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

by John Addington Symonds

In putting this dream-world of his fantasy upon the canvas, Ariosto showed the power of an accomplished painter. This is the secret of the Furioso's greatness. This makes it in a deep sense the representative poem of the Italian Renaissance. All the affinities of its style are with the ruling art of Italy, rather than with sculpture or with architecture; and the poet is less a singer uttering his soul forth to the world in song, than an artist painting a multitude of images with words instead of colors. His power of delineation never fails him. Through the lucid medium of exquisitely chosen language we see the object as clearly as he saw it. We scarcely seem to see it with his eyes so much as with our own, for the poet stands aloof from his handiwork and is a spectator of his pictures like ourselves. So authentic is the vision that, while he is obliged by his subject to treat the same situations—in duels, battles, storms, love-passages—he never repeats himself. A fresh image has passed across the camera obscura of his brain, and has been copied in its salient features. For the whole of this pictured world is in movement, and the master has the art to seize those details which convey the very truth of life and motion. We sit in a dim theater of thought, and watch the motley crowd of his fantastic personages glide across the stage. They group themselves for a moment ere they flit away; and then the scene is shifted, and a new procession enters; fresh tableaux vivants are arranged, and when we have enjoyed their melodies of form and color, the spell is once more broken and new actors enter. The stage is never empty; scene melts into scene without breathing-space or interruption; but lest the show should weary by its continuity, the curtain is let down upon each canto's closing, and the wizard who evokes these phantoms for our pleasure, stands before it for a moment and discourses wit and wisdom to his audience.

It is this all-embracing universally illuminating faculty of vision that justifies Galileo's epithet of the Divine for Ariosto. This renders his title of the Italian Homer intelligible. But we must remember that these high-sounding compliments are paid him by a nation in whose genius the art of painting holds the highest rank; and it may well happen that critics less finely sensitive to pictorial delineation shall contest them both. As in Italian painting, so in Ariosto's poetry, deep thought and poignant passion are not suffered to interrupt the calm unfolding of a world where plastic beauty reigns supreme. No thrilling cry from the heart of humanity is heard; no dreadful insight into mortal woe disturbs the rhythmic dance. Tragedy is drowned and swallowed in a sea of images; and if the deeper chords of pathos are touched here and there, they are so finely modulated and blent with the pervading melody that a harsh note never jars upon our ears. A nation in whom the dramatic instinct is paramount, an audience attuned to Hamlet or King Lear, will feel that something essential to the highest poetry has been omitted. The same imperious pictorial faculty compels Ariosto to describe what more dramatic poets are contented to suggest. Where Dante conveys an image in one pregnant line, he employs an octave for the exhibition of a finished picture.[8] Thus our attention is withdrawn from the main object to a multitude of minor illustrations, each of which is offered to us with the same lucidity. The dædal labyrinth of exquisitely modeled forms begins to cloy, and in our tired ingratitude we wish the artist had left something to our own imagination. It is too much to be forced to contemplate a countless number of highly-wrought compositions. We long for something half-seen, indicated, shyly revealed by lightning flashes and withdrawn before it has been fully shown. When Lessing in Laocoon censured the famous portrait of Alcina, this was, in part at least, the truth of his complaint. She wearies us by the minuteness of the touches that present her to our gaze; and the elaboration of each detail prevents us from forming a complete conception of her beauty. But the Italians of the sixteenth century, accustomed to painted forms in fresco and in oils, and educated in the descriptive traditions of Boccaccio's school, would not have recognized the soundness of this criticism. For them each studied phrase of Ariosto was the index to an image, summoned by memory from the works of their own masters, or from life. His method of delineation was analogous to that of figurative art. In a word, the defect pointed out by the German critic is the defect of Ariosto's greatest quality, the quality belonging to an age and race in which painting was supreme.

Closely allied to this pictorial method in the representation of all objects to our mental vision, was Ariosto's rhetorical amplification. He rarely allows a situation to be briefly indicated or a sentiment to be divined. The emotions of his characters are analyzed at length; and their utterances, even at the fever-heat of passion, are expanded with a dazzling wealth of illustration. Many of the episodes in the Furioso are eminently dramatic, and the impression left upon the memory is forcible enough. But they are not wrought out as a dramatist would handle them. The persons do not act before us, or express themselves by direct speech. The artist has seen them in motion, has understood what they are feeling; and by his manner of describing them he makes us see them also. But it is always a picture, always an image; that presents itself. Soul rarely speaks to soul without the intervention of interpretative art. This does not prevent Ariosto from being a master of the story-teller's craft. No poet of any nation knew better what to say and what to leave unsaid in managing a fable. The facility of his narration is perfect; and though the incidents of his tales are extremely complicated, there is no confusion. Each story is as limpid as each picture he invents. Nor, again, is there any languor in his poem. Its extraordinary swiftness can only be compared to the rush of a shining river, flowing so smoothly that we have to measure its speed by objects on the surface. The Furioso, in spite of its accumulated images, in spite of its elaborated rhetoric, is in rapid onward movement from the first line to the last. It has an elasticity which is lacking to the monumental architecture of the Divine Comedy. It is free from the stationary digressions that impede a student of Paradise Lost.

The fairy-like fantastic structure of the Furioso has a groundwork of philosophical solidity. Externally a child's story-book, it is internally a mine of deep world-wisdom, the product of a sane and vigorous intellect. Not that we have any right to seek for allegory in the substance of the poem. When Spenser fancied that Ariosto had "ensampled a good governour and vertuous man" in Orlando—in the Orlando who went mad, neglected his liege-lord, and exposed Christendom to peril for Angelica's fair face—he was clearly on the wrong tack. For a man of Ariosto's temperament, in an age of violent contrast between moral corruption and mental activity, it was enough to observe human nature without creating ideals. His knowledge of the actions, motives, passions and characters of men is concrete; and his readings in the lessons of humanity, are literal. The excellence of his delineation consists precisely in the nicety of nuances, the blending of vice and virtue, the correct analysis of motives. He paints men and women as he finds them, not without the irony of one who stands aloof from life and takes malicious pleasure in pointing out its misery and weakness. If I wished to indicate a single passage that displays this knowledge of the heart, I should not select the too transparent allegory of Logistilla[9]—though even here the contrast between Alcina's seductive charms and the permanent beauty of her sister is wrought with a magnificence of detail worthy of Spenser. I would rather point to the reflections which conclude the tale of Marganorre and his wicked sons.[10] In lucid exposition of fact lay the strength of Ariosto; and here it may be said that he proved his affinity to the profoundest spirits of his age in Italy—to Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the founders of analytical science for modern Europe. This intimate study of the laws which govern human action when it seems most wayward, is displayed in Grifone's subjection to the faithless Orrigille, in the conflict of passions which agitate the heroes of Agramante's camp, in the agony of Orlando when he finds Medoro's name coupled with Angelica's, in Bradamante's jealousy, in the conflict of courtesy between Leone and Ruggiero, in the delusive visions of Atlante's castle, in the pride of Rodomonte, and in the comic termination of Angelica's coquetries. The difference between Ariosto and Machiavelli is, that while the latter seems to have dissected human nature with a scalpel, the former has gained this wisdom by sympathy. The one exhibits his anatomical preparations with grim scientific gravity; the other makes his puppets move before us, and smiles sarcastically at their antics.

Sometimes he condenses his philosophy of life in short essays that form the prefaces to cantos, introducing us as through a shapely vestibule into the enchanted palace of his narrative. Among these the finest are the exordia on Love and Honor, on Jealousy, on Loyalty, on Avarice, on the fickleness of Fortune, on Hypocrisy in Courts, and on the pains of Love.[11] The merit of these discourses does not consist in their profundity so much as in their truth. They have been deeply felt and are of universal applicability. What all men have experienced, what every age and race of men have known, the supreme poet expresses with his transparent style, his tender and caressing melody of phrase, his graceful blending of sympathy and satire. Tasso in the preface to Rinaldo rebukes Ariosto for the introduction of these digressions. He says they are below the dignity of the heroic manner, and that a true poet should be able by example and the action of his characters to point the moral without disquisition. This may be true. Yet Ariosto was writing a romance, and we welcome these personal utterances as a relief from the perpetual movement of his figures. In like manner we should be loth to lose the lyrical inter-breathings of Euripidean choruses, or Portia's descant upon mercy, or Fielding's interpolated reflections, all of which are halting-places for the mind to rest on in the rapid course of dramatic or narrative evolution. Still it is not in these detached passages that Ariosto shows his greatest wealth of observation. The novelle, scattered with a lavish hand through all his cantos, combine the same sagacity with energy of action and pictorial effect. Whatever men are wont to do, feel, hope for, fear—what moves their wrath—what yields them pleasure, or inflicts upon them pain—that is the material of Ariosto's tales. He does not use this matter either as a satirist or a moralist, as a tragic poet to effect a purification of the passions, or, again, as a didactic poet to inculcate lessons. Like Plautus, he seems to say: "Whatever be the hues of life, my words shall paint them." Following the course of events without comment, his page reflects the mask of human joys and griefs which is played out before him. In the tale of Polinesso and Ginevra all the elements of pathos that can be extracted from the love of women and the treachery of men, are accumulated. The desertion of Olimpia by Bireno after the sacrifices she has made for him, invests the myth of Ariadne with a wild romantic charm. Isabella's devotion to Zerbino through captivity and danger; the friendship of Cloridano for the beautiful Medoro, and their piety toward Dardinello's corpse; Angelica's doting on Medoro, and the idyll of their happiness among the shepherd folk; the death of Brandimarte, and Fiordeligi's agony of grief; Fiordespina's vain love for Bradamante, and her consolation in the arms of Ricciardetto; the wild legend of the Amazons, who suffered no male stranger to approach their city; Norandino's loyalty to Lucina in the cave of Orco; Lidia's cruel treatment of Alceste; the arts whereby Tanacro and Olindo, sons of Marganorre, work their wicked will in love; Gabrina's treachery toward husband and paramour; Giocondo's adventures with the king Astolfo; the ruse by which Argia justifies her infidelity to Anselmo; the sublime courtesies of Leone; the artful machinations of Melissa—these are the rubrics of tales and situations, so varied, so fertile in resource, that a hundred comedies and tragedies might be wrought from them. Ariosto, in his conduct of these stories, attempts no poetical justice. Virtue in distress, vice triumphant, one passion expelling another, nobler motives conquered by baser, loyalty undermined by avarice, feminine frailty made strong to suffer by the force of love; so runs the world, and so the poet paints it.

New and old, false and real, he mixes all together, and by the alchemy of his imagination makes the fusion true. The classics and the Italian poets, writers of history and romance, geographers and chroniclers, have been laid under contribution. But though the poem is composed of imitations, it is invariably original, because Ariosto has seen and felt whatever he described. Angelica on the horse going out to sea recalls Europa. The battle with the Orc is borrowed from the tale of Perseus. Astolfo in the myrtle grove comes straight from Virgil. Cloridano and Medoro are Nisus and Euryalus in modern dress. The shield of Atlante suggests Medusa's head. Pegasus was the parent of the Hippogriff, and Polyphemus of Orco. Rodomonte rages like Mezentius and dies like Turnus. Grifone on the bridge is a Renaissance study from Horatius Cocles. Senapo repeats the myth of Phineus and the Harpies. Yet throughout these plagiarisms Ariosto remains himself. He has assimilated his originals to his own genius, and has given every incident new life by the vividness of his humanity. If it were needful to cite an instance of his playful, practical ironic treatment of old material, we might point to Lucinda's feminine delicacy in the cave of Orco. She refuses to smear herself with the old goat's fat, and fails to escape with Norandino and his comrades from the hands of this new Polyphemus. So comprehensive is the poet's fancy that it embraces the classic no less than the medieval past. Both are blent in a third substance which takes life from his own experience and observation. In this respect the art of Ariosto corresponds to Raphael's—to the Stanza of the Segnatura or the Antinous-Jonah of the Chigi Chapel. It is the first emancipation of the modern spirit in a work of catholic beauty, preluding to the final emancipation of the reason in the sphere of criticism, thought, and science.

The quality which gives salt and savor to Ariosto's philosophy of life is irony, sometimes bordering on satire, sometimes running over into drollery and humor. Irony is implicit in the very substance of the Furioso. The choice of a mad Orlando for hero reveals the poet's intention; and the recovery of his lost wits from the moon parodies the medieval doctrine that only in the other world shall we find our true selves. The fate of Angelica, again, is supremely ironical. After flouting kings and Paladins, the noblest knights of the whole world, her lovers, she dotes upon a handsome country-lad and marries him in a shepherd's hut. Medoro plucks the rose for which both Christendom and Paynimry had fought in furious rivalry; and wayward Love requites their insults with a by-blow from his dart. Such, smiles the poet, is the end of pride, ambition, passion, and the coquetries that placed the kingdoms of the East and West in peril. Angelica is the embodiment of mortal frailty. The vanity of human wishes, the vicissitudes which blind desire prepares for haughtiest souls, the paradoxes held in store by destiny, are symbolized and imaged in her fate.

Astolfo's journey to the moon, related in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth cantos, presents the Ariostean irony with all its gradations of satire, parody, and comic humor. This Duke of England in the Italian romances played the part of an adventurous vain-glorious cavalier, eminent for courtesy and courage, who carried the wandering impulse of knight-errantry to the extreme verge of the ridiculous. We find him at the opening of the thirty-fourth canto in possession of Atlante's Hippogriff and Logistilla's marvelous horn. Mounting his winged horse, he flies through space, visits the sources of the Nile, and traverses the realm of Ethiopia. There he delivers King Senapo from a brood of Harpies, whom he pursues to the mouth of a cavern whence issues dense smoke. This is the entrance into Hell:

L'orecchie attente allo spiraglio tenne, E l'aria ne sentì percossa e rotta Da pianti e d'urli, e da lamento eterno; Segno evidente quivi esser lo 'nferno.

The paladin's curiosity is roused, and he determines to advance: