Pulci was in advance of his time on more
subjects
than one.
Stories from the Italian Poets
All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
the Cross! ]
[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
of which nothing else is recorded. ]
[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii. ]
[Footnote 20:
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo e quello strale
Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle
Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,
Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso. "
[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
Verona. ]
[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
had received Dante at his court. ]
[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]
[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin? )
seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples. ]
[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
"Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia. "
In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
them]. In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
heart (like hers) contented.
"_Boccaccio. _--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
quite enough without _che la sazia? _The picture is before us, the
sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
"_Petrarch. _--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
blemishes, and even more. "--p. 92.
Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety. ]
[Footnote 30:
"E come a buon cantor buon citarista
Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
In che più di piacer lo canto acquista;
Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,
Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
Con le parole muover le fiammette. " ]
[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age. " Petrarch also makes honourable
mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
there. --_Lombardi in loc. _ vol. III. p. 547. ]
[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat. ]
[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle. "]
[Footnote 34:
"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
E fero un grido di sì alto suono,
Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono. "
Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
into his treatise on the Sublime. ]
[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
Camaldoli. ]
[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
in Cowley
"Lo, I mount; and lo,
How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
Where shall I find the noble British land?
Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
Which in the sea does lie,
And seems a grain o' the sand.
For this will any sin, or bleed?
Of civil wars is this the meed?
And is it this, alas, which we,
Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie? "
And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
"Where am I now? angels and God is here. "
All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
of grandeur and loveliness. ]
[Footnote 37:
"Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
Così la donna mia si stava eretta
E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
Fecimi quale è quei che disiando
Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga. " ]
[Footnote 38:
"Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni. "
[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person. ]
[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary. ]
[Footnote 41:
"Mi rendei
A la battaglia de' debili cigli. "]
[Footnote 42:
"Ambo le luci mi dipinse. "
[Footnote 43:
"Qualunque melodia più dolce suona
Qua giù, e più a se l'anima tira,
Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
Comparata al sonar di quella lira
Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira. " ]
[Footnote 44:
"Benedicendomi cantando
Tre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui,
L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui. "
It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist! ]
[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
Del mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:
Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte
L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. " ]
[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te. " _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee. "]
[Footnote 47:
"Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
Sì che l' affetto convien che si paia
Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia. "
A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
to one's imagination. ]
[Footnote 48:
"Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. "
Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
tremendous passage that ensues! ]
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
invective awful.
A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic? --I am afraid, all things considered,
we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
Church-hymns he would have written! ]
[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence! ) that
for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
them into Heaven! ]
[Footnote 51:
"Certo io credo
Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. " ]
[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
restoration to his country were at an end. ]
[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
prepared for him. ]
[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical! ]
[Footnote 55: David. ]
[Footnote 56: The Trinity. ]
[Footnote 57: The Incarnation. ]
[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
his poem with the word "stars. " He thinks that it was done as a happy
augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
terminated. ]
PULCI:
Critical Notice
of
PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
laughable sallies.
Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinæ_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
sonnet:
"'Luigi Pulci ov' è, che non si sente? ' 'Egli se n' andò dianzi in quel
boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr à fantasticar
forse un sonetto. '"
"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_. " "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
not let him rest till it's a sonnet. "
In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it. " Such is the
first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
Lorenzo.
"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
Che questa non è storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
via,
Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
pazzia;
Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi è infinita.
La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille
urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
know 'em.
Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites. "
He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
"refuge. " The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
profane derision. " [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our
author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by
himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother,
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who
wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than
once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The _Morgante_
concludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with
a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him
in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that
expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
mother as to a jest?
I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
spheres. " He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
fellow-creature.
Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
appearance of Columbus. [3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci. "[5] And all minds, in
which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
weak. [6]
The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain. They die, however, victorious;
and the two royal and noble scoundrels, by a piece of prosaical justice
better than poetical, are despatched like common malefactors, with a
halter.
There is, perhaps, no pure invention in the whole of this enlargement of
old ballads and chronicles, except the characters of another giant, and
of a rebel angel; for even Morgante's history, though told in a very
different manner, has its prototype in the fictions of the pretended
archbishop. [7] The Paladins are well distinguished from one another;
Orlando as foremost alike in prowess and magnanimity, Rinaldo by his
vehemence, Ricciardetto by his amours, Astolfo by an ostentatious
rashness and self-committal; but in all these respects they appear to
have been made to the author's hand. Neither does the poem exhibit
any prevailing force of imagery, or of expression, apart from popular
idiomatic phraseology; still less, though it has plenty of infernal
magic, does it present us with any magical enchantments of the alluring
order, as in Ariosto; or with love-stories as good as Boiardo's, or even
with any of the luxuries of landscape and description that are to be
found in both of those poets; albeit, in the fourteenth canto, there is
a long _catalogue raisonné_ of the whole animal creation, which a lady
has worked for Rinaldo on a pavilion of silk and gold.
To these negative faults must be added the positive ones of too many
trifling, unconnected, and uninteresting incidents (at least to readers
who cannot taste the flavour of the racy Tuscan idiom); great occasional
prolixity, even in the best as well as worst passages, not excepting
Orlando's dying speeches; harshness in spite of his fluency (according
to Foscolo), and even bad grammar; too many low or over-familiar forms
of speech (so the graver critics allege, though, perhaps, from want of
animal spirits or a more comprehensive discernment); and lastly (to say
nothing of the question as to the gravity or levity of the theology),
the strange exhibition of whole successive stanzas, containing as many
questions or affirmations as lines, and commencing each line with the
same words. They meet the eye like palisadoes, or a file of soldiers,
and turn truth and pathos itself into a jest. They were most likely
imitated from the popular ballads. The following is the order of words
in which a young lady thinks fit to complain of a desert, into which she
has been carried away by a giant. After seven initiatory O's addressed
to her friends and to life in general, she changes the key into E:
"E' questa, la mia patria dov' io nacqui? E' questo il mio palagio e 'l
mio castello? E' questo il nido ov' alcun tempo giacqui? E' questo il
padre e 'l mio dolce fratello? E' questo il popol dov' io tanto piacqui?
E' questo il regno giusto antico e bello? E' questo il porto de la mia
salute? E' questo il premio d' ogni mia virtute?
Ove son or le mie purpuree veste? Ove son or le gemme e le ricchezze?
Ove son or già le notturne feste? Ove son or le mie delicatezze? Ove son
or le mie compagne oneste? Ove son or le fuggite dolcezze? Ove son or le
damigelle mie? Ove son, dice? omè, non son già quie. "[8]
Is this the country, then, where I was born? Is this my palace, and my
castle this? Is this the nest I woke in, every morn? Is this my father's
and my brother's kiss? Is this the land they bred me to adorn? Is this
the good old bower of all my bliss? Is this the haven of my youth and
beauty? Is this the sure reward of all my duty?
Where now are all my wardrobes and their treasures? Where now are all
my riches and my rights? Where now are all the midnight feasts and
measures? Where now are all the delicate delights? Where now are all the
partners of my pleasures? Where now are all the sweets of sounds and
sights? Where now are all my maidens ever near? Where, do I say? Alas,
alas, not here!
There are seven more "where nows," including lovers, and "proffered
husbands," and "romances," and ending with the startling question and
answer,--the counterpoint of the former close,--
"Ove son l' aspre selve e i lupi adesso, E gli orsi, e i draghi, e i
tigri? Son qui presso. "
Where now are all the woods and forests drear, Wolves, tigers, bears,
and dragons? Alas, here!
