IDLING IN ITALY
IDLING IN ITALY
STUDIES OF
LITERATURE AND OF LIFE
BY
JOSEPH COLLINS
AUTHOR OF "MY ITALIAN YEAR"
_I loaf and invite my soul_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1920
Copyright, 1920, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1920
[Illustration]
TO M. K. C.
... Io vengo di lontana parte,
Dov'era lo tuo cuor.
PREFACE
Nothing obstacled my pleasure so much when I first went to Italy as
unfamiliarity with its literature. Every one who would add to his
spiritual stature and his emotional equanimity by tarry in Italy should
have some intimacy with the Bible, with mythology, and with Italian
writers, especially the poets. I sought books about books but was not
very successful in finding them. Interpretative articles on men and
books which are so common in British and American literature are
exceptional in Italy. One who is ambitious to get even a bowing
acquaintance with them must make the introduction himself. In 1918 an
enterprising Italian, Signor A. T. Formiggini, attempted to supply such
introduction by the publication of a literary review called _L'Italia
Che Scrive_, a monthly supplement to all the periodicals. He has had
gratifying success.
My purpose in publishing the essays on fictional literature in this
volume is in the hope of awakening a larger interest in America in
Italian letters and to aid in creating a demand for their translation
into English. I shall be glad if they serve to orient any one who is
bewildered by his first glance into the maze of Italian modern,
improvisional literature.
Americans go to Italy by the thousands, but very few of them take the
trouble to acquaint themselves with her history or with her ideals and
accomplishments. This is to be regretted, for proportionately as they
did that their pleasure would be enhanced and their profit increased.
Moreover, it would contribute to better mutual understanding of
Americans and Italians.
The remaining chapters are the outgrowth of experiences and emotions in
Italy during and after the war.
Some of these essays originally appeared in _The Bookman_, _Scribner's
Magazine_, and _The North American Review_, and I thank the editors of
those journals for permission to make use of them.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LITERARY ITALY 1
II. LITERARY ITALY (CONTINUED) 25
III. GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO--POET, PILOT, AND PIRATE 44
IV. THE FUTURIST SCHOOL OF ITALIAN WRITERS 70
V. GIOVANNI PAPINI AND THE FUTURISTIC LITERARY MOVEMENT IN ITALY 88
VI. TWO NOISY ITALIAN SCHOOLMASTERS 107
VII. IMPROVISIONAL ITALIAN LITERATURE OF TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY 121
VIII. FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY 148
IX. THE LITERARY MAUSOLEUM OF SAMUEL BUTLER 159
X. SAINTS AND SINNERS 173
XI. WOMAN'S CAUSE IS MAN'S: THEY RISE OR SINK TOGETHER 185
XII. POSTBELLUM VAGARIES 198
XIII. WORLD CONVALESCENCE 214
XIV. BANQUETS AND PERSONALITIES 236
XV. SENTIMENTALITY AND THE MALE 251
XVI. THE PLAY INSTINCT IN CHILDREN 263
XVII. "IF A MAN WALKETH IN THE NIGHT, HE STUMBLETH; BUT IF HE
WALKETH IN THE DAY HE SEETH THE LIGHT OF THIS WORLD" 277
XVIII. THE AMERICAN EAGLE CHANGES HIS PERCH 293
IDLING IN ITALY
IDLING IN ITALY
CHAPTER I
LITERARY ITALY
There is something about the word Italy that causes an emotional glow in
the hearts of most Americans. For them Italy is the cradle of modern
civilization and of the Christian religion; the land where modern
literature and science took their faltering first steps; the garden
where the flowers of art first bloomed, then reached a magnificence that
has never been equalled; the land that after having so long agonized
under the tyrant finally rose in its might and delivered her children,
carrying the principles of personal liberty to a new and noble
elevation.
We have an admiration and affection for her that one has for a beautiful
mother whose charm and redolency of accomplishment has increased with
time.
In recent days there have been countless numbers on this western
continent who feel that Italy has not had recognition from the world of
her decision, her valor, and her accomplishment in shaping the World War
to a successful end. Their interest in her has been quickened and their
pride enhanced. They look forward with confidence to the time when she
will again have a measure of that supremacy in the field of art and
literature which once made her the cynosure of all eyes, the loadstone
of all hearts. They hope to see her on a pedestal of political, social,
and religious liberty worthy of the dreams of Mazzini, which shall be
exposed to the admiring gaze of the whole world.
Already there are indications that she is making great strides in
literature and a generation of young writers is forging ahead, heralding
the coming of a new order.
It can scarcely be expected that Italy will achieve the position she had
in the sixteenth century when Ariosto and Tasso, Machiavelli and
Guicciardini, Bandello and Aretino, Cellini and Castiglione gave to
literature an unrivalled supremacy. But it may be legitimately hoped
that Italy will give up the servile admiration and imitation of foreign
literature, and particularly of the French, which has been so evident
during the past one hundred years, and at the same time while taking
pride in her cinquecento accomplishments, even in the glories of her
romantic period, realize that the vista which appeals to the children of
men to-day is that obtained from looking forward and not backward.
I shall take a cursory glance over the literature of the nineteenth
century preparatory to a survey of that of the twentieth, and note some
trends and their significance: the dislocation of habitual ways of
looking at things, of modes of thought, and of peeps into the future
caused by the French Revolution; the outlook for the Italian people
which seemed to be conditioned by the Napoleonic occupation; the
imminence of a change in the way in which the world was likely to be
ordered and administered suggested by the fall of thrones and
governments. Such events could not fail to be reflected in the
literature, particularly in imaginative literature as parallel
conditions to-day are being reflected in literature, practically all of
which is burdened with one topic: destruction of privilege and
liberation from archaic convention that freedom and liberty shall have a
larger significance--in brief, making a new estimate of human rights.
With the powerful political and religious reaction that was manifest in
all Europe after the French Revolution there developed a kind of
contempt, indeed abhorrence, of antique art and literature because it
was pagan and republican. The deeds of men, their longings, their
aspirations, their loves, their hatreds, their melancholies; the
beauties of nature, their potencies to influence the emotional state of
man and particularly to contribute to his happiness; the liberation of
mankind from galling tyranny and the universal happiness that would flow
from further liberation were the themes of writers. These coupled with
neglect and disdain of the heroes of antiquity, mythological and actual,
caused a romantic literature which moved over Europe like an avalanche.
Italy contested every inch of the threatened encroachment upon its soil,
and one of her poets, Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), who was most potent
in resisting it, stood out to the end for the classic ideal. The period
of his greatest mental activity and creativeness antedated the French
Revolution, and although he was in Paris when it was at its height, its
significance in so far as it is reflected in his writings was lost upon
him. The same is true of Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799), who, during the
last fifty years of the eighteenth century, had great vogue in Italy
because of a poem called "Il Giorno" ("The Day"), in which "The
Morning," "The Noon," "The Evening," and "The Night" of a Lombard
gentleman was depicted to life and satirized.
The writings of Ugo Foscolo (1776-1827), which were given far higher
rating by contemporaries than by posterity, foreshadowed the yielding of
the classic traditions. But it was not until Cesarotti published a
translation of MacPherson's "Ossian" that the floodgates of romance were
opened for Italian literature. It was published at Padua (1763-1770).
From that date imaginative and lyric literature of Italy began to devote
itself to celebrating Italy's glorious past, to anticipating its future
glories, to recounting and satirizing contemporaries, to pillorying the
crimes of the tyrants who had fastened themselves upon Italy, and to
exposing the corruptions of its governments.
Its promoters were obsessed with the idea that they must get away from
the classic traditions. They sought to avoid the stern realities of
life, its sufferings and its tragedies, and instead to depict beauty,
pleasure, and happiness. They exalted the comedy and suppressed the
tragedy of daily life.
It has often been said that Italian romantic literature had its origin
in the Società del Caffè founded in Milan in 1746. But like many other
dogmatic statements, it should not be accepted literally. "Il Caffè,"
published by the Accademia dei Pugni, was not romantic. Its iconoclastic
attitude alone toward literary tradition may entitle it to a certain
influence as a remote precursor of the romantic movement. The
publication which fought the battle for Romanticism was the
_Conciliatore_ (1818-1819). Around it was constituted the Romantic
school which produced Grossi and the others. Most of its followers in
the beginning were Lombardians, therefore under the espionage of the
Austrian Government. They were particularly Tommaso Grossi, the author
of a romance of the fourteenth century entitled "Marco Visconti," of
"Ildegonda," and "I Lombardi" (the best seller of its day), and Giovanni
Berchet, who, though of French descent, was the most Italian of
Italians, and spent a large part of his life in exile in Switzerland and
England.
Soon the Romanticists were given a political complexion--they were
resigned to their fate of being slaves to Austria--at least they were
accused of this by the classicists. In truth they were digging the
trenches in which were later implanted the bombs whose explosion put the
Austrians to flight.
The predominant figure of the romantic period was Alessandro Manzoni
(1785-1873). It is no exaggeration to say that he carried fame of
Italian letters to greater numbers of people the world over than any
writer save Dante. In 1827 he published a novel, "I Promessi Sposi"
("The Betrothed Ones"), which Walter Scott said was the best ever
written, and this opinion was seconded by Goethe. He had shown his
emancipation from classicism in two earlier plays, "Carmagnola" and
"Adelchi," but it was not until the romance above mentioned and which
earned his immortality that the romantic triumph can be said to have
occurred in Italy. The men who carried the movement forward were
Pellico, Niccolini, Grossi, D'Azeglio, Giordani, Leopardi, Giusti, and
many others.
Among these the two who have been most favored by posterity are Silvio
Pellico (1789-1854), principally because of the book in which he
described his experiences in Austrian dungeons, "Le mie Prigioni" ("My
Prisons"), and Leopardi, the intellectual giant of an arid epoch. The
immortality of the former is founded in sentiment, of the latter in
merit.
The poet who had greatest popularity in Italy at this time was Giuseppe
Giusti (1809-1850), a satirist who chose verse as his medium. Although
posterity has not given him a very high rating, his "Versi" are still
widely read in Italy. His most appealing possession was ability to
express in scannable, rememberable, singable verse what may be called
every-day sentiment, to depict simple characters whose virtues every one
would like to have, and to interlace political satires with the most
panoplied, pathetic, patriotic sentiments. There is no safer way to
sense to-day the sentiment of the first half of the nineteenth century
of Italy than to read Giusti's poems. His "All'Amica Lontana" ("To the
Friend Far Away"), "Gli Umanitari" ("The Humanitarians"), and his poems
of spleen and of dream have a sprightliness and freshness as if they
were of yesterday. Dario Niccodemi has recently borrowed the title
"Prete Pero" from one of Giusti's poems for a comedy in which is
depicted the conduct of a simple, honest, pious priest confronted with
the conflict of ecclesiastical instructions and war problems. Giusti's
brief life was a strange mixture of potential joy and actual suffering.
In the vigor of his manhood he was seized by a painful disease, and to
his sufferings was added the mental agony caused by fear of hydrophobia.
Giuseppina Guacci Nobile (1808-1848), of Naples, a contemporary of
Giusti, had great popularity as a poetess of sentiment. She sang of love
of country, of art, of husband, of children, of heaven, and when the
sadness of the times was so profound that she needs must sing of hate
she died.
Three poets of northern Italy must also be mentioned. Francesco
Dall'Ongaro, who, though born in the Friuli, went to Venice when he was
ten years old and lived for the rest of his life in the northern
provinces, had a tremendous popularity in the revolutionary period of
1848 because of a little collection of lyrics called "Stornelli";
Giovanni Prati, of Dasindo, Trent, whose permanent reputation as a poet
depends upon his ballads, became widely known through his poem
"Edmenegarda"; and Aleardo Aleardi, born at Verona in the early years of
the nineteenth century, whose best-known book, "Le Prime Storie," was
extensively read.
The pillars of the romantic movement were soon erected in Central Italy
by the writings of Leopardi, Niccolini, and Giusti.
Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) had a personality that has fastened itself
upon Italy, even unto the present day, in a most extraordinary--one
might even say, inexplicable--way. He was laconic, silent, morose,
introspective, solitary, celibate. His filial love was readily
overdrawn; he loathed his ancestral home and environment; he contended
with ill health from infancy; he was denied the understanding friend,
save one, whose behavior toward Leopardi has been criticised severely.
He wandered solitarily about central Italy wrapped in the mantle of
introspection and veiled in melancholy until 1833, when he settled at
Naples, and there he remained four years, until he had attained his
thirty-ninth year, when he died under most distressing circumstances.
Ranieri, in his "Sette Anni di Sodalizio con Giacomo Leopardi," gives
this description of Leopardi's appearance: he was of moderate height,
bent and thin, with a fair complexion that inclined to pallor, a large
head, a square, broad forehead, languid blue eyes, a short nose, and
very delicate features; his voice was modest and rather weak; his smile
ineffable and almost unearthly.
It is not easy for a foreigner to understand the exalted estimation in
which the poetry of Leopardi is held in Italy to-day. To do so one must
needs sense the spirit of the times when he lived. The "whatever is is
right" day of Pope had been succeeded by a day of tragedy the like of
which the world had perhaps never known, and things would never be again
as they were. Leopardi sung this change. He was the poet of pain and of
despair, the versifier of Schopenhauer's philosophy. He sang of
melancholy, but he was never reconciled to supine resignation. Though
classical in form, his poems are steeped with the romantic spirit.
Although a supporter of the romantic school, he scarcely can be called
an exponent or upholder of it. A familiarity with his writings is an
integral part of the education of all cultured Italians, and nearly
every schoolboy can recite parts of the poems "To Italy" or "The Quiet
after the Storm."
Leopardi considered it was harder to write good prose than good verse.
Greek thoughts were clearer and more vivid to him than Latin or Italian.
It is a pitiable picture that Ranieri draws of him in Naples, suffering
from consumption and from dropsy, unable to read, turning night into
day, having dinner at midnight to the discomfiture of the household,
having to be nursed and entertained, disliking the country, and living
in abject terror of the cholera which then raged in Naples.
De Musset praised his work. Sainte-Beuve did homage to him, and at an
early date made his name familiar to French readers. The judgment of
posterity is the one that counts and not the judgment of individuals,
and Leopardi is Italy's greatest modern poet. De Sanctis said of him:
"His songs are the most profound and occult verses of that laborious
transition called the nineteenth century." His death marked the close of
the first romantic period in Italy.
Gian Battista Niccolini (1785-1861) wrote tragedies, historical
romances, and poetry, the best known of which is "Arnaldo da Brescia."
The Florentines have erected a noble monument to his memory in their
Westminster Abbey--the church of Santa Croce.
Massimo D'Azeglio (1798-1866), diplomat, statesman, and man of letters,
played a very conspicuous part in the political and social life of his
day, and left an extraordinarily interesting account of it and of his
period in "I miei Ricordi" ("My Recollections"), which no one desirous
of acquainting himself with the social life of the risorgimento period
fails to read.
A literary production of this period which must be mentioned, not
because of its merits but because it is a sign of the times, was that of
Cesare Cantù (1804-1895), a universal history in thirty-five volumes,
which went through forty editions. It displays lucidity of statement,
sequential narrative, and finished literary technic. It was highly
partisan and not based on critical study of documentary evidence. He saw
in all Italian writers, beginning with Dante, enemies of the church and
of God. All had something false in their art which it pleased him to
reveal. Italian writers were all anti-Catholic, and classic literature
was all pagan; he excepted Manzoni, however, and himself.
Two noteworthy historic writers were V. Gioberti (1801-1852) and
Pasquale Galluppi (1770-1846), though the latter confined himself
chiefly to philosophy. No review of the literature of this period should
fail to mention Francesco de Sanctis (1817-1883), one of the most
versatile and soundest literary critics, who was assiduous in calling
the attention of his countrymen to the writings of foreigners and in
keenly analyzing and evaluating home productions, and Pasquale Villari,
the historian of Savonarola and Macchiavelli.
There were two great literary figures in the romantic triumph of Italy
of the nineteenth century, Manzoni and Leopardi, and after their death
no figure of any importance came upon the stage for upward of a
generation.
During this period--from 1830 to 1860, let us say--the rocks from which
were to gush forth the waters of liberalism were being drilled. The
times were too tense to facilitate imaginative literature, and mere
record of events was more startling and absorbing than fiction.
It was not until Giosuè Carducci (1836-1907) entered the arena and dealt
romanticism a blow, and at the same time restored classicism, that
Leopardi had a worthy successor.
To-day there is a Carducci cult in Italy. There are individuals and
groups who have the same kind of reverence for him that they or others
have for Leonardo. There is no praise for him that is too fulsome, no
adulation too great. Admirers like Panzini, Panzacchi, and Papini
ransack dictionaries and archives to find words that will convey their
devotion to him. He was a man who incited the admiration and affection
of those who came personally in contact with him. His was a sturdy
personality, which inspired confidence, generated respect, and mediated
an easy belief in his inspiration. The son of a country doctor, he was
born in a little village in Tuscany in 1836. Thus his childhood and
early youth coincided with those years in which king, pope, and emperor
seemed to vie with one another in crushing independent thought in Italy;
those years in which men dared not write, fearing their words might be
misconstrued, or, writing, were obliged to publish clandestinely. During
these years Carducci's thirst for liberty and freedom, political,
social, and religious, developed, and for a third of a century after he
had reached the age of man he externalized it in moving, majestic,
musical verse, which made known Italy's rights and aspirations, and
encouraged her loyal sons to continue their struggles.
After teaching a few years in the high schools of San Miniato and
Pistoia, during which time he published a selection of religious, moral,
and patriotic juvenile poems entitled "Juvenilia," he went to Bologna.
In 1860 he was called to the chair of Italian literature in the
University of Bologna and soon published "Giambi ed Epodi" ("Iambs and
Epodes"). In this he preached republican doctrines so openly that he
gave offense to the crown and was suspended from his position, which,
however, he soon regained.
Soon after this he published, under the pseudonym of "Enotrio Romano,"
an irreligious or materialistic poem entitled "Inno a Satana" ("A Hymn
to Satan"), which gave him great popularity. It is an invective against
the church, which through its mysticism and asceticism seeks to suppress
natural impulses and which through its intellectual censorship aims to
stifle scientific investigation. It breathed a spirit of revolt against
tyranny and privilege, especially clerical privilege, which had made
such profound growth in Italy. It inveighed against the efforts of
suppression of human rights and bespoke the culture of human reason. It
is quite impossible to read understandingly the "Hymn to Satan" without
a knowledge of mythology and Greek history. Indeed, one of the most
characteristic features of his poem is the wealth of classic allusion.
Agramiania, Adonis, Astarte, Venus, Anadyomene, Cyprus, Heloise, Maro,
Flaccus, Lycoris, Glycera are some of the names that are encountered. It
was not until the publication of his "Odi barbare" ("Barbaric Odes")
that his stride as an original poet began to be recognized. They called
forth the most vicious criticism and at first sight it would seem that
they must sink beneath the avalanche of disapproval, but in reality
Italy was ready to listen to a message couched in new form. Conventional
rhymes, easily read, easily remembered, were now to give way to rough,
sonorous lines in which rhythm took the place of rhyme and
straight-from-the-shoulder blows took the place of feints and passes.
Carducci met his critics with the "Ça ira." It is the apology of the
French Revolution and especially of the _Convention_. The title of the
sonnets comes from the famous revolutionary song of the reign of terror.
Within a brief time, namely, from 1883 to 1887, when his books entitled
"New Barbaric Odes" and "New Rhymes" were published, there were few
competent to express an opinion who did not realize that he was Italy's
most learned poet, potent in the art of appreciation, felicitous in
conveying noble sentiments and inspiring thoughts, human in his
sympathies with the simple and the oppressed, a tower of strength, a
pillar of fire. From that period until to-day Carducci's fame as a poet
has steadily gained ground in Italy, so that it is no exaggeration to
say that many accord him the crown worn by Petrarch and Tasso. Those who
fulsomely praise his memory see in him not only a poet but a learned man
who was able to strain classic erudition through his understanding mind
to such effect that the average individual could avail himself of it to
satisfaction and to advantage. They also see in him the noblest work of
God, an honest man.
His students idolized him. When they left the university and returned to
their various spheres of activity they carried his image in their hearts
and sounded his praises with tongue or pen. They made propaganda con
amore. No one is ever approved of universally in any country, probably
least of any in Italy. When Carducci published his "Alla Regina
d'Italia" ("Ode to the Queen of Italy"), one of his best--simple,
musical, redolent of reverence and affection--he aroused the fury of the
republicans, who called him traitor, and the scorn of the envious, who
called him snob.
In 1891, when he accepted a senatorship of the realm, the students of
the University of Bologna howled and jeered at him, and many of the
former students plucked or tore his image from their hearts. They had
apotheosized the Great Commoner, and they saw in this truckling to
royalty and honors weakness and vanity which they could not believe that
he possessed. Yet in 1896, when he completed thirty-five years of
service at the university, the event was celebrated for three successive
days, and the outpouring of expressions of admiration and gratitude from
colleagues and students, and from heads crowned with laurel and gold,
has scarcely ever been paralleled.
In an autobiographical sketch in the volume of "Poesie," of 1871, he
relates with great detail the way in which he broke from his early
parental teachings and acquired his new literary, political, and
religious feelings. Following his Hellenic instincts, the religious
trend in him was toward the paganism of the ancient Latin forefathers
rather than toward the spirituality that had come in with the infusion
of foreign blood. He rebelled against the passive dependence on the fame
of her great writers, in which Italy had lived in the apathy of a
long-abandoned hope of political independence and achievement. The
livery of the slave and the mask of the courtesan disgusted him. His was
the hope and joy of a nation waking to a new life. He was the poet of
the national mood.
Carducci is little known as a poet in this country. There are many
reasons why his fame has not made headway in Anglo-Saxon countries. In
the first place, he has not been extensively translated, and in the
second place, although the subject of his song was so often liberty, his
lines are so replete with erudite classic illusions that even though he
could be translated he would be found to be hard reading. But more than
all there is probably no poet whose matter loses so much of its music
and its fire by translation as Carducci. Such exquisite verses as the
"Idylls of the Lowlands," "The Ox," "The Hymn to the Seasons," "To the
Fountains of Clitumnus" are translatable. It would require a Longfellow
to do it so that they should not be emasculated.
In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature and the entire
literary world approved of the reward. Two years previously he had
resigned his professorship, and parliament voted him a pension of twelve
thousand lire a year for life, but it was of short duration, for he died
in 1907.
Mario Rapisardi, to whom a monument has been erected in his native town
of Catania, and who is known best for his tragedy "Manfredi" and his
philosophic poem, "La Palingenesi," and "Poesie religiose," was a
ferocious critic of Carducci. In his poem entitled "Lucifer" there are
many disparaging allusions to him. Rapisardi was a teacher and a poet,
but a spiritual chameleon: a devout believer, he became a radicalist; a
monarchist, he became a socialist; a romanticist, he became a
classicist. He is one of the best specimens of the old order of poets.
His "Falling Stars" and "The Impenitent" have a genuine lyric quality,
and such poems as "To a Fire-fly" have movement, rhythm, and luminosity
that are impressive.
The only poet that approximated Carducci's stature was Giovanni Pascoli
(1855-1912). Though he was a few years younger, the period of his
literary activity was contemporaneous. When Carducci died, Pascoli
succeeded him for a few years in the University of Bologna. His personal
story appealed tremendously to Italians, and he was of the masses in
appearance and sentiment. After the assassination of his father by an
unknown hand the family suffered great poverty, and as a boy the support
of two younger sisters fell upon him, and like so many of the talented
young men of Italy he accomplished it by teaching school. He was
teaching in the high school of Leghorn in 1892 when he published
"Myricae," upon which to-day his fame rests most securely. His verses
gave him an immediate celebrity, and he was soon made professor of Latin
and Greek in the University of Messina. From there he went to Pisa and
soon afterward to Bologna.
Pascoli has been called the greatest Latin poet after Virgil. Some of
the titles of his volumes are "Poemetti" ("Little Poems"), "Poemi
Conviviali" ("Convivial Poems"), "Odi e Inni" ("Odes and Hymns"), "Canti
di Castelvecchio" ("Songs of Castelvecchio"), "Nuovi Poemetti" ("New
Little Poems"), "Poemetti Italici" ("Little Poems of Italy"), "Le
Canzoni di Re Enzio" ("The Songs of King Enzio"), and an interpretative
volume of Dante entitled "Sotto il Velame" ("Beneath the Veil").
Despite the fact that he was an advanced political thinker, he taught
his students to respect the law. He was the poetical evangelist of the
humble, of the unfortunate, and of the physically venturesome. He sang
of the cravings of the soul, of the problems of existence, of Christian
acceptation, of the glory of Italy and the accomplishments of her sons.
Posterity, however, is whispering that the name most worthy to be
bracketed with Carducci is Gabriele D'Annunzio. I shall consider him in
another chapter.
There is a name in the literary annals of this period that is steadily
gaining claim to immortality. It is Giovanni Verga, the chief exponent
of the Veristic school, who was born at Catania in 1840 and is still
living. Although it is the opinion of those who are competent to judge
that his fame as a novelist is greater than that of Fogazzaro, it may
truthfully be said that he is scarcely known beyond the confines of
Italy, and even there his romances have not had the reception that they
deserve. A few years ago when I asked for a copy of "Mastro-don
Gesualdo" in the leading bookshop of Palermo and was not successful in
obtaining it, the young man with whom I talked assured me that Zuccoli
would prove to be a satisfactory substitute for Verga. If he is known at
all in this country, it is as the author of the play entitled
"Cavalleria Rusticana," upon which was composed the popular opera. He
has not been a very prolific writer--eight romances, half a dozen
volumes of short stories, and a few plays. He got the material for many
of his short stories in central and northern Italy, but most of his
romances are of his native Sicily, and the pictures of life in the
little villages and towns in the houses of the passionate peasants, in
the huts of the poverty-stricken shepherds, in the hovels of the
adventurous fishermen, and the crumbling palaces of the decayed nobles
are so realistic, so true to life, so almost photographically depicted,
that the reader feels that they are mediated by his own senses. Verga
has the supreme faculty of creating men and women that the reader has
met or would like to meet.
If realism consists in depicting people as they are and particularly
people who are battling with the stern realities of life--poverty,
illness, passions--then Verga is a great realist. The best of his
romances, though not the most popular, are "I Malavoglia" and
"Mastro-don Gesualdo." "Tigre Reale" had the greatest popularity, and
the "Storia di una Capinera" ("The Story of a Black-hood Novice"), the
most ardently romantic of all romantic stories, and "Il Marito di Elena"
("The Husband of Helen") were widely read.
"I Malavoglia" and "Mastro-don Gesualdo" were to have been succeeded by
a third volume which would complete the story of the characters unfolded
in them, but it never appeared. When we recall that only eight thousand
copies of the former have been sold in forty years, we readily
understand the artist's discouragement. Posterity is likely to link
Verga's name with Leopardi and Manzoni.
The great romance-writer of Italy during the days of her resurrection
was Manzoni. During the first and second generations of Italy's unity
the mantle of his greatness was worn gracefully and becomingly by
Antonio Fogazzaro (1842-1911). Born at Vicenza, he had the bringing-up
and education of a gentleman. His best-known books are "Daniele Cortis,"
"Piccolo Moderno Mondo" ("The Little Modern World"), "Piccolo Mondo
Antico" ("The Little Antique World"), and "Il Santo" ("The Saint").
"Daniele Cortis" is generally believed to reveal Fogazzaro's moral,
religious, and political convictions. It is a series of interesting
pictures of intimate life in the upper circles and reveals the mental
development of a man of high principles, the skeleton in whose closet is
a mother who, having side-stepped the paths of morality in her youth,
and who was lost to her son for several years, thrusts herself upon him
the very day when he has his feet securely set on the ladder whose apex
is a brilliant political career. His struggles between duty to his
mother and obligations to his country, his desire not to offend
convention or outrage morality, his love for his cousin Eleana, tame for
him but consuming to her, unhappily married to a Sicilian roué brute and
baron, are narrated in a way that seduces even the casual reader. Indeed
it is wonderfully done, and attention is sustained to the end, virtue
being finally rewarded.
"The Saint" is a psychological study of abnormal religious development.
It presented forcibly the necessity for reform of the Vatican and
ecclesiastical customs and beliefs. When it was put on the Index it
caused its illustrious author, a fervent believer and an exemplary
communicant, much pain and remorse. "Leila" continued the history of the
leading character of "The Saint." It is said that the author hoped it
would make amends for the offense that the latter had given, but it was
also put on the Index.
He wrote a volume of poetry, and many of his verses are redolent of
music and charm, such as "Ultima Rosa" ("The Last Rose") and "Amorum."
He has been more widely read in this country than any Italian writer of
fiction save D'Annunzio. He raised one slab to his memory which will
resist more than granite--"Piccolo Mondo Antico." It will be preserved
by time, and cherished for the same reason that one keeps and lauds a
marvellous picture of wife or mother, brother or sweetheart, because it
is a bit of perfection and because the owner loves it.
An extraordinary figure in Italian literature of yesterday and of the
period under discussion, was Olindo Guerrini (1845-1916), for many years
director of the University Library at Bologna. In 1878 he published a
volume entitled "Postuma" which purported to be the work of one Lorenzo
Stecchetti which caused prudish Italy to shiver, prurient Italy to
shake, and literary Italy to be enormously diverted. The "Postuma" went
through thirty-two editions in forty years, but one should not inquire
too closely the reason for this. When critics discovered that the author
was alive they assailed his immodest verses, and his responses "Nova
Polemica" added to his literary reputation. But it was not until he
published his prose writings that he displayed his real literary
stature.
"Postuma" is still read, that the reader may find something recent to
compare with the conduct of Messalina rather than for its literary
qualities. "Rime," which has no panoplied display of the author's libido
but many charming idyls, reminiscences, and vignettes is much read
to-day. Such poems as "Il Guado" ("The Ford") and "Nell' Aria" are as
redolent of sentiment and ingenuous experiences that lead to thrills as
a rose is redolent of perfume. Every schoolgirl can quote the last two
lines of the latter:
"Ed io che intesi quel che non dicevi
M'innamorai di te perchè tacevi."
Other poems such as "Congedo" ("Leave-taking") and "Wienerblut," after
the waltz of Johann Strauss, had great popularity at the time and were
praised by his contemporaries, but to-day it is difficult to find great
merit in them. Were one called upon to make specific comment upon his
poetry, he would have to point out the very obvious influence of Byron,
De Musset, and Heine, and to say that Guerrini in no way is comparable
with any of them. Much has been written about him as the index of the
revolt against the corrupt romanticism of the third romantic period in
Italy. He was the uncompromising foe of cant and hypocrisy in literature
and the stanch defender of realism.
Giuseppe Lipparini, an eminently fair critic, gives him a higher rating
as a writer of prose than of poetry. These include "Vita di Giulio
Cesare Croce" ("Life of Julius Cæsar Croce"), a monograph on Francesco
Patuzio, and "Bibliografia per ridere" ("The Laugher's Library").
Although there were countless poets of this period, two or three should
be mentioned, more because of the effect they had upon the public taste,
perhaps one might say public education, than for the intrinsic merit of
their writings; and of these may be mentioned Vittorio Betteloni
(1840-1910), the son of a romantic poet. His writings may be said to
have popularized the public protest against the romanticism of the third
romantic period. He also made known to many of his countrymen the poetry
of Byron and of Goethe in faithful poetic translations.
Brief mention is here made of two literary men of affairs in Italy, the
purpose being more to call attention to a type of individual who is more
often found in Italy than in any other country--the versatile,
many-sided, cultivated man of affairs who has also distinctive literary
talent.
Enrico Panzacchi (1841-1904) published a volume of lyrics, fluid,
harmonious, transparent, treating of homely, every-day subjects which
appealed very much to the public. He first became known as a writer of
seductive romances, then as an accomplished musician, afterward as a
lyric poet, then as a critic of literature, æsthetics, and philosophy.
He taught the philosophy and history of art; he was the secretary of the
Academy of Belle Arti at Bologna, for many years a deputy in Parliament,
and at one time undersecretary of state and an orator of great renown.
His reputation as a poet depends largely upon "Cor Sincerum," published
in 1902. In his versatility he reminds of Remy de Gourmont, although his
literary productions were incomparably less numerous, but in temper of
mind, literary equipment, æsthetic appetite, and general virtuosity they
are brothers.
The other is Ferdinando Martini, a governor of one of Italy's colonies,
a minister of public instruction, a deputy of long service, a poet, an
essayist, a biographer, and a traveller, the Italian Admirable Crichton.
He was born in Monsummano in 1841, and for forty-five years was without
interruption in the Chamber of Deputies. He went under in the last
election. He has published many books and articles, amongst which may be
mentioned "Nell' Africa Italiana" ("In African Italy"), but the casual
reader will get most pleasurable contact with him from "Pagine
Raccolte." He is an excellent example of the cultured man in public life
in Italy. His prose integrates the aroma of the classics, while at the
same time his sympathies and interests bring his subjects up to the
minute. His writings have a pragmatic as well as an æsthetic quality.
None of them has the air of preachings. He knows how to be profound
without being heavy and learned without being pedantic. For him
literature has not been an æsthetic exercise or a statement of human
rights and human needs. Prospective admirers should not study too
closely his political career.
Death has claimed nearly all of the conspicuous figures of literature in
the period of the risorgimento. One who had a strange tenacity of life,
which he but recently yielded, was Salvatore Farina, whose first
romances, "Un Segreto" ("A Secret") and "Due Amori" ("Two Loves"), were
published more than fifty years ago. He was, perhaps, the truly
representative writer of the Piccolo Borghese in the generation that
followed Italy's unity. In the fifty or more volumes that he published
(the last of which appeared in 1912 and was called the "Second Book of
the Lovers") he portrayed a variety of romanticism which was the
outgrowth of the struggle between the drab and commonplace realities of
life and the fantastic dreams of simple-minded persons who thought that
life would be ideal if it could be fashioned after their own plans. He
was the novelist of sickly sentiment, the most slavish disciple that
Samuel Richardson ever had. Students of Italian literature will read his
two reminiscent volumes called "La mia Giornata," the first published in
1910, the second in 1913, to get a picture of the literary doings of one
of the grayest and most uncertain periods of modern Italian literature.
He is mentioned here merely to note the tremendous popularity which his
writings had, and to call attention to the fact that they left no
impression upon the times and that the type of novel which they
represent has practically now disappeared the world over.