Roberto Fedi From the ^Auctor' to the Authors: Writing Lyrics in the ItaUan Renaissance 1. The story is set in Florence, in 1515 (or maybe 1516); it takes place, to be more precise, just outside Porta San Gallo, one of the gates to the city, in a locality called "II Pio." The countryside began in those days at the city walls, and an isolated house stood in that neighborhood beyond the gate. Its owner, Filippo Strozzi, a rich and rather powerful man in Florence, had come up with an original idea. In that house, away from the city and indiscreet eyes, he provided lodgings to a group of courtesans, for his own pleasure and enter- tainment, and that of his company of friends. We know the names of some of these women: Camilla called ia Pisana,' Alessandra called 'la Fiorentina,' Beatrice, Brigida. They all lived in that house. When they were not receiving the visits of Strozzi and his cronies, they managed household affairs, kept track of expenses, and performed the tasks necessary for the proper function- ing of a sort of family. They took care of each other when they were ill. They helped one another with their hair, clothes, make-up, and other accoutre- ments of beauty. They ahnost never went out. It is almost impossible for us to imagine such a way of life. Yet these women imagined it and lived it 'as if' it were possible and real. In order to do this, they wrote. We certainly do not want to glamorize their situation, which to some may have already sounded like an idea for a film. This is not a refined salon we are talking about, nor are these the so-called 'honest' courtesans (those of the most elevated and acceptable standing, the Gaspara Stampas, Veronica Francos, or Tullia d'Aragonas). These women were virtual prisoners, and their male friends were busy and negligent of their needs. These women lived a precarious lifestyle, but aspired nevertheless to a sort of intellectual redemp- tion by recreating an 'elevated' world in writing. In this way, they pursued a myth, a perhaps already impoverished one, but one which shone brightly in their imaginations: the world of the Court and its poetry. The fact of these women's aspiration seems extraordinary to me. 2. Letters issued from the solitary home of these women, messages in bottles. Almost always addressed to 'favorite' friends, they deal with common mat- ters: love, separation, jealousy. ' The letters observed, in effect, a crystallized QUADERNI d'italtanistica Vol. XVD, No. 2. Autunno 1996 62 Roberto Fedi and abstract lyrical norm like that which can be found in the poetry of Petrarch or the Petrarchists, a fact more disconcerting (and even pathetic) when we consider their rhetorical situation, one of complete isolation. The case of our correspondents thus stands at the opposite pole from that of the Petrarchan norm. This in itself could be interesting. But we are talking about lyric poetry, and in particular the canzonieri and other verse collections - their structure, their evolution in the sixteenth century, and their audience. So the moment has come to read some passages from these letters. Things should be much clearer afterwards. I will quote only one example, but there are many. It is a letter from Camilla to Francesco del Nero, her usual correspondent (and brother-in-law to Niccolò Macchiavelli), who alternated in this capacity with Filippo Strozzi. Camilla, who, moreover, was Francesco's favorite, wrote: E credimi che non iscrivo adesso per chiachiera, che non ho persona al mondo che più ami e di chi sia più tutta sua che vostra, e porto sigillato nel cuore ogni benefizio che da voi ricevo, né mai sarò sazia di amarvi e ringraziarvi a tutte l'ore, e benedico el giorno e la prima causa che mi vi fece noti, che tutto quel bene che ho l'ho da voi, e nella amicizia vostra mi vego nobilitata ed essaltata. / Voi adunque siate la mia co- rona, la mia gloria, e un vero paradiso non finto, dove io ritruovo ogni dehzia, ogni bene e tutto quel ch'io posso desiderare. [...] E, dite, dove potrei io trovare acumulate tante virtù, dove tante gentilezze, e dove, dico, tanto favore? Voi m'avete tolto il gusto d'ogni altro. E se bene el vedervi m 'è tolto, la impressione sta ferma, l'amor costante, el desiderio fervente, né mai uman forza può far ch'io non v'ami, e vedròvi, se io dovessi morire (14: 58-59). [And believe me I am not writing now to make small talk. I have no one in the world whom I love more and of whom I am more his than yours, and I carry sealed in my heart every kindness which I receive from you, nor will I ever have enough of loving you and of thanking you every moment of that day, and I bless the day and the first thing that caused us to notice each other, because all the good things which I have, I have gotten from you, and in your friendship I see myself ennobled and exalted. / May you be therefore my crown, my glory, and a true paradise, not make-believe, where I find every delight, every good thing and all that I could desire. [...] And, tell me, where could I ever find accumulated together so many virtues, where so much kindness, and where, tell me, so much favor? You have made me lose interest in all others. And even if I am deprived of seeing you, the impression remains, the steadfast love, the fervent desire, nor could human forces ever make me stop loving you, and I will see you, if I should die in doing so.] The letter is a curious mixture of the language of everyday use ("You have made me lose interest in all others") and of elements of the lyric style, with generic citations (the crown, virtue, death, the heart, kindness, delight, glory, etc.) as well as direct borrowings or actual copyings from Petrarch or from Petrarchism (of especial note, the expressions taken from Petrarch's Rerum From the 'Aucior to the Authors 63 vulgarium fragmenta 61, "amarvi e ringraziarvi a lutte Tore", and "e bene- dico el giorno e la prima causa che mi vi fece noti", as well as the reference to a "paradiso non fmto" which is a cross between, for example, /?VF 243.13 and 224. 1).^ Camilla reveals herself to be well acquainted with ars retorica, given that she uses rhetorical questions, lyric climax, and lyric lexicon (typical noun-adjective pairs, such as "amor costante" ["steadfast love"]: a phrase which, not by chance, would become the title of a play by Alessandro Piccolo- mini in 1536, L'amor costarne), as well as a final hyperbole, which is truly Petrarchan.^ 3. These letters bring out something which is more than simple intellectual curiosity. They seem to be a living historical metaphor; and that is exactly how they should be interpreted. It has been said that to impose a lyrical, and in any case stylistic, canon on the sixteenth century becomes a sort of domina- tion, an imperialism exercised from on high (from the auctoritas of Petrarch, later appropriated by Pietro Bembo) and directed downwards (to the Petrar- chist poets in general, who had become the clerics in this new hierarchy).'' It may be true. For example, it may seem terrible to us living in the twentieth century that these women should accept from their masters not only confine- ment but their language as well. But - putting ourselves back in the sixteenth century - we should not forget the other aspect of this intellectual and social question. It was precisely thanks to that grammar, those rules, and the cultural circuit, that it was possibile for subjects, until then outcast and mute, to gain access to the written word.' To insist upon the metaphor: in that isolated house outside Florence this culture introduced mythic dimensions, and gave these women the possibility (some will say only the illusion) of 'elevated' and noble communication. The metaphor aside, it is an aspect which we should keep in mind when we speak of the Renaissance lyric, which is the effect of a historical transformation that resulted from the dissolution of the culture of the Court and its passage from the hands of the Humanist aristocracy to those of the urban bourgeoisie. This process produced mythology as well as nostal- gia. But it produced something more, as we will see. 4, Let's turn to Venice now. In 1529 (the year before ihe princeps of his Rime, and four years after the Prose della volgar lingua), Pietro Bembo answered Niccolò Astemio, who did not believe in the sincerity of the love of Francesco Petrarca for Laura and considered it merely a literary fiction: Se il Petrarca non v'ha potuto persuadere egli di essere stato veramente innamorato di Madonna Laura, con tanti suoi belli e cari scritti volgari, e spezialmente col primo suo sonnetto, nel quale non è verisimile che egli fingesse a sua vergogna: e con tanti altri latini, ne' quali egli fa testimonio di ciò, io non presumerò già di poterlovi persuader io.« 64 Roberto Fedi [If Petrarch was incapable of persuading you that he was truly in love with Madonna Laura, with so many of his precious and beautiful works in the vernacular, and espe- cially with his first sonnet, in which it is improbable that he was faking his shame, and with many other Latin texts, m which he bore witness to that, I will not then presume to be able to persuade you myself.] It is clear that Bembo did not only guarantee the truth of that love (from two centuries earlier).