PO E M S

J- y hw G I O S U E C‘A R D U C C I

TRAN SLATED W ITH TW O INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS

I GI O SUE CAR D U CCI AN D THE HE LLE N IC R E ACT IO N IN ITAL!

I I CAR DU CCI AN D THE CLASSIC R E ALI SM

B!

FRAN K S E W A LL

w ‘w

“ ’ L e s cr t de l a rt rec reside 1d darts c rt: e e g ‘. e fi n esse d dégager la hg ne um ue ct ‘n ices ’ ’ w s az re q uz év oq ue la v ie et en éterm zn e d coup commale typ e étern el P AU L B OU R G E T

LO N DON

o M I A l o scoo x) c LV N E c . ,

LBEM RLE S T . W . 4 5 A A ,

1 893

CO N T E N T S

PRE FAC E

E S S AYS

x G x O sU E C R DUCC I D T H E H ELLE I C R E A C . A AN N

T I O N I N I TALY

u C R D U CC D T H E C L C R E LI M . A I A N ASSI A S

TRA N S LATIONS

L R O M A .

u H M T o S T . Y N A AN m H O M ER . x v V R G L . I I

I OC T O T o TH E L R E v. NV A I N Y

v 1 SU D LO E . N AN V vu T o A U ROR . A

8 24 774 C on fen ts

I R U T H OR V II . I A x / T H E O x I X .

T o PH IE E U S A PO LLO X .

H M T o TH E R E DE EM ER XI . Y N

O UT DE TH E CE RTO XII . SI SA D TE S ET XIII . AN ONN

I N G OTH C C H URCH XIV . A I

x v I Z Z ! . NNAN I , INNAN I SER M O E XVI . I N

T o H OR E XVII . A S

A D RE M SU M M ER XVIII . A IN

’ O N S I T PE T E R s E V E XIX . A A N

T H E M OT H E R XX .

L E M I A O L T R . P P TO XXI ASSA A NAV , S A , A IAN

~ C R L . XXII . A NIVA

V O I C E FRO M T H E P A LA C E

V O I C E FRO M T H E H OV E L

V O I C E FRO M T H E B A N QU ET

V O I C E FRO M T H E G A RR ET

V O I C E FRO M B E N EA T H

XXIII . SONNET TO PETRAR C H

V XXI . SONNET TO G OLDO NI

XXV . SONNET T o A LFIERI

N XXVI . SO NET T o M ONTI C ohten ts

I N T T O I C O N XXVI . SON E N C LI I

I N S T CRO C E XXVIII . AN A

XXIX . V OI CE O F TH E PR I E STS

V O C E O F G O D XXX . I

’ O N M D UG HTER M RR G E XXXI . Y A S A IA

A T T H E B LE O F FR E ND XXXII . TA A I D TE XXXIII . AN

V O N TH E S T H CE TE R O F D TE XXXI . IX N NA Y AN B E T R CE XXXV . A I

’ J E S T I D P R M I L D . A O U SC I A XXXVI Q I I A A VI I .

“ ’ ’ N O N O UELL I o CH E C I A D I XXXVII . S N Q A M C H E

CE N E

T H EJ A N C I E N T U C P ETR XXXVIII . T S AN O Y

O LD XXXIX . FI G U RI NE S

M ADRI G AL

SNO W E D U N DE R

PRE FA CE

w E n lish (a N endeavouring to introduce Carducci to g readers 55 through the following essays and translations , I would not be understood as being moved to do so alone o f by my high estimate the literary merit Of his poems , nor by a desire to advocate any peculiar religious o r social prin I ciples which they may embody . t is rather because these poems seem to me to afford an unusually interesting example o f the survival of ancient religious motives beneath the litera ture of a people o ld enough to have passed through a succes sion of religions and also because they present a form o f realistic literary art which , at this time, when realism is being so perverted and abused , is eminently refreshing , and sure to impart a healthy impetus to the literature of any a people . For these reasons I h ve thought that , even under of the garb very i nadequate translations , they would consti tute a not unwelcome contribution to contemporary literary study . I am indebted to the courtesy of Harper Brothers for the of privilege including here, in an amplified form , the essay

' ’ ’ ’ o n iosu C arduccz an d tbe Hellen ic eaétzon in I ta G é R ly, which ’ ' fi Har er s M a n e 1 8 0 . appeared rst in p n for July, 9

W A HINGTO . C 2 N l 8 . S , D . , June , 9

Gro suE CARDUCC I

AN D THE HE LLE NI C R E ACTIO N IN I TAL!

HE passing of a religion is at once the most interesting and the most tragic theme that can engage the his

torian . Such a record lays bare what lies in mostly o f o o r at the heart a people , and has , c nsciously unconsciously , shaped thei r outward life . of or The literature a time reveals , but rarely describes o n analyses, the changes that go in the popular religious beliefs . It is only in a later age , when the religion itself has become desiccated , its creeds and its forms dried and parcelled for o f better preservation , that this analysis is made its passing o f modes, and these again made the subject literary treatment . Few among the existing nations that possess a literature have a history which dates back far enough to embrace these great fundamental changes , such as that from paganism to

Christianity , and also a literature that is coeval with those changes . The Hebrew race possess indeed thei r ancient

Scriptures , and with them retain their ancient religious ideas . The R ussians and Scandinavians deposed their pagan deities to give place to the White Christ within comparatively recent times, but they can hardly be said to have possessed a l itera l I ’ ' G zosue C ardueez

- ture in the. pre Christian period . Our o wn saga of Beowull . I s indeed:a1reI I gI ous war - chant uttering the savage emotions o f o ur o f Teutonic . ancestors, but not a work literary art ' f calirily re fl etjin g the universal life o the people . ' ‘ ' lt is O t to the Latin nations of Europe , sprung from Hellenic stock and having a continuous literary history cov ering a period of from two to three thousand years , that we m o f ,may look for the exa ple a people undergoing these ' radical religious changes and preserving meanwhile a living

o f m record them in a conte poraneous literature . Such a

fi nation we nd in Italy . So thorough is the reaction exhibited during the last half of the present century in that country against the dogma and the authority o f the Church of Rome that we are led to in‘ quire whether , not the church alone, as Mr . Symonds says , “ but Christianity itself has ever imposed o n the Italian char acter to such an extent as to obliterate wholly the underlying o r Latin or Hellenic elements , prevent these from springing again into a predominating influence when the foreign yoke is once removed . To speak of Christianity coming and going as a mere pass ing episode in the life of a nation , and taking no deep hold o n the ' n ation al m re character , is so ewhat shocking to the li ious g ideas which prevail among Christians, but not more so than would have been to a Roman of the time of the Caesars the suggestion that the Roman Empire might itself o n e o f day pass away , a transient phase only in the life a

“ R ome itself had n eve r gathere d the Italian cities i n to what we call a ’ n a on an d e n R o me the o d s e ad fe the m n a e s o f I a t e ti ; wh , w rl h , ll, u icip liti t ly ma n e d an d the I al an e o e s an to fe a a n b o n a e i , t i p pl p r g li g i y c t ct with th ir m ian e o e ab e as . e n o the C r swa e d E o e o I a so irr c v r l p t Th , th ugh hu ch y ur p fr t l il , She ha e e s P o ud as the a ian s d n owhe r l s de vo te d subje cts than in Italy . r It l hadb e e n o f the e m ire o das e n owe e o f the s n e e the p , p r u th y w r church , till ith r R o man E m i e n o r the R o man r m ose d n the I a an C ara e p r Chu ch i p o t li h ct r. ’ “ ” S mon d 2 s s R n s an I r I I . . e a s e in a Literatu e . . y i c t ly. , p 5 4 ’ Gzosue Carducci 3 pe ople whose history was to extend in unbroken line over a

- fi period o f twenty ve hundred years .

r hin ts ~ In the work just referred to Mr . Symonds also briefly

' of fi whe the rt at another idea profound signi cance , namely , there is not an underlying basis o f pri mitive race character still extant i n the various sections o f the Italian people to which may be attributed the variety in the development o f '

' S tudii Le ttemrz art and literature which these exhibit . In his I ( Bologna , Carducci has made this idea a fundamental one f in his definition of the three elements o Italian literature .

These are , he says , the church , chivalry , and the national

fi o r character . The rst ecclesiastical element is superimposed

n o t to by the Roman hierarchy , but is and never was native the Italian people . It has existed in two forms . The first is

Oriental , mystic , and violently opposed to nature and to human instincts and appetites , and hence is designated the f e ascetic type o Christianity . The other is pol itic and a com modatin - g, looking to a peaceful meeting ground between the o f soul so b e desires the body and the demands of the , and of I ts tween the pagan and the Christian forms worship . aim is to bring into serviceable subjection to the church those elements o f human nature o rof natural character which could m d not be crushed o ut altogether . This ele ent is represente by the church o r the ecclesiastical polity . It becomes distinctly o f Roman , following the eclectic traditions the ancient empire , which gave the gods o f all the conquered provinces a nich e of in the Pantheon . It transformed the sensual paganism the Latin races and the natural paganism o f the Germanic into a n ot religion which , if Christianity , could be made to serve the Christian church . I n the same way that the church brought in the Christian

o r - element , both in its ascetic and its Roman sem i pagan form , so did feudalism and the German Empire bring in that f o f . o chivalry This , again , was no native development the ' ' 4 Gzbsué Carducez

in Italian character . It came with the French and German vaders ; it played no part in the actions of the Italians o n “ ” own . their soil There never was in Italy , says Carducci ,

a true chivalry , and therefore there never was a chivalrous ” o f poetry . With the departure a central imperial power the chivalrous tendency disappeared . There remained the third of element , that nationality , the race instinct , resting on the old a Roman , and even older Latin , It lic , Etruscan , Hellenic all attachments in the heart of the pewople . Witness during the Middle Ages , even when the po er of the church and the of influence the empire were strongest , the reverence every where shown by the Italian people for classical names and o f traditions . Arnold Brescia , Nicola di Rienzi , spoke to a sentiment deeper and stronger in the hearts of their hearers than any that either pope o r emperor could inspire . The of o f V story is told a schoolmaster the eleventh century , il o f who o f V gardo Ravenna , saw visions irgil , Horace , and m f Juvenal , and rejoiced in their co mendation of his e forts to preserve the ancient literature Of the people . The national m m I principle also exists in two for s , the Ro an and the talian — o r . the aulic learned, and the popular Besides the tra ditio n s o f a of the great days of the republic and the C sars ,

the o f besides i nheritance the Greek and Latin classics , there o f are also the native instincts the people themselves, which , especially in religion and in art, must play an important part . “ ” o f o ut Arnold Brescia cried , Neither pope nor emperor ! t i It was hen the people , as the third estate , made their vo ces ’ i son n heard C o a eb ( Here am I too I ). After the elapse of three hundred years from the downfall of the free Italian municipalities and the enslavement of the

A ustrio - peninsula under Spanish rule , we have witnessed again the achievement by Italians of national independence n and national unity . The effect of this political change o the free manifestations of the Italian character would seem to ' Gzosué C arducei 5

’ “ off er another corroboration of Carducci s assertion that I taly is born and dies with the setting and the rising Of the stars ” ’ ’ S tudiz Leiterart . of the pope and the emperor . ( , p Not only with the withdrawal of the Austrian and French ’ an interference has the pope s temporal power come to end , but i n a large measure the religious emancipation o f Italy from the foreign influences o f Christianity in every way has been accomplished . The expulsion of the Jesuits and the secularisation of the schools and of the monastic properties

o f O of were the means a more real emancipation of pinion , belief, and of native impulse, which , free from restraint either o r ecclesiastical political , could now resume its ancient habit , lift from the overgrowth of centuries the ancient shrines of popular worship , and i nvoke again the ancient gods .

o f The pope remains , indeed , and the Church Rome fills a large space in the surface life of the people o f Italy ; and so

its far as in gorgeous processions and spectacles, its joyous fi festivals and picturesque rites , and especially in its sacri cial o f and Vicarious theory worship , the church has assimilated to itself the most important feature o f the ancient pagan re

li ion of . g , it may still be regarded as a thing the people But the real underlying antagonism between the ancient national o f instinct , both religious and civil , and that habit Chris tian it fi - y which has been imposed upon it , nds its true ex ’ of f Carducci s pression in the strong lines a sonnet o , pub

’ lished 1 8 1 D eeemmlz . in 7 , in the collection entitled Even o f through the burdensome guise a metrical translation , some thing o f the splendid fire of the original can hardly fail to make itself felt . [I] The movement fo r the revival o f Italian literature may be to fi said have begun with Al eri , at the close of the last and

o f con tem o rar the beginning the present century . It was p yi with the breaking up o f the political institutions of the past of the i n Europe , the dissolution the Holy Roman Empire , 6 Giosue Cardueei

f o r brief existence of the Italian Republic, the revival a short joyous moment of the hope o f a restored Italian in depe n

o f m dence . Again a thrill patriotic ardour stirs the easures zL i o n A merica o f the languid Italian verse . Alf eri writes odes

Liberata th he roe s of o f , celebrating as e the new age liberty

Franklin , Lafayette , and Washington . Still more significant of the new life imparted to literature at this time is the sober ’ of A lfl e i s o dignity and strength r s nnets , and the manly pas sion that speaks in his dramas and marks him as the founder

of Italian tragedy .

But the promise of those days was illusory . With the of downfall of Napoleon and the return the Austrian rule ,

fi the hOpe of the Italian n ationality again died o ut. Al eri

- was succeeded by w and his fellow classicists , who sought to console a people deprived of future hope with f the contemplation o the remote past . This school restored

rather than revived the ancient classics . They gave Italians V admirable translations of Homer and i rgil , and turned their

n owpoetic writing into the classical form . But they failed to all make these dead forms live . These remained in their beauty like speechless marble exhumed and set up in the

light and stared at . If they spoke at all , as they did in the of verses Ugo Foscolo and Leopardi , it was not to utter the

o joyous emotions , the godlike freedom and delight f living ’ which belonged to the world s youthful time ; it was rather to give voice to an all - pervading despair and brooding melan

chol it of o f y, born , is true , repeated disappointments and a very real sense of the vanity o f life and the emptiness of

o f in dividual o r o f great aspirations , whether the society . to m This melancholy , itself repugnant the pri itive Italian fo r nature , opened the way the still more foreign influence of f the romanticists, which tended to the study and love o o r nature from the subjective emotional side , and to a more or less morbid dwelling upon the passions and the interior Giosue Carducci 7

— f life . With a religion whose life sap o a genuine faith had fo r t been drained away ages , and a patriotism enerva ed and poisoned by subserviency to foreign rule and fawning fo r to foreign favour , naught seemed remain for Italian writers who to to wished do something else than moan , but compose

te e n th- a critical century classics , with el borate annotations, and so to keep the people mindful o f the fact that there was of once an Italian l iterature , even if they were to despair having another . The decay of religious faith made the ex ternal forms o f papal Christianity seem al l the more a cruel mockery to the mi nds that began n o wto turn their gaze inward , and to feel what Taine so truly describes as the

Puritan melancholy , the subjective sadness which belongs peculiarly to the Teutonic race . The whole literature of the o r b e romantic school , whether in Italy throughout Europe , tra ed of y a certain morbidness feeling which , says Carducci , e all sof To r b longs to period transition , and appears alike in

uato e of q Tasso , und r the Catholic reaction the sixteenth century , and in Chateaubriand , Byron , and Leopardi , i n the of monarchical restoration the nineteenth . The despair which furnishes a perpetual undertone to the writing of this school is that which is born of the effort to keep a semblance o f o f life in dead forms the past , while yet the really living motives of the present have found neither the courage nor the fitting forms fo r their expression . In many respects the present revival of Ital ian literature is L a reawakening o f the same spirit that constituted the Renais- I sance of the fourteenth and fifteen centuries , and disappeared 1 under the subsequent influences o f the Catholic reactio n u Three hundred years o f papal supremacy and foreign civic rule have , however, tempered the national spirit , weakened of of the manhood the people , and developed a habit child like subserviency and eff eminate dependence . While re 8 Giosue C arducei straining the sensuous tendency of pagan religion and pagan n ot art within the channels of the church ritual , Rome has m meanwhile rendered the Italian people ore , but, if anything , less spiritual and less susceptible o f spiritual teaching than of o r o f they were in the days Dante even Savonarola . The t new I alian renaissance , if we may so name the movement witnessed by the present century fo r the re - e stablishment o f I national unity and the building up of a new talian literature , lacks the youthful zeal , the fiery ardour which characterised f the age o the Medici . The glow is rather that of an Indian

t . o summer han that of May The purp se , the zeal , whatever be of shall its final aim , will be the result reflection and not of youthful impulse . The creature to be awakened and stirred to new l ife is more than a mere animal ; it is a man , whose thinking powers are to be addressed , as well as his sensuous instincts and amatory passion . Such a revival is slow to be set in motion . When once fairly begun , pro vided V it have any really ital principle at bottom , it has much greater promise o f permanence than any in the past of history of the Italian people . A true renascence a nation will imply a reform or renewal o f n ot o n e phase alone Of the ’ nation s l ife , but of all ; not only a new political l ife and a all new poetry , but a new art , a new science , and , above , a new religious faith . The steps to this renewal are necessarily at the beginning oftener o f the nature of negation of the o ld o f f than assertion o the new . The destroyer and the clearer of é away the d bris go before the builder . It will not be strange , therefore , if the present aspect of the new national life of Italy should offer us a number of conspicuous negations ’ rather than any positive new conceptions ; that the people s

M an te az z a — a favorite scientist , g , the ultra m terialist , should ’ be the nation s chosen spokesman to utter in the face o f the V atican its denial of the supernatural ; and that Carducci , the ’ o f nation s foremost and favourite poet , should sing the return

Giosué C arduee i

MM DCXVI I I m o f fro the Foundation Rome , which revealed

in a far more significant manner in what sense its author , e Giosu Carducci , then in his thirtieth year , was to become u ’ tr ly the nation s poet , in giving utterance again to those

- I deeply hidden and long hushed ideas and emotions which in fl u belonged anciently to the people, and which no exotic

ence had been able enti rely to quench . This poem was “ ” b a l d n k a Hymn n S ata . The shock it gave to the popular sense of propriety is evident not only from the Violence and indignation with which it was handled in the clerical and “ o n e o f the conservative journals , which called it an intel ” o f lectual orgy , but from the number explanations , more or t less apologe ic , which the poet and his friends found it of necessary to publish . One these , wh ich appeared over the

E n o triofi lo I talian A tben ce um o f signature in the j anuary , 1 886 , has been approvingly quoted by Carducci in his notes

D ecen n ali ma m to the . We y therefore regard it as e bodying n ot ideas which are , at least , contrary to what the author of

the po em intended . From this commentary it appears that “ we are to look here not for the poetry o f the saints but of — oi n o t the sinners , those sinners , that is , who do steal away own into the deserts to hide thei r virtues , so that others

shall o f not enjoy them , who are not ashamed human de

lights and human comforts , and who refuse none of the paths

laudes that lead to these . Not or spiritual hymns , but a ” material hymn is what we shall here find . Enotrio sings , “ m all says his ad iring apologist , and I forget the curses m to which the catechis dispenses the world , the flesh , and

e . V h . ” t devil Asceticism here finds no defender and no ictim “ J an no longer goes fancying among the vague aspirations o f

the mystics . He respects laws , and wills well , but to him

the sensual delights of love and the cup are not sinful , and

in these , to him , innocent pleasures Satan dwells . It was to the joys o f earth that the rites of the Aryans looked ; the Giosue C arduce i same jo y s were by the Semitic religion either mocked o r

. a secre tl quenched . But the people did not forget them As y treasured national inheritance , despite both Christian church m o f and Gothic e pire , this ancient worship of nature and the joys of the earth remains with the people . It is this spirit f of o f o nature and natural sensuous delights , and lastly natural science , that the poet here addresses as Satan . As ’ Satan it appears in nature s secret powers o f healing and

o f o f . magic , i n the arts the sorcerer and the alchemist The d anchorites , who , runk with paradise , deprived themselves o f a the joys of earth , gradually beg n to listen to these songs — from beyond the gratings of their cells songs of brave

of o f of . deeds , fai r women , and the triumph arms It is

a b ut n Sat n who sings , as they liste they become men again , enamoured of civil glory . New theories arise , new masters ,

n e w o f . ideals life Genius awakes , and the cowl of the

m . Do inican falls to earth Now , liberty itself becomes the m o f tempter . It is the develop ent of human activity , labour e o f and struggle , that caus s the increase both bread and n Of all laughter , riches and ho our, and the author this new activity is Satan ; not Satan bowing his head before hypo

o f critical worshippers , but standing glorious in the sight those who acknowledge him . This hymn is the result Of

o f o n e two streams inspiration , which soon are united in , and continue to fl o win a peaceful current : the goods of life ” and genius rebelling against slavery . With this explanation of its inner meaning we may now refer the reader to the hymn itself. [II] o r This poem , while excelled by many others in beauty in ’ interest , has nowhere , even in the poet s later verses, a rival of in daring and novelty conception , and none serves so well - T to typify the prominent traits o f Carducci as a national pit7 o f i We see here the fetters classic , romantic , and religous tradition thrown off, and the old national , which is in sub 1 2 Giosue C arducci

stance a pagan , soul pouring forth in all freedom the senti of ments its nature . It is no longer here the question of o r either Guelph Ghibelline ; Christianity, whether of the subjective Northern type , brought in by the emperors , or of of the extinct formalities Rome , is bidden to give way to the o ld Aryan love of nature and the worship of outward beauty and sensuous pleasure . The reaction here witnessed is essen tiall y Hellenic in its delight i n Objective beauty , its bold asser ’ of m o f r tion the rightful clai s nature s instincts , its abhor ence o f mysticism and o f all that religion of introspection and o f conscience which the poet includes under the term “Se ” It mitic . will exchange dim cathedrals for the sky filled ’ with joyous sunshine ; it will go to nature s processes and laws for its oracles , rather than to the droning priests . While of m the worship atter and its known laws , in the form of a

o f kind of apotheosis science, with which the poem opens m and closes, may seem at first glance rather a odern than an ancient idea , it is nevertheless in substance the same con ce ption as that which anciently took form in the myth Of

Prometheus , i n the various Epicurean philosophies , and i n f o . f the poem Lucretius Where , however, Carducci dif ers from his contemporaries and from the classicists so called is o f in the utter frankness of his renunciation Christianity , and the bold bringing to the front of the old underlying Hellenic instincts o f the people . That which others wrote abo ut he of feels intensely , and sings aloud as the very life himself and f o his nation . That which the foreigner has tried for cen

’ f of uries to crush out , it is the mission the nation s true poet and prophet to restore . ’ The sen time n ts Carduccis _ underlying writings we find - ' to b e ChieflyW e : a fervent and joyous veneration o f the o f o f great poets Greece and Rome ; an i ntense love nature , amounting to a kind of worship o f sunshine and o f bodily beauty and sensuous delights ; and finally an abhorrence of Giosue Cardaeei I 3

the supernatural and spiritual elements of religion . I nter mingled with the utterances of these sentiments will be found patrio tigeffusions mostly in the usual vein o f aspirants after o f which , while a national interest , are n o t do peculiar to the author , and not serve particularly to of illustrate the Hellenistic motive his writing . The same o f may be said his extensive critical labours in prose , his uni of versity lectures , his scholarly annotations the early Italian Ho poets . wfar Carducci conforms to the traditional char acter of the Italian poets — always with the majestic exception o f the exiled Dante in that the soft winds o f court favour are

o f o n a powerful source their inspiration national themes , may be judged from the fact that while at the beginning o f his public career he was a violent republican , now that he is known to stand high i n the esteem and favour of Queen Margherita his democratic utterances have become very greatly

e e n o f moderated , and his praises of the (b and the bounties of and blessings her reign are most glowing and fulsome .

Without a formal coronation , Carducci occupies the position

- o f o f . poet laureate Italy A little over fifty years of age , an active student and a hard- working professor at the University of Bologna , where his popularity with his students in the lecture - room is equal to that which his public writings have won throughout the land , called from time to time to sojourn

o r o in the country with the court , to lecture bef re the Queen s R m o f and her ladie at o e , withal a man great simplicity , to of even roughness manners , and of a cordial , genial nature

- such is the writer whom the Italians with o n e voice call their greatest poet , and whom not a few are fain to consider E at the foremost living poet of uro pe .

’ ’ ' Se e L a P oesia e l l talza n e lla uartz: roczata D is o se s in the e Q C . c ur p r s ’ n e o f he r Ma e s the e e n . N uo va A n to io za R o me F e e b a 1 88 . c j ty Qu g , , ru ry, 9 T he p o e ms o f Carducci have b e e n publi she dfo r the mo st p art in the fo llo w in o e o n s : P oesie Fo e n e Ba b e a 1 8 1 o m se s the o e ms re gc ll cti ( l r c , G. r r , 7 ) c p ri p p vio usly published un de r the p seudon ym E n o trio R o man o in thre e succe ssive Giosue C arducci

It would be interesting to trace the development of the ’ Hellenic spirit in the successive productions O f Carducci s to muse , note his emancipation from the lingering i nfluences O ff the fetters o f conventional

11 u an autobiographical sketch , which the author

o f P oesie 1 8 1 gives us in the preface the ( 7 ), we will here only glance briefly at some of the more characteristic points thus

presented . After alluding to the bitterness and violence for which the

Tuscans are famous in their abuse , he informs us that from rst he was charged with an idolatry o f antiquity an d o f

o f and with an aristocracy style . The theatre critics m m d to teach him gra mar , and the school asters said

aping the Greeks . One distinguished critic said that ’ se revealed the author s absolute want o f all poetic ” o f m faculty . The first published series poe s was in reality f a protest against the religious and intellectual bitterness which n 1 860 prevailed in the decade precedi g , against the nothing ness and vanity under wh ose burden the country was languish ing ; against the weak coquetries of liberalism which spoiled

un satis then as it still spoils our art and our thoughts , ever n ot factory to the spirit wh ich will do things by halves , and ” to to which refuses pay tribute cowardice . Naturally , even in

literary matters inclined to take the opposite side , Carducci f o ut o f elt himself in the majority like a fish water . In the revolutionary years 1 8 58 and 1 8 59 he wrote poems o n the

— ’ ’ ’ I ss e s r J uve mlza the a o s e a o d on s in the e a s 1 8 0- 1 8 u , , uth r rly p r ucti y r 5 5 7,

' ' 2 L er/za Gra v za e n b e e e n the ears 1 8 an d 1 8 0 an d D ece mzalz , , writt tw y 5 7 7 , 3 , , — o d e d in the de ade 1 860 1 8 0 ; N am/e P oesie 1 8 Odi B arba ra B o p r uc c 7 , 79 : ;

° Io ue 1 8 ; N uov e Odi B a rbare 1 886 N uov e R ime B o o n a 1 88 B e g , 77 , , l g . 7. s de s the as n ame d the b s e Zan I che lli in B o o n a has a so i l t pu li h r , l g , l issue d

’ ' ' ’ ' e diti on s o f the author s D zseorsi L e tte ra ri e S ton ez an d P rim z S aggi; an d ’

a o m e e e d o n o f the a o s n s in e n vols. 1 6mo is ro m c pl t iti uth r writi g , tw ty , p ised th same b s e by e pu li h r. Giosue C ardue ci 1 5

' Ple biscite and Unity , counselling the king to throw his crown as into the Po , enter Rome its armed tribune , and there order “ ” “ a national vote . These , says the poet , were my worst

an d I es things , fortunately were kept unpublished , and so

- o f caped becoming the poet laureate public opinion . In a m republic it would have been otherwise . I would have co posed the battle pieces with the usual grand words — the ranks in order, arms outstretched in command , brilliant uni To forms , and finely curled moustaches . escape all temptation of of this sort I resorted to th e cold bath philosophy , the ’ - I u death shrouds o f learning en f olo f un erario dell erudif ion e fi It was pleasant amid all that grand talk of the new life to hide myself in among the cowled shadows of the fourteenth f and fifteenth centuries . I journeyed along the Dead Sea o

Middle o f the Ages , studied the movements revolution in history and in letters ; then gradually dawned upon me a fact which at once surprised and comforted me . I found that my o wn repugnance to - the literary and philosophical reaction of 1 8 1 5 was really in harmony with the experience o o f many illustrious thinkers and authors . My wn sins o f paganism had already been committed, and in manifold of splendid guises , by many the noblest minds and geniuses

o f . o f Europe This paganism , this cult form , was naught else but the love of that noble nature from which the solitary Semitic estrangements had alienated hitherto the spirit o f man in such bitter opposition . My at first feebly defined sentiment of opposition thus became confirmed conceit , reason , affirmation the hymn to Phoebus Apollo became the hymn

. 1 8 6 1 1 86 to Satan Oh , beautiful years from to 5 , passed in o f peaceful solitude and quiet study , in the midst a home o f where the venerated mother , instead fostering superstition , taught us to read Alfie ri! But as I read the codices of the fourteenth century the ideas of the Renaissance began to appear to me in the gilded initial letters like the eyes o f nymphs i n I 6 Giosué C arducci

of of the midst flowers , and between the lines the spiritual laude I detected th Meanwhile the image o f Dante looked d‘ upon me ; but I might : have answered Father and master , why didst thou bring learn m m g from the cloister into the piazza , fro the Latin to the vulgar tongue ! Why wast thou willing that the hot breath o f thine anger should sweep the heights of papal ! 0 a and imperial power Thou first, great public ccuser of o f : the Middle Ages, gavest the signal for the rebound thought that the alarm was sounded from the bells of a Gothic cam ’ pan ile mattered but little ! So my mind matured in under

Levia racia standing and sentiment to the G , and thence more

’

i to D eeen n ah. rap dly , in questions of social interest , the There are those who complain that I am not what I was

- — twenty four years ago good people , for whom to live and

ui lar is in oen eacit develop is only to feed , like the calf q g

- e uven ilia m f . b rbis . In the j I was the ar our bearer o the classics

I n a I n c the Leo i Gracia I held my armed watch . the D e en n ali of , after a few uncertain preliminary strokes the lance , l fo r venture abroad prepared every risk and danger . l have read that the poet must give pleasure either to all or to the

- few ; to cater to many is a bad sign . Poetry to day is use less from not having learned that it has nothing to do with the exigencies o f the moment . The lyre Of the soul should

o f respond to the echoes of the past , the breathings the future , f o . o n the solemn rumours ages and generations gone by If,

o f the contrary , it allows itself to be swayed by the breeze ’ ’ society s fans o r the waving o f soldiers cockades and protes ’ ! sors togas , then woe to the poet Let the poet express him self and his artistic and moral convictions with the utmost

as possible candour , sincerity , and courage for the rest , it is a not his concern . And so it happens that I d re to put forth of on e o ur a book verses in these days , when group of literati

Giosue Cardueei

This I ntense longing for greater freedom of verse he expresses in the following lines from the Odi B arbare

I h ate the accust omed verse . a it a in the a o f the o d L zily f lls with t ste cr w , A n d p ulseless in its feeb le emb races i do n an d L es w sleep s .

Fo r me th at vi gilan t stro p he Which leap s with the p laudits an d rhythmic stamp o f the o ch rus , a b d a in fl Like ir c ught its i ght , which n n Tur s a d gives b attle .

I n the preface of the same volume ( 1 8 77) he pleads in be “ half o f his new metres that it may be pardoned in him that he has endeavoured to adapt to new sentiments new metres

of O ld instead conforming to the ones , and that he has thus done for Italian letters what Klopstock did for the Germans , and what Catullus and Horace did in bringing into Latin use ” the forms of the Eolian lyric .

uce e ime 1 8 8 In the N R ( 7) are three Hellenic Odes , under “ of the titles Primavere Elleniche , written in three the o f ancient metres , the beauty which would be lost by trans lation into any language less melodious and sympathetic than the Italian . We give a few l ines from each

I E I A . O L

in a b maio b ido n n a L , ru tur i cli , ' N ell aer geli do mo n ta la sera ' E a me n an ima fi o risce O n a ell , Li ,

La p rimavera.

II . D O R I CA

M uo ro n o gli altri dii di Greci a i n umi ' N o n stan n o o ccas o ci do rrn o n n e matern i ' ‘ o n i e n e ho o a mo n i fiumi Tr ch ri , s p r i ti , , I ma n ri eter i . Giosue C arduee i 1 9

A Cristo in facci a irrigidi n e i marmi I I puro fi o r di lo r b ellezze ign ude N e i am 0 n a a so l n e i a m c e , Li , sp ir c r e L o r io v n tu g e de .

I II A LE S S AN D R I N A .

n o a o o n d E o a Lu gi , s vi , p r f‘ i ; li Cetra n o n rese p iti do lci gemiti M ai n e i S i mo lli sp irti , D i Lesb o un di tra i mirti .

