PARINI.
If the Eighteenth Century was frivolous and luxurious, it was also
picturesque and elegant. The age of Dresden china, the age of Watteau
and Liotard in painting, must also have left its impress of refined
gaiety on poetry. We find that impress in the satires of Pope, in the
lighter poems of Voltaire, and in the musical verse of Parini.
GIUSEPPE PARINI was born of humble parents at Bosisio, a hamlet in the
district of Milan, near the lake of Pusiano, on the twenty-second of
May, 1729. He was educated in Milan at the Arcimboldi Gymnasium, under
the direction of the Barnabite Fathers. He showed marked ability and
strong inclination for literature. But he had his parents to support,
and necessity forced him to become a law-writer. This occupation
furnished him with the means of studying Theology, and he entered the
priesthood. In 1752 he published his first volume of poems, which,
immature as it was, contained sufficient elements of promise to gain
for him many friends and admirers, and he was elected a member of the
Academy of the Trasformati of Milan and of the Arcadia of Rome.
Still, he was in great distress, and he was compelled by poverty to
become a tutor in private families, and when his father died, he sold
the bit of land that came to him in order to supply his mother with
the necessaries of life. But, in spite of misfortune, his ambition was
not dormant, and he determined that nothing from his pen should see
the light until it was brought to the utmost height of perfection. He
conceived the plan of his great work, _Il Giorno,_ and the first part,
entitled _Il Mattino,_ was published in 1763, and the second part,
entitled _Meriggio,_ two years later.
Count Firmian, the Austrian Governor of Lombardy, was induced by
Parini's reputation to entrust him with the editorship of an official
Gazette, and later on gave him the post of Professor of Literature at
the Palatine School at Milan, and after the suppression of the Jesuits
he was appointed in the same capacity at the College of the Brera.
These appointments made his circumstances a little more comfortable,
but his health gradually deteriorated. An affection of the muscles of
the legs seems to have deprived him of che free use of his limbs, and
it became so much worse with years, that he ended by being hardly able
to walk at all. To add to his misfortunes, his spirit was independent,
and his judgment on men and books sharp and even acrimonious. Thus
he made many enemies, and when Count Firmian died, he lost his
appointments just at the time when he wanted support for his declining
years. His sight failed him from overstudy, and at last death came to
him as a release on the fifteenth of August, 1799.
His fame as a great poet rests entirely on _Giorno._ The third part,
_Il Vespro,_ and the fourth, _La Notte,_ were not published until after
his decease. Although the work occupied him for nearly forty years, it
remained incomplete after all, a few lines being wanted to conclude _La
Notte._ He was one of those poets who write and re-write their works
until they reach the last point of elaboration. His mind was not very
fertile, and when a thought occurred to him, it was too precious to be
dismissed until it had been adorned with all the resources of his art.
That art, at its best, is brilliantly successful. His blank verse
attained a perfection which had never yet been witnessed in the
Italian language. Indeed, his blank verse is immeasurably superior
to his rhymes. His sonnets and odes are hardly preferable to the
better class of similar productions in his day, but the moment he
returns to blank verse, he regains all the powers of his mind and
is seen to the greatest advantage. The only defect of his style is
that it occasionally becomes stiff and heavy, probably the result
of over-elaboration. Its peculiar merit is its picturesqueness. It
is impossible to read fifteen or twenty consecutive lines in his
compositions without coming across a picture which a painter might
reproduce on his canvas.
This quality of picturesqueness is peculiarly observable in his best
work _Il Giorno,_ a mock-heroic poem in blank verse, describing a
day in the life of a Milanese nobleman. It must have had some truth
as a satire of manners, for one leader of Milanese Society, Prince
Belgiojoso, was so struck with the resemblance of its hero to himself,
that he hired some ruffians to waylay the author one evening and beat
him severely.
