Renaissance in Italy Volume V Part 26

Ch'ormai ogni paese Hai ammorbato, ogn'uom, ogn'animale, Il ciel e Dio e 'l diavol ti vuol male.

Quelle veste ducale, O ducali accattate e furfantate, Che ti piangono addosso sventurate, A suon di bastonate Ti saran tratte, prima che tu muoja, Dal reverendo padre messer boja, Che l'anima di noja, Mediante un capestro, caveratti, E per maggior favore squarteratti; E quei tuoi leccapiatti, Barda.s.sonacci, paggi da taverna, Ti canteranno il requiem eterna.

Or vivi e ti governa, Bench'un pugnale, un cesso, overo un nodo Ti faranno star cheto in ogni modo.

From this conclusion the rest may be divined. Berni paid dearly for the satisfaction of thus venting his spleen. Aretino had found more than his match. Though himself a master in the art of throwing dirt, he could not, like Berni, sling his missiles with the certainty of gaining for himself by the same act an immortality of glory. This privilege is reserved for the genius of style, and style alone.

Therefore he had to shrink in silence under Berni's scourge. But Aretino was not the man to forego revenge if only an opportunity for inflicting injury upon his antagonist, full and effectual, and without peril to himself, was offered. The occasion came after Berni's death; and how he availed himself of it, will appear in the next paragraphs.

Though the _Capitoli_ and sonnets won for their author the high place he occupies among Italian poets, Berni is also famous for his _rifacimento_ or remodeling of the _Orlando Innamorato_. He undertook this task after the publication of the _Furioso_; and though part was written at Verona, we know from references to contemporary events contained in the _rifacimento_, that Berni was at work upon it in the last years of his life at Florence. It was not published until some time after his death. Berni subjected the whole of Boiardo's poem to minute revision, eliminating obsolete words and Lombard phrases, polishing the verse, and softening the roughness of the elder poet's style. He omitted a few pa.s.sages, introduced digressions, connected the episodes by links and references, and opened each canto with a dissertation in the manner of Ariosto. Opinions may vary as to the value of the changes wrought by Berni. But there can be no doubt that his work was executed with artistic accuracy, and that his purpose was a right one. He aimed at nothing less than rendering a n.o.ble poem adequate to the measure of literary excellence attained by the Italians since Boiardo's death. The _Innamorato_ was to be made worthy of the _Furioso_. The nation was to possess a continuous epic of Orlando, complete in all its parts and uniformly pure in style. Had Berni lived to see his own work through the press, it is probable that this result would have been attained. As it happened, the malignity of fortune or the malice of a concealed enemy defeated his intention. We only possess a deformed version of his _rifacimento_.

The history, or rather the tragedy, of its publication involves some complicated questions of conjecture. Yet the side-lights thrown upon the conditions of literature at that time in Italy, as well as on the mystery of Berni's death, are sufficiently interesting to justify the requisite expenditure of s.p.a.ce and time.

The _rifacimento_ appeared in a mutilated form at Venice in 1541, from the press of the Giunti, and again in 1542 at Milan from that of Francesco Calvo. These two issues are identical, except in the t.i.tle and tail pages. The same batch of sheets was in fact divided by the two publishers. In 1545 another issue, called _Edizione Seconda_, saw the light at Venice, in which Giunta introduced a very significant note, pointing out that certain stanzas were not the work of "M.

Frances...o...b..rni, but of one who presumptuously willed to do him so great an injury."[473] This edition, differing in many respects from those of 1541 and 1542, was on the whole an improvement. It would seem that the publishers, in the interval between 1541 and 1545, regretted that Berni's copy had been tampered with, and did their best, in the absence of the original, to restore a correct text. Still, as Giunta acknowledged, the _rifacimento_ had been irretrievably damaged by some private foe.[474] The introductory dedication to Isabella Gonzaga, where we might have expected an allusion to Boiardo, is certainly not Berni's; and the two lines,

Ne ti sdegnar veder quel ch'altri volse Forse a te dedicar, ma morte il tolse,

must be understood to refer to Berni's and not to Boiardo's death.