The second o f these examples demands translation as exhib iting perhaps more forcibly than any others we could select the boldness with which Carducci asserts the survival o f the Hellenic spirit in the love of nature as we ll as in art and liter o f ature , despite the contrary influences ascetic Christianity

h d di b ut o o f T e o ther go s may e . th se Greece N o n n o in an n o o d setti gk w they sleep cie t w s , I n fl o o n mo n a n an d am wers , up the u t i s , the stre s , a A n d etern al se s .

! I n a o f C ri in ma b a d an d fi rm f ce h st , r le h r , The p ure fl o wer o f their n aked b e auty glo ws ; I n o n 0 n a an d a o n in o n s gs , Li , l e s gs ,

Breathes their en dless yo uth .

The reader is also here referred to the Invocation . [V]

From this glance at the classic is so distinct “ ’ Carducci s E6 a feature in poems , we proceed examine the - — - - II EI rSIibstan ce feeling and I , and which will be found to be n o less Hellenic than the metres t t which clo he them . No hing could stand i n stronger con l of h o f s trast with the melancho y the romantic sc ool poet , or with the subjective thoughtfulness and austere introspection

’ I s there an allusio n he re to Michae l A n ge lo s Chri st in the Church of S an ta Maria S o p ra Min erva at R o me ! Giosué C arducei

of of the Christian , than the unfettered outbursts song in

e Of the o O f of o f b o d prais j y living, the delights love and o f ily pleasure, and of the sensuous worship beautiful form , which we find i n the poems “Sun and Love ” [VI] and the ” VI I hymn To Aurora . [ ] rThe latter has i n it the freshness and splendour of morn V in g mists rising among the mountains and catching the rosy h” o f kisses of the sun . Equally beautiful but full the tran quillity o f evening is the R uit Hora from the Odi B arbare of

1 8 77. [VIII] N o o n e will fai l to be struck with the beauty of the fig of ure in the last stanza this poem , nor with the picturesque “ ” o f force of the green and silent solitudes the first, a near approach to the celebrated and boldly original conception o f “ silen o verde m on e o f a gi , a green silence , which for s the “ ” many rare and beautiful gems o f the sonnet To the Ox . [ I XI As an example of a purely Ho meresque power o f descrip m o f tion and colouring , and at the same ti e an intense sym pathy with nature and exquisite responsiveness to every thrill f o f its l i e , this sonnet stands at the summit all that Car

ducci has written , if indeed it has its rival anywhere in the o ur poetry of century . The desire to produce in English a suggestion at l east o f the broad and restful tone gi ven by the metre and rhythm o f the original has induced me to attempt

a metrical and rhymed translation , even at the inevitable cost f ’ o a strict fidelity to the author s every word , and in such

a poem to lose a word is to lose much . Nothing but the

- - original can present the sweet , ever fresh , and sense reviving

picture painted in this truly marvellous sonnet . The unusual and al most grotesque epithet of the opening phrase will be pardoned in View of the singular harmony and fitness of the

original . We know not where else to look for such vivid examples Giosue Carducci 2 1 as Carducci affords us of a purely objective and sensuous sympathy with nature , as distinguished from the romantic , reflective mood which nature awakens in the more senti f mental school o poets . We feel that this strong and bril

' ure l Gre ek liant obj ectivity is something p y and pagan , as con traSte d with the an alysI s of emotions and thoughts Which n e occupies so large a place I n Christian writing . N O o is better aware o f the existence o f th is contrast than Carducci . — of himself. For the clear love o f nature that boon youth before the shadows o f anxious care began to darken the mind , or the queryings of philosophy , the conflicts of doubt , — and the stings o f conscience to torment it for this happy revelling of mere animal life in the world where the sun o f to shines , the soul the poet never ceases yearn and cry o ut of . The consciousness of the opposite , of a world thought , o f of co n care , and conscience ever frowning in sheer stern trast from the strongholds o f the present life and the opin ions o f men - this is yyhat W fi ve of these oe ms mo ral into many _ p , and adds greatly to their , t the o e tr of that is , thei r human in erest . For p y mere animal life , if such were poetry , however bl issful the life it describes , would still n ot be interesting . Something of this pathos appears in the poem To Phoebus ” X Apollo , [ ] where the struggle of the ancient with the present sentiments of the human soul is depicted . It will i interest the reader to kn owthat at the time this poem was

of uven ilia written (it appeared in Book I I . the j ) the author had not broken so entirely with the conventional thought of his time and people but that he could consent to write a lauda s irituale X fo r o f or us D omin i p [ I] a procession the C p , o f Guin tin i and a hymn for the Feast the Blessed Diana , pro tectress o f V Santa Maria a Monti in the lower aldarno .

' When called by the U mta C altolica to account for this sudden transformation of the hymn - writer into the odist o f Ph oebus 2 2 Giosue C ardue ei

Apollo , Carducci replied by reminding his clerical critics that even in his nineteenth year he was given to writing parodies o f o f sacred hymns , and he further Offers by way very doubt t ful apology the explanation that , being invited by cer ain priests who knew o f h is rhyming ability to compo se verses “ fo r their feasts , the thought came into his head , being in those days deeply interested in Horace and the thirteenth

n ot f o rm century writers , to show that faith does a fect the f o o n e H ; f p oetry , and that therefore without any faith at all o f of W mh ’ v gi ht reproduce entirely the forms the blessed Iaudists

the thirteenth century . I undertook the task as if it were a ” wager . I n the lines o f the poem To P baebas Apollo there is traceable o f a romantic melancholy , the faint remnant the impression left m “ by those writers through who , says Carducci , I mounted ”

to . the ancients , and dwelt with Dante and Petrarch , viz , lfi A e ri s . , Parini , Monti , Fo colo , and Leopardi He has not yet

broken entirely with subj ective reflection and its gloom , and entrusted himself to the life which the senses real ize at the

- present moment as the whole of human well being . This sen time n t becomes more strongly pronounced in the later poems , where not even a regret for the past is allowed to enter to dis of tract the worship the present , radiant with its divine splen

dour and bounty . The one thought that can cast a shadow is the thought o f death ; but this is n ot at all to be ide n ti fi ed with Christian seriousness in reflecting o n the world to ’ of n o t of come . The poet s fear death is that a j udgment , or

a punishment for sins here committed , and hence it is not associated with any idea of the responsibility o f the present o r of hour , the amending of life and character in the present of conduct . The only fear death here depicted is a horror of o f o f of the absence life , and hence the absence the delights o f m f f o f . o o o life It is the fear a vast dreary vacuu , c ld , o f o f darkness , nothingness . The moral effect such a fear is Giosue Carducci 23

only that of enhancing the value o f the sensual joys of the use o f present life , the of the body for the utmost pleasure

that can be got by means Of it . This more than pagan materialism finds its bold expression in the lines from the “ ” d a e l on e O i B arb r . X a ba entitled Outside the Certosa [ II] I II studying the religious o r theological tendency o f Car ’ ducci s muse , it is necessary to bear in m ind constantly the o f inherent national blindness the Hellenic and , in equal if

not greater degree , the Latin mind to what we may call a o f f spiritual conception li e , its duties , and its destiny . But in addition to this bl indness towards the spiritual elements o r substance o f Christianity there is felt i n every renascent Hel lenie instinct a Violent and unrelenting hostility towards that a scetic form and practice which , although in no true sense

en e ral Christian , the greater religious orders and the g disci pline o f the Roman Church have succeeded in compelling mo rtificatio n Christianity to wear . The of nature , the con

demn atio n of n o t all worldly and corporeal del ights , in thei r

abuse , but in their essential and orderly use, the dishonour ing o f the body in regarding its beauty as only an incentive o f to sin , and in making a virtue ugliness , squalor , and — physical weakness these things have the offensiveness of deadly sins to the sensuous consciousness o f minds of the

Hellenic type . To spiritual Christianity Carducci is not ad — verse because it I s spi ritual as such it is still compara — tively an unknown element to Italian minds but because it is foreign to the national insti nct ; because it came in

with the emperors , and so it is indissolubly associated with r foreign rule and Oppression . It i s the Gothic o Teutonic infusion in the Italian people that has kept alive whatever there is of spiritual life i n the Christianity that has been im

po sed Ou them by the Roman Church . The other elements of Romanism are only a sensuous cul t o f beautiful and imposing o n o n e forms in ritual , music , and architecture the hand ; 2 4 Giosue C arduce i

on and the other a stern , uncompromising asceticism , which in spi rit is the direct contradiction of the former . While the o f principle asceticism was maintained in theory, the sincerity ‘ o f its votaries gradually came to be believed in by no o n e ; the only phase o f the church that seized hold of the sym pathie swand affections of the people was the pagan element in its orship and its festivals ; and seeing these , the popes were wise enough to foster this spirit and cater in the most o f liberal measure to its indulgence , as the surest means I n maintaining thei r hold on the popular devotion . the

- m ever widening antagonis between the spi rit and the flesh , between the subjective conception o f Christianity o n the o n e hand , as represented by the Teutonic race and the empire , O o n and the sensuous and bjective the other , as represented by the Italic race and the pope , may we not discern the reason o f why the Italian people , in the lowest depths their sensual corruption , were largely and powerfully Guelph in their m w o f sy pathies , and why the exiled and lonely riter the D icin a C ommedia was a Ghibelline ! I t is at least in the an tagon ism o f principles as essentially native c ersws foreign that ’ we must find the explanation of the cooling of Carducci s of m ardour towards the revered master his early use , even while the Old spell of the latter is still felt to be as irresistible s o f as ever . Thi double attitude reverence and aversion we have already seen neatly portrayed in the reference Carducci makes i n the autobiograph ic al notes given above to Dante as the great accuser o f the Middle Ages who first sounded the ” fo r of mo signal the reaction dern thought , with the added “ remark that the signal being sounded from a Gothic cam ” n ile o m O pa detracted but little fr the grandeur f its i mport . The same contrast o f sentiment finds more distinct expression

V Lecia rac ia XI II in the sonnet on Dante in Book I . Of the G . [ ] But nowhere is the contrast between the Christian sense o f awe in the presence o f the invisible and supernatural and the

2 6 Giosué Cardueci “ Tuscan Virgin rising tran sfigured amid the hymns of

. o o n n o r angels The p et , the contrary , sees neither angels d f emons , but is conscious only o feeling

the co ld twilight T o b e d o to o te i us the s ul , an d then exclaims

rewe ll m d m r D at a S Go : F , e itic the ist ess e h M a still o n n in o mn y c ti ue thy s le rites ,

O far- Off in o f o dim n k g sp irits , wh se shri es n S hut o ut the su .

C rucifi ed M artyr ! M an th o u crucifi e st h i darke n e st wi o o m T e very a r th o u th thy gl . O d a n n d are a n utsi e , the he ve s shi e , the fiel s l ughi g,

A n d fl ash with lo ve .

T he O f d a O d a I o d se e eyes Li i Li i , w ul thee Amo n g the ch o rus o f white shi n i n gvirgi n s Th at dan ce aro un d the altar o f Ap o llo I n the o r sy twili ght ,

am n as P ian ma b amo n the a Gle i g ar r le g l urels , n n an mo n o m an d Fli gi g the sweet e es fr thy h , o o m an d o m the o n J y fr thy eyes , fr thy lip s s g O f a B acch an te ! O D I B AR A R E B . Notwithstanding the bold assertion Of the Hellenic spirit

of n e ve rthe in this and in the greater part his poems , that ,

o do f less , Carducci has not been able to restore his fair g light and beauty , the Phoebus Apollo , to the undisputed sway he held in the ancient mind is evident from the shadows o f o f doubt , fear , and anxious questioning which still darken ’ I n n an z here and there the poet s lines , as in the sonnet f ,

' I n n an z ! XV m o f f [ ] It is here that the stern ele ent tragedy , o f the real tragedy humanity , makes itself felt in this rhap s dist o f o o f m tell o j y and love . It co es to us that to the Giosue Can im al 2 7

I - talian as he is to day life has ceased to be a carnival , and that other sounds than that of the Bacchante ’ s hymn have

gained an entrance , with all their grating discord , to his ear and to silence this intruder will the praises o f Lidia and of ffi o n v h Apollo su ce, be they sung a lyre ne er so armonious and sweet ! In this so nnet is depicted in wonderful imagery the ancient and awful struggle wh ich the sensuous present

life sustains with the question of an eternity lying beyond .

While o ur interest in Carducci is largely owing to the

o f ( character he bears as the poet the Italian people , it would o u be quite erroneous to consider him a popular poet . For p p larit o r y, whether with the court , the school , the masses , he

never aimed , as is evident from his satisfaction at narrowly

- of escaping being made a political poet laureate . Instead

writing down to the level of popular apprehension and taste , he rather places himself hopelessly aloof from the contact of

the masses by his style of writing , which , simple and pure as

it seems to the cultured reader , is nevertheless branded by the n d n ot average Italian as learned a obscure , and suited to the an d ordinary intelligence . As an innovator both in the form

o f i n th e content h is verse , he has still a tedious warfare to wage with a people so conservative as the Italians of old habits and o ld tastes confirmed as these have been by the combined i nfluence of centuries of political and ecclesiastical ’ Carducci s bondage . But writing , springing nevertheless

from a strong instinct , looks only to the people for a final

recognition , even though that has to be obtai ned through the of Ho medium the learned classes at first . wfar he has succeeded in getting this vantage - ground of a general recogn i o f tion and acquiescence on the part the learned , the follow Pan z acchi ing testimony from Enrico , himself a critic and a of to : poet high reputation , may help us conclude I bel ieve that I do n o t exaggerate the importance of Car ducci when I affirm that to him and to his perseverance and 28 Giosue Cardueci steadfast courageous work we owe in great part the poetic revival in Italy . “ of I have great faith , I confess , in the initiative power f w o men strong genius and will , and , to tell the truth , hile it is the fashion o f the day to explain always the individual by the age he lived in , I think it is Often necessary to invert ” the rule , and explain the age by the individual . o n f He goes to show that , indi ferent ali ke to conventional

o laws and public opini n , Carducci always persisted in the ’ “ ” ar l arte constant endeavour to f , to do his art . He defied the critics , and tried to be himself. “ o f Mr . Symonds says the Renaissance that it was a return o f in all sincerity and faith to the glory and gladness nature , ” whether in the world without or in the soul o f man . Car ducci reflects the spirit of the Renaissance in so far as by setting free the national instincts he has made way for the Hellenic reaction in favour of the “glory and the gladness f ” o . the world without He has shown , moreover , how for e i n g to these instincts is Christianity , considered apart from o r the Roman Church , whether in its ascetic in its spiritual f h m . o i aspects But it cannot be said , whatever may have of o f reawak been true the poets the Renaissance , that he has ened or rediscovered “the glory and gladness of nature in ” of man of the soul , and without this the gladness the world without is but a film o f sunshine hiding the darkness of the abyss . Indeed , if the soul and not the senses be addressed , we q uestion whether beneath all the Dionysian splendours and ’ jollity of Carducci s verses there be not discernible a gloom f r more real than that of Leopardi . Even o Italy the day is past when Hellenism can fi ll the place of Christianity ; the soul craves a substance for which mere beauty of form , w art o r l hether in intellect , , nature , is a poor and hol ow sub stitute n o t m ; and to revive the poetry alone , but the hu anity o f the nation , a force is needed greater and higher than that to be got by the restoration of either dead Pan o r Apollo . CARDUCCI

A N D THE CLASS IC RE ALI SM

O O U RN I N G on e en sion J autumn in a quiet p at Lugano ,

in - I came contact with a fellow boarder , who , not withstanding he bore the title of a Sicilian count of

- o n very high sounding name , proved acquaintance to be a man of serious literary taste and n ot above accepting pecu m iary compensation for the products o f his pen . He was engaged at that time in translating into the Italian

- o f a well known English classic , and was in the habit appeal ing to me occasionally fo r my judgment as to the accuracy of of o r his interpretation an English word phrase . This led to pleasant interviews o n the literary art i n general . It was one day when the conversation turned on the ex

of of treme materialism certain scientific writers the day , and

o n Man te az z a of especially g Florence , whose grossness in treating of the human passions has called forth expressions of a disgust from It lians , as well as others , that my Sicilian friend “ quietly remarked , We Italians can never allow the holy — Trine to be destroyed the True , the Good , the Beautiful . It is not enough that a writer tell the facts as they are ; n o r that his purpose be a useful on e ; there must be the 2 9 Giosn e C arduee i

o r element of beauty also i n his work , the Italians will not m accept it ; and the ugly , the monstrous , and defor ed the ” Italians will not endure . I thought herein he proved his lineage from a stock Older than even his family title — that old race o f the land where alon e lE tn a Theocritus sang as if for beauty , and whose cherishes still her deep- down fires uncooled and untamed by modern as by ancient contrivances o f man .