Parini's experiences as a tutor in noble families do not appear to
have been very happy, and his bile was excited against a class which,
even at its best, is apt to be frivolous and self-indulgent. The great
merit of the poem is its picturesqueness and its originality; the great
defect, its monotony of style, though not of thought or imagery. It
is all on one note, that of elaborate irony. He pretends to venerate
profoundly things which he most utterly despises. The difficulty of
sustaining this tone is often painfully apparent. Another defect is
that the poem, unlike the _Rape of the Lock,_ offers no connected
story. It accompanies the hero from the morning toilet to the midnight
ball. Never leaving this one character, a certain monotony is the
result, which the author has modified, though not removed, by a few
happy digressions. If the irony were not always so obviously insisted
upon, it would be at once more effective and more artistic.
As a sample of Parini's style, we may quote the exquisite passage
from the first part of the _Giorno,_ where the hero, after taking his
snuff-box, adorns himself with his rings, his watches (for in the
age of Parini it was the fashion to wear two of everything), and the
crystal locket containing the portrait of his love.
"Ecco a molti colori oro distinto,
Ecco nobil testuggine, su cui
Voluttuosi immagini lo sguardo
Invitan degli eroi. Copia squisita
Di fumido Rapè quivi è serbata,
E di Spagna oleoso, onde lontana,
Pur come suol fastidioso insetto,
Da te fugga la noia. Ecco che smaglia,
Cupido a te di circondar le dita,
Vivo splendor di preziosa anella.
Ami la pietra ove si stanno ignude
Sculte le Grazie, e che il giudeo ti fece
Creder opra d' Argivi, allor ch'ei chiese
Tanto tesoro, e d' erudito il nome
Ti compartì, prostrandosi a tuoi piedi?
Vuoi tu i lieti rubini? O più t' aggrada
Sceglier quest' oggi l'indico adamante
Là dove il lusso incantata costrinse
La fatica e il sudor di cento buoi
Che pria vagando per le tue campagne
Faccean sotto a i lor piè nascere i beni?
Prendi o tutti o qual vuoi; ma l'aureo cerchio
Che sculto intorno è d'amorosi motti
Ognor teco si vegga, il minor dito
Prémati alquanto, e sovvenir ti faccia
Dell' altrui fida sposa a cui se' caro.
Vengane alfin de gli oriuoi gemmati,
Venga il duplice pondo; e a te dell' óro
Che al alte imprese dispensar conviene
Faccia rigida prova. Ohimè che vago
Arsenal minutissimo di cose
Ciondola quindi e ripercosso insieme
Molce con soavissimo tintinno!
Ma v' hai tu il meglio? Ah sì; che i miei precetti
Sagace prevenisti. Ecco risplende,
Chiuso in breve cristallo, il dolce pegno
Di fortunato amor: lunge, o profani!
Chè a voi tant 'oltre penetrar non lice."
This is a style chiselled and finished to the last degree of
perfection; but it is somewhat wanting in ease, and its stiffness is
perceptible even in this quotation, much more in the extent of the
whole poem. Parini was somewhat deficient in tenderness, and that want
casts a dryness over portions of his work.
In this lack of tenderness he was very unlike Pope, with whom he had
otherwise many points of resemblance. Both were poets of the highly
elaborate civilization of their century. Both were intensely satirical
by nature. Both lived in cities, Pope seldom deserting London and its
neighbourhood, Parini seldom being seen beyond the precincts of Milan.
Both suffered from delicate health and deformity. Both were intensely
admired by their contemporaries, and regarded as masters of the Art
of Poetry. Pope, however, was singularly prosperous in the course of
his life, and Parini singularly unfortunate. The Italian poet had a
mind far less fiery and impetuous. He was also far less prolific and
versatile. Pope produced eight or ten masterpieces, each of which alone
would perpetuate his fame; Parini only one. Pope's mind often seems
as it were on fire, so ardent and brilliant are the emanations of his
genius. The light of Parini's verse is softer and mellower, and if he
does not dazzle us with the blinding splendour of Pope at his best,
he fills the ear with musical lines, and gratifies the imagination by
conjuring up pictures, finished like the finest miniatures, infinitely
pleasing and precious to a cultivated taste.