Modern Italian Poets; Essays and Versions Part 24

There is still another of these songs, in which the heart of womanhood speaks, though this time with a voice of pride and happiness.

THE DECORATION.

My love looks well under his helmet's crest; He went to war, and did not let them see His back, and so his wound is in the breast: For one he got, he struck and gave them three.

When he came back, I loved him, hurt so, best; He married me and loves me tenderly.

When he goes by, and people give him way, I thank G.o.d for my fortune every day; When he goes by he seems more grand and fair Than any crossed and ribboned cavalier: The cavalier grew up with his cross on, And I know how my darling's cross was won!

This poem, like that of La Livornese and La Donna Lombarda, is a vivid picture: it is a liberated city, and the streets are filled with jubilant people; the first victorious combats have taken place, and it is a wounded hero who pa.s.ses with his ribbon on his breast. As the fond crowd gives way to him, his young wife looks on him from her window with an exultant love, unshadowed by any possibility of harm:

Mi men a moglie e mi vuol tanto bene!

This is country and freedom to her,--this is strength which despots cannot break,--this is joy to which defeat and ruin can never come nigh! It might be any one of the sarcastic and quickwitted people talking politics in the streets of Rome in 1847, who sees the newly elected Senator--the head of the Roman munic.i.p.ality, and the legitimate mediator between Pope and people--as he pa.s.ses, and speaks to him in these lines the dominant feeling of the moment:

THE CARDINALS.

O Senator of Rome! if true and well You are reckoned honest, in the Vatican, Let it be yours His Holiness to tell, There are many Cardinals, and not one man.

They are made like lobsters, and, when they are dead, Like lobsters change their colors and turn red; And while they are living, with their backward gait Displace and tangle good Saint Peter's net.

An impulse of the time is strong again in the following Stornello,--a cry of reproach that seems to follow some recreant from a beleaguered camp of true comrades, and to utter the feeling of men who marched to battle through defection, and were strong chiefly in their just cause.

It bears the date of that fatal hour when the king of Naples, after a brief show of liberality, recalled his troops from Bologna, where they had been acting against Austria with the confederated forces of the other Italian states, and when every man lost to Italy was as an ebbing drop of her life's blood.

THE DESERTER.

(Bologna, May, 1818.)

Never did grain grow out of frozen earth; From the dead branch never did blossom start: If thou lovest not the land that gave thee birth, Within thy breast thou bear'st a frozen heart; If thou lovest not this land of ancient worth, To love aught else, say, traitor, how thou art!

To thine own land thou could'st not faithful be,-- Woe to the woman that puts faith in thee!

To him that trusteth in the recreant, woe!

Never from frozen earth did harvest grow: To her that trusteth a deserter, shame!

Out of the dead branch never blossom came.

And this song, so fine in its picturesque and its dramatic qualities, is not less true to the hope of the Venetians when they rose in 1848, and intrusted their destinies to Daniele Manin.

THE RING OF THE LAST DOGE.

I saw the widowed Lady of the Sea Crowned with corals and sea-weed and sh.e.l.ls, Who her long anguish and adversity Had seemed to drown in plays and festivals.

I said: "Where is thine ancient fealty fled?-- Where is the ring with which Manin did wed His bride?" With tearful visage she: "An eagle with two beaks tore it from me.

Suddenly I arose, and how it came I know not, but I heard my bridegroom's name."

Poor widow! 't is not he. Yet he may bring-- Who knows?--back to the bride her long-lost ring.

The Venetians of that day dreamed that San Marco might live again, and the fineness and significance of the poem could not have been lost on the humblest in Venice, where all were quick to beauty and vividly remembered that the last Doge who wedded the sea was named, like the new President, Manin.

I think the Stornelli of the revolutionary period of 1848 have a peculiar value, because they embody, in forms of artistic perfection, the evanescent as well as the enduring qualities of popular feeling.

They give us what had otherwise been lost, in the pa.s.sing humor of the time. They do not celebrate the battles or the great political occurrences. If they deal with events at all, is it with events that express some belief or longing,--rather with what people hoped or dreamed than with what they did. They sing the Friulan volunteers, who bore the laurel instead of the olive during Holy Week, in token that the patriotic war had become a religion; they remind us that the first fruits of Italian longing for unity were the cannons sent to the Romans by the Genoese; they tell us that the tricolor was placed in the hand of the statue of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitol, to signify that Rome was no more, and that Italy was to be. But the Stornelli touch with most effect those yet more intimate ties between national and individual life that vibrate in the hearts of the Livornese and the Lombard woman, of the lover who sees his bride in the patriotic colors, of the maiden who will be a sister of charity that she may follow her lover through all perils, of the mother who names her new-born babe Costanza in the very hour of the Venetian republic's fall. And I like the Stornelli all the better because they preserve the generous ardor of the time, even in its fondness and excess.

After the fall of Rome, the poet did not long remain unmolested even in his Swiss retreat. In 1852 the Federal Council yielded to the instances of the Austrian government, and expelled Dall' Ongaro from the Republic. He retired with his sister and nephew to Brussels, where he resumed the lectures upon Dante, interrupted by his exile from Trieste in 1847, and thus supported his family. Three years later he gained permission to enter France, and up to the spring-time of 1859 he remained in Paris, busying himself with literature, and watching events with all an exile's eagerness. The war with Austria broke out, and the poet seized the long-coveted opportunity to return to Italy, whither he went as the correspondent of a French newspaper. On the conclusion of peace at Villafranca, this journal changed its tone, and being no longer in sympathy with Dall' Ongaro's opinions, he left it.

Baron Ricasoli, to induce him to make Tuscany his home, inst.i.tuted a chair of comparative dramatic literature in connection with the University of Pisa, and offered it to Dall' Ongaro, whose wide general learning and special dramatic studies peculiarly qualified him to hold it. He therefore took up his abode at Florence, dedicating his main industry to a comparative course of ancient and modern dramatic literature, and writing his wonderful restorations of Menander's "Phasma" and "Treasure". He was well known to the local American and English Society, and was mourned by many friends when he died there, some ten years ago.

As with Dall' Ongaro literature had always been but an instrument for the redemption of Italy, even after his appointment to a university professorship he did not forget this prime object. In nearly all that he afterwards wrote, he kept the great aim of his life in view, and few of the events or hopes of that dreary period of suspense and abortive effort between the conclusion of peace at Villafranca and the acquisition of Venice went unsung by him. Indeed, some of his most characteristic "Stornelli" belong to this epoch. After Savoy and Nice had been betrayed to France, and while the Italians waited in angry suspicion for the next demand of their hated ally, which might be the surrender of the island of Sardinia or the sacrifice of the Genoese province, but which no one could guess in the impervious Napoleonic silence, our poet wrote:

THE IMPERIAL EGG.

(Milan, 1862.)

Who knows what hidden devil it may be Under yon mute, grim bird that looks our way?-- Yon silent bird of evil omen,--he That, wanting peace, breathes discord and dismay.

Quick, quick, and change his egg, my Italy, Before there hatch from it some bird of prey,--

Before some beak of rapine be set free, That, after the mountains, shall infest the sea; Before some ravenous eaglet shall be sent After our isles to gorge the continent.

I'd rather a goose even from yon egg should come,-- If only of the breed that once saved Rome!

The flight of the Grand Duke from Florence in 1859, and his conciliatory address to his late subjects after Villafranca, in which by fair promises he hoped to win them back to their allegiance; the union of Tuscany with the kingdom of Italy; the removal of the Austrian flags from Milan; Garibaldi's crusade in Sicily; the movement upon Rome in 1862; Aspromonte,--all these events, with the shifting phases of public feeling throughout that time, the alternate hopes and fears of the Italian nation, are celebrated in the later Stornelli of Dall' Ongaro. Venice has long since fallen to Italy; and Rome has become the capital of the nation. But the unification was not accomplished till Garibaldi, who had done so much for Italy, had been wounded by her king's troops in his impatient attempt to expel the French at Aspromonte.

TO MY SONGS.

Fly, O my songs, to Varignano, fly!

Like some lost flock of swallows homeward flying, And hail me Rome's Dictator, who there doth lie Broken with wounds, but conquered not, nor dying; Bid him think on the April that is nigh, Month of the flowers and ventures fear-defying.

Or if it is not nigh, it soon shall come, As shall the swallow to his last year's home, As on its naked stem the rose shall burn, As to the empty sky the stars return, As hope comes back to hearts crushed by regret;-- Nay, say not this to his heart ne'er crushed yet!

Let us conclude these notices with one of the Stornelli which is non-political, but which I think we won't find the less agreeable for that reason. I like it because it says a pretty thing or two very daintily, and is interfused with a certain arch and playful spirit which is not so common but we ought to be glad to recognize it.

If you are good as you are fair, indeed, Keep to yourself those sweet eyes, I implore!

A little flame burns under either lid That might in old age kindle youth once more: I am like a hermit in his cavern hid, But can I look on you and not adore?

Fair, if you do not mean my misery Those lovely eyes lift upward to the sky; I shall believe you some saint shrined above, And may adore you if I may not love; I shall believe you some bright soul in bliss, And may look on you and not look amiss.

I have already noted the more obvious merits of the Stornelli, and I need not greatly insist upon them. Their defects are equally plain; one sees that their simplicity all but ceases to be a virtue at times, and that at times their feeling is too much intellectualized. Yet for all this we must recognize their excellence, and the skill as well as the truth of the poet. It is very notable with what directness he expresses his thought, and with what discretion he leaves it when expressed. The form is always most graceful, and the success with which dramatic, picturesque, and didactic qualities are blent, for a sole effect, in the brief compa.s.s of the poems, is not too highly praised in the epithet of novelty. Nothing is lost for the sake of att.i.tude; the actor is absent from the most dramatic touches, the painter is not visible in lines which are each a picture, the teacher does not appear for the purpose of enforcing the moral. It is not the grandest poetry, but is true feeling, admirable art.

GIOVANNI PRATI

I

The Italian poet who most resembles in theme and treatment the German romanticists of the second period was nearest them geographically in his origin. Giovanni Prati was born at Dasindo, a mountain village of the Trentino, and his boyhood was pa.s.sed amidst the wild scenes of that picturesque region, whose dark valleys and snowy, cloud-capped heights, foaming torrents and rolling mists, lend their gloom and splendor to so much of his verse. His family was poor, but it was n.o.ble, and he received, through whatever sacrifice of those who remained at home, the education of a gentleman, as the Italians understand it. He went to school in Trent, and won some early laurels by his Latin poems, which the good priests who kept the _collegio_ gathered and piously preserved in an alb.u.m for the admiration and emulation of future scholars; when in due time he matriculated at the University of Padua as student of law, he again shone as a poet, and there he wrote his "Edmenegarda", a poem that gave him instant popularity throughout Italy. When he quitted the university he visited different parts of the country, "having the need" of frequent change of scenes and impressions; but everywhere he poured out songs, ballads, and romances, and was already a voluminous poet in 1840, when, in his thirtieth year, he began to abandon his Teutonic phantoms and hectic maidens, and to make Italy in various disguises the heroine of his song. Whether Austria penetrated these disguises or not, he was a little later ordered to leave Milan. He took refuge in Piedmont, whose brave king, in spite of diplomatic remonstrances from his neighbors, made Prati his _poeta cesareo_, or poet laureate. This was in 1843; and five years later he took an active part in inciting with his verse the patriotic revolts which broke out all over Italy. But he was supposed by virtue of his office to be monarchical in his sympathies, and when he ventured to Florence, the novelist Guerrezzi, who was at the head of the revolutionary government there, sent the poet back across the border in charge of a carbineer. In 1851 he had the misfortune to write a poem in censure of Orsini's attempt upon the life of Napoleon III., and to take money for it from the gratified emperor. He seems to have remained up to his death in the enjoyment of his office at Turin. His latest poem, if one may venture to speak of any as the last among poems poured out with such bewildering rapidity, was "Satan and the Graces", which De Sanctis made himself very merry over.

The Edmenegarda, which first won him repute, was perhaps not more youthful, but it was a subject that appealed peculiarly to the heart of youth, and was sufficiently mawkish. All the characters of the Edmenegarda were living at the time of its publication, and were instantly recognized; yet there seems to have been no complaint against the poet on their part, nor any reproach on the part of criticism. Indeed, at least one of the characters was nattered by the celebrity given him. "So great," says Prati's biographer, in the _Gallera n.a.z.ionale_, "was the enthusiasm awakened everywhere, and in every heart, by the Edmenegarda, that the young man portrayed in it, under the name of Leoni, imagining himself to have become, through Prati's merit, an eminently poetical subject, presented himself to the poet in the Caffe Pedrocchi at Padua, and returned him his warmest thanks. Prati also made the acquaintance, at the Caffe n.a.z.ionale in Turin, of his Edmenegarda, but after the wrinkles had seamed the visage of his ideal, and canceled perhaps from her soul the memory of anguish suffered." If we are to believe this writer, the story of a wife's betrayal, abandonment by her lover, and repudiation by her husband, produced effects upon the Italian public as various as profound. "In this pathetic story of an unhappy love was found so much truth of pa.s.sion, so much naturalness of sentiment, and so much power, that every sad heart was filled with love for the young poet, so compa.s.sionate toward innocent misfortune, so sympathetic in form, in thought, in sentiment. Prom that moment Prati became the poet of suffering youth; in every corner of Italy the tender verses of the Edmenegarda were read with love, and sometimes frenzied pa.s.sion; the political prisoners of Rome, of Naples, and Palermo found them a grateful solace amid the privations and heavy tedium of incarceration; many sundered lovers were reconjoined indissolubly in the kiss of peace; more than one desperate girl was restrained from the folly of suicide; and even the students in the ecclesiastical seminaries at Milan revolted, as it were, against their rector, and pet.i.tioned the Archbishop of Gaisruk that they might be permitted to read the fantastic romance."

{Ill.u.s.tration: GIOVANNI PRATI.}

What he was at first, Prati seems always to have remained in character and in ideals. "Would you know the poet in ordinary of the king of Sardinia?" says Marc-Monnier. "Go up the great street of the Po, under the arcades to the left, around the Caffe Florio, which is the center of Turin. If you meet a great youngster of forty years, with brown hair, wandering eyes, long visage, lengthened by the imperial, prominent nose, diminished by the mustache,--good head, in fine, and proclaiming the artist at first glance, say to yourself that this is he, give him your hand, and he will give you his. He is the openest of Italians, and the best fellow in the world. It is here that he lives, under the arcades. Do not look for his dwelling; he does not dwell, he promenades. Life for him is not a combat nor a journey; it is a saunter (_flanerie_), cigar in mouth, eyes to the wind; a comrade whom he meets, and pa.s.ses a pleasant word with; a group of men who talk politics, and leave you to read the newspapers; _puis ca et la, par hasard, une bonne fortune_; a woman or an artist who understands you, and who listens while you talk of art or repeat your verses. Prati lives so the whole year round. From time to time he disappears for a week or two. Where is he? n.o.body knows. You grow uneasy; you ask his address: he has none. Some say he is ill; others, he is dead; but some fine morning, cheerful as ever, he re-appears under the arcades. He has come from the bottom of a wood or the top of a mountain, and he has made two thousand verses.... He is hardly forty-one years old, and he has already written a million lines. I have read seven volumes of his, and I have not read all."

I have not myself had the patience here boasted by M. Marc-Monnier; but three or four volumes of Prati's have sufficed to teach me the spirit and purpose of his poetry. Born in 1815, and breathing his first inspirations from that sense of romance blowing into Italy with every northern gale,--a son of the Italian Tyrol, the region where the fire meets the snow,--he has some excuse, if not a perfect reason, for being half-German in his feeling. It is natural that Prati should love the ballad form above all, and should pour into its easy verse the wild legends heard during a boyhood pa.s.sed among mountains and mountaineers. As I read his poetic tales, with a little heart-break, more or less fict.i.tious, in each, I seem to have found again the sweet German songs that fluttered away out of my memory long ago. There is a tender light on the pages; a mistier pa.s.sion than that of the south breathes through the dejected lines; and in the ballads we see all our old acquaintance once more,--the dying girls, the galloping hors.e.m.e.n, the moonbeams, the familiar, inconsequent phantoms,--scarcely changed in the least, and only betraying now and then that they have been at times in the bad company of Lara, and Medora, and other dissipated and vulgar people. The following poem will give some proof of all this, and will not unfairly witness of the quality of Prati in most of the poetry he has written: