A Manual of Italian Literature

by Francis Henry Cliffe

"Sono, Italia, per te discordia e morte
In due nomi una cosa; e a si gran male
Un mal s'aggiunge non minor, che frale
Non se' abbastanza, nè abbastanza forte."

Christina, Queen of Sweden, took up her residence in Rome after her abdication, and delighted in attracting a brilliant circle to her Court. Filicaia does not seem to have left his native city, but she extended her patronage to his sons, and he celebrated her munificence in many odes, and wrote a noble Sonnet on her death. In one of his poems he exhorts Rome to rejoice in Christina's presence:

"Non lungi là dal gelido Boöte
Sorse indi a poco imperiosa Stella,
Ma fausta si, che se mentir non vuoi,
Dire a ragion tu puoi:
Antica Roma, a par di te son bella."

Filicaia received immense praise and universal renown for a series of Odes on the Liberation of Vienna from the Turks by John Sobiesky, King of Poland, in 1683. No lyric poems in the Italian language are more universally known. They are undoubtedly splendid and effective compositions. They inspired Wordsworth with the following Sonnet:

'Oh, for a kindling touch from that pure flame
Which ministered, erewhile, to a sacrifice
Of gratitude, beneath Italian skies,
In words like these: 'Up, Voice of Song! proclaim
'Thy saintly rapture with celestial aim;
'For lo! the Imperial City stands released
'From bondage threatened by the embattled East,
'And Christendom respires, from guilt and shame
'Redeemed, from miserable fear set free
'By one day's feat, one mighty victory.
'Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue;
'The Cross shall spread, the Crescent hath waxed dim,
'He conquering, as in joyful Heaven is sung;
'He conquering through God, and God through Him.'"

The poems rise to the occasion, but at times they are more rhetorical than poetical, and the constant apostrophes to God to wake up from His sleep are not in the best taste. Filicaia unfortunately devotes almost as much eulogy to the ungrateful Leopold as to the heroic Sobiesky, and the grovelling adulation with which he addresses Royal and Imperial personages, detracts from the loftiness of the whole.

Filicaia was remarkable for tenderness. One of the finest of his sonnets is on Divine Providence:

"Qual madre i figli con pietoso affetto,"

in which thought and pathos are blended with admirable art. Some of his sonnets are strikingly ingenious. Very beautiful is that on the earth-quake of Sicily, in 1683: