A history of Italian literature

by Richard Garnett

Literature, as a rule, must ever be on the side of liberty, for one conclusive reason among others—that liberty is the life of literature. Hence every man of letters is instinctively a partisan of freedom; and even should his political or religious opinions drive him to support a tyranny by which these are protected, or should he be willing to acquiesce in a despotism which maintains peace and encourages art, he must yet disapprove of restraint upon his own productiveness, and this inevitable concession implies all the rest. Poetry—and the remark may in its measure be extended to every department of intellectual labour implying creation or even construction—has been well said to represent the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest minds, a virtue and felicity to be understood as referring solely to the intellectual sphere. That is, there is no activity so pleasurable as production, or, by consequence, anything so intolerable as restraint.

The history of European literature for the half-century following the fall of Napoleon is, therefore, in the main, that of a force enlisted to contend with the Governments and the various sinister interests which strove to ignore the Revolution and restore the state of affairs which had existed in the eighteenth century. Many illustrious authors, no doubt, especially in England, more or less favoured this tendency, but their literary practice was commonly inconsistent with their political principles. Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Chateaubriand, might be reactionary as politicians, but in the literary sphere they were innovators and iconoclasts. The study of their writings could not but engender a habit of mind entirely inconsistent with the deference to authority required for the perpetuation of the ancient régime in State and Church. No man, for example, more sincerely deplored the tendencies of his times than Niebuhr, but he should have thought of them before he meddled with the history of Rome. By proving its legendary character, he had done more to unsettle allegiance to tradition than could have been accomplished by the wit and malice of a hundred Heines. We are thus justified in regarding the literature of the nineteenth century as in the main a great liberating force, and in the long-run favourable to sound conservatism also, since it aimed at procuring that liberty for the human spirit without which renovation was as impossible as demolition.

If there was any country in Europe where literature might be expected to be unequivocally on the side of Liberty, it was Italy; for Italy alone had to reckon with foreign as well as domestic oppressors. In fact, the general tendency of Italian literature during the period under review is more uniformly liberal than that of any other; but at the same time its expression is more restrained than that of any other, for the conclusive reason that an Italian writer could only obtain liberty of speech at the price of exile. Love of country is, nevertheless, the dominant thought, which colours it throughout as the soil colours the flower. The men of greatest genius and most prominent association with the national movement have been treated of in previous chapters, but the host of distinguished if less illustrious authors who must be briefly reviewed in this, was not less animated with patriotic feeling, and this pervading spirit imparts to the Italian literature of the period unity and dignity, and entitles it to a higher place in the general history of literature than could have been procured for it by the mere ability of its representatives.

One apparent exception to this generally liberal and patriotic tendency is not really an exception. The New Catholic reaction which was a necessary consequence of the Revolution, whatever it may have been among the priesthood and the less cultivated classes, was neither illiberal nor unpatriotic among men of letters. Many of the most eminent of these were fervent Catholics, and as such felt themselves in a strait between the claims of religion and of country. As the head of the Church, the Pope was entitled to the profoundest veneration, but as temporal prince, he was as much supported by Austrian bayonets as any of the rest. Could he be promoted from this undignified position to that of spiritual King of Italy by the union of all Italian states into a confederacy under his auspices? This project, if Utopian, was yet natural, generous, and in no respect inconsistent with true patriotic feeling. It broke down from the demonstration furnished by the course of events of the incompatibility of Italian confederacy with Italian unity, but, by the exertions of its opponents, no less than those of its supporters, it left deep traces upon literature.

