Mimesis (32 page)

The occasion, as I have said, is insignificant, but what an inspired scenic idea to take a pauper’s hat and staff and go begging of beggars! We can well imagine the brothers’ confusion and humiliation when he sits down in the ashes with his bowl and says: Now I am seated like a Minorite. …

The saint’s manner of life and expression was taken over by the Order and produced a very peculiar atmosphere. In both the good and
bad sense, it became extremely popular. The excess of drastic vigor of expression made of the friars the creators, and soon too the subject, of dramatic, witty, and frequently coarse and obscene anecdotes. The coarser realism of the later Middle Ages is often linked to the activity and appearances of the Franciscans. Their influence in this direction can be traced down to the Renaissance. This too was clearly demonstrated, a few years ago, in an essay by Etienne Gilson (“Rabelais franciscain,” in the volume previously mentioned,
Les Idées et les Lettres
, pp. 197ff.). We shall have to return to this point in a later chapter. On the other hand, Franciscan power of expression led to a still more direct and intense representation of human events; it asserts itself in popular religious poetry, which, during the thirteenth century, under the influence of the Franciscan and other popular ecstatic movements, treated the Passion scene especially (Mary at the cross) as a livingly dramatic and human episode. The most famous piece, one that is included in many anthologies, is by Jacopone da Todi (b. 1230), a very expressive mystic and poet of the period immediately before Dante. In his later years he was a member of the Franciscan Order, specifically of its radical wing, the Spirituals. His Passion poem is in the form of a dialogue. The speakers are a messenger, the Virgin Mary, the “crowd,” and finally Christ himself. I quote the beginning of it after E. Monaci’s
Crestomazia italiana dei primi secoli
(Citta di Castello, 1912, p. 479):

(Messenger
Lady of Paradise,

Thy son is taken / Jesus Christ the blessed.

Hasten, Lady, and see / how the people maltreat him.

I think he will die, / so much have they flailed him.

Virgin
How could it be, / for never did wrong

Christ, my hope, / that they have taken him?

Messenger
Lady, he was betrayed, / Judas sold him,

Thirty denarii he got for it, / he made a great bargain of it.

Virgin
Help me, Magdalene; / misfortune has befallen me;

Christ my son is being led away / as has been told me.

Messenger
Help, Lady, assist us, / they spit at your son

and the people take him away, / they have handed him over to Pilate.

Virgin
O Pilate, do not do it, / do not torture my son;

for I can show you / how he is wrongly accused.

Crowd
Crucify, crucify / the man who makes himself king;

according to our law / he rebels against the Senate.

Virgin
I beg you, listen to me, / think of my pain,

Perhaps you will soon change / what you have said.

Messenger
They are bringing the thieves / who are to be his companions.

Crowd
Crown him with thorns, / him who has called himself king.

Virgin
O son, son, son! / son, beloved lily,

son, who will advise / my anguished heart?

O son, eyes of joy, / son, why do you not answer?

son, why do you hide / from the breast which gave you milk?

Messenger
Lady, here is the cross / which the people bring whereon the true light / is to be raised. …)

This text, like the Old French text discussed at the beginning of this chapter, presents a complete embedding of the sublime and sacred event in a reality which is simultaneously contemporary Italian and omnitemporal. Its popular character is apparent in the first place in matters of language, by which I mean not only the dialectal forms but also “popularity” of expression in the sociological sense (for example,
jonta m’è adosso pena
, in the mouth of the Holy Virgin). It is further shown in the freedom with which the Biblical episode is rendered, giving Mary a much more important and active part than even the Gospel according to Saint John does, so that the opportunity arises for dramatic development of her anxiety, her pain, and her mourning. Closely connected with this is the crowding together of scenes and characters, so that Mary can address Pilate directly and the picture yet admit the carrying in of the cross. Magdalene, who is called upon to help, and John, to whom Christ later entrusts his mother, appear together with Mary like a group of friends and neighbors. And finally the popular element also appears in the illogical anachronism of the conception—a subject which we discussed in detail in connection with the Old French treatment of the Fall. On the one hand Mary is an anxious and helplessly lamenting mother, who sees no way out, and falls back on pleading; on the other hand the messenger calls her
donna del paradiso
, and everything has been foretold to her.

In all these respects—that is, so far as the embedding of the action in the popular and everyday is concerned—the two texts, though about a century apart, are closely related. Yet it is apparent that there is also an important and fundamental stylistic difference between them. Jacopone’s poem preserves but little of the enchanting and transparent candor of the Adam play. On the other hand, it is more intense, more direct, more tragic. This is not due to the difference in subject matter, to the fact that Jacopone’s theme is the lament of a mother. Or rather, it is no coincidence that Italