Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
and spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery.
_Salomon._ Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I have never
seen one: all are disposed to level down, but nobody to level up. As
for nobility, there is none in Europe beside the Venetian. Nobility
must be self-constituted and independent: the free alone are noble;
slavery, like death, levels all. The English come nearest to the
Venetian: they are independent, but want the main characteristic, the
_self-constituted_. You have been in England, Signor Conte, and can
judge of them better than I can.
* * * * *
_Alfieri._ It is among those who stand between the peerage and the
people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than
in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified simplicity may be
attributed to the plainness of their religion, and, what will always
be imitated, to the decorous life of their king: for whatever may be
the defects of either, if we compare them with others round us, they
are excellent.
_Salomon._ A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an older one,
and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks, her cant, and her
decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes with indignation, and swears
there is neither relationship nor likeness. Was there ever a religion
in the world that was not the true religion, or was there ever a king
that was not the best of kings?
_Alfieri._ In the latter case we must have arrived nigh perfection;
since it is evident from the authority of the gravest men--theologians,
presidents, judges, corporations, universities, senates--that every
prince is better than his father, 'of blessed memory, now with God'. If
they continue to rise thus transcendently, earth in a little time will
be incapable of holding them, and higher heavens must be raised upon
the highest heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian
courts, the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red
cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling from
it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These automatons, we
are told nevertheless, are very condescending. Poor fools who tell us
it! ignorant that where on one side is condescension, on the other side
must be baseness. The rascals have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an
habitual sneer upon my face, God confound them for it! even when I
whisper a word of love in the prone ear of my donna.
_Salomon._ This temper or constitution of mind I am afraid may do
injury to your works.
_Alfieri._ Surely not to all: my satire at least must be the better
for it.
_Salomon._ I think differently. No satire can be excellent where
displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence. When satire
ceases to smile, it should be momentarily, and for the purpose of
inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more a satirist than Lucan: he
is indeed a vigorous and bold declaimer, but he stamps too often, and
splashes up too much filth. We Italians have no delicacy in wit: we
have indeed no conception of it; we fancy we must be weak if we are
not offensive. The scream of Pulcinello is imitated more easily than
the masterly strokes of Plautus, or the sly insinuations of Catullus
and of Flaccus.
_Alfieri._ We are the least witty of men because we are the most
trifling.
_Salomon._ You would persuade me then that to be witty one must be
grave: this is surely a contradiction.
_Alfieri._ I would persuade you only that banter, pun, and quibble are
the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine
humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is
always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible with them:
worthless is that man who feels no contempt for the worthless, and
weak who treats their emptiness as a thing of weight. At first it may
seem a paradox, but it is perfectly true, that the gravest nations
have been the wittiest; and in those nations some of the gravest men.
In England, Swift and Addison; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La
Fontaine are recorded by their countrymen to have been _reveurs_. Few
men have been graver than Pascal; few have been wittier.
* * * * *
That Shakespeare was gay and pleasurable in conversation I can easily
admit; for there never was a mind at once so plastic and so pliant:
but without much gravity, could there have been that potency and
comprehensiveness of thought, that depth of feeling, that creation of
imperishable ideas, that sojourn in the souls of other men? He was
amused in his workshop: such was society. But when he left it, he
meditated intensely upon those limbs and muscles on which he was about
to bestow new action, grace, and majesty; and so great an intensity of
meditation must have strongly impressed his whole character.
* * * * *
_Salomon._ Certainly no race of men upon earth ever was so unwarlike,
so indifferent to national dignity and to personal honour, as the
Florentines are now: yet in former days a certain pride, arising from
a resemblance in their government to that of Athens, excited a
vivifying desire of approximation where no danger or loss accompanied
it; and Genius was no less confident of his security than of his
power. Look from the window. That cottage on the declivity was
Dante's: that square and large mansion, with a circular garden before
it elevated artificially, was the first scene of Boccaccio's
_Decameron_. A boy might stand at an equal distance between them, and
break the windows of each with his sling. What idle fabricators of
crazy systems will tell me that climate is the creator of genius? The
climate of Austria is more regular and more temperate than ours, which
I am inclined to believe is the most variable in the whole universe,
subject, as you have perceived, to heavy fogs for two months in
winter, and to a stifling heat, concentrated within the hills, for
five more. Yet a single man of genius hath never appeared in the whole
extent of Austria, an extent of several thousand times greater than
our city; and this very street has given birth to fifty.
_Alfieri._ Since the destruction of the republic, Florence has
produced only one great man, Galileo, and abandoned him to every
indignity that fanaticism and despotism could invent. Extraordinary
men, like the stones that are formed in the higher regions of the air,
fall upon the earth only to be broken and cast into the furnace. The
precursor of Newton lived in the deserts of the moral world, drank
water, and ate locusts and wild honey. It was fortunate that his head
also was not lopped off: had a singer asked it, instead of a dancer,
it would have been.
_Salomon._ In fact it was; for the fruits of it were shaken down and
thrown away: he was forbidden to publish the most important of his
discoveries, and the better part of his manuscripts was burned after
his death.
_Alfieri._ Yes, Signor Salomon, those things may rather be called our
heads than this knob above the shoulder, of which (as matters stand)
we are rather the porters than the proprietors, and which is really
the joint concern of barber and dentist.
_Salomon._ Our thoughts, if they may not rest at home, may wander
freely. Delighting in the remoter glories of my native city, I forget
at times its humiliation and ignominy. A town so little that the voice
of a cabbage-girl in the midst of it may be heard at the extremities,
reared within three centuries a greater number of citizens illustrious
for their genius than all the remainder of the Continent (excepting
her sister Athens) in six thousand years. My ignorance of the Greek
forbids me to compare our Dante with Homer. The propriety and force of
language and the harmony of verse in the glorious Grecian are quite
lost to me. Dante had not only to compose a poem, but in great part a
language. Fantastical as the plan of his poem is, and, I will add,
uninteresting and uninviting; unimportant, mean, contemptible, as are
nine-tenths of his characters and his details, and wearisome as is the
scheme of his versification--there are more thoughts highly poetical,
there is more reflection, and the nobler properties of mind and
intellect are brought into more intense action, not only than in the
whole course of French poetry, but also in the whole of continental;
nor do I think (I must here also speak with hesitation) that any one
drama of Shakespeare contains so many. Smile as you will, Signor
Conte, what must I think of a city where Michel Angelo, Frate
Bartolomeo, Ghiberti (who formed them), Guicciardini, and Machiavelli
were secondary men? And certainly such were they, if we compare them
with Galileo and Boccaccio and Dante.
_Alfieri._ I smiled from pure delight, which I rarely do; for I take
an interest deep and vital in such men, and in those who appreciate
them rightly and praise them unreservedly. These are my
fellow-citizens: I acknowledge no other; we are of the same tribe, of
the same household; I bow to them as being older than myself, and I
love them as being better.
_Salomon._ Let us hope that our Italy is not yet effete. Filangieri
died but lately: what think you of him?
_Alfieri._ If it were possible that I could ever see his statue in a
square at Constantinople, though I should be scourged for an idolater,
I would kiss the pedestal. As this, however, is less likely than that
I should suffer for writing satirically, and as criticism is less
likely to mislead me than speculation, I will revert to our former
subject.
Indignation and contempt may be expressed in other poems than such as
are usually called satires. Filicaia, in his celebrated address to
Italy, steers a middle course.
* * * * *
A perfect piece of criticism must exhibit _where_ a work is good or
bad; _why_ it is good or bad; in what degree it is good or bad; must
also demonstrate in what manner, and to what extent, the same ideas or
reflections have come to others, and, if they be clothed in poetry,
why by an apparently slight variation, what in one author is
mediocrity, in another is excellence. I have never seen a critic of
Florence, or Pisa, or Milan, or Bologna, who did not commend and
admire the sonnet of Cassiani on the rape of Proserpine, without a
suspicion of its manifold and grave defects.
* * * * *
Does not this describe the devils of our carnival, rather than the
majestic brother of Jupiter, at whose side upon asphodel and amaranth
the sweet Persephone sits pensively contented, in that deep motionless
quiet which mortals pity and which the gods enjoy; rather than him
who, under the umbrage of Elysium, gazes at once upon all the beauties
that on earth were separated--Helena and Eriphyle, Polyxena and
Hermione, Deidamia and Deianira, Leda and Omphale, Atalanta and
Cydippe, Laodamia, with her arm round the neck of a fond youth whom
she still seems afraid of losing, and, apart, the daughters of Niobe
clinging to their parent?
_Salomon._ These images are better than satires; but continue, in
preference to other thoughts or pursuits, the noble career you have
entered. Be contented, Signor Conte, with the glory of our first great
dramatist, and neglect altogether any inferior one. Why vex and
torment yourself about the French? They buzz and are troublesome while
they are swarming; but the master will soon hive them. Is the whole
nation worth the worst of your tragedies? All the present race of
them, all the creatures in the world which excite your indignation,
will lie in the grave, while young and old are clapping their hands or
beating their bosoms at your _Bruto Primo_. Consider also that kings
and emperors should in your estimation be but as grasshoppers and