Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/354

 288 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 S.VIILAFRH. 0,1921. THE BEGINNING OF AESTHETIC CRITICISM IN ITALY. II. (See ante, p. 244.) Pallavicino differentiates carefully between history and poetry, between the bare narra- tion of fact and the adaptation of fact to a creative intention. The Renaissance criticism used the definition of history to limit the domain of poetry and complete the division of literary types; Pallavicino uses history to perfect his knowledge of poetry. In this sense history and poetry are united in perception and lead to mutual appreciation. " History has not for task a mere collection of facts : that would make it an ignoble work and of little value to human curiosity : but the inculcation by means of that narration of the rules of civil prudence. In this way it should teach eternal and universal truths and should be also the mistress of life."* The ethical function attributed to poetry broadens out to the social and ethical in history. Poetry gives to truth a more vivid reality than history, and the theory of imitation must be applied to poetry in general which imitates life. Cast al vet ro opines that " as the true is prior in nature and perception to the fictitious and the original to the copy, the art of narrating truth History should be learned before Poetry- the art of narrating the fictitious! " ; but Pallavicino brushes aside this adapta- tion of the historical method with the insistence on expression as being the main element in poetry. Expression of the fictitious and expression of the true are identical as expression in poetry J. Fundamentally, there is no connection between the poet arid the historian. " There is no reason why the inventive painter should know the art of executing portraits the latter being the delineation of things, beautiful or not beautiful, just as they are while the painter of invention should paint his figures so that they do not resemble as a whole but in the parts separately considered, no matter what they are or were but only as they are delightful to con- template. History aims at teaching those events which it profits others to learn. . . .Poetry aims at inculcation of the delightful and the delight of perception lies in its vivacity, in the splendour of colour with which it is painted. Hence Poetry does not invent those occurrences which, if real, would be learned with profit but 70. t ' Del Bene,' p. 462. I Ibid., p. 464. Ibid., p. 462. imagines those which, even if fictitious, arc delicious to imagine and strives to bring them. vividly before the eyes Thus Pallavicino has abandoned to some- extent the ethical and emphasized the- aesthetic and even hedonistic aspect of poetry. Pleasure pervades the conception of the beautiful : beauty is only good as a- means of causing the feeling of pleasure :* beauty must not be only expressed but seen and vividly felt " even if I knew myself to be dreaming at this* hour and this alley so nobly pleasant, those gracious beds of flowers, those statues so deli- cately alive were only an impasto of nocturnal, shadows, if the same vivid perception remained in me, the same pleasure would remain." t A notable affirmation of the spiritual appre- ciation of beauty as beauty which is not paralleled in any other writer of his or the- following century ! " If the beauty in such a vision or in such a vivid perception is summoned by an act of judgment, the delight in beauty as beauty doe* not arise from such an act but from that vision and from that vivid perception which could survive in us even without reason."^ It would be difficult to find a better defini- tion of aesthetic. Pallavicino arrives at the- Plotinian doctrine of the inner beauty to be- found in Fracastoro and raises beauty into the highest attribute of good " the Beautiful in my opinion is in fact bid a parti- cular variety of Good, ichich through its oun ex- cellence causes delightful perception of itself in the eye or intellect." a revolutionary thought in the Seicento and curiously modern even to us. Even, with this Pallavicino is not content and admits imperfection as a necessary element in beauty " he who does not perceive in every polished marble some minute roughness, in every white pearl some subtle tarnish in colour, will only convince connoisseurs of the grossness of his^ own senses and not of the perfection of those objects. "If The aesthetic purification arising from the- emotional in art is wonderfully drawn " the striking imagining of those objects grievous in their nature joined to the immory of the horrible tales heard by us in childhood and impressed deeply 3n that waxen mind, squeeze- out from the lower part of the soul the passion of fear while the higher part, to which no real peril appears, liies secure and tranquil."* t ' Del Bene,' p. 466. i Ibid. ' Lettere,' p. 71. I 1 ' Del Ben<V p. 173. T Ibid. p. 167.
 * ' Lettere,' p. 70.
 * ' Del Bene,' p. 466.
 * Ibid., pp. 456-60,