第98章 The Revival of Antiquity Introductory (48)

The visionary 'Trionfi' of Petrarch were the last of the works written under this influence which satisfy our taste.The 'Amorosa Visione' of Boccaccio is at bottom no more than an enumeration of historical or fabulous characters, arranged under allegorical categories.Others preface what they have to tell with a baroque imitation of Dante's first canto, and provide themselves with some allegorical comparison, to take the place of Virgil.Uberti, for example, chose Solinus for his geographical poem--the 'Dittamondo'--and Giovanni Santi, Plutarch for his encomium on Federigo of Urbino.The only salvation of the time from these false tendencies lay in the new epic poetry which was represented by Pulci and Boiardo.The admiration and curiosity with which it was received, and the like of which will perhaps never fall again to the lot of epic poetry to the end of time, is a brilliant proof of how great was the need of it.It is idle to ask whether that epic ideal which our own day has formed from Homer and the 'Nibelungenlied' is or is not realized in these works; an ideal of their own age certainly was.By their endless descriptions of combats, which to us are the most fatiguing part of these poems, they satisfied, as we have already said, a practical interest of which it is hard for us to form a just conception--as hard, indeed, as of the esteem in which a lively and faithful reflection of the passing moment was then held.

Nor can a more inappropriate test be applied to Ariosto than the degree in which his 'Orlando Furioso' serves for the representation of character.Characters, indeed, there are, and drawn with an affectionate care; but the poem does not depend on these for its effect, and would lose, rather than gain, if more stress were laid upon them.But the demand for them is part of a wider and more general desire which Ariosto fails to satisfy as our day would wish it satisfied.From a poet of such fame and such mighty gifts we would gladly receive something better than the adventures of Orlando.From him we might have hoped for a work expressing the deepest conflicts of the human soul, the highest thoughts of his time on human and divine things--in a word, one of those supreme syntheses like the 'Divine Comedy' or 'Faust.' Instead of which he goes to work like the visual artists of his own day, not caring for originality in our sense of the word, simply reproducing a familiar circle of figures, and even, when it suits his purpose, making use of the details left him by his predecessors.The excellence which, in spite of all this, can nevertheless be attained, will be the more incomprehensible to people born without the artistic sense, the more learned and intelligent in other respects they are.The artistic aim of Ariosto is brilliant, living action, which he distributes equally through the whole of his great poem.For this end he needs to be excused, not only from all deeper expression of character, but also from maintaining any strict connection in his narrative.He must be allowed to take up lost and forgotten threads when and where he pleases; his heroes must come and go, not because their character, but because the story requires it.Yet in this apparently irrational and arbitrary style of composition he displays a harmonious beauty, never losing himself in description, but giving only such a sketch of scenes and persons as does not hinder the flowing movement of the narrative.Still less does he lose himself in conversation and monologue, but maintains the lofty privilege of the true epos, by transforming all into living narrative.His pathos does not lie in the words, not even in the famous twentythird and following cantos, where Roland's madness is described.That the love-stories in the heroic poem are without all lyrical tenderness, must be reckoned a merit, though from a moral point of view they cannot always be approved.Yet at times they are of such truth and reality, notwithstanding all ; and romance which surrounds them, that we might think them personal affairs of the poet himself.In the full consciousness of his own genius, he does not scruple to interweave t he events of his own day into the poem, and to celebrate the fame of the house of Este in visions and prophecies.The wonderful stream of his octaves bears it all forward in even and dignified movement.