After passing the Furies, and entering the very jaws of Hades, Baldus encounters the fantasies of grammarians and humanists, the idle nonsense of the schoolmen, all the lumber of medieval philosophy mixed with the trifles of the Renaissance.[443] He fights his way through the thick-crowding swarm of follies, and reaches the hell of lovers, where a mountebank starts forward and offers to be his guide. Led by this zany, the hero and his comrades enter an enormous gourd, the bulk of which is compared to the mountains of Val Camonica. Within its spacious caverns dwell the sages of antiquity, with astrologers, physicians, wizards, and false poets. But, having brought his Barons to this place Merlinus Cocajus can advance no further. He is destined to inhabit the great gourd himself. Beyond it he has no knowledge; and here, therefore, he leaves the figments of his fancy without a word of farewell:
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Nec Merlinus ego, laus, gloria, fama Cipadæ, Quamvis fautrices habui Tognamque Gosamque, Quamvis implevi totum macaronibus orbem, Quamvis promerui Baldi cantare batajas, Non tamen hanc zuccam potui schifare decentem, In qua me tantos opus est nunc perdere dentes, Tot, quot in immenso posui mendacia libro. |
With this grotesque invention of the infernal pumpkin, where lying bards are punished by the extraction of teeth which never cease to grow again, Folengo breaks abruptly off. His epic ends with a Rabelaisian peal of laughter, in which we can detect a growl of discontent and anger.
Laying the book down, we ask ourselves whether the author had a serious object, or whether he meant merely to indulge a vein of wayward drollery. The virulent invectives which abound in the Maccaronea, seem to warrant the former conclusion; nor might it be wholly impossible to regard the poem as an allegory, in which Baldus should play the part of the reason, unconscious at first of its noble origin, consorting with the passions and the senses, but finally arriving at the knowledge of its high destiny and defeating the powers of evil.[444] Yet when we attempt to press this theory and to explain the allegory in detail, the thread snaps in our hands. Like the romances of chivalry which it parodies, the Maccaronea is a bizarre mixture of heterogeneous elements, loosely put together to amuse an idle public and excite curiosity. If its author has used it also as the vehicle for satire which embraces all the popular superstitions, vices and hypocrisies of his century; if, as he approaches the conclusion, he assumes a tone of sarcasm more sinister than befits the broad burlesque of the commencement; we must rest contented with the assumption that his choleric humor led him from the path of comedy, while the fury of a soul divided against itself inspired his muses of the cook-shop with loftier strains than they had promised at the outset.[445] Should students in the future devote the same minute attention to Folengo that has been paid to Rabelais, it is not improbable that the question here raised may receive solution. The poet is not unworthy of such pains. Regarded merely as the precursor of Rabelais, Folengo deserves careful perusal. He was the creator of a style, which, when we read his epic, forces us to think of the seventeenth century; so strongly did it influence the form of humorous burlesque in Europe for at least two hundred years. On this account, the historian of modern literature cannot afford to neglect him. For the student of Italian manners in Lombardy during the height of the Renaissance, the huge amorphous undigested mass of the Maccaronea is one of the most valuable and instructive documents that we possess. I do not hesitate, from this point of view, to rank it with the masterpieces of the age, with the Orlando of Ariosto, with Machiavelli's comedies, and with the novels of Bandello.
Folengo used the maccaronic style in two other considerable compositions. The one entitled Moscheis is an elegant parody of the Batrachomyomachia, relating the wars of ants and flies in elegiac verse. The other, called Zanitonella, celebrates the rustic loves of Zanina and Tonello in a long series of elegies, odes and eclogues. This collection furnishes a complete epitome of parodies modeled on the pastorals in vogue. The hero appears upon the scene in the following Sonolegia, under which title we detect a blending of the Sonnet and the Elegy:[446]
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Solus solettus stabam colegatus in umbra, Pascebamque meas virda per arva capras. Nulla travajabant animum pensiria nostrum, Cercabam quoniam tempus habere bonum. Quando bolzoniger puer, o mea corda forasti; Nec dedit in fallum dardus alhora tuus. Immo fracassasti rationis vincula, quæ tunc Circa coradam bastio fortis erat. |
The lament is spun out to the orthodox length of fourteen verses, and concludes with a pretty point. Who the bolzoniger puer was, is more openly revealed in another Sonolegia:[447]
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Nemo super terram mangiat mihi credite panem Seu contadinus, seu citadinus erit, Quem non attrapolet Veneris bastardulus iste, Qui volat instar avis, cæcus, et absque braga. |
To follow the poet through all his burlesques of Petrarchistic and elegiac literature, Italian or Latin, would be superfluous. It is enough to say that he leaves none of their accustomed themes untouched with parody. The masterpiece of his art in this style is the sixth Eclogue, consisting of a dialogue between two drunken bumpkins—interloquutores Tonellus et Pedralus, qui ambo inebriantur.[448]