These are all very natural thoughts, and such, no doubt, as would
actually pass through the mind of the young lady, in the candour of
desolation; but the mechanical iteration of her mode of putting them
renders them irresistibly ludicrous. It reminds us of the wager laid by
the poor queen in the play of _Richard the Second_, when she overhears
the discourse of the gardener:
"My wretchedness _unto a roar of pins_, They'll talk of state. "
Did Pulci expect his friend Lorenzo to keep a grave face during
the recital of these passages? Or did he flatter himself, that the
comprehensive mind of his hearer could at one and the same time be
amused with the banter of some old song and the pathos of the new
one? [9]
The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external
nature, in the _Morgante_, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of
heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost
absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and
delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion. The
fair embroiderer, in presenting it to her idol Rinaldo, undervalues
it as a gift which his great heart, nevertheless, will not disdain to
accept; adding, with the true lavishment of the passion, that "she
wishes she could give him the sun;" and that if she were to say, after
all, that it was her own hands which had worked the pavilion, she should
be wrong, for Love himself did it. Rinaldo wishes to thank her, but is
so struck with her magnificence and affection, that the words die on his
lips. The way also in which another of these loving admirers of Paladins
conceives her affection for one of them, and persuades a vehemently
hostile suitor quietly to withdraw his claims by presenting him with
a ring and a graceful speech, is in a taste as high as any thing in
Boiardo, and superior to the more animal passion of the love in their
great successor. [10] Yet the tenderness of Pulci rather shews itself in
the friendship of the Paladins for one another, and in perpetual little
escapes of generous and affectionate impulse. This is one of the great
charms of the _Morgante_. The first adventure in the book is Orlando's
encounter with three giants in behalf of a good abbot, in whom he
discovers a kinsman; and this goodness and relationship combined move
the Achilles of Christendom to tears. Morgante, one of these giants, who
is converted, becomes a sort of squire to his conqueror, and takes such
a liking to him, that, seeing him one day deliver himself not without
peril out of the clutches of a devil, he longs to go and set free the
whole of the other world from devils. Indeed there is no end to his
affection for him. Rinaldo and other Paladins, meantime, cannot rest
till they have set out in search of Orlando. They never meet or part
with him without manifesting a tenderness proportionate to their
valour,--the old Homeric candour of emotion. The devil Ashtaroth
himself, who is a great and proud devil, assures Rinaldo, for whom he
has conceived a regard, that there is good feeling (_gentilezza_) even
in hell; and Rinaldo, not to hurt the feeling, answers that he has no
doubt of it, or of the capability of "friendship" in that quarter; and
he says he is as "sorry to part with him as with a brother. " The passage
will be found in our abstract. There are no such devils as these in
Dante; though Milton has something like them:
"Devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds: men only disagree. "
It is supposed that the character of Ashtaroth, which is a very new
and extraordinary one, and does great honour to the daring goodness
of Pulci's imagination, was not lost upon Milton, who was not only
acquainted with the poem, but expressly intimates the pleasure he took
in it. [11] Rinaldo advises this devil, as Burns did Lucifer, to "take a
thought and mend. " Ashtaroth, who had been a seraph, takes no notice of
the advice, except with a waving of the recollection of happier times.
He bids the hero farewell, and says he has only to summon him in order
to receive his aid. This retention of a sense of his former angelical
dignity has been noticed by Foscolo and Panizzi, the two best writers on
these Italian poems. [12] A Calvinist would call the expression of the
sympathy "hardened. " A humanist knows it to be the result of a spirit
exquisitely softened. An unbounded tenderness is the secret of all that
is beautiful in the serious portion of our author's genius. Orlando's
good-natured giant weeps even for the death of the scoundrel Margutte;
and the awful hero himself, at whose death nature is convulsed and the
heavens open, begs his dying horse to forgive him if ever he has wronged
it.
A charm of another sort in Pulci, and yet in most instances, perhaps,
owing the best part of its charmingness to its being connected with the
same feeling, is his wit. Foscolo, it is true, says it is, in general,
more severe than refined; and it is perilous to differ with such a
critic on such a point; for much of it, unfortunately, is lost to a
foreign reader, in consequence of its dependance on the piquant old
Tuscan idiom, and on popular sayings and allusions. Yet I should think
it impossible for Pulci in general to be severe at the expense of some
more agreeable quality; and I am sure that the portion of his wit most
obvious to a foreigner may claim, if not to have originated, at least
to have been very like the style of one who was among its declared
admirers,--and who was a very polished writer,--Voltaire. It consists in
treating an absurdity with an air as if it were none; or as if it had
been a pure matter of course, erroneously mistaken for an absurdity.
