Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 195
Pacchiarotto. III
Pacchiarotto. IV
Pacchiarotto. V
Pacchiarotto. VI
Pacchiarotto. VII
Pacchiarotto. VIII
Pacchiarotto. IX
Pacchiarotto. X
Pacchiarotto. XI
Pacchiarotto. XII
Pacchiarotto. XIII
Pacchiarotto. XIV
Pacchiarotto. XV
Pacchiarotto. XVI
Pacchiarotto. XVII
Pacchiarotto. XVIII
Pacchiarotto. XIX
Pacchiarotto. XX
Pacchiarotto. XXI
Pacchiarotto. XXII
Pacchiarotto. XXIII
Pacchiarotto. XXIV
Pacchiarotto. XXV
Pacchiarotto. XXVI
Pacchiarotto. XXVII
Pacchiarotto. XXVIII
Pacchiarotto. XXIX
Pacchiarotto, and How He Worked in Distemper
Pacchiarotto. I
QUERY: was ever a quainter
Crotchet than this of the painter
Giacomo Pacchiarotto
Who took “Reform” for his motto?
Pacchiarotto. II
He, pupil of old Fungaio,
Is always confounded (heigho!)
With Pacchia, contemporaneous
No question, but how extraneous
In the grace of soul, the power
Of hand, — undoubted dower
Of Pacchia who decked (as we know,
My Kirkup!) San Bernardino,
Turning the small dark Oratory
To Siena’s Art-laboratory,
As he made its straitness roomy
And glorified its gloomy,
With Bazzi and Beccafumi.
(Another heigho for Bazzi:
How people miscall him Razzi!)
Pacchiarotto. III
This Painter was of opinion
Our earth should be his dominion
Whose Art could correct to pattern
What Nature had slurred — the slattern!
And since, beneath the heavens,
Things lay now at sixes and sevens,
Or, as he said, sopra-sotto —
Thought the painter Pacchiarotto
Things wanted reforming, therefore.
“Wanted it” — ay, but wherefore?
When earth held one so ready
As he to step forth, stand steady
In the middle of God’s creation
And prove to demonstration
What the dark is, what the light is,
What the wrong is, what the right is,
What the ugly, what the beautiful,
What the restive, what the dutiful,
In Mankind profuse around him?
Man, devil as now he found him,
Would presently soar up angel
At the summons of such evangel,
And owe — what would Man not owe
To the painter Pacchiarotto?
Ay, look to thy laurels, Giotto!
Pacchiarotto. IV
But Man, he perceived, was stubborn,
Grew regular brute, once cub born;
And it struck him as expedient —
Ere he tried to make obedient;
The wolf, fox, bear, and monkey
By piping advice in one key, —
That his pipe should play a prelude
To something heaven-tinged not hell-hued,
Something not harsh but docile,
Man-liquid, not Man-fossil —
Not fact, in short, but fancy.
By a laudable necromancy
He would conjure up ghosts — a circle
Deprived of the means to work ill
Should his music prove distasteful
And pearls to the swine go wasteful.
To be rent of swine — that was hard!
With fancy he ran no hazard:
Fact might knock him o’er the mazard.
Pacchiarotto. V
So, the painter Pacchiarotto
Constructed himself a grotto
In the quarter of Stalloreggi —
As authors of note allege ye.
And on each of the whitewashed sides of it
He painted — (none far and wide so fit
As he to perform in fresco) —
He painted nor cried quiesco
Till he peopled its every square foot
With Man — from the Beggar barefoot
To the Noble in cap and feather;
All sorts and conditions together.
The Soldier in breastplate and helmet
Stood frowningly — hail fellow well met —
By the Priest armed with bell, book, and candle.
Nor did he omit to handle
The Fair Sex, our brave distemperer:
Not merely King, Clown, Pope, Emperor —
He diversified too his Hades
Of all forms, pinched Labor and paid Ease,
With as mixed an assemblage of Ladies.
Pacchiarotto. VI
Which work done, dry, — he rested him,
Cleaned palette, washed brush, divested him
Of the apron that suits frescanti,
And, bonnet on ear stuck jaunty,
This hand upon hip well planted,
That, free to wave as it wanted,
He addressed in a choice oration
His folk of each name and nation,
Taught its duty to every station.
The Pope was declared an arrant
Impostor at once, I warrant.
The Emperor — truth might tax him
With ignorance of the maxim
“Shear sheep but nowise flay them!”
And the Vulgar that obey them,
The Ruled, well-matched with the Ruling,
They failed not of wholesome schooling
On their knavery and their fooling.
As for Art — where’s decorum? Pooh-poohed it is
By Poets that plague us with lewd ditties,
And Painters that pester with nudities!
Pacchiarotto. VII
Now, your rater and debater
Is balked by a mere spectator
Who simply stares and listens
Tongue-tied, while eye nor glistens
Nor brow grows hot and twitchy,
Nor mouth, for a combat itchy,
Quivers with some convincing
Reply — that sets him wincing?
Nay, rather — reply that furnishes
Your debater with just what burnishes
The crest of him, all one triumph,
As you see him rise, hear him cry “Humph!
Convinced am I? This confutes me?
Receive the rejoinder that suits me!
Confutation of vassal for prince meet —
Wherein all the powers that convince meet,
And mash my opponent to mincemeat!”
Pacchiarotto. VIII
So, off from his head flies the bonnet,
His hip loses hand planted on it,
While t’ other hand, frequent in gesture,
Slinks modestly back beneath vesture,
As — hop, skip and jump, — he’s along with
Those weak ones he late proved so strong with!
Pope, Emperor, lo, he’s beside them,
Friendly now, who late could not abide them,
King, Clown, Soldier, Priest, Noble, Burgess;
And his voice, that out-roared Boanerges,
How minikin-mildly it urges
In accents how gentled and gingered
Its word in defence of the injured!
“Oh, call him not culprit, this Pontiff!
Be hard on this Kaiser ye won’t if
Ye take into con-si-der-ation
What dangers attend elevation!
The Priest — who expects him to descant
On duty with more zeal and less cant?
He preaches but r
ubbish he’s reared in.
The Soldier, grown deaf (by the mere din
Of battle) to mercy, learned tippling
And what not of vice while a stripling.
The Lawyer — his lies are conventional.
And as for the Poor Sort — why mention all
Obstructions that leave barred and bolted
Access to the brains of each dolt-head?”
Pacchiarotto. IX
He ended, you wager? Not half! A bet?
Precedence to males in the alphabet!
Still, disposed of Man’s A B C, there’s X
Y Z want assistance, — the Fair Sex I
How much may be said in excuse of
Those vanities — males see no use of —
From silk shoe on heel to laced poll’s-hood!
What’s their frailty beside our own falsehood?
The boldest, most brazen of . . . trumpets,
How kind can they be to their dumb pets!
Of their charms — how are most frank, how few venal!
While as for those charges of Juvenal —
Quœ nemo dixisset in toto
Nisi (œdepol) ore illoto —
He dismissed every charge with an “A page!”
Pacchiarotto. X
Then, cocking (in Scotch phrase) his cap a-gee,
Right hand disengaged from the doublet
— Like landlord, in house he had sublet
Resuming of guardianship gestion,
To call tenants’ conduct in question —
Hop, skip, jump, to inside from outside
Of chamber, he lords, ladies, louts eyed
With such transformation of visage
As fitted the censor of this age.
No longer an advocate tepid
Of frailty, but champion intrepid
Of strength, — not of falsehood but verity, —
He, one after one, with asperity
Stripped bare all the cant-clothed abuses,
Disposed of sophistic excuses,
Forced folly each shift to abandon,
And left vice with no leg to stand on.
So crushing the force he exerted,
That Man at his foot lay converted!
Pacchiarotto. XI
True — Man bred of paint-pot and mortar!
But why suppose folks of this sort are
More likely to hear and be tractable
Than folks all alive and, in fact, able
To testify promptly by action
Their ardor, and make satisfaction
For misdeeds non verbis sed factis?
“With folks all alive be my practice
Henceforward! O mortar, paint-pot O,
Farewell to ye I” cried Pacchiarotto,
“Let only occasion intérpose!”
Pacchiarotto. XII
It did so: for, pat to the purpose
Through causes I need not examine,
There fell upon Siena a famine.
In vain did the magistrates busily
Seek succor, fetch grain out of Sicily,
Nay, throw mill and bakehouse wide open —
Such misery followed as no pen
Of mine shall depict ye. Faint, fainter
Waxed hope of relief: so, our painter,
Emboldened by triumph of recency,
How could he do other with decency
Than rush in this strait to the rescue,
Play schoolmaster, point as with fescue
To each and all slips in Man’s spelling
The law of the land? — slips now telling
With monstrous effect on the city,
Whose magistrates moved him to pity
As, bound to read law to the letter,
They minded their hornbook no better.
Pacchiarotto. XIII
I ought to have told you, at starting,
How certain, who itched to be carting
Abuses away clean and thorough
From Siena, both province and borough,
Had formed themselves into a company
Whose swallow could bolt in a lump any
Obstruction of scruple, provoking
The nicer throat’s coughing and choking:
Fit Club, by as fit a name dignified
Of “Freed Ones” — ”Bardotti” — which signified
“Spare-Horses” that walk by the wagon
The team has to drudge for and drag on.
This notable Club Pacchiarotto
Had joined long since, paid scot and lot to,
As free and accepted “Bardotto.”
The Bailiwick watched with no quiet eye
The outrage thus done to society,
And noted the advent especially
Of Pacchiarotto their fresh ally.
Pacchiarotto. XIV
These Spare-Horses forthwith assembled:
Neighed words whereat citizens trembled
As oft as the chiefs, in the Square by
The Duomo, proposed a way whereby
The city were cured of disaster.
“Just substitute servant for master,
Make Poverty Wealth and Wealth Poverty,
Unloose Man from overt and covert tie,
And straight out of social confusion
True Order would spring!” Brave illusion —
Aims heavenly attained by means earthly!
Pacchiarotto. XV
Off to these at full speed rushed our worthy, —
Brain practised and tongue no less tutored,
In argument’s armor accoutred, —
Sprang forth, mounted rostrum, and essayed
Proposals like those to which “Yes” said
So glibly each personage painted
O’ the wall-side wherewith you’re acquainted.
He harangued on the faults of the Bailiwick:
“Red soon were our State-candle’s paly wick,
If wealth would become but interfluous;
Fill voids up with just the superfluous;
If ignorance gave way to knowledge
— Not pedantry picked up at college
From Doctors, Professors et cætera —
(They say: ‘kai to loipa’ — like better a
Long Greek string of kappas, taus, lambdas,
Tacked on to the tail of each damned ass) —
No knowledge we want of this quality,
But knowledge indeed — practicality
Through insight’s fine universality!
If you shout ‘Bailiffs, out on ye all! Fie,
Thou Chief of our forces, Amalfi,
Who shieldest the rogue and the clot poll!’
If you pounce on and poke out, with what pole
I leave ye to fancy, our Siena’s
Beast-litter of sloths and hyenas — ”
(Whoever to scan this is ill able
Forgets the town’s name’s a disyllable) —
“If, this done, ye did — as ye might — place
For once the right man in the right place,
If you listened to me” . . .
Pacchiarotto. XVI
At which last “I.”
There flew at his throat like a mastiff
One Spare-Horse — another and another!
Such outbreak of tumult and pother,
Horse-faces a-laughing and fleering,
Horse-voices a-mocking and jeering,
Horse-hands raised to collar the caitiff
Whose impudence ventured the late “If” —
That, had not fear sent Pacchiarotto
Off tramping, as fast as could trot toe,
Away from the scene of discomfiture —
Had he stood there stock-still in a dumbfit — sure
Am I he had paid in his peison
Till his mother might fail to know her son,
Though she gazed on him never so wistful,
do the figure so tattered and tristful.
Each mout
h full of curses, each fist full
Of cuffings — behold, Pacchiarotto,
The pass which thy project has got to,
Of trusting, nigh ashes still hot — tow!
(The paraphrase — which I much need — is
From Horace “per ignes incedis.”)
Pacchiarotto. XVII
Right and left did he dash helter-skelter
In agonized search of a shelter.
No purlieu so blocked and no alley
So blind as allowed him to rally
His spirits and see — nothing hampered
His steps if he trudged and not scampered
Up here and down there in a city
That’s all ups and downs, more the pity
For folks who would outrun the constable.
At last he stopped short at the one stable
And sure place of refuge that’s offered
Humanity. Lately was coffered
A corpse in its sepulchre, situate
By St. John’s Observance. “Habituate
Thyself to the strangest of bedfellows,
And, kicked by the live, kiss the dead fellows!”
So Misery counselled the craven.
At once he crept safely to haven
Through a hole left unbricked in the structure.
Ay, Misery, in have you tucked your
Poor client and left him conterminous
With — pah! — the thing fetid and verminous!
(I gladly would spare you the detail,
But History writes what I retail.)
Pacchiarotto. XVIII
Two days did he groan in his domicile:
“Good Saints, set me free and I promise I’ll
Adjure all ambition of preaching
Change, whether to minds touched by teaching
— The smooth folk of fancy, mere figments
Created by plaster and pigments, —
Or to minds that receive with such rudeness
Dissuasion from pride, greed and lewdness,
— The rough folk of fact, life’s true specimens
Of mind — ’haud in posse sed esse mens’
As it was, is, and shall be forever
Despite of my utmost endeavor.
O live foes I thought to illumine,
Henceforth lie untroubled your gloom in!
I need my own light, every spark, as
I couch with this sole friend — a carcase!”
Pacchiarotto. XIX
Two days thus he maundered and rambled;
Then, starved back to sanity, scrambled
From out his receptacle loathsome.
“A spectre!” — declared upon oath some
Who saw him emerge and (appalling
To mention) his garments a-crawling
With plagues far beyond the Egyptian.
He gained, in a state past description,