Modern Italian Poets; Essays and Versions Part 13

_Ad._ That hour of peace has come to me.

Believe it, father, save that I leave thee Crushed with thy sorrow here below.

_Des._ O front Serene and bold! O fearless hand! O eyes That once struck terror!

_Ad._ Cease thy lamentations, Cease, father, in G.o.d's name! For was not this The time to die? But thou that shalt live captive, And hast lived all thy days a king, oh listen: Life's a great secret that is not revealed Save in the latest hour. Thou'st lost a kingdom; Nay, do not weep! Trust me, when to this hour Thou also shalt draw nigh, most jubilant And fair shall pa.s.s before thy thought the years In which thou wast not king--the years in which No tears shall be recorded in the skies Against thee, and thy name shall not ascend Mixed with the curses of the unhappy. Oh, Rejoice that thou art king no longer! that All ways are closed against thee! There is none For innocent action, and there but remains To do wrong or to suffer wrong. A power Fierce, pitiless, grasps the world, and calls itself The right. The ruthless hands of our forefathers Did sow injustice, and our fathers then Did water it with blood; and now the earth No other harvest bears. It is not meet To uphold crime, thou'st proved it, and if 't were, Must it not end thus? Nay, this happy man Whose throne my dying renders more secure, Whom all men smile on and applaud, and serve, He is a man and he shall die.

_Des._ But I That lose my son, what shall console me?

_Ad._ G.o.d!

Who comforts us for all things. And oh, thou Proud foe of mine! _(Turning to Carlo.)_

_Carlo._ Nay, by this name, Adelchi, Call me no more; I was so, but toward death Hatred is impious and villainous. Nor such, Believe me, knows the heart of Carlo.

_Ad._ Friendly My speech shall be, then, very meek and free Of every bitter memory to both.

For this I pray thee, and my dying hand I lay in thine! I do not ask that thou Should'st let go free so great a captive--no, For I well see that my prayer were in vain And vain the prayer of any mortal. Firm Thy heart is--must be--nor so far extends Thy pity. That which thou can'st not deny Without being cruel, that I ask thee! Mild As it can be, and free of insult, be This old man's bondage, even such as thou Would'st have implored for thy father, if the heavens Had destined thee the sorrow of leaving him In others' power. His venerable head Keep thou from every outrage; for against The fallen many are brave; and let him not Endure the cruel sight of any of those His va.s.sals that betrayed him.

_Carlo._ Take in death This glad a.s.surance, Adelchi! and be Heaven My testimony, that thy prayer is as The word of Carlo!

_Ad._ And thy enemy, In dying, prays for thee!

_Enter_ ARVINO.

_Armno._ (_Impatiently_) O mighty king, thy warriors and chiefs Ask entrance.

_Ad._ (_Appealingly_.) Carlo!

_Carlo._ Let not any dare To draw anigh this tent; for here Adelchi Is sovereign; and no one but Adelchi's father And the meek minister of divine forgiveness Have access here.

_Des._ O my beloved son!

_Ad._ O my father, The light forsakes these eyes.

_Des._ Adelchi,--No!

Thou shalt not leave me!

_Ad._ O King of kings! betrayed By one of Thine, by all the rest abandoned: I come to seek Thy peace, and do Thou take My weary soul!

_Des._ He heareth thee, my son, And thou art gone, and I in servitude Remain to weep.

I wish to give another pa.s.sage from this tragedy: the speech which the emissary of the Church makes to Carlo when he reaches his presence after his arduous pa.s.sage of the Alps. I suppose that all will note the beauty and reality of the description in the story this messenger tells of his adventures; and I feel, for my part, a profound effect of wildness and loneliness in the verse, which has almost the solemn light and balsamy perfume of those mountain solitudes:

From the camp, Unseen, I issued, and retraced the steps But lately taken. Thence upon the right I turned toward Aquilone. Abandoning The beaten paths, I found myself within A dark and narrow valley; but it grew Wider before my eyes as further on I kept my way. Here, now and then, I saw The wandering flocks, and huts of shepherds. 'T was The furthermost abode of men. I entered One of the huts, craved shelter, and upon The woolly fleece I slept the night away.

Rising at dawn, of my good shepherd host I asked my way to France. "Beyond those heights Are other heights," he said, "and others yet; And France is far and far away; but path There's none, and thousands are those mountains-- Steep, naked, dreadful, uninhabited Unless by ghosts, and never mortal man Pa.s.sed over them." "The ways of G.o.d are many, Far more than those of mortals," I replied, "And G.o.d sends me." "And G.o.d guide you!" he said.

Then, from among the loaves he kept in store, He gathered up as many as a pilgrim May carry, and in a coa.r.s.e sack wrapping them, He laid them on my shoulders. Recompense I prayed from Heaven for him, and took my way.

