Modern Italian Poets; Essays and Versions Part 26

{Ill.u.s.tration: ALEARDO ALEARDI.}

The revolution of 1848 took place; the Austrians retired from the dominion of Venice, and a provisional republican government, under the presidency of Daniele Manin, was established, and Aleardi was sent as one of its plenipotentiaries to Paris, where he learnt how many fine speeches the friends of a struggling nation can make when they do not mean to help it. The young Venetian republic fell. Aleardi left Paris, and, after a.s.sisting at the ceremony of being bombarded in Bologna, retired to Genoa. He later returned to Verona, and there pa.s.sed several years of tranquil study. In 1852, for the part he had taken in the revolution, he was arrested and imprisoned in the fortress at Mantua, thus fulfilling the destiny of an Italian poet of those times.

All the circ.u.mstances and facts of this arrest and imprisonment are so characteristic of the Austrian method of governing Italy, that I do not think it out of place to give them with some fullness. In the year named, the Austrians were still avenging themselves upon the patriots who had driven them out of Venetia in 1848, and their courts were sitting in Mantua for the trial of political prisoners, many of whom were exiled, sentenced to long imprisonment, or put to death. Aleardi was first confined in the military prison at Verona, but was soon removed to Mantua, whither several of his friends had already been sent. All the other prisons being full, he was thrust into a place which till now had seemed too horrible for use. It was a narrow room, dark, and reeking with the dampness of the great dead lagoon which surrounds Mantua. A broken window, guarded by several gratings, let in a little light from above; the day in that cell lasted six hours, the night eighteen. A mattress on the floor, and a can of water for drinking, were the furniture. In the morning they brought him two pieces of hard, black bread; at ten o'clock a thick soup of rice and potatoes; and nothing else throughout the day. In this dungeon he remained sixty days, without books, without pen or paper, without any means of relieving the terrible gloom and solitude. At the end of this time, he was summoned to the hall above to see his sister, whom he tenderly loved. The light blinded him so that for a while he could not perceive her, but he talked to her calmly and even cheerfully, that she might not know what he had suffered. Then he was remanded to his cell, where, as her retreating footsteps ceased upon his ear, he cast himself upon the ground in a pa.s.sion of despair. Three months pa.s.sed, and he had never seen the face of judge or accuser, though once the prison inspector, with threats and promises, tried to entrap him into a confession. One night his sleep was broken by a continued hammering; in the morning half a score of his friends were hanged upon the gallows which had been built outside his cell.

By this time his punishment had been so far mitigated that he had been allowed a German grammar and dictionary, and for the first time studied that language, on the literature of which he afterward lectured in Florence. He had, like most of the young Venetians of his day, hated the language, together with those who spoke it, until then.

At last, one morning at dawn, a few days after the execution of his friends, Aleardi and others were thrust into carriages and driven to the castle. There the roll of the prisoners was called; to several names none answered, for those who had borne them were dead. Were the survivors now to be shot, or sentenced to some prison in Bohemia or Hungary? They grimly jested among themselves as to their fate. They were marched out into the piazza, under the heavy rain, and there these men who had not only not been tried for any crime, but had not even been accused of any, received the grace of the imperial pardon.

Aleardi returned to Verona and to his books, publishing another poem in 1856, called Le Citta Italiane Marinare e Commercianti. His next publication was, in 1857, Rafaello e la Fornarina; then followed Un'

Ora della mia Giovinezza, Le Tre Fiume, and Le Tre Fanciulle, in 1858.

The war of 1859 broke out between Austria and France and Italy.

Aleardi spent the brief period of the campaign in a military prison at Verona, where his sympathies were given an ounce of prevention. He had committed no offense, but at midnight the police appeared, examined his papers, found nothing, and bade him rise and go to prison. After the peace of Villafranca he was liberated, and left the Austrian states, retiring first to Brescia, and then to Florence. His publications since 1859 have been a Canto Politico and I Sette Soldati. He was condemned for his voluntary exile, by the Austrian courts, and I remember reading in the newspapers the official invitation given him to come back to Verona and be punished. But, oddly enough, he declined to do so.

II

The first considerable work of Aleardi was Le Prime Storie (Primal Histories), in which he traces the course of the human race through the Scriptural story of its creation, its fall, and its destruction by the deluge, through the Greek and Latin days, through the darkness and glory of the feudal times, down to our own,--following it from Eden to Babylon and Tyre, from Tyre and Babylon to Athens and Rome, from Florence and Genoa to the sh.o.r.es of the New World, full of shadowy tradition and the promise of a peaceful and happy future.

He takes this fruitful theme, because he feels it to be alive with eternal interest, and rejects the well-worn cla.s.sic fables, because

Under the bushes of the odorous mint The Dryads are buried, and the placid Dian Guides now no longer through the nights below Th' invulnerable hinds and pearly car, To bless the Carian shepherd's dreams. No more The valley echoes to the stolen kisses, Or to the tw.a.n.ging bow, or to the bay Of the immortal hounds, or to the Fauns'

Plebeian laughter. From the golden rim Of sh.e.l.ls, dewy with pearl, in ocean's depths The snowy loveliness of Galatea Has fallen; and with her, their endless sleep In coral sepulchers the Nereids Forgotten sleep in peace.

The poet cannot turn to his theme, however, without a sad and scornful apostrophe to his own land, where he figures himself sitting by the way, and craving of the frivolous, heartless, luxurious Italian throngs that pa.s.s the charity of love for Italy. They pa.s.s him by unheeded, and he cries:

Hast thou seen In the deep circle of the valley of Siddim, Under the shining skies of Palestine, The sinister glitter of the Lake of Asphalt?

Those coasts, strewn thick with ashes of d.a.m.nation, Forever foe to every living thing, Where rings the cry of the lost wandering bird That, on the sh.o.r.e of the perfidious sea, Athirsting dies,--that watery sepulcher Of the five cities of iniquity, Where even the tempest, when its clouds hang low, Pa.s.ses in silence, and the lightning dies,-- If thou hast seen them, bitterly hath been Thy heart wrung with the misery and despair Of that dread vision!

Yet there is on earth A woe more desperate and miserable,-- A spectacle wherein the wrath of G.o.d Avenges him more terribly. It is A vain, weak people of faint-heart old men, That, for three hundred years of dull repose, Has lain perpetual dreamer, folded in The ragged purple of its ancestors, Stretching its limbs wide in its country's sun, To warm them; drinking the soft airs of autumn Forgetful, on the fields where its forefathers Like lions fought! From overflowing hands, Strew we with h.e.l.lebore and poppies thick The way.

But the throngs have pa.s.sed by, and the poet takes up his theme. Abel sits before an altar upon the borders of Eden, and looks with an exile's longing toward the Paradise of his father, where, high above all the other trees, he beholds,

Lording it proudly in the garden's midst, The guilty apple with its fatal beauty.

He weeps; and Cain, furiously returning from the unaccepted labor of the fields, lifts his hand against his brother.

It was at sunset; The air was severed with a mother's shriek, And stretched beside the o'erturned altar's foot Lay the first corse.

Ah! that primal stain Of blood that made earth hideous, did forebode To all the nations of mankind to come

The cruel household stripes, and the relentless Battles of civil wars, the poisoned cup, The gleam of axes lifted up to strike The p.r.o.ne necks on the block.

The fratricide Beheld that blood amazed, and from on high He heard the awful voice of cursing leap, And in the middle of his forehead felt G.o.d's lightning strike....

....And there from out the heart All stained with guiltiness emerged the coward Religion that is born of loveless fears.

And, moved and shaken like a conscious thing, The tree of sin dilated horribly Its frondage over all the land and sea, And with its poisonous shadow followed far The flight of Cain....

.... And he who first By th' arduous solitudes and by the heights And labyrinths of the virgin earth conducted This ever-wandering, lost Humanity Was the Accursed.

Cain pa.s.ses away, and his children fill the world, and the joy of guiltless labor brightens the poet's somber verse.

The murmur of the works of man arose Up from the plains; the caves reverberated The blows of restless hammers that revealed, Deep in the bowels of the fruitful hills, The iron and the faithless gold, with rays Of evil charm. And all the cliffs repeated The beetle's fall, and the unceasing leap Of waters on the paddles of the wheel Volubly busy; and with heavy strokes Upon the borders of the inviolate woods The ax was heard descending on the trees, Upon the odorous bark of mighty pines.

Over the imminent upland's utmost brink The blonde wild-goat stretched forth his neck to meet The unknown sound, and, caught with sudden fear, Down the steep bounded, and the arrow cut Midway the flight of his aerial foot.

So all the wild earth was tamed to the hand of man, and the wisdom of the stars began to reveal itself to the shepherds,

Who, in the leisure of the argent nights, Leading their flocks upon a sea of meadows,

turned their eyes upon the heavenly bodies, and questioned them in their courses. But a taint of guilt was in all the blood of Cain, which the deluge alone could purge.

And beautiful beyond all utterance Were the earth's first-born daughters. Phantasms these That now enamor us decrepit, by The light of that prime beauty! And the glance Those ardent sinners darted had beguiled G.o.d's angels even, so that the Lord's command Was weaker than the bidding of their eyes.

And there were seen, descending from on high, His messengers, and in the tepid eyes Gathering their flight about the secret founts Where came the virgins wandering sole to stretch The nude pomp of their perfect loveliness.

Caught by some sudden flash of light afar, The shepherd looked, and deemed that he beheld A fallen star, and knew not that he saw A fallen angel, whose distended wings, All tremulous with voluptuous delight, Strove vainly to lift him to the skies again.

The earth with her malign embraces blest The heavenly-born, and they straightway forgot The joys of G.o.d's eternal paradise For the brief rapture of a guilty love.

And from these nuptials, violent and strange, A strange and violent race of giants rose; A chain of sin had linked the earth to heaven; And G.o.d repented him of his own work.

The destroying rains descended,

And the ocean rose, And on the cities and the villages The terror fell apace. There was a strife Of suppliants at the altars; blasphemy Launched at the impotent idols and the kings; There were embraces desperate and dear, And news of suddenest forgivenesses, And a relinquishment of all sweet things; And, guided onward by the pallid prophets, The people climbed, with lamentable cries, In pilgrimage up the mountains.

But in vain; For swifter than they climbed the ocean rose, And hid the palms, and buried the sepulchers Far underneath the buried pyramids; And the victorious billow swelled and beat At eagles' Alpine nests, extinguishing All lingering breath of life; and dreadfuller Than the yell rising from the battle-field Seemed the hush of every human sound.

On the high solitude of the waters naught Was seen but here and there unfrequently A frail raft, heaped with languid men that fought Weakly with one another for the gra.s.s Hanging about a cliff not yet submerged, And here and there a drowned man's head, and here And there a file of birds, that beat the air With weary wings.

After the deluge, the race of Noah repeoples the empty world, and the history of mankind begins anew in the Orient. Rome is built, and the Christian era dawns, and Rome falls under the feet of the barbarians.

Then the enthusiasm of Christendom sweeps toward the East, in the repeated Crusades; and then, "after long years of twilight", Dante, the sun of Italian civilization, rises; and at last comes the dream of another world, unknown to the eyes of elder times.

But between that and our sh.o.r.e roared diffuse Abysmal seas and fabulous hurricanes Which, thought on, blanched the faces of the bold; For the dread secret of the heavens was then The Western world. Yet on the Italian coasts A boy grew into manhood, in whose soul The instinct of the unknown continent burned.

He saw in his prophetic mind depicted The opposite visage of the earth, and, turning With joyful defiance to the ocean, sailed Forth with two secret pilots, G.o.d and Genius.

Last of the prophets, he returned in chains And glory.

In the New World are the traces, as in the Old, of a restless humanity, wandering from coast to coast, growing, building cities, and utterly vanishing. There are graves and ruins everywhere; and the poet's thought returns from these scenes of unstoried desolation, to follow again the course of man in the Old World annals. But here, also, he is lost in the confusion of man's advance and retirement, and he muses:

How many were the peoples? Where the trace Of their lost steps? Where the funereal fields In which they sleep? Go, ask the clouds of heaven How many bolts are hidden in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, And when they shall be launched; and ask the path That they shall keep in the unfurrowed air.

The peoples pa.s.sed. Obscure as destiny, Forever stirred by secret hope, forever Waiting upon the promised mysteries, Unknowing G.o.d, that urged them, turning still To some kind star,--they swept o'er the sea-weed In unknown waters, fearless swam the course Of nameless rivers, wrote with flying feet The mountain pa.s.s on pathless snows; impatient Of rest, for aye, from Babylon to Memphis, From the Acropolis to Rome, they hurried.

And with them pa.s.sed their guardian household G.o.ds, And faithful wisdom of their ancestors, And the seed sown in mother fields, and gathered, A fruitful harvest in their happier years.

And, 'companying the order of their steps Upon the way, they sung the choruses And sacred burdens of their country's songs, And, sitting down by hospitable gates, They told the histories of their far-off cities.

And sometimes in the lonely darknesses Upon the ambiguous way they found a light,-- The deathless lamp of some great truth, that Heaven Sent in compa.s.sionate answer to their prayers.

But not to all was given it to endure That ceaseless pilgrimage, and not on all Did the heavens smile perennity of life Revirginate with never-ceasing change; And when it had completed the great work Which G.o.d had destined for its race to do, Sometimes a weary people laid them down To rest them, like a weary man, and left Their nude bones in a vale of expiation, And pa.s.sed away as utterly forever As mist that snows itself into the sea.

The poet views this growth of nations from youth to decrepitude, and, coming back at last to himself and to his own laud and time, breaks forth into a lament of grave and touching beauty:

Muse of an aged people, in the eve Of fading civilization, I was born Of kindred that have greatly expiated And greatly wept. For me the ambrosial fingers Of Graces never wove the laurel crown, But the Fates shadowed, from my youngest days, My brow with pa.s.sion-flowers, and I have lived Unknown to my dear land. Oh, fortunate My sisters that in the heroic dawn Of races sung! To them did destiny give The virgin fire and chaste ingenuousness Of their land's speech; and, reverenced, their hands Ran over potent strings. To me, the hopes Turbid with hate; to me, the senile rage; To me, the painted fancies clothed by art Degenerate; to me, the desperate wish, Not in my soul to nurse ungenerous dreams, But to contend, and with the sword of song To fight my battles too.

Such is the spirit, such is the manner, of the Prime Storie of Aleardi. The merits of the poem are so obvious, that it seems scarcely profitable to comment upon its picturesqueness, upon the clearness and ease of its style, upon the art which quickens its frequent descriptions of nature with a human interest. The defects of the poem are quite as plain, and I have again to acknowledge the critical acuteness of Arnaud, who says of Aleardi: "Instead of synthetizing his conceptions, and giving relief to the princ.i.p.al lines, the poet lingers caressingly upon the particulars, preferring the descriptive to the dramatic element. Prom this results poetry of beautiful arabesques and exquisite fragments, of harmonious verse and brilliant diction."