Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
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[Footnote 1: See p. 58 of the present volume.]
[Footnote 2:
"Fugge tra selve spaventose e scure,
Per lochi inabitati, ermi e selvaggi.
Il mover de le frondi e di verzure
Che di cerri sentia, d' olmi e di faggi,
Fatto le avea con subite paure
Trovar di qua e di la strani viaggi;
Ch' ad ogni ombra veduta o in monte o in valle
Temea Rinaldo aver sempre alle spalle."
Canto i. st. 33.]
[Footnote 3:
"Ecco non lungi un bel cespuglio vede
Di spin fioriti e di vermiglic rose,
Che de le liquide onde al specchio siede,
Chiuso dal Sol fra l' alte quercie ombrose; ]
[Footnote 4: And how lovely is this!
"E fuor di quel cespuglio oscuro e cieco
Fa di se bella et improvvisa mostra,
Come di selva o fuor d'ombroso speco
Diana in scena, o Citerea si mostra," &c.
St. 52.]
[Footnote 5: How admirable is the suddenness, brevity, and force of this
scene! And it is as artful and dramatic as off-hand; for this Amazon,
Bradamante, is the future heroine of the warlike part of the poem, and
the beauty from whose marriage with Ruggiero is to spring the house of
Este. Nor without her appearance at this moment, as Panizzi has shewn
(vol. i. p. cvi.), could a variety of subsequent events have taken place
necessary to the greatest interests of the story. All the previous
passages in romance about Amazons are nothing compared with this flash of
a thunderbolt.]
[Footnote 6: From _bayard_, old French; _bay-colour._]
Footnote 7: His famous sword, vide p. 48.]
[Footnote 8: To richness and rarity, how much is added by remoteness! It
adds distance to the other difficulties of procuring it.]
[Footnote 9:
"Ecco apparir lo smisurato mostro
Mezo ascoso ne l'onda, e mezo sorto.
Come sospinto suol da Borca o d'Ostro
Venir lungo navilio a pigliar porto,"
Canto x. st. 100.
Improved from Ovid, _Metamorph_. lib. iv. 706
"Ecce velut navis praefixo concita rostro
Sulcat aquas, juvenum sudantibus acta lacertis;
Sic fera," &c.
As when a galley with sharp beak comes fierce,
Ploughing the waves with many a sweating oar.
Ovid is brisker and more obviously to the purpose; but Ariosto gives the
ponderousness and dreary triumph of the monster. The comparison of the
fly and the mastiff is in the same higher and more epic taste. The
classical reader need not be told that the whole ensuing passage, as far
as the combat is concerned, is imitated from Ovid's story of Perseus and
Andromeda.]
[Footnote 10:
"Sul lito un bosco era di querce ombrose,
Dove ogn' or par che Filomena piagna;
Ch'in mezo avea un pratel con una fonte,
E quinci e quindi un solitario monte.
Quivi il bramoso cavalier ritenne
L'audace corso, e nel pratel discese."
St. 113.
What a landscape! and what a charm beyond painting he has put into it
with his nightingales! and then what figures besides! A knight on a
winged steed descending with a naked beauty into a meadow in the thick of
woods, with "here and there a solitary mountain." The mountains make no
formal circle; they keep their separate distances, with their various
intervals of light and shade. And what a heart of solitude is given to
the meadow by the loneliness of these its waiters aloof!]
[Footnote 11: Nothing can be more perfectly wrought up than this sudden
change of circumstances.]
[Footnote 12: To feel the complete force of this picture, a reader should
have been in the South, and beheld the like sudden apparitions, at open
windows, of ladies looking forth in dresses of beautiful colours, and
with faces the most interesting. I remember a vision of this sort at
Carrara, on a bright but not too hot day (I fancied that the marble
mountains there cooled it). It resembled one of Titian's women, with its
broad shoulders, and boddice and sleeves differently coloured from the
petticoat; and seemed literally framed in the unsashed window. But I am
digressing.]
[Footnote 13: Ariosto elsewhere represents him as the handsomest man in
the world; saying of him, in a line that has become famous,
"Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa."
Canto x. st. 84.
--Nature made him, and then broke the mould.
(The word is generally printed _ruppe_; but I use the primitive text
of Mr. Pannizi's edition.) Boiardo's handsomest man, Astolfo, was an
Englishman; Ariosto's is a Scotchman. See, in the present volume, the
note on the character of Astolfo, p. 41.]
[Footnote 14:
"Come orsa, che l'alpestre cacciatore
Ne la pietrosa tana assalita abbia,
Sta sopra i figli con incerto core,
E freme in suono di pieta e di rabbia:
Ira la 'nvita e natural furore
A spiegar l'ugne, e a insanguinar le labbia;
Amor la 'ntenerisce, e la ritira
A riguardare a i figli in mezo l'ira."
Like as a bear, whom men in mountains start
In her old stony den, and dare, and goad,
Stands o'er her children with uncertain heart,
And roars for rage and sorrow in one mood;
Anger impels her, and her natural part,
To use her nails, and bathe her lips in blood;
Love melts her, and, for all her angry roar,
Holds back her eyes to look on those she bore.
This stanza in Ariosto has become famous as a beautiful transcript of a
beautiful passage in Statius, which, indeed, it surpasses in style, but
not in feeling, especially when we consider with whom the comparison
originates:
"Ut lea, quam saevo foetam pressere cubili
Venantes Numidae, natos erecta superstat
Mente sub incerta, torvum ac miserabile frendens
Illa quidem turbare globes, et frangere morsu
Tela queat; sed prolis amor crudelia vincit
Pectora, et in media catulos circumspicit ira."
_Thebais_, x. 414.]
[Footnote 15: This adventure of Cloridan and Medoro is imitated from the
Nisus and Euryalus of Virgil. An Italian critic, quoted by Panizzi, says,
that the way in which Cloridan exposes himself to the enemy is inferior
to the Latin poet's famous
"Me, me (adsum qui feci), in me convertite ferrum."
Me, me ('tis I who did the deed), slay me.
And the reader will agree with Panizzi, that he is right. The
circumstance, also, of Euryalus's bequeathing his aged mother to the care
of his prince, in case he fails in his enterprise, is very touching;
and the main honour, both of the invention of the whole episode and its
particulars, remains with Virgil. On the other hand, the enterprise of
the friends in the Italian poet, which is that of burying their dead
master, and not merely of communicating with an absent general, is more
affecting, though it may be less patriotic; the inability of Zerbino to
kill him, when he looked on his face, is extremely so; and, as Panizzi
has shewn, the adventure is made of importance to the whole story of the
poem, and is not simply an episode, like that in the AEneid. It serves,
too, in a very particular manner to introduce Medoro worthily to the
affection of Angelica; for, mere female though she be, we should hardly
have gone along with her passion as we do, in a poem of any seriousness,
had it been founded merely on his beauty.]
[Footnote 16: Canto xix. st. 34, &c. All the world have felt this to be
a true picture of first love. The inscription may be said to be that of
every other pair of lovers that ever existed, who knew how to write their
names. How musical, too, are the words "Angelica and Medoro!" Boiardo
invented the one; Ariosto found the match for it. One has no end to the
pleasure of repeating them. All hail to the moment when I first became
aware of their existence, more than fifty years ago, in the house of
the gentle artist Benjamin West! (Let the reader indulge me with this
recollection.) I sighed with pleasure to look on them at that time; I
sigh now, with far more pleasure than pain, to look back on them, for
they never come across me but with delight; and poetry is a world in
which nothing beautiful ever thoroughly forsakes us.]
[Footnote 17:
"Scritti, qual con carbone e qual con gesso."
Canto xxiii. st. 106.
Ariosto did not mind soiling the beautiful fingers of Angelica with coal
and chalk. He knew that Love did not mind it.
* * * * *
ASTOLFO'S JOURNEY TO THE MOON.
Argument.
The Paladin Astolfo ascends on the hippogriff to the top of one of the
mountains at the source of the Nile, called the Mountains of the Moon,
where he discovers the Terrestrial Paradise, and is welcomed by St. John
the Evangelist. The Evangelist then conveys him to the Moon itself, where
he is shewn all the things that have been lost on earth, among which is
the Reason of Orlando, who had been deprived of it for loving a Pagan
beauty. Astolfo is favoured with a singular discourse by the Apostle, and
is then presented with a vial containing the Reason of his great brother
Paladin, which he conveys to earth.
ASTOLFO'S
JOURNEY TO THE MOON
When the hippogriff loosened itself from the tree to which Ruggiero had
tied it in the beautiful spot to which he descended with Angelica,[1] it
soared away, like the faithful creature it was, to the house of its own
master, Atlantes the magician. But not long did it remain there--no, nor
the house itself, nor the magician; for the Paladin Astolfo came with a
mighty horn given him by a greater magician, the sound of which overthrew
all such abodes, and put to flight whoever heard it; and so the house
of Atlantes vanished, and the enchanter fled; and the Paladin took
possession of the griffin-horse, and rode away with it on farther
adventures.
