The Arcadia was begun at Nocera in Sannazzaro's youth, continued during his first residence in France, and finished on his return to Naples. So much can be gathered from its personal references. The book blends autobiography and fable in a narrative of very languid interest. The poet's circumstances and emotions in exile are described at one moment in plain language, at another are presented with the indirectness of an allegory. Arcadia in some passages stands for a semi-savage country-district in France; in others it is the dream-world of poetry and pastoral simplicity. But in either case its scenery is drawn from Sannazzaro's own Italian home. The inhabitants are shepherds such as Virgil fancied, with even more of personal refinement. Through their lips the poet tells the tale of his own love, and paints his Neapolitan mistress among the nymphs of Mount Parthenion. Throughout, we note an awkward interminglement of subjective and objective points of view. Realism merges into fancy. Experience of life assumes the garb of myth or legend. Neither as an autobiographical romance nor again as a work of pure invention has the Arcadia surpassing merit. Loose in construction and uncertain in aim, it lacks the clearness and consistency of perfect art. And yet it is a masterpiece; because its author, led by prescient instinct, contrived to make it reflect one of the deepest and most permanent emotions of his time. The whole pastoral ideal—the yearning after a golden age, the beauty and pathos of the country, the felicity of simple folk, the details of rustic life, the charm of woods and gardens, the mythology of Pan and Satyrs, Nymphs and Fauns—all this is expressed in a series of pictures, idyllically graceful, artistically felt. It is not for its story that we read Arcadia, but for the Feast of Pales, the games at Massilia's shrine, the Sacrifice to Pan, Androgéo's tomb, the group of girls a-maying, the carved work of the beechen cup, the passion of Carino, the gardens with their flowers, and the bands of youths and maidens meeting under shadowy trees to dance and play. Pictures like these are presented with a scrupulous and loving sincerity, an anxious accuracy of studied style, which proves how serious was the author. His heart, as an artist, is in the realization of his dream-world; and his touch is firm and dry and delicate as Mantegna's. Indeed, we are constantly reminded of the Mantegnesque manner, and one reference justifies the belief that Sannazzaro strove to reproduce its effect.[254] The sensuousness of the Italian feeling for mere beauty is tempered with reticence and something of the coldness of Greek marbles. In point of diction, Boccaccio has been obviously imitated. But Boccaccio's style is not revived, as Masuccio strove to revive it, with the fire and energy of Southern passion substituted for its Tuscan irony and delicacy. On the contrary, the periods are still more artificial, the turns of phrase more tortured. Sannazzaro writes with difficulty in a somewhat unfamiliar language, rendered all the more stubborn by his endeavors to add classical refinements. Boccaccio's humor is gone; his sensuality is purged by contact with antique examples; the waving groves of the Filocopo are clipped and tutored like box-hedges in an academic garden. If there is less of natural raciness than came unsummoned to Boccaccio's aid, there is more of Virgil and Theocritus than he chose to appropriate. The slow deliberate expansion of each picture, stroke by stroke and touch by touch, reminds us of the quattrocento painters; while the précieuseté of the phrasing has affinity to the manner of a late Greek stylist, especially perhaps, though almost certainly unconsciously, to that of Philostratus. This close correspondence of the Arcadia to the main artistic sympathies of the Renaissance, rendered it indescribably popular in its own age, and causes it still to rank as one of the representative masterpieces of the epoch. Through its peculiar blending of classical and modern strains—the feasts of Pales and of Pan taking color from Capo di Monte superstitions; the nymphs of wood and river modeled after girls from Massa and Sorrento; the yellow-haired shepherds of Mount Mænalus singing love-laments for Neapolitan Carmosina—we are enabled more nearly than in almost any other literary essay to appreciate the spirit of the classical revival as it touched Italian art. A little earlier, there was more of spontaneity and naïveté. A little later, there was more of conscious erudition and consummate skill. The Arcadia comes midway between the Filocopo and the Pastor Fido.
