Renaissance in Italy, Volume 5 (of 7) / Italian Literature, Part 2

by John Addington Symonds

Ma qual paese è quello ove oggi possa, Glorioso Francesco, in questa guisa Il rustico cultor goderse in pace L'alte fatiche sue sicuro e lieto? Non già il bel nido ond'io mi sto lontano, Non già l'Italia mia; che poichè lunge Ebbe, altissimo Re, le vostre insegne, Altro non ebbe mai che pianto e guerra. I colti campi suoi son fatti boschi, Son fatti albergo di selvagge fere, Lasciati in abbandono a gente iniqua. Il bifulco e 'l pastor non puote appena In mezzo alle città viver sicuro Nel grembo al suo signor; chè di lui stesso Che 'l devria vendicar, divien rapina ... Fuggasi lunge omai dal seggio antico L'italico villan; trapassi l'alpi; Truove il gallico sen; sicuro posi Sotto l'ali, signor, del vostro impero. E se quì non avrà, come ebbe altrove Così tepido il sol, sì chiaro il cielo, Se non vedrà quei verdi colli toschi, Ove ha il nido più bello Palla e Pomona; Se non vedrà quei cetri, lauri e mirti, Che del Partenopeo veston le piagge; Se del Benaco e di mill'altri insieme Non saprà quì trovar le rive e l'onde; Se non l'ombra, gli odor, gli scogli ameni Che 'l bel liguro mar circonda e bagna; Se non l'ampie pianure e i verdi prati Che 'l Po, l'Adda e 'l Tesin rigando infiora, Quì vedrà le campagne aperte e liete, Che senza fine aver vincon lo sguardo, etc.[300]

Luigi Alamanni was the member of a noble Florentine family, who for several generations had been devoted to the Medicean cause. He was born in 1495, and early joined the band of patriots and scholars who assembled in the Rucellai gardens to hear Machiavelli read his notes on Livy. After the discovery of the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, in which Machiavelli was implicated, and which cost his cousin Luigi di Tommaso Alamanni and his friend Jacopo del Diacceto their lives, Luigi escaped across the mountains by Borgo San Sepolcro to Urbino. Finally, after running many risks, and being imprisoned for a while at Brescia by Giulio's emissaries, he made good his flight to France. His wife and three children had been left at Florence. He was poor and miserable, suffering as only exiles suffer when their home is such a paradise as Italy. In 1527, after the expulsion of the Medici, Luigi returned to Florence, and took an active part in the preparations for the siege as well as in the diplomatic negotiations which followed the fall of the city. Alessandro de' Medici declared him a rebel; and he was forced to avail himself again of French protection. With the exception of a few years passed in Italy between 1537 and 1540, the rest of his life was spent as a French courtier. Both Francis I. and Henri II. treated him with distinction and bounty. Catherine de Medicis made him her master of the household; and his son received the bishopric of Macon. In 1556 he died at Amboise following the Court.

Luigi Alamanni was the greatest Italian poet of whose services Francis I. could boast, as Cellini was the greatest Italian artist. His works are numerous, and all are marked by the same qualities of limpid facility, tending to prolixity and feebleness. Sonnets and canzoni, satires, romantic epics, eclogues, translations, comedies, he tried them all. His translation of the Antigone deserves commendation for its style. His Flora is curious for its attempt to reproduce the comic iambic of the Latin poets. If his satires dealt less in generalities, they might aspire to comparison with Ariosto's. As it is, the poet's bile vents itself in abstract invectives, of which the following verses upon Rome may stand for a fair specimen:[301]

Or chi vedesse il ver, vedrebbe come Più disnor tu, che 'l tuo Luter Martino, Porti a te stessa, e più gravose some. Non la Germania, no, ma l'ozio e 'l vino, Avarizia, ambizion, lussuria, e gola Ti mena al fin, che già veggiam vicino. Non pur questo dico io, non Francia sola, Non pur la Spagna, tutta Italia ancora Che ti tien d'eresia, di vizi scola. E chi nol crede, ne dimandi ognora Urbin, Ferrara, l'Orso, e la Colonna, La Marca, il Romagnuol, ma più chi plora Per te servendo, che fu d'altri donna.

Alamanni is said to have been an admirable improvisatore; and this we can readily believe, for his verses even when they are most polished, flow with a placidity of movement that betrays excessive case.

We have traced the pastoral ideal from its commencement in Boccaccio, through the Arcadia of Sannazzaro, Poliziano's Orfeo, and the didactic poets, up to the point when it was destined soon to find its perfect form in the Aminta and the Pastor Fido. Both Tasso and Guarini lived beyond the chronological limits assigned to this work. The Renaissance was finished; and Italy had passed into a new phase of existence, under the ecclesiastical reaction which is called the Counter-Reformation. It is no part of my programme to enter with particularity into the history of the second half of the sixteenth century. And yet the subject of this and the preceding chapter would be incomplete were I not to notice the two poems which combined the drama and the pastoral in a work of art no less characteristic for the people and the age than fruitful of results for European literature. Great tragedy and great comedy were denied to the Italians. But they produced a novel species in the pastoral drama, which testified to their artistic originality, and led by natural transitions to the opera. Poetry was on the point of expiring; but music was rising to take her place. And the imaginative medium prepared by the lyrical scenes of the Arcadian play, afforded just that generality and aloofness from actual conditions of life, which were needed by the new art in its first dramatic essays.

It would be a mistake to suppose that because the form of the Arcadian romance was artificial, it could not lend itself to the presentation of real passion when adapted to the theater. The study of the Aminta and the Pastor Fido is sufficient to remove this misconception. Though the latter is the more carefully constructed of the two, the plot in either case presents a series of emotional situations, developed with refined art and expressed with lyrical abundance. The rustic fable is but a veil, through which the everlasting lineaments of love are shown. Arcadia, stripped of pedantry and affectation, has become the ideal world of sentiment. Like amber, it incloses in its glittering transparency the hopes and fears, the pains and joys, which flit from heart to heart of men and women when they love. The very conventionality of the pastoral style assists the lyrical utterance of real feeling. For it must be borne in mind that both Aminta and the Pastor Fido are essentially lyrical. The salt and savor of each play are in their choruses and monologues. The dialogue, the fable and the characters serve to supply the poet with motives for emotion that finds vent in song. This being conceded, it will be understood how from their scenes as a whole world of melodrama issued. Whatever may have been the subject of an opera before the days of Gluck, it drew its life-blood from these pastorals.

The central motive of Aminta and the Pastor Fido is the contrast between the actual world of ambition, treachery and sordid strife, and the ideal world of pleasure, loyalty and tranquil ease. Nature is placed in opposition to civil society, the laws of honor to the laws of love, the manners of Arcadia to the manners of Italy. This cardinal motive finds its highest utterance in Tasso's chorus on the Age of Gold:

O bella età dell'oro, Non già perchè di latte Sen corse il fiume, e stillò mele il bosco; Non perchè i frutti loro Dier dall'aratro intatte Le terre, e gli angui erràr senz'ira o tosco; Non perchè nuvol fosco Non spiegò allor suo velo, Ma in primavera eterna, Ch'ora s'accende, e verna, Rise di luce e di sereno il cielo; Nè portò peregrino O guerra, o mercè agli altrui lidi il pino: Ma sol perchè quel vano Nome senza oggetto, Quell'idolo d'errori, idol d'inganno, Quel che dal volgo insano Onor poscia fu detto, Che di nostra natura 'l feo tiranno, Non mischiava il suo affanno Fra le liete dolcezze Dell'amoroso gregge; Nè fu sua dura legge Nota a quell'alme in libertate avvezze: Ma legge aurea e felice, Che Natura scolpì, "S'ei piace, ei lice."