This idea was the especial property of Vincenzo Gioberti, already mentioned among the men to whom Italian regeneration owes most. Its very fallacy was a powerful aid to the popular cause, for it conciliated many who would have shrunk from openly assailing the Pope’s secular authority, while at the same time it was not so obviously unsound as to be incapable of being maintained in good faith until refuted by the course of events. Although, nevertheless, Gioberti’s essay on Italy’s spiritual and intellectual primacy is the most important of his works, it almost disappears in the mass of the remainder, treating for the most part of religion, or of moral or speculative philosophy. Among them was a violent attack on the writings of the most eminent Italian philosopher of the age, ANTONIO ROSMINI-SERBATI (1797-1855), who in turn accused Gioberti of pantheism. The great purpose of Rosmini’s philosophy may be defined to be the perfecting of St. Thomas Aquinas’s system by expelling the element it had derived from Aristotle, which in Rosmini’s view led direct to pantheism and materialism. He laboured hard at this object all his life, but died before his work was done. It says much for his genius that one so encumbered with childish ultramontane notions should have won the acknowledged rank he holds among the first philosophical thinkers. He is equally well known as the founder of a religious Order, the constant antagonist of the Jesuits, and the author of the Five Wounds of the Church, an appeal for reform whose honest frankness was used by his enemies to deprive him of the cardinal’s hat that had been promised him. His Order still flourishes, his system is still potent, and his memory, honoured everywhere, is almost adored in his native place, Roveredo in the Italian Tyrol.

Another philosopher influential on Italian thought was GIOVANNI DOMENICO ROMAGNOSI (1761-1835), whose importance chiefly consists in his application of philosophy to legal and political science, and his clear prevision of the coming deliverance of Italy.

No Italian of his age, perhaps, was more thoroughly admirable in every respect than TERENZIO MAMIANI (1799-1885), an approved patriot, a wise statesman, a sound and sober thinker in religion and philosophy, an elegant poet, and a man excellent in every relation of life. With more angularity of character, he would, perhaps, have possessed more creative force, and impressed himself more powerfully on the imagination. The dignified eloquence of his meditative poetry, usually in blank verse, and of his discourses, political or academical, is often very impressive, but the form seems more remarkable than the substance. Like most of the best Italians of his day, he spent his youth in exile, his prime in office, and his old age in study and composition. A good selection from his voluminous writings has been published with a memoir by Giovanni Mestica, the editor of Petrarch.

A connecting link between the thinkers and the historians is formed by GIUSEPPE FERRARI (1812-1872). A disciple of Romagnosi, he imported abstract ideas into his survey of the revolutions of Italy since the downfall of the Roman Empire—a very readable if not always a very convincing book. Ferrari was also a distinguished publicist, and an indefatigable pamphleteer in the cause of his country.

History has been extensively cultivated in Italy during the nineteenth century; and although many histories were but popular compendiums, or magnified party pamphlets, or mere mémoires pour servir, others have gained for the writers honourable rank among first-class historians. The most extensive in scale and imposing in subject are histories by CARLO BOTTA (1766-1837) of the American War of Independence and of Italy from 1789 to 1814. The former is the best history of the subject out of the United States; the latter, though taxed with partiality, is a great and invaluable work. His continuation of Guicciardini is of less account. Botta’s style is severe and dignified; too archaic in diction, and occasionally deficient in flexibility, but he always writes with the consciousness of his mission which becomes the historian. He was a determined enemy of the romantic school. A Piedmontese by birth, he had been concerned in the disturbances of the early revolutionary period, and had made several campaigns in the capacity of an army surgeon. Become temporarily a Frenchman by the annexation of Piedmont to France, he had held office under Napoleon, whom he displeased by his frankness. After Napoleon’s fall he lived chiefly in France. Though always a patriot as regarded the independence of Italy, the melancholy deceptions of revolutionary times led him at last to deem his countrymen only fit for an enlightened despotism.

A stancher liberal was PIETRO COLLETTA (1770-1831) and an even more eminent historian. A Neapolitan officer of engineers, he served under Murat, but was, nevertheless, maintained in his rank by the restored Bourbons. He was Minister of War under the Constitutional Government of 1820, and after its overthrow was for some time imprisoned at Brunn in Austria, where his health suffered greatly. Upon his release he settled at Florence, and devoted himself to writing the history of Naples from the accession of the Bourbon dynasty in 1734 up to 1825. He was wholly inexperienced as an author, but succeeded in imparting classic form to his work by dint of infinite labour and careful imitation of Tacitus, for which the imperious brevity natural to him, intensified by the habits of military life, admirably qualified him. His work is one of the most marrowy and sinewy of histories, and is especially valuable where he speaks as an eye-witness. It deals fully with financial and economical as well as political and military affairs.