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Nec jussa canas, nisi forte coactus Magnorum imperio regum. |
Notwithstanding his avoidance of publication and parsimony of production, Berni won an almost unique reputation during his lifetime, and after his death was worshiped as a saint by the lovers of burlesque.[464] In one of his drollest sonnets he complains that poets were wont to steal their neighbors' verses, but that he is compelled to take the credit of more than he ever wrote:[465]
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A me quei d'altri son per forza dati, E dicon tu gli arai, vuoi o non vuoi. |
A piece of comic prose or verse cannot appear but that it is at once ascribed to him:
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E la gente faceta Mi vuole pure impiastrar di prose e carmi, Come s'io fussi di razza di marmi: Non posso ripararmi; Come si vede fuor qualche sonetto, Il Berni l'ha composto a suo dispetto. E fanvi su un guazzetto Di chiose e di sensi, che rinnieghi il cielo, Se Luter fa più stracci del Vangelo. |
One of the glosses referred to in this coda, lies before me as I write. It was composed by Gianmaria Cecchi on Berni's sonnet which begins "Cancheri e beccafichi." The sonnet is an amusing imprecation upon matrimony, written in one paragraph, and containing the sting of the epigram in its short coda of three lines.[466] But it did not need a commentary, and Cecchi's voluminous annotations justify the poet's comic anger.
Berni's Capitoli may be broadly divided into three classes. The first includes his poetical epistles, addressed to Fracastoro, Sebastian del Piombo, Ippolito de' Medici, Marco Veneziano, and other friends. Except for the peculiar humor, which elevates the trivial accidents of life to comedy, except for the consummate style, which dignifies the details of familiar correspondence and renders fugitive effusions classical, these letters in verse would scarcely detach themselves from a mass of similar compositions. As it is, Berni's personality renders them worthy companions of Ariosto's masterpieces in a similar but nicely differentiated branch of literature. It remains for the amateurs of autobiographical poetry to choose between the self-revelation of the philosophizing Ferrarese poet and the brilliant trifling of the Florentine. The second class embraces a number of occasional poems—the Complaint against Love, the Deluge in Mugello, the Satire upon Adrian VI., the Lamentation of Nardino—descriptive or sarcastic pieces, where the poet chooses a theme and develops it with rhetorical abundance. The third class may be regarded as the special source and fountain of the Bernesque manner, as afterwards adopted and elaborated by Berni's imitators. Omitting personal or occasional motives, he sings the praises of the Plague, of Primiera, of Aristotle, of Peaches, of Debt, of Eels, of the Urinal, of Thistles, and of other trifling subjects. Here his burlesque genius takes the most fantastic flight, soaring to the ether of absurdity and sinking to the nadir of obscenity, combining heterogeneous elements of fun and farce, yet never transgressing the limits of refined taste. These Capitoli revealed a new vehicle of artistic expression to his contemporaries. Penetrated with their author's individuality, they caught the spirit of the age and met its sense of humor. Consequently they became the touchstones of burlesque inspiration, the models which tempted men of feebler force and more uncertain tact to hopeless tasks of emulation. We still possess La Casa's Capitolo on the Oven; Molza's on Salad and the Fig; Firenzuola's on the Sausage and the Legno Santo; Bronzino's on the Paint-brush and the Radish; Aretino's on the Quartan Fever; Franzesi's on Carrots and Chestnuts; Varchi's on Hard Eggs and Fennel; Mauro's on Beans and Priapus; Dolce's on Spittle and Noses; Bini's on the Mal Franzese; Lori's on Apples; Ruscelli's on the Spindle—not to speak of many authors, the obscurity of whose names and the obscenity of the themes they celebrated, condemn them to condign oblivion. Not without reason did Gregorovius stigmatize these poems as a moral syphilis, invading Italian literature and penetrating to the remotest fibers of its organism. After their publication in academical circles and their further diffusion through the press, simple terms which had been used to cloak their improprieties, became the bywords of pornographic pamphleteers and poets. Figs, beans, peaches, apples, chestnuts acquired a new and scandalous significance. Sins secluded from the light of day by a modest instinct of humanity, flaunted their loathsomeness without shame beneath the ensigns of these literary allegories. The corruption of society, hypocritically veiled or cynically half-revealed in coteries, expressed itself too plainly through the phraseology invented by a set of sensual poets. The most distinguished members of society, Cardinals like Bembo, prelates like La Casa, painters like Bronzino, critics like Varchi, scholars like Molza, lent the prestige of their position and their talents to the diffusion of this leprosy, which still remains the final most convincing testimony to the demoralization of Italy in the Renaissance.[467]
To what extent, it may be asked, was Berni responsible for these consequences? He brought the indecencies of the piazza, where they were the comparatively innocuous expression of coarse instincts, into the close atmosphere of the study and the academical circle, refined their vulgarisms, and made their viciousness attractive by the charm of his incomparable style. This transition from the Canto Carnascialesco to the Capitolo may be observed in Berni's Caccia di Amore, a very licentious poem dedicated to "noble and gentle ladies." It is a Carnival Song or Canzone a Ballo rewritten in octave stanzas of roseate fluency and seductive softness. A band of youthful huntsmen pay their court in it to women, and the double entendre exactly reproduces the style of innuendo rendered fashionable by Lorenzo de' Medici. Yet, though Berni is unquestionably answerable for the obscene Capitoli of the sixteenth century, it must not be forgotten that he only gave form to material already sufficiently appropriated by the literary classes. With him, the grossness which formed the staple of Mauro's, Molza's, Bini's, La Casa's and Bronzino's poems, the depravities of appetite which poisoned the very substance of their compositions, were but accidental. The poet stood above them and in some measure aloof from them, employing these ingredients in the concoction of his burlesque, but never losing the main object of his art in their development. A bizarre literary effect, rather than the indulgence of a sensual imagination, was the aim he had in view. Therefore, while we regret that his example gave occasion to coarser debaucheries of talent, we are bound to acknowledge that the jests to which he condescended, do not represent his most essential self. This, however, is but a feeble apology. That without the excuse of passion, without satirical motive or overmastering personal proclivity, he should have penned the Capitolo a M. Antonio da Bibbiena, and have joked about giving and taking his metaphorical peaches, remains an ineradicable blot upon his nature.[468]
The Bernesque Capitoli were invariably written in terza rima, which at this epoch became the recognized meter of epistolary, satirical, and dissertational poetry throughout Italy.[469] Thus the rhythm of the Divine Comedy received final development by lending itself to the expression of whims, fancies, personal invectives and scurrilities. To quote from Berni's masterpieces in this style would be impossible. Each poem of about one hundred lines is a perfect and connected unity, which admits of no mutilation by the detachment of separate passages. Still readers may be referred to the Capitolo a Fracastoro and the two Capitoli della Peste as representative of the poet's humor in its purest form, without the moral deformities of the still more celebrated Pesche or the uncleanliness of the Orinale.