BROWNING'S ITALY (28 page)

Shrewd was that snatch f rom out the corner South

He graced his Carrion with, God curse the same!

Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence

One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,

And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,

And up into the aery dorne where live

The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:

And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,

And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,

With those nine columns round me, two and two,

The odd one at my feet where Anselm Stands:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.

— Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church

— What then ? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death ? Go dig

The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,

Drop water gently tili the surface sink,

And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I! . . .

Bedded in störe of rotten fig-leaves soft,

And corded up in a tight olive-frail,

Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazvli,

Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,

Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . .

Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,

That brave Frascati villa with its bath,

So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,

Like God the Father's globe on both his hands

Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,

For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!

Swift as a weaver's Shuttle fleet our years:

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Man goeth to the grave and where is he ? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons ? Black — Twas ever antique-black I meant! How eise Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath ? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs je wot of, and perchanoe Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the Mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables . . . but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm ? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me — all of Jasper, then! Tis Jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty Jasper somewhere in the world — And have I not St. Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs ? — That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy wäre like Gandolf's second line — Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the Mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Grood strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night»

Dying in state and by such slow degrees,

I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,

And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,

And let the bedclothes, for a mort cloth, drop

Into great laps and folds of sculptorVwork:

And as yon tapers dwindle, and stränge thoughts

Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,

About the life before I lived this life,

And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,

Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,

Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,

And new-found agate ums as fresh as day,

And marble's language, Latin, pure, discreet,

— Aha, elucescebat quoth our f riend ?

No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!

Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.

All lapis y all, sons! Else I give the Pope

My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?

Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,

They glitter like your mother's for my soul,

Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,

Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase

With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx

That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,

To comf ort me on my entablature

Wherever I am to lie tili I must ask

"Do I live, am I dead ?" There, leave me, there!

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude

To death — ye wish it — God, ye wish it! Stone —

Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy Squares which sweat

As if the corpse they keep were oozing through —

And no more lapis to delight the world!

Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,

But in a row: and, going, turn your backs

— Ay, like deparüng altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church the church for peace,

That I may watch at leisure if he leers —

Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,

As still he envied me, so fair she was!

Though it does not come within our present scope to dwell upon the marvelous genius shown by the poet in these portrayals of diverse types of Renaissance artists, one word must be said, namely, that we cannot help feeling some sense of regret that he refrained from illuminating for the world with his poetic vision the souls of men like Michael Angelo and Raphael. Perhaps he feit before them as he did before Shakespeare, "To such name's sounding, what succeeds Fitly as silence."

Besides the dramatic power of these mono-logues by means of which these artists seem to live and breathe before us, they have genuine value as criticism, and, be it said, criticism of the highest order, not merely appreciation, but that penetrating insight into the nature of the man and the con-ditions surrounding him that go to make the qualities by which his art must perforce be distinguished.

To close with a remark of Symonds who

has been our chief guide through the mazes of this world of the painter's imagination, — "It is one of the sad features of this sub-ject, that each section has to end in lamenta-tion. Servitude in the sphere of politics; literary feebleness in scholarship; decadence in art — to shun these conclusions is im-possible. He who has undertaken to describe the parabola of a projectile cannot be satis-fied with tracing its gradual rise and deter-mining its culmination. He must follow its spent force, and watch it slowly sink with ever dwindling impetus to the earth."

PICTÜRES OF SOCIAL LIFE

"The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven — All's right with the world!"

THE poems in which Browning gives some idea of the social conditions in Italy have dates ranging from the sixteenth Century to near the end of the eighteenth. Four of them, "My Last Duchess," "Cenciaja," "In a Gondola" and "The Ring and the Book," have to do with murders, while all show appalling conditions of social decay. These glimpses of the time are only too true to the actual f acts as they may be gleaned from contemporary records.

"My Last Duchess" is not dated, but it is quite significant that the scene of the poem is Ferrara, for the story of Lucrezia de* Medici furnishes a strikingly similar incident. She was

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the daughter of Cosimo de* Medici and became the Duchess of Ferrara, and falling under sus-picion of infidelity was possibly removed by poison in 1561. This would be quite enough of a hint for the poet to build his poem upon. The poem, it is true, was first entitied more vaguely "Italy," yet this episode of Medici family history could hardly have failed to serve the poet as the initiative idea of the poem.

The Duke of Ferrara is pictured arranging for a new match with an ambassador from another Count. In the course of the conversa-tion, he shows the ambassador a portrait of his last Duchess, whose general kindliness of nature was cause enough in this Duke's eyes for jeal-ousy and for punishment by death. He is a typical art-connoisseur of the time, and evidently takes an emotionally artistic delight in the posses-sion of the portrait of his beautif ul murdered wif e.

It is a gern among Browning's poems for its incisive, swift and perfect portraiture of the Duke and his wife and its Suggestion of the social conditions of the time in the scene setting — and all in the space of fifty-six lines:

MY LAST DUCHESS

FERRARA

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. 1 call

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That piece a wonder now: Frä Pandolf's hands

Worked busily a day, and there she Stands.

Will 't please you sit and look at her ? I said

"Frä Pandolf " by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess' check: perhaps

Frä Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps

Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart — how shall I say ? — too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, *t was all one! My favor at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace — all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but thanked

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

— Een then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she Stands

As if alive. Will 't please you rise ? We'U meet

The Company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master's known munificence

Is ample Warrant that no just pretence

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter's seif, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

One may ask in surprise did not society at that late date object even to a Duke's murdering his wife upon such slight grounds? On the contrary, society condoned the murder of a wife who was faithless or suspected of faithlessness. The law took cognizance of the fact, but always considered that there were extenuating circum-stances. The murder of a sister who brought disgrace upon her family in any way was also condoned. In fact during the last three quarters of the sixteenth Century violent crimes of

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all sorts committed by individuals for personal ends were on the increase.

The general state of society is horrible to contemplate, f or it became the custom for people of quality to keep a retinue of " knights errant," as they were euphoniously called, to do their eruel Jobs for them. They had only to "give commands" as the Duke did, whenever tiiey wanted "smiles" to cease. This dismal state of affairs was probably the working out of the cruel, warlike spirit which had been engendem! by the centuries of political struggle. Now as Symonds puts it, "the broad pohtical and relig-ious contests which had torn the country in the first years of the sixteenth Century, were pacified,

inces of Italy. The victorious powers of Spain, the church, and the protected principalities, seemed secure in the possession of their gains. But those international quarreis which kept the nation in unrestthrougha long period of munic-ipa! wars, ending in the horrors of successive invasions, were now succeeded by an almost universal discord between families and persons. Each province, each city, each village became the theater of private feuds and assassinations. Each household was the scene of homicide and empoisonment. Italy presented the spectacle of a nation, anned against itself, not to decide the

issue of antagonistic poKtical principles by civil strife, but to gratify lawless passions — cupidity, revenge, resentment — by deeds of personal high-handedness. Among the common people of the country and the towns, crimes of brutality and bloodshed were of daily occurrence; every man bore weapons for self-defense and for attack upon his neighbor. The aristocracy and the upper classes of the bourgeoisie lived in a per-petual state of mutual mistrust, ready upon the slightest occasion of fancied affront to blaze forth into murder."

The Church, instead of frowning upon these practises, countenanced them and even used them f or their own ends; particularly the Jesuits encouraged assassination for reasons which they considered sacred.