Modern Italian Poets; Essays and Versions Part 15

The princ.i.p.al poem here is called "Le Fantasie", and consists of a series of lyrics in which an Italian exile contrasts the Lombards, who drove out Frederick Barbarossa in the twelfth century, with the Lombards of 1829, who crouched under the power defied of old. It is full of burning reproaches, sarcasms, and appeals; and it probably had some influence in renewing the political agitation which in Italy followed the French revolution of 1830. Other poems of Berchet represent social aspects of the Austrian rule, like one ent.i.tled "Remorse", which paints the isolation and wretchedness of an Italian woman married to an Austrian; and another, "Giulia", which gives a picture of the frantic misery of an Austrian conscription in Italy.

A very impressive poem is that called "The Hermit of Mt. Cenis". A traveler reaches the summit of the pa.s.s, and, looking over upon the beauty and magnificence of the Italian plains, and seeing only their loveliness and peace, his face is lighted up with an involuntary smile, when suddenly the hermit who knows all the invisible disaster and despair of the scene suddenly accosts him with, "Accursed be he who approaches without tears this home of sorrow!"

At the time the Romantic School rose in Italian literature, say from 1815 till 1820, society was brilliant, if not contented or happy.

In Lombardy and Venetia, immediately after the treaties of the Holy Alliance had consigned these provinces to Austria, there flourished famous _conversazioni_ at many n.o.ble houses. In those of Milan many distinguished literary men of other nations met. Byron and Hobhouse were frequenters of the same _salons_ as Pellico, Manzoni, and Grossi; the Schlegels represented the German Romantic School, and Madame de Stael the sympathizing movement in France. There was very much that was vicious still, and very much that was ign.o.ble in Italian society, but this was by sufferance and not as of old by approval; and it appears that the tone of the highest life was intellectual. It cannot be claimed that this tone was at all so general as the badness of the last century. It was not so easily imitated as that, and it could not penetrate so subtly into all ranks and conditions. Still it was very observable, and mingled with it in many leading minds was the strain of religious resignation, audible in Manzoni's poetry. That was a time when the Italians might, if ever, have adapted themselves to foreign rule; but the Austrians, sofar from having learned political wisdom during the period of their expulsion from Italy, had actually retrograded; from being pa.s.sive authorities whom long sojourn was gradually Italianizing, they had, in their absence, become active and relentless tyrants, and they now seemed to study how most effectually to alienate themselves. They found out their error later, but when too late to repair it, and from 1820 until 1859 in Milan, and until 1866 in Venice, the hatred, which they had themselves enkindled, burned fiercer and fiercer against them. It is not extravagant to say that if their rule had continued a hundred years longer the Italians would never have been reconciled to it. Society took the form of habitual and implacable defiance to them. The life of the whole people might be said to have resolved itself into a protest against their presence.

This hatred was the heritage of children from their parents, the bond between friends, the basis of social faith; it was a thread even in the tie between lovers; it was so intense and so pervasive that it cannot be spoken.

Berchet was the vividest, if not the earliest, expression of it in literature, and the following poem, which I have already mentioned, is, therefore, not only intensely true to Italian feeling, but entirely realistic in its truth to a common fact.

REMORSE.

Alone in the midst of the throng, 'Mid the lights and the splendor alone, Her eyes, dropped for shame of her wrong, She lifts not to eyes she has known: Around her the whirl and the stir Of the light-footing dancers she hears; None seeks her; no whisper for her Of the gracious words filling her ears.

The fair boy that runs to her knees, With a shout for his mother, and kiss For the tear-drop that welling he sees To her eyes from her sorrow's abyss,-- Though he blooms like a rose, the fair boy, No praise of his beauty is heard; None with him stays to jest or to toy, None to her gives a smile or a word.

If, unknowing, one ask who may be This woman, that, as in disgrace, O'er the curls of the boy at her knee Bows her beautiful, joyless face, A hundred tongues answer in scorn, A hundred lips teach him to know-- "Wife of one of our tyrants, forsworn To her friends in her truth to their foe."

At the play, in the streets, in the lanes, At the fane of the merciful G.o.d, 'Midst a people in prison and chains, Spy-haunted, at home and abroad-- Steals through all like the hiss of a snake Hate, by terror itself unsuppressed: "Cursed be the Italian could take The Austrian foe to her breast!"

Alone--but the absence she mourned As widowhood mourneth, is past: Her heart leaps for her husband returned From his garrison far-off at last?

Ah, no! For this woman forlorn Love is dead, she has felt him depart: With far other thoughts she is torn, Far other the grief at her heart.

When the shame that has darkened her days Fantasmal at night fills the gloom, When her soul, lost in wildering ways, Flies the past, and the terror to come-- When she leaps from her slumbers to hark, As if for her little one's call, It is then to the pitiless dark That her woe-burdened soul utters all:

"Woe is me! It was G.o.d's righteous hand My brain with its madness that smote: At the alien's flattering command The land of my birth I forgot!

I, the girl who was loved and adored, Feasted, honored in every place, Now what am I? The apostate abhorred, Who was false to her home and her race!

"I turned from the common disaster; My brothers oppressed I denied; I smiled on their insolent master; I came and sat down by his side.

Wretch! a mantle of shame thou hast wrought; Thou hast wrought it--it clingeth to thee, And for all that thou sufferest, naught From its meshes thy spirit can free.

"Oh, the scorn I have tasted! They know not, Who pour it on me, how it burns; How it galls the meek spirit, whose woe not Their hating with hating returns!

Fool! I merit it: I have not holden My feet from their paths! Mine the blame: I have sought in their eyes to embolden This visage devoted to shame!

"Rejected and followed with scorn, My child, like a child born of sin, In the land where my darling was born, He lives exiled! A refuge to win From their hatred, he runs in dismay To my arms. But the day may yet be When my son shall the insult repay, I have nurtured him in, unto me!

"If it chances that ever the slave Snaps the shackles that bind him, and leaps Into life in the heart of the brave The sense of the might that now sleeps-- To which people, which side shall I cleave?

Which fate shall I curse with my own?

To which banner pray Heaven to give The triumph? Which desire o'erthrown?

"Italian, and sister, and wife, And mother, unfriended, alone, Outcast, I wander through life, Over shard and bramble and stone!

Wretch! a mantle of shame thou hast wrought; Thou hast wrought it--it clingeth to thee, And for all that thou sufferest, naught From its meshes thy spirit shall free!"

GIAMBATTISTA NICCOLINI

I

The school of Romantic poets and novelists was practically dispersed by the Austrian police after the Carbonari disturbances in 1821-22, and the literary spirit of the nation took refuge under the mild and careless despotism of the grand dukes at Florence.

In 1821 Austria was mistress of pretty near all Italy. She held in her own grasp the vast provinces of Lombardy and Venetia; she had garrisons in Naples, Piedmont, and the Romagna; and Rome was ruled according to her will. But there is always something fatally defective in the vigilance of a policeman; and in the very place which perhaps Austria thought it quite needless to guard, the restless and indomitable spirit of free thought entered. It was in Tuscany, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, reigned over by a family set on the grand-ducal throne by Austria herself, and united to her Hapsburgs by many ties of blood and affection--in Tuscany, right under both noses of the double-headed eagle, as it were, that a new literary and political life began for Italy. The Leopoldine code was famously mild toward criminals, and the Lorrainese princes did not show themselves crueler than they could help toward poets, essayists, historians, philologists, and that cla.s.s of malefactors. Indeed it was the philosophy of their family to let matters alone; and the grand duke restored after the fall of Napoleon was, as has been said, an absolute monarch, but he was also an honest man. This _galantuomo_ had even a minister who successfully combated the Austrian influences, and so, though there were, of course, spies and a censors.h.i.+p in Florence, there was also indulgence; and if it was not altogether a pleasant place for literary men to live, it was at least tolerable, and there they gathered from their exile and their silence throughout Italy.

Their point of union, and their means of affecting the popular mind, was for twelve years the critical journal ent.i.tled the _Antologia_, founded by that Vieusseux who also opened those delightful and beneficent reading-rooms whither we all rush, as soon as we reach Florence, to look at the newspapers and magazines of our native land.

The Antologia had at last the misfortune to offend the Emperor of Russia, and to do that prince a pleasure the Tuscan government suppressed it: such being the international amenities when sovereigns really reigned in Europe. After the Antologia there came another review, published at Leghorn, but it was not so successful, and in fact the conditions of literature gradually grew more irksome in Tuscany, until the violent liberation came in '48, and a little later the violent reenslavement.

Giambattista Niccolini, like nearly all the poets of his time and country, was of n.o.ble birth, his father being a _cavaliere_, and holding a small government office at San Giuliano, near Pistoja. Here, in 1782, Niccolini was born to very decided penury. His father had only that little office, and his income died with him; the mother had nothing--possibly because she was descended from a poet, the famous Filicaja. From his mother, doubtless, Niccolini inherited his power, and perhaps his patriotism. But little or nothing is known of his early life. It is certain, merely, that after leaving school, he continued his studies in the University of Pisa, and that he very soon showed himself a poet. His first published effort was a sort of lamentation over an epidemic that desolated Tuscany in 1804, and this was followed by five or six pretty thoroughly forgotten tragedies in the cla.s.sic or Alfierian manner. Of these, only the _Medea_ is still played, but they all made a stir in their time; and for another he was crowned by the Accademia della Crusca, which I suppose does not mean a great deal. The fact that Niccolini early caught the attention and won the praises of Ugo Foscolo is more important. There grew up, indeed, between the two poets such esteem that the elder at this time dedicated one of his books to the younger, and their friends.h.i.+p continued through life.

When Elisa Bonaparte was made queen of Etruria by Napoleon, Niccolini became secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts, and professor of history and mythology. It is said that in the latter capacity he instilled into his hearers his own notions of liberty and civic virtue. He was, in truth, a democrat, and he suffered with the other Jacobins, as they were called in Italy, when the Napoleonic governments were overthrown.

The benefits which the French Revolution conferred upon the people of their conquered provinces when not very doubtful were still such as they were not prepared to receive; and after the withdrawal of the French support, all the Italians through whom they had ruled fell a prey to the popular hate and contumely. In those days when dynasties, restored to their thrones after the lapse of a score of years, ignored the intervening period and treated all its events as if they had no bearing upon the future, it was thought the part of the true friends of order to resume the old fas.h.i.+ons which went out with the old _regime_. The queue, or pigtail, had always been worn, when it was safe to wear it, by the supporters of religion and good government (from this fas.h.i.+on came the famous political nickname _codino_, pigtail-wearer, or conservative, which used to occur so often in Italian talk and literature), and now whoever appeared on the street without this emblem of loyalty and piety was in danger of public outrage. A great many Jacobins bowed their heads to the popular will, and had pigtails sewed on them--a device which the idle boys and other unemployed friends of legitimacy busied themselves in detecting. They laid rude hands on this ornament singing,

If the queue remains in your hand, A true republican is he; Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!

Give him a kick for liberty.

It is related that the superficial and occasional character of Niccolini's conversion was discovered by this test, and that he underwent the apposite penalty. He rebelled against the treatment he received, and was arrested and imprisoned for his contumacy. When Ferdinando III had returned and established his government on the let-alone principle to which I have alluded, the dramatist was made librarian of the Palatine Library at the Pitti Palace, but he could not endure the necessary attendance at court, where his politics were remembered against him by the courtiers, and he gave up the place.

The grand duke was sorry, and said so, adding that he was perfectly contented. "Your Highness," answered the poet, "in this case it takes two to be contented."

II

The first political tragedy of Niccolini was the _Nebuchadnezzar_, which was printed in London in 1819, and figured, under that Scriptural disguise, the career of Napoleon. After that came his _Antonio Foscarini_, in which the poet, who had heretofore been a cla.s.sicist, tried to reconcile that school with the romantic by violating the sacred unities in a moderate manner. In his subsequent tragedies he seems not to have regarded them at all, and to have been romantic as the most romantic Lombard of them all could have asked.

Of course, his defection gave exquisite pain to the lovers of Italian good taste, as the cla.s.sicists called themselves, but these were finally silenced by the success of his tragedy. The reader of it nowadays, we suspect, will think its success not very expensively achieved, and it certainly has a main fault that makes it strangely disagreeable. When the past was chiefly the affair of fable, the storehouse of tradition, it was well enough for the poet to take historical events and figures, and fas.h.i.+on them in any way that served his purpose; but this will not do in our modern daylight, where a freedom with the truth is an offense against common knowledge, and does not charm the fancy, but painfully bewilders it at the best, and at the second best is impudent and ludicrous. In his tragedy, Niccolini takes two very familiar incidents of Venetian history: that of the Foscari, which Byron has used; and that of Antonio Foscarini, who was unjustly hanged more than a hundred years later for privity to a conspiracy against the state, whereas the attributive crime of Jacopo Foscari was the a.s.sa.s.sination of a fellow-patrician. The poet is then forced to make the Doge Foscari do duty throughout as the father of Foscarini, the only doge of whose name served out his term very peaceably, and died the author of an extremely dull official history of Venetian literature. Foscarini, who, up to the time of his hanging, was an honored servant of the state, and had been amba.s.sador to France, is obliged, on his part, to undergo all of Jacopo Foscari's troubles; and I have not been able to see why the poet should have vexed himself to make all this confusion, and why the story of the Foscari was not sufficient for his purpose. In the tragedy there is much denunciation of the oligarchic oppression of the Ten in Venice, and it may be regarded as the first of Niccolini's dramatic appeals to the love of freedom and the manhood of the Italians.

It is much easier to understand the success of Niccolini's subsequent drama, _Lodovico il Moro_, which is in many respects a touching and effective tragedy, and the historical truth is better observed in it; though, as none of our race can ever love his country with that pa.s.sionate and personal devotion which the Italians feel, we shall never relish the high patriotic flavor of the piece. The story is simply that of Giovan-Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, whose uncle, Lodovico, on pretense of relieving him of the cares of government, has usurped the sovereignty, and keeps Galeazzo and his wife in virtual imprisonment, the young duke wasting away with a slow but fatal malady. To further his ambitious schemes in Lombardy, Lodovico has called in Charles VIII. of France, who claims the crown of Naples against the Aragonese family, and pauses, on his way to Naples, at Milan. Isabella, wife of Galeazzo, appeals to Charles to liberate them, but reaches his presence in such an irregular way that she is suspected of treason both to her husband and to Charles. Yet the king is convinced of her innocence, and he places the sick duke under the protection of a French garrison, and continues his march on Naples.

Lodovico has appeared to consent, but by seeming to favor the popular leaders has procured the citizens to insist upon his remaining in power; he has also secretly received the invest.i.ture from the Emperor of Germany, to be published upon the death of Galeazzo. He now, therefore, defies the French; Galeazzo, tormented by alternate hope and despair, dies suddenly; and Lodovico, throwing off the mask of a popular ruler, puts the republican leaders to death, and reigns the feudatory of the Emperor. The interest of the play is almost entirely political, and patriotism is the chief pa.s.sion involved. The main personal attraction of the tragedy is in the love of Galeazzo and his wife, and in the character of the latter the dreamy languor of a hopeless invalid is delicately painted.

The _Giovanni da Procida_ was a further advance in political literature. In this tragedy, abandoning the indirectly liberal teachings of the Foscarini, Niccolini set himself to the purpose of awakening a Tuscan hatred of foreign rule. The subject is the expulsion of the French from Sicily; and when the French amba.s.sador complained to the Austrian that such a play should be tolerated by the Tuscan government, the Austrian answered, "The address is to the French, but the letter is for the Germans." The Giovanni da Procida was a further development of Niccolini's political purposes in literature, and at the time of its first representation it raised the Florentines to a frenzy of theater-going patriotism. The tragedy ends with the terrible Sicilian Vespers, but its main affair is with preceding events, largely imagined by the poet, and the persons are in great part fict.i.tious; yet they all bear a certain relation to fact, and the historical persons are more or less historically painted.

Giovanni da Procida, a great Sicilian n.o.bleman, believed dead by the French, comes home to Palermo, after long exile, to stir up the Sicilians to rebellion, and finds that his daughter is married to the son of one of the French rulers, though neither this daughter Imelda nor her husband Tancredi knew the origin of the latter at the time of their marriage. Precida, in his all-absorbing hate of the oppressors, cannot forgive them; yet he seizes Tancredi, and imprisons him in his castle, in order to save his life from the impending ma.s.sacre of the French; and in a scene with Imelda, he tells her that, while she was a babe, the father of Tancredi had abducted her mother and carried her to France. Years after, she returned heart-broken to die in her husband's arms, a secret which she tries to reveal peris.h.i.+ng with her.

While Imelda remains horror-struck by this history, Procida receives an intercepted letter from Eriberto, Tancredi's father, in which he tells the young man that he and Imelda are children of the same mother. Procida in pity of his daughter, the victim of this awful fatality, prepares to send her away to a convent in Pisa; but a French law forbids any s.h.i.+p to sail at that time, and Imelda is brought back and confronted in a public place with Tancredi, who has been rescued by the French.

He claims her as his wife, but she, filled with the horror of what she knows, declares that he is not her husband. It is the moment of the Vespers, and Tancredi falls among the first slain by the Sicilians. He implores Imelda for a last kiss, but wildly answering that they are brother and sister, she swoons away, while Tancredi dies in this climax of self-loathing and despair. The management of a plot so terrible is very simple. The feelings of the characters in the hideous maze which involves them are given only such expression as should come from those utterly broken by their calamity. Imelda swoons when she hears the letter of Eriberto declaring the fatal tie of blood that binds her to her husband, and forever separates her from him. When she is restored, she finds her father weeping over her, and says:

Ah, thou dost look on me And weep! At least this comfort I can feel In the horror of my state: thou canst not hate A woman so unhappy....

... Oh, from all Be hid the atrocity! to some holy shelter Let me be taken far from hence. I feel Naught can be more than my calamity, Saving G.o.d's pity. I have no father now, Nor child, nor husband (heavens, what do I say?

He is my brother now! and well I know I must not ask to see him more). I, living, lose Everything death robs other women of.

By far the greater feeling and pa.s.sion are shown in the pa.s.sages describing the wrongs which the Sicilians have suffered from the French, and expressing the aspiration and hate of Procida and his fellow-patriots. Niccolini does not often use pathos, and he is on that account perhaps the more effective in the use of it. However this may be, I find it very touching when, after coming back from his long exile, Procida says to Imelda, who is trembling for the secret of her marriage amidst her joy in his return:

Daughter, art thou still So sad? I have not heard yet from thy lips A word of the old love....

... Ah, thou knowest not What sweetness hath the natal spot, how many The longings exile hath; how heavy't is To arrive at doors of homes where no one waits thee!

Imelda, thou may'st abandon thine own land, But not forget her; I, a pilgrim, saw Many a city; but none among them had A memory that spoke unto my heart; And fairer still than any other seemed The country whither still my spirit turned.

In a vein as fierce and pa.s.sionate as this is tender, Procida relates how, returning to Sicily when he was believed dead by the French, he pa.s.sed in secret over the island and inflamed Italian hatred of the foreigners:

I sought the pathless woods, And drew the cowards thence and made them blush, And then made fury follow on their shame.

I hailed the peasant in his fertile fields, Where, 'neath the burden of the cruel tribute, He dropped from famine 'midst the harvest sheaves, With his starved brood: "Open thou with thy scythe The b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Frenchmen; let the earth no more Be fertile to our tyrants." I found my way In palaces, in hovels; tranquil, I Both great and lowly did make drunk with rage.

I knew the art to call forth cruel tears In every eye, to wake in every heart A love of slaughter, a ferocious need Of blood. And in a thousand strong right hands Glitter the arms I gave.

In the last act occurs one of those lyrical pa.s.sages in which Niccolini excels, and two lines from this chorus are among the most famous in modern Italian poetry: