POPULAR SECULAR POETRY.
Separation between Cultivated Persons and the People--Italian
despised by the Learned--Contempt for Vernacular
Literature--The _Certamen Coronarium_--Literature of
Instruction for the Proletariate--Growth of Italian
Prose--Abundance of Popular Poetry--The People in the
Quattrocento take the Lead--Qualities of Italian
Genius--Arthurian and Carolingian Romances--_I Reali di
Francia_--Andrea of Barberino and his Works--Numerous Romances
in Prose and Verse--Positive Spirit--Versified Tales from
Boccaccio--Popular Legends--Ginevra degli Almieri--Novel of
_Il Grasso_--Histories in Verse--_Lamenti_--The Poets of the
People--_Cantatori in Banca_--Antonio Pucci--His
_Sermintesi_--Political Songs--Satires--Burchiello--His Life
and Writings--Dance-Songs--Derived from Cultivated Literature,
or produced by the People--Poliziano--Love-Songs--_Rispetti_
and _Stornelli_--The Special Meaning of
_Strambotti_--Diffusion of this Poetry over Italy--Its
Permanence--Question of its Original Home--Intercommunication
and Exchange of Dialects--_Incatenature_ and
_Rappresaglie_--Traveling in Medieval Italy--The
Subject-Matter of this Poetry--Deficiency in Ballad
Elements--Canti Monferrini--The Ballad of _L'Avvelenato_ and
Lord Ronald.
During the fifteenth century there was an almost complete separation
between the cultivated classes and the people. Humanists, intent upon
the exploration of the classics, deemed it below their dignity to use
the vulgar tongue. They thought and wrote in Latin, and had no time to
bestow upon the education of the common folk. A polite public was
formed, who in the Courts of princes and the palaces of noblemen amused
themselves with the ephemeral literature of pamphlets, essays, and
epistles in the Latin tongue. For these well-educated readers Poggio
and Pontano wrote their Latin novels. The same learned audience
applauded the gladiators of the moment, Valla and Filelfo, when they
descended into the arena and plied each other with pseudo-Ciceronian
invectives. To quit this refined circle, and address the vulgar crowd,
was thought unworthy of a man of erudition. Even Alberti, as we have
seen, felt bound to apologize for sending his _Teogenio_ in Italian to
Lionello d'Este. Only here and there a humanist of the first rank is
found who, like Bruni, devoted a portion of his industry to the Italian
lives of Dante and Petrarch, or like Filelfo, lectured on the Divine
Comedy, or again like Landino, composed a Dantesque commentary in the
mother tongue. Moreover, Dante and Petrarch passed for almost classical;
and in nearly all such instances of condescension, pecuniary interest
swayed the scholar from his wonted orbit. It was want of skill in Latin
rather than love for his own idiom which induced Vespasiano to pen his
lives of great men in Italian. Not spontaneous inspiration, but the whim
of a ducal patron forced Filelfo to use _terza rima_ for his worthless
poem on S. John, and to write a commentary upon Petrarch in the
vernacular.[279] One of this man's letters reveals the humanist's
contempt for the people's language, and his rooted belief in the
immortality of Latin. It is worth translating.[280] "I will answer
you," he says, "not in the vulgar language, as you ask, but in Latin and
our own true speech; for I have ever had an abhorrence for the talk of
grooms and servants, equal to my detestation of their life and manners.
You, however, call that dialect vernacular which, when I use the Tuscan
tongue, I sometimes write. All Italians agree in praise of Tuscan. Yet I
only employ it for such matters as I do not choose to transmit to
posterity. Moreover, even that Tuscan idiom is hardly current throughout
Italy, while Latin is far and wide diffused throughout the habitable
world." From this interesting epistle we gather that even professional
scholars in the middle of the fifteenth century recognized Tuscan as a
quasi-literary language, superior in polish to the other Italian
dialects, but not to be compared for dignity and durability with Latin.
It also proves that the language of Boccaccio was for them almost a
foreign speech.
This attitude of learned writers produced a curious obtuseness of
critical insight. Niccolo Niccoli, though he was a Florentine, called
Dante "a poet for bakers and cobblers." Pico della Mirandola preferred
Lorenzo de' Medici's verses to Petrarch. Landino complained, not,
indeed, without good reason in that century, that the vulgar language
could boast of no great authors. Filippo Villani, in the proem to his
biographies, apologized for his father Matteo, who exerted humble
faculties and scanty culture to his best ability. Lorenzo de' Medici
defended himself for paying attention to an idiom which men of good
judgment blamed for "lowness, incapacity and unworthiness to deal with
high themes or grave material." Benedetto Varchi, who lived to be an
excellent though somewhat cumbrous writer of Italian prose, gives this
account of his early training[281]: "I remember that when I was a lad,
the first and strictest rule of a father to his sons, and of a master to
his pupils, was that they should on no account and for no object read
anything in the vulgar speech (_non legesseno cose volgari, per dirlo
barbaramente come loro_); and Master Guasparre Mariscotti da Marradi,
who was my teacher in grammar, a man of hard and rough but pure and
excellent manners, having once heard, I know not how, that Schiatta di
Bernardo Bagnesi and I were wont to read Petrarch on the sly, gave as a
sound rating for it, and nearly expelled us from his school." Some of
Varchi's own stylistic pedantries may be attributed to this Latinizing
education.
Even when they wrote their mother tongue, it followed that the men of
humanistic culture had a false conception of style. Alberti could not
abstain from Latinistic rhetoric. Cristoforo Landino went the length of
asserting that "he who would fain be a good Tuscan writer, must first be
a Latin scholar." The Italian of familiar correspondence was mingled in
almost equal quantities with Latin phrases. Thus Poliziano, writing from
Venice to Lorenzo de' Medici, employs the following strange maccaronic
jargon[282]:
Visitai stamattina Messer Zaccheria Barbero; e mostrandoli io
l'affezione vostra ec., mi rispose sempre lagrimando, et ut
visum est, de cuore; risolvendosi in questo, in te uno spem
esse. Ostendit so nosse quantum tibi debeat; sicche fate
quello ragionaste, ut favens ad majora. Quello Legato che
torna da Roma, et qui tecum locutus est Florentiae, non e punto
a loro proposito, ut ajunt.
Poliziano, however, showed by his letters to the ladies of the Medicean
family, and by some sermons composed for a religious brotherhood of
which he was a member, that he had no difficulty in writing Tuscan prose
of the best quality.[283] It seems to have been a contemptuous fashion
among men of learning, when they used the mother tongue for
correspondence, to load it with Latin--just as a German of the age of
Frederick proved his superiority by French phrases. The acme of this
affectation was reached in the _Hypnerotomachia_, where the vice of
Latinism sought perpetuation through the printing press. Meanwhile, the
genius of the Florentine people was saving Italian literature from the
extreme consequences to which caricatures of this kind, inspired by
humanistic pedantry and sciolism, exposed it.
A characteristic incident of the year 1441 brings before us a set of men
who, though obscure and devoted to the service of the common folk,
exercised no slight influence over the destinies of the Italian
language. After the reinstatement of the Medici, and while Alberti was
resident in Florence, it occurred to him to propose the prize of a
silver crown for the best poem upon Friendship, in the vulgar tongue.
Piero de' Medici approving of this scheme, it was arranged that the
contest for the prize should take place in S. Maria del Fiore, the
competitors reciting their own compositions. The secretaries of Pope
Eugenius IV. consented to be umpires. Eight poets entered the
lists--Michele di Noferi del Gigante, Francesco d'Altobianco degli
Alberti, and six others not less unknown to fame. We still possess their
compositions in octave stanzas, _terza rima_, sapphics, hexameters and
lyric strophes.[284] The poems were so bad that even the judges of that
period refused to award the crown; nor could the most indulgent student
of forgotten literature arraign this verdict for severity. Yet the men
who engaged in Alberti's _Certamen Coronarium_, as it was called, fairly
represented a class of literary workers, who occupied a middle place
between the learned and the laity, and on whom devolved the task of
writing for the people.
Since that unique moment in the history of Tuscan civilization when the
lyrics of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti were heard upon the lips of
blacksmiths, the artisans of Florence had not wholly lost their thirst
for culture. Style and erudition retired into the schools of the
humanists and the studies of the nobles. But this curiosity of the
_volgo_, as Boccaccio contemptuously called them, was satisfied by the
production of a vernacular literature, which brought the ruder elements
of knowledge within their reach. Mention has already been made of
Latini's _Tesoro_ and _Tesoretto_, Uberti's _Dittamondo_ and similar
encyclopaedic works of medieval learning. To these may now be added
Leonardo Dati's cosmographical history in octave stanzas, the Schiavo da
Bari's aphorisms on morality, and Pucci's _terza rima_ version of
Villani's Chronicle. Genealogical poems on popes, emperors and kings;
episodes from national Italian history; novels, romances and tales of
chivalry; pious biographies; the rudiments of education, from the
_Dottrinale_ of Jacopo Alighieri down to Feo Belcari's _A B C_, helped
to complete the handicraftsman's library. Further to describe this
plebeian literature is hardly necessary. The authors advanced no
pretensions to artistic elegance or stateliness of style. They sought to
render knowledge accessible to unlettered readers, or to please an
open-air audience with stirring and romantic narratives. Their language
broke only at rare intervals into poetry and rhetoric, when the
subject-matter forced a note of unaffected feeling from the
improvisatore. Yet it has always the merit of purity, and, in point of
idiom, is superior to the Latinistic periods of Alberti. By means of the
neglected labors of these nameless writers, the style of the fourteenth
century, so winning in its infantine grace, was gradually transformed
and rendered capable of stronger literary utterance. Those who have
studied a single prose-work of this period--_I Reali di Francia_, for
instance, or Belcari's _Vita del Beato Colombino_, or the _Governo della
Famiglia_ ascribed to Pandolfini--will be convinced that a real progress
toward grammatical cohesion and massiveness of structure was made
during those years of the fifteenth century which are usually counted
barren of achievement by literary historians. Italian prose had entered
on the period of adolescence, leading to the manhood of Machiavelli.
