Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers

The note of this philosophy is given at once in the preface of the “Poemetti,” addressed to his sister Maria. He gives a short indication, rather than description, of his new home with its church-towers and bells, its mountains and its rivers, its field-birds, its swallows, martins and rock-swallows, and then exclaims, addressing them: —

“Oh yes, there was a time when we did not live so near you. And if you knew what grief was ours then, what weeping, what noisy solitude, what secret and continuous anguish!” – “But come, man, think not on it,” you say to me. – “Nay, let us think on it. Know that the long sweetness of your voices is born of the echoes they arouse of that past grief: that things would not be so beautiful now had they not been so black before: that I should not find so much pleasure in small motives of joy, had the suffering not been so great; had it not come from all sources of grief, from Nature and from Society; and had it not wounded me soul and body, mind and feeling. Is it not so, Maria? Blessèd, then, blessèd be grief.”

And then, further on, after a charming picture of a martin that feeds, under his eaves, the abandoned nestlings of her enemy the swallow, he breaks out: —

“Men, I will speak as in a fable for children: Men, imitate that martin. Men, be content with little, and love each other within the limits of the family, of the nation, of humanity.”

Twice the poet returns to the same subject. A collection of four short pieces entitled “The Hermit,” compact with thought, ends as follows: —

IVAnd the pale hermit veiled his eyes,and lo throughout his heart there streamedthe sweet sleep of his weary life.When he awoke (he was droppingdown broad, still writers in a drifting ship)he cried: Let me remember, Lord!God, let me dream! Nothing is more sweet,God, than the end of grief, but ’tisgrievous to forget it; for ’tis hardto cast away the flower that only smells when plucked.

In “The Two Children” two little ones, having come to blows in heroic fashion at their play one evening, are ignominiously swept off to bed by their mother. In the dark, full of denser shadows, their sobbing gradually ceases, they draw nearer to each other, and when the mother comes to look at them, shading the light with her hand, she finds them pressed close together, good beyond their wont, asleep. And she tucks them in with a smile. The third part takes up the parable as follows: —

IIIMen! in the cruel hour when the wolf is lord,think on the shade of destiny unknownthat wraps us round, and on the silence awesomethat reigns beyond the short noise of your brawling,the clamour of your warring —just a bee’s hum within an empty hive.Peace, men! in the prone earthtoo great’s the mystery, and only hewho gets him brethren in his fear errs not.Peace, brethren! and let not the armsthat now ye stretch, or shall, to those most near,know aught of strife or threat.And like good children sleeping ’twixt the sheetsplacid and white, be found,when unseen and unheard, above you bendsDeath, with her lighted lamp.

The poet’s thought on death is given, with the insistence of one who is very much in earnest, in two recently delivered lectures, “L’Era Nuova,” and “La Ginestra,” (“Flower of the Broom,” a development of Leopardi’s exquisite poem); and again in two of his most beautiful poems, “La Pace” (published after the Milan riots), and “Il Focolare” (“The Hearth”).

In the “Ginestra” Pascoli expounds Leopardi as follows: —

“And look at the stars. Reflect that there was a time when they were thought to be what they appear; small, mere atoms of light… Instead, it is the earth that is small, a mere grain of sand. To believe the earth large and stars small; or to believe, as is the case, that the stars are infinite in number and size, and the earth very small; these are the two religions, this is the σκότος and the φῶς: darkness and light. Look at Vesuvius the destroyer, the glare of the lava glowing in the darkness. Look at Death. Look it in the face, without drooping the head cowardly, without erecting it proudly. You will feel the necessity of being at peace with your fellow-men. And say not that all men know they are mortal, but that that has never kept anyone from doing ill. I tell you it is not enough to know it; you must have your soul saturated with it, and have but that in your soul. Men know, too, that the stars are large, or rather they give an idle assent to the learned who say so. They know it, that is, but they do not think it as yet. Will the time come when they will think it?” And in the “Era Nuova” he continues: – Man “sought illusions and found them. The brute knows not that he will die: the man said to himself that he knows he will not die. So they again came to be like each other… And thenceforth Death being denied, no longer received from man his sad and entire assent. Man feared not to sadden his fellow, feared not to kill him, feared not to kill himself, because he no longer felt the Irreparable. I know the Peisithanatos (Death-persuader) who it is. I know who persuaded man to violate life in himself and in others. It is he, who, in our souls, first violated Death… This is light. Science is beneficent in that in which she is said to have failed. She has confirmed the sanction of Death. She has sealed up the tombs again… The proof, moved against her, is her boast. Or rather it will be when from this negation the poet-priest shall have drawn the moral essence. Who can imagine the words by which we shall feel ourselves whirling through space? by which we shall feel ourselves mortal? We know this and that: we do not feel it. The day we feel it … we shall be better. And we shall be sadder. But do you not see that it is exactly by his sadness that man differs from the brute beasts? And that to advance in sadness is to advance in humanity?.. Man, embrace your destiny! Man, resign yourself to be man! Think in your furrow, do not rave. Love – think it – is not only the sweetest but the most tremendous of actions: it is adding new fuel to the great pyre that flames in the darkness of our night.”

Many will not agree with Pascoli’s method of arriving at his conclusions; for men’s minds are infinite in number, and but few think alike. But all will recognise the reverent earnestness of his belief, and respect the man whom hatred has moulded into a fervent apostle of love.

To understand Pascoli’s power of differentiating character and handling dialogue, we must turn, not to his Italian, but to his Latin poems. These are not in any sense of the word academic exercises: they are instinct with life and of extraordinary vivacity. The crowd in which the laughing Horace finds himself wedged, in the “Reditus Augusti” – the poetical rivalry in the tavern between Catullus and Calvus, in the “Catullo Calvos” – the witty yet serious discussion between Mæcenas, Varius, Virgil and Plotius in the “Cena in Caudiano Nervæ” – these are charming in the extreme, and have all the piquancy of the Horatian satire. The other two poems, “Jugurtha” and “Castanea,” are of a different stamp. The first is a powerful conception of the ravings and sufferings of the blinded Numidian king, in the Roman dungeon where he dies of hunger and thirst; the second is a description of the gathering and preparation of the chestnut crops, with an invocation to the tree on which alone the inhabitants of the Tuscan Apennines depend for warmth and food in winter. The peasant household is truly Virgilian in the conciseness and sympathy with which it is presented.

Truly Virgilian, too, is an Italian poem entitled “La Sementa” (The Sowing) published in the “Poemetti.” There is a simple dignity in all the actions and sayings of the peasants which prevents any feeling of the triviality which the poet might so easily have suggested; prevents at the same time that sentiment of unreality which enthusiastic and romantic writers on the subject are so apt to provoke.

It is perhaps in the quiet intimateness of “La Sementa” that the fundamental difference between the classic inspiration of Pascoli and that of the older poet Carducci is epitomised. Carducci is a born polemist. Son of the Risorgimento, he passed his youth in the midst of a great epic movement, stigmatizing shams and tyrants with the resources which a wide vocabulary placed at the disposal of an exceptionally energetic and enthusiastic nature. Carducci’s classicism is to a great extent formal. His verse imitates the Horatian metres, his periods are often more Latin than Italian in their construction, his women bear Latin names. And this Latin brevity, this careful exclusion of all superfluous words, this precision in the use of the smaller parts of speech (Carducci’s prepositions are a study in themselves) combined with the broad imagery and ample conception that seem inseparable from the age of Garibaldi, provoke in the reader a sense of exquisite form and of impressive grandeur. The grandeur, however, sometimes degenerates into rhetoric. Pascoli is more reflective; he has more quiet sentiment. He lives in a quieter age, when the enthusiastic hopefulness of the Risorgimento has found its reaction in a feeling of despondency concerning the accomplished reality. He is in no sense of the word a polemist. The form of his verse and of his period is Italian, though he has, it is true, revived the Latin meaning of many Italian words. He has less grandeur than Carducci, but on the other hand he is never rhetorical. The Latin spirit has taken such complete possession of him that it has become part of himself; it leavens his whole work, but leaves it strictly individual in form and conception, and admits the expression of a sense of mystery and vagueness which is rather of the romantic than of the classic mind. As illustrative of the difference in conception between the two poets we may compare their sonnets to “The Ox.”

The Ox. (Pascoli.)At the narrow brook, amid uncertain mistsgazes the wide-eyed ox: in the plainfar stretching to a sea that recedes ever,go the blue waters of a river:loom large before his eyes, in the mistylight, the willow and the alder;wanders a flock upon the grass, now here now there,and seems the herd of an ancient god.Shadows with talons spread broad wingsin the air: mutely chimeras movelike clouds in the deep sky:the sun goes down, immense, behindhuge mountains: already lengthen, black,the larger shades of a much larger world.The Ox. (Carducci.)Oh pious ox, I love thee; and a gentle feelingof vigour and of peace thou pour’st into my heart;whether, solemn as a monument,thou gazest at the field so free and fruitful,or whether, bowing gladly to the yoke,the agile work of man thou gladly aidest;he pricks and urges thee and thou repliestwith the slow turning of thy patient eye.From thy broad nostril damp and darksmokes forth thy breath, and like a joyful hymnthy lowing rises through the quiet air;and in the austere sweetness of thy graveand glaucous eye, ample and quiet is reflectedthe green and godlike silence of the plain.

Another side of Pascoli’s mind reveals itself in his studies on Dante. The hope which is company for me, he writes, is to go down to posterity as an interpreter of Dante, as an illustrator of the great Poet’s mind and thought. He has already published a book, La Minerva Oscura, for professional Dantisti; and is about to issue a series of articles for the general public.

Pascoli is now occupied on a translation, in hexameters, of the Homeric poems; and will shortly publish the glottological studies and the experiments by which he has prepared himself for his task. That he is capable of treating Greek subjects with Greek directness and simplicity, and without any affectation of Greek forms (a pitfall into which D’Annunzio continually stumbles) will be seen in the poem which closes this paper.

The Sleep of OdysseusINine days, by moon and sun, the black ship sped,Wind-borne, helm-guided, while the creaking ropesWere governed by Odysseus’ cunning hand;Nor – wearied – did he yield them, for the windBore him on ever toward his country dear.Nine days, by moon and sun, the black ship sped,The hero’s eye seeking unwaveringlyThe rocky isle ’mid the blue-twinkling waves:Content if, ere he died, he saw againIts smoke-wreaths rising blue into the air.The tenth day, where the ninth day’s setting sunHad vanished in a blinding blaze of gold,He, peering, saw a shapeless blot of black:Cloud was’t he saw, or land? And his grave eyeSwam, conquered by the sweetness of the dawn.Far off Odysseus’ heart was rapt by sleep.IIAnd, moving towards the ship’s swift flight, it seemed,Behold a land! that nearer, nearer sailedIn misty blue, ’mid the blue-twinkling waves.Anon a purple peak that stormed the sky;Then down the peak the frothing gullies leaped’mid tufts of bristling brushwood and bare rock;And on its spurs sprang into view long rowsOf vines; and at its feet the verdant fieldsFleecy with shimmering blades of new-sprung grain,Till it stood out entire – a rocky isle,Harsh, and not pasture fit for neighing steed,Altho’ good nurse for oxen and wild goats.And here and there, upon the airy peaks,Died, in the clearness of the wakening dawn,The herdsmen’s fires: and here and there shot upThe morning swirl of smoke from Ithaca —His home at last – ! But King Odysseus’ heartFloating profound in sleep, beheld it not.IIIAnd lo! upon the prow o’ the hollow shipLike angry gulls, words fly; like screaming birdsWith hissing flight. The forward-straining shipWas coasting then the high peak of The CrowAnd the well-circled fount, and one could hearThe rooting of the boar-pigs; then a penOf ample girth appeared, with mighty rocks,Well-builded, walled around, and hedged aboutWith wild-pear and with hawthorn all a-bloom.The godlike herdsman of the boar-pigs, next,Upon the seashore, with sharp-edgèd axeSpoiled of its bitter bark an oakling strong,And cut great stakes to strengthen that fair pen,With harsh and gleaming axe-bites. FitfullyAmid the water’s wash, came o’er the seaThe hoarse pant of his strokes – that herdsman good —Faithful Eumæus – But Odysseus’ heart,Sunk deep in slumber, heard them not at all.IVAnd now above the ship, from prow to stern,The sailors’ furious words like arrows spedIn shuddering flight. The eager-homing shipAbreast the harbour of Phorkyne sailed.Ahead of it stood out the olive tree,Large, goodly-boughed; and near to it a cave,A cave sonorous with much-busied beesAs they in wine-bowls and in jars of stonePerform sweet task of honey. One could seeThe stony street o’ the town; the houses whiteClimbing the hill; distinguish, ’mid the greenOf water-loving alders, the fair fount,The altar white, the high-raised, goodly roof —Odysseus’ high-raised steading. Now, perchance,The shuttle whistled through the warp, and ’neathThe weary fingers grew again the webAmple, immortal. – Yet, nor saw, nor heardOdysseus’ mighty heart, quite lost in sleep.VAnd in the ship, now entering the port,The worse part won the day. The men untiedThe leathern bags, and straight the winds out-whistledFurious; the sail flung wide, and flapped as dothA peplum by a woman left outspreadTo dry i’ the sun upon some airy peak.And lo! the labouring ship hath left the haven —The haven where, upon the shore, there stoodA goodly youth propped on a spear bronze-pointed.Under the grey-green olive stood the youthSilent, with dreaming eyes: and a swift houndAround him leaped, waving his plumy tail.Now the dog checketh in his restless playWith straining eyes fixed on the infinite sea;And, snuffing up the air o’ the briny tracks,After the flying ship he howls aloud —Argus his dog. Yet still nor heard nor sawOdysseus’ heart, in balmy slumber bathed.VIAnd now the ship coasted a lofty pointOf rocky Ithaca. And, twixt two hillsA garth there was, well-tilled, Laertes’ field,The ancient king’s: therein an orchard richWhere pear-trees stood, and apples, row on row,That once Laertes gave to his dear sonWho thro’ the vineyard followed, begging thisAnd that, among the slim new-planted trees.Here now, ten apple-trees and thirteen pearsStood white with blossom in a close-set clump,And in the shade of one – the fairest – stoodAn old man, turning towards the boundless seaWhere roared the sudden squall – with up-raised handLessening the light above his wearied eyes —Strained his weak gaze after the flying ship.This was his father: but Odysseus’ heart,Floating profound in sleep, beheld him not.VIIAnd as the winds the black ship bore afarSudden the hero started from his sleep,Swiftly unclosed his eyes, to see – perchance —Smoke rise from his long-dreamed-of Ithaca —Faithful Eumæus standing in the pen —His white-haired father in the well-tilled field,His father dear, who, on the mattock propped,Stood gazing, gazing at the lessening ship —His goodly son, who, leaning on his spear,Stood gazing, gazing at the lessening ship —And, leaping round his lord, with waving tail,Argus his dog – Yea, and perchance his house,His dear sweet home, wherein his faithful wifeAlready laboured in the chattering loom.He gazed again – a shapeless blot of blackHe saw across the purpling waste of sea —Cloud was’t or land? – It faded into airE’en as Odysseus’ heart emerged from sleep.

Giovanni Pascoli’s sincerity of thought, truth of feeling, breadth of sympathy, temperateness and restraint, mark him out as a poet in the full sense of the word; and place him, artistically and morally, on a higher plane than the decadents who represent Italy to the foreign public.

THE MAKING OF RELIGION

(COME SI FORMA LA RELIGIONE)Andrew Lang Longmans Green and Co. 20

Avversario implacabile della dotta critica tedesca e degli scienziati che si rifiutino ad indagini che possano eventualmente distruggere teorie favorite, è il signor Andrew Lang. Un anno fa, egli presentò al pubblico inglese una traduzione del libro in cui il Comparetti, esaminando il poema cosiddetto epico dei Finni e le Rune delle quali il Lönnrot lo costrusse, trova parole acerbe per i Tedeschi che idearono la teoria dei Kleine Lieder per i poemi omerici, e che la sostennero con grande apparato scientifico basato sul nulla, per mezzo di deduzioni da ipotesi non provate, e, per la mancanza di criterii obiettivi, non dimostrabili. In un libro recente egli dà l’assalto alla teoria vigente sulle origini e sullo sviluppo della religione.

La fede in un Dio etico, onnipotente, cui non si propizia per sacrifizi di tori e di agnelli, non è un’evoluzione dall’Animismo, dall’adorazione degli antenati, che esiste tuttora fra i popoli meno progrediti, nè il concetto di un tal Dio nasce da quello astratto di spirito, come ordinariamente si asserisce. Tale fede, tale concetto si trovano fra i popoli meno evoluti che si conoscano, ma vengono sopraffatti durante il progresso materiale ed intellettuale della razza: in parte dal desiderio di avere un Dio più trattabile, meno esigente; in parte dalle invenzioni della classe sacerdotale, che per il proprio vantaggio asseconda codesto desiderio; in parte dai miti che oscurano il concetto fondamentale della Deità. Solo fra il popolo ebraico codesto concetto fondamentale potè perdurare; ma perdurò per opera dei profeti, ad onta delle tendenze popolari verso il politeismo e delle pretese della classe sacerdotale.

Tale la tesi del signor Lang. Per svilupparla, egli esamina prima le fonti da cui potrebbe scaturire, nell’uomo primitivo, l’idea di spirito; e qui non rifugge dall’investigare quelle manifestazioni della regione X della natura umana, cui gli scienziati rifiutano in generale di rivolgere l’attenzione. Il Lang è di natura alquanto scettico, ma sostiene che il consenso di tradizioni del passato di tutti i popoli e di fatti che si possono con cura verificare oggi intorno alla telepatia, alla chiaroveggenza, rende non scientifica l’attitudine di quegli scienziati i quali si rifiutano ad indagini e deridono senz’altro l’idea che esista una potenza per cui individui, senza la propria volontà o con essa, possano acquistare conoscenza di fatti accaduti, o che stanno accadendo, per altri mezzi che non siano quelli apparenti dei sensi.

Vagliando con cura le narrazioni dei viaggiatori di tutti i tempi, ma specialmente di quelli più recenti, e confrontandole colle esperienze sue proprie nell’indovinare i fatti ignoti e passati scrutando in un cristallo (crystal-gazing, scryer), il Lang conclude, che la chiaroveggenza, esistente in certi individui e specialmente fra certe razze (gli Scozzesi ad esempio) e molto evidentemente sviluppata (nonostante gli inganni dei “veggenti”) fra i popoli meno progrediti, fornisca esperienze vere abbastanza meravigliose per dar luogo all’idea di spirito ed all’animismo che forma la religione attuale di molte tribù.

Seguendo gli ulteriori stadi dello sviluppo dell’idea religiosa, il Lang combatte fieramente lo Spencer e l’Huxley, accrescendo forza alla propria teoria con addurre fatti osservati recentemente da vari viaggiatori tra i nomadi più bassi dell’Australia, e dalla signorina Kingsley fra le tribù selvagge dell’Africa (Zulu, Bantu, ecc.). Egli prova quindi che tutte le razze primitive finora esaminate, perfino i rozzi Bushmen dell’Australia, hanno il concetto di un Essere onnipotente, che esisteva prima che la morte entrasse nel mondo, che vede ogni cosa, che punisce l’adulterio, la violenza alle vergini, gli assalti a tradimento non soltanto contro i componenti la stessa tribù ma anche contro altre persone. E a questo Essere non si offrono sacrifizi, perchè, secondo le parole d’un Bushman, “noi non gli possiamo offrir nulla che egli non abbia già.”

Ora, è vero che contemporaneamente a codest’Essere concepito così largamente ed eticamente, quasi tutti i popoli adorano una folla di spiriti, che sono gli spettri di persone morte, oppure che non sono mai stati uniti ad un corpo, e che vengono propiziati con sacrifizi; di modo che il culto degli spiriti è molto più in evidenza che non quello del Dio grande e buono.

Domanda il Lang: Il Dio grande si è sviluppato più tardi da uno fra la folla degli spiriti e spettri di antenati affamati? Oppure è egli fondamentale nella religione di quei popoli? Nacque egli, per così dire, prima che, per le esperienze sopra accennate, l’idea di spirito fosse concepita; prima dunque che gli antenati e gli spiriti vaganti fossero adorati; prima che l’Animismo divenisse la religione apparente di quei popoli? L’Autore crede che quest’ultimo sia il caso. È pur difficile che lo spirito di uno stregone o di un antenato appartenente ad una sola famiglia sia stato assunto da una intiera tribù alla dignità di Essere creatore di tutto; specialmente quando si rifletta che codesti spiriti sono per lo più di indole cattiva o almeno capricciosa, che non inculcano precetti etici, e che il loro culto porge l’occasione a banchetti cari all’uomo di ogni tempo. Di più, se l’Essere creatore fosse un’evoluzione ulteriore del pensiero non più primitivo, godrebbe come prodotto recente una maggiore stima e gli sarebbe attribuita maggiore importanza che non agli altri Iddii. Invece si verifica il contrario. Il Creatore accenna fra molti popoli a sparire addirittura. Se ne parla come di un Essere misterioso, potentissimo, “di cui ci raccontavano i nostri padri,” ma che è ormai quasi dimenticato. Codesto sarebbe un fatto assai strano nell’ipotesi che egli fosse un Dio più recente degli altri. Inoltre, la fede nel Creatore etico si trova con straordinaria purità fra i Bushmen, che non hanno il culto degli antenati; prova lampante che fra loro almeno lo sviluppo supposto dallo Spencer e dall’Huxley non ha avuto luogo.

I Bushmen sono nomadi. Darumulun, il Creatore etico, non ha dimora fissa, ma è da per tutto. Non avrebbe dovuto il progresso nella coltura materiale, si chiede il Lang, portare quasi logicamente un rimpiccolimento ed una conseguente degenerazione nell’idea religiosa? Le tribù nomadi prendono dimora fissa; l’Essere creatore abita, non più da per tutto, ma vicino a loro, e veglia specialmente su di loro: diviene un Dio tutelare. Le tombe dei morti, prima sparse qua e là, rimangono davanti agli occhi dei vivi; cominciano i sacrifici ai morti ed agli spiriti loro; e ne risulta un animismo fiorente accanto alla fede, mezzo dimenticata, in un Essere più grande.

E l’Animismo, domanda ancora il Lang, è valso poi a nulla nel formarsi della Religione quale l’hanno ora i cristiani? E risponde che esso, sovrapponendo la fede nella vita futura a quella nella Deità onnipotente conservataci attraverso i secoli dal popolo ebraico, ha aggiunto a questa un nuovo ed importantissimo elemento etico.