Modern Italian Poets; Essays and Versions Part 20

Now thou shalt rest forever, O weary heart! The last deceit is ended, For I believed myself immortal. Cherished Hopes, and beloved delusions, And longings to be deluded,--all are perished!

Rest thee forever! Oh, greatly, Heart, hast thou palpitated. There is nothing Worthy to move thee more, nor is earth worthy Thy sighs. For life is only Bitterness and vexation; earth is only A heap of dust. So rest thee!

Despair for the last time. To our race Fortune Never gave any gift but death. Disdain, then, Thyself and Nature and the Power Occultly reigning to the common ruin: Scorn, heart, the infinite emptiness of all things!

Nature was so cruel a stepmother to this man that he could see nothing but harm even in her apparent beneficence, and his verse repeats again and again his dark mistrust of the very loveliness which so keenly delights his sense. One of his early poems, called "The Quiet after the Storm", strikes the key in which nearly all his songs are pitched.

The observation of nature is very sweet and honest, and I cannot see that the philosophy in its perversion of the relations of physical and spiritual facts is less mature than that of his later work: it is a philosophy of which the first conception cannot well differ from the final expression.

... See yon blue sky that breaks The clouds above the mountain in the west!

The fields disclose themselves, And in the valley bright the river runs.

All hearts are glad; on every side Arise the happy sounds Of toil begun anew.

The workman, singing, to the threshold comes, With work in hand, to judge the sky, Still humid, and the damsel next, On his report, comes forth to brim her pail With the fresh-fallen rain.

The noisy fruiterers From lane to lane resume Their customary cry.

The sun looks out again, and smiles upon The houses and the hills. Windows and doors Are opened wide; and on the far-off road You hear the tinkling bells and rattling wheels Of travelers that set out upon their journey.

Every heart is glad; So grateful and so sweet When is our life as now?

O Pleasure, child of Pain, Vain joy which is the fruit Of bygone suffering overshadowed And wrung with cruel fears Of death, whom life abhors; Wherein, in long suspense, Silent and cold and pale, Man sat, and shook and shuddered to behold Lightnings and clouds and winds, Furious in his offense!

Beneficent Nature, these, These are thy bounteous gifts: These, these are the delights Thou offerest unto mortals! To escape From pain is bliss to us; Anguish thou scatterest broadcast, and our woes Spring up spontaneous, and that little joy Born sometimes, for a miracle and show, Of terror is our mightiest gain. O man, Dear to the G.o.ds, count thyself fortunate If now and then relief Thou hast from pain, and blest When death shall come to heal thee of all pain!

"The bodily deformities which humiliated Leopardi, and the cruel infirmities that agonized him his whole life long, wrought in his heart an invincible disgust, which made him invoke death as the sole relief. His songs, while they express discontent, the discord of the world, the conviction of the nullity of human things, are exquisite in style; they breathe a perpetual melancholy, which is often sublime, and they relax and pain your soul like the music of a single chord, while their strange sweetness wins you to them again and again." This is the language of an Italian critic who wrote after Leopardi's death, when already it had begun to be doubted whether he was the greatest Italian poet since Dante. A still later critic finds Leopardi's style, "without relief, without lyric flight, without the great art of contrasts, without poetic leaven," hard to read. "Despoil those verses of their masterly polish," he says, "reduce those thoughts to prose, and you will see how little they are akin to poetry."

I have a feeling that my versions apply some such test to Leopardi's work, and that the reader sees it in them at much of the disadvantage which this critic desires for it. Yet, after doing my worst, I am not wholly able to agree with him. It seems to me that there is the indestructible charm in it which, wherever we find it, we must call poetry. It is true that "its strange sweetness wins you again and again," and that this "lonely pipe of death" thrills and solemnly delights as no other stop has done. Let us hear it again, as the poet sounds it, figuring himself a Syrian shepherd, guarding his flock by night, and weaving his song under the Eastern moon:

O flock that liest at rest, O blessed thou That knowest not thy fate, however hard, How utterly I envy thee!

Not merely that thou goest almost free Of all this weary pain,-- That every misery and every toil And every fear thou straightway dost forget,-- But most because thou knowest not ennui When on the gra.s.s thou liest in the shade.

I see thee tranquil and content, And great part of thy years Untroubled by ennui thou pa.s.sest thus.

I likewise in the shadow, on the gra.s.s.

Lie, and a dull disgust beclouds My soul, and I am goaded with a spur, So that, reposing, I am farthest still From finding peace or place.

And yet I want for naught, And have not had till now a cause for tears.

What is thy bliss, how much, I cannot tell; but thou art fortunate.

Or, it may be, my thought Errs, running thus to others' destiny; May be, to everything, Wherever born, in cradle or in fold, That day is terrible when it was born.

It is the same note, the same voice; the theme does not change, but perhaps it is deepened in this ode:

ON THE LIKENESS OP A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN CARVEN UPON HER TOMB.

Such wast thou: now under earth A skeleton and dust. O'er dust and bones Immovably and vainly set, and mute, Looking upon the flight of centuries, Sole keeper of memory And of regret is this fair counterfeit Of loveliness now vanished. That sweet look, Which made men tremble when it fell on them, As now it falls on me; that lip, which once, Like some full vase of sweets, Ran over with delight; that fair neck, clasped By longing, and that soft and amorous hand, Which often did impart An icy thrill unto the hand it touched; That breast, which visibly Blanched with its beauty him who looked on it-- All these things were, and now Dust art thou, filth, a fell And hideous sight hidden beneath a stone.

Thus fate hath wrought its will Upon the semblance that to us did seem Heaven's vividest image! Eternal mystery Of mortal being! To-day the ineffable Fountain of thoughts and feelings vast and high, Beauty reigns sovereign, and seems Like splendor thrown afar From some immortal essence on these sands, To give our mortal state A sign and hope secure of destinies Higher than human, and of fortunate realms, And golden worlds unknown.

To-morrow, at a touch, Loathsome to see, abominable, abject, Becomes the thing that was All but angelical before; And from men's memories All that its loveliness Inspired forever faults and fades away.

Ineffable desires And visions high and pure Rise in the happy soul, Lulled by the sound of cunning harmonies Whereon the spirit floats, As at his pleasure floats Some fearless swimmer over the deep sea; But if a discord strike The wounded sense, to naught All that fair paradise in an instant falls.

Mortality! if thou Be wholly frail and vile, Be only dust and shadow, how canst thou So deeply feel? And if thou be In part divine, how can thy will and thought By things so poor and base So easily be awakened and quenched?

Let us touch for the last time this pensive chord, and listen to its response of hopeless love. This poem, in which he turns to address the spirit of the poor child whom he loved boyishly at Recanati, is pathetic with the fact that possibly she alone ever reciprocated the tenderness with which his heart was filled.

TO SYLVIA.

Sylvia, dost thou remember In this that season of thy mortal being When from thine eyes shone beauty, In thy shy glances fugitive and smiling, And joyously and pensively the borders Of childhood thou did'st traverse?

All day the quiet chambers And the ways near resounded To thy perpetual singing, When thou, intent upon some girlish labor, Sat'st utterly contented, With the fair future brightening in thy vision.

It was the fragrant month of May, and ever Thus thou thy days beguiledst.

I, leaving my fair studies, Leaving my ma.n.u.scripts and toil-stained volumes, Wherein I spent the better Part of myself and of my young existence, Leaned sometimes idly from my father's windows, And listened to the music of thy singing, And to thy hand, that fleetly Ran o'er the threads of webs that thou wast weaving.

I looked to the calm heavens, Unto the golden lanes and orchards, And unto the far sea and to the mountains; No mortal tongue may utter What in my heart I felt then.

O Sylvia mine, what visions, What hopes, what hearts, we had in that far season!

How fair and good before us Seemed human life and fortune!

When I remember hope so great, beloved, An utter desolation And bitterness o'erwhelm me, And I return to mourn my evil fortune.

O Nature, faithless Nature, Wherefore dost thou not give us That which thou promisest? Wherefore deceivest, With so great guile, thy children?

Thou, ere the freshness of thy spring was withered.

Stricken by thy fell malady, and vanquished, Did'st perish, O my darling! and the blossom Of thy years sawest; Thy heart was never melted At the sweet praise, now of thy raven tresses, Now of thy glances amorous and bashful; Never with thee the holiday-free maidens Reasoned of love and loving.

Ah! briefly perished, likewise, My own sweet hope; and destiny denied me Youth, even in my childhood!

Alas, alas, beloved, Companion of my childhood!

Alas, my mourned hope! how art thou vanished Out of my place forever!

This is that world? the pleasures, The love, the labors, the events, we talked of, These, when we prattled long ago together?

Is this the fortune of our race, O Heaven?

At the truth's joyless dawning, Thou fellest, sad one, with thy pale hand pointing Unto cold death, and an unknown and naked Sepulcher in the distance.

III

These pieces fairly indicate the range of Leopardi, and I confess that they and the rest that I have read leave me somewhat puzzled in the presence of his reputation. This, to be sure, is largely based upon his prose writings--his dialogues, full of irony and sarcasm--and his unquestionable scholarship. But the poetry is the heart of his fame, and is it enough to justify it? I suppose that such poetry owes very much of its peculiar influence to that awful love we all have of hovering about the idea of death--of playing with the great catastrophe of our several tragedies and farces, and of marveling what it can be. There are moods which the languid despair of Leopardi's poetry can always evoke, and in which it seems that the most life can do is to leave us, and let us lie down and cease. But I fancy we all agree that these are not very wise or healthful moods, and that their indulgence does not fit us particularly well for the duties of life, though I never heard that they interfered with its pleasures; on the contrary, they add a sort of zest to enjoyment. Of course the whole transaction is illogical, but if a poet will end every pensive strain with an appeal or apostrophe to death--not the real death, that comes with a sharp, quick agony, or "after long lying in bed", after many days or many years of squalid misery and slowly dying hopes and medicines that cease even to relieve at last; not this death, that comes in all the horror of undertaking, but a picturesque and impressive abstraction, whose business it is to relieve us in the most effective way of all our troubles, and at the same time to avenge us somehow upon the indefinitely ungrateful and unworthy world we abandon--if a poet will do this, we are very apt to like him. There is little doubt that Leopardi was sincere, and there is little reason why he should not have been so, for life could give him nothing but pain.

De Sanctis, whom I have quoted already, and who speaks, I believe, with rather more authority than any other modern Italian critic, and certainly with great clearness and acuteness, does not commit himself to specific praise of Leopardi's work. But he seems to regard him as an important expression, if not force or influence, and he has some words about him, at the close of his "History of Italian Literature", which have interested me, not only for the estimate of Leopardi which they embody, but for the singularly distinct statement which they make of the modern literary att.i.tude. I should not, myself, have felt that Leopardi represented this, but I am willing that the reader should feel it, if he can. De Sanctis has been speaking of the Romantic period in Italy, when he says:

"Giacomo Leopardi marks the close of this period. Metaphysics at war with theology had ended in this attempt at reconciliation. The multiplicity of systems had discredited science itself. Metaphysics was regarded as a revival of theology. The Idea seemed a subst.i.tute for providence. Those philosophies of history, of religion, of humanity, had the air of poetical inventions.... That reconciliation between the old and new, tolerated as a temporary political necessity, seemed at bottom a profanation of science, a moral weakness.... Faith in revelation had been wanting; faith in philosophy itself was now wanting. Mystery re-appeared. The philosopher knew as much as the peasant. Of this mystery, Giacomo Leopardi was the echo in the solitude of his thought and his pain. His skepticism announced the dissolution of this theologico-metaphysical world, and inaugurated the reign of the arid True, of the Real. His songs are the most profound and occult voices of that laborious transition called the nineteenth century. That which has importance is not the brilliant exterior of that century of progress, and it is not without irony that he speaks of the progressive destinies of mankind. That which has importance is the exploration of one's own breast, the inner world, virtue, liberty, love, all the ideals of religion, of science, and of poetry--shadows and illusions in the presence of reason, yet which warm the heart, and will not die. Mystery destroys the intellectual world; it leaves the moral world intact. This tenacious life of the inner world, despite the fall of all theological and metaphysical worlds, is the originality of Leopardi, and gives his skepticism a religious stamp.

... Every one feels in it a new creation. The instrument of this renovation is criticism.... The sense of the real continues to develop itself; the positive sciences come to the top, and cast out all the ideal and systematic constructions. New dogmas lose credit. Criticism remains intact. The patient labor of a.n.a.lysis begins again....

Socialism re-appears in the political order, positivism in the intellectual order. The word is no longer liberty, but justice.

... Literature also undergoes transformation. It rejects cla.s.ses, distinctions, privileges. The ugly stands beside the beautiful; or rather, there is no longer ugly or beautiful, neither ideal nor real, neither infinite nor finite.... There is but one thing only, the Living."

GIUSEPPE GIUSTI

I

Giuseppe Giusti, who is the greatest Italian satirist of this century, and is in some respects the greatest Italian poet, was born in 1809 at Mossummano in Tuscany, of parentage n.o.ble and otherwise distinguished; one of his paternal ancestors had a.s.sisted the liberal Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo to compile his famous code, and his mother's father had been a republican in 1799. There was also an hereditary taste for literature in the family; and Giusti says, in one of his charming letters, that almost as soon as he had learned to speak, his father taught him the ballad of Count Ugolino, and he adds, "I have always had a pa.s.sion for song, a pa.s.sion for verses, and more than a pa.s.sion for Dante." His education pa.s.sed later into the hands of a priest, who had spent much time as a teacher in Vienna, and was impetuous, choleric, and thoroughly German in principle. "I was given him to be taught," says Giusti, "but he undertook to tame me"; and he remembered reading with him a Plutarch for youth, and the "Lives of the Saints", but chiefly was, as he says, so "caned, contraried, and martyred" by him, that, when the priest wept at their final parting, the boy could by no means account for the burst of tenderness. Giusti was then going to Florence to be placed in a school where he had the immeasurable good fortune to fall into the hands of one whose gentleness and wisdom he remembered through life. "Drea Francioni," he says, "had not time to finish his work, but he was the first and the only one to put into my heart the need and love of study. Oh, better far than stuffing the head with Latin, with histories and with fables! Endear study, even if you teach nothing; this is the great task!" And he afterward dedicated his book on Tuscan proverbs, which he thought one of his best performances, to this beloved teacher.

He had learned to love study, yet from this school, and from others to which he was afterward sent, he came away with little Latin and no Greek; but, what is more important, he began life about this time as a poet--by stealing a sonnet. His theft was suspected, but could not be proved. "And so," he says of his teacher and himself, "we remained, he in his doubt and I in my lie. Who would have thought from this ugly beginning that I should really have gone on to make sonnets of my own?... The Muses once known, the vice grew upon me, and from my twelfth to my fifteenth year I rasped, and rasped, and rasped, until finally I came out with a sonnet to Italy, represented in the usual fashion, by the usual matron weeping as usual over her highly estimable misfortunes. In school, under certain priests who were more Chinese than Italian, and without knowing whether Italy were round or square, long or short, how that sonnet to Italy should get into my head I don't know. I only know that it was found beautiful, and I was advised to hide it,"--that being the proper thing to do with patriotic poetry in those days.