Renaissance in Italy
Chapter 83 : Civil society succeeds to the savagery of the woodland, and love is treated as the vest

Civil society succeeds to the savagery of the woodland, and love is treated as the vestibule to culture.[117] The romantic and legendary portions of this tale are ill-connected. The versification is lax; and except in the long episode of Mensola's seduction, which might have formed a pa.s.sage of contemporary novel-writing, the genius of Boccaccio s.h.i.+nes with clouded l.u.s.ter.[118] Yet the _Ninfale Fiesolano_ occupies a not unimportant place in the history of Italian literature. It adapts the pastoral form to that ideal of civility dependent upon culture, which took so strong a hold upon the imagination of the _cinque cento_.

Its stanzas are a forecast of the _Arcadia_ and the _Orfeo_.

In the minor poems and romances, which have here been pa.s.sed in review, except perhaps in the _Fiammetta_, Boccaccio cannot be said to take a place among European writers of the first rank. His style is prolix; his versification, if we omit the _Canzoni a Ballo_ and some sonnets, is slovenly; nor does he show exceptional ability in the conception and conduct of his stories. He is strongest when he paints a violent pa.s.sion or describes voluptuous sensations, weakest when he attempts allegory or a.s.sumes the airs of a philosopher. We feel, in reading these productions of his earlier manhood, that nearly all were what the Germans call _Gelegenheits-gedichte_. The private key is lost to some of these works, which were intended for the ears of one among the mult.i.tude. On others it is plainly written that they were the outpourings of a personal desire, the self-indulgence of a fancy which reveled in imagined sensuality, using literature as the safety-valve for subjective longings. They lack the calm of perfect art, the full light falling on the object from without, which marks a poem of the highest order. From these romances of his youth, no less than from the Latin treatises of his maturity, we return to the Decameron when we seek to place Boccaccio among the cla.s.sics. Nothing comparable with this Human Comedy for universal interest had appeared in modern Europe, if we except the Divine Comedy; and it may be questioned whether any work of equal scope was given to the world before the theater of Shakspere and the comedies of Moliere. Boccaccio, though he paints the surface of life, paints it in a way to suggest the inner springs of character, and to bring the motives of action vividly before us. _Quicquid agunt homines_ is the matter of his book. The recoil from medieval principles of conduct, which gives it a certain air of belonging to a moment rather than all time, was necessary in the evolution of intellectual freedom. In this respect, again, it faithfully reflected the Florentine temperament. At no epoch have the Italians been sternly and austerely pious. Piety with them is a pa.s.sionate impulse rather than a deeply-reasoned habit based upon conviction. Their true nature is critical, susceptible to beauty, quick at seizing the ridiculous and exposing shams, suspicious of mysticism, realistic, pleasure-loving, practical. These qualities, special to the Florentines, but shared in large measure by the nation, found artistic expression in the Decameron, and a.s.serted their supremacy in the literature of the Renaissance. That a sublime ideal, unapprehended by Boccaccio, and destined to remain unrepresented in the future, should have been conceived by Dante; that Petrarch should have modulated by his masterpiece of poetic workmans.h.i.+p from the key of the Divine Comedy to that of the Decameron; that one city should have produced three such men, and that one half-century should have witnessed their successive triumphs, forms the great glory of Florence, and is one of the most notable facts in the history of genius.

