Page:The Oxford book of Italian verse.djvu/25

INTRODUCTION In this epoch of unreality and convention the intellectual progress of Italy seems to have halted completely—e pur si muove. The spiritual energy which was denied by force of circumstances to art and letters becomes intense in the philosopher, the scientist, and the historian—in Bruno and Campanella, in Galileo, in Vico and Sarpi—lonely and persecuted figures who are the pioneers of the reaction against all the hideous errors that arise from confused thought, wilfully obscured knowledge, and tyranny masquerading as religion. In the midst of a civilization that was content to feed on shams and lies and to stop its ears to the voice of reality they follow the forgotten feet of truth—the truth that is mighty and must prevail at last—probing the secrets of the infinite universe, exploring the infinite labyrinths of the human mind and revealing the God within it. To contemplate reality, reverently but without fear, unbiassed by superstition and tradition, was the aim of these uomini nuovi; the method applied to the exact sciences by Galileo and his followers was identical with the method employed by Descartes in his metaphysical researches; observation and experiment were their instruments; fantastic hypothesis was contemptuously discarded. Ignorance of self and ignorance of life were the two supreme evils; the wise man was the deliverer of a world:—

S'ei vive, perdi, e s'ei muore, esce un lampo Di Deità dal corpo per te scisso, Che le tenebre tue non han più scampo.

Lyric poetry during the first half of the eighteenth century is still dominated by the Arcadians; with Metastasio 25