BROWNING'S ITALY (36 page)

And o'er the hard place slide they with a smile.

Giuseppe Maria Caponsacchi mine,

Nobody wants you in these latter days

To prop the Church by breaking your backbone, —

As the necessary way was once, we know,

When Diocletian flourished and his like.

That building of the buttress-work was done

By martyrs and confessors; let it bide,

Add not a brick, but, where you see a chink,

Stick in a sprig of ivy or root a rose

Shall make amends and beautify the pile!

We profit as you were the painfullest

O* the martyrs, and you prove yourself a match

For the cruellest confessor ever was,

If you march boldly up and take your stand

Where their blood soaks, their bones yet strew the soil,

And cry 'Take notice, I the young and free

And well-to-do i* the world, thus leave the World,

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Cast in my lot thus with no gay young world

But the grand old Church: she tempts me of the two!'

Renounce the world? Nay, keep and give it us!

Let us have you, and boast of what you bring.

We want the pick o' the earth to practise with,

Not its offscouring, halt and deaf and blind

In soul and body. There's a rubble-stone

Unfit for the front o' the building, stuf? to stow

In a gap behind and keep us weather-tight;

There 's porphyry for the prominent place. Good lack!

Saint Paul has had enough and to spare, I trow,

Of ragged runaway Onesimus:

He wants the right-hand with the signet-ring

Of King Agrippa, now, to shake and use.

I have a heavy scholar cloistered up,

Close under lock and key, kept at his task

Of letting Fenelon know the fool he is,

In a book I promise Christendom next Spring.

Why, if he covets so much meat, the clown,

As a lark's wing next Friday, or, any day,

Diversion beyond catching his own fleas,

He shall be properly swinged, I promise him.

But you, who are so quite another paste

Of a man, — do you obey me ? Cultivate

Assiduous that superior gift you have

Of making madrigals — (who told me ? Ah!

Get done a Marinesque Adoniad straight

With a pulse o' the blood a-pricking here and there,

That I may teil the lady, 'And he's ours!'"

So I became a priest: those terms changed all, I was good enough for that, nor cheated so; I could live thus and still hold head erect. Now you see why I may have been bef ore

When — 'Nay, 111 make her give you back your gaze' —

Said Canon Conti; and at the word he tossed

A paper-twist of comfits to her lap,

And dodged and in a trice was at my back

Nodding from over my Shoulder. Then she turned,

Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad stränge smile."

Pompilia's view of the Carnival will be an exquisite passage to close the glimpses of seven-teenth Century Italy, given in "The Ring and the Book:"

"I had been miserable three drear years In that dread palace and lay passive now, When I first learned there could be such a man. Thus it feil: I was at a public play, In the last days of Carnival last March, Brought there I knew not why, but now know well. My husband put me where I sat, in front; Then crouched down, breathed cold through me from

behind, Stationed i* the shadow, — none in front could see, — I, it was, faced the stranger-throng beneath, The crowd with upturned faces, eyes one stare, Voices one buzz. I looked but to the stage, Whereon two lovers sang and interchanged 'True life is only love, love only bliss: I love thee — thee I love!' then they embraced. I looked thence to the ceiling and the walls, — Over the crowd, those voices and those eyes, — My thoughts went through the roof and out, to Rome On wings of music, waft of measured words, — Set me down there, a happy child again, Sure that to-morrow would be festa day,

Hearing my parents praise past festas more, And seeing they were old if I was young, Yet wondering why they still would end discourse With 'We must soon go, you abide your time, And, — might we haply see the proper friend Throw his arm over you and make you safe!' Sudden I saw him; into my lap there feil A foolish twist of comfits, broke my dream And brought me from the air and laid me low, As ruined as the soaring bee that's reached (So Pietro told me at the Villa once) By the dust-handful. There the comfits lay: I looked to see who flung them, and I faced This Caponsacchi, looking up in turn. Ere I could reason out why, I feit sure, Whoever flung them, his was not the hand, — Up rose the round face and good-natured grin Of one who, in effect, had played the prank, From covert close beside the earnest face, — Fat waggish Conti, friend of all the world. He was my husband's cousin, privileged To throw the thing: the other, silent, grave, Solemn almost, saw me, as I saw him."

A characteristic episode of Renaissance Italy is shown in "The Statue and the Bust," in which there is the usual jealous husband and a lover. The husband in this case vindicates sixteenth Century notions of authority by sub-jecting his wife to lifelong imprisonment and lif elong torture. He places her in a room where she can see her lover pass daily. She plans to escape and join the lover, he plans to carry her

off, but day by day somethiog prevents; their whole life passes and nothing is accomplished; only his statue in the Square and her bust in the window teil of their love. The legend is connected with the Statue of Duke Ferdinand I of Florence, whose equestrian statue, executed by the sculptor John of Douay, was placed by him in the Piazza dell Annunciata so that he might forever gaze toward the old Riccardi palace where the lady lived.

