Invecchiando gli uomini piangono (I narratori) (Italian Edition)

Going home is the dreadful duty, inescapable even after the fatal date with the dark prince of the world out yonder. Then perhaps the most important elements of this lyrical setting are the mirror and the red lamp. The sense of the all- encompassing nothingness is a sound literary message of American literature masters, from Melville to Hemingway. We find it here, again, in this minor? In his generous approach of her better known output as a novelist, Bloom remarks: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question.

It is this dreary setting that suggests that what actually matters for this couple has nothing to do with material satisfaction: Promiscuous Molly Bloom expresses herself just as overwhelmingly in a flow of lively poetic images linked by the stream-of-consciousness technique. Wharton, Edith, , Old New York: Central to the projection of the world structure in the whaling epos is the functional similarity displayed by the whale and the mask, both of them being interpreted, in the light of the Swedenborgian theory of correspondences, as the isthmus between the sensible and the intelligible.

The overarching idea of the study is that the world projected in the Melvillean epos is articulated through an interplay of meanings of cosmic laws which generate a multifarious configuration. Melville artistically articulates his intuition of what is beyond the mask in the monologs and dramatic exchanges of his characters: But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask ….

That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate The unfolding of the dynamic core of the novel articulates a multi-tiered world structure, the construction of which corresponds to the spiritual progress or regress of the protagonist. Spiritual ascent, that is, attainment of illumination, has as counterpart the access to a higher order of being which parallels the upward movement in the cosmic order.

Conversely, the negative drives entail a sliding down the cosmic hierarchy. Ahab possesses knowledge of a superior level of being, yet, the supernatural, which has laid hold of him, does not activate in him any upward-tending impulse but quite the reverse. Owing to the hierarchical order of being, the superior levels are in a relation of causality to the inferior ones, conditioning them in this way. Ahab is fully aware of the mythical, symbolic quality of the world. He knows that nothing in this world is self-sufficient or autonomous; everything has its roots in the level of existence immediately superior to its own.

The autonomy is precluded by the lack of common measure between the Principle and the manifest. The mask functions as an intermediary between the visible and the invisible, half shadow and half apparition, an ambiguous vehicle of the messages between the two realms. It is the herald of the Unseen, turning it into something compatible with the sensible world.

He realizes that Moby Dick is a point of contact between two states, a narrow gate through which the Principle communicates with the manifest. Ahab glimpses the secrets of the Universe when the similarity between the whale and the mask is revealed to him. Nevertheless, this revelation does not lead him to a state of illumination because he approaches the mystery through hatred, which precludes enlightenment. It is a ritualistic gesture laden with mystical value: This point is where two opposite states of existence meet. The human being, placed midway between the high and the low, can embark either on an upward-tending or a downward-tending quest.

At the foundation of his grim failure lies his overpowering desire not only to unravel an enigma but to annihilate it for its inscrutability drives him mad. This double significance may be related to the vaster context of the symbolism of the fish as Savior both in the Christian faith and the Hindu tradition. Those following the bright path progress from the manifest to the non-manifest. The bright path corresponds to the process of spiritual realization while the dark way leads back to the visible dimension of being.

Projecting this symbolism into the story of Moby-Dick, it becomes apparent that the whale functions as the Savior-Fish, the Redeemer, opening the path to a higher dimension. Nevertheless, Ahab, the dark quester, is blind to this supreme spiritual quality of the white whale. Thus, he chooses the descending way, along which he heads to the inferior cosmic levels.

This interpretation is suggested by the shape of this letter in Arabic: This graphical representation may also be construed as an image of the esoteric Ark and its precious contents: These aspects of traditional symbolism deepen the perspective and make possible the identification of the whale with the matrix in which the transition between two modes of being is effected.

The whale, an emblem of the matrix, thus becomes an illustration of the ritualistic cave. The narrator establishes some striking correspondences. In other words, the whale is equated with the Principle, the One and the Potential as opposed to the manifest world of generation and destruction. By allowing these destructive, vengeful drives to take dominion over his entire being, Ahab cuts off his roots from the Causal Plane simultaneously stifling the mythical nature of the world.

Therefore, he is left to wander on the lower waters, symbolic of the astral plane of passions, in this way losing the faintest chance of redemption. The elusiveness of the whale is suggestive of a fundamental cosmic law, namely, the qualitative character of distance, be it in time or space: At the core of any process of initiation lies a secret that cannot be put into words. Its intensity consists in its inaccessibility: The inexpressible veils itself in its inaccessibility: Even if Ahab fights to reach the Center, he is disqualified because of his demonic drives.

White is associated with the supreme spiritual authority, with the immutability of the Center, which is the same as the White Island or the White Mountain upon which all the positive spiritual efforts are focused. He reveals that the rainbow contains six colors only - an idea which runs counter to the commonly held seven-color theory: Besides, introducing an extra color in the chromatic set would completely ruin their harmonious distribution which is usually represented according to a very simple geometrical figure which is laden with dense esoteric significance: The seventh term of the color septenary can be identified by referring to the geometrical construction of the seventh ray.

This can be derived from the symbolic representation of the three-dimension cosmic cross made up of the six directions of space and their center taken together. The function of the seventh chromatic term in relation to the other six colors will be similar to the role of the center related to the six space directions.

The seventh color will be positioned at the center of the six-pointed star, namely, the point where all apparent oppositions, which are in fact complementary to each other, fuse together and merge into oneness. In other words, the seventh term is not properly a color just as the center is not a direction per se. The center is the very origin of the six space directions. Therefore, the seventh color must be the principle out of which the six are generated and in which they are synthetically contained.

White is not made manifest in the rainbow just as the seventh ray is not represented geometrically. The six colors are the result of the refraction of white light just as the six directions stand for the unfolding of the potentialities comprised in the primordial point. The seventh ray, the counterpart of whiteness, represents the way along which a being returns to the non-manifest after completing a journey in the visible dimension of existence.

Fame usurpate by Vittorio Imbriani

In the light of this analysis, Moby Dick emerges as the symbol of the liberating way, corresponding to the ritualistic straight path at the end of which illumination awaits. The symbolism of the whale is intricately connected with that of the mythical monster, which generally performs the role of the guardian of a treasure.

The treasure Moby Dick guards is its whiteness which stands for the invisible, the transcendent order of being, the Causal Plane. The Guardian of the Threshold, of which Moby Dick is emblematic, marks the passage to a superior level of spiritual development. After the encounter with this terrible figure one can either be successful and accede to the treasure — as is the case of those who qualify — or be devoured by the monster. Ahab was confronted by the white monster and found wanting: This clash has as its Biblical counterpart the fight between Jacob and the Angel of God during which Jacob is wounded.

These two exemplary stories typify the encounter with the Absolute, an existential adventure which sets the stage and arouses the desire for similar pivotal experiences. Symbolically, to mutilate or to maim is tantamount to a displacement from the diurnal, normal, common order — the order of the even — followed by a transfer to the order of the odd which is the same as the nocturnal, occult or transcendent domain Cirlot At this very moment, Ahab sets out on a voyage which unfolds in a space that lacks the qualitative aspect characteristic of a sacred space.

His voyage turned from a progress into an aimless wandering over a watery mirror which represents the common dimension of being. Some postulants, such as Ahab, end up drowning in their own image: Ahab opens the channel of communication between his world and the Causal Plane the herald of which is Moby Dick itself.

He tries to initiate an exchange of values between the visible and the invisible: Do you see this Spanish ounce of gold? Whosoever of ye raises me the white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys! It was set apart and sanctified The autumn equinox is suggestive of the equilibrium between the solar world and the planetary existence.

Ahab interferes with this state of balance and upsets the universal order through his demonic hatred. Starting from Libra, the sun sets out on a journey toward janua coeli symbolized by the winter solstice. In his sinister hunt, Ahab rushes towards the gates of death as he is doomed to never step through the gate of Heaven.

The symbolism of the doubloon is linked to the significance of the solstice gates. Moreover, Janus discharged the function of performer of initiation into mysteries. In the light of this analysis, the symbolism of the doubloon acquires new dimensions. The coin abides simultaneously in two different realities, functioning as the gate between two worlds.

The fact that the sun represented on the doubloon is in Libra — midway between the two solstice gates — has rich esoteric significance. But the indomitable quester asserts his ultimate choice: So be it, then! Moby Dick, though abiding in a superior dimension of being, makes itself manifest on the watery surface which is emblematic of our plane of existence.

The story of the whale is just like a sacred writing veiled in mystery and obscurity because of the human inability to apprehend subjective truths. Melville, Herman , Moby Dick: Or, the Whale, Luther S. Secondary Sources Gaskell, G. One interesting approach to madness, however, is that linking mental disturbance to heightened creativity, an approach which dates back to Antiquity and which has spurred such a deep controversy, involving humanists and scientists alike, that analyzing it satisfactorily from the ideas of the ancient Greeks, through Romanticism and up to current neurological research would require a lifetime of arduous study.

Within the paper, each will be afforded a sub-section benefiting from a title which anticipates the two main poles of the discussion that follows, and incorporating its own conclusions. Introduction The reasoning behind my decision to pair Sylvia Plath and Zelda Fitzgeraldas subjects of the present paper is, I believe, fairly transparent: However, before delving into an in-depth analysis of any of these autobiographical literary products and its likely cathartic role, I find it responsible to try to comprehend how each author regards the creative process as such and, if possible, to answer strictly at an individual level, for the issue of the relationship between madness and creativity is so complex and so sensitive, that generalizations simply cannot be made the difficult question of whether creativity is enhanced by mental instability, inhibited by it, an escape from it, or, maybe, even a major factor in its onset.

What needs to be mentioned at this point is the fact that, as a non-specialist, I have neither the ability to diagnose the writers my research is based on I rely on the informed opinion of psychiatric professionals in this respect , nor such a diagnosis as one of my focus points. However, although I admit that establishing a psychiatric diagnosis is a process which tends to equate the person with the disease, I do believe that having at least a basic notion of the conditions the writers in question were afflicted by is vital in understanding both their life and their work.

Freud quoted in Flaherty The world was finally truly discovering Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath became a double symbol: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Kauffman, Random House, New York, p. In , it was published in the United Kingdom under Sylvia's name, while was the year of its publication in the United States. As a result, she was appropriated by the mental health movement and the feminist movement alike. But who was, in fact, Sylvia Plath? What drove her mad and what role did her writing play in her madness? Sylvia Plath was, first and foremost, from a young age, an overachiever.

She studied at prestigious institutions and had outstanding results. How did Sylvia cope with the failures in her private life, as well as her inability to live up to her own image of herself? She wrote, for writing acted as an outlet for all the negative emotions that were consuming her, as proven by the following entry in her journal: So I turn to my work… I am justifiably outraged.

How I am exorcising them from my system… Like bile. Threw you, book, down, punch with fist. Joy to murder someone, pure scapegoat. But pacified during necessity to work. Hughes and McCullough Fury jams the gullet and spreads poison, but, as soon as I start to write, dissipates, flows into the figure of the letters; writing as therapy? However, this delving into the very depth of her soul that transpires from her poetry and that she is so highly acclaimed for proved dangerous, for she became so immersed in what she was experiencing, that, at a certain point, there was no escape from the feeling of utter futility and, as a result, she committed suicide.

It was her third attempt, after the one at age twenty, and a second one, close to her death, which involved her purposefully running her car off the road apparently as a reaction to her marriage coming apart. In his preface to Sylvia Plath: Method and Madness, Edward Butscher XII is contradicted by both the tragic biographical truth her accelerated mental disintegration, ending in suicide, in the context of heightened self-scrutinizing and self-revelatory creativity — which is not to say that writing should be reduced to the level of a symptom in mentally unstable individuals , and her poems themselves the level of involvement is simply too great.

Quoted in Harris Sylvia poured her soul into her only novel just as she poured it into her poems, with all the beauty and darkness it had to offer. I, for one, believe that the introspection that her poetry occasioned forced her to confront even the demons that had previously lain hidden within her and, as aesthetically pleasing in a voyeuristic kind of way, as in the case of any literary product authoredby an individual with a disintegrating psyche, I must add as we find her arresting poems today, they cost her the very little that was left of her sanity.

My heart aches for her, for I agree with biographer Lynne Ferguson Chapman: Sylvia Plath […] had all the prerequisites for happiness: When it comes to the source of her madness, however, opinions are divided. XIV , for instance, stated the following: In denying her the right to be her own person…, by refusing to permit her the use of her own material…, by rebuking her for attempting to create a life of her own — he gradually causes her to emotionally wither and die. XXIII were, in fact, engaged in the unhealthiest of relationships, one marked by alcoholism, mental illness, financial troubles and infidelity.

Scott is portrayed as the authoritative husband who did not allow Zelda to become her own woman and her own writer. Zelda was, indeed, the perfect muse. She was, thus, also an abused, drained muse, who came to see madness as an escape: When she finally tried to make a life for herself, apart from the marriage, it was too late.

She had scant resources left. The only way out was through the insanity to which her family was prone. XIV Indeed, Zelda was not particularly comfortable with this state of affairs, as expressed, albeit in her usual playful manner, in the review she wrote for The Beautiful and Damned in the New York Tribune: Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.

Quoted in Lanahan XXX is understandably outraged by the idea: Perfect strangers have volunteered with straight faces that Zelda had all the talent and Scott simply stole her ideas — an injustice that, of course, drove her crazy! That Scott was an egotistic man and not particularly pleased with his wife entering a territory he saw as his own is obvious. That he believed his wife was merely an amateur and that her texts could potentially embarrass him in front of the world is, again, undeniable.

Her first mental breakdown occurred in , after three years of intense, physically and mentally exhausting ballet training begun rather late in life, at the age of twenty-seven, in an attempt to fulfill a life-long dream. Zelda was in the end diagnosed with schizophrenia, a new disease at the time, and several hospitalizations during some of which she underwent versions of the rest cure that only worsened her condition marked the rest of her life, which ended tragically in , eight years after the death of her then estranged husband, in the fire that engulfed the mental institution where she was a patient.

Prior to her death, however, after being no longer allowed to dance, Zelda had sought a new way of expressing herself. Today, Save Me the Waltz, significantly revised so as not to be plagiaristic, as Scott saw it, is largely regarded as a companion to Tender Is the Night, rather than a novel in its own right. Zelda had, it seems, failed once more: Quoted in Kurth Nevertheless, as unreliable as Scottie may be, I do agree with her: Zelda was a talented woman who, despite the mask of confidence she put on, simply could not find peace.

A dysfunctional marriage to a man who was talented and troubled as well did by no means help. I cherish her most extravagant hallucinations. As a result, at the end of the present paper, I find myself in awe of the two women I have analyzed, for their work, which, as emphasized above, would be a great accomplishment for any individual who has not had to struggle with mental illness, becomes extraordinary in the context of their emotional instability. In Madness in Literature, Lillian Feder pointed out the following: The varieties of communication among the mad include muteness, violence, and suicide, as well as verbal and pictorial symbols, all of which convey inner experience of enormous range and complexity.

The present paper has, in the end, intended to do just that. Butscher, Edward , Sylvia Plath: Hughes, Ted and Frances Mccullough Eds. Kurth, Peter , Zelda, an Illustrated Life: Bryers and Cathy W. Nettle, Daniel , Strong Imagination. Sagert, Kelly Boyer , Flappers: Alternative Horizons,Routledge, London, pp. Features shared by both trends or used by both writers will be pointed out, as well as inner and outside representations of the world.

Similar elements, such as the lyricism used by both authors, the same one-day duration of the novel, interweaving of past and present, use of language ordinary speech, linguistic effects as well as other features related to the literary trends they belong to for instance, parody in Swift will be considered in the analysis of the representation of the world in these novels. How does Swift rewrite the stream of consciousness used by Woolf and what is its effect on the representation of the world?

Modernism, Postmodernism, Woolf, Swift, representation. Modernists are known for switching the interest of their novels from the social world to language. This is true for the novels of both authors, in fact. The inner world of their characters becomes more important than outside reality. Other aspects include various themes echoing one another in the contents of the two novels, such as war, death, love, travelling and even aspects related to the same one-day duration of the action and thoughts described in the novel, the interweaving of past and present, the same setting, but during a different time: In both novels there are quotations from poems or various allusions to other types of stories.

Even the novels themselves are not examples of ordinary prose. They combine prose with lyricism. The fragmented view of the world is also a common feature of Modernism and Postmodernism. Generally, while for modernists such a fragmented view of life is regarded as negative, as tragic, it is an acceptable representation of reality for the postmodernists. Ambiguity and thus simultaneous views are generally associated with Postmodernism. To what extent does the poetic or the language games aspects of the novels contribute to the representation of the world?

How do characters view the world in the two novels? To what extent do the two novels belong to Modernism or Postmodernism, not chronologically speaking but judging on certain features? Use of language It is said that language not only describes certain experiences of reality, it also shapes it, it creates a certain perception of the world. With Modernists, language is very important, while with Postmodernists it has a contradictory role.

How does Swift describe his views on writing a novel and how does the stream of consciousness he uses contribute to his depiction of a certain representation of reality? The stream-of- consciousness is a mixture of all the levels of awareness, an unending flow of sensations, thoughts, memories, associations, and reflections Norman, Rose, Stream-of-consciousness.

Modernism focuses on language and on interior reality. According to Genevieve Lloyd, a distinctive preoccupation of the modern novel is represented by the concern with the inner contents of consciousness. Alcaraz Varo claims that, in Mrs. With Postmodernism one would expect a more ironic use of language and more language games rather than lyricism. The two trends, however, may be regarded not as opposed, not as reacting against one another, but also as continuing one another.

As we have seen, there are features which are common to both trends. Moreover, Postmodernists try to surprise their readers by being different. Winnberg's claim is that Swift's work reflects a movement from modernism to limited modernism to postmodernism. The head does a lot on top of that, but the core of the book is feeling. In the same book she gives a definition of the lyric mode. According to her, this mode is without chronology or causation, its principle of connection being associative. The lyric mode consists of the organization of discrete elements images, events, scenes, passages, words around an unspoken thematic or emotional center.

For this, language should be flexible, it should be able to give enough freedom of expression. The reconciliation of antithetical impulses is also seen by Ralph Freedman as one defining feature of the lyrical novel. It is not just lyrical passages that lead to defining a novel as lyrical, as lyrical passages are to be found in most novels, together with certain rhythmic features. Woolf presents in Mrs Dalloway the case of a suicide. The atmosphere of the novel, although dark, is built by means of lyricism.

In Graham Swift, lyricism helps deal with a murder and the reasons for it. She helps Kristina and then she begins to love George. The whole story is expressed lyrically. In this consists her ambivalence. His novels are about ordinary events in the lives of ordinary men. However, in their voices Swift ponders some of the bigger issues of life — such as death, birth, marriage and sex - as well as the everyday politics of relationships and friendships. Linguistic Effects George Webb, from the novel The Light of Day, will have the opportunity to improve his language skills.

His language is both lyrical and filled with language games. Lea The Modernist and Postmodernist concern with language is illustrated in the contents of The Light of Day, in the motif of the teacher. Both Rachel, the former wife of George Webb, and Sarah are teachers. Sarah is a lecturer in Modern Languages and also a translator. It is from her that George learns how to improve his language skills. George, as a narrator, begins many chapters in the middle of the events or in the middle of thought, which are not completely rendered.

The reader is left to gradually come to understand their meaning, their significance. This is an instance of Postmodernist playing with the reader, of allowing the reader to make an effort while reading. One-Day Duration Both novels take place during one day, which includes, however, going back to the past on certain occasions. In Mrs Dalloway, the action takes place during a single day in post World War I England, and we are presented with an inter-war social structure.

The Light of Day covers the events happening during one day in The events, or better put, what goes on in the consciousness of characters in a one-day narrative are carefully chosen. Catherine Pesso-Miquel notices about Swift and literary trends the following: This organization of narrative indicates that the past weighs heavily on the present.

Characters try to reconcile past selves with present selves into a continuous, coherent identity. We can see this from the meditation of the past on his childhood, his failed marriage and career as a policeman which is found in his interior monologue. Dalloway, Clarissa remembers what she experienced in the past and she herself reflects on those events.

Similar reflections belong to other characters, for instance to Septimus and to his wife Rezia or to Peter. They think a lot about the choices they did in the past and their effect on their present. Clarissa thinks about her decision to choose to marry Richard instead of Peter. Moreover, she reflects on her present life. Septimus and Rezia think about their past decision to get married. Each of them has their story and their present feelings involved when thinking about the way their past choice affects their present.

Both authors see identity in their novels as flexible, fluid, always in the process of becoming. Setting The image of the town of London is present in both novels. Walking on the streets of London is usually an occasion to explore. It gives characters a feeling of freedom. The setting is identifiable in real life.

The motif of travel is visible both in the exploration of the outside, urban space as well as with respect to the mind, which travels across many layers of memory. As Megan Tiegan In The Light of Day, we are presented with names of streets and also with specific directions: The borders between the real world of London and the fictional image of London are blurred. Swift presents another side of London, the South-West, including Wimbledon and its surroundings.

Walking and driving through London becomes a journey of self- discovery and transformation, according to Guignery. George Webb reflects on his childhood, his marriage, his relationship with his daughter. While Clarissa remains rather unhappy in her marriage, George Webb is given a chance for a redemptive love with Sarah. Isolation comes from being involved in distant relationships, from feeling misunderstood.

This happens in the relationship between Lucrezia and Septimus, and is echoed at least during some moments in the relationship between Clarissa and Richard. Death is another common theme. There are more deaths than that, however, in both novels. There in an imprecision in the representation of the murder. Septimus suffers from shell-shock while Kristina is a refugee whose family has been killed. Characters who travel are again common in the two novels.

Travel is a central trope or thematic feature of modernist texts. Landino fiorentino sopra la comedia di Danthe Alighieri Firenze: Pontano si pone sulle orme di Lucrezio esattamente come il poeta latino si era posto sulle orme di Epicuro,25 e progetta di scrivere in vecchiaia un poema dedicato alla natura, ai quattro elementi empedoclei vv. Ioannis Ioviani Pontani Carmina, testo fondato sulle stampe originali e riveduto sugli autografi, introduzione bibliografica ed appendice di poesie inedite a cura di Benedetto Soldati Fi- renze: Barbera, , vol.

Ecloghe, elegie, liriche, a cura di Johann Oeschger Bari: Laterza, , pp. Un commento a De rerum natura 1, , a cura di Lisa Piazzi Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, Biografie umanisti- che cit. Centre de recherche A. Unde impii homines plurimum vel ignavissimi sunt, qualis fuisse dicitur Epicu- rus, vel flagitiosi, qualis Aristippus, vel insani, qualis sectator eorum Lucretius, qui dum insania propter atram bilem concitaretur, animam suam primo conatus est ver- bis perdere in libro de natura rerum tertio, deinde corpus suum gladio perdidit.

Ergo sicut de vini sapore non est aegrotanti credendum, sed bene valenti, ita de fine huma- nae vitae credendum est humano sanoque ingenio potius quam insano. Elegia a Bartolomeo Fonzio. Salerno editrice, , pp. Marsilii Ficini Florentini philosophi Platonici opuscula inedita et di- spersa primum collegit et ex fontibus plerumque manuscriptis edidit [ Sansoni, , pp. E di questo fenomeno richiama ad esempio proprio il poeta la- tino: Ricciardi, , pp. Leto , 36,43 ss. Borgia , 38,18 ss. Crinito , 45,30 s. Pio , 50,20 s.

Candido , 54,11 s. Ed anche il poeta spilimberghese Gian Domenico Cancianini, scrivendo ad Lucretium Atavum, che si dedica a ricerche geografiche, astronomiche e matematiche, ne fa un rivale di Archita, ed un seguace di Lucrezio: Altera causa, propter quam licet innovare verba, haec est, cum cogimur res ob- scuras, neque ab aliis ante dictas novis dictionibus explicare; hinc Ciceroni licuisse videmus, quamvis id pudenter faciat, et nisi petita prius venia, in philosophia veterum Graecorum mandanda literis Latinis, novas subinde proferre dictiones, quod ipsum etiam facit Lucretius; ne multa silere cogeretur.

Et profecto antiqui nova verba aut fabricaverunt, aut a Graecis deduxerunt, quae deinceps a posteris trita sunt. Nam Cato de nuce pinea tempestivum dixit verbum hactenus incognitum. Et Lucretius delata tellus. Et reboant, ut illud Naec cithara re- boant laqueata aurataque tecta. Christophori Landini Florentini in Q.

Horatii Flacci libros omnes ad illustrissimum Gui- donem Feltrinum magni Federici ducis filium interpretationes Florentiae: Landino inserisce nel canone dei comici anche Lucrezio: Poetarum autem comicorum veterum iudicium dedit hoc pacto Sidigitus in libro de poetis, ut Cecilio primae partes darentur. Antiquitatis postremo causa Ennium decimum ponit.

Delenificus dicitur blandilocus, unde et num, Hoc verbum de pino tempestiva a Catone [agr. Teubner, , James Willis Leipzig: Liguori, , p. Auli Gelli noctes Atticae lucidiores redditae, cum collatione veterum exemplarium, tum innumeris emendationibus ac conjecturis insigniorum aetatis nostrae criticorum Venetiis: Martinum de Lazaronibus, , s. Fabio Planciade Fulgenzio, Definizione di parole antiche, introduzione, testo, traduzione e note a cura di Ubaldo Piz- zani Roma: Parte seconda, in Opere di M.

Maii nel suo commento a Lucr. Est profecto ar- duum novis auctoritatem et obsoletis nitorem dare auctore Plinio [nat. Le parole e le cose cit. The Annals of Q. Ennius, edited with introduction and commentary by Otto Skutsch Oxford: Clarendon Press, , pp. The Perine Book, , pp. V ,30 ; aedituens participio sostantivato, citato da Gell.

V ,14 ; 67 clinamen; commutatus; coortus; disiectus; dispositura; documen Ter. American Book Company, , p. Marziano Capella 2, e Boezio arithm. ThlL II ,67 ss.

Oltre agli hapax assoluti admoderate; adumbratim; conseque; contrac- tabiliter; filatim; insedabiliter; perhilum; permananter; praemetuenter; praeprope- ranter; torte,79 ho considerato anche propritim citato da Non. Hans Rohr, , cfr. In the space of ten lines he has melichrus, acosmos, Palladium, dorcas, chariton mia, cataplexis, Lampadium, ischnon, eromenion, rhadine, Iaccho, Silena, satura, philema, and even the verb traulizi traulivzei.

Brill, , p. Oxford UP, , Brill, , pp. IV ,7 e 11 ; Scaptensula 6,, cit. Quis aeque est alius potens, idem cuncta dare atque idem alere omnia, idem, cum libet, omnia Parcarum memori lege resolvere? Quis foecundior ingeni 35 largitor, solidae quis retinentiae, Quis et pauperiem pati et niti melior cum duce, par duci?

Marullo non richiama tanto il testo di partenza,93 ma lo impiega in questo caso come delle azioni allora compiute? Inni naturali, con testo a fronte. Introduzione, traduzione italiana e commento di Donatella Coppini Firenze: Le lettere, , p. Teubner, , p. Nel De rerum natura il vocabolo ricorre due volte, sempre nella clausola variantia rerum: Virginibus facies eadem, atque eadem omnibus aetas, idem habitus, par et vox et variantia cantus, par amor in cunctas.

