Categories
- Antiques & Collectibles 13
- Architecture 36
- Art 47
- Bibles 22
- Biography & Autobiography 813
- Body, Mind & Spirit 137
- Business & Economics 27
- Computers 4
- Cooking 94
- Crafts & Hobbies 3
- Drama 346
- Education 45
- Family & Relationships 57
- Fiction 11812
- Games 19
- Gardening 17
- Health & Fitness 34
- History 1377
- House & Home 1
- Humor 147
- Juvenile Fiction 1873
- Juvenile Nonfiction 202
- Language Arts & Disciplines 88
- Law 16
- Literary Collections 686
- Literary Criticism 179
- Mathematics 13
- Medical 41
- Music 39
- Nature 179
- Non-Classifiable 1768
- Performing Arts 7
- Periodicals 1453
- Philosophy 63
- Photography 2
- Poetry 896
- Political Science 203
- Psychology 42
- Reference 154
- Religion 498
- Science 126
- Self-Help 79
- Social Science 80
- Sports & Recreation 34
- Study Aids 3
- Technology & Engineering 59
- Transportation 23
- Travel 463
- True Crime 29
Modern Italian Poets Essays and Versions
Description:
Excerpt
This book has grown out of studies begun twenty years ago in Italy, and continued fitfully, as I found the mood and time for them, long after their original circumstance had become a pleasant memory. If any one were to say that it did not fully represent the Italian poetry of the period which it covers chronologically, I should applaud his discernment; and perhaps I should not contend that it did much more than indicate the general character of that poetry. At the same time, I think that it does not ignore any principal name among the Italian poets of the great movement which resulted in the national freedom and unity, and it does form a sketch, however slight and desultory, of the history of Italian poetry during the hundred years ending in 1870.
Since that time, literature has found in Italy the scientific and realistic development which has marked it in all other countries. The romantic school came distinctly to a close there with the close of the long period of patriotic aspiration and endeavor; but I do not know the more recent work, except in some of the novels, and I have not attempted to speak of the newer poetry represented by Carducci. The translations here are my own; I have tried to make them faithful; I am sure they are careful.
Possibly I should not offer my book to the public at all if I knew of another work in English studying even with my incoherence the Italian poetry of the time mentioned, or giving a due impression of its extraordinary solidarity. It forms part of the great intellectual movement of which the most unmistakable signs were the French revolution, and its numerous brood of revolutions, of the first, second, and third generations, throughout Europe; but this poetry is unique in the history of literature for the unswerving singleness of its tendency.
The boundaries of epochs are very obscure, and of course the poetry of the century closing in 1870 has much in common with earlier Italian poetry. Parini did not begin it, nor Alfieri; it began them, and its spirit must have been felt in the perfumed air of the soft Lorrainese despotism at Florence when Filicaja breathed over his native land the sigh which makes him immortal. Yet finally, every age is individual; it has a moment of its own when its character has ceased to be general, and has not yet begun to be general, and it is one of these moments which is eternized in the poetry before us. It was, perhaps, more than any other poetry in the world, an incident and an instrument of the political redemption of the people among whom it arose. "In free and tranquil countries," said the novelist Guerrazzi in conversation with M. Monnier, the sprightly Swiss critic, recently dead, who wrote so much and so well about modern Italian literature, "men have the happiness and the right to be artists for art's sake: with us, this would be weakness and apathy. When I write it is because I have something to do; my books are not productions, but deeds. Before all, here in Italy we must be men. When we have not the sword, we must take the pen. We heap together materials for building batteries and fortresses, and it is our misfortune if these structures are not works of art. To write slowly, coldly, of our times and of our country, with the set purpose of creating a chef-d'oeuvre, would be almost an impiety. When I compose a book, I think only of freeing my soul, of imparting my idea or my belief. As vehicle, I choose the form of romance, since it is popular and best liked at this day; my picture is my thoughts, my doubts, or my dreams. I begin a story to draw the crowd; when I feel that I have caught its ear, I say what I have to say; when I think the lesson is growing tiresome, I take up the anecdote again; and whenever I can leave it, I go back to my moralizing....