Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 24

After pa.s.sing the Furies, and entering the very jaws of Hades, Baldus encounters the fantasies of grammarians and humanists, the idle nonsense of the schoolmen, all the lumber of medieval philosophy mixed with the trifles of the Renaissance.[443] He fights his way through the thick-crowding swarm of follies, and reaches the h.e.l.l of lovers, where a mountebank starts forward and offers to be his guide. Led by this zany, the hero and his comrades enter an enormous gourd, the bulk of which is compared to the mountains of Val Camonica. Within its s.p.a.cious caverns dwell the sages of antiquity, with astrologers, physicians, wizards, and false poets. But, having brought his Barons to this place Merlinus Cocajus can advance no further. He is destined to inhabit the great gourd himself. Beyond it he has no knowledge; and here, therefore, he leaves the figments of his fancy without a word of farewell:

Nec Merlinus ego, laus, gloria, fama c.i.p.adae, Quamvis fautrices habui Tognamque Gosamque, Quamvis implevi totum macaronibus...o...b..m, Quamvis promerui Baldi cantare batajas, Non tamen hanc zuccam potui schifare decentem, In qua me tantos opus est nunc perdere dentes, Tot, quot in immenso posui mendacia libro.

[Footnote 443:

Hic sunt Grammaticae populi, gentesque reductae, Huc, illuc, istuc, reliqua seguitante fameja: Argumenta volant dialectica, mille sophistae Adsunt bajanae, pro, contra, non, ita, lyque: Adsunt Errores, asunt mendacia, bollae, Atque solecismi, fallacia, fictio vatum...

Omnes altandem tanto rumore volutant Ethicen et Physicen, Animam, centumque novellas, Ut sibi stornito Baldus stopparet orecchias.

Squarnazzam Scoti Fraca.s.sus repperit illic, Quam vest.i.t, gabbatque Deum, pugnatque Thomistas.

Alberti magni Lironus somnia zaffat.]

With this grotesque invention of the infernal pumpkin, where lying bards are punished by the extraction of teeth which never cease to grow again, Folengo breaks abruptly off. His epic ends with a Rabelaisian peal of laughter, in which we can detect a growl of discontent and anger.

Laying the book down, we ask ourselves whether the author had a serious object, or whether he meant merely to indulge a vein of wayward drollery. The virulent invectives which abound in the _Maccaronea_, seem to warrant the former conclusion; nor might it be wholly impossible to regard the poem as an allegory, in which Baldus should play the part of the reason, unconscious at first of its n.o.ble origin, consorting with the pa.s.sions and the senses, but finally arriving at the knowledge of its high destiny and defeating the powers of evil.[444] Yet when we attempt to press this theory and to explain the allegory in detail, the thread snaps in our hands. Like the romances of chivalry which it parodies, the _Maccaronea_ is a bizarre mixture of heterogeneous elements, loosely put together to amuse an idle public and excite curiosity. If its author has used it also as the vehicle for satire which embraces all the popular superst.i.tions, vices and hypocrisies of his century; if, as he approaches the conclusion, he a.s.sumes a tone of sarcasm more sinister than befits the broad burlesque of the commencement; we must rest contented with the a.s.sumption that his choleric humor led him from the path of comedy, while the fury of a soul divided against itself inspired his muses of the cook-shop with loftier strains than they had promised at the outset.[445] Should students in the future devote the same minute attention to Folengo that has been paid to Rabelais, it is not improbable that the question here raised may receive solution. The poet is not unworthy of such pains. Regarded merely as the precursor of Rabelais, Folengo deserves careful perusal. He was the creator of a style, which, when we read his epic, forces us to think of the seventeenth century; so strongly did it influence the form of humorous burlesque in Europe for at least two hundred years. On this account, the historian of modern literature cannot afford to neglect him. For the student of Italian manners in Lombardy during the height of the Renaissance, the huge amorphous undigested ma.s.s of the _Maccaronea_ is one of the most valuable and instructive doc.u.ments that we possess. I do not hesitate, from this point of view, to rank it with the masterpieces of the age, with the _Orlando_ of Ariosto, with Machiavelli's comedies, and with the novels of Bandello.

[Footnote 444: This hypothesis receives support from the pa.s.sage in which Baldus compares his new love for Crispis, the paragon of all virtues, with his old infatuation for Berta, who is the personification of vulgar appet.i.te, unrefined natural instinct. See the end of Book xxiii.]

[Footnote 445: The rage of a man who knows that he has chosen the lower while he might have trodden the higher paths of life and art, flames out at intervals through this burlesque. Take this example, the last five lines of Book xxiii.:

Sic ego Macronic.u.m penitus volo linquere carmen c.u.m mihi tempus erit, quod erit, si celsa voluntas Flect.i.tur et nostris lachrymis et supplice voto.

Heu heu! quod volui misero mihi? floribus Austrum Perditus et liquidis immisi fontibus aprum.]

Folengo used the maccaronic style in two other considerable compositions. The one ent.i.tled _Moscheis_ is an elegant parody of the _Batrachomyomachia_, relating the wars of ants and flies in elegiac verse. The other, called _Zanitonella_, celebrates the rustic loves of Zanina and Tonello in a long series of elegies, odes and eclogues.

This collection furnishes a complete epitome of parodies modeled on the pastorals in vogue. The hero appears upon the scene in the following _Sonolegia_, under which t.i.tle we detect a blending of the Sonnet and the Elegy:[446]

Solus solettus stabam colegatus in umbra, Pascebamque meas virda per arva capras.

Nulla travajabant animum pensiria nostrum, Cercabam quoniam tempus habere bonum.

Quando bolzoniger puer, o mea corda forasti; Nec dedit in fallum dardus alhora tuus.

Immo fraca.s.sasti rationis vincula, quae tunc Circa coradam bastio fortis erat.

[Footnote 446: _Zanitonella_, p. 3.]

The lament is spun out to the orthodox length of fourteen verses, and concludes with a pretty point. Who the _bolzoniger puer_ was, is more openly revealed in another Sonolegia:[447]

Nemo super terram mangiat mihi credite panem Seu contadinus, seu citadinus erit, Quem non attrapolet Veneris b.a.s.t.a.r.dulus iste, Qui volat instar avis, caecus, et absque braga.

[Footnote 447: _Ibid._ p. 2. Compare Sonolegia xiii. _ib._ p. 40.]

To follow the poet through all his burlesques of Petrarchistic and elegiac literature, Italian or Latin, would be superfluous.

It is enough to say that he leaves none of their accustomed themes untouched with parody. The masterpiece of his art in this style is the sixth Eclogue, consisting of a dialogue between two drunken b.u.mpkins--_interloquutores Tonellus et Pedralus, qui ambo inebriantur_.[448]

[Footnote 448: _Op. cit._ p. 42.]

The maccaronic style was a product of North Italy, cultivated by writers of the Lombard towns, who versified comic or satiric subjects in parodies of humanistic poetry. The branch of burlesque literature we have next to examine, belonged to Tuscany, and took its origin from the equivocal carnival and dance songs raised to the dignity of art by Lorenzo de' Medici. Its conventional meter was _terza rima_, handled with exquisite sense of rhythm, but degraded to low comedy by the treatment of trivial or vulgar motives. The author of these _Capitoli_, as they were called, chose some common object--a paint-brush, salad, a sausage, peaches, figs, eels, radishes--to celebrate; affected to be inspired by the grandeur of his subject; developed the drollest tropes, metaphors and ill.u.s.trations; and almost invariably conveyed an obscene meaning under the form of innuendoes appropriate to his professed theme. Though some exceptions can be pointed out, the _Capitoli_ in general may be regarded as a species of Priapic literature, fashioned to suit the taste of Florentines, who had been accustomed for many generations to semi-disguised obscenity in their vernacular town poetry.[449] Taken from the streets and squares, adopted by the fashionable rhymsters of academies and courtly coteries, the rude Fescennine verse lost none of its license, while it a.s.sumed the polish of urbane art. Were it not for this antiquity and popularity of origin, which suggests a plausible excuse for the learned writers of _Capitoli_ and warns us to regard their indecency as in some measure conventional, it would be difficult to approach the three volumes which contain a selection of their poems, without horror.[450] So deep, universal, unblushing is the vice revealed in them.

[Footnote 449: We may ascend to the very sources of popular Tuscan poetry, and we shall find this literature of _double entendre_ in the _Canzoni_ of the _Nicchio_ and _Ugellino_, noticed above, Part i. p.

38. Besides the _Canti Carnascialeschi_ edited by Il Lasca, we have a collection of _Canzoni a Ballo_, printed at Florence in 1569, which proves that the raw material of the _Capitoli_ lay ready to the hand of the burlesque poets in plebeian literature.]

[Footnote 450: My references are made to _Opere Burlesche_, 3 vols., 1723, with the names of Londra and Firenze. Gregorovius says of them: "Wenn man diese 'scherzenden' Gedichte liest, muss man entweder uber die Nichtigkeit ihrer Gegenstande staunen, oder vor dem Abgrund der Unsittlichkeit erschrecken, den sie frech entschleiern." _Stadt Rom._ vol. viii. p. 345.]

