Italy has played a leading part both in forming the culture of West Europe and in making an impact on the rest of the world, even though its late attempts at empire building were a dismal failure, its colonies in Africa largely and wastes and its annexation of Ethiopia in the late 1930s widely opposed and short-lived. Italians of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance were responsible for many of the technological innovations that led to the great oceanic discoveries, and participated themselves, though on behalf of other countries, in exploration. During the last hundred years they have settled in very large numbers in the U.S.A. and parts of Latin America. Since the Second World War Italian influence as a trading nation has grown rapidly, Italian shipping and air routes are widespread, and Italian firms have participated in large construction projects in many parts of the world.
So far Italy has been considered as a single economic and political unit within a wider setting. In anticipation it may be suggested that superior conditions for agriculture and industry, including a more favourable physical environment (relief, climate, soils and so on) for farming, and a socially and politically more advanced population, have helped northern Italy for at least several centuries, with the result that there is now an enormous gap in living standards between the most prosperous parts of the North and the poorest parts of the South.
Here a few words are necessary about the term Italy. This was first used several centuries B.C. with reference to the southern part of the Peninsula, and later, after its annexation by Rome, the North of Italy as well. Later still, Sicily and Sardinia were also included. Italy therefore existed at the time of the Roman Empire, though it did not apply to a clearly defined administrative unit as it does today, but rather to a general area, obviously an important one, within the Empire. With the gradual disintegration of the western part of the Empire, Italy, through being split among various units, ceased to refer even to a specific piece of territory, except when, at times, a unit called Italy referring to some part of the country was temporarily resurrected. Thanks however to the common cultural heritage based both on language and religion, some kind of Italian consciousness remained, especially in the North and Centre, and although Italy failed to emerge with England, France, Spain and other countries as a modern nation after the Middle Ages, the idea of unification grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, and unification was proclaimed in 1861. Though conveniently delimited by coasts or by the crest of the Alps almost everywhere, perfectionists in post-unification Italy have devised an Italian region (la regione Italiana), which is somewhat larger than the present Italy and is bounded by the main watershed of the Alps, extends into France to Nice, and into Istria, and includes the Ticino canton of Switzerland, Corsica and Malta.
The true life of Italy -- from Dante to our own time
The true life of Italy -- from Dante to our own time -- is much nearer to the turbulence of Greece than to the official discipline of Rome. Our municipal life is clamorous and agitated, we are full of the daring of the navigators and merchants who find or rediscover the roads of the world (a daring which is renewed today in a more anonymous manner by our emigrants), the spirit of party, the originality of individual temperaments, all this reminds us father of the turbulent Ionic cities than of the solemn scenes of collective life described by Livy.
Yet of this so agitated Italian life the classics of the sixteenth century only speak to deplore' it; almost as though they were ashamed of it. Only the novellieri -- the story-tellers -- delight in it with tranquil serenity.
When one talks of the novellieri one thinks before all of Boccaccio; the Decamerone is even today crowded with Italians of every age. In Boccaccio's own fourteenth century the pomp of the Church is superb, but faith is very weak; it might seem to have exhausted itself in the pure and sacred flame of St. Francis of Assisi in the preceding century; Dante thunders against the "new men and sudden wealth", but Boccaccio belongs to these "new men", he represents them, and moves among them at his ease. Like all Italians, he has learned as a child, the legends and visions that followed the year one thousand, but the Tuscan smile has not left his lips; his serene equilibrium gives him a sovereign indulgence for all human misery and this indulgence he applies with equal impartiality to the market-place and the church, to the cottage and the palace.
Dante sometimes describes with a simple stroke certain types of daily life like the old tailor who struggles with the eye of his needle, but we feel that all his lyrical power really reserves itself for tragic lovers such as Paolo and Francesca, or for a stubborn hero like Farinata. Boccaccio, instead, is all for the common people. If he describes princes, or knights and ladies, his world becomes pale and conventional. But when he brings on the scene merchants, artists or peasants, his prose is always bubbling with life. And then especially in Boccaccio -- notwithstanding the latinized rhythm of his style -- and, with him, in the anonymous stories that preceded him like the Novellino, and in all the succeeding collections of stories in Italian and in dialect, we may follow the long and authentic thread of Italian sentiment.
French story-tellers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are not more inventive and realist than their predecessors, the Trouvères: almost always it is the usual deceived husband, the same sly wife who makes fools of her husband and her lover. . . . And so on down to La Fontaine: but the serene genius of this poet is concerned rather with human nature than with such typical French scenes.
The art of the Italian novellieri is a counterweight to the tone, sometimes too solemn and abstract, of literature of the highest order. In the novellieri all is a direct echo of the life of the people; just as it is in popular poetry, whether it is the Tuscan "rispetto", the Neapolitan "arietta", or the Sicilian "canzuna".
And like the Sicilian ottava with alternating rhymes -- spontaneous as the life of the people -- the Italian novella is rarely brilliant; only in Boccaccio these stories often present a final phrase that illuminates and wittily illustrates the whole.
French and German tales have a semi-mythological origin. In Italy, stories were very early written with contemporary human types as characters; for instance, in the fifteenth century, Arlotto, a parish priest of the neighbourhood of Florence, famous even today, or Gonnella, the buffoon of the court of Ferrara. Another difference between the Italian novella and that of other countries, is revealed in its essentially national character. In French and German fables -- as today in the Norman stories of Maupassant -- the humour has as its unique end some material advantage or some material pleasure. But behind the humour of Arlotto, as behind that of his successors, such personal ends are altogether lacking; it is indeed art for art's sake. These authors often injure themselves with their devices; they know it, but cannot resist it; what they aim at is a satisfaction of their self-respect. This is still today one of the most vivid traits of the Italian character.
A sceptical tolerance inspires our novellieri and chroniclers in almost all psychological problems. In one instance only are they all without exception unjust and even in this ultra-Italian. They have a double patriotism: love and pride in Italy, and a profound and secret tenderness for their native city. Even Boccaccio, whenever he brings a robber on the scene, a hypocrite or forger, never presents him as a Florentine, but makes him by birth Milanese or Neapolitan.
Four centuries later, we may note a similar love for Venice on the part of Goldoni; his typical liar comes from Naples, the braggart and the miser from other parts of Italy -- never from Venice.
It is only in the novellieri that we find faithfully described one of the most profound characteristics of the Italian people, one which centuries of silent struggles against the powerful and against nature have formed in them: a kind of philosophy, good-natured and resigned, that might appear to a superficial observer to be an almost oriental fatalism, while in fact it is only bitter experience of history, combined with daily practical attempts, silent and untiring, to eliminate the effects of evil and misfortune.
Yet of this so agitated Italian life the classics of the sixteenth century only speak to deplore' it; almost as though they were ashamed of it. Only the novellieri -- the story-tellers -- delight in it with tranquil serenity.
When one talks of the novellieri one thinks before all of Boccaccio; the Decamerone is even today crowded with Italians of every age. In Boccaccio's own fourteenth century the pomp of the Church is superb, but faith is very weak; it might seem to have exhausted itself in the pure and sacred flame of St. Francis of Assisi in the preceding century; Dante thunders against the "new men and sudden wealth", but Boccaccio belongs to these "new men", he represents them, and moves among them at his ease. Like all Italians, he has learned as a child, the legends and visions that followed the year one thousand, but the Tuscan smile has not left his lips; his serene equilibrium gives him a sovereign indulgence for all human misery and this indulgence he applies with equal impartiality to the market-place and the church, to the cottage and the palace.
Dante sometimes describes with a simple stroke certain types of daily life like the old tailor who struggles with the eye of his needle, but we feel that all his lyrical power really reserves itself for tragic lovers such as Paolo and Francesca, or for a stubborn hero like Farinata. Boccaccio, instead, is all for the common people. If he describes princes, or knights and ladies, his world becomes pale and conventional. But when he brings on the scene merchants, artists or peasants, his prose is always bubbling with life. And then especially in Boccaccio -- notwithstanding the latinized rhythm of his style -- and, with him, in the anonymous stories that preceded him like the Novellino, and in all the succeeding collections of stories in Italian and in dialect, we may follow the long and authentic thread of Italian sentiment.
French story-tellers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are not more inventive and realist than their predecessors, the Trouvères: almost always it is the usual deceived husband, the same sly wife who makes fools of her husband and her lover. . . . And so on down to La Fontaine: but the serene genius of this poet is concerned rather with human nature than with such typical French scenes.
The art of the Italian novellieri is a counterweight to the tone, sometimes too solemn and abstract, of literature of the highest order. In the novellieri all is a direct echo of the life of the people; just as it is in popular poetry, whether it is the Tuscan "rispetto", the Neapolitan "arietta", or the Sicilian "canzuna".
And like the Sicilian ottava with alternating rhymes -- spontaneous as the life of the people -- the Italian novella is rarely brilliant; only in Boccaccio these stories often present a final phrase that illuminates and wittily illustrates the whole.
French and German tales have a semi-mythological origin. In Italy, stories were very early written with contemporary human types as characters; for instance, in the fifteenth century, Arlotto, a parish priest of the neighbourhood of Florence, famous even today, or Gonnella, the buffoon of the court of Ferrara. Another difference between the Italian novella and that of other countries, is revealed in its essentially national character. In French and German fables -- as today in the Norman stories of Maupassant -- the humour has as its unique end some material advantage or some material pleasure. But behind the humour of Arlotto, as behind that of his successors, such personal ends are altogether lacking; it is indeed art for art's sake. These authors often injure themselves with their devices; they know it, but cannot resist it; what they aim at is a satisfaction of their self-respect. This is still today one of the most vivid traits of the Italian character.
A sceptical tolerance inspires our novellieri and chroniclers in almost all psychological problems. In one instance only are they all without exception unjust and even in this ultra-Italian. They have a double patriotism: love and pride in Italy, and a profound and secret tenderness for their native city. Even Boccaccio, whenever he brings a robber on the scene, a hypocrite or forger, never presents him as a Florentine, but makes him by birth Milanese or Neapolitan.
Four centuries later, we may note a similar love for Venice on the part of Goldoni; his typical liar comes from Naples, the braggart and the miser from other parts of Italy -- never from Venice.
It is only in the novellieri that we find faithfully described one of the most profound characteristics of the Italian people, one which centuries of silent struggles against the powerful and against nature have formed in them: a kind of philosophy, good-natured and resigned, that might appear to a superficial observer to be an almost oriental fatalism, while in fact it is only bitter experience of history, combined with daily practical attempts, silent and untiring, to eliminate the effects of evil and misfortune.
Italians and Their Literature
Italian literature presents this singular character, that it reached from its beginning complete formal perfection. Hardly had it taken its first steps when it produced Dante, its most universal genius; and with him Petrarch and Boccaccio. Shakespeare, Racine and Goethe only flourished after many generations of English, French and German poets; in Italy instead, Guido Guinizelli and Guido Cavalcanti had scarce time to astonish the Italians of the thirteenth century with catrzoni and ballate which made one forget the old troubadours, when they were overtaken by the master, as he himself says,
Che l'uno e l'altro caccerà di nido.
But Dante is Dante, unique. And unique also after him are Petrarch and Boccaccio. Boccaccio with his novelle, his stories, will emancipate the Italian spirit of his time and probably of all time.
But poets like Dante and Petrarch, and -- after the period of learning, of the Renaissance -- like Ariosto and Tasso, represent only themselves, and through themselves, the universal consciousness, so Leopardi in the nineteenth century.
Dante is moved by Italian passions; Petrarch thanks God that he was born Italian; but they do not represent Italy more than Racine represents France or Cervantes Spain, or Whitman the United States. For every authentic poet, the fatherland, while it remains a vivid element in his intimate life, is melted and fused into a more ample world. A poet of whom it can be said that he is entirely national is not truly a poet. Manzoni, who was a poet and who loved Italy so much, doubtless alludes to himself when, singing of Homer of whom
Argo ed Atene e Rodi e Smirne cittadin contende, adds:
Dante himself, intensely Italian though he was, declared that his fatherland was "the world in general", and to those who would have made peace for him, who worked to bring his exile to an end, but on humiliating conditions, he replied: "Cannot I then perchance contemplate wherever I may be the light of the sun and of the stars? Cannot I meditate anywhere on Supreme Truths?"
Let us then disregard the literary game of finding the soul of a people in its poets; and equally vain is it to speak of a Dantesque Italy, of a Racinian France or of a Shakespearian England. Rather the very opposite is true. It is for the universal poets to exercise an influence on successive generations and to mould their sentiments and aspirations. All Italians are brought up in the Dantesque religion; Dante has exercised a greater influence over them than Shakespeare over the English and Racine over the French. Even the most dense Italian will have been moved at least once in his life by some of those hendecasyllables in which the thought and the images are more swift and clear than in any other poetry. Certain American ladies, nurses in the armies of the United States in 1917, have told me that the convalescent soldiers of Italian origin asked very often to have Dante to read, so that it was necessary to buy many dozen copies of the poet. Neither the English nor the French possess anything comparable to this cult of Dante, and as for the Germans, too many of them have only sought in Goethe a motive of pride "vom deutschen Standpunkt"; faithless to the spirit of Goethe who so often recommended them in vain to rise to a universal spirit. Dante has become in Italy a national altar at which all are communicants -- or pretend to be. The fact is that Dante has been utilized in every age as a measure of national feeling; in the Divine Comedy we find described those "natural frontiers" that France has sought in her geography and history, but never found in her poets. When in the Parliament of 1920 I fought for a policy of friendly understanding with our Slav neighbours, finally liberated from the Austro-Hungarian chains, but at the same time maintained that Trieste and Istria were Italy, the argument purely literary and Dantesque which I found it natural to use, had a definite weight and not only with the masses; for has not Dante written that it is the Quarnero (the gulf to the east of Istria)
Ch'Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna?
In the most unhappy moments of her history, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Italy abandoned Dante. There were more editions published of the Divine Comedy from 1818 to 1860, in the era of the Risorgimento, than during the two previous centuries.
All know that the unequalled perfection of Dante at the very origins of our literature, and with it, the art of Petrarch whose lyrics are still so near to our hearts, are at the roots of the exclusively literary formation of the greater number of Italian poets, perhaps less free to take their own way by reason of those formidable exemplars. It was simpler and more natural for a Villon to find his inspiration in his own anarchical spirit, and for an English poet to seek it in nature; for the Italian knew by heart all the canti of the Inferno and almost all the canzoni of Petrarch. Was this an obstacle? For us Italians our classics have meant for long something more than simple masterpieces of literature. They were the ideal fatherland, the only fatherland free from foreign domination; they were a promise of glory and of future independence.
In Italy the main stream of our literature is composed of two currents which combine without mixing, without being confounded: the writer who, like Dante, composes "when love inspires him" -- this is the current that flows down to Leopardi and Manzoni; and, on the other hand, those writers whose ability only produces formal or exterior results, prodigious sometimes, it is true, like those of Vincenzo Monti, but too often deprived of that real inspiration which the young Manzoni promised himself "never to betray".
It is in the epochs when liberty is lost, when an artificial order reigns in the street and in books, that all originality disappears from Italian literature; it cedes its place to clever and able writers whose arsenal is composed either of arches of Constantine and Roman eagles, or of women who please for a moment but do not remain in our hearts: the Dori, the Filli, the Ebi of the long Spanish epoch; gracious shades, but neither Italian nor universal, excepting those of Metastasio.
It is at the beginning of the heroic epoch of the Risorgimento, with Manzoni and Leopardi, that the spark of our national poetry glowed again. The unrestrained passion and the excess of sorrow in Leopardi repeat, for the first time, what we find in Dante. The same Leopardi writes -- and it is in harmony with his genius -- that from the sixteenth century to his own time Italy had known only "verses without poetry".
Manzoni and Leopardi left behind them not merely Manzonians and Leopardians; they left Italians converted to simplicity and sincerity; that is to say, to true poetry.
I have said that our classical literature reached at its birth a formal perfection, because it was born of the perfection of the Latin tongue and in the shadow of the genius of Dante. It was this very perfection, perhaps, that soon detached it from the people, exception being made, I repeat, for the Divine Comedy, and later, during many generations, for Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.
Che l'uno e l'altro caccerà di nido.
But Dante is Dante, unique. And unique also after him are Petrarch and Boccaccio. Boccaccio with his novelle, his stories, will emancipate the Italian spirit of his time and probably of all time.
But poets like Dante and Petrarch, and -- after the period of learning, of the Renaissance -- like Ariosto and Tasso, represent only themselves, and through themselves, the universal consciousness, so Leopardi in the nineteenth century.
Dante is moved by Italian passions; Petrarch thanks God that he was born Italian; but they do not represent Italy more than Racine represents France or Cervantes Spain, or Whitman the United States. For every authentic poet, the fatherland, while it remains a vivid element in his intimate life, is melted and fused into a more ample world. A poet of whom it can be said that he is entirely national is not truly a poet. Manzoni, who was a poet and who loved Italy so much, doubtless alludes to himself when, singing of Homer of whom
Argo ed Atene e Rodi e Smirne cittadin contende, adds:
Dante himself, intensely Italian though he was, declared that his fatherland was "the world in general", and to those who would have made peace for him, who worked to bring his exile to an end, but on humiliating conditions, he replied: "Cannot I then perchance contemplate wherever I may be the light of the sun and of the stars? Cannot I meditate anywhere on Supreme Truths?"
Let us then disregard the literary game of finding the soul of a people in its poets; and equally vain is it to speak of a Dantesque Italy, of a Racinian France or of a Shakespearian England. Rather the very opposite is true. It is for the universal poets to exercise an influence on successive generations and to mould their sentiments and aspirations. All Italians are brought up in the Dantesque religion; Dante has exercised a greater influence over them than Shakespeare over the English and Racine over the French. Even the most dense Italian will have been moved at least once in his life by some of those hendecasyllables in which the thought and the images are more swift and clear than in any other poetry. Certain American ladies, nurses in the armies of the United States in 1917, have told me that the convalescent soldiers of Italian origin asked very often to have Dante to read, so that it was necessary to buy many dozen copies of the poet. Neither the English nor the French possess anything comparable to this cult of Dante, and as for the Germans, too many of them have only sought in Goethe a motive of pride "vom deutschen Standpunkt"; faithless to the spirit of Goethe who so often recommended them in vain to rise to a universal spirit. Dante has become in Italy a national altar at which all are communicants -- or pretend to be. The fact is that Dante has been utilized in every age as a measure of national feeling; in the Divine Comedy we find described those "natural frontiers" that France has sought in her geography and history, but never found in her poets. When in the Parliament of 1920 I fought for a policy of friendly understanding with our Slav neighbours, finally liberated from the Austro-Hungarian chains, but at the same time maintained that Trieste and Istria were Italy, the argument purely literary and Dantesque which I found it natural to use, had a definite weight and not only with the masses; for has not Dante written that it is the Quarnero (the gulf to the east of Istria)
Ch'Italia chiude e i suoi termini bagna?
In the most unhappy moments of her history, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Italy abandoned Dante. There were more editions published of the Divine Comedy from 1818 to 1860, in the era of the Risorgimento, than during the two previous centuries.
All know that the unequalled perfection of Dante at the very origins of our literature, and with it, the art of Petrarch whose lyrics are still so near to our hearts, are at the roots of the exclusively literary formation of the greater number of Italian poets, perhaps less free to take their own way by reason of those formidable exemplars. It was simpler and more natural for a Villon to find his inspiration in his own anarchical spirit, and for an English poet to seek it in nature; for the Italian knew by heart all the canti of the Inferno and almost all the canzoni of Petrarch. Was this an obstacle? For us Italians our classics have meant for long something more than simple masterpieces of literature. They were the ideal fatherland, the only fatherland free from foreign domination; they were a promise of glory and of future independence.
In Italy the main stream of our literature is composed of two currents which combine without mixing, without being confounded: the writer who, like Dante, composes "when love inspires him" -- this is the current that flows down to Leopardi and Manzoni; and, on the other hand, those writers whose ability only produces formal or exterior results, prodigious sometimes, it is true, like those of Vincenzo Monti, but too often deprived of that real inspiration which the young Manzoni promised himself "never to betray".
