Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

by Benedetto Croce

But the beauty of Olympia is portrayed in a like manner, forgetful of the chastity of the lady, which might have seemed to ask a different sort of description or rather veiling:

Le bellezze d' Olimpia eran di quelle
che son più rare; e non la fronte sola,
gli occhi e le guancie, e le chiome avea belle,
la bocca, il naso, gli omeri e la gola....[7]

Finally, Medoro is described in the same way, Medoro whose brave and devoted heart and youthful heroism might seem to ask in its turn a less attentive observation of its fresh youthfulness:

Medoro avea la guancia colorita,
e bianca e grata ne la età novella.[8] ...

The very numerous similes between the personages and the situations in which they find themselves and the spectacles afforded by the life of animals or the phenomena of nature, also form an almost prehensible and palpable part of this conversion of the human world into the world of nature. We shall not give details of it, for this has already been done in an irritatingly patient manner by a German philologist, whose cumbrous compilation effectually precludes one from desiring to dwell even for a moment upon Ariosto's similes, comparisons and metaphors.

This apparent naturalism, this objectivism, of which we have demonstrated the profoundly subjective character, has led to the erroneous statement, already met with, as to Ariosto's form consisting of indifference and chilly observation, directed to the external world. He has been coupled with his contemporary Machiavelli in this respect. Machiavelli examined history and politics with a sagacious eye, describing—as they say—their mode of procedure and formulating their laws, to which he gave expression in his prose with analogously inexorable objectivity and scientific coldness. It is true that both did in a certain but in a very remote sense, destroy a prior spiritual content and naturalised in different fields and with different ends (Machiavelli destroyed the mediaeval religious conception of history and politics). But this judgment of Machiavelli amounts to nothing more than a brilliant or principal remark, for Machiavelli, as a thinker, developed and explained facts with his new vigorous thought, and as a writer gave an apparently cold form to his severe passion. Ariosto's naturalistic and objective tendency is also to be regarded as nothing more than a metaphor, because Ariosto reduced his material to nature, in order to spiritualise it in a new way, by creating spiritual forms of Harmony.

From the opposite point of view and arising out of what we have just said, we must refrain from praising Ariosto for his "epicity," for the epic nobility and decorum which Galilei praised so much in him, or for the force and coherence of his personages, so much admired by the old as well as by new and even recent critics. How could there be epicity in the Furioso, when the author not only lacked the ethical sentiments of the epos and when even that small amount, which he might be said to have inherited, was dissolved with all the rest in harmony and irony? And how could there be true and proper characters in the poem, if characters and personages in art are nothing but the notes of the soul of the poet themselves, in their diversity and opposition? These become embodied in beings who certainly seem to live their own proper and particular lives, but really live, all of them, the same life variously distributed and are sparks of the same central power. One of the worst of critical prejudices is to suppose that characters live on their own account and can almost continue living outside the works of art of which they form a part and in which they in no wise differ nor can be disassociated from the strophes, the verses and the words. Since there is no free energy of passionate sentiments in the Furioso, we do not find there characters, but figures, drawn and painted certainly, but without relief or density, portrayed rather as general or typical than individual beings. The knights resemble and mingle with one another, though differentiated by their goodness or wickedness, their greater polish or greater rudeness, or by means of external and accidental attributes, often by their names alone; in like manner the women are either amorous or perfidious, virtuous and content with one love, or dissolute and perverse, often distinguished merely by their different adventures or the names that adorn them. The same is to be said of the narratives and descriptions (typical and non-individual, or but little individual, is the madness of Orlando, to compare which with Lear's is a rhetorician's fancy), and of natural objects, landscapes, palaces, gardens, and all else. Reserves have been and can with justice even be made as to the coherence of the characters taken as a whole and forming part of a general scheme, for Ariosto's personages take many liberties with themselves, according to the course of the events with which they find themselves connected, or rather according to the services which the author asks of them.

Such warnings as these are indispensable, because, if some readers realise their expectation of finding objectively described and coherent characters in Ariosto and consequently praise him for creating them, others with like expectations equally unfounded are disappointed and consequently blame him. Thus for De Sanctis Ariosto's feminine characters have seemed to be inferior to those of Dante, of Shakespeare and of Goethe: but this is an impossible comparison, because Angelica, Olympia, and Isabella, although they certainly lack the passionate intensity of Francesca, Desdemona and Margaret, yet the latter for their part lack the harmonious octaves in which the first trio lives and has its being, consisting of just these octaves. And what is more, neither trio suffers from the imperfections, which are imperfections only in the light of imperfect critical knowledge and consequent prejudice, but not real imperfections and poetical contradictions in themselves. De Sanctis also blamed Ariosto for his lack of sentiment for nature, as though it were a defect; but what is called sentiment for nature (as for that matter the great master De Sanctis himself taught) does not depend upon nature, but rather upon the attitude of the human spirit, upon the feelings of comfort, of melancholy or of religious terror, with which man invests nature and finds them where he has placed them; but this attitude was foreign to the fundamental attitude of Ariosto, and were there to be by chance some reference to it in the poem, were some note of sentiment to sound there, we should immediately be sensible of the discord and impropriety. To Lessing, another objective critic, the portrayal of the beauties of Alcina seemed to be a mistake and to exceed the limit of poetry, to which De Sanctis replied that this materiality which Lessing blamed was the secret of the poetry, because the beauty of the magician Alcina required a material description, since it was fictitious in its nature. This blame was unjust, and although the answer to it was ingenious, yet it was perhaps not perfectly correct, for we have already seen that Ariosto always described thus both true and imaginary beauties, Olympias and Alcinas. The true answer seems to be the one already given, that it would be useless to seek for features of energy in Ariosto, lively portraits dashed off in a couple of brush strokes, for these things presuppose a mode of feeling that he lacked altogether or, at any rate suppressed. Those "laughing fleeting" eyes, which are all Sylvia, "le doux sourire amoureux et souffrant," which are the whole of the spiritual sister-soul of the Maison du Berger, do not belong to Ariosto, but to Leopardi and to De Vigny.

There are two ways in which the Furioso should not be read: the first is the way in which one reads a work of rhythmic and lofty moral inspiration, like the Promessi Sposi, tracing, that is to say, the development of a serious human affection, which circulates in and determines every part alike, even to the smallest detail; the second is that suitable for such works as Faust, where the general composition, which is more or less guided by mental concepts, does not at all coincide with the poetical inspiration of the separate parts. Here the poetical should be separated from the unpoetical parts, and the poetically endowed reader will neglect the one to enjoy the other. In the Furioso, this inequality of work is absent or only present to a very slight extent (that is to say, to the extent that imperfection must ever be present in the most perfect work of man) and it is as equally harmonious as the Promessi Sposi; but it lacks that particular form of passionate seriousness, to be found throughout Manzoni's work and in stray passages of Goethe's. The Furioso should therefore be read in a third manner, namely by following a content which is ever the same, yet ever expressed in new forms, whose attraction consists in the magic of this ever-identical yet inexhaustible variety of appearances, without paying attention to the material element of the narratives and descriptions.

As we see, this too amounts to accepting with a rectification a common judgment on the Furioso, which may be said to have accompanied the poem from the moment of its first appearance: namely, that it is a work devoid of seriousness, being of a light, burlesque, pleasing and frivolous sort. It was described as "ludicro more" by Cardinal Sadoleto, when according the license for printing the edition of 1516 in the name of Leo X, although he added to this, perhaps translating the declaration of the poet himself, "longo tamen studio et cogitatione, multisque vigiliis confectum." Bernardo Tasso, Trissino and Speroni, and other suchlike grave pedantic personages, did not fail to blame Ariosto for having dedicated his poem to the sole end of pleasing. Boileau looked upon it simply as a collection of fables comiques, and Sulzer called it a "poem with the sole end of pleasing, not directed by the reason"; and even to-day are to be found its merits and defects noted down to credit and debit account in many a scholastic manual; on the credit side stand the perfection of the octave, the vivacity of the narrative, the graceful style, to the debit account lack of profound sentiment, light which shines but does not warm and failure to touch the heart. We accept and rectify this judgment with the simple observation that those who regard the poem thus see clearly enough everything that is on a level with their own eyes, but do not raise them to regard what is above their heads and is the principal quality of the Furioso, owing to which the frivolity of Ariosto reveals itself as profound seriousness of rare quality, profound emotion of the heart, but of a noble and exquisite heart, equally remote from the emotions of what is generally looked upon as life and reality.