Critical Studies Part 2

'Hearing a rattle of plates, he asked, "Are you hungry?" And the question suggested by the little homely sound, put eagerly, with childlike insistence, made Ippolita smile.

'"Yes, a little," she answered, smiling; and both of them looked at the table ready spread under the oak tree. In a few minutes more their dinner was ready.

'"You must be content with what there is," said Giorgio. "It is very humble fare."

'"Oh, I should be satisfied with herbs."

'And with a gay air she drew near the table, examined curiously the tablecloth, the silver, the gla.s.s, the plates, finding everything charming, delighted like a child with the blue flowers which ornamented the fine white pottery.

'"Everything delights me here!"

'She bent over the big, round loaf, which was still warm under its golden and crisp crust.

'"Ah! what a good smell it has!" And, as if impelled by her childlike joy in the fresh bread, she broke off a piece of its crust.

'"What good bread!"

'Her strong, white teeth shone as they bit and closed, and all the movements of her curving lip expressed the pleasure which she felt; and from her whole person there seemed to emanate a rare, fresh grace, which attracted and amazed her lover with a new and unexpected charm.

'"Oh, how good! Taste, how good it is!"'

What can be more graphic, more simple, more radiant, than this picture painted in words so few?

Take this landscape, so true to the scenery of the Veneto:--

'It was afternoon. He explored the winding paths which went, now up, now down, leading towards the point of the Penna, on the seash.o.r.e. He looked before him and around him with curiosity, but, perhaps, with some forced attention, as if he wished to understand obscure meanings hidden in these simple scenes, to wrest from them some unseizable secret. Rising in the heart of these hills of the coast the water of a brook, directed by a homely aqueduct made of hollowed trees, crossed the low-lying land between the two slopes. Other little rivulets were caught and guided by concave tiles to water the tilled earth grown with rich vegetation, and above these streams, ever bright and rippling, there leaned some beautiful purple flowers;[2] all these humble things seemed to him pregnant with profound life. All the merry waters ran down along the incline towards the pebbly beach, and pa.s.sed under a little bridge. In the shadow of its arch some women were washing linen, and their gestures were mirrored in the stream.

On the shingle other linen was already outspread, whitening in the sun. Along the path a man walked with bare feet, carrying his shoes swinging in his hand. Two children, laden with linen, ran along laughing and playing. An old woman hung up on a line a blue mattress.

'On the edge of the path there were little white sh.e.l.ls, out of them frail tentacles trembled and stretched to the light. From a rock above hung twisted dead roots like entwined snakes.

Farther on there was a large peasant's house, bearing on the summit of its roof a floral ornament in clay. An outside staircase led up to a covered terrace. Two women sat spinning at the head of the stair, and the flax shone in the sun like gold. You could hear the wheels turn. By a window sat another, weaving; you could see her rhythmical gestures in moving the shuttle. In the courtyard a huge grey ox was lying down; he shook his ears and moved his tail faintly but incessantly in war against the flies. The c.o.c.ks and hens cackled and crowed around him. Farther on still another little river crossed the road; it laughed aloud, crisp, mirthful, vivid, limpid.

'Near another farmhouse a thick bay hedge shut in an orchard.

The straight, shining stems rose immovable, crowned with their glistening foliage. One of the bay trees was enveloped in the embrace of a clematis, which lovingly conquered the martial bay with her blossoms of snow, the veil of her nuptial freshness.

Underneath, the earth was dewy and fragrant. In an angle a black cross leaned over the hedge, the silence had the resigned sadness of a graveyard. At the end of a line there arose a flight of steps, half in shade, half in sunshine; they led to a door standing half open, protected by two branches of olive hung from its rustic architrave. On the lowest step sat an old man asleep, his head uncovered, his chin on his breast, his hands on his knees; the light touched his aged brow. From the half-open door there came, to soothe his senile sleep, the cadence of a rocking cradle, the rise and fall of a murmured lullaby.'

[Footnote 2: Campanulas, spotted orchis, or foxglove, I suppose. It it characteristic of him that he sighs for an 'unseizable secret,' and does not take the trouble to learn the names of the flowers he sees.]

What can be more true or more beautiful than this? Mark the contrast of the old man sleeping on the stone steps, with the young mother, unseen within, singing _sotto voce_ her cradle song. In totally different style and tone take these few lines on Orvieto:--

'A rock of tufa hanging above a melancholy valley; a city so silent that it seems empty: the windows are closed, in the grey lanes gra.s.s grows; a capuchin crosses a square; a bishop descends from a closed carriage before the gate of a hospital; a tower rises in a white and rainy sky; a clock strikes the hour slowly; all at once at the end of the street a miracle in stone--the Cathedral.'

Is not the city of Luca Signorelli set before you with those few lines?

There is here something far beyond dexterity or ingenuity of style; there is the poet's, the painter's, power to embrace a world at a glance, and with a touch set before duller eyes that world in all its varieties and suggestions, all its past and its present, all its secrets of the grave and of the future.

Take again this very different picture:--

'He found the gorse.

'On a tableland the thickly-growing gorse had flowered so densely as to spread a vast golden mantle over all the soil.

