Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/322

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. OCT. 2, 1920.

distorted through the work of Corneille, Racine and their disciples, and led to a new classical tradition which was used later in the seventeenth century by Baillet, Fon- tenelle, Mambrun, Bouhours, Rapin to glorify French literature above all the other literatures of Europe. Corneille, Racine, Boileau were the models by which they judged foreign writers. Thus we find Mam- brun condemning Ariosto for introducing women too indiscreetly into armies and Petrarch as "moins scrupuleux a violer les regies de la purete des moeurs qu'a choquer celles de la purete du langage " ; Baillet in his ' Jugements des sgavans sur les princi- paux ouvrages des auteurs ' (1686) attacks Marino's immorality, Bembo's "devergond- age," Tansello's libertinage, "fee remembers that the Aminta and Pastor Fido have acted as models for too many pastorals born in Italy during eighty years with so much licence " ; Rapin finds Armide in the Gerusalemme Liber ata "trop libertine et trop effrontee. " The criteria are miserable in the extreme, prudish morality and the most repellent "purisme " in technique. Balzac and Rapin condemn in Sannazaro "that mixture of the fables of Paganism with the Mysteries of our Religion," a monstrous thing to people of good sense. Menage at a later date in his annotations to the ' Aminta ' states quite frankly : "The tragedies, in which our Corneille, Rotrou, Gombaldi, Durier, Scuderi, Tristan, Meretti and others, I shall not say rival but by far surpass all the Italians," and finds an answer in the criticism of the Accademia della Cru?ca. The principal offender, how- ever, is Bouhours, the only writer among them with talents above the commonplace, who in 'Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugene ' attributes the inferiority of Italian literature to the corrupt state of the language, and in the 'Maniere de bien penser dans les ouvrages de 1'esprit,' lays weight on the artificial nature of Italian poetry. Yet in him there are traces of that new spirit which pulses so strongly in Montani, and brings the latter almost into sympathy. Such a sentence as "The thoughts which surprise, which ravish, which charm the most, either through delicacy or sublimity or through simple elegance, are vicious if they are not natural " must have appeared uncomfortably pertinent to that later Marinistic Seicento. The standard remains purely moral, purely pedantic, wholly unnatural and degraded ; and we can classify that reaction of the century as twofold, a high and a lower, the

higher being a desire to attain liberty in literary creation, the lower, a desire to com- bat on pedantic grounds the French asser- tions. Later on, those tendencies fuse together and rise into a doctrine not far removed from our modern aesthetic in Gravina and Antonio Conti.

Orsi's " Considerazioni " contain nothing of interest to modern readers with the excep- tion of Montani's essay and the book or rather compilation represents the last great bulwark raised by the pedantic academic critics against the French influence which had an appearance of rebellion against set traditions even if it ruffled Italian sensibilities, and against the spirit of innovation discernible in Italy itself. The controversy splits into two parts : the first part contains Orsi' work dedicated to Mme Dacier where he combats word for word, in the dreariest way, every assertion put forward by Bouhours, four letters written by the same writer with the criticism contained in the Journal de Trevoux (1705-6), and letters written by Bernardoni, Muratori, Salvini, Bedori, Torti, Sacco, Apostolo Zeno, Eustachio Manfredi r Antonio Gatti and Fontanini; the second part, Montani's letter answered by Fran- cesco Bottazzoni, Garofalo, Capassi, Baraf- foldi, Allaleona, terminating in a bio- graphy of Orsi by Muratori. The Italian pedants of the early Settecento were just as keen to resist innovation in their own critic- ism as intrusion from abroad.

Foffano in 1897 was perhaps the first writer in Italy to draw attention to the singular importance of Montani 's essay ; Alfredo Galletti in his 'Teorie drammatiche e la tragedia in Italia nel secolo xviii ' (Cremona, Fezzi, 1901), and Benedetto Croce in his ' Problemi di estetica ' ex- amined in greater detail some of the theories of the Emilian letterato. But in no case has the entire essay been studied and at best only small fragments have been quoted. The subject remains even now to all intents and purposes virgin and will repay a closer evaluation. Francesco Montani symbolizes the man of letters absolutely in love with fine literature for its own sake, ever listening for delicate music in poetry, ever apprecia- tive of the subtler beauties not only in art but in nature herself. His criticism comes directly from the heart, the inner source of conviction, and his thoughts are emotional, born in the spirit which does not change, but to the spirit, and remains always true to life if not to a particular period in life. Hence, an eagerness for ideal in life, a