The popular poetry of the _quattrocento_ is still more interesting than
its prose. No period of Italian history was probably more fruitful of
songs poured forth from the very heart of the people, on the fields and
in the city. The music of these lyrics still lingers about the Tuscan
highlands and the shores of Sicily, where much that now passes for
original composition is but the echo of most ancient melody stored in
the retentive memory of peasants. To investigate the several species of
this poetry, together with kindred works of prose fiction, under the
several classes of (i) epics and romances, (ii) histories in verse and
satires, (iii) love-poems, (iv) religious lyrics, and (v) dramas, will
be my object in the present and the following chapters. This survey of
popular literature forms a necessary introduction to the renascence
which was simultaneously effected for Italian at Florence, Ferrara and
Naples during the last years of the century. The material prepared by
the people was then resumed and artistically elaborated by learned
authors.
It has been well said that Italian poetry exhibits a continual
reciprocity of exchange between the cultivated classes and the
proletariate. In this respect the literature of the Italians corresponds
to their fine art. Taken together with painting, sculpture, and music,
it offers a more complete embodiment of the national spirit than can be
shown by any other modern race. Dante's Francesca and Count Ugolino,
Ariosto's golden cantos, and the romantic episodes of the _Gerusalemme_
are known by heart throughout the length and breadth of the Peninsula.
The people have appropriated these masterpieces of finished art. On the
other hand, the literary poets have been ever careful to borrow
subjects, forms, and motives from the populace. The close _rapport_
which thus connects the tastes and instincts of the proletariate with
the culture of the aristocracy, is rooted in peculiar conditions of
Italian society. Traditions of a very ancient civilization, derived
without apparent rupture from the Roman age, have penetrated and refined
the whole nation. From the highest to the lowest, the Italians are born
with sensibility to beauty. This people and its poets live in sympathy
so vital that, though their mutual good understanding may have been
suspended for short intervals, it has never been broken. The vibrations
of intercourse between the peasant and the learned writer are incessant;
and if we notice some intermittency of influence on one side or the
other, it is only because at one epoch the destinies of the national
genius were committed to the people, at another to the cultivated
classes. In the fifteenth century, one of these temporary ruptures
occurred. The Revival of Learning had to be effected by an isolation of
the scholars. Meanwhile, the people carried on the work of literary
transmutation, which was to connect Boccaccio with Pulci and Poliziano.
Their instinct rejected all elements alien to the national temperament.
Out of the many models bequeathed by the fourteenth century, only those
which suited the sensuous realism of the Florentines survived. The
traditions of Ciullo d'Alcamo and Jacopone da Todi, of Rustico di
Filippo and Lapo Gianni, of Folgore da S. Gemignano and Cene dalla
Chitarra, of Cecco Angiolieri and Guido Cavalcanti, of Boccaccio and
Sacchetti, of Ser Giovanni and Alesso Donati, triumphed over the
scholasticism of those learned poets--"half Provencal and half Latin,
half chivalrous, and half _bourgeois_, half monastic and half sensual,
half aristocratic and half plebeian"[285]--who had unsuccessfully
experimentalized in the dawn of Tuscan culture. The artificial chivalry,
lifeless mysticism, barren metaphysics, and hypocritical piety of the
rhyming doctors were eliminated. Common sense expressed itself in a
reaction against their conventional philosophy. Giotto's blunt critique
of Franciscan poverty, Orcagna's burlesque definition of Love, not as a
blind boy with wings and arrows, but thus:
L'amore e un trastullo;
Non e composto di legno ne d'osso;
E a molta gente fa rompere il dosso:
struck the keynote of the new literature.[286] It is true that much was
sacrificed. Both Dante and Petrarch seemed to be forgotten. Yet this was
inevitable. Dante represented a bygone age of faith and reason.
Petrarch's humanity was too exquisitely veiled. The Florentine people
required expression more simple and direct, movement more brusque,
emotion of a coarser fiber. Meanwhile the Divine Comedy and the
_Canzoniere_ were the inalienable possessions of the nation. They had
already taken rank as classics.
The Italians had no national Epic, if we except the _AEneid_. We have
seen how the romances of Charlemagne and Arthur were imported with the
languages of France and Provence into Northern Italy, and how they
passed into the national literature of Lombardy and Tuscany.[287] Both
cycles were eminently popular. The _Tavola Ritonda_ ranks among the
earliest monuments of Tuscan prose.[288] The _Cento Novelle_ contain
frequent references to Merlin, Lancelot and Tristram. Folgore da S.
Gemignano compares the members of his Joyous Company to King Ban's
children. In the _Laberinto d'Amore_ Boccaccio speaks of Arthurian tales
as the favorite studies of idle women, and Sacchetti bids his blacksmith
turn from Dante to legends of the Round Table. Yet there is no doubt
that from a very early period the Carolingian cycle gained the
preference of the Italian people.[289] It is also noticeable that, not
the main legend of Roland, but the episode of Rinaldo, and other
offshoots from the history of the Frankish peers, furnished plebeian
poets with their favorite material.[290] MSS. written in Venetian and
Franco-Italian dialects before the middle of the fourteenth century
attest to the popularity of these subordinate romances, and reveal an
independent handling of the borrowed subject. In form they do not
diverge widely from French originals. Yet there is one prominent
characteristic which distinguishes the Italian _rifacimenti_. A
Christian hero falls in love with a pagan heroine on pagan soil. His
pursuit of her, their difficulties and adventures, and the
evangelization of her people by the knightly lover, furnish a series of
incidents which recur with singular persistence.[291] When the romances
in question had been translated into Tuscan, a destiny of special
splendor was reserved for two of them, in no way distinguished by any
apparent merit above the rest. These were the tales of Buovo d'Antona,
of which we possess an early version in octave stanzas, and of
Fioravante, which exists in still older prose. About the beginning of
the fifteenth century, the _Buovo_ and the _Fioravante_, together with
other material drawn from the Carolingian epic, were combined into the
great prose work called _I Reali di Francia_.[292] Since its first
appearance to the present day, this romance has never ceased to be the
most widely popular of all books written in Italian. "There is nothing,"
says Signor Rajna, "so assiduously read from the Alps to the furthest
headlands of Sicily. Wherever a reader exists, there is it certain to be
found in honor."[293] Not the earliest but the latest product of a long
elaboration of romantic matter by the people, it seems to have
assimilated the very essence of the popular imagination. When we inquire
into its authorship, we find good reason to ascribe it to Andrea dei
Mangalotti of Barberino in the Val d'Elsa, one of the best and most
indefatigable workmen for the literary market of the proletariate.[294]
It was he who compiled the _Aspromonte_, the _Aiolfo_, the seven books
of _Storie Nerbonesi_, the _Ugone d'Avernia_, and the _Guerino il
Meschino_, reducing these tales from elder poems and prose sources into
Tuscan of sterling lucidity and vigor, and attempting, it would seem, to
embrace the whole Carolingian cycle in a series of episodical
romances.[295] _Guerino il Meschino_ rivaled for a while the _Reali_ in
popularity; but for some unknown reason, which would have to be sought
in the instinctive partialities of the people, it was gradually
superseded by the latter. The _Reali_ alone has descended in its
original form through the press to this century.[296]
Andrea da Barberino, if we are right in ascribing the _Reali_ to his
pen, conferred a benefit on the Italians parallel to that which the
English owed to Sir Thomas Mallory in his "Mort d'Arthur." He not only
collected and condensed the scattered tales of numerous unknown
predecessors, but he also bequeathed to the nation a monument of
unaffected prose at a moment when the language was still ingenuous and
plastic. It would be not uninteresting to compare the fate of the
_Reali_ with that of our own "Mort d'Arthur." The latter was the more
artistic performance of the two. It achieved a truer epical unity, and
was composed in a richer, more romantic style. The former remained
episodical and incomplete; and its language, though solid and efficient,
lacked the charm of Mallory's all golden prose. Yet the _Reali_ is still
a household classic. It is found in every _contadino's_ cottage, and
supplies the peasantry with subjects for their _Maggi_. The "Mort
d'Arthur," on the contrary, has become the plaything of medievalizing
folk in modern England. Read for its unique beauty by students, it is
still unknown to the people, and, in the opinion of the dull majority,
it is reckoned inferior to Tennyson's smooth imitations.