Confusion sometimes arises because of the fact that the Riccardi Palace in the Piazza dell Annunciata where the lady hved is now the Palazzo Antinori, while the palace now known as the Riccardi was then the Medici Palace, where the Duke lived. It is in the Via Larga and Browning refers to it as "the pile which the mighty shadow makes," a shadow not merely of bulk, but because of its connection with the name of Medici, the family who in the person of Cosimo and Lorenzo committed the crime of destroying the political Kberty of Florence. Browning uses the story merely as a fable upon which to hang a moral. That moral has caused a good deal of discussion among Browning students and any one who cares to decide upon the pros and cons of the matter may f ollow it up in the various books of Browning criticism.

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The remaining poems to be considered in this pleasant search for the historical, artistic, and social aspects of Italian life which Browning has chosen to draw upon in his work, carry us for the first time to Venice, whose history f umishes one of die most interesting and instructive chapters in the fascinating labyrinth of Italy's political and social growth.

"In a Gondola" belongs to that Venice which had lost its early Uberties. The history of Venice is that of a gradual evolution into a RepubUc of an oligarchical form. The struggles of the Doges in the first place to convert them-selves into hereditary princes caused a curtail-ment of their power until they became litüe more than symbols of the State. The general assem-bly of the people who elected the Doge and from among whom the Doge invited coiuicillors to advise him, was changed to an elected assem-bly of f our hundred and eighty members holding office for a year. Finally the people were disfranchised altogether and the Great Council elected and chose by lot according to its own sweet will, though it must be said that its will was to guard elections with the most compli-cated red-tapism. Next a Council of Ten is evolved, the Great Council being too cumbrous to manage special affairs. Lastly a Council of Three, elected from the Ten, and these Councils

between them wielded autocratic power and becapie the engines of the horrible injustices and cruelties so often secretiy perpetrated in the palmy days of Venice. The Three were espe-cially invested with inquisitorial powers which they exercised in spying into the morals of the Venetian subjects, and as these morals were similar to those of the rest of Italy at that time they soon rendered themselves hateful to a cor-rupt nobüity. The story of "In a Gondola" is a typical example of the romantic episodes of the time. In it the lover refers to the "Three" more than once, by which he probably meant the ladies' relations, husband and brothers per-haps — Gian, Paul, Himself, but the speaking of them as the "Three," by which name the Coimcil of Three was always designated, is too significant in the connection for Browning not to have had in mind these inquisitorial guards of morality and he probably wished to imply that the Lover had them in mind also.

IN A GONDOLA

He sing 8. I send my heart up to thee, all my heart

In this my singing. For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;

The very night is clinging Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space

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Above me, whence thy face May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.

She speaks. Say alter me, and try to say My very words, as if each word Came from you of your own acoord, In your own voiee, in your own way: "Ulis woman's heart and soul and brain Are mine as much as this gold chain She bids me wear; which" (say again) "I choose to make by cherishing A precious thing, or choose to fling Over the boat-side, ring by ring." And yet once more say . . . no word more! Since words are only words. Give o'er!

Unless you call me, all the same,

Familiarly by my pet name,

Which if the Three should hear you call,

And me reply to, would proclaim

At once our secret to them all.

Ask of me, too, command me, blame —

Do, break down the partition-wall

Twixt us, the daylight world beholds

Curtained in dusk and splendid folds!

What's left but — all of me to take ?

I am the Three's; prevent them, slake

Your thirst! Tis said, the Arab sage,

In practising with gems, can loose

Their subtle spirit in his cruce

And leave but ashes: so, sweet mage,

Leave them my ashes when thy use

Sucks out my soul, thy heritage!

He sings. Past we glide, and past, and past!

What's that poor Agnese doing Where they make the shutters fast ?

Gray Zanobi's just a-wooing To his couch the purchased bride:

Past we glide!

Past we glide, and past, and past!

Why's the Pucci Palace flaring Like a beacon to the blast ?

Guests by hundreds, not one caring If the dear host's neck were wried:

Past we glide!

She sing8. The moth's kiss, first! Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed Its petals up; so, here and there You brush it, tili I grow aware Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.

The bee's kiss, now! Kiss me as if you entered gay My heart at some noonday, A bud that dares not disallow The claim, so all is rendered up, And passively its shattered cup Over your head to sleep I bow.

He sings. What are we two ? I am a Jew.

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And carry thee, farther than friends can pursue,

To a feast of our tribe;

Where they need thee to bribe

The devil that blasts them unless he imbibe

Thy . . . Scatter the vision forever! And now,

As of old, I am I, thou art thou!

Say again, what we are ?

The sprite of a star,

I Iure thee above where the destinies bar

My plumes their füll play

Till a ruddier ray

Than my pale one announce there is withering away

Some . . . Scatter the vision forever! And now,

As of old, I am I, thou art thou!

He w/uses. Oh, which were best, to roam or rest ? The land's lap or the water's breast ? To sleep on yellow millet-sheaves, Or swim in lucid shallows just Eluding water-lily leaves, An inch from Death's black fmgers, thrust To lock you, whom release he must; Which life were best on Summer eves ?