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                                 POEMS
                                   OF
                            GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI

                               TRANSLATED
                      WITH TWO INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS

                   I GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI AND THE HELLENIC
                           REACTION IN ITALY

                  II CARDUCCI AND THE CLASSIC REALISM


                                   BY
                              FRANK SEWALL


                      “_Le secret de l'art grec réside là, dans cette
                      finesse à dégager la ligne unique et nécessaire
                      qui évoque la vie et en détermine du coup comme
                      le type éternel_”

                                                       PAUL BOURGET



                                 LONDON
                        OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO.
                          45 ALBEMARLE ST., W.
                                  1893




                 THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW-YORK, U. S. A.




CONTENTS


                                                             PAGE

  PREFACE                                                     vii

  ESSAYS

   I. GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI AND THE HELLENIC REACTION
        IN ITALY                                                1
  II. CARDUCCI AND THE CLASSIC REALISM                         29

  TRANSLATIONS

        I. ROMA                                                57
       II. HYMN TO SATAN                                       58
      III. HOMER                                               66
       IV. VIRGIL                                              67
        V. INVOCATION TO THE LYRE                              68
       VI. SUN AND LOVE                                        70
      VII. TO AURORA                                           71
     VIII. RUIT HORA                                           76
       IX. THE OX                                              77
        X. TO PHŒBUS APOLLO                                    78
       XI. HYMN TO THE REDEEMER                                81
      XII. OUTSIDE THE CERTOSA                                 84
     XIII. DANTE—SONNET                                        85
      XIV. IN A GOTHIC CHURCH                                  86
       XV. INNANZI, INNANZI!                                   88
      XVI. SERMIONE                                            89
     XVII. TO A HORSE                                          93
    XVIII. A DREAM IN SUMMER                                   94
      XIX. ON A SAINT PETER'S EVE                              97
       XX. THE MOTHER                                          99
      XXI. “PASSA LA NAVE MIA, SOLA, TRA IL PIANTO”           101
     XXII. CARNIVAL.
             VOICE FROM THE PALACE                            102
             VOICE FROM THE HOVEL                             103
             VOICE FROM THE BANQUET                           105
             VOICE FROM THE GARRET                            106
             VOICE FROM BENEATH                               107
    XXIII. SONNET TO PETRARCH                                 109
     XXIV. SONNET TO GOLDONI                                  110
      XXV. SONNET TO ALFIERI                                  111
     XXVI. SONNET TO MONTI                                    112
    XXVII. SONNET TO NICCOLINI                                113
   XXVIII. IN SANTA CROCE                                     114
     XXIX. VOICE OF THE PRIESTS                               115
      XXX. VOICE OF GOD                                       116
     XXXI. ON MY DAUGHTER'S MARRIAGE                          117
    XXXII. AT THE TABLE OF A FRIEND                           119
   XXXIII. DANTE                                              120
    XXXIV. ON THE SIXTH CENTENARY OF DANTE                    126
     XXXV. BEATRICE                                           127
    XXXVI. “A QUESTI DÍ PRIMA IO LA VIDI. USCIA”              130
   XXXVII. “NON SON QUELL'IO CHE GIÀ D'AMICHE CENE”           131
  XXXVIII. THE ANCIENT TUSCAN POETRY                          132
    XXXIX. OLD FIGURINES                                      133
       XL. MADRIGAL                                           134
      XLI. SNOWED UNDER                                       135




PREFACE


In endeavouring to introduce Carducci to English readers through the
following essays and translations, I would not be understood as being
moved to do so alone by my high estimate of the literary merit of his
poems, nor by a desire to advocate any peculiar religious or social
principles which they may embody. It is rather because these poems
seem to me to afford an unusually interesting example of the survival
of ancient religious motives beneath the literature of a people old
enough to have passed through a succession of religions; and also
because they present a form of realistic literary art which, at this
time, when realism is being so perverted and abused, is eminently
refreshing, and sure to impart a healthy impetus to the literature of
any people. For these reasons I have thought that, even under the garb
of very inadequate translations, they would constitute a not unwelcome
contribution to contemporary literary study.

I am indebted to the courtesy of Harper & Brothers for the privilege
of including here, in an amplified form, the essay on _Giosuè Carducci
and the Hellenic Reaction in Italy_, which appeared first in _Harper's
Magazine_ for July, 1890.

                                                                F. S.

  WASHINGTON, D. C., June, 1892.




I

GIOSUÈ CARDUCCI
AND THE HELLENIC REACTION IN ITALY


The passing of a religion is at once the most interesting and the most
tragic theme that can engage the historian. Such a record lays bare
what lies inmostly at the heart of a people, and has, consciously or
unconsciously, shaped their outward life.

The literature of a time reveals, but rarely describes or analyses, the
changes that go on in the popular religious beliefs. It is only in a
later age, when the religion itself has become desiccated, its creeds
and its forms dried and parcelled for better preservation, that this
analysis is made of its passing modes, and these again made the subject
of literary treatment.

Few among the existing nations that possess a literature have a history
which dates back far enough to embrace these great fundamental changes,
such as that from paganism to Christianity, and also a literature that
is coeval with those changes. The Hebrew race possess indeed their
ancient Scriptures, and with them retain their ancient religious ideas.
The Russians and Scandinavians deposed their pagan deities to give
place to the White Christ within comparatively recent times, but they
can hardly be said to have possessed a literature in the pre-Christian
period. Our own saga of Beowulf is indeed a religious war-chant
uttering the savage emotions of our Teutonic ancestors, but not a work
of literary art calmly reflecting the universal life of the people.

It is only to the Latin nations of Europe, sprung from Hellenic stock
and having a continuous literary history covering a period of from two
to three thousand years, that we may look for the example of a people
undergoing these radical religious changes and preserving meanwhile a
living record of them in a contemporaneous literature. Such a nation we
find in Italy.

So thorough is the reaction exhibited during the last half of the
present century in that country against the dogma and the authority
of the Church of Rome that we are led to inquire whether, not the
church alone, as Mr. Symonds says,[1] but Christianity itself has ever
“imposed on the Italian character” to such an extent as to obliterate
wholly the underlying Latin or Hellenic elements, or prevent these from
springing again into a predominating influence when the foreign yoke is
once removed.

To speak of Christianity coming and going as a mere passing episode
in the life of a nation, and taking no deep hold on the national
character, is somewhat shocking to the religious ideas which prevail
among Christians, but not more so than would have been to a Roman of
the time of the Cæsars the suggestion that the Roman Empire might
itself one day pass away, a transient phase only in the life of a
people whose history was to extend in unbroken line over a period of
twenty-five hundred years.

In the work just referred to Mr. Symonds also briefly hints at
another idea of profound significance,—namely, whether there is not
an underlying basis of primitive race character still extant in the
various sections of the Italian people to which may be attributed the
variety in the development of art and literature which these exhibit.
In his _Studii Letterari_ (Bologna, 1880), Carducci has made this idea
a fundamental one in his definition of the three elements of Italian
literature. These are, he says, the church, chivalry, and the national
character. The first or ecclesiastical element is superimposed by
the Roman hierarchy, but is not and never was native to the Italian
people. It has existed in two forms. The first is Oriental, mystic,
and violently opposed to nature and to human instincts and appetites,
and hence is designated the ascetic type of Christianity. The other is
politic and accommodating, looking to a peaceful meeting-ground between
the desires of the body and the demands of the soul, and so between
the pagan and the Christian forms of worship. Its aim is to bring into
serviceable subjection to the church those elements of human nature or
of natural character which could not be crushed out altogether. This
element is represented by the church or the ecclesiastical polity.
It becomes distinctly Roman, following the eclectic traditions of the
ancient empire, which gave the gods of all the conquered provinces a
niche in the Pantheon. It transformed the sensual paganism of the Latin
races and the natural paganism of the Germanic into a religion which,
if not Christianity, could be made to serve the Christian church.

In the same way that the church brought in the Christian element,
both in its ascetic and its Roman or semi-pagan form, so did feudalism
and the German Empire bring in that of chivalry. This, again, was no
native development of the Italian character. It came with the French
and German invaders; it played no part in the actions of the Italians
on their own soil. “There never was in Italy,” says Carducci, “a true
chivalry, and therefore there never was a chivalrous poetry.” With
the departure of a central imperial power the chivalrous tendency
disappeared. There remained the third element, that of nationality, the
race instinct, resting on the old Roman, and even older Latin, Italic,
Etruscan, Hellenic attachments in the heart of the people. Witness
during all the Middle Ages, even when the power of the church and the
influence of the empire were strongest, the reverence everywhere shown
by the Italian people for classical names and traditions. Arnold of
Brescia