The Project Gutenberg eBook of Renaissance in Italy, Italian Literature, Part 1 (of 2), by John Addington Symonds.

[492] This poem must have been written between 1476, the date of Simonetta's death, and 1478, the date of Giuliano's murder, when Poliziano was about twenty-four. Chronology prevents us from regarding it as the work of a boy of fourteen, as Roscoe thought, or of sixteen, as Hallam concluded.

[493] His Latin elegies on Simonetta and on Albiera degli Albizzi, and those Greek epigrams which Scaliger preferred to the Latin verses of his maturity, had been already written.

[494] From Le Stanze, i. 7, we learn that he interrupted the translation of the Iliad in order to begin this poem in Italian. He never took it up again. It remains a noble torso, the most splendid extant version of a Greek poem in Latin by a modern hand.

[495] By a strange coincidence this was the anniversary of his love, Simonetta's, death in 1476. The close connection between her untimely end—celebrated by Lorenzo de' Medici in his earlier Rime, by Poliziano in his Latin Elegy and again in the Giostra—and the renascence of Italian poetry, makes her portrait by Botticelli della Francesca in the Pitti interesting.

[496] I must refer my readers to the original, and to the translations published by me in Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 217-224. The description of Simonetta in the meadow (Giostra, i. 43 and following) might be compared to a Florentine Idyll by Benozzo Gozzoli; the birth of Venus from the waves (i. 99-107) is a blending of Botticelli's Venus in the Uffizzi with his Primavera in the Belle Arti; the picture of Venus in the lap of Mars (i. 122-124) might be compared to work by Piero di Cosimo, or, since poetry embraces many suggestions, to paintings from the schools of Venice. The metamorphoses of Jupiter (i. 104-107) remind us of Giulio Romano. The episode of Ariadne and the Bacchic revel (i. 110-112) is in the style of Mantegna's engravings. All these passages will be found translated by me in the book above quoted.

[497] I believe the Favola di Orfeo, first published in 1494, and republished from time to time up to the year 1776, was the original play acted at Mantua before the Cardinal Gonzaga. It is not divided into acts, and has the usual "Annunziatore della Festa," of the Sacre Rappresentazioni. The Orphei Tragædia, published by the Padre Ireneo Affò at Venice in 1776, from two MSS. collated by him, may be regarded as a subsequent recension of his own work made by Poliziano. It is divided into five acts, and is far richer in lyrical passages. Carducci prints both in his excellent edition of Poliziano's Italian poems. I may refer English readers to my own translation of the Orfeo and the note upon its text, Studies and Sketches in Italy, pp. 226-242, 429, 430.

[498] The popularity of Poliziano's poems is proved by the frequency of their editions. The Orfeo and the Stanze were printed together or separately twenty-two times between 1494 and 1541, thirteen times between 1541 and 1653. A redaction of the Orfeo in octave stanzas was published at Florence in 1558 for the use of the common people. It was entitled La Historia e Favola d'Orfeo alla dolce lira. This narrative version of Poliziano's play is still reprinted from time to time for the Tuscan contadini. Carducci cites an edition of Prato, 1860.

[499] No one who has read Poliziano's Greek epigrams on Chrysocomus, or who knows the scandal falsely circulated regarding his death, will have failed to connect the sentiments put into the mouth of Orpheus (Carducci, pp. 109-110) with the personality of the poet-scholar. That the passage in question could have been recited with applause before a Cardinal, is a fact of much significance.

[500] Perhaps Ficino was the first to give him this title. In a letter of his to Lorenzo de' Medici we read: "Nutris domi Homericum ilium adolescentem Angelum Politianum qui Græcam Homeri personam Latinis coloribus exprimat. Exprimit jam; atque, id quod mirum est ita tenerâ ætate, ita exprimit ut nisi quivis Græcum fuisse Homerum noverit dubitaturus sit e duobus uter naturalis sit et uter pictus Homerus" (Ep. ed. Flor. 1494, lib. i. p. 6). Ficino always addressed Poliziano as "Poeta Homericus."

[501] Among the frescoes by Signorelli at Orvieto there is a tondo in monochrome, representing Orpheus before the throne of Pluto. He is dressed like a poet, with a laurel crown, and he is playing on a violin of antique form. Medieval demons are guarding the prostrate Eurydice. It would be curious to know whether a rumor of the Mantuan pageant had reached the ears of the Cortonese painter, or whether he had read the edition of 1494.

[502] The original should be read in the version first published by the Padre Affò (Carducci, pp. 148-154). My translation will be found in Studies and Sketches in Italy, pp. 235-237.

[503] "La notte esceva per Barletta (rè Manfredi) cantando strambotti e canzoni, che iva pigliando lo frisco, e con isso ivano due musici Siciliani ch'erano gran romanzatori." M. Spinello, in Scr. Rer. Ital. vii. Spinello's Chronicles are, however, probably a sixteenth-century forgery.

[504] A letter addressed by Poliziano to Lorenzo in 1488 from Acquapendente justifies the belief that the cultivation of popular poetry had become a kind of pastime in the Medicean circle. He says: "Yesterday we set off for Viterbo. We are all gay, and make good cheer, and all along the road we whet our wits at furbishing up some song or May-day ditty, which here in Acquapendente with their Roman costume seem to me more fanciful than those at home." See Del Lungo's edition of the Prose Volgari, etc., p. 75.

[505] See above, p. 378. For translations of several Ballate by Poliziano I may refer to my Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 190-225.

[506] For translations of detached Rispetti, see my Sketches and Studies in Italy, p. 197.

[507] I have translated one long Rispetto Continuato or Lettera in Istrambotti; see Sketches and Studies in Italy, pp. 198-201. It is probable that Poliziano wrote these love-poems for his young friends, which may excuse the frequent repetitions of the same thoughts and phrases.

[508] In Carducci's edition, pp. 342, 355, 363. The first seems to me untranslatable. The second and third are translated by me in Sketches and Studies, etc., pp. 202-207.

[509]

But she who gives my soul sorrow and mirth,
Seemed Pallas in her gait, and in her face
Venus; for every grace
And beauty of the world in her combined.
Merely to think, far more to tell my mind,
Of that most wondrous sight, confoundeth me;
For mid the maidens she
Who most resembled her was found most rare.
Call ye another first among the fair;
Not first, but sole before my lady set:
Lily and violet.
And all the flowers below the rose must bow.
Down from her royal head and lustrous brow
The golden curls fell sportively unpent.
While through the choir she went
With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.

[510]

White is the maid, and white the robe around her,
With buds and roses and thin grasses pied;
Enwreathéd folds of golden tresses crowned her,
Shadowing her forehead fair with modest pride:
The wild wood smiled; the thicket, where he found her,
To ease his anguish, bloomed on every side:
Serene she sits, with gesture queenly mild,
And with her brow tempers the tempests wild.

. . . . . . . . . .

Reclined he found her on the swarded grass
In jocund mood; and garlands she had made
Of every flower that in the meadow was,
Or on her robe of many hues displayed;
But when she saw the youth before her pass,
Raising her timid head awhile she stayed;
Then with her white hand gathered up her dress,
And stood, lap full of flowers, in loveliness.

[511] Praised for their incomparable sweetness by Scaliger, and translated into softest Italian by Firenzuola.

[513] This poem relates the adventures of Ciriffo and Il Povero Avveduto, bastards of two noble ladies, and gives the history of a crusade of Louis against the Soldan of Egypt. It was published as the work, as far as the first Book, of Luca Pulci, completed and restored by Bernardo Giambullari. "Il Ciriffo Calvaneo, diviso in iv. Canti, col primo Libro di Luca Pulci, ed il resto riformato per Bernardo Giambullari" (Roma, Mazzocchio, 1514). Luigi Pulci claims a share in it, if not the whole in the Morgante, xxviii. 118, 129.

[514] See Lettere di Luigi Pulci a Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Lucca, Giusti, 1868. Sonetti di Matteo Franco e Luigi Pulci, 1759. The sonnets are indescribably scurrilous, charged with Florentine slang, and loaded with the filthiest abuse. The point of humor is that Franco and Pulci undertook (it is said, for fun) to heap scandals on each other's heads, ransacking the language of the people for its vilest terms of invective. If they began in joke, they ended in earnest; and Lorenzo de' Medici, who had a taste for buffoonery, enjoyed the scuffle of his Court-fools. It was a combat of humanists transferred from the arena of the schools to the market-place, where two men of parts degraded themselves by assuming the character of coal-heavers.

[515] The poetical talents of the Pulci family were hereditary. Cellini tells us of a Luigi of that name who improvised upon the market-place of Florence.

[516] Turpin's Chronicle consists of thirty-two chapters, relating the wars of Charlemain with the Spanish Moors, the treason of Ganelon, and Roland's death in Roncesvalles. The pagan knight, Ferraguto, and the Christian peers are mentioned by name, proving that at the date of its compilation the whole Carolingian myth was tolerably perfect in the popular imagination.

[517] It has been conjectured by M. Génin, editor of the Chant de Roland, not without substantial grounds, that Gui de Bourgogne, bishop of Vienne, afterwards Pope Calixtus II., was himself the pseudo-Turpin.

[518] See Chanson de Roland, line 804, and compare Morg. Magg. xxvii. 79.

[519] See Ludlow's Popular Epics of the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 412, and M. Génin's Introduction to the Chanson de Roland, Paris, 1851.

[520] See Génin (op. cit. pp. xxix., xxx.) for the traces of the Roland myth in the Pyrenees, at Rolandseck, in England, and at Verona; also for gigantic statues in Germany called Rolands (ib. pp. xxi. xxii.). At Spello, a little town of Umbria between Assisi and Foligno, the people of the place showed me a dint in their ancient town wall, about breast-high, which passes for a mark made by Orlando's knee. There is learned tradition of a phallic monument named after Roland in that place; but I could find no trace of it in local memory.

[521] The Song of Roland does not give this portrait of Charlemagne's dotage. But it is an integral part of the Italian romances, a fixed point in all rifacimenti of the pseudo-Turpin.

[522] Ludlow (op. cit. i. 358) translates the Basque Song of Atta-biçar, which relates to some destruction of chivalrous forces by the Pyrenean mountaineers.

[523] See Génin (op. cit. pp. xxv.-xxviii.).

[524] Introduction to Panizzi's edition of the Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso (London, Pickering, 1830), vol. i. pp. 126-128.

[525] See Dante, Inf. xxxii. 61, v. 67, v. 128. Galeotto, Lancelot's go-between with Guinevere, gave his name to a pimp in Italy, as Pandarus to a pander in England. Boccaccio's Novelliere was called Il Principe Galeotto. Petrarch in the Trionfi and Boccaccio in the Amoroso Visione make frequent references to the knights of the Round Table. The latter in his Corbaccio mentions the tale of Tristram as a favorite book with idle women. The Fiammetta might be quoted with the same object of proving its wide-spread popularity. The lyrics of Folgore da San Gemignano and other trecentisti would furnish many illustrative allusions.

[526] See above, p. 17.

[527] The Reali di Francia sets forth this legendary genealogy at great length, and stops short at the coronation of Charles in Rome and the discovery of Roland. Considering the dryness of its subject-matter, it is significant that this should have survived all the prose romances of the fifteenh century. We may ascribe the fact perhaps to the tenacious Italian devotion to the Imperial idea.

[528] Orl. Inn. Rifac. i. 18, 26. Niccolò da Padova in the thirteenth century quoted Turpin as his authority for the history of Charlemagne which he composed in Northern French. This proves the antiquity of the custom. See Bartoli, Storia della Lett. It. vol. ii. p. 44. To believe in Turpin was not, however, an article of faith. Thus Bello in the Mambriano, c. viii.:

Ma poi che 'l non è articolo di fede,
Tenete quella parte che vi piace,
Che l'autor libramente vel concede.

[529] "Un Dio, uno Orlando, e una Roma." Morg. Magg. xxvii. 220. Compare this with Arthur's "Flos regum Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus."

[530] See Propugnatore (Anni ii., iii., iv.). La Spagna was itself two popular compilations.

[531] This is only strictly true of Cantos xxiv., xxv., xxvi., xxvii. The last Canto, in fact the whole poem after the execution of Marsilio, is a dull historical epitome, brightened by Pulci's personal explanations at the ending.

[532] It is called Morgante Maggiore because the part relating to him was published separately under the title of Morgante. This character Pulci derived from the MS. poem called by Signor Rajna the Orlando to distinguish it. In the year 1500 we find one of the Baglioni called Morgante which proves perhaps the popularity of this giant.

[533] Canto xxv. 73-78. The locust-tree, according to the tradition of the South, served Judas when he hanged himself. Northern fancy reserved this honor for the elder, not perhaps without a poetic sense of the outcast existence of the plant and its worthlessness for any practical use. On the same locust-tree Marsilio was afterwards suspended (c. xxvii. 267). The description of the blasted pleasure-garden in the latter passage is also very striking. For the translation of these passages see Appendix.

[534] xxvii. 5-7 and 47. Note in particular (translated in Appendix):

Rispose Baldovin: Se il padre mio
Ci ha qui condotti come traditore,
S'io posso oggi campar, pel nostro Iddio,
Con questa spada passerògli il core!
Ma traditore, Orlando, non son io,
Ch'io t'ho seguito con perfetto amore;
Non mi potresti dir maggiore ingiuria!
Poi si stracciò la vesta con gran furia,
E disse: Io tornerò nella battaglia,
Poi che tu m'hai per traditore scorto;
Io non son traditor, se Dio mi vaglia,
Non mi vedrai più oggi se non morto!
E inverso l'oste de' Pagan si scaglia,
Dicendo sempre: Tu m'hai fatto torto!
Orlando si pentea d'aver ciò detto
Chè disperato vide il giovinetto.

[535] Of all the Paladins only Orlando is uniformly courteous to Charlemagne. When Rinaldo dethrones the Emperor and flies to his cousin (c. xi. 114), Orlando makes him return to his obedience (ib. 127). See, too, c. xxv. 100:

Or oltre in Roncisvalle Orlando va,
Per obbedir, com'e' fe' sempre, Carlo.

[536] xxvi. 126:

Rinaldo, quando e' fu nella battaglia,
Gli parve esser in ciel tra' cherubini
Tra suoni e canti.

[537] Canto xxvi. 24-39. These two touches, out of many that are noble, might be chosen:

Stasera in paradiso cenerete;
Come disse quel Greco anticamente
Lieto a' suoi già, ma disse—Nello inferno:

and

La morte è da temere, o la partita,
Quando l'anima e 'l corpo muore insieme;
Ma se da cosa finita a infinita
Si va qui in ciel fra tante diademe,
Questo è cambiar la vita a miglior vita.

[538] This pervasive doubt finds its noblest and deepest expression in some lines spoken by Orlando just before engaging in the fight at Roncesvalles (xxvi. 31):

Tutte cose mortal vanno ad un segno;
Mentre l'una sormonta, un'altra cade:
Così fia forse di Cristianitade.

This is said not from the hero's but the author's point of view. Pomponazzi afterwards gave philosophical utterance to the same disbelief in the permanence of Christianity.

[539] Canto xxvii. 172.

[542] Canto xxvi. 91.

[543] Canto xxvi. 89.

[544] Canto xxv. 217, 218.

[545] Canto xviii. 114, et seq.

[546] I have placed in the Appendix a rough plaster cast rather than a true copy of Margutte's admirable comic autobiography. My stanzas cannot pretend to exactitude of rendering or interpretation. The Morgante has hitherto been very imperfectly edited; and there are many passages in this speech which would, I believe, puzzle a good Florentine scholar, and which, it is probable, I have misread.

[547] Canto xix. 148.

[548] Cantos xxv. xxvi.

[549] xxv. 119. This distinction between the fallen angels and the spiriti folletti deserves to be noticed. The latter were light and tricksy spirits, on whom not even a magician could depend. Marsilio sent two of them in a magic mirror to Charlemagne (xxv. 92), and Astarotte warned Malagigi expressly against their vanity (xxv. 160, 161). Fairies, feux follets, and the lying spirits of modern spiritualists seem to be of this family. Translations from Astarotte's dialogue will be found in the Appendix.

[550] xxv. 159, 208.

[551] xxv. 161; xxvi. 83.

[552] Canto xxv. 141-158; translation in Appendix.

[555] Doctor Faustus, act i. Scene with Mephistophilis in a Franciscan's habit.

[556] The scene in the banquet-hall at Saragossa (xxv. 292-305) is very similar to some of the burlesque scenes in Doctor Faustus.

[557] xxv. 228-231. Astarotte's discourses upon theology and physical geography are so learned that this part of the Morgante was by Tasso ascribed to Ficino. It is not improbable that Pulci derived some of the ideas from Ficino, but the style is entirely his own. The sonnets he exchanged with Franco prove, moreover, that he was familiar with the treatment of grave themes in a burlesque style. In acknowledging the help of Poliziano he is quite frank (xxv. 115-117, 169; xxviii. 138-149). What that help exactly was, we do not know. But there is nothing whatever to justify the tradition that Poliziano was the real author of the Morgante. Probably he directed Pulci's reading; and I think it not impossible, judging by one line in Canto xxv. (stanza 115, line 4), that he directed Pulci's attention to the second of the two poems out of which the narrative was wrought. If we were to ascribe all the passages in the Morgante that display curious knowledge to Pulci's friends, we might claim the discourse on the antipodes for Toscanelli and the debates on the angelic nature for Palmieri. Such criticism is, however, far-fetched and laboriously hypothetical. Pulci lived in an intellectual atmosphere highly charged with speculation of all kinds, and his poem reflected the opinion of his age. His own methods of composition and the relation in which he stood to other poets of the age are explained in two passages of the Morgante (xxv. 117, xxviii. 138-149), where he disclaims all share of humanistic erudition, and expresses his indifference to the solemn academies of the learned. See translation in Appendix.

[558] xxvi. 82-88. We may specially note these phrases:

Astarotte, e' mi duole
Il tuo partir, quanto fussi fratello;
E nell'inferno ti credo che sia
Gentilezza, amicizia e cortesia.

. . . . . . . . .

Chè di servirti non mi fia fatica;
E basta solo Astarotte tu dica,
Ed io ti sentirò sin dello inferno.

[559] Book II. canto viii. 1. All references will be made to Panizzi's edition of the Orlando Innamorato, London, Pickering, 1830.

[560] Sonetti e Canzone [sic] del poeta clarissimo Matteo Maria Boiardo Conte di Scandiano, Milano, 1845. The descriptions of natural beauty, especially of daybreak and the morning star, of dewy meadows, and of flowers, in which these lyrics abound, are very charming and at all points worthy of the fresh delightful inspiration of Boiardo's epic verse. Nor are they deficient in metrical subtlety; notice especially the intricate rhyming structure of a long Canto, pp. 44-49.

[561] See above, p. 15.

[562] See the exordium to the second Book, where it appears that the gentle poet caressed a vain hope that the peace of Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century was destined to revive chivalry.

[563] See the opening of Book II. Canto xviii. where Boiardo compares the Courts of Arthur and of Charlemagne.

[564] The acute and learned critic Pio Rajna, whose two massive works of scholarlike research, I Reali di Francia (Bologna, 1872), and Le Fonti dell'Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876), have thrown a flood of light upon Chivalrous Romance literature in Italy, is at pains to prove that the Orlando Innamorato contains a vein of conscious humor. See Le Fonti, etc., pp. 24-27. I agree with him that Boiardo treated his subject playfully. But it must be remembered that he was far from wishing to indulge a secret sarcasm like Ariosto, or to make open fun of chivalry like Fortiguerra.

[565]

Mentre che io canto, o Dio redentore,
Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco,
Per questi Galli, che con gran valore
Vengon, per disertar non so che loco.

Compare II. xxxi. 50; III. i. 2.

[566] Orlando was not handsome (II. iii. 63):

avea folte le ciglia,
E l'un de gli occhi alquanto stralunava.

[567] See his prayer, II. xxix. 36, 37.

[568] See the description of him in the tournament (I. ii. 63, iii. 4), when he saves the honor of Christendom to the surprise of everybody including himself. Again (I. vii. 45-65), when he defies and overthrows Gradasso, and liberates Charles from prison. The irony of both situations reveals a master's hand.

[569] For instance, when he attacks Argalia with his sword, contrary to stipulation, after being unhorsed by him (I. i. 71-73). The fury of Ferraguto in this scene is one of Boiardo's most brilliant episodes.

[570] His epithets are always fiorito, fior di cortesia, di franchezza fiore, etc. For the effect of his beauty, see II. xxi. 49, 50. The education of Ruggiero by Atalante was probably suggested to Boiardo by the tale of Cheiron and Achilles. See II. i. 74, 75.

[571] See II. i. 56, for Rodamonte's first appearance; for his atheism, II. iii. 22:

Che sol il mio buon brando e l'armatura
E la mazza, ch'io porto, e 'l destrier mio
E l'animo, ch'io ho, sono il mio Dio.

[573] In Bello's Mambriano, for instance, we have a very lively picture of the amorous and vain Astolfo. Pulci supplies us with even a more impressive Orlando than Boiardo's hero, while his Amazonian heroines, Meridiana and Antea, are at least rough sketches for Marfisa. It was Boiardo's merit to have grasped these characters and drawn them with a fullness of minute detail that enhances their vitality.