Renaissance in Italy Volume IV Part 26

The humanists themselves const.i.tuted a new and powerful body, a nation within the nation, separated from its higher social and political interests, selfish, restless, greedy for celebrity, nomadic, disengaged from local ties, conscious of their strength, and swaying with the vast prestige of learning in that age the intellectual destinies of the race. Insolent and ambitious in all that concerned their literary pretensions, these men were servile in their private life. They gained their daily bread by flatteries and menaces, hanging about the Courts of petty despots, whose liberality they paid with adulation or quickened with the threat of infamy in libels. At the same time the humanists, steeped in the best and worst that could be extracted from the cla.s.sics, confounding the dross of Greek and Roman literature with its precious metal in their indiscriminate worship of antiquity, and debarred through want of criticism from a.s.similating the n.o.blest spirit of the pagan culture, had created a new mental atmosphere. The work they accomplished for Italy, though mixed in quality, had two undeniable merits. Not only had they restored the heritage of the past and broken down the barrier between the ancient and the modern world, bringing back the human consciousness from the torpor of the middle ages to a keen and vivid sense of its own unity; but they so penetrated and imbued each portion of the Italian nation with their enthusiasm, that, intellectually at least, the nation was now one and ready for a simultaneous progress on the path of culture.[463]

It so happened that at this very moment, when the unity of Italy in art and scholarship had been achieved, external quiet succeeded to the discords of three centuries. The ancient party-cries of Emperor and Church, of Guelf and Ghibelline, of n.o.ble and burgher, of German and Latin ingredients within the body politic had gradually ceased and been forgotten. The Italic element, deriving its instincts from Roman civilization, triumphed over the alien and the feudal; and though this victory was attended with the decay of the Communes that had striven to achieve it, yet the final outcome was a certain h.o.m.ogeneity of conditions in all the great centers of national life. Italy became a net-work of cultivated democracies, ruled by tyrants of different degrees. The middle of the fifteenth century witnessed the commencement of that halcyon period of forty years' tranquillity, destined to be broken by the descent of Charles VIII., in 1494, upon which Machiavelli and Guicciardini from amid the tempests of the next half century looked back with eyes of wonder and of envy. Constantinople fell, and the undoubted primacy of the civilized races came to the Italians. Lorenzo de' Medici was regarded as the man who, by his political ability and firm grasp of the requisite conditions for maintaining peace in the peninsula, had established and secured the equilibrium between mutually jealous and antagonistic States. Whether the merit of that repose, so fruitful of results in art and literature for the Italians, was really due to Lorenzo's sagacity, or whether the shifting forces of the nation had become stationary for a season by the operation of circ.u.mstances, may fairly be questioned. Yet there is no doubt that the unprecedented prosperity of the people coincided with his administration of Florence, and ended when he ceased to guide the commonwealth. It was at any rate a singular good fortune that connected the name of this extraordinary man with the high-tide of material prosperity in Italy and with the resurrection of her national literature.

The figure of Lorenzo de' Medici has more than once already crossed the stage of this history.[464] Whether dealing with the political conditions, or the scholarship, or the fine arts of the Renaissance, it is impossible to omit his name. There is therefore now no need to sketch his character or to inquire into the incidents of his Florentine administration. It will suffice to remind the readers of this book that he finally succeeded in so clinching the power of the Casa Medici that no subsequent revolutions were able to destroy it. The part he played as a patron of artists and scholars, and as a writer of Italian, was subordinate to his political activity in circ.u.mstances of peculiar difficulty. While controlling the turbulent democracy of Florence and gaining recognition for his tyranny from jealous princes, he still contrived to lead his age in every branch of culture, deserving the magnificent eulogium of Poliziano, who sang of him in the _Nutricia_[465]:

Tu vero aeternam, per avi vestigia Cosmi Perque patris (quis enim pietate insignior illo?), Ad famam eluctans, cujus securus ad umbram Fulmina bellorum ridens procul aspicit Arnus, Maeoniae caput, o Laurens, quem plena senatu Curia quemque gravi populus stupet ore loquentem Si fas est, tua nunc humili patere otia cantu Secessusque sacros avidas me ferre sub auras.

Namque, importunas mulcentem pectine curas, Umbrosae recolo te quondam vallis in antrum Monticolam traxisse deam: vidi ipse corollas Nexantem, numerosque tuos p.r.o.na aure bibentem....

Quodque alii studiumque vocant durumque laborem, Hc tibi ludus erit: fessus civilibus actis, Huc is emeritas acuens ad carmina vires.

