Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

Doth no one fight for thee, no one defend thee,

  None of thy own? Arms, arms! For I alone

  Will fight and fall for thee.

  Grant me, O Heaven, my blood

  Shall be as fire unto Italian hearts!

  Where are thy sons? I hear the sound of arms,

  Of wheels, of voices, and of drums;

  In foreign fields afar

  Thy children fight and fall.

  Wait, Italy, wait! I see, or seem to see,

  A tumult as of infantry and horse,

  And smoke and dust, and the swift flash of swords

  Like lightning among clouds.

  Wilt thou not hope? Wilt thou not lift and turn

  Thy trembling eyes upon the doubtful close?

  For what, in yonder fields,

  Combats Italian youth? O gods, ye gods,

  For other lands Italian swords are drawn!

  Oh, misery for him who dies in war,

  Not for his native shores and his beloved,

  His wife and children dear,

  But by the foes of others

  For others’ cause, and cannot dying say,

  “Dear land of mine,

  The life thou gavest me I give thee back.”

  This suffers, of course, in translation, but I confess that in the original it wears something of the same perfunctory air. His patriotism was the fever-flame of the sick man’s blood; his real country was the land beyond the grave, and there is a far truer note in this address to Death.

  And thou, that ever from my life’s beginning

  I have invoked and honored, Beautiful Death! who only

  Of all our earthly sorrows knowest pity:

  If ever celebrated

  Thou wast by me; if ever I attempted

  To recompense the insult

  That vulgar terror offers

  Thy lofty state, delay no more, but listen

  To prayers so rarely uttered:

  Shut to the light forever,

  Sovereign of time, these eyes of weary anguish!

  I suppose that Italian criticism of the present day would not give Leopardi nearly so high a place among the poets as his friend Ranieri claims for him and his contemporaries accorded. He seems to have been the poet of a national mood; he was the final expression of that long, hopeless apathy in which Italy lay bound for thirty years after the fall of Napoleon and his governments, and the re�stablishment of all the little despots, native and foreign, throughout the peninsula. In this time there was unrest enough, and revolt enough of a desultory and unorganized sort, but every struggle, apparently every aspiration, for a free political and religious life ended in a more solid confirmation of the leaden misrule which weighed down the hearts of the people. To such an apathy the pensive monotone of this sick poet’s song might well seem the only truth; and one who beheld the universe with the invalid’s loath eyes, and reasoned from his own irremediable ills to a malign mystery presiding over all human affairs, and ordering a sad destiny from which there could be no defense but death, might have the authority of a prophet among those who could find no promise of better things in their earthly lot.

  Leopardi’s malady was such that when he did not positively suffer he had still the memory of pain, and he was oppressed with a dreary ennui, from which he could not escape. Death, oblivion, annihilation, are the thoughts upon which he broods, and which fill his verse. The passing color of other men’s minds is the prevailing cast of his, and he, probably with far more sincerity than any other poet, nursed his despair in such utterances as this:

  TO HIMSELF.

  Now thou shalt rest forever,

  O weary heart! The last deceit is ended,

  For I believed myself immortal. Cherished

  Hopes, and beloved delusions,

  And longings to be deluded, — all are perished!

  Rest thee forever! Oh, greatly,

  Heart, hast thou palpitated. There is nothing

  Worthy to move thee more, nor is earth worthy

  Thy sighs. For life is only

  Bitterness and vexation; earth is only

  A heap of dust. So rest thee!

  Despair for the last time. To our race Fortune

  Never gave any gift but death. Disdain, then,

  Thyself and Nature and the Power

  Occultly reigning to the common ruin:

  Scorn, heart, the infinite emptiness of all things!

  Nature was so cruel a stepmother to this man that he could see nothing but harm even in her apparent beneficence, and his verse repeats again and again his dark mistrust of the very loveliness which so keenly delights his sense. One of his early poems, called “The Quiet after the Storm”, strikes the key in which nearly all his songs are pitched. The observation of nature is very sweet and honest, and I cannot see that the philosophy in its perversion of the relations of physical and spiritual facts is less mature than that of his later work: it is a philosophy of which the first conception cannot well differ from the final expression.

  ... See yon blue sky that breaks

  The clouds above the mountain in the west!

  The fields disclose themselves,

  And in the valley bright the river runs.

  All hearts are glad; on every side

  Arise the happy sounds

  Of toil begun anew.

  The workman, singing, to the threshold comes,

  With work in hand, to judge the sky,

  Still humid, and the damsel next,

  On his report, comes forth to brim her pail

  With the fresh-fallen rain.

  The noisy fruiterers

  From lane to lane resume

  Their customary cry.

  The sun looks out again, and smiles upon

  The houses and the hills. Windows and doors

  Are opened wide; and on the far-off road

  You hear the tinkling bells and rattling wheels

  Of travelers that set out upon their journey.

  Every heart is glad;

  So grateful and so sweet

  When is our life as now?

  O Pleasure, child of Pain,

  Vain joy which is the fruit

  Of bygone suffering overshadow�d

  And wrung with cruel fears

  Of death, whom life abhors;

  Wherein, in long suspense,

  Silent and cold and pale,

  Man sat, and shook and shuddered to behold

  Lightnings and clouds and winds,

  Furious in his offense!

  Beneficent Nature, these,

  These are thy bounteous gifts:

  These, these are the delights

  Thou offerest unto mortals! To escape

  From pain is bliss to us;

  Anguish thou scatterest broadcast, and our woes

  Spring up spontaneous, and that little joy

  Born sometimes, for a miracle and show,

  Of terror is our mightiest gain. O man,

  Dear to the gods, count thyself fortunate

  If now and then relief

  Thou hast from pain, and blest

  When death shall come to heal thee of all pain!

  “The bodily deformities which humiliated Leopardi, and the cruel infirmities that agonized him his whole life long, wrought in his heart an invincible disgust, which made him invoke death as the sole relief. His songs, while they express discontent, the discord of the world, the conviction of the nullity of human things, are exquisite in style; they breathe a perpetual melancholy, which is often sublime, and they relax and pain your soul like the music of a single chord, while their strange sweetness wins you to them again and again.” This is the language of an Italian critic who wrote after Leopardi’s death, when already it had begun to be doubted whether he was the greatest Italian poet since Dante. A still later critic finds Leopardi’s style, “without relief, without lyric flight, without the great art of contrasts, without poetic leaven,” hard to read. “Despoil those verses of their masterly polish,” he sa
ys, “reduce those thoughts to prose, and you will see how little they are akin to poetry.”

  I have a feeling that my versions apply some such test to Leopardi’s work, and that the reader sees it in them at much of the disadvantage which this critic desires for it. Yet, after doing my worst, I am not wholly able to agree with him. It seems to me that there is the indestructible charm in it which, wherever we find it, we must call poetry. It is true that “its strange sweetness wins you again and again,” and that this “lonely pipe of death” thrills and solemnly delights as no other stop has done. Let us hear it again, as the poet sounds it, figuring himself a Syrian shepherd, guarding his flock by night, and weaving his song under the Eastern moon:

  O flock that liest at rest, O bless�d thou

  That knowest not thy fate, however hard,

  How utterly I envy thee!

  Not merely that thou goest almost free

  Of all this weary pain, —

  That every misery and every toil

  And every fear thou straightway dost forget, —

  But most because thou knowest not ennui

  When on the grass thou liest in the shade.

  I see thee tranquil and content,

  And great part of thy years

  Untroubled by ennui thou passest thus.

  I likewise in the shadow, on the grass.

  Lie, and a dull disgust beclouds

  My soul, and I am goaded with a spur,

  So that, reposing, I am farthest still

  From finding peace or place.

  And yet I want for naught,

  And have not had till now a cause for tears.

  What is thy bliss, how much,

  I cannot tell; but thou art fortunate.

  Or, it may be, my thought

  Errs, running thus to others’ destiny;

  May be, to everything,

  Wherever born, in cradle or in fold,

  That day is terrible when it was born.

  It is the same note, the same voice; the theme does not change, but perhaps it is deepened in this ode:

  ON THE LIKENESS OP A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN CARVEN

  UPON HER TOMB.

  Such wast thou: now under earth

  A skeleton and dust. O’er dust and bones

  Immovably and vainly set, and mute,

  Looking upon the flight of centuries,

  Sole keeper of memory

  And of regret is this fair counterfeit

  Of loveliness now vanished. That sweet look,

  Which made men tremble when it fell on them,

  As now it falls on me; that lip, which once,

  Like some full vase of sweets,

  Ran over with delight; that fair neck, clasped

  By longing, and that soft and amorous hand,

  Which often did impart

  An icy thrill unto the hand it touched;

  That breast, which visibly

  Blanched with its beauty him who looked on it —

  All these things were, and now

  Dust art thou, filth, a fell

  And hideous sight hidden beneath a stone.

  Thus fate hath wrought its will

  Upon the semblance that to us did seem

  Heaven’s vividest image! Eternal mystery

  Of mortal being! To-day the ineffable

  Fountain of thoughts and feelings vast and high,

  Beauty reigns sovereign, and seems

  Like splendor thrown afar

  From some immortal essence on these sands,

  To give our mortal state

  A sign and hope secure of destinies

  Higher than human, and of fortunate realms,

  And golden worlds unknown.

  To-morrow, at a touch,

  Loathsome to see, abominable, abject,

  Becomes the thing that was

  All but angelical before;

  And from men’s memories

  All that its loveliness

  Inspired forever faults and fades away.

  Ineffable desires

  And visions high and pure

  Rise in the happy soul,

  Lulled by the sound of cunning harmonies

  Whereon the spirit floats,

  As at his pleasure floats

  Some fearless swimmer over the deep sea;

  But if a discord strike

  The wounded sense, to naught

  All that fair paradise in an instant falls.