Beaching the valley's top, a peak arose, And, putting faith in G.o.d, I climbed it. Here No trace of man appeared, only the forests Of untouched pines, rivers unknown, and vales Without a path. All hushed, and nothing else But my own steps I heard, and now and then The rus.h.i.+ng of the torrents, and the sudden Scream of the hawk, or else the eagle, launched From his high nest, and hurtling through the dawn, Pa.s.sed close above my head; or then at noon, Struck by the sun, the crackling of the cones Of the wild pines. And so three days I walked, And under the great trees, and in the clefts, Three nights I rested. The sun was my guide; I rose with him, and him upon his journey I followed till he set. Uncertain still, Of my own way I went; from vale to vale Crossing forever; or, if it chanced at times I saw the accessible slope of some great height Rising before me, and attained its crest, Yet loftier summits still, before, around, Towered over me; and other heights with snow From foot to summit whitening, that did seem Like steep, sharp tents fixed in the soil; and others Appeared like iron, and arose in guise Of walls insuperable. The third day fell What time I had a mighty mountain seen That raised its top above the others; 't was All one green slope, and all its top was crowned With trees. And thither eagerly I turned My weary steps. It was the eastern side, Sire, of this very mountain on which lies Thy camp that faces toward the setting sun.

While I yet lingered on its spurs the darkness Did overtake me; and upon the dry And slippery needles of the pine that covered The ground, I made my bed, and pillowed me Against their ancient trunks. A smiling hope Awakened me at daybreak; and all full Of a strange vigor, up the steep I climbed.

Scarce had I reached the summit when my ear Was smitten with a murmur that from far Appeared to come, deep, ceaseless; and I stood And listened motionless. 'T was not the waters Broken upon the rocks below; 'twas not the wind That blew athwart the woods and whistling ran From one tree to another, but verily A sound of living men, an indistinct Rumor of words, of arms, of trampling feet, Swarming from far away; an agitation Immense, of men! My heart leaped, and my steps I hastened. On that peak, O king, that seems To us like some sharp blade to pierce the heaven, There lies an ample plain that's covered thick With gra.s.s ne'er trod before. And this I crossed The quickest way; and now at every instant The murmur nearer grew, and I devoured The s.p.a.ce between; I reached the brink, I launched My glance into the valley and I saw, I saw the tents of Israel, the desired Pavilion of Jacob; on the ground I fell, thanked G.o.d, adored him, and descended.

VIII

I could easily multiply beautiful and effective pa.s.sages from the poetry of Manzoni; but I will give only one more version, "The Fifth of May", that ode on the death of Napoleon, which, if not the most perfect lyric of modern times as the Italians vaunt it to be, is certainly very grand. I have followed the movement and kept the meter of the Italian, and have at the same time reproduced it quite literally; yet I feel that any translation of such a poem is only a little better than none. I think I have caught the shadow of this splendid lyric; but there is yet no photography that transfers the splendor itself, the life, the light, the color; I can give you the meaning, but not the feeling, that pervades every syllable as the blood warms every fiber of a man, not the words that flashed upon the poet as he wrote, nor the yet more precious and inspired words that came afterward to his patient waiting and pondering, and touched the whole with fresh delight and grace. If you will take any familiar pa.s.sage from one of our poets in which every motion of the music is endeared by long a.s.sociation and remembrance, and every tone is sweet upon the tongue, and subst.i.tute a few strange words for the original, you will have some notion of the wrong done by translation.

THE FIFTH OF MAY.

He pa.s.sed; and as immovable As, with the last sigh given, Lay his own clay, oblivious, From that great spirit riven, So the world stricken and wondering Stands at the tidings dread: Mutely pondering the ultimate Hour of that fateful being, And in the vast futurity No peer of his foreseeing Among the countless myriads Her blood-stained dust that tread.

Him on his throne and glorious Silent saw I, that never-- When with awful vicissitude He sank, rose, fell forever-- Mixed my voice with the numberless Voices that pealed on high; Guiltless of servile flattery And of the scorn of coward, Come I when darkness suddenly On so great light hath lowered, And offer a song at his sepulcher That haply shall not die.

From the Alps unto the Pyramids, From Rhine to Manzanares Unfailingly the thunderstroke His lightning purpose carries; Bursts from Scylla to Tanais,-- From one to the other sea.

Was it true glory?--Posterity, Thine be the hard decision; Bow we before the mightiest, Who willed in him the vision Of his creative majesty Most grandly traced should be.

The eager and tempestuous Joy of the great plan's hour, The throe of the heart that controllessly Burns with a dream of power, And wins it, and seizes victory It had seemed folly to hope-- All he hath known: the infinite Rapture after the danger, The flight, the throne of sovereignty, The salt bread of the stranger; Twice 'neath the feet of the wors.h.i.+pers, Twice 'neath the altar's cope.

He spoke his name; two centuries, Armed and threatening either, Turned unto him submissively, As waiting fate together; He made a silence, and arbiter He sat between the two.

He vanished; his days in the idleness Of his island-prison spending, Mark of immense malignity, And of a pity unending, Of hatred inappeasable, Of deathless love and true.

As on the head of the mariner, Its weight some billow heaping, Falls even while the castaway, With strained sight far sweeping, Scanneth the empty distances For some dim sail in vain; So over his soul the memories Billowed and gathered ever!

How oft to tell posterity Himself he did endeavor, And on the pages helplessly Fell his weary hand again.

How many times, when listlessly In the long, dull day's declining-- Downcast those glances fulminant, His arms on his breast entwining-- He stood a.s.sailed by the memories Of days that were pa.s.sed away; He thought of the camps, the arduous a.s.saults, the shock of forces, The lightning-flash of the infantry, The billowy rush of horses, The thrill in his supremacy, The eagerness to obey.

Ah, haply in so great agony His panting soul had ended Despairing, but that potently A hand, from heaven extended, Into a clearer atmosphere In mercy lifted him.

And led him on by blossoming Pathways of hope ascending To deathless fields, to happiness All earthly dreams transcending, Where in the glory celestial Earth's fame is dumb and dim.

Beautiful, deathless, beneficent Faith! used to triumphs, even This also write exultantly: No loftier pride 'neath heaven Unto the shame of Calvary Stooped ever yet its crest.

Thou from his weary mortality Disperse all bitter pa.s.sions: The G.o.d that humbleth and hearteneth, That comforts and that chastens, Upon the pillow else desolate To his pale lips lay pressed!

IX

Giuseppe Arnaud says that in his sacred poetry Manzoni gave the Catholic dogmas the most moral explanation, in the most attractive poetical language; and he suggests that Manzoni had a patriotic purpose in them, or at least a sympathy with the effort of the Romantic writers to give priests and princes a.s.surance that patriotism was religious, and thus win them to favor the Italian cause. It must be confessed that such a temporal design as this would fatally affect the devotional quality of the hymns, even if the poet's consciousness did not; but I am not able to see any evidence of such sympathy in the poems themselves. I detect there a perfectly sincere religious feeling, and nothing of devotional rapture. The poet had, no doubt, a satisfaction in bringing out the beauty and sublimity of his faith; and, as a literary artist, he had a right to be proud of his work, for its spirit is one of which the tuneful piety of Italy had long been void. In truth, since David, king of Israel, left making psalms, religious songs have been poorer than any other sort of songs; and it is high praise of Manzoni's "Inni Sacri" to say that they are in irreproachable taste, and unite in unaffected poetic appreciation of the grandeur of Christianity as much reason as may coexist with obedience.

The poetry of Manzoni is so small in quant.i.ty, that we must refer chiefly to excellence of quality the influence and the fame it has won him, though I do not deny that his success may have been partly owing at first to the errors of the school which preceded him. It could be easily shown, from literary history, that every great poet has appeared at a moment fortunate for his renown, just as we might prove, from natural science, that it is felicitous for the sun to get up about day-break. Manzoni's art was very great, and he never gave his thought defective expression, while the expression was always secondary to the thought. For the self-respect, then, of an honest man, which would not permit him to poetize insincerity and shape the void, and for the great purpose he always cherished of making literature an agent of civilization and Christianity, the Italians are right to honor Manzoni. Arnaud thinks that the school he founded lingered too long on the educative and religious ground he chose; and Marc Monnier declares Manzoni to be the poet of resignation, thus distinguis.h.i.+ng him from the poets of revolution. The former critic is the nearer right of the two, though neither is quite just, as it seems to me; for I do not understand how any one can read the romance and the dramas of Manzoni without finding him full of sympathy for all Italy has suffered, and a patriot very far from resigned; and I think political conditions--or the Austrians in Milan, to put it more concretely--scarcely left to the choice of the Lombard school that att.i.tude of aggression which others a.s.sumed under a weaker, if not a milder, despotism at Florence. The utmost allowed the Milanese poets was the expression of a retrospective patriotism, which celebrated the glories of Italy's past, which deplored her errors, and which denounced her crimes, and thus contributed to keep the sense of nationality alive. Under such governments as endured in Piedmont until 1848, in Lombardy until 1859, in Venetia until 1866, literature must remain educative, or must cease to be. In the works, therefore, of Manzoni and of nearly all his immediate followers, there is nothing directly revolutionary except in Giovanni Berchet. The line between them and the directly revolutionary poets is by no means to be traced with exactness, however, in their literature, and in their lives they were all alike patriotic.

Manzoni lived to see all his hopes fulfilled, and died two years after the fall of the temporal power, in 1873. "Toward mid-day," says a Milanese journal at the time of his death, "he turned suddenly to the household friends about him, and said: 'This man is failing--sinking--call my confessor!'

"The confessor came, and he communed with him half an hour, speaking, as usual, from a mind calm and clear. After the confessor left the room, Manzoni called his friends and said to them: 'When I am dead, do what I did every day: pray for Italy--pray for the king and his family--so good to me!' His country was the last thought of this great man dying as in his whole long life it had been his most vivid and constant affection."

SILVIO PELLICO, TOMa.s.sO GROSSI, LUIGI CAREER, AND GIOVANNI BERCHET

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