Felix ingenio! felix cui pectore tantas Instaurare vices, cui fas tam magna capaci Alternare animo, et varias ita nectere curas!

Lorenzo de' Medici was the last apologist for the mother speech, as he was the first and chief inaugurator of the age when such apologies were no longer to be needed. He took a line somewhat different from Alberti's in his defense of Italian, proving not merely its utility but boldly declaring its equality with the cla.s.sic languages. We possess a short essay of his, written with this purpose, where he bestows due praise on Dante, Boccaccio and Guido Cavalcanti, and affirms in the teeth of the humanists that Petrarch wrote better love-poems than Ovid, Tibullus, Catullus or Propertius.[466] Again, in his epistle to Federigo of Aragon, sent with a MS. volume containing a collection of early Tuscan poetry, he pa.s.ses acute and sympathetic judgments on the lyrists from Guittone of Arezzo to Cino da Pistoja, proving that he had studied their works to good purpose and had formed a correct opinion of the origins of Italian literature.[467] Lorenzo does not write like a man ashamed of the vernacular or forced to use it because he can command no better. He is sure of the justice of his cause, and determined by precept and example and by the prestige of his princely rank to bring the literature he loves into repute again.

No one could have been better fitted for the task. Unlike Alberti, Lorenzo was a Florentine of the Florentines, Tuscan to the backbone, imbued with the spirit of his city, a pa.s.sionate lover of her customs and pastimes, a complete master of her vernacular. His education, though it fitted him for Platonic discussions with Ficino and rendered him an amateur of humanistic culture, had failed to make a pedant of him. Much as he appreciated the cla.s.sics, he preferred his Tuscan poets; and what he learned at school, he brought to bear upon the study of the native literature. Consequently his style is always idiomatic; whether he seeks the elevation of grave diction or reproduces the talk of the streets, he uses language like a man who has habitually spoken the words which he commits to paper. His brain was vigorous, and his critical faculty acute. He lived, moreover, in close sympathy with his age, never rising above it, but accurately representing its main tendencies. At the same time he was sufficiently a poet to delight a generation that had seen no great writer of verse since Boccaccio. Though his work is in no sense absolutely first rate, he wrote nothing that a man of ability might not have been pleased to own.

Lorenzo's first essays in poetry were sonnets and _canzoni_ in the style of the _trecento_. It is a mistake to cla.s.sify him, as some historians of literature have done, with the deliberate imitators of Petrarch, or to judge his work by its deflection from the Petrarchistic standard of pure style. His youthful lyrics show the appreciative study of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti no less than of the poet of Vaucluse; and though they affect the conventional melancholy of the Petrarchistic mannerism, they owe their force to the strong objective spirit of the fifteenth century.

Lorenzo's originality consists in the fusion he effected between the form of the love-lyric handed down from Petrarch and the realistic genius of the age of Ghirlandajo. This is especially noticeable in the sonnets that describe the beauties of the country. They are not penetrated with emotion permeating and blurring the impressions made by natural objects on the poet's mind. His landscapes are not hazy with the atmosphere, now luminous, now somber, of a lover's varying mood. On the contrary, every object is defined and cla.s.sified; and the lady sits like a beautiful figure in a garden, painted with no less loving care in all its details than herself.[468] These pictures, very delicate in their minute and truthful touches, affect our fancy like a panel of Benozzo Gozzoli, who omits no circ.u.mstance of the scene he undertakes to reproduce, crowds it with incidents and bestows the same attention upon the princ.i.p.al subjects and the accessories. The central emotion of Lorenzo's verse is scarcely love, but delight in the country--the Florentine's enjoyment of the villa, with its woods and rivulets, the pines upon the hillsides, the song-birds, and the pleasures of the chase.

The following sonnet might be chosen as a fair specimen of the new manner introduced into literature by Lorenzo. Its cla.s.sical coloring, deeply felt and yet somewhat frigid, has the true stamp of the _quattrocento_[469]:

Leave thy beloved isle, thou Cyprian queen; Leave thine enchanted realm so delicate, G.o.ddess of love! Come where the rivulet Bathes the short turf and blades of tenderest green!

Come to these shades, these airs that stir the screen Of whispering branches and their murmurs set To Philomel's enamored canzonet: Choose this for thine own land, thy loved demesne!

And if thou com'st by these clear rills to reign, Bring thy dear son, thy darling son, with thee; For there be none that own his empire here.

From Dian steal the vestals of her train, Who roam the woods at will, from danger free, And know not Love, nor his dread anger fear.

That Lorenzo was incapable of loving as Dante or Petrarch or even Boccaccio loved, is obvious in every verse he wrote. The spirit in him neither triumphs over the flesh nor struggles with it, nor yet submits a willing and intoxicated victim. It remains apart and cold, playing with fancies, curiously surveying the carnival of l.u.s.ts that hold their revel in the breast whereof it is the lord. Under these conditions he could take the wife his mother found for him at Rome, and record the fact in his diary[470]; he could while away his leisure with venal beauties or country girls at his villas; but of love in the poet's sense he had no knowledge. It is true that, nurtured as he was in the traditions of fourteenth-century verse, he thought it necessary to establish a t.i.tular mistress of his heart. The account he gives of this proceeding in a commentary on his own sonnets, composed after the model of the _Vita Nuova_, is one of his best pieces of writing. He describes the day when the beautiful Simonetta Cattaneo, his brother Giuliano's lady, was carried to her grave with face uncovered, lying beneath the sunlight on her open bier. All Florence was touched to tears by the sight, and the poets poured forth elegies. The month was April, and the young earth seemed to have put on her robe of flowers only to make the pathos of that death more poignant. Then, says Lorenzo: "Night came; and I with a friend most dear to me went communing about the loss we all had suffered. While we spoke, the air being exceedingly serene, we turned our eyes to a star of surpa.s.sing brightness, which toward the west shone forth with such l.u.s.ter as not only to conquer all the other stars, but even to cast a shadow from the objects that intercepted its light. We marveled at it a while; and then, turning to my friend, I said: 'There is no need for wonder, since the soul of that most gentle lady has either been transformed into yon new star or has joined herself to it.

And if this be so, that splendor of the star is nowise to be wondered at; and even as her beauty in life was of great solace to our eyes, so now let us comfort ourselves at the present moment with the sight of so much brilliance. And if our eyes be weak and frail to bear such brightness, pray we to the G.o.d, that is to her deity, to give them virtue, in order that without injury unto our sight we may awhile contemplate it.' ... Then, forasmuch as it appeared to me that this colloquy furnished good material for a sonnet, I left my friend and composed the following verses, in which I speak about the star aforesaid:

"O lucid star, that with transcendent light Quenchest of all those neighboring stars the gleam, Why thus beyond thine usage dost thou stream, Why art thou fain with Phoebus still to fight?

Haply those beauteous eyes, which from our sight Death stole, who now doth vaunt himself supreme, Thou hast a.s.sumed: clad with their glorious beam, Well mayst thou claim the sun-G.o.d's chariot bright.

Listen, new star, new regent of the day, Who with unwonted radiance gilds our heaven, O listen, G.o.ddess, to the prayers we pray!

Let so much splendor from thy sphere be riven That to these eyes, which fain would weep alway, Unblinded, thy glad sight may yet be given!"

From that moment Lorenzo began to write poems. He wandered alone and meditated on the sunflower, playing delightfully unto himself with thoughts of Love and Death. Yet his heart was empty; and like Augustine or Alastor, he could say: "nondum amabam, sed amare amabam, quaerebam quod amarem amans amare." When a young man is in this mood it is not long before he finds an object for his adoration. Lorenzo went one day in the same spring with friends to a house of feasting, where he met with a lady lovelier in his eyes even than La Simonetta. After the fashion of his age, he describes her physical and mental perfections with a minuteness which need not be enforced upon a modern reader.[471]

Suffice it to say that Lucrezia Donati--such was the lady's name--supplied Lorenzo with exactly what he had been seeking, an object for his literary exercises. The _Sonetti_, _Canzoni_, and _Selve d'Amore_ were the fruits of this first pa.s.sion.

Though Lorenzo was neither a poet nor a lover after the stamp of Dante, these juvenile verses and the prose with which he prefaced them, show him in a light that cannot fail to interest those who only know the statesman and the literary cynic of his later years. There is sincere fervor of romantic feeling in the picture of the evening after Simonetta's funeral, even though the a.n.a.lytical temper of the poet's mind is revealed in his exact description of the shadow cast by the planet he was watching. The first meeting with Lucrezia, again, is prettily described in these stanzas of the _Selve_:

What time the chain was forged which then I bore, Air, earth, and heavens were linked in one delight; The air was never so serene before, The sun ne'er shed such pure and tranquil light; Young leaves and flowers upon the gra.s.sy floor Gladdened the earth where ran a streamlet bright, While Venus in her father's bosom lay And smiled from heaven upon the spot that day.

She from her brows divine and amorous breast Took with both hands roses of many a hue, And showered them through the heavens that slept in rest, Covering my lady with their gracious dew; Jove, full of gladness, on that day released The ears of men, that they might hear the true Echoes of melody and dance divine, Which fell from heaven in songs and sounds benign.

Fair women to that music moved their feet, Inflamed with gentle fire by Love's breath fanned: Behold yon lover with his lady sweet-- Her hand long yearned for clasped in his loved hand; Their sighs, their looks, which pangs of longing cheat; Brief words that none but they can understand; The flowers that she lets fall, resumed and pressed, With kisses covered, to his head or breast.

Amid so many pleasant things and fair, My loveliest lady with surpa.s.sing grace Eclipsed and crowned all beauties that were there; Her robe was white and delicate as lace; And still her eyes, with silent speech and rare, Talked to the heart, leaving the lips at peace: Come to me, come, dear heart of mine, she said: Here shall thy long desires at rest be laid.

The impression of these verses is hardly marred by the prosy catalogue of Lucrezia's beauties furnished in the _Innamoramento_. Lorenzo was an a.n.a.lyst. He could not escape from that quality so useful to the observer, so fatal to artists, if they cannot recompose the data furnished by observation in a new subjective synthesis. When we compare his description of the Age of Gold in the _Selve_,[472] justly celebrated for its brilliancy and wealth of detail, with the shorter pa.s.sage from Poliziano's _Stanze_, we measure the distance between intelligent study of nature and the imagination which unifies and gives new form of life to every detail. The same end may be more briefly attained by a comparison of this pa.s.sage about roses from Lorenzo's _Corinto_ with a musical _Ballata_ of Poliziano[473]:

Into a little close of mine I went One morning, when the sun with his fresh light Was rising all refulgent and unshent.

Rose-trees are planted there in order bright, Whereto I turned charmed eyes, and long did stay Taking my fill of that new-found delight.

Red and white roses bloomed upon the spray; One opened, leaf by leaf, to greet the morn, Shyly at first, then in sweet disarray; Another, yet a youngling, newly born, Scarce struggled from the bud, and there were some Whose petals closed them from the air forlorn; Another fell, and showered the gra.s.s with bloom; Thus I beheld the roses dawn and die, And one short hour their loveliness consume.

But while I watched those languid petals lie Colorless on cold earth, I could but think How vain a thing is youthful bravery.

Trees have their time to bloom on winter's brink; Then the rathe blossoms wither in an hour, When the brief days of spring toward summer sink; The fruit, as yet unformed, is tart and sour; Little by little it grows large, and weighs The strong boughs down with slow persistent power; Nor without peril can the branches raise Their burden; now they stagger 'neath the weight Still growing, and are bent above the ways; Soon autumn comes, and the ripe ruddy freight Is gathered: the glad season will not stay; Flowers, fruits, and leaves are now all desolate.

Pluck the rose, therefore, maiden, while 'tis May!

That is good. It is the best kind of poetry within Lorenzo's grasp. But here is Poliziano's dance-song:

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

Violets and lilies grew on every side Mid the green gra.s.s, and young flowers wonderful, Golden and white and red and azure-eyed; Toward which I stretched my hands, eager to pull Plenty to make my fair curls beautiful, To crown my rippling curls with garlands gay.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

But when my lap was full of flowers I spied Roses at last, roses of every hue; Therefore I ran to pluck their ruddy pride, Because their perfume was so sweet and true That all my soul went forth with pleasure new, With yearning and desire too soft to say.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

I gazed and gazed. Hard task it were to tell How lovely were the roses in that hour; One was but peeping from her verdant sh.e.l.l, And some were faded, some were scarce in flower.

Then Love said: Go, pluck from the blooming bower Those that thou seest ripe upon the spray.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

For when the full rose quits her tender sheath, When she is sweetest and most fair to see, Then is the time to place her in thy wreath, Before her beauty and her freshness flee.

Gather ye therefore roses with great glee, Sweet girls, or ere their perfume pa.s.s away.

I went a-roaming, maidens, one bright day, In a green garden in mid month of May.

Both in this _Ballata_ and also in the stanzas on the Age of Gold, it might almost seem as though Poliziano had rewritten Lorenzo's exercise with a view to showing the world the difference between true poetry and what is only very like it.

The _Selve d'Amore_ and the _Corinto_ belong to Lorenzo's early manner, when his heart was yet fresh and statecraft had not made him cynical.

The latter is a musical eclogue in _terza rima_; the former a discursive love-poem, with allegorical episodes, in octave stanzas. Up to the date of the _Selve_ the _ottava rima_ had, so far as I know, been only used for semi-epical poems and short love-songs. Lorenzo proved his originality by suiting it to a style of composition which aimed at brilliant descriptions in the manner of Ovid. He also handled it with an ease and brightness. .h.i.therto unknown. The pageant of Love and Jealousy and the allegory of Hope in the second part are both such poetry as only needed something magical from the touch of Ariosto to make them perfect.[474] As it is, Lorenzo's studies in verse produce the same impression as Bronzino's in painting. They are brilliant, but hard, cold, calculated, never fused by the final charm of poetry or music into a delightful vision. What is lacking is less technical skill or invention than feeling in the artist, the glow of pa.s.sion, or the charm of spiritual harmony. Here is a picture of Hope's attendant train:

Following this luckless dame, where'er she goes, Flit dreams in crowds, with auguries and lies, Chiromants, arts that cozen and impose, Chances, diviners, and false prophecies, Spoken or writ in foolish scroll and glose, Whose forecast brings time flown before our eyes, Alchemy, all who heaven from our earth measure, And free conjectures made at will and pleasure.

'Neath the dark shadow of her mighty wings The whole deluded world at last must cower:-- O blindness that involves all mortal things, Frail ignorance that treads on human power!-- He who can count the woes her empire brings, Could number every star, each fish, each flower, Tell all the birds that cross the autumnal seas, Of leaves that flutter from the naked trees.

His _Ambra_ is another poem in the same style as the _Selve_. It records Lorenzo's love for that Tuscan farm which Poliziano afterwards made famous in the sonorous hexameters he dedicated to the memory of Homer.[475] Following the steps of Ovid, Lorenzo feigns that a shepherd Lauro loved the nymph Ambra, whom Umbrone, the river-G.o.d, pursued through vale and meadow to the sh.o.r.es of Arno. There he would have done her violence, but that Diana changed her to a rock in her sore need:

Ma pur che fussi gia donna ancor credi; Le membra mostran, come suol figura Bozzata e non finita in pietra dura.

This simile is characteristic both of Lorenzo's love for familiar ill.u.s.tration, and also of the age that dawned on Michelangelo's genius.

In the same meter, but in a less ambitious style, is _La Caccia col Falcone_. This poem is the simple record of a Tuscan hawking-party, written to amuse Lorenzo's guests, but never meant a.s.suredly to be discussed by critics after the lapse of four centuries. These pastorals, whether trifling like _La Caccia_, romantic like _Corinto_, or pictorial like _Ambra_, sink into insignificance beside _La Nencia da Barberino_--a masterpiece of true genius and humor, displaying intimate knowledge of rustic manners, and using the dialect of the Tuscan _contadini_.[476] Like the _Polyphemus_ of Theocritus, but with even more of racy detail and homely fun, _La Nencia_ versifies the love-lament of a hind, Vallera, who describes the charms of his sweetheart with quaint fancy, wooing her in a thousand ways, all natural, all equally in keeping with rural simplicity. It can scarcely be called a parody of village life and feeling, although we cannot fail to see that the town is laughing at the country all through the exuberant stanzas, so rich in fancy, so incomparably vivid in description. What lifts it above parody is the truth of the picture and the close imitation of rustic popular poetry[477]:

Le labbre rosse paion di corallo: Ed havvi drento due filar di denti Che son piu bianchi che quei di cavallo: E d'ogni lato ella n'ha piu di venti.

Le gote bianche paion di cristallo Senz'altri lisci ovver scorticamenti: Ed in quel mezzo ell'e come una rosa.

Nel mondo non fu mai s bella cosa.

Ben s potra tenere avventurato Che sia marito di s bella moglie; Ben s potra tener in buon d nato Chi ara quel fioraliso senza foglie; Ben s potra tener santo e beato, Che s contenti tutte le sue voglie D'aver la Nencia e tenersela in braccio Morbida e bianca che pare un sugnaccio.

These lines, chosen at random from the poem, might be paralleled from _Rispetti_ that are sung to-day in Tuscany. The vividness and vigor of _La Nencia_ secured for it immediate popularity. It was speedily imitated by Luigi Pulci in the _Beca da Dicomano_, a village poem that, aiming at cruder realism than Lorenzo's, broke the style and lapsed into vulgarity. _La Nencia_ long continued to have imitators; for one of the princ.i.p.al objects of educated poets in the Renaissance was to echo the manner of popular verse. None, however, succeeded so well as Lorenzo in touching the facts of country life and the truth of country feeling with a fine irony that had in it at least as much of sympathy as of sarcasm.