Chapter VIII: The Period of Decadence and the Revival

In the history of Italian literature, Dante, to expand a figure already used, stands at the end of the Middle Ages like a lofty, solitary mountain peak; behind him the low, level plain fades away into darkness; before him the landscape, shone upon by the first rays of a new epoch, slopes gradually upward until with Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the great writers of the Renaissance, we have a lofty and widely extended plateau. After Tasso there is a sudden descent to a low, level, uniform plain, in which Italian literature dragged itself along till the middle of the eighteenth century, when again an upward slope is noticed, which becomes more and more accentuated as we approach the present.

Among the causes of the period of degradation, from 1560 to 1750, the leading ones must be sought for in the political and religious condition of Italy at that time. Spain had become possessed of a large part of the country, especially in the north and south, while the pope, who ruled the center, in temporal as well as spiritual matters, was the firm ally of the Spaniards. The country thus under foreign dominion, was oppressed and robbed without mercy. The Spanish viceroys, and their ignoble imitators, the Italian nobles, lived a life of luxury and vice, surrounded by bandits and brigands, and by paralyzing all commerce and industry, brought on famine and pestilence.

The religious condition was no better. The Catholic reaction, or counter reformation, which culminated in the Council of Trent, fastened still more firmly the chains of medieval superstition and dogmatism on the mass of the Italian people. The absolute power of the pope was reaffirmed; two mighty instruments were forged to crush out heresy and opposition--the Inquisition, which effectually choked out free thought, and the Jesuits, who found their way stealthily into all ranks and classes of society. Such was the condition of Italy at this time, "a prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heartrending tragedy." The effect on the social life of Italy was almost fatal. Everywhere, to use the almost exaggerated language of Symonds, were to be seen idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition, hypocrisy, vice, ruin, pestilence, "while over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuit hypocrisy."

No wonder that in such a state of society, literature and art reached the lowest point in all its history. Scarcely a single man of genius or even of talent, can be found in the period between 1580 and 1750. All literature was marked by lack of originality of thought and by a style deformed by execrable taste, a style which consisted of wretched conceits, puns, antithesis, and gorgeous and far-fetched metaphors. This form of literary diction was not confined, however, to Italy, being represented in Spain by Gongora, in France by the Hotel de Rambouillet, and in England by Lyly's Euphues. In Italy it is known as Marinism from the poet Marini, whose Adone (in which is told the love of Venus for Adonis, a subject previously treated by Shakespeare) exemplifying all phases of the above-mentioned style, had enormous popularity not only in Italy but abroad.

During the period now under discussion, poets were not wanting, for the defect was in quality rather than quantity. Yet not all were entirely without merit, for some possessed a certain degree of talent, especially in the musical elements of their verse. Such were the lyrical poets, Chiabrera, Testi, and Filicaja. In prose literature a better and saner style prevailed, especially in the dialogues of Galileo, and in the historical and critical writings of Sarpi and Vico.

In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended Spanish rule in Italy, and the breath of free thought from England sweeping across the plains of France entered Italy and gradually weakened the power of the Jesuits, dissipated to a certain extent superstition and ignorance, and aroused the country to a sense of its degradation. By bringing Italy into connection with other nations, and with newer ideas, it planted the germs of a new intellectual life. The influence of France, England, and Germany began to make itself felt. Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire influenced Italian tragedy, while Moliere, who himself had borrowed largely from the early Italian comedies, now returned the favor by becoming the master of Goldoni. English influence came later, first Addison, Pope, and Milton, then toward the end of the eighteenth century, Young, Gray, Shakespeare, and Ossian. Last of all came the German influence, especially Klopstock and Goethe.

In this period of awakening the chief gain was in the field of the drama. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, Italy, in this branch of literature, could not even remotely be compared with France, Spain, or England. In the sixteenth century comedies had not been wanting, and beside the purely Italian creation of improvised farce (now represented in Punch and Judy shows, pantomimes, and harlequinades), Ariosto had written literary comedies in close imitation of Plautus and Terence. Yet, from Ariosto to Goldoni we find practically but one genuine writer of comedy; this singularly enough, was Machiavelli, whose Mandragora was enormously popular, and was declared by Voltaire to be better than Aristophanes and but little inferior to Moliere. But one book does not make a literature any more than one swallow makes a summer. It was left for Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) to give his country a number of comedies worthy of being compared with those of Moliere. Goldoni was a kindly, amiable man of the world as well as of letters, bright and witty but withal somewhat superficial. Although a keen observer of the outer form of society and human nature, he lacked the depth and insight, and especially the subtle pathos of Moliere. He was greatly influenced by the latter, whom he looked upon as his master. Like him he began with light comedy, farcical in nature, and gradually produced more and more comedies of manner and character. Yet he is not a slavish imitator of the great Frenchman, to whom, while inferior in earnestness and knowledge of the human heart, he was equal in dialogue, in development of plot, and in comic talent. Goldoni composed rapidly (once he wrote sixteen comedies in a year), and has left behind him one hundred and sixty plays and eighty musical dramas and opera texts.

The musical drama is a peculiar Italian invention, and almost immediately reached perfection in Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782), after whom it began rapidly to decline. Metastasio was universally admired and was, before Goldoni and Alfieri, the only Italian that had a European reputation, and who thus won some measure of glory for his country in her period of deepest degradation. His plays, meant to be set to music--the modern opera text is a debased form of this--were superficial, had no real delineation of character, yet were written in verses which flowed softly along like a clear stream through flowery meads. Light, artificial in sentiment, often lax in morals, yet expressing the courtly conventionalities of the times, Metastasio's poetry enjoyed vast popularity, while he himself became the favorite of the aristocratic society of Vienna, where he lived for fifty years, and the pride and glory of Italy. After him music became the all-important element in this peculiar form of drama, which thus became the modern opera, while the poetical element was degraded to the text thereof.

More famous, perhaps, than either the above was Alfieri, the founder of modern Italian tragedy. In the intellectual movement of the sixteenth century, tragedy, like comedy, had not been neglected, and many translations and imitations had been made of the Greek and Latin dramatists. The first regular tragedy, not only of Italian but of modern European literature, was the Sofonisba of Trissino, which became the model of all succeeding writers. Published first in 1524 it was soon translated into all European languages and has been imitated, among many others, by Corneille and Voltaire in France, Alfieri in Italy, and Geibel in Germany. In spite of this promising beginning, however, Italian tragedy did not develop as that of the neighboring countries did. Among the numberless writers of tragedy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scarcely one deserves mention. In the early part of the eighteenth century one name became famous, Scipio Maffei (1675-1755) the immediate predecessor of Alfieri, whose Merope was vastly popular throughout all Europe.

Yet Italy could not boast of a truly national drama before the appearance of Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803), who gave her an honorable rank in this department of the world's literature. The story of his life, as told by himself in his autobiography, is exceedingly interesting. Born in Asti, near Turin, of a noble family, after a youth spent in idleness, ignorance, and selfish pleasure, he "found himself," at the age of twenty-six, and being fired with ambition to become a poet, he began a long period of self-education, in which he made especial effort to master the Italian language, which he, born in Piedmont, and long absent abroad, only half understood. The rest of his life was spent in this study and in writing his dramas.

In his reform of the Italian drama, Alfieri did not, like Manzoni later, try to introduce Shakesperean methods. He went back to the tragic system of the Greeks and tried to improve on the French followers of the latter. He observed the three unities, especially that of action, even more strictly than Corneille or even Racine. Hence his plays are extraordinarily short (only one is of more than fifteen hundred lines). The action moves on swiftly to the climax with no effort at mere dramatic situation or stage effect.

Of especial interest are the subjects of Alfieri's tragedies, all of them having a political or social tendency. They all express the theories of the French philosophers then so popular in Italy, concerning freedom and the rights of the people in opposition to the divine right of kings. His heroes--Virginius, Brutus, Timoleon--all proclaim the liberty of man. It is interesting to note that he dedicated one of his plays to George Washington. To the reader of the present day even his best plays--Virginia, Orestes, Agamemnon, Myrra, and Saul--seem conventional, monotonous, and unreal. The characters are mere types of passion or sentiment; there is no variety of action, no episodes, and no poetical adornments. Yet in his own age Alfieri was regarded as a great tragic poet, not only in his own country, but beyond the Alps. His influence on Italian literature was very great. For the next two generations there was scarcely a poet who did not admire and imitate him. Parini, Foscolo, Monti, Manzoni, Leopardi, and Pellico, all looked up to him as their master.

Alfieri was the first to speak of a fatherland, a united Italy; he practically founded the patriotic school of literature which has lasted down to the present time. Hence he is even more important from a political standpoint than from a literary one. He himself looked on his tragedies as a means of inspiring new and higher political ideas in his fellow-countrymen, degraded as they had been by the long oppression of Spain. "I wrote," he says, "because the sad conditions of the times did not allow me to act."

