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THE MEMOIRS
OF
COUNT CARLO GOZZI
VOLUME THE FIRST
_PUBLISHERS' NOTE._
_Five hundred and twenty copies of this book printed for England,
and two hundred and sixty for America. Type distributed. Each
copy numbered._
_No._ 606
[Illustration: Carlo Gozzi]
THE MEMOIRS OF
COUNT CARLO GOZZI
TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
With Essays on Italian Impromptu Comedy, Gozzi's Life,
The Dramatic Fables, and Pietro Longhi
BY THE TRANSLATOR
_WITH PORTRAIT AND SIX ORIGINAL ETCHINGS_
BY ADOLPHE LALAUZE
_ALSO ELEVEN SUBJECTS ILLUSTRATING ITALIAN COMEDY BY MAURICE SAND
ENGRAVED ON COPPER BY A. MANCEAU, AND COLOURED BY HAND_
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME THE FIRST
NEW YORK
SCRIBNER & WELFORD
743 & 745 BROADWAY
MDCCCXC
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
_VOLUME THE FIRST._
The Etchings designed and etched by AD. LALAUZE. The Masks, illustrating
the Italian Commedia dell'Arte, by MAURICE SAND, engraved by A. MANCEAU,
and coloured by hand.
I. PORTRAIT OF CARLO GOZZI (_etching_) _Frontispiece_
PAGE
II. THE ITALIAN COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE, OR IMPROMPTU COMEDY 25
III. COLOMBINA (1683) 48
IV. TARTAGLIA (1620) 96
V. BRIGHELLA (1570) 128
VI. IL DOTTORE (1653) 160
VII. SCARAMOUCH (1645) 192
VIII. THE FRANCISCAN FRIAR ON THE GALLEY (_etching_) 216
IX. IL CAPITANO (1668) 256
PREFACE.
After the appearance of my work on Benvenuto Cellini, Mr. J. C. Nimmo
proposed that I should undertake a translation of Count Carlo Gozzi's
_Memorie Inutili_.
The suggestion that such a book might be of interest to the English
public emanated originally, I believe, from Mr. E. Hutchings of
Manchester, in a letter addressed to the _Academy_.[1]
To this gentleman my warmest thanks are due, not only for starting the
idea, which I have carried out, but also for the interest he has shown
in my work during its progress, and for the assistance he has liberally
rendered by the loan of rare books.
I entertained the proposal with some doubt. What I already knew about
Carlo Gozzi amounted to little; and it seemed to me improbable that the
world would willingly have left his Memoirs in oblivion if they
possessed solid qualities.
At the same time, the little that I did know of Gozzi roused my
curiosity. The picturesque aspects of Venetian decadence allured my
fancy. I foresaw that I should have to handle the attractive subject of
Italian impromptu comedy. Finally, it so happens that autobiographies
have always exerted a peculiar fascination for my mind. I rate them
highly as historical and psychological documents. The smallest fragment
of a genuine autobiography seems to me valuable for the student of past
epochs.
I had strong inducements, therefore, to undertake the proposed task.
The first thing to do was to procure a copy of the Memoirs, which exist
only in one edition of three volumes. Mr. Hutchings placed the first two
volumes of the book at my disposal; but the third was missing. It had
been purloined while its owner was stationed in one of the South
American cities. Mr. Nimmo and I waited through four months, making
continued applications to the best European dealers in old books, before
a complete copy was at last disinterred from a Venetian library.
The extraordinary rarity of the _Memorie_ stimulated my growing
interest. After making a preliminary study of the text, I perceived that
this was no common specimen of self-portraiture. In some respects it
seemed to me to be a masterpiece. I felt no doubt that it possessed both
psychological and historical value. A man of a very marked type stood
forth from those pages. He was, moreover, the Venetian representative of
a well-defined social and literary period. This period corresponded
pretty closely with that of our own Samuel Johnson, Fielding, Goldsmith,
Reynolds, David Hume. It was the period which ended with the earthquake
of the French Revolution, the signs of which catastrophe were felt more
ominously in Italy than in our own land. At the same time I recognised
salient qualities of healthy moral sense, of analytical acumen, of
vigorous intelligence, and of caustic humour in the author, mingled with
literary merit of no ordinary kind, vivid transcripts from contemporary
life, dramatic narration, incisive sketches of character, original
reflections on society.
According to my own standard in such matters, Gozzi's Memoirs ranked as
an important document for the study of Italy in the last century.
But was the book worth translating? Would it not suffice to leave the
few existing copies in their obscurity, and to indicate their value for
historians by composing a critical treatise on the author and his times?
My own predilection for autobiographies, and my sense of their utility,
caused me to reject this alternative. I decided to translate, and to
illustrate my translation by tolerably copious original essays.
While engaged upon the work, I have not, however, felt always quite at
ease. It has recurred to my mind that many readers of these volumes will
exclaim: "An English version of Gozzi's self-styled 'useless memoirs'
cannot fail to be twice as useless as the original!" Not all people
share that partiality for autobiographies which in me amounts almost to
a passion.
Besides, I had to face other difficulties. The three chapters which
contain the narratives of Gozzi's love-adventures could not be omitted.
They are too valuable for the light they throw upon his age, and too
important in the man's estimate of his own character. Their suppression
would have been unfair to Gozzi, and would have shorn his Memoirs of
some brilliant bits of local colour. Nevertheless, I knew that the
frankness and the cynical humour of these episodes are out of tune with
modern taste. Much is pardoned by the virtue of our age to classics--to
Plato or Cellini--which would not be excused in a writer of inferior
eminence. But Gozzi is no classic. The fact of his neglect by his own
nation proves that overwhelmingly. Why drag him from deserved oblivion
if these love-stories are indispensable to the rehabilitating process?
My answer to this perplexing query was that the debated passages are
good in literature, true to nature, sound in moral feeling. Their
candour is the candour of a cleanly heart, resolved to bare its secret
by an effort of self-portraiture. Gozzi describes passions common to
that age, and ours, and every age; but he also shows how a determined
character, upright and honourable, can free itself from the
entanglements of natural frailty. The lesson may be somewhat harsh, but
it is salutary. Gozzi has written no single word unworthy of a man of
principle--nothing which is calculated to make vice alluring. Only one--
"Who winks, and shuts his apprehension up
From common sense of what men were and are,
Who would not know what men must be:"--
only such an one can take exception to the narratives of Gozzi's
love-adventures.
Reasoning thus, I determined to include the love-tales in my
translation, having already decided that no translation could be given
to the world without them, and that the book was worthy of
resuscitation. But I felt myself justified in removing those passages
and phrases which might have caused offence to some of my readers.
To translate Gozzi with the minute attention to his style which I
bestowed upon Cellini would have been unpractical. I should even have
inflicted an injury upon my author. It is in many respects an annoying
style; redundant, unequal, diffuse; bearing the stamp of garrulous
senility and imperfect (though copious) command of language.
To condense and manipulate the Memoirs at my own free will, following
the plan of Paul de Musset's abridgement, seemed to me unscrupulous,
even if I abstained from that amusing writer's deliberate
mystifications.
I resolved to convert the larger portion of the book into equivalent
English, allowing myself the license of curtailing certain passages, and
rearranging the order of some chapters. All cases of important
condensation or omission have been indicated in my notes. My account of
the Memoirs and the causes which led to their publication (Introduction,
Part i.) sufficiently explains my right to transpose material from one
place to another. Readers of the Introduction will perceive how
carelessly and accidentally, to serve occasion, the original and unique
edition was put together. It is due in part, I think, to Gozzi's
indifference and haste of compilation that so curious a specimen of
autobiography fell into almost absolute oblivion.
We have only one edition of the _Memorie_, that of Palese, under the
date Venezia, 1797. Therefore nothing need be said upon the topic of
bibliography. I may, however, mention that the few copies of this rare
book which have fallen under my inspection present some features of
difference, indicating the random way in which the sheets were made up
for publication.
Among English critics of distinction, one only, so far as I am aware,
has mentioned Gozzi's Memoirs. That is Vernon Lee, in her _Studies of
the Eighteenth Century in Italy_. But Vernon Lee knew the book only
through Paul de Musset's "perversion." Accordingly, what she has to say
about the man is less valuable than the vivid, if not always accurate,
account she gives of his _Fiabe_.
The volumes I am now presenting to the public claim at least one
merit--that of dealing with a hitherto almost untouched document of
historical and literary importance.
I flatter myself that readers will be found to appreciate the brilliant,
though prolix and desultory, portraiture of life in Venice during the
last century which these "useless memoirs" offer to their imagination.
Finally, I wish here to record my mature opinion about Carlo Gozzi's
character for veracity and general uprightness. I think that I have been
hardly just, and certainly not generous, to Gozzi in the Introduction
and the notes appended to my version. Wishing to avoid the _lues
biographica_, I assumed a somewhat too purely critical attitude while
writing. Careful perusal of the proofs makes me feel that the truth
would not have suffered had I entirely suppressed some suspicions and
concealed some personal want of sympathy with the man. Allowing for his
peculiar and occasionally repellent character--the character of an
"original" and a confirmed old bachelor--Gozzi seems to me now to have
been as honest and open-hearted as a gentleman should be.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
AM HOF, DAVOS PLATZ,
_March 25, 1889_.
_BOOKS USED AND REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK._
1. CARLO GOZZI. "Memorie Inutili." 3 vols. Venice. 1797.
2. CARLO GOZZI. "Opere." 10 vols. Venice. Colombani and other
publishers. 1772-1791.
3. ERNESTO MASI. "Le Fiabe di Carlo Gozzi." 2 vols. Bologna.
Zanichelli. 1885.
4. PIER ANTONIO GRATAROL. "Narrazione Apologetica." 2 vols.
Venezia. Gatti. 1797.
5. PAUL DE MUSSET. "Mémoires de Charles Gozzi." Paris. Charpentier.
1848.
6. GIOV. BATT. MAGRINI. "Carlo Gozzi e le Fiabe." Cremona.
Feraboli. 1876. The same work, second edition: "I Tempi la Vita e
gli Scritti di Carlo Gozzi." Benevento. De Gennaro. 1883.
7. MICHELE SCHERILLO. "La Commedia dell' Arte in Italia." Torino.
Loescher. 1884.
8. ADOLFO BARTOLI. "Scenari Inediti della Commedia dell' Arte."
Firenze. Sansone. 1880.
9. ALFONSE ROYER. "Carlo Gozzi, Théâtre Fiabesque." Paris. Michel
Lévy. 1865.
10. CARLO GOLDONI. "Mémoires." 3 vols. Paris. Veuve Duchesne. 1787.
11. FERDINANDO GALANTI. "Carlo Goldoni e Venezia nel Secolo xviii."
Padova. Samin. 1882.
12. P. G. MOLMENTI. "Carlo Goldoni." Venezia. Ongania. 1880.
13. VERNON LEE. "Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy."
London. Satchell. 1880.
14. MAURICE SAND. "Masques et Bouffons." 2 vols. Paris. A. Lévy
1862.
15. S. ROMANIN. "Storia Documentata di Venezia." Vols. vii.-ix.
Venezia. Naratovitch. 1860.
16. GIUSEPPE BOERIO. "Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano." Venezia.
Cocchini. 1856.
17. PHILARÈTE CHASLES. "Études sur l'Espagne, etc." ("D'un Théâtre
Espagnol-Vénitien au xviii^{me.} Siècle et de Charles Gozzi").
Paris. Amyot. 1847.
18. N. TOMMASÈO. "Storia Civile nella Letteraria." Roma, Torino,
Firenze. E Loescher. 1872.
19. EUGENIO CAMERINI. "I Precursori del Goldoni." Milano. Sonzogno.
1872.
20. "Mémoires de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, écrites par
lui-même. Bruxelles. Rozet. 1876.
THE MEMOIRS
OF
COUNT CARLO GOZZI
INTRODUCTION.
PART I.
_CARLO GOZZI AND PIERO ANTONIO GRATAROL._
1. The ancestry and social standing of Count Carlo Gozzi--His
collision with Piero Antonio Gratarol, Secretary to the Venetian
Collegio--How this quarrel led to the composition of Gozzi's
Memoirs--Their importance as a document for the social history of
Venice in the eighteenth century.--2. The interweaving of this
episode in Gozzi's Life with his literary warfare against Goldoni,
which culminated in the production of his ten dramatic fables.--3.
Sketch of Gratarol's life, and his relation to Andrea and Caterina
Tron--Gozzi's _liaison_ with the actress Teodora Ricci--Gozzi's
comedy, _Le Droghe d'Amore_--Turned by Mme. Tron into a satire upon
Gratarol--Gratarol flies from Venice to Stockholm, is proscribed by
the Republic, and loses all his fortune--His _Narrazione
Apologetica_--Gozzi takes up the pen in self-defence--The
Inquisitors of State forbid the publication of his autobiographical
polemic--Gratarol's death in Madagascar--Circumstances which
induced Gozzi in 1797, after the fall of the Republic of St. Mark,
to complete and publish his Memoirs.--4. Gozzi's literary style and
personal character--The false conception of the man and his work
which has been diffused by Paul de Musset.
I.
In the year 1797 there appeared at Venice a book entitled _Memorie
inutili della vita di Carlo Gozzi, scritte da lui medesimo e pubblicate
per umiltà_, "Useless Memoirs of the Life of Carlo Gozzi, written by
himself and published from motives of humility." Its author, though he
bore the title of Count, and belonged to an honourable family in
Venice, was not of patrician descent. That is to say, none of his lineal
ancestors had acquired the right of voting in the Grand Council or of
holding the highest offices of state. They ranked with the citizens of
the Republic, who took no direct part in the government, but who were
permitted to discharge important functions as secretaries of several
departments and as ambassadors of the second class. By his mother he
drew half of his blood from one of the oldest and proudest of Venetian
noble families, the Tiepolos. Thus, socially, if not politically, birth
placed him almost on a level with the best Venetian aristocracy.
In the year 1797 he was seventy-seven; and although he had been a man of
some mark in his early days, the public had lost sight of him for the
last seventeen years. His reputation depended upon a large number of
dramatic pieces, satirical poems, and prose compositions, mostly of a
controversial kind. Two main episodes in his literary life conferred a
slightly dubious notoriety upon his name. The first of these was the
long and bitter war he waged against the two playwrights, Chiari and
Goldoni, between the years 1756 and 1762. The other was an unfortunate
series of events which brought him into collision with a certain Pier
Antonio Gratarol in 1777. Gratarol, like his adversary, was a Venetian
citizen, allied by descent to the great patrician family of Contarini.
