Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 - Leigh Hunt
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24
[Footnote 5: "Che di soaevita l'alma notriva" is beautiful; but the
passage, as a whole, is not well imitated from the Terrestrial Paradise
of Dante. It is not bad in itself, but it is very inferior to the one
that suggested it. See vol. i. p. 210, &c. Ariosto's Terrestrial Paradise
was at home, among the friends who loved him, and whom he made happy.]
[Footnote 6: This is better; and the house made of one jewel thirty miles
in circuit is an extravagance that becomes reasonable on reflection,
affording a just idea of what might be looked for among the endless
planetary wonders of Nature, which confound all our relative ideas of
size and splendour. The "lucid vermilion" of a structure so enormous, and
under a sun so pure, presents a gorgeous spectacle to the imagination.
Dante himself, if he could have forgiven the poet his animal spirits
and views of the Moon so different from his own, might have stood in
admiration before an abode at once so lustrous and so vast.]
[Footnote 7:
"De' frutti a lui del Paradiso diero,
Di tal sapor, ch'a suo giudizio, sanza
Scusa non sono i due primi parenti,
Se pur quei fur si poco ubbidienti."
Canto xxxiv. st. 60.]
[Footnote 8: Modern astronomers differ very much both with Dante's and
Ariosto's Moon; nor do the "argent fields" of Milton appear better placed
in our mysterious satellite, with its no-atmosphere and no-water, and its
tremendous precipices. It is to be hoped (and believed) that knowledge
will be best for us all in the end; for it is not always so by the way.
It displaces beautiful ignorances.]
[Footnote 9: Very fine and scornful, I think, this. Mighty monarchies
reduced to actual bladders, which, little too as they were, contained big
sounds.]
[Footnote 10: Such, I suppose, as was given at convent-gates.]
[Footnote 11: The pretended gift of the palace of St. John Lateran, the
foundation of the pope's temporal sovereignty. This famous passage was
quoted and translated by Milton.
"Di varii fiori ad on gran monte passa
Ch'ebbe gia buon odore, or putia forte.
Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece)
Che Constantino al buon Silvestro fece."
Canto xxxiv. st. 80.
The lines were not so bold in the first edition. They stood thus
"Ad un monte di rose e gigli passa,
Ch'ebbe gia buon odore, or putia forte,
Ch'era corrotto; e da Giovanni intese,
Che fu un gran don ch'un gran signor mal spese."
"He came to a mount of lilies and roses, that once had a sweet smell,
but now stank with corruption; and be understood from John that it was a
great gift which a great lord ill expended."
The change of these lines to the stronger ones in the third edition, as
they now stand, served to occasion a charge against Ariosto of having got
his privilege of publication from the court of Rome for passages which
never existed, and which he afterwards basely introduced; but, as Panizzi
observes, the third edition had a privilege also; so that the papacy
put its hand, as it were, to these very lines. This is remarkable; and
doubtless it would not have occurred in some other ages. The Spanish
Inquisition, for instance, erased it, though the holy brotherhood found
no fault with the story of Giocondo.]
[Footnote 12: "Sol la pazzia non v'e, poca ne assai;
Che sta qua giu, ne se ne parte mai"
St. 78.]
[Footnote 13: Part of this very striking passage is well translated by
Harrington
"He saw some of his own lost time and deeds,
And yet he knew them not to be his own."
I have heard these lines more than once repeated with touching
earnestness by Charles Lamb.]
[Footnote 14: Readers need not have the points of this exquisite satire
pointed out to them. In noticing it, I only mean to enjoy it in their
company--particularly the passage about the men accounted wisest, and the
emphatic "I mean, sense" (Io dico, il senno).]
[Footnote 15: Admirable lesson to frailty!]
[Footnote 16: I do not feel warranted in injuring the strength of the
term here made use of by the indignant apostle, and yet am withheld from
giving it in all its force by the delicacy, real or false, of the times.
I must therefore leave it to be supplied by the reader according to the
requirements of his own feelings.]
ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.
Argument.
