to require filling up.
Berni could not impart the special qualities of Ariosto, but he could
bring Boiardo’s style more nearly up to Ariosto’s level, and he could
adorn his original by graceful introductions to the respective cantos.
Both these objects have been achieved with taste and success; and
although Boiardo’s comparatively artless composition is still the best,
as nearest to Nature, it cannot be denied that Berni’s alterations must
have appeared to his contemporaries great improvements, and that his
embellishments may be read with abundant pleasure. Conscious of his
lack of poetical invention, he has abstained from interfering with the
narrative. His work was not published until after his death, and there
is reason to suspect that it was considerably adulterated by or at the
instance of the great literary bully of the day, Pietro Aretino.
It does not appear that Berni had any intention of parodying the
_Orlando Innamorato_ in his _rifacimento_; he simply wished to bring
it, in his conception, nearer to the literary level of the continuation
which had superseded it, and deemed that this could be best effected by
an infusion of humour and satire. It would be a still greater error to
assume, with some modern Italian critics, an intention on the part of
Boiardo and Ariosto of parodying the old chivalric romance. They merely
desired to adapt it to the spirit of their own age, as Tennyson has
adapted the _Morte d’Arthur_ to ours, and their sprightliness is the
correlative of his moral earnestness. Ariosto is less reverent of his
original than Boiardo, but he keeps within bounds. The great success
of his poem, however, was sure to evolve a _bona-fide_ parodist, as
in our day Mark Twain has capered with cap and bells in the wake of
Tennyson. The Italian Mark Twain was TEOFILO FOLENGO (1491-1544), known
under his pseudonym of _Merlinus Cocaius_ as a distinguished cultivator
of macaronic poetry, a by-path of literature which we are compelled
to leave unexplored. He was a dissipated runaway monk, who repented,
became serious, and resought his cell just as he seemed within an ace
of turning Protestant. His _Orlandino_ is a burlesque upon the poems
of chivalry, with pieces of genuine poetry interspersed, and many
digressions on the corruptions of the age, especially the vices of the
religious orders. It is unfinished. What was published is said to have
been written in three months, a statement confirmed by the energy of
the verse.
It was a great step in Greek comedy when the mythological parodies
which had constituted the substance of the middle comedy were replaced
by the picture of contemporary manners which formed the staple of
the new. So great an advance could not be made by ALESSANDRO TASSONI
(1565-1638), the chief representative of serio-comic poetry in the
seventeenth century, for his age would not have tolerated it; but he
effected much in the same direction by converting the mere parody of
the chivalric romance which had satisfied his predecessors into the
mock-heroic epic, a form of literature which, if he did not invent, he
may claim to have perfected. Instead of contriving burlesque variations
upon Ariosto, he took a real incident of a serio-comic nature--the war
which in the thirteenth century had actually broken out between the
republics of Modena and Bologna respecting a bucket carried off by the
former. The treatment is admirable; the characters, some of whom are
historical, and others sketched after Tassoni’s contemporaries, have
an air of reality altogether wanting to the personages of Folengo’s
parodies; there is enough of idyllic charm and tender pathos here
and there to approve the writer a true poet, while humour dominates,
and many of the sarcasms are really profound. A more biting irony on
the wretched dissensions which had been the ruin of Italy cannot be
conceived; and, notwithstanding a subordinate purpose of deriding
Tasso’s languid imitators, and the personal quarrel which prompted
composition in the first instance, such was probably the main purpose
of the writer, in his political sentiments and aspirations a statesman
of the type of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, who burned with hatred of
the Spanish oppressor, but, except for the two Philippics he composed
in demonstration of the real hollowness of the Spanish power, could
find no other vent for his patriotism than his poetry, and wasted his
life in the service of petty princes. _La Secchia Rapita_ (_The Rape of
the Bucket_) was published under a pseudonym at Paris in 1622, having
long circulated in manuscript. Tassoni also showed himself a bold if
bilious critic of Petrarch, against whose predominance a reaction was
declaring itself, and participated in the general anti-Aristotelian
movement of his times by a volume of miscellaneous reflections.
A contemporary of Tassoni is usually named along with him as a master
of the heroi-comic style, but is in every respect greatly his inferior.
This is FRANCESCO BRACCIOLINI (1566-1645), whose pen, if he really
meant to serve the Church by ridiculing the classical mythology, should
have been wielded a century sooner. Part of the humour of his _Scherno
degli Dei_ consists in the unconscious anachronism. It manifests
considerable fertility of invention, and has survived the author’s four
epics, placed as these were immediately after Tasso’s by good judges in
his own day. The _Malmantile Racquistato_ of Lorenzo Lippi the painter,
the delight of the philologist for its idiomatic Tuscan, is remarkable
for embalming much local folk-lore, and so many local phrases as to be
shorter than its own glossary.
Two more recent examples of the mock-heroic epic maybe included here
to complete the subject. The _Ricciardetto_ of NICOCOLÒ FORTEGUERRI,
published under the pseudonym of Carteromaco, has received much merited
and more unmerited praise. The author (1670-1730) was a prelate of the
Roman court, and so great a favourite of Pope Clement XII. that he is
said to have died from mortification at having displeased his patron
by neglecting to ask for a vacant appointment. His poem burlesques the
chivalric epics of Ariosto and others, not with the refined raillery of
a Berni, but in a style of broad, coarse buffoonery. It was published
after his death, when his friends sought to extenuate its unclerical
character by alleging that it had been undertaken for a wager, composed
in spare intervals of time, and never designed for publication. All
these statements seem to be groundless. It has considerable merit as a
burlesque, and some passages indicate a talent for serious poetry which
might have developed into something considerable; in the main, however,
the ability displayed is of a low though drastic strain. The best idea
is that of making the Saracen champion Feraù turn hermit, a character
which he supports less in the fashion of St. Jerome than of Friar Tuck.
It seems an instance of apparent injustice in prevalent literary
opinion that the _Ricciardetto_ should be so widely known, while no
less a poem than Leopardi’s Supplement (_Paralipomeni_) to Homer’s
Battle of the Frogs and the Mice is hardly mentioned. The wonder,
however, is not so great as it seems. Forteguerri wrote what all
could understand, while Leopardi only cared to please exceptional
readers, and was, moreover, compelled to shroud much of his satire in
obscurity for fear of the ruling powers. The allegory, nevertheless, is
sufficiently transparent. The vanquished mice are the people of Italy;
the frogs are the priesthood and other accomplices of the powers of
darkness; the crabs, who turn the scale in the latter’s favour, are the
Austrians. The weakness and disunion of the oppressed, no less than the
brutality of the oppressor, are depicted with the most refined sarcasm.
Nothing can be more humorous, for example, than the crab’s exposition
to the mouse of the principle of the balance of power; and through
all the fancy and drollery pierce the grief and rage of a patriotic
Italian. There are also fine flashes of true poetry, especially
near the end, when the adventurous mouse visits the underworld of
his species; and Ariosto is parodied as well as Dante. The satire,
nevertheless, transcends the appreciation of ordinary readers; and it
certainly does appear somewhat singular that the fastidious author, who
composed so sparingly and with such difficulty upon the most exalted
themes, should have bestowed so much labour upon a _jeu d’esprit_.