Yet, though it is because of Luzzatto that I am writing of Guarini, nevertheless, Guarini, and not Luzzatto, is my present subject. So I will re-tell for the reader the story of the Pastor Fido. Not that it is an easy task. Guarini, who influenced the late Elizabethans, shared, with the best of the latter, the inordinate fancy for complicated plots. Plot is entangled within plot, until we lose sight of the main theme. Luzzatto—I find it impossible to keep the Hebrew out!—here simplifies. He hardly gives us a story at all; he provides an allegory, eking out Guarini with Midrash. In the process of disentangling Guarini’s intricacies, he somewhat sacrifices the chief merit of his Italian model. Luzzatto’s dramatis personae are almost abstractions; they remind us of the figures in morality plays. A Luzzatto drama more resembles Everyman than it does As You Like it. Of Guarini, on the other hand, it may be said, that though he means his characters to represent types, he draws them as individuals. Silvio, to adopt Mr. Symond’s summaries, is “cold and eager”; Mirtillo “tender and romantic.” Corisca’s “meretricious arts” contrast with and enhance Amarillis’s “pure affection”; Dorinda is “shameless.” The dramatist, however, be he Luzzatto or Guarini, writes with a distinct tendency. His aim is to set up the country life and the country girl as essentially superior to the city varieties. This motive is as old as satire, and as young as the “verses of society.” Austin Dobson’s Phyllida is all that is sweet and natural, she is a foil to the artificiality of the “ladies of St. James’s.” Guarini enjoys the honor not of creating the mood, but of bringing it into new vogue.
But I am still keeping from the story. The scene is Arcadia. Yearly the inhabitants must sacrifice a young maiden to Diana. Diana had suffered through the perfidy of Lucrina; but the Oracle declares:
Your Woes, Arcadians! never shall have End,
Till Love shall two conjoin of heavenly Race,
And till a faithful Shepherd shall amend,
By matchless Zeal, Lucrina’s old Disgrace.
Montano, the priest of Diana, seeks, therefore, to join in marriage his only son, Silvio, to the noble nymph, Amarillis, descended from Pan. But Silvio thought more of hunting than of love. The young shepherd, Mirtillo, becomes enamored of Amarillis, and she of him. The artful Corisca, desiring the shepherd for herself, charges Amarillis with infidelity—she is betrothed, though not wedded, to Silvio. Amarillis is sentenced to death. Mirtillo offers himself, and is accepted, as her substitute. Led to the—fatal, not the bridal—altar, Mirtillo’s identity is discovered. The shepherd is Montano’s son. Let us read the rest in the terms of the “argument” (as given in the 1782 English version): “On which Occasion, the true Father, bewailing that it should fall to his lot to execute the law on his own blood—(for to Montano, as priest, the office of carrying out the sacrificial rite belonged)—is by Tirenio, a blind soothsayer, clearly satisfied by the interpretation of the Oracle itself, that it was not only opposite to the will of the gods that this victim should be sacrificed, but moreover that the happy period (i.e., end) was now come to the woes of Arcadia, which had been predicted by the sacred Voice, and from which, as every circumstance now strongly corresponded, they concluded that Amarillis could not be, nor ought to be, the spouse of any other than Mirtillo. And as a little previous to this, Silvio, thinking to wound a wild beast, had pierced Dorinda, who had been exceedingly distressed by the slight he had shown to her violent passion for him, but whose wonted savageness was changed by this accident and softened into compassion—after her wound was healed, which at first was thought mortal, and after Amarillis was become the spouse of Mirtillo, he too became now enamoured of Dorinda, and married her; by means of these events, so happy and so extraordinary, Corisca is at length convinced of and confesses her guilt, and, having implored pardon and obtained it from the loving couple, her perturbed spirit now pacified and satiated with the Follies of the World, she determines to change her Course of Life.” The play ends with the wedding chorus for the hero and heroine (Luzzatto, too, wrote his plays for marriage celebrations). In words very like those used by Luzzatto, Guarini’s shepherds sing to Mirtillo and Amarillis:
O happy pair!
Who have in Sorrow sown, and reap’d in Joy,
How hath your bitter share of grief’s alloy
Now sweetened and confirmed your present bliss!
And may ye learn from this,
Blind, feeble mortals! to distinguish right
What are true ills, and what is pure delight—
Not all that pleases is substantial good;
Not all which grieves, true ill, well understood—
That, of all joys, must be pronounced the best,
Which virtue’s arduous triumphs yield the breast.