Unlike Gozzi, he early embarked on a political career, was one of the
secretaries of the Collegio, and looked forward to the highest
appointments which were open to a man of his rank. The collision with
Count Gozzi, which I shall have to describe with some minuteness, ended
in Gratarol's voluntary exile from Venice, the confiscation of his
property by the State, and a public scandal of sufficient importance to
attract the attention of serious historians.[2] Had it not been for this
tragi-comic episode in his past life, Gozzi would never have written his
Memoirs; and had the memory of the scandal not been revived some years
after Gratarol's death, when the old Republic of S. Mark had fallen in
the crash of the French Revolution, he would never have published them.
This autobiography is distinctly an apologetical work, a portrait drawn
by Gozzi in self-defence, and intended to vindicate himself from the
aspersions cast by Gratarol upon his character. Its main object is to
set forth in the fairest light his own conduct during the unlucky
collision to which I have alluded. Yet though so limited in aim, the
interest which it possesses for us at the present time, is far wider
than belongs to that unhappy squabble, long since buried in oblivion.
Gozzi's conception of an _Apologia pro vita sua_ was a comprehensive
one. He resolved to reveal his character under all its aspects, from
his childhood until the date 1777, dealing now with matters of general
importance, now with the private affairs of his home, touching upon the
literature of his age, discussing fashions, criticising philosophy,
entering into minute particulars regarding theatres and actors,
describing his love-affairs with a frankness worthy of Rousseau, and
painting a series of lively portraits in which a large variety of
individuals from all classes are presented to our notice. The result is
that his autobiography, although in the strictest sense of that term an
occasional production, forms one of the most valuable documents we
possess for a study of Venetian society during the decadence of the
Republic. Gozzi was gifted with a penetrative and observant mind, strong
sense of humour, and a power of brilliant description. On the faults of
his style and the defects of his character, I shall speak hereafter. At
present it is enough to indicate the importance of the Memoirs as
furnishing a vivid picture of Venetian life in the eighteenth century.
Venice, at that period, was fortunate in autobiographers. She possessed
Goldoni and Casanova as well as Gozzi, not to mention smaller folk like
Da Ponte, the poet of Mozart's _Don Giovanni_. But when we compare the
three life-records of Goldoni, Casanova, and Gozzi, by far the deepest
historical interest, in my opinion, belongs to the last. Casanova's
Memoirs are almost excluded from general use by the nature of their
predominant pre-occupation. Moreover, they deal but partially with
Venice, and only with limited aspects of its social life. Goldoni's,
though more humane, and in all that concerns tone impeccable, turn too
exclusively upon the history of his dramatic works to be of great
importance as an historical document. Moreover, the scene is laid in
several provinces of Italy and transferred before its close to France.
Gozzi, on the contrary, never quits the soil of Venice. Except when he
served as a soldier for three years in the Venetian province of
Dalmatia, he does not appear to have travelled further than to Pordenone
on one side and to Padua on the other. Of strong aristocratic instincts,
but condemned to comparative poverty by the reckless expenditure of his
parents and grandparents, Gozzi enjoyed opportunities of studying the
society of Venice from several points of view. His enthusiasm for
literature and partiality for professional actors brought him acquainted
with the scholars and the Bohemians of that epoch. His management of the
encumbered estates of his family introduced him to advocates,
solicitors, brokers, Jews, tenants, and all manner of strange people.
His birth made him the companion of patricians. His military service
involved him in the wild pleasures and perils of scapegrace lads upon a
foreign soil. Consequently, the records of a life so varied in
experience, while strictly confined within the narrow circuit of
Venetian society, could not fail to be rich in details for the student.
It may be regretted that Gozzi chose to write in a didactic spirit. We
could willingly have exchanged his long-winded excursions into the
sphere of moral philosophy for a few more graphic sketches in the style
of his Dalmatian adventures.
II.
This biographical and historical interest, far more than Gozzi's quarrel
with Goldoni or his collision with Gratarol, is the reason why I thought
it worth while to translate a book which has become excessively rare in
the original. Nothing can be duller or more contemptible, to my mind,
than the chronicle of literary quarrels. The Goldoni-Gozzi episode would
be devoid of permanent attraction were it not for the curious light
thrown by it upon the obscure subject of impromptu comedy, and for the
ten extraordinary _Fiabe Teatrali_ from Gozzi's pen to which it gave
rise. Again, the Gratarol-Gozzi episode, as we shall presently see, is
almost humiliating in the pettiness of its details, and painful through
its tragic termination.