One of these was the deliverance of Senapus, king of Ethiopia, from the
visitation of the dreadful harpies of old, who came infesting his table
as they did those of AEneas and Phineus. Astolfo drove them with his horse
towards the sources of the river Nile, in the Mountains of the Moon, and
pursued them with the hippogriff till they entered a great cavern, which,
by the dreadful cries and lamentings that issued from the depths within
it, the Paladin discovered to be the entrance from earth to Hell.
The daring Englishman, whose curiosity was excited, resolved to penetrate
to the regions of darkness. "What have I to fear?" thought he; "the horn
will assist me, if I want it. I'll drive the triple-mouthed dog out of
the way, and put Pluto and Satan to flight."[2]
Astolfo tied the hippogriff to a tree, and pushed forward in spite of a
smoke that grew thicker and thicker, offending his eyes and nostrils. It
became, however, so exceedingly heavy and noisome, that he found it would
be impossible to complete his enterprise. Still he pushed forward as far
as he could, especially as he began to discern in the darkness something
that appeared to stir with an involuntary motion. It looked like a dead
body which has hung up many days in the rain and sun, and is waved
unsteadily by the wind. It turned out to be a condemned spirit in this
first threshold of Hell, sentenced there, with thousands of others, for
having been cruel and false in love. Her name was Lydia, and she had been
princess of the country so called.[3] Anaxarete was among them, who, for
her hard-heartedness, became a stone; and Daphne, who now discovered how
she had erred in making Apollo "run so much;" and multitudes of other
women; but a far greater number of men--men being worthier of punishment
in offences of love, because women are proner to believe. Theseus and
Jason were among them; and Amnon, the abuser of Tamar; and he that
disturbed the old kingdom of Latinus.[4]
Astolfo would fain have gone deeper into the jaws of Hell, but the smoke
grew so thick and palpable, it was impossible to move a step farther.
Turning about, therefore, he regained the entrance; and having refreshed
himself in a fountain hard by, and re-mounted the hippogriff, felt an
inclination to ascend as high as he possibly could in the air. The
excessive loftiness of the mountain above the cavern made him think that
its top could be at no great distance from the region of the Moon; and
accordingly he pushed his horse upwards, and rose and rose, till at
length he found himself on its table-land. It exhibited a region of
celestial beauty. The flowers were like beds of precious stones for
colour and brightness; the grass, if you could have brought any to earth,
would have been found to surpass emeralds; and the trees, whose leaves
were no less beautiful, were in fruit and flower at once. Birds of as
many colours were singing in the branches; the murmuring rivulets and
dumb lakes were more limpid than crystal: a sweet air was for ever
stirring, which reduced the warmth to a gentle temperature; and every
breath of it brought an odour from flowers, fruit-trees, and herbage all
at once, which nourished the soul with sweetness.[5]
In the middle of this lonely plain was a palace radiant as fire. Astolfo
rode his horse round about it, constantly admiring all he saw, and filled
with increasing astonishment; for he found that the dwelling was thirty
miles in circuit, and composed of one entire carbuncle, lucid and
vermilion. What became of the boasted wonders of the world before this?
The world itself, in the comparison, appeared but a lump of brute and
fetid matter.[6]
As the Paladin approached the vestibule, he was met by a venerable old
man, clad in a white gown and red mantle, whose beard descended on his
bosom, and whose aspect announced him as one of the elect of Paradise.
It was St. John the Evangelist, who lived in that mansion with Enoch and
Elijah, the only three mortals who never tasted death; for the place, as
the saint informed him, was the Terrestrial Paradise; and the inhabitants
were to live there till the angelical trumpet announced the coming of
Christ "on the white cloud." The Paladin, he said, had been allowed to
visit it, by the favour of God, for the purpose of fetching away to earth
the lost wits of Orlando, which the champion of the Church had been
deprived of for loving a Pagan, and which had been attracted out of his
brains to the neighbouring sphere, the Moon.
Accordingly, after the new friends had spent two days in discourse, and
meals had been served up, consisting of fruit so exquisite that the
Paladin could not help thinking our first parents had some excuse for
eating it,[7] the Evangelist, when the Moon arose, took him into the car
which had borne Elijah to heaven; and four horses, redder than fire,
conveyed them to the lunar world.
