Giuseppe Arnaud, in his admirable criticisms on the Patriotic Poets of Italy, has treated of the literary side of Alfieri in terms that seem to me, on the whole, very just: “He sacrificed the foreshortening, which has so great a charm for the spectator, to the sculptured full figure that always presents itself face to face with you, and in entire relief. The grand passions, which are commonly sparing of words, are in his system condemned to speak much, and to explain themselves too much.... To what shall we attribute that respectful somnolence which nowadays reigns over the audience during the recitation of Alfieri's tragedies, if they are not sustained by some theatrical celebrity? You will certainly say, to the mediocrity of the actors. But I hold that the tragic effect can be produced even by mediocre actors, if this effect truly abounds in the plot of the tragedy.... I know that these opinions of mine will not be shared by the great majority of the Italian public, and so be it. The contrary will always be favorable to one who greatly loved his country, always desired to serve her, and succeeded in his own time and own manner. Whoever should say that Alfieri's tragedies, in spite of many eminent merits, were constructed on a theory opposed to grand scenic effects and to one of the two bases of tragedy, namely, compassion, would certainly not say what was far from the truth. And yet, with all this, Alfieri will still remain that dry, harsh blast which swept away the noxious miasms with which the Italian air was infected. He will still remain that poet who aroused his country from its dishonorable slumber, and inspired its heart with intolerance of servile conditions and with regard for its dignity. Up to his time we had bleated, and he roared.” “In fact,” says D'Azeglio, “one of the merits of that proud heart was to have found Italy Metastasian and left it Alfierian; and his first and greatest merit was, to my thinking, that he discovered Italy, so to speak, as Columbus discovered America, and initiated the idea of Italy as a nation. I place this merit far beyond that of his verses and his tragedies.”
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri wrote, as I have already stated, some comedies in his last years; but I must own my ignorance of all six of them; and he wrote various satires, odes, sonnets, epigrams, and other poems. Most of these are of political interest; the Miso-Gallo is an expression of his scorn and hatred of the French nation; the America Liberata celebrates our separation from England; the Etruria Vendicata praises the murder of the abominable Alessandro de' Medici by his kinsman, Lorenzaccio. None of the satires, whether on kings, aristocrats, or people, have lent themselves easily to my perusal; the epigrams are signally unreadable, but some of the sonnets are very good. He seems to find in their limitations the same sort of strength that he finds in his restricted tragedies; and they are all in the truest sense sonnets.
Here is one, which loses, of course, by translation. In this and other of my versions, I have rarely found the English too concise for the Italian, and often not concise enough:
HE IMAGINES THE DEATH OF HIS LADY.
The sad bell that within my bosom aye
Clamors and bids me still renew my tears,
Doth stun my senses and my soul bewray
With wandering fantasies and cheating fears;
The gentle form of her that is but ta'en
A little from my sight I seem to see
At life's bourne lying faint and pale with pain,—
My love that to these tears abandons me.
“O my own true one,” tenderly she cries,
“I grieve for thee, love, that thou winnest naught
Save hapless life with all thy many sighs.”
Life? Never! Though thy blessed steps have taught
My feet the path in all well-doing, stay!—
At this last pass 't is mine to lead the way.
There is a still more characteristic sonnet of Alfieri's, with which I shall close, as I began, in the very open air of his autobiography:
HIS PORTRAIT.
Thou mirror of veracious speech sublime,
What I am like in soul and body, show:
Red hair,—in front grown somewhat thin with time;
Tall stature, with an earthward head bowed low;
A meager form, with two straight legs beneath;
An aspect good; white skin with eyes of blue;
A proper nose; fine lips and choicest teeth;
Face paler than a throned king's in hue;
Now hard and bitter, yielding now and mild;
Malignant never, passionate alway,
With mind and heart in endless strife embroiled;
Sad mostly, and then gayest of the gay.
Achilles now, Thersites in his turn:
Man, art thou great or vile? Die and thou 'lt learn!
VINCENZO MONTI AND UGO FOSCOLO
I
The period of Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo is that covered in political history by the events of the French revolution, the French invasion of Italy and the Napoleonic wars there against the Austrians, the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic and of the kingdom of Italy, the final overthrow of the French dominion, and the restoration of the Austrians. During all these events, the city of Milan remained the literary as well as the political center of Italy, and whatever were the moral reforms wrought by the disasters of which it was also the center, there is no doubt that intellectually a vast change had taken place since the days when Parini's satire was true concerning the life of the Milanese nobles. The transformation of national character by war is never, perhaps, so immediate or entire as we are apt to expect. When our own war broke out, those who believed that we were to be purged and ennobled in all our purposes by calamity looked for a sort of total and instant conversion. This, indeed, seemed to take place, but there was afterward the inevitable reaction, and it appears that there are still some small blemishes upon our political and social state. Yet, for all this, each of us is conscious of some vast and inestimable difference in the nation.