It remains to speak about Boccaccio's prose, and the relation of his style to that of other _trecentisti_. If we seek the origins of Italian prose, we find them first in the Franco-Italian romances of the Lombard period, which underwent the process of _toscaneggiamento_ at Florence, next in books of morality and devotion, and also in the earlier chronicles. Among the Tuscanized tales of chivalry belonging to the first age of Italian literature are the _Conti di antichi cavalieri_ and the _Tavola Ritonda_, both of which bear traces of translation from Provencal sources.[119] The _Novellino_, of which mention has already been made, betrays the same origin. The style of these works offers a pretty close parallel to the English of Sir Thomas Mallory. At the same time that the literature of France was a.s.suming an Italian garb, many versions of Roman cla.s.sics appeared. Orosius, Vegetius, Sall.u.s.t, with parts of Cicero, Livy and Boethius were adapted to popular reading. But the taste of the time, as we have already seen in the preceding chapter, inclined the authors of these works to make selections with a view to moral edification. Their object was, not to present the ancients in a modern garb, but to cull notable examples of conduct and ethical sentences from the works that found most favor with the medieval intellect. Pa.s.sing under the general t.i.tles of _Fiori_, _Giardini_, _Tesori_ and _Conviti_--_Fiori di filosofi e molto savi_, _Giardino di Consolazione_, _Fiore di Rettorica_, _Fiore del parlar gentile_--these collections supplied the laity with extracts from Latin authors, and extended culture to the people. The _Libro di Cato_ might be chosen as a fair example of their scope.[120] The number of such books, ascribed to Bono Giamboni, Brunetto Latini, and Guidotto of Bologna, proves that an extensive public was eager for instruction of this sort; and it is reasonable to believe that they were studied by the artisans of central Italy. The ba.s.s-reliefs and frescoes of incipient Italian art, the pavement of the Sienese Cathedral, the Palazzo della Ragione at Padua, bear traces of the percolation through all social strata of this literature. A more important work of style was the _De Regimine Principum_, of Egidio Colonna, translated from the French version by an unknown Tuscan hand; while Giamboni's Florentine version of Latini's _Tesoro_ introduced the erudition of the most learned grammarian of his age to the Italians. Contemporaneously with this growth of vernacular treatises on rhetorical and ethical subjects, we may a.s.sume that memoirs and chronicles began to be written in the vulgar tongue. But so much doubt has recently been thrown upon the earliest monuments of Italian historiography that it must here suffice to indicate the change which was undoubtedly taking place in this branch also of composition toward the close of the thirteenth century.[121] Literature of all kinds yielded to the first strong impact of the native idiom. Epistles, for example, whether of private or of public import, were now occasionally written in Italian, as can be proved by reference to the published letters of Guittone d'Arezzo.[122]

The works. .h.i.therto mentioned belong to the latter half of the thirteenth century. Their style, speaking generally, is dry and tentative. Except in the versions of French romances, which borrow grace from their originals, we do not find in them artistic charm of diction. The _Fiori_ and _Giardini_ are little better than commonplace books, in which the author's personality is lost beneath a ma.s.s of extracts and citations.

The beginning of the fourteenth century witnessed the growth of a new Italian prose. Of this second stage, the masterpieces are Villani's Chronicle, Dante's _Vita Nuova_, the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, the _Leggende dei Santi Padri_ of Domenico Cavalca, and Jacopo Pa.s.savanti's _Specchio della vera Penitenza_.[123] These writers have no lack of individuality. Their mind moves in their style, and gives a personal complexion to their utterance. The chief charm of their manner, so far as it is common to characters so diverse, is its grave and childlike spontaneity. For vividness of description, for natural simplicity of phrase, and for that amiable garrulity which rounds a picture by innumerable details and unconscious touches of graphic force, not one of the books of this period surpa.s.ses the _Fioretti_. Nor are the _Leggende_ of Cavalca less admirable. Modern, especially Northern, students may discover too much suavity and unction in the writer's tone--a superfluity of sweetness which fatigues, a caressing tenderness that clogs. After reading a few pages, we lay the book down, and wonder whether it could really have been a grown man, and not a cherub flown from Fra Angelico's Paradise, who composed it. This infantine note belongs to the cloister and the pulpit. It matches the simple credulity of the narrator, and well befits the miracles he loves to record. We seem to hear a good old monk gossiping to a party of rosy-cheeked novices, like those whom Sodoma painted in his frescoes of S. Benedict at Monte Oliveto. It need hardly be observed that neither in Villani's nor in Dante's prose do we find the same puerility. But all the _trecentisti_ have a common character of limpidity, simplicity, and unaffected grace.

The difficulties under which even the best Italian authors labor while using their own language, incline them to an exaggerated admiration for these pearls of the _trecento_. They look back with envy to an age when men could write exactly as they thought and felt and spoke, without the tyranny of the _Vocabolario_ or the fear of an Academy before their eyes. We, with whom the literary has always closely followed the spoken language, and who have, practically speaking, no dialects, while we recognize the purity of that incomparably transparent manner, cannot comprehend that it should be held up for imitation in the present age.

To paint like Giotto would be easier than to write like Pa.s.savanti. The conditions of life and the modes of thought are so altered that the style of the _trecento_ will not lend itself to modern requirements.

