kinswoman he had married, he was suspected of treason. He was invited to Venice, and received with great honor, and conducted with every flattering ceremony to the hall of the Grand Council. After a brief delay, sufficient to exclude Carmagnola’s followers, the Doge ordered him to be seized, and upon a summary trial he was put to death. From this tragedy I give first a translation of that famous chorus of which I have already spoken; I have kept the measure and the movement of the original at some loss of literality. The poem is introduced into the scene immediately succeeding the battle of Maclodio, where the two bands of those Italian _condottieri_ had met to butcher each other in the interests severally of the Duke of Milan and the Signory of Venice.
CHORUS.
On the right hand a trumpet is sounding, On the left hand a trumpet replying,
The field upon all sides resounding With the trampling of foot and of horse. Yonder flashes a flag; yonder flying
Through the still air a bannerol glances; Here a squadron embattled advances,
There another that threatens its course.
The space ‘twixt the foes now beneath them Is hid, and on swords the sword ringeth; In the hearts of each other they sheathe them; Blood runs, they redouble their blows. Who are these? To our fair fields what bringeth To make war upon us, this stranger?
Which is he that hath sworn to avenge her, The land of his birth, on her foes?
They are all of one land and one nation, One speech; and the foreigner names them All brothers, of one generation;
In each visage their kindred is seen; This land is the mother that claims them, This land that their life blood is steeping, That God, from all other lands keeping, Set the seas and the mountains between.
Ah, which drew the first blade among them To strike at the heart of his brother? What wrong, or what insult hath stung them To wipe out what stain, or to die?
They know not; to slay one another They come in a cause none hath told them; A chief that was purchased hath sold them; They combat for him, nor ask why.
Ah, woe for the mothers that bare them, For the wives of these warriors maddened! Why come not their loved ones to tear them Away from the infamous field?
Their sires, whom long years have saddened, And thoughts of the sepulcher chastened, In warning why have they not hastened
To bid them to hold and to yield?
As under the vine that embowers
His own happy threshold, the smiling Clown watches the tempest that lowers
On the furrows his plow has not turned, So each waits in safety, beguiling
The time with his count of those falling Afar in the fight, and the appalling
Flames of towns and of villages burned.
There, intent on the lips of their mothers, Thou shalt hear little children with scorning Learn to follow and flout at the brothers Whose blood they shall go forth to shed; Thou shalt see wives and maidens adorning Their bosoms and hair with the splendor Of gems but now torn from the tender,
Hapless daughters and wives of the dead.
Oh, disaster, disaster, disaster!
With the slain the earth’s hidden already; With blood reeks the whole plain, and vaster And fiercer the strife than before!
But along the ranks, rent and unsteady, Many waver–they yield, they are flying! With the last hope of victory dying
The love of life rises again.
As out of the fan, when it tosses
The grain in its breath, the grain flashes, So over the field of their losses
Fly the vanquished. But now in their course Starts a squadron that suddenly dashes Athwart their wild flight and that stays them, While hard on the hindmost dismays them The pursuit of the enemy’s horse.
At the feet of the foe they fall trembling, And yield life and sword to his keeping; In the shouts of the victors assembling, The moans of the dying are drowned.
To the saddle a courier leaping, Takes a missive, and through all resistance, Spurs, lashes, devours the distance;
Every hamlet awakes at the sound.
Ah, why from their rest and their labor To the hoof-beaten road do they gather? Why turns every one to his neighbor
The jubilant tidings to hear?
Thou know’st whence he comes, wretched father? And thou long’st for his news, hapless mother? In fight brother fell upon brother!
These terrible tidings _I_ bring.
All around I hear cries of rejoicing; The temples are decked; the song swelleth From the hearts of the fratricides, voicing Praise and thanks that are hateful to God. Meantime from the Alps where he dwelleth The Stranger turns hither his vision,
And numbers with cruel derision
The brave that have bitten the sod.
Leave your games, leave your songs and exulting; Fill again your battalions and rally
Again to your banners! Insulting
The stranger descends, he is come! Are ye feeble and few in your sally,
Ye victors? For this he descendeth! ‘Tis for this that his challenge he sendeth From the fields where your brothers lie dumb!
Thou that strait to thy children appearedst, Thou that knew’st not in peace how to tend them, Fatal land! now the stranger thou fearedst Receive, with the judgment he brings! A foe unprovoked to offend them
At thy board sitteth down, and derideth, The spoil of thy foolish divideth,
Strips the sword from the hand of thy kings.
Foolish he, too! What people was ever For bloodshedding blest, or oppression? To the vanquished alone comes harm never; To tears turns the wrong-doer’s joy! Though he ‘scape through the years’ long progression, Yet the vengeance eternal o’ertaketh
Him surely; it waiteth and waketh; It seizes him at the last sigh!
We are all made in one Likeness holy, Ransomed all by one only redemption;
Near or far, rich or poor, high or lowly, Wherever we breathe in life’s air,
We are brothers, by one great preemption Bound all; and accursed be its wronger, Who would ruin by right of the stronger, Wring the hearts of the weak with despair.
Here is the whole political history of Italy. In this poem the picture of the confronted hosts, the vivid scenes of the combat, the lamentations over the ferocity of the embattled brothers, and the indifference of those that behold their kinsmen’s carnage, the strokes by which the victory, the rout, and the captivity are given, and then the apostrophe to Italy, and finally the appeal to conscience–are all masterly effects. I do not know just how to express my sense of near approach through that last stanza to the heart of a very great and good man, but I am certain that I have such a feeling.
The noble, sonorous music, the solemn movement of the poem are in great part lost by its version into English; yet, I hope that enough are left to suggest the original. I think it quite unsurpassed in its combination of great artistic and moral qualities, which I am sure my version has not wholly obscured, bad as it is.
VI
The scene following first upon this chorus also strikes me with the grand spirit in which it is wrought; and in its revelations of the motives and ideas of the old professional soldier-life, it reminds me of Schiller’s Wallenstein’s Camp. Manzoni’s canvas has not the breadth of that of the other master, but he paints with as free and bold a hand, and his figures have an equal heroism of attitude and motive. The generous soldierly pride of Carmagnola, and the strange _esprit du corps_ of the mercenaries, who now stood side by side, and now front to front in battle; who sold themselves to any buyer that wanted killing done, and whose noblest usage was in violation of the letter of their bargains, are the qualities on which the poet touches, in order to waken our pity for what has already raised our horror. It is humanity in either case that inspires him–a humanity characteristic of many Italians of this century, who have studied so long in the school of suffering that they know how to abhor a system of wrong, and yet excuse its agents.
The scene I am to give is in the tent of the great _condottiere_. Carmagnola is speaking with one of the Commissioners of the Venetian Republic, when the other suddenly enters:
_Commissioner._ My lord, if instantly You haste not to prevent it, treachery
Shameless and bold will be accomplished, making Our victory vain, as’t partly hath already.
_Count._ How now?
_Com._ The prisoners leave the camp in troops! The leaders and the soldiers vie together To set them free; and nothing can restrain them Saving command of yours.
_Count._ Command of mine?
_Com._ You hesitate to give it?
_Count._ ‘T is a use,
This, of the war, you know. It is so sweet To pardon when we conquer; and their hate Is quickly turned to friendship in the hearts That throb beneath the steel. Ah, do not seek To take this noble privilege from those
Who risked their lives for your sake, and to-day Are generous because valiant yesterday.
_Com._ Let him be generous who fights for himself, My lord! But these–and it rests upon their honor– Have fought at our expense, and unto us
Belong the prisoners.
_Count._ You may well think so, Doubtless, but those who met them front to front, Who felt their blows, and fought so hard to lay Their bleeding hands upon them, they will not So easily believe it.
_Com._ And is this
A joust for pleasure then? And doth not Venice Conquer to keep? And shall her victory
Be all in vain?
_Count._ Already I have heard it, And I must hear that word again? ‘Tis bitter; Importunate it comes upon me, like an insect That, driven once away, returns to buzz
About my face…. The victory is in vain! The field is heaped with corpses; scattered wide, And broken, are the rest–a most flourishing Army, with which, if it were still united, And it were mine, mine truly, I’d engage To overrun all Italy! Every design
Of the enemy baffled; even the hope of harm Taken away from him; and from my hand
Hardly escaped, and glad of their escape, Four captains against whom but yesterday It were a boast to show resistance; vanished Half of the dread of those great names; in us Doubled the daring that the foe has lost; The whole choice of the war now in our hands; And ours the lands they’ve left–is’t nothing? Think you that they will go back to the Duke, Those prisoners; and that they love him, or Care more for _him_ than _you_? that they have fought In _his_ behalf? Nay, they have combatted Because a sovereign voice within the heart Of men that follow any banner cries,
“Combat and conquer!” they have lost and so Are set at liberty; they’ll sell themselves– O, such is now the soldier!–to the first That seeks to buy them–Buy them; they are yours!
_1st Com._ When we paid those that were to fight with them,
We then believed ourselves to have purchased them.
_2d Com._ My lord, Venice confides in you; in you She sees a son; and all that to her good And to her glory can redound, expects
Shall be done by you.
_Count._ Everything I can.
_2d Com._ And what can you not do upon this field?