Thus the good abbot, whose monastery is blockaded by the giants (for the
virtue and simplicity of his character must be borne in mind), after
observing that the ancient fathers in the desert had not only locusts to
eat, but manna, which he has no doubt was rained down on purpose from
heaven, laments that the "relishes" provided for himself and his
brethren should have consisted of "showers of stones. " The stones, while
the abbot is speaking, come thundering down, and he exclaims, "For God's
sake, knight, come in, for the manna is falling! " This is exactly in the
style of the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_. So when Margutte is asked
what he believes in, and says he believes in "neither black nor blue,"
but in a good capon, "whether roast or boiled," the reader is forcibly
reminded of Voltaire's Traveller, _Scarmentado_, who, when he is desired
by the Tartars to declare which of their two parties he is for, the
party of the black-mutton or the white-mutton, answers, that the dish is
"equally indifferent to him, provided it is tender. " Voltaire, however,
does injustice to Pulci, when he pretends that in matters of belief he
is like himself,--a mere scoffer. The friend of Lucrezia Tornabuoni has
evidently the tenderest veneration for all that is good and lovely in
the Catholic faith; and whatever liberties he might have allowed himself
in professed _extravaganzas_, when an age without Church-authority
encouraged them, and a reverend canon could take part in those (it must
be acknowledged) unseemly "high jinks," he never, in the _Morgante_,
when speaking in his own person, and not in that of the worst
characters, intimates disrespect towards any opinion which he did not
hold to be irrelevant to a right faith. It is observable that his freest
expressions are put in the mouth of the giant Margutte, the lowest
of these characters, who is an invention of the author's, and a most
extraordinary personage. He is the first unmitigated blackguard in
fiction, and is the greatest as well as first. Pulci is conjectured,
with great probability, to have designed him as a caricature of some
real person; for Margutte is a Greek who, in point of morals, has been
horribly brought up, and some of the Greek refugees in Italy were
greatly disliked for the cynicism of their manners and the grossness of
their lives. Margutte is a glutton, a drunkard, a liar, a thief, and
a blasphemer. He boasts of having every vice, and no virtue except
fidelity; which is meant to reconcile Morgante to his company; but
though the latter endures and even likes it for his amusement, he gives
him to understand that he looks on his fidelity as only securable by
the bastinado, and makes him the subject of his practical jokes. The
respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on
what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest. Margutte laughs
himself to death at sight of a monkey putting his boots on and off; as
though the good-natured poet meant at once to express his contempt of
a merely and grossly anti-serious mode of existence, and his
consideration, nevertheless, towards the poor selfish wretch who had had
no better training.
To this wit and this pathos let the reader add a style of singular ease
and fluency,--rhymes often the most unexpected, but never at a loss,--a
purity of Tuscan acknowledged by every body, and ranking him among the
authorities of the language,--and a modesty in speaking of his own
pretensions equalled only by his enthusiastic extolments of genius in
others; and the reader has before him the lively and affecting, hopeful,
charitable, large-hearted Luigi Pulci, the precursor, and in some
respects exemplar, of Ariosto, and, in Milton's opinion, a poet worth
reading for the "good use" that may be made of him. It has been
strangely supposed that his friend Politian, and Ficino the Platonist,
not merely helped him with their books (as he takes a pride in telling
us), but wrote a good deal of the latter part of the Morgante,
particularly the speculations in matters of opinion. As if (to say
nothing of the difference of style) a man of genius, however lively, did
not go through the gravest reflections in the course of his life, or
could not enter into any theological or metaphysical question, to which
he chose to direct his attention. Animal spirits themselves are too
often but a counterbalance to the most thoughtful melancholy; and one
fit of jaundice or hypochondria might have enabled the poet to see more
visions of the unknown and the inscrutable in a single day, than perhaps
ever entered the imagination of the elegant Latin scholar, or even the
disciple of Plato.
[Footnote 1: _Literature of the South of Europe_, Thomas Roscoe's
Translation, vol. ii. p. 54. For the opinions of other writers, here and
elsewhere alluded to, see Tiraboschi (who is quite frightened at him),
_Storia della Poesia Italiana_, cap. v. sect. 25; Gravina, who is more
so, _Della Ragion Poetica_ (quoted in Ginguéné, as below); Crescimbeni,
_Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Poesia_, &c. lib. vi. cap. 3
(Mathias's edition), and the biographical additions to the same work,
4to, Rome, 1710, vol. ii. part ii. p. 151, where he says that Pulci was
perhaps the "modestest sad most temperate writer" of his age ("il pin
modesto e moderato"); Ginguéné, _Histoire Littéraire d'Italie_, tom. iv.
p. 214; Foscolo, in the _Quarterly Review_, as further on; Panizzi on
the _Romantic Poetry of the Italians_, ditto; Stebbing, _Lives of the
Italian Poets_, second edition, vol, i. ; and the first volume of _Lives
of Literary and Scientific Men_, in _Lardner's Cyclopædia_. ]
[Footnote 2: Canto xxv. The passage will be found in the present
volume. ]
[Footnote 3: Id. And this also. ]
[Footnote 4: Canto xxvii. stanza 2.
"S' altro ajuto qui non si dimostra,
Sarà pur tragedía la istoria nostra.
Ed io pur commedía pensato avea
Iscriver del mio Carlo finalmente,
Ed _Alcuin_ così mi promettea," &c. ]
[Footnote 5:
"In fine to adorerai l'Ariosto, tu ammirerei il Tasso, ma tu amerai il
Pulci. "--_Parn. Ital_. vol. ix. p. 344. ]
[Footnote 6: Ellis's _Specimens of Early English Poetical Romances_,
vol. ii. p. 287; and Panizzi's _Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry
of the Italians_; in his edition of Boiardo and Ariosto, vol. i. p.
113. ]
[Footnote 7: _De Vita Caroli Magni et Rolandi Historia_, &c. cap. xviii.
p. 39 (Ciampi's edition). The giant in Turpin is named Ferracutus, or
Fergus. He was of the race of Goliath, had the strength of forty men,
and was twenty cubits high. During the suspension of a mortal combat
with Orlando, they discuss the mysteries of the Christian faith, which
its champion explains by a variety of similes and the most beautiful
beggings of the question; after which the giant stakes the credit of
their respective beliefs on the event of their encounter. ]
[Footnote 8: Canto xix. st. 21. ]
[Footnote 9: When a proper name happens to be a part of the tautology,
the look is still more extraordinary. Orlando is remonstrating with
Rinaldo on his being unseasonably in love:
"Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gagliardia?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo sommo potere?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo senno di pria?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo antivedere?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua fantasia?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, l' arme e 'l tuo destriere?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, la tua gloria e fama?
Ov' è, Rinaldo, il tuo core? a la dama. "
Canto xvi. st. 50.
Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy gagliardize?
Oh where, Rinaldo, is thy might indeed?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy repute for wise?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy sagacious heed?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy free-thoughted eyes?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy good arms and steed?
Oh where, Rinaldo, thy renown and glory?
Oh where, Rinaldo, _thou? _--In a love-story.
The incessant repetition of the names in the burdens of modern songs
is hardly so bad as this. The single line questions and answers in the
Greek drama were nothing to it. Yet there is a still more extraordinary
play upon words in canto xxiii. st. 49, consisting of the description
of a hermitage. It is the only one of the kind which I remember in the
poem, and would have driven some of our old hunters after alliteration
mad with envy:--
"La _casa cosa_ parea _bretta_ e _brutta_,
_Vinta_ dal _vento_; e la _notta_ e la _notte_
_Stilla_ le _stelle_, ch' a _tetto_ era _tutto_:
Del _pane appena_ ne _dette_ ta' _dotte_.
_Pere_ avea _pure_, e qualche _fratta frutta_;
E _svina_ e _svena_ di _botto_ una _botte_
_Poscia_ per _pesci lasche_ prese a _l'esca_;
Ma il _letto allotta_ a la _frasca_ fu _fresca_.
