Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece Part 16

'_Cr_. Scegliesti?

'_Ant_. Ho scelto.

'_Cr_. Emon?

'_Ant_. Morte.

'_Cr_. L'avrai!'

Goldoni's comedies, again, have not enough of serious thought or of true creative imagination to be works of high art. They lean too much to the side of farce; they have none of the tragic salt which gives a dignity to Tartuffe. They are, in a word, almost too enethistically comic.

The contrast between these authors might lead us to raise the question long ago discussed by Socrates at Agathon's banquet--Can the same man write both comedies and tragedies? We in England are accustomed to read the serious and comic plays of Shakspere, Fletcher, Jonson, and to think that one poet could excel in either branch. The custom of the Elizabethan theatre obliged this double authors.h.i.+p; yet it must be confessed that Shakspere's comedies are not such comedies as Greek or Romnan or French critics would admit. They are works of the purest imagination, wholly free from the laws of this world; while the tragedies of Fletcher have a melodramatic air equally at variance with the cla.s.sical Melpomene. It may very seriously be doubted whether the same mind could produce, with equal power, a comedy like the 'Cortese Veneziano' and a tragedy like Alfieri's 'Brutus.' At any rate, returning to our old position, we find in these two men the very opposite conditions of dramatic genius. They are, as it were, specimens prepared by Nature for the instruction of those who a.n.a.lyse genius in its relations to temperament, to life, and to external circ.u.mstances.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This Essay was written in 1866, and published in 1867. Reprinting it in 1879, after eighteen months spent continuously in one high valley of the Grisons, I feel how slight it is. For some amends, I take this opportunity of printing at the end of it a description of Davos in winter.]

[Footnote 2: See, however, what is said about Leo Battista Alberti in the sketch of Rimini in the second series.]

[Footnote 3: The Grisons surname Campell may derive from the Romansch Campo Bello. The founder of the house was one Kaspar Campell, who in the first half of the sixteenth century preached the Reformed religion in the Engadine.]

[Footnote 4: I have translated and printed at the end of the second volume some sonnets of Petrarch as a kind of palinode for this impertinence.]

[Footnote 5: This begs the question whether [Greek: leukoion] does not properly mean snowflake, or some such flower. Violets in Greece, however, were often used for crowns: [Greek: iostephanos] is the epithet of Homer for Aphrodite, and of Aristophanes for Athens.]

[Footnote 6: Olive-trees must be studied at Mentone or San Remo, in Corfu, at Tivoli, on the coast between Syracuse and Catania, or on the lowlands of Apulia. The stunted but productive trees of the Rhone valley, for example, are no real measure of the beauty they can exhibit.]

[Footnote 7: Dante, Par. xi. 106.]

[Footnote 8: It is but just to Doctor Pasta to remark that the above sentence was written more than ten years ago.

Since then he has enlarged and improved his house in many ways, furnished it more luxuriously, made paths through the beechwoods round it, and brought excellent water at a great cost from a spring near the summit of the mountain. A more charming residence from early spring to late autumn can scarcely be discovered.]

[Footnote 9: 'The down upon their cheeks and chin was yellower than helichrysus, and their b.r.e.a.s.t.s gleamed whiter far than thou, O Moon.']

[Footnote 10: 'Thy tresses have I oftentimes compared to Ceres' yellow autumn sheaves, wreathed in curled bands around thy head.']

[Footnote 11: Both these and the large frescoes in the choir have been chromolithographed by the Arundel Society.]

[Footnote 12: I cannot see clearly through these transactions, the muddy waters of decadent Italian plot and counterplot being inscrutable to senses a.s.sisted by nothing more luminous than mere tradition.]

[Footnote 13: Those who are interested in such matters may profitably compare this description of a planned murder in the sixteenth century with the account written by Ambrogio Tremazzi of the way in which he tracked and slew Troilo Orsini in Paris in the year 1577. It is given by Gnoli in his _Vittoria Accoramboni_, pp. 404-414.]

[Footnote 14: So far as I can discover, the only church of San Spirito in Venice was a building on the island of San Spirito, erected by Sansavino, which belonged to the Sestiere di S. Croce, and which was suppressed in 1656. Its plate and the fine pictures which t.i.tian painted there were transferred at that date to S.M. della Salute. I cannot help inferring that either Bibboni's memory failed him, or that his words were wrongly understood by printer or amanuensis.

If for S. Spirito we subst.i.tute S. Stefano, the account would be intelligible.]

SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY AND GREECE

BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

AUTHOR OF "RENAISSANCE IN ITALY" "STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS," ETC

SECOND SERIES

LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1914

_All rights reserved_

FIRST EDITION (_Smith, Elder & Co._) _October, 1898_ _Reprinted_ _May, 1900_ _Reprinted_ _June, 1902_ _Reprinted_ _November, 1905_ _Reprinted_ _December, 1907_ _Reprinted_ _February, 1914_ _Taken over by John Murray_ _January, 1917_

_Printed in Great Britain at_ THE BALLANTYNE PRESS _by_ SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE & Co. LTD. _Colchester, London & Eton_

CONTENTS

PAGE

RAVENNA 1 RIMINI 14 MAY IN UMBRIA 32 THE PALACE OF URBINO 50 VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI 88 AUTUMN WANDERINGS 127 PARMA 147 CANOSSA 163 FORNOVO 180 FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI 201 THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE 258 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY 276 POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE 305 THE 'ORFEO' OF POLIZIANO 345 EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH 365