_Count._ The thing you ask. An ancient use, a use Dear to the soldier, I can not violate.
_2d Com._ You, whom no one resists, on whom so promptly
Every will follows, so that none can say, Whether for love or fear it yield itself; You, in this camp, you are not able, you, To make a law, and to enforce it?
_Count._ I said
I could not; now I rather say, I _will_ not! No further words; with friends this hath been ever My ancient custom; satisfy at once
And gladly all just prayers, and for all other Refuse them openly and promptly. Soldier!
_Com._ Nay–what is your purpose?
_Count._ You will see anon.
[_To a soldier who enters_ How many prisoners still remain?
_Soldier._ I think,
My lord, four hundred.
_Count._ Call them hither–call The bravest of them–those you meet the first; Send them here quickly. [Exit soldier. Surely, I might do it–
If I gave such a sign, there were not heard A murmur in the camp. But these, my children, My comrades amid peril, and in joy,
Those who confide in me, believe they follow A leader ever ready to defend
The honor and advantage of the soldier; _I_ play them false, and make more slavish yet, More vile and base their calling, than ’tis now? Lords, I am trustful, as the soldier is, But if you now insist on that from me
Which shall deprive me of my comrades’ love, If you desire to separate me from them,
And so reduce me that I have no stay Saving yourselves–in spite of me I say it, You force me, you, to doubt–
_Com._ What do you say?
[_The prisoners, among them young Pergola, enter._
_Count (To the prisoners)._ O brave in vain! Unfortunate! To you,
Fortune is cruelest, then? And you alone Are to a sad captivity reserved?
_A prisoner._ Such, mighty lord, was never our belief. When we were called into your presence, we Did seem to hear a messenger that gave
Our freedom to us. Already, all of those That yielded them to captains less than you Have been released, and only we–
_Count._ Who was it,
That made you prisoners?
_Prisoner._ We were the last To give our arms up. All the rest were taken Or put to flight, and for a few brief moments The evil fortune of the battle weighed
On us alone. At last you made a sign That we should draw nigh to your banner,–we Alone not conquered, relics of the lost.
_Count._ You are those? I am very glad, my friends, To see you again, and I can testify
That you fought bravely; and if so much valor Were not betrayed, and if a captain equal Unto yourselves had led you, it had been No pleasant thing to stand before you.
_Prisoner._ And now
Shall it be our misfortune to have yielded Only to you, my lord? And they that found A conqueror less glorious, shall they find More courtesy in him? In vain, we asked
Our freedom of your soldiers–no one durst Dispose of us without your own assent,
But all did promise it. “O, if you can, Show yourselves to the Count,” they said. “Be sure, He’ll not embitter fortune to the vanquished; An ancient courtesy of war will never
Be ta’en away by him; he would have been Rather the first to have invented it.”
_Count._ (_To the Coms._) You hear them, lords? Well, then, what do you say?
What would you do, you? _(To the prisoners)_ Heaven forbid that any
Should think more highly than myself of me! You are all free, my friends; farewell! Go, follow Your fortune, and if e’er again it lead you Under a banner that’s adverse to mine,
Why, we shall see each other. _(The Count observes young Pergola and stops him.)_
Ho, young man,
Thou art not of the vulgar! Dress, and face More clearly still, proclaims it; yet with the others Thou minglest and art silent?
_Pergola._ Vanquished men
Have nought to say, O captain.
_Count._ This ill-fortune
Thou bearest so, that thou dost show thyself Worthy a better. What’s thy name?
_Pergola._ A name
Whose fame ‘t were hard to greaten, and that lays On him who bears it a great obligation.
Pergola is my name.
_Count._ What! thou ‘rt the son
Of that brave man?
_Pergola._ I am he.
_Count._ Come, embrace
Thy father’s ancient friend! Such as thou art That I was when I knew him first. Thou bringest Happy days back to me! the happy days Of hope. And take thou heart! Fortune did give
A happier beginning unto me;
But fortune’s promises are for the brave. And soon or late she keeps them. Greet for me Thy father, boy, and say to him that I
Asked it not of thee, but that I was sure This battle was not of his choosing.
_Pergola._ Surely,
He chose it not; but his words were as wind.
_Count._ Let it not grieve thee; ‘t is the leader’s shame Who is defeated; he begins well ever
Who like a brave man fights where he is placed. Come with me, _(takes his hand)_
I would show thee to my comrades. I’d give thee back thy sword. Adieu, my lords; (_To the Coms._)
I never will be merciful to your foes Till I have conquered them.
A notable thing in this tragedy of Carmagnola is that the interest of love is entirely wanting to it, and herein it differs very widely from the play of Schiller. The soldiers are simply soldiers; and this singleness of motive is in harmony with the Italian conception of art. Yet the Carmagnola of Manzoni is by no means like the heroes of the Alfierian tragedy. He is a man, not merely an embodied passion or mood; his character is rounded, and has all the checks and counterpoises, the inconsistencies, in a word, without which nothing actually lives in literature, or usefully lives in the world. In his generous and magnificent illogicality, he comes the nearest being a woman of all the characters in the tragedy. There is no other personage in it equaling him in interest; but he also is subordinated to the author’s purpose of teaching his countrymen an enlightened patriotism. I am loath to blame this didactic aim, which, I suppose, mars the aesthetic excellence ofthe piece.
Carmagnola’s liberation of the prisoners was not forgiven him by Venice, who, indeed, never forgave anything; he was in due time entrapped in the hall of the Grand Council, and condemned to die. The tragedy ends with a scene in his prison, where he awaits his wife and daughter, who are coming with one of his old comrades, Gonzaga, to bid him a last farewell. These passages present the poet in his sweeter and tenderer moods, and they have had a great charm for me.
SCENE–THE PRISON.
_Count_ (_speaking of his wife and daughter_). By this time they must know my fate. Ah! why
Might I not die far from them? Dread, indeed, Would be the news that reached them, but, at least, The darkest hour of agony would be past, And now it stands before us. We must needs Drink the draft drop by drop. O open fields, O liberal sunshine, O uproar of arms,
O joy of peril, O trumpets, and the cries Of combatants, O my true steed! ‘midst you ‘T were fair to die; but now I go rebellious To meet my destiny, driven to my doom
Like some vile criminal, uttering on the way Impotent vows, and pitiful complaints.
* * * * *
But I shall see my dear ones once again And, alas! hear their moans; the last adieu Hear from their lips–shall find myself once more Within their arms–then part from them forever. They come! O God, bend down from heaven on them One look of pity.
[_Enter_ ANTONIETTA, MATILDE, _and_ GONZAGA. _Antonietta._ My husband!
_Matilde._ O my father!
_Antonietta._ Ah, thus thou comest back! Is this the moment So long desired?
_Count._ O poor souls! Heaven knows That only for your sake is it dreadful to me. I who so long am used to look on death,
And to expect it, only for your sakes Do I need courage. And you, you will not surely Take it away from me? God, when he makes Disaster fall on the innocent, he gives, too, The heart to bear it. Ah! let _yours_ be equal To your affliction now! Let us enjoy
This last embrace–it likewise is Heaven’s gift. Daughter, thou weepest; and thou, wife! Oh, when I chose thee mine, serenely did they days Glide on in peace; but made I thee companion Of a sad destiny. And it is this thought Embitters death to me. Would that I could not See how unhappy I have made thee!
_Antonietta._ O husband
Of my glad days, thou mad’st them glad! My heart,– Yes, thou may’st read it!–I die of sorrow! Yet I could not wish that I had not been thine.
_Count._ O love, I know how much I lose in thee: Make me not feel it now too much.
_Matilde._ The murderers!
_Count._ No, no, my sweet Matilde; let not those Fierce cries of hatred and of vengeance rise From out thine innocent soul. Nay, do not mar These moments; they are holy; the wrong’s great, But pardon it, and thou shalt see in midst of ills A lofty joy remaining still. My death,
The cruelest enemy could do no more Than hasten it. Oh surely men did never
Discover death, for they had made it fierce And insupportable! It is from Heaven
That it doth come, and Heaven accompanies it, Still with such comfort as men cannot give Nor take away. O daughter and dear wife, Hear my last words! All bitterly, I see, They fall upon your hearts. But you one day will have Some solace in remembering them together. Dear wife, live thou; conquer thy sorrow, live; Let not this poor girl utterly be orphaned. Fly from this land, and quickly; to thy kindred Take her with thee. She is their blood; to them Thou once wast dear, and when thou didst become Wife of their foe, only less dear; the cruel Reasons of state have long time made adverse The names of Carmagnola and Visconti;
But thou go’st back unhappy; the sad cause Of hate is gone. Death’s a great peacemaker! And thou, my tender flower, that to my arms Wast wont to come and make my spirit light, Thou bow’st thy head? Aye, aye, the tempest roars Above thee! Thou dost tremble, and thy breast Is shaken with thy sobs. Upon my face
I feel thy burning tears fall down on me, And cannot wipe them from thy tender eyes. … Thou seem’st to ask
Pity of me, Matilde. Ah! thy father Can do naught for thee. But there is in heaven, There is a Father thou know’st for the forsaken; Trust him and live on tranquil if not glad.
* * * * *
Gonzaga, I offer thee this hand, which often Thou hast pressed upon the morn of battle, when We knew not if we e’er should meet again: Wilt press it now once more, and give to me Thy faith that thou wilt be defense and guard Of these poor women, till they are returned Unto their kinsmen?
_Gonzaga._ I do promise thee.
_Count._ When thou go’st back to camp, Salute my brothers for me; and say to them That I die innocent; witness thou hast been Of all my deeds and thoughts–thou knowest it. Tell them that I did never stain my sword With treason–I did never stain it–and
I am betrayed.–And when the trumpets blow, And when the banners beat against the wind, Give thou a thought to thine old comrade then! And on some mighty day of battle, when
Upon the field of slaughter the priest lifts His hands amid the doleful noises, offering up The sacrifice to heaven for the dead,
Bethink thyself of me, for I too thought To die in battle.
_Antonietta._ O God, have pity on us!
_Count._ O wife! Matilde! now the hour is near We needs must part. Farewell!
_Matilde._ No, father–
_Count._ Yet
Once more, come to my heart! Once more, and now, In mercy, go!
_Antonietta._ Ah, no! they shall unclasp us By force!
[_A sound of armed men is heard without._
_Matilde._ What sound is that?
_Antonietta._ Almighty God!
[_The door opens in the middle; armed men are seen. Their leader advances toward the Count; the women swoon._
_Count._ Merciful God! Thou hast removed from them This cruel moment, and I thank Thee! Friend, Succor them, and from this unhappy place Bear them! And when they see the light again, Tell them that nothing more is left to fear.
VII
In the Carmagnola having dealt with the internal wars which desolated medieval Italy, Manzoni in the Adelchi takes a step further back in time, and evolves his tragedy from the downfall of the Longobard kingdom and the invasion of the Franks. These enter Italy at the bidding of the priests, to sustain the Church against the disobedience and contumacy of the Longobards.
Desiderio and his son Adelchi are kings of the Longobards, and the tragedy opens with the return to their city Pavia of Ermenegarda, Adelchi’s sister, who was espoused to Carlo, king of the Franks, and has been repudiated by him. The Longobards have seized certain territories belonging to the Church, and as they refuse to restore them, the ecclesiastics send a messenger, who crosses the Alps on foot, to the camp of the Franks, and invites their king into Italy to help the cause of the Church. The Franks descend into the valley of Susa, and soon after defeat the Longobards. It is in this scene that the chorus of the Italian peasants, who suffer, no matter which side conquers, is introduced. The Longobards retire to Verona, and Ermenegarda, whose character is painted with great tenderness and delicacy, and whom we may take for a type of what little goodness and gentleness, sorely puzzled, there was in the world at that time (which was really one of the worst of all the bad times in the world), dies in a convent near Brescia, while the war rages all round her retreat. A defection takes place among the Longobards; Desiderio is captured; a last stand is made by Adelchi at Verona, where he is mortally wounded, and is brought prisoner to his father in the tent of Carlo. The tragedy ends with his death; and I give the whole of the last scene:
[_Enter_ CARLO _and_ DESIDERIO.
_Desiderio._ Oh, how heavily
Hast thou descended upon my gray head, Thou hand of God! How comes my son to me! My son, my only glory, here I languish,
And tremble to behold thee! Shall I see Thy deadly wounded body, I that should
Be wept by thee? I, miserable, alone, Dragged thee to this; blind dotard I, that fain Had made earth fair to thee, I digged thy grave. If only thou amidst thy warriors’ songs
Hadst fallen on some day of victory, Or had I closed upon thy royal bed
Thine eyes amidst the sobs and reverent grief Of thy true liegemen, ah; it still had been Anguish ineffable! And now thou diest,
No king, deserted, in thy foeman’s land, With no lament, saving thy father’s, uttered Before the man that doth exult to hear it.
_Carlo._ Old man, thy grief deceives thee. Sorrowful, And not exultant do I see the fate
Of a brave man and king. Adelchi’s foe Was I, and he was mine, nor such that I
Might rest upon this new throne, if he lived And were not in my hands. But now he is
In God’s own hands, whither no enmity Of man can follow him.
_Des._ ‘T is a fatal gift
Thy pity, if it never is bestowed
Save upon those fallen beyond all hope– If thou dost never stay thine arm until
Thou canst find no place to inflict a wound!
(_Adelchi is brought in, mortally wounded._)
_Des._ My son!
_Adelchi._ And do I see thee once more, father? Oh come, and touch my hand!
_Des._ ‘T is terrible
For me to see thee so!
_Ad._ Many in battle
Did fall so by my sword.
_Des._ Ah, then, this wound
Thou hast, it is incurable?
_Ad._ Incurable.
_Des._ Alas, atrocious war!
And cruel I that made it. ‘T is I kill thee.
_Ad._ Not thou nor he _(pointing to Carlo)_, but the Lord God of all.
_Des._ Oh, dear unto those eyes! how far away From thee I suffered! and it was one thought Among so many woes upheld me. ‘T was the hope To tell thee all one day in some safe hour Of peace–
_Ad._ That hour of peace has come to me. Believe it, father, save that I leave thee Crushed with thy sorrow here below.
_Des._ O front
Serene and bold! O fearless hand! O eyes That once struck terror!
_Ad._ Cease thy lamentations, Cease, father, in God’s name! For was not this The time to die? But thou that shalt live captive, And hast lived all thy days a king, oh listen: Life’s a great secret that is not revealed Save in the latest hour. Thou’st lost a kingdom; Nay, do not weep! Trust me, when to this hour Thou also shalt draw nigh, most jubilant And fair shall pass before thy thought the years In which thou wast not king–the years in which No tears shall be recorded in the skies
Against thee, and thy name shall not ascend Mixed with the curses of the unhappy. Oh, Rejoice that thou art king no longer! that All ways are closed against thee! There is none For innocent action, and there but remains To do wrong or to suffer wrong. A power
Fierce, pitiless, grasps the world, and calls itself The right. The ruthless hands of our forefathers Did sow injustice, and our fathers then
Did water it with blood; and now the earth No other harvest bears. It is not meet
To uphold crime, thou’st proved it, and if ‘t were, Must it not end thus? Nay, this happy man Whose throne my dying renders more secure, Whom all men smile on and applaud, and serve, He is a man and he shall die.
_Des._ But I
That lose my son, what shall console me?
_Ad._ God!
Who comforts us for all things. And oh, thou Proud foe of mine! _(Turning to Carlo.)_
_Carlo._ Nay, by this name, Adelchi, Call me no more; I was so, but toward death Hatred is impious and villainous. Nor such, Believe me, knows the heart of Carlo.
_Ad._ Friendly
My speech shall be, then, very meek and free Of every bitter memory to both.
For this I pray thee, and my dying hand I lay in thine! I do not ask that thou
Should’st let go free so great a captive–no, For I well see that my prayer were in vain And vain the prayer of any mortal. Firm
Thy heart is–must be–nor so far extends Thy pity. That which thou can’st not deny Without being cruel, that I ask thee! Mild As it can be, and free of insult, be
This old man’s bondage, even such as thou Would’st have implored for thy father, if the heavens Had destined thee the sorrow of leaving him In others’ power. His venerable head
Keep thou from every outrage; for against The fallen many are brave; and let him not Endure the cruel sight of any of those
His vassals that betrayed him.
_Carlo._ Take in death
This glad assurance, Adelchi! and be Heaven My testimony, that thy prayer is as
The word of Carlo!
_Ad._ And thy enemy,
In dying, prays for thee!
_Enter_ ARVINO.
_Armno._ (_Impatiently_) O mighty king, thy warriors and chiefs Ask entrance.
_Ad._ (_Appealingly_.) Carlo!
_Carlo._ Let not any dare
To draw anigh this tent; for here Adelchi Is sovereign; and no one but Adelchi’s father And the meek minister of divine forgiveness Have access here.
_Des._ O my beloved son!
_Ad._ O my father,
The light forsakes these eyes.
_Des._ Adelchi,–No!
Thou shalt not leave me!
_Ad._ O King of kings! betrayed By one of Thine, by all the rest abandoned: I come to seek Thy peace, and do Thou take My weary soul!
_Des._ He heareth thee, my son,
And thou art gone, and I in servitude Remain to weep.
I wish to give another passage from this tragedy: the speech which the emissary of the Church makes to Carlo when he reaches his presence after his arduous passage of the Alps. I suppose that all will note the beauty and reality of the description in the story this messenger tells of his adventures; and I feel, for my part, a profound effect of wildness and loneliness in the verse, which has almost the solemn light and balsamy perfume of those mountain solitudes:
From the camp,
Unseen, I issued, and retraced the steps But lately taken. Thence upon the right
I turned toward Aquilone. Abandoning The beaten paths, I found myself within
A dark and narrow valley; but it grew Wider before my eyes as further on
I kept my way. Here, now and then, I saw The wandering flocks, and huts of shepherds. ‘T was The furthermost abode of men. I entered
One of the huts, craved shelter, and upon The woolly fleece I slept the night away. Rising at dawn, of my good shepherd host I asked my way to France. “Beyond those heights Are other heights,” he said, “and others yet; And France is far and far away; but path There’s none, and thousands are those mountains– Steep, naked, dreadful, uninhabited
Unless by ghosts, and never mortal man Passed over them.” “The ways of God are many, Far more than those of mortals,” I replied, “And God sends me.” “And God guide you!” he said. Then, from among the loaves he kept in store, He gathered up as many as a pilgrim
May carry, and in a coarse sack wrapping them, He laid them on my shoulders. Recompense I prayed from Heaven for him, and took my way. Beaching the valley’s top, a peak arose, And, putting faith in God, I climbed it. Here No trace of man appeared, only the forests Of untouched pines, rivers unknown, and vales Without a path. All hushed, and nothing else But my own steps I heard, and now and then The rushing of the torrents, and the sudden Scream of the hawk, or else the eagle, launched From his high nest, and hurtling through the dawn, Passed close above my head; or then at noon, Struck by the sun, the crackling of the cones Of the wild pines. And so three days I walked, And under the great trees, and in the clefts, Three nights I rested. The sun was my guide; I rose with him, and him upon his journey I followed till he set. Uncertain still, Of my own way I went; from vale to vale
Crossing forever; or, if it chanced at times I saw the accessible slope of some great height Rising before me, and attained its crest, Yet loftier summits still, before, around, Towered over me; and other heights with snow From foot to summit whitening, that did seem Like steep, sharp tents fixed in the soil; and others Appeared like iron, and arose in guise
Of walls insuperable. The third day fell What time I had a mighty mountain seen
That raised its top above the others; ‘t was All one green slope, and all its top was crowned With trees. And thither eagerly I turned My weary steps. It was the eastern side, Sire, of this very mountain on which lies Thy camp that faces toward the setting sun. While I yet lingered on its spurs the darkness Did overtake me; and upon the dry
And slippery needles of the pine that covered The ground, I made my bed, and pillowed me Against their ancient trunks. A smiling hope Awakened me at daybreak; and all full
Of a strange vigor, up the steep I climbed. Scarce had I reached the summit when my ear Was smitten with a murmur that from far
Appeared to come, deep, ceaseless; and I stood And listened motionless. ‘T was not the waters Broken upon the rocks below; ’twas not the wind That blew athwart the woods and whistling ran From one tree to another, but verily
A sound of living men, an indistinct Rumor of words, of arms, of trampling feet, Swarming from far away; an agitation
Immense, of men! My heart leaped, and my steps I hastened. On that peak, O king, that seems To us like some sharp blade to pierce the heaven, There lies an ample plain that’s covered thick With grass ne’er trod before. And this I crossed The quickest way; and now at every instant The murmur nearer grew, and I devoured
The space between; I reached the brink, I launched My glance into the valley and I saw,
I saw the tents of Israel, the desired Pavilion of Jacob; on the ground
I fell, thanked God, adored him, and descended.
VIII
I could easily multiply beautiful and effective passages from the poetry of Manzoni; but I will give only one more version, “The Fifth of May”, that ode on the death of Napoleon, which, if not the most perfect lyric of modern times as the Italians vaunt it to be, is certainly very grand. I have followed the movement and kept the meter of the Italian, and have at the same time reproduced it quite literally; yet I feel that any translation of such a poem is only a little better than none. I think I have caught the shadow of this splendid lyric; but there is yet no photography that transfers the splendor itself, the life, the light, the color; I can give you the meaning, but not the feeling, that pervades every syllable as the blood warms every fiber of a man, not the words that flashed upon the poet as he wrote, nor the yet more precious and inspired words that came afterward to his patient waiting and pondering, and touched the whole with fresh delight and grace. If you will take any familiar passage from one of our poets in which every motion of the music is endeared by long association and remembrance, and every tone is sweet upon the tongue, and substitute a few strange words for the original, you will have some notion of the wrong done by translation.
THE FIFTH OF MAY.
He passed; and as immovable
As, with the last sigh given,
Lay his own clay, oblivious,
From that great spirit riven,
So the world stricken and wondering Stands at the tidings dread:
Mutely pondering the ultimate
Hour of that fateful being,
And in the vast futurity
No peer of his foreseeing
Among the countless myriads
Her blood-stained dust that tread.
Him on his throne and glorious
Silent saw I, that never–
When with awful vicissitude
He sank, rose, fell forever–
Mixed my voice with the numberless Voices that pealed on high;
Guiltless of servile flattery
And of the scorn of coward,
Come I when darkness suddenly
On so great light hath lowered,
And offer a song at his sepulcher That haply shall not die.
From the Alps unto the Pyramids,
From Rhine to Manzanares
Unfailingly the thunderstroke
His lightning purpose carries;
Bursts from Scylla to Tanais,–
From one to the other sea.
Was it true glory?–Posterity,
Thine be the hard decision;
Bow we before the mightiest,
Who willed in him the vision
Of his creative majesty
Most grandly traced should be.
The eager and tempestuous
Joy of the great plan’s hour,
The throe of the heart that controllessly Burns with a dream of power,
And wins it, and seizes victory
It had seemed folly to hope–
All he hath known: the infinite
Rapture after the danger,
The flight, the throne of sovereignty, The salt bread of the stranger;
Twice ‘neath the feet of the worshipers, Twice ‘neath the altar’s cope.
He spoke his name; two centuries,
Armed and threatening either,
Turned unto him submissively,
As waiting fate together;
He made a silence, and arbiter
He sat between the two.
He vanished; his days in the idleness Of his island-prison spending,
Mark of immense malignity,
And of a pity unending,
Of hatred inappeasable,
Of deathless love and true.
As on the head of the mariner,
Its weight some billow heaping,
Falls even while the castaway,
With strained sight far sweeping, Scanneth the empty distances
For some dim sail in vain;
So over his soul the memories
Billowed and gathered ever!
How oft to tell posterity
Himself he did endeavor,
And on the pages helplessly
Fell his weary hand again.
How many times, when listlessly
In the long, dull day’s declining– Downcast those glances fulminant,
His arms on his breast entwining– He stood assailed by the memories
Of days that were passed away;
He thought of the camps, the arduous Assaults, the shock of forces,
The lightning-flash of the infantry, The billowy rush of horses,
The thrill in his supremacy,
The eagerness to obey.
Ah, haply in so great agony
His panting soul had ended
Despairing, but that potently
A hand, from heaven extended,
Into a clearer atmosphere
In mercy lifted him.
And led him on by blossoming
Pathways of hope ascending
To deathless fields, to happiness All earthly dreams transcending,
Where in the glory celestial
Earth’s fame is dumb and dim.
Beautiful, deathless, beneficent
Faith! used to triumphs, even
This also write exultantly:
No loftier pride ‘neath heaven
Unto the shame of Calvary
Stooped ever yet its crest.
Thou from his weary mortality
Disperse all bitter passions:
The God that humbleth and hearteneth, That comforts and that chastens,
Upon the pillow else desolate
To his pale lips lay pressed!
IX
Giuseppe Arnaud says that in his sacred poetry Manzoni gave the Catholic dogmas the most moral explanation, in the most attractive poetical language; and he suggests that Manzoni had a patriotic purpose in them, or at least a sympathy with the effort of the Romantic writers to give priests and princes assurance that patriotism was religious, and thus win them to favor the Italian cause. It must be confessed that such a temporal design as this would fatally affect the devotional quality of the hymns, even if the poet’s consciousness did not; but I am not able to see any evidence of such sympathy in the poems themselves. I detect there a perfectly sincere religious feeling, and nothing of devotional rapture. The poet had, no doubt, a satisfaction in bringing out the beauty and sublimity of his faith; and, as a literary artist, he had a right to be proud of his work, for its spirit is one of which the tuneful piety of Italy had long been void. In truth, since David, king of Israel, left making psalms, religious songs have been poorer than any other sort of songs; and it is high praise of Manzoni’s “Inni Sacri” to say that they are in irreproachable taste, and unite in unaffected poetic appreciation of the grandeur of Christianity as much reason as may coexist with obedience.
The poetry of Manzoni is so small in quantity, that we must refer chiefly to excellence of quality the influence and the fame it has won him, though I do not deny that his success may have been partly owing at first to the errors of the school which preceded him. It could be easily shown, from literary history, that every great poet has appeared at a moment fortunate for his renown, just as we might prove, from natural science, that it is felicitous for the sun to get up about day-break. Manzoni’s art was very great, and he never gave his thought defective expression, while the expression was always secondary to the thought. For the self-respect, then, of an honest man, which would not permit him to poetize insincerity and shape the void, and for the great purpose he always cherished of making literature an agent of civilization and Christianity, the Italians are right to honor Manzoni. Arnaud thinks that the school he founded lingered too long on the educative and religious ground he chose; and Marc Monnier declares Manzoni to be the poet of resignation, thus distinguishing him from the poets of revolution. The former critic is the nearer right of the two, though neither is quite just, as it seems to me; for I do not understand how any one can read the romance and the dramas of Manzoni without finding him full of sympathy for all Italy has suffered, and a patriot very far from resigned; and I think political conditions–or the Austrians in Milan, to put it more concretely–scarcely left to the choice of the Lombard school that attitude of aggression which others assumed under a weaker, if not a milder, despotism at Florence. The utmost allowed the Milanese poets was the expression of a retrospective patriotism, which celebrated the glories of Italy’s past, which deplored her errors, and which denounced her crimes, and thus contributed to keep the sense of nationality alive. Under such governments as endured in Piedmont until 1848, in Lombardy until 1859, in Venetia until 1866, literature must remain educative, or must cease to be. In the works, therefore, of Manzoni and of nearly all his immediate followers, there is nothing directly revolutionary except in Giovanni Berchet. The line between them and the directly revolutionary poets is by no means to be traced with exactness, however, in their literature, and in their lives they were all alike patriotic.
Manzoni lived to see all his hopes fulfilled, and died two years after the fall of the temporal power, in 1873. “Toward mid-day,” says a Milanese journal at the time of his death, “he turned suddenly to the household friends about him, and said: ‘This man is failing–sinking–call my confessor!’
“The confessor came, and he communed with him half an hour, speaking, as usual, from a mind calm and clear. After the confessor left the room, Manzoni called his friends and said to them: ‘When I am dead, do what I did every day: pray for Italy–pray for the king and his family–so good to me!’ His country was the last thought of this great man dying as in his whole long life it had been his most vivid and constant affection.”
SILVIO PELLICO, TOMASSO GROSSI, LUIGI CAREER, AND GIOVANNI BERCHET
I
As I have noted, nearly all the poets of the Romantic School were Lombards, and they had nearly all lived at Milan under the censorship and espionage of the Austrian government. What sort of life this must have been, we, born and reared in a free country, can hardly imagine. We have no experience by which we can judge it, and we never can do full justice to the intellectual courage and devotion of a people who, amid inconceivable obstacles and oppressions, expressed themselves in a new and vigorous literature. It was not, I have explained, openly revolutionary; but whatever tended to make men think and feel was a sort of indirect rebellion against Austria. When a society of learned Milanese gentlemen once presented an address to the Emperor, he replied, with brutal insolence, that he wanted obedient subjects in Italy, nothing more; and it is certain that the activity of the Romantic School was regarded with jealousy and dislike by the government from the first. The authorities awaited only a pretext for striking a deadly blow at the poets and novelists, who ought to have been satisfied with being good subjects, but who, instead, must needs even found a newspaper, and discuss in it projects for giving the Italians a literary life, since they could not have a political existence. The perils of contributing to the _Conciliatore_ were such as would attend house-breaking and horse-stealing in happier countries and later times. The government forbade any of its employees to write for it, under pain of losing their places; the police, through whose hands every article intended for publication had to pass, not only struck out all possibly offensive expressions, but informed one of the authors that if his articles continued to come to them so full of objectionable things, he should be banished, even though those things never reached the public. At last the time came for suppressing this journal and punishing its managers. The chief editor was a young Piedmontese poet, who politically was one of the most harmless and inoffensive of men; his literary creed obliged him to choose Italian subjects for his poems, and he thus erred by mentioning Italy; yet Arnaud, in his “Poeti Patriottici”, tells us he could find but two lines from which this poet could be suspected of patriotism, and he altogether refuses to class him with the poets who have promoted revolution. Nevertheless, it is probable that this poet wished Freedom well. He was indefinitely hopeful for Italy; he was young, generous, and credulous of goodness and justice. His youth, his generosity, his truth, made him odious to Austria. One day he returned from a visit to Turin, and was arrested. He could have escaped when danger first threatened, but his faith in his own innocence ruined him. After a tedious imprisonment, and repeated examinations in Milan, he was taken to Venice, and lodged in the famous _piombi_, or cells in the roof of the Ducal Palace. There, after long delays, he had his trial, and was sentenced to twenty years in the prison of Spielberg. By a sort of poetical license which the imperial clemency sometimes used, the nights were counted as days, and the term was thus reduced to ten years. Many other young and gifted Italians suffered at the same time; most of them came to this country at the end of their long durance; this Piedmontese poet returned to his own city of Turin, an old and broken-spirited man, doubting of the political future, and half a Jesuit in religion. He was devastated, and for once a cruel injustice seemed to have accomplished its purpose.
Such is the grim outline of the story of Silvio Pellico. He was arrested for no offense, save that he was an Italian and an intellectual man; for no other offense he was condemned and suffered. His famous book, “My Prisons”, is the touching and forgiving record of one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated.
Few have borne wrong with such Christlike meekness and charity as Pellico. One cannot read his _Prigioni_ without doing homage to his purity and goodness, and cannot turn to his other works without the misgiving that the sole poem he has left the world is the story of his most fatal and unmerited suffering. I have not the hardihood to pretend that I have read all his works. I must confess that I found it impossible to do so, though I came to their perusal inured to drought by travel through Saharas of Italian verse. I can boast only of having read the _Francesca da Rimini_, among the tragedies, and two or three of the canticles,–or romantic stories of the Middle Ages, in blank verse,–which now refuse to be identified. I know, from a despairing reference to his volume, that his remaining poems are chiefly of a religious cast.
II
A much better poet of the Romantic School was Tommaso Grossi, who, like Manzoni and Pellico, is now best known by a prose work–a novel which enjoys a popularity as great as that of “Le Mie Prigioni”, and which has been nearly as much read in Italy as “I Promessi Sposi”. The “Marco Visconti” of Grossi is a romance of the thirteenth century; and though not, as Cantu says, an historic “episode, but a succession of episodes, which do not leave a general and unique impression,” it yet contrives to bring you so pleasantly acquainted with the splendid, squalid, poetic, miserable Italian life in Milan, and on its neighboring hills and lakes, during the Middle Ages, that you cannot help reading it to the end. I suppose that this is the highest praise which can be bestowed upon an historical romance, and that it implies great charm of narrative and beauty of style. I can add, that the feeling of Grossi’s “Marco Visconti” is genuine and exalted, and that its morality is blameless. It has scarcely the right to be analyzed here, however, and should not have been more than mentioned, but for the fact that it chances to be the setting of the author’s best thing in verse. I hope that, even in my crude English version, the artless pathos and sweet natural grace of one of the tenderest little songs in any tongue have not wholly perished.
[Illustration: TOMMASO GROSSI.]
THE FAIR PRISONER TO THE SWALLOW.
Pilgrim swallow! pilgrim swallow!
On my grated window’s sill,
Singing, as the mornings follow,
Quaint and pensive ditties still, What would’st tell me in thy lay?
Prithee, pilgrim swallow, say!
All forgotten, com’st thou hither
Of thy tender spouse forlorn,
That we two may grieve together,
Little widow, sorrow worn?
Grieve then, weep then, in thy lay! Pilgrim swallow, grieve alway!
Yet a lighter woe thou weepest:
Thou at least art free of wing,
And while land and lake thou sweepest, May’st make heaven with sorrow ring,
Calling his dear name alway,
Pilgrim swallow, in thy lay.
Could I too! that am forbidden
By this low and narrow cell,
Whence the sun’s fair light is hidden, Whence thou scarce can’st hear me tell Sorrows that I breathe alway,
While thou pip’st thy plaintive lay.
Ah! September quickly coming,
Thou shalt take farewell of me,
And, to other summers roaming,
Other hills and waters see,–
Greeting them with songs more gay, Pilgrim swallow, far away.
Still, with every hopeless morrow,
While I ope mine eyes in tears,
Sweetly through my brooding sorrow Thy dear song shall reach mine ears,– Pitying me, though far away,
Pilgrim swallow, in thy lay.
Thou, when thou and spring together Here return, a cross shalt see,–
In the pleasant evening weather,
Wheel and pipe, here, over me!
Peace and peace! the coming May,
Sing me in thy roundelay!
It is a great good fortune for a man to have written a thing so beautiful as this, and not a singular fortune that he should have written nothing else comparable to it. The like happens in all literatures; and no one need be surprised to learn that I found the other poems of Grossi often difficult, and sometimes almost impossible to read.
Grossi was born in 1791, at Bollano, by lovely Como, whose hills and waters he remembers in all his works with constant affection. He studied law at the University of Pavia, but went early to Milan, where he cultivated literature rather than the austerer science to which he had been bred, and soon became the fashion, writing tales in Milanese and Italian verse, and making the women cry by his pathetic art of story-telling. “Ildegonda”, published in 1820, was the most popular of all these tales, and won Grossi an immense number of admirers, every one (says his biographer Cantu) of the fair sex, who began to wear Ildegonda dresses and Ildegonda bonnets. The poem was printed and reprinted; it is the heart-breaking story of a poor little maiden in the middle ages, whom her father and brother shut up in a convent because she is in love with the right person and will not marry the wrong one–a common thing in all ages. The cruel abbess and wicked nuns, by the order of Ildegonda’s family, try to force her to take the veil; but she, supported by her own repugnance to the cloister, and, by the secret counsels of one of the sisters, with whom force had succeeded, resists persuasion, reproach, starvation, cold, imprisonment, and chains. Her lover attempts to rescue her by means of a subterranean vault under the convent; but the plot is discovered, and the unhappy pair are assailed by armed men at the very moment of escape. Ildegonda is dragged back to her dungeon; and Rizzardo, already under accusation of heresy, is quickly convicted and burnt at the stake. They bring the poor girl word of this, and her sick brain turns. In her delirium she sees her lover in torment for his heresy, and, flying from the hideous apparition, she falls and strikes her head against a stone. She wakes in the arms of the beloved sister who had always befriended her. The cruel efforts against her cease now, and she writes to her father imploring his pardon, which he gives, with a prayer for hers. At last she dies peacefully. The story is pathetic; and it is told with art, though its lapses of taste are woful, and its faults those of the whole class of Italian poetry to which it belongs. The agony is tedious, as Italian agony is apt to be, the passion is outrageously violent or excessively tender, the description too often prosaic; the effects are sometimes produced by very “rough magic”. The more than occasional infelicity and awkwardness of diction which offend in Byron’s poetic tales are not felt so much in those of Grossi; but in “Ildegonda” there is horror more material even than in “Parisina”. Here is a picture of Rizzardo’s apparition, for which my faint English has no stomach:
Che dalla bocca fuori gli pendea
La coda smisurata d’ un serpente, E il flagellava per la faccia, mentre
Il capo e il tronco gli scendean nel ventre.
Fischia la biscia nell’ orribil lutta Entro il ventre profondo del dannato,
Che dalla bocca lacerata erutta
Un torrente di sangue aggruppato; E bava gialla, venenosa e brutta,
Dalle narici fuor manda col fiato, La qual pel mento giu gli cola, e lassa Insolcata la carne, ovunque passa.
It seems to have been the fate of Grossi as a poet to achieve fashion, and not fame; and his great poem in fifteen cantos, called “I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata”, which made so great a noise in its day, was eclipsed in reputation by his subsequent novel of “Marco Visconti”. Since the “Gerusalemma” of Tasso, it is said that no poem has made so great a sensation in Italy as “I Lombardi”, in which the theme treated by the elder poet is celebrated according to the aesthetics of the Romantic School. Such parts of the poem as I have read have not tempted me to undertake the whole; but many people must have at least bought it, for it gave the author thirty thousand francs in solid proof of popularity.
After the “Marco Visconti”, Grossi seems to have produced no work of importance. He married late, but happily; and he now devoted himself almost exclusively to the profession of the law, in Milan, where he died in 1853, leaving the memory of a good man, and the fame of a poet unspotted by reproach. As long as he lived, he was the beloved friend of Manzoni. He dwelt many years under the influence of the stronger mind, but not servile to it; adopting its literary principles, but giving them his own expression.
III
Luigi Carrer of Venice was the first of that large number of minor poets and dramatists to which the states of the old Republic have given birth during the present century. His life began with our century, and he died in 1850. During this time he witnessed great political events–the retirement of the French after the fall of Napoleon; the failure of all the schemes and hopes of the Carbonarito shake off the yoke of the stranger; and that revolution in 1848 which drove out the Austrians, only that, a year later, they should return in such force as to make the hope of Venetian independence through the valor of Venetian arms a vain dream forever. There is not wanting evidence of a tender love of country in the poems of Carrer, and probably the effectiveness of the Austrian system of repression, rather than his own indifference, is witnessed by the fact that he has scarcely a line to betray a hope for the future, or a consciousness of political anomaly in the present.
Carrer was poor, but the rich were glad to be his friends, without putting him to shame; and as long as the once famous _conversazioni_ were held in the great Venetian houses, he was the star of whatever place assembled genius and beauty. He had a professorship in a private school, and while he was young he printed his verses in the journals. As he grew older, he wrote graceful books of prose, and drew his slender support from their sale and from the minute pay of some offices in the gift of his native city.
Carrer’s ballads are esteemed the best of his poems; and I may offer an idea of the quality and manner of some of his ballads by the following translation, but I cannot render his peculiar elegance, nor give the whole range of his fancy:
THE DUCHESS.
From the horrible profound
Of the voiceless sepulcher
Comes, or seems to come, a sound; Is’t his Grace, the Duke, astir?
In his trance he hath been laid
As one dead among the dead!
The relentless stone he tries
With his utmost strength to move; Fails, and in his fury cries,
Smiting his hands, that those above, If any shall be passing there,
Hear his blasphemy, or his prayer.
And at last he seems to hear
Light feet overhead go by;
“O, whoever passes near
Where I am, the Duke am I!
All my states and all I have
To him that takes me from this grave.”
There is no one that replies;
Surely, some one seemed to come! On his brow the cold sweat lies,
As he waits an instant dumb;
Then he cries with broken breath, “Save me, take me back from death!”
“Where thou liest, lie thou must,
Prayers and curses alike are vain: Over thee dead Gismond’s dust–
Whom thy pitiless hand hath slain– On this stone so heavily
Rests, we cannot set thee free.”
From the sepulcher’s thick walls
Comes a low wail of dismay,
And, as when a body falls,
A dull sound;–and the next day
In a convent the Duke’s wife
Hideth her remorseful life.
Of course, Carrer wrote much poetry besides his ballads. There are idyls, and romances in verse, and hymns; sonnets of feeling and of occasion; odes, sometimes of considerable beauty; apologues, of such exceeding fineness of point, that it often escapes one; satires and essays, or _sermoni_, some of which I have read with no great relish. The same spirit dominates nearly all–the spirit of pensive disappointment which life brings to delicate and sensitive natures, and which they love to affect even more than they feel. Among Carrer’s many sonnets, I think I like best the following, of which the sentiment seems to me simple and sweet, and the expression very winning:
I am a pilgrim swallow, and I roam
Beyond strange seas, of other lands in quest, Leaving the well-known lakes and hills of home, And that dear roof where late I hung my nest; All things beloved and love’s eternal woes I fly, an exile from my native shore: I cross the cliffs and woods, but with me goes The care I thought to abandon evermore. Along the banks of streams unknown to me, I pipe the elms and willows pensive lays, And call on her whom I despair to see, And pass in banishment and tears my days. Breathe, air of spring, for which I pine and yearn, That to his nest the swallow may return!
The prose writings of Carrer are essays on Aesthetics and morals, and sentimentalized history. His chief work is of the latter nature. “I Sette Gemme di Venezia” are sketches of the lives of the seven Venetian women who have done most to distinguish the name of their countrywomen by their talents, or misfortunes, or sins. You feel, in looking through the book, that its interest is in great part factitious. The stories are all expanded, and filled up with facile but not very relevant discourse, which a pleasant fancy easily supplies, and which is always best left to the reader’s own thought. The style is somewhat florid; but the author contrives to retain in his fantastic strain much of the grace of simplicity. It is the work of a cunning artist; but it has a certain insipidity, and it wearies. Carrer did well in the limit which he assigned himself, but his range was circumscribed. At the time of his death, he had written sixteen cantos of an epic poem called “La Fata Vergine”, which a Venetian critic has extravagantly praised, and which I have not seen. He exercised upon the poetry of his day an influence favorable to lyric naturalness, and his ballads were long popular.
IV
GIOVANNI BERCHET was a poet who alone ought to be enough to take from the Lombard romanticists the unjust reproach of “resignation”. “Where our poetry,” says De Sanctis, “throws off every disguise, romantic or classic, is in the verse of Berchet…. If Giovanni Berchet had remained in Italy, probably his genius would have remained enveloped in the allusions and shadows of romanticism. But in his exile at London he uttered the sorrow and the wrath of his betrayed and vanquished country. It was the accent of the national indignation which, leaving the generalities of the sonnets and the ballads, dramatized itself and portrayed our life in its most touching phases.”
Berchet’s family was of French origin, but he was the most Italian of Italians, and nearly all his poems are of an ardent political tint and temperature. Naturally, he spent a great part of his life in exile after the Austrians were reestablished in Milan; he was some time in England, and I believe he died in Switzerland.
I have most of his patriotic poems in a little book which is curiously historical of a situation forever past. I picked it up, I do not remember where or when, in Venice; and as it is a collection of pieces all meant to embitter the spirit against Austria, it had doubtless not been brought into the city with the connivance of the police. There is no telling where it was printed, the mysterious date of publication being “Italy, 1861”, and nothing more, with the English motto: “Adieu, my native land, adieu!”
The principal poem here is called “Le Fantasie”, and consists of a series of lyrics in which an Italian exile contrasts the Lombards, who drove out Frederick Barbarossa in the twelfth century, with the Lombards of 1829, who crouched under the power defied of old. It is full of burning reproaches, sarcasms, and appeals; and it probably had some influence in renewing the political agitation which in Italy followed the French revolution of 1830. Other poems of Berchet represent social aspects of the Austrian rule, like one entitled “Remorse”, which paints the isolation and wretchedness of an Italian woman married to an Austrian; and another, “Giulia”, which gives a picture of the frantic misery of an Austrian conscription in Italy. A very impressive poem is that called “The Hermit of Mt. Cenis”. A traveler reaches the summit of the pass, and, looking over upon the beauty and magnificence of the Italian plains, and seeing only their loveliness and peace, his face is lighted up with an involuntary smile, when suddenly the hermit who knows all the invisible disaster and despair of the scene suddenly accosts him with, “Accursed be he who approaches without tears this home of sorrow!”
At the time the Romantic School rose in Italian literature, say from 1815 till 1820, society was brilliant, if not contented or happy. In Lombardy and Venetia, immediately after the treaties of the Holy Alliance had consigned these provinces to Austria, there flourished famous _conversazioni_ at many noble houses. In those of Milan many distinguished literary men of other nations met. Byron and Hobhouse were frequenters of the same _salons_ as Pellico, Manzoni, and Grossi; the Schlegels represented the German Romantic School, and Madame de Stael the sympathizing movement in France. There was very much that was vicious still, and very much that was ignoble in Italian society, but this was by sufferance and not as of old by approval; and it appears that the tone of the highest life was intellectual. It cannot be claimed that this tone was at all so general as the badness of the last century. It was not so easily imitated as that, and it could not penetrate so subtly into all ranks and conditions. Still it was very observable, and mingled with it in many leading minds was the strain of religious resignation, audible in Manzoni’s poetry. That was a time when the Italians might, if ever, have adapted themselves to foreign rule; but the Austrians, sofar from having learned political wisdom during the period of their expulsion from Italy, had actually retrograded; from being passive authorities whom long sojourn was gradually Italianizing, they had, in their absence, become active and relentless tyrants, and they now seemed to study how most effectually to alienate themselves. They found out their error later, but when too late to repair it, and from 1820 until 1859 in Milan, and until 1866 in Venice, the hatred, which they had themselves enkindled, burned fiercer and fiercer against them. It is not extravagant to say that if their rule had continued a hundred years longer the Italians would never have been reconciled to it. Society took the form of habitual and implacable defiance to them. The life of the whole people might be said to have resolved itself into a protest against their presence. This hatred was the heritage of children from their parents, the bond between friends, the basis of social faith; it was a thread even in the tie between lovers; it was so intense and so pervasive that it cannot be spoken.
Berchet was the vividest, if not the earliest, expression of it in literature, and the following poem, which I have already mentioned, is, therefore, not only intensely true to Italian feeling, but entirely realistic in its truth to a common fact.
REMORSE.
Alone in the midst of the throng,
‘Mid the lights and the splendor alone, Her eyes, dropped for shame of her wrong, She lifts not to eyes she has known:
Around her the whirl and the stir Of the light-footing dancers she hears; None seeks her; no whisper for her
Of the gracious words filling her ears.
The fair boy that runs to her knees, With a shout for his mother, and kiss For the tear-drop that welling he sees To her eyes from her sorrow’s abyss,– Though he blooms like a rose, the fair boy, No praise of his beauty is heard;
None with him stays to jest or to toy, None to her gives a smile or a word.
If, unknowing, one ask who may be
This woman, that, as in disgrace, O’er the curls of the boy at her knee
Bows her beautiful, joyless face, A hundred tongues answer in scorn,
A hundred lips teach him to know– “Wife of one of our tyrants, forsworn
To her friends in her truth to their foe.”
At the play, in the streets, in the lanes, At the fane of the merciful God,
‘Midst a people in prison and chains, Spy-haunted, at home and abroad–
Steals through all like the hiss of a snake Hate, by terror itself unsuppressed:
“Cursed be the Italian could take The Austrian foe to her breast!”
Alone–but the absence she mourned
As widowhood mourneth, is past:
Her heart leaps for her husband returned From his garrison far-off at last?
Ah, no! For this woman forlorn
Love is dead, she has felt him depart: With far other thoughts she is torn,
Far other the grief at her heart.
When the shame that has darkened her days Fantasmal at night fills the gloom,
When her soul, lost in wildering ways, Flies the past, and the terror to come– When she leaps from her slumbers to hark, As if for her little one’s call,
It is then to the pitiless dark
That her woe-burdened soul utters all:
“Woe is me! It was God’s righteous hand My brain with its madness that smote: At the alien’s flattering command
The land of my birth I forgot!
I, the girl who was loved and adored, Feasted, honored in every place,
Now what am I? The apostate abhorred, Who was false to her home and her race!
“I turned from the common disaster; My brothers oppressed I denied;
I smiled on their insolent master; I came and sat down by his side.
Wretch! a mantle of shame thou hast wrought; Thou hast wrought it–it clingeth to thee, And for all that thou sufferest, naught From its meshes thy spirit can free.
“Oh, the scorn I have tasted! They know not, Who pour it on me, how it burns;
How it galls the meek spirit, whose woe not Their hating with hating returns!
Fool! I merit it: I have not holden My feet from their paths! Mine the blame: I have sought in their eyes to embolden This visage devoted to shame!
“Rejected and followed with scorn,
My child, like a child born of sin, In the land where my darling was born, He lives exiled! A refuge to win
From their hatred, he runs in dismay To my arms. But the day may yet be
When my son shall the insult repay, I have nurtured him in, unto me!
“If it chances that ever the slave
Snaps the shackles that bind him, and leaps Into life in the heart of the brave
The sense of the might that now sleeps– To which people, which side shall I cleave? Which fate shall I curse with my own? To which banner pray Heaven to give
The triumph? Which desire o’erthrown?
“Italian, and sister, and wife,
And mother, unfriended, alone,
Outcast, I wander through life,
Over shard and bramble and stone! Wretch! a mantle of shame thou hast wrought; Thou hast wrought it–it clingeth to thee, And for all that thou sufferest, naught From its meshes thy spirit shall free!”
GIAMBATTISTA NICCOLINI
I
The school of Romantic poets and novelists was practically dispersed by the Austrian police after the Carbonari disturbances in 1821-22, and the literary spirit of the nation took refuge under the mild and careless despotism of the grand dukes at Florence.
In 1821 Austria was mistress of pretty near all Italy. She held in her own grasp the vast provinces of Lombardy and Venetia; she had garrisons in Naples, Piedmont, and the Romagna; and Rome was ruled according to her will. But there is always something fatally defective in the vigilance of a policeman; and in the very place which perhaps Austria thought it quite needless to guard, the restless and indomitable spirit of free thought entered. It was in Tuscany, a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, reigned over by a family set on the grand-ducal throne by Austria herself, and united to her Hapsburgs by many ties of blood and affection–in Tuscany, right under both noses of the double-headed eagle, as it were, that a new literary and political life began for Italy. The Leopoldine code was famously mild toward criminals, and the Lorrainese princes did not show themselves crueler than they could help toward poets, essayists, historians, philologists, and that class of malefactors. Indeed it was the philosophy of their family to let matters alone; and the grand duke restored after the fall of Napoleon was, as has been said, an absolute monarch, but he was also an honest man. This _galantuomo_ had even a minister who successfully combated the Austrian influences, and so, though there were, of course, spies and a censorship in Florence, there was also indulgence; and if it was not altogether a pleasant place for literary men to live, it was at least tolerable, and there they gathered from their exile and their silence throughout Italy. Their point of union, and their means of affecting the popular mind, was for twelve years the critical journal entitled the _Antologia_, founded by that Vieusseux who also opened those delightful and beneficent reading-rooms whither we all rush, as soon as we reach Florence, to look at the newspapers and magazines of our native land. The Antologia had at last the misfortune to offend the Emperor of Russia, and to do that prince a pleasure the Tuscan government suppressed it: such being the international amenities when sovereigns really reigned in Europe. After the Antologia there came another review, published at Leghorn, but it was not so successful, and in fact the conditions of literature gradually grew more irksome in Tuscany, until the violent liberation came in ’48, and a little later the violent reenslavement.
Giambattista Niccolini, like nearly all the poets of his time and country, was of noble birth, his father being a _cavaliere_, and holding a small government office at San Giuliano, near Pistoja. Here, in 1782, Niccolini was born to very decided penury. His father had only that little office, and his income died with him; the mother had nothing–possibly because she was descended from a poet, the famous Filicaja. From his mother, doubtless, Niccolini inherited his power, and perhaps his patriotism. But little or nothing is known of his early life. It is certain, merely, that after leaving school, he continued his studies in the University of Pisa, and that he very soon showed himself a poet. His first published effort was a sort of lamentation over an epidemic that desolated Tuscany in 1804, and this was followed by five or six pretty thoroughly forgotten tragedies in the classic or Alfierian manner. Of these, only the _Medea_ is still played, but they all made a stir in their time; and for another he was crowned by the Accademia della Crusca, which I suppose does not mean a great deal. The fact that Niccolini early caught the attention and won the praises of Ugo Foscolo is more important. There grew up, indeed, between the two poets such esteem that the elder at this time dedicated one of his books to the younger, and their friendship continued through life.
When Elisa Bonaparte was made queen of Etruria by Napoleon, Niccolini became secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts, and professor of history and mythology. It is said that in the latter capacity he instilled into his hearers his own notions of liberty and civic virtue. He was, in truth, a democrat, and he suffered with the other Jacobins, as they were called in Italy, when the Napoleonic governments were overthrown. The benefits which the French Revolution conferred upon the people of their conquered provinces when not very doubtful were still such as they were not prepared to receive; and after the withdrawal of the French support, all the Italians through whom they had ruled fell a prey to the popular hate and contumely. In those days when dynasties, restored to their thrones after the lapse of a score of years, ignored the intervening period and treated all its events as if they had no bearing upon the future, it was thought the part of the true friends of order to resume the old fashions which went out with the old _regime_. The queue, or pigtail, had always been worn, when it was safe to wear it, by the supporters of religion and good government (from this fashion came the famous political nickname _codino_, pigtail-wearer, or conservative, which used to occur so often in Italian talk and literature), and now whoever appeared on the street without this emblem of loyalty and piety was in danger of public outrage. A great many Jacobins bowed their heads to the popular will, and had pigtails sewed on them–a device which the idle boys and other unemployed friends of legitimacy busied themselves in detecting. They laid rude hands on this ornament singing,
If the queue remains in your hand,
A true republican is he;
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!
Give him a kick for liberty.
It is related that the superficial and occasional character of Niccolini’s conversion was discovered by this test, and that he underwent the apposite penalty. He rebelled against the treatment he received, and was arrested and imprisoned for his contumacy. When Ferdinando III had returned and established his government on the let-alone principle to which I have alluded, the dramatist was made librarian of the Palatine Library at the Pitti Palace, but he could not endure the necessary attendance at court, where his politics were remembered against him by the courtiers, and he gave up the place. The grand duke was sorry, and said so, adding that he was perfectly contented. “Your Highness,” answered the poet, “in this case it takes two to be contented.”
II
The first political tragedy of Niccolini was the _Nebuchadnezzar_, which was printed in London in 1819, and figured, under that Scriptural disguise, the career of Napoleon. After that came his _Antonio Foscarini_, in which the poet, who had heretofore been a classicist, tried to reconcile that school with the romantic by violating the sacred unities in a moderate manner. In his subsequent tragedies he seems not to have regarded them at all, and to have been romantic as the most romantic Lombard of them all could have asked. Of course, his defection gave exquisite pain to the lovers of Italian good taste, as the classicists called themselves, but these were finally silenced by the success of his tragedy. The reader of it nowadays, we suspect, will think its success not very expensively achieved, and it certainly has a main fault that makes it strangely disagreeable. When the past was chiefly the affair of fable, the storehouse of tradition, it was well enough for the poet to take historical events and figures, and fashion them in any way that served his purpose; but this will not do in our modern daylight, where a freedom with the truth is an offense against common knowledge, and does not charm the fancy, but painfully bewilders it at the best, and at the second best is impudent and ludicrous. In his tragedy, Niccolini takes two very familiar incidents of Venetian history: that of the Foscari, which Byron has used; and that of Antonio Foscarini, who was unjustly hanged more than a hundred years later for privity to a conspiracy against the state, whereas the attributive crime of Jacopo Foscari was the assassination of a fellow-patrician. The poet is then forced to make the Doge Foscari do duty throughout as the father of Foscarini, the only doge of whose name served out his term very peaceably, and died the author of an extremely dull official history of Venetian literature. Foscarini, who, up to the time of his hanging, was an honored servant of the state, and had been ambassador to France, is obliged, on his part, to undergo all of Jacopo Foscari’s troubles; and I have not been able to see why the poet should have vexed himself to make all this confusion, and why the story of the Foscari was not sufficient for his purpose. In the tragedy there is much denunciation of the oligarchic oppression of the Ten in Venice, and it may be regarded as the first of Niccolini’s dramatic appeals to the love of freedom and the manhood of the Italians.
It is much easier to understand the success of Niccolini’s subsequent drama, _Lodovico il Moro_, which is in many respects a touching and effective tragedy, and the historical truth is better observed in it; though, as none of our race can ever love his country with that passionate and personal devotion which the Italians feel, we shall never relish the high patriotic flavor of the piece. The story is simply that of Giovan-Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, whose uncle, Lodovico, on pretense of relieving him of the cares of government, has usurped the sovereignty, and keeps Galeazzo and his wife in virtual imprisonment, the young duke wasting away with a slow but fatal malady. To further his ambitious schemes in Lombardy, Lodovico has called in Charles VIII. of France, who claims the crown of Naples against the Aragonese family, and pauses, on his way to Naples, at Milan. Isabella, wife of Galeazzo, appeals to Charles to liberate them, but reaches his presence in such an irregular way that she is suspected of treason both to her husband and to Charles. Yet the king is convinced of her innocence, and he places the sick duke under the protection of a French garrison, and continues his march on Naples. Lodovico has appeared to consent, but by seeming to favor the popular leaders has procured the citizens to insist upon his remaining in power; he has also secretly received the investiture from the Emperor of Germany, to be published upon the death of Galeazzo. He now, therefore, defies the French; Galeazzo, tormented by alternate hope and despair, dies suddenly; and Lodovico, throwing off the mask of a popular ruler, puts the republican leaders to death, and reigns the feudatory of the Emperor. The interest of the play is almost entirely political, and patriotism is the chief passion involved. The main personal attraction of the tragedy is in the love of Galeazzo and his wife, and in the character of the latter the dreamy languor of a hopeless invalid is delicately painted.
The _Giovanni da Procida_ was a further advance in political literature. In this tragedy, abandoning the indirectly liberal teachings of the Foscarini, Niccolini set himself to the purpose of awakening a Tuscan hatred of foreign rule. The subject is the expulsion of the French from Sicily; and when the French ambassador complained to the Austrian that such a play should be tolerated by the Tuscan government, the Austrian answered, “The address is to the French, but the letter is for the Germans.” The Giovanni da Procida was a further development of Niccolini’s political purposes in literature, and at the time of its first representation it raised the Florentines to a frenzy of theater-going patriotism. The tragedy ends with the terrible Sicilian Vespers, but its main affair is with preceding events, largely imagined by the poet, and the persons are in great part fictitious; yet they all bear a certain relation to fact, and the historical persons are more or less historically painted. Giovanni da Procida, a great Sicilian nobleman, believed dead by the French, comes home to Palermo, after long exile, to stir up the Sicilians to rebellion, and finds that his daughter is married to the son of one of the French rulers, though neither this daughter Imelda nor her husband Tancredi knew the origin of the latter at the time of their marriage. Precida, in his all-absorbing hate of the oppressors, cannot forgive them; yet he seizes Tancredi, and imprisons him in his castle, in order to save his life from the impending massacre of the French; and in a scene with Imelda, he tells her that, while she was a babe, the father of Tancredi had abducted her mother and carried her to France. Years after, she returned heart-broken to die in her husband’s arms, a secret which she tries to reveal perishing with her. While Imelda remains horror-struck by this history, Procida receives an intercepted letter from Eriberto, Tancredi’s father, in which he tells the young man that he and Imelda are children of the same mother. Procida in pity of his daughter, the victim of this awful fatality, prepares to send her away to a convent in Pisa; but a French law forbids any ship to sail at that time, and Imelda is brought back and confronted in a public place with Tancredi, who has been rescued by the French.
He claims her as his wife, but she, filled with the horror of what she knows, declares that he is not her husband. It is the moment of the Vespers, and Tancredi falls among the first slain by the Sicilians. He implores Imelda for a last kiss, but wildly answering that they are brother and sister, she swoons away, while Tancredi dies in this climax of self-loathing and despair. The management of a plot so terrible is very simple. The feelings of the characters in the hideous maze which involves them are given only such expression as should come from those utterly broken by their calamity. Imelda swoons when she hears the letter of Eriberto declaring the fatal tie of blood that binds her to her husband, and forever separates her from him. When she is restored, she finds her father weeping over her, and says:
Ah, thou dost look on me
And weep! At least this comfort I can feel In the horror of my state: thou canst not hate A woman so unhappy….
… Oh, from all
Be hid the atrocity! to some holy shelter Let me be taken far from hence. I feel Naught can be more than my calamity,
Saving God’s pity. I have no father now, Nor child, nor husband (heavens, what do I say? He is my brother now! and well I know
I must not ask to see him more). I, living, lose Everything death robs other women of.
By far the greater feeling and passion are shown in the passages describing the wrongs which the Sicilians have suffered from the French, and expressing the aspiration and hate of Procida and his fellow-patriots. Niccolini does not often use pathos, and he is on that account perhaps the more effective in the use of it. However this may be, I find it very touching when, after coming back from his long exile, Procida says to Imelda, who is trembling for the secret of her marriage amidst her joy in his return:
Daughter, art thou still
So sad? I have not heard yet from thy lips A word of the old love….
… Ah, thou knowest not
What sweetness hath the natal spot, how many The longings exile hath; how heavy’t is To arrive at doors of homes where no one waits thee! Imelda, thou may’st abandon thine own land, But not forget her; I, a pilgrim, saw Many a city; but none among them had
A memory that spoke unto my heart; And fairer still than any other seemed The country whither still my spirit turned.
In a vein as fierce and passionate as this is tender, Procida relates how, returning to Sicily when he was believed dead by the French, he passed in secret over the island and inflamed Italian hatred of the foreigners:
I sought the pathless woods, And drew the cowards thence and made them blush, And then made fury follow on their shame. I hailed the peasant in his fertile fields, Where, ‘neath the burden of the cruel tribute, He dropped from famine ‘midst the harvest sheaves, With his starved brood: “Open thou with thy scythe The breasts of Frenchmen; let the earth no more Be fertile to our tyrants.” I found my way In palaces, in hovels; tranquil, I
Both great and lowly did make drunk with rage. I knew the art to call forth cruel tears In every eye, to wake in every heart
A love of slaughter, a ferocious need Of blood. And in a thousand strong right hands