Comparison of the two editions makes it, moreover, clear that Berni's MS. had been garbled, and the autograph probably put out of the way before the publication of the poem.

[Footnote 473: "Di chi presuntuosamente gli ha voluto fare tanta ingiuria." This note occurs at Stanza 83 of Canto 1.]

[Footnote 474: In some cases the readings of the second edition are inferior to those of the first, while both fall short of Boiardo.

Boiardo wrote in his description of Astolfo (Canto i. 60):

Quel solea dir, ch'egli era per sciagura, E tornava a cader senza paura.

In the _rifacimento_ of 1541 we have:

E alle volte cadeva per sciagura, E si levava poi senza paura.

In that of 1545:

Un sol dispetto avea: dice Turpino Che nel cader alquanto era latino.

I take these instances from Panizzi.]

Who is to be held responsible for this fraud? Who was the presumptuous enemy who did such injury to Berni? Panizzi, so far back as 1830, pointed out that Giovanni Alberto Albicante took some part in preparing the edition of 1541-2. This man prefixed sonnets written by himself to the _rifacimento_; "whence we might conclude that he was the editor."[475] Signor Virgili, to whose researches attention has already been directed, proved further by references to Pietro Aretino's correspondence that this old enemy of Berni had a hand in the same work. Writing to Francesco Calvo from Venice on February 16, 1540, Aretino approaches the subject of the _rifacimento_ in these words:[476] "Our friend Albicante informs me, with reference to the printing of _Orlando_ defamed by Berni, that you are good enough to meet my wishes, for which I thank you.... You will see that, for the sake of your own modesty, you are bound either not to issue the book at all, or else to purge it of all evil-speaking." He then states that it had been his own intention "to emend the Count of Scandiano's _Innamoramento_, a thing in its kind of heroic beauty, but executed in a trivial style, and expressed with phrases at once plebeian and obsolete." This task he renounced upon reflection that it would bring him no fame to a.s.sume the mask of a dead man's labors. In another letter to the same Calvo, dated February 17, 1542, Aretino resumes the subject. Sbernia (so he chooses to call Berni) has been "overwhelmed beneath the ruins he pulled down upon himself by his undoing of the _Innamoramento_."[477] Now, it is certain that the ruin proclaimed by Aretino did really fall on Berni's labors. In 1545 Lodovico Domenichi published a second _rifacimento_, far inferior in style to that of Berni, and executed with the slovenliness of a literary hack. But this was several times reprinted, whereas Berni's remained neglected on the shelves of the librarians until the year 1725, when it was republished and welcomed with a storm of exaggerated enthusiasm.

[Footnote 475: _Boiardo ed Ariosto_, vol. ii. p. cx.x.xiv.]

[Footnote 476: _Lettere_, Book ii. p. 121.]

[Footnote 477: _Ibid._ p. 249. We might quote a parallel pa.s.sage from the Prologue to the _Ipocrita_, which Aretino published in 1542, just after accomplishing his revenge on Berni: "Io non ho pensato al gastigo che io darei a quegli che pongono il lor nome nei libri che essi guastano nella foggia che un non so chi ha guasto il Boiardo, per non mi credere che si trova.s.se cotanta temerita nella presunzione del mondo." The hypocrisy of this is worthy of the play's t.i.tle.]

We have therefore reached this conclusion, that Aretino, aided by Albicante, both of them notable literary brigands, contrived to send a mutilated version of the _rifacimento_ to press, with a view of doing irreparable mischief to Berni's reputation.[478] We have also seen that there was something dangerous in Berni's work, described by Aretino as _maldicentia_, which he held as a threat over the Milanese publisher. Lastly, Giunta recognized too late that he had made himself the party to some act of malice by issuing a garbled copy. Aretino had, we know, a private grudge to satisfy. He could not forget the castigation he received at Berni's hands, in the sonnet which has been already described. The hatred subsisting between the two men had been further exasperated by the different parts they took in a literary duel. Antonio Broccardo, a young Venetian scholar, attacked Pietro Bembo's fame at Padua in 1530, and attempted to raise allies against the great dictator. Aretino took up the cudgels for Bembo, and a.s.sailed Broccardo with vehement abuse and calumny. Berni ranged himself upon Broccardo's side. The quarrel ended in Broccardo's death under suspicious circ.u.mstances in 1531 at Padua. He was, indeed, said to have been killed by Aretino.[479] Berni died mysteriously at Florence four years later, and Aretino caused his _rifacimento_, "purged of evil-speaking," to be simultaneously published at Venice and Milan.

[Footnote 478: Mazzuch.e.l.li (_Scrittori d'Italia_: Albicante, Giov.

Alberto) may be consulted about the relations between these two ruffians, who alternately praised and abused each other in print.]

[Footnote 479: See Mazzuch.e.l.li, _op. cit._, under "Brocardo, Antonio."

The spelling of the name varies. Bembo, six years afterwards, told Varchi that Aretino drove Broccardo for him into an early grave. See _Lettere all'Aretino_, vol. ii. p. 186, ed. Romagnoli. The probability is that Broccardo died of fever aggravated by the annoyance caused him by Aretino's calumnies. There is no valid suspicion of poison.]

The question still remains to be asked how Aretino, Berni's avowed enemy, obtained possession of the MS. Berni had many literary friends.

Yet none of them came forward to avert the catastrophe. None of them undertook the publication of his remains. His last work was produced, not at Florence, where he lived and died, but at Venice; and Albicante, Aretino's tool, was editor. In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to answer this question authoritatively.

Considerable light, however, is thrown upon the mystery by a pamphlet published in 1554 by the heretic Vergerio. He states that Berni undertook his _rifacimento_ with the view of diffusing Protestant doctrines in a popular and un.o.btrusive form; but that the craft of the devil, or in other words the policy of the Church, effected its suppression at the very moment when it was finished and all but printed.[480] Here, then, we seem to find some missing links in the dark chain of intrigue. Aretino's phrase _maldicentia_ is explained; his menace to Francesco Calvo becomes intelligible; the silence of Berni's friends can be accounted for; and the agency by which the MS.

was placed in Albicante's hands, can be at least conjectured. As a specimen of Berni's Lutheran propaganda, Vergerio subjoins eighteen stanzas, written in the poet's purest style, which were addressed to Battista Sanga, and which formed the induction to the twentieth Canto.

This induction, as it stands in Berni's _Innamorato_, is reduced to seven stanzas, grossly garbled and deformed in diction. Very few of the original lines have been retained, and those subst.i.tuted are full of vulgarisms.[481] From a comparison of the original supplied by Vergerio with the mutilated version, the full measure of the mischief practiced upon Berni's posthumous work can be gauged. Furthermore, it must be noticed that these compromising eighteen stanzas contained the names of several men alive in Italy, all of whom were therefore interested in their suppression, or precluded from exposing the fraud.

[Footnote 480: This curious pamphlet was reprinted from a unique copy by Panizzi, _op. cit._ vol. iii. p. 361. In the introduction, Vergerio gives an interesting account of Berni. He represents him as a man of worldly life, addicted to gross pleasures and indecent literature until within a few years of his death. Having been converted to evangelical faith in Christ, Berni then resolved to use the _Orlando_ as a vehicle for Lutheran opinions; and his _rifacimento_ was already almost printed, when the devil found means to suppress it. Vergerio is emphatic in his statement that the poem was finished and nearly printed. If this was indeed the case, we must suppose that Albicante worked upon the sheets, canceling some and leaving others, and that the book thus treated was afterwards shared by Giunta and Calvo.]

[Footnote 481: I shall print a translation of the eighteen stanzas in an Appendix to this volume. Lines like the following,

Arrandellarsi come un salsicciuolo,

which are common in the mangled version, would never have pa.s.sed Berni's censure.]

The inference I am inclined to draw from Signor Virgili's researches, combined with Vergerio's pamphlet, is that the Church interfered to prevent the publication of Berni's heretical additions to Boiardo's poem. Berni's sudden death, throwing his affairs into confusion at the moment when he was upon the point of finishing the business, afforded an excellent occasion to his ecclesiastical and personal opponents, who seem to have put some pressure on his kinsmen to obtain the MS.

or the sheets they meant to mutilate.[482] The obnoxious pa.s.sages may have been denounced by Aretino; for we know that he was intimate with Vergerio, and it is more than probable that the verses to Sanga were already in circulation.[483] Aretino, strange to say, was regarded in clerical quarters as a pillar of the Church. He therefore found it in his power to wreak his vengeance on an enemy at the same time that he posed as a defender of the faith. That he was allowed to control the publication, appears from his letters to Calvo; and he confided the literary part of the business to Albicante. His threats to Calvo have reference to Berni's heresy, and the _maldicentia_ may possibly have been the eighteen stanzas addressed to Sanga. The terror of the Inquisition reduced Berni's friends to silence. Aretino, even if he had not denounced Berni to the Church, had now identified himself with the crusade against his poem, and he was capable of ruining opponents in this unequal contest by charges they would have found it impossible to refute. The eighteen stanzas were addressed to a secretary of Clement VII.; and men of note like Molza, Flamminio, Navagero, Fondulo, Fregoso, were distinctly named in them. If, then, there is any cogency in the conclusions I have drawn from various sources, Berni's poem, and perhaps his life, was sacrificed to theological hatred in combination with Aretino's personal malice. The unaccountable inactivity of his friends is explained by their dread of being entangled in a charge of heresy.[484]

[Footnote 482: This appears from a reference in Aretino's second letter to Calvo, where he talks of Berni's "friends and relatives." It might be going too far to suggest that Berni was murdered by his ecclesiastical enemies, who feared the scandal which would be caused by the publication of his opinions.]

[Footnote 483: Vergerio may have communicated the eighteen stanzas to Aretino; or conversely he may have received them from him. I have read through the letters exchanged between him and Aretino--and they are numerous--without, however, finding any pa.s.sage that throws light on this transaction. Aretino published both series of letters. He had therefore opportunity to suppress inconvenient allusions.]

[Footnote 484: We may note the dates and fates of the chief actors in this tragedy. Broccardo died of grief in 1531. Berni died, under suspicion of poison, in 1535. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was poisoned a few months later, in 1535. Alessandro de' Medici was murdered by Lorenzino in 1537. Pietro Paolo Vergerio was deprived of his see and accused of heresy in 1544. Berni's old friend, the author of _Il Forno_, M. La Casa, conducted his trial, as Papal Nuncio at Venice. Aretino, who had a.s.sumed the part of inquisitor and mutilator to gratify his private spite, survived triumphant.]

Enough has been already said about Berni's imitators in the burlesque style. Of satire in the strict sense of the term, the poets of the sixteenth century produced nothing that is worth consideration. The epistolary form introduced by Ariosto, and the comic caprices rendered fashionable by Berni, determined the compositions of Pietro Aretino, of Ercole Bentivoglio, of Luigi Alamanni, of Antonio Vinciguerra, of Giovanni Andrea dell'Anguillara, of Cesare Caporali, and of the minor versifiers whose occasional poems in _terza rima_, seasoned with more or less satirical intention, are usually reckoned among the satires of the golden age.[485] Personal vituperation poured forth in the heat of literary quarrels, scarcely deserves the name of satire. Else it might be necessary in this place to mention Niccol Franco's sonnets on Pietro Aretino, or the far more elegant compositions of Annibale Caro directed against his enemy Castelvetro.[486] Models for this species of poetical abuse had been already furnished by the sonnets exchanged between Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco in a more masculine age of Italian literature.[487] It is not, however, inc.u.mbent upon the historian to resuscitate the memory of those forgotten and now unimportant duels. The present allusion to them may suffice to corroborate the opinion already stated that, while the Italians of the Renaissance were ingenious in burlesque, and virulent in personal invective, they lacked the earnestness of moral conviction, the indignation, and the philosophic force that generate real satire.

[Footnote 485: See the _Raccolta di Poesie Satiriche_, Milano, 1808.]

[Footnote 486: See, for the latter series, _Poesie Satiriche_, pp.

138-156.]

[Footnote 487: See _Sonetti di Matteo Franco e di Luigi Pulci_, 1759.

