The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 15

Whenever plaintive warblings, or the note Of leaves by summer breezes gently stirred, Or baffled murmur of bright waves I've heard Along the green and flowery sh.o.r.e to float, Where meditating love I sat and wrote, Then her whom earth conceals, whom heaven conferred, I hear and see, and know with living word She answereth my sighs, though so remote.

'Ah, why art thou,' she pityingly says, 'Pining away before thy hour?'

(Sonnet 238.)

The waters and the branches and the sh.o.r.e, Birds, fishes, flowers, gra.s.ses, talk of love, And me to love for ever all invite.

(Sonnet 239.)

Thou'st left the world, oh Death, without a sun....

Her mourners should be earth and sea and air.

(Sonnet 294.)

Here we have happiness and misery felt in the modern way, and Nature in the modern way drawn into the circle of thought and feeling, and personified.

Petrarch was the first, since the days of h.e.l.lenism, to enjoy the pleasures of solitude quite consciously.

How often to my darling place of rest, Fleeing from all, could I myself but flee, I walk and wet with tears my path and breast.

(Sonnet 240.)

He shared Schiller's thought:

Oh Nature is perfect, wherever we stray, 'Tis man that deforms it with care.

As love from thought to thought, from hill to hill, Directs me, when all ways that people tread Seem to the quiet of my being, foes, If some lone sh.o.r.e, or fountain-head, or rill Or shady glen, between two slopes outspread, I find--my daunted soul doth there repose....

On mountain heights, in briary woods, I find Some rest; but every dwelling place on earth Appeareth to my eyes a deadly bane....

Where some tall pine or hillock spreads a shade, I sometimes halt, and on the nearest brink Her lovely face I picture from my mind....

Oft hath her living likeness met my sight, (Oh who'll believe the word?) in waters clear, On beechen stems, on some green lawny s.p.a.ce, Or in white cloud....

Her loveliest portrait there my fancy draws, And when Truth overawes That sweet delusion, frozen to the core, I then sit down, on living rock, dead stone, And seem to muse, and weep and write thereon....

Then touch my thoughts and sense Those widths of air which hence her beauty part, Which always is so near, yet far away....

Beyond that Alp, my Ode, Where heaven above is gladdest and most clear, Again thou'lt meet me where the streamlet flows And thrilling airs disclose The fresh and scented laurel thicket near, There is my heart and she that stealeth it.

(Ode 17.)

It is the same idea as Goethe's in _Knowest thou the Land_? Again:

Alone, engrossed, the least frequented strands I traverse with my footsteps faint and slow, And often wary glances round me throw, To flee, should human trace imprint the sands.

(Sonnet 28.)

A life of solitude I've ever sought, This many a field and forest knows, and will.

(Sonnet 221.)

Love of solitude and feeling for Nature limit or increase each other; and Petrarch; like Dante, took scientific interest in her, and found her a stimulant to mental work.

Burckhardt says: 'The enjoyment of Nature is for him the favourite accompaniment of intellectual pursuits; it was to combine the two that he lived in learned retirement at Vaucluse and elsewhere, that he from time to time fled from the world and from his age.'

He wrote a book _On a Life of Solitude (De Vita Solitaria)_ by the little river Sorgue, and said in a letter from Vaucluse: 'O if you could imagine the delight with which I breathe here, free and far from the world, with forests and mountains, rivers and springs, and the books of clever men.'

Purely objective descriptions, such as his picture of the Gulf of Spezzia and Porto Venere at the end of the sixth book of the _Africa_, were rare with him; but, as we have already seen, he admired mountain scenery. He refers to the hills on the Riviera di Levante as 'hills distinguished by most pleasant wildness and wonderful fertility.'[6]

The scenery of Reggio moved him, as he said,[7] to compose a poem. He described the storm at Naples in 1343, and the earthquake at Basle.

As we have seen from one of his odes, he delighted in the wide view from mountain heights, and the freedom from the oppression of the air lower down. In this respect he was one of Rousseau's forerunners, though his 'romantic' feeling was restrained within characteristic limits. In a letter of April 26, 1335, interesting both as to the period and the personality of the writer, he described to Dionisius da Borgo San Sepolchro the ascent of Mt. Ventoux near Avignon which he made when he was thirty-two, and greatly enjoyed, though those who were with him did not understand his enjoyment. When they had laboured through the difficulties of the climb, and saw the clouds below them, he was immensely impressed. It was in accordance with his love of solitude that lonely mountain tops should attract him, and the letter shows that he fully appreciated both climb and view.

'It was a long day, the air fine. We enjoyed the advantages of vigour of mind, and strength and agility of body, and everything else essential to those engaged in such an undertaking, and so had no other difficulties to face than those of the region itself.' ... 'At first, owing to the unaccustomed quality of the air and the effect of the great sweep of view spread out before me, I stood like one dazed.

I beheld the clouds under our feet, and what I had read of Athos and Olympus seemed less incredible as I myself witnessed the same things from a mountain of less fame. I turned my eyes towards Italy, whither my heart most inclined. The Alps, rugged and snow-capped, seemed to rise close by, although they were really at a great distance.... The Bay of Ma.r.s.eilles, the Rhone itself, lay in sight.'

It was a very modern effect of the wide view that 'his whole past life with all its follies rose before his mind; he remembered that ten years ago, that day, he had quitted Bologna a young man, and turned a longing gaze towards his native country: he opened a book which was then his constant companion, _The Confessions of St Augustine_, and his eye fell on the pa.s.sage in the tenth chapter:

And men go about and admire lofty mountains and broad seas, and roaring torrents and the ocean, and the course of the stars, and forget their own selves while doing so.

His brother, to whom he read these words, could not understand why he closed the book and said no more. His feeling had suddenly changed.

He knew, when he began the climb, that he was doing something very unusual, even unheard of among his contemporaries, and justified himself by the example of Philip V. of Macedon, arguing that a young man of private station might surely be excused for what was not thought blamable in a grey-haired king. Then on the mountain top, lost in the view, the pa.s.sage in St Augustine suddenly occurred to him, and he started blaming himself for admiring earthly things so much. 'I was amazed ... angry with myself for marvelling but now at earthly things, when I ought to have learnt long ago that nothing save the soul was marvellous, and that to the greatness of the soul nought else was great'; and he closed with an explanation flavoured with theology to the taste of his confessor, to whom he was writing.

The mixture of thoroughly modern delight in Nature[8] with ascetic dogma in this letter, gives us a glimpse into the divided feelings of one who stood upon the threshold between two eras, mediaeval and modern, into the reaction of the mediaeval mind against the budding modern feeling.

This is, at any rate, the first mountain ascent for pleasure since h.e.l.lenic days, of which we have detailed information. From Greece before Alexander we have nothing; but the Persian King Darius, in his expedition against the Scythians in the region of Chalcedon, ascended the mountain on which stood the Urios temple to Zeus, and there 'sitting in the temple, he took a view of the Euxine Sea, which is worthy of admiration.' (Herodotus.)

Philip V. of Macedon ascended the Haemus B.C. 181, and Apollonios Rhodios describes the panorama spread out before the Argonauts as they ascended the Dindymon, and elsewhere recalls the view from Mt.

Olympus. These are the oldest descriptions of distant views conceived as landscape in the cla.s.sic literature preserved to us. Petrarch's ascent comes next in order.

This sentimental and subjective feeling for Nature, half-idyllic, half-romantic, which seemed to arise suddenly and spontaneously in Petrarch, is not to be wholly explained by a marked individuality, nourished by the tendencies of the period; the influence of Roman literature, the re-birth of the cla.s.sic, must also be taken into account. For the Renaissance att.i.tude towards Nature was closely allied to the Roman, and therefore to the h.e.l.lenic; and the fact that the first modern man arose on Italian soil was due to the revival of antiquity plus its union with the genius of the Italian people. Many direct a.n.a.logies can be traced between Petrarch and the Roman poets; it was in their school that his eyes opened to the wonders of Nature, and he learnt to blend the inner with the outer life.

Boccaccio does not lead us much further. There is idyllic quality in his description of a wood in the _Ameto_,[9] and especially in _Fiammetta_, in which he praises country life and describes the spring games of the Florentine youth.

This is the description of a valley in the _Decameron_: 'After a walk of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies' Valley, which they entered by a straight path, whence there issued forth a fine crystal current, and they found it so extremely beautiful and pleasant, especially at that sultry season, that nothing could exceed it, and, as some of them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley was so exact a circle, as if it had been described by a pair of compa.s.ses, though it seemed rather the work of Nature than of art, and was about half a mile in circ.u.mference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle....

The part that looks toward the south was planted as thick as they could stand together with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and most other kinds of fruit trees, and on the northern side were fine plantations of oak, ash, etc., so tall and regular that nothing could be more beautiful. The vale, which had only that one entrance, was full of firs, cypress trees, laurels, and pines, all placed in such order as if it had been done by the direction of some exquisite artist, and through which little or no sun could penetrate to the ground, which was covered with a thousand different flowers.... But what gave no less delight than any of the rest was a rivulet that came through a valley which divided two of the mountains, and running through the vein of a rock, made a most agreeable murmur with its fall, appealing, as it was dashed and sprinkled into drops, like so much quicksilver.'

Description of scenery for its own sake is scarcely more than attempted here, nor do Petrarch's lyrics, with their free thought of pa.s.sion and overpowering consciousness of the joys and sorrows of love, reach the level of h.e.l.lenism in this respect. Yet it advanced with the Renaissance. Pope Pius II. (aeneas Sylvius) was the first to describe actual landscape (Italian), not merely in a few subjective lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment. He was one of those figures in the world's history in whom all the intellectual life and feeling of a time come to a focus.

He had a heart for everything, and an all-round enthusiasm for Nature unique in his day. Antiquity and Nature were his two pa.s.sions, and the most beautiful descriptions of Nature before Rousseau and Goethe are contained in his _Commentaries_.

Writing of the country round his home, he says:

'The sweet spring time had begun, and round about Siena the smiling hills were clothed with leaves and flowers, and the crops were rising in plenty in the fields. Even the pasture land quite close to the town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping hills, either planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for corn, look down on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green fields are to be seen, and brooks are even flowing. There are, too, many plantations, either natural or artificial, in which the birds sing with wondrous sweetness. Nor is there a mound on which the citizens have not built a magnificent estate; they are thus a little way out of the town.

Through this district the Pope walked with joyous head.'

Again and again love of Nature drew him away even in old age from town life and the circle of courtiers and flatterers; he was for ever finding new reasons to prolong his _villeggiatura_, despite the grumbling of his court, which had to put up with wretched inns or monasteries overrun by mice, where the rain came through the roofs and the necessaries of life were scanty.[10]

His taste for these beautifully-situated monastic solitudes was a riddle to those around him. He wrote of his summer residence in Tibur:

'On all sides round the town in summer there are most lovely plantations, to which the Pope with his cardinals often retired for relaxation, sitting sometimes on some green sward beneath the olives, sometimes in a green meadow on the bank of the river Aino, whence he could see the clear waters. There are some meadows in a retired glen, watered by many streams; Pius often rested in these meadows near the luxuriant streams and the shady trees. He lived at Tibur with the Minorites on an elevation whence he could see the town and the course of the Aino as it flowed into the plain beneath him and through the quiet gardens, nor did anything else give him pleasure.

'When the summer was over, he had his bedroom in the house overlooking the Aino; from there the most beautiful view was to be seen, and also from a neighbouring mountain on the other side of the river, still covered with a green and leafy grove ... he completed a great part of his journey with the greatest enjoyment.'

In May 1462 he went to the baths at Viterbo, and, old man as he was, gives this appreciative description of spring beauties by the way:

'The road by which he made for Sorianum was at that time of the year delightful; there was a tremendous quant.i.ty of genista, so that a great part of the field seemed a ma.s.s of flowering yellow, while the rest, covered as it was by shrubs and various gra.s.ses, brought purple and white and a thousand different colours before the eyes. It was the month of May, and everything was green. On one side were the smiling fields, on the other the smiling woods, in which the birds made sweet harmony. At early dawn he used to walk into the fields to catch the exquisite breeze before the day should grow hot, and gaze at the green crops and the flowering flax, which then, emulating heaven's own blue, gave the greatest joy to all beholders.... Now the crows are holding vigil, and the ringdoves; and the owl at times utters lament with funeral note. The place is most lovely; the view in the direction of Siena stretches as far as Amiata, and in the west reaches Mt. Argentarius.'

In the plains the plague was raging; the sight of the people appealing to him as to a G.o.d, moved him to tears as he thought how few of the children would survive in the heat. He travelled to a castle charmingly placed on the lake of Bolsena, where 'there is a shady circular walk in the vineyard under the big grapes; stone steps shaded by the vine leaves lead down to the bank, where ilex oaks, alive with the songs of blackbirds, stand among the crags.' Halfway up the mountain, in the monastery of San Salvatore, he and his court took up their quarters.

'The most lovely scenery met the eye. As you look to the west from the higher houses, the view reaches beyond Ilcinum and Siena as far as the Pistorian Alps. To the north a variety of hills and the pleasant green of woods presents itself, stretching a distance of five miles; if your sight is good, your eye will travel as far as the Apennine range and can see Cortona.'

There he pa.s.sed the time, shooting birds, fishing, and rowing.