The Duke of Albany, pretending to be in love with a damsel in the service
of Ginevra, Princess of Scotland, but desiring to marry the princess
herself, and not being able to compass his design by reason of her being
in love with a gentleman from Italy named Ariodante, persuades the
damsel, in his revenge, to personate Ginevra in a balcony at night,
and so make her lover believe that she is false. Ariodante, deceived,
disappears from court. News is brought of his death; and his brother
Lurcanio publicly denounces Ginevra, who, according to the laws of
Scotland, is sentenced to death for her supposed lawless passion.
Lurcanio then challenges the unknown paramour (for the duke's face had
not been discerned in the balcony); and Ariodante, who is not dead, is
fighting him in disguise, when the Paladin Rinaldo comes up, discloses
the whole affair, and slays the deceiver.
ARIODANTE AND GINEVRA.[1]
Charlemagne had suffered a great defeat at Paris, and the Paladin Rinaldo
was sent across the Channel to ask succours of the King of England; but a
tempest arose ere he could reach the coast, and drove him northwards upon
that of Scotland, where he found himself in the Caledonian Forest, a
place famous of old for knightly adventure. Many a clash of arms had been
heard in its shady recesses--many great things had been done there by
knights from all quarters, particularly the Tristans and the Launcelots,
and the Gawains, and others of the Round Table of King Arthur.
Rinaldo, bidding the ship await him at the town of Berwick, plunged into
the forest with no other companion than his horse Bayardo, seeking the
wildest paths he could find, in the hope of some strange adventure.[2] He
put up, for the first day, at an abbey which was accustomed to entertain
the knights and ladies that journeyed that way; and after availing
himself of its hospitality, he inquired of the abbot and his monks if
they could direct him where to find what he looked for. They said that
plenty of adventures were to be met with in the forest; but that, for the
most part, they remained in as much obscurity as the spots in which they
occurred. It would be more becoming his valour, they thought, to exert
itself where it would not be hidden; and they concluded with telling him
of one of the noblest chances for renown that ever awaited a sword. The
daughter of their king was in need of a defender against a certain baron
of the name of Lurcanio, who sought to deprive her both of life and
reputation. He accused her of having been found in the arms of a lover
without the license of the priest; which, by the laws of Scotland, was a
crime only to be expiated at the stake, unless a champion could be found
to disprove the charge before the end of a month. Unfortunately the month
had nearly expired, and no champion yet made his appearance, though the
king had promised his daughter's hand to anybody of noble blood who
should establish her innocence; and the saddest part of the thing was,
that she was accounted innocent by all the world, and a very pattern of
modesty.
While this horrible story was being told him, the Paladin fell into a
profound state of thought. After remaining silent for a little while,
at the close of it he looked up, and said, "A lady then, it seems, is
condemned to death for having been too kind to one lover, while thousands
of our sex are playing the gallant with whomsoever they please, and
not only go unpunished for it, but are admired! Perish such infamous
injustice! The man was a madman who made such a law, and they are little
better who maintain it. I hope in God to be able to shew them their
error."
The good monks agreed, that their ancestors were very unwise to make such
a law, and kings very wrong who could, but would not, put an end to it.
So, when the morning came, they speeded their guest on his noble purpose
of fighting in the lady's behalf. A guide from the abbey took him a short
cut through the forest towards the place where the matter was to be
decided; but, before they arrived, they heard cries of distress in a dark
quarter of the forest, and, turning their horses thither to see what it
was, they observed a damsel between two vagabonds, who were standing over
her with drawn swords. The moment the wretches saw the new comer, they
fled; and Rinaldo, after re-assuring the damsel, and requesting to know
what had brought her to a pass so dreadful, made his guide take her up
on his horse behind him, in order that they might lose no more time. The
damsel, who was very beautiful, could not speak at first, for the horror
of what she had expected to undergo; but, on Rinaldo's repeating his
request, she at length found words, and, in a voice of great humility,
began to relate her story.
But before she begins, the poet interferes with an impatient remark.--"Of
all the creatures in existence," cries he, "whether they be tame or wild,
whether they are in a state of peace or of war, man is the only one that
lays violent hands on the female of his species. The bear offers no
injury to his; the lioness is safe by the side of the lion; the heifer
has no fear of the horns of the bull. What pest of abomination, what fury
from hell, has come to disturb, in this respect, the bosom of human kind?
