[CHAPTER VI
TWO NOISY ITALIAN SCHOOLMASTERS]
The most diverting and conspicuous figures in the literary world of Italy to-day are two old school-teachers, Alfredo Panzini, humanist, and Luigi Pirandello, satirist. Both of them have earned a permanent fame and their fecundity seems to be increasing with age.
Alfredo Panzini, a pedagogue by profession, is a writer by dint of long training. Born in Senigaglia, a small town in the Province of Ancona, in 1863, he called Carducci master. After serving a long literary apprenticeship compiling grammars, readers, dictionaries, anthologies, his name began to appear in journals and magazines, and gradually he has forged his way to the front rank as an episodist, an interpreter of the feelings and sentiments of the average man and woman and their spokesman, and as a master of prose.
In appearance he is a typical lower middle-class Italian, short, stout, and ruddy, a kindly, benevolent face, with contented eyes that look at you uninquiringly from behind gold-rimmed spectacles. One might gather from looking at him that he had asked but little from the world and got more than he asked.
His writings display an intimate familiarity with a few classic writers, especially of Greece and Italy, which he reveals by frequent and appropriate quotations and references, contrasting the sayings and doings of the venerated ancients with those of the not always deprecated modern. He knows the emotional desires and reactions of the average man; he senses his aspirations and his appeasements; he has keen understanding of his virtues and his infirmities. He knows his potential and actual pleasures, and he reveals this understanding of his fellows to us in a diverting and instructive way and at the same time shows us idealistic vistas of life and conduct that are most refreshing. It is to be regretted that he is not equally enlightened about women. If he knows their aspirations he denies the legitimacy of them; if he discerns their future he refuses to forecast it; if he knows feminine psychology his writings do not reveal it. He is the traveller ascending from the plains whose pleasure is in looking backward to survey the paths over which he has travelled, to describe the beauty of the country and its associations, and to moralize about them. Elevations in front of him from which one may legitimately anticipate more comprehensive vistas he refuses to consider, or, if constrained to do so, denies that what shall be seen from them will compare with what he sees and has seen.
His two most successful and commendable books are "La Lanterna di Diogene" ("Diogenes' Lantern") and "Xantippe." The first is a narrative of sentimental wandering in which he describes the commonplace world and the homely conflict of those whom he encounters, and in which he displays not only tolerance, but love of his fellow men. He is sometimes playful, more often ironical, but never disparaging or vituperative, and his prose is clear, limpid—sometimes, indeed, sparkling.
His "Xantippe" does not deal particularly with the virtues or infirmities of that renowned shrew. It recounts many incidents in the life, trial, and incarceration of Socrates which, while still redounding to his fame, are made to show by contrasting them with man's conduct and customs to-day the weaknesses, inconsistencies, and fallacies of many conventions of the twentieth century.
"Il Viaggio di un Povero Letterato" ("The Wanderings of a Poor Writer") shows the same simple-minded, charming vagabondage as "Diogenes' Lantern." It was published in 1912, when many readers did not share his distrust of Germany or hold with him in his forecasts. Many of his statements are to-day prophecies fulfilled.
It is not an imaginary man of letters who starts on a trip in obedience to a doctor's orders. It is Alfredo Panzini, exhausted from many labors. He goes wherever his fancy takes him, to Vicenza, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, and it is with the literary memories of these places that he is chiefly concerned. At Pisa it is Leopardi, Shelley, and Byron; at Vicenza, Fogazzaro; but at Bologna the memories become more personal. Here he sat at the feet of Carducci and learned to love and respect him; here his budding fancies first showed indications of blooming; here he first essayed amatory flights. He chances upon an old flame of his student days leading the old life in the old home, except that she had taken to writing poems and insists on having his opinion of them. His account of how he succeeded in meeting her wishes and still maintained his self-respect is a masterpiece of ingenuousness. The least thing suffices to start a train of thought and reflection or to decide his next tarrying-place. The volume ends with an interesting account of a visit to the birthplace of Pascoli, the socialist and idealist poet of the Romagna.
In his "Piccole Storie del Mondo Grande" he describes a pilgrimage to the country of Leopardi, and to Umbria. It is filled with little anecdotes of literary immortals who wandered there, and of references that are more significant to Italians than to foreigners, and through it all there is a strange, melancholy humor which is quite characteristic of Panzini.