It is in the epochs when liberty is lost, when an artificial order reigns in the street and in books, that all originality disappears from Italian literature; it cedes its place to clever and able writers whose arsenal is composed either of arches of Constantine and Roman eagles, or of women who please for a moment but do not remain in our hearts: the Dori, the Filli, the Ebi of the long Spanish epoch; gracious shades, but neither Italian nor universal, excepting those of Metastasio.
It is at the beginning of the heroic epoch of the Risorgimento, with Manzoni and Leopardi, that the spark of our national poetry glowed again. The unrestrained passion and the excess of sorrow in Leopardi repeat, for the first time, what we find in Dante. The same Leopardi writes -- and it is in harmony with his genius -- that from the sixteenth century to his own time Italy had known only "verses without poetry".
Manzoni and Leopardi left behind them not merely Manzonians and Leopardians; they left Italians converted to simplicity and sincerity; that is to say, to true poetry.
I have said that our classical literature reached at its birth a formal perfection, because it was born of the perfection of the Latin tongue and in the shadow of the genius of Dante. It was this very perfection, perhaps, that soon detached it from the people, exception being made, I repeat, for the Divine Comedy, and later, during many generations, for Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.
Noble spirits in Italy
There was certainly a memory of Rome which animated many noble spirits in Italy; but these -- Dante first among them -- dreamed not of conquests but of that universal idea of the Empire with Rome and Italy as the centres of a universal societas with equal rights for all.
Leibniz has written in the Preface to the Codex Diplomaticus, that in the Middle Age the Emperor and the Pope were the two heads of the Christian Republic. The Italians were the first from the twelfth to the fourteenth century to feel themselves united in this idea. It was their first political idea, national and supra-national at the same time. They will never give it up, but ancient Rome itself and its cruel glory contributed little to the formation of the Italian spirit.
In the Middle Age, the most living of all the Romans, for the Italians, was Virgil; but they transformed the poet half into a magician and half into a Christian. The only name of an Emperor which remained popular was that of Trajan, but because he was "the just", and with him was Justinian because he gave the world universal laws.
In the epoch, more formalist than earnest, which in Italy followed the Counter-Reformation, all Italian schools were modelled to the same form in the hands of the Jesuits, and Rome became the inspirer of current literature, but, it must be understood, a "mannerist" Rome, like the ruins in the pictures of Pannini. The fact that the heroes of the literature and schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were looked for among the ancient Romans rather than in the Middle Age, proves that those in control considered ancient Rome less dangerous; the exception was Tacitus, whose love of liberty was suspect; and the pompous Roman mise en scène that the schools of the seventeenth century inaugurated shows their suspicion of the natural; it was at this time that the head of the class in many schools was given a crown and the title of Emperor.
The last and the most eloquent of the Italians to be blinded by that Rome of mannerists was Carlo Botta, whose ponderous Storia d'Italia, famous at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is to be found even today in all our old country-houses, where it sleeps between the Primato of Gioberti and Le Consulat et l'Empire of Thiers.
For Botta, the golden age of Italy and of the world is the Roman Empire: the Middle Age seems to him "a desolate age, especially in Italy", an age in which only ignorance, force and barbarism dominated.
Botta was the last of the sincere worshippers of Imperial Rome. The Risorgimento began to make itself felt, first in the political struggle with an array of notable scholars from all parts of Italy, from Piedmont to Sicily; many among them were excellent historians; all these had cast off the Roman vanity which belonged to the generations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; they were too proud to dress up in old costumes of the theatre. One of these writers, Micali, went so far as to maintain in his best work, L'Italia avanti il dominio dei Romani, that Rome had been nothing but brute force, suffocating the spontaneous impulses of the Italian spirit, which would have come from the happy union of the diverse peoples of the peninsula, from the Etruscans to the Siciliots.
The supervening romanticism contributed to turn the mind of the time to the Middle Age, as the sacred and dolorous epoch whence sprang the authentic life of the Italian people.
The citizen class and the best among the Italian working classes that the preaching of Mazzini had moved, recognized themselves in the Communes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in their struggles against the German Emperors.
It is also true that at the same time another current -- corresponding to the ancient Italian anti-clerical tradition -- drew its epos from the Ghibellines, from the epoch in which the court of Frederick II, the heretic, more Sicilian than German, had produced the earliest Italian poets. But precisely because it was Ghibelline this tradition too was medieval.
The nineteenth century was, in Italy as in the rest of Europe, the age of Liberalism and then of democracy, and it appeared, more or less clearly, that the Roman Empire had only been, at least from the artistic point of view, a triumph of anonymous and uneducated masses. In Imperial Rome one was occupied with the kolossal, as in the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II. One noted that the immense edifices of Rome -- so heavy when one confronted them with the supreme grace of the tiny Acropolis of Athens -- were the symbol and the fruit of the impoverishment and depopulation that was already appearing in Italy: impoverishment and depopulation whose ruinous effects opened the way later on for the barbarian invasions.
Eloquent parallel with that stupid satisfaction which appears always in Italy in epochs of decadence, with the glories of Imperial Rome, the first rumour of which can be traced back to Rome itself, for example under Hadrian, whose coins bear the inscription: Italia felix or Temporum felicitas, and the like.
Such complacency only manifests itself when corruption is upon one; thus it befell in Venice, in China, in Persia and in Spain; wherever the corruption becomes gloriosus.
At bottom, the history of Italy offers to the world this disconcerting message: that it is during the struggle between rich and poor, during the periods troubled by bitter factions that the poets, the painters, the sculptors and the architects most filled with genius have expressed themselves among us; and that it is during these same periods that the great achievements of our navigators, our bankers and our merchants have dominated the world.
Of all Machiavelli has written, these words remain the truest for all time: "The multitude is more constant and more wise than any monarch." And "It appears to me that they who condemn the tumults between the nobles and the plebs are condemning just those things which were the first cause of Rome winning any freedom; and that they give more weight to the rumours and noise which sprang from such tumults than to the good effects they brought to pass".
The last Italian author who felt our romanità, but did not make of it an instrument of rhetoric, was Carducci, the poet of the generation of 1870-90.
Like Machiavelli in his histories, Carducci found his deepest lyrical inspiration in love of country; and he drew the symbols of his ideal from Republican Rome.
Leopardi, too, was not insensible to the same ideal; but he soon dropped his "vedo le mura e gli archi" ; universal poet as he was, his love for his country was fused ever more profoundly into a sentiment that did not deny but rather amplified his love for Italy.
This explains why Carducci, notwithstanding the force and beauty of his poetry, is not better known outside Italy. There is a kind of justice in the radius of the fame of poets.
Leibniz has written in the Preface to the Codex Diplomaticus, that in the Middle Age the Emperor and the Pope were the two heads of the Christian Republic. The Italians were the first from the twelfth to the fourteenth century to feel themselves united in this idea. It was their first political idea, national and supra-national at the same time. They will never give it up, but ancient Rome itself and its cruel glory contributed little to the formation of the Italian spirit.
In the Middle Age, the most living of all the Romans, for the Italians, was Virgil; but they transformed the poet half into a magician and half into a Christian. The only name of an Emperor which remained popular was that of Trajan, but because he was "the just", and with him was Justinian because he gave the world universal laws.
In the epoch, more formalist than earnest, which in Italy followed the Counter-Reformation, all Italian schools were modelled to the same form in the hands of the Jesuits, and Rome became the inspirer of current literature, but, it must be understood, a "mannerist" Rome, like the ruins in the pictures of Pannini. The fact that the heroes of the literature and schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were looked for among the ancient Romans rather than in the Middle Age, proves that those in control considered ancient Rome less dangerous; the exception was Tacitus, whose love of liberty was suspect; and the pompous Roman mise en scène that the schools of the seventeenth century inaugurated shows their suspicion of the natural; it was at this time that the head of the class in many schools was given a crown and the title of Emperor.
The last and the most eloquent of the Italians to be blinded by that Rome of mannerists was Carlo Botta, whose ponderous Storia d'Italia, famous at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is to be found even today in all our old country-houses, where it sleeps between the Primato of Gioberti and Le Consulat et l'Empire of Thiers.
For Botta, the golden age of Italy and of the world is the Roman Empire: the Middle Age seems to him "a desolate age, especially in Italy", an age in which only ignorance, force and barbarism dominated.
Botta was the last of the sincere worshippers of Imperial Rome. The Risorgimento began to make itself felt, first in the political struggle with an array of notable scholars from all parts of Italy, from Piedmont to Sicily; many among them were excellent historians; all these had cast off the Roman vanity which belonged to the generations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; they were too proud to dress up in old costumes of the theatre. One of these writers, Micali, went so far as to maintain in his best work, L'Italia avanti il dominio dei Romani, that Rome had been nothing but brute force, suffocating the spontaneous impulses of the Italian spirit, which would have come from the happy union of the diverse peoples of the peninsula, from the Etruscans to the Siciliots.
The supervening romanticism contributed to turn the mind of the time to the Middle Age, as the sacred and dolorous epoch whence sprang the authentic life of the Italian people.
The citizen class and the best among the Italian working classes that the preaching of Mazzini had moved, recognized themselves in the Communes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in their struggles against the German Emperors.
It is also true that at the same time another current -- corresponding to the ancient Italian anti-clerical tradition -- drew its epos from the Ghibellines, from the epoch in which the court of Frederick II, the heretic, more Sicilian than German, had produced the earliest Italian poets. But precisely because it was Ghibelline this tradition too was medieval.
The nineteenth century was, in Italy as in the rest of Europe, the age of Liberalism and then of democracy, and it appeared, more or less clearly, that the Roman Empire had only been, at least from the artistic point of view, a triumph of anonymous and uneducated masses. In Imperial Rome one was occupied with the kolossal, as in the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II. One noted that the immense edifices of Rome -- so heavy when one confronted them with the supreme grace of the tiny Acropolis of Athens -- were the symbol and the fruit of the impoverishment and depopulation that was already appearing in Italy: impoverishment and depopulation whose ruinous effects opened the way later on for the barbarian invasions.
Eloquent parallel with that stupid satisfaction which appears always in Italy in epochs of decadence, with the glories of Imperial Rome, the first rumour of which can be traced back to Rome itself, for example under Hadrian, whose coins bear the inscription: Italia felix or Temporum felicitas, and the like.
Such complacency only manifests itself when corruption is upon one; thus it befell in Venice, in China, in Persia and in Spain; wherever the corruption becomes gloriosus.
At bottom, the history of Italy offers to the world this disconcerting message: that it is during the struggle between rich and poor, during the periods troubled by bitter factions that the poets, the painters, the sculptors and the architects most filled with genius have expressed themselves among us; and that it is during these same periods that the great achievements of our navigators, our bankers and our merchants have dominated the world.
Of all Machiavelli has written, these words remain the truest for all time: "The multitude is more constant and more wise than any monarch." And "It appears to me that they who condemn the tumults between the nobles and the plebs are condemning just those things which were the first cause of Rome winning any freedom; and that they give more weight to the rumours and noise which sprang from such tumults than to the good effects they brought to pass".
The last Italian author who felt our romanità, but did not make of it an instrument of rhetoric, was Carducci, the poet of the generation of 1870-90.
Like Machiavelli in his histories, Carducci found his deepest lyrical inspiration in love of country; and he drew the symbols of his ideal from Republican Rome.
Leopardi, too, was not insensible to the same ideal; but he soon dropped his "vedo le mura e gli archi" ; universal poet as he was, his love for his country was fused ever more profoundly into a sentiment that did not deny but rather amplified his love for Italy.
This explains why Carducci, notwithstanding the force and beauty of his poetry, is not better known outside Italy. There is a kind of justice in the radius of the fame of poets.
Florence dominated Europe with her bankers
Florence then dominated Europe with her bankers, from Flanders to Constantinople. Genoa and Venice were the queens of all the known seas; it was then were upreared to Heaven in every Italian city cathedrals and bell-towers that still remain the marvel of the world; our religious enthusiasm then gave St, Francis of Assisi to Christianity; Italian poetry at a leap had overwhelmed the Provençal; Guido Guinizelli and Guido Cavalcanti had proved it . . . But all that counted nothing for Dante. He saw but one thing: that the political unity of Christian society was broken; that the Roman Emperor lived beyond the Alps and that Italy had ceased to be "il giardin dell'Impero", the garden of the Empire.
And as he thought so did others, less lofty in spirit but equally sincere. Giovanni Villani living in the luminous life of Florence only knew that one must "greatly fear the judgement of God". Another Villani saw nothing about him but "grave dangers and destruction", and the anonymous chroniclers echo them: the Chronica Astensis deplores that "semper Lombardia in malo statu fuit".
Two centuries later, in full sixteenth century, this discontent, which almost recalls that of the prophets of Israel, deepened even more, not without reason, since the "italiane tempeste" -- to use the expression of one of the Villani -- had become more miserable with the invasion of the foreigners; but above all because all the great writers of the sixteenth century were children of the Renaissance and in consequence felt even more profoundly, if it is possible, than the generation of the time of Dante and Petrarch, the distance which separated their fallen Italy from the ideal times of the Pax Romana.
Not one of the historians who, like Machiavelli, loved Italy so ardently, deigned to bring into the light from the pages of the old chronicles, the marvellous day in 1170 on which the Italians, all of them, except the priests, the blind and the dumb, swore on their baptismal fonts this oath:
"In the name of the Lord, Amen. I swear on the Gospel that neither directly nor indirectly will I make peace or treaty or pact with the Emperor Frederick or his son or his wife, nor with any other person of his family; in good faith, with all my means, I will try to prevent any army, little or great, of Germany or of any other land of the Emperor's beyond the Alps, from entering Italy; and if an army should enter, I swear to make war upon the Emperor and on all his, until the said army goes forth from Italy; and I will cause my sons to swear the same as soon as they reach the age of fourteen years."
This oath was carried out and became history at the battle of Legnano, one of the most shining pages of the struggle for liberty among the young peoples of Europe. Battle and victory, but truth to tell without definite consequence; but this too was due to our universalist character: all Italians maintained the oath, they fought the German King who attempted to violate their liberty and their privileges, but their efforts drooped when the German who was also Roman Emperor spoke in his decrees of the splendour of Rome of which he called himself the heir.
Thus is explained the character of the wars waged by the Italians; they were all defensive: never did the Lombard League decide to prevent an Emperor from crossing the Alps, or to follow him beyond the Brenner after having defeated him. Therefore the Germans always chose a favourable moment to cross the Alps, "cum omni pace", and to fall in surprise on the rich plains of the Po; then beaten, they saved themselves retreating beyond the Alps. The danger, immense for the Italian cities, was almost non-existent for the Germans, who had learnt that the Italians only claimed the right to defend themselves.
Such a history might seem a miserable business, and one might indeed think it such since it is the basis of the stupid assertions which have placed Italian valour in doubt. In reality, however, such a history bears witness to a collective moral superiority, which would be enough, if it were generally spread through the world, to prepare a Europeless unhealthy and less quarrelsome.
Some years after Legnano, in 1179, in the same plains which were the site of that battle, was begun the work, gigantic for that time, of the canal of the Ticino. And the canal of the Muzza too -- the greatest in Europeuntil the end of the nineteenth century was begun after another battle, that of Casorate, with another Emperor, Frederick II, in 1239.
It was then that a hundred cities of Italyinscribed in their Statutes the right of free transit even across the property of the nobles, for water for irrigation, to bring water to the fields of the most humble village; a right which, outside Italy, landowners, staunch in the idea of the absolute rights of property, have fought successfully even till yesterday.
It was about the same time, in 1236, that Bologna,first in Europe, gave freedom to all the serfs of her glebe; the elected representatives of the people decreed, "on pain of death", that no longer should any man be kept as a serf; and all the serfs, men and women, were redeemed by the Commune and set free, the nobles retaining their lands alone.
No Italian historian has ever thought to bring into the light facts of this kind with which the old chronicles are filled, except one, Carlo Cattaneo; but that sovereign independent spirit was a republican federalist, between Cavour, monarchist and unificator, and Mazzini, unificator and republican.
And as he thought so did others, less lofty in spirit but equally sincere. Giovanni Villani living in the luminous life of Florence only knew that one must "greatly fear the judgement of God". Another Villani saw nothing about him but "grave dangers and destruction", and the anonymous chroniclers echo them: the Chronica Astensis deplores that "semper Lombardia in malo statu fuit".
Two centuries later, in full sixteenth century, this discontent, which almost recalls that of the prophets of Israel, deepened even more, not without reason, since the "italiane tempeste" -- to use the expression of one of the Villani -- had become more miserable with the invasion of the foreigners; but above all because all the great writers of the sixteenth century were children of the Renaissance and in consequence felt even more profoundly, if it is possible, than the generation of the time of Dante and Petrarch, the distance which separated their fallen Italy from the ideal times of the Pax Romana.
Not one of the historians who, like Machiavelli, loved Italy so ardently, deigned to bring into the light from the pages of the old chronicles, the marvellous day in 1170 on which the Italians, all of them, except the priests, the blind and the dumb, swore on their baptismal fonts this oath:
"In the name of the Lord, Amen. I swear on the Gospel that neither directly nor indirectly will I make peace or treaty or pact with the Emperor Frederick or his son or his wife, nor with any other person of his family; in good faith, with all my means, I will try to prevent any army, little or great, of Germany or of any other land of the Emperor's beyond the Alps, from entering Italy; and if an army should enter, I swear to make war upon the Emperor and on all his, until the said army goes forth from Italy; and I will cause my sons to swear the same as soon as they reach the age of fourteen years."
This oath was carried out and became history at the battle of Legnano, one of the most shining pages of the struggle for liberty among the young peoples of Europe. Battle and victory, but truth to tell without definite consequence; but this too was due to our universalist character: all Italians maintained the oath, they fought the German King who attempted to violate their liberty and their privileges, but their efforts drooped when the German who was also Roman Emperor spoke in his decrees of the splendour of Rome of which he called himself the heir.
Thus is explained the character of the wars waged by the Italians; they were all defensive: never did the Lombard League decide to prevent an Emperor from crossing the Alps, or to follow him beyond the Brenner after having defeated him. Therefore the Germans always chose a favourable moment to cross the Alps, "cum omni pace", and to fall in surprise on the rich plains of the Po; then beaten, they saved themselves retreating beyond the Alps. The danger, immense for the Italian cities, was almost non-existent for the Germans, who had learnt that the Italians only claimed the right to defend themselves.
Such a history might seem a miserable business, and one might indeed think it such since it is the basis of the stupid assertions which have placed Italian valour in doubt. In reality, however, such a history bears witness to a collective moral superiority, which would be enough, if it were generally spread through the world, to prepare a Europeless unhealthy and less quarrelsome.
Some years after Legnano, in 1179, in the same plains which were the site of that battle, was begun the work, gigantic for that time, of the canal of the Ticino. And the canal of the Muzza too -- the greatest in Europeuntil the end of the nineteenth century was begun after another battle, that of Casorate, with another Emperor, Frederick II, in 1239.
It was then that a hundred cities of Italyinscribed in their Statutes the right of free transit even across the property of the nobles, for water for irrigation, to bring water to the fields of the most humble village; a right which, outside Italy, landowners, staunch in the idea of the absolute rights of property, have fought successfully even till yesterday.
It was about the same time, in 1236, that Bologna,first in Europe, gave freedom to all the serfs of her glebe; the elected representatives of the people decreed, "on pain of death", that no longer should any man be kept as a serf; and all the serfs, men and women, were redeemed by the Commune and set free, the nobles retaining their lands alone.
No Italian historian has ever thought to bring into the light facts of this kind with which the old chronicles are filled, except one, Carlo Cattaneo; but that sovereign independent spirit was a republican federalist, between Cavour, monarchist and unificator, and Mazzini, unificator and republican.
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