The literature of the first half of the nineteenth century was dominated by this political and patriotic spirit; Monti, Foscolo, Manzoni, and Pellico, all wrote dramas in the spirit of Alfieri. Most of them, however, are better known in other accounts. Foscolo, through his letters of Jacopo Ortis, the Italian Werther, and his literary essays; Pellico for his My Prisons; Manzoni for his Betrothed, one of the great novels of modern times.

Greater than all of these, however, is Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who alone is worthy to be placed beside the four great Italian poets, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, the last three of whom, at least, he might under happier circumstances have equaled. The story of his life is a pathetic one. Born of a family noble but poor, with a sensitive and melancholy temperament, the circumstances of his life only added to his morbid tendency, and after a brief existence, passed in sickness, poverty, and gloom, he died. Leopardi was great as a poet, a philosopher, and scholar. His Ode to Italy is one of the noblest poems in the language, and his Solitary Shepherd of Asia, is full of incomparable beauty.

Other names of this later period crowd upon our attention, in political literature, Mazzini; in the novel, D'Azeglio, Cantu, Guerazzi, and Gozzi; in history Botta, Balbo, and Cantu. But we must hasten to close this brief survey, with merely mentioning the names of a few of the more important writers of the present time; in poetry, Carducci, Ada Negri, D'Annunzio; in the novel, which in Italy as elsewhere has usurped the chief place, Fogazzaro, D'Annunzio. The latter, although still young, is, next to Carducci, the most considerable figure in Italian literature to-day. In his dramas, poetry, and novels he shows a wonderful command of language and descriptive imagination, and at one time bid fair to become a truly great writer. In his later works he shows retrogression rather than progress, and the taint of immorality and a certain exaggerated eccentricity of thought have vitiated his talent and tended to destroy his popularity.

QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

1. Mention some causes of the degradation of Italian literature
in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

2. Describe the political and social condition of the country.

3. Who was Marini?

4. Name some of the early writers of Italian comedy.

5. Life, character, and literary genius of Goldoni.

6. What was the musical drama; who its greatest writer?

7. Name two famous tragedies before the time of Alfieri.

8. Give an account of the life of Alfieri.

9. What is the general character of his plays?

10. Alfieri's influence, what form did it take?

11. Name some of his followers.

12. Who was the greatest poet of the early nineteenth century?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For the political and social condition of Italy during the
period of decline see Symond's Catholic Reaction. Alfieri's
Autobiography, an intensely interesting book, has been often
published in English. For modern literature see Howell's Modern
Italian Poets, Sewall's translations from Carducci, and Greene's
Italian Lyrists of To-day.

INDEX

Accius, 5.

Alexander, 7.

Alfieri, Vittorio, 341, seq.

Alighieri, Dante, 195, seq.; 299, 313, 337.

Andronicus, 4, 39, 119.

Angelo, Michel, 335.

Annales, 124.

Anselm, 179.

Apollodorus, 39.

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 180, 256, 263.

Arezzo, Guittone d', 184, seq.

Argo, 7.

Argonautae, 7.

Ariosto, 191, Chap. VI. works; 303, 322, 335.

Aristophanes, 39.

Bandello, Matteo, 335.

Beatrice, 197, 204, 206, seq.

Bellum, Punicum, 119.

Bembo, Pietro, 335.

Benivieni, Girolamo, 189.

Berni, Francesco, 335.

Boccaccio, 196, 267, Chap. V. works; 286, seq.; 299, 335, 337.

Boiardo, 191, 300, seq.; 322.

Bonaventura, St., 180.

Bracciolini, Poggio, 297.

Caesar, 82, 90, 129.

Calvo, Bonifaccio, 182.

Carducci, 345.

Castiglione, Baldasarre, 335.

Cato, 9, 72, 122.

Catullus, 128.

Cavalcanti, 193, seq.

Cellini, Benvenuto, 335.

Cervantes, 314.

Chanson, de geste, 190, 299.

Chaucer, 286, seq.; 289.

Chiabrera, 339.

Ciani, Gioachino, 286.

Cicero, 129.

Cino da Pistoia, 193.

Cinzio, Giraldo, 335.

Colonna, Vittoria, 335.

Convito, 205.

Cratinus, 39.

Damian, Peter, 179, 257.

Daniel, Arnaut, 184.

D'Annunzio, 345.

Dante da Majano, 193.

Decameron, 287, seq.

Dies, Irae, 188.

Divine Comedy, 205, Chap. III., 316.

Domitian, 106.

Domitius, 9.

Eclogues of Vergil, 130.

Ennius, 5, 74;
epitaph of, 75; 121.

Epicharmus, 74.

Eupolis, 39.

Fabulae praetextae, 5.

Fasani, 188.

Ficino, Marsilio, 297.

Filicaja, 339.

Firenzuola, 335.

Flagellants, 188, seq.

Foscolo, 343, 344.

Francesca da Rimini, 203, 221.

Frederick II., 182, seq.

Fulvius, 122, 123.

Georgics of Vergil, 130.

Gianni, Lapo, 193.

Goldoni, Carlo, 339.

Guarini, 335.

Guelphs and Ghibellines, 198, seq.

Guicciardini, 335.

Guinicelli, Guido, 185, seq.; 247.

Hesiod, 72.

Horace, 72, 80.

Italian Renaissance, 314, 335.

Jacopone da Todi, 189.

Jerusalem Delivered, 304, 322, seq.

Juvenal, 105.

Lanfranc, 179.

Latini, Brunetto, 196, 227.

Laudi, 189.

Laura, 269, seq.

Leopardi, Giacomo, 344.

Lombard, Peter, 179.

Lucan, 9.

Lucilius, 72, 73, 75, 76, 128.

Lucretius, 128.

Machiavelli, Nicholas, 335, 340.

Maecenas, 83, 91, 92, 95, 130.

Maffei, Scipio, 342.

Manzoni, 343, 344.

Marini, 339.

Marsili, Luigi, 297.

Maternus, 9.

Menander, 39.

Metastasio, Pietro, 341.

Mirandola, Pico della, 298.

Naevius, 5, 40, 119.

Nardi, 335.

New Life, The, 206, seq.

Octavia, 9.

Odyssey, 4, 119.

OEnomaus, 8.

Orlando, 300;
Innamorato, 301;
Furioso, 303;
seq., 316.

Ovid, 9, 72.

Pacuvius, 5.

Paris, 7.

Pellico, 343, 344.

Persius, 99.

Petrarch, Chap. IV., 299, 335, 337.

Petroni, Pietro de', 285.

Pharsalia of Lucan, 127.

Philemon, 39.

Plautus, 40.

Politian, 298, 299.

Pollio, 8, 91.

Pomponius Secundus, 9.

Porto Luigi da, 335.

Provencal, 173, 182, seq.

Ptolemaic system, 216, 217.

Pulci, Luigi, 191, 299.

Punica, of Silius, 127.

Sallust, 129.

Salutati, Coluccio, 297.

Sannazaro, 335.

Sarpi, 339.

Seneca, 9.

Sordello, of Mantua, 182, 241.

Speculum Majus, 180.

Stabat Mater, 189.

St. Francis, 187, 256.

Tacitus, 107.

Tasso, 298, Chapter VII.
Works, 322, 337.

Terence, 40.

Testi, 339.

Thebaid, of Statius, 127.

Thomas, of Celano, 188.

Thyestes, 9.

Uberti, Farinata degli, 225.

Ulysses, 230.

Universal Monarchy, 205;
political treatise on, 206.

Vaqueiras, Rambaud de, 181.

Varchi, 335.

Varius, 8, 9.

Varro, 72, 128.

Vasari, 335.

Vergil, 9, 72, 91, 128, Chap. III.

Vico, 339.

Vidal, Pierre, 181.

Vigne, Pier delle, 183.

Vincent of Beauvais, 180.

Works and Days, 72.

Zorzi, Bartolomeo, 182.

Transcriber's Notes

This is the second part of a larger work. The first part is "Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman" by Frank Justus Miller. References in the index to pages earlier than 173 refer the first part.

Page 261

'among the men and woman'

'woman' is likely 'women'. Unchanged.

Page 273

'noonday' rather that 'noon-day' as used elsewhere.

Unchanged.

Page 302

'Rinaldo, and the latter's sister, Brandiamente,'

Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.

Page 302

'Other important characters are Astolfo, Rodomonte,'

Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.

Pages 305-315

Medoro and Medore are used interchangeably. Unchanged.

Page 313

'Roger and Brandiamante, the former a pagan,'

Brandiamente also spelled Brandiamante. Unchanged.

Page 313

on his wedding day, slays Rodamonte,

'Rodamonte also spelled Rodomonte. Unchanged.'

Page 315

'For the romatic poets,'

May be 'romantic' vice 'romatic'. Unchanged.

End of Project Gutenberg's Studies in the Poetry of Italy, by Oscar Kuhns

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