CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN LITERATURE
The present age of letters in Italy resembles its contemporary
literary epochs in the one respect in which these agree among
themselves and differ from most preceding ages; it is an age of
literary anarchy. No standard of taste exists to which it is deemed
essential to conform, and antipathetic schools flourish comfortably,
if not always peaceably, side by side. This was the case with the
Greek schools of philosophy under the Roman Empire, but in literature
has rarely happened before the nineteenth century. At almost all
former periods some prevailing canon of taste has stamped the literary
productions of the era with its own signet, and the most celebrated
authors of the day have legislated for the rest. The Goethes, the
Victor Hugos, the Tennysons of our time, while powerfully affecting
contemporary thought, have failed to thus impress their image and
superscription on contemporary style. Scepticism which at former
periods would have horrified the coævals of Pope or Bembo, is
audaciously professed with regard to the merits of greater men; and
whereas, in former ages, admiration meant imitation, some of the
sincerest votaries of a Hugo or a Browning would be farthest from
attempting to reproduce their mannerisms. It is quite true that the
endeavour is still sometimes made to erect individual tastes and
distastes into articles of faith, that we are confidently told that
such a writer or such a form of art is hopelessly antiquated, and
that such another is accepted by the right-minded. But this dogmatism
is invariably an expression of individual taste, and has no real
substance and no permanence. The change cannot but be salutary if,
as we believe, it is in the main an effect of the expansion of the
area of knowledge. The class of intelligent readers is now so greatly
enlarged that the legislation of academies and the verdict of coteries
reach comparatively but a little way; readers think for themselves
more than they did of old; and if the public taste is less disciplined
than formerly, it is in less danger of being biassed in one direction.
It may be added that the armistice between the classic and romantic
schools, consequent upon the proved inability of each to subdue the
other, has demonstrated the impossibility of any infallible æsthetic
criterion. Men disputed what this criterion might be, and different
conceptions of it prevailed in different ages, but the existence of
some definite standard entitled to exact conformity was questioned by
none. Now it is generally recognised that men are born classicists
or romanticists, as they have been said to be born Platonists or
Aristotelians, and that the right course for every author is to
cultivate his powers in whatsoever direction Nature has assigned
to them, and for every reader to strive to appreciate excellence
whencesoever it comes. The result is life, spirit, energy, but a
commotion as of tossing billows, which may or may not eventually settle
down into the calm of an accepted theory of art.
We cannot speak in Italy more than elsewhere of any great writer
as ruling his age and prescribing laws to his contemporaries.
Individual genius, however, is no less effective than of old upon
those constitutionally in sympathy with it, and no gifted writer
can introduce a new style without enlisting disciples and provoking
antagonists. Such a genius and such a style appertain to GIOSUÈ
CARDUCCI (born 1836), the one contemporary poet of Italy who, if we
except Gabriele d’Annunzio, “in shape and gesture proudly eminent,”
stands forth like a tower from the rest, and who has made an abiding
reputation as the introducer of the new elements needed to replace the
expiring impulse of the romantic school. Like many of his compeers,
Carducci partakes of both classic and romantic elements; romantic in
his revolt against convention, classic in his worship of antique form;
and it is in great measure this duality which renders him so important
and interesting.
Carducci, far from being the literary dictator of his age, is perhaps
not less distasteful to the ultra-realists for whom he paved the way,
than to the romanticists whom he overthrew, yet is in a very special
sense the representative of his age and nation. The commencement
of poetical activity synchronised with a new dispensation in the
world of politics. The reviving nation must have a new poet or none.
Egypt was plainly unfit to sing the songs of Sion. The submission of
Manzoni, the despair of Leopardi, had in their respective ways well
suited an age of slavery; but the age of liberty had now arrived, and
craved strains combative, resonant, and joyous. The Pope’s obstinate
clinging to the temporal power also compelled the national poet to be
anti-clerical. Neither Carducci’s political nor his religious views
wanted anything essential to the effectual fulfilment of his mission:
that their vehemence sometimes transgressed the limits of good sense
and good taste would probably now be acknowledged by himself. It was
equally important that the form should correspond to the feeling. The
new spirit sought a new body. Carducci solved the problem in the same
manner as Chiabrera would have solved it two centuries and a half
before, had Chiabrera’s genius equalled his discernment. He perceived
that in the circumstances of his day a return to classic models would
be no retrogression, but renovation for Italian poetry: unfortunately
he had no true insight into the classical spirit. This Carducci
possessed, and there are few happier examples of the alliance of one
literature with another than the poems, the most important part of his
work, in which he has kept classical examples steadily before him. The
imitation, it must be understood, is one of form and not of essence;
the themes are but occasionally classical, and even when this is the
case express the feelings of a modern Italian spirit. Imitate classical
forms as the poet may, he is essentially the man of the nineteenth
century: his variety of mood and theme is great; his orchestra has a
place for every instrument; but in nine cases out of ten the direction
to the performer is _con brio_. By this dashing vigour Carducci has
poured new blood into the exhausted veins of Italian poetry, and
administered an antidote to her besetting maladies by the example of a
style condensed, nervous, and terse to a fault. Epic or dramatic power
he does not claim: his genius is entirely lyrical.
Carducci’s first volume appeared in 1857, and the events of the
following years called forth a number of occasional poems, clearly
indicating the representative poet of the people and the time. In
1865, the vigorous “Hymn to Satan” provoked the controversy which the
poet had no doubt designed. His Satan, it hardly need be said, is not
the monarch of the fallen seraphim, but the spirit of revolt against
social and ecclesiastical tyranny, more of a Luther than a Lucifer.
_Levia Gravia_ (1867) greatly extended the poet’s reputation. _Odi
Barbare_ (1877) excited a literary controversy almost as virulent as
the theological. The splendour of the diction was beyond question, but
what was to be said to the novel or exotic forms in which the poet had
thought fit to clothe it? To us, the naturalisation of the Alcaic and
Sapphic metres appears most successful, although in the former the
writer has permitted himself some deviation from the Horatian model,
and the form is perhaps too deeply impressed with his own personality
to become frequent in Italian literature. Most of the other forms,
including the hexameters and pentameters, seem to us either too stiff
or too intricate to be quite satisfactorily manipulated even by
Carducci himself; but the study of them must be a valuable training
for practitioners in more facile metres. If the form be sometimes
too elaborate, there can be no dispute as to the weight and massive
majesty of the sense. Carducci has solved the problem which baffled
the Renaissance, of linking strength of thought to artifice of form.
The _Rime Nuove_ brought him new laurels, and his poetical career has
paused for the present with a noble ode on the tercentenary of Tasso in
1895. The jubilee of his connection with the University of Bologna was
celebrated by a great demonstration in 1896, and, reconciled with the
monarchy which he once opposed, he enjoys the honour of a Senator of
the Kingdom. A Liberal but a Royalist, a freethinker but a theist, he
is happily placed to exert a reconciling and moderating influence alike
in the political and the intellectual sphere.
The difficulties of translating Carducci’s more characteristic poems
are almost insuperable. He is not in the least obscure, but his
noble and austere form is indissolubly wedded to the sense, and in
reproduction his bronze too often becomes plaster. Many versions,
moreover, would be required to render justice to the various aspects of
his many-sided genius--his love of country, his passion for beautiful
form, his Latin and Hellenic enthusiasm, his photographic intensity of
descriptive touch, his sympathy for honest labour and uncomplaining
poverty, his capacity for caressing affection and scathing indignation.
The following poem powerfully exhibits his intense devotion to the
past, and faith in the future of his Italy. The subject is the statue
of Victory in the Temple of Vespasian at Brescia; but to appreciate the
full force of the poem, it must be known that the statue was a recent
discovery of happiest augury (1826), and that Brescia had been the
scene of an heroic defence and a cruel sack in the uprising against the
Austrians in 1848:
_Hast thou, high Virgin, wings of good augury
Waved o’er the crouching, targeted phalanxes,
With knee-propt shield and spear protended,
Biding the shock of the hostile onset?_
_Or hast thou, soaring in front of the eagles,
Led surging swarms of Marsian soldiery,
With blaze of fulgent light the neighing
Parthian steed and his lord appalling?_
_Thy pinions folded, thy stern foot haughtily
Pressing the casque of foeman unhelmeted;--
Whose fair renown for feat triumphant
Art on the orb of thy shield inscribing?_
_An archon’s name, who boldly in face of Wrong
The freeman’s law upheld and immunity?
A consul’s, far and wide the Latin
Limit and glory and awe enlarging?_
_Thee throned on Alpine pinnacle loftily,
Radiant 'mid tempest, heralding might I hear_,
Kings and peoples, here stands Italy,
Weaponed to strike for her soil and honour.
_Lydia, the while, a garland of flowerets,
By sad October strewn o’er the wreck of Rome,
To deck thee braids, and gently bending,
Questioneth, as at thy foot she lays it:_
_“What thoughts, what visions, Victory, came to thee,
Years on years in the humid imprisonment
Of earth immured? the German horses
Heardest thou stamp o’er thy brow Hellenic?”_
_“I heard,” she answers, flashing and fulminant,
“Heard and endured, for glory of Greece am I,
And strength of Rome, in bronze immortal
Sped without flaw through the fleeting ages._
_“The ages passed like the twelve birds ominous,
Descried by gaze of Romulus anciently:
They passed, I rose: thy Gods, proclaiming,
Italy, see! and thy buried heroes._
_“Proud of her fortune, Brescia enshrinèd me,
Brescia the stalwart, Brescia the iron-girt,
Italia’s lioness, her vesture
Dyed in the blood of her land’s invaders.”_
A large proportion of Carducci’s lyrics flow with more of liquid
ease in more familiar metres, better adapted for popularity. This is
especially the case with his impassioned addresses to the dead or to
contemporaries who have won his admiration, and the poems which depict
ordinary life, such as “A Dream in Summer,” “On a Saint Peter’s Eve,”
and “The Mother,” whose apparently loose but really well-knit texture
is admirably reproduced by his American translator Mr. Sewall, and
which are such pieces as Walt Whitman might have written if he had been
a poet in virtue of his art as well as of his nature. Perhaps none of
the shorter pieces is more expressive of his profound humanity than his
apotheosis of patient toil under the figure of “The Ox,” ably rendered
by Mr. Sewall, a poem Egyptian in its grave massiveness and tranquil
repose:
_I love thee, pious Ox; a gentle feeling
Of vigour and of peace thou giv’st my heart.
How solemn, like a monument, thou art!
Over wide fertile fields thy calm gaze stealing!
Unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling,
To man’s quick work thou dost thy strength impart:
He shouts and goads, and, answering thy smart,
Thou turn’st on him thy patient eyes appealing._
_From thy broad nostrils, black and wet, arise
Thy breath’s soft fumes; and on the still air swells,
Like happy hymn, thy lowing’s mellow strain.
In the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes
Of emerald, broad and still reflected, dwells
All the divine green silence of the plain._
Carducci has rendered his country much service as a literary critic,
especially of the Renaissance, and of the Risorgimento of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is not subtle or profound,
but puts forth unanswerably propositions dictated by the soundest
common-sense. There is something Teutonic as well as Italian in
his composition, and he recalls no precursor so much as the German
poet Platen, an equal master of form; but Platen, though a real
patriot, is more at home with any nation than his own. It is a chief
glory of Carducci to have united an intensely patriotic spirit to a
comprehensive cosmopolitanism. Though ranging far and wide to enrich
the domestic literature with new metrical forms, he loves those in
which the Italian genius has embodied itself from days of old, and
is always ready to defend them against degenerate countrymen, no
less than against unappreciative foreigners. Like Wordsworth, he has
simultaneously vindicated and illustrated the sonnet:
_Brief strain with much in little rife; whose tone,
As worlds untrodden rose upon his thought,
Dante touched lightly; that Petrarca sought,
Flower among flowers by gliding waters grown;
That from trump epical of Tasso blown
Pealed through his prison; that wert gravely fraught
With voice austere by him who marble fought
To free the spirit he divined in stone:--_
_To Æschylus new-born by Avon’s shore
Thou camest harbinger of Art, to be
A hidden cell for hidden sorrow’s store;
On thee smiled Milton and Camoens; thee,
His rout of lines unleashing with a roar,
Bavius blasphemes; the dearer thence to me._
Carducci’s example could not but create a school of poets, many of
great merit, but most of whom stand to him more or less in the relation
of disciples to a master. The chief exception is the only one who can
claim, like Timotheus, to “divide the crown,” GABRIELE D’ANNUNZIO.
D’Annunzio (born 1863) is a second Marini, endowed with an even
more brilliant genius, and better armed against besetting faults. It
is terrible to think what synchronism with Marini might have made of
him, but it has been his good fortune to have had Carducci’s example
before his eyes, and his merit to have profited by it. At the same time
his genius is so distinct from Carducci’s as to vindicate for him an
independent position. To employ Coventry Patmore’s happy application of
a passage in Zephaniah to the poetic art, D’Annunzio rather represents
“Beauty,” and Carducci “Bands”; the note of the one is restraint,
and that of the other is exuberance. D’Annunzio’s verse is not cast
in bronze like Carducci’s, nor has he his rival’s splendid virility
or his devotion to ideal interests; his affluence is nevertheless so
well restrained by a natural instinct for form that it never, as with
Marini, becomes riotous extravagance. Some of the metrical forms,
indeed, which, influenced as may be surmised by Mr. Swinburne, he has
endeavoured to introduce, seem ill adapted to the genius of the Italian
language, though they would probably succeed well in English. But
nothing can be more satisfactory than the form of his sonnets or of his
ballad-romances, and he has enriched Italian poetry with one new form
of great beauty, the _rima nona_, a happy compromise between the terse
purity of the national octave and the rich harmony, like the chiming
of many waters, of the English Spenserian stanza, which no foreign
literature has yet succeeded in acclimatising. It is also to his honour
that, while no writer is more partial to the employment of unusual
words, commonly derived from science or natural history, the effect
is that of brilliant mosaic without a mosaic’s rigidity, but soft and
liquid as a glowing canvas.
In many respects D’Annunzio presents a strong affinity to Keats;
but to the innocent sensuousness which rejoices in the reproduction
of sumptuous beauty, he adds that which purposely ministers to
voluptuousness. This might be forgiven as the failing of a youthful
and ardent poet, and becomes, indeed, much less obtrusive in his later
poetical writings. The misfortune is that nothing seems to be taking
its place. Had years brought D’Annunzio “the philosophic mind,” had his
third volume compared with its predecessors as _Locksley Hall_ and _In
Memoriam_ compare with the _Lotus Eaters_, he would be at the head, not
merely of Italian, but of European poets. His most recent productions,
while indicating, as must almost inevitably be the case, an
impoverishment of the merely sensuous opulence of his youth, manifest
but slight advance in power of thought, in dignity of utterance, in
human or national sympathies, in anything that discriminates the noon
of poetical power from its morning. The _Canto Novo_ (1881) and the
_Intermezzo_ (1883) were a splendid dawn; and _L’Isotteo_ (1885) and
_La Chimera_ (1888) revealed further development, not indeed in power
of thought, but in objectivity and in mastery of form. Much of all
these volumes is mere voluptuous dreaming, but the pictures of nature
are marvellously vivid; such pieces as the little unrhymed lyric of
twelve lines, _O falce di luna calante_, reveal the natural magic which
is perhaps the rarest endowment of genius; and the melody is such as
is only granted to a true poet. In the _Poema Paradisiaco_, the joy of
life is evidently on the wane, and, except in a few pieces of exquisite
pathos, such as _Consolazione_, seems in danger of being replaced,
not by a nobler and more serious theory of life, but by the worst
kind of pessimism, that born of mere satiety. The most recent poems,
the _Odi Navali_ (1893), though patriotic in theme, appear tame and
artificial in comparison with earlier work. The epilogue to the _Poema
Paradisiaco_, nevertheless, argues progress in the right direction, and
leaves room to hope that D’Annunzio may yet take rank not merely with
poets eminent for melody, fancy, and imagination, but with those who
have counted among the shaping forces of their time.
The general impression of D’Annunzio’s poetry is one of dazzling
splendour and intoxicating perfume. The poet seems determined to leave
no sense ungratified, and not to omit a hue, an odour, or a cadence
that can by any possibility be pressed into his service. It says much
for the genuineness of his poetical faculty that he should actually be
able to perform this without falling into extravagance; but although
his lavish luxury of phrase and description is kept within the limits
of taste, the too uniform splendour satiates and fatigues. Mr. Greene’s
translations in his Italian Lyrists convey a very good notion of
D’Annunzio’s most usual manner. The following sonnet may serve as a
specimen:--
_Beneath the white full-moon the murmuring seas
Send songs of love across the pine-tree glade;
The moonlight filtering through the dome-topped trees
Fills with weird light the vast and secret shade;
A fresh salt perfume on the Illyrian breeze
From sea-weeds on the rock is hither swayed,
While my sad heart, worn out and ill at ease,
A wild poetic longing doth invade._
_But now more joyous still the love-songs flow
O’er waves of silver sea; from pine to pine
A sweet name echoes in the winds that blow;
And, hovering through yon spaces diamantine,
A phantom fair with silent flight and slow,
Smiles on me from its great-orbed eyes divine._
At the same time D’Annunzio has another style, principally exhibited
in his minor lyrics and his ballad romances, where simple but perfect
melody is mated with hearty vigour. The contrast between Tennyson’s
_Palace of Art_ and his _Edward Gray_ is hardly greater than that
between the brilliant poetical landscape just quoted, and this joyous
_aubade_:--
_While yet the veil of misty dew
Conceals the morning flush,_
(How light of foot the foxes’ crew
Are scampering in the bush!)
_On damask bed my Clara spends
In dreams the idle hours:_
(Warm the wet meadow’s breath ascends,
And herbs are sweet as flowers.)
