Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 19

[Footnote 375: _Op. cit._ p. 385.]

Whatever may have been the crimes of Giulio against his father, Trissino used a cruel and unpardonable revenge upon his eldest son.

Not content with blackening his character under the name of Agrilupo in the _Italia Liberata_,[376] he wrote a codicil to his will, in which he brought against Giulio the most dangerous charge it was then possible to make. He disinherited him with a curse, and accused him of Lutheran heresy.[377] It was clearly the father's intention to hand his son down to an immortality of shame in his great poem, to ruin him in his temporal affairs, and to deprive him of his ecclesiastical privileges. Posterity has defeated his first purpose; for few indeed are the readers of Trissino's _Italia Liberata_. In his second and his third objects, he was completely successful. Giulio was prosecuted for heresy in 1551, cited before the Inquisition of Bologna in 1553, excommunicated by the Roman Holy Office in 1554, condemned as a contumacious heretic in 1556, driven into hiding at Venice, attacked in bed and half murdered there in 1568, and finally thrown into prison in 1573. He died in prison in 1576, without having shown any signs of repentance, a martyr to his Lutheran opinions.[378] Ciro Trissino, the third actor in this domestic tragedy, had already been strangled in his villa at Cornedo in the year 1574.

[Footnote 376: _Ibid._ p. 413.]

[Footnote 377: _Ibid._ p. 414.]

[Footnote 378: The whole of this extraordinary sequel to Trissino's biography will be read with interest in the last chapter of Signor Morsolin's monograph. It leaves upon my mind the impression that Giulio, though unpardonably ill-tempered, and possibly as ill-conducted in his private life as his foes a.s.serted, was the victim of an almost diabolical persecution.]

Trissino's literary labors bring us back to the specific subject of this chapter. He made it the aim of his life to apply the methods of the ancients to the practice of Italian poetry, and to settle the vexed questions of the language on rational principles. Conscious of the novelty and ambitious nature of his designs, he adopted the Golden Fleece of Jason for an emblem, signifying that his voyages in literature led far beyond the ordinary track, with an inestimable prize in view.[379] Had his genius been equal to his enterprise, he might have effected a decisive revolution. But Trissino was a man of sterling parts and sound judgment rather than a poet: a formulator of rules and precepts rather than a creator. His bent of mind was critical; and in this field he owed his success more to coincidence with prevalent opinion than to originality. Though he fixed the type of Italian tragedy by his _Sofonisba_, and tied comedy down to Latin models by his _Simillimi_, we cannot rate his talents as a playwright very high. The _Poetica_, in which he reduced Horace and Aristotle to Italian prose, and laid down laws for adapting modern literature to antique system, had a wide and lasting influence.[380] We may trace the canon of dramatic unities, which through Italian determined French practice, up to this source: but had not Trissino's precepts been concordant with the tendencies of his age, it is probable that even this treatise would have carried little weight. When he attempted to reform Italian orthography on similar principles, he met with derision and resistance.[381] The world was bent on aping the cla.s.sics; it did not care about adopting the Greek Kappa, Zeta, Phi, etc. Trissino intervened with more effect in the dispute on language. He pleaded that the vernacular, being the common property of the whole nation, should be called Italian and cultivated with a wise tolerance of local diction. Having discovered a copy of Dante's _De Eloquio_, he communicated this treatise to the learned world in support of his own views, and had a translation of it printed.[382] This publication embittered the strife which was then raging. Some Florentine scholars, led by Martelli, impugned its genuineness. But the _De Eloquio_ survived antagonistic criticism, and opened a new stage in the discussion.

[Footnote 379: See Morsolin, _op. cit._, p. 197. This device was imprinted as early as 1529, upon the books published for Trissino at Verona by Janicolo of Brescia.]

[Footnote 380: The _Poetica_ was printed in 1529; but it had been composed some years earlier.]

[Footnote 381: His grammatical and orthographical treatises were published under the t.i.tles of _Epistola a Clemente VII._, _Grammatichetta_, _Dialogo Castellano_, _Dubbi Grammaticali_.

Firenzuola made Trissino's new letters famous and ridiculous by the burlesque sonnets he wrote upon them.]

[Footnote 382: Vicenza, Tolomeo Janicolo, 1529.]

In his attempt to add the heroic species of the epic to Italian literature, Trissino was even less successful than in his dramatic experiments. Disgusted with Ariosto's success in what he regarded as a barbarous style of art, he set himself to make an epic on the model of Homer, with scrupulous obedience to Aristotle's rules. For his subject he chose an episode from Italian history, and used blank verse instead of the attractive octave stanza. The _Italia Liberata_ cost its author twenty years of labor.[383] It was a masterpiece of erudition, displaying profound acquaintance with Roman tactics, and a competent knowledge of Roman topography. But in spite of its characters _plaques_ upon those of the _Iliad_, in spite of its learnedly-constructed episodes, in spite of its fidelity to Aristotle, the _Italia Liberata_ was not a poem. The good sense of the nation refused it. Ta.s.so returned to the romantic method and the meretricious charms of the _ottava rima_. Only Gravina among critics spoke a good word for it. The subject lacked real grandeur. Italy delivered from the Goths, was only Italy delivered to the Lombards. The unity of the poem was not the unity of an epic, but of a chapter from a medieval Chronicle. The machinery of angels, travestied with cla.s.sic t.i.tles, was ridiculous. The Norcian Sibyl, introduced in rivalry with Virgil's Sibyl of Avernus, was out of place. And though Trissino expunged what made the old romantic poems charming, he retained their faults.

Intricate underplots and flatteries of n.o.ble families were consistent with a species which had its origin in feudal minstrelsy. They were wholly out of character with a professed transcription from the Greek. Neither style nor meter rose to the heroic level. The blank verse was pedestrian and prolix. The language was charged with Lombardisms. Thus the _Italia Liberata_ proved at all points that Trissino could make rules, but that he could not apply them to any purpose. It is curious to compare his failure with Milton's success in a not entirely dissimilar endeavor. The poet achieves a triumph where the pedant only suffers a defeat; and yet the aim of both was almost identical. So different is genius guided by principles from the mechanical carpentry of imitative talent.

[Footnote 383: Nine books were first printed at Rome in 1547 by Valerio and Luigi Dorici. The whole, consisting of twenty-seven books, was published at Venice in 1548 by Tolomeo Janicolo of Brescia. This Janicolo was Trissino's favorite publisher.]

CHAPTER XIV.

BURLESQUE POETRY AND SATIRE.

Relation of Satiric to Serious Literature--Italy has more Parody and Caricature than Satire or Comedy--Life of Folengo--His _Orlandino_--Critique of Previous Romances--Lutheran Doctrines--Orlando's Boyhood--Griffarosto--Invective against Friars--Maccaronic Poetry--The Travesty of Humanism--Pedantesque Poetry--Glottogrysio Ludimagistro--Tifi Oda.s.si of Padua--The Pedant Vigonca--Evangelista Fossa--Giorgio Alione--Folengo employs the Maccaronic Style for an Epic--His Address to the Muses--His Hero Baldus--Boyhood and Youth--Cingar--The Travels of the Barons--Gulfora--Witchcraft in Italy--Folengo's Conception of Witchcraft--Entrance into h.e.l.l--The Zany and the Pumpkin--Nature of Folengo's Satire--His Relation to Rabelais--The _Moscheis_--The _Zanitonella_--Maccaronic Poetry was Lombard--Another and Tuscan Type of Burlesque--_Capitoli_--Their Popular Growth--Berni--His Life--His Mysterious Death--His Character and Style--Three Cla.s.ses of _Capitoli_--The pure Bernesque Manner--Berni's Imitators--The Indecency of this Burlesque--Such Humor was Indigenous--_Terza Rima_--Berni's Satires on Adrian VI. and Clement VII.--His Caricatures--His Sonnet on Aretino--The _Rifacimento_ of Boiardo's _Orlando_--The Mystery of its Publication--Albicante and Aretino--The Publishers Giunta and Calvi--Berni's Protestant Opinions--Eighteen Stanzas of the _Rifacimento_ printed by Vergerio--Hypothesis respecting the Mutilation of the _Rifacimento_--Satire in Italy.

In all cla.s.sical epochs of literature comedy and satire have presented their ant.i.thesis to ideal poetry, by setting the actual against the imagined world, or by travestying the forms of serious art. Thus the t.i.tanic farce of Aristophanes was counterposed to aeschylean tragedy; and Moliere portrayed men as they are, before an audience which welcomed Racine's pictures of men as the age conceived they ought to be. It is the mark of really great literature when both thesis and ant.i.thesis, the aspiration after the ideal and the critique of actual existence, exhibit an equality of scale. The comic and satiric species of poetry attain to grandeur only by contact with impa.s.sioned art of a high quality, or else by contrast with a natural greatness in the nation that produces them. Both mask and anti-mask reveal the mental stature of the people. Both issue from the conscience of society, and bear its impress.

If so much be admitted, we can easily understand why burlesque poetry formed the inevitable pendent to polite literature in Italy. There was no national tragedy; therefore there could be no great comedy. The best work of the age, typified by Ariosto's epic, was so steeped in irony that it offered no vantage-ground for humorous counterpoise.

There was nothing left but to exaggerate its salient qualities, and to caricature its form. Such exaggeration was burlesque; such caricature was parody. In like manner, satire found no adequate sphere. The nation's life was not on so grand a scale as to evolve the elements of satire from the contrast between faculties and foibles. Nor again could a society, corrupt and satisfied with corruption, anxious to live and let live, apply the lash with earnestness to its own shoulders. _Facit indignatio versus_, was Juvenal's motto; and indignation tore the heart of Swift. But in Italy there was no indignation. All men were agreed to tolerate, condone, and compromise.

When vices come to be laughingly admitted, when discords between practice and profession furnish themes for tales and epigrams, the moral conscience is extinct. But without an appeal to conscience the satirist has no _locus standi_. Therefore, in Italy there was no great satire, as in Italy there was no great comedy.

The burlesque rhymsters portrayed their own and their neighbors'

immorality with self-complacent humor, calling upon the public to make merry over the spectacle. This poetry, obscene, equivocal, frivolous, horribly sincere, supplied a natural ant.i.thesis to the pseudo-platonic, pedantic, artificial mannerism of the purists. In point of intrinsic value, there is not much to choose between the Petrarchistic and the burlesque styles. Many burlesque poets piqued themselves with justice on their elegance, and clothed gross thoughts in diction of elaborate polish. Meanwhile they laid the affectations, conventions and ideals of the age impartially under contribution. The sonneteers suggested parodies to Aretino, who celebrated vice and deformity in women with hyperboles adapted from the sentimental school.[384] The age of gold was ridiculed by Romolo Bertini.[385] The idyl found its travesty in Berni's pictures of crude village loves and in Folengo's _Zanitonella_. Chivalry became absurd by the simple process of enforcing the prosaic elements in Ariosto, reducing his heroes to the level of plebeian life, and exaggerating the extravagance of his romance. The ironical smile which played upon his lips, expands into broad grins and horse-laughter. Yet, though the burlesque poets turned everything they touched into ridicule, these buffoons were not unfrequently possessed of excellent good sense. Not a few of them, as we shall see, were among the freest thinkers of their age. Like Court jesters they dared to utter truths which would have sent a serious writer to the stake. Lucidity of intellectual vision was granted at this time in Italy to none but positive and materialistic thinkers--to a.n.a.lysts like Machiavelli and Pomponazzi, critics like Pietro Aretino, poets with feet firmly planted on the earth like Berni and Folengo.

The two last-named artists in the burlesque style may be selected as the leaders of two different but cognate schools, the one flourishing in Lombardy, the other in Florence.

[Footnote 384: See the Madrigals in _Opere Burlesche_, vol. iii. pp.

36-38.]

[Footnote 385: _Ibid._ p. 290.]

Girolamo Folengo was born in 1491 of n.o.ble parents at c.i.p.ada, a village of the Mantuan district. He made his first studies under his father's roof, and in due time proceeded to Bologna. Here he attended the lectures of Pomponazzi, and threw himself with ardor into the pleasures and perils of the academical career. Francesco Gonzaga, a fantastical and high-spirited libertine from Mantua, was the recognized leader of the students at that moment. Duels, challenges, intrigues and street-quarrels formed the staple of their life. It was an exciting and romantic round of gayety and danger, of which the novelists have left us many an animated picture. Folengo by his extravagant conduct soon exhausted the easy patience of the university authorities. He was obliged to quit Bologna, and his father refused to receive him. In this emergency he took refuge in a Benedictine convent at Brescia. When he made himself a monk, Folengo changed his Christian name to Teofilo, by which he is now best known in literature. But he did not long endure the confinement of a cloister. After six years spent among the Benedictines, he threw the cowl aside, and ran off with a woman, Girolama Dieda, for whom he had conceived an insane pa.s.sion.[386] This was in the year 1515. During the next eleven years he gave himself to the composition of burlesque poetry. His _Maccaronea_ appeared at Venice in 1519, and his _Orlandino_ in 1526.