The mortal visitant was amazed to see in the Moon a world resembling his
own, full of wood and water, and containing even cities and castles,
though of a different sort from ours. It was strange to find a sphere so
large which had seemed so petty afar off; and no less strange was it to
look down on the world he had left, and be compelled to knit his brows
and look sharply before he could well discern it, for it happened at the
time to want light.[8]
But his guide did not leave him much time to look about him. He conducted
him with due speed into a valley that contained, in one miraculous
collection, whatsoever had been lost or wasted on earth. I do not speak
only (says the poet) of riches and dominions, and such like gratuities of
Fortune, but of things also which Fortune can neither grant nor resume.
Much fame is there which Time has withdrawn--infinite prayers and vows
which are made to God Almighty by us poor sinners. There lie the tears
and the sighs of lovers, the hours lost in pastimes, the leisures of the
dull, and the intentions of the lazy. As to desires, they are so numerous
that they shadow the whole place. Astolfo went round among the different
heaps, asking what they were. His eyes were first struck with a huge
one of bladders which seemed to contain mighty sounds and the voices of
multitudes. These he found were the Assyrian and Persian monarchies,
together with those of Greece and Lydia.[9] One heap was nothing but
hooks of silver and gold, which were the presents, it seems, made to
patrons and great men in hopes of a return. Another consisted of snares
in the shape of garlands, the manufacture of parasites. Others were
verses in praise of great lords, all made of crickets which had burst
themselves with singing. Chains of gold he saw there, which were
pretended and unhappy love-matches; and eagles' claws, which were deputed
authorities; and pairs of bellows, which were princes' favours; and
overturned cities and treasuries, being treasons and conspiracies; and
serpents with female faces, that were coiners and thieves; and all sorts
of broken bottles, which were services rendered in miserable courts. A
great heap of overturned soup[10] he found to be alms to the poor, which
had been delayed till the giver's death. He then came to a great mount
of flowers, which once had a sweet smell, but now a most rank one. This
(_with submission_) was the present which the Emperor Constantine made to
good Pope Sylvester.[11] Heaps of twigs he saw next, set with bird-lime,
which, dear ladies, are your charms. In short there was no end to what he
saw. Thousands and thousands would not complete the list. Every thing
was there which was to be met with on earth, except folly in the raw
material, for that is never exported.[12]
There he beheld some of his own lost time and deeds; and yet, if nobody
had been with him to make him aware of them, never would he have
recognised them as his.[13]
They then arrived at something, which none of us ever prayed God to
bestow, for we fancy we possess it in superabundance; yet here it was in
greater quantities than any thing else in the place--I mean, sense.
It was a subtle fluid, apt to evaporate if not kept closely; and here
accordingly it was kept in vials of greater or less size. The greatest of
them all was inscribed with the following words: "The sense of Orlando."
Others, in like manner, exhibited the names of the proper possessors; and
among them the frank-hearted Paladin beheld the greater portion of his
own. But what more astonished him, was to see multitudes of the vials
almost full to the stopper, which bore the names of men whom he had
supposed to enjoy their senses in perfection. Some had lost them for
love, others for glory, others for riches, others for hopes from great
men, others for stupid conjurers, for jewels, for paintings, for all
sorts of whims. There was a heap belonging to sophists and astrologers,
and a still greater to poets.[14]
Astolfo, with leave of the "writer of the dark Apocalypse," took
possession of his own. He had but to uncork it, and set it under his
nose, and the wit shot up to its place at once. Turpin acknowledges that
the Paladin, for a long time afterwards, led the life of a sage man,
till, unfortunately, a mistake which he made lost him his brains a second
time.[15]
The Evangelist now presented him with the vial containing the wits of
Orlando, and the travellers quitted the vale of Lost Treasure. Before
they returned to earth, however, the good saint chewed his guest other
curiosities, and favoured him with many a sage remark, particularly on
the subject of poets, and the neglect of them by courts. He shewed him
how foolish it was in princes and other great men not to make friends of
those who can immortalise them; and observed, with singular indulgence,
that crimes themselves might be no hindrance to a good name with
posterity, if the poet were but feed well enough for spices to embalm the
criminal. He instanced the cases of Homer and Virgil.
"You are not to take for granted," said he, "that AEneas was so pious
as fame reports him, or Achilles and Hector so brave. Thousands and
thousands of warriors have excelled them; but their descendents bestowed
fine houses and estates on great writers, and it is from their honoured
pages that all the glory has proceeded. Augustus was no such religious or
clement prince as the trumpet of Virgil has proclaimed him. It was his
good taste in poetry that got him pardoned his iniquitous proscription.
Nero himself might have fared as well as Augustus, had he possessed as
much wit. Heaven and earth might have been his enemies to no purpose, had
he known how to keep friends with good authors. Homer makes the Greeks
victorious, the Trojans a poor set, and Penelope undergo a thousand
wrongs rather than be unfaithful to her husband; and yet, if you would
have the real truth of the matter, the Greeks were beaten, and the
Trojans the conquerors, and Penelope was a --. [16] See, on the other
hand, what infamy has become the portion of Dido. She was honest to her
heart's core; and yet, because Virgil was no friend of hers, she is
looked upon as a baggage.
"Be not surprised," concluded the good saint, "if I have expressed myself
with warmth on this subject. I love writers, and look upon their cause as
my own, for I was a writer myself when I lived among you; and I succeeded
so well in the vocation, that time and death will never prevail against
me. Just therefore is it, that I should be thankful to my beloved Master,
who procured me so great a lot. I grieve for writers who have fallen
on evil times--men that, with pale and hungry faces, find the doors of
courtesy closed against all their hardships. This is the reason there are
so few poets now, and why nobody cares to study. Why should he study? The
very beasts abandon places where there is nothing to feed them."
At these words the eyes of the blessed old man grew so inflamed with
anger, that they sparkled like two fires. But he presently suppressed
what he felt; and, turning with a sage and gracious smile to the Paladin,
prepared to accompany him back to earth with his wonted serenity.
He accordingly did so in the sacred car: and Astolfo, after receiving his
gentle benediction, descended on his hippogriff from the mountain, and,
joining the delighted Paladins with the vial, his wits were restored, as
you have heard, to the noble Orlando.
The figure which is here cut by St. John gives this remarkable satire a
most remarkable close. His association of himself with the fraternity of
authors was thought a little "strong" by Ariosto's contemporaries. The
lesson read to the house of Este is obvious, and could hardly have been
pleasant to men reputed to be such "criminals" themselves. Nor can
Ariosto, in this passage, be reckoned a very flattering or conscientious
pleader for his brother-poets. Resentment, and a good jest, seem to have
conspired to make him forget what was due to himself.
The original of St. John's remarks about Augustus and the ancient poets
must not be omitted. It is exquisite of its kind, both in matter and
style. Voltaire has quoted it somewhere with rapture.
"Non fu si santo ne benigno Augusto
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona:
L'aver avuto in poesia buon gusto
La proscrizion iniqua gli perdona.
Nessun sapria se Neron fosse ingiusto,
Ne sua fama saria forse men buona,
Avesse avuto e terra e ciel nimici,
Se gli scrittor sapea tenersi amici.
Omero Agamennon vittorioso,
E fe' i Trojan parer vili et inerti;
E che Penelopea fida al suo sposo
Da i prochi mille oltraggi avea sofferti:
E, se tu vuoi che 'l ver non ti sia ascoso,
Tutta al contrario l'istoria converti:
Che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice,
E che Penelopea fu meretrice.
Da l'altra parte odi che fama lascia
Elissa, ch'ebbe il cor tanto pudico;
Che riputata viene una bagascia,
Solo perche Maron non le fu amico."
Canto xxxv. st. 26. ]
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: See p. 192.]
[Footnote 2: Ariosto is here imitating Pulci, and bearding Dante. See
vol. i. p. 336.]
[Footnote 3: I know of no story of a cruel Lydia but the poet's own
mistress of that name, whom I take to be the lady here "shadowed forth."
See Life, p. 114.]
[Footnote 4: The story of Anaxarete is in Ovid, lib. xiv. Every body
knows that of Daphne, who made Apollo, as Ariosto says, "run so much"
(correr tanto). Theseus and Jason are in hell, as deserters of Ariadne
and Medea; Amnon, for the atrocity recorded in the Bible (2 Samuel, chap.
xiii.); and AEneas for interfering with Turnus and Lavinia, and taking
possession of places he had no right to. It is delightful to see the
great, generous poet going upon grounds of reason and justice in the
teeth of the trumped-up rights of the "pious AEneas," that shabby deserter
of Dido, and canting prototype of Augustus. He turns the tables, also,
with brave candour, upon the tyrannical claims of the stronger sex to
privileges which they deny the other; and says, that there are more
faithless men in Hell than faithless women; which, if personal infidelity
sends people there, most undoubtedly is the case beyond all comparison.]