_Lift, lovely lady all amort,
The glory of your head._
(The hounds are yelling in the court
Enough to wake the dead.)
_Hear’st not the note of merry horn
That calls thee to the chase?_
(In glades of ancient oak and thorn
The deer hath left his trace.)
_With manly vesture, trim and tight,
Those budding breasts be bound;_
(I hear thy jennet neigh delight,
And paw the paven ground.)
_Soho! my beauty! down the stairs
At last! Aha! Huzza!_
(Red morning o’er the mountain flares.)
_To saddle! and away!_
It is manifest that although the Carduccis and D’Annunzios of the
present day may not rank higher as poets than the Montis and Leopardis
of the past, they have done far more to fit the Italian lyre with new
strings, and have opened up paths of progress formerly undreamed of.
Many of the novel and exotic forms they have introduced will richly
repay cultivation, but the problem will be to employ the technique
acquired by their practice to the embellishment and elevation of
forms more adapted for general use. This the great master of modern
Italian poetry has seen, and, magnificently as he has handled the more
elaborate harmonies, it is the simple, popular song that he invokes
after all, while incomparably exemplifying it:
_Cura e onor de’ padri miei,
Tu mi sei
Come lor sacra e diletta.
Ave, o rima: e dammi un fiore
Per l’amore,
E per l’odio una saetta._
Apart from these two chief names Italy possesses at present a
number of excellent lyrical poets. The best known is perhaps Olindo
Guerrini, whose first poems, _Posthuma_, supposed to be edited from the
papers of an imaginary Lorenzo Stecchetti, caused a great sensation,
not so much by their unquestionable talent as by their audacious
immorality. Of late years Guerrini has produced a number of poems on
the political circumstances of the country, many of which are perfect
masterpieces of refined form and energetic expression. As much may
be said for the political verses of the Parliamentary orator Felice
Cavallotti. The poet of the social revolution is Mario Rapisardi, a
Sicilian, known also as the literary antagonist of Carducci; while the
sorrows of the poor are pathetically expressed by a lady, Ada Negri.
Alessandro Arnaboldi, lately deceased, possessed an eminent faculty
for description and excelled in grave and dignified lyric, not unlike
Matthew Arnold; while Italy has her James Thomson in the gloomy and
powerful Arturo Graf. Antonio Fogazzaro, on the other hand, is the
poet of hope and faith. Enrico Panzacchi, less individual than most
of these, surpasses them all in grace and variety; Edmondo de Amicis,
celebrated as a traveller, has the gift of brilliant description; Luigi
Capuana has emulated Carducci’s metrical experiments; and excellent
poetry has been produced by Giovanni Marradi, Giuseppe Pascoli, and
Alfredo Baccelli. Translated specimens of these and other poets,
with biographical and bibliographical particulars, will be found in
Mr. G. A. Greene’s _Italian Lyrists of To-Day_. On the whole, the
present condition of Italian poetry is one of abundant vitality, but
of deficient concentration either in great men or great poems. The
serious drama is best represented by Cavallotti’s tragedies and the New
Testament trilogy of Giuseppe Bovio, and the humorous by the comedies
of Roberto Bracco and Giacinto Gallina.
The novel is at present as vigorously cultivated in Italy as in any
civilised nation, and the talent it attracts cannot be altogether
devoid of results. No talent, however, succeeds in permanently
naturalising forms of literature uncongenial to the national mind,
and it remains to be seen whether this is or is not the case with the
novel in Italy. The novelette arose spontaneously, and was maintained
without difficulty; but with every encouragement from the example of
other nations, Italy failed to acclimatise either romantic fiction or
the novel of manners, until far entered into the nineteenth century.
The inference that lengthy story-telling must be alien to the genius of
the people is confirmed by the general inferiority of modern Italian
novelists. One or two, such as Matilda Serao, Salvatore Farini, and
Giulio Barrili, have acquired a reputation beyond the limits of their
own country. One or two others, such as Antonio Fogazzaro, the leader
of a reaction towards a spiritualistic conception of things; Carlo
Placci, the very promising author of _Un Furto_; and Luciano Zuccoli,
author of _Roberta_, have shown the ability to impress themselves upon
the national literature.
Only two, however, seem to stand forth very decidedly as masters of
fiction. One of them is Gabriele d’Annunzio, already treated as a
poet. D’Annunzio’s novels have made more noise than his poems, being
from one point of view much more, from another much less, suited for
general perusal. The scandal which has grown up about them has diverted
attention from their real merits of fine style and conscientious
workmanship. As an artist, D’Annunzio is almost as admirable in prose
as in verse; and if with his descriptive he combined the creative
gift, all his immoralities would not debar him from permanent
renown. Unfortunately, he is like most French and Italian novelists,
monotonously restricted to the portrayal of a single passion, and
his splendid scenery is the background for trivial characters. He
reminds us of the demon in Victor Hugo’s poem, who consumes the
strength of lions and the wisdom of elephants in fashioning a locust.
This is the besetting sin of the novelists of France and Italy:
with a few brilliant exceptions on both sides, the English novel
lives by character, the French by situation. D’Annunzio’s novels are
nevertheless important literary events, and cannot be omitted from
any survey of modern European literature. They have already gained
him renown and circulation in France and the United States. The most
celebrated are _Il Piacere_, _Il Trionfo della Morte_, _La Vergine
delle Rocce_, the last of which is exempt from most of the objections
justly urged against the others.
GIOVANNI VERGA (b. 1840) rivals the European reputation of D’Annunzio,
and is, like him, the head of a realistic school; but his realism is of
quite another sort, owing nothing to Zola or Maupassant. He is the most
eminent European representative of the local novel, dealing with the
manners, humours, and peculiar circumstances of some special locality.
The vogue of this style was perhaps originally due to George Sand’s
idyllic pictures of Berri. Verga has found a yet more interesting
corner of the world to delineate. A Sicilian, though residing at Milan,
he has made his native island the scene of his fiction. Centuries of
misgovernment have unhappily accumulated stores of tragic material in
the people’s misery and oppression, and the ferocity and vindictiveness
these have engendered. Verga depicts these circumstances with the
fidelity of a dispassionate observer and the skill of an artist. His
books not only attract in their own day, but will be treasured in the
future among the most valuable documents for the social history of
Sicily.
Any one of even the minor poets whom we have enumerated has a chance
of reaching posterity, for their work is at all events individual, and
expressive of the personality of the author. If this is sufficiently
interesting, the work may live, though it be far from inaugurating a
new literary era like Carducci’s. It is otherwise with the contemporary
prose literature of Italy. A history, a biography, philology like
Ascoli’s or D’Ancona’s, a work on social science like Sella’s or
Morselli’s may possess great value as the work of an expert, even
though devoid of individuality; but in this case it must sooner or
later lapse into the category of books of reference. Such appears
to be the case with most of the excellent work now being done in
Italy in these and other departments: the statue is carved, but no
name is inscribed upon the pedestal, for the sculpture is the work
of a craftsman, not of an artist. Exceptions may be made in favour
of a few writers recently deceased--Ruggiero Bonghi, translator of
Plato and historian of Rome, one of the soundest heads in Italy;
Giuseppe Chiarini, champion of Carducci; Enrico Nencioni, lately lost
to his country, a high authority upon English literature; Angelo
de Gubernatis, a brilliant and almost too versatile critic and
philologist; and Giuseppe Guerzoni, raised above himself by his theme
when he wrote the life of Garibaldi. Among living men, two at least
have won an abiding reputation as writers, apart from the utilitarian
worth of their work--Pascale Villari, biographer of Savonarola and
Machiavelli, and writer on the social conditions of the South; and
Domenico Comparetti, author of _Virgilio nel Medio Evo_. In general,
however, the chief distinction of contemporary writers on serious
subjects seems to be their general diligence and good sense. Admirable
writers have gained European renown for themselves, and exalted the
fame of their country by the substantial merit of works making no
especial pretension to literary distinction. Thus Ascoli stands high in
general philology; D’Ancona, Tigri, and Rubieri in literary history;
Lanciani and Rossi in archæology; Nitti in historical research;
Pasolini and Solerti in biography; Cremona in mathematics; Lombroso and
Ferrero in psychology; and Cossa in political economy.
These form a galaxy indeed, but belong rather to learning and science
than to literature. This temporary languor of pure literature may
perhaps be accounted for when it is considered that one main factor
of inspiration has been removed by the contentment of the national
aspirations. The subjection and oppression of the country, with all
their evils, at all events afforded an intense stimulus to literary
genius. Every Italian heart was possessed by the emotions most
conducive to impassioned composition; and patriotic sentiment, even
when not expressed in words, imbued the whole of literature. The
tension removed, it was perhaps inevitable that overstrained feelings
should decline to a lower level, which may be suddenly elevated by the
occurrence of some great national crisis, or the appearance of some
genius gifted, like Mazzini and Carducci, with an especial power of
influencing the young. What Italian letters seem to want above all
things is men, other than poets and novelists, capable of impressing
their own individuality on what they write, and such men are most
readily formed either by the agitation of stirring times, or by the
contagious enthusiasm caught from a great teacher.
The opinions of many eminent living men of letters on the future of
their country’s literature have been collected by Signor Ugo Ojetti in
his _Alla scoperta dei Letterati_ (1895). They are not in general of a
very encouraging character, but their weight is considerably impaired
by their almost complete restriction to a single branch of literature,
and that one whose preponderance is by no means to be desired. Almost
all the authors interviewed by Signor Ojetti are novelists, and, so
far as appears from his reports, would appear utterly unconscious of
the existence of any class of literature but fiction, poetry, and
the drama. They seem to regard literature and _belles lettres_ as
convertible terms, and take no notice of the wider and more important
domains of history, biography, philosophy, moral and economic science,
which may be and often have been in the most flourishing condition
while _belles lettres_ languish. It is, indeed, much to be wished
that more of the literary talent of Italy were directed to solid
and permanent work, and less to fiction, which must be ephemeral in
proportion to the very fidelity with which it fulfils its ordinary task
of depicting the manners of the day. Work like Comparetti’s _Virgilio
nel Medio Evo_, for example, confers higher distinction on the national
literature than any number of novels, unless when creations of genius
of a high order.
Such genius, when exercised in fiction or in poetry, does not depend
for its manifestation upon the state of the book market; the really
gifted author obeys an impulse from within. “Genius does what it must,
and talent does what it can.” If modern Italians have it in them
to produce great books, they will not be prevented by such of the
obstacles stated by Signor Ojetti’s confabulators as may be fairly
resolved into one, the insufficient remuneration of literary work.
It is just to acknowledge, however, the existence of impediments of
another kind. From the earliest period of letters Italy has suffered
from the variance of the written and the spoken language. The
refinements of cultivated circles at Rome were not accepted in the
provinces: there was a Latin of books and a Latin of ordinary life. In
process of time the former became the exclusive speech of the learned,
while the language of the vulgar gave birth to a number of dialects,
out of which, when a vernacular literature came to exist, the Tuscan
was selected as the most appropriate for written speech. Hence there
has always been something artificial in Italian literary language. Many
of the most gifted authors who happened to be born out of Tuscany never
attained to write it with perfect correctness; and the jealous care
taken to ensure its purity tended to limit its flexibility and compass.
It thus became hardly adequate to deal with the mass of neologism
absolutely forced upon it by the development of modern civilisation.
“The difficulty,” says Symonds, “under which a mother-tongue,
artificially and critically fashioned like Italian, suffers when it
copes with ordinary affairs of modern life, is illustrated by the
formation of feeble vocables, and by newspaper jargon,” of which he
gives a horrible instance. The same critic wrote in 1877: “Italian
has undergone no process of transformation and regeneration according
to the laws of organic growth since it first started. The different
districts still use different dialects, while writers in all parts
of the peninsula have conformed their style, as far as possible,
to early Tuscan models. It may be questioned whether united Italy,
having for the first time gained the necessary conditions of national
concentration, is not now at last about to enter on a new phase of
growth in literature, which, after many years, will make the style of
the first authors more archaic than it seems at present.” The immense
difficulty experienced by so great a writer as Manzoni in reconciling
vigour with purity of diction, and his complaints of the limited
vocabulary at his disposal, seem to prove that these impediments are
not imaginary. Since Symonds wrote, however, a view differing in some
respects has been expressed by one of the few living men who may claim
to be regarded as masters of Italian prose, Gabriele d’Annunzio. In
the dedicatory preface to his _Trionfo della Morte_ (1894), D’Annunzio
enters into the question of the adequacy of the Italian language to
express modern ideas, which he emphatically asserts. There is no
respect, he declares, in which it need envy other tongues, or anything
that it need wish to borrow from them. The misfortune is that its great
resources are neglected by modern writers, whose ordinary vocabulary
is limited to a few hundred words, many of illegitimate extraction or
hopelessly disfigured by vulgar usage, and these thrown into sentences
of nearly uniform length, destitute of logical connection and of the
rhythmical accompaniment indispensable to a fine style. The remedy is
a return to the old authors; and, justly remarking that the novelists
of the best period are entirely out of harmony with modern requirements
by reason of their wholly objective character and incapacity for
psychological analysis, D’Annunzio seriously advises modern romancers
to enrich their vocabulary and perfect their style by a course of the
ancient ascetic, casuistical, and devotional writers. The Zolas of
modern Italy resorting for instruction to St. Catherine of Siena would
indeed afford a scene for Aristophanes; yet from a merely stylistic
point of view the advice is judicious.
As regards the ancient writers, the effect would be to renovate them
instead of rendering them more archaic, as anticipated by Symonds,
so far at least as concerns their vocabulary. Although perhaps an
inevitable tribute to Time and Evolution, it is yet no gain to the
English language or literature that so much of our early writers should
be obsolete; and Italy would do well to preserve as much as possible
the speech of the original masters of her tongue, which can be best
effected by keeping their phraseology in constant employment. It may be
hoped that a standard of taste will thus be created enabling writers
to deal satisfactorily with the mass of neologisms which the great
development of modern civilisation renders it impossible to exclude,
but which, indiscriminately admitted, threaten to swamp and debase
the national speech, or possibly to sunder the common inheritance
into two languages, one for the scholar, the other for the multitude.
It is, indeed, a most serious problem for patriotic scholars in all
nations how to preserve the continuity of the national speech amid the
vicissitudes of the national life, and the tendencies which in the
intellectual as in the physical sphere are always at work to wear all
diversities down to one monotonous level. The consolation is that,
whereas these agencies are mere unconscious forces, called into being
by causes independent of the human will, the resisting influences have
their origin in the will, and are capable of intelligent direction. It
should be the task of the cultivators of every literature to ascertain
what course this literature has instinctively shaped for itself;
what are the dominant ideas which have determined the course of its
development. In Italy, from the first lyrists down to Carducci, from
the first prose writers down to D’Annunzio, the guiding principle
would seem to have been the love of perfect form and artistic finish,
liable, like all other meritorious tendencies, to abuse, when its too
exclusive pursuit has cramped originality; to aberration, when writers,
remembering the end, have mistaken the means; but on the whole a right
and laudable aim, because in harmony with the genius of the people and
the language. As it has been said that what is not clear is not French,
so it might be added that what is not refined is not Italian.
Notwithstanding the production of much inferior work, this character
still appertains to the literature in its best contemporary examples,
the only ones with which posterity is likely to concern itself. The
enormous recent development, nevertheless, of the sphere of human
interests; the creation of new arts and sciences, necessitating a
corresponding expansion of the resources of language; the facility
of intercourse among peoples, tending to a cosmopolitanism which
continually threatens to obliterate national distinctions; the
formation of an immense and imperfectly trained reading class, to
whose tastes the majority of authors must or at all events will
condescend--these are trying circumstances for every literature, and
especially for one whose special claims are polish and dignity. But if
it be true that these latter qualities are not imported, or imposed
by external pressure, but inherent in the constitution of the nation
itself, it may well be hoped that they will adapt themselves to the
circumstances of the present, without breach of continuity with the
past. Up to the present time this continuity appears to us unbroken,
and we have been able to conceive of the history of Italian literature
as biography, not so much of individual writers as of a single fair
spirit living through them all, which has moulded, animated, and laid
aside all in their turn. Like other finite existences, this spirit has
known infancy, adolescence, and maturity, and must one day know decay
and death; but the phenomena accompanying her present development
seem to us rather to indicate that, in common with other literatures,
she is traversing a crisis than that she is entering upon a period
of decadence. Every age of letters has its own peculiar peril: that
of ours is the debasement of the standard of writing to the level of
imperfectly educated readers. Against this danger Italian literature
should be especially protected by its close affinity to the languages
of antiquity, by uniform practice and tradition ever since Dante called
Love _the fountain of fair speech_[23], and by a refinement so deeply
imbibed that it seems to have become a part of itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] _Risponde il fonte del gentil parlare._
--Sonnet XLII.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The number of books which may be usefully consulted on various points
of Italian literature is very considerable. Only the most important
can be named here, and those for the most part such as are written
in English or Italian, and fall strictly under the heads of literary
history or bibliography, or standard editions with indispensable
commentaries. Many books not referable to any of these classes, such
as Burckhardt’s _Cicerone_, Des Brosses’s _Letters_, or Dennistoun’s
_Lives of the Dukes of Urbino_, are incidentally of high value, but
cannot be enumerated in a bibliographical list. Some few biographies,
however, have been added which may be deemed essential. The dates given
are in general those of the best or most accessible editions. Some of
the most important are out of print.
GENERAL COLLECTIONS OF ITALIAN AUTHORS
D’Ancona and Bacci, _Manuale della Letteratura italiana_, 5 vols.
1893-95. A most admirable selection, both for its soundness of
judgment and its comprehensiveness. The notices of the various authors
prefixed to the selections are excellent from the biographical and
bibliographical points of view, and also from the critical when
criticism is sufficiently full, which is not always the case.--Cantù,
_La Letteratura italiana esposta_, &c., 1851, and Morandi, _Antologia_,
1893, are inferior to D’Ancona and Bacci, yet deserve attention.
GENERAL HISTORIES
Tiraboschi, _Storia della Letteratura italiana_, &c., 1822. The
Italian literary historian _par excellence_, characterised at pp. 295,
296 of this book. There is a continuation by Lombardi.--Sismondi,
_Histoire de la Littérature du Midi de l’Europe_; numerous editions and
translations, but hardly equal to its reputation.--Ginguené, _Histoire
littéraire d’Italie_, 14 vols., 1811-35 [the last four volumes by
Salfi]. A work of extraordinary diligence and erudition, on no account
to be neglected by the few who may have time to read it, though written
from an eighteenth-century point of view now entirely antiquated. The
chief literary defect is the immoderate space devoted to unravelling
the plots of uninteresting epics and dramas; this excess of diligence,
however, renders it a valuable source of information concerning minor
authors frequently omitted.--This is also a valuable feature of
Corniani, _I Secoli della Letteratura italiana_, 1832-33.--Bartoli,
_Storia della Letteratura italiana_, 1875. This unfinished work is
the best authority for the history of the early period, beyond which
it does not as yet extend. It is full of learning and research, but
prolix.--Gaspary, _Geschichte der italienischen Litteratur_, &c.,
1885. Another important work unfortunately left incomplete, breaking
off in the Cinque Cento. The best of all the larger Italian literary
histories, but deficient in form, rather a quarry of material than a
regular edifice. An English translation by H. Oelsner is in preparation.
HISTORIES OF SPECIAL DEPARTMENTS
Crescimbeni, _Istoria della volgar Poesia_, 1730. Quadrio, _Della
Storia e della regione d’ogni Poesia_, 1739-52. Standard histories long
out of print, but to be found in all good public libraries.--Muratori,
_Della perfetta Poesia_, 1821. Characterised at p. 295.--Ruth,
_Geschichte der italienischen Poesie_, 1844-47.--Loise, _Histoire de la
Poésie en Italie_, 1895.--Carducci, _Studi Letterari_, 1880. Valuable
criticisms on various periods of Italian literature.--An excellent
anthology of the dicta of modern Italian critics has been compiled by
Morandi, _Antologia_, &c., 1893.
ABRIDGED LITERARY HISTORIES
Emiliani-Giudici, _Compendia della Storia della Letteratura italiana_,
1855. Very sound, but verbose.--Settembrini, _Lezioni della Letteratura
italiana_, 1877. Perhaps on the whole the most recommendable of all
the minor Italian literary histories. The author, an exile lately
restored to his country, is inspired with a spirit of patriotism which
renders his work singularly vital and energetic, and the young men to
whom his lectures are addressed are ever before him. Notwithstanding
occasional paradoxes, his appreciations are in general sound, although
he is naturally inclined to bear hardly upon authors who fail to attain
his standard of patriotism.--De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura
italiana_, 1879. Very good, but deficient in the spirit and fire of
Settembrini.--Fenini, _Letteratura italiana_, 1889. The model of
an abbreviated handbook; and the same may be said of its English
counterpart, Snell’s _Primer of Italian Literature_, 1893.
POPULAR POETRY
Rubieri, _Storia della Poesia popolare italiana_, 1877.--D’Ancona,
_La Poesia popolare italiana_, 1878.--Tommaseo, _Canti popolari_,
1841-42.--Tigri, _Canti popolari Toscani_, 1869. See also J. A.
Symonds’s essay in his _Italian Sketches and Studies_, 1879, a new
edition of which is in preparation.
PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF DANTE
Rossetti, _Dante and his Circle_, 1893. Consists chiefly of
translations of the highest merit. The information it contains is
chiefly derived from Nannucci, _Manuale della Letteratura del primo
Secolo_, 1843; and Trucchi, _Poesie italiane inedite di dugento
autori_, 1846.
DANTE
There is, perhaps, as much commentary upon Dante as upon all the
rest of Italian literature put together. The most charming edition,
when comment is not needed, is that of Dr. Edward Moore, 1894, where
all Dante’s works are compressed into one small and exquisitely
printed volume; but few students can dispense with a commentary, and
it is generally advisable to read Dante in a modern Italian edition,
with notes in that language. Of several excellent editions of this
description, the best, perhaps, is Fraticelli’s, 1892. For profound
students, Ferrazzi, _Manuale Dantesco_, 1865, and Poletto, _Dizionario
Dantesco_, 1885, are indispensable. A similar and not less important
work in English, by Mr. Paget Toynbee, is now in the press. Of the
numerous introductions to the _Divine Comedy_, the following may be
recommended to English readers: Scartazzini, _Companion to Dante_,
translated by A. J. Butler, 1895; Symonds, _Introduction to Dante_,
1890; Maria Francesca Rossetti, _A Shadow of Dante_, 1884; Dean Church,
_Dante_, 1878; and A. J. Butler, _Dante_, 1895. Of these, Scartazzini
is the scholar and Dantophilist, Symonds and Butler are the efficient
critics from the modern point of view, and Miss Rossetti and Dean
Church represent Dante’s own position. Moore’s _Studies in Dante_, now
in course of publication, and Wicksteed’s _Sermons on Dante_, have a
wider scope than that of an introductory manual. The point of Dante’s
influence on posterity has been investigated by Oelsner, _Influence of
Dante on Modern Thought_, 1895; and his relation to his own countrymen
is discussed in the third volume of Dean Plumptre’s translation of the
_Divine Comedy_. He is treated from the neo-catholic point of view by
Ozanam, _Dante et la Philosophie catholique_, 1845.
The best editions of Dante’s lyrical poems, including the very many
falsely attributed to him, and of his _Vita Nuova_ and other prose
works, are those by Fraticelli. The best English translation of the
_Vita Nuova_ is Rossetti’s; but other translators (Martin, 1862;
Norton, 1893; Boswell, 1895; and the Austrian translator Federn, 1897)
have done much more for the illustration of the text. A beautiful work
on _Dante, sein Leben und sein Werk, sein Verhältniss zur Kunst und zur
Politik_, by Franz Xaver Kraus, has just been published in Berlin.
PETRARCH
No authority for Petrarch’s life is equal to his own letters, published
complete in the edition of Fracassetti, 1859-63. An English translation
has been announced. There are recent biographies corresponding to the
requirements of modern research by Geiger, 1874, and in the first
volume of Koerting’s _Geschichte der Litteratur Italiens_, 1878.
Petrarch’s position and resources as a scholar have been thoroughly
investigated by Pierre de Nolhac, _Pétrarque et l’Humanisme_, 1892.
The best commentary is Leopardi’s, always printed with the current
Florentine edition of the _Canzoniere_. The most critical edition is
Mestica’s, 1896. The best literary criticism is Zumbini’s _Studi sul
Petrarca_, 1895.
BOCCACCIO
Koerting’s life of Boccaccio in the second volume of his _Geschichte_
is the best; and the English reader may consult Symonds, _Giovanni
Boccaccio_, 1895.
ITALIAN NOVEL
Perhaps the fullest account of the Italian novelists in an English
book is that in Dunlop’s _History of Fiction_, as edited by Wilson,
1888. See also Papanti, _Catalogo dei Novelieri italiani_, 1871, and
the notices prefixed to the specimens translated in Thomas Roscoe’s
_Italian Novelists_, 1832.
ITALIAN DRAMA
The fullest accounts of individual Italian dramatists will be found
in Ginguené. The beginning of the Italian drama is investigated by
D’Ancona in his _Origini del Teatro in Italia_, 1891; see also the
volumes (iv.-vii.) devoted to Italy in Klein’s _Geschichte des Dramas_.
D’Ancona has written a monograph on the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_
(see p. 226). The _Commedia dell’ Arte_ (pp. 305-307) is treated in
Scherillo’s monograph with this title, in Maurice Sand’s _Masques et
Bouffons_, and in Symonds’s preface to his translation of the memoirs
of Carlo Gozzi, 1892.
ROMANTIC POETRY
This subject is most fully treated in general histories, whether of
Italian or romantic literature. Panizzi’s introduction to his edition
of Boiardo and Ariosto (1831), though in many respects erroneous or
antiquated, deserves attention, as does Ferrario, _Storia ed Analisi
degli antichi Romanzi di Cavalleria_, 1828-29. Ariosto’s indebtedness
to earlier romancers has been investigated by Rajna, _Le Fonti dell’
Orlando Furioso_. Leigh Hunt’s _Stories from the Italian Poets_ is a
charming companion to Italian chivalric poetry.
ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
The best view of the Renaissance as a whole is to be obtained from
Symonds’s great work, _The Renaissance in Italy_, 1875-81. A new
edition is in course of issue. Much of this comprehensive book relates
to politics, and much to art; but so complete in the Renaissance
period was the interpenetration of all forms of mental activity that
no part of the work is useless for the study of literature. The same
may be said of almost all modern biographies of leading Italians of the
period, of most collections of letters, and of such books as Bisticci’s
memoirs of his contemporaries (p. 107). A useful abridged account of
the scholars of the early period of the Renaissance will be found in
Villari’s _Life of Machiavelli_; and authors of later date are noticed
in Roscoe’s _Life of Leo X_. The dissemination of literature upon the
invention of printing is illustrated by Horatio Brown in his _Venetian
Printing Press_, 1892.
TASSO
All previous biographies are superseded by Solerti’s, 1895.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Crescimbeni, _Vite degl’ Arcadi Illustri_, 1704-13.--Cantù, _L’Abate
Parini e la Lombardia nel Secolo XVIII_.--Carducci, _Parini_.--Vernon
Lee, _Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy_, 1880. Much of this
brilliant book is devoted to music and the stage, but the literary
element is never long absent.
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The most valuable essays on Italian literature in the nineteenth
century are at present to be found in periodicals, especially the
_Nuova Antologia_ and the _Deutsche Rundschau_; in general works
on Italy like Mariotti’s; in the biographies and correspondence of
distinguished authors of the period, and in such monographs upon them
as Zumbini’s _Sulle Poesie di Vincenzo Monti_. Modern Italian poetry
is well treated by W. D. Howells, _Modern Italian Poets_, 1887; by F.
Sewall in his introduction to his translations from Carducci, 1892;
and in the preface and biographical introductions to Greene’s _Italian
Lyrists of To-Day_, 1893.
INDEX
_Adelchi_, 346
_Adone_, 273, 274
Alamanni, Luigi, his _Girone_, 152;
his didactic poetry, 202;
his satires, 203
Alberti, Leone Battista, 105-107
Aleardi, Aleardo, 388, 389
Alfieri, Count Vittorio, biography, 316-319;
tragedies, 319, 320;
minor writings, 321
Algarotti, Francesco, 296
Alphonso, Duke of Ferrara, 240, 244
Amari, Michele, 382
Amicis, Edmondo de, 408
_Aminta_, 233, 234
Ammirato, Scipione, 173
Andreini, 233
Angioleri, Cecco, 20
Annunzio, Gabriele d’, as poet, 402-406;
as novelist, 409;
on the Italian language, 415
_Arcadia_, 123, 124
_Arcadian Academy_, 279-298
Aretino, Pietro, 182;
his comedies, 232
Ariosto, Lodovico, biography, 140-143;
his _Orlando Furioso_, 143-154;
minor poetical works, 151;
satires, 203;
comedies, 230, 231
Arnaboldi, Alessandro, 408
_Arnaldo da Brescia_, 350
Arnold, Matthew, on Alfieri, 320
_Asolani, Gli_, 180
Azeglio, Massimo d’, 349, 384
Baccelli, Alfredo, 408
Balbo, Cesare, 383
Ballala, the, 10
Bandello, Matteo, 218, 219
Barberino, Francesco, 21
Baretti, Giuseppe, 297
Barrili, Giulio, 409
Basile, Giovanni, _l’entamerone_, 221
_Bassvilliana, La_, 334
Beatrice de’ Portinari, Dante’s lady, 25, 26, 32
Beccaria, Cesare, 293
Belli, Gioacchino, 368, 369
Bello, Francesco, 138
Bembo, Pietro, his history of Venice, 174, 175;
his _Asolani_, 180;
his letters, 183;
his poems, 188, 189
Benivieni, Girolamo, 121
Bentivoglio, Cardinal Guido, 269, 273
Beolco, Angelo, 232
Berchet, Giovanni, 386
Berni, Francesco, his humorous poetry, 204, 205;
his _rifacimento_ of Boiardo, 206, 207
Bibbiena, Cardinal, 142, 230
Bible, translated into Italian, 113
Biondo, Flavio, 111
Bisticci, Vespasiano da, 107
Boccaccio, Giovanni, his sonnet on Dante, 31;
his friendship with Petrarch, 61, 84;
his biography, 82-85;
his romances, 85-87;
his _Decameron_, 87-90;
his poetry, 91-95;
his character, 96
Boccalini, Trajano, 270, 271
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, his _Orlando Innamorato_, 131, 138;
his lyrics, 139;
his _Timone_, 230
Bonghi, Ruggiero, 411
Borgia, Girolamo, 172
Botta, Carlo, 380
Bovio, Giuseppe, 408
Bracciolini, Francesco, 209
Bracciolini, Poggio, 111
Bracco, Roberto, 408
Bruni, Leonardo, his life of Dante, 27;
translates Plato and Aristotle, 111
Bruno, Giordano, 260-263
Bryant, 339
Buonarotti, M. A., 232
Burchiello, Domenico, 101
Byron, 354
Campanella, Tommaso, 263, 265
Cantù, Cesare, 349, 381
Canzone, the, 8
_Canzoniere, Il_, 66, 67
Capponi, Gino, 104
Capuana, Luigi, 408
Carducci, Giosuè, sonnet on Dante, 52;
his beneficial influence, 328;
leading position in modern Italian literature, 396, 397;
characteristics of his poetry, 397-401;
founder of a school of poets, 402
_Carmagnola_, 346
Caro, Annibale, 192
Carrer, Luigi, 387
Casa, Giovanni della, 179, 193
Casti, Giovanni Battista, 302, 303
Castiglione, Baldassare, his _Cortegiano_, 178-180
Cavalcanti, Guido, 17, 18
Cavalieri, Tommaso de’, 197
Cavallotti, Felice, 407, 408
Cayley, C. B., on Petrarch’s _Canzoniere_, 66, 67
Cellini, Benvenuto, his autobiography, 177, 178
Cerlone, Francesco, 307
Charles V., Caro’s sonnet upon, 192
Chaucer, 61, 90, 91, 98
Chiabrera, Gabriello, 276-279, 397
Chiari, Abate, 308
Chiarini, Giuseppe, 411
Chrysoloras, Emanuel, 111
Cielo dal Carno, 7
Cino da Pistoia, 18-20
Cinthio, Giovanni Battista Giraldi, 219, 229
Ciriaco di Ancona, 105
Clement VI., Pope, 58, 69
Clement VII., Pope, 158
Clement VIII., Pope, 246, 257
Clerke, Miss Ellen, translations by, 93, 117, 135, 148, 250, 347
Clough, quoted, 331
Coleridge, S. T., 35, 61, 62, 361, 390
Colletta, Pietro, 380, 381
Colonna, Cardinal, patron of Petrarch, 55, 59
Colonna, Francesco, 108
Colonna, Vittoria, her sonnet to Bembo, 191;
poems on her husband, 194;
Michael Angelo’s attachment to her, 197
_Commedia dell’arte_, 305, 306
Compagni, Dino, chronicle attributed to, 27, 103, 104
Comparetti, Domenico, 411, 413
Conti, Giusto de’, 101
_Convito, Il_, 34
Coppetta, Francesco, 203, 204
Coronal of Sonnets, Tasso’s, 255
_Cortegiano, Il_, 178-180
Cosmo de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 166
Cossa, Pietro, 391, 392
Costanzo, Angelo di, his history of Naples, 176;
his poems, 193, 194
Courthope, W. J., 146
Crescimbeni, Giovanni Mario, 294, 298
Dacre, Lady, translation from Pulci by, 130
Dante Alighieri, biography, 24-31;
_Vita Nuova_, 31-34;
_Convito_, 34-36;
_De Monarchia_, 36, 37;
_Divina Commedia_, 40-52;
Petrarch upon him, 63, 77;
Boccaccio upon him, 93, 96
Davila, Enrico Caterino, 268
_Decamerone, Il_, 88-90
_De Monarchia_, 36, 37
Denina, Carlo, 296
_De Vulgari Eloquio_, 36
_Discorsi sopra Tito Livio_, 161
_Divina Commedia, La_, 40-52
Este, house of, 141, 144
Farini, Luigi Carlo, 383
Farini, Salvatore, 409
Ferrari, Giuseppe, 379
Fiamma, Gabriele, 198
Fiammetta, Boccaccio’s _innamorata_, 83
_Fiammetta, La_, 86-88
Filangieri, Gaetano, 293
Filicaja, Vincenzo, 283-285
_Filocopo, Il_, 85, 86
_Filostrato, Il_, 91, 92
Firenzuola, Agnolo, 182, 217
Fogazzaro, Antonio, 408, 409
Folengo, Teofilo, 207
Folgore di San Geminiano, 20
Fortiguerri, Niccoló, 210
Foscolo, Ugo, life and works, 337-341
Francis of Assisi, St., 16
Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, 6, 7
Frezzi, Frederico, 100
Galiani, Ferdinando, 294
Galileo, 259
Gallina, Giacinto, 408
Gelli, Giovanni Battista, 181
Gemma Donati, Dante’s wife, 28, 29
Genovesi, Antonio, 294
Gentili, Alberico, 266
_Gerusalemme Liberata, La_, 246-253
Giannone, Pietro, 291, 292
Gil Vicente, 225
Ginguené, 77, 143
Gioberti, Vincenzo, 370, 371, 377, 378
Giordani, Pietro, 369, 370
_Giorno, Il_, 299
_Giostra, La_, 117
Giovanni Fiorentino, 102, 215, 216
Giovio, Paolo, 172
Giusti, Giuseppe, 365-368
Giustiniani, Leonardo, 102
Glassford, James, translation from Sannazaro by, 187
Goethe, on _I Promessi Sposi_, 348
Goldoni, Carlo, controversy with Gozzi, 308;
life, 321-323;
comedies, 323, 324
Gosse, Edmund, translation of a sonnet of Redi by, 282
Gozzi, Carlo, life and dramatic writings, 307-309
Gozzi, Gaspare, 297
Graf, Arturo, 408
Gravina, Vincenzo, 298, 310
Grazzini, Antonio Maria, 219
Greene, G. A., translation from D’Annunzio, 405;
his _Italian Lyrists of To-Day_, 408
Grossi, Tommaso, 349
Guarini, Giovanni Battista, _Pastor Fido_, 234-236
Gubernatis, Angelo de, 411
Guerrazzi, Francesco Domenico, 391
Guerrini, Olindo, 407
Guerzoni, Giuseppe, 411
Guicciardini, Francesco, his life, 164-166;
history of his times, 166, 167;
miscellaneous writings, 168, 169
Guidi, Alessandro, 285
Guidiccioni, Guido, 191, 192
Guinicelli, Guido, 15
Guittone di Arezzo, 13, 14
Homeric epic, probable genesis of, 154, 155
Howells, W. H., translation from Giusti by, 367
Hunt, Leigh, translations by, 78, 205, 235;
on Pulci, 130;
on Tasso’s _Aminta_, 233
_Hypnerotomachia Poliphili_, 108
Ippolito d’Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, 141
Jacopino de’ Todi, 21
Jacopo da Lentino, 8
_Jacopo Ortis_, 338, 339
Lanzi, Luigi, 296
Latini, Brunetto, 21, 22
Laura, Petrarch’s _innamorata_, 55, 67-73
Lee, Vernon [Miss Violet Paget], 280, 297, 307, 309, 392
Leo X., Pope, 142, 158, 165, 175
Leonora d’Este, sister of the Duke of Ferrara, 241
Leopardi, Giacomo, his commentary on Petrarch, 81;
his _Paralipomeni_, 210;
biography, 354-357;
as philosopher, 357, 358;
as poet, 359-362;
his prose works, 362, 363;
as moralist, 363, 364
Leti, Gregorio, 269, 270
Lippi, Lorenzo, 209
Lorenzo de’ Medici, his poetry and patronage of literature,
113-116
Luigi d’Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, 240
Macgregor, Major, translation from Petrarch by, 58
Machiavelli, Niccoló, his life, 157-159;
his _Prince_, 159-161;
_Discourses on Livy’s Decades_, 161;
_History of Florence_, 162, 163;
his poems, 203;
his comedies, 231
Maffei, Scipione, Marquis, 295, 315
Magno, Celio, 198
Mamiani, Terenzio, 379
_Mandragola, La_, 231
Manzoni, Alessandro, life and character, 342-344;
lyrical poetry, 345;
dramas, 346;
_I Promessi Sposi_, 348, 349
Marini, Giovanni Battista, 273-275
Marini, Giuseppe Ambrogio, 287
Marradi, Giovanni, 408
Massuccio Salernitano, 216
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 370-374
Mazzuchelli, Giovanni Maria, 295
Meli, Giovanni, 301, 302
Menzini, Benedetto, 285
_Merope_, 315
Mestica, Giovanni, commentator on Petrarch, 74, 80, 379
Metastasio, Pietro, biography, 310-312;
works and literary characteristics, 312-315
Micali, Giuseppe, 382
Michael Angelo, as a poet, 197
_Mie Prigioni, Le_, 351
Milton, compared with Dante, 49, 50;
indebtedness to Sannazaro, 187;
study of Italian models, 199;
on the decay of Italian literature in
his time, 238;
influence of Tasso on his versification, 245;
compared with Tasso, 248, 249
Molière, 323, 324
Molza, Francesco Maria, 189, 190
_Mondo Creato, Il_, 245
Montanelli, Giuseppe, 384
Montemagno, Bonaccorso da, 102
Monti, Vincenzo, life and works, 333-337;
a reviver of Dante, 344
_Morgante Maggiore, Il_, 128-131
Muratori, Lodovico Antonio, 295
Napoleon, the true founder of Italian unity, 353
Nardi, Jacopo, 172
Navagero, Andrea, 172
Negri, Ada, 408
Nencioni, Enrico, 411
Niccolini, Giovanni Battista, 350
Nicholas V., Pope, 112
Niebuhr, 376
Nievo, Ippolito, 391
Nolhac, Pierre de, _Pétrarque et l’Humanisme_, 65
_Novellino, Il_, 85
Ojetti, Ugo, 325, 412
Ongaro, Francesco dall’, 387
Opera, the, 313, 314
Ophelia, 124
_Orfeo_, 233
_Orlando Furioso_, 143-151
_Orlando Innamorato_, 132-138
Ottonieri, Filippo, pseudonym of Leopardi, 364
Ovid, 145
Pallavicino, Cardinal Sforza, 267, 268
Palmieri, Matteo, 101
Panizzi, Antonio, 11, 129, 130, 138, 139, 143
Panzacchi, Enrico, 408
Parini, Giuseppe, 299-301
Paruta, Pietro, 174, 175
Pascoli, Giuseppe, 408
_Pastor Fido, Il_, 234, 235
Paterno, Lodovico, 203
Patmore, Coventry, 97, 148, 403
Paul III., Pope, 175, 237
Paul V., Pope, 267
Petrarca, Francesco, biography, 53-61;
his Latin poetry, 61-63;
other Latin writings, 63, 64;
epistles, 64, 65;
classical scholarship, 65;
his passion for Laura, 66-73;
his _Canzoniere_, 73-79;
his character, 79, 80
Pellico, Silvio, 351
Piccolomini, Alessandro, 181
Pindemonte, Ippolito, his sonnet on Petrarch’s Laura, 72;
his life and writings, 341, 342
Pius II., Pope [Enea Silvio Piccolomini], 105
Pius IV., Pope, 237
Placci, Carlo, 409
Pletho, Gemistus, 111
Poliziano, Angelo, his poetry and scholarship, 116-119;
his _Orfeo_, 227, 233
Polo, Marco, 105
Pontano, Giovanni, 107, 108
Porto, Luigi da, 217
Prati, Giovanni, 387, 388
_Principe, Il_, 158-161
_Promessi Sposi, I_, 348, 349
Provençal literature, 4-6
Pulci, Luca, 121
Pulci, Luigi, his _Morgante Maggiore_, 128-131
Ranieri, Antonio, 356
Rapisardi, Mario, 408
_Rappresentazione Sacra_, 226
_Reali di Francia, I_, 128
Redi, Francesco, 281, 282
Reeve, Henry, 81
Ridella, Franco, 357
Romagnosi, Giovanni Domenico, 378
Rosa, Salvator, 286
Roscoe, William, 189, 196
Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio, 378
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, translations by, 7, 8, 9, 15, 19, 20, 22,
34, 95, 100, 102
Rossetti, Gabriel, 386, 387
Rossi, J. V. [Nicius Erythræus], 269, 277, 287
Rousseau, 329
Rucellai, Giovanni, 202
Sabadino degli Arienti, 217
Sacchetti, Franco, 102, 214, 215
Sade, Abbé de, his theory respecting Petrarch’s Laura, 68-71
Sannazaro, Jacopo, his life, 122;
his _Arcadia_, 123, 124;
his Latin and Italian poetry, 187
Sarpi, Pietro, 267, 268
Savonarola, Girolamo, 121
_Secchia Rapita, La_, 208, 209
Senuccio del Bene, 101
_Sepolcri, I_, 339
Serao, Matilda, 409
Settembrini, Luigi, 124, 219, 243, 274, 344
Sewall, Frank, translation from Carducci, 401
Shakespeare, _Othello_, 219;
_Measure for Measure_, 219, 229;
_Timon of Athens_, 230;
sonnets, 255
Shelley, 17, 27, 35, 41, 144, 360
Sicilian octave, the, 10
Sidney, Sir Philip, 124, 262
Sixtus V., Pope, 270
Solerti, 243
_Song of Roland_, 128
Sonnet, the, 9, 284
Spenser, 134, 146, 329, 403
Speroni, Sperone, 229
Staël, Madame de, her _Corinne_, 333, 354
Stampa, Gaspara, 195
Stigliani, Tommaso, 275
Straparola, his _Notti Piacevoli_, 220
Swinburne, quoted, 373
Symonds, J. A., cited, 26, 44, 48, 106, 118, 190, 197, 232,
234, 260, 309, 323, 414; translations by, 120, 265
Tansillo, Luigi, his life and poems, 195-197
Tasso, Bernardo, his _Amadigi_, 152;
his sonnets, 191;
his misfortunes, 239
Tasso, Torquato, his _Rinaldo_, 152;
_Torrismondo_, 229;
_Aminta_, 233, 234;
his life, 238-246;
_Jerusalem Delivered_, 246-254;
minor poems, 254, 255;
his dialogues, 266;
his sonnet to Stigliani, 275;
his patriotic feeling, 352
Tassoni, Alessandro, 208, 209
Telesio, Bernardo, 260
_Teseide, La_, 91, 92
Testa, Giovanni Battista, 381
Testi, Fulvio, 279, 280
Tiraboschi, Girolamo, 295, 296
Tomlinson, C., 81
Tommaseo, Niccoló, 384, 385
Trissino, Giovanni Giorgio, his _Italia Liberata_, 153, 154;
his _Sophonisba_,228
Troya, Carlo, 382, 383
Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, 127
Uberti, Fazio degli, 99, 100
Valla, Lorenzo, 111
Valle, Pietro della, 271
Vanini, Giulio Cesare, 265
Varchi, Benedetto, 172
Vasari, Giorgio, his lives of Italian artists, 176, 177
Verga, Giovanni, 410
Verri, Alessandro, 303
Vico, Giovanni Battista, 290, 291
Villani, Giovanni, 104
Villari, Pasquale, on Guicciardini, 167, 168;
his writings, 411
_Vita Nuova, La_, 32-34
Wells, C., 215
Whitman, Walt, and Carducci, 401
Wordsworth, 200, 277, 402
Zanella, Giacomo, 389-391
Zappi, Faustina, 299
Zappi, Felice, 298
Zeno, Apostolo, 310
Zuccoli, Luciano, 409
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London
* * * * *
Literatures of the World
Edited by EDMUND GOSSE, M.A.
I.
A History of
Ancient Greek Literature
By Gilbert Murray, M.A.
Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow; sometime
Fellow of New College, Oxford
Large Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
=_The Times._=--“A sketch to which the much-abused word 'brilliant’
may be justly applied. Dealing in 400 pages with a subject which is
both immense and well worn, Mr. Murray presents us with a treatment
at once comprehensive, penetrating, and fresh. By dint of a clear,
freely-moving intelligence, and by dint also of a style at once
compact and lucid, he has produced a book which fairly represents the
best conclusions of modern scholarship.”
=_The Athenæum._=--“The book is brilliant and stimulating; while its
freshness of treatment and recognition of the latest German research
amply justify its existence. Professor Murray has made these old
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=_The Saturday Review._=--“Mr. Gosse’s introduction to this new
series, the list of his collaborators, his own wide knowledge and
delicate taste, and, finally, the manner in which his first volume
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=_The Morning Post._=--“Professor Murray is exceptionally qualified
to deal with the difficult and important subject of that Greek
Literature, which he has made a life-long study. His gifts of
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poets, Professor Murray has brought to notice much that will prove
new even to the scholar, and more that will be of interest to the
general reader.”
=_The Scotsman._=--“The book speaks well for the attractions of its
own subject, and promises well for the series in which it appears.”
=_The Daily Chronicle._=--“The writer shows himself well qualified to
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ancient Greece and her literature are exceedingly real and vivid. His
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=_The Glasgow Herald._=--“To competent knowledge of his subject, Mr.
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great learning; and, while scholars will here find a fresh and
well-digested account of all the most recent criticism of the long
procession of outstanding names in Greek literature, the ordinary
reader will not be repelled by excessive technicality or too numerous
details.”
=_The St. James’s Gazette._=--“Mr. Gosse is to be congratulated on
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has invested his treatise with a human interest. The book is equally
solid and attractive, and abounds with happy phrases.”
=_The National Observer and British Review._=--“The treatment of
the Homeric question seems to us masterly, as an indication of
the results attained by scientific analysis of language and the
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discoursing on subjects delightful to the listener.”
=_The Speaker._=--“Vigour and freshness, great learning and
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may be read with pleasure by those who have not carried their
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=_A. T. Q. C. in the Speaker._=--“Mr. Heinemann and Mr. Gosse have
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=_The Pall Mall Gazette._=--“A really quite admirable book. It is
full of learning, but the learning is never obtruded. Then, too, it
is full of humour, not exactly racy epigram, but felicitous phrases.
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in really thrilling English.”
=_The Journal of Education._=--“The series starts _felici omine_. No
brighter or more readable account of a subject so immense as Greek
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Professor Murray’s volume.... This delightful book should be of great
service.”
=_The Spectator._=--“Professor Murray soon convinces his readers that
he is equal to his subject, has something fresh to say about it, and
is able to say it with a quite uncommon vigour. In power of sympathy
he surpasses, we think, all his predecessors. We have seldom found a
book that has given us more pleasure than this.”
=_The Standard._=--“Professor Murray does all the justice which is
possible in the compass of 400 pages, to a subject so vast, subtle,
and many-sided. He has written a lucid and fascinating sketch of the
men and movements that shaped in prose and poetry the most splendid
and influential literary bequest of antiquity. The method of the
book is to realise what sort of men the Greek poets, historians,
orators, and philosophers were, and to describe them in their habit
as they lived. The book abounds in fresh and vigorous thought, and
independence of judgment.”
Literatures of the World
Edited by EDMUND GOSSE, M.A.
II.
A History of French Literature
By Edward Dowden, D.C.L., LL.D.
Professor of Oratory and English Literature
in the University of Dublin
Large crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
=_The Athenæum._=--“Mr. Dowden has condensed a remarkable amount
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he writes of Rabelais and when he writes of Fénelon.... The book
gives us a clearer and a more sympathetic notion of the spirit of
French writers than any book, certainly which has been written
in English.... Mr. Dowden is for the most part so just, because,
whatever his personal preferences, he possesses pre-eminently a sane
enthusiasm for literature as literature. Looking at literature as the
self-expression of humanity, he is most attracted by those writers in
whom what is called the human element is strongest.... Where his book
is most valuable, most corrective of much that is unduly academic in
the professional treatment of literature, is that he has realised
literature in this living way, as being itself so living a thing....
A book which is certainly the best history of French Literature in
the English language.”
=_The Saturday Review._=--“This is a history of literature as
histories of literature should be written. From beginning to end of
this book, in which French Literature is chronicled from the Middle
Ages to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, there is
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to understand, sympathise with, and truthfully interpret writer after
writer, Rabelais, Calvin, Victor Hugo.... His style has the singular
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always.... Seeing sharply, definitely, he sees widely; and that moral
quality, whose importance in literature he is so well aware of, gives
to his own writing a grasp on realities, on what is essential in a
man’s expression of himself, which the historian of literature but
rarely possesses.... The more closely one looks into this book, the
more clearly is it seen how much thought, how much mental selection,
as well as how much reading, have gone to the making of these
picturesque portraits of writers.”
Literatures of the World
Edited by EDMUND GOSSE, M.A.
III.
A History of
Modern English Literature
By
Edmund Gosse
Hon. M.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge
Large crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
=_Athenæum._=--“The author has succeeded in giving a really useful
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stroke. This 'History of Modern English Literature’ is a work which
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worthy of a place of honour in the library.”
=_Saturday Review._=--“It is difficult to be too thankful to a
historian who judges everything from the strictly literary point
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continuous life of literature, and to whom the historian himself is a
person to be kept rigorously out of sight.”
=_Times._=--“Mr. Gosse’s most ambitious book, and probably his best.
It bears on every page the traces of wide reading, of a genuine love
for his subject, and of a lively critical intelligence. Moreover, it
is extremely readable--more readable, in fact, than any other single
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=_Daily Chronicle._=--“Mr. Gosse has been remarkably successful in
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and varied theme. We have read the book, not only with pleasure,
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=_Daily Graphic._=--“Mr. Gosse is a careful student and skilful
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write something better than a school-book. We wish we could help our
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one should read from beginning to end.”
=_St. James’s Gazette._=--“Certainly one of the most valuable as well
as one of the most interesting books of its kind.”
=_Academy._=--“A book that is interesting in every paragraph.”
=_Manchester Guardian._=--“Animation, sympathy, proportion, govern
the book throughout. Alike in his treatment of individuals and in
his firm hold of the main threads of his story, the author shows his
mastery of the art of weaving a history.”
=_Glasgow Herald._=--“This brilliant book gives a new value and
distinction to the series. Mr. Gosse’s critical taste and skill have
never been better exemplified. The book is a fine and solid piece of
work.”
=_Manchester Courier._=--“An interesting body of criticism
unsurpassed in its sanity, luminousness, and sense of proportion,
expressed with a directness and clearness which render it all the
more valuable, and with a felicity which gives it a charm, rarely
associated with handbooks of literature.”
=_Globe._=--“It is wonderful that Mr. Gosse should have been able
to get so much fact as well as thought into a space comparatively so
small. We have here, in effect, the cream of the author’s meditations
on the wide field of English literature.”
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