Unam sequiturque, cupitque; 50 una tamen quae sit, dubium, et sententia differt. Cambridge UP, , p. Variantia cantus riprende dunque, per significato e posizione nel verso il modello lucreziano, ma lo trasferisce a ben altro tema. Beretta in questo volume. Anche i semina, poi, occupano un posto di rilievo nella fortuna di Lucrezio, cfr.

Invita autem Minerva facimus, quod est stultitiae, et est proverbium artificum, Erasm. Rizzoli, , nr. Klincksieck, , p. Edipuglia, , Oxford UP, , , pp. I cardinali erano infatti incerti, e non vi era alcuno che fosse degno del papato; ciascuno con tutte le sue forze desiderava il potere, e la passione per il regno tormentava tutti quanti: Res, , p. In ogni caso il verbo com- pare con diversi referenti in Ugolino Verino, Carlias 4, s.

Le Monnier, , p. Barbera, , pp. Rubbettino, , p. Nonne vides hanc molem, atque haec variantia membra? Nunc illa inter sese arcto coeuntia nexu exercent placidam felici foedere pacem; sensiferi unde vigent mortali in corpore motus: Talibus inter se vicibus volvuntur in orbem et pecudes, et montivagum genus omne ferarum, et volucres pictis tranantes aera pennis, 10 quaeque latent liquido Nerei sub gurgite monstra, velivolaeque rates et amantes aspera dumi. Non vedi questa mole, queste membra di vario aspetto? Ora esse, incontrandosi tra loro in uno stretto nesso, vivono una tranquilla pace in felice accordo: Ein Glossar vornehmlich zum Wortschatz der Dichtersprache Innsbruck: Morphologische, historische und lexi- kalische Studien Innsbruck: Flaminio ex Graeco in Latinum conversum: Aristotelis de Prima Philosophia p.

Antonii Flaminii Paraphrasis in duodecimum Aristotelis librum de prima philosophia Ve- netiis: Arrighetti , dove ajpopalmovn corrisponde a dissiliant. Sansoni, , 3 voll. Numerosi i casi anche di forme di origine enniana come silvai , e virgiliana come aulai. Note e saggi filologici. Tra poeti e filologia Bologna: In generale i composti ricevono una maggiore attenzione per la loro natu- ra poetica, indipendentemente dal contesto originario: Giuseppe Scaligero — che cito da Orphica, cum notis H.

Tyrwhitti, recensuit Go- dofredus Hermannus Leipzig: Fritsch, , pp. Gio- vanni Darcio da Venosa, Canes, item epistola Deidamiae ad Achillem cum aliquot epigrammatis, intro- duzione, edizione critica, traduzione a fronte e note di Maria Teresa Imbriani Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, , pp. Munro, 4nd edition fi- nally revised London: Bell and Sons, [] , 3 voll. Martin indica la lacuna. Brill, , 2 voll. Note e saggi filologici, III Bologna: Les Belles Let- tres, , e ID.

Per la manieristica ricerca di simmetria negli epigrammi di Marullo, cfr. B1 Cum tot aethera questibus fatiges, tot spargas lacrimas et hic et illic infensus pariter viris deisque, nec unquam madidae genae serescant, 10 quis suspiria crebra, quis dolenti tam longas tibi sufficit querelas?

Questa serie di ripetizioni si accompagna ad uno studiato gioco di para- fonie e antitesi ad es. Accademia Properziana del Subasio, , , in part. Questi risponde allo stereotipo del perenne affamato, alla ricerca di cibo che il padrone gli nega: Dii omnes perdant istos eros, ut quamprimum servi domini fierent. Non sic seresceret venter nec pabulo fabacio quottidie pascerer.

Equidem postquam hac domo sum, numquam satur fui, esurio in dies acrius. Eine ethologische Studie Leip- zig: Da Plauto a Pascoli, nuova edi- zione rielaborata, accresciuta e aggiornata Bologna: Nam cum cogito de sene, sanguis totus congelascit meus atque ita cor sese conglutinavit misere, ut iam pectus pultat prae timore frequens. Iam me sentio cinefactum fieri. Marso infatti traeva arcaismi, oltre che da Plauto, da lessico- grafi e trattatisti, e Nonio riporta entrambi i termini, assieme alle citazioni lucreziane. Longo, , p.

Introduction, Text, Translation and Notes with a computer-genera- ted word index Liverpool: Arte e Scienza, , Paulatim aerii tractus, et inania lata accepere luem, vacuasque insuetus in auras Cfr. Scritti inediti, con introduzione, commenti e note a cura di Fran- cesco Pellegrini Verona: Edizioni Valdonega, , p. Lucrezio fornisce non solo lo schema logico, ma anche spiegazioni di fenomeni come i terremoti o il propagarsi del fulmine. Sive quod ardenti tot concurrentibus astris cum Sole, e pelago multos terraque vapores traxerit ignea vis, qui misti tenuibus auris correptique novo vitio, contagia visu perrara attulerint: Fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della natura.

Argento melius persolvunt omnia vivo pars maior: Sive aliam vim fata illi, et natura dedere. Quis enim admiranda Deorum munera praetereat? Riporto il testo del carme di Navagero, assieme ad altre due traduzioni quasi contemporanee, di Thomas More e Vincent Obsopoeus: Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex, revisione del testo, commento e studi introduttivi di Carlo Giussani Torino: Chiantore, , 4 voll. Lusus 68 Esse atomos celeri tenuissima corpora motu, assidue immensum quae per inane meant, Cunctarum hinc visum est Epicuro exordia rerum, hinc elementa orbi prima fuisse novo; Scilicet exiguum quoddam minimumque requirens, 5 his minus ille atomis credidit esse nihil.

Marce, atomis minor est multoque minutior ipsis exilisque magis quam leuis umbra Lycus. Si visus foret hic Epicuro, hinc prima putasset principia, immensum hinc constituisse opus, 10 Ni potius rerum ille atomos primordia et ipsas e multis atomos crederet esse Lycis. In perpusillum, e Graeco Ex atomis Epicurus totum fabricat orbem, Alchime, dum nihil his credidit esse minus. Ex te fecisset, si tum, Diophante, fuisses, nempe atomis multo es tu, Diophante, minor. Aut forte ex atomis iam ceter scriberet esse, 5 aut ipsas ex te scriberet esse atomos. Obsopoeus Ex atomis Epicurus ait consistere mundum, Alcime: University of Chicago Press, , p.

Obsopoeus Heydnecker apparvero nel volume In Graecorum Epigram- matum libros quatuor Annotationes longe doctissimae, iam primum in lucem editae, Vincentio Obso- poeo autore Nicolaus Brylinger, , cfr. Traggo la traduzione da T. Lucreti Cari De rerum natura libri sex, ex editione Gilberti Wakefieldi cum notis et interpretatione in usum delphini variis lectionibus notis variorum recensu editionum et codicum Valpy, , 3 voll. Ex atomis aut si vel caetera cuncta probasset, 5 sed tamen ex illo diceret esse atomos. Entrambi sopprimono invece il voca- tivo del v. Edizioni di Storia e Let- teratura, , pp.

Adelphi, , p. Giunti Barbera, ; rist. Tan- tum religio potuit suadere malorum. Alij vero Platone quidem vetustiores, attamen novis modis nec unquam excogi- tatis, de ipsorum [sc. Illa enim conficiebant ex pleno et vacuo, plenum gravitatis, vacuum vero levitatis caussam dicentes. Cum igitur corpus quoddam plus in se plenum contineret, grave ipsum esse testabantur, 6 Cfr.

Semartellium, , part. Per una articolata disamina del pensiero del Buona- mici, cfr. Marescottus, , p. Buonamici cita i vv. Horum caput Democritus, cuius simia fuit Epicu- rus. Nanque ex ipso Lucretius: Denique cur alias aliis praestare videmus pondere res rebus nihilo maiore figura? Nam si tantundem est in lanae glomere quantum corporis in plumbo est, tantundem pendere par est, corporis officium est quoniam premere omnia deorsum, contra autem natura manet sine pondere inanis.

Ecco il dettaglio dei seguenti versi del primo libro del De rerum natura: Ergo quod magnumst aeque leviusque videtur, ni mirum plus esse sibi declarat inanis; at contra gravius plus in se corporis esse dedicat et multo vacui minus intus habere. Est igitur ni mirum id quod ratione sagaci quaerimus, admixtum rebus, quod inane vocamus. Componevano, infatti, i corpi di pieno e di vuoto, sostenendo che il pieno fosse la causa del peso ed il vuoto la causa della leggerezza.

Il principale esponente di costoro fu Democrito, imitato da Epicuro. E appunto ispirato da questi, Lucrezio scrive: I versi citati da Buonamici corrispondono ai vv. Secondo le sue parole: OG, I, , Quod si minor fuerit resistentia quam in corpore illo offen- derint, quam sit vis qua ipsae premunt, vincunt illudque extrudunt: Sursus enim versus gignuntur et augmina sumunt et sursum nitidae fruges arbustaque crescunt, pondera, quantum in se est, cum deorsum cuncta ferantur.

Nec cum subsiliunt ignes ad tecta domorum et celeri flamma degustant tigna trabesque, sponte sua facere id sine vi subiecta putandum est.

1. Invecchiando gli uomini piangono : Jean-Luc Seigle : .
2. The Missionarys Wife.
3. Toddler Books: Alphabet Book of Animals (African Animal Picture Books).
4. Renaissance in Italy, Volume 5 (of 7), by John Addington Symonds.
5. Top Authors.
6. Finding Educational Activities in the Most Unexpected Places: 200+ Activities for Young Children Using Common Household Objects.

Nec tamen haec, quantum est in se, dubitamus, opinor, quin vacuum per inane deorsum cuncta ferantur. Sic igitur debent flammae quoque posse per auras aeris expressae sursum succedere, quamquam pondera, quantum in sest, deorsum deducere pugnent. Eppure non dubitiamo, credo, che questi corpi, per quanto sta in loro, nel libero vuoto tutti precipitino al basso.

Editions du Cerf, ; rist. Vrin, , VIII, p. Bernard Cohen, with the assistance of Anne Whitman Cambridge: Cambridge UP, , I, p. Cohen individua la radice della suggestione cartesiana e newtoniana nel commentario al De rerum natura di Denys Lambin Lambinus , originariamente pubblicato a Parigi nel Timaeus, Strato Lampsacenus et Epicurus — rileva Buonamici — existimaverunt omnia quidem esse gravia, nihil per se leve; duos autem esse terminos motus, alterum supremum, atque alterum oppositum illi infimum; sed unum, nempe deorsum et in- fimum, esse locum in quem omnia properent secundum naturam; alterum vero ad quem vi ferantur.

Etenim cum omnia gravia sint, deorsum suapte natura feruntur; quod si quid ex his inferius est, aut superius, hoc non aliunde proficisci quam quod 22 Leonardo Olschki spiegava tale assenza con lo sceveramento, consapevolmente operato da Galileo, del piano scientifico da quello estetico-poetico: Basic Books, ; repr. Ob id velocitas huius motus non quidem ab interna caussa derivabitur, verum ab externa, et erit violenta, non autem naturalis. E invero entrambi i corpi appartengono al genere dei gravi.

Ora, dal momento che il corpo molto pesante esercita una pressione sul meno grave, esso viene a sistemarsi al di sotto di questo, che, a sua volta, si pone al di sopra. Nam si violentum id est quod contra naturam fit, naturale prius est violento; ergo tunc, cum naturalis motio violentam atomorum impulsionem natura praecedit, individua haec naturalia, Democriti, Leu- cippi, Epicuri et Lucretii elementa, naturalem ac proprium motum habere necesse est: Per altri analoghi spunti critici contro gli atomisti, cfr.

Oggetto del contendere era la spiegazione del galleggiamento dei corpi e, in particolare, il ruolo giocato in esso dalla forma o figura del corpo galleg- giante. Af- firmat ut videtur ubi ait: Et quamquam meminerit de tactu tantum, unde inferendum videatur, solas primas qualitates eis tribuisse: Negat tamen alibi, et ab eis omnes qualitates seiungit, dum ait: I versi citati corrispondono a Lucr. Aspetti della rivoluzione scientifica Roma: Armando, , pp. Parmi che voi caminiate alla via di quei vacui disseminati di certo filosofo antico. Veddi bene, e non senza stomaco, il livore del mal affetto contradittore: Butts and Joseph C.

Reidel, , pp. Vivarium, , pp. Boringhieri, , p. Grassi aveva etichettato le tesi sulla natura del calore esposte dallo scienziato pisano nel suo Il Saggiatore come opinioni di ascendenza epicurea: Lo Stilese dichiarava, infatti, di esser: Sumptibus Sebastiani Cramoisy, , cfr. Ad una simile accusa Galileo replicava — nelle po- stille apposte in margine alla sua copia del libro del Grassi — dichiarando di ignorare le opere di Epi- curo: Einaudi, ; nuova ed. Per lo che vo io pensando che questi sapori, odori, colori, etc. Nempe subicitur ab his omnibus, primum elementum usque adeo esse omni pe- nitus qualitate vacuum, ut nullam vel albedinem innatam habeat, vel nigredinem, vel alium quempiam colorem, non dulcedinem, non amaritudinem, sed neque calorem, neque frigus et tandem ut cuiusvis alterius qualitatis sit omnino expers.

Lege enim dicebat Democritus color est, lege amarum, lege dulce, atomus vero et vacuum vere est, ipse ejteiv" dixit. Credidit enim ille sensiles qualitates ex individuorum illorum cor- pusculorum conventu per solam ad nos, qui sentimus, collationem gigni: Quippe hoc illi lege significabat, ex nostra nimirum existimatione, non ex ipsa rerum natura, ita etiam illi ejteiv" nomen ab ejteovn deductum est, quod verum significat, ut universi sermonis illius est is sensus sit.

Arbitramur quidem nos homines quippiam esse album vel nigrum, vel dulce, vel amarum et quaecumque alia huiusce generis sunt.

Bestselling Series

Sed re 42 OG, VI, Itaque atomi omnes, quae exigua quaedam corpuscula sunt, omni prorsus qualitate vacant. OG, IV, nota 2; E ben si veggono providamente disposti, quanto al sito, la lingua e i canali del naso: Accedamus nunc ad calorem et frigiditatem; unde nam has duas qualitates agno- sces? Nempe ex sensu tactus; at tactus non discernit an sint qualitates an substantiae. Sentit quidem molestiam aut delectationem, a molesto vel delectabili obiecto; sed utrum hoc sit qualitas, an substantia non discernit.

Numquid impossibile iudicabis corpuscula exeuntia et tactui occurrentia esse, quae efficiunt sensationem, quam tu calorem et frigiditatem appellas?

Journal of Italian Translation, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring | Luigi Bonaffini - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

Vale inoltre la pena di notare come il testo di de Castro rechi non pochi rinvii a Lucrezio. Forse che allora giudicherai impossibile che siano corpuscoli che si dipartono dai corpi e incontrano il senso del tatto a produrre la sensazione che chiami caldo o freddo? Thuilii, , p. Antenore, , pp. Accademia dei Lincei, , vol. Il Mulino, , pp. Ex officina Christophori Plantini, In effetti, per quan- to Galileo tenda a esplicitare assai di rado le proprie fonti di ispirazione, non sembra affatto implausibile ritenere che, nella stesura di queste sezioni della sua opera del , egli abbia tratto stimolo anche dalla lettura del De rerum natura.

Tum porro varios rerum sentimus odores nec tamen ad naris venientis cernimus umquam nec calidos aestus tuimur nec frigora quimus usurpare oculis nec voces cernere suemus; quae tamen omnia corporea constare necessest natura, quoniam sensus inpellere possunt: Huc accedit uti mellis lactisque liquores iucundo sensu linguae tractentur in ore; at contra taetra absinthi natura ferique centauri foedo pertorquent ora sapore; ut facile agnoscas e levibus atque rutundis esse ea quae sensus iucunde tangere possunt, at contra quae amara atque aspera cumque videntur, haec magis hamatis inter se nexa teneri proptereaque solere vias rescindere nostris sensibus introituque suo perrumpere corpus.

Inde quod exprimimus per caulas omne palati Diditur, et rarae per flexa foramina linguae. Hoc ubi levia sunt manantis corpora suci, suaviter attingunt et suaviter omnia tractant umida linguai circum sudantia templa. At contra pungunt sensum lacerantque coorta, quanto quaeque magis sunt asperitate repleta.

Acrior ardor enim conductis partibus esset, languidior porro disiectis disque sipatis. Denique multa vides quibus et color et sapor una reddita sunt cum odore; in primis pleriqua poma. Sed ne forte putes solo spoliata colore corpora prima manere, etiam secreta teporis sunt ac frigoris omnino calidique vaporis, et sonitu sterila et succo ieiuna feruntur, nec iaciunt ullum proprium de corpore odorem. Nunc ea quae sentire videmus cumque necessest ex insensilibus tamen omnia confiteare principiis constare. Illud in his igitur rebus meminisse decebit, non ex omnibus omnino, quaecumque creant res sensilia, extemplo me gigni dicere sensus, sed magni referre ea primum quantula constent, sensile quae faciunt, et qua sint praedita forma, motibus ordinibus posituris denique quae sint.

Nelle postille apposte in margine alla Libra astronomica ac philosophica del suo avversario Orazio Grassi, Galileo replicava al rilievo del gesuita di non es- ser riuscito a riscontrare il supposto flusso di particelle prodotte dalla percus- sione di un corpo, affermando che la bilancia non registra simili eventi. Quin etiam multis solis redeuntibus annis anulus in digito subter tenuatur habendo, stilicidi casus lapidem cavat [ Eiusmodi est enim humanae mentis conditio, ut nisi assiduis rerum simulacris in eam extrinsecus irrumpentibus pulsetur, omnis ex illa recordatio facile effluat.

Il passo in questione corrisponde ai vv. Postremo duo de concursu corpora lata si cita dissiliant, nempe aer omne necessest, inter corpora quod fiat, possidat inane. Les Belles Lettres, , 51, nota Il passo citato in trad. La modi- fica testuale di late ha trovato il consenso di Martin F. Sa- lerno, , vv. But Discord does her work inadequately; and the cries of Rodomonte's victims rise to heaven.

This rouses Michael from his slumber of beatitude. He blushes, plumes his pinions, and shoots down again to earth in search of Discord among the monks. He finds her sitting in a chapter convened for the election of officers, and makes her in a moment feel his presence: This is a good specimen both of Ariosto's peculiar levity and of the romantic style which in the most serious portion of his poem permitted such extravagance. The robust archangel tearing Discord's disheveled hair, kicking her, pounding her with his fists, breaking a cross upon her back, and sending her about her business with a bee in her bonnet, presents a picture of drollery which is exceedingly absurd.

