I have moods, in the presence of his simplicity and severity, when I
feel that he and all the classicists may be right. When I see how much
he achieves with his sparing phrase, his sparsely populated scene, his
narrow plot and angular design, when I find him perfectly sufficient
in expression and entirely adequate in suggestion, the Classic alone
appears elegant and true--till I read Shakespeare again; or till I
turn to Nature, whom I do not find sparing or severe, but full of
variety and change and relief, and yet having a sort of elegance and
truth of her own.
In the treatment of historical subjects Alfieri allowed himself every
freedom. He makes Lorenzo de' Medici, a brutal and very insolent
tyrant, a tyrant after the high Roman fashion, a tyrant almost after
the fashion of the late Edwin Forrest. Yet there are some good
passages in the Congiura dei Pazzi, of the peculiarly hard Alfierian
sort:
An enemy insulted and not slain!
What breast in triple iron armed, but needs
Must tremble at him?
is a saying of Giuliano de' Medici, who, when asked if he does not
fear one of the conspirators, puts the whole political wisdom of the
sixteenth century into his answer,--
Being feared, I fear.
The Filippo of Alfieri must always have an interest for English
readers because of its chance relation to Keats, who, sick to death of
consumption, bought a copy of Alfieri when on his way to Rome. As Mr.
Lowell relates in his sketch of the poet's life, the dying man opened
the book at the second page, and read the lines--perhaps the tenderest
that Alfieri ever wrote--
Misero me! sollievo a me non resta
Altro che il pianto, e il pianto è delitto!
Keats read these words, and then laid down the book and opened it no
more. The closing scene of the fourth act of this tragedy can well be
studied as a striking example of Alfieri's power of condensation.
Some of the non-political tragedies of Alfieri are still played;
Ristori has played his Mirra, and Salvini his Saul; but I believe
there is now no Italian critic who praises him so entirely as Giudici
did. Yet the poet finds a warm defender against the French and German
critics in De Sanctis, {note: Saggi Critici. Di Francesco de Sanctis.
Napoli: Antonio Morano. 1859.} a very clever and brilliant Italian,
who accounts for Alfieri in a way that helps to make all Italian
things more intelligible to us. He is speaking of Alfieri's epoch and
social circumstances: “Education had been classic for ages. Our ideal
was Rome and Greece, our heroes Brutus and Cato, our books Livy,
Tacitus, and Plutarch; and if this was true of all Europe, how much
more so of Italy, where this history might be called domestic, a thing
of our own, a part of our traditions, still alive to the eye in our
cities and monuments. From Dante to Machiavelli, from Machiavelli
to Metastasio, our classical tradition was never broken.... In the
social dissolution of the last century, all disappeared except this
ideal. In fact, in that first enthusiasm, when the minds of men
confidently sought final perfection, it passed from the schools into
life, ruled the imagination, inflamed the will. People lived and died
Romanly.... The situations that Alfieri has chosen in his tragedies
have a visible relation to the social state, to the fears and to the
hopes of his own time. It is always resistance to oppression, of
man against man, of people against tyrant.... In the classicism of
Alfieri there is no positive side. It is an ideal Rome and Greece,
outside of time and space, floating in the vague, ... which his
contemporaries filled up with their own life.”
Giuseppe Arnaud, in his admirable criticisms on the Patriotic Poets of
Italy, has treated of the literary side of Alfieri in terms that seem
to me, on the whole, very just: “He sacrificed the foreshortening,
which has so great a charm for the spectator, to the sculptured full
figure that always presents itself face to face with you, and in
entire relief. The grand passions, which are commonly sparing of
words, are in his system condemned to speak much, and to explain
themselves too much.... To what shall we attribute that respectful
somnolence which nowadays reigns over the audience during the
recitation of Alfieri's tragedies, if they are not sustained by some
theatrical celebrity? You will certainly say, to the mediocrity of
the actors. But I hold that the tragic effect can be produced even by
mediocre actors, if this effect truly abounds in the plot of the
tragedy.... I know that these opinions of mine will not be shared by
the great majority of the Italian public, and so be it. The contrary
will always be favorable to one who greatly loved his country, always
desired to serve her, and succeeded in his own time and own manner.
Whoever should say that Alfieri's tragedies, in spite of many eminent
merits, were constructed on a theory opposed to grand scenic effects
and to one of the two bases of tragedy, namely, compassion, would
certainly not say what was far from the truth. And yet, with all this,
Alfieri will still remain that dry, harsh blast which swept away the
noxious miasms with which the Italian air was infected. He will
still remain that poet who aroused his country from its dishonorable
slumber, and inspired its heart with intolerance of servile conditions
and with regard for its dignity. Up to his time we had bleated, and he
roared.” “In fact,” says D'Azeglio, “one of the merits of that proud
heart was to have found Italy Metastasian and left it Alfierian; and
his first and greatest merit was, to my thinking, that he discovered
Italy, so to speak, as Columbus discovered America, and initiated the
idea of Italy as a nation. I place this merit far beyond that of his
verses and his tragedies.”
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri wrote, as I have already stated, some
comedies in his last years; but I must own my ignorance of all six of
them; and he wrote various satires, odes, sonnets, epigrams, and other
poems. Most of these are of political interest; the Miso-Gallo is an
expression of his scorn and hatred of the French nation; the America
Liberata celebrates our separation from England; the Etruria Vendicata
praises the murder of the abominable Alessandro de' Medici by
his kinsman, Lorenzaccio. None of the satires, whether on kings,
aristocrats, or people, have lent themselves easily to my perusal; the
epigrams are signally unreadable, but some of the sonnets are very
good. He seems to find in their limitations the same sort of strength
that he finds in his restricted tragedies; and they are all in the
truest sense sonnets.
Here is one, which loses, of course, by translation. In this and other
of my versions, I have rarely found the English too concise for the
Italian, and often not concise enough: