IMPROVISIONAL ITALIAN LITERATURE OF TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY
I never fully appreciated how hazardous it is to speak of the literature
of a foreign country until I read an article in the _Tribuna_ of Rome,
signed Mario Vinciguerra, on Michaud's "Mystiques et Realistes
Anglo-Saxons," which seeks to disparage the originality of some of our
Transcendentalists, particularly Emerson, and to trace tendencies in our
literature. I hope that I may be more successful in reviewing some of
Italy's recent literature and in making an estimate of the merit of
those who are responsible for it than Signor Vinciguerra, who says the
two most potent romancers of living American writers are Jack London and
Upton Sinclair. At least I shall not say that Guido da Verona and
Salvator Gotta are the most potent romancers of Italy, and even I shall
not go so far as to say that Luciano Zuccoli is. Any writer who would
maintain that "Before the breaking out of the war the books that made
the greatest stir in the United States were Upton Sinclair's 'A Captain
of Industry,' 'The Jungle,' 'The Metropolis,' and Jack London's 'The
Iron Heel,'" would not write himself so hopelessly ignorant of American
literature as he would were he to claim that Harold Bell Wright and Rex
Beach were our leading novelists. Such contention would show either
unfamiliarity with our literature or dearth of understanding.
Previous to the war there was no such pouring out of literature in Italy
as there was in England, and there were few writers of fiction whose
output or content could be compared with that of Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr.
Arnold Bennett, Mr. Hugh Walpole, Mr. Gilbert Cannan, Mr. Compton
Mackenzie, Mr. D. H. Lawrence, and others. D'Annunzio had long since
ceased to write romances. Matilda Serao was in the twilight of her years
and literary career. Grazia Deledda was displaying stereotypy and
Zuccoli reploughed the familiar acre. French fiction was the favorite
pabulum of the Italian who would kill time, dispel ennui, and combat
dearth. Since then, however, there has been a great change and there is
every indication that Italians will provide literature for their
countrymen which will at least obviate the necessity of importation.
That it has not yet been accomplished, however, must be admitted in the
beginning. The young writers are like birds trying their wings, aerial
pilots striving for altitude tests. From their performances one is
justified in hoping, indeed believing, that they will go far and soar
high, but up to date Verga dominates the field of Italian fiction just
as Hardy dominates the field of English fiction.
No reference to the literature of to-day should fail to take note of the
fact that much of the most important and suggestive fiction does not
appear in book form, or at least not for a long time, but in periodicals
such as the monthlies and quarterlies, and also in such publications as
_Novella_ and _Comoedia_. No one can gain a familiarity with the hundred
or more active writers of fiction in Italy who does not see and read
such publications. They lend themselves readily to brevity and to that
speeding up which the Futurists urge, and they tend to do away with the
long-drawn-out descriptions which are the despair of the average reader.
Another feature of the newer literature which augurs well for it is that
its theme is not wholly portrayal of the genesic instinct and the
multiform perversions to which it has been subject by culture and which
Christianity has been unable materially to influence. We realize how
large the subject has bulked in the literature of every nation, but it
is probably not beyond the truth to say that it has bulked larger in the
modern literature of Italy even than of France.
It is natural that recent literature has begun to occupy itself with the
conditions of the people and to display awareness of the new
significance that they are giving to the words liberty and equality, and
an attempt is being made to reconcile preaching and practising in their
bearings on life here and hereafter.
The acceptable fiction of to-day will reflect in some measure the world
thought, or it will soothe man's cravings for assurance of future life
and strengthen his belief in it. It is idle to deny that the pitch of
man's thought to-day is materialistic, though his unconscious mind is
steeped in the mystic. Could we but teach future generations the
pleasure-potency of the imagination, we should give them an asset that
would enhance the usefulness and efficiency of their lives comparable to
health. But for some years at least there has been a mistaken notion
that the chief sources of pleasure are responding to the call of the
instincts, the fortuitous offerings of chance, and awaiting the day when
the vital sap will return from the branches of that universal tree upon
which we are the leaves to the trunk, that the spirit may be restored to
the Infinite. "Poor vaunt of life, indeed, were man but formed to feed
on joy, to solely seek and find and feast."
Pedagogy has never concerned itself with our imaginative life. That is
left to endowment and to chance, which sometimes shows itself in the
shape of a literary critic. Fortunate, indeed, is the people or nation
that breeds competent critics, it matters not what field of activity
they cultivate, letters, science, or theology. Italy has had many such,
but there is a greater dearth of them now than ever before. With the
exception of Benedetto Croce there is perhaps no one of more than
national reputation.
It is, perhaps, unwise to select from the considerable number of
present-day literary critics the names of a few, but I hazard it. Emilio
Cecchi, of the Rome _Tribuna_, is a versatile, scholarly writer, a
thoughtful, judicious estimator of his fellow writers' works, and a
critic who is not obsessed with the impulse that is supposed to dominate
a certain type of Irishman, namely, to hit a head whenever he sees it.
Giuseppe Prezzolini, who has been very intimate with the Florentine
group headed by Papini and who has written a critical estimate of his
writings and made a glowing statement of his personal charms, has a
sympathy and admiration for the writers of what may be called the new
school. That does not prevent him from being a keen observer, a logical
thinker with a judicious capacity to weigh the evidence presented by his
fellow writers in their claim for popularity and fame. He is a type of
literary man new to Italy, a keen critic, a clear thinker, a master of
literary expression who devotes much of his energy to his
publishing-house and to _La Voce_. His writings are chiefly political
and critical, "Il Sarto Spirituale" ("The Spiritual Tailor"), "L'Arte di
Persuadere" ("The Art of Persuading"), "Cos' è il Modernismo?" ("What is
Modernism?"). He has done more to introduce and bring forward the potent
group of young writers than any one in Italy.
Lionello Fiumi, a young poet and critic, has published contributions
that are noteworthy, but he has given no real capacity to analyze
evidence, to sum it up, or to interpret it judiciously. His last effort
to prove that Corrado Giovi is the poetic sun of Italy to-day was anæmic
and feeble. The antithesis of him is Gherardo Marone, who thinks that
Futurism and anarchism are synonymous, but the agnostic in religion sees
no choice between Catholicism and Presbyterianism. He also maintains the
extraordinary position that a great poet must needs be a great thinker.
He is a very young man and his "Difesa di Dulcinea" ("Defense of
Dulcinea") gives promise that when he gets in his stride he will go near
the winning post.
Vincenzo Cardarelli is a literary critic whose writings are
characterized by erudition, sympathy, understanding, and a sense of
responsibility. He has published a volume of poems entitled "Prologhi"
in line with the symbolist school of France, and especially Stephane
Mallarmé.
Another critic who senses the trend of Italian literature and puts
correct interpretation upon it is G. A. Borghese.
Two of the popular writers of fiction of to-day, Alfredo Panzini and
Luigi Pirandello, I have discussed in a separate chapter.
Luciano Zuccoli is the most conspicuous and successful exponent in Italy
of the type of fiction which was thrown upon the world for the first
time now nearly two hundred years ago by Samuel Richardson, father of
the novel of sentimental analysis. Though Zuccoli has a score of novels
and romances to his credit, he would seem to be now at the height of his
fecundity. The literary school in Italy which is the outgrowth of the
Futuristic movement points the contemptuous finger at him and scoffs at
his productions, but he has, nevertheless, a large following and is a
writer of much skill. His success depends largely upon taking characters
of the Borghesia and exposing them to the ordinary incidents of life,
such as love, matrimony, war, politics, and then depicting what comes
"naturally" to some of the victims: disillusionment tugging at the leash
until it snaps the illicit splicing of it to another snapped leash (for
there is no divorce in Italy); conflict between patriotism and pacifism,
and between sentiment and idealism from a political, social, and
personal point of view. He has got far away from the simpler
delineations of his earlier books, such as "La Freccia nel Fianco" ("The
Arrow in the Flank"), in which the love of a sentimental girl of
eighteen for a boy of eight, the son of a most dissolute noble who tends
to follow in his father's footsteps, is featured, and the meticulous
discussion of the daily life of male and female sybarites, who have
chosen the smooth and easy road to destruction as it travels through
Italy's wickedest city, Milan, as in "Fortunato in Amore" and have come
to keep what might be called better company, the company of those whose
infraction of convention is conditioned more by environment than by
determination.
"L'Amore non c'è più" ("There Is No More Love") and "Il Maleficio
occulto" ("Witchcraft") are other popular romances.
Virgilio Brocchi is a similar writer, though his writings have never had
similar popularity. His most meritorious books have been "Mite" and "Le
Aquile." His later books, such as "Isola Sonante," show the author's
progress in literary craftsmanship. His last book, "Secondo il Cuor mio"
("According to My Heart"), shows that he has had his ear to the ground
and has noticed that the chariot labelled "Public Taste in Letters" is
being driven on a new road. There is a note of idealism in the conduct
of Gigi Leoni, the artist passionately devoted to his art, in love with
Merine Dialli, proud and rich; he refuses to accept her suggestion that
he relinquish his art and do something that will lead to material
success. After she has made a failure in matrimony with an army officer
and returns to the artist, Zuccoli succeeds in drawing with masterly
strokes the portrait of a real hero, who, when he perishes later on the
field of battle, excites unreservedly the admiration of his readers. In
reality it is a book in which passion, of life or of the senses, as it
sways an attractive man full of nobility and of dreams, is depicted in
the traditional idealistic manner.
The Harold Bell Wright of Italian fiction is Guido Da Verona, and this
does Mr. Wright an injustice, for he has never written pornographically
and Signor Da Verona has rarely written otherwise. But he is Italy's
best-seller. It is depressing to think that really great romances, like
the "I Malavoglia" of Verga, stories such as Capuana's "Passa L'Amore,"
or Renato Fucini's, or even Panzini's "La Madonna di Mamà," should have
a sale of only a few thousand copies, while books of the character of
"Mimi Bluette," the flower of Signor Da Verona's garden, should go up
toward the hundred-thousand mark. It is an index of the salaciousness of
the average person, whoever he may be. Any review of Italy's recent
literature must mention "The Woman Who Invented Love," "Life Begins
To-morrow," if for no other purpose than to show that there is a kind of
literature in every country which has a great popularity. In Belgium its
clientele is found in the prurient of other countries; in France the
"best people" do not read it or say they do not; in England the public
censor prohibits it; and we have Mr. Comstock and his successors.
"Madeline," which has recently cost its guiltless publisher a fine, is
"soft stuff" compared with "Mimi Bluette," and I doubt if Mr. George
Moore could revoke any memories of his dead life that could hold a
candle to some of Signor Da Verona's actual life.
There is little to be said in favor of his books that could not be said
for narcotic-taking, gambling-hells, and underworld tango palaces. They
have a glamour about them and an aroma that appeals to the
feeble-minded, the inherently decadent, and the ennuyed idle. It is a
realism whose reality exists only in a mind made lubricitous by
cupidity.
Marino Moretti is one of the young writers whose short stories and
romances have found much favor. There is an atmosphere of triviality, of
lightness, of inconsequentiality about his writings which is an
important part of his art. In reality he is a finished technician and an
artist with a wonderful mastery of perspective and of color, and a
commendable capacity for expression. His particular charm is that he
creates an atmosphere or a situation, but does not insist upon giving a
chemical analysis or physical description of either. When he takes you
to a drawing-room or to the bathing-beach at the fashionable hour he
does not insist on presenting you to every one or giving you a detailed
history of their lives and particularly of their amatory tidal waves.
Although he seems to give his clientele soft food, he does not insist on
spoon-feeding them. In the guise of pap he gives them often
thought-making pabulum.
Some of his popular books are "Il Sole del Sabato" ("Saturday's Sun"),
"Guenda," "La Voce di Dio" ("The Voice of God"), and "Adamo ed Eva."
Antonio Beltramelli is another writer who has studied literary form to
great purpose and with it he combines imaginative gifts of an
exceptional order. His earlier books, short stories entitled "Anna
Perena" and "I Primogeniti" ("First-born Sons"), were well received. He
has recently come back to similar presentations in "La Vigna
Vendemmiata" ("The Harvested Vineyard"), which while not revealing the
spiritual growth which his admirers expected from him, shows him,
nevertheless, to be a man of parts. His chief defect is his ignorance of
behavioristic psychology which is nowhere better shown than in this
collection of short stories, "La Madre," for instance. Moreover, it is
an ambitious writer who makes a story of these unromantic facts; a
stupid man with some of the characteristics of the ox and the rat is
married to a gross, slovenly creature who deceives him. A friendly
neighbor opens his eyes and he finds her and her paramour in the brake
and cane around the vineyard. On his way thence he encounters the parish
priest and asks him if one would be justified in meting out personal
punishment to such transgressors. "Perhaps yes, perhaps no" is the
reply. When he comes upon the guilty couple he kills the man with the
blow of a stick, then falls back upon the priest's words for
justification.
"Gli Uomini Rossi" ("The Red Men") is his best-known romance. He has
read and still reads Cervantes and Rabelais. Had he the gift of artistic
presentation he might become a great novelist, but until now he has
confounded embellishment with natural beauty.
Among the fiction that has appeared in Italy during the past year a few
books call for mention, not because of their intrinsic merit but because
it is indicative of the change that is going on in the minds of the
common people which reflects particularly the thought now being given to
social and psychological questions.
The American reader of Italian fiction cannot fail to be impressed with
the poverty of subject-matter which it displays. This is explained
partly by the fact that it is sometimes biographical and very often
autobiographical--moreover, the family and social and religious customs
of Italy do not make for novelty or variety in individual life. The zone
in which all the details of existence is predetermined by convention
extends much farther with them both up and down the social scale than
with us. If man is independent of it to some extent woman is not, and
since there is no object in chronicling the obvious, popular Italian
fiction is apt to deal with excursions of man beyond his own circle and
class. Another thing that has to be kept in mind is the position of
women. The important woman in the life of the majority of Italians is
the mother, not the wife. She is on terms of equality with her son and
she retains much of the authority of the Roman matron in her children's
married life. This it need scarcely be said is changing with the eternal
flux of things.
Italy of to-day is a very new country. Whenever we as a nation do
something which the Italians consider gauche or raw, and they are
obliged to dislocate an inherent politeness by mention of it, they
excuse us because we are so young. So one excuses an infant for some
verbal or conductual infraction. In reality we are about a century older
than Italy of to-day, and we have spent that time developing a "manner"
that reflects our protracted habituation to freedom. That it is
sometimes masked by arrogance and self-satisfaction is to be regretted.
Hence our indifference to convention which is often painful to the
foreigner. It is a mistake to think that it is only the upper classes of
Italy who are beholden to unwritten convention and customs. In truth,
subscription to them is more mandatory amongst the Borghesia and Il
Popolo. With the gradual dissemination and acceptation of the doctrines
of socialism, the equal rights of women, and the widening sphere of
culture through universal education, many of the shackling conventions
of to-day will disappear. The younger workers are blazing the way. Of
those who herald this change Mario Mariani must be heeded. In "La Casa
dell' Uomo" ("The House of Man"), he makes a satiric onslaught against
the amorous, avid of money and of pleasure, who are ready to sacrifice
every basic virtue in order to obtain them. After presenting a picture
of the present-day cages of human beings he tells his story through the
mouth and diary of the janitress of a modern apartment-house, who being
deprived by time of her pulchritude and sensuous appeal, has been
obliged to forego her chosen profession, that of Mrs. Warren, and to
gain her livelihood in the sweat of her brow. She has visions of a day
when she can no longer even do that, and yet must needs have food,
raiment, and shelter; so she keeps a diary which sets forth the
flagrancies of the tenants, men, women, and children. She does not admit
that the entries are the wythes of blackmail. She salves such conscience
as has survived her life of sin by assuring herself that the entries in
the book are to assuage literary growing pains. When Signor Mariani
obtained the documents by fabrication or by stealth he found himself in
possession of the "characters" of many individuals, young and old, who
present a strange similarity to those we encounter in daily life. He has
seen fit to publish them without saying whether it was art or bread that
was the incentive, and they constitute a serious charge against society.
The wonder is that if such things exist the social fabric conserves the
appearance of well-being. In truth, life is not a mask behind which the
wearer laughs, if this diary is to be believed. It is in reality a
tragedy made up of a tissue of hypocrisies, banalities, sordid
commonplaces, inimical to joy, subversive of pleasure, and destructive
of happiness.
It is obvious that de Maupassant is the author's model. Despite a
certain vivacity of form, his tales are in substance very old-fashioned
and his characters are so sordid and sensual that their actions and
their fate from an artistic point of view fail to interest.
In "Smorfia dell' anima" ("Grimaces of the Soul"), the central theme is
that all people who defy accepted morals are much more honest and happy
than those who hypocritically accept convention but do not conform to
the moral laws which underlie them. There is a certain amount of truth
in this view, but it will not stand too much insistence.
Though Signor Mariani's books are not entitled to laudation, they, with
his commentual writing, encourage us to await the advent of his full
powers with a sincere belief that he will arrive in Italian letters.
Gino Rocca is a young Milanese writer who has returned from the war with
ideas and capacity to express them. His novel "L'Uragano" is what is
popularly called powerful. It is the same old theme, love and adultery,
but it introduces what may be called new reactions. It is a story of a
young man who, "temperamentally unfit" to live in the refined and
shut-in atmosphere of his parental home, goes to Milan and does
successfully newspaper work while giving himself copiously to what is
called a life of sin. The picture of this life is one with which readers
of modern French fiction are familiar. Through the mediation of a
sympathetic aunt he encounters a lady burdened with an unworthy husband,
who makes such appeal to him that he abandons the gaming-table and the
underworld, but in such a way as to leave the impression that it would
have been only temporary had not the call to arms put them beyond his
reach. In the army and in the hospital, while idealizing his innamorata
he has experiences which show him the perfidy of the feminine human
heart. When he returns to Milan he realizes that even with his enriched
experience he is not yet the man who understands women, for he has yet
to learn of the inconstancy of her to whom he attributed all the
virtues. This discovery gives the writer an opportunity to depict a
profound emotional storm from which the novel gets its name and from
which the hero emerges a better man.
There is nothing noteworthy in the book except its character
delineation. It is a novel in so far as it is an exact and complete
reproduction of social surroundings or environment, but photographs are
often spoiled by being colored. It shows the writer to have a mastery of
literary technic and an unusual capacity for expression.