It is this presence o f the love of the beautiful that every m where acco panies the Greek race and their descendants , and ll imparts what we may ca the Hel lenic instinct of form . And in this sense o f form born o f the love o f beauty lies the of m o f secret the im ortal art the Greeks , whether as presented in sculpture , architecture , painting , or letters . The survival of a certain Hellenic religious feeling in the Italian people after centuries of a superimposed Christianity has already been treated of in the previous essay . I desire here to speak of Carducci as affording an example — perhaps o n e — of among many , but I know none better the restoration of love o f the Greek form to modern letters , and so as illus in m trat g what we may designate as the classic realis . N O term has been more abused of late years than this word o f realism . Become the watchword schools of realists i n o f every branch art and literature, it has been reduced at last to a service as empty of meaning as was ever the vaguest idealism empty o f reality . The tendency o f the age has been unquestionably o n e of ultimation ; everything presses i nto the plane o f outermost effect . We have seemed to be no more satisfied with the contemplation of intangible ideals we rest content only with “ what hand can touch and eye rest upon . The power in ” ultimates is the display Of force characteristic of this age f o the world . The forces physical and mental have been Giosue Carduee i 3 1

: always there it has taken a time like the present, an age o f inventive frenzy filled with a yearning for the doing and

o f trying things long dreamt of, to give vent to these hidden forces .

' se ekin ex ressio n o f This tendency to ultimation , the g p in m m ost emotions and conceptions in material e bodiments , has

o f late o f characterized years every form mental activity . Religion exemplifies it in the i mpatience the people ex hib it at fine analyses o f doctrines and laborious attempts

- at creed patching , at the same time that they are ready to engage in schemes o f benevolence and social reform un paral f leled in the history o the past . They would fain substitute a religion o f doing for a rel igion of believing ; and so impa tient are they o f the restrictions o f dogma that they resent the! o r o f o r inquiry into quality inward motive the doing , m f so even into its oral e fect in the long run , only some “ ” good work be done and done quickly . We see the same tendency in music and the drama won de rfully illustrated in the whole conception and eff ort o f the

Wagnerian school . Expression is everything . The question — s is not Is the thing in itself noble , but is the expre sion ! Of it complete , unhindered by previous conventionalities ls o r the nothing kept back , left to i magination , but every

o of thing , rather , brought out into the actual ity of s und , ! color , of l iving performers , and material accessories

To ur ue n ief of The Ibsen drama , the g and Tolstoi school o f Z novelists , not to speak ola and his followers in France, V I writers like Capuana and erga in taly , and , although in a f quite di ferent vein , Howells among novelists and Whitman among poets in America , have aimed chiefly to give a faithful f account o life as it is seen . So me have come dangerously near the asse rtion that by some mysterious law the bo ld doing ennobles even a commonplace motive , and that a regard for truth is enough whether there be any beauty behind it or not . 3 2 Giosue Cardueei

The power realised in full and free expression is o n e of the

o most exquisite delights known to man . We o f a n rthern

o f o ur race who , according to the saying French neighbor , “ ” o ur O take pleasures sadly , do so because f a hereditary

o f f conviction the sanctity o the unexpressed . We have therefore been slowest in arriving at these efforts towards

o f realism , or the untrammelled giving forth the inward self into outward embodiment . That pure externalism of the southern or Greek nature which sought its highest satisfaction

o f in a visible embodiment the divine in art , and which dis tin uishe s g still the Roman from the Saxon religious nature , has been regarded as verging on the sinful . It is not strange that a tendency so long suppressed when once set free should o r o f rush even into lawless extremes , and that an age school writers tasting the delights o f this liberty for the first time S hould be loth to resign it and be ready rather to sacrifice all to its further extension . It is quite in accordance with this theory that puritan America should have given birth to W all Walt hitman , who , with his lawlessness , is in many m respects the most of a Greek that odern literature can show . To what extremes this delight has sought indulgence is shown not more plainly in Zola and his school above men tio n ed than in the whole contemporary school o f French pic i to r al . we art see here how form , as expression , indulged fo r o wn in its sake , apart from a due consideration of the m substance within the form , becomes itself onstrous and m l vicious . This is the essentially i mora element in art

of m o r o f e the licentious worship for , external shap , regard f less o an internal soul o r motive . “ : o f When the realist says With the motive of nature ,

o f man u society , , I have nothing to do ; it is eno gh if I ” portray faithfully his conduct , he thereby advertises the

n o t o f . fact that he is an artist , but a kind moral photographer He falls short Of being an artist in just the degree in which

3 4 Giosue Carduce i o f n ot o r unity is form , but shape, an artificial cast made to resemble the living thing , but having no life within it . Art is thus the form that grows from within , while shape is but the impression mechanically i mposed on passive and lifeless m of aterial from without . The modern French school realists in art are the fittest examples of this substitution o f shape for

f - o . form , and so pseudo realism They have given us corpses , m o r . whether physical oral , and called them human beings

- - They have preferred the charnel house , the dissecting room , o r of the field carnage , as the subjects i n which to dis play most effectively their realism . The more revolting the subject , the more hideously exact the representation , the more credit was claimed for the artist . In literature the to case was parallel . Nothing so vile but it was be admired for its faithfulness in representation . The inner motive , the

o r moral purpo se of the writing the painting , was not only n o t there , but the producer scorned the judgment that would f r o r o f o . look it Never was religion , the sentiment reverence ’ for the spiritual as the world s idea, so manifestly wanting as of in these recent French materialists . The abjuring the romantic and the ideal has gone so far as to extinguish the m human ele ent , and so we find in these schools skilfully painted bodies and an almost matchless power o f expression ; ! but , after all , how little is expressed ’ Compare a Greek statue o f Phidias s ti me with the latest

o f production of a Parisian studio . Both are alike hard , col o le ss n o t o n e ur , senseless marble ; but can we see in the o f o d breathing a g , while in the other we , at the most , study with a critical vision the outlines of a human animal ! Reality is not reached by the negative process o f taking away conventional guises and concealments ; and yet modern artists and writers have alike thought to get at truth in this

. m way But the nude is not the ore real for being nude . o n The reality of an object depends what is within it , and Giosue C ardueci 3 5

o n o r n ot o n anything that men put take away from it . How many writers of late years have been deluding them selves with the idea that if o n e can only succeed in avoiding everything like a moral purpose , or even interesting situa o f tions, and reveal what they call the bare facts experience, o n e may thereby attain to the real ! As if ever art existed except in the discovering of unity , the interpretation of pur pose , and in the suggesting of that which is interesting to the human heart ! m The emptiness Of this kind of realis , which is as naked o f O w1tho ut soul within as f garments , is proved by the reaction that is already setting in i n France , where mate ri l o a ism has made its b ldest claims in the domain of art . Not only in art is there a strongmovement fo r restoring the lost

o f elements romance and piety , leading to a religious severity

m o f - al ost like that the pre Raphaelites , but in literature there is a similar protest against the degradation of the real m of . . to the plane ere soulless matter M Paul Bourget , who has been through all phases of French expression and knows its extremes , gives voice to this reaction in the following “ ’ ” passage from his Sensations d ltalie ’ o n t vu dab o rd e t Sans doute , les grands peintres avant ’ e e o n t é é race tout l tre vivant ; mais dans cet tre , ils d gag la e t n e déméle r ils pouvaient pas la sentir, cette race , sans ’ ’ l o b scur é s a ite Ve e é id al qui g en elle , qui g te dans les cr atures ’ é é - e t co risub stan tie l inf rieures , ignor d elles m mes e cependant a leur sang . La langueur e t la robustesse a la fois de ce pays

mon ta hes le fi evre le de g dont pied baigne dans la , mysticisme ’ de dA ssise e t des compatriotes Saint Francois leur sauvagerie , ’ la mélancol ie songeuse prise devant l immob ile sommeil des ’ t é é le é b e e lacs , ous ces traits labor s par travail s culaire de l r ’ ’ le Péru in é a é u un dite , g les a d g g s plus nettement q autre , ’ ’ mais il n a eu qu a les dégager . Sa divination instinctive les ’ ’ - e a reconnus , sans peut tre qu il s en rendit compte, dans des 36 Giosue C arduee i

e coupes de joues , des nuances de prunelles , des airs de t te . ’ in te r retatio n e t é C est la , dans cette p a la fois so‘umise g niale , é é o iI ame que r side la v ritable copie de la nature tout est , e e t — me m me surtout la forme , ame qui se cherche , qui se ’ co n n ait s avilit e e t parfois , qui , mais une ame tout de m me ’ ’ ” n e e e qui se r v le qu a l ame .

A Frenchman of to- day become an admirer o f Perugino ! m of A tendency to realis , unlike that French art in subject , m but not unlike in ethod , is that which is exhibited in Eng land in the recent religious novelists of the class headed by “ ” f the authoress of Robert Elsmere . Here , again , the e fort has been to get at the real by stripping o ff conventional re li ious g admissions , pretensions , and errors , and depicting a moral basis of conduct which can exist independently o f creed

. o and church The result has been disapp inting , because a creed incapable o f perversion or corruption becomes as life less and as powerless a factor in human character- building as is the multiplication table ; and without a miraculous in car of nation Deity as its basis and its imperative authority , the o f whole system Christian ethics , when thus reduced to a ’ scientific conclusion or to an invention of man s individual

D o b e ss the r a a n e s sawfirs an d b e fo e all n s h e t e man u tl g t p i t r , t r thi g , hu b e n b ut in s b e n e sawthe a e an d he o u d n o s e n h t d t e a e i g; thi i g th y r c , t y c l i c r r c t o d se n a n the a e ideal s r e s in e x s s e e n in wi h ut i g gi g v gu which t uggl it, which i t v n fe o e a e s n kn o n to e mse e s an d e t on s b s an a t e i ri r cr tur , u w th lv y c u t ti l wi h th ir T he an an at the same me the s re n o f s an o f n b o o d. I o d d mo l gu r , ti , t gth thi l u ta n s ose fe e are b a e d b the a e s o f fe e - b e e din ma she s the i , wh t th y w t r v r r g r , m f F an s o f s h m s s an d the dn e ss o f the o m a o s o S t. A ss t e y tici wil c p tri t r ci i i, dre amy me lan cho ly in sp ire db y the co n te mplatio n o f S le e p in g lake s all tho se a s e ab o a e d b the o rk n o f e e d o e n e s P e n o saw tr it , l r t y w i g h r ity thr ugh c turi , rugi m H mo e C e a an an o n e e se b ut he had o n to de e e . e d n e d r l rly th y l , ly t ct th ivi e m n s n e in the o t n e o f the C e e k the o o r o f the e e the n th i ti ctiv ly u li h , c l u y , tur m n m O f the e ad. I is in t s n e e a on at o n e b e a d s a e h t hi i t rp r t ti , c hu l y p th tic, ha the e ab e mita o n o f n a re o n s s s in h all is so e e n an d t t v rit l i ti tu c i t , w ich ul, v , ab o e all the o m— a so se e ks se d s u se s se at me s an d v f r ul which it lf, i g i it lf ti e e n deb ase s se b ut a so n e e e e ss an d o n e ha e ea s se o n to v it lf, ul v rth l t t r v l it lf ly " the soul . Giosue Cardn ce i 3 7

to fl moral sense , loses not only its power in uence morally , “ ” but even to interest other minds . The real basis of religion all thus arrived at is found to be no religion at , but only the private opinion o f this authoress as to what is good and

'

right , with every divine and therefore every universal and obligatory element i n it left o ut.

" of i I have spoken indiscriminately , above , the realists n , o ur modern l iterature as all subject to the temptation to 5 satisfied with photographic imitations of nature rather than with a reality created from their apprehension o f its ideal form . The end sought for is faithfulness in expression , and the danger is that of making subordinate to this the substance of all what is expressed . But among these writers there are degrees of approach to the genuine realism which undoubt e dl e o f y, lik the art the Greeks , is a thing that can never die , and which , even if for a long interval set aside , is sure to return again to its rightful place as the only true form of expression . e of Among the various aspi rants to the titl realist, we have no more interesting examples than in o ur o wn Howells of of and Whitman , both being avowed prophets this school writing . In Whitman we see a generous nature run away f with by the passion o expression . His words are heaped

- l . o f ike sand dunes There is a sound roaring waves, but too o n the landscape is , often , the whole , shapeless and ’ wearisome . One feels that there is meaning in the poet s m ind , but the expression is excessive , and so without form . The delight of ultimation has become a f renz y o f word- piling

- ex e o r word inventing . The disappointment is like that p rie n ced o n seeing a piece of sculpture which reveals a bold and vigorous design with magni ficent anatomy and muscular strength , but which has a weak l ine i n the face . It just falls short of being art . Giosué Carducci

With Howells the charm o f his realism lies in the subtlety f m o f o . his concealment it The deep oral purpose which , like a strong , i rresistible current, underlies his recent and more serious writing , is all the more potent because it is not “ ” pointed ; and the reader is allowed to indulge , as if with the author himself, in the little delusion that this is only the ordinary superficial aspect of an every - day world which is being described , and that things do thus merely happen as o r they happen , without design reason . So perfect is the form and so true to nature that , with the author , we keep up , too , the little deception , that it is with the form itself that we are pleased , and that this constitutes the real ism of which the author is so ardent an advocate . Meanwhile we learn , all in when the story is ended , that this realism was formed o f with a soul moral and divine purpose , and that this is all that is real in it as in anything e lse .

To distinguish from the pseudo- realism o f matter the

- genuine realism that is soul informed , I do not know a better name for the latter than the Classic Realism . I mean by this ' so methin g as far remote as possible from the classic formalism of the age of Pope and Dryden , as remote indeed as form is from formalism . For in that period it was neither truth to nature nor truth to the imagination that was aimed at in expression , but rather a cold and rigid conformity to the rules of correct writing as found in the recognized stan “ ” o t dards . Classic hence g to mean merely according to the standards . But by a Classic Realism we will certainly understand that effor t to Obtain a form o f expression which o f recognizes both the internal and the external reality things , and is able to combine both in o n e ultimation like the soul and body that make the one man . The subjectivity o f the Saxon mind and a large inheritance o f both the classic fo rmalism and the romanticism of former Giosue Carducci 39 periods of English literature have prevented our English writers from attaining that spontaneous realism which was native to the Hellenic mind ; and yet they have the gift to recognise an d interpret it when found . This did Tennyson when he chose for translation the following lines closing the Eighth Book of the “Iliad ”

As when in heave n the stars ab o ut the mo o n o o b a n all wn d are a d L k e utiful , whe the i s l i , A n d o m o ut an d n a every height c es , jutti gp e k , A n d a an d imm a ab a n v lley , the e sur le he ve s Bre ak Op en to their hi ghest ; an d all the stars S n an d d add n in a hi e , the shepher gl e s his he rt S O man a b n the i an d am , y fire etwee sh p s stre O X an b a d b o o o f o f thus l ze ef re the t wers Tr y , A tho usan d o n the p l ai n an d clo se b y each S at fifty in the b laze o f b urn i n gfire A n d am in o d n a n o o od , ch p gg l e gr i , the h rses st ,

H a d b a o ai n fo r da n . r y their ch ri ts , w ti g the w

The same vision into the charmed world of the classic real ism had Keats when he wrote his sonnet “On First Looking ’ ” of into Chapman s Homer , and put a whole age ecstatic de ‘ light into these matchless l ines

Oft o f o n e wide ex p an se had I b e e n to ld Th at deep - b ro wed H o mer ruled as his demesn e ! e t did I n ever b reathe its p ure seren e 1311 I heard Ch ap man sp eak o ut lo ud an d b o ld T hen fe lt I like so me watcher o f the skies When a n e wp lan et swi ms i n to his ke n O o Co n a r like st ut rtez whe , with e gle eyes , — H e st ared at the P acific an d all his me n ' Lo ok d at e ach o ther with a wildsurmise

S n o n a a in D a n . ile t , up pe k rie

Listen to Theocritus describing in most realistic language of ho the Joys Peace . Notice whe does not so much as men 40 Giosue Cardueei

tion any emotion , but awakens it by his faithful description of the objective world :

A n d o h ! a m d an d a n n mb d th t they i ght till rich fiel s , th t u u ere S an d fat m b l a i o a n an d a heep i ght e t cheer ly thr ugh the p l i s , th t o x n o m n in d to a o d o n a b e , c i g her s the st lls , sh ul urge the tr veller y A n d o h ! a a o an d m b e b o n u fo r twili ght . th t the f ll w l s ight r ke p o n n ada n o n his a d s wi g, whe the cic , sitti g tree , w tches the shep her in the o p en day an d chirp s o n the to p mo st sp ray ; th at sp iders may d a fi n e b o ma a a m an d n o t n n am o f r w their we s ver rti l r s , eve the e

- a d d XV I the b attle cry b e he r . [ I yl

Keats has felt the same appeal of nature to human sym m o f pathy in all the humblest for s life , and has expressed it in his sonnet on the “Grasshopper and the Cricket

T he o o f a n d ad p etry e rth is ever e . n all the b d are a n the ho t sun Whe ir s f i t with , A n d d in o o n a o will run hi e c li g trees , v ice Fro m hedge to hedge ab o ut the n e w- mo w n mead ' — Th at is the grassh o pp er s he t akes the lead I n summer lu x ury he has n ever do n e d fo r n d o ut wi fun With his eli ghts , , whe tire th , H e at a b n a o m a rests e se e e th s e p le san t weed. T he p o etry o f e arth is ce asin g n ever O n a lo n e n n n wn the o wi ter eve i g, he fr st H as o a n o m o wr ught sile ce , fr the st ve there shrills ’ T he o n in a m n a n cricket s s g, w r th i cre si gever , A n d m to o n e in d o n a o see s r wsi ess h lf l st , ' a o 5 amo n o m a The gr ssh p p er g s e gr ssy hills .

e This is realism , but a truly classic r al ism it is earth , but “ o f the poetry earth . Probably Whitman has here and there approached as nearly as any English writer to this pure realism , and, when he has not allowed his del ight in words to outrun his in ward conception , he has given us pictures possessing much o f o f the vivid obj ectivity the Greek realists . Compare with

Giosn e C arducci

o m present p pularity to the char of novelty . But , novel as

re - his style may seem , it is but the discovered secret of all

of true art, the realism that is the ultimation the soul . That Goethe was a real ist in this sense is shown by the fact that where the emotion was deepest and the moral sub o f m stance his writing the ost intense and unmistakable , the — form was purely objective and classic dealing with the ’ m o f - si plest and commonest the world s every day material , o r o r and indulging in l ittle no reflection introspection .

H erman n un d D oro thea Such is he in the , at once the most

o f o O f Teutonic and the most Hellenic modern p ems . this Professor Dowden says in a recent essay “Goethe never attempted to transform himself into a C re ek o n for ; the contrary , it seemed to him essential the object which he had in View that he should remain a Ger it o f man , since was from the alliance the Teutonic genius with the genius of Greece that he hoped f o r the bi rth o f the of ardent child Euphorion . And in the representative poem

Herman n an el D o rotbea this period , , if Goethe is more than elsewhere a Greek in the bright purity of his art and its fine

o f simplicity outline , here also more than elsewhere in the ” body of thought and feeling he is a German of the Germans .

Coming now to study Carducci as a poet who more per

ctl y than any other living , perhaps , reflects the classic real

o f m m his Hellenic literary ancestry , I desire to e phasise as a point o f peculiar interest the fact that the religious ele ment which I have spoken of above as the most essential o n e art in all is here not Christian , but avowedly pagan ; ’ Carducci s but that , as such , it supplies that inward essence to poems that gives them reality . There is all the difference imaginable between the description of landscape in his poem o n the peninsula o f Sermione [XVI] and that o f our modern

’

e F n F n z ldl R v iewA u . 1 8 1 . o e s e ds wS e . ort e G th ri hip ith chill r g y , g , 9 Giosue Carducci 43 writers who think to have outgrown Christianity and see no suggestion o f supernatural presence o r influence in the world

himself a around them . Were Carducci believer in the present

o f existence the Gods of Greece , he could hardly have infused

' a more intense life into his writing than he has done by the

r o f continually suggested p esence the happy gods , sirens , and m nymphs of the classic mythology . Our odern poets can use the same mythologic personages in figurative embellish

I II ment o r i n allegoric allusion . Carducci they are real pres “ s fo r e n ce such as Wordsworth sighed in his sonnet , The World is too much with us ”

’ Great G o d I d rather b e A a an d in a d o o n p g suckle cree utw r , S o m I an d n o n a an le a ight , st i g this p le s t , H ave glimp ses th at wo uld make me less fo rlo rn H ave si ght o f P ro teus risi n g fro m the se a O r he ar o ld Trito n b lo w his wre ath ed h o rn “ and as Keats felt when writing in his Ode o n a Grecian ” U rn these lines

H a d m o d are b ut o n a d e r el ies sweet , th se u he r A re o o a o n sweeter ; theref re , ye s ft p i p es , p l y ’ N o t to n a e ar b ut mo e n de ar d the se su l , , re , Pip e to the sp irit ditties o f n o to n e :

0 Attic sh ap e Fair attitude I with b rede O ma b me n an d ma d n o o u f r le i e s verwr ght , With fo rest b ran ches an d the tro dden weed Tho u silen t fo rm ! do st te ase us o ut o f th o ught d n As o th eter ity .

The same Vivid realisation of the presence of the super ’ natural in nature under truly pagan forms is seen in Carducci s ” poem TO Aurora [XVII]

o i an d kisse st O o dd o b a o d Th u r sest , G ess , with r sy re th the cl u s ,

Kisse st the dusky p i n n acles o f marb le temp les . 44 Giosue Carducei

In this poem is contrasted in most realistic manner the of Greek sense the sunlight as a divine presence , imparting only joy to men and leading them to seek their delights under the open sky , with the exhausting nightly dissi patio n s o f modern l ife and the hatred of daylight which recalls men to their labour

O urs is a we aried race S adis a 0 A o a n o o o ur o thy f ce , ur r , whe th u risest ver t wers .

dim - am o o ut an d n o t n an n at The street l p s g , , eve gl ci g thee ,

A a - a d o o o o m ma in n a b n a p le f ce tr p g h e i g i gthey h ve ee h p p y .

A n ril at his do o o n d n - m d ab o g y r is p u i gthe ill te p ere l urer , a m to b o n da Cursi n gthe dawn th at o n ly c lls hi b ack his ge .

to of su e rn atural we Next the emotion the p , are struck with the intense sympathy with nature both animate and inanimate , so ’ which gives lively a glow to Carducci s description . The “ sonnet o n The Ox [IX] I have referred to in the previous “ essay ; here I would call attention to that addressed To a XV Horse [ II] , which , if the former can be called Homeric , can equally claim to be Phidian in the pure outline o f the drawing and the Olympic spirit that seems to quiver in the poet ’ s words

0 a fo r m b a an d E an th t thee ight l ze the s s le , Fo r a mn o d P n da n thee gre t hy s the g like i r si g, Fo llo win gthee there up on the waves A lphae an ! Keats proves how deeply he has imbibed the Greek poetic “ ” spirit i n his sonnet on the Grasshopper and the Cricket ; fo r here he expresses the same intense joy of communion with a certain soul in nature which caused Theocritus to never o r tire of singing , having his Sicilian goatherds sing , of the bees that fed the imprisoned Co matas all through the spring m of of ti e , the Oaks that sung the dirges the shepherd ” of she oats of Daphnis , the g feeding on the hill , the young lambs pasturing on the upland fi elds when the spring is on ’ Giosue C araueci

” “ of o n the wane , the white calves browsing the arbutus , “ ” “ ” o f to i the cicada cicada dear , the prattl ng locusts , and “ ” lizards that sleep at midday by the dry stone wall . With the same zest Carducci delights to sing of the “ ” the risin of forests awaking with a cool shiver at g Aurora , “ ” of the garrulous nests that mutter amid the wet leaves in “ of o ff the early dawn , the grey gull far that screams over ” “ the purple sea , the sorrel colt breaking away with high ” “ a d of l ifted mane n neighing in the wind , and the pack ” hounds , wakeful , answering from their kennels . What Mr . Lang says of Theocritus may be as truly said of Carducci “ r r of There is nothing in Wordsworth mo e eal , more full f the incommunicable sense o nature . It is as true to ” o f nature as the statue the native fisherman in the Vatican . [Introduction to Theocritus ] Especially are we aware o f ’ the almost oppressive feeling of nature s Ianguor and sweet ’ “ melancholy o n reading Carducci s poems o n A Dream in ” “ ’ ” Summer [XVIII] and On a Saint Peter s Eve [XIX] . n a Here , indeed , the feeling is more moder th n ancient , but o f the mode expressing it is the same . How like Homer is the picture o f

sun a o re d a o d n d n The cr ss the v p urs esce i g, A n d falli n g i n to the se a like a shield o f b rass n a rin o b o o d d o f war Which shi es w ve g ver the l y fiel , n n mo The n dro p s a d is see n o re .

’ ” the re verse of I It seems like the figure in the liad , where the armed Diome d is described

Fo rth fro m his helm an d shield a fi re - li ght n fl a d a mn a a b i n The she , like utu st r th t r ghtest shi es

When n ewly risen fro m his o cean b ath .

o f And further , when we read the swallows that

o an d o i o o d fl a o n d the W ve rew ve the r cr ke ight r u gutters , While in sh ado ws malari o us the b ro wn sp arro ws were ch atteri n g; 46 Giosue Cardueei and how there comes thro ugh the humid air o n o f a o n di an mo n an d a i d The s g the re p ers , l g, st t , ur ful we r e a line which can only tell its full tale o f tender sadness in the o rigin al :

il c an to de m o i o n o o n an o an o an e ietit r , l g , l t , p i gev le , st c how the sun looks down

like a cycl o p s heavy with wi n e and we are then as suddenly awakened o ut o f o ur delicious ’ reverie by the screaming o f a peacock and a bat s wing graz o ur m ing head, we know that the poetry is real not by its ere accuracy of description , but by the feeling that it awakens as only nature itself could awaken it . “ ” The Summer Dream recalls, in the vividness and deli o f cacy of its landscape and tenderness feeling , perhaps more o f Dante than o f the ancient poets . There is a vision of the mother walking with the poet’ s little brother by the river bank ,

a mo a n in n the h pp y ther w lki g the su light ,

’ which suggests Dante s glimpse o f the Countess Matilda in

- - the daisy sprinkled meadow , described in the twenty eighth “ ” The of - canto of the Purgatory . bells Easter eve are telling from a high tower that

a in o n the mo rro w Christ wo uld rise ga .

From the sea far below comes up the odorous breeze , while

o n its waters fo ur white s ails ro ck sl o wly to an dfro in the sun .

’ The o et s thou m __ p gw the solemn shades o f o n o f Certosa and the flowering banks the Arno , lie at rest

beloved ones . But quickly , with the sudden waking [ the Giosué C arduce z

of from the nap , is dispelled the vision the poet and with it the modern introspective gloom ; these give place to the realism and the day - light contentment of the o ld time

’ Lauretta s joyo us so n gwas rin gin gthro ugh all the ch amb ers ” h B b n d n o am o o d S n o o f W ile ice , e i g ver her fr e , f ll we ile t the w rk d the n ee le .

! gThere is something majestic in the mo ral portraiture o f the ” ' po em on The Mother . [XX] We seem to be looking o n a

colossal bronze figure , in which are blended pure natural joy o f and an instinct of the divine holiness motherhood . The reproach contained in the last verse belongs to the present time of social unrest ; it is hard to convey in Engl ish the full intent o f the subtle phrase

la giustizi a p ia del l avo ro

’ S en sation s dltalie o f Paul Bourget speaks, in his , the simplicity peculiar to the lofty style o f Italian poetry introduced by Dante under which o n e feels the glorious origin of the lan i guage and he quotes , as illustrating this s mplicity , Car ’ “ ” ducci s divine sonnet commencing :

P as a la n a mia o a tra il an o . s ve , s l , p i t

[XXI] On this he remarks The quality of the words in which Roman vigour still of palpitates , the direct force the image , the construction , at o f once flowing and concise , the sentence, give this poetry the charm o f precision which is the distinctive characteristic ” o f R . o f the genius the omans It is at once sober and grand . Surely no better example of such writing could anywhere “ be found than in the poem on The Mother . With what awful severity such a style lends itself to the

of of exposure the corruption and inhumanity society , like

F o f the n ame B e a amiliar con traction trice . 48 Giosue Cardue ei a veritable j uvenal returned to hurl his satire at these modern “ ” . XX times , is shown in the poem on The Carnival [ II]

’ Another phase o f Carducci s genuine realism is the subtle o f o wn art blending with nature , not his personality, but that of great souls of the past who have lived amid the scenes m “ ” described . Of this a fine example is the poe Sermione XV mentioned above . [ I] The peninsula so named , which o f j uts boldly out into the southern bay the Largo di Garda ,

Laeus B en acu m the s of the Romans , is about equidistant fro

o f V Mantua on the south , the birthplace irgil , and from

V o n . erona the east , the birthplace of Catullus Near by is

o n e o f S cali e rs situated of the castles the g , where Dante may have had his abode when taking refuge with that family on 1 1 6 o f his banishment from Florence in 3 . At the extremity of villa of the promontory are still seen the relics the Catullus , o f in which he is supposed to have written many his poems, especially the one beginning

S irmi in sularum ue P e n in sularum, o , q O celle .

- How endeared was the lake to the tender hearted poet, and how its cool and placid shores brought solace to his bosom , ’ o f m tells rent with the passions Ro e s giddy life , Carducci in the song of the Sirens

C o m to n V a ! e us , Qui tus lerius H to o ur o o d n d n a b ut an d ere gr tt s esce still the su r ys , silvery , m o ild as th se o f Cyn thi a. Here the assiduo us tumults th at b urde n thy life b ut resemb le the di an n st t hummi g o f b e e s .

We feel ourselves to be listening for the poet , and would fain with him enjoy the fresh ai r , the soothing calm ,

While Hesp erus o ver the waters b ro aden s his ro sy face . A n d the w aves are l app i n g the sh o re .

50 Giosue Carduce i

’ ducci s own indignation at the literary and political degen f c racy of the present time . Many o them are from among ’ o c the poet s earlier productions , and the changes which have curred since thei r writing make them seem to belong already to a past period when perhaps more than at present his severe reflections o n his country and countrymen were deserved . A foreigner can hardly enter into the bitterness o f Vituperation which finds utterance in such poems as th 05 e “ “ ” XXV o r V of In Sauli Croce [ III] , The oice the Priests

XX X V Alfre ri XX V [ I ] , the sonnet addressed to ittorio [ ] ,

O de I a o a o n mo a a l t l g supre tlet , “ of o f and that to Goldoni , the Terence the Adria but all w call these , hich we may the literary sonnets , have a certain universal value i n that they reflect more than individual feeling . Each poet addressed is identified in some way with ’ woe o f an d the nation s weal or ; and the soul the patriot , no mere dilettante admiration , is what pours forth those fer id v utterances which , in another tongue and to the ear of strangers , will naturally often seem overwrought . No less truly does the soul of the father speak in the beau “ ’ ” tiful verses On my Daughter s Marriage , and the soul of “ manly friendship in that little song At the Table o f a o f Friend , which seems as if it had dropped from the pages Horace like a purple grape from the cluster all odorous with its bloom .

Over all others in stem and majestic portraiture rise those o f verses, both the earlier and later period , in which Carducci treats of Dante and his influence . Nowhere are we more impressed than here with the strange fascination of that man who made thi n gs go o d an d evil to tell their tale thro u gh him the fatal p ro p h et ; Giosue Carducci 5 I

’ against whose‘Gothic sphere Carducci s Hellenic spirit con l tin ual y fretted and rebelled . ! e t h is soul is ever thrilled (see the Sonnet o n the Sixth Centenary o f Dante [XXXIV] ) “ of with awe at the reappearing that mighty Form ,

n o o Ad an ho an d all an d I a a mb d whe sh k the ri s re the l t li tre le ,

’ like a mo rn in gmist D id ma a o n A e n n in ian an d rch l gthe p str , au n ado n a o n an d Gl ci g w the v les either h , Then van ished like the dawn ; “ while in earthly hearts a fear arose, discovering the awful ” of presence a God, and there ,

b o n d a sun b n n where , ey the g tes , the is ur i g,

T h a ad o f war- me n an d e d r ces e , like wise , ' n With jo y s aluted the great so ul s return i g.

The antagonism between the pagan and the Christian re ligious instincts comes to light in all that Carducci writes o f his revered master . Half in anger he chides the awful singer who

C o m do n o m a n b n n H mn S m es w fr he ve ri gi g the y up re e , while upon his brow shines a radi an ce divi n e wh a d in S n o G o a Like his sp ke with i i , because he cared n ot fo r

H o n an d n d a n is po o r c u try the e less strife th t re t its cities .

o f With the splendours the holy kingdom , amid which Dante t of civil s ood , Carducci contrasts the mortal fields war and the wastes deserted and malignant ,

' n o m o n d d a an d d o f d n a o whe ce c es the s u , re ry ull , yi gw rri rs sighs ; Giosue Carducci and yet no commentator seems to become so transformed as Carducci into Dante ’ s own being and manner when contem plating and describing him The poem on Dante , beginning with the words [XXXIII ]

o mb an di n o a V F rte se i ze vell ita , t recalls , in its sta uesq ue strength and supple beauty , Michael ’ “ ” all Angelo s Sleeping Slave . It breathes through with the f ’ spirit of the Italia n Renaissance . I n the narrative o Dante s secret heart- life an d soul - l ife it seems as if we were turning new leaves of La Vita N oc a rather than those o f a nineteenth ’ century critic . N o voice but Dante s seems to speak in lines of o f like these , describing the first awaking the passion love in the youthful poet ’s heart

S n an d n o a o ighi g p e sive , yet with l cks gl w i o n do o m an o h air W th r sy sple ur fr t er , Lo ve made lo n g st ay : A n d such the gen tle thi n gs H e talked to thee with b ashful lip s so sweetly He e n tered all the ch amb ers o f thy heart

Th at n o o n e ev e r kn ew to lo ve like thee .

’ ” cl o f This surely is the intelletto amore Dante himself. Hardly less like Dante is the picture of Beatrice in that

- - o n half playful , half worshipful poem that mysterious per son age [XXXV]

Like o ur Lady fro m he aven S he a b o me p sses ef re , A n an in m n an d e t all so a d n gel see i g, y r e t My mi n d sto pp ed thi n ki n g B to o o at ut l k her , A n d o was at — b ut fo r n the s ul rest , sighi gl sweet and true an echo from Sonnet XXV in

T an to gen tile e tan to o n est a p are Giosue C ardn cei 53 Here Carducci treats Beatrice under the favourite character of the Idea which is to elevate mankind from its rude savagery .

As in Goethe ,

i wib li h un in an D as e wg e e e zieht s h .

N o t a oman b ut I d a w , the e , A m I a n did o ff , which he ve er

Fo r man to study when seeki n g thi n gs o n high .

Nevertheless , we cannot forget the satirical tone in which , in another poem , he contrasts the ideal love of Dante with the passion of a lower kind that found its home in the Greek o f nature , and sings rather of Lalage and Lesbia than this “ ” Angel in seeming .

It is in his poetic power of interpretation that here , as in the poems on nature , Carducci proves himself the true realist . fo r o wn Whatever form he chooses, is the time filled with its life , and speaks from that and no other . I have introduced “ ” X h Lauda S irituale the Hymn to the Redeemer [ I] , t at p , which the poet describes in the passage from his autob iogf raphy quoted in the previous essay as a youthful literary ex

' e rime n t e p , in which he attempted to clothe the spiritual id a o f o f the Christ with the form the pagan triumphal ode . The heroic picture o f the Redeemer o f the world returning” from Battle as a Victor and receiving triumphal honour an d applause, is novel , and not without a high order of beauty . It to seems , indeed , to minds trained modern religious thought , more pagan than Christian ; but o n e may question whether this aspect of Christ as the Hero is not one which the Church ‘ has erroneously overlooked i n her tendency to lay stress o n o f o n the vicarious sacrifice Christ , rather than the actual deliverance wrought for man by Him i n His warfare against the infernal hosts , setting the race thereby spiritually free from bondage . Do we not see here the same attempt to, Giosue C arducci

m present the Christian Rede ption in ancient heroic form , as the Pisan sculptors made when they copied from pagan sar co phagi the figures of their apostles and saints ! It was not the conventional way ; but we feel that they might have done worse .

’ o m Carducci s A few p ems fro youthful period , in which m he indulges in the eaningless melancholy , the passion and ’ in despair , incident to that stage of the poet s growth , I have

troduced too . , as showing that he had his sentimental side

In these he describes his emotions . They are the sonnets

ucen ilia from the j , beginning respectively with the follow ing lines

d i V i ma io la V d U sc a. XXX I 0 questi p ri i i . [ ]

' ' am n V N on so n quell io che giad iche ce e . [XXX II]

P a a la n a mia o a a an o . XXI ss ve , s l , tr il p i t [ ]

As such they are beautiful , but they lack that objectivity and realistic power which is felt in those poems where , as in life ,

n ot . the emotion tells itself, and does need to be described

Odi B arbare title In the , for which I am unable to find a ” better rendering than Barbaric Odes , foreign as it may o f seem to the character these exquisitely finished verses , l have followed the poet ’s choice in om itting to capitalize m the initial words of the lines . Many of these poe s are

of without rhyme , and , for the sake greater faithfulness in

the m l translating , have sometimes discarded both the rhyme and the strict rhythmical form .

F . S .

C . I . 2 A SH NGT N 1 8 . W O , D , June , 9

TO SATAN

To thee my verses ,

Unbridled and daring , 0 Shall mount , Satan ,

King of the banquet .

Away with thy sprinkl ing,

O Priest , and thy droning,

Fo r never shall Satan , 0 Priest , stand behind thee .

See how the rust is Gnawing the mystical

Sword o f St . Michael ; And how the faithful

Wind - plucked archangel Falls into emptiness ! Frozen the thunder in

Hand of Jehovah . 58 Giosue C arcluoei 59

to o r Like pale meteors ,

Planets exhausted , Out o f the fi rmamen t R ain down the angels .

Here in the matter

Which never sleeps ,

o f o m King phen ena ,

o f King all forms ,

! Thou , Satan , livest Thine is the empire Felt i n the dark eyes ’ m Tre ulous flashing ,

Whether their languishing

o r Glances resist , ,

Glittering and tearful , they

Call and invite .

How shine the clusters

’

With happy blood , So that the furious

Jo y may n o t perish !

So that the languishing

Love be restored , And sorrow be banished And love be increased ! 60 Giosué Carduee i

Thy breath , O Satan , My verses inspires When from my bosom The gods l defy

o n tifical Of Kings p , O f Kings inhuman Thine is the lightning that

to Sets minds shaking .

Fo r A riman e thee ,

Adonis, Astarte ;

For thee l ived the marbles,

The pictures , the parchments ,

When the fair Venus Anadiomene Blessed the Ionian

Heavens serene .

For thee were roaring the

o f Forests Lebanon ,

Of the fair Cy prian Lover reborn

Fo r thee rose the chorus ,

Fo r thee raved the dances, For thee the pure shining

of Loves th e virgins, Giosue C ardue ci 6 1

Under the sweet- odoured

o f I dume Palms , Where break in white foam

a The Cypri n waves .

What if the barbarous

Nazarene fury , Fed by the base rites

Of secret feastings ,

Lights sacred torches

To burn down the temples , Scattering abroad The scrolls hieroglyphic !

I n thee find refuge

- The humble roofed plebs , Who have not forgotten

The gods of their household .

Thence comes the power , t Fervid and loving, tha ,

Filling the quick - throbbing

of Bosom woman ,

Turns to the succour

Of nature enfeebled ,

A sorceress pallid , W ith endless care laden . ' Gzosué Carducci

Thou to the trance- holden

Eye of the alchemist , Thou to the view of the

Bigoted mago ,

S howe st the lightning- fl ash Of the new time Shining behind the dark

o f Bars the cloister .

Seeking to fly from thee

- Here in the world l ife , Hides him the gloomy monk

ln t Theban deser s .

O soul that wanderest

Far from the straight way ,

Satan is merciful . See Hélo rsa !

ln vain you wear yourself Thin in rough gown ; I Still murmur the verses O t Maro and Flaccus

Amid the Davidic

Psalmiii g and wailing ; And Delphic figures Close to thy side Giosué Carducci

Rosy , amid the dark

Cowls of the friars ,

Lico rida Enters ,

Enters Glice ra.

Then other images Of days more fair Come to dwell with thee ln thy secret cell .

Lo ! from the pages of

Livy , the Tribunes A ll ardent , the Consuls ,

The crowds tumultuous ,

Awake ; and the fantastic Pride of ltalian

Drives thee , O Monk , Up to the Capitol ;

fl And you , whom the aming

Pyre never melted ,

Conj uring voices ,

Wiclif and Huss,

Send to the broad breeze The cry o f the watchman The age renews itself ; Full is the time ! ” Giosué C arducci Already tremble

The mitres and crowns . Forth from the cloister

Moves the rebellion .

Under his stole , see ,

Fighting and preaching, Brother Girolamo

Savonarola .

Off goes the tunic Of Martin Luther ; Off go the fetters

That bound human thought .

It flashes and lightens ,

Girdled with flame .

Matter , exalt thyself ! Satan has won !

A fair and terrible Monster unchained

Courses the oceans , Courses the earth

Flashing and smoking ,

Like the volcanoes , he

Climbs over mountains ,

Ravages plains,

HOMER

And from the savage Urals to the plain

A new barbarian folk shall send alarms , The coast of Age n o rean Thebes again Be waked with sound of chariots and of arms

’ And Rome shall fall and Tiber s current drai n

The nameless lands of long- deserted farms m But thou , like Hercules , shalt still re ain ,

’ Untouched by fiery Etna s deadly charms ;

And with thy youthful temples laurel - crowned Shalt rise to the eternal Form ’ s embrace Whose unveiled smile all earliest was thine

ulfi n i And till the Alps to g gsea g ve place ,

or a By Latin shore on Ach ean ground , ’ 0 ! Like heaven s sun , shalt thou , Homer , shine

LEVIA GRAVI A . VlRGlL

As when above the heated fields the moon

of Hovers to spread its veil summer frost , The brook between its narrow banks half lost

lo w Glitters in pale light , murmuring its tune ;

The nightingale pours forth her secret boon , Whose strains the lonely traveller accost ; ’ t He sees his dear one s golden tresses ossed , And time forgets in love ’ s entrancing swoon

And the orphaned mother who has grieved in vain Upon the tomb looks to the silent skies

And feels thei r white light on her sorrow shine ;

- o ff Meanwhile the mountains laugh , and the far main , And through the lofty trees a fresh wind sighs :

Such is thy verse to me , Poet divine

LEVIA GRAVIA . INVOCATION TO THE L! RE lf once I cut thee with a trembling hand

oe From Latin bough to Ph bus that belongs ,

So 0 now, Lyre , shalt thou rehearse the songs

Of the Tuscan land .

What consolations fierce to bosoms hard

Of bristling warriors thou wast wont to bring, Or else in peace the soothing verse to sing Of the Lesbian bard

tau hte st V of Thou g them of enus and Love ,

of of And the immortal son Semele ,

’ The Lycian s hair , the glowing majesty

- Of deep bre wed Jove .

to Now , when I strike , comes smiling my side

of Flaccus The spirit , and through choirs divine

Of laurelled nymphs that radiant round me shine ,

Calmly I glide . ' Gzosué Carducci

0 clear to jove and Phoebus ! Sway benignant

’ o ur Which art chief guardian of cities peace , Answer o ur prayers ! and bid the discord cease Of soul s malignant

N JUVE ILIA . SUN AND LOVE

Fleecy and white into the western space Hurry the clouds ; the wet sky laughs Over the market and streets ; and the labour of man

is . hailed by the sun , benign , triumphal

High in the rosy light lifts the cathedral

I ts thousand pinnacles white and its saints o f gold Flashing forth its hosannas ; while all around

- Flutter the wings and the notes of the brown plumed choir ,

So ’ t is when love and its sweet smile dispel The clouds which had so sorely me oppressed ; The sun again arises in my soul With all life ’s holiest ideals renewed

And multiplied , the while each thought becomes

A harmony and every sense a song .

a: P N n o v O E S IE . TO A URORA

kisse st Thou risest and , O Goddess , with rosy breath , the

clouds ,

Kissest of the dusky pinnacles marble temples .

The forests feel thee and with a cool shiver awake ;

in o Up soars the falcon flashing eager j y.

Meanwhile amid the wet leaves mutter the garrulous nests ,

And far off the grey gull screams over the purple sea .

First to delight in thee , down in the laborious plain ,

Are the streams which glisten amid the rustling poplars .

Daringly the sorrel colt breaks away from his feeding,

to - Runs the brooks with high lifted mane , neighing in the

wind .

o f Wakeful answers from the huts the great pack the hounds ,

And the whole valley is filled with the sound of their noisy

barking. ’ ’ 72 Gzosué Carduccz

— m But the man whom thou awakest to l ife consu ing labour, ! 0 ! He , O ancient outh , outh eternal ,

on Still thoughtful admires thee , even as the mountain

The Aryan Fathers adored thee , standing am id their white

O XCl] .

Again upon the wing of the fresh morning flies forth

The hymn which to thee they sang over thei r heaped - up

spears .

“ Shepherdess thou of heaven ! from the stalls o f thy jealous sister Thou loosest the rosy kine and leadest them back to the skies

Thou leadest the rosy kine , and the white herds , and the horses

A svin i With the blond flowing manes dear to the brothers .

Like a youthful bride who goes from her bath to her spouse,

o f Reflecting in her eyes the love him her lover ,

m So dost thou s iling let fall the light garments that veil thee ,

fi And serene to the heavens thy virgin gure reveal .

Flushed thy cheeks, with white breast panting , thou runnest

To of . the sovereign worlds , to the fair flaming Suria

' ‘ 74 Gzosué C arduccz

The heavens bent down . A sweet blush tinged the forest

and the hills,

W . hen thou , O Goddess , didst descend

‘ desce n dedst But thou not ; rather did Cephalus , drawn by

thy kiss ,

Mount , all alert , through the air, fair as a beautiful god ,

o n Mount the amorous winds and amid the sweet odours , While all around were the nuptials of flowers and the mar

riage of streams .

Wet lies upon his neck the heavy tress of gold and the golden quiver

R of er eaches above his white shoulder , held by the belt v

milion .

O fragrant kisses of a goddess among the dews !

’ O ambrosia of love in the world s youth - time !

0 ! Dost thou also love, goddess But ours is a wearied race ;

0 o ur Sad is thy face , Aurora , when thou risest over towers .

The dim street- lamps go o ut ; and without even glancing at

thee ,

- A pale faced troop go home imagining they have been happy .

- Angrily at his door is pounding the ill tempered labourer,

Cursing the dawn that only calls him back to his bondage . ’ Gzosué Carducci 75

f Only the lover , perhaps , fresh from the dreams o the loved

n e o ,

His blood still warm from her kisses , salutes thee with joy ,

Beholds with delight thy face , and feels thy cool breathing upon him “ Then cries , O bear me, Aurora , upon thy swift courser of

flame ,

fi of Bear me up into the elds the stars , that there , looking

down ,

I may behold the earth beneath thy rosy light smiling ,

“ o n e o f Behold my fair in the face the rising day ,

Let fall her black tresses down over her blushing bosom .

D r BAR ARE O B . RU IT HORA

0 green and silent solitudes far from the rumours of men !

s Hither come to meet us true friend divine , O Lidia ,

Wine and love .

0 tell me why the sea far under the flaming Hesperus

Sends such mysterious moanings ; and what songs are these , 0 Lidia , The pines are chanting !

See with what longing the hills stretch their arms to the setting sun The shadow lengthens and holds them ; they seem to be asking 0 ! last kiss , Lidia

D O I BARBARE . THE OX

’ m io b o v c T a o , p

I o x love thee , pious ; a gentle feeling

’ of i s Of vigour and peace thou g v t my heart . ! How solemn , like a monument , thou art

Over wide fertile fields thy calm gaze stealing ,

Unto the yoke with grave contentment kneeling ,

’ To man s quick work thou dost thy strength impart .

He shouts and goads , and answering thy smart,

’ Thou turn st o n him thy pati ent eyes appealing .

s From thy broad nostrils , black and wet , ari e

’ s Thy breath s soft fumes ; and o n the still air Swell ,

’ m . Like happy hymn , thy lowing s ellow strain

I n the grave sweetness of thy tranquil eyes

Of emerald , broad and still reflected dwells A ll the divine green silence of the plain . TO PHCE BUS APOLLO

The sovereign driver Of the ethereal chariot

Whips the fiery wing- footed steeds

A Titan most beautiful .

From the Thessalian valley ,

E ean From the g shores , The vision divine of the pro phets

Hellenic saw thee arise ,

The youthful god most fair ;

R isi ng through the deserted skies ,

Thy feet had wings of fire ,

Thy chariot was a flame ,

And around thee danced In the sphere serene

- The twenty four virgins ,

In colours tawny and bright . 78 Giosué C arducci 79

Didst thou n o t l ive ! Did the ‘ M x o n ian verse never reach thee ! And did Proclus in vain call thee The Love o f the universe !

The inexorable truth With its cold shadow covered

o f Thee , the phantom ages past,

’ Hellas god and mine .

Now , where is the chariot and the golden , Radiant brow of youth ! An unsightly mouldering heap

Gloomily flashing remains .

A Alas , from the usonian lands All the gods are flown ! I n a vast solitude

Thou remainest , my Muse .

I n vain , O Ionian virgin , Thy songs and thy calling o n Homer ;

- Truth , the sallow faced , rises

From her deserts and threatens .

0 A Farewell , Titan pollo , Who governed the rolling year ;

' Alone is left to lead me

Love , the last delusion . 80 Giosué C arducc i

Let us go : i n the acts and the smiles Of my Delia still do the Graces

Reveal themselves , as of old

h s Ce p i us beheld them .

Perish the sober age

That quenches the life i n me , That freezes i n souls Phazb e an The Hellenic song !

E JU V N I LI A .

8 2 Giosué Carducci

Behold the Lord who o f rebelli o us man Suffered Himself the doom

’ o n And payed our ransom with His wheart s blood .

o f He made Himself the fellow our grief,

ur He bore our burden and endured o shame .

o f Black over Him did fall the shadow death . Nor turned the Father to His cry the face

That day when , seeing again the sacred Mount , Came from their tombs The prophets and the saints of Israel !

o f Behold the Isaac the ancient time , W ho bends beneath the sword his gentle neck

u And looks pon his slayer with a smile .

Kneeling to him in all humility . No pity fo r the blooming flower of youth ;

None for that bitter end ,

of Nor for the robbed embraces the mother .

n ow And , His death forever witnessing ,

He brings with Him Divine Humanity , lrradiating all the earth with joy As when the sun dispels the gloomy cloud ; And all the abodes o f woe and that dark land Where dwelt the shadow o f death

He comforts with His presence all divine . ' Gzosué Carducci 83

To Him upon H is throne o f victory

o f Be lifted up the gaze every art , Whom glory like a cloud doth gird around

And love angelical e n co mpasseth. m Fly thither fro the world where grief still sighs ,

Where death still bides and reigns ,

to Fly , O my song , Him who thee deserves ,

And there relate the sorrows of His people

Who , from the good astray , still seek the good ,

fo r Like hart that panteth the cooling stream , Or bird imprisoned fo r its native ai r He from the sphere divine wherein He dwells May send a ray benign

’ To souls perplexed and lost in their l ife s way .

0 Lift , human race , Lift up your minds

And chastened hearts to this most clement King, Who welcomes those who turn to Hi m in faith '

JUVE N ILIA . OUTSIDE THE CERTOSA

The dead are saying : Blessed are ye who walk along the hillsides

of Flooded with the warm rays the golden sun .

5 10 cs Cool murmur the waters through flowery p descending .

Singing are the birds to the verdure , singing the leaves to the

wind .

“ Fo r yo u are smiling the flowers ever new on the earth ; ” Fo r o u m f o . y s ile the stars , the flowers eternal heaven

The dead are saying Gather the flowers , for they too pass away ;

Adore the stars, for they pass never away .

“ Rotted away are the garlands that lay around o ur damp

skulls .

Roses place ye around the tresses golden and black .

. . ! Down here it is cold We are alone Oh , love ye the sun ” of ! Shine , constant star Love , on the life which passes away m O BARBARE . DANTE

O Dante , why is it that I adoring

to Still lift my songs and vows thy stern face , And sunset to the morning grey gives place To find me still thy restless verse exploring !

’ Lucia prays not fo r my poor soul s resting ; Fo r me Matilda tends no sacred fount ;

For me in vain the sacred lovers mount,

’ O er star and star to the eternal soaring .

I hate the Holy Empire , and the crown And sword alike relentless would have riven

’ o n Ol From thy good Frederic o n a s plains .

Empire and Church to ruin have gone down ,

And yet for them thy songs did scale high heaven .

Great Jove is dead . Only the song remains .

LEVIA RAVIA G . IN A GOTHIC CHURCH

They rise aloft, marching in awful file ,

The polished shafts i mmense of marble grey , And in the sacred darkness seem to b e An army o f giants

Who wage a war with the i nvisible ; The silent arches soar and spring apart

t e- I n distant flight , then embrace again

o And dr op o n high .

So in the discord of unhappy men ,

From out their barbarous tumult there go up To God the sighs o f solitary souls

In Him united .

n o Of you I ask God , ye marble shafts , — ! e airy vaults ! I tre mble but I watch

To hear a dainty well - known footstep waken T he so lemn echoes . 8 6 Giosué Carducci 8 7

’T a d is Lidia , and she turns , n , slowly turning ,

s Her tres es full of light reveal themselves , And lo ve is shining from a pale shy face

e il Behind the v . INNANZI , INNANZI

on ! hill On , through dusky shadows up the

o f Stretches the shining level the snow ,

Which yields and creaks each laboured step I go , hill My breath preceding in a vapour c .

Now silent all . There where the clouds stand still

The moon leaps forth into the blank , to throw f An aw ul shadow , a gaunt pine below ,

Of branches crossed and bent in manner ill .

s They eem like the uneasy thought of death . 0 Winter vast , embrace me and quick stay I n icy hold my heart’s tempestuous waves !

For yet that thought , shipwrecked , again draws breath ,

: 0 0 And cries to heaven Night , Winter , say , What are the dead doing down there in thei r graves !

9 0 Giosué C arducci Beneath lies the land like a Titan slain in some desperate

battle , prostrate , but threatening revenge .

But along the curved shores of the bay at the left of the mountain stretch o ut the fair white -arms

o n like unto those of a child who , happy entering the dance , throws to the breeze her hair ,

o ut laughs , and with generous hand deals her flowers right

and left , f and crowns the chie youth with her garland .

Garda there , far below , lifts up her dusky shoulders over the liquid mirror ,

singing the while a saga of cities ancient and buried , and their barbaric kings .

0 of But here , Lalage , whence , through the holy joys the

azure , thou sendest thy soul - glance ;

V to here alerius Catullus moored the wet rocks , of old , his frail pitched canoe , ’ ' Gzosué Carduccz 9 I sat lon through the g days and watched in the waves, phos

ho resce n t p and tremulous , the eyes of his Lesbia ;

of yea , and saw in those waves the changingmoods his

Lesbia ,

erfidio us saw her p smile ,

the while she beguiled with her charms , through darksome

o f haunts the town ,

o f the princely nephews Romulus .

To him from the humid depths sang forth the nymph of the

lake,

i in tus V ! Come to us , (L alerius

“ o ur Here to grottoes descend still the sun rays , but silvery and mild as those o f Cynthia .

Here the assiduous tumults that burden thy life but resemble the distant humming of bees ,

“ all and , in the silence cool , thy cares , frenzied and fearful , gently fade into oblivion .

“ o Here the fresh air , here the sleep , the so thing music and chorus of the cerulean virgins , ’ 92 Giosué C arduccz “ while Hesperus over the waters broadens his rosy face ,

” and the waves are lapping the shore .

Alas for sad Love ! how the Muses he hates ; how the poet he shatters

o r ! with lust , with j ealousy kills

who But from thine eyes and the wars they are plotting afar ,

who ! O Lalage , shall protect

of t Pluck for the Muses three boughs sacred laurel and myr le , wave them in sunlight eternal !

Seest thou not from Peschiera how the flocks of white swans are swimming down through the silvery Mincio !

Dost thou n o t hear from the green pastures where sleeps

Bian o re

’ the sound of Virgilius voice !

0 ! o f Scali e rs Lalage , turn and adore From yonder tower the g looks out a face stem and grand .

m m Suso in Italia bella , s iling he mur urs , and looks

sk . at the water , the earth , and the y

O o r BARBARE .

A DREAM IN SUMMER

o f 0 In the midst thy song , Homer , with battles ever

resounding , the midsummer heat overcame me ; my head fell asleep

’ S caman de rs there on bank ; but my heart fled at once ,

to o f T rrhe n ia. as soon as set free , back again the shore y

— I dreamed dreamed pleasant things o f the new years m co ing to me , of ! of books no more My chamber, stifled with the heat

the July sun ,

of t and noisy with the endless rolling carriages in the stree s ,

. m opened wide I dreamed yself among my hills , the clear forest hills which an April - time youth was re

flowering .

A stream gushed down the hillside , widening into a brook with murmuring cool , and along the brook wandered my

mother , still in the flower of her youth , and leading a child by the

hand . ' Gzosué Carducci 9 5

On his bare white shoulder lay shining his golden curls . too He walked with a childish step, but stately , ,

’ to proud of the mother s love , and thrilled the heart with the great gladness o f that Festival which everywhere sweet Nature was i ntoning. For high up i n yo u tower the bells were telling that o n the morrow Christ would rise again !

hills And over the and vales , through air and boughs and m strea s ,

flowed everywhere the great Hymn of the Spring .

The apple- trees and the peach - trees were blossoming white

and red , underneath laughed the meadow with yellow flowers and blue the red trefoi l was clambering up to cover the sloping

fields , and beyond the hills lay veiled i n t he glow of the golden

broom . From the sea below came up an odorous breeze ; o n its waters four white sails rocked slowly to and fro i n

the sun , whose dazzling rays were quivering over sea and lan d and

sky . I watched the happy mother walking in the sunlight ;

: I watched the mother thoughtful I watched my brother , him who now lies at rest on the flowering banks o f the

Arno , while she is sleeping alone in the solemn shade o f

Certosa . ’ 9 6 Grosué Carducci

f Thought ul I gazed, and wondered if still they live ,

o f and , mindful my grief, come back from where

’ their happy years gl ide on mid forms well known . So passed the vision blessed ; quick with my nap it went

’ all Lauretta s joyous song was ringing through the chambers , and Bice , bending over her frame, followed silent the work

o f the needle .

O o r BARBARE .

' 98 Gian t! C arduc' cz

“ l — of gazed at the falling sun Proud light the world , Like a Cyclops heavy with wine thou lookest down on o ur l ife ”

Then screamed the peacocks , mocking me from among the

pomegranates , and a vagrant bat as it passed me grazed my head . E Om BARBAR . THE MOTHER

[ A GROU P B ! A D RIAN cscro m]

- Surely admired her the rosy day dawn when , summoning the farmers to the still grey fields, it saw her barefooted , with quick step passing

o f among the dewy odours the hay .

elm~ tre es Heard her at midday the white with dust ,

’ o e r win rows as , with broad shoulders bent the yellow , she challenges in cheery song the grasshoppers h whose hoarse chirping rings from the ot hillsides .

And when from her toil she lifted her turgid bosom ,

' sun b ro wn e d d her face with glossy curls surroun ed , how , then , thy vesper fires , O Tuscany , did richly tinge with colour her bold figure !

’T is then the strong mother plays at ball with her infant , the lusty child whom her naked breasts have just sated

o n tosses him high and prattles sweetly with him ,

o f while he , with eye fixed on the shining eyes his mother , 9 9 ' I OO Gzosué Carduccz

his little body trembling all over with fear , holds out his tiny fingers imploring ; then loud laughs the mother, and into the one great embrace of lo ve lets him fall clasped close to her bosom .

Around her smiles the scene o f homely labor ; tremulous nod the oats o n the green hillsides ; o n e o x hears the distant mooing of the ,

o n and the barn roof the gay plumed cock is crowing .

Nature has her brave ones who for her despise

o f the masks glory dear to the vulgar throng . ’T is thus , O Adrian , with holy visions

mf rtest - thou co o the souls of fellow men .

’T 0 is thus , artist , with thy blow severe

’ ’ utt st thou p in stone the ages ancient hope , 0 the lofty hope that cries , when shall labor be happy ! and faithful love secure from harm ! ”

When shall a mighty nation of freemen “ say in the face of the sun : Shine no more o n the idle ease and the selfish wars of tyrants ; but o n the pious justice of labour

O m BARBARE .

CARN IVAL

VO I CE FROM THE PALACE

0 Couldst thou , north wind , coming

o f From the deep bosom the moaning valley ,

Or , wandering in the aisles of songful pines ,

’ Or through a lonely cloister s corridors , Chant to me in a thousand sounds

of The piping reeds , the roaring of wild beasts , And cries of human woe '

That would be my delight , the while I know

’ o n On y cold height there lies the winter s snow .

A shower o f white darkness Fills all the sleepy air ; the snowy plain

Fades into the horizon far away .

’ Meanwhile , the sun s great disk grows faintly red

As wearily it sinks behind the clouds,

’ Staring as t were a lidless human eye .

No breeze, no breath among the hills is stirred ,

’ N or n o r of traveller s voice , song children heard , 1 02 ’ Grosué Carducci I O3

But the loud crash of branches

Too o f heavily bent by burden the snow ,

of And sharp explosions the cracking ice, Arcadia sing and Zephyrus invite

To your sweet company in meadows fair .

’ N ownature s mute and haughty horror doth

to ! E urilla Add zest pleasure Come , , make The drowsy coals a livelier sparkle take !

On me let them be casting

A light serenely flashing , such as spring

Doth carry with her wheresoever she goeth . The mouthing actor

’ No more the boxes heed, when mid the sight Of all that crowded brilliancy and beauty

'

And perfumed tresses , and enwreathed flowers ,

’ There comes the scent of April s fruitful showers .

VOICE FROM THE HOVEL

0 if, with living blood

From my heart streaming , I could thee restore ,

o f ' Poor , frozen body my little son

But my heart dies within me ,

And feeble is the hold of my embraces ,

And man is deaf and God abo ve too high .

o n e - Lay , my poor l ittle , thy tear wet cheek

’ Close to thy mothe r s whilst I with thee speak . ' 1 04 Giosué C arducca

Not so thy brother lay ; Hardly he drew amid the stifling snow

o n His failing breath , as his way he crept .

After the toilsome day ,

Beneath a heavy load , his little steps th’ Failed to keep even pace with hurrying men , While the rough path and the night’s stormy frown

Conspired with man to drag his courage down .

The gusts o f whirling snow

Beat through his ragged clothes , his wearied limbs .

falls He , and , bleeding , tries to lift himself,

’ But t is in vain ; and hunger

N ow drains his little strength , and at the end Of the dolorous way he gives the struggle over ; Then pious Death comes down and looks upon The bruised form ; and from its grave of snow

’ Home to the mother s roof they bring it so .

Alas ! with better reason The eagle flies for refuge from the blast

o n f Unto her eyrie the jagged cli f,

And the aged beast to his cave . m f ’ A kennel warm protects the asti f s sleep ,

Full fed , within the palace there , near by

’ e To where , O child , born of love s mightier br ath ,

An icy hand leads thee away to death .

' 1 06 Gzosué Carducci

See how from these o ur feasts

The common people get the benefit , And civil charity finds large increase ' Thanks to the heavenly power

That ill and good allots, a j udgm ent stern Has easement in a graceful piety ;

And we the happy progeny of mirth , Shed like the sun a radiance o ’ er the earth !

VOI CE OM‘HE A E FR T G RR T .

o ut The bread gave , the work

o ff o n o ur Fell which did hang life ,

And trembling sat before the fi re le ss hearth m e . My mother , and watched Pale was the face and mute with some great fear

: The while she watched until , as if pursued

By that mute stare , after the long , long day

I could endure no more , and stole away .

Down through the winter ’ s mist Poured the high moon a livid radiance

Above the muddy alley , then disappeared

Behind the clouds . So did The light of youth but shine to disappear

- Upon the sorrow mingled pathway of my life .

fall A hand touched me . I felt a foul glance

Upon me, and words that did my heart appal . Giosué Carducci 1 07

Appal ! but more appalling

The hunger , O ye proud ones , that did drive me ,

’ And the o ld mother s mute and maddening stare ! And so it came that I took bread to her !

all fo r But desire me her fast had stilled .

o n Hardly me she raised her heavy eyes ,

’ While I o n my poor mother s breast would claim

A place where I might hide my face and shame .

Adieu , O tearful visions

o u Of a once holy love and y , the fond Companions of a maiden most unhappy ! For you may shine the whiteness ! Of that pure veil the mother , weeping , binds Fo r you the thought that to the cradle turns ; I , to my sin abandoned , keep me near

o f so . The track darkness and , , disappear

‘ v01crs O E N E A ’ I H FR M B .

Be still , thou maiden sad , 0 Be still , grieving mother , and thou , child ,

’ Found starving , when shut down the night s great gloom ! Behold ! what festive lights

Gleam in the palace windows , where unite

of o ur The ruling orders favoured land ,

of And magistrates and soldiers renown ,

of And doctors , mix with merchants the town . ’ 1 08 Gzosué C arducci

The bloom of thy best years

irl Thou spoilest , g , while thou dost pine i n vain

For that sweet love and life that all desire .

Laugh rather , and be gay , In dazzling robes of silk and gold held up

’ By hand fair as a countess s, while you haste To join the dance ! Then weep and wait — what

’ The garb of shame that s waiting at thy door !

As if the tears had frozen Between the eyelids o f the dying boy

n o t Whom thou couldst revive , O wretched mother,

to And turned precious gems,

’ So shines the fillet in the dame s black hair , m With who the economist , gallant and suave , ! Holds speech His l ips a smile do wear ,

As if a kiss each honied word did bear .

Seize and enjoy your triumph , ! O Masks so happy and so powerful . m And when the co ing dawn drives folk to work ,

o ut Go and show yourselves ,

Belching your i ll - digested orgies forth ; Flaunting your pomp before their humble fast

Nor dream the day when , at your gilded gate,

Grim Hunger and his brother Death shall wait . LEVIA RAVIA G .

XX IV

CARLO GOLDONI

o f O Terence the Adria, to whose pen

’ Italia s land did give such vengeful po wer

That , as from rebel soil a noble flower ,

So rose alive the Latin soul again .

! See where should rule a race of noble men ,

Sharing in righteous deal their bounteous dower ,

a ’ There art , beshadowed with base p ssion s glower, Goes reeling to the jeering harlot’ s den !

! o ut o f Laugh and drive these Goths , and thei r shame

Tear down the altars , and to the muse impart

The laurel crown the ancients loved to view .

But n o ! To - day thou hast no dower but blame ; And the base crowd proclaims in vileness new

How low has fallen o ur Italian art !

JUVEN ILIA . VITTORIO ALFIERI

’ O de I italo ago n supre mo atle ta

’ O supreme wrestler o n Italia s plains !

See how a race grown feeble and despairing ,

Even from thee the sacred laurel tearing , The rising of thy holy wrath restrains !

’ hold st To what high prize thou the guiding reins ,

Whither aloft the stars with thee are faring,

The while the age , to its vile feasts repairing ,

Each day tastes viands new and still complains .

U 0 ngrateful world , son ; and made still worse By listless souls who o n their way proceed f With neither word of chiding nor o praising . And where to evil thought is linked the curse

r Of instincts vile , what heart o mind can read Those distant heights o n which my soul gazing ! ”

U JU VE M A . VINCENZO MONTI

When burst thy rapid songs from o ut a brain

od A g had struck , his ready kindred knowing ,

I n mighty flood like that which from the plain

Of Eridanus to the sea is going ,

Then rose the immortal siren whose domain V ’ Holds irgil s ashes , and her breath bestowing

As from an ancient urn disturbed again ,

Sweet harmonies as o f lyres and reeds were flowing .

Along the circling shores its measures flinging

’ Came as o f bees h id in Ravenna s gloom The Tuscan verse of Dante softly ringing ;

The P0 sent back its trumpet note of doom .

Thou ceased . No more was heard the holy singing ,

’ V Alli hie ri s irgil was still , and g tomb

XXVI

VINCENZO MONTI

When burst thy rapid songs from out a brain

o d A g had struck , his ready kindred knowing , In mighty flood like that which from the plain

Of Eridanus to the sea is going ,

Then rose the immortal siren whose domain V ’ Holds irgil s ashes , and her breath bestowing

As from an ancient urn disturbed again ,

Sweet harmonies as o f lyres and reeds were flowing .

Along the circling shores its measures flinging

’ Came as o f bees h id in Ravenna s gloom The Tuscan verse of Dante softly ringing ;

The P0 sent back its trumpet note of doom .

Thou ceased . No more was heard the holy singing ,

’ V A lli hie ri s irgil was still , and g tomb XXVI I

GIOVAN BATTISTA N ICCOLIN I

The time will come when the ancient mother , raising

of Her eyes upon the examples the past ,

Shall see our land its lot with virtue cast,

And virtuous souls virtue as friend appraising .

n ow But , from where the Alpine herds are grazing

To far Sicilian shore , in slumber fast

o Like jealous nurse she lulls them t the last ,

Lest they should wake and on those forms be gazing .

o f What worth to thee our feeble note praise ,

’ Only the people s lullaby to mar

to ! To thee but shame, us but harm befalling

’ 0 o f happy those who mid the din war ,

of On thee , a prophet worthy better days , With Dante and Vittorio shall be callin g!

JUVE N ILIA . XXV III

IN SAN TA CROCE

’ 0 great Ones born in that our Nation s hour To which the world did long look back admiring

’ As to a springtime when the heavens inspiring

of Poured equal gifts anger , love , and power ,

For slavery has Italia sold her dower , And feasts with those against her weal conspiring ; At your high shrines in vain were my requiring

o n Of what may soothe the griefs that me lower .

The present race such ancestry belying

of . Seeks but the ease death , as in its tomb ! Here l ives , and only here , the ancient Nation

And here I stay shivering amid the gloom ,

c Breathing upon the world my impre ation ,

Doomed to live ever by my scorn undying .

JUV EN ILI A .

VOICE OF GO D

! o f Hark In the temple the voice God is sounding . “ O people o f o n e speech and o n e endeavour ! ours is the land with my best gifts abounding Whereon the smile o f heaven is resting ever !

“Away the armed hosts your gates surrounding !

The barbarous hordes that come your speech to sever , ’ f To raze the fortunes of your fathers ounding , And call you slaves ! That will I pardon never !

“ Rather within your tombs the flame be stirred

As from an awful flash in heaven burning ,

’ ” a n Such as gave forth the M ccab ea s word . Hail Voice divine ! be ours the quick discerning Of what thy message means : in thee be heard Savonarola’s spirit to us returning !

Juvz mu A . XXXI

ON M! D AU GHTER ’ S MARRIAGE

0 born when over my poor roof did pass hope like a homeless , wandering nightingale ,

i o f and I , d s dainful the present world , knocked fretful at the portals o f the morrow ;

’ n ow that I stand as at my journey s end , and see around my threshold flocking come ,

’ in turn , the jackdaws noisy company , screaming their flattering plaudits at my door ;

’t is thou , my dove, dost steal thyself away , willing a new nest for thyself to weave

’ beyond the Apennines , where thou may st feel f the native sweet air o the Tuscan hills .

Go then with love ; go then with joy : 0 with all thy pure white faith ! The eye grows dim in gazing at the flying sail .

Meanwhile my Camena is still and thinks , 1 1 7 ’ ' 1 1 8 Gzosué Carduccz

o f m o n e thinks the days when thou , y little ,

- went gathering flowers beneath the acacia trees , and she who led thee gently by the hand

was reading visions fanciful in heaven ,

thinks o f the days when over thy soft tresses were breathed in the wild ecstasy o f freedom my strophes aimed against the oligarchs

and the base cringing slaves o f Italy .

Meanwhile didst thou grow on , a thoughtful virgin , and she o ur country with intrepid step

o f began to climb the lofty heights art ,

to plant thereon the flag of liberty .

— Looks back and thinks ! Across the path of years With thee shall it be sweet o n e day to dream m the old sweet drea s again , while gazing fondly upon the smiling faces o f thy sons !

Or shall it be my better destiny to fight on till the sacred summons comes !

Then , O my daughter, let no Beatrice m y soul upon its heavenward flight attend ,

o n m o f then , that way where Ho er the Greeks

a lo n and Christian D nte g ago did pass ,

there be thy gentle look my only guide,

thy voice familiar all my company .

XXXM

DANTE

of Strong forms were those the New Life , that stood

Around thy cradle , 0 Master of the song that looks above !

A brave young giantess ,

Unknown before to Greek or Latin shores ,

Daring in love and hate , and fair withal ,

Came Tuscan Libertade , and the child

Already with bounteous breast did comfort thee .

a- And all glowing with her spheral rays ,

on e Mild and austere in ,

: Came Faith and she , across a shore

o f Obscure with crowds visions and of shades ,

Opened fo r thee the Gate of the Infinite .

e t Sighing and pensive , y with locks aglow

With rosy splendour from another air,

Love made long stay . And such the gentle things 1 2 0 ’ ’ G zosué Carduccz 1 2 1

He talked to thee with bashful lips , so sweetly

all o f He entered the chambers thy heart ,

That no o n e ever knew to love like thee .

m But soon away from lonely editating ,

O youthful recluse,

Wild clamour and fierce tumult tore thee , and

’ The fury of brothers seeking brothers blood .

’ Thou heardst the hissing flames of civil war

’ On neighbour s walls ; thou heardest women shriek

To heaven that altars and the marriage bed ,

’ - The dear hearth stone and the infant s cradle,

All marital that made fai r the abode ,

Were swept away in on e great gulf of flame . Their men had rushed from their embrace to arms ;

The youth breathed only anger and destruction . Thou sawest the raging of swords

Seeking the breast- plunge ; Thou heardest the dying warrior Blaspheme and curse

Before thee , streaming with gore , Gold locks and grey ; And the Furies offering To Liberty the execrated host Of human victims ;

o f And Death , the cruel arbiter fates , Crumbling the mighty towers and opening

- The long barred gates . ' 1 22 Giosué C arduccz

Amid wild scenes

so ul So grew thy Italian , A nd prayed that the long civil hate might end .

Meanwhile he saw

Of love such pure revealings and so strange , The which depicted in the shade

- Of a young myrtle tree ,

bo w Each one who saw must the head in reverence .

’ But o e r this gentle dream

There came the voice of weeping ,

Bitterly sounding from the maternal source .

Alas ! broken by the whirlwind , m Lies the fair yrtle ,

And with wide- spread wings The clove of sweet affection is flown forth

r To seek a purer aura fo its flight .

He , driven here and there

I n o f the thick darkness the turbulent age , Sought refuge with the famous shades o f old ;

to m So learned hate hi self and present things . w m And in the t ilight ca e he forth a giant , — Seeming a shade himself an angry shade t m m Who through the desert wen fro to b to tomb ,

N o wquestioning and now embracing them Until before him rose across the ruin

o f And dust these barbaric ages gone ,

' 1 24 Gzosué C arducci

o f Explored the depths all the universe . Following the good gentile Philosopher

m o f Who placed thee i n the idst secret things , Thou didst desire to see as angels see

There where there is no intervening ve il ;

do And thou wouldst love as they love in heaven .

Up through the ways o f lo ve The humble creature

’ the Pushing his way to Creator s presence , Wished to find rest in that eternal Truth

Which taught thee the great love and the great thought . V Here irgil failed thee ,

And thou , deserted , A lonely human spi rit as if drowned

o f Within the abyss thy immense desire ,

Didst vanish overwhelmed in doubt, When as on wings Angelical there came unto thy grief She who is love and light and vision

Between the understanding and the True .

mo rtal ma m No tongue like mine y give her na e ,

But thou who lovedst didst call her Beatrice . And so from sphere to sphere ’ T m was naught but elody that thou didst hear ,

’ T o was naught but one great light that th u didst see ,

u And every single sense tho hadst was love , And verse and spirit made o n e harmony

Like unto her who there revealed herself. ' Gzosué C arduccz 1 2 5

Alas ! what caredst thou then For thy poor country and the endless strife ! That rent its cities like , alas even those That make forever dark the vales of hell ! From heaven descending thou didst thrice bring down

The Hymn Supreme , and all the while there shone Upon thy brow a radiance divine G Like his who spake with od in Sinai .

Before thee shining I n all the splendour of the holy Kingdom Flashed in its crimson light the mortal field

Of Montaperto , and along the wastes o Deserted and malignant came the s und ,

’ o f Dreary and dull , dying warriors sighs To which far o ff responded With a great cry o f mingled human woe

- The cursed battle fi e ld o f Campaldin o .

M eloria And thou , Rea , Didst rise from the Tuscan sea

of To tell the glory this horrid slaughter , And o f the Thyrren ian shores made desolate

’ o ur m With this madness , and the sea s great boso

’ All stained with blood , and far Liguria s strand Filled with the moan o f lonely Pisan exiles

And children born for fratricidal war .

Juvz mu A . XXXIV

ON THE SIXTH CENTENAR! OF DANTE

I saw him , from the uncovered tomb uplifting m His ighty form , the imperial prophet stand .

all Then shook the Adrian shore , and the land

Italia trembled as at an earthquake drifting .

Like morning mist from purest ether sifting,

I t A e n n in ian marched along the p strand ,

o n Glancing adown the vales either hand , t Then vanished like the dawn o daylight shifting .

Meanwhile in earthly hearts a fear did rise ,

of The awful presence a god discerning,

To which no mortal dared to lift the eyes .

But where , beyond the gates , the sun is burning, The races dead of warl ike men and wise

’ With joy saluted the great soul s returning .

LEVIA GRAVIA.

1 2 8 Giosué Carducci Like Our Lady from heaven

She passed before me,

all An angel in seeming and yet so ardent .

My mind stopped thinking

But to look at her, — And the soul was at rest but for sighing .

Then said I : 0 how or when Did earth deserve That such a mark o f love be given her !

What reckless ancestors Gave thee to the world ! What age ever bore so fair a thing as thou !

What serener star Produced thy form ! What love divine evolved thee from its light !

Easily the ways of man Following the blessed guidance ! Of thee , Beatrice , were all made new

“ Not a woman , but the Idea

Am I , which heaven did offer

For man to study when seeking things o n high . ’ ‘ Gzosué C arduccz 1 2 9

When hearts , not wholly cooled Of thei r potential fires

Fought hard with life severe, and with the truth ,

“ And to the valiant thinking And courageous hope

love o f Faith and true lent arms constancy ,

Then , from my airy seat descending , I Among these gallant souls came ,

Kindled and kept alive thei r ardent zeal ,

“ And , faithful to my champions ,

Clasped in their mighty embrace , — I made them worship Death yea , and Defeat ,

“ While , traced by dreamy souls

I n verse and colours ,

’ n I wandered through the laurels o Arno s banks .

I n vai n you look for me ’ Mong your poor household gods No Bice Portinari — I am the Idea ! ”

Juvz mu A . XXXV I

” A e s di ma io la qu ti pri vidi . U scia

These were the days when first I saw her growing

o f Like bud to flower i n the time spring , Her figure such a sweet and lovely thing

’ n e As if o heard love s richest music flowing .

The bashful blushes on her cheeks were showing What native grace her gentle speech could bring ;

o n e As smooth s as the stars their radiance fling ,

So in her laughing eyes the soul was glowing .

’ T was such I saw her . Now with mad desire As in a world o f stifling ai r alone

I wander , weak and worn with my inquiring ,

Till strength remains only her name to moan As with each breath I feel my life expiring

0 of ! Light all my years , where art thou flown

E N ILI JUV A .

XXXVII]

THE ANCIENT TUSCAN POETR!

A child in gardens , fields , and city squares

’ I grew ’ mid war’ s alarms and love s alluring ;

’ But manhood s school of mysteries and cares

’ Enticed me to the temple s dark immuring .

Where now the lofty dames , with glance securing

What free - born knight o r brave civilian dares ! Bright April days the roses bloom assuring ! The o ak that through the castle rampart stares !

alo n e c Poor and , again to that lear dwelling I come where pious love did once deny

’ That I should heed the Enchantress sweet impelling .

! 0 : Open Child though be the times awry ,

’ Thy vision , Beatrice , wakes my heart s rebelling , Open ! The Tuscan poesy am I !

LEVIA GRA v . XXXIX

OLD FIGURIN E S

Like as an infant , beaten by its mother o r but half conquered in a wayward quarrel , t tired , falls asleep , wi h its little fists

- tight clenched and with tear wet eyel ids ,

So does my passion , O fair Lalage ,

n or sleep in my bosom ; nor thinking , caring , whether i n rosy May- time wander playing the other happy infants in the sun .

’ 0 t n ot ! o r wake , Lalage thou shalt hear

my passion , like a very God of battles ,

to putting an end sports so innocent , to flay the very heavens with its raging !

Om BARBARE . MADRIGAL

Breaking his way through the white clouds i n the azure , The sun laughs out and cries

O Springtime , come

Across the greening hills with placid murmurs The streams sing back to the breeze ! O Springtime , come

“ ” 0 t a Springtime , come ! o his heart the poet is s ying ,

a e ! While g zing, O pure Lalage , in thine yes

0 E 0 1 BARBAR .