Renaissance in Italy
Chapter 84 : [84] I may specially refer to the pa.s.sages of the _Amorosa Visione_ (cap. v. vi.) whe

[84] I may specially refer to the pa.s.sages of the _Amorosa Visione_ (cap. v. vi.) where he meets with Dante, "gloria delle muse mentre visse," "il maestro dal qual'io tengo ogni ben," "il Signor d'ogni savere;" also to the sonnets on Dante, and that most beautiful sonnet addressed to Petrarch after death at peace in heaven with Cino and Dante. See the _Rime_ (_Op. Volg._ vol. xvi.), sonnets 8, 60, 97, 108.

[85] De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i. cap. 9.

[86] "Che la ragion sommettono al talento:" _Inferno_ v. Compare these phrases:

Le genti dolorose Che hanno perduto il ben dell'intelletto.

--_Inferno_ iii.

And Semiramis:

Che libito fe lecito in sua legge.

--_Inferno_ v.

[87] In all his earlier works, especially in the _Fiammetta_, the _Filostrato_, the _Ninfale Fiesolano_, the _Amorosa Visione_, he sings the hymn of _Il Talento_, triumphant over medieval discipline. They form the proper prelude to what is sometimes called the Paganism of the Renaissance, but what is really a resurgence of the natural man.

It was this _talento_ which Valla philosophized, and Beccadelli and Pontano sang.

[88] One instance will suffice to ill.u.s.trate the different methods of Boccaccio and Dante in dealing with the same material. We all know in what murk and filth Dante beheld Ciacco, the glutton, and what torments awaited Filippo Argenti, the _fiorentino spirito bizzarro_, upon the marsh of Styx (_Inferno_ vi. and viii.). These persons play the chief parts in Giorn. ix. nov. 8, of the _Decameron_. They are still the spendthrift parasite, and the brutally capricious bully. But while Dante points the sternest moral by their examples, Boccaccio makes their vices serve his end of comic humor. The inexorableness of Dante is nowhere more dreadful than in the eighth Canto of the _Inferno_. The levity of Boccaccio is nowhere more superficial than in that Novella.

[89] See the little work, full of critical learning, by Adolfo Bartoli, _I Precursori del Boccaccio_, Firenze, Sansoni.

[90] See _Le Novelle Antiche_ (another name for _Il Novellino_), per cura di Guido Biagi, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880. It is a curious agglomeration of anecdotes drawn from the history of the Suabian princes, Roman sources, the Arthurian legends, the Bible, Oriental apologues, fables, and a few ancient myths. That of _Narcis_, p. 66, is very prettily told. Only one tale is decidedly cynical. We find in the book selections made from the _debris_ of a vast and various medieval library. French influence is frequently perceptible in the style.

[91] _Precursori del Boccaccio_, p. 57 to end.

[92] See _Carmina Burana_ (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 1-112; _Poems of Walter Mapes_, by Thomas Wright (for Camden Society, 1841), pp. 1-257, for examples of these satiric poems. The _Propter Syon non tacebo_, _Flete Sion filiae_, _Utar contra vitia_, should be specially noticed.

Many other curious satires, notably one against marriage and the female s.e.x, can also be found in Du Meril's three great collections, _Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au douzieme Siecle_, _Poesies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, and _Poesies Inedites du Moyen Age_, Paris, 1843-1847. Those to whom these works are not accessible, may find an excellent selection of the serious and jocular popular Latin medieval poetry in a little volume _Gaudeamus! Carmina Vagorum selecta_, Lipsiae, Teubner, 1877. The question of their authors.h.i.+p has been fairly well discussed by Hubatsch, _Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder_, Gorlitz, 1870.

[93] The erotic and drinking songs of the Vagi deserve to be carefully studied by all who wish to understand the germs of the Renaissance in the middle ages. They express a simple naturalism, not of necessity Pagan, though much is borrowed from the language of cla.s.sical mythology. I would call attention in particular to _aestuans interius_, _Omittamus studia_, _O admirabile Veneris idolum_, _Ludo c.u.m Caecilia_, _Si puer c.u.m puellula_, and four _Pastoralia_, all of which may be found in the little book _Gaudeamus_ cited above. In spontaneity and truth of feeling they correspond to the Latin hymns. But their spirit is the exact ant.i.thesis of that which produced the _Dies Irae_ and the _Stabat Mater_. The absence of erudition and cla.s.sical imitation separates them from the poems of Beccadelli, Pontano, Poliziano, or Bembo. They present the natural material of neo-pagan Latin verse without its imitative form. It is youth rejoicing in its strength and l.u.s.tihood, enjoying the delights of spring, laughing at death, taking the pleasures of the moment, deriding the _rumores senum severiorum_, unmasking hypocrisy in high places, at wanton war with const.i.tuted social shams. These songs were written by wandering students of all nations, who traversed Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, seeking special knowledge at the great centers of learning, following love-adventures, poor and careless, coldly greeted by the feudal n.o.bility and the clergy, attached to the people by their habits but separated from them by their science. In point of faith these poets are orthodox. There is no questioning of ecclesiastical dogma, no antic.i.p.ation of Luther, in their verses. This blending of theological conformity with satire on the Church and moral laxity is eminently characteristic of the Renaissance in Italy.

[94] See the last sentence of Giorn. iii. Nov. 1.

[95] _Op. Volg._ vol. xiv.

[96] Cap. xlix.

[97] Letter to Leigh Hunt, September 8, 1819.

[98] _Op. Volg._ vol. vii. p. 230. I am loth to attempt a translation of this pa.s.sage, which owes its charm to the melody and rhythm of chosen words:--

"With ears intent upon the music, he began to go in the direction whence he heard it; and when he drew nigh to the fountain, he beheld the two maidens. They were of countenance exceeding white, and this whiteness was blent in seemly wise with ruddy hues. Their eyes seemed to be stars of morning, and their little mouths, of the color of a vermeil rose, became of pleasanter aspect as they moved them to the music of their song. Their tresses, like threads of gold, were very fair, and slightly curled went wandering through the green leaves of their garlands. By reason of the great heat their tender and delicate limbs, as hath been saaid above, were clad in robes of the thinnest texture, the which, made very tight above the waist, revealed the form of their fair bosoms, which like two round apples pushed the opposing raiment outward, and therewith in divers places the white flesh appeared through graceful openings. Their stature was of fitting size, and each limb well-proportioned."

[99] The description of the nymph Lia in the _Ameto_ (_Op. Volg._ xv.

30-33) carries Boccaccio's manner into tedious prolixity.

[100] Boccaccio was a great painter of female beauty and idyllic landscape; but he had not the pictorial faculty in a wider sense. The frescoes of the _Amorosa Visione_, when compared with Poliziano's descriptions in _La Giostra_, are but meager notes of form. Possibly the progress of the arts from Giotto to Benozzo Gozzoli and Botticelli may explain this picturesque inferiority of the elder poet; but in reading Boccaccio we feel that the defect lay not so much in his artistic faculty as in the limitation of his sympathy to certain kinds of beauty.

[101] Dante (_De Vulg. Eloq._ ii. 2) observed that while there were three subjects of great poetry--War, Love, Morality--no modern had chosen the first of these themes. Boccaccio in the last Canto of the _Teseide_ seems to allude to this:

Poiche le muse nude cominciaro Nel cospetto degli uomini ad andare, Gia fur di quelli che le esercitaro Con bello stile _in onesto parlare_, Ed altri in _amoroso_ le operaro; Ma tu, o libro, primo a lor cantare _Di Marte_ fai gli affanni sostenuti, _Nel volgar Lazio mai piu non veduti_.

[102] How far Boccaccio actually created the tale can be questioned.

In the dedication to Fiammetta (_Op. Volg._ ix. 3), he says he found a very ancient version of his story, and translated it into rhyme and the _latino volgare_ for the first time. Again, in the exordium to the first Book (_ib._ p. 10), he calls it:

una storia antica Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa Che latino autor non par ne dica Per quel ch'i' senta in libro alcuna cosa.

We might perhaps conjecture that he had discovered the legend in a Byzantine MS.

[103] Carducci, "Cantilene, etc.," _Op. cit._ pp. 168, 170, 171, 173.

[104] _Op. cit._ p. 160.

[105] See above, p. 114.

[106] This appears from the conclusion (_Op. Volg._ viii. 376).

Fiammetta was the natural daughter of Petrarch's friend and patron, King Robert. Boccaccio first saw her in the church of S. Lawrence at Naples, April 7, 1341.

[107] The history of this widely popular medieval romance has been traced by Du Meril in his edition of the thirteenth-century French version (Paris, 1856). He is of opinion that Boccaccio may have derived it from some Byzantine source. But this seems hardly probable, since Boccaccio gained his knowledge of Greek later in life. Certain indications in the _Filocopo_ point to a Spanish original.

[108] See _Op. Volg._ vii. 6-11. Compare with these phrases those selected from the humanistic writings of a later date, _Revival of Learning_, p. 397.

[109] This is the climax (Parte Terza, stanza x.x.xii.):

A cui Troilo disse; anima mia, I' te ne prego, s ch'io t'abbia in braccio Ignuda s come il mio cor disia.

Ed ella allora: ve' che me ne s.p.a.ccio; E la camicia sua gittata via, Nelle sue braccia si raccolse avvaccio; E stringnendo l'un l'altro con fervore, D'amor sentiron l'ultimo valore.

[110] The _Amorosa Visione_ ends with these words, _Sir di tutta pace_; their meaning is explained in previous pa.s.sages of the same poem. At the end of cap. xlvi. the lady says:

Io volli ora al presente far quieto Il tuo disio con amorosa pace, Dandoti l'arra che finira il fleto.

Again in cap. l. we read:

E quel disio che or piu ti tormenta Porr in pace, con quella bellezza Che l'alma al cor tuttora ti presenta.

The context reveals the nature of the peace to be attained. It is the satisfaction of an o.r.g.a.s.m. We may compare the invocation to Venus and her promise at the end of the _Caccia di Diana_, canto xvii. (_Op.

Volg._ xiv.). The time-honored language about "expelling all base thoughts" is here combined with the antic.i.p.ation of sensual possession.

[111] _Op. Volg._ vi. 21, 89, 91.

[112] Bonucci in his edition of Alberti's works, conscious of that author's debt to Boccaccio, advances the wild theory that he wrote the _Fiammetta_. See _Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti_, vol. iii. p. 353.

[113] _Laberinto d'Amore_ (Firenze, Caselli), p. 153, and p. 127.

[114] _Ibid._ p. 174.

[115] See _Age of the Despots_, p. 186, note.