Among the prosaists of the fourteenth century--Cavalca, Villani, the author of the _Fioretti_, and Pa.s.savanti--Boccaccio meets us with a sudden surprise. They aimed at finding the readiest and most appropriate words to convey their meaning in the simplest, most effective manner.

Without artistic purpose, without premeditation, without side-glances at the cla.s.sics, they wrote straightforward from their heart. There is little composition or connection in their work, no molding of paragraphs or rounding of phrases, no oratorical development, no gradation of tone.

Boccaccio, on the contrary, sought to give the fullness and sonority of Latin to the periods of Italian prose. He had the Ciceronian cadence and the labyrinthine sentences of Livy in view. By art of style he was bent on rendering the vulgar language a fit vehicle for learning, rhetoric, and history. In order to make it clear what sorts of changes he introduced, it will be necessary to compare his prose with that of his contemporaries. Dante used the following words to describe his first meeting with Beatrice[124]:

Nove fiate gia, appresso al mio nascimento, era tornato lo cielo della luce quasi ad un medesimo punto, quanto alla sua propria girazione, quando alli miei occhi apparve prima la gloriosa Donna della mia mente, la quale fu chiamata da molti Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare. Ella era gia in questa vita stata tanto che nel suo tempo lo cielo stellato era mosso verso la parte d'oriente delle dodici parti l'una d'un grado: s che quasi dal principio del suo anno nono apparve a me, ed io la vidi quasi alla fine del mio nono anno.

Boccaccio, relating his first glimpse of Fiammetta on April 17, 1341, spins the following coc.o.o.n of verbiage:[125]

Avvenne che un giorno, la cui prima ora Saturno avea signoreggiata, essendo gia Febo co' suoi cavalli al sedecimo grado del celestiale Montone pervenuto, e nel quale il glorioso partimento del figliuiolo di Giove dagli spogliati regni di Plutone si celebrava, io, della presente opera componitore, mi trovai in un grazioso e bel tempio in Partenope, nominato da colui che per deificarsi sostenne che fosse fatto di lui sacrificio sopra la grata, e quivi con canto pieno di dolce melodia ascoltava l'uficio che in tale giorno si canta, celebrato da' sacerdoti successori di colui che prima la corda cinse umilmente esaltando la povertade quella seguendo.

Dante's style is a.n.a.lytic and direct. The sentences follow each other naturally; and though the language is stiff, from scrupulous precision, and in one place intentionally obscure, it is free from affectation.

Boccaccio aims at a synthetic presentation of all he means to say; and he calls nothing by its right name, if he can devise a periphrasis. The breathless period pants its labored clauses out, and dwindles to a lame conclusion. The _Filocopo_ was, however, an immature production. In order to do its author justice, and at the same time to compare his style with a graceful piece of fourteenth-century composition, I will select a pa.s.sage from the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, and place it beside one taken from the first novel of the Decameron. This is the episode of S. Anthony preaching to the fishes[126]:

E detto ch'egli ebbe cos, subitamente venne alla riva a lui tanta molt.i.tudine di pesci, grandi, piccoli e mezzani, che mai in quel mare ne in quel fiume non ne fu veduta s grande molt.i.tudine: e tutti teneano i capi fuori dell'acqua, e tutti stavano attenti verso la faccia di santo Antonio, e tutti in grandissima pace e mansuetudine e ordine: imperocche dinanzi e piu presso alla riva stavano i pesciolini minori, e dopo loro stavano i pesci mezzani, poi di dietro, dov'era l'acqua piu profonda, stavano i pesci maggiori. Essendo dunque in cotale ordine e disposizione allogati i pesci, santo Antonio cominci a predicare solennemente, e disse cos: Fratelli miei pesci, molto siete tenuti, secondo la vostra possibilitade, di ringraziare il nostro Creatore, che v'ha dato cos n.o.bile elemento per vostra abitazione; sicche, come vi piace, avete l'acque dolci e salse; e havvi dati molti rifugii a schifare le tempeste; havvi ancora dato elemento chiaro e transparente, e cibo, per lo quale voi possiate vivere, etc., etc.... A queste e simiglianti parole e ammaestramenti di santo Antonio, cominciarono li pesci ad aprire la bocca, inchinaronli i capi, e con questi ed altri segnali di riverenza, secondo li modi a loro possibili, laudarono Iddio.

This is a portion of the character of Ser Ciapelletto:

Era questo Ciapelletto di questa vita. Egli essendo notajo, avea grandissima vergogna quando uno de' suoi strumenti (come che pochi ne facesse) fosse altro che falso trovato; de' quali tanti avrebbe fatti, di quanti fosse stato richesto, e quelli piu volentieri in dono, che alcun altro grandemente salariato.

Testimonianze false con sommo diletto diceva richesto e non richesto; e dandosi a' que' tempi in Francia a' saramenti grandissima fede, non curandosi fargli falsi, tante quistioni malvagiamente vincea, a quante a giurare di dire il vero sopra la sua fede era chiamato. Aveva oltre modo piacere, e forte vi studiava, in commettere tra amici e parenti e qualunque altra persona mali et inimicizie e scandali; de' quali quanto maggiori mali vedeva seguire, tanto piu d'allegrezza prendea.

Invitato ad uno omicidio o a qualunque altra rea cosa, senza negarlo mai, volenterosamente v'andava; e piu volte a fedire et ad uccidere uomini colle proprie mani si trov volentieri.

These examples will suffice to show how Boccaccio distinguished himself from the _trecentisti_ in general. When his style attained perfection in the Decameron, it had lost the pedantry of his first manner, and combined the brevity of the best contemporary writers with rhetorical smoothness and intricacy. The artful structure of the period, and the cadences of what afterwards came to be known as "numerous prose," were carried to perfection. Still, though he was the earliest writer of a scientific style, Boccaccio failed to exercise a paramount influence over the language until the age of the Academies.[127] The writers of the fifteenth century, partly no doubt because these were chiefly men of the people, appear to have developed their manner out of the material of the _trecento_ in general, modified by contemporary usage. This is manifest in the _Reali di Francia_, a work of considerable stylistic power, which cannot probably be dated earlier than the middle of the fifteenth century. The novelist Masuccio modeled his diction, so far as he was able, on the type of the Decameron, and Alberti owed much to the study of such works as the _Fiammetta_. Yet, speaking broadly, neither the excellences nor the defects of Boccaccio found devoted imitators until the epoch when the nation at large turned their attention to the formation of a common Italian style. It was then, in the days of Bembo and Sperone, that Boccaccio took rank with Petrarch as an infallible authority on points of language. The homage rendered at that period to the Decameron decided the destinies of Italian prose, and has since been deplored by critics who believe Boccaccio to have established a false standard of taste.[128] This is a question which must be left to the Italians to decide. One thing, however, is clear; that a nation schooled by humanistic studies of a Latin type, divided by their dialects, and removed by the advance of culture beyond the influences of the purer _trecentisti_, found in the rhetorical diction of the Decameron a common model better suited to their taste and capacity than the simple style of the Villani could have furnished.

Boccaccio died in 1375, seventeen months after the death at Arqua of his master, Petrarch. The painter Andrea Orcagna died about the same period.

With these three great artists the genius of medieval Florence sank to sleep. A temporary torpor fell upon the people, who during the next half century produced nothing of marked originality in literature and art.

The Middle Age had pa.s.sed away. The Renaissance was still in preparation. When Boccaccio breathed his last, men felt that the elder sources of inspiration had failed, and that no more could be expected from the spirit of the previous centuries. Heaven and h.e.l.l, the sanctuaries of the soul, the garden of this earth, had been traversed.

The tentative essays and scattered preludings, the dreams and visions, the preparatory efforts of all previous modern literatures, had been completed, harmonized and presented to the world in the master-works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. What remained but to make a new start?

This step forward or aside was now to be taken in the Cla.s.sical Revival.

Well might Sacchetti exclaim in that _canzone_[129] which is at once Boccaccio's funeral dirge and also the farewell of Florence to the fourteenth century:

Sonati sono i corni D'ogni parte a ricolta; La stagione e rivolta: Se tornera non so, ma credo tardi.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] _Rime di Guido Cavalcanti, edite ed inedite_, etc., Firenze, 1813. See p. 29 for the Canzone, and p. 73 for a translation into Italian of Dino's Latin commentary.

[63] _Op. cit._ pp. 21-27. Two in particular, _Era in pensier_ and _Gli occhi di quella gentil forosetta_, may be singled out. A _pastourelle_, _In un boschetto_, antic.i.p.ates the manner of Sacchetti.

As for the May song, its opening lines, _Ben venga Maggio_, etc., are referred by Carducci to Guido Cavalcanti.

[64] See _Vita e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoja_, Pisa, Capurro, 1813. Also Barbera's diamond edition of Cino da Pistoja and other poets, edited by Carducci.

[65] The tomb of Cino in the Duomo at Pistoja, with its Gothic canopies and the ba.s.s-reliefs which represent a Doctor of Laws lecturing to men of all ranks and ages at their desks beneath his professorial chair, is a fine contemporary monument. The great jurist is here commemorated, not the master of Petrarch in the art of song.

[66] Cp. Dante _De Vulg. Eloq._ i. 17, upon Cino's purification of Italian from vulgarisms, with Lorenzo de' Medici, who calls Cino "tutto delicato e veramente amoroso, il quale primo, al mio parere, cominci l'antico rozzore in tutto a schifare." _Lettera all'ill.u.s.tr.

Sig. Federigo_, Poesie (ed. Barbera, 1858), p. 33.

[67] _Il Canzoniere_ (Fraticelli's edition), p. 199.

[68] _Voi che portate_; _Donna pietosa_; _Deh peregrini_.

[69] See Rossetti's translation of the _Vita Nuova_.

[70] Rossetti's translation of the _Vita Nuova_.

[71] _Donna del cielo_; _O benigna, o dolce_; _O bon Gesu_. See _Rime di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo_ (Firenze, Morandi, 1828), vol. ii. pp. 212, 3; vol. i. p. 61.

[72] Not only the sixth _aeneid_, but the _Dream of Scipio_ also, influenced the medieval imagination. The Biblical visions, whether allegorical like those of Ezekiel and Paul, or apocalyptic, like S.

John's, exercised a similar control.

[73] See the little book of curious learning by Alessandro d'Ancona, ent.i.tled _I Precursori di Dante_, Firenze, Sansoni, 1874.

[74] See De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i.

chap. 5. Of the _Commedia Spirituale dell'Anima_ I have seen a Sienese copy of the date 1608, a reprint from some earlier Florentine edition.

The Comedy is introduced by two boys, good and bad. The piece itself brings G.o.d as the Creator, the soul He has made, its guardian angel, the devil, the powers of Memory, Reason, Will, and all the virtues in succession, with corresponding vices, on the scene. It ends with the soul's judgment after death and final marriage to Christ.

Dramatically, it is almost devoid of merit.

[75] See _Revival of Learning_, chapter ii.

[76] See above, _Revival of Learning_, chapter ii. I may also refer to an article by me in the _Quarterly Review_ for October, 1878, from which I shall have occasion to draw largely in the following pages.

[77] _Par._ xvi.

[78] Carducci, "Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura n.a.z.ionale:" _Studi Letterari_ (Livorno, 1874), p. 60.

[79] The _Divine Comedy_ was probably begun in earnest about 1303, and the _Decameron_ was published in 1353.

[80] Boccaccio was called Giovanni della Tranquillita partly in scorn.

He resented it, as appears from a letter to Zan.o.bi della Strada (_Op.

Volg._ vol. xvii. p. 101), because it implied a love of Court delights and parasitical idleness. In that letter he amply defends himself from such imputations, showing that he led the life of a poor and contented student. Yet the nickname was true in a deeper sense, as is proved by the very arguments of his apology, and confirmed by the description of his life at Certaldo remote from civic duties (Letter to Pino de'

Rossi, _ibid._ p. 35), as well as by the tragi-comic narrative of his discomfort at Naples (Letter to Messer Francesco, _ibid._ pp. 37-87).

Not only in these pa.s.sages, but in all his works he paints himself a comfort-loving _bourgeois_, whose heart was set on his books, whose ideal of enjoyment was a satisfied pa.s.sion of a sensual kind.

[81] See above, vol. ii. _Revival of Learning_, chap. ii. pp. 87-98.

[82] Boccaccio, _Opere Volgari_ (Firenze, 1833), vol. xv. p. 18.

[83] _Revival of Learning_, p. 88.