Nor is there any impropriety in the picture from the poet's point of view. Michael and the Evangelist are scarcely serious beings. They both form part of his machinery and help to make the action move. Broad fun, untinctured by irony, seasons the Furioso —as when Astolfo creates a fleet by throwing leaves into the sea, and mounts his Ethiopian cavalry on horses made of stone, and catches the wind in a bladder; all of which burlesque miracles are told with that keen relish of their practical utility which formed an element of Ariosto's sprightliness.

Ariosto's irony, no less than his romantic method, deprived the Furioso of that sublimity which only belongs to works of greater seriousness and deeper conviction. Yet he sometimes touches the sublime by force of dramatic description or by pathetic intensity.

The climax of Orlando's madness has commonly been cited as an instance of poetic grandeur. Yet I should be inclined to prefer the gathering of the storm of discord in Agramante's camp. The thunder-clouds which had been mustering to break in ruin upon Christendom, rush together and spend their fury in mid air. Thus the moment is decisive, and nothing has been spared to dignify the passions that provoke the final crash.

They go on accumulating in complexity, like a fugue of discords, till at last the hyperbole of this sonorous stanza that seems justified: His pathos also has its own sublimity. Imogen stretched lifeless on the corpse of Cloten; the Duchess of Malfi telling Cariola to see that her daughter says her prayers; Bellario describing his own sacrifice as a mere piece of boyhood flung away—these are instances from our own drama, in which the pathetic is sublime.

Ariosto's method is different, and the effect is more rhetorical. Yet he can produce passages of almost equal poignancy, prolonged situations of overmastering emotion, worthy to be set side by side with the Euripidean pictures of Polyxena, Alcestis, or Iphigenia. Zerbino is one of the most sympathetic creations of the poet's fancy.

Of him Ariosto wrote the famous line: He is killed by the Tartar Mandricardo before his lady Isabella's eyes: With stanzas like this the poet cheats the sorrow he has stirred in us. Their imagery is too beautiful to admit of painful feeling while we read; and thus, though the passion of the scene is tragic, its anguish is brought by touches of pure art into harmony with the romantic tone of the whole poem.

So also when Isabella, kneeling before Rodomonte's sword, like S. Catherine in Luini's fresco at Milan, has met her own death, Ariosto heals the wound he has inflicted on our sensibility by lines of exquisitely cadenced melody: But it is in the situations, the elegiac lamentations, the unexpected vicissitudes, and the strong pictorial beauties of Olimpia's novel, that Ariosto strains his power over pathos to the utmost.

Olimpia has lost her kingdom and spent her substance for her husband, Bireno. Orlando aids her in her sore distress, and frees Bireno from his prison. Bireno proves faithless, and deserts her on an island. She is taken by corsairs, exposed like Andromeda on a rock to a sea-monster, and is finally rescued by Orlando. Each of these touching incidents is developed with consummate skill; and the pathos reaches its height when Olimpia, who had risked all for her husband, wakes at dawn to find herself abandoned by him on a desolate sea-beach.

Catullus in a single felicitous simile, Fletcher by the agony of passionate declamation, surpass Ariosto's detailed picture. The one is more restrained, the other more tragic. But Ariosto goes straight to our heart by the natural touch of Olimpia feeling for Bireno in the darkness, and by the suggestion of pallid moonlight and a shivering dawn. The numerous prosaic details with which he has charged his picture, add to its reality, and enhance the Euripidean quality we admire in it. In the case of a poet whose imagination was invariably balanced by practical sound sense, the personal experience he acquired of the female sex could not fail to influence his delineation of women.

He was not a man to cherish illusion or to romance in verse about perfection he had never found in fact. He did not place a Beatrice or Laura on the pedestal of his heart; nor was it till he reached the age of forty-seven, when the Furioso had lain for six years finished on his desk, that he married Alessandra Strozzi. His great poem, completed in , must have been written under the influence of those more volatile amours he celebrated in his Latin verses. Therefore we are not surprised to find that the female characters of the Orlando illustrate his epistle on the choice of a wife.

Yet even in Bradamante he has painted a virago from whom the more delicate humanity of Shakspere would have recoiled. The scene in which she quarrels with Marfisa about Ruggiero degrades her in our eyes, and makes us feel that such a termagant might prove a sorry wife. Consequently when, just before her marriage, she snuffs the carnage of the Saracens from afar, and regrets that she must withhold her hand from "such rich spoil of slaughter in a spacious field," a painful sense of incongruity is left upon our mind.

But Bradamante, destined to become a mother, gentle in her home affections, obedient to her father's wishes, tremulous in her attachment to Ruggiero, cannot with any propriety be compared to a leopard loosed from the leash upon defenseless gazelles. After the more finished portrait of Bradamante, we find in Isabella and Fiordeligi, the lovers of Zerbino and Brandimarte, Ariosto's purest types of feminine affection. The cardinal virtue of woman in his eyes was self-devotion—loyalty to the death, unhesitating sacrifice of wealth, ease, reputation, life, to the one object of passionate attachment.

And this self-devotion he has painted in Olimpia no less romantically than in Isabella and Fiordeligi. Still it must be remembered that Isabella had eloped with Zerbino from her father's palace, that Fiordeligi was only a wife in name, and that Olimpia murdered her first husband and consoled herself very rapidly for Bireno's loss in the arms of Oberto. The poet has not cared to interweave with either portrait such threads of piety and purity as harmonize the self-abandonment of Juliet. Fiordespina's ready credence of the absurd story by which Ricciardetto persuades her that he is Bradamante metamorphosed by a water-fairy to a man, and her love longings, so frankly confessed, so unblushingly indulged, illustrate the passion Ariosto delighted to describe.

He feels a tender sympathy for feminine frailty, and in more than one exquisitely written passage claims for women a similar license in love to that of men. Angelica, who in the Innamorato touches our feelings by her tenderness for Rinaldo, in the Furioso becomes a mere coquette, and is well punished by her insane passion for the first pretty fellow that takes her fancy. The common faults for which Ariosto taxes women are cupidity, infidelity, and fraud.

Ariosto's morality was clearly on a level with that of the novelists from Boccaccio to Bandello; and his apology is that he was not inferior to the standard of his age. Still it is not much to his credit to plead that his cantos are less impure than the Capitoli of Monsignore La Casa or the prurient comedies of Aretino. Even allowing for the laxity of Renaissance manners, it must be conceded that he combined vulgar emotions and a coarse-fibered nature with the most refined artistic genius.

The beauty of its style, the absence of tragedy in its situations or of passion in its characters, and the humorous smile with which the poet acts as showman to the secrets of the alcove, render this tale one of the most licentious in literature. Nor is this licentiousness balanced by any sublimer spiritual quality. His ideal of manliness is physical force and animal courage.

Cruelty and bloodshed for the sake of slaughter stain his heroes. The style of the Furioso is said to have taught Galileo how to write Italian. This style won from him for Ariosto the title of divine.

1. Berkeley: Philosophy in an Hour!
2. Dirty Spanish Workbook: 101 Fun Exercises Filled with Slang, Sex and Swearing (Dirty Everyday Slang).
3. Abes Caribbean Takeout!
4. The Adam and Eve Chronicles?
5. Full text of "Renaissance in Italy: Italian literature, in two parts".
6. Download This eBook!
7. ;

As the luminous and flowing octave stanzas pass before us, we are almost tempted to forget that they are products of deliberate art. The beauty of their form consists in its limpidity and naturalness. Ariosto has no mannerism. He always finds exactly the expression needed to give clearness to the object he presents. Whether the mood be elegiac or satiric, humorous or heroic, idyllic or rhetorical, this absolute sincerity and directness of language maintains him at an even level.

In each case he has given the right, the best, the natural investiture to thought, and his phrases have the self-evidence of crystals. Just as he collected the materials of his poem from all sources, so he appropriated every word that seemed to serve his need. The vocabulary of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the racy terms of popular poetry, together with Latinisms and Lombardisms, were alike laid under contribution.

Yet these diverse elements were so fused together and brought into a common toning by his taste that, though the language of his poem was new, it was at once accepted as classical. When we remember the difficulties which in his days beset Italian composition, when we call to mind the frigid experiments of Bembo in Tuscan diction, the meticulous proprieties of critics like Speron Speroni, and the warfare waged around the Gerusalemme Liberata , we know not whether to wonder at Ariosto's happy audacities in language or at their still happier success.

His triumph was not won without severe labor. He spent ten years in the composition of the Furioso and sixteen in its polishing. The autograph at Ferrara shows page upon page of alteration, transposition, and refinement on the first draught, proving that the Homeric limpidity and ease we now admire, were gained by assiduous self-criticism.

The result of this long toil is that there cannot be found a rough or languid or inharmonious passage in an epic of 50, lines. If we do not discern in Ariosto the inexhaustible freshness of Homer, the sublime music of Milton, the sculpturesque brevity of Dante, the purity of Petrarch, or the majestic sweetness of Virgilian cadences, it can fairly be said that no other poet is so varied.

None mingles strength, sweetness, subtlety, rapidity, rhetoric, breadth of effect and delicacy of suggestion, in a harmony so perfect. None combines workmanship so artistic with a facility that precludes all weariness. Whether we read him simply to enjoy his story or to taste the most exquisite flavors of poetic diction, we shall be equally satisfied. Language in his hands is like a soft and yielding paste, which takes all forms beneath the molder's hand, and then, when it has hardened, stays for ever sharp in outline, glittering as adamant.

While following the romantic method of Boiardo and borrowing the polished numbers of Poliziano, Ariosto refined the stanzas of the former poet without losing rapidity, and avoided the stationary pomp of the latter without sacrificing richness. He thus effected a combination of the two chief currents of Italian versification, and brought the octave to its final perfection. When we study the passage which describes the entrance of Ruggiero into the island home of Alcina, we feel the advance in melody and movement that he made.

We are reminded of the gardens of Morgana and Venus; but both are surpassed in their own qualities of beauty, while the fluidity that springs from complete command of the material, is added. Such touches as the following: Again, this stanza, without the brocaded splendor of Poliziano, contains all that he derived from Claudian: Raphael, Correggio and Titian have succeeded to Botticelli and Mantegna; and as those supreme painters fused the several excellences of their predecessors in a fully-developed work of art, so has Ariosto passed beyond his masters in the art of poetry.

Nor was the process one of mere eclecticism. Intent upon similar aims, the final artists of the early sixteenth century brought the same profound sentiment for reality, the same firm grasp on truth, the same vivid imagination as their precursors to the task.

Invecchiando gli uomini piangono

But they possessed surer hands and a more accomplished method. They stood above their subject and surveyed it from the height of conscious power. After the island of Alcina, it only remained for Tasso to produce novelty in his description of Armida's gardens by pushing one of Ariosto's qualities to exaggeration. The dolcezza , which in Tasso is too sugared, has in Ariosto the fine flavor of wild honeycombs. In the tropical magnificence of Tasso's stanzas there is a sultry stupor which the fresh sunlight of the Furioso never sheds. This wilding grace of the Ferrarese Homer is due to the lightness of his touch—to the blending of humorous with luxurious images in a style that passes swiftly over all it paints.

Similar Books

It is not that Tasso has not invented a new music and wrung a novel effect from the situation by the impassioned fervor of his sympathy and by the majestic languor of his cadences. But we feel that what Tasso relies on for his main effect, Ariosto had already suggested in combination with other and still subtler qualities. The one has the overpowering perfume of a hothouse jasmine; the other has the mingled scents of a garden where roses and carnations are in bloom.

Ariosto's pictorial faculty has already formed the topic of a paragraph, nor is it necessary to adduce instances of what determines the whole character of the Orlando Furioso. Otherwise it would be easy to form a gallery of portraits and landscapes; to compare the double treatment of Andromeda exposed to the sea monster in the tenth and eleventh cantos, [44] to set a pageant in the style of Mantegna by the side of a Correggiesque vignette, [45] or to enlarge upon the beauty of those magical Renaissance buildings which the poet dreamed of in the midst of verdant lawns and flowery wildernesses.

Therefore we find but little of landscape-painting for its own sake and small sympathy with the wilder and uncultivated beauties of the world. His scenery recalls the backgrounds to Carpaccio's pictures or the idyllic gardens of the Giorgionesque school. Sometimes there is a magnificent drawing in the style of Titian's purple mountain ranges, and here and there we come upon minutely finished studies that imply deep feeling for the moods of nature. Of this sort is the description of autumn [47] ;. The illuminative force of his similes is quite extraordinary.

He uses them not only as occasions for painting cabinet pictures of exquisite richness, but also for casting strong imaginative light upon the object under treatment. In the earlier part of the Furioso he describes two battles with a huge sea monster. The Orc is a kind of romantic whale, such as Piero di Cosimo painted in his tale of Andromeda; and Ruggiero has to fight it first, while riding on the Hippogriff.

It is therefore necessary for Ariosto to image forth a battle between behemoth and a mighty bird. He does so by elaborately painting the more familiar struggles of an eagle who has caught a snake, and of a mastiff snapping at a fly. The mixture of imagery with prosaic detail brings the whole scene distinctly before our eyes.

When Orlando engages the same monster, he is in a boat, and the conditions of the contest are altered. Accordingly we have a different set of similes. A cloud that fills a valley, rolling to and fro between the mountain sides, describes the movement of the Orc upon the waters; and when Orlando thrusts his anchor in between its jaws to keep them open, he is compared to miners propping up their galleries with beams in order that they may pursue their work in safety.

The same nice adaptation of images may be noticed in the similes showered on Rodomonte. The giant is alone inside the walls of Paris, and the poet is bound to make us feel that a whole city may have cause to tremble before a single man. Therefore he never leaves our fancy for a moment in repose. At one time it is a castle shaken by a storm; at another a lion retreating before the hunters; again, a tigress deprived of her cubs, or a bull that has broken from the baiting- pole, or the whelps of a lioness attacking a fierce young steer.

Some of Ariosto's illustrations—like the plowman and the thunderbolt, the two dogs fighting, the powder magazine struck by lightning, the house on fire at night, the leaves of autumn, the pine that braves a tempest, the forest bending beneath mighty winds, the April avalanche of suddenly dissolving snow—though wrought with energy and spirit, have not more than the usual excellences of carefully developed Homeric imitation. Others illuminate the matter they are used to illustrate, with the radiance of subtle and remote fancy. Of this sort is the brief image by which the Paladins in Charlemagne's army are likened to jewels in a cloth of gold: A common metaphor takes new beauty by its handling in this simile [53] ;.

Both Homer and Virgil likened their dying heroes to flowers cut down by the tempest or the plow. The following passage will bear comparison even with the death of Euphorbus: One more example may be chosen where Ariosto has borrowed nothing from any model. He uses the perfume that clings to the hair or dress of youth or maiden, as a metaphor for the aroma of noble ancestry: The unique importance of Ariosto in the history of Renaissance poetry justifies a lengthy examination of his masterpiece.

In him the chief artistic forces of the age were so combined that he remains its best interpreter. Painting, the cardinal art of Italy, determined his method; and the tide of his narrative car ried with it the idyl, the elegy, and the novella. In these forms the genius of the Renaissance found fittest literary expression; for the epic and the drama lay beyond the scope of the Italians at this period.

The defect of deep passion and serious thought, the absence of enthusiasm, combined with rare analytic powers and an acute insight into human nature, placed Ariosto in close relation to his age. Free from illusions, struggling after no high-set ideal, accepting the world as he found it, without the impulse to affirm or to deny, without hate, scorn, indignation or revolt, he represented the spirit of the sixteenth century in those qualities which were the source of moral and political decay to the Italians.

But he also embodied the strong points of his epoch—especially that sustained pursuit of beauty in form, that width of intellectual sympathy, that urbanity of tone and delicacy of perception, which rendered Italy the mistress of the arts, the propagator of culture for the rest of Europe. Of Boccaccio's legacy the most considerable portion, and the one that bore the richest fruit, was the Decameron. During the sixteenth century the Novella , as he shaped it, continued to be a popular and widely practiced form of literature. Nor is this predominance of what must be reckoned a subordinate branch of fiction, altogether singular; for the Novella was in a special sense adapted to the public which during the Age of the Despots grew up in Italy.

Since the fourteenth century the conditions of social life had undergone a thorough revolution. Under the influence of dynastic rulers stationed in great cities, merchants and manufacturers were confounded with the old nobility; and in commonwealths like Florence the bourgeoisie gave their tone to society. At the same time the community thus formed was separated from the people by the bar of humanistic culture. Literature felt this social transformation. Its products were shaped to suit the taste of the middle classes, and at the same time to amuse the leisure of the aristocracy.

The Novella was the natural outcome of these circumstances. Its qualities and its defects alike betray the ascendency of the bourgeois element. When a whole nation is addressed in drama or epic, it is necessary for the poet to strike a lofty and noble note. He appeals to collective humanity, and there is no room for aught that savors of the trivial and base. Homer and Sophocles, Dante and Shakspere, owed their grandeur in no slight measure to the audience for whom they labored.

The case is altered when a nation comes to be divided into orders, each of which has its own peculiar virtues and its own besetting sins. Limitations are of necessity introduced and deflections from the canon of universality are welcomed. If the poet, for example, writes for the lowest classes of society, he can afford to be coarse, but he must be natural. An aristocracy, taken by itself, is apt, on the contrary, to demand from literature the refinements of fashionable vice and the subtleties of artificial sentiment.

Under such influence we obtain the Arthurian legends of the later middle ages, which contrast unfavorably, in all points of simplicity and directness, with the earlier Niebelungen and Carolingian Cycles. The middle classes, for their part, delight in pictures of daily life, presented with realism, and flavored with satire that touches on the points of their experience.

Literature produced to please the bourgeois , must be sensible and positive; and its success will greatly depend upon the piquancy of its appeal to ordinary unidealized appetites. The Italians lacked such means of addressing the aggregated masses of the nation as the panhellenic festivals of Greece afforded. The public, which gave its scale of grandeur and sincerity to the Attic and Elizabethan drama, was wanting. The literature of the cinque cento , though it owed much to the justice of perception and simple taste of the true people, was composed for the most part by men of middle rank for the amusement of citizens and nobles.

It partook of those qualities which characterise the upper and middle classes. It was deficient in the breadth, the magnitude, the purity, which an audience composed of the whole nation can alone communicate. We find it cynical, satirical, ingenious in sly appeals to appetite, and oftentimes superfluously naughty. Above all it was emphatically the literature of a society confined to cities.

It may be difficult to decide what special quality of the Italian temperament was satisfied with the Novella. Yet the fact remains that this species of composition largely governed their production, not only in the field of narrative, but also in the associated region of poetry and in the plastic arts. So powerful was the attraction it possessed, that even the legends of the saints assumed this character. A notable portion of the Sacre Rappresentazioni were dramatized Novelle. The romantic poets interwove Novelle with their main theme, and the charm of the Orlando Furioso is due in no small measure to such episodes.

Popular poems of the type represented by Ginevra degli Almieri were versified Novelle. Celebrated trials, like that of the Countess of Cellant, Vittoria Accoramboni, or the Cenci, were offered to the people in the form of Novelle. The best serial pictures of the secondary painters—whether we select Benozzo Gozzoli's legend of S. Augustine at San Gemignano, or Carpaccio's legend of S. Ursula at Venice, or Sodoma's legend of S. John at Prato—are executed in the spirit of the novelists. They are Novelle painted in their salient incidents for the laity to study on the walls of church and oratory.

The term Novella requires definition, lest the thing in question should be confounded with our modern novel. Although they bear the same name, these species have less in common than might be supposed. Both, indeed, are narratives; but while the novel is a history extending over a considerable space of time, embracing a complicated tissue of events, and necessitating a study of character, the Novella is invariably brief and sketchy.

It does not aim at presenting a detailed picture of human life within certain artistically chosen limitations, but confines itself to a striking situation, or tells an anecdote illustrative of some moral quality. This is shown by the headings of the sections into which Italian Novellieri divided their collections.

We read such rubrics as the following: The Novelle were descended in a direct line from the anecdotes embedded in medieval Treasuries, Bestiaries, and similar collections. The novel, on the other hand, as Cervantes, Richardson, and Fielding formed it for the modern nations, is an expansion and prose digest of the drama. It implies the drama as a previous condition of its being, and flourishes among races gifted with the dramatic faculty.

Furthermore, the Novelle were composed for the amusement of mixed companies, who met together and passed their time in conversation. All the Novellieri pretend that their stories were originally recited and then written down, nor is there the least doubt that in a large majority of cases they were really read aloud or improvised upon occasions similar to those invented by their authors.

These circumstances determined the length and ruled the mechanism of the Novella. It was impossible within the short space of a spoken tale to attempt any minute analysis of character, or to weave the meshes of a complicated plot. The narrator went straight to his object, which was to arrest the attention, stimulate the curiosity, gratify the sensual instincts, excite the laughter, or stir the tender emotions of his audience by some fantastic, extraordinary, voluptuous, comic, or pathetic incident.

He sketched his personages with a few swift touches, set forth their circumstances with pungent brevity, and expended his force upon the painting of the central motive. Sometimes he contented himself with a bare narrative, leaving its details to the fancy. Many Novelle are the mere skeletons of stories, short notes, and epitomes of tales. At another time he indulged in descriptive passages of great verbal beauty, when it was his purpose to delight the ideal audience with pictures, or to arouse their sympathy for his characters in a situation of peculiar vividness.

Or he introduced digressions upon moral themes suggested by the passion of the moment, discoursing with the easy flow of one who raises points of casuistry in a drawing-room. Again, he heightened the effects of his anecdote by elaborate rhetorical development of the main emotions, placing carefully-studied speeches into the mouth of heroine or hero, and using every artifice for appealing directly to the feelings of his hearers. Thus, while the several Novellieri pursue different methods at different times according to their purpose, their styles are all determined by the fact that recitation was essential to the species.

All of them, moreover, have a common object in amusement. Though the Novellieri profess to teach morality by precept, and though some of them prefix prayers to their most impudent debauches of the fancy, [58] it is clear that entertainment was their one sole end in view. For their success they relied on the novelty and strangeness of their incidents; on obscenity, sometimes veiled beneath the innuendoes and suggestive metaphors of Italian convention, but more often unabashed and naked to the view; on startling horrors, acts of insane passion, or the ingenuities of diabolical cruelty.

The humor of beffe and burle , jests played by rogues on simpletons, practical jokes, and the various devices whereby wives and lovers fooled confiding husbands, supplied abundant material for relieving the more tragic stories. Lastly, the wide realm of pathos, the spectacle of beauty in distress, young lovers overwhelmed by undeserved calamity, sudden reverses of fortune, and accidents of travel upon land and sea, provided the narrator with plentiful matter for working on the sympathy of his readers.

Of moral purpose in any strict sense of the phrase the Novelle have none. This does not mean that they are invariably immoral; on the contrary, the theme of a considerable number is such that the tale can be agreeably told without violence to the most sensitive taste. But the novelist had no ethical intention; therefore he brought every motive into use that might amuse or stimulate, with business-like indifference.

He felt no qualm of conscience at provoking the cruder animal instincts, at dragging the sanctities of domestic life in the mire of his buffoonery, or at playing on the appetite for monstrous vice, the thirst for abnormal sensations, in his audience. So long as he could excite attention, he was satisfied. We cannot but wonder at the customs of a society which derived its entertainment from these tales, when we know that noble ladies listened to them without blushing, and that bishops composed them as a graceful compliment to the daughter of a reigning duke.

In style the Novelle are, as might be expected, very unequal. Everybody tried his hand at them: Yet all affected to be following Boccaccio. His artificial periods and rhetorical amplifications, ill-managed by men of imperfect literary training, who could not free themselves from local jargons, produced an awkward mixture of discordant faults. Yet the public expected little from the novelist in diction. What they required was movement, stimulus, excitement of their passions. So long as the tale-maker kept curiosity awake, it was a matter of comparative indifference what sort of words he used.

The Novella was a literary no-man's-land, where the critic exercised a feeble sway, and amateurs or artists did what each found suited to his powers. It held its ground under conditions similar to those which determined the supply of plays among us in the seventeenth century, or of magazine novels in this. In their material the Novelle embraced the whole of Italian society, furnishing pictures of its life and manners from the palaces of princes to the cottages of contadini.

Every class is represented—the man of books, the soldier, the parish priest, the cardinal, the counter-jumper, the confessor, the peasant, the duke, the merchant, the noble lady, the village maiden, the serving-man, the artisan, the actor, the beggar, the courtesan, the cut-throat, the astrologer, the lawyer, the physician, the midwife, the thief, the preacher, the nun, the pander, the fop, the witch, the saint, the galley-slave, the friar—they move before us in a motley multitude like the masquerade figures of carnival time, jostling each other in a whirl of merriment and passion, mixing together in the frank democracy of vice.

Though these pictures of life are brightly colored and various beyond description, they are superficial. It is only the surface of existence that the Novelliere touches. He leaves its depths unanalyzed, except when he plunges a sinister glance into some horrible abyss of cruelty or lust, or, stirred by gentler feeling, paints an innocent unhappy youthful love. The student of contemporary Italian customs will glean abundant information from these pages; the student of human nature gathers little except reflections on the morals of sixteenth-century society.

It was perhaps this prodigal superfluity of striking incident, in combination with poverty of intellectual content, which made the Novelle so precious to our playwrights. The tales of Cinthio and Bandello supplied them with the outlines of tragedies, leaving the poet free to exercise his analytic and imaginative powers upon the creation of character and the elaboration of motive. But that in spite of all their faults, the Novelle fascinate the fancy and stimulate the mental energies, will be admitted by all who have made them the subject of careful study.

To render an adequate account of the Novellieri and their works is very difficult. At Florence Firenzuola penned stories with the golden fluency and dazzling wealth of phrase peculiar to him. Il Lasca's Cene rank among the most considerable literary products of the age. But it was chiefly in the North of Italy that novelists abounded. Giraldi's hundred tales, entitled Hecatommithi , issued from Ferrara. They were heavy in style, and prosaic; yet their matter made them widely popular. Cademosto of Lodi, Monsignor Brevio of Venice, Ascanio de' Mori of Mantua, Luigi da Porto of Vicenza, and, last not least, the illustrious Matteo Bandello, proved how rich in this species of literature were the northern provinces.

The Lombards displayed a special faculty for tales in which romance predominated. Venice, notorious for her pleasure-marts of luxury, became the emporium of publications which supplied her courtesans and rufflers with appropriate mental food. The Tuscans showed more comic humor, and, of course, a purer style. But in point of matter, intellectual and moral, there is not much to choose between the works of Florentine and Lombard authors. Following the precedent of Boccaccio, it was usual for the Novellieri to invent a framework for their stories, making it appear that a polite society of men and women called in Italy a lieta brigata had by some chance accident been thrown upon their own resources in circumstances of piquant novelty.

One of the party suggests that they should spend their time in telling tales, and a captain is chosen who sets the theme and determines the order of the story-tellers. These introductions are not unfrequently the most carefully written portion of the collection, and abound in charming sketches of Italian life.

Thus Il Lasca at the opening of Le Cene feigns that a company of young men and women went in winter time to visit at a friend's house in Florence. It was snowing, and the youths amused themselves by a snow-ball match in the inner courtyard of the palace. The ladies watched them from a loggia , till it came into their heads to join the game.