"You would not wish, fair stranger," replied the Count, "that we should admit Teutonic barbarism amongst us—that we should copy Young's Night Thoughts, and the Concetti of the Italians and Spaniards. What would become of the taste and elegance of our French style after such a mixture?" Prince Castel-Forte, who had not yet spoken, said—"It seems to me that we all stand in need of each other: the literature of every country discovers to him who is acquainted with it a new sphere of ideas. It was Charles the Fifth himself who said—that a man who knows four languages, is worth four men. If that great political genius judged thus, in regard to the conduct of affairs, how much more true is it with respect to literature? Foreigners all study French; thus they command a more extended horizon than you, who do not study foreign languages. Why do you not more often take the trouble of learning them?—You would thus preserve your own peculiar excellence, and sometimes discover your deficiencies."
FOOTNOTE:
[22] Cesarotti, Verri, and Bettinelli, are three living authors who have introduced thought into Italian prose; it must be confessed, that this was not the case for a long time before.
Chapter ii.
"You will at least confess," replied the Count d'Erfeuil, "that there is one part of literature in which we have nothing to learn of any country.—Our drama is decidedly the first in Europe; for I cannot believe that the English would presume to oppose their Shakespeare to us."—"I beg your pardon," interrupted Mr Edgermond, "they have that presumption."—And after this observation he was silent.—"In that case I have nothing to say," continued the Count, with a smile which expressed a kind of civil contempt: "Each one may think as he pleases, but for my part I persist in believing that we may affirm without presumption that we are the very first in dramatic art. As to the Italians, if I may speak my mind freely, they do not appear even to suspect that there is a dramatic art in the world.—With them the music is every thing, and the play itself nothing. Should the music of the second act of a piece be better than the first, they begin with the second act. Or, should a similar preference attach to the first acts of two different pieces, they will perform these two acts in the same evening, introducing between, perhaps, an act of some comedy in prose that contains irreproachable morality, but a moral teaching entirely composed of aphorisms, that even our ancestors have already cast off to the foreigner as too old to be of any service to them. Your poets are entirely at the disposal of your famous musicians; one declares that he cannot sing without there is in his air the word felicità; the tenor must have tomba; while a third singer can only quaver upon the word catene. The poor bard must make these different whims agree with dramatic situation as well as he can. This is not all; there are actors who will not appear immediately treading the boards of the stage; they must first be seen in a cloud, or they must descend the lofty stairs of a palace, in order to give more effect to their entrée. When the air is finished, whatever may be the violent or affecting situation of his character, the singer must bow to the audience in acknowledgment of their applause. The other day, in Semiramis, after the spectre of Ninus had sung his air, the representative of this shadowy personage made in his ghostly costume a low reverence to the pit, which greatly diminished the terror of the apparition.
"They are accustomed in Italy to consider the theatre merely as a large assembly room, where there is nothing to hear but the airs, and the ballet! I am justified in saying that they listen to nothing but the ballet; for it is only when the ballet is about to begin, that silence is called for in the pit: and what is this ballet but a masterpiece of bad taste? There is nothing amusing in the dancing save the comic part of it; the grotesque figures alone afford entertainment, being indeed a good specimen of caricature. I have seen Gengis-Kan in a ballet, all covered with ermine, and full of fine sentiments; for he ceded his crown to the child of a king whom he had conquered, and lifted him up in the air upon one foot; a new mode of establishing a monarch upon his throne. I have also seen the sacrifice of Curtius formed into a ballet of three acts, with divertisements. Curtius, in the dress of an Arcadian shepherd, danced for a considerable time with his mistress; then mounting a real horse in the middle of the stage, he plunged into the gulf of fire, made of yellow satin and gilt paper, which looked more like a fancy riding habit than an abyss. In fact, I have seen the whole of Roman history from Romulus to Cæsar, compressed into a ballet."
"What you say is true," replied Prince Castel-Forte, mildly; "but you have only spoken of music and dancing, which do not comprise what we understand by the drama of any country." "It is much worse," interrupted the Count d'Erfeuil, "when tragedies are represented, or dramas that are not termed dramas that end happily: they unite more horrors in the course of five acts, than the imagination could form a picture of. In one piece of this kind, the lover kills the brother of his mistress in the second act; in the third he blows out the brains of his mistress herself upon the stage; her funeral occupies the fourth; in the interval, between the fourth and fifth acts, the actor who performs the lover comes forward, and announces to the audience with the greatest tranquillity in the world, the harlequinades which are to be performed on the following evening; he then reappears in the fifth act, to shoot himself with a pistol. The tragic actors are quite in harmony with the coldness and extravagance of these pieces: they commit all these horrors with the utmost calm. When a performer uses much action, they say he conducts himself like a preacher; for in truth, there is more acting in the pulpit than on the stage. It is very fortunate that these actors are so moderate in their pathos; for as there is nothing interesting, either in the piece or its situations, the more noise they made about it, the more ridiculous they would appear: it might still be endurable, were there any thing gay in this nonsense; but it is most stupidly dull and monotonous. There is in Italy no more comedy than tragedy; and here again we stand foremost. The only species of comedy peculiar to Italy is harlequinade. A valet, at once a knave, a glutton, and a coward; an old griping, amorous dupe of a guardian, compose the whole strength of these pieces. I hope you will allow that Tartuffe, and the Misanthrope, require a little more genius than such compositions."
This attack of the Count d' Erfeuil was sufficiently displeasing to the Italians who were his auditors; nevertheless they laughed at it. The Count was more desirous of showing his wit than his natural goodness of disposition; for though this latter quality influenced his actions, self-love guided his speech. Prince Castel-Forte and the rest of his countrymen present, were extremely impatient to refute the Count d'Erfeuil; but as they were little ambitious of shining in conversation and believed their cause would be more ably defended by Corinne, they besought her to reply, contenting themselves with barely citing the celebrated names of Maffei, Metastasio, Goldoni, Alfieri, and Monti. Corinne began by granting that the Italians had no drama; but she undertook to prove that circumstances and not want of talent, were the cause of it. Comedy, which depends upon the observation of manners, can only exist in a country where we live in the midst of a numerous and brilliant society. In Italy we meet with nothing but violent passions or idle enjoyments which produce crimes of so black a hue that no shades of character can be distinguished. But ideal comedy, if it may be so termed, that which depends upon the imagination, and may agree with all times and all countries, owes its invention to Italy. Harlequin, punchinello, pantaloon, &c., have the same character in every different piece. In all cases they exhibit masks, and not faces: that is to say, their physiognomy is that of some particular species of character, and not that of any individual. Undoubtedly, the modern authors of harlequinades, finding every part ready carved out for them like the men of a chess-board, have not the merit of inventing them; but their first invention is due to Italy; therefore these fantastic personages, which from one end of Europe to the other afford amusement to every child, and to every grown-up person whom imagination has made childlike, must certainly be considered as the creation of Italians: this I should conceive ought to give them some claim to the art of comedy.
The observation of the human heart is an inexhaustible source of literature; but nations more disposed to poetry than to reflection, more easily surrender themselves to the intoxication of joy than to philosophic irony. That pleasantry which is founded upon the knowledge of mankind has something sad at bottom. It is only the gaiety of the imagination which is truly inoffensive. It is not that the Italians do not study deeply the men whom they have to do with; for none discover more subtly their secret thoughts; but they employ this talent as a guide of conduct, and have no idea of converting it to any literary purpose. Perhaps even they have no wish to generalise their discoveries, and publish their perceptions. There is a prudent dissimulation in their character, which teaches them not to expose in comedies that which affords rules for private intercourse; not to reveal by the fictions of the mind what may be useful in circumstances of real life.