Old Calabria Part 20

The flight of Innocence from earth; the distempered l.u.s.t which dominates over Adam and Eve after the Fall; the league of Sin and Death to rule henceforward over the world; the pathetic lament of Adam regarding his misfortune and the evils in store for his progeny; his n.o.ble sentiment, that none can withdraw himself from the all-seeing eye of G.o.d--all these are images which Milton has copied from Salandra.

Adam's state of mind, after the fall, is compared by Salandra to a boat tossed by impetuous winds (p. 228):

Qual agitato legno d'Austro, e Noto, Instabile incostante, non hai pace, Tu vivi pur . . .

which is thus paraphrased in Milton (ix, 1122):

. . . High winds worse within Began to rise . . . and shook sore Their inward state of mind, calm region once And full of peace, now tossed and turbulent.

Here is a still more palpable adaptation:

... So G.o.d ordains: G.o.d is thy law, thou mine.

--MILTON (iv, 636)

. . . . Un voler sia d' entrambi, E quel' uno di noi, di Dio sia tutto.

--SALANDRA (p. 42).

After the Fall, according to Salandra, _vacill la terra_ (i), _geme_ (2), _e pianse_ (3), _rumoreggiano i tuoni_ (4), _accompagnati da grandini_ (5), _e dense nevi_ (6), (pp. 138, 142, 218). Milton translates this as follows: Earth trembled from her entrails (1), and nature gave a second groan (2); sky loured and, muttering thunders (4), some sad drops wept (3), the winds, armed with ice and snow (6) and hail (5). ('Paradise Lost,' ix, 1000, x. 697).

Here is another translation:

. . . inclino il ciclo Giu ne la terra, e questa al Ciel innalza.

--SALANDRA (p. 242).

And Earth be changed to Heaven, and Heaven to Earth.

--MILTON (vii, 160).

It is not to my purpose to do Zicari's work over again, as this would entail a complete translation of his long article (it contains nearly ten thousand words), to which, if the thing is to be done properly, must be appended Salandra's 'Adamo,' in order that his quotations from it can be tested. I will therefore refer to the originals those who wish to go into the subject more fully, warning them, _en pa.s.sant,_ that they may find the task of verification more troublesome than it seems, owing to a stupid mistake on Zicari's part. For in his references to Milton, he claims (p. 252) to use an 1818 Venice translation of the 'Paradise Lost'

by Rolli. Now Rolli's 'Paradiso Perduto' is a well-known work which was issued in many editions in London, Paris, and Italy throughout the eighteenth century. But I cannot trace this particular one of Venice, and application to many of the chief libraries of Italy has convinced me that it does not exist, and that 1818 must be a misprint for some other year. The error would be of no significance if Zicari had referred to Rolli's 'Paradiso' by the usual system of cantos and lines, but he refers to it by pages, and the pagination differs in every one of the editions of Rolli which have pa.s.sed through my hands. Despite every effort, I have not been able to hit upon the precise one which Zicari had in mind, and if future students are equally unfortunate, I wish them joy of their labours. [Footnote: Let me take this opportunity of expressing my best thanks to Baron E. Tortora Brayda, of the Naples Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale, who has taken an infinity of trouble in this matter.]

These few extracts, however, will suffice to show that, without Salandra's 'Adamo,' the 'Paradise Lost,' as we know it, would not be in existence; and that Zicari's discovery is therefore one of primary importance for English letters, although it would be easy to point out divergencies between the two works--divergencies often due to the varying tastes and feelings of a republican Englishman and an Italian Catholic, and to the different conditions imposed by an epic and a dramatic poem. Thus, in regard to this last point, Zicari has already noted (p. 270) that Salandra's scenic acts were necessarily reproduced in the form _of visions_ by Milton, who could not avail himself of the mechanism of the drama for this purpose. Milton was a man of the world, traveller, scholar, and politician; but it will not do for us to insist too vehemently upon the probable mental inferiority of the Calabrian monk, in view of the high opinion which Milton seems to have had of his talents. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The 'Adamo Caduto,' of course, is only one of a series of similar works concerning which a large literature has now grown up, and it might not be difficult to prove that Salandra was indebted to some previous writer for those words and phrases which he pa.s.sed on to the English poet.

But where did Milton become acquainted with this tragedy? It was at Naples, according to Cowper ('Milton,' vol. iii, p. 206), that the English poet may first have entertained the idea of 'the loss of paradise as a subject peculiarly fit for poetry.' He may well have discussed sacred tragedies, like those of Andreini, with the Marquis Manso. But Milton had returned to England long before Salandra's poem was printed; nor can Manso have sent him a copy of it, for he died in 1645--two years before its publication--and Zicari is thus mistaken in a.s.suming (p. 245) that Milton became acquainted with it in the house of the Neapolitan n.o.bleman. Unless, therefore, we take for granted that Manso was intimate with the author Salandra--he knew most of his literary countrymen--and sent or gave to Milton a copy of the ma.n.u.script of 'Adamo' before it was printed, or that Milton was personally familiar with Salandra, we may conclude that the poem was forwarded to him from Italy by some other friend, perhaps by some member of the _Accademia, degli Oziosi_ which Manso had founded.

A chance therefore seems to have decided Milton; Salandra's tragedy fell into his hands, and was welded into the epic form which he had designed for Arthur the Great, even as, in later years, a chance question on the part of Elwood led to his writing 'Paradise Regained.' [Footnote: _Thou hast said much of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?_ He made no answer, but sat some time in a muse. . . .]

For this poem there were not so many models handy as for the other, but Milton has written too little to enable us to decide how far its inferiority to the earlier epic is due to this fact, and how far to the inherent inertia of its subject-matter. Little movement can be contrived in a mere dialogue such as 'Paradise Regained '; it lacks the grandiose _mise-en-scene_ and the shifting splendours of the greater epic; the stupendous figure of the rebellious archangel, the true hero of 'Paradise Lost,' is here dwarfed into a puny, malignant sophist; nor is the final issue in the later poem _even for a moment_ in doubt--a serious defect from an artistic point of view. Jortin holds its peculiar excellence to be 'artful sophistry, false reasoning, set off in the most specious manner, and refuted by the Son of G.o.d with strong unaffected eloquence'; merits for which Milton needed no original of any kind, as his own lofty religious sentiments, his argumentative talents and long experience of political pamphleteering, stood him in good stead. Most of us must have wondered how it came about that Milton could not endure to hear 'Paradise Lost' preferred to 'Paradise Regained,' in view of the very apparent inferiority of the latter. If we had known what Milton knew, namely, to how large an extent 'Paradise Lost' was not the child of his own imagination, and therefore not so precious in his eyes as 'Paradise Regained,' we might have understood his prejudice.

Certain parts of 'Paradise Lost' are drawn, as we all know, from other Italian sources, from Sannazario, Ariosto, Guarini, Bojardo, and others.

Zicari who, it must be said, has made the best of his case, will have it that the musterings and battles of the good and evil angels are copied from the 'Angeleide' of Valvasone published at Milan in 1590. But G.

Polidori, who has reprinted the 'Angeleide' in his Italian version of Milton (London, 1840), has gone into this matter and thinks otherwise.

These devil-and-angel combats were a popular theme at the time, and there is no reason why the English poet should copy continental writers in such descriptions, which necessarily have a common resemblance. The Marquis Manso was very friendly with the poets Ta.s.so and Marino, and it is also to be remarked that entire pa.s.sages in 'Paradise Lost' are copied, _totidem verbis,_ from the writings of these two, Manso having no doubt drawn Milton's attention to their beauties. In fact, I am inclined to think that Manso's notorious enthusiasm for the _warlike_ epic of Ta.s.so may first of all have diverted Milton from purely pastoral ideals and inflamed him with the desire of accomplishing a similar feat, whence the well-known lines in Milton's Latin verses to this friend, which contain the first indication of such a design on his part. Even the familiar invocation, 'Hail, wedded Love,' is bodily drawn from one of Ta.s.so's letters (see Newton's 'Milton,' 1773, vol. i, pp. 312, 313).

It has been customary to speak of these literary appropriations as 'imitations '; but whoever compares them with the originals will find that many of them are more correctly termed translations. The case, from a literary-moral point of view, is different as regards ancient writers, and it is surely idle to accuse Milton, as has been done, of pilferings from Aeschylus or Ovid. There is no such thing as robbing the cla.s.sics.

They are our literary fathers, and what they have left behind them is our common heritage; we may adapt, borrow, or steal from them as much as will suit our purpose; to acknowledge such 'thefts' is sheer pedantry and ostentation. But Salandra and the rest of them were Milton's contemporaries. It is certainly an astonishing fact that no scholar of the stamp of Thyer was acquainted with the 'Adamo Caduto'; and it says much for the isolation of England that, at a period when poems on the subject of paradise lost were being scattered broadcast in Italy and elsewhere--when, in short, all Europe was ringing with the doleful history of Adam and Eve--Milton could have ventured to speak of his work as 'Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyma'--an amazing verse which, by the way, is literally transcribed out of Ariosto ('Cosa, non detta in prosa mai, ne in rima'). But even now the acquaintance of the British public with the productions of continental writers is superficial and spasmodic, and such was the ignorance of English scholars of this earlier period, that Birch maintained that Milton's drafts, to be referred to presently, indicated his intention of writing an _opera_ (!); while as late as 1776 the poet Mickle, notwithstanding Voltaire's authority, questioned the very existence of Andreini, who has written thirty different pieces.

Some idea of the time when Salandra's tragedy reached Milton might be gained if we knew the date of his ma.n.u.script projects for 'Paradise Lost' and other writings which are preserved at Cambridge. R. Garnett ('Life of Milton,' 1890, p. 129) supposes these drafts to date from about 1640 to 1642, and I am not sufficiently learned in Miltonian lore to controvert or corroborate in a general way this a.s.sertion. But the date must presumably be pushed further forward in the case of the skeletons for 'Paradise Lost,' which are modelled to a great extent upon Salandra's 'Adamo' of 1647, though other compositions may also have been present before Milton's mind, such as that mentioned on page 234 of the second volume of Todd's 'Milton,' from which he seems to have drawn the hint of a 'prologue spoken by Moses.'

Without going into the matter exhaustively, I will only say that from these pieces it is clear that Milton's primary idea was to write, like Salandra, a sacred tragedy upon this theme, and not an epic. These drafts also contain a chorus, such as Salandra has placed in his drama, and a great number of mutes, who do not figure in the English epic, but who reappear in the 'Adamo Caduto' and all similar works. Even Satan is here designated as Lucifer, in accordance with the Italian Lucifero; and at the end of one of Milton's drafts we read 'at last appears Mercy, comforts him, promises the Messiah, etc.,' which is exactly what Salandra's Misericordia (Mercy) does in the same place.

Milton no doubt kept on hand many loose pa.s.sages of poetry, both original and borrowed, ready to be worked up into larger pieces; all poets are smothered in odd sc.r.a.ps of verse and lore which they 'fit in'

as occasion requires; and it is therefore quite possible that some fragments now included in 'Paradise Lost' may have been complete before the 'Adamo Caduto' was printed. I am referring, more especially, to Satan's address to the sun, which Philips says was written before the commencement of the epic.

Admitting Philips to be correct, I still question whether this invocation was composed before Milton's visit to Naples; and if it was, the poet may well have intended it for some other of the mult.i.tudinous works which these drafts show him to have been revolving in his mind, or for none of them in particular.

De Quincey rightly says that Addison gave the initial bias in favour of 'Paradise Lost' to the English national mind, which has thenceforward shrunk, as Addison himself did, from a dispa.s.sionate contemplation of its defects; the idea being, I presume, that a 'divine poem' in a manner disarmed rational criticism. And, strange to say, even the few faults which earlier scholars did venture to point out in Milton's poem will be found in that of Salandra. There is the same superabundance of allegory; the same confusion of spirit and matter among the supernatural persons; the same lengthy astronomical treatise; the same personification of Sin and Death; the same medley of Christian and pagan mythology; the same tedious historico-theological disquisition at the end of both poems.

For the rest, it is to be hoped that we have outgrown our fastidiousness on some of these points. Theological fervour has abated, and in a work of the pure imagination, as 'Paradise Lost' is now--is it not?--considered to be, there is nothing incongruous or offensive in an amiable commingling of Semitic and h.e.l.lenic deities after the approved Italian recipe; nor do a few long words about geography or science disquiet us any more. Milton was not writing for an uncivilized mob, and his occasional displays of erudition will represent to a cultured person only those breathing s.p.a.ces so refreshing in all epic poetry. That Milton's language is saturated with Latinisms and Italianisms is perfectly true. His English may not have been good enough for his contemporaries. But it is quite good enough for us. That 'grand manner'

which Matthew Arnold claimed for Milton, that sustained pitch of kingly elaboration and fullness, is not wholly an affair of high moral tone; it results in part from the humbler ministrations of words happily chosen--from a felicitous alloy of Mediterranean grace and Saxon mettle.

For, whether consciously or not, we cannot but be influenced by the _colour-effects_ of mere words, that arouse in us definite but indefinable moods of mind. To complain of the foreign phraseology and turns of thought in 'Paradise Lost' would be the blackest ingrat.i.tude nowadays, seeing that our language has become enriched by steady gleams of pomp and splendour due, in large part, to the peculiar _l.u.s.tre_ of Milton's comely importations.

XXII

THE "GREEK" SILA

It was to be the Sila in earnest, this time. I would traverse the whole country, from the Coscile valley to Catanzaro, at the other end.

Arriving from Cosenza the train deposited me, once more, at the unlovely station of Castrovillari. I looked around the dusty square, half-dazed by the sunlight--it was a glittering noonday in July--but the postal waggon to Spezzano Albanese, my first resting-point, had not yet arrived. Then a withered old man, sitting on a vehicle behind the sorry skeleton of a horse, volunteered to take me there at once; we quickly came to terms; it was too hot, we both agreed, to waste breath in bargaining. With the end of his whip he pointed out the church of Spezzano on its hilltop; a proud structure it looked at this distance, though nearer acquaintance reduced it to extremely humble proportions.

The Albanian Spezzano (Spezzano Grande is another place) lies on the main road from Castrovillari to Cosenza, on the summit of a long-stretched tongue of limestone which separates the Crati river from the Esaro; this latter, after flowing into the Coscile, joins its waters with the Crati, and so closes the promontory. An odd geographical feature, this low stretch, viewed from the greater heights of Sila or Pollino; one feels inclined to take a broom and sweep it into the sea, so that the waters may mingle sooner.

Our road ascended the thousand feet in a sinuous ribbon of white dust, and an eternity seemed to pa.s.s as we crawled drowsily upwards to the music of the cicadas, under the simmering blue sky. There was not a soul in sight; a hush had fallen upon all things; great Pan was brooding over the earth. At last we entered the village, and here, once more, deathlike stillness reigned; it was the hour of post-prandial slumber.

At our knocking the proprietor of the inn, situated in a side-street, descended. But he was in bad humour, and held out no hopes of refreshment. Certain doctors and government officials, he said, were gathered together in his house, telegraphically summoned to consult about a local case of cholera. As to edibles, the gentlemen had lunched, and nothing was left, absolutely nothing; it had been _uno sterminio--_an extermination--of all he possessed. The prospect of walking about the burning streets till evening did not appeal to me, and as this was the only inn at Spezzano I insisted, first gently, then forcibly--in vain. There was not so much as a chair to sit upon, he avowed; and therewith retired into his cool twilight.

Despairing, I entered a small shop wherein I had observed the only signs of life so far--an Albanian woman spinning in patriarchal fashion. It was a low-ceilinged room, stocked with candles, seeds, and other commodities which a humble householder might desire to purchase, including certain of those water-gugglets of Corigliano ware in whose shapely contours something of the artistic dreamings of old Sybaris still seems to linger. The proprietress, clothed in gaudily picturesque costume, greeted me with a smile and the easy familiarity which I have since discovered to be natural to all these women. She had a room, she said, where I could rest; there was also food, such as it was, cheese, and wine, and----

"Fruit?" I queried.

"Ah, you like fruit? Well, we may not so much as speak about it just now--the cholera, the doctors, the policeman, the prison! I was going to say _salami."_

Salami? I thanked her. I know Calabrian pigs and what they feed on, though it would be hard to describe in the language of polite society.

Despite the heat and the swarms of flies in that chamber, I felt little desire for repose after her simple repast; the dame was so affable and entertaining that we soon became great friends. I caused her some amus.e.m.e.nt by my efforts to understand and p.r.o.nounce her language--these folk speak Albanian and Italian with equal facility--which seemed to my unpractised ears as hopeless as Finnish. Very patiently, she gave me a long lesson during which I thought to pick up a few words and phrases, but the upshot of it all was:

"You'll never learn it. You have begun a hundred years too late."

I tried her with modern Greek, but among such fragments as remained on my tongue after a lapse of over twenty years, only hit upon one word that she could understand.

"Quite right!" she said encouragingly. "Why don't you always speak properly? And now, let me hear a little of your own language."

I gave utterance to a few verses of Shakespeare, which caused considerable merriment.

"Do you mean to tell me," she asked, "that people really talk like that?"