Five maidens were gathering the flowers and filling with them skips and baskets, singing as they worked. They sang a song of thirds and fives in perfect harmony. When one of them reached a special phrase she lifted her whole bust out of the yellow maze of blossom that the notes might go forth from her throat with fuller liberty, and held it long sustained in air, looking her companions in the eyes whilst they applauded with their hands of flowers.

'When they saw the stranger they stopped and bent again over the gorse. Stifled saucy laughter rippled under the yellow sea.

Giorgio asked,--

'"Which of you is Favetta?"

'A girl, brown as an olive, raised her head in reply, amazed, almost terrified: "It is I, sir."

'"Are you not the finest singer of San Vito?"

'"No, sir. That is not true."

'"It is true. It is true!" cried her companions.

'"Sir! make her sing."

'"No, sir, it is not true. I cannot sing."

'She hid herself, laughing, her face all aflame; she twisted her ap.r.o.n whilst the others teased her. She was of short stature but well-formed; her bosom was high and large, swollen with songs. She had curly hair, dark eyebrows, aquiline profile; something in her carriage wild and free. After the first resistance she yielded.

'The others, taking her by the arms, held her in their circle.

They were up to their waists in the flowering gorse, whilst round them the bees were humming.

'Favetta began unsteadily, but with each note her voice grew firmer. It was limpid, liquid, crystal, clear as a water spring. She sang a couplet and the others sang in chorus a ritornello. They prolonged the harmonies, putting their mouths close to form one single vocal flute; the song rose and fell in the light air with the slow regularity of a litany.

'Favetta sang:--

'"All the springs are dry, O poor love of mine!

He dies of thirst.

Where is the water thou broughtest me?

We have brought thee an earthen jar, But round it is a chain of gold!"

'The others sang:--

'"Long live Love!"

'It was the salutation of May to Pa.s.sion, pouring from young b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which perchance as yet knew not its sweetness and perchance never would know its sorrow.'

Or take the following pa.s.sage which is as essentially true in its accurate observation as it is beautiful in its expression. Tullio Hermil and Giuliana are listening at Villa Lilla to the first songster of that spring.

'The nightingale sang. At first it was like a burst of melodious glee; a jet of easy trills which fell through the air like pearls falling on the gla.s.s of a harmonium. Then came a pause. A shake arose, agile, marvellously prolonged, like a proof of strength, in an impulse of insolence, a challenge to some unknown rivals.

'A second pause. A phrase of three notes with a tone of interrogation pa.s.sed on a chain of light variations repeating the interrogative phrase five or six times, modulated softly like a slender reed flute on which is played a pastoral. A third pause: the song becomes elegiac, turns to a minor key, tender as a sigh; it is almost a groan; it expresses all the grief of the lonely lover, a heartrending desire; a vain hope; it flings out a last appeal, improvised, acute as a scream of anguish: then it ceases. A longer pause, more ominous. Then one hears a new accent which scarcely seems to come from the same throat so humble is it, so timid, so slight; it resembles the twitter of scarce-fledged birds, the chirrup of sparrows; then, with a miraculous volubility, this noisy note changes into a breathless song, more and more rapid in its trills, vibrating in sustained shakes, turning in daring flights of sound, leaping, growing, bounding, attaining the highest heights of the soprano. The songster is drunk with his own song. With pause so brief that one note scarce ceases ere another succeeds it, he spends his delirium in ever-varied melody, impa.s.sioned and sweet, subdued and ear-piercing, light and grave, now interrupted by broken sighs, by lament and supplication, now by impetuous lyrical improvisation and supreme appeal. It seems that even the gardens are listening, that the sky stoops over the old tree from whose summit this poet, invisible to mortal eyes, pours out such floods of eloquence. The flowers breathe deeply and silently. A yellow glow lingers in the west. This last lingering glance of the dying day is sad. But a single star has risen, alone and tremulous like a drop of luminous dew.'

He who can write thus is a great writer; and the charm of this pa.s.sage is not alone its poetry but its exact truth. The song of the nightingale varies much in accord with age, with species (for there are two species, Luscinia Philomela, and Luscinia Major), with climate, with the sense of security, and the want of security, but the song of a nightingale in its maturity, who is unalarmed and feels at home in the gardens of his choice, is precisely such a song as is described in this pa.s.sage, and is more completely echoed in it than in the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven.

This sympathy with the melody of birds is the more singular in D'Annunzio, because Italians are almost invariably indifferent to such melody, and snare the divine songster in the net, or shoot him whilst he shouts his nuptial _Io Triumphe!_ with the most stolid indifference. And it may, perhaps, be that D'Annunzio does not care for the bird himself more than the rest of his countrymen, but only cares for his own eloquence concerning it. It may be said, without risk of injustice to him, that great tenderness is at no moment found in him. He has not 'the pathetic fallacy'; but he approaches it very nearly at times. When women shall have lost for him some of the intensity of their physical charm, nature in her wider and more profound meanings will, perhaps, become more visible and more dear to him. Perhaps, however, it will not, for the Italian is rarely impersonal.

Something of the affectation to which the delicate taste of my Italian correspondent justly objects must be admitted to mar, by its artificiality, the many magnificent pages dedicated by him to the sea.