It is time to turn from dissertation, and to detach, almost at haphazard, some of those descriptions which render the Arcadia a storehouse of illustrations to the pictures of the fifteenth century. I will first select the frescoes on the front of Pales' chapel, endeavoring so far as possible to reproduce the intricacies and quaint affectations of the style.[255] The constant abuse of epithets, and the structure of the period by means of relatives, pegging its clauses down and keeping them in their places, will be noticed as part of the Boccaccesque tradition. "Intending now to ratify with souls devout the vows which had been made in former times of need, upon the smoking altars, all together in company we went unto the sacred temple, along whose frontal, raised upon a few ascending steps, we found above the doorway painted certain woods and hills of most delightful beauty, full of leafy trees and of a thousand sorts of flowers, among the which were seen many herds that went a-pasture, wending at pleasure through green fields, with peradventure ten dogs to guard them, the footsteps of the which upon the dust were traced most natural to the view. Of the shepherds, some were milking, some shearing wool, others playing on pipes, and there were there a few, who, as it seemed, were singing and endeavoring to keep in tune with these. But that which pleased me to regard with most attention were certain naked Nymphs, the which behind a chestnut bole stayed, as it were, half-hidden, laughing at a ram, who, in his eagerness to gnaw a wreath of oak that hung before his eyes, forgot to feed upon the grass around him. In that while came four Satyrs, with horns upon their heads and goat's feet, stealing through a shrubbery of lentisks, softly, softly, to take the maidens from behind. Whereof when they were ware, they took to flight through the dense grove, shunning nor thorns nor aught else that might annoy them; and of these one, nimbler than the rest, was clinging to a hornbeam's branches, and thence, with a long bough in her hands, defending herself. The others had cast themselves through fright into a river, wherethrough they fled a-swimming; and the clear water hid little or but nothing of their snow-white flesh. But whenas they saw themselves escaped, they sat them down on the further bank, fordone with toil and panting, drying their soaked hair, and thence with word and gesture seemed to mock at those who had not shown the power to capture them. And in one of the sides there was Apollo, with the yellowest hair, leaning upon a wand of wild olive, and watching Admetus' herds beside a river-bed; and thus, intently gazing on two sinewy bulls which jousted with their horns, he was not ware of wily Mercury, who in a shepherd's habit, with a kid-skin girded under his left shoulder, stole the cows away from him. And in that same space stood Battus, the bewrayer of the theft, transformed into a stone, stretching his finger forth in act of one who pointed. A little lower, Mercury was seen again, seated upon a large stone, and playing with swollen cheeks upon a rustic pipe, while his eyes were turned to mark a white calf close beside him, and with most cunning arts he strove to cozen Argus of the many eyes. On the other side, at the foot of an exceeding high oak-tree, was stretched a shepherd asleep among his goats; and a dog stayed near him, smelling at his pouch, which lay beneath his head; and he, forasmuch as the moon gazed at him with glad eyes, methought must be Endymion. Next to him was Paris, who with his sickle had begun to carve Œnone on an elm-tree's bark, and being called to judge between the naked goddesses that stood before him, had not yet been able to complete his work. But what was not less subtle in the thought than pleasant in the seeing was the shrewdness of the wary painter, who, having made Juno and Minerva of such extreme beauty that to surpass them was impossible, and doubting of his power to make Venus so lovely as the tale demanded, had painted her with back turned, covering the defect of art by ingenuity of invention. And many other things right charming and most beautiful to look upon, of the which I now have but a faulty memory, I saw there painted upon divers places." It is clear that Sannazzaro had not read Lessing's Laocoon or noted the distinctions between poetry and painting. Yet in this he was true to the spirit of his age; for actions no less continuous than some of those described by him, may be found represented in the frescoes of Gozzoli or Lippo Lippi.
The finished portrait of Sannazzaro's mistress Carmosina shall supply my next question.[256] The exile is listening to shepherds singing, and one of them has mentioned Amaranta. He knows that she is present, and resolves to choose her by her gestures from the rest. "With wary glance, watching now one and now another, I saw among the maidens one who seemed to me the loveliest. Her hair was covered with a very thin veil, beneath which two eyes, lovely and most brilliant, sparkled not otherwise than the clear stars are wont to shine in a serene and limpid sky; and her face, inclining somewhat to the oval more than the round, of fair shape, with pallor that was not unpleasing, but tempered, as it were toward dark complexion turning, and relieved therewith by vermeil and gracious hues, filled with joy of love the eyes that gazed on her. Her lips were of the sort that surpass the morning roses; between the which, each time she spoke or smiled, she showed some portion of her teeth, of such rare and marvelous grace that I could not have compared them to aught else but orient pearls. Thence passing down to her marble and delicate throat, I saw upon that tender bosom the slight and youthful breasts, which, like two rounded apples, thrust her robe of finest texture somewhat forward; and in the midst of them I could discern the fairest little way, exceeding pleasant to the sight, the which, because it ended and escaped the view, was reason why I dwelt thereon with greater force of thought. And she, with most delicate gait and a gentle and aspiring stature, went through the fair fields, with her white hand plucking tender flowers. With the which when she had filled her lap, no sooner had the singing youth within her hearing mentioned Amaranta, than, dropping her hands and gathered robe, and as it were lost to her own recollection, without her knowing what befell, they all slid from her grasp, sowing the earth with peradventure twenty sorts of colors. Which, as though suddenly brought to herself, when she perceived, she blushed not otherwise than sometimes reddens the enchanted moon with rosy aspect, or as, upon the issuing of the sun, the red Aurora shows herself to mortal gaze. Whereupon she, not for any need methinks compelling her thereto, but haply hoping better thus to hide the blushes that came over her, begotten by a woman's modesty, bent toward earth again to pick them up, as though she cared for only that, choosing the white flowers from the crimson and the dark blue from the violet blossoms." Amaranta makes a pretty picture, but one which is too elaborate in detail. Her sisterhood is described with touches more negligent, and therefore the more artful.[257] "Some wore garlands of privet with yellow buds and certain crimson intermingled; others had white lilies and purple mixed with a few most verdant orange leaves between; one went starred with roses, and yon other whitened with jasmines. So that each by herself and altogether were more like to divine spirits than to human creatures. Whereupon many men there present cried with wonder: O blessed the possessor of such beauties!" The young swains are hardly less attractive than their nymphs.[258] "Logisto and Elpino, shepherds, comely of person and in years within the bounds of earliest youth: Elpino guardian of goats, Logisto of the woolly sheep: both with hair yellower than ripe ears of corn; both of Arcadia; both fit alike to sing and to make answer."
Sannazzaro's touch upon inanimate nature is equally precise. Here is a description of the evening sky.[259] "It was the hour when sunset embroidered all the west with a thousand varieties of clouds; some violet, some darkly blue, and certain crimson; others between yellow and black, and a few so burning with the fire of backward-beaten rays that they seemed as though of polished and finest gold." Here is a garden:[260] "Moved by sympathy for Ergasto, many shepherds had moreover wrought the place about with high hedges, not of thorns or briars, but of junipers, roses and jasmines, and had delved therein with their mattocks a pastoral seat, and at even spaces certain towers of rosemary and myrtles interwoven with the most incomparable art." Here are flowers:[261] "There were lilies, there privets, there violets toned to amorous pallor, and in large abundance the slumberous poppies with their leaning heads, and the ruddy spikes of the immortal amaranth, most comely of coronals mid winter's rudeness."
The same research of phrase marks the exhibition of emotion. Carino, the shepherd, tells how, overwhelmed with grief, he lay upon the ground and seemed lost to life:[262] "Came the oxherds, came the herdsmen of the sheep and goats, together with the peasants of the neighboring farms, deeming me distraught, as of a truth indeed I was; and all with deepest pity asked the reason of my woe. Unto whom I made no answer, but, minding my own weeping, thus with lamentable voice exclaimed: You of Arcady shall sing among your mountains of my death! You of Arcady, who only have the art of song, you of my death shall sing amid your mountains!" His complaint extends to a length which defies quotation. But here is an extract from it:[263] "O gods of heaven and earth, and whosoe'er ye are who have regard for wretched lovers, lend, I pray, your ears of pity to my lamentation, and listen to the dolent cries my tortured spirit sendeth forth! O Naiads, dwellers in the running water brooks! O Napean nymphs, most gracious haunters of far places and of liquid fonts, lift up your yellow tresses but a little from the crystal waves, and receive these my last cries before I perish! O you, O fairest Oreads, who naked on the hanging cliffs are wont to go achase, leave now your lofty mountain realm, and in my misery visit me, for I am sure to win your sorrow by what brings my cruel maid delight! Come forth from your trees, O pitying Hamadryads, ye anxious guardians over them, and turn your thoughts a little toward the martyrdom these hands of mine prepare for me! And you, O Dryads, most beauteous damsels of the woods profound, ye who not once but many and many a time have watched our shepherds at the fall of eve in circle dancing neath the shadow of cool walnut trees, with yellowest curls a-ripple down their snow-white necks, cause now I pray, if you are not with my too changeful fortune changed, that mid these shades my death may not be mute, but ever grow from day to day through centuries to come, so that the tale of years life lacks, may go to lengthen out my fame!"
For English students the Arcadia has a special interest, since it begot the longer and more ambitious work of Sir Philip Sidney. Hitherto I have spoken only of its prose; but the book blends prose and verse in alternating sections. The verse consists of mingled terza rima, canzoni and sestines. Not less artificial and decidedly less original than the prose, Sannazzaro's lyrics and eclogues do not demand particular attention. He put needless restraint upon himself by affecting the awkwardness of sdrucciolo rhymes[264]; and he lacked the roseate fluency, the winning ease, the unaffected graces of Poliziano. One sestine, sung by himself among the shepherds of Arcady, I have translated, because it paints the actual conditions of life which drove Sannazzaro into his first exile.[265] But the singularly charmless form adopted, which even Petrarch hardly rendered tolerable, seems to check the poet's spontaneity of feeling.