To Frances...o...b..rni belongs the merit, such as it is, of having invented the burlesque _Capitoli_. He gave his name to it, and the term Bernesque has pa.s.sed into the critical phraseology of Europe. The unique place of this rare poet in the history of Italian literature, will justify a somewhat lengthy account of his life and works.

Studying him, we study the ecclesiastical and literary society of Rome in the age of Leo X. and Clement VII.

Frances...o...b..rni was born at Lamporecchio, in the Val di Nievole, about the end of the fifteenth century.[451] His parents were poor; but they were connected with the family of the Cardinal Bibbiena, who, after the boy's education at Florence, took him at the age of nineteen to Rome. Upon the death of this patron in 1520, Berni remained in the service of Bibbiena's nephew, Agnolo Dovizio. Receiving no advancement from these kinsmen, he next transferred himself, in the quality of secretary, to the household of Giammatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona, who was a distinguished Mecaenas of literary men. This change involved his taking orders. Berni now resided partly at Rome and partly at Verona, tempering the irksome duties of his office by the writing of humorous poetry, which he recited in the then celebrated Academy of the Vignajuoli. This society, which numbered Molza, Mauro, La Casa, Lelio Capilupi, Firenzuola, and Frances...o...b..ni among its members, gave the tone to polite literature at the Courts of Leo and Clement.

[Footnote 451: The probable date is 1496.]

Berni survived the sack of 1527, which proved so disastrous to Italian scholars; but he lost everything he possessed.[452] Monsignor Giberti employed him on various missions of minor importance, involving journeys to Venice, Padua, Nice, Florence, and the Abruzzi. After sixteen years of Court-life, Berni grew weary of the petty duties, which must have been peculiarly odious to a man of his lazy temperament, if it is true, as he informs us, that the Archbishop kept him dancing attendance till daylight, while he played primiera with his friends. Accordingly, he retired to Florence, where he held a canonry in the cathedral. There, after a quiet life of literary ease, he died suddenly in 1535. It was rumored that he had been poisoned: and the most recent investigations into the circ.u.mstances of his death tend rather to confirm this report. All that is known, however, for certain, is that he spent the evening of May 25 with his friends the Marchionesse di Ma.s.sa in the Palazzo Pazzi, and that next morning he breathed his last. His mysterious and unexplained decease was ascribed to one of the two Medicean princes then resident in Florence. A sonnet in Berni's best style, containing a vehement invective against Alessandro de' Medici, is extant. The hatred expressed in this poem may have occasioned the rumor (which certainly acquired a certain degree of currency) that Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici attempted to use the poet for the secret poisoning of his cousin, and on his refusal had him murdered. Other accounts of the supposed a.s.sa.s.sination ascribe a like intention to the Duke, who is said to have suggested the poisoning of the Cardinal to Berni. Both stories agree in representing his tragic end as the price paid for refusal to play the part of an a.s.sa.s.sin. The matter remains obscure; but enough suspicion rests upon the manner of his death to render this characteristic double legend plausible; especially when we remember what the customs of Florence with respect to poisoning were, and how the Cardinal de' Medici ended his own life.[453]

[Footnote 452: _Orl. Inn. Rifatto da Fr. Berni_, i. 14, 23-28, makes it clear that Berni was an eye-witness of the Sack of Rome. Panizzi's reference to this pa.s.sage (_Boiardo ed Ariosto_, London, 1830, vol.

ii. p. cxi.) involves what seems to me a confusion.]

[Footnote 453: The matter is fully discussed by Mazzuch.e.l.li in his biography of Berni. He, relying on the hypothesis of Berni having lived till 1536, if not till 1543, points out the impossibility of his having been murdered by the Cardinal, who died himself in July, 1535.

This difficulty has recently been removed by Signor Antonio Virgili's demonstration of the real date of Berni's death in May, 1535. See _Ra.s.segna Settima.n.a.le_, February 23, 1879, a paper of great importance for students of Berni's life and works, to which I shall frequently refer.]

Such is the uneventful record of Berni's career. He was distinguished among all the poets of the century for his genial vein of humor and amiable personal qualities. That he was known to be stained with vices which it is not easy to describe, but which he frankly acknowledged in his poetical epistles, did not injure his reputation in that age of mutual indulgence.[454] Willing to live and let live, with a never-failing fund of drollery, and with a sincere dislike for work of any sort, he lounged through existence, an agreeable, genial and witty member of society. If this were all we should not need to write about him now. But with this easy-going temperament he combined a genius for poetry so peculiar and delicate, that his few works mark an epoch in Italian literature.

[Footnote 454: It is enough to mention the _Capitoli_ "Delle Pesche,"

"A M. Antonio da Bibbiena," "Sopra un Garzone," "Lamentazion d'Amore."

References are made to the _Rime e Lettere di Fr. Berni_, Firenze, Barbera, 1865. For the _Rifacimento_ of the _Orlando Innamorato_ I shall use the Milan reprint in 5 vols., 1806, which also contains the _Rime_.]

The best description of Berni is contained in the burlesque portrait of himself, which forms part of his _Boiardo Innamorato_.[455] This has been so well translated by an English scholar, the late W.S. Rose, that I cannot do better than refer the student to his stanzas. They convey as accurate a notion of the Bernesque manner as can be derived from any version in a foreign language.[456] The character he there has given to himself for laziness is corroborated by his extant epistles in prose. Berni represents himself as an incurably bad correspondent, pleased to get letters, but overcome with mortal terror when he is obliged to answer them.[457] He confides to his friend Frances...o...b..ni that the great affair in life is to be gay and to write as little as possible:[458] "A vivere avemo sino alla morte a dispetto di chi non vuole, e il vantaggio e vivere allegramente, come conforto a far vio, attendando a frequentar quelli banchetti che si fanno per Roma, e scrivendo sopra tutto manco che potete. _Quia haec est victoria, quae vincit mundum._" The curse has been laid upon him of having to drive his quill without ceasing:[459] "_O ego laevus_, che scrivo d'ogni tempo, e scrivo ora che ho una gamba al collo, che ieri tornando dalla Certosa mi ruppe la mia cavalla, cascandomivi sopra.

Sono pure un gran coglione!" So his pen runs on. The man writes just as he spoke, without affectation, mixing his phrases of Latin with the idiom of common life. The whole presents an agreeable contrast to the stilted style of Bembo, La Casa's studied periods, and the ambitious epistolary efforts of Aretino. Sometimes he breaks into doggrel:[460]

"S'io avessi l'ingenio del Burchiello, Io vi farei volentier un sonetto, Che non ebbi giammai tema e subietto, Piu dolce, piu piacevol, ne piu bello." When his friends insist upon his writing to them, rhyme comes to his aid, and he affects a comic fit of rage:[461]

Perche m'ammazzi con le tue querele, Priuli mio, perche ti duole a torto, Che sai che t'amo piu che l'orso il miele, etc.

[Footnote 455: Book III. canto vii. (canto 67 of the _Rifacimento_, vol. iv. p. 266).]

[Footnote 456: This translation will be found in Panizzi's edition of the _Orlando Innamorato_ (London, Pickering, 1830), vol. ii. p. cxiv.]

[Footnote 457: Letter vi. to Messer Giamb. Montebuona.]

[Footnote 458: Letter xvii.]

[Footnote 459: Letter xxiv.]

[Footnote 460: Letter to Ippolito de' Medici (ed. Milan, vol. v. p.

227).]

[Footnote 461: Letter ix.]

Importuned to publish the poems he recited with so much effect in private circles, he at last consents because he cannot help it:[462]

"Compare, io non ho potuto tanto schermirmi che pure m'e bisognato dar fuori ques...o...b..nedetto Capitolo e Comento della Primiera; e siate certo che l'ho fatto, non perche mi consuma.s.si d'andare in stampa, ne per immortalarmi come il cavalier Casio, ma per fuggire la fatica mia, e la malevolenza di molti che domandandomelo e non lo avendo mi volevano mal di morte." Nor were these the ordinary excuses of an author eager to conceal his vanity. The _Capitolo_ upon the game of primiera was the only poem which appeared with his consent.[463] He intended his burlesque verses for recitation, and is even said to have preserved no copies of them, so that many of his compositions, piratically published in his lifetime, were with difficulty restored to a right text by Il Lasca in 1548. This indifference to public fame did not imply any carelessness of style. Mazzuch.e.l.li, who had seen some of his rough copies, a.s.serts that they bore signs of the minutest pains bestowed upon them. The melody of versification, richness of allusion, refinement of phrase, equality and flowing smoothness, which distinguish Berni's work from that of his imitators confirm the belief that his _Capitoli_ and sonnets, in spite of their apparent ease, were produced with the conscientious industry of a real artist.

[Footnote 462: Letter vii. Compare the sonnet "In nome di M.

Prinzivalle da Pontremoli" (ed. Milan, vol. v. p. 3).]

[Footnote 463: It was published at Rome by Calvo in 1526, with the comment of M. Pietro Paolo da S. Chirico.]