When we come to consider the romantic poems of Pulci, Boiardo, and
Ariosto, we shall be able to estimate the service rendered by men like
Andrea da Barberino to polite Italian literature. The popularity of the
cycle to which the _Reali_ belonged, decided the choice of the
Carolingian epic by the poets of Florence and Ferrara. Nor were the
above-mentioned romances by any means the only works of their kind
produced for a plebeian audience in the _quattrocento_. It is enough to
mention _La Regina Ancroja_, _La Spagna_, _Trebisonda con la Vita e
Morte di Rinaldo_. Both in prose and verse an abundant literature of the
kind was manufactured. Without being positively burlesqued, the heroes
of chivalrous story were travestied to suit the taste of artisans and
burghers. The element of the marvelous was surcharged; comic and
pathetic episodes were multiplied; beneath the armor of the Paladins
Italian characters were substituted with spontaneous malice for the
obsolete ideals of feudalism. It only needed a touch of conscious irony
to convert the material thus elaborated by the people into the airy
fabric of Ariosto's art. At the same time the form which the epic of
romance was destined to assume, had been determined. The streets and
squares of town and village rang with the chants of improvisatori,
turning the prose periods of Andrea da Barberino and his predecessors
into wordy octave stanzas, rehandling ancient _Chansons de Geste_, and
adapting the mannerism of chivalrous minstrelsy to the requirements of a
subtle-witted Tuscan crowd. The old-fashioned invocations of God,
Madonna, or some saint were preserved at the beginning of each canto,
while the audience received their _conge_ from the author at its close.
When the poems thus produced were committed to writing, the plebeian
author feigned at least the inspiration of a bard.
While the traditions of medieval song were thus preserved, the
prose-romances followed, as closely as possible, the style of a
chronicle, and aimed at the verisimilitude of authentic history. The
_Reali_, for example, opens with this sentence: "Fuvvi in Roma un santo
pastore della Chiesa, che aveva nome papa Silvestro." The _Fioravante_,
recently edited by Signor Rajna, begins: "Nel tempo che Gostantino
imperadore regiea & mantenea corte in Roma grandissima." This parade of
historic seriousness, observed by the subsequent romantic poets,
contributed in no small measure to the irony at which they aimed. But
with the story-tellers of the _quattrocento_ it was no mere affectation.
Like their predecessors of the fourteenth century, they treated legend
from the standpoint of experience. It was due in no small measure to
this circumstance that the Italian prose-romances are devoid of charm.
Nowhere do we find in them that magic touch of poetry which makes the
forests, seas and castles of the "Mort d'Arthur" enchanted ground.
Notwithstanding all their extravagances, they remain positive in spirit,
presenting the material of fancy in the sober garb of fact. The Italian
genius lacked a something of imaginative potency possessed in
overflowing measure by the Northern nations. It required the stimulus of
satire, the infusion of idyllic sentiment, the consciousness of art, to
raise the romantic epic to the height it reached in Ariosto. Then, and
not till then, when the matter of the legend had become the sport of the
aesthetic sense, were the inexhaustible riches of Italian fancy, dealing
delicately and humorously with a subject which could no longer be
apprehended seriously, revealed to the world in a masterpiece of beauty.
But that work of consummate art was what it was, by reason of the
master's wise employment of a style transmitted to him through
generations of plebeian predecessors.
The same positive and workmanly method is discernible in the versified
_novelle_ of this period.[297] The popular poets were wont to recast
tales from the Decameron and other sources in octave stanzas. Of such
compositions we have excellent specimens in Girolamo Benivieni's version
of the novel of Tancredi, and in an anonymous rhymed paraphrase of
Patient Grizzel.[298] The latter is especially interesting when we
compare it with the series of panels attributed to Pinturicchio in the
National Gallery, where a painter of the same period has exercised his
fancy in illustrating the legend which the poet versified. Detached
episodes of semi-mythical Florentine history were similarly treated.
Allusion has already been made to the love-tale of Ippolito and Leonora,
attributed on doubtful grounds to Alberti.[299] But by far the most
beautiful is the story of Ginevra degli Almieri, told in octave stanzas
by Agostino Velletti.[300] This poem has rare value as a genuine product
of the plebeian muse. The heroine Ginevra's father was a pork-butcher,
says the minstrel, and lived in the Marcato Vecchio, where he carried
on the best business of the sort in Florence. It is also important for
students of comparative literature, because it clearly illustrates the
difference between Italian and Northern treatment of an all but
contemporary incident. The events narrated are supposed to have really
happened in the year 1396. On the Scotch Border they would have
furnished materials for a ballad similar to Gil Morrice or Clerk
Saunders. In Florence they take the form of a _novella_, and the
_novella_ is expanded in octave stanzas.[301] Ginevra had two lovers,
Antonio de' Rondinelli and Francesco degli Agolanti. Antonio loved her
the more tenderly; but her parents gave her in marriage to Francesco.
Soon after the ceremony, she sickened and fell into a trance; and since
Florence was then threatened with the plague, the girl was buried
over-hastily in this deep slumber. Her weeping parents laid her in a
cippus or _avello_ between the two doors of S. Reparata, where the
workmen, unable to finish their job before sunset, left the lid of her
sepulcher unsoldered. In the middle of the night Ginevra woke, and
discovered to her horror that she had been sent to the grave alive.
Happily the moon was shining, and a ray of light fell through a chink
upon her bier. She arose, wrapped her shroud around her, and struggled
from her marble chest into the silent cathedral square. Giotto's bell
tower rose above her, silvery and beautiful, and slender in the
moonlight. Like a ghost, sheeted in her grave-clothes, Ginevra ran
through the streets, and knocked first at Francesco's door. He was
seated awake by the fireside, sorrowing for his young bride's loss:
Andonne alla finestra e aprilla un poco:
Chi e la? Chi batte? Io son la tua Ginevra;
Non m'odi tu? Col suo parlar persevera.
Her husband doubts not that it is a spirit calling to him, bids her rest
till masses shall be said for her repose, and shuts the window. Then she
turns to her mother's house. The mother, too, is sitting sorrowful by
the hearth, when she is startled by Ginevra's cry:
E spaventata e piena di paura
Disse: va in pace, anima benedetta,
Bella figliuola mia, onesta e pura;
E riserro la finestra con fretta.
Rejected by husband and mother, Ginevra next tries her uncle, and calls
on him for succor in God's name:
Fugli risposto; anima benedetta,
Va che Dio ti conservi in santa pace.
The poor wretch now feels that there is nothing left for her but to lie
down on the pavement and die of cold. But while she is preparing herself
for this fate, she bethinks her of Antonio. To his house she hurries,
cries for aid, and falls exhausted on the doorstep. Then comes the
finest touch in the poem. Antonio knows Ginevra's voice; and loving her
so tenderly, he hurries with delight to greet her risen from the grave.
He alone has no fear and no misgiving; for love in him is stronger than
death. At the street door, when he reaches it, he finds no ghost, but
his own dear lady yet alive. She is half frozen and unconscious; yet her
heart still beats. How he calls the women of his household to attend
her, prepares a bed, and feeds her with warm soups and wine, and how she
revives, and how Antonio claims her for his wife, and wins his cause
against her former bridegroom in the Bishop's court, may be read at
length in the concluding portion of the tale. The intrinsic pathos of
this story makes it a real poem; for though the wizard's wand of
Northern imagination lay beyond the grasp of the Italian genius, the
_novelle_ are rarely deficient in poetry evoked by sympathy with injured
innocence and loyal love.
Of truly popular _novelle_ belonging to the fifteenth century, none is
racier or more characteristic than the anonymous tale of _Il Grasso,
Legnaiuolo_.[302] It is written in pure Florentine dialect, and might be
selected as the finest extant specimen of homespun Tuscan humor. We have
already seen that the point of Sacchetti's stories is nearly always a
practical joke, where comedy combines with heartless cruelty in almost
equal parts. The theme of _Il Grasso_ is a superlatively comic _beffa_
of this sort, played by Filippo Brunelleschi on a friend of his. The
incident is dated 1409, and is supposed to have really occurred. Manetto
Ammannatini, a _tarsiatore_ or worker in carved and inlaid wood, was
called _Il Grasso_, because he was a fine stout fellow of twenty-eight
years. He had his _bottega_ on the Piazza S. Giovanni and lived with his
brother in a house hard by. Among his most intimate associates were
Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, Donatello, _intagliatore di marmi_,
Giovanni di Messer Francesco Rucellai, and others, partly gentlemen and
partly handicraftsmen; for there was no abrupt division of classes at
Florence, and this story shows how artisans and men of high condition
dwelt together in good fellowship. The practical joke devised by
Brunelleschi consisted in persuading Manetto that he had been changed
into a certain Matteo. The whole society of friends were in the secret,
and the affair was so cunningly conducted that at last they attained the
desired object. They caused Manetto to be arrested for a debt of Matteo,
sent Matteo's brothers and then the clergyman of the parish to reason
with him on his spendthrift habits, and fooled him so that he fairly
lost his sense of identity. The whole series of incidents, beginning
with Manetto's indignant assertion of his proper personality, passing
through his doubts, and closing with his mystification, is conducted by
fine gradations of irresistibly comic humor. At last the poor man
resolves to quit Florence and to seek refuge with King Mathias Corvinus
in Hungary; which it seems he subsequently did, in company with a
certain Lo Spano. There is no reason to suppose that this practical joke
did not actually take place.
I have enlarged upon the _novella_ of _Il Grasso_, because it is typical
of the genuinely popular literature, written to delight the folk of
Florence, appealing to their subtlest as well as broadest sense of fun,
and bringing on the scene two famous artists, Brunelleschi, whose cupola
is "raised above the heavens," and Donatello, whose S. George seems
stepping from his pedestal to challenge all the evil of the world and
conquer it. Unfortunately, our published collections are not rich in
novels of this date; and next to the anonymous tale of _Il Grasso,
Legnaiuolo_ it is difficult to cite one of at all equal value, till we
come to Luigi Pulci's story of Messer Goro and Pius II. This is really a
satire on the Sienese, whom Pulci represents with Florentine malice as
almost inconceivably silly. The Tuscan style is piquant in the extreme,
and the picture of manners very brilliant.[303]
From epical and narrative literature to poems written for the people
upon contemporary events and public history, is not an unnatural
transition. These compositions divide themselves into _Storie_ and
_Lamenti_. We have abundant examples of both kinds in lyric measures and
also in octave stanzas and _terza rima_.[304] A few of their titles will
suffice to indicate their scope. _Il Lamento di Giuliano de' Medici_
relates the tragic ending of the Pazzi conspiracy; _Il Lamento del Duca
Galeazzo Maria_ tells how that Duke was murdered in the church of S.
Stefano at Milan; _El Lamento di Otranto_ is an echo of the disaster
which shook all Italy to her foundations in the year 1480; _El Lamento e
la Discordia de Italia universale_ sounds the death-note of Italian
freedom in the last years of the century. After that period the _Pianti_
and _Lamenti_, attesting to the sorrows of a nation, increase in
frequency until all voices from the people are hushed in the leaden
sleep of Spanish despotism.[305] The _Storie_ in like manner are more
abundant between the years 1494 and 1530, when the wars of foreign
invaders supplied the bards of the market-place with continual matter
for improvisation. Among the earliest may be mentioned two poems on the
Battle of Anghiari and the taking of Serezana.[306] Then the list
proceeds with the tale of the Borgias, _Guerre Orrende_, _Rotta di
Ravenna_, _Mali deportamenti de Franciosi fato in Italia_, and so forth,
till it ends with _La Presa di Roma_ and _Rotta di Ferruccio_. A last
echo of these _Storie_ and _Lamenti_--for alas! in Italy of the
sixteenth century history and lamentation were all one--still sounds
about the hillsides of Siena[307]:
O Piero Strozzi, 'ndu sono i tuoi bravoni?
Al Poggio delle Donne in que' burroni.
O Piero Strozzi, 'ndu sono i tuoi soldati?
Al Poggio delle Donne in quei fossati.
O Piero Strozzi, 'ndu son le tue genti?
Al Poggio delle Donne a cor le lenti.
It may be well to say how these poems reached the people, before they
were committed to writing or the press. There existed a professional
class of rhymsters, usually blind men, if we may judge by the frequent
affix of _Cieco_ to their names, who tuned their guitar in the streets,
and when a crowd had gathered round them, broke into some legend of
romance, or told a tale of national misfortune. The Italian designation
of these minstrels is _Cantatore in Banca_ or _Cantore di piazza_. In
the high tide of Florentine freedom the _Cantore di piazza_ exercised a
noble calling; for through his verse the voice of the common folk made
itself heard beneath the very windows of the Signoria. In 1342, when the
war with Pisa turned against the Florentines owing to the incompetence
of their generals, Antonio Pucci, who was the most celebrated
_Cantatore_ of the day, took his lute and placed himself upon the steps
beneath the Palazzo, and having invoked the Virgin Mary, struck up a
_Sermintese_ on the duty of making peace[308]:
Signor, pognam ch'i' sia di vil nascenza,
I' pur nacqui nel corpo di Firenza,
Come qual c'e di piu sofficienza:
Onde 'l mi duole
Di lei, considerando che esser suole
Tenuta piu che madre da figliuole;
Oggi ogni bestia soggiogar la vuole
E occupare.
Other poems of the same kind by Antonio Pucci belong to the year 1346,
or celebrate the purchase of Lucca from Mastino della Scala, or the
victory of Messer Piero Rosso at Padua, or the expulsion of the Duke of
Athens from Florence in 1348. It must not be supposed that the
_Cantatori in Banca_ of the next century enjoyed so much liberty of
censure or had so high a sense of their vocation as Antonio Pucci. Yet
the people made their opinions freely heard in rhymes sung even by the
children through the streets, as when they angered Martin V. in 1420 by
crying beneath his very windows[309]:
Papa Martino, Signor di Piombino,
Conte de Urbino, non vale un quattrino.
During the ascendency of Savonarola and the party-struggles of the
Medici the rival cries of _Palle_ and _Viva Cristo Re_ were turned into
street songs[310]; but at last, after the siege and the victory of
Clement, the voice of the people was finally stifled by authority.[311]
The element of satire in these ditties of the people leads me to speak
of one very prominent poet of the fifteenth century--Domenico di
Giovanni, called Il Burchiello, the rhyming barber.[312] He was born
probably in 1403 at Florence, where his father, who was a Pisan, had
acquired the rights of citizenship and followed the trade of a barber.
Their shop was situated in Calimala, and formed a meeting-place for the
wits, who carried Burchiello's verses over the town. The boy seems to
have studied at Pisa, and acquired some slight knowledge of
medicine.[313] At the age of four-and-twenty we find him married, with
three children and no property.[314] Soon after this date, he separated
from his wife; or else she left him on account of his irregular and
dissolute habits. Peering through the obscurity of his somewhat sordid
history, we see him getting into trouble with the Inquisition on account
of profane speech, and then espousing the cause of the Albizzi against
the Medicean faction. On the return of Cosimo de' Medici in 1434,
Burchiello was obliged to leave Florence. He settled at Siena, and
opened a shop in the Corso di Camollia, hoping to attract the
Florentines whose business brought them to that quarter. Here he nearly
ruined his health by debauchery, and narrowly escaped assassination at
the hands of a certain Ser Rosello.[315] Leaving Siena about 1440,
Burchiello spent the last years of his life in wandering through the
cities of Italy. We hear of him at Venice entertained by one of the
Alberti family, then at Naples, finally in Rome, where he died in 1448,
poisoned probably by Robert, a bastard of Pandolfo Sigismondo Malatesta,
at the instigation of his ancient enemy, Cosimo de' Medici.[316] Such
long arms and such retentive memory had the merchant despot.
Burchiello's sonnets were collected some thirty years after his death
and published simultaneously at various places.[317] They owed their
popularity partly to their political subject-matter, but more to their
strange humor. A foreigner can scarcely understand their language, far
less appreciate their fun; for not only are they composed in Florentine
slang of the fifteenth century, but this slang itself consists of
detached phrases and burlesque allusions, chipped as it were from
current speech, broken into splinters, and then wrought into a grotesque
mosaic. That Burchiello had the merit of originality, and that he caught
the very note of plebeian utterance, is manifest from the numerous
editions and imitations of his sonnets.[318] His Muse was a _volgivaga
Venus_ bred among the taverns and low haunts of vulgar company, whose
biting wit introduced her to the society of the learned. Yet her
utterances, at this distance of time, are so obscure and their point has
been so blunted that to profess an admiration for Burchiello savors of
literary affectation.[319] He was a poet of the transition; and the
burlesque style which he made popular was destined to be superseded by
the more refined and subtle Bernesque manner. Il Lasca, writing in the
sixteenth century, expressed himself strongly against those who still
ventured to compare Burchiello with the author of _Le Pesche_. "Let no
one talk to me of Burchiello; to rank him with Berni is no better than
to couple the fiend Charon with the Angel Gabriel."[320]
Not the least important branch of popular poetry in its bearing on the
future of Italian literature was the strictly lyrical. In treating of
these Volkslieder, it will be necessary to consider them under the two
aspects of secular and religious--the former destined to supply
Poliziano and Lorenzo de' Medici with models for their purest works of
literary art, the latter containing the germs of the Florentine Sacred
Play within the strophes of a hymn.
If we return to the golden days of the fourteenth century, we find that
Dante's, Boccaccio's and Sacchetti's _Ballate_ descended to the people
and were easily adapted to their needs.[321] Minute comparison of
Dante's dance-song of the _Ghirlandetta_ with the version in use among
the common folk will show what slight alterations were needed in order
to render it the property of 'prentice lads and spinning maidens, and
at the same time how subtle those changes were.[322] Dante's song might
be likened to a florin fresh from the mint; the popular ditty to the
same coin after it had circulated for a year or two, exchanging
something of its sharp lines for the smoothness of currency and usage.
The same is true of Boccaccio's Ballata, _Il fior che 'l valor perde_;
except that here the transformation has gone deeper, and, if such a
criticism may be hazarded, has bettered the original by rendering the
sentiment more universal.[323] Sacchetti's charming song _O vaghe
montanine pasturelle_ underwent the same process of metamorphosis before
it assumed the form in which it passed for a composition of
Poliziano.[324] Starting with poems of this quality, the rhymsters of
the market-place had noble models, and the use they made of them was
adequate. We cannot from the wreck of time recover very many that were
absolutely written for the people by the people; but we can judge of
their quality by Angelo Poliziano's imitations.[325] He borrowed so
largely from all sources, and his debts can be so accurately traced in
his _rispetti_, that it is fair to credit the popular Muse with even
such delicate work as _La Brunettina_, while the disputed authorship of
the May-song _Ben venga Maggio_ and of the Ballata _Vaghe le montanine e
pastorelle_ is sufficient to prove at least their widespread fame.[326]
Whoever wrote them, they became the heirlooms of the people. If proof
were needed of the vast number of such compositions in the fifteenth
century--erotic, humorous, and not unfrequently obscene--it might be
derived from the rubrics of the _Laude_ or hymns, which were almost
invariably parodies of popular dance-songs and intended to be sung to
the same tunes.[327] Every festivity--May-morning tournaments, summer
evening dances on the squares of Florence, weddings, carnival
processions, and vintage-banquets at the villa--had their own lyrics,
accompanied with music and the Carola.
The dance-songs and canzonets, of which we have been speaking, were
chiefly of town growth and Tuscan. Another kind of popular love-poem,
common to all the dialects of Italy, may be regarded as a special
production of the country. Much has lately been written concerning these
_Rispetti_, _Strambotti_ and _Stornelli_.[328] Ample collections have
been made to illustrate their local peculiarities. Their points of
resemblance and dissimilarity have been subjected to critical analysis,
and great ingenuity has been expended on the problem of their origin. It
will be well to preface what has to be said about them with some
explanation of terms. There are, to begin with, two distinct species.
The _Stornello Ritornello_ or _Fiore_, called also _Ciure_ in Sicily,
properly consists of two or three verses starting with the name of a
flower. Thus[329]:
Fior di Granato!
Bella, lo nome tuo sta scritto in cielo,
Lo mio sta scritto sull'onda del mare.
_Rispetto_ and _Strambotto_ are two names for the same kind of song,
which in the north-eastern provinces is also called _Villotta_ and in
Sicily _Canzune_.[330] Strictly speaking, the term _Strambotto_ should
be confined to literary imitations of the popular _Rispetto_. In Tuscany
the lyric in question consists, in its normal form, of four alternately
rhyming hendecasyllabic lines, followed by what is technically called
the _ripresa_, or repetition, which may be composed of two, four, or
even more verses. Though not strictly an octave stanza, it sometimes
falls into this shape, and has then two pairs of three alternate rhymes,
finished up with a couplet. In the following instance the quatrain and
the _ripresa_ are well marked[331]:
Quando sara quel benedetto giorno,
Che le tue scale saliro pian piano?
I tuoi fratelli mi verranno intorno,
Ad un ad un gli tocchero la mano.
Quando sara quel di, cara colonna,
Che la tua mamma chiamero madonna?
Quando sara quel di, caro amor mio?
Io saro vostra, e voi sarete mio!
In Sicily the _Canzune_ exhibits a stanza of eight lines rhyming
alternately throughout upon two sounds. Certain peculiarities, however,
in the structure of the strophe render it probable that it was
originally a quatrain followed by a _ripresa_ of the same length.
Thus[332]:
Quannu nascisti tu, stidda lucenti,
'N terra calaru tri ancili santi;
Vinniru li Tri Re d'Orienti,
Purtannu cosi d'oru e di brillanti;
Tri aculi vularu prestamenti,
Dannu la nova a punenti e a livanti;
Bella, li to' billizzi su' putenti!
Avi nov'anni chi ti sugnu amanti.
In the north-east the _Villotta_ consists of a simple quatrain. Of this
form the following is an example[333]:
Quanti ghe n'e, che me sente a cantare,
E i dise;--Custia canta dal bon tempo.--
Che prego 'l ciel che me possa agiutare;
Quando che canto, alora me lamento.
Though these are the leading types of the _Rispetto_, _Canzune_ and
_Villotta_, each district exhibits a variety of subordinate and complex
forms. The same may be said about the _Stornello_, _Ritornello_ and
_Ciure_. The names, too, are very variously applied; nor without
pedantry would it be possible to maintain perfect precision in their
usage.[334] It is enough to have indicated the two broad classes into
which popular poetry of this kind is divided. For the future I shall
refer to the one sort as _Rispetti_, to the other as _Stornelli_.
Comparative analysis makes it clear that the _Rispetti_ and _Stornelli_
scattered over all the provinces of Italy, constitute a common fund.
That is to say, we do not meet with the _Rispetti_ of each dialect
confined to their own region; but the same original _Rispetto_, perhaps
now lost to sight, has been adapted and transformed to suit the taste
and idiom of the several provinces. To reconstitute the primitive type,
to decide with certainty in each case the true source of these lyrics,
is probably impossible. All we know for certain is that beneath apparent
dialectical divergences the vulgar poetry of the Italians presents
unmistakable signs of identity.[335] Which province was the primitive
home of the _Rispetti_; whether Sicily, where the faculty for
reproducing them is still most vivid[336]; or Tuscany, where they
certainly attain their purest form and highest beauty; or whether all
Italian country districts have contributed their quota to the general
stock; are difficult questions, as yet by no means satisfactorily
decided. Professor d'Ancona advances a theory, which is too plausible to
be ignored in silence. _Rispetti_, he suggests, were first produced in
Sicily, whence they traveled through Central Italy, receiving
dialectical transmutation in Tuscany, and there also attaining to the
perfection of their structure.[337] Numerous slight indications lead to
the conclusion that their original linguistic type was southern. The
imagery also which is common in verses sung to this day by the peasants
of the Pistoja highlands, including frequent references to the sea with
metaphors borrowed from orange-trees and palms, seems to indicate a
Sicilian birthplace.[338] We have, moreover, the early evidence of six
_Napolitane_ copied from a Magliabecchian MS. of the fourteenth century,
which exhibit the transition from southern to Tuscan idiom and
structure.[339] One of these still exists in several dialects, under the
title of _La Rondinella importuna_.[340] It is therefore certain that
many _Rispetti_ are very ancient, dating from the Suabian period, when
Sicilian poetry, as we have seen, underwent the process of
_toscaneggiamento_. However, D'Ancona's theory is too hypothetical, and
it may also be said, too neat, to be accepted without reservation.
One point, at any rate, may be considered certain. Though the _Rispetti_
are still alive upon the lips of _contadini_; though we may hear them
echoing from farm and field through all the length and breadth of Italy;
though the voluminous collections we possess have recently been gathered
from _viva voce_ recitation; yet they are perhaps as ancient as the
dialects. The proof of this antiquity lies in the fact that whether we
take the literary _Strambotti_ of Poliziano for our standard, or the
_pasticci_, _incatenature_ and _intrecciature_ of the sixteenth century
for guides, we find the phrases and the style that are familiar to us in
the rural lyrics of to-day.[341] Bronzino's _Serenata_ and the
_Incatenatura_ of Bianchino contain, embedded in their structure,
ditties which were universally known in the sixteenth century, and which
are being sung still with unimportant alterations by the people. The
attention of learned men was directed in the renascence of Tuscan
literature to the beauty of these lyrics. Poliziano, writing to Lorenzo
de' Medici in 1488, and describing his journey with Pietro through
Montepulciano and Acquapendente in the month of May, says that he and
his companions amused themselves with _rappresaglie_ or adaptations of
the songs they heard upon the way.[342] His road took him through what
is still one of the best sources of local verse and music; and we may
believe that at the close of the fifteenth century, the _contadini_ of
that district were singing nearly the same words as now. Nor, when we
examine the points of similarity and difference in the Italian
_Rispetti_ and _Stornelli_, as they now exist, is there anything
improbable in this antiquity. Nothing but great age can account for
their adaptation to the tone, feeling, fancy, habits and language of so
many regions. It must have taken more than a century or two to rub down
their original angles, to efface the specific stamp of their birthplace,
and to make them pass for home productions in Venice no less than
Palermo, in Tuscan Montalcino and Ligurian Chiavari.
The retentiveness of the popular memory, before it has been spoiled by
education, is quite sufficient to account for the preservation of these
lyrics through several hundred years. Nor need their wide diffusion
suggest difficulties. Italy in the middle ages offered readier means of
intercommunication between the inhabitants of her provinces than she has
done since the settlement of the country in 1530. When the liberation of
the Communes gave a new impulse to intellectual and commercial activity,
there began a steady and continually increasing movement from one city
to another. Commercial enterprise led the burghers of Pisa, Lucca,
Florence, Venice, Genoa, to establish themselves as bankers and
middle-men, brokers and manufacturers, in Rome and Naples. Soldiers of
adventure flocked from the south, and made the northern towns their
temporary home. The sanctuaries of Gargano, Loretto and Assisi drew
pilgrims from all quarters. Noblemen of Romagna acted as _podesta_
beyond the Apennines, while Lombards opened shops in Palermo. Churchmen
bred upon the Riviera wore the miter in the March; natives of the
Spoletano taught in the schools of Bologna and Pavia. Men of letters,
humanists and artists had no fixed dwelling-place, but wandered, like
mercenary soldiers, from town to town in search of better pay. Students
roamed from school to school according as the fame of great professors
drew them. Party-quarrels in the commonwealths drove whole families,
such as the Florentine Uberti, Alberti, Albizzi, Strozzi, into exile.
Conquered cities, like Pisa, sent forth their burghers by hundreds as
emigrants, too proud to bear the yoke of foes they had resisted. Nor
were the Courts of princes without their influence in mingling the
natives of different districts. Whether, then, we study the _Novelle_,
or the histories of great houses, or the biographies of eminent
Italians, or the records of the universities, we shall be led to the
conclusion that from the year 1200 to the year 1550 there was a
perpetual and lively intercourse by land and sea between the departments
of Italy. This reciprocity of influence did not cease until the two
despotic races, Austrian and Spaniard, threw each separate province into
solitary chains. Such being the conditions of social exchange at the
epoch when the language was in process of formation, there is nothing
strange in finding the rural poetry of the south acclimatized in central
and northern Italy. But the very facility of communication and the
probable antiquity of these lyrics should make us cautious in adopting
any rigid hypothesis about their origin. It is reasonable to suppose
that such transferable property as love-poems might have been everywhere
produced and rapidly diffused, the best from each center surviving by a
natural process of selection. Lastly, whatever view may be taken of
their formation and their age, we have every reason to believe that the
fifteenth century was a fruitful period of production and accumulation.
Toward the close of the _quattrocento_ they attracted the curiosity of
lettered poets, who began to imitate them, and in the next hundred years
they were committed in large numbers to the press.[343]
In addition to the influence exercised by these popular lyrics over
polite literature in the golden age of the Renaissance, extraordinary
interest attaches to them as an indigenous species of verse, dating from
remote antiquity and still surviving in all corners of the country. In
them we analyze the Italian poetic genius at its source and under its
most genuine conditions. Both from their qualities and their defects
inferences may be drawn, which find application and illustration in the
solemn works of laureled singers. The one theme of _Rispetti_ and
_Stornelli_ is love; but love in all its phases and with all its retinue
of associated emotions--expectation, fruition, disappointment, jealousy,
despair, rejection, treachery, desertion, pleading, scorn--the joys of
presence, the pangs of absence, the ecstasy of union, the agony of
parting--love, natural and unaffected, turbulent or placid, chaste or
troubled with desire, imperious or humble, tempestuously passionate or
toned to tranquil acquiescence--love varying through all moods and
tempers, yet never losing its note of spontaneity, sincerity and truth.
The instincts of the people are pure, and their utterances of affection
are singularly free from grossness. This at least is almost universally
the case with lyrics gathered from the country. Approaching town-life,
they lose their delicacy; and the products of the city are not
unfrequently distinguished by the crudest obscenity.[344] The literary
form of many of these masterpieces exhibits the beauty of rhythm, the
refinement of outline, which we associate with melodies of the best
Italian period--with chants of Pergolese, songs of Salvator Rosa. When
we compare their subject-matter with that of our Northern Ballads, we
notice a marked deficiency of legend, superstition or grotesque fancy.
There are no witches, dragons, demon-lovers, no enchanted forests, no
mythical heroes, no noble personages, few ghosts, few dreams and
visions, in these songs poured forth among the olive-trees and
myrtle-groves of Italy. Human nature, conscious of pleasure and of pain,
finding its primitive emotion an adequate motive for verse subtly
modulated through a thousand keys, is here sufficient to itself. The
echoes imported from an outer world of passion and romance and action
into this charmed region of the lover's heart are rare and feeble.
Through all their national vicissitudes, the Italian peasants followed
one sole aim in verse. The _Rispetti_ of all times, localities and
dialects form one protracted, ever-varying Duo between Thou and I, the
_dama_ and the _damo_, the eternal protagonists in the play of youth and
love.
This absence of legendary and historical material marks a main
difference between Italian and Teutonic inspiration. Among the Italic
communities the practical historic sense was early developed, and
sustained by the tradition of a classic past. It demanded a positive
rather than imaginative treatment of contemporary fact and mythus.
Among the people this requirement was satisfied by _Storie_, _Lamenti_,
and prose Chronicles. Very few, indeed, are the relics of either
romantic or actual history surviving in the lyrics of the rural
population. Only here and there, in dim allusions to the Sicilian
Vespers and the Norman Conquest, in the tale of the Baronessa di Carini,
or in the Northern legend of Rosmunda, under its popular form of _La
Donna Lombarda_, do we find a faint analogy between the Italian and
Teutonic ballads.[345] Dramatic, mythical and epical elements are almost
wholly wanting in the genuine lyrics of the people.
This statement requires some qualification. The four volumes of _Fiabe,
Novelle e Racconti_ recently published by Signor Pitre, prove that the
Sicilians in prose at least have a copious literature corresponding to
German _Maerchen_ and Norse tales.[346] This literature, however, has not
received poetic treatment in any existing southern songs that have been
published, excepting in the few already noticed. At the same time, it
must be mentioned that the collections of lyrics in north-western
dialects--especially the _Canti Monferrini_, _Canzoni Comasche_, and
_Canti Leccesi_--exhibit specimens of genuine ballads. It would seem
that contact with French and German borderers along the Alpine rampart
had introduced into Piedmont and Lombardy a form of lyric which is not
essentially Italian. Had I space sufficient at disposal, I should like
to quote the _Donna Lombarda_, _Moglie Infedele_, _Giuseppina
Parricida_, _Principessa Giovanna_, _Giuliano della Croce Bianca_,
_Cecilia_, _Re Carlino_, _Morando_, and several others from Ferraro's
collection.[347] They illustrate, what is exceedingly rare in popular
Italian poetry, both the subject-matter and the manner peculiar to the
Northern Ballad. Let the following verses from _La Sposa per Forza_
suffice[348]:
Ra soi madona a r'ha brassaja
Suvra u so coffu a r'ha minee;
Uardee qui, ra me noiretta,
Le bele gioje che vi voi dunee.
Mi n'ho csa fe dle vostre gioje;
E manc ancur dla vostra ca;
Cma ca voja dir bel gioje
Ra me mama m' na mandira.
To comparative mythologists in general, and to English students in
particular, the most interesting of these rare Italian Ballads is
undoubtedly one known as _L'Avvelenato_.[349] So far as I am aware, it
is unique in the Italian language; nor had its correspondences with
Northern Ballad-literature been noticed until I pointed them out in
1879.[350] In his work on popular Italian poetry, Professor D'Ancona
included the following song, which he had heard upon the lips of a young
peasant of the Pisan district[351]:
Dov'eri 'ersera a cena
Caro mio figlio, savio e gentil?
Mi fai morire
Ohime!
Dov'eri 'ersera a cena
Gentile mio cavalier?--
Ero dalla mia dama;
Mio core sta male,
Che male mi sta!
Ero dalla mia dama;
'L mio core che se ne va.--
Che ti dienno da cena,
Caro mio figlio, savio e gentil?
Mi fai morire,
Ohime!
Che ti dienno da cena,
Gentile mio cavalier?--
Un anguilletta arrosto,
Cara mia madre;
Mio core sta male,
Che male mi sta!
Un anguilletta arrosto,
'L mio core che se ne va.
Other versions of the same poem occur in the dialects of Venice, Como
and Lecco with such variations as prove them all to be the offshoots
from some original now lost in great antiquity. That it existed and was
famous so far back as the middle of the seventeenth century, is proved
by an allusion in the _Cicalata in lode della Padella e della Frittura_,
recited before the Accademia della Crusca by Lorenzo Panciatichi in
1656.[352] A few lines are also quoted in the _incatenatura_ of the
Cieco Fiorentino, published at Verona in 1629.[353] Any one who is
familiar with our Border Minstrelsy will perceive at once that this is
only an Italian version of the Ballad of Lord Donald or Lord
Randal.[354] The identity between the two is rendered still more
striking by an analysis of the several Lombard versions. In that of
Como, for example, the young man makes his will; and this is the last
verse[355]:
Cossa lasse alla vostra dama,
Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil,
Cossa lasse alla vostra dama?
La forca da impiccarla,
Signora mama, mio cor sta mal!
La forca da impiccarla:
Ohime, ch'io moro, ohime!
The same version furnishes the episode of the poisoned hounds[356]:
Coss'avi fa dell'altra mezza,
Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil?
Cossa avi fa dell'altra mezza?
L'ho dada alla cagnola:
Signora mama, mio core sta mal!
L'ho dada alla cagnola:
Ohime, ch'io moro, ohime!
Cossa avi fa della cagnola,
Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil?
Cossa avi fa della cagnola?
L'e morta dre la strada;
Signora mama, mio core sta mal!
L'e morta dre la strada:
Ohime, ch'io moro, ohime!
It is worth mentioning that the same Ballad belongs under slightly
different forms to the Germans, Swedes, and other nations of the
Teutonic stock; but so far as I have yet been able to discover, it
remains the sole instance of that species of popular literature in
Italy.[357] The phenomenon is singular, and though conjectures may be
hazarded in explanation, it is impossible, until further researches for
parallel examples have been made, to advance a theory of how this Ballad
penetrated so far south as Tuscany.
FOOTNOTES:
[279] See Rosmini, _Vita di Filelfo_, vol. ii. p. 13, for Filelfo's
dislike of Italian. In the dedication of his Commentary to Filippo
Maria Visconti he says: "Tanto piu volentieri ho intrapreso questo
comento, quanto dalla tua eccellente Signoria non solo invitato sono
stato, ma pregato, lusingato et provocato." The first Canto opens
thus:
O Philippo Maria Anglo possente,
Perche mi strengi a quel che non poss'io?
Vuoi tu ch'io sia ludibrio d'ogni gente?
[280] Dated Milan, Feb. 1477. Rosmini, _op. cit._ p. 282.
[281] _Ercolano_ (in Vinetia, Giunti, 1570), p. 185.
[282] _Prose Volgari_, etc., edite da I. del Lungo (Firenze, Barbera,
1867), p. 80.
[283] _Prose_, etc., _op. cit._ pp. 45 _et seq._ pp. 3 _et seq._
[284] Alberti, _Op. Volg._ vol. i. pp. clxvii.-ccxxxiii. The quality
of these Latin meters may be judged from the following hexameters:
Ma non prima sara che 'l Dato la musa corona
Invochi, allora subito cantando l'avete,
Tal qual si gode presso il celeste Tonante.
Of the Sapphics the following is a specimen:
Eccomi, i' son qui Dea degli amici,
Quella qual tutti li omini solete
Mordere, e falso fugitiva dirli,
Or la volete.
[285] Carducci, "Della Rime di Dante Alighieri," _Studi_, p. 154.
[286] For Giotto's and Orcagna's poems, see Trucchi, vol. ii. pp. 8
and 25.
[287] See above, pp. 17 _et seq._
[288] The _Tavola Ritonda_ has been reprinted, 2 vols., Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1864. It corresponds very closely in material to our _Mort
d'Arthur_, beginning with the history of Uther Pendragon and ending
with Arthur's wound and departure to the island of Morgan le Fay.
[289] See above, p. 18. The subject of these romances has been ably
treated by Pio Rajna in his works, _I Reali di Francia_ (Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1872), and _Le Fonti dell'Orlando Furioso_ (Firenze,
Sansoni, 1876).
[290] The _Rinaldino_, a prose romance recently published (Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1865), might be selected as a thoroughly Italian
_fioritura_ on the ancient Carolingian theme.
[291] We have here the germ of the _Orlando_ and of the first part of
the _Morgante_.
[292] Rajna, _I Reali_, p. 320, fixes the date of its composition at a
little before 1420.
[293] _Ibid._ p. 3.
[294] _I Reali_, pp. 311-319.
[295] The _Storie Nerbonesi_ were published in two vols. (Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1877), under the editorship of I.G. Isola. The third volume
forms a copious philological and critical appendix.
[296] _Guerino_ was versified in octave stanzas, by a poet of the
people called L'Altissimo, in the sixteenth century.
[297] See _I Novellieri Italiani in Verso_ by Giamb. Passano
(Romagnoli, 1868). The whole _Decameron_ was turned into octave
stanzas by V. Brugiantino, and published by Marcolini at Venice in
1554. Among _Novelle_ versified for popular reading may be cited,
_Masetto the Gardener_ (_Decam._ Giorn. iii. 1), _Romeo and Juliet_
(Verona, 1553), _Il Grasso, Legnaiuolo_ (by B. Davanzati, Florence,
1480), _Prasildo and Lisbina_ (from the _Orlando Innamorato_), _Oliva,
Fiorio e Biancifiore_ (the tale of the _Filocopo_). Of classical tales
we find _Sesto Tarquinio et Lucretia_, _Orpheo_, _Perseo_, _Piramo_,
_Giasone e Medea_.
[298] _Tancredi Principe di Salerno_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1863. _Il
Marchese di Saluzzo e la Griselda_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1862.
[299] See above, p. 212. The literary hesitations of an age as yet
uncertain of its aim might be illustrated from these romances. Of
_Ippolito e Leonora_ we have a prose, an _ottava rima_, and a Latin
version. Of _Griselda_ we have Boccaccio's Italian, and Petrarch's
Latin prose, in addition to the anonymous _ottava rima_ version. Of
the _Principe di Salerno_ we have Boccaccio's Italian, and Lionardo
Bruni's Latin versions in prose, together with Filippo Beroaldo's
Latin elegiacs, Francesco di Michele Accolti's _terza rima_ and
Benivieni's octave stanzas. Lami in his _Novelle letterarie_ (Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1859) prints an Italian _novella_ on the same story, which
he judges anterior to the _Decameron_. Later on, Annibal Guasco
produced another _ottava rima_ version; and the tale was used by
several playwrights in the composition of tragedies.
[300] _La Storia di Ginevra Almieri che fu sepolta viva in Firenze_
(Pisa, Nistri, 1863).
[301] The same point is illustrated by the tales of the Marchese di
Saluzzo and the Principe di Salerno, which produced the novels of
_Griselda_ and _Tancredi_. See notes to p. 250, above.
[302] _Raccolta dei Novellieri Italiani_, vol. xiii.
[303] _Op. cit._ vol. xiii. An allusion to Masuccio in this novel is
interesting, since it proves the influence he had acquired even in
Florence: "Masuccio, grande onore della citta di Salerno, molto
imitatore del nostro messer Giovanni Boccaccio," _ib._ p. 34. Pulci
goes on to say that the reading of the _Novellino_ had encouraged him
to write his tale.
[304] See D'Ancona, _La Poesia Popolare Italiana_, pp. 64-79.
[305] A fine example of these later _Lamenti_ has been republished at
Bologna by Romagnoli, 1864. It is the _Lamento di Fiorenza_ upon the
siege and slavery of 1529-30.
[306] A medieval specimen of this species of composition is the
_Ballata_ for the _Reali di Napoli_ in the defeat of Montecatini. See
Carducci's _Cino e Altri_, p. 603.
[307] D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 78.
[308] _Sermintese Storico di A. Pucci_, Livorno, Vigo, 1876. It will
be remembered that Dante in the _Vita Nuova_ (section vi.) says he
composed a _Serventese_ on sixty ladies of Florence. The name was
derived from Provence, and altered into _Sermintese_ by the
Florentines. We possess a poem of this sort by A. Pucci on the
Florentine ladies, printed by D'Ancona in his edition of the _Vita
Nuova_ (Pisa, Nistri, p. 71), together with a valuable discourse upon
this form of poetry. Carducci in his _Cino e Altri_ prints two
_Sermintesi_ by Pucci on the beauties of women.
[309] D'Ancona, _Poesia Popolare Italiana_, pp. 47-50, has collected
from Leonardo Bruno and other sources many interesting facts about
Pope Martin's anger at this ditty. He seems to have gone to the length
of putting Florence under an interdict.
[310] D'Ancona, _op. cit._ pp. 51-56.
[311] One of the last plebeian rhymes on politics comes from Siena,
where, in the year 1552, the people used to sing this couplet in
derision of the Cardinal of the Mignanelli family sent to rule them:
Mignanello, Mignanello,
Non ci piace il tuo modello.
See Benci's _Storia di Montepulciano_ (Fiorenza, Massi e Landi, 1641),
p. 104. An anecdote from Busini (_Lettere al Varchi_, Firenze, Le
Monnier, p. 220) is so characteristic of the popular temper under the
oppression of Spanish tyranny that its indecency may be excused. He
says that a law had been passed awarding, "quattro tratti di corda ad
uno che, tirando una c---- disse: Poi che non si puo parlare con la
bocca, io parlero col c----."
[312] See the work entitled _Sulle Poesie Toscane di Domenico il
Burchiello nel secolo xv_, G. Gargani, Firenze, Tip. Cenn. 1877.
[313]
Intendi a me, che gia studiai a Pisa,
E ogni mal conosco senza signo.
_Sonetti del Burchiello, del Bellincioni, e d'altri_, 1757, Londra, p.
125. See, too, the whole sonnet _Son medico in volgar_.
[314] Gargani, _op. cit._ p. 23, extract from the _Catasto_, 1427:
"Domenicho di Giovanni barbiere non ha nulla."
[315] The parallel between these passages of Burchiello's life and
Filelfo's at the same period is singular. See _Revival of Learning_,
p. 275.
[316] Gargani, _op. cit._ p. 90.
[317] The best edition bears the date Londra, 1757.
[318] The edition cited above includes _Sonetti alla Burchiellesca_ by
a variety of writers. The strange book called _Pataffio_, which used
to be ascribed to Brunetto Latini, seems born of similar conditions.
[319] Florentines themselves take this view, as is proved by the
following sentence from Capponi: "E pure qui obbligo di registrare
anche il Burchiello, barbiere di nome rimasto famoso, perche fece d'un
certo suo gergo poesia forse arguta ma triviale; oscura oggi, ma
popolare nei tempi suoi e che ebbe inclusive imitatori" (_Storia della
Rep. di Firenze_, ii. 176).
[320] See the Sonnet quoted in Note 59 to Mazzuchelli's Life of Berni,
_Scrittori d'Italia_, vol. iv.
[321] The _Ballata_ or _Canzone a Ballo_, as its name implies, was a
poem intended to be sung during the dance. A musician played the lute
while young women executed the movements of the Carola (so beautifully
depicted by Benozzo Gozzoli in his Pisan frescoes), alone or in the
company of young men, singing the words of the song. The _Ballata_
consisted of lyric stanzas with a recurrent couplet. It is difficult
to distinguish the _Ballate_ from the _Canzonette d'Amore_.
[322] See Carducci, _Cantilene e Ballate_ (Pisa, 1871), pp. 82, 83.
[323] _Ibid._ pp. 171-173.
[324] _Ibid._ pp. 214-217.
[325] A volume of ancient _Canzoni a Ballo_ was published at Florence
in 1562, by Sermatelli, and again in 1568.
[326] _Le Rime di Messer A. Poliziano_, pp. 295, 346.
[327] See _Laude Spirituali di Feo Belcari e di Altri_, Firenze, 1863.
The hymn _Crocifisso a capo chino_, for example, has this heading:
"Cantasi come--Una donna d'amor fino," which was by no means a moral
song (_ib._ p. 16). D'Ancona in his _Poesia Pop. It._ pp. 431-436, has
extracted the titles of these profane songs, some of which are to be
found in the _Canzoni a Ballo_ (Firenze, 1568), and _Canti
Carnascialeschi_ (Cosmopoli, 1750), while the majority are lost.
[328] The books which I have consulted on this branch of vernacular
poetry are (1) Tommaseo, _Canti popolari toscani, corsi, illirici e
greci_, Venezia, 1841. (2) Tigri, _Canti popolari toscani_, Firenze,
1869. (3) Pitre, _Canti popolari siciliani_, and _Studi di poesia
popolare_, Palermo, 1870-1872. (4) D'Ancona, _La Poesia popolare
italiana_, Livorno, 1878. (5) Rubieri, _Storia della poesia popolare
italiana_, Firenze, 1877. Also numerous collections of local songs, of
which a good list is furnished in D'Ancona's work just cited. Bolza's
edition of Comasque poetry, Dal Medico's of Venetian, Ferraro's of
_Canti Monferrini_ (district of Montferrat), Vigo's of Sicilian,
together with Imbriani's of Southern and Marcoaldo's of Central
dialects, deserve to be specially cited. The literature in question is
already voluminous, and bids fair to receive considerable additions.
[329] I take this example at random from Blessig's _Roemische
Ritornelle_ (Leipzig, 1860), p. 48:
Flower of Pomegranate tree!
Your name, O my fair one, is written in heaven;
My name it is writ on the waves of the sea.
[330] The term _Villotta_ or _Vilota_ is special, I believe, to Venice
and the Friuli. D'Ancona identifies it with _Rispetto_, Rubieri with
_Stornello_. But it has the character of a quatrain, and seems
therefore more properly to belong to the former.
[331] Tigri, p. 123. Translated by me thus:
Ah, when will dawn that blissful day
When I shall softly mount your stair,
Your brothers meet me on the way,
And one by one I greet them there!
When comes the day, my staff, my strength,
To call your mother mine at length?
When will the day come, love of mine,
I shall be yours and you be mine!
[332] Pitre, vol. i. p. 185. Translated by me thus, with an alteration
in the last couplet:
When thou wert born, O beaming star!
Three holy angels flew to earth;
The three kings from the East afar
Brought gold and jewels of great worth;
Three eagles on wings light as air
Bore the news East and West and North.
O jewel fair, O jewel rare,
So glad was heaven to greet thy birth.
[333] Dalmedico, _Canti Ven._ p. 69:
Many there are who when they hear me sing,
Cry: There goes one whose joy runs o'er in song!
But I pray God to give me succoring;
For when I sing, 'tis then I grieve full strong.
[334] For instance, _Rispetti_ in the valley of the Po are called
_Romanelle_. In some parts of Central Italy the _Stornello_ becomes
_Mottetto_ or _Raccommandare_. The little Southern lyrics known as
_Arii_ and _Ariette_ at Naples and in Sicily, are elsewhere called
_Villanelle_ or _Napolitane_ and _Siciliane_. It is clear that in this
matter of nomenclature great exactitude cannot be sought.
[335] The proofs adduced by D'Ancona in his _Poesia popolare_, pp.
177-284, seem to me conclusive on this point.
[336] See Pitre, _Studi di Poesia popolare_ (Palermo, Lauriel, 1872),
two essays on "I Poeti del Popolo Siciliano," and "Pietro Fullone e le
sfide popolari," pp. 81-184. He gives particulars relating to
contemporary improvisations. See, too, the Essays by L. Vigo, _Opere_
(Catania, 1870-74), vol. ii.
[337] _Op. cit._ pp. 285, 288-294.
[338] I may refer at large to Tigri's collection, and to my
translations of these _Rispetti_ in _Sketches in Italy and Greece_.
[339] Carducci, _Cantilene_, p. 57.
[340] See Rubieri, _Storia della poesia popolare_, pp. 352-356, for a
selection of variants.
[341] The terms employed above require some illustration. Poliziano's
Canzonet, _La pastorella si leva per tempo_, is a _pasticcio_ composed
of fragments from popular songs in vogue at his day. We possess three
valuable poems--one by Bronzino, published in 1567; one by Il Cieco
Bianchino of Florence, published at Verona in 1629; the third by Il
Cieco Britti of Venice, published in the same year--which consist of
extracts from popular lyrics united together by the rhymster. Hence
their name _incatenatura_. See Rubieri, _op. cit._ pp. 121, 130, 212.
See, too, D'Ancona, _op. cit._ pp. 100-105, 146-172, for the text and
copious illustrations from contemporary sources of Bronzino's and Il
Cieco Bianchino's poems.
[342] _Prose Volgari, etc., di A.A. Poliziano_ (Firenze, Barbera,
1867), p. 74. "Siamo tutti allegri, e facciamo buona cera, e becchiamo
per tutta la via di qualche rappresaglia e Canzone di Calen di Maggio,
che mi sono parute piu fantastiche qui in Acquapendente, alla
Romanesca, vel nota ipsa vel argumento."
[343] See D'Ancona, _op. cit._ pp. 354-420, for copious and
interesting notices of the popular press in several Italian towns. The
_Avallone_ of Naples, _Cordella_ of Venice, _Marescandoli_ of
Florence, _Bertini_ and _Baroni_ of Lucca, _Colomba_ of Bologna, all
served the special requirements of the proletariate in town and
country. G.B. Verini of Florence made anthologies called _L'Ardor
d'Amore_ and _Crudelta d'Amore_ in the sixteenth century, both of
which are still reprinted. The same is true of the _Olimpia_ and
_Gloria_ of Olimpo degli Alessandri of Sassoferrato. The subordinate
titles commonly used in these popular Golden Treasuries are, "Canzoni
di amore," "di gelosia," "di sdegno," "di pace e di partenza." Their
classification and description appear from the following rubrics:
"Mattinate," "Serenate," "Partenze," "Strambotti," "Sdegni,"
"Sonetti," "Villanelle," "Lettere," "Affetti d'Amore," etc.
[344] Upon this point consult Rubieri, _op. cit._ chap. xiv. In Sicily
the _Ciure_, says Pitre, is reckoned unfit for an honest woman's
mouth.
[345] The South seems richer in this material than the Center. See
Pitre's _Canti Pop. Sic._ vol. ii., among the _Leggende e Storie_,
especially _La Comare_, _Minni-spartuti_, _Principessa di Carini_,
_L'Innamorata del Diavolo_, and some of the bandit songs.
[346] Palermo, Lauriel, 1875.
[347] _Canti Monferrini_ (Torino-Firenze, Loescher, 1870), pp. 1, 6,
14, 26, 28, 34, 42. One of the ballads cited above, _La Sisilia_, is
found in Sicily.
[348] _Ibid._ p. 48.
[349] It does not occur in the _Canti Monferrini_.
[350] See my letter to the _Rassegna Settimanale_, March 9, 1879, on
the subject of this ballad. Though I begged Italian students for
information respecting similar compositions my letter only elicited a
Tuscan version of the _Donna Lombarda_.
[351] _Op. cit._ p. 106.
[352] D'Ancona, _op. cit._ p. 106.
[353] _Ibid._ pp. 99, 105.
[354] See Child's _English and Scottish Ballads_, vol. ii. pp. 244,
_et seq._
[355] Bolza, _Canz. Pop. Comasche_, No. 49. Here is the Scotch version
from Lord Donald:
What will ye leave to your true-love, Lord Donald, my son?
What will ye leave to your true-love, my jollie young man?
The tow and the halter, for to hang on yon tree,
And lat her hang there for the poisoning o' me.
[356] This is the Scotch version, with the variant of Lord Randal:
What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?
What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?
I gat eels boiled in broo; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down.
What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randal, my son?
What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?
O, they swelled and they died; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down.
[357] In Passano's _I Novellieri Italiani in Verso_ I find, at p. 20,
the notice of a poem, in octave stanzas, which corresponds exactly to
the _Heir of Lynn_. Published at Venice, 1530, 1531, 1542, it bears
this title: "Essempio dun giovane ricchissimo; qual consumata la
ricchezza: disperato a un trave si sospese. Nel qual il padre previsto
il suo fatalcorso gia molti anni avanti infinito tesoro posto havea,
et quello per il carico fracassato, la occulta moneta scoperse." The
young man's name is Fenitio. I have not seen this poem, and since it
is composed in _ottava rima_ it cannot be classed exactly with the
_Avvelenato_. Passano also catalogues the _Historia di tre Giovani
disperati e di tre fate_, and the _Historia di Leon Bruno_, which seem
to contain ballad elements.