  Mortality! if thou

  Be wholly frail and vile,

  Be only dust and shadow, how canst thou

  So deeply feel? And if thou be

  In part divine, how can thy will and thought

  By things so poor and base

  So easily be awaken�d and quenched?

  Let us touch for the last time this pensive chord, and listen to its response of hopeless love. This poem, in which he turns to address the spirit of the poor child whom he loved boyishly at Recanati, is pathetic with the fact that possibly she alone ever reciprocated the tenderness with which his heart was filled.

  TO SYLVIA.

  Sylvia, dost thou remember

  In this that season of thy mortal being

  When from thine eyes shone beauty,

  In thy shy glances fugitive and smiling,

  And joyously and pensively the borders

  Of childhood thou did’st traverse?

  All day the quiet chambers

  And the ways near resounded

  To thy perpetual singing,

  When thou, intent upon some girlish labor,

  Sat’st utterly contented,

  With the fair future brightening in thy vision.

  It was the fragrant month of May, and ever

  Thus thou thy days beguiledst.

  I, leaving my fair studies,

  Leaving my manuscripts and toil-stained volumes,

  Wherein I spent the better

  Part of myself and of my young existence,

  Leaned sometimes idly from my father’s windows,

  And listened to the music of thy singing,

  And to thy hand, that fleetly

  Ran o’er the threads of webs that thou wast weaving.

  I looked to the calm heavens,

  Unto the golden lanes and orchards,

  And unto the far sea and to the mountains;

  No mortal tongue may utter

  What in my heart I felt then.

  O Sylvia mine, what visions,

  What hopes, what hearts, we had in that far season!

  How fair and good before us

  Seemed human life and fortune!

  When I remember hope so great, beloved,

  An utter desolation

  And bitterness o’erwhelm me,

  And I return to mourn my evil fortune.

  O Nature, faithless Nature,

  Wherefore dost thou not give us

  That which thou promisest? Wherefore deceivest,

  With so great guile, thy children?

  Thou, ere the freshness of thy spring was withered.

  Stricken by thy fell malady, and vanquished,

  Did’st perish, O my darling! and the blossom

  Of thy years sawest;

  Thy heart was never melted

  At the sweet praise, now of thy raven tresses,

  Now of thy glances amorous and bashful;

  Never with thee the holiday-free maidens

  Reasoned of love and loving.

  Ah! briefly perished, likewise,

  My own sweet hope; and destiny denied me

  Youth, even in my childhood!

  Alas, alas, belov�d,

  Companion of my childhood!

  Alas, my mourn�d hope! how art thou vanished

  Out of my place forever!

  This is that world? the pleasures,

  The love, the labors, the events, we talked of,

  These, when we prattled long ago together?

  Is this the fortune of our race, O Heaven?

  At the
truth’s joyless dawning,

  Thou fellest, sad one, with thy pale hand pointing

  Unto cold death, and an unknown and naked

  Sepulcher in the distance.

  III

  These pieces fairly indicate the range of Leopardi, and I confess that they and the rest that I have read leave me somewhat puzzled in the presence of his reputation. This, to be sure, is largely based upon his prose writings — his dialogues, full of irony and sarcasm — and his unquestionable scholarship. But the poetry is the heart of his fame, and is it enough to justify it? I suppose that such poetry owes very much of its peculiar influence to that awful love we all have of hovering about the idea of death — of playing with the great catastrophe of our several tragedies and farces, and of marveling what it can be. There are moods which the languid despair of Leopardi’s poetry can always evoke, and in which it seems that the most life can do is to leave us, and let us lie down and cease. But I fancy we all agree that these are not very wise or healthful moods, and that their indulgence does not fit us particularly well for the duties of life, though I never heard that they interfered with its pleasures; on the contrary, they add a sort of zest to enjoyment. Of course the whole transaction is illogical, but if a poet will end every pensive strain with an appeal or apostrophe to death — not the real death, that comes with a sharp, quick agony, or “after long lying in bed”, after many days or many years of squalid misery and slowly dying hopes and medicines that cease even to relieve at last; not this death, that comes in all the horror of undertaking, but a picturesque and impressive abstraction, whose business it is to relieve us in the most effective way of all our troubles, and at the same time to avenge us somehow upon the indefinitely ungrateful and unworthy world we abandon — if a poet will do this, we are very apt to like him. There is little doubt that Leopardi was sincere, and there is little reason why he should not have been so, for life could give him nothing but pain.

  De Sanctis, whom I have quoted already, and who speaks, I believe, with rather more authority than any other modern Italian critic, and certainly with great clearness and acuteness, does not commit himself to specific praise of Leopardi’s work. But he seems to regard him as an important expression, if not force or influence, and he has some words about him, at the close of his “History of Italian Literature”, which have interested me, not only for the estimate of Leopardi which they embody, but for the singularly distinct statement which they make of the modern literary attitude. I should not, myself, have felt that Leopardi represented this, but I am willing that the reader should feel it, if he can. De Sanctis has been speaking of the Romantic period in Italy, when he says: