The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the Second

IX

With all his limitations of character and artistic scope, Longi remains a very interesting and highly respectable painter. In an age of social corruption he remained free from impurity, and depicted only what was blameless and of good repute. We cannot study his work without surmising that manners in Italy were more refined than in our own country at that epoch – a conclusion to which we are also led by Goldoni's, Carlo Gozzi's, and even Casanova's Memoirs. Morally licentious and politically decadent the Venetians undoubtedly were; but they were neither brutal, nor cruel, nor savage, nor sottish. Even the less admirable aspects of their social life – its wasteful luxury and effeminate indulgence in pleasure – have been treated with so much reserve by this humane artist, that youth and innocence can suffer no contamination from the study of his works. At the same time they are delightful for their gracious realism, for their naïve touch upon the follies of the period. Those who love to dream themselves back into the days of hoops and perukes – and there are many such among as now – should not neglect to make themselves acquainted with Pietro Longhi.

1

Despériers lived in France between 1480 and 1544. He was servant to Marguerite de Navarre, and a writer of Rabelaisian humour. His two principal works are called Cymbalum Mundi and Nouvelles, Récréations et Joyeux Dévis.

2

The Orco was a huge sea-monster, shaped like a gigantic crab. It first appeared in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (Bk. iii. Cant. 3), and was afterwards developed by Ariosto, Orl. Fur. (Cant. 17).

3

This was one of Gozzi's own comedies.

4

These words have so much local colouring that they must be left in the text and explained in a note. A sotto portico at Venice is formed by the projection of houses over the narrow path which skirts a small canal or rio; the first floor of the houses rests on pillars at the water-side. A ponte storto is a bridge built askew across a rio, not at right angles to the water, but slanting. A riva is the quay of stone which runs along the canals of Venice, here and there broken by steps descending into the water and serving as landing-places.

5

See above, vol. i. p. 299.

6

The narrow foot-paths between lines of houses at Venice are so called. They frequently have scarcely space enough for two men to walk abreast.

7

One of Pietro Longhi's pictures in the Museo Civico at Venice represents exactly such a scene as this in the workroom of a tailoress. The beau is there, and the woman prepared for flirtation.

8

Gozzi had a distinct object in writing these chapters on his love-affairs. Gratarol's accusation of his having been a hypocrite and covert libertine lay before him. He wished to make a clean breast of his frailties. To suppress this portion of his apologia pro vitâ suâ would have been to do him grave injustice. The Memorie must always be read as an answer to Gratarol's Narrazione. See Introduction, Part i.

9

There is a good deal said about this man in Casanova's Memoirs.

10

The translator of this narrative has taken the trouble to make this tedious detour on foot. The quarter in which Gozzi lived, remains exactly in the same condition as when he described it. His old palace has not altered; and the whole of the above scene can be vividly presented to the fancy by an inspection of the localities.

11

The following paragraphs, to the end of the chapter, are extracted and condensed from vol. iii. chap. v. of the Memorie.

12

A magistracy composed of four patricians, who controlled the manners of the town in matters of lawless and indecent living.

13

Messer Grande corresponded to the Bargello at Rome, and was the chief of catchpoles and constables.

14

This chapter on Gozzi's contrarieties, which I have supplemented with a few passages from the incoherent notes at the end of the Memorie, has received undue attention from Paul de Musset and critics who adopt his untrustworthy version of Gozzi's autobiography. De Musset strove to base upon it a theory that Gozzi was the victim of his own fabulous sprites. See Introduction, vol. i. p. 23.

15

Gozzi alludes to the Ragionamento Ingenuo prefixed to the first volume of Colombani's edition of his works.

16

That is, the authors of the seventeenth century, during which an extravagant and affected style prevailed in Italy.

17

These names require explanation. Granelli, coglioni, and testicoli are words for the same things, and have the secondary meaning of simpleton. Thus Arcigranellone is the Arch-big-simpleton. The crest of the Academy carries an allusion to the same things. Apropos of this not very edifying topic, it is worth mentioning that the canting arms of the noble Bergamasque family of Coglioni consisted of three granelli counterchanged upon a field party per fesse gules and argent. I cannot recall a parallel instance in heraldry.

18

Calandrino was a famous fool and butt in the Decameron of Boccaccio.

19

What follows in the text above might be largely illustrated. It is curious to find Casanova, for example, agreeing with Gozzi on a point of morality: "Une méchante philosophie," he says, "diminue trop le nombre de ce qu'on appelle préjugés" (vol. i. p. 97). Compare the ludicrous account of the rogue Squaldo-Nobili, who shared Casanova's prison in S. Mark, and who had purged himself of prejudice by reading La Sagesse de Charon (vol. iii. p. 70). While I am writing, an article by M. Emile de Laveleye on "How bad books may destroy States" (Pall Mall Gazette, June 9, 1888) falls into my hands with a pertinent passage, which I shall here extract: —

"The following are the terms in which, in an eighteenth century romance, Count Clitandre explains to the Marquise Cidalise all the services that philosophy has rendered to refined and elegant society. 'Thanks to philosophy,' he says, 'we have the happiness to have found the truth, and what does not this entail for us? Women have never been less prudish under pretext of duty, and there has never been so little affectation of virtue. A man and a woman please each other and a liaison is formed; they tire of it, and separate with as little ceremony as they commenced it; if they come again to regret the separation, their former relations may recommence, and with the same enthusiasm as the first time. These again cease; and all this takes place without any quarrellings or disputes! It is true that there has been no question whatever of love; but after all, what is love save a mere desire that people chose to exaggerate, a physical sentiment of which men, in their vanity, chose to make a virtue? Nowadays the desire alone exists, and if people, in their mutual relations, speak of love, it is not because they really believe in it, but because it is a politer way of obtaining what they reciprocally wish for. As there has been no question of love at the onset, there is no hatred at parting, and from the slight liking mutually inspired rests a mutual desire and readiness to oblige each other. I think, all things considered, that it is wise to sacrifice to so much pleasure a few old-fashioned prejudices which bring but little esteem and an infinite amount of worry to those who still make them their rule of conduct.'"

20

This paragraph reads amusingly like a satire upon English "æsthetes."

21

See above, vol i. p. 367.

22

See above, chap. xxxi.

23

The first or Paris edition bears, however, the date 1756.

24

I have to say that what follows in this chapter has been very considerably abridged from Gozzi's text. Apology is owed to him by the translator for condensing his narrative and confining it to points of permanent interest, if indeed there is any interest at all in bygone literary squabbles, while retaining the first person.

25

This poem is printed in vol. viii. of Colombani's edition of Carlo Gozzi's Works.

26

I may remind my readers that Truffaldino was the specific form invented for the mask of Arlecchino by Sacchi. See above, vol. i. p. 53. Truffaldino was originally a character in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, where he played the part of a consummate rogue, traitor, and coward, and was killed by the paladin Rinaldo (Bk. i. Cant. 26).

27

This passage indicates Gozzi's justice, his habit of conceding the suum cuique, however grudgingly. Goldoni, as we learn from his Memoirs, piqued himself upon the study he made of actors like Darbes, Golinetti, and Collalto.

28

A singular piece of self-criticism. Gozzi appeals to posterity on points which seem to us the least noteworthy in his work. Nothing is needed beyond the above sentences to dispel the illusion of his having been a free romantic genius.

29

Gozzi uses the word squarci for these stock passages. The expression is partly explained by what follows in the paragraph, and has been further illustrated by me above: vol. i. p. 62. See Bartoli's Scenari, pp. lxxv. et seq.

30

After the Carnival, until the following October. The theatrical year in Venice began on the first Sunday in October, and ended with the next Ash-Wednesday. It corresponded to the months in which masks were allowed.

31

Translated in chaps. xxxii., xxxiii., xxxiv.

32

There is some inaccuracy here. See vol. i. p. 148, for the dates of Gozzi's Fiabe.

33

Page 33 in vol. ii. of Gozzi is a good specimen of an interminable sentence broken up by me. It has thirty-nine lines of about eight words apiece, or 312 words, without a full stop. It begins with Un' ammasso, and ends on p. 34 with commiserazione.

34

See above, cap. xxx.

35

This theatre was also called S. Luca.

36

This looks as though Gozzi had reason to believe that Mme. Manzoni would write her autobiography. Whether she did so or not, I am unable to say. But the remark shows how popular and common self-indited Memoirs had become.

37

That is, the Venetian noble Antonio Vendramini.

38

Printed in vol. ix. of the Opere, ed. cit.

39

It cannot be denied that Gozzi has spun out the history of his liaison with Teodora Ricci to a tedious length, giving the episode of Pier Antonio Gratarol an importance which it is far from deserving. I intend therefore to abridge the chapters which he invites his readers to skip. But, with the view of preserving unity of style, I shall not drop the first person singular, and shall select, so far as this is possible, nothing but phrases of Gozzi to translate.

40

By the playwright Arneau.

41

Printed in vol. v. of the Opere, ed. cit.

42

Francesco Gritti, of the ancient patrician family, was born in 1740 and died in 1811. His translations of French plays appeared in two vols. at Venice in 1788. Some of his poems in Venetian dialect were published in 1815. Venezia, Alvisopoli.

43

Gozzi is here answering Gratarol, who had called him a hypocrite in his Narrazione.

44

This and the ensuing chapters throw light upon Gozzi's intention when he wrote chaps. xl. xli. above. The generalities of the earlier chapters square point by point with the particularities of the later. It looks as if he wished to prepare his readers for a special self-apologetical statement of his case against Mme. Ricci. We need not impute to him insincerity or false suggestion. When he wrote these Memoirs, the manners and customs of comedians were patent to the world, and he probably uttered no more than the truth about them. Yet the forensic cleverness of a pleader may be detected in the account he gives of his relations with this woman. Considering their intimacy, he does not act quite chivalrously in the exposure of its dissolution. At this distance of time we cannot ascertain the facts. Gozzi was perhaps consistent and veracious in his disclaimer of more than a liaison of friendship. The reader of the following chapters must decide for himself whether the writer of them was carefully manipulating and colouring circumstances he wished to attenuate.

45

Gozzi means that he had assumed the rôle of Cicisbeo to Mme. Ricci.

46

This man was called Francesco Bartoli. We owe to his pen a valuable collection of biographical notes on Italian actors and actresses: Notizie Istoriche dei Comici Italiani che fiorirono intorno al MDL fino ai giorni presenti (Padova, Conzatti, 1781). This work contains a life of Teodora Ricci and the author's own autobiography. After the events of 1777 he separated from his wife, and only acknowledged the first of her three children. Critics may pause to wonder, at this point, whether Gozzi's relations to Mme. Ricci were as Platonic as he painted them. In 1782 Bartoli retired from the stage and lived at Rovigo. On Teodora's leaving the profession in 1793, he took her back, and endured her hysterical tempers until the date of his own death in 1806. She died mad about the year 1824 in the asylum of S. Servilio at Venice.

47

Zannuzzi was premier amoureux at the Comédie Italienne in Paris. It was he who invited Goldoni to visit that city, and offered him an engagement for two years from the Court. See Goldoni's Memoirs, part ii. chap. xliii.

48

The Greek rogue in Pulci's Morgante Maggiore.

49

Gozzi here refers directly to the Gratarol episode.

50

Printed in vol. ix. of the Opere, ed. cit.

51

Il Salvatico, one of the very oldest hostelries of Venice, dating from the Middle Ages.

52

Printed at the end of the third volume of the unique edition of the Memorie Inutili di Carlo Gozzi, 1797.

53

These will be found in Gozzi's Opere, ed. cit. The prefaces are printed before the plays.

54

From this point forward Gozzi relates the series of events which Gratarol had already described in his Narrazione Apologetica. The two accounts agree in essentials, the fundamental difference between them being Gratarol's firm belief that Gozzi meant to satirise him in the Droghe d'Amore, which Gozzi vehemently denies. It must be remembered that Gozzi had the Narrazione before him while writing these Memoirs.

55

Diavoloni is the Italian word. We hear of these comfits also from Gratarol. They are big sugar-plums containing liqueur.

56

That is, Council of Ten with the Inquisitori di Stato at its head.

57

Albergati was born at Bologna in 1728. The circumstances of his private life were curious. In 1748 he married a wife from whom he was divorced in 1751. In 1769 he married a second wife at Venice, who committed suicide. In 1789 he married a third wife. He lived principally at Venice and at his country seat at Zola, where he had a famous private theatre. He composed and translated a great many plays. His works were collected and published in an edition of several volumes at Bologna in 1827.

58

The relation of gossip or Compare di San Giovanni is reckoned sacred at Venice.

59

See above, p. 227.

60

This lady was the celebrated Caterina Dolfin Tron, wife of the Procuratore Andrea Tron. Her husband exercised such influence in the State that he was called Il Padrone. A terrible portrait is drawn of her by Gratarol in his Narrazione, vol. i. pp. 23 and 44. To him she certainly behaved with cruel tyranny. But she was a woman of brilliant talents and fascinating person, who gave tone to literary and political society in Venice.

61

Gozzi has not perhaps quite told the whole truth about his relations to Mme. Tron. They were certainly more intimate at one period than he here admits. He formed a member of the society whom she received on Monday evenings at the Casino di San Giuliano, and dedicated his Marfisa Bizzarra to her in terms of high compliment (V.E. non è nimica, non è ignorante, non è dispettosa, non è sospettosa, e sa essere benefattrice volontaria anche di coloro che non le chiedono favori). At the same time he disagreed with Mme. Tron's liberal opinions, and disapproved of her philosophising turn of mind. It is quite possible that before the date 1776 their former intimacy may have cooled. Gratarol himself observes that Gozzi had not frequented her society during the seven years prior to these events.

62

This magistracy exercised control over the morals of Venice.

63

Gratarol gives a vivid picture of this throng. "Many hundreds of persons were sent away from the doors, since the vast area of the theatre was crammed full. Boxes, which on ordinary nights were paid two pauls, this evening brought a couple of sequins, and not a single one was empty." —Narrazione, vol. i. p. 68.

64

Gratarol asserts plainly (Narr. Apol., vol. i. pp. 63, 65, 66) that Mme. Tron induced Sacchi to change the rôles and to dress up Vitalba in clothes resembling his own. Gozzi tacitly admits the truth of this.

65

Gratarol describes the public excitement of Venice. "In the houses, the shops, the open squares, all sorts and conditions of folk were chattering about the play. When I entered the Piazza di S. Marco, the idle people who crowd the coffee-houses under the Procuratie Vecchie, lacqueys, barbers, players, spies, pimps, and baser beings, if such there be, came swarming out by tens and twenties to stare at me, walked in front, lagged behind, dogged my steps, jostled me, compared notes with each other as to my resemblance to the vile actor travestied to mimic me." —Narrazione, vol. i. p. 73.

66

Gratarol has printed his petition to the Inquisitors (Narr. Apol., i. 81). It is not very injurious to Gozzi, if the document is really what he sent. The reference to Gozzi runs thus: "Umana debolezza scossa da circonstanze troppo puerili e indegne di riferirsi alla maestà di questo Supremo Tribunale indusse il Sig. Co. Carlo Gozzi a sparger di satira una sua commedia tolta dallo Spagnuolo ed intitolata Le Droghe d'Amore, e ad innestarvi un carattere apposito unicamente per fare scherno e ridicolo dileggio dell'umilissima persona di me," &c.

67

This interview is related at length by Gratarol (Narr. Apol., vol. i. pp. 97-110). His account differs in several minor particulars from Gozzi's. But one can see that Gozzi had it before him while writing what follows above.

68

Light is thrown on this paragraph by a passage in Gratarol's Narr. Apol., i. 99. He there says that Signor Maffei had reported Gozzi's great distress at the unexpected effect of his comedy, adding that Sacchi professed his willingness to abandon the play if Gozzi wished it and was able to arrange matters.

69

In the Narr. Apol. Gratarol gives a different turn to this incident. He does not represent himself as refusing the prologue; and indeed he asserts that on the night of the 17th he was extremely disgusted at not hearing it. See vol. i. p. 114.

70

Gratarol intimates that Gozzi acted with bad faith in this negotiation, "operando in modo che altri consigliassero a resistere." He calls the meeting at Mme. Tron's "l'infernal conciliabolo [che] si tenne in ora più tarda nelle soglie della regnante Matrona." Loc. cit., p. 114.

71

This letter is reported in the Narr. Apol., vol. i. p. 123.

72

It is amusing to read Gozzi's Memorie and Gratarol's Narrazione side by side. Gratarol exclaims: "Conte, voi dovete la vita ad un qualche angelo tutelare che benedimmi acciò potessi frenare il cieco impeto," &c. He meditates an aperta vendetta, and so forth. Op. cit., pp. 115-117. And yet these two swelling turkey-cocks did not think of fighting a duel.

73

Though this is told to his own advantage, Gozzi must have known that he was placing a new weapon in the hands of Gratarol's worst enemy when he consigned to Mme. Tron the letter of defiance.

74

Gozzi here alludes, I think, to the attack on the actor Vitalba at Milan, which will be related farther on.

75

Why did he not call Gratarol out? This is very comedian-like.

76

Paolo Renier was one of the most striking figures in the last years of the Republic. A man of brilliant and versatile abilities, widely read and profoundly instructed by experience of the world, he possessed eloquence so weighty and persuasive that one speech from his lips had power to sway conflicting parties in the State and bring their heated leaders to his lure. (See Romanin, vol. viii. chap. vii., for an extraordinary instance of his oratory.) Yet Renier's character does not inspire respect. Before he became Doge, he had pursued a tortuous course in politics, and had only escaped serious entanglements by his extraordinary intellectual finesse. He married a woman off the stage, who impaired his social credit; and when he appeared as candidate for the ducal cap, he lavished bribes with cynical shamelessness. Gratarol has penned two pungent pages upon Renier's character, which are worth attention. "Talent and art," he says, "both fail me in describing this man of hundred colours. An intellect of the highest, a heart of the proudest, a face of the most deceptive; such are his component parts. A more fraudulently plausible orator, a more turbulent politician, I have never known. Whether fortune or some charm defends him, he always escapes unhurt from the mortal perils into which he wilfully plunges." —Op. cit., p. 77.

77

Gozzi publishes a copy of his memorial to the Inquisitors of State. Since the document is long, and repeats what is already known to the readers of his Memoirs, I have not judged it necessary to translate it. The text will be found on pp. 395-399 of the second volume of the Memorie Inutili.

78

Gratarol reports this letter, but expressly states that he was obliged by Signor Zon, secretary to the Inquisitors of State, to omit the words dimenticando il passato. His account of how he was compelled to sit down and scribble off the apology, while Zon stood over him, is very amusing. He taught his servant, on delivering the letter into Gozzi's hands, to repeat these words: "el mio paron xè stà comandà de scriverghe sto viglietto." In fact, Gratarol was forced by the supreme authority in Venice to send this apology, and refusal to do so would have involved his immediate imprisonment. According to his own confession, Gratarol, after hearing the ultimatum of the Supreme Tribunal, went to his writing-table and penned the above letter, expressing at the same time his readiness to kiss Count Gozzi's … on the piazza, or to do anything else ridiculous which the Inquisitors might impose upon him. The Republic of S. Mark had reached the last stage of decrepitude, and well deserved to be swept into the lumber-room of bygone greatnesses, when Gratarol's and Gozzi's squabble about a woman and a play brought the machinery of state thus into action. Venice, always an artificial power (in the same sense as the Greek cities of antiquity were artificial), subsisting mainly upon commerce and on the tribute levied from dependencies, had in the eighteenth century dwindled into dotage, through lack of natural resources and revolutions in the world-trade. The rulers of Venice, reduced to insignificance among the powers of Europe, occupied their brains with parochial affairs and the contests of comedians. Op. cit., pp. 130-134.