Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

3. ROMANTIC EPIC POETRY.—The romances of chivalry, which had been thus versified by Pulci and Boiardo, were elevated to the rank of epic poetry by the genius of Ariosto (1474-1533). He was born at Reggio, of which place his father was governor. As the means of improving his resources, he early attached himself to the service of Cardinal D'Este, and afterwards to that of the Duke of Ferrara. At the age of thirty years he commenced his "Orlando Furioso," and continued the composition for eleven years. While the work was in progress, he was in the habit of reading the cantos, as they were finished, at the courts of the cardinal and duke, which may account for the manner in which this hundred-fold tale is told, as if delivered spontaneously before scholars and princes, who assembled to listen to the marvelous adventures of knights and ladies, giants and magicians, from the lips of the story-teller. Ariosto excelled in the practice of reading aloud with distinct utterance and animated elocution, an accomplishment of peculiar value at a time when books were scarce, and the emoluments of authors depended more on the gratuities of their patrons than the sale of their works. In each of the four editions which he published, he improved, corrected, and enlarged the original. No poet, perhaps, ever evinced more fastidious taste in adjusting the nicer points that affected the harmony, dignity, and fluency of his composition, yet the whole seems as natural as if it had flowed extemporaneously from his pen. Throughout life it was the lot of Ariosto to struggle against the difficulties inseparable from narrow and precarious circumstances. His patrons, among them Leo X., were often culpable in exciting expectations, and afterwards disappointing them. The earliest and latest works of Ariosto, though not his best, were dramatic. He wrote also some satires in the form of epistles. He died in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and his ashes now rest under the magnificent monument in the new church of the Benedictines in Ferrara. The house in which the poet lived, the chair in which he was wont to study, and the inkstand whence he filled his pen, are still shown as interesting memorials of his life and labors.

Ariosto, like Pulci and Boiardo, undertook to sing the paladins and their amours at the court of Charlemagne, during the fabulous wars of this emperor against the Moors. In his poem he seems to have designedly thrown off the embarrassment of a unity of action. The Orlando Furioso is founded on three principal narratives, distinct but often intermingled; the history of the war between Charlemagne and the Saracens, Orlando's love for Angelica, his madness on hearing of her infidelity, and Ruggiero's attachment to Bradamante. These stories are interwoven with so many incidents and episodes, and there is in the poem such a prodigious quantity of action, that it is difficult to assign it a central point. Indeed, Ariosto, playing with his readers, seems to delight in continually misleading them, and allows them no opportunity of viewing the general subject of the poem. This want of unity is essentially detrimental to the general impression of the work, and the author has succeeded in throwing around its individual parts an interest which does not attach to it as a whole. The world to which the poet transports his readers is truly poetic; all the factitious wants of common life, its cold calculations and its imaginary distinctions, disappear; love and honor reign supreme, and the prompting of the one and the laws of the other are alone permitted to stimulate and regulate a life, of which war is the only business and gallantry the only pastime. The magic and sorcery, borrowed from the East, which pervade these chivalric fictions, lead us still farther from the world of realities. Nor is it the least charm that all the wonders and prodigies here related are made to appear quite probable from the apparently artless, truthful style of the narration. The versification of the Orlando is more distinguished for sweetness and elegance than for strength; but, in point of harmony, and in the beauty, pathos, and grace of his descriptions, no poet surpasses Ariosto.

4. HEROIC EPIC POETRY.—While, in the romantic epic of the Middle Ages, unity of design was considered unnecessary, and truthfulness of detail, fertility of imagination, strength of coloring, and vivacity of narration were alone required, heroic poetry was expected to exhibit, on the most extensive scale, those laws of symmetry which adapt all the parts to one object, which combine variety with unity, and, as it were, initiate us into the secrets of creation, by disclosing the single idea which governs the most dissimilar actions, and harmonizes the most opposite interests. It was reserved to Torquato Tasso to raise the Italian language to this kind of epic poetry.

Tasso (1544-1595) was born in Sorrento, and many marvels are told by his biographers of the precocity of his genius. Political convulsions early drove his father into exile. He went to Rome and sent for his son, then ten years of age. When the exiles were no longer safe at Rome, an asylum was offered them at Pesaro by the Duke of Urbino. Here young Tasso pursued his studies in all the learning and accomplishments of the age. In his seventeenth year he had completed the composition of an epic poem on the adventures of Rinaldo, which was received with passionate admiration throughout Italy. The appearance of this poem proved not only the beginning of the author's fame, but the dawn of a new day in Italian literature. In 1565, Tasso was nominated by the Cardinal D'Este as gentleman of his household, and his reception at the court was in every respect most pleasing to his youthful ambition. He was honored by the intimate acquaintance of the accomplished princesses Lucretia and Leonora, and to this dangerous friendship must be attributed most of his subsequent misfortunes, if it be true that he cherished a secret attachment for Leonora.

During this prosperous period of his life, Tasso prosecuted his great epic poem, the "Jerusalem Delivered," and as canto after canto was completed and recited to the princesses, he found in their applause repeated stimulus to proceed. While steadily engaged in his great work, his fancy gave birth to numerous fugitive poems, the most remarkable of which is the "Aminta." After its representation at the court of Ferrara, all Italy resounded with the poet's fame. It was translated into all the languages of Europe, and the name of Tasso would have been immortal even though he had never composed an epic. The various vexations he endured regarding the publication of his work at its conclusion, the wrongs he suffered from both patrons and rivals, together with disappointed ambition, rendered him the subject of feverish anxiety and afterwards the prey of restless fear and continual suspicion. His mental malady increased, and he wandered from place to place without finding any permanent home. Assuming the disguise of a shepherd, he traveled to Sorrento, to visit his sister; but soon, tired of seclusion, he obtained permission to return to the court of Ferrara. He was coldly received by the duke, and was refused an interview with the princesses. He left the place in indignation, and wandered from one city of Italy to another, reduced to the appearance of a wretched itinerant, sometimes kindly received, sometimes driven away as a vagabond, always restless, suspicious, and unhappy. In this mood he again returned to Ferrara, at a moment when the duke was too much occupied with the solemnities of his own marriage to attend to the complaints of the poet. Tasso became infuriated, retracted all the praises he had bestowed on the house of Este, and indulged in the bitterest invectives against the duke, by whose orders he was afterwards committed to the hospital for lunatics, where he was closely confined, and treated with extreme rigor. If he had never been insane before, he certainly now became so. To add to his misfortune, his poem was printed without his permission, from an imperfect copy, and while editors and printers enriched themselves with the fruit of his labors, the poet himself was languishing in a dungeon, despised, neglected, sick, and destitute of the common conveniences of life, and above all, deafened by the frantic cries with which the hospital continually resounded. When the first rigors of his imprisonment were relaxed, Tasso pursued his studies, and poured forth his emotions in every form of verse. Some of his most beautiful minor poems were composed during this period. After more than seven years' confinement, the poet was liberated at the intercession of the Duke of Mantua. Prom this time he wandered from city to city; the hallucinations of his mind never entirely ceased. Towards the close of the year 1594 he took up his residence at Rome, where he died at the age of fifty-two.

Tasso was particularly happy in choosing the most engaging subject that could inspire a modern poet—the struggle between the Christians and the Saracens. The Saracens considered themselves called on to subjugate the earth to the faith of Mohammed; the Christians to enfranchise the sacred spot where their divine founder suffered death. The religion of the age was wholly warlike. It was a profound, disinterested, enthusiastic, and poetic sentiment, and no period has beheld such a brilliant display of valor. The belief in the supernatural, which formed a striking characteristic of the time, seemed to have usurped the laws of nature and the common course of events.

The faith against which the crusaders fought appeared to them the worship of the powers of darkness. They believed that a contest might exist between invisible beings as between different nations, and when Tasso armed the dark powers of enchantment against the Christian knights, he only developed and embellished a popular idea.

The scene of the Jerusalem Delivered, so rich in recollections and associations with all our religious feelings, is one in which nature displays her riches and treasures, and where descriptions, in turn the most lovely and the most austere, attract the pen of the poet. All the nations of Christendom send forth their warriors to the army of the cross, and the whole world thus becomes his patrimony. Whatever interest the taking of Troy might possess for the Greeks, or the vanity of the Romans might attach to the adventures of AEneas, whom they adopted as their progenitor, it may be asserted that neither the Iliad nor the Aeneid possesses the dignity of subject, the interest at the same time divine and human, and the varied dramatic action which are peculiar to the Jerusalem Delivered.

The whole course of the poem is comprised in the campaign of 1093, when the Christian army, assembled on the plain of Tortosa, marched towards Jerusalem, which they besieged and captured. From the commencement of the poem, the most tender sentiments are combined with the action, and love has been assigned a nobler part than had been given to it in any other epic poem. Love, enthusiastic, respectful, and full of homage, was an essential characteristic of chivalry and the source of the noblest actions. While with the heroes of the classic epic it was a weakness, with the Christian knights it was a devotion. In this work are happily combined the classic and romantic styles. It is classic in its plan, romantic in its heroes; it is conceived in the spirit of antiquity, and executed in the spirit of medieval romance. It has the beauty which results from unity of design and from the harmony of all its parts, united with the romantic form, which falls in with the feelings, the passions, and the recollections of Europeans. Notwithstanding some defects, which must be attributed rather to the taste of his age than to his genius, in the history of literature Tasso may be placed by the side of Homer and Virgil.

5. LYRIC POETRY.—Lyric poetry, which had been brought to such perfection by Petrarch in the fourteenth century, but almost lost sight of in the fifteenth, was cultivated by all the Italian poets of this period. Petrarch became the model, which every aspirant endeavored to imitate. Hence arose a host of poetasters, who wrote with considerable elegance, but without the least power of imagination. We must not, however, confound with the servile imitators of Petrarch those who took nothing from his school but purity of language and elegance of style, and who consecrated the lyre not to love alone, but to patriotism and religion. First of these are Poliziano and Lorenzo de' Medici, in whose ballads and stanzas the language of Petrarch reappeared with all its beauty and harmony. Later, Cardinal Bembo (1470-1547), Molza (1489-1544), Tarsia (1476-1535), Guidiccioni (1480-1541), Della Casa (1503-1556), Costanzo (1507-1585), and later still, Chiabrera (1552-1637), attempted to restore Italian poetry to its primitive elegance. Their sonnets and canzoni contributed much to the revival of a purer style, although their elegance is often too elaborate and their thoughts and feelings too artificial. Besides these, Ariosto, Tasso, Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo, whose genius was practiced in more ambitious tasks, did not disdain to shape and polish such diminutive gems as the canzone, the madrigal, and the sonnet.