_Sequel of my literary quarrels.--Goldoni and Chiari.--My resolve to
amuse my fellow-citizens with fantastic dramatic pieces on the stage._
This new fashion of unlicensed freedom and of sheer enthusiasm made
rapid strides, because it was convenient and comfortable. Intellects,
misled and muddled, lost the sense of what is good and bad in writing.
They applauded the worst and the best without distinction. Little by
little, commonplace and transparent stupidities on the one
hand--stupidities sonorous and oracular upon the other, were adopted in
the practice of literature. Pure, cultivated, judicious, and natural
style took on the aspect of debilitated languor and despicable
affectation.
The contagion spread so rapidly and so widely, that even men like
Doctor Carlo Goldoni and the Abbe Pietro Chiari were universally hailed
and eulogized as first-rate Italian authors. Their original and
incomparable achievements were lauded to the skies. To them we owed a
fit of fashion, which lasted some few lustres, and which helped to
overthrow the principles of sound and chaste expression.
These rivals, both of them dramatic poets, and each the critic of the
other, were strong enough to heat the brains of our Venetian folk to
boiling-point, so that the public formed two stormy parties, which came
well-nigh to fisticuffs over the sublimities of their respective idols.
A whirlwind of comedies, tragi-comedies, and tragedies, composts of
imperfections, occupied the public stage; the one genius of inculture
vying with the other in the quantity he could produce. A diarrhoea of
dramatic works, romances, critical epistles, poems, cantatas, and
apologies by both the Vandals poured from the press and deluged Venice.
All the youth were stunned, distracted, and diverted from good sense by
din and tumult. Only the Granelleschi kept themselves untainted by this
Goldonio-Chiaristic epidemic.
We did not shun the theatres. We were not so unjust as to refuse his
share of merit as a playwright to Goldoni. We did not confound him with
Chiari, to whom we conceded nothing, or but little. Yet we were unable
to glance with other eyes than those of pitying derision upon the
tables of fine ladies, the writing-desks of gentlemen, the stalls of
booksellers and artisans, the hands and arms of passers in the street,
the rooms of public and private schools, colleges, even convents--all of
which were loaded with Goldoni's comedies, Chiari's comedies and
romances, the thousand trivialities and absurdities of both
quill-drivers--while everything the scribblers sent to press was valued
as a mirror of reform in literature, a model of right thinking and good
writing.
I hope that no one will be scandalised if I report a saying which I
heard with my own ears. There was a certain Abbe Salerni, Venetian-born,
a preacher of the gospel. He was in the habit of thundering forth
Lenten-sermons from the pulpits, and had a multitude of eager listeners.
This man announced one day, with the air of frank and sturdy
self-conceit, that he had arrived at composing his oratorical
masterpieces upon sacred themes by the unremitting study of Goldoni's
comedies.
I ought to render a candid account here of the impression made upon me
by those two deluges of ink, Goldoni and Chiari. To begin with Goldoni.
I recognised in him an abundance of comic motives, truth, and
naturalness. Yet I detected a poverty and meanness of intrigue; nature
copied from the fact, not imitated; virtues and vices ill-adjusted, vice
too frequently triumphant; plebeian phrases of low double meaning,
particularly in his Venetian plays; surcharged characters; scraps and
tags of erudition, stolen Heaven knows where, and clumsily brought in to
impose upon the crowd of ignoramusses. Finally, as a writer of
Italian--except in the Venetian dialect, of which he showed himself a
master--he seemed to me not unworthy to be placed among the dullest,
basest, and least correct authors who have used our idiom.
In spite of all the praises showered upon Goldoni, paid for or gratis,
by journalists, preface-writers, romancers, apologists, Voltaires, I do
not think that, with the single exception of his _Bourru Bienfaisant_,
which he wrote at Paris, which suited the French theatre, but which had
no success in its Italian translation here, he ever produced a perfect
dramatic piece. At the same time I must add that he never produced one
without some excellent comic trait. In my eyes he had always the
appearance of a man who was born with the innate sense of how sterling
comedies should be composed, but who, by defect of education, by want of
discernment, by the necessity of satisfying the public and supplying new
wares to the poor Italian comedians through whom he gained his
livelihood, and by the hurry in which he produced so many pieces every
year to keep himself afloat, was never able to fabricate a single play
which does not swarm with faults.
In the course of our playful and airy polemics--polemics which had more
the form of witty squibs than formal criticisms--polemics which we
Granelleschi never deigned to aim directly, in due form of siege,
against the outpoured torrents of Goldoni and Chiari, but which we meant
to act as sinapisms on the minds of sluggish youths, besotted by that
trash and froth of ignorance--I once defied the whole world to point out
a single play of Goldoni's which could be styled perfect. I confined
myself to one, because I did not care to be drowned in an ocean; and I
felt confident that I could fulfil my part of the challenge by making
even boys and children see how the public had been taken in. No one
stooped to take my glove up, and to name the perfect comedy. The goad
and lash of pleasantry, with which I exposed Goldoni's stupidities, only
elicited the following two verses, which he wrote and printed, and which
exactly illustrate the stupidity I accused him of:--
"Pur troppo io so che buon scrittor non sono,
E che ai fonti miglior non ho bevuto."
("Too well I know that I am no good writer,
And that I have not drunk at the best fountains.")
Proceeding next to Abbe Chiari. In him I found a brain inflamed,
disordered, bold to rashness, and pedantic; plots dark as astrological
predictions; leaps and jumps demanding seven-league boots; scenes
isolated, disconnected from the action, foisted in for the display of
philosophical sententious verbiage; some good theatrical surprises, some
descriptions felicitous in their blunt _naivete_; pernicious ethics;
and, as for the writer, I found him one of the most turgid, most
inflated, nay, the most turgid, the most inflated, of this century. I
once saw a sonnet of his, printed and posted on the shops in Venice; it
was composed to celebrate the recovery from illness of a patrician, and
began with this verse:--
"Sull'incude fatal del nostro pianto."
("Upon the fatal anvil of our tears.")
Nothing more need be said. With such monstrosities in metre, he had the
courage to proclaim himself a modern Pindar. Goldoni he looked down upon
like some gull of the lagoons. Yet, such as he was, Chiari succeeded in
mystifying a thousand empty brains, who admired him without
understanding a line he wrote.
It is not to be wondered at if a Goldoni and a Chiari, with a few
disciples and adherents, were able to create a temporary _furore_, when
we consider that this _furore_ flamed up in the precincts of the
theatres. Here all the population was divided into hostile camps, and
each party was so blind and bewitched as not to recognise the infinite
superiority of Goldoni as a comic playwright over his rival.
What is the force of righteous indignation when a vogue of this sort has
been launched on its career? That of Goldoni and Chiari was bound to run
its natural course, and when it died away, the other, which I have
described in the foregoing chapter, the vogue of immoderate, unnatural,
incorrect enthusiasts, so-styled sublime philosophers, came in, who
discovered new worlds in literature, and who are fawning now upon the
young men of our days, threatening new vocabularies, nay, new alphabets,
treating antiquity as a short-sighted idiot, and involving humanity in
an undistinguishable chaos of literary follies.
With regard to the mania created by Goldoni and Chiari, as may easily be
imagined, I looked upon it as a fungus growth upon opinion, worthy at
the best of laughter. I deemed that, at any rate, I had the right to be
the master of my own thoughts; and a trifle in verse which I wrote for
my amusement, without the intention of sending it to press, was the
accidental cause of obliging me to maintain my views against these poets
by a series of good-natured _jeux d'esprit_. My real friends know that I
harboured no envy, no sentiment of rivalry against them and their swamps
of volumes in octavo. Any one who has the justice to remember that I was
a mere amateur in literature, giving away gratis whatever issued from my
pen, will agree with my friends, and acknowledge that I was prompted by
a disinterested zeal in the cause of pure and unaffected writing. May
Heaven pardon those, and there are many of them, who have held me up for
detestation as a malignant satirist, seeking to found my own fame and
fortune upon the ruin of others! The players and publishers would be
able to disabuse them of this notion. But I do not choose to beg for
testimonials to my generosity; and perhaps I have not told the whole
truth about it in the chapter already written upon my own character.[22]
It was in the year 1757 then that I composed the little book in verse
which I have mentioned, closely following the style of good old Tuscan
masters, and giving it the title of _La Tartana degl'influssi per
l'anno bisestile 1757_.[23] This little work contained a gay critique in
abstract on the uses and abuses of the times. It was composed upon
certain verses of that obscure Florentine poet Burchiello, which I
selected as prophetic texts for my own disquisitions. It took the humour
of our literary club, and I dedicated it to a patrician of Venice,
Daniele Farsetti, to whom I also gave the autograph, without retaining
any copy for my own use. This Cavaliere, a man of excellent culture, and
a Mecaenas of the Granelleschi, wishing to give me an agreeable surprise,
and thinking perhaps that he would meet with difficulty in getting the
poem printed at Venice, sent it to Paris to be put in type, and
distributed the few copies which were struck off among his friends in
Venice.
This trifling volume might have gone the round of many hands, affording
innocent amusement by its broad and humorous survey over characters and
customs, if a few drops of somewhat pungent ink, employed in lashing the
bad writers of those days, had not played the part of venomous and
sacrilegious asps. Goldoni, besides being a regular deluge of dramatic
works, had in him I know not what diuretic medicine for composing little
things in verse, songs, rhyming diatribes, and other such-like poems of
a very muddy order. This gift he now exercised, while putting together a
collection of panegyrics on the patrician Veniero's retirement from the
rectorship of Bergamo, to vent one of his commonplace _terza-rima_
rigmaroles against my _Tartana degli influssi_. He abused the book as a
stale piece of mustiness, an inept and insufferable scarecrow; treating
its author as an angry man who deserved compassion, because (he chose to
say) I had wooed fortune in vain. Many other polite expressions of the
same stamp adorned these triplets.
Meanwhile, the famous Signor Lami, who at that time wrote the literary
paper of Florence, thought my _Tartana_ worthy of notice in his journal,
and extracted some of its stanzas on the decadence and corruption of the
language. Padre Calogera, too, who was then editing the _Giornale de'
Letterati d'Italia_, composed and published praises on it, which were
certainly above its merits. I flatter myself that my readers will not
think I record these facts out of vanity. I was not personally
acquainted with either Lami or Calogera. It is not my habit to
correspond with celebrated men of letters in order to manufacture
testimonials out of their civil and flattering replies. I do not
condescend to wheedle journalists and reviewers into imposing on the
credulity of the public by calling bad things good and good things bad
in my behoof. I have always been so far sensible as to check
self-esteem, and to appreciate my literary toys at their due
worthlessness. Writers who by tricks of this kind, extortions,
canvassings, and subterfuges, seek to gratify their thirst for fame, and
to found a reputation upon bought or begged for attestations, are the
objects of my scorn and loathing. For Lami and Calogera I cherished
sentiments of gratitude. I seemed to find in them a spirit kindred to my
own, and a conviction that I had uttered what was useful in the cause of
culture.
As a matter of fact, although the _Tartana_ was written in strict
literary Tuscan, although its style was modelled upon that of antiquated
Tuscan authors, especially of Luigi Pulci, and was therefore "caviare to
the general," the book obtained a rapid and wide success. The partisans
of Goldoni and Chiari took it for a gross malignant satire.
Possibly the rarity of copies, and the fact that it came from Paris,
helped to float the little poem. Anyhow, it created such a sensation,
raised so much controversy, and brought so many young students into
relations with myself and membership among the Granelleschi, that I
almost dared to hope for a new turn of the tide in literature.
It was this hope which made me follow up the missile I had cast into the
wasp's nest of bad authorship by a pleasant retort against Goldoni's
strictures on my _Tartana_. Goldoni was a good fellow at bottom, but
splenetic, and a miserable writer. Having begun life as a pleader at the
bar of Venice, he never succeeded in throwing off a certain air of
professional coarseness and a tincture of forensic rhetoric. I seized
upon this point of weakness, and indited an epistle, which he was
supposed to have written me, larded with all the jargon of the
law-courts. The object of the letter was to introduce his terzets to my
notice. I gave it the following title: _Scrittura contestativa al taglio
della Tartana degli Influssi stampata a Parigi l'anno 1757_. After this
I set myself to examine his _terza-rima_ poem, and had no difficulty in
exposing a long list of stupidities, improprieties, puerilities, and
injustices. Without altering the low and trivial sentiments expressed in
it, I rewrote the whole in a style of greater elegance and elevation, so
as to prove that even the most plebeian thoughts may acquire harmony and
decent grace by choiceness of diction. Finally, I dissuaded him from
sending his unhappy pamphlet to the press, and concluded by addressing
some octave stanzas to the public, in which I begged them to set him
free in future from his self-imposed obligation of composing in verse.
I did not stop here. My _Tartana_ contained some satirical sallies
against the comedies in vogue upon our stage; and Goldoni had
appropriated these to himself. In his invective he inserted a couple of
forensic lines against me, which conveyed a kind of challenge. Here they
are:--
"Chi non prova l'assunto e l'argomento,
Fa come il cane che abbaja alla luna."
("He who proves not both theme and argument,
Acts like the dog who barks against the moon.")
This excited me to write another little book, in which I proved the
proposition and the argument, and at the same time afforded my readers
food for mirth.
I feigned that the Granelleschi were assembled one day during Carnival,
to dine at the tavern of the Pellegrino, which looks out upon the Piazza
di San Marco. My comrades gathered round the windows to observe the
passing masqueraders, when a monstrous creature, wearing a mask of four
strongly-marked and different faces, entered the inn. They entreated it
to come up into our room, in order that they might examine it at
leisure. This mask of the the four faces and four mouths represented the
Comic Theatre of Goldoni, personified by me in the way I shall explain.
As soon as it caught sight of me, the author of _Tartana_, it turned to
fly off in a rage, but was forced to stay and sustain an argument with
me upon the theme of its dramatic productions.
In the dialogue which ensued, I maintained and proved that Goldoni had
striven to gain popularity rather by changing the aspect of his wares
than by any real merit which they possessed. After scribbling plots in
outline for the old-fashioned comedy of improvisation, which he
afterwards attacked and repudiated, he had begun by putting into written
dialogue certain motives neglected by that kind of drama. Then seeing
that this first manner began to pall, he dropped his so-called Reform of
the Stage, and assailed the public with his _Pamelas_ and other
romances. When this novelty in its turn ceased to draw, he bethought
himself of those Venetian farces, which were indeed the best and
longest-lived of his dramatic hashes. In time they suffered the fate of
their predecessors, because such vulgar scenes from life could not fail
to be monotonous. Accordingly, he tried another novelty, tickling the
ears of his audience with rhymed Martellian verses and semi-tragic
pieces, stuffed out with absurdities, improprieties, and the
licentiousness of Oriental manners. These _Spose Persiane_, brutal
_Ircane_, dirty _Eunuchi_, and unspeakable _Curcume_, by the mere fact
of their bad morality, monstrosity, and improbability, raised Goldoni's
fame among a crowd of fools and fanatics, who learned his long-winded
Martellian lines by heart, and went about the alleys of the town
reciting them aloud, to the annoyance of people who knew what good
poetry really is.
I maintained and proved that he had rashly essayed tragedy of the
sublime style, but had prudently fallen back on such plebeian
representations as the _Pettegolezzi delle Donne_, the _Femmine gelose
della Signora Lucrezia_, the _Putta Onorata_, the _Bona Muger_, the
_Rusteghi_, the _Todero Brontolone_. The arguments of comedies like
these were well adapted to his talent. He displayed in them a really
extraordinary ability for interweaving dialogues in the Venetian
dialect, taken down by him with pencil and notebook in the houses of the
common people, taverns, gaming hells, _traghetti_, coffee-houses, places
of ill-fame, and the most obscure alleys of our city. Audiences were
delighted by the realism of these plays, a realism which had never
before been so brilliantly illustrated, illuminated, and adorned, as it
now was by the ability of actors who faithfully responded to the spirit
of this new and popular type of farce.
I maintained and proved that he had frequently charged the noble persons
of his plays with fraud, absurdity, and baseness, reserving serious and
heroic virtues for personages of the lower class, in order to curry
favour with the multitude, who are always too disposed to envy and
malign the great. I also showed that his _Putta Onorata_ was not honest,
and that he had incited to vice while praising virtue with the dullness
of a tiresome sermon. With regard to this point, the four-mouthed Comic
Theatre kept protesting that it wished to drive the time-honoured masks
of improvised comedy off the stage, accusing them of imposture,
immodesty, and bad example for the public. I, on the other hand, clearly
proved that Goldoni's plays were a hundred times more lascivious, more
indecent, and more injurious to morals. My arguments were rendered
irrefutable by a whole bundle of obscene expressions, dirty
double-entendres, suggestive and equivocal situations, and other
nastinesses, which I had collected and textually copied from his works.
The monstrous mask defended itself but poorly, and at last fell to
abusing me personally with all its four mouths at once. This did not
serve it; and when I had argued it down and exposed it to the contempt
of the Granelleschi, it lifted up its clothes in front, and exhibited a
fifth mouth, which it carried in the middle of its stomach. This fifth
allegorical mouth raised up its voice and wept, declaring itself beaten
and begging for mercy. I admit that my satire here was somewhat harsh
and broad; but it had been provoked by an expression of Goldoni's, who
twitted me with being _a man out of temper with fortune_.
As a preface to these two little works, I composed an epistle in blank
verse, in which I dedicated them to a certain well-known
poverty-stricken citizen of Venice, called Pietro Carati. The man used
to go about the streets, wrapt in a ragged mantle, with a rusty
periwig, and black stockings, mended in a thousand places with green,
grey, or white silk (the surest signs of beggary), modestly demanding
from his acquaintances some trifle to support his dignity as cittadino.
In this epistle I repeated that I was not out of temper with fortune,
that I sought no favours from that goddess by my writings, and that my
only object was to carry on the war against bad authors, and to uphold
the rules and purity of literature. These two little pamphlets became
the property of the public before I had time and opportunity to print
them. The stir they made while yet in manuscript occasioned a series of
events which I will now relate.[24]
The noble gentleman, Giuseppe Farsetti, who was a member of our Academy,
came to me one day, and told me that another patrician, Count Ludovico
Widiman, and he would take it very kindly if I consented to withdraw my
little works from publication. I was somewhat surprised, because I knew
that the Cavaliere Farsetti was a lover of good literature. Count
Widiman, on the other hand, had declared himself a partisan of Goldoni.
Nevertheless, I readily assented to their request, and promised to bury
my two pamphlets in oblivion. I added, at the same time, that I felt
sure that Goldoni, when he was aware of this act of generosity on my
part, would begin hostilities against me, trusting to his numerous and
enthusiastic following.
I was not mistaken when I made this prophecy. It soon became evident
that Goldoni intended to carry on the war against us lovers of pure
writing in all the _Raccolte_ which appeared from time to time in
Venice. He also introduced affected and unpleasant types of character
upon the stage under Florentine names, and otherwise jeered at us in the
coarse little poems which he styled his _Tavole Rotonde_. Confiding in
his popularity and the influence of those fine gentlemen whom he called
his "beloved patrons," he hoped to revenge himself on me and to suppress
my _Tartana_.
To break my promise given to the two Cavalieri, and to publish the
satirical pieces I have described above, was out of the question. So I
prepared myself for a guerilla warfare, something after Goldoni's own
kind, but more witty and amusing. I judged it better to fight the
quarrel out with short and cutting pieces, which should throw ridicule
upon my adversary and amuse the public, than to begin a critical
controversy in due form. Squibs and satires were now exchanged daily
between Polisseno Fegejo (such was Goldoni's high-sounding title in the
Arcadi of Rome) and my humble self, the Solitario in our modest Academy
of the Granelleschi.
To meet Goldoni's lumbering diatribes in verse, I brought out a little
burlesque poem, which I called _Sudori d'Imeneo_. It was printed on the
occasion of a wedding, and created a revolution among the wits which
exceeded my most sanguine expectations. At this distance of time I find
it impossible to render a precise account of the innumerable
compositions which I produced in this controversy. They were read at the
time with avidity, because of their novelty and audacity. I never cared
to keep a register of my published or unpublished writings in prose and
verse. If I were asked where these trifles could be found, I should
reply: "Certainly not in my hands." Some of my friends, however--among
them the Venetian gentleman, Raffaele Todeschini, and Sebastiano Muletti
of Bergamo--thought it worth while to form complete collections of such
pieces from my pen.
It must not be imagined that Abbe Chiari escaped without blows in this
battle of the books. It so happened that an unknown writer subjected one
of his prologues to a scathing satire in an essay called _Five Doubts_.
The piece was mistakenly attributed to me; and Chiari answered it by six
cowardly, filthy, satirical sonnets, which he circulated in manuscript,
against myself and the Granelleschi. Upon this there arose a whole
jungle of pens in our defence. The five doubts were multiplied by four,
by six; and the Abbe was argued and twitted out of his wits. In these
straits, he condescended to extend the kiss of peace to his old foe
Goldoni, and Goldoni abased himself to the point of accepting the
salute. Drowning their former rivalries and differences, they now
entered into an offensive and defensive alliance against the Academy and
me.
Meanwhile our party grew steadily in numbers. The head-quarters of the
Granelleschi as a belligerent body were at this time established in the
shop of the bookseller Paolo Colombani. Every month we issued here in
parts a series of critical and satirical papers, which drew crowds of
purchasers round Colombani's counter. The papers appeared under the
title of _Atti Granelleschi_, and were prefaced with an introduction in
octave stanzas from my pen. The noise they created all about the town
was quite remarkable, and young men eagerly enrolled themselves under
our standard of the Owl. Chiari and Goldoni, on their side, were not
idle; but the alliance they had struck took off considerably from their
vogue. This depended in no small measure on their former rivalry. The
dropping fire which had been exchanged between their partisans kept
their names and fames before the public. Now that they were fighting
under one flag against us, the interest in their personalities declined.
Without pursuing the details of this literary war, which raged between
the years 1757 and 1761, I will only touch upon those circumstances
which led me to try my fortune on the stage as a dramatic writer. Both
Goldoni and Chiari professed themselves the champions of theatrical
reform; and part of their programme was to cut the throat of the
innocent _Commedia dell'Arte_, which had been so well supported in
Venice by four principal and deservedly popular masks: Sacchi, Fiorelli,
Zannoni, and Derbes. It seemed to me that I could not castigate the
arrogance of these self-styled Menanders better than by taking our old
friends Truffaldino, Tartaglia, Brighella, Pantalone, and Smeraldina
under my protection. Accordingly, I opened fire with a dithyrambic poem,
praising the extempore comedians in question, and comparing their gay
farces favourably with the dull and heavy pieces of the reformers.[25]
Chiari and Goldoni replied to my attacks and those of my associates by
challenging us to produce a comedy. Goldoni, in particular, called me a
verbose word-monger, and kept asserting that the enormous crowds which
flocked together to enjoy his plays constituted a convincing proof of
their essential merit. It is one thing, he said, to write subtle verbal
criticisms, another thing to compose dramas which shall fill the public
theatres with enthusiastic audiences. Spurred by this continual appeal
to popularity and vogue, I uttered the deliberate opinion that crowded
theatres proved nothing with regard to the goodness or the badness of
the plays which people came to see; and I further staked my reputation
on drawing more folk together than he could do with all his scenic
tricks, by simply putting the old wives' fairy-story of the _Love of the
Three Oranges_ upon the boards.
Shouts of incredulous and mocking laughter, not unnaturally, greeted
this Quixotic challenge. They stung my sense of honour, and made me gird
up my loins for the perilous adventure. When I had composed the scheme
of my strange drama, and had read it to the Granelleschi, I could see,
by the laughter it excited, that there was stuff and bottom in the
business. Yet my friends dissuaded me from producing such a piece of
child's-play before the public; it would certainly be hissed, they said,
and compromise the dignity of our Academy.
I replied that the whole public had to be attacked in front upon the
theatre, in order to create a sensation, and to divert attention from
our adversaries. I meant to give, and not to sell this play, which I
hoped would vindicate the honour and revenge the insults of our Academy.
Finally, I humbly submitted that men of culture and learning were not
always profoundly acquainted with human nature and the foibles of their
neighbours.
Well, I made a present of _L'Amore delle Tre Melarancie_ to Sacchi's
company of comic players, and the extravaganza was produced in the
theatre of San Samuele at Venice during the Carnival of 1761. Its
novelty and unexpectedness,--the surprise created by a fairy-tale
adapted to the drama, seasoned with trenchant parodies of both Chiari's
and Goldoni's plays, and not withal devoid of moral allegory--created
such a sudden and noisy revolution of taste that these poets saw in it
the sentence of their doom.
Who could have imagined that this twinkling spark of a child's fable on
the stage should have outshone the admired and universally applauded
illumination of two famous talents, condemning them to obscurity, while
my own dramatised fairy-tales throve and enthralled the public for a
period of many years? So wags the world!