If a painter’s skull is so offensive artistically and so futile
scientifically, what shall we say of a poet’s heart? “Look into thy
heart and write” may be a sound maxim, but to look into somebody else’s
heart, is another matter. Separate sepulture for the poet’s heart is not
unknown. But the exhibition of a poet’s heart as a literal literary
asset, or library decoration, is, I imagine, only to be seen in the
University of Ferrara. ’Tis the heart of the poet Monti who died in
1828, after having frequently resided in Ferrara, as a local tablet to
“the sovereign poet of his age” testifies. Be it known that to Ferrara’s
University turn the hearts of all poets, inasmuch as hither were
transported the bones of Ariosto—and here a beautifully bound Ariosto
album by all the poets of the day still awaits Napoleon’s promised
attendance at the osseous installation, side by side with a lonely
phalange of Ariosto that was equally belated for the ceremony. Monti
could not resist the desire to bequeath his heart to this shrine of the
Muses, and lo! there I beheld it, in a sort of air-tight hour-glass, a
little brown heart, preserved in alcohol like a physiological specimen.
Could anything be more prosaic of a poet, nay, more heartless? Fie upon
you, Vincenzo! Was it not enough that your side-whiskers are perpetuated
in the bust in the Ambrosian library? Are you an Arab that you should
hold the heart the centre of the soul? Would you persuade us that this
quaint ounce of flesh was the heart that contracted and dilated with
tragic passion as you wrote your “Aristodemo,” the heart that beat out
the music of “_Bella Italia, amate sponde_,” the heart that swelled with
the tropes of the Professor of Eloquence at Pavia? Was it with these
auricles and ventricles that you pumped up your poetry, was it these
cardiac muscles that wrested the laureateship from Foscolo and
Pindemonte? Was this “the official organ” of Napoleon?
Go to! Wear your heart on your sleeve, if you will, so long as it throbs
with your life, but foist not upon us this butcher’s oddment as the
essential you. Is it that you would abase us like Hamlet’s gravedigger
with abject reminders of our mortality? Pooh! a lock of your hair during
your lifetime were no more distressing. Not with this key did
Shakespeare unlock his heart. And if we wish to behold your heart, we
shall turn to your poems, and see it divided among many loves, equally
susceptible to Dante and Homer. But this offal—let it be buried with
Ariosto’s phalange!
Indeed, in justice to Italian taste, it should be stated that this heart
has already been buried once. The courteous librarian of the University
informed me that at Monti’s death in 1828, it was sent to the library by
a beloved friend who had placed it in a pot of alcohol. But Cardinal
Della Genga vetoed its exhibition and it was interred in the Certosa,
under the poet’s monument. There it remained till 1884, when it was
decided to carry the lead case in which the heart was buried to the
library. In 1900 the case was opened in the presence of the authorities
and the heart found splendidly preserved. It was therefore placed on
view in a chest belonging to the poet, and containing papers of his. But
the sooner it is removed again the better. That sort of “literary
remains” scarce goes with the atmosphere of libraries.