Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 2

[Footnote 28: Canto x.x.xvi., especially stanza 50.]

[Footnote 29: Canto x.x.xix. 10-15; cp. _ib._ 67-72.]

[Footnote 30: Canto x.x.xvii. 15.]

[Footnote 31: Canto x.x.xix. 69.]

After the more finished portrait of Bradamante, we find in Isabella and Fiordeligi, the lovers of Zerbino and Brandimarte, Ariosto's purest types of feminine affection. The cardinal virtue of woman in his eyes was self-devotion--loyalty to the death, unhesitating sacrifice of wealth, ease, reputation, life, to the one object of pa.s.sionate attachment. And this self-devotion he has painted in Olimpia no less romantically than in Isabella and Fiordeligi. Still it must be remembered that Isabella had eloped with Zerbino from her father's palace, that Fiordeligi was only a wife in name, and that Olimpia murdered her first husband and consoled herself very rapidly for Bireno's loss in the arms of Oberto. The poet has not cared to interweave with either portrait such threads of piety and purity as harmonize the self-abandonment of Juliet. Fiordespina's ready credence of the absurd story by which Ricciardetto persuades her that he is Bradamante metamorphosed by a water-fairy to a man, and her love longings, so frankly confessed, so unblushingly indulged, ill.u.s.trate the pa.s.sion Ariosto delighted to describe. He feels a tender sympathy for feminine frailty, and in more than one exquisitely written pa.s.sage claims for women a similar license in love to that of men.[32]

Indeed, he never judges a woman severely, unless she adds to her want of chast.i.ty the spitefulness of Gabrina or the treachery of Orrigille or the cupidity of Argia or the heartlessness of Angelica. Angelica, who in the _Innamorato_ touches our feelings by her tenderness for Rinaldo, in the _Furioso_ becomes a mere coquette, and is well punished by her insane pa.s.sion for the first pretty fellow that takes her fancy. The common faults for which Ariosto taxes women are cupidity, infidelity, and fraud.[33] The indulgence due to them from men is almost cynically ill.u.s.trated by the story of Adonio and the magic virtues of Merlin's goblet.[34] In the preface to the fifth canto he condemns the brutality of husbands, and in the tenth he recommends ladies to be free of their favors to none but middle-aged lovers.[35]

[Footnote 32: See especially iv. 63-67.]

[Footnote 33: Introductions to cantos xliii. xxviii. xxix. xxii.

xxvi.; cp. xxvii. 123.]

[Footnote 34: Canto xlii.]

[Footnote 35: Stanzas 6-9.]

Ariosto's morality was clearly on a level with that of the novelists from Boccaccio to Bandello; and his apology is that he was not inferior to the standard of his age. Still it is not much to his credit to plead that his cantos are less impure than the _Capitoli_ of Monsignore La Casa or the prurient comedies of Aretino. Even allowing for the laxity of Renaissance manners, it must be conceded that he combined vulgar emotions and a coa.r.s.e-fibered nature with the most refined artistic genius.[36] Our Elizabethan drama, in spite of moral crudity, contains nothing so cynical as Ariosto's novel of Jocondo.

The beauty of its style, the absence of tragedy in its situations or of pa.s.sion in its characters, and the humorous smile with which the poet acts as showman to the secrets of the alcove, render this tale one of the most licentious in literature. Nor is this licentiousness balanced by any sublimer spiritual quality. His ideal of manliness is physical force and animal courage. Cruelty and bloodshed for the sake of slaughter stain his heroes.[37] The n.o.blest conflict of emotion he portrays is the struggle between love and honor in Ruggiero,[38] and the contest of courtesy between Ruggiero and Leone.[39] In the few pa.s.sages where he celebrates the chivalrous ideal, he dwells chiefly on the scorn of gain and the contempt for ease which characterized the errant knighthood.[40]

[Footnote 36: If this seems over-stated, I might refer the reader to the prologue of the _Suppositi_, where the worst vice of the Renaissance is treated with a flippant relish; or, again, to the prologue of the _Lena_, where the _double entendre_ is worthy of the grossest _Capitolo_. The plots of all Ariosto's comedies are of a vulgar, obscene, _bourgeois_ type.]

[Footnote 37: See x.x.xix. 10-72, xx. 113, xlvi. 137, and _pa.s.sim_, for the carnage wrought by knights cased in enchanted armor with invulnerable bodies upon defenseless Saracens or unarmed peasants. It was partly this that made Sh.e.l.ley shrink with loathing from the _Furioso_.]

[Footnote 38: Cantos xxi. 1-3, xx. 143, x.x.xviii. introduction, xlv.

57, xxv. introduction.]

[Footnote 39: Cantos xliv. xlv.]

[Footnote 40: Canto vi. 80, vii. 41-44. The sentiments, though superficial, are exquisitely uttered.]

The style of the _Furioso_ is said to have taught Galileo how to write Italian. This style won from him for Ariosto the t.i.tle of _divine_. As the luminous and flowing octave stanzas pa.s.s before us, we are almost tempted to forget that they are products of deliberate art. The beauty of their form consists in its limpidity and naturalness. Ariosto has no mannerism. He always finds exactly the expression needed to give clearness to the object he presents. Whether the mood be elegiac or satiric, humorous or heroic, idyllic or rhetorical, this absolute sincerity and directness of language maintains him at an even level.

In each case he has given the right, the best, the natural invest.i.ture to thought, and his phrases have the self-evidence of crystals. Just as he collected the materials of his poem from all sources, so he appropriated every word that seemed to serve his need. The vocabulary of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the racy terms of popular poetry, together with Latinisms and Lombardisms, were alike laid under contribution. Yet these diverse elements were so fused together and brought into a common toning by his taste that, though the language of his poem was new, it was at once accepted as cla.s.sical. When we remember the difficulties which in his days beset Italian composition, when we call to mind the frigid experiments of Bembo in Tuscan diction, the meticulous proprieties of critics like Speron Speroni, and the warfare waged around the _Gerusalemme Liberata_, we know not whether to wonder at Ariosto's happy audacities in language or at their still happier success. His triumph was not won without severe labor. He spent ten years in the composition of the _Furioso_ and sixteen in its polishing. The autograph at Ferrara shows page upon page of alteration, transposition, and refinement on the first draught, proving that the Homeric limpidity and ease we now admire, were gained by a.s.siduous self-criticism. The result of this long toil is that there cannot be found a rough or languid or inharmonious pa.s.sage in an epic of 50,000 lines. If we do not discern in Ariosto the inexhaustible freshness of Homer, the sublime music of Milton, the sculpturesque brevity of Dante, the purity of Petrarch, or the majestic sweetness of Virgilian cadences, it can fairly be said that no other poet is so varied. None mingles strength, sweetness, subtlety, rapidity, rhetoric, breadth of effect and delicacy of suggestion, in a harmony so perfect. None combines workmanship so artistic with a facility that precludes all weariness. Whether we read him simply to enjoy his story or to taste the most exquisite flavors of poetic diction, we shall be equally satisfied. Language in his hands is like a soft and yielding paste, which takes all forms beneath the molder's hand, and then, when it has hardened, stays for ever sharp in outline, glittering as adamant.

While following the romantic method of Boiardo and borrowing the polished numbers of Poliziano, Ariosto refined the stanzas of the former poet without losing rapidity, and avoided the stationary pomp of the latter without sacrificing richness. He thus effected a combination of the two chief currents of Italian versification, and brought the octave to its final perfection. When we study the pa.s.sage which describes the entrance of Ruggiero into the island home of Alcina, we feel the advance in melody and movement that he made. We are reminded of the gardens of Morgana and Venus; but both are surpa.s.sed in their own qualities of beauty, while the fluidity that springs from complete command of the material, is added. Such touches as the following:[41]

Pensier canuto ne molto ne poco Si pu quivi albergare in alcun core:

are wholly beyond the scope of Boiardo's style. Again, this stanza, without the brocaded splendor of Poliziano, contains all that he derived from Claudian:[42]

Per le cime dei pini e degli allori, Degli alti f.a.ggi e degli irsuti abeti, Volan scherzando i pargoletti Amori; Di lor vittorie altri G.o.dendo lieti, Altri pigliando a saettare i cori La mira quindi, altri tendendo reti: Chi tempra dardi ad un ruscel piu ba.s.so, E chi gli aguzza ad un volubil sa.s.so.

[Footnote 41: Canto vi. 73.]

[Footnote 42: Canto vi. 75.]

Raphael, Correggio and t.i.tian have succeeded to Botticelli and Mantegna; and as those supreme painters fused the several excellences of their predecessors in a fully-developed work of art, so has Ariosto pa.s.sed beyond his masters in the art of poetry. Nor was the process one of mere eclecticism. Intent upon similar aims, the final artists of the early sixteenth century brought the same profound sentiment for reality, the same firm grasp on truth, the same vivid imagination as their precursors to the task. But they possessed surer hands and a more accomplished method. They stood above their subject and surveyed it from the height of conscious power.

After the island of Alcina, it only remained for Ta.s.so to produce novelty in his description of Armida's gardens by pushing one of Ariosto's qualities to exaggeration. The _dolcezza_, which in Ta.s.so is too sugared, has in Ariosto the fine flavor of wild honeycombs. In the tropical magnificence of Ta.s.so's stanzas there is a sultry stupor which the fresh sunlight of the _Furioso_ never sheds. This wilding grace of the Ferrarese Homer is due to the lightness of his touch--to the blending of humorous with luxurious images in a style that pa.s.ses swiftly over all it paints.[43] After a like fashion, the idyl of Angelica among the shepherds surpa.s.ses the celebrated episode of Erminia in the _Gerusalemme_. It is not that Ta.s.so has not invented a new music and wrung a novel effect from the situation by the impa.s.sioned fervor of his sympathy and by the majestic languor of his cadences. But we feel that what Ta.s.so relies on for his main effect, Ariosto had already suggested in combination with other and still subtler qualities. The one has the overpowering perfume of a hothouse jasmine; the other has the mingled scents of a garden where roses and carnations are in bloom.

[Footnote 43: Notice, for example, the irony of the seventh line in vi. 71, and of the third and fourth in the next stanza.]

Ariosto's pictorial faculty has already formed the topic of a paragraph, nor is it necessary to adduce instances of what determines the whole character of the _Orlando Furioso_. Otherwise it would be easy to form a gallery of portraits and landscapes; to compare the double treatment of Andromeda exposed to the sea monster in the tenth and eleventh cantos,[44] to set a pageant in the style of Mantegna by the side of a Correggiesque vignette,[45] or to enlarge upon the beauty of those magical Renaissance buildings which the poet dreamed of in the midst of verdant lawns and flowery wildernesses.[46] True to the spirit of Italian art, he had no strong sentiment for nature except in connection with humanity. Therefore we find but little of landscape-painting for its own sake and small sympathy with the wilder and uncultivated beauties of the world. His scenery recalls the backgrounds to Carpaccio's pictures or the idyllic gardens of the Giorgionesque school. Sometimes there is a magnificent drawing in the style of t.i.tian's purple mountain ranges, and here and there we come upon minutely finished studies that imply deep feeling for the moods of nature. Of this sort is the description of autumn[47];

Tra il fin d'ottobre e il capo di novembre, Nella stagion che la frondosa vesta Vede levarsi, e discoprir le membre, Trepida pianta, finche nuda resta, E van gli augelli a strette schiere insembre.

[Footnote 44: Canto x. 95, 96, xi. 65, 66. The one is Angelica, the other Olimpia.]

[Footnote 45: Canto vi. 62, 63, 75.]

[Footnote 46: Canto vi. 71, x.x.xiv. 51-53.]

[Footnote 47: Canto ix. 7.]

The illuminative force of his similes is quite extraordinary. He uses them not only as occasions for painting cabinet pictures of exquisite richness, but also for casting strong imaginative light upon the object under treatment. In the earlier part of the _Furioso_ he describes two battles with a huge sea monster. The Orc is a kind of romantic whale, such as Piero di Cosimo painted in his tale of Andromeda; and Ruggiero has to fight it first, while riding on the Hippogriff. It is therefore necessary for Ariosto to image forth a battle between behemoth and a mighty bird. He does so by elaborately painting the more familiar struggles of an eagle who has caught a snake, and of a mastiff snapping at a fly.[48] At the same time he adds realistic touches like the following:

L'orca, che vede sotto le grandi ale L'ombra di qua e di la correr su l'onda, Lascia la preda certa littorale, E quella vana segue furibonda.

[Footnote 48: Canto x. 102-106.]

Or, again, when Ruggiero is afraid of wetting his aerial courser's wings:

Che se lo sprazzo in tal modo ha a durare, Teme s l'ale innaffi all'Ippogrifo, Che brami invano avere o zucca o schifo.

The mixture of imagery with prosaic detail brings the whole scene distinctly before our eyes. When Orlando engages the same monster, he is in a boat, and the conditions of the contest are altered.

Accordingly we have a different set of similes. A cloud that fills a valley, rolling to and fro between the mountain sides, describes the movement of the Orc upon the waters; and when Orlando thrusts his anchor in between its jaws to keep them open, he is compared to miners propping up their galleries with beams in order that they may pursue their work in safety.[49] In this way we realize the formidable nature of the beast, and comprehend the stratagem that tames it to Orlando's will.

[Footnote 49: Canto xi. 34-38.]

The same nice adaptation of images may be noticed in the similes showered on Rodomonte. The giant is alone inside the walls of Paris, and the poet is bound to make us feel that a whole city may have cause to tremble before a single man. Therefore he never leaves our fancy for a moment in repose. At one time it is a castle shaken by a storm; at another a lion retreating before the hunters; again, a tigress deprived of her cubs, or a bull that has broken from the baiting-pole, or the whelps of a lioness attacking a fierce young steer.[50] Image succeeds image with dazzling rapidity, all tending to render a strained situation possible.

[Footnote 50: Canto xviii. 11, 14, 19, 22, 35.]

Some of Ariosto's ill.u.s.trations--like the plowman and the thunderbolt, the two dogs fighting, the powder magazine struck by lightning, the house on fire at night, the leaves of autumn, the pine that braves a tempest, the forest bending beneath mighty winds, the April avalanche of suddenly dissolving snow--though wrought with energy and spirit, have not more than the usual excellences of carefully developed Homeric imitation.[51] Framed in single octave stanzas, they are pictures for the mind to rest on. Others illuminate the matter they are used to ill.u.s.trate, with the radiance of subtle and remote fancy.

Of this sort is the brief image by which the Paladins in Charlemagne's army are likened to jewels in a cloth of gold:[52]

Ed hanno i paladin sparsi tra loro, Come le gemme in un ricamo d'oro.

[Footnote 51: Canto i. 65, ii. 5, ix. 78, xx. 89, xxi. 15, 16, xxiv.

63, x.x.xvi. 40.]

[Footnote 52: Canto x.x.xix. 17.]

A common metaphor takes new beauty by its handling in this simile[53];

Pallido come colto al mattutino E da sera il ligustro o il molle acanto.