In this story may be perceived the germs both of Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess and of Luzzatto’s Unto the Upright Praise. But while the former seized upon and elaborated the sensuous element in Guarini’s plot, giving us a truly disgusting figure in Chloe, Luzzatto pounced on the finer aspects, and his heroines outshine even Amarillis in purity and beauty of mind, just as his heroes surpass Mirtillo in fidelity to the standards of manhood. That one and the same model should have produced two such varied copies says much for the genius of the original author. To him, it is true, we owe the tragi-comedy of intrigue. But to him also we are indebted for idylls, as full-blooded as those of Theocritus, but far more spiritual.
HAHN’S NOTE BOOK
The Hahn family came to Frankfort-on-the-Main from Nordlingen (Bavaria), whence the Jews were expelled in 1507. Between that date and 1860 Nordlingen could not boast of a synagogue; such Jews as visited the place were admitted for a day at a time to the fairs, or were allowed temporarily to reside in war times. In each case a poll-tax was exacted (see Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. ix, p. 335). In Frankfort, the family dwelt in a house bearing the sign of “The Red Cock” (Zum rothen Hahn). Graetz fully describes the regulations which compelled the Jews of Frankfort to fix shields with various devices and names on their houses. He cites “the garlic,” “the ass,” “green shield,” “red shield” (Rothschild), “dragon.” The Frankfort Jews were forced to name themselves after these shields. Hence, in the Jewish sources, the author with whom we are now concerned is sometimes called Joseph Nordlinger, from his original home, and sometimes Joseph Hahn, from the family house-sign in Frankfort.
He himself was not permitted to live peaceably in Frankfort. Born in the second half of the sixteenth century, he not only had to endure the pitiable restrictions to which the Jews were at normal times subjected, but he suffered in 1614 under the Fettmilch riot, as the result of which, after many of the whole Jewish community had been slain and more injured, the survivors left the town. In March, 1616, the Jews—Joseph Hahn among them—were welcomed back amid public demonstrations of good-will, and the community instituted the Frankfort Purim on Adar 20, the anniversary of the return. Though the trouble thus ended happily, we can understand how insecure the life of the German Jews was at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Hence we need not be surprised to find in Hahn’s book Yosif Omez (§ 483) a form of dying confession drawn up in Frankfort to be recited by those undergoing martyrdom. It is a moving composition, simple in its pathos, yet too poignant in its note of sorrow to be cited here in full.
Let it not be thought, however, that the book is a doleful one. Joseph Hahn’s is a warm-hearted Judaism, and there was room in it for a manifold human interest. The work, in a sense, is learned, but it is written so crisply and epigrammatically that its charm surpasses and even disguises its technicalities. It was printed in 1723, but was written a good deal earlier, as we know that the author died in 1637. I have alluded to the manifold interests which occupied Hahn’s mind. Questions of Jewish law and fundamental problems of morality are considered; but so are matters of costume and cookery. How to wear a special dress for synagogue and how to keep a special overcoat for the benediction of the moon, how to rub off ink-stains from the fingers before meals, how “it is a truer penance to eat moderately at ordinary meals than to endure an occasional fast,” how the children should be encouraged to read good books at table, and how, when such a book is finished, there should be a jolly siyyum—these and many another interesting view crowd Joseph Hahn’s delightful pages. He enjoyed a cheerful meal, but he proceeds to denounce in unmeasured terms those who (“and there are many such in our times,” he adds) sing love-songs or tell indecent stories over their wine. “Do not esteem lightly,” he cautions his readers (§ 183), “the advice of our sages,” as to first putting on the right shoe and first removing the left. Joseph Hahn, in truth, is a remarkable mixture of the old and the new; he loves old customs, yet constantly praises new ones, such as the introduction of Psalms and of Lekah Dodi into the Friday night service. We are so familiar with the hymn “Come, O friend, to meet the bride,” that it is startling to be reminded that it dates from the sixteenth century. Joseph Hahn thoroughly entered into the spirit of such lively processions from place to place as accompanied Lekah Dodi, though he held them more suitable for Palestine than Germany. He detested low songs, and objected to games of chance, but he was no kill-joy. Again and again he refers to the synagogue tunes, and revels in hazzanut. His was a thoroughly Jewish synthesis of austerity and joviality.