Whether the distinctively Neapolitan note can be discerned in Sannazzaro, seems more than doubtful. As in his Sapphic Odes and Piscatory Eclogues, so also in his Arcadia we detect the working of a talent self-restrained within the limits of finely-tempered taste. The case is very different with Pontano's Latin elegies and lyrics.[266] They breathe the sensuality and self-abandonment to impulse of a Southern temperament. They reflect the profuseness of nature in a region where men scarcely know what winter means, her somewhat too nakedly voluptuous beauties, her volcanic energies and interminglement of living fire with barren scoriæ. For this reason, and because there is some danger of neglecting the special part played by the Southern Province in Italian literary history, I am induced to digress from the main topic of this chapter in the direction of Pontano's poetry.
Though a native of Cerreto in Umbria, Pontano passed his life at Naples, and became, if we may trust the evidence of his lyrics, more Neapolitan than the Neapolitans. In him the southern peoples found a voice, which, though it uttered a dead language, expressed their sentiments. It is unlucky that Pontano, who deserves to be reckoned as the greatest poet of Naples, should have made this important contribution to Italian literature in Latin. Whether at that moment he could have spoken so freely in the vulgar tongue is more than doubtful. But be that as it may, we must have recourse to his Latin poems, in order to supply a needed link in the chain of Italian melody. Carducci acutely remarked that, more than any other poems of the century, they embody "the æsthetic and learned reaction against the mystical idealism of Christianity in a preceding age." They do so better than Beccadelli's, because, where the Hermaphroditus is obscene, the Eridanus, Baiæ, Amor Conjugalis, Pompæ, Næniæ of Pontano are only sensual. The cardinal point in Pontano is the breadth of his feeling. He touches the whole scale of natural emotions with equal passion and sincerity. The love of the young man for his sweetheart, the love of the husband for his bride, the love of a father for his offspring, the love of a nurse for her infant charge, find in his verse the same full sensuous expression. In Pontano there is no more of Teutonic Schwärmerei than of Dantesque transcendentalism. He does not make us marvel how the young man, who has embroidered odes upon the theme of Alma Pellegrina, or who has woven violet and moonshine into some Du bist wie eine Blume, can submit to light the hymeneal torch and face the prose of matrimony. Within the limits of unsophisticated instinct he is perfectly complete and rounded to a flawless whole. He does not say one thing and leave another to be understood—a contradiction that imports some radical unreality into the Platonic or sentimental modes of sexual expression. He expects woman to weigh but little less than man in scales of natural appetite. And yet his Muse is no mere vagrant Venus. She is a respectable if not, according to our present views, an altogether decent Juno. The final truth about her is that she revealed to her uniquely gifted bard, on earth and in the shrine of home, that poetry of love which Milton afterwards mythologized in Eden. The note of unadulterated humanity sounds with a clearness that demands commemoration in this poetry of passion. It is, if not the highest, yet the frankest and most decided utterance of mutual, legitimate desire. As such, it occupies an enviable place in the history of Italian love—equally apart from trecento sickliness and cinque cento corruption; unrefined perchance, but healthy; doing justice to the proletariate of Naples whence it sprung.
Pontano paints all primitive affections in a way to justify his want of reticence. His Fannia, Focilla, Stella, Ariadne, Cinnama—mistress or wife, we need not stop to question—are the very opposite of Dante's or of Petrarch's loves.[267] Liberal of their charms, rejoicing like the waves of the Chiaja in the laughter of the open day, they think it no shame to unbare their beauties to their lover's eyes, or to respond with ardor to his caresses. Christian modesty, medieval asceticism, the strife between the spirit and the flesh, the aspiration after mystic modes of feeling, have been as much forgotten in their portraits, as though the world had never undergone reaction against paganism. And yet they differ from the women of the Roman elegiac poets. They are less artificial than Corinna. Though "the sweet witty soul of Ovid" passed over these honeyed elegies, the Neapolitan poet remains a bourgeois of the fifteenth century. His passion is unreservedly sensual and at the same time tenderly affectionate. Its motive force is sexual desire; its depth and strength are in the love a husband and a father feels. Given the verses upon Fannia alone, we should be justified in calling Pontano a lascivious poet. The three books De Amore Conjugali show him in a different light. He there expounds the duties and relations of the family with the same robust and unaffected force of feeling he had shown in the description of a wanton. After painting his Stella with the gusto of an Italian Rubens, he can turn to shed tears almost sublime in their pathos over the tomb of Lucia his daughter, or to write a cradle-song for his son Luciolus.[268] The carnal appetites which are legitimated by matrimony and hallowed in domestic relations, but which it is the custom of civilized humanity to veil, assume a tone of almost Bacchic rapture in this fluent Latin verse. This constitutes Pontano's originality. Such a combination has never been presented to the world before or since. The genial bed, from which he draws his inspiration, found few poets to appreciate it in ancient days, and fewer who have dared to celebrate it so unblushingly among the moderns.[269]