The Memoirs contain a full and tolerably accurate account of the
Gratarol incident. Yet I cannot dispense with a summary of this affair,
based upon a comparison of Gozzi's story with that of Gratarol in his
_Narrazione Apologetica_. The extreme importance of the event in the
lives of both men, and the fact that it constitutes the subject of
Gozzi's autobiography in quite as serious a sense as that in which the
Persian war forms the subject of Herodotus' history, render this
unavoidable.
III.
Pier Antonio Gratarol was a young man between thirty and forty in the
year 1776. He had grown up with an ample fortune and without a father's
control; had imbibed French ways of thinking and French customs; had
married, and after marriage had separated from his wife.[3] He
represented that class of intellectual and political Liberals whom
Gozzi, with his Conservative prejudices, regarded as dangerous to the
well-being of the State. He was an open libertine in his relations with
women, and did not strive to conceal those principles of personal
liberty which the _philosophes_ were spreading throughout Europe. At the
same time he represented a family which had served the Republic in
distinguished offices for many generations; he possessed excellent
abilities, and had every reason to expect a brilliant future. There was
nothing in his conduct or in his domestic circumstances to distinguish
him unfavourably from a multitude of gay livers and free-thinkers in the
corrupt Venice of that epoch. He had recently become eligible for the
post of ambassador at a foreign Court; and was already nominated as
Resident in Naples. This nomination required, however, to be confirmed
by the Grand Council; and circumstances, which need not be enlarged
upon, rendered the grant of money for his embassy a matter of debate.[4]
Unfortunately, Gratarol was a person of vain, imperious temper, puffed
up with the sense of his own merits, and incapable of correcting his
antipathies. His French tendencies--political, moral, social,
literary--fashionable for the most part--prejudiced the minds of
influential people in the highest departments of the government against
him. Finally, he had made an implacable enemy of a great lady, who at
that time exercised almost dictatorial control over the councils of the
State. This was Caterina Dolfin Tron, the wife of Andrea Tron,
Procuratore di San Marco, whose immense influence in the Council of Ten,
the Consulta, and the Senate enabled him to do what he liked with the
Grand Council.[5] Caterina's husband was popularly known as _Il
Padrone_, or the Master of Venice, and he doted on her with a blind
affection. She was a woman of brilliant parts, imbued, like Gratarol,
with advanced French notions, meddlesome in public matters, aspiring to
manage the politics of Venice and to dictate laws to society from her
own reception-rooms. Gratarol began by paying her wise attentions; but
for some reason unknown to us, he had lately dropped his courtship and
indulged in satirical comments upon Caterina's private conduct. She
vowed to effect his ruin, and circumstances enabled her to do so.
Gozzi, meanwhile, had for the last five years or so assumed the position
of titular protector to a married actress called Teodora Ricci. He does
his best to persuade us that the _liaison_ was one of friendship; but it
is clear that, upon whatever footing he stood toward the Ricci, he felt
a real affection for this woman. For her he composed the dramatic works
of his second or Spanish manner. He attended her in public, introduced
her to the houses of his friends, and stood godfather to her second
child. We are, in fact, met here by an obscurity not unlike that which
involves the more famous connection of Congreve with Mrs. Bracegirdle.
Gratarol, pursuing the usual course of his amours, made the Ricci's
acquaintance, became her lover, compromised her reputation, and wounded
Gozzi so deeply in his sense of honour, that he broke off familiar
relations with the actress.
Such was the position of affairs when Gozzi, who wrote assiduously for
the theatre, produced a drama modelled on a Spanish piece by Tirso da
Molina. It was called _Le Droghe d'Amore_, and contained a minor part,
which might well have passed either for a sketch of manners or for a
personal satire on Gratarol. Gozzi vehemently and persistently denied
that he had any intention of caricaturing his rival on the stage; and if
we trust what he relates about the composition of the play in question,
it is hardly possible that he can have had Gratarol in view when he
designed it. At the same time, we are bound to concede that the
offensive part of Don Adone fitted nicely on to Gratarol. Mme. Ricci,
smarting under Gozzi's withdrawal from her intimacy, took for granted
that a satire was intended. This woman's hysterical imagination turned a
mere _jeu d'esprit_ of her old friend into a formidable weapon of
attack against her new lover. Through her dangerous interference it
became an instrument, in the hands of other parties, to annoy Gozzi and
to overwhelm Gratarol. She began by poisoning the latter's mind with
gossiping insinuations. Gratarol's fretful vanity and sense of
self-importance made him boil with fury at the thought of being put upon
the stage. He moved heaven and earth to get the play suspended;
imprudently, as it turned out, because this step brought him face to
face with his real enemy, Mme. Tron. The manager of the theatre, to whom
Gozzi had given his comedy, took the manuscript at once to that lady.
This unscrupulous person now saw her opportunity for inflicting
vengeance upon Gratarol. She induced the manager to redistribute the
parts so that the _rôle_ of Don Adone should be assigned to an actor who
resembled Gratarol. She taught this man how to imitate Gratarol's dress
and gestures, and turned what may in fact have been an innocent
production of Gozzi's pen into a satire of the most insulting pungency.
At that point the _Droghe d'Amore_ passed out of the control of those
whom it privately concerned.
After this, Gratarol, driven mad by wounded self-conceit, floundered
from one imprudence into another. He applied to the highest tribunal of
the State, and laid an information against Gozzi. Whether the
Inquisitors did not choose to cancel the license already granted for
the _Droghe d'Amore_, or whether they were influenced by Mme. Tron, does
not greatly signify. At any rate, the comedy continued to be acted.
Gratarol grew more and more irritated, uttered indignant invectives
against the tyrants of the State, and displayed a spirit of
insubordination which was perilous in Venice. Mme. Tron followed up her
advantage, and caused his appointment to the embassy at Naples to be
suspended. Thereupon Gratarol made up his mind to quit Venice. He knew
that this act would expose himself to outlawry and his family to ruin. A
civil servant of the Republic had no legal right to sever himself from
his engagements without permission. The mere fact of doing so caused him
to be treated as a contumacious rebel. But instead of assuming an
indifferent attitude, instead of biding his time in patience and letting
the storm blow over--which it certainly would have done, since a popular
reaction had already begun to operate in his favour--he departed for
Padua on the 11th of September 1777, proceeded to Ceneda, crossed the
frontier on the 25th, travelled to Munich, thence to Brunswick, and
finally to Stockholm, where he arrived in March. Meanwhile a
proclamation was issued against him at Venice. This curious document is
a relic from the savage days of the Middle Ages.[6] It set a price upon
his head, offered rewards to any one who should bring him alive to
Venice or should prove his assassination, cancelled all contracts made
by him during twelve months before the date of December 22, 1777,
confiscated his property during his lifetime, and ordered the whole of
it to be sold by public auction. The latter portions of the ban were
carried into effect. Everything which belonged to Gratarol was sold by
the Avogadori;[7] and what seems really scandalous in this transaction
is that his furniture and jewels passed into the possession of an
Avogadore, Zorzi Angaran, while his landed estates fell to the share of
the Avvocato fiscale dell' Avogaderia, Galante, at the ridiculously low
sum of 2000 ducats.[8] Even his wife, who possessed a dowry of 25,000
ducats, had to institute long and costly lawsuits for the recovery of
what belonged to her and formed no part of the outlaw's estate.
Caterina Dolfin Tron, aided by her victim's rashness and impatience, had
succeeded in her plan to ruin him. But a retribution awaited this lady
in the form of an eloquent invective hurled by Gratarol against his
enemies from Stockholm. The so-called _Narrazione Apologetica_ was
printed there in 1779, and soon found its way to Venice. It contained a
detailed account of the events which had induced him to take flight,
arraigned his powerful enemies in terms of the bitterest sarcasm,
exposed their private foibles, and flashed a sharp light upon the
political corruption of the decadent Republic. Gozzi, of course, came in
for his share of abuse;[9] but Gratarol's most telling shafts were
directed against Mme. Tron and the patrician ring which tyrannised over
Venice. It is believed that the scandal of this pamphlet was one reason
why Andrea Tron failed to be elected Doge in 1779.
On perusing Gratarol's _Narrazione Apologetica_, Count Carlo Gozzi
determined to clear his own character and to lay his version of the
story before the public. With this view he composed a lengthy _Epistola
Confutatoria_, taking up each of Gratarol's points in detail, and
discussing his arguments with a strange mixture of acuteness, fury, and
contemptuous severity. He also conceived the notion of writing his
Memoirs, in order that the whole tenor of his life might be clearly
understood.[10] The Confutation and the larger part of the Memoirs were
finished in 1780. But the Government decided that Gratarol's scandalous
pamphlet should be left unanswered. No Venetian pen was allowed to
notice it;[11] and Gozzi received information that the Inquisitors of
State would take the matter up if he attempted to show further fight.
The authorities acted with prudence in this matter. Nobody but Gozzi had
anything to gain by his refutation of Gratarol. With regard to the
corruption of Venice, the despotism of a few leading patricians, and the
back-stairs influence of Mme. Tron, Gratarol had only told the truth. He
had told it indeed emphatically, bitterly, and probably with some
exaggeration. Yet, unhappily, it was the truth. No amount of
apologetical rhetoric could have broken down his arguments. A public
discussion would have disturbed the public mind, and many dark secrets
and dirty jobs must certainly have come to light.
Gozzi had to choose between the _piombi_ or the sacrifice of his already
finished manuscripts. Of course he did not hesitate. Both Confutation
and Memoirs were thrown at once aside; and they might even now have
been lying in some neglected corner of his ancient mansion had it not
been for the events which have to be related.
Gratarol never returned to Venice. From Sweden he passed to England,
where he was hospitably received and befriended by members of our
aristocracy. Failing, however, to get any appointment in London, he
crossed to North America, travelled southwards to Brazil, and again left
that country in the train of some political adventurers. The party were
betrayed and robbed by the captain of their vessel, and cast ashore upon
the coast of Madagascar. Here Gratarol perished miserably in October
1785. His English friends sent information of this event to the Venetian
Government; but the evidence was judged insufficient, and the
restitution of his estates to two female cousins, who were his only
heirs, was refused until the fall of the Republic. When that took place,
Gratarol's friends immediately republished the _Narrazione Apologetica_
at Venice, and appealed to General Bonaparte for justice. This was in
1797.
Gozzi, who had now nothing to fear from Inquisitors of State, and whose
reputation was again exposed to calumny, took his manuscripts from their
drawer, dusted them, and placed them in the hands of a publisher. In the
month of July 1797 he issued a manifesto to the Venetian public,
proclaiming his intention.[12] "Availing myself of the beneficent
freedom now permitted to the press, I have drawn my manuscript from the
tomb in which it has lain during the past seventeen years." He refers to
the recent republication of Gratarol's _Narrazione_, and declares that
this alone has forced him to resuscitate the memory of bygone quarrels
and offences. At the same time he pays a high tribute to Gratarol's
work. "This book, which appeared at Stockholm in 1779, and which I had
forgotten, without however forgetting the unjust tricks and jobs by
which its truly pitiable author was overwhelmed with ruin, contains a
great number of indubitable truths, and it is only to be regretted that
he dictated it under the influence of blind anger and venomous
resentment, instead of philosophic calm."
It appears that at this time Gozzi did not intend to publish his
_Epistola Confutatoria_, written in 1780, and certainly dictated under
the influence of anger as hot, hatred as fierce, and resentment as
venomous as any which inspired his adversary. Indeed, it may here be
observed that Gratarol, though he calls Gozzi a hypocrite, a huckster,
an impostor, and so forth, is more measured in his language than the
latter. Yet, while Gozzi was passing the sheets of his Memoirs through
the press,[13] Gratarol's friends issued another book entitled _Last
Notices regarding Pietro Antonio Gratarol, with documents relating to
his death_. In this they expressed a hope that Gozzi would not proceed
with the publication announced by his manifesto, and incautiously
printed a document alluding to Gozzi in the following by no means
flattering terms: "the infernal hypocrisy of a satirical liar."[14]
Furthermore, upon the 29th of August, having obtained a decree for the
restitution of Gratarol's property to his cousins, they published this
edict together with a preface, signed Widiman,[15] in which they had the
folly to rake up the whole tedious story of Gratarol's wrongs again.
Once more Gozzi was annoyed with well-worn phrases like the following:
"The persecuting furies of a haughty woman, the talent and the passion
of a very famous author, made him (Gratarol), to the horror of all
right-minded people, become the object of scorn and ridicule upon a
public theatre prostituted to the uses of a vile and infamous buffoon."
This was more than Gozzi could stand. Firmly holding to the opinion that
it was only Gratarol's folly and Mme. Tron's vindictiveness which had
caused the scandal of _Le Droghe d'Amore_, he now resolved to publish
everything which could establish the truth of his own story. Therefore
he incorporated the _Epistola Confutatoria_ in the third volume of the
Memoirs, and printed the notorious comedy for the first time at the end
of the book. Meantime he invited Gratarol's friends to inspect the MS.
of this play, which he declared to be the sole and original autograph,
in order that they might convince themselves that his statements
regarding its composition were accurate. Having now made up his mind to
supplement the two parts of his book with a third, he carried down his
Memoirs to the date of March 1798, when they came to a sudden
termination. All three volumes bear the date 1797; but their pagination
and some other trifling matters lead me to believe that the first two
were printed in that year, the third in the following spring.
IV.
The circumstances under which Gozzi's _Memorie_ were produced
sufficiently account for their peculiar form, or rather formlessness. He
wrote hurriedly, with a polemical object in view, and paid no attention
to style. This he confesses in the manifesto.[16] "I have not striven to
express myself with the exactitude, the raciness, and the elegances of
our language." As a literary performance, this autobiography is
remarkably unequal, a thing of rags and patches, some of which are of
fine silk or velvet, others of rough sackcloth. Their main defect as
regards composition is prolixity. Gozzi does not know when to stop, and
he uses three phrases where one would have sufficed. He is also very
incoherent, spinning interminable periodic sentences, which sometimes do
not hang together grammatically or logically. While insisting so
magisterially upon the purity of Italian diction, he indulges in uncouth
Lombardisms, and slips at times into Venetian dialect. We must remember
that he grew up practically without education. He acquired his
knowledge, cultivated his taste, and formed his style by reading without
discrimination and by writing without fixed purpose. This accounts for
the digressive, irregular, improvisatory manner of his prose. It has its
own merits, however, of vehemence, a copious vocabulary, dramatic vigour
in narration, and occasionally graphic descriptions.
It may be asked why he called his Memoirs "useless." Partly no doubt out
of an ironical self-consciousness, which marked his peculiar species of
humour; but partly also as a slap in the face to his readers. He tells
them candidly in one of his prefaces that he considers the moral
reflections with which the book is filled to be both sound and valuable,
but that the false science of the age is certain to render them of no
effect.[17] In like manner, when he asserts that the Memoirs were
published out of humility, this is partly true and partly false. Gozzi
piqued himself on being what I may call a Stoic-Democritean philosopher.
It was his pride to bear everything with endurance and to laugh at
everything, himself and his own concerns included, with contemptuous
indulgence. Yet he deserved the stinging epigram which Goldoni uttered
on his character: "A smile upon his lips and venom in his heart." His
light-heartedness and risibility were often assumed to hide bitter
resentment or boiling indignation. No man had less of genuine humility
than Gozzi, or more of the "pride which apes humility." _Umiltà_ upon
his title-page has much the same effect as _Umiltà_ in huge Gothic
letters beneath the coronets and crests of the Borromeo family above
their haughty palace-portals. As a single instance, I might select the
supercilious condescension with which he invariably treats his friends
the actors. They are _canaille_, to be consorted with by a gentleman
merely for amusement. His repeated boast that he gave his literary work
away, and his sneers at his brother Gasparo for making money, do not
savour of a really humble spirit. At the bottom of all he says about his
foolhardiness in Dalmatia there lurks a proud self-satisfaction.
To what extent was he truthful? That is a difficult question to answer.
I believe that in the main he tried to be, and was, veracious throughout
the Memoirs; but that he considered a certain economy of statement, a
certain evasion of direct facts, and a certain forensic chicanery to be
permissible in openly controversial composition. This renders his
account of the Gratarol episode somewhat suspicious, particularly when
we remember that he was writing with the _Narrazione Apologetica_ before
his eyes. It is clear that he wished to conceal his real age, that he
falsified the date of his departure for Dalmatia, and that he somewhat
misstated the nature of his intimacy with Mme. Tron. In each of these
cases it was his object to put himself in as favourable a light as
possible face to face with Gratarol, first by making it appear that he
was ten years or so younger than his actual age when he began the
liaison with Mme. Ricci, and secondly by slurring over the fact of a
partial collusion with Gratarol's deadly enemy. It would take up too
much space to expand the arguments by which I have arrived at these
conclusions; but the notes to my translation will make each point clear
in its proper place.
On the whole, Gozzi strikes me as rather inclined to the vices of too
open speech and cynicism than to those of dissimulation and hypocrisy.
He can hardly have been a lovable man. His language about his mother
proves that. She treated him ill, it is true, and gave him but a scanty
share of her maternal kindness. Yet this does not justify the freezing
sarcasms with which he refers to her. They are no doubt humorous, but
their humour is of a savage kind. Toward the rest of his family he
behaved with fairness, candour, and uprightness. He devoted himself to
the task of repairing their ruined fortunes, and discharged the duties
of solicitor and estate-agent for all of them through a long series of
years. He bore their bad tempers and frivolities with good-humoured
contempt, and did not even resent being satirised by Gasparo in a comedy
upon the public stage of Venice. Gasparo, his weak but genial elder
brother, he truly loved, although, with characteristic acidity, he
always lets us understand what a poor creature he was. Women had not the
privilege of being highly appreciated by Gozzi. He treats them in all
his writings as inferior creatures, and exposes their frailties with
ruthless severity. Either he only knew the worst side of the fair sex,
or was incapable of seeing the best. To men he shows himself more just
and sympathetic. Though he made but few intimate friends, these remained
firmly attached to him till death.
We must divest our minds of the false conception of Gozzi's character
with which Paul de Musset hoaxed the French critics and Vernon Lee. He
was no dramatic dreamer and abstract visionary, but a keen hard-headed
man of business, caustic in speech and stubborn in act, adhering
tenaciously to his opinions and his rights, acidly and sardonically
humorous, eccentric, but fully aware of his eccentricities, and apt to
use them as the material of burlesque humour. Nobody would have laughed
more loudly at De Musset's fancy picture of his fairy-haunted palace
than Gozzi would have done, or have more keenly relished the joke of
turning his practical self into a sprite-tormented idealist.[18]
The Memoirs lie now before English readers, and Carlo Gozzi will be
known to them for the first time--certainly for the first time as he
really was. It is not necessary, therefore, to spin out this
introduction. Otherwise, it would have been interesting to compare the
portraits painted of themselves by those four eminent Italian
contemporaries--Goldoni, Gozzi, Casanova, and Alfieri. Four characters
more diverse in quality, and more admirably placed upon the literary
canvas, could hardly, I think, be found in any other nation or in any
other century.
[Illustration: THE
ITALIAN COMMEDIA DELL' ARTE, OR IMPROMPTU COMEDY]