The former was published under he pseudonym of Merlinus Cocaius, compounded of a slang word in the Mantuan dialect, and of the famous wizard's t.i.tle of romance.[387] The latter bore the _nom de plume_ of _Limerno Pitocco_--an anagram of Merlino, with the addition of an epithet pointing to the poet's indigence. These works brought Folengo fame but little wealth, and he was fain to return at last to his old refuge.[388] Resuming the cowl, he now retired to a monastery in the kingdom of Naples, visited Sicily, and died at last near Padua, in the convent of S. Croce di Campese. This was in 1544. The last years of his life had been devoted to religious poetry, which is not read with the same curiosity as his burlesque productions.

[Footnote 386: In _Mac._ xx. (p. 152 of Mantuan edition, 1771), he darkly alludes to this episode of his early life, where he makes an exposed witch exclaim:

Nocentina vocor magicis tam dedita chartis, Decepique mea juvenem c.u.m fraude Folengum.]

[Footnote 387: I cannot find sufficient authority for the story of Folengo's having had a grammar-master named Cocaius, from whom he borrowed part of his pseudonym. The explanation given by his Mantuan editor, which I have adopted in the text, seems the more probable.

_Cocaj_ in Mantuan dialect means a cork for a bottle; and the phrase _ch'al fa di cocaj_ is used to indicate some extravagant absurdity or blunder.]

[Footnote 388: There seems good reason, from many pa.s.sages in his _Maccaronea_, to believe that his repentance was sincere. I may here take occasion to remark that, though his poems are gross in the extreme, their moral tone is not unhealthy. He never makes obscenity or vice attractive.]

Teofilo Folengo, or Merlinus Cocaius, or Limerno Pitocco, was, when he wrote his burlesque poems, what the French would call a _decla.s.se_. He had compromised his character in early youth and had been refused the shelter of his father's home. He had taken monastic vows in a moment of pique, or with the baser object of getting daily bread in idleness.

His elopement from the convent with a paramour had brought scandal on religion. Each of these steps contributed to place him beyond the pale of respectability. Driven to bay and forced to earn his living, he now turned round upon society; and spoke his mind out with a freedom born of bile and cynical indifference. If he had learned nothing else at Bologna, he had imbibed the materialistic philosophy of Pomponazzi together with Gonzaga's lessons in libertinage. Brutalized, degraded in his own eyes, rejected by the world of honest or decorous citizens, but with a keen sense of the follies, vices and hypocrisies of his age, he resolved to retaliate by a work of art that should attract attention and force the public to listen to his comments on their shame. In his humorous poetry there is, therefore, a deliberate if not a very dignified intention. He does not merely laugh, but mixes satire with ribaldry, and points buffoonery with biting sarcasm. Since the burlesque style had by its nature to be parasitical and needed an external motive, Folengo chose for the subject of his parody the romance of _Orlando_, which was fashionable to the point of extravagance in Italy after the appearance of the _Furioso_. But he was not satisfied with turning a tale of Paladins to ridicule. He used it as the shield behind which he knew that he might safely shoot his arrows at the clergy and the princes of his native land, attack the fortresses of orthodoxy, and vent his spleen upon society by dragging its depraved ideals in the mire of his own powerful but vulgar scorn.

Folengo has told us that the _Orlandino_ was conceived and written before the _Maccaronea_, though it was published some years later. It is probable that the rude form and plebeian language of this burlesque romance found but little favor with a public educated in the niceties of style. They were ready to accept the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Latin dialect invented for his second venture, because it offended no puristic sensibilities.

But the coa.r.s.e Italian of the _Orlandino_ could not be relished by academicians, who had been pampered with the refinements of Berni's wanton Muse.[389] Only eight cantos appeared; nor is there reason to suppose that any more were written, for it may be a.s.sumed that the fragment had fulfilled its author's purpose.[390] That purpose was to satirize the vice, hypocrisy and superst.i.tion of the clergy, and more particularly of the begging friars. In form the _Orlandino_ pretends to be a romance of chivalry, and it bears the same relation to the _Orlando_ of Boiardo and Ariosto as the _Secchia Rapita_ to the heroic poems of Ta.s.so's school. It begins with a burlesque invocation to Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, in which the poet bluntly describes his poverty and begs for largess. Then Folengo pa.s.ses to an account of his authorities and to the criticism of his predecessors in romantic poetry. He had recourse, he says, to a witch of Val Camonica, who mounted him upon a ram, and bore him to the country of the Goths.

There he found forty decades of Turpin's history among the rubbish of old books stolen from Italy. Of these, three decades had already been discovered and translated by Boiardo; but, after versifying a large portion of the second, the poet left the rest of it to Ariosto. The sixth was stolen from him by Frances...o...b..llo. The last he gave with his own hands to Poliziano, who put it into rhyme and allowed Pulci to have the credit of his labors.[391] Folengo himself took a portion of the first decade, and thus obtained material for treating of the birth and boyhood of Orlando. This exordium is chiefly valuable as a piece of contemporary criticism:

Queste tre Deche dunque sin qua trovo Esser dal fonte di Turpin cavate; Ma _Trebisonda_, _Ancroia_, _Spagna_, e _Bovo_ Coll'altro resto al foco sian donate: Apocrife son tutte, e le riprovo Come nemiche d'ogni veritate; Boiardo, l'Ariosto, Pulci, e'l Cieco Autenticati sono, ed io con seco.

[Footnote 389: Part of Folengo's satire is directed against the purists. See Canto i. 7-9. He confesses himself a Lombard, and shrugs his shoulders at their solemn criticisms:

Non per, se non nacqui Tosco, i' piango; Che ancora il ciacco G.o.de nel suo fango.

To the reproach of "turnip-eating Lombard" he retorts, "Tuscan chatterbox." Compare vi. 1, 2, on his own style:

Oscuri sensi ed affettate rime, Qual'e chi dica mai compor Limerno?]

[Footnote 390: The first line of the elegy placed upon the edition of 1526 runs thus:

Mensibus istud opus tribus _indignatio fecit_.

Folengo claims for himself a satiric purpose. The edition used by me is Molini's, Londra, 1775.]

[Footnote 391: See above Part i. p. 455, for the belief that Poliziano was the real author of the _Morgante Maggiore_.]

If we may accept this stanza as expressing the opinion of Italians in the sixteenth century relative to their romantic poets, we find that it almost exactly agrees with that of posterity. Only the _Mambriano_ of Bello has failed to maintain its place beside the _Morgante_ and _Orlando_.

Embarking upon the subject of his tale, Folengo describes the Court of Charlemagne, and pa.s.ses he Paladins in review, intermingling comic touches with exaggerated imitations of the romantic style. The peers of France preserve their well-known features through the distorting medium of caricature; while humorous couplets, detonating here and there like crackers, break the mock-heroical monotony. Gano, for example, is still the arch-traitor of the tribe of Judas:

Figliuol non d'uomo, ne da Dio creato, Ma il gran Diavol ebbelo cacato.

The effect of parody is thus obtained by emphasizing the style of elder poets and suddenly breaking off into a different vein. Next comes the description of Berta's pa.s.sion for Milone, with a singularly coa.r.s.e and out-spoken invective against love.[392] Meanwhile Charlemagne has proclaimed a tournament. The peers array themselves, and the Court is in a state of feverish expectation. _Parturiunt montes_: instead of mailed warriors careering upon fiery chargers, the knights crawl into the lists on limping mules and lean a.s.ses, with a ludicrous array of kitchen-gear for armor. The description of this donkey-tournament, is one of Folengo's triumphs.[393] When Milone comes upon the scene and jousts beneath his lady's balcony, the style is heightened to the tone of true romance, and, but for the roughness of the language, we might fancy that a page of the _Orlando_ were beneath our eyes. A banquet follows, after which we are regaled with a Court-ball, and then ensues the comic chain of incidents which bring Milone and Berta to the fruition of their love. They elope, take ship, and are separated by a series of mishaps upon the open sea. Berta is cast ash.o.r.e alone in Italy, and begs her way to Sutri, where she gives birth to Orlando in a shepherd's cabin. During the course of these adventures, Folengo diverts his readers with many brilliant pa.s.sages and bits of satire, at one time inveighing against the license of b.a.l.l.s, at another describing the mixed company on board a ship of pa.s.sage; now breaking off into burlesque pedigrees, and then again putting into Berta's mouth a string of Lutheran opinions. Though the personages are romantic, the incidents are copied with realistic fidelity from actual life. We are moving among Italian _bourgeois_ in the masquerade of heroes and princesses.

[Footnote 392: Canto i. 64, 65; ii. 1-4:

Ed io dico ch'Amor e un barda.s.sola Piu che sua madre non fu mai puttana, etc.