Husband and wife deafen one another with injurious speeches, tear one
another's faces, bathe the genial bed with tears, nay, some times with
bloodshed. In my eyes the man who can allow himself to give a blow to a
woman, or to hurt even a hair of her head, is a violater of nature, and a
rebel against God; but to poison her, to strangle her, to take the soul
out of her body with a knife,--he that can do that, never will I believe
him to be a man at all, but a fiend out of hell with a man's face."[3]
Such must have been the two villains who fled at the sight of Rinaldo,
and who had brought the woman into this dark spot to stifle her testimony
for ever.
But to return to what she was going to say.--
"You are to know, sir," she began, "that I have been from my childhood in
the service of the king's daughter, the princess Ginevra. I grew up with
her; I was held in bonour, and I led a happy life, till it pleased the
cruel passion of love to envy me my condition, and make me think that
there was no being on earth to be compared to the Duke of Albany. He
pretended to love me so much, that, in return, I loved him with all my
heart. Unable, by degrees, to refuse him anything, I let him into the
palace at night, nay, into the room which of all others the princess
regarded as most exclusively her own; for there she kept her jewels, and
there she was accustomed to sleep during inclement states of the weather.
It communicated with the other sleeping-room by a covered gallery, which
looked out to some lonely ruins; and nobody ever passed that way, day or
night.
"Our intercourse continued for several months; and, finding that I placed
all my happiness in obliging him, he ventured to disclose to me one day
a design he had upon the princess's hand; nay, did not blush to ask my
assistance in furthering it. Judge how I set his wishes above my own,
when I confess that I undertook to do so. It is true, his rank was nearer
to the princess's than to mine; and he pretended that he sought the
alliance merely on that account; protesting that he should love me more
than ever, and that Ginevra would be little better than his wife in name.
But, God knows, I did it wholly out of the excess of my desire to please
him.
"Day and night I exerted all my endeavours to recommend him to the
princess. Heaven is my witness that I did it in real earnest, however
wrong it was. But my labour was to no purpose, for she was in love
herself. She returned in all its warmth the passion of a most
accomplished and valiant gentleman, who had come into Scotland with a
younger brother from Italy, and who had made himself such a favourite
with every body, my lover included, that the king himself had bestowed on
him titles and estates, and put him on a footing with the greatest lords
of the land.
"Unfortunately, the princess not only turned a deaf ear to all I said
in the duke's favour, but grew to dislike him in proportion to my
recommendation; so that, finding there was no likelihood of his success,
his own love was secretly turned into hate and rage. He studied, little
as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect
of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient,
which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He
pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in
his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in
reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress
myself in the identical clothes which the princess put off when she went
to bed that night, and then to appear in them at my usual post in the
balcony, and so let down the ladder as though I were her very self, and
receive him into my arms.
"I did all that he desired, mad fool that I was; and out of the part
which I played has come all this mischief. I have intimated to you that
the duke and Ariodante (for such was the other's name) had been good
friends before Ginevra preferred hint to my false lover. Pretending
therefore to be still his friend, and entering on the subject of a
passion which he said he had long entertained for her, he expressed his
wonder at finding it interfered with by so noble a gentleman, especially
as it was returned by the princess with a fervour of which the other, if
he pleased, might have ocular testimony. "Greatly astonished at this news
was Ariodante. He had received all the proofs of his mistress's affection
which it was possible for chaste love to bestow, and with the greatest
scorn refused to believe it; but as the duke, with the air of a man who
could not help the melancholy communication, quietly persisted in his
story, the unhappy lover found himself compelled, at any rate, to let
him afford those proofs of her infidelity which he asserted to be in his
power. The consequence was, that Ariodante came with his brother to the
ruins I spoke of; and there the two were posted on the night when I
played my unhappy part in the balcony. He brought Lurcanio with him (that
was the brother's name), because he suspected that the duke had a design
on his life, not conceiving what he alleged against Ginevra to be
possible. Lurcanio, however, was not in the secret of his brother's
engagement with the princess. It had been disclosed hitherto neither to
him nor to any one, the lady not yet having chosen to divulge it to the
king himself. Ariodante, therefore, requested his brother to take his
station at a little distance, out of sight of the palace, and not to come
to him unless he should call: 'otherwise, my dear brother,' concluded he,
'stir not a step, if you love me.' "'Doubt me not,' said Lurcanio; and,
with these words, the latter entrenched himself in his post.
"Ariodante now stood by himself, gazing at the balcony,--the only person
visible at that moment in all the place. In a few minutes the Duke
of Albany appeared below it, making the signal to which I had been
accustomed; and then I, in my horrible folly, became visible to the eyes
of both, and let down the ladder.
"Meantime Lurcanio, beginning to be very uneasy at the mysterious
situation in which he found himself, and to have the most alarming fears
for his brother, had cautiously picked his way after him at a little
distance; so that he also, though still hidden in the shade of the lonely
houses, perceived all that was going on.
"I was dressed, as I had undertaken to be, in the identical clothes which
the princess had put off that night; and as I was not unlike her in air
and figure, and wore the golden net with red tassels peculiar to ladies
of the royal family, and the two brothers, besides, were at quite
sufficient distance to be deceived, I was taken by both of them for her
very self. The duke impatiently mounted the ladder; I received him as
impatiently in my arms; and circumstances, though from very different
feelings, rendered the caresses that passed between us of unusual ardour.
"You may imagine the grief of Ariodante. It rose at once to despair. He
did not call out; so that, had not his brother followed him, still worse
would have ensued than did; for he drew his sword, and was proceeding in
distraction to fall upon it, when Lurcanio rushed in and stopped him.
'Miserable brother!' exclaimed he, 'are you mad? Would you die for a
woman like this? You see what a wretch she is. I discern all your case
at once, and, thank God, have preserved you to turn your sword where it
ought to be turned, against the defender of such a pattern of infamy.'
"Ariodante put up his sword, and suffered himself to be led away by his
brother. He even pretended, in a little while, to be able to review his
condition calmly, but not the less had he secretly resolved to perish.
Next day he disappeared, nobody knew whither; and about eight days
afterwards, news was secretly brought to Ginevra, by a pilgrim, that he
had thrown himself from a headland into the sea.
"'I met him by chance,' said the pilgrim, 'and we happened to be standing
on the top of the headland, conversing, when he cried out to me, 'Relate
to the princess what you beheld on parting from me; and add, that the
cause of it was my having seen too much. Happy had it been for me had I
been blind!' And with these words,' concluded the pilgrim, 'he leaped
into the sea below, and was instantly buried beneath it.'
"The princess turned as pale as death at this story, and for a while
remained stupefied. But, alas! what a scene was it my fate to witness,
when she found herself in her chamber at night, able to give way to her
misery. She tore her clothes, and her very flesh, and her beautiful
hair, and kept repeating the last words of her lover with amazement and
despair.
The disappearance of Ariodante, and a rumour which transpired of his
having slain himself on account of some hidden anguish, surprised and
afflicted the whole court. But his brother Lurcanio evinced more and more
his impatience at it, and let fall the most terrible words. At length
he entered the court when the king was holding one of his fullest
assemblies, and laid open, as he thought, the whole matter; setting forth
how his unhappy brother had secretly, but honourably, loved the princess;
how she had professed to love him in return; and how she had grossly
deceived him, and played him impudently false before his own eyes. He
concluded with calling upon her unknown paramour to come forth, and shew
reasons against him with his sword why she ought not to die.
"I need not tell you what the king suffered at hearing this strange and
terrible recital. He lost no time in sharply investigating the truth of
the allegation; and for this purpose, among other proceedings, he sent
for the ladies of his daughter's chamber. You may judge, sir,--especially
as, I blush to say it, I still loved the Duke of Albany,--that I could
not await an examination like that. I hastened to meet the duke, who was
as anxious to get me out of the way as I was to go; and to this end,
professing the greatest zeal for my security, he commissioned two men to
convey me secretly to a fortress he possessed in this forest. 'Tis at no
great distance from the place where Heaven sent you to my deliverance.
You saw, sir, how little those wretches intended to take me anywhere
except to my grave; and by this you may judge of the agonies and shame I
have endured in knowing what a dupe I have been to one of the cruelest of
men. But thus it is that Love treats his most faithful servants."
The damsel here concluded her story; and the Paladin, rejoicing at having
become possessed of all that was required to establish the falsehood of
the duke, proceeded with her on his road to St. Andrews, where the lists
had been set up for the determination of the question. The king and his
court were anxiously praying at that instant for the arrival of some
champion to fight with the dreaded Lurcanio; for the month, as I have
stated, was nearly expired, and this terrible brother appeared to have
the business all his own way; so that the stake was soon to be looked for
at which the hapless Ginevra was to die.
Fast and eagerly the Paladin rode for St. Andrews, with his squire and
the trembling damsel, who was now agitated for new reasons, though the
knight gave her assurances of his protection. They were not far from
the city when they found people talking of a champion who had certainly
arrived, but whose name was unknown, and his face constantly concealed by
his visor. Even his own squire, it seems, did not know him; for the
man had but lately been taken into his service. Rinaldo, as soon as
he entered the city, left the damsel in a place of security, and then
spurred his horse to the scene of action, when he found the accuser and
the champion in the very midst of the fight. The Paladin, whose horse,
notwithstanding the noise of the combat, had been heard coming like a
tempest, and whose sudden and heroical appearance turned all eyes towards
him, rode straight to the royal canopy, and, begging the king to stop the
combat, disclosed the whole state of the matter, to the enchantment of
all present, except the Duke of Albany; for the villain himself was on
horseback there in state as grand constable, and had been feasting his
miserable soul with the hope of seeing Ginevra condemned. The combatants
were soon changed. Instead of Lurcanio and the unknown champion (whom the
new comer had taken care to extol for his generosity), it was the Paladin
and the Duke that were opposed; and horribly did the latter's heart fail
him. But he had no remedy. Fight he must. Rinaldo, desirous to make short
work of him, took his station with fierce delight; and at the third sound
of the trumpets, the Duke was forced to couch his spear and meet him
at full charge. Sheer went the Paladin's ashen staff through the false
bosom, sending the villain to the earth eight feet beyond the saddle. The
conqueror dismounted instantly, and unlacing the man's helmet, enabled
the king to hear his dying confession, which he had hardly finished, when
life forsook him. Rinaldo then took off his own helmet; and the king,
who had seen the great Paladin before, and who felt more rejoiced at his
daughter's deliverance than if he had lost and regained his crown, lifted
up his hands to heaven, and thanked God for having honoured her innocence
with so illustrious a defender.
The other champion, who, in the mean time, had been looking on through
the eyelets of his visor, was now entreated to disclose his own face. He
did so with peculiar emotion, and king and all recognised with transport
the face of the loved and, as it was supposed, lost Ariodante. The
pilgrim, however, had told no falsehood. The lover had indeed thrown
himself into the sea, and disappeared from the man's eyes; but (as
oftener happens than people suppose) the death which was desired when
not present became hated when it was so; and Ariodante, lover as he
was, rising at a little distance, struck out lustily for the shore, and
reached it.[4] He felt even a secret contempt for his attempt to kill
himself; yet putting up at an hermitage, became interested in the reports
concerning the princess, whose sorrow flattered, and whose danger,
though he could not cease to think her guilty, afflicted him. He grew
exasperated with the very brother he loved, when he found that Lurcanio
pursued her thus to the death; and on all these accounts he made his
appearance at the place of combat to fight him, though not to slay. His
purpose was to seek his own death. He concluded that Ginevra would then
see who it was that had really loved her, while his brother would mourn
the rashness which made him pursue the destruction of a woman. "Guilty
she is," thought he, "but no such guilt can deserve so cruel a
punishment. Besides, I could not bear that she should die before me. She
is still the woman I love, still the idol of my thoughts. Right or wrong,
I must die in her behalf."
With this intention he purchased a suit of black armour, and obtained a
squire unknown in those parts, and so made his appearance in the lists.
What ensued there I need not repeat; but the king was so charmed with the
issue of the whole business, with the resuscitation of the favourite whom
he thought dead, and the restoration of the more than life of his beloved
daughter, that, to the joy of all Scotland, and at the special instance
of the great Paladin, he made the two lovers happy without delay; and the
bride brought her husband for dowry the title and estates of the man who
had wronged him.