The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi Volume I Part 9

A new scene introduces Renzo and Barbarina. They have returned to the city, and are standing in front of the palace. Renzo begs his sister to throw the magic stone. Barbarina reminds him that if they become rich, all will be over with their philosophy. At last he persuades her to throw it, and she does so, bidding herself be mindful that a wretched pebble is the source of her future magnificence. In a moment a gorgeous palace rises, fronting the royal dwelling. Renzo's and Barbarina's rags are exchanged for splendid raiment. Moorish servants issue from the great gates with torches, and welcome their princely masters.

No sooner have the twins taken up their abode in this magic palace, than they begin to act like _parvenus_ and _nouveaux riches._ Every folly, vanity, and false desire enters their heads. Their philosophy is forgotten. Brigh.e.l.la, in his character of seer, divines, meanwhile, that their presence threatens danger to the person of Tartagliona. He therefore endeavours to persuade the Queen to make her will in his favour. She very sensibly refuses, and bids him do all in his power to prolong the life of one whom he adores. He is obliged to meet her wishes, and divulges a plan whereby the twins shall be destroyed. The fairy Serpentina, he reminds her, owns apples which sing, and golden water which plays and dances. The adventure of stealing these magical objects involves the greatest peril. Certainly Barbarina will be ruined if she longs to have them. Accordingly, when she appears at the window of her palace, Tartagliona from the opposite balcony is to repeat these rhymes:[87]--

"Voi siete bella a.s.sai; ma piu bella sareste, S'un de'pomi, che cantano, in una mano areste.

Figlia voi siete bella; ma piu bella sareste, S'acqua, che suona e balla, nell'altra mano areste."

The scene now changes to the interior of the palace of the twins.

Barbarina is contemplating her charms in the looking-gla.s.s, when Smeraldina suddenly enters, full of affection. She has heard of the good fortune of her foundlings, and forgetting their recent ill-treatment of her, has come to congratulate them. Barbarina exclaims against her rudeness, calls the servants, throws a purse of gold at her foster-mother, and bids her depart. Smeraldina, who cannot stifle her affection for the ungrateful girl, changes tone, and humbly asks to be allowed to stay and serve her. Barbarina, much to her own surprise, feels touched by this display of feeling, and magnanimously allows the good woman to remain as a menial. Smeraldina's soliloquy at the end of the scene reveals her sound sense no less than her warm heart:[88]

"Questa e quella filosofa, che andava Ieri per legna al bosco, ed oggi! ... basta ...

Seco volea restar, perche l'adoro, E seco resto alfin; del tacer poi Ci proveremo; ma non sara nulla.

Non la conosco piu. Quanta superbia!

Che diavol l'ha arrichita in questa forma?

Io non vorrei, che questa frasconcella ...

Forse qualche milord ... ma sapr tutto."

{_Entra._

Next we have Renzo. He has fallen desperately in love with a beautiful statue which he found in the garden of the palace. Truffaldino enters, frankly confesses that he has come to live at ease with his quondam foster-child, professes himself a true sage, and expounds the cynical philosophy of interested motives. Renzo cannot resist laughing at the knave's candour, but is not yet disposed to bear his insolence.

Truffaldino sees that he must alter his tone. So he begins to whine and flatter. Renzo is softened, and consents to keep him as a buffoon. His cynicism and his hyperbolical adulation will serve to make the hours pa.s.s pleasantly.

Tartaglia and Pantalone appear upon the royal balcony. Barbarina enters on the other side, and Tartaglia falls head over ears in love with her at first sight. The scene is carried out with much burlesque humour, until Tartagliona and Brigh.e.l.la join the group below. Tartagliona utters the magic verses, and Barbarina becomes madly bent upon the apples which sing and the water which plays and dances. Renzo, touched by his sister's despair, agrees to attempt the adventure; but before he goes, he gives her a dagger. So long as this is bright, he will be alive. If it drops blood, that is a sign that her brother has died in the attempt.

A scene between Ninetta in her living tomb and the Green Bird who brings her food, is here interpolated, in order to prepare the audience for what ensues.

Renzo and Truffaldino arrive at Serpentina's garden, and fail in their adventure. Then Renzo calls on Calmon, who appears, and summons a band of statues--the female figure on the fountain at Treviso and the Moors of the Campo de'Mori at Venice[89]--to his aid. By their a.s.sistance a singing apple is procured, and some of the dancing water is bottled in a phial. But Calmon and his band of statues remind Renzo that he is in duty bound to be grateful. Calmon lacks his nose; the fountain of Treviso's b.r.e.a.s.t.s are injured; the Moors have, each of them, some broken limb. Renzo must undertake to restore them properly, and all will go well with him.

Renzo promises; but he very soon forgets the shattered statues. Lost in admiration before the image of beautiful Pompea, he spends his days in wooing her. At length Pompea finds her voice, and confides to him her previous experience. She was the daughter of a great Italian prince, the prince of a corrupt but mighty city; and she has now become an idol through her self-idolatry.

At this juncture enters Truffaldino with exciting news. Tartaglia has made a declaration of his love through Pantalone to Barbarina. She wavers between the splendid prospects of a royal match and the affection which she feels for the Green Bird, her lover and consoler in their days of poverty. Meanwhile Tartagliona breaks negotiations off by declaring that Barbarina must bring the Green Bird as dower; else she can never be Tartaglia's bride. At this announcement Barbarina falls into hysterics, kicking Pantalone downstairs, and screaming out that nothing but the Green Bird will satisfy her. Truffaldino, partly out of compa.s.sion for Barbarina's state, partly from a sense of modesty, leaves her presence.

He arrives to rouse his master to a sense of the situation. This is no time to make platonic love to statues, &c.

Renzo replies that he is quite ready to attempt the adventure of the Green Bird. He knows from Calmon that the bird alone is capable of solving the problem of his own parentage, and also of evoking Pompea from her marble immobility. Consequently he has a strong personal interest in the capture of the bird; and his sister's troubles are an additional reason why he should no longer delay. With Truffaldino for his squire, he will ride forth into the forest of the Goblin, who holds the bird in meshes of diabolical enchantments. Let Smeraldina remind his sister that the dagger which he gave her will a.s.sure her of his good or evil fortune in the perilous essay.

While Renzo is on his journey, Barbarina keeps continually gazing on the dagger. It does not cease to shine. But Smeraldina and the speaking statue of Pompea work upon her feelings by suggesting the perils her brother is undergoing, to which her own vanity has exposed him. Moved at last by simple human sympathy, she finds the situation intolerable, and resolves to follow Renzo to the place of danger. It is this return to nature which saves her, and brings about a happy catastrophe. Barbarina renounces her wish to wed Tartaglia, and thinks only of arresting Renzo in his dangerous course. She sets off with Smeraldina; and the magic palace is left desolate, in mourning, all its splendour gone.

Renzo and Truffaldino have now reached the Goblin's hill, where the Green Bird is seen upon a perch, chained by the leg. Trying to capture him, Renzo turns into a statue; and there is a whole gathering of similar statues in the place--men who essayed the same adventure, and failed.

Barbarina and _Smeraldina_ arrive at the scene of action. The dagger drops blood. Barbarina's mask of false philosophy and selfish vanity drops off. She becomes a simple woman, filled with repentance and anguish for her brother who is dead. She flings herself upon the bosom of poor Smeraldina, whom she had so villainously treated. At this juncture, when all seems lost, Calmon appears, and reads her a sound moral lecture. Then he points to a scroll before her feet, and instructs her what she has to do. She must walk up to within a hair's-breadth--no more and no less--of the bird, and take good heed that he does not utter a sound before she has read aloud the words inscribed upon the scroll.

If she succeeds in this feat, all may yet come right. There is a breathless moment, during which Barbarina executes what Calmon told her.

The bird is captured, and begins to talk. Let her take a feather from his tail. That will restore the statues to life.

The drama is quickly wound up. By means of the bird's tail-feather, Renzo and Pompea are made happy lovers. Ninetta returns from her hole.

Tartagliona is changed into a tortoise, and Brigh.e.l.la into a donkey. The Green Bird resumes his form as King of Terradombra and plights his faith to Barbarina. Tartaglia recognises his lost son and daughter, and is fain to be contented with the resuscitated wife whom he had so wantonly condemned to a lingering death.

This a.n.a.lysis, if any one takes the trouble to read it, will suffice to show the sprightliness of Gozzi's invention, and also the essential weakness of his artistic method. The magic and the transformations at the close are mechanical. The fate of the Green Bird is connected by no proper motive with the fate of Tartaglia and the twins. Calmon and the statues, allegorically useful, are in like manner independent of the main dramatic action. Ninetta's doom is atrocious. Tartaglia is only saved from being disgusting by his burlesque absurdity.

XI.

In the spring of 1762, having exhibited _Le Tre Melarancie_, _Il Corvo_, _Il Re Cervo_, and _Turandot_, Gozzi proved that he had won the game against Chiari and Goldoni. Sacchi's company removed from the theatre at S. Samuele to a more commodious house at S. Angelo. Chiari retired to his native city, Brescia, and left off writing for the stage. Goldoni departed for Paris. None of Goldoni's biographers deny that he took this step in consequence of Gozzi's triumph. In his own Memoirs he omitted all references to the literary quarrels of the years 1756-62; and he gives excellent reasons, quite independent of Gozzi, for his setting off to seek fortune in the French capital. Certainly, the last piece he presented to the Venetian public, _Una delle ultime sere di Carnovale_, was received with enthusiasm. "It closed the theatrical year of 1761,"

he says;[90] "and the evening of Shrove Tuesday brought me an ovation.

The theatre rang with thunders of applause, among which could be distinguished these farewells: _A happy journey! Come back to us! Be sure you do not fail to do so!_ I confess that I was touched to tears."

Yet the simultaneous retirement of both Chiari and Goldoni at this critical moment justifies our believing that the latter judged it expedient to leave Venice after the revolution effected by Gozzi. He did so without ill-will on either side. Count Gasparo Gozzi, Carlo's brother, and a distinguished member of the Granelleschi, undertook the charge of seeing a new edition of Goldoni's plays through the press in his absence.

For some years after this event, Carlo Gozzi and Sacchi's company had the theatres of Venice pretty much at their own disposal. But the success of the _Fiabe_ was ephemeral. Before their author's death, he saw his own dramatic novelties cast into the shade and Goldoni's realistic comedies restored to favour. A poet of such eminence as Goethe, surveying all things Italian with curiosity in 1786, paid a well-considered tribute to Gozzi's sympathy with the Venetian public, praised the energy and nature of the _Commedia dell' Arte_, but reserved his highest panegyric for a representation of Goldoni's _Baruffe Chiozzote_ at the theatre of S. Luca.[91] "At last I am able to say that I have seen a comedy," are the emphatic words with which Goethe opens a detailed description of this piece.

In the course of the last hundred years, Goldoni has secured a signal and irreversible victory over his rival. One of the best theatres at Venice is called by his name. His house is pointed out by gondoliers to tourists. His statue stands almost within sight of the Rialto on the Campo S. Bartolommeo, where people most do congregate. His comedies are repeatedly given by companies of celebrated actors. Gozzi's _Fiabe_ have been relegated to the marionette stages, where some of their _scenari_ in a mutilated form may still be seen. There exist no memorials to his fame in Venice. Not even a tablet with the words _Qui nacque Carlo Gozzi_ is to be found upon the ancient palace at S. Ca.s.siano. The sacristan of the church, where his dust is gathered to his fathers, cannot point to the Gozzi vault.

The vicissitudes of Gozzi's reputation turn upon the different views which have been taken of his merits in relation to Goldoni. In Italy the balance of opinion tends to sink against him. Baretti, that fiery member of Sam Johnson's club, the fierce opponent of Goldoni, p.r.o.nounced at first in Gozzi's favour, lamented that he could not bring Garrick to one of his plays, proposed to translate the _Fiabe_ into English, and swore that Gozzi stood next to Shakespeare in dramatic genius. But when Baretti read the _Fiabe_ in print, he declaimed against the buffooneries of the Masks, and dropped his enthusiasm. Tommasei found no words too strong to express his contempt for a writer whose genius he denied, and whose character inspired him with repugnance. Tommasei was a champion of Goldoni. Omitting further details, it is enough to say that Italy has elected to ignore Gozzi and to deify Goldoni. The causes are not far to seek. Gozzi's vogue depended partly upon controversy and satire. It was confined to the locality of Venice. His plays required the co-operation of the Masks; and these expired in his own lifetime. Moreover, they appealed to a rare combination of sensibilities, romantic and humorous, which is not common in Italy. Lastly, for their proper mounting on the stage, they demanded an expenditure of ingenuity and money, which their fading popularity prohibited. Goldoni, on the other hand, suited the temper of the growing age by his simplicity, his truth to nature, his realism, and the freshness of eternal youth which lends charm to the facile productions of his amiable genius. His comedies can be put upon the stage without the least difficulty; and they afford scope for the display of varied talents in actors of several descriptions.

In Germany Gozzi enjoyed wide posthumous reputation, not as a playwright with the public, but as a poet among men of letters. He was early chosen, during the _Sturm und Drang_ period, to perform the part of champion of Romantic against Cla.s.sical forms of art. How mistaken this view of Gozzi really is, I have attempted to prove. Yet if critics ignore what Gozzi wrote about the origin of his _Fiabe_, and keep out of sight his intentions while composing them--if they only regard the printed plays--it is not difficult to make him a.s.sume this false position. Franz A. C. Werthes translated the _Fiabe_ into German so early as 1777-79, and published them at Bern. No less than twelve separate versions of selected plays have since appeared, up to the date 1877.[92] Among these may be mentioned Schiller's _Turandot_, which was executed from the translation of Werthes, and a reproduction of _I Pitocchi Fortunati_ by Paul Heyse. Schlegel introduced the _Fiabe_ to public notice, emphasising their value as specimens of the Romantic style, and connecting them with the indigenous art of Italy. Hoffmann declared his enthusiasm for Gozzi; and if he did not borrow motives from the _Fiabe_ and the _Memoirs_ for his own fantastic productions, he undoubtedly regarded their author as a genius of the same species as himself. Wagner, I may parenthetically observe, based one of his earliest operatic productions on _La Donna Serpente_. It was composed in 1833, and was first exhibited at Munich in 1888. To follow the several steps by which Gozzi came to be regarded in Germany as a Romanticist, snuffed out by the Revolution, would lead me beyond the limits of this introduction. I suspect that he was known there mainly in the translation of Werthes, and that his works were quarried as a mine of motives by writers of romantic tendencies, who lacked invention. There is a pocket edition of the _Fiabe_ in Italian, 3 vols., published by Hitzig, 1808.

The German conception of Gozzi as a Romantic poet of the purest water spread to France. It took the French imagination just when the Romantic movement was at its height. Philarete Chasles treated his works from the point of view of Spanish dramatic literature. Paul de Musset pounced upon the Memoirs, condensed them into a small volume with considerable literary ability, and so ingeniously manipulated their text in the process as to create the illusion that Gozzi had p.r.o.nounced himself to be in fact what his German admirers found in him. This clever travesty of Gozzi's autobiography presented him to the world as the victim of sprites, the creature of his own inventions, the plaything of superst.i.tion, instead of the caustic, practical, sometimes dissembling, and often sinister, man of thwarted pa.s.sion, violent caprice, hard head, and conservative heart, who will presently be revealed in my version of the Memoirs. I do not blame Paul de Musset for his literary escapade. I understand his motive, and appreciate the joke. He wanted, at one and the same time, to place Gozzi, as the Germans had already placed him, among the fathers of Romanticism, and also to construct a telling novel of adventure out of the copious materials furnished by the Memoirs. But, by so doing, Paul de Musset misled writers who had no access to the sole edition of Gozzi's _Memorie_, or who were perhaps too careless to seek this doc.u.ment out. Among these I may mention M. Paul Royer, the translator of five of Gozzi's _Fiabe_ into French,[93] and Vernon Lee, the talented auth.o.r.ess of a deservedly popular book ent.i.tled _Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy_.[94] Both of these distinguished writers have fallen into the trap laid for them by Paul de Musset, and have accepted a false conception of the man who forms the subject of these volumes.

Gozzi, who plumed himself upon his Democritean philosophy of laughter, his Stoic-Epicurean acceptance of every wayward stroke of fortune, would have been the first to smile sardonically, yet not without a touch of benignant humour, upon the mask he has been made to wear by Germans and by Frenchmen. English critics, with the exception of Vernon Lee, have had little or nothing to do with him up to this date.[95] Let the man speak for himself in the account of his own life, which I now for the first time present to the mult.i.tude of English readers.

_August 8, 1888._

CARLO GOZZI.

I.

_My Pedigree and Birth._

There are people foolish enough to make every family history the object of their ridicule and satire. For the sake of wits of this sort I shall give a short but truthful account of my ancestry, in order that they may have something to quiz.

Our stock springs in the fourteenth century from a certain Pezlo de'Gozzi. This is proved by an authentic genealogy, which we possess; the authority of which has never been disputed, and which has been accepted as evidence in law-courts, although it is but a dusty doc.u.ment, worm-eaten and be-cobwebbed, not framed in gold or hung against the wall. Since I am no Spaniard, I never applied to any genealogist to discover a more ancient origin for our race. There are historical works, however, which derive us from the family de'Gozze, extant at the present epoch in Ragusa, and original settlers of that venerable republic. The chronicles of Bergamo relate that the aforesaid Pezlo de'Gozzi was a man of weight and substance in the district of Alzano, and that he won the grat.i.tude of the most serene Republic of Venice for having imperilled his property and person against the Milanese in order to preserve that district for her invincible and clement rule. His descendants held office as amba.s.sadors and podestas for the city of Bergamo, which proves that they were members of its Council; while two privileges of the sixteenth century show that two separate branches of the family obtained admission to the citizenship of Venice.[96] They erected houses for the living and provided tombs for their dead in the quarter and the Church of San Ca.s.siano, as may be seen at the present day.[97] One of these branches was honoured with adoption into the patrician families of Venice in the seventeenth century,[98] and afterwards expired. The branch from which I am descended remained in the cla.s.s of Cittadini Originari, on which they certainly brought no discredit whatsoever.

None of my ancestors aspired to the honourable and lucrative posts which are open to Venetian citizens.[99] They were for the most part men of peaceful unambitious temper, contented with their lot in life, or perhaps averse from the disturbances of compet.i.tion. Had they entered upon a political career, I am quite sure that they would have served their Prince faithfully, without pride and without vain ostentation.

About two centuries ago, my great-great-grandfather purchased some six hundred acres of land,[100] together with buildings, in Friuli, at the distance of five miles from Pordenone. A large portion of these estates consists of meadow-land, and is held by feudal tenure. All the heirs-male are bound to renew the invest.i.ture, which costs some ducats.

Upon this point the officials of the Camera de' Feudi at Udine are extremely vigilant. If the fine is not paid immediately after the death of the last feudatory, they confiscate the crops derived from the meadows subject to this tenure. That happened to me after my father's decease. A few months' negligence cost me a considerable sum in excess of the customary fine. It is probably by right of some old parchment that we own the t.i.tle of Count, conceded to our family in public acts and in the addresses of letters.[101] I should feel no resentment, if this t.i.tle were refused me; but it would anger me extremely, if my hay were withheld.

My father was Jacopo Antonio Gozzi; a man of fine and penetrative intellect, of sensitive and delicate honour, of susceptible temper, resolute, and sometimes even formidable. His father Gasparo died while he was yet a child, leaving this only son to the guardianship of his mother, the Contessa Emilia Grampo, a n.o.ble woman of Padua. The estate was sufficient to sustain his dignity with credit; but he indulged dreams of magnificence. Sole heir, and educated by a tender mother, who humoured every fancy of her son, he early acquired the habit of following his own inclinations. These led him into lordly extravagances--stables full of horses; kennels of hounds; hunting-parties; splendid banquets--nor did he reflect upon the consequences of a marriage, which he made without deliberation in his early manhood, to indulge a whim of the heart. My mother was Angela Tiepolo, the daughter of one branch of that patrician house, which expired in her brother Almor Cesare.[102] He died, a Senator of the Republic, about the year 1749.