THE PERIOD OF DECADENCE AND THE REVIVAL
In the history of Italian literature, Dante, to expand a figure already
used, stands at the end of the Middle Ages like a lofty, solitary
mountain peak; behind him the low, level plain fades away into darkness;
before him the landscape, shone upon by the first rays of a new epoch,
slopes gradually upward until with Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the great
writers of the Renaissance, we have a lofty and widely extended plateau.
After Tasso there is a sudden descent to a low, level, uniform plain, in
which Italian literature dragged itself along till the middle of the
eighteenth century, when again an upward slope is noticed, which becomes
more and more accentuated as we approach the present.
Among the causes of the period of degradation, from 1560 to 1750, the
leading ones must be sought for in the political and religious condition
of Italy at that time. Spain had become possessed of a large part of the
country, especially in the north and south, while the pope, who ruled
the center, in temporal as well as spiritual matters, was the firm ally
of the Spaniards. The country thus under foreign dominion, was oppressed
and robbed without mercy. The Spanish viceroys, and their ignoble
imitators, the Italian nobles, lived a life of luxury and vice,
surrounded by bandits and brigands, and by paralyzing all commerce and
industry, brought on famine and pestilence.
The religious condition was no better. The Catholic reaction, or counter
reformation, which culminated in the Council of Trent, fastened still
more firmly the chains of medieval superstition and dogmatism on the
mass of the Italian people. The absolute power of the pope was
reaffirmed; two mighty instruments were forged to crush out heresy and
opposition--the Inquisition, which effectually choked out free thought,
and the Jesuits, who found their way stealthily into all ranks and
classes of society. Such was the condition of Italy at this time, "a
prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heartrending tragedy." The effect
on the social life of Italy was almost fatal. Everywhere, to use the
almost exaggerated language of Symonds, were to be seen idleness,
disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy,
vice, ruin, pestilence, "while over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction
floated the sickening oil of Jesuit hypocrisy."
No wonder that in such a state of society, literature and art reached
the lowest point in all its history. Scarcely a single man of genius or
even of talent, can be found in the period between 1580 and 1750. All
literature was marked by lack of originality of thought and by a style
deformed by execrable taste, a style which consisted of wretched
conceits, puns, antithesis, and gorgeous and far-fetched metaphors. This
form of literary diction was not confined, however, to Italy, being
represented in Spain by Gongora, in France by the Hotel de Rambouillet,
and in England by Lyly's Euphues. In Italy it is known as Marinism from
the poet Marini, whose Adone (in which is told the love of Venus for
Adonis, a subject previously treated by Shakespeare) exemplifying all
phases of the above-mentioned style, had enormous popularity not only in
Italy but abroad.
During the period now under discussion, poets were not wanting, for the
defect was in quality rather than quantity. Yet not all were entirely
without merit, for some possessed a certain degree of talent, especially
in the musical elements of their verse. Such were the lyrical poets,
Chiabrera, Testi, and Filicaja. In prose literature a better and saner
style prevailed, especially in the dialogues of Galileo, and in the
historical and critical writings of Sarpi and Vico.
In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended Spanish rule in Italy, and
the breath of free thought from England sweeping across the plains of
France entered Italy and gradually weakened the power of the Jesuits,
dissipated to a certain extent superstition and ignorance, and aroused
the country to a sense of its degradation. By bringing Italy into
connection with other nations, and with newer ideas, it planted the
germs of a new intellectual life. The influence of France, England, and
Germany began to make itself felt. Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire
influenced Italian tragedy, while Moliere, who himself had borrowed
largely from the early Italian comedies, now returned the favor by
becoming the master of Goldoni. English influence came later, first
Addison, Pope, and Milton, then toward the end of the eighteenth
century, Young, Gray, Shakespeare, and Ossian. Last of all came the
German influence, especially Klopstock and Goethe.
In this period of awakening the chief gain was in the field of the
drama. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, Italy, in this branch
of literature, could not even remotely be compared with France, Spain,
or England. In the sixteenth century comedies had not been wanting, and
beside the purely Italian creation of improvised farce (now represented
in Punch and Judy shows, pantomimes, and harlequinades), Ariosto had
written literary comedies in close imitation of Plautus and Terence.
Yet, from Ariosto to Goldoni we find practically but one genuine writer
of comedy; this singularly enough, was Machiavelli, whose Mandragora was
enormously popular, and was declared by Voltaire to be better than
Aristophanes and but little inferior to Moliere. But one book does not
make a literature any more than one swallow makes a summer. It was left
for Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) to give his country a number of comedies
worthy of being compared with those of Moliere. Goldoni was a kindly,
amiable man of the world as well as of letters, bright and witty but
withal somewhat superficial. Although a keen observer of the outer form
of society and human nature, he lacked the depth and insight, and
especially the subtle pathos of Moliere. He was greatly influenced by
the latter, whom he looked upon as his master. Like him he began with
light comedy, farcical in nature, and gradually produced more and more
comedies of manner and character. Yet he is not a slavish imitator of
the great Frenchman, to whom, while inferior in earnestness and
knowledge of the human heart, he was equal in dialogue, in development
of plot, and in comic talent. Goldoni composed rapidly (once he wrote
sixteen comedies in a year), and has left behind him one hundred and
sixty plays and eighty musical dramas and opera texts.
The musical drama is a peculiar Italian invention, and almost
immediately reached perfection in Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), after
whom it began rapidly to decline. Metastasio was universally admired and
was, before Goldoni and Alfieri, the only Italian that had a European
reputation, and who thus won some measure of glory for his country in
her period of deepest degradation. His plays, meant to be set to
music--the modern opera text is a debased form of this--were
superficial, had no real delineation of character, yet were written in
verses which flowed softly along like a clear stream through flowery
meads. Light, artificial in sentiment, often lax in morals, yet
expressing the courtly conventionalities of the times, Metastasio's
poetry enjoyed vast popularity, while he himself became the favorite of
the aristocratic society of Vienna, where he lived for fifty years, and
the pride and glory of Italy. After him music became the all-important
element in this peculiar form of drama, which thus became the modern
opera, while the poetical element was degraded to the text thereof.
More famous, perhaps, than either the above was Alfieri, the founder of
modern Italian tragedy. In the intellectual movement of the sixteenth
century, tragedy, like comedy, had not been neglected, and many
translations and imitations had been made of the Greek and Latin
dramatists. The first regular tragedy, not only of Italian but of modern
European literature, was the Sofonisba of Trissino, which became the
model of all succeeding writers. Published first in 1524 it was soon
translated into all European languages and has been imitated, among many
others, by Corneille and Voltaire in France, Alfieri in Italy, and
Geibel in Germany. In spite of this promising beginning, however,
Italian tragedy did not develop as that of the neighboring countries
did. Among the numberless writers of tragedy in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries scarcely one deserves mention. In the early part
of the eighteenth century one name became famous, Scipio Maffei
(1675-1755) the immediate predecessor of Alfieri, whose Merope was
vastly popular throughout all Europe.
Yet Italy could not boast of a truly national drama before the
appearance of Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), who gave her an honorable
rank in this department of the world's literature. The story of his
life, as told by himself in his autobiography, is exceedingly
interesting. Born in Asti, near Turin, of a noble family, after a youth
spent in idleness, ignorance, and selfish pleasure, he "found himself,"
at the age of twenty-six, and being fired with ambition to become a
poet, he began a long period of self-education, in which he made
especial effort to master the Italian language, which he, born in
Piedmont, and long absent abroad, only half understood. The rest of his
life was spent in this study and in writing his dramas.
In his reform of the Italian drama, Alfieri did not, like Manzoni later,
try to introduce Shakesperean methods. He went back to the tragic
system of the Greeks and tried to improve on the French followers of the
latter. He observed the three unities, especially that of action, even
more strictly than Corneille or even Racine. Hence his plays are
extraordinarily short (only one is of more than fifteen hundred lines).
The action moves on swiftly to the climax with no effort at mere
dramatic situation or stage effect.
Of especial interest are the subjects of Alfieri's tragedies, all of
them having a political or social tendency. They all express the
theories of the French philosophers then so popular in Italy, concerning
freedom and the rights of the people in opposition to the divine right
of kings. His heroes--Virginius, Brutus, Timoleon--all proclaim the
liberty of man. It is interesting to note that he dedicated one of his
plays to George Washington. To the reader of the present day even his
best plays--Virginia, Orestes, Agamemnon, Myrra, and Saul--seem
conventional, monotonous, and unreal. The characters are mere types of
passion or sentiment; there is no variety of action, no episodes, and no
poetical adornments. Yet in his own age Alfieri was regarded as a great
tragic poet, not only in his own country, but beyond the Alps. His
influence on Italian literature was very great. For the next two
generations there was scarcely a poet who did not admire and imitate
him. Parini, Foscolo, Monti, Manzoni, Leopardi, and Pellico, all looked
up to him as their master.
Alfieri was the first to speak of a fatherland, a united Italy; he
practically founded the patriotic school of literature which has lasted
down to the present time. Hence he is even more important from a
political standpoint than from a literary one. He himself looked on his
tragedies as a means of inspiring new and higher political ideas in his
fellow-countrymen, degraded as they had been by the long oppression of
Spain. "I wrote," he says, "because the sad conditions of the times did
not allow me to act."
The literature of the first half of the nineteenth century was dominated
by this political and patriotic spirit; Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, and
Pellico, all wrote dramas in the spirit of Alfieri. Most of them,
however, are better known in other accounts. Foscolo, through his
letters of Jacopo Ortis, the Italian Werther, and his literary essays;
Pellico for his My Prisons; Manzoni for his Betrothed, one of the great
novels of modern times.
Greater than all of these, however, is Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who
alone is worthy to be placed beside the four great Italian poets, Dante,
Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, the last three of whom, at least, he might
under happier circumstances have equaled. The story of his life is a
pathetic one. Born of a family noble but poor, with a sensitive and
melancholy temperament, the circumstances of his life only added to his
morbid tendency, and after a brief existence, passed in sickness,
poverty, and gloom, he died. Leopardi was great as a poet, a
philosopher, and scholar. His Ode to Italy is one of the noblest poems
in the language, and his Solitary Shepherd of Asia, is full of
incomparable beauty.
Other names of this later period crowd upon our attention, in political
literature, Mazzini; in the novel, D'Azeglio, Cantu, Guerazzi, and
Gozzi; in history Botta, Balbo, and Cantu. But we must hasten to close
this brief survey, with merely mentioning the names of a few of the more
important writers of the present time; in poetry, Carducci, Ada Negri,
D'Annunzio; in the novel, which in Italy as elsewhere has usurped the
chief place, Fogazzaro, D'Annunzio. The latter, although still young,
is, next to Carducci, the most considerable figure in Italian literature
to-day. In his dramas, poetry, and novels he shows a wonderful command
of language and descriptive imagination, and at one time bid fair to
become a truly great writer. In his later works he shows retrogression
rather than progress, and the taint of immorality and a certain
exaggerated eccentricity of thought have vitiated his talent and tended
to destroy his popularity.
QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW
1. Mention some causes of the degradation of Italian literature
in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
2. Describe the political and social condition of the country.
3. Who was Marini?
4. Name some of the early writers of Italian comedy.
5. Life, character, and literary genius of Goldoni.
6. What was the musical drama; who its greatest writer?
7. Name two famous tragedies before the time of Alfieri.
8. Give an account of the life of Alfieri.
9. What is the general character of his plays?
10. Alfieri's influence, what form did it take?
11. Name some of his followers.
12. Who was the greatest poet of the early nineteenth century?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For the political and social condition of Italy during the
period of decline see Symond's Catholic Reaction. Alfieri's
Autobiography, an intensely interesting book, has been often
published in English. For modern literature see Howell's Modern
Italian Poets, Sewall's translations from Carducci, and Greene's
Italian Lyrists of To-day.
INDEX
Accius, 5.
Alexander, 7.
Alfieri, Vittorio, 341, seq.
Alighieri, Dante, 195, seq.; 299, 313, 337.
Andronicus, 4, 39, 119.
Angelo, Michel, 335.
Annales, 124.
Anselm, 179.
Apollodorus, 39.
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 180, 256, 263.
Arezzo, Guittone d', 184, seq.
Argo, 7.
Argonautae, 7.
Ariosto, 191, Chap. VI. works; 303, 322, 335.
Aristophanes, 39.
Bandello, Matteo, 335.
Beatrice, 197, 204, 206, seq.
Bellum, Punicum, 119.
Bembo, Pietro, 335.
Benivieni, Girolamo, 189.
Berni, Francesco, 335.
Boccaccio, 196, 267, Chap. V. works; 286, seq.; 299, 335, 337.
Boiardo, 191, 300, seq.; 322.
Bonaventura, St., 180.
Bracciolini, Poggio, 297.
Caesar, 82, 90, 129.
Calvo, Bonifaccio, 182.
Carducci, 345.
Castiglione, Baldasarre, 335.
Cato, 9, 72, 122.
Catullus, 128.
Cavalcanti, 193, seq.
Cellini, Benvenuto, 335.
Cervantes, 314.
Chanson, de geste, 190, 299.
Chaucer, 286, seq.; 289.
Chiabrera, 339.
Ciani, Gioachino, 286.
Cicero, 129.
Cino da Pistoia, 193.
Cinzio, Giraldo, 335.
Colonna, Vittoria, 335.
Convito, 205.
Cratinus, 39.
Damian, Peter, 179, 257.
Daniel, Arnaut, 184.
D'Annunzio, 345.
Dante da Majano, 193.
Decameron, 287, seq.
Dies, Irae, 188.
Divine Comedy, 205, Chap. III., 316.
Domitian, 106.
Domitius, 9.
Eclogues of Vergil, 130.
Ennius, 5, 74;
epitaph of, 75; 121.
Epicharmus, 74.
Eupolis, 39.
Fabulae praetextae, 5.
Fasani, 188.
Ficino, Marsilio, 297.
Filicaja, 339.
Firenzuola, 335.
Flagellants, 188, seq.
Foscolo, 343, 344.
Francesca da Rimini, 203, 221.
Frederick II., 182, seq.
Fulvius, 122, 123.
Georgics of Vergil, 130.
Gianni, Lapo, 193.
Goldoni, Carlo, 339.
Guarini, 335.
Guelphs and Ghibellines, 198, seq.
Guicciardini, 335.
Guinicelli, Guido, 185, seq.; 247.
Hesiod, 72.
Horace, 72, 80.
Italian Renaissance, 314, 335.
Jacopone da Todi, 189.
Jerusalem Delivered, 304, 322, seq.
Juvenal, 105.
Lanfranc, 179.
Latini, Brunetto, 196, 227.
Laudi, 189.
Laura, 269, seq.
Leopardi, Giacomo, 344.
Lombard, Peter, 179.
Lucan, 9.
Lucilius, 72, 73, 75, 76, 128.
Lucretius, 128.
Machiavelli, Nicholas, 335, 340.
Maecenas, 83, 91, 92, 95, 130.
Maffei, Scipio, 342.
Manzoni, 343, 344.
Marini, 339.
Marsili, Luigi, 297.
Maternus, 9.
Menander, 39.
Metastasio, Pietro, 341.
Mirandola, Pico della, 298.
Naevius, 5, 40, 119.
Nardi, 335.
New Life, The, 206, seq.
Octavia, 9.
Odyssey, 4, 119.
OEnomaus, 8.
Orlando, 300;
Innamorato, 301;
Furioso, 303;
seq., 316.
Ovid, 9, 72.
Pacuvius, 5.
Paris, 7.
Pellico, 343, 344.
Persius, 99.
Petrarch, Chap. IV., 299, 335, 337.
Petroni, Pietro de', 285.
Pharsalia of Lucan, 127.
Philemon, 39.
Plautus, 40.
Politian, 298, 299.
Pollio, 8, 91.
Pomponius Secundus, 9.
Porto Luigi da, 335.
Provencal, 173, 182, seq.
Ptolemaic system, 216, 217.
Pulci, Luigi, 191, 299.
Punica, of Silius, 127.
Sallust, 129.
Salutati, Coluccio, 297.
Sannazaro, 335.
Sarpi, 339.
Seneca, 9.
Sordello, of Mantua, 182, 241.
Speculum Majus, 180.
Stabat Mater, 189.
St. Francis, 187, 256.
Tacitus, 107.
Tasso, 298, Chapter VII.
Works, 322, 337.
Terence, 40.
Testi, 339.
Thebaid, of Statius, 127.
Thomas, of Celano, 188.
Thyestes, 9.
Uberti, Farinata degli, 225.
Ulysses, 230.
Universal Monarchy, 205;
political treatise on, 206.
Vaqueiras, Rambaud de, 181.
Varchi, 335.
Varius, 8, 9.
Varro, 72, 128.
Vasari, 335.
Vergil, 9, 72, 91, 128, Chap. III.
Vico, 339.
Vidal, Pierre, 181.
Vigne, Pier delle, 183.
Vincent of Beauvais, 180.
Works and Days, 72.
Zorzi, Bartolomeo, 182.
Transcriber's Notes
This is the second part of a larger work. The first part is
"Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman" by Frank Justus Miller.
References in the index to pages earlier than 173 refer the first part.
Page 261
'among the men and woman'
'woman' is likely 'women'. Unchanged.
Page 273
'noonday' rather that 'noon-day' as used elsewhere.
Unchanged.
Page 302
'Rinaldo, and the latter's sister, Brandiamente,'
Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.
Page 302
'Other important characters are Astolfo, Rodomonte,'
Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.
Pages 305-315
Medoro and Medore are used interchangeably. Unchanged.
Page 313
'Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan,'
Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.
Page 313
on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte,
'Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.'
Page 315
'For the romatic poets,'
May be 'romantic' vice 'romatic'. Unchanged.
End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in the Poetry of Italy, by Oscar Kuhns