Cp. above, Part i. p. 431.]

CHAPTER XV.

PIETRO ARETINO.

Aretino's Place in Italian Literature and Society--His Birth and Boyhood--Goes to Rome--In the Service of Agostino Chigi--At Mantua--Gradual Emergence into Celebrity--The Incident of Giulio Romano's Postures--Giovanni delle Bande Nere--Aretino settles at Venice--The Mystery of his Influence--Discerns the Power of the Press--Satire on the Courts--Magnificent Life--Aretino's Wealth--His Tributary Princes--Bullying and Flattery--The Divine Aretino--His Letter to Vittoria Colonna--To Michelangelo--His Admiration of Artists--Relations with Men of Letters--Epistle to Bernardo Ta.s.so--His Lack of Learning--Disengagement from Puristic Prejudices--Belief in his own Powers--Rapidity of Composition--His Style--Originality and Independence--Prologue to _Talanta_--Bohemian Comrades--Niccol Franco--Quarrel with Doni--Aretino's Literary Influence--His Death--The Anomaly of the Renaissance--Estimate of Aretino's Character.

Pietro Aretino, as I have already had occasion to observe, is a representative name in the history of Italian literature. It is almost as impossible to slur him over with a pa.s.sing notice as it would be to dwell but casually upon Machiavelli or Ariosto, Cellini or Poliziano, in reviewing the Renaissance. Base in character, coa.r.s.e in mental fiber, unworthy to rank among real artists, notwithstanding his undoubted genius, Aretino was the typical ruffian of an age which brought ruffianism to perfection, welcomed it when successful, bowed to its insolence, and viewed it with complacent toleration in the highest places of Church, State, and letters. He was the _condottiere_ of the pen in a society which truckled to the Borgias. He embodied the infamy and cowardice which lurked beneath the braveries of Italian Court-life--the coa.r.s.eness of speech which contradicted literary purism--the cynicism and gross strength of appet.i.te for which convention was a flimsy veil.[488] The man himself incarnated the dissolution of Italian culture. His works, for the student of that period, are an anti-mask to the brilliant display of Ariosto's or of Ta.s.so's puppets. It is the condemnation of Italy that we are forced to give this prominence to Aretino. If we place Poliziano or Guicciardini, Bembo or La Casa, Bandello or Firenzuola, Cellini or Berni, Paolo Giovio or Lodovico Dolce--typical men of letters chosen from the poets, journalists, historians, thinkers, artists, novel-writers of the age--under the critical microscope, we find in each and all of them a tincture of Aretino. It is because he emphasizes and brings into relief one master element of the Renaissance, that he deserves the rank a.s.signed to him. In Athens Aristophanes is named together with Sophocles, Thucydides and Plato, because, with genius equal to theirs, he represented the comic ant.i.thesis to tragedy, philosophy and history. In Italy Aretino is cla.s.sed with Machiavelli and Ariosto for a different reason. His lower nature expressed, not an ant.i.thesis, but a quality, which, in spite of intellectual and moral superiority, they possessed in common with him, which he exhibited in arrogant abundance, and which cannot be omitted from the survey of his century. The alloy of cynicism in Machiavelli, his sordid private pleasures, his perverse admiration for Cesare Borgia, his failure to recognize the power of goodness in the world, condemn him to the company of this triumvir. The profligacy of genius in Ariosto, his waste of divine gifts upon trifles, his lack of n.o.ble sentiment, his easy acquiescence in conditions of society against which he should have uttered powerful protest, consign him, however undeservedly, to the same a.s.sociation.[489]

[Footnote 488: The best source of information regarding Pietro Aretino is his own correspondence published in six volumes (Paris, 1609), and the two volumes of letters written to him by eminent personages, which are indeed a rich mine of details regarding Italian society and manners in the sixteenth century. Mazzuch.e.l.li's _Vita di Pietro Aretino_ (Padua, 1741) is a conscientious, sober, and laborious piece of work, on which all subsequent notices have been based.]

[Footnote 489: It may be mentioned that Ariosto has immortalized this bully in the _Orlando_ (xlvi. 14), among the most ill.u.s.trious men and women of his age: