Studies in the Poetry of Italy Part 13

Neither the wars of Charlemagne nor the madness of Orlando gives a real unity to the poem; the nearest thing to such a unity is to be found in the story of Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan, the latter a Christian, daughter of Aymon and sister to Rinaldo. They love each other, seek each other, and after countless adventures by land and sea, are united in marriage, thus founding the house of Este. It is with Roger's conversion to Christianity and his marriage that the poem ends.

All the different heroes are gathered together before the walls of Paris, Orlando's madness has been cured by Astolfo, who has made his famous visit to the moon, where, in the paradise of fools, he recovers the lost brain of his friend; Rinaldo, on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte, the truculent and hitherto unconquerable enemy of the Christians, and with his fall the war and the poem are ended.

Hard as it is to give a clear conception of the complicated adventures told in the Orlando Furioso, it is perhaps still harder to give an idea of its charm to these who have not read it. We are introduced at once into a world of fancy, a sort of fairy-book for grown-up people. The poem is not deeply impressive like the Divine Comedy, it has no elements of tragedy. Ariosto did not aim at moral effect, but merely sought to amuse his readers. Dante represents the deep, mystical religious feeling of his times; Ariosto represents the worldliness of the neo-paganism of the Renaissance. The asceticism of the Middle Ages now gives way to intense delight in the life that now is. The artist and poet sought to represent the pomp and circ.u.mstance of life, man in his physical and intellectual power, woman in her beauty, nature in all its picturesque variety, art in its magnificence. This was the ideal followed by Ariosto; this was the ideal of the Italian Renaissance.

The great charm of Ariosto is his style. Here form reaches its highest expression. He worked over and polished his verses unceasingly, yet so natural are they that they seem to have been written spontaneously. The Orlando is full of beautiful descriptions, of pathetic scenes, alternating skilfully with humorous ones. Ariosto's humor, however, is not coa.r.s.e or grotesque, but refined and elegant. He does not caricature the stories of chivalry, as Cervantes does in Don Quixote; but living in a skeptical age he cannot take seriously the creatures of his own fancy, and accompanies the prodigious deeds of his heroes with a smile of good-natured irony.

We have already said that Ariosto was a man of good sense. From the quiet of his own home he looked out upon the ruffled sea of life and mused on what he saw. His reflections are contained in his satires; but they likewise add a peculiar and original charm to the Orlando Furioso.

Among the parts most popular with the serious reader are the short introductions to the various cantos, each containing some wise reflection, some rule of life, or some kindly satire; this charm is well known to the genuine lover of Thackeray.

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

Progress of the revival of learning--Florence the center of the movement--Poggio Bracciolini; Pico della Mirandola; Politian; their services to scholarship--The chivalrous romance in Italy--Boiardo's influence--Ariosto (1474-1533); Comedies and Satires--His Orlando Furioso reflects the age.

1. Trace the development of the Renaissance from Petrarch to Politian.

2. Name some of the more important writers of this period.

3. Who was Lorenzo the Magnificent?

4. Who was the first to introduce chivalrous romances into Italian literature?

5. Who was Boiardo? What were his services to Italian literature?

6. Give a sketch of Ariosto's life.

7. Describe his character.

8. Give a list of his works.

9. What is the general theme of Orlando Furioso?

10. Did Ariosto invent the plot of his poem?

11. Tell the story of Cloridano and Medoro.

12. How does Orlando become insane?

13. Describe the death of Zerbino.

14. How does the poem end?

15. Was Ariosto a great poet?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The best English book on the Renaissance is that by J. A.

Symonds. For the romatic poets, Leigh Hunt's book, "Stories from the Italian Poets," should be read. The first canto of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore was translated by Byron and may be found in his works. A complete translation of Orlando Furioso, translated by Rose, is published in the Bohn Library.

CHAPTER VII

Ta.s.sO

From the beginning of Italian literature to the death of Ariosto nearly three hundred years had elapsed. In that period four of its greatest writers had appeared. Yet no literature can attain the highest rank in which the drama and epic are not represented. Italy hitherto lacked these two important branches. The Divine Comedy of Dante is, strictly speaking, not an epic, but forms a cla.s.s by itself, being an imaginative journey to the supernatural world, with a record of things seen and heard therein; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso was a revival of the old chivalrous romances in a new and elegant form, adapted to the conditions and taste of his times; a huge fresco, rather than an epic. As we shall see in the next chapter, comedy and tragedy had to wait nearly two hundred years after the death of Arios...o...b..fore finding worthy representatives in Alfieri and Goldoni. The regular epic, however, was given to Italy by Ta.s.so at the end of the sixteenth century.

The story of Ta.s.so's life is of great though painful interest. It is a tragedy of suffering like that of Dante; yet how vast the difference between the two. Dante bore his sufferings with unparalleled n.o.bility of character, exciting our admiration. Ta.s.so, weak and vacillating by nature, lives wretched and miserable, not from the decrees of fortune, but owing to his unfitness to bear the trials of ordinary life.

He was born March 11, 1544, at Sorrento, near Naples, the son of Bernardo Ta.s.so, a man of affairs, a courtier and a poet, who, although of n.o.ble family, was forced by straitened circ.u.mstances to pa.s.s his life in the service of others. Ta.s.so's education was varied enough; a few years at a Jesuit school in Naples, an experience which left a lasting impression on his sensitive and melancholy temperament; then under private teachers at Rome; and finally, several years of study of law at the universities of Padua and Bologna. He was compelled to leave the latter as a result of certain satires against the university authorities, which he was accused of having written.

The important period of his life begins in 1565, when he went to Ferrara, then, as in the days of Boiardo and Ariosto, the center of a rich and brilliant court. His life here for the next seven or eight years was a prosperous one. Fortune seemed to have showered her fairest gifts on this young, handsome, and gentle-mannered poet. He was treated on terms of intimacy by the duke and his sisters, Lucretia and Leonora.

He was accustomed to take his meals with the two ladies, and to them he read the poetry which he wrote from time to time. It was undoubtedly due to their influence that he composed his famous pastoral poem, Aminta (1572-73), full of exquisite pictures of rural life and bathed in an atmosphere of tender and refined love. This poem had an unprecedented success and made its author famous throughout all Europe.

Not long after this, however, the first germs of the terrible mental disease which wrecked his life began to show themselves. For many years Ta.s.so was made the hero of a romance, in which he was depicted as a martyr to social caste--the victim of his own love for a woman beyond his sphere. According to this romance Ta.s.so fell in love with the sister of the duke of Ferrara, and for this crime was shut up in prison and falsely treated as insane. The results of modern scholarship, however, have dissipated the sentimental halo from the brow of the unfortunate poet, and reduced his case to one of pathological diagnosis. Leonora was some ten years older than Ta.s.so, and the affection which at first undoubtedly existed between them was that of an elder sister and a younger brother. The duke was not cruel to Ta.s.so, but on the contrary treated him at first kindly, and only when he was at last worn out by the vagaries of the poet, did he drop him and bother himself no more about him.

The secret of Ta.s.so's sufferings and vicissitudes of fortune lay in himself; he was, during the latter part of his life, simply insane. All his actions during this period ill.u.s.trate perfectly the various phases of the persecution mania, which in his case was aggravated by religious hallucination. To this terrible mental disease he was predisposed from early life; his Jesuit education, the mysterious death of his mother (suspected of having been poisoned), overwork and worriment, and especially his morbidly sensitive and melancholy temperament, all helped to prepare the way for the catastrophe that was to darken his life.

The first open manifestations of insanity occurred in 1577 (probably as the result of a fever), about the time he had finished the first draft of the Jerusalem Delivered. Very foolishly for a man as sensitive as he was, he turned over the ma.n.u.script of his poem to a number of friends for suggestions. The heartless criticisms he thus received filled him with bitterness and fostered the rising irritability of his nascent disease. He was especially hurt by the brutal and stupid criticism of the Inquisitor Antoniano, who advised him to cut out all the romantic episodes, which form the real beauty of the poem. This put into his mind the thought that the Inquisition might refuse him permission to print his poem, and made him fear that he might be a heretic. The lessons of his early teachers, the Jesuits, now began to bear fruit. In 1577, tormented by religious doubts, he went to the inquisitor of Bologna and laid his case before him. Although the latter absolved him from his self-charge of heresy, Ta.s.so was not satisfied. Henceforth religious fear was added to the fear of a.s.sa.s.sination--a double torment to his soul.

Under these circ.u.mstances he became more and more moody and irritable; he was suspicious of all about him and subject to frequent outbursts of violence. On the evening of June 17, 1577, he was discoursing of his troubles to the Princess Lucretia, when he suspected a pa.s.sing servant of spying him, and flung a knife at him. In order to prevent further acts of violence he was shut up, at first in his room, and later in the monastery of St. Francis, under the care of a physician. On July 27 he broke the door and escaped. Hors.e.m.e.n were sent after him, but being disguised as a peasant, he escaped, and after many adventures, often begging his way as a common beggar, he reached Sorrento, where, in the quiet seclusion of his sister's house, surrounded by all the tokens of her love and sympathy, he enjoyed a short period of rest and peace.

He soon became restless, however, and yearned for the brilliant life of the court, which presented itself to his fancy, enhanced by the charms of distance and of those things we have had and lost. He was like a b.u.t.terfly, always attracted toward the light that was to destroy him. He returned to Ferrara, and again ran away, wandering from city to city, yet finding nowhere a warm welcome. "The world's rejected guest,"

Sh.e.l.ley called him, who knew himself only too well the meaning of these words.

In February, 1579, Ta.s.so once more returned to Ferrara, this time without previous warning, and asked to be received by the duke. It was a singularly unpropitious moment; the duke was then in the midst of preparations for his marriage with Margaret Gonzaga, his third wife, and naturally enough the obscure, half-insane poet was neglected. This neglect completely turned his mind, and losing all self-control he broke out into violent invectives in the presence of the court. He was immediately taken out, shut up in the insane asylum of S. Anna, and in accordance with the barbarous customs of the age in the treatment of the insane, put in chains. Here he remained in utter misery, a prey to the double nightmare of his sick brain, fear of death by the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife, and of everlasting d.a.m.nation as a heretic. The letters which he wrote by scores during this period are of heartbreaking pathos.

He remained in S. Anna nearly eight years, being released in 1586 at the solicitation of Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga, brother-in-law of the duke of Ferrara. From now on to the end, the story of Ta.s.so's life becomes a mere repet.i.tion of melancholy incidents. Once more he went from city to city, visiting in turn Milan, Florence, Naples, and Rome, and moving restlessly hither and thither

"Like spirits of the wandering wind, Who seek for rest, yet rest can never find."

Finally fortune seemed about to smile upon him; a faint ray of sunshine broke through the thick clouds that for so long had hung over his life.

In November, 1594, he was invited to Rome, there to be crowned poet, as Petrarch had been. The pope a.s.signed him a pension, and it seemed as if at last some measure of happiness might again be his. It was only a brief gleam of sunshine, however; the clouds soon closed again, and the sun of Ta.s.so's life hastened to its setting shrouded in gloom. The coronation was put off on account of the ill health of Cardinal Cinzio and the inclemency of the season. In March, 1595, he himself fell sick, and in April was taken to the monastery of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum hill. To the monks who came to meet him he uttered the pathetic words: "My fathers, I have come to die among you." The pope sent his own physician to attend him, but in vain. The world-weary poet pa.s.sed away April 25, 1595. His body lies buried in the adjacent church. The visitor to-day can still see his room, furnished as in his lifetime, and on the wall a copy of his last letter, in which he announces his speedy death.

Ta.s.so's works are comparatively voluminous, and consist of lyrical poems, the pastoral poem, Aminta, a tragedy, Torrismondo, dialogues, letters, and the Jerusalem Delivered. In this brief sketch we can only discuss the latter, by which alone he is known the world over.

Already when only sixteen years old, he had felt the ambition to write a poem which should combine the merits of the regular epic (such as the Iliad and aeneid), and the romantic interest of the poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. His Rinaldo, written when he was only nineteen years old, was remarkable both on account of the youth of its author and as a promise of what was to follow. For a number of years after this, however, he devoted himself almost exclusively to the task of preparing himself, by reading, study, and thought, to write the great poem which he had in mind.

His choice of a subject was a happy one. The fear of the Turk at that time was widespread; the wars between Christian and Saracen, which filled the old romances, were now occurring again on the eastern borders of Europe. The Turks had conquered Hungary, and their piratic ships had ravaged the coast of Italy, often destroying entire populations; a short time before Sorrento, Ta.s.so's birthplace, had been attacked, and his sister escaped only by a miracle. Ta.s.so himself must have heard many a story of the crusades, when a child at Sorrento, where Pope Urban, who had published the first crusade, was buried. His choice of the deliverance of Jerusalem from the unbeliever then was a natural one.

Contrary to the Orlando Furioso, the story of Jerusalem Delivered, is a simple one. Yet the main plot, _i. e._, the military operations of G.o.dfrey, the various battles, and the final capture of Jerusalem, are not so effective or interesting as the various romantic episodes introduced from time to time; the reader to-day is disposed to hurry over the early cantos and to linger over the beautiful pages which tell the loves of Tancred and Clorinda, Olindo and Sophronia, Rinaldo, Armida, and Erminia.

The poem begins with the usual invocation: