Sotto l' imperio del buon Barbarossa
and his successors,-- it appears strange that Italian literature should have been so far behind that of almost every other country ;-- that its earliest poets should have preferred foreign tongues, without making any attempt to cultivate their own, though in many respects superior ;-- and yet that, after so much torpor, it should at length break forth all at once in such comparative splendour and perfection. The Provençal writers must have been perfectly familiar to the Italians; for their early writers, such as Guittone d'Arrezzo (in his Letters), Dante, and Petrarch, are full of allusions to them, and of the warmest eulogiums on their works. Several of the Troubadours themselves, for example Sordel, (who is introduced in the 6th and 9th cantos of the Purgatorio,) Boniface Calvo, and Folquet, who, as Petrarch tells us,
-- a Marsiglia il nome ha date,
Ed a Genova tolto --
were Italians. Even the German language, -- so unharmonious as we should conceive to the delicate ears of Italians,-- was adopted by at least one of their ancient poets. The poem alluded to is of the 13th century, written probably under the patronage of the Emperor Frederic II., whom it eulogizes, and directed, in the usual strain of invective, against the vices and the follies of the day. It is entitled Der Welsche Gast,-- The Welch Guest,-- Welch being a name then used by the Germans for all the Southern or Latin nations. The author, who is called Thomasin von Ferrara, with some half-dozen aliases (see Eschenburg's Denkmäler), announces himself thus modestly:--
Ich bin von Friul geborn,
Und lazze gar one zorn
Swer ane spott mein getiht,
Und mine tütsche bezzert iht;
Ich heiz Thomasin--- &c.
Towards the end of the poem he gives the reason for the title assumed by him, as being a foreigner, a "guest," among Germans:
Mein buch heizet der welsche Gast,
Wan ich bin an der tutsche Gast.
And he craves excuse on the same account for writing bad German:
Missprich ich der tutsche icht,
Das düncke üch wunderlich nicht,
Wann ich gar ain walch bin;
Des wirt an miner tutsch erschin.*
*"If I blunder in my German, think it not wonderful, since I am a Welch, as will appear by my German."
But the foreign language most popular in Italy seems to have been the North French, in which many of its writers avowedly composed. One of them, Brunetto Latini, in the 13th century declares that he did so "parceque François est plus delitables languages et plus communs que tous autres." Yet amidst all this admiration of the various classes of poetry and romance which were holding their bright reign all around, scarcely any attempts were made at imitation of them in the vernacular tongue of the Italians. They seem to have been restrained by a proud and lingering attachment to classical tastes, and a distrust of the new literature, from which they still could not withhold the homage of affection. At length, however, the Troubadour spirit, when expiring in France, revived in the colder but more classical rimes of the Petrarchan school: and again, when the glory of Romance was fading away in its native climes, the Italian poets adopted, fostered, and matured it in the most beautiful specimens of their art.
The native Italian poetry seems to have made its first appearance at the court of Sicily, where the French and German poets had resorted in great numbers under the Norman princes, and afterwards under the sovereigns of the houses of Swabia and Anjou. But the number of attempts to adapt the Italian tongue to the purposes of poetry appears for a long time to have been very limited. Yet it cannot be thought that the language was previously too crude and unfashioned for poetic use. Whatever side we may take in the disputes as to the very remote antiquity claimed for it by some critics, it cannot be doubted that it had at any rate kept pace with the other tongues which had arisen from the Latin, and which were so much sooner consecrated to the service of the Muses. The truth is, that in the 11th and 12th centuries, the society and literature of Italy were very differently characterized from those of other European countries. While the pride of feudal aristocracy and the pomp of chivalry were elsewhere at their height, the commercial states of Italy were arising, and directing men's minds to subjects alien from the gay institutions and popular feelings which gave their life and spirit to the Troubadour muse. The states of the Church were as little congenial with such pursuits. Italy had none of the romantic gallantry, the ardent enterprise, which, amidst all their irregularities, roused the genius and passions of the surrounding nations. It could boast of erudite research, of the classical studies and intricate dialectics of the philosophic schools of Salernum; but gallantry and the Gai Saber found no fellowship with the Trivium and Quadrivium. It had no childhood of romantic poetry, arising as it were naturally from its institutions and society; though it afterwards adopted the spirit of the new school, mixed with a peculiar affected and metaphysical turn of thought, which has given, even to the works of some of the most distinguished Italian poets, a coldness and conceit that speak to the wit more than to the heart. They sang of love, but as of a principle, a platonic abstraction, not a tender or glowing feeling; and all allusions to sense were banished from what now became the empire of busy thought.
Little can be quoted, that possesses any interest, from the Italian poets before Petrarch: but to complete the circle of our view, a few specimens may be produced, more for the sake of elucidating the state of the language than for the excellence of the matter.
There exists among the remains of the Troubadours, a "descort" by Rambaud de Vaqueiras, a Provençal, written most probably about the year 1200, which according to Crescimbeni, exhibits in the first stanza the Provençal tongue, in the second the Italian in the Tuscan dialect, in the third Norman-French, in the fourth Gascon, in the fifth Spanish; in the sixth there is what he calls a melange of them all; that is to say, of the ten lines which it contains, two are of each of the above five languages, in the same order as they stand in the preceding stanzas. But one cannot help entertaining considerable suspicion of the poet's power to give a faithful specimen of so many foreign tongues: and when our inquiry is simply directed to the state of a language, it is not very safe to rely on the work of one who was probably imperfectly acquainted with it except in sound.
Undoubtedly either the Italian of this piece differs very widely from that which the poets of the country adopted, or the idiom of the Sicilians of about the same period had made much greater advances towards perfection, and was much nearer the present classical language of Italy. After all, however, a great deal of the early difference between these Romance or bastard Latin languages, consists more in the orthography than either the sound or the grammar; an arbitrary orthography being adopted by each dialect when it began to be used for literary purposes, a little variation in each removed it very widely from the common standard; and those soon appeared to be distinct languages, which originally were perhaps hardly to be called separate dialects, and even still in sound continued to be very similar, however distinct they looked upon paper. .......
... The German emperors of the house of Swabia not only admired and patronized every where the popular French poetry, but stimulated their subjects to emulation in their native tongues. In this they were as much actuated by sound policy as by a liberal taste; for it is impossible for any one acquainted with the history of the age, not to have observed how powerfully its rising literature was directed to weaken the influence of the Church, both indirectly by stimulating the intellect of mankind, and directly by the darind manner in which its professors openly combined to expose the papal corruption, and to rouse that resistance which the prevailing superstition rendered it difficult for sovereigns to effect by open force of arms. Dante (de Vulg. Eloq. 1. 12.), as quoted by Mr. Carey, bears express testimony to the salutary influence of the Imperial patronage :-- "Those illustrious worthies, Frederic the Emperor and his son Manfredi, manifested their nobility and uprightness of form as long as fortune remained, by following pursuits worthy of men, and disdaining those which are suited only to brutes. Such, therefore, as were of lofty spirit and graced with natural endowments, endeavoured to walk in the track which the majesty of such great princes had marked out for them; so that, whatever was in their time attempted by eminent Italians first made its appearance in the court of crowned sovereigns; and because Sicily was a royal throne, it came to pass that whatever was produced in the vernacular tongue by our predecessors was called Sicilian, which neither we nor our posterity shall be able to change."
During the last part of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, Henry VI., and Frederic II., had added Naples and Sicily to their Italian possessions; and there the first known efforts of the Italian muse appeared. Ciullo d'Alcamo, a Sicilian, at the end of the 12th century, sings in no very despicable strain, as quoted by M. Ginguené from Allacci's Poeti Antichi --
Rosa fresca aulentissima
Capari in ver l'estate
Le donne te desiano
Pulcelle e maritate,
Traheme deste focora
Se teste a bolontate,
Per te non aio abento nocte e dia
Pensando pur di voi, Madonna mia!
But Frederic II. himself was one of the earliest Italian rimers, and thus commences a canzone in a style remarkable neither for its purity nor poetic fire :--
Poiche ti piace, amore
Ch' eo deggia trovare,
Faron de mia possanza
Ch' eo venga a compimento,
Dato haggio lo meo core
In voi, Madonna, amare;
E tutta mia speranza
In vostro piacimento.
E no mi partiraggio
Da voi, donna valente;
Ch' eo v' amo dolcemente;
E piace a voi ch' eo haggia intendimento;
Valimento mi date, donna fina;
Che lo meo core adesso a voi s' inchina.
With him we must place his learned but unfortunate chancellor Petrus de Vineis, who uses a purer idiom; indeed, one that seems as classical as that of Dante --
Or potess' io venire a voi, amorosa,
Come il ladron ascoso, e non paresse:
Ben lo mi terria in gioja avventurosa
Se l'amor tanto di ben mi facesse;
Se bel parlare, donna, con voi fora;
E direi come v' amai lungamente,
Più che Piramo Tisbe dolcemente
E v' ameraggio, in fin ch' io vivo, ancora.
Guido delle Colonne follows a few years later in the same school, and tells his lady,
Ben passa rose e fiori
La vostra fresca cera,
Lucente più che spera;
E la bocca aulitusa
Più rende aulente audore
Che non fa una fera
C' ha nome la Pantera.*
*The panther is introduced in several of the early Italian poets as a subject of comparison. How the breath of the beast acquired the repute assigned to it, does not appear.
Jacopo da Lentino, of the same period, furnishes a sonnet that proves the Italians have very early attached themselves to that form and style of poetry to which they so long adhered with success. The mixture of love and religion is in the genuine feeling of the Troubadours.
Io mi agio posto in core a Dio servire
Com' io potesse gire in Paradiso,
Al santo loco c' agio audito dire
Ove si mantiene sollazzo, gioco e riso.
Senza la mia donna non vi vorria gire,
Quella c' a la blonda testa el clare viso,
Che senza lei non porzeria gaudire
Estando da la mia donna diviso.
Ma non lo dico a tale intendimento
Perche peccato ci vollesse fare
Se non vedere lo suo bello portamento,
E lo bello viso el morbido sguardare;
Che lo mi tiria in gran consolemento
Vegendo la mia donna in gioja stare.
Following the example of the Sicilian poets, arose the Tuscan school, nearer the middle of the 13th century. Guido Guinicelli stands one of the first in the rank, and his language differs little from the purest classic Italian. His style, too, is thoroughly characteristic of the national taste.
Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore
Si come augello in selvo a la verdura:
Non fe amore anzi che gentil core,
Ne gentil core anzi ch' amor, natura.
Ch' adesso com' fu 'l sole
Si tosto lo splendore fue lucente;
Ne fue duvanti al' sole;
E prende amore in gentillezza luoco,
Cosi propiamente
Com' il calore in clarità del foco.
To gentle heart doth Love for shelter fly
As birds for refuge to the shady grove:
Not elder born than Love is Courtesy,
Nor doth fair Courtesy precede true Love:
Like as the glorious light
Sprung forth at rising sun,
And was not till that orb appear'd,
So Love and Courtesy are one. &c.
Guittone d'Arezzo (who died in 1294) was also a writer of sonnets, many of which are published in the Giunti collection of Tuscan poets of 1527: some of them will bear to be placed by the side of those of his great successor Petrarch, and often display touches of considerable feeling.*
*It should be observed that there is some controversy among Italian antiquaries as to the authenticity of these sonnets.
Ben forse alcun verrà dopo qualch' anno
Il qual leggendo i mei sospiri in rima,
Se dolerà della mia dura sorte:
E chi sa se colei ch' or non mi estima,
Visto con il mio mal giunto il suo danno,
Non deggia lagrimar della mia morte.
In after years perhaps there may be one
Who, dwelling on the music of my sighs,
May grieve in pity at my destinies:
Who knows but she, whose breast would now disown
One kinder thought, may then repent her hate,
And, viewing then my misery as her own,
May drop a tear o'er my untimely fate?
Guido Cavalcanti (who died in 1300) is the only one of these early poets whose productions have any lightness or animation. His works have been collected and published by Cicciaporci at Florence in 1813: his ballads (ballatette) or pastorals have something of the old Troubadour gaiety and feeling of delight in the beauties of nature. Petrarch has quoted from him in his 17th canzone; and Dante bears his testimony to his superior popularity over Guido Guinicelli (Purg. cant. xi.); at the same time that he is generally supposed, perhaps without foundation, to prophesy his own superiority over both.
Credette Cimabue nella pittura
Tener lo campo; et ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che la fama di colui oscura.
Cosi ha tolto l' uno al l' altro Guido
La gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato
Chi l' uno e l' altro caccerà di nido.
Non è 'l mondan romore altro ch' un fiato
Di vento, ch' or vien quinci e or vien quindi,
E muta nome, perchè muta lato.
Yet Dante seems to doubt the classical purity of the last poet's style, and to consider it as deviating too daringly from ancient models; for in the Inferno, c. 10, when Guido's father inquires from the tomb,
Mio figlio ov' è, e perchè non è teco?
Dante replies, alluding to his companion Virgil,
........ Da me stesso non vegno;
Colui, ch' attende là, per qui mi mena;
Forse qui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno.
Perhaps he only means to express the same distrust of the merits of their vernacular poetry, which the most successful cultivators of it seem continually to have felt, although popular applause induced them to sacrifice in some degree the superior attachment which they themselves entertained for the Latin language and the classical standards of taste.
These are some of the best specimens of early Italian poetry, at a time when all other nations had made rapid progress in every department of the art. No variety or originality animates the Cisalpine muse. It is an imitative style, carrying to excess the coldest and most unnatural features of the Provençal poets, and marked by defects which have blemished the beauty of its proudest ornaments.
The two following stanzas, selected from the Provençal Arnaud de Marveil, show how nearly the Troubadour turn of thought sometimes resembles that of the Italian sonnetteers :--
So, lady! love and thou distract my heart,
That love I dare not -- dare not yet refrain;
One goads me on -- the other checks the rein;
True courage one -- the one will fear impart:
And thus I rest, not daring to depart,
As shipwreck'd sailor gazes on the sea,
And knows his doom, and if he dar'd would flee,
And cries for mercy with dejected heart.
And those sweet looks, that form, that face so fair,
And pleasant smiles thou know'st so well to give,
The more my love awake, the more I live,
And hope the more, as I the more despair.
Thus do I rave, and yet I cannot tear
Myself from her, remembering what she is;
My folly I forget, and grasping bliss,
Following my will, my wisdom give to air.
The bolder spirit of the Troubadours is not to be found in the early Italian songs; there are no gallant chivalrous feelings, no joy in spring, in fields and flowers, and no generous bursts of indignation against the weaknesses of courts and the vices of the church. When they talk of love, it is of some demi-religious principle dressed up in the abstractions of Platonism. Thomas Aquinas is most akin to the early lucubrations of these worthy Italians.
At length appeared Petrarch, who fixed the standard of Italian poetry, and became one of its brightest ornaments. He is the genuine disciple of the Provençal school, on which his taste was avowedly formed, and with which he is quite sufficiently identified to save it from that neglect into which many have heedlessly or ignorantly dismissed it. His poetry exhibits many of its defects, but with them most of its beauties, tempered by classical purity, and the by overflowings of an elegant mind and a tender heart. A Platonic spiritualization and a laboured play of thought reign throughout, and often greatly diminish the interest : yet his Rime bear with them so much exquisite feeling, and so much genuine poetry, that they will always command the admiration of the world, although, perhaps, few would be inclined to hold them up as upon the whole models for imitation.
~ Lays of the Minnesingers or German Troubadours of the 12th and 13th Centuries. (anonymous). Printed in London for Longman, etc. 1825. {1st edition}.
Considering the perfection in which the earliest known specimens exhibit the language of Italy, -- the delight which it is clear its inhabitants felt in the poetry and romances of the North and South French,-- and the free intercourse with other nations which existed during their connexion with the Norman princes of Sicily and with the German Empire,
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