Another writer who has shown himself a master of verbal structure and
adept in the delineation of character, a student of psychological
reactions and facile artist of the environment in which they are
displayed, is Raffaele Calzini. His first short stories, "La Vedova
Scaltra" ("The Wary Widow"), published seven or eight years ago, were
hailed by some critics as the work of a writer of potential distinction.
They are coloristic or impressionistic stories. Although he has not yet
given proof that he will earn enduring fame, he is nevertheless one of
the most promising of the younger writers, and, although he is not
prolific, each succeeding publication has added to his fame. His last
contribution is a comedy entitled "Le Fedeltà" ("Fidelity").
I could not have better illustrations of the rôle played by
autobiography in modern fiction than two recent novels--one by Michele
Sapanaro, "Peccato" or "Six Months of Rustic Life"; the other by
Frederigo Tozzi, "Con gli Occhi Chiusi" ("With Closed Eyes"). The first
is a fresh, ingenuous book with a vein of romanticism which does not run
into great effusion or great amativeness, in which is depicted the
atmosphere, environment, and inhabitants of a small community in
southern Italy, whither the writer has gone to visit his peasant brother
and to recover from some of the wounds inflicted upon him in
transformation from peasant to "gentleman." It is undoubtedly an
elaborated, embellished chapter of the author's life.
That "With Closed Eyes," a novel of provincial and peasant life in
Tuscany, is wholly autobiographical, we have the testimony of a fellow
Tuscan who says of Signor Tozzi that he first met him when he was a
waiter in his father's tavern. Lazy, slothful, unkempt, and of coarse
appearance, he had a passion for reading Angiolieri and Verlaine. He was
radical, socially and politically. After a colorless, misspent youth
beyond authority, parental or communal, he began newspaper work, the
stepping-stones of so many Italian writers of to-day. The discipline of
military life and the environment of Rome effected a change in his
outward appearance, and the composition of his book, "Bestie"
("Beasts"), which the church put on the Index, helped him spiritually.
"With Closed Eyes" is a narrative of his life, sordid, ugly,
commonplace, revealing, however, a gradual spiritual uplift and
refinement. It was not until the publication of "Tre Croci" that he was
much discussed. Competent critics such as Signor Borghese think that
Italy's most promising literary light was extinguished when Frederigo
Tozzi died in Rome, in March, 1920. His literary output was not great
for a man who had lived thirty-eight years, but it can truthfully be
said that each succeeding volume from his pen showed that he was likely
one day to be Verga's successor in the literary primacy of Italy. His
last romance, "Il Podere," ("The Farm,") has not yet appeared in book
form.
One cannot always judge from first performances the potentialities of a
writer. A few years ago Rosso di San Secondo, a young Sicilian,
published "Io Commemoro Loletta" ("I Commemorate Loletta"), a series of
short stories which in substance and in workmanship showed not only no
talent but no promise of talent. In reality they seemed to show an
absence of artistic capacity, architectural ability, and literary taste.
A year later "La Bella Addormentata" ("The Sleeping Beauty"), a
coloristic, mystic drama, a strange mixture of Plotinus and Dionysius,
revealed real talent.
The Sleeping Beauty, of infantile mind and facial pulchritude, formerly
a servant, yielded to the advances of a notary, the nephew of a senile,
implacable shrew, whose miserly savings he and his sister hoped to
inherit. After a few secure trips on the sliding-board of sensual
indulgence, the Sleeping Beauty shot to the bottom of the pit and became
the travelling harlot of a caravan which went from one country fair to
another. The more frequently she yielded the body the greater became her
spiritual detachment, until finally she lived in a world of unreality.
Becoming pregnant, the spiritual flame gradually lighted up in her, and
finally blazed under the ardent fanning of a new type of Lothario, Nero
of the Sulphur Mines, half knight, half jail-bird, but withal a romantic
and seductive figure. His flair for her was wholly spiritual. Not only
did he encourage her to renounce her life, but he insisted that she
return to the house of the notary. They go there and she charges him
with her interesting condition, even though three years have elapsed.
Water doesn't flow in the brook of the valley if there is no spring
higher up. The aunt who has sought in vain the opportunity to crush the
cringing hypocrite whose outward life had seemingly been one of virtue
and rigorous conventionalism, sees it now. She compels him to marry the
Sleeping Beauty. He becomes the butt of the taunts and derisions of the
community, juvenile and adult, especially after the child is born. The
strain is too much for him and he hangs himself when he realizes that
the dying aunt has left her money to the child of another and to the
church.
From the moment the Sleeping Beauty felt a new life within her a
spiritual torch was lit in her soul, which illuminated the abyss into
which she had fallen to such purpose that she found her way out, with
the helping hand which Nero held out to her. Continuing to burn during
her gestation and delivery, it conditioned her spiritual resurrection
and the moral rehabilitation of Nero. The impression left in the mind of
the reader is that they live together happily forever after, the summum
bonum of earthly existence, because of the happiness that flows from it
and because it insures eternal repose in Paradise. Although the play was
received with groans and howls and shrieks of depreciation when it was
first given in Rome, nevertheless some of the eternal verities are
accentuated and carried home by Nero of the Mines and by the Sleeping
Beauty.
I find greater difficulty in writing of recent Italian poetry than of
fiction. In the first place, I have not read it so extensively, and, in
the second, nearly every writer of fiction writes poetry as well. Some
of the young poets are discussed in the chapter on Futurists in
literature. Here I shall mention one or two others. Guido Gozzano, who
recently died, in his twenty-eighth year, was a prolific writer of
verse. It is confidently claimed by some critics that he earned the
distinction of being called Italy's most representative poet, the only
one since Pascoli and D'Annunzio who made a new vibration to the poetic
lyre and stamped verse with an individual conception which poetasters
have more or less accepted. But he suffered from hyperfecundity, and
many of his intellectual children are anæmic and rachitic. Even though
they are endowed with some feature of beauty their vitality is so slight
that no one wants to adopt them, and their parent being busy with the
creation of others, neglects them after having given them one passably
decent suit of clothes in the shape of book-form publications, so they
die.
Guido Gozzano was a melancholy figure. From life he appeared to have got
only sadness. At twenty-five years it had deluged his soul. His true
infelicity was then of not being able even to be sad. Scarcely had he
entered youth before he felt old. He had no companions, he was often
ill; nothing appealed to him, not even poetry. Literary life resembled
death. He forsook the city for the country, and the novelty of it for a
while diverted him. But it was not for long. He vacillated between doing
nothing and dreaming, between contemplating the emptiness of a grotesque
reality and the nostalgia of an unreal life, felt but not seen. He was
never emotional, never exalted, never blasphemous. Nevertheless, he
would seem to have written incessantly.
"Verso la Cuna del Mondo" ("Toward the Cradle of the World") consists of
the impressions of a voyage in India made in 1912 and 1913. "I Colloqui"
is a book of fables for children. In the "L'Altare del Passato" ("The
Altars of the Past") Gozzano takes as a rhythm the cry for the things
that were; the past arises anew in the intimacy of his feelings to tempt
him and to inspire him. It is the generous wine that he hopes will
intoxicate him and fill him with joy. Its effects are transitory.
His last book, "L'Ultima Traccia" ("The Last Traces"), did not
materially enhance his reputation as a story-teller. The story called
"The Eyes of the Soul" is undoubtedly the best. A beautiful girl has to
live her betrothed days alone; her fiancé goes to the war. She contracts
smallpox, which disfigures her. When she is called to his bedside in the
hospital where he is lying wounded, perhaps dying, she is concerned what
his feelings will be when he sees her face. When she gets there he is
not mortally injured, he is blind.
Francesco Chiesa has already differentiated himself from the writing
herd and his "Viali d'Oro" has had great popularity with the younger
generation of his country. His style, imagery, and masterful synthesis
is best seen in the volume entitled "Istorie e Favole," a collection of
short stories.
Another young Italian writer who is likely to come to the fore is Piero
Jahier. He wrote the best war story, "Con mi e con gli Alpini."
"Ragazzo," a recent publication, shows him in an entirely different
light.
Alfredo Bacceli was a young man of great promise in letters. His "Verso
la Morte" ("Toward Death"), showed clear vision, deep feeling, and
mastery of form.
Some of the most conspicuous of the present-day poets of Italy are
Marradi, Pastonchi, Rapisardi, Siciliani, and Sindici. The first two are
lyric poets, the last two masters of form in addition.
Luigi Siciliani, who became a member of Parliament in the last
elections, is the one of this group who is most likely to be remembered.
His "Canti perfetti," translations from the Greek, Latin, Portuguese,
and English, published in 1910, showed him to be not only a student but
a writer possessed of exquisite literary craftsmanship. He has written
novels, criticisms, anthologies, but the volume by which he is best
known is "Poesie per ridere," published in 1909.
Francesco Meriano, one of the group of young literary Italians that are
known through the _Brigata_ of Bologna, and who published some years ago
a volume of Futuristic poetry entitled "Equatore Notturno," is the
author of a volume containing his lyric compositions of the past four
years, entitled "Croci di legno" ("Wooden Crosses"), which has been very
well received by the critics.
In Marino Moretti's "Poesie" we encounter things which make us think of
the great poets--little perfections that much recent poetry almost no
longer knows, lucidity, subtle vision and modesty. If poetry is emotion
recollected in tranquillity some of these verses are real poetry.
Alfredo de Bosis, translator of Shelley's Cenci and advocate of Walt
Whitman, is the author of many lyrical poems, some of which have been
highly praised.
The three most prolific writers for the stage of yesterday in Italy are
Roberto Bracco, Sem Benelli, and Dario Niccodemi. They have all had much
success outside of their own country, and their names are well known to
readers and theatre-goers of our own country. They are now in the
fulness of their mature years, but with the exception of the latter none
has given evidence in recent productions of having sensed the change
that has taken place in the likings of the theatre-going public in
Italy.
Signor Bracco, a Neapolitan approaching sixty years of age, has for the
past twenty years worn gracefully the mantle of Giacosa. His works have
been published in ten fat volumes averaging three plays to a volume,
mostly comedies. Of these the most important are "L'Infedele" ("The
Unfaithful Woman"), and "Il Trionfo" ("The Triumph"), both published in
1895. The best of his dramas are "Tragedie dell' Anima" ("The Tragedies
of the Soul") and "La Piccola Fonte" ("The Little Spring"), which
becomes the fount of life in inspiration for those with whom the heroine
comes in contact. The best of his tragedies is "Sperduti nel Buio"
("Lost in the Darkness"). This brief enumeration gives no idea of the
versatility of Signor Bracco, who in reality has depicted in his
twoscore plays the ravages of carnal love in peasant and prince, in maid
and in mistress, in priest and professor, in the underworld and in the
overworld, in the cradle and in the grave.
Had the display of love and the passions that flow from it any confines,
they would encompass Signor Bracco's imagination. Although denied what
is called a scholastic education, he has studied science and philosophy,
literature and art, but always with one object in view: to learn what
human beings think and do when swayed by sexual passion. Not that
anything that he has written can be construed as exalting it or as
licensing it. On the contrary, the moral of the majority of his plays is
that continence, like virtue, is its own reward. Although Signor Bracco
would be the last to admit that he has not had an uplift motive in his
writings, it is difficult to discover it. Nor does he point the way that
will lead to avoidance of the suffering that flows, apparently with so
much directness, from social convention, from privilege, and from the
almost mediæval position of women in certain parts of Italy to-day. He
is a realist of realists in fiction, but he is like a physician who is
content to diagnose disease and leave to others its prevention and its
cure.
A writer who dyes his products in Bracco's vat, then for contrast colors
them with Sardou and Dumas, which, exposed for sale in the market-place,
find avid purchasers and bring high prices, is Dario Niccodemi, whose
comedies, especially "Scampolo" ("The Remnant") and "L'Ombra" ("The
Shadow"), have had great success. In his last two books, "Il Titano"
("The Titan") and "Prete Pero" ("Priest Pero"), he gives evidence that
he is keenly discerning of the new social consciousness that has
developed in Italy apparently as the result of the war. "Prete Pero,"
while depicting the subterfuges of the church to accomplish its ends and
the arguments that it uses to convince that the ends justify the means,
portrays one of those simple, faithful, honest, transparent souls, in
the shape of Father Bragio, who have been the pillars of the Roman
church which no Samson has ever been able to tear down. "I wrote 'Prete
Pero,'" he says, "as a journalist writes a series of articles or as a
speaker makes a series of conferences--for a general idea; but I have
had two, the first æsthetic, to sustain the principle that in Italy, as
in France and in England, and, indeed, in every country agonized by this
terrible war, one might make and make acceptably war comedies; second,
moral, to prove that it is permitted to say from the stage in verse or
in prose that which in the past four years has been said in journals, in
speeches, in conferences, in parliament and in committees, which is: in
the disorder of the social organization produced by the phenomena of war
there have been sublime heroes and brazen-faced cheats and swindlers."
"Prete Pero" showed that Signor Niccodemi has a nose for the favorite
perfume of the modern reader, just as his "L'Ombra" showed it when he
afflicted his heroine with hysterical paralysis and then cured her by
the method which Freud originally called the cathartic method. Dario
Niccodemi has not added materially to the dignity of Italian letters,
but he has amused and diverted his countrymen and ourselves, and for
that we are grateful.
Sem Benelli, who has recently had political life thrust upon him is, in
common with many literary Jews in Italy, inclined to give himself a
certain mystery of origin by concealing his antecedents. In reality he
was born in 1877. Not only is he well known in Italy but in this
country, where one of his early plays, "La Cena delle Beffe" ("The
Supper of the Jests"), has had great success. He began his literary
career as a journalist on a Florentine review, _Marzocco_. His first
play was published when he was twenty-five years old. Although "La
Tignola" ("The Moth") showed unusual quality of construction and
contrasted with great force the artistic temperament with the world of
the big business, it was not until "La Cena delle Beffe" that he
arrived.
His great forte is to be able to put melodrama of the most lurid kind
into verse, while depicting the lives and customs of the aristocracy of
the Renaissance, whose standard of morals and canons of conduct were so
unlike those of to-day. His heroes are always in search of revenge, his
women of adventure. In his "Le Nozze dei Centauri" ("The Marriage of the
Centaurs") he widens the field of his activity to display the conflict
of christian and barbarian, but again it is the same thing, adventure
and revenge. He does not trouble to be historically exact. It does not
matter to him whether his characters are true to life so long as they
are true to his conception of revengefulness. To accomplish his purpose
he often strikes a note that reminds of his ancestors of the Old
Testament.
The leader of all the younger Italian writers in drama and tragedy is
Luigi Ercole Morselli, born at Pesaro in 1883. The commission nominated
by the Ministry of Instruction to decide the most meritorious dramatic
production of 1918 awarded the prize of six thousand lire to him. As a
youth he studied medicine and later letters in Florence, but he soon
deserted them and wandered in America and Africa. His first success, a
pagan theme entitled "Orione," was recognized by competent critics to
have originality and unusual dramatic qualities, but he was by way of
being forgotten when nearly ten years later, 1919, a mystic drama based
upon mythology, entitled "Glauco," appeared. It was produced in Rome and
was greeted with every manifestation of approval. In reality it had an
astonishing but merited success. Glauco, the amorous fisherman, in order
to obtain his Scilla, braves the sea and seeks renown and riches. But,
alas for human frailties, he falls under the enchantment of Calypso.
When he returns to his native shore to claim his best-beloved he learns
of the heart-breaking events that have transpired during his absence.
Neither he nor Scilla can tolerate constant reminder of them and they
disappear in the deep waves after one of the most remarkable farewells
in modern literature.
Morselli does not follow either the mythological stories or their recent
reconstruction very closely. On the contrary he makes the events of the
legends harmonize with or conform to the laws that govern modern
amatoriousness. His heroes react in their love and hate, ambition,
realizations, in the same way as the people of to-day. His world is a
mythological world, but it is scenery in which we live or visit, and it
is peopled by men and women who love, hate, envy, portray, succor, and
defend, quite like the modern world.
He has recently published two new dramas entitled "Belfagor" and "Dafni
e Cloe." His fiction is a volume of fanciful tales called "Favole per i
Re d'Oggi" ("Fables for the Kings of To-day"), and short stories which
have appeared in magazines and journals.
Another young writer for the stage is Nino Berrini. The success of "Il
Beffardo" ("The Jester") was so great that one may confidently look
forward to his career without fear of disappointment.
Other successes in the theatrical world of 1919 in Italy were "La Vena
d'Oro" ("The Vein of Gold"), of Zorzi, and in much lesser degree "La
nostra Ricchezza" of Gotta.
The author of the latter is a man of thirty-three years who returned
from the war with new ideas regarding the rights of the people, liberty,
or whatever one calls that which underlies the present social unrest. He
has written many short stories, several romances, of which "Ragnatele"
("Cobwebs"), "Il Figlio Inquieto" ("The Restless Son") and "La più Bella
Donna del Mondo" ("The Most Beautiful Woman in the World") are the most
important.
Not only is he a man of ideas, but he has disciplined himself to a
chaste and virile way of expressing them. In "Our Riches" he has given
an admirable picture of the honest, high-principled aristocrat-farmer of
his native territory Ivrea, who has the same feeling for his acres that
the ideal patriot has for his country: reverence and love, and a
paternal interest in the welfare of those who gain their livelihood in
serving him. In contrast with him is his grandson, who has the same
reverence and affection for the ancestral home and acres but who sees
life, its entailments and its privileges, in an entirely different
light, who is a socialist in the correct sense of the term. Then he
draws with great distinctness the daughter of the former and the mother
of the latter, who is confronted with the conflict of choosing between
her son, father, and husband, the latter a profiteering shark in the
world of affairs. The weakness of the play is the author's failure or
unwillingness to define his own state of mind concerning property rights
and property distribution, or to define the relationship that should
exist between product and producer, capital and labor.
Were I obliged to characterize the fictional output of Italy during the
past few years, I should say that it was imaginatively sterile and
emotionally fecund. Whereas much of it displays technical efficiency in
form, construction, and finish, it lacks originality and does not reveal
comprehensive imaginativeness, which the renowned fiction of every
country has always had and must continue to have. It must be said,
however, that it portrays human nature: that is, thoughts and emotional
reactions incited and elicited by new conditions and new aspirations in
such a way as to pique the reader's curiosity and sustain his interest.
The Italian novelists of to-day are not story-tellers; they are
incident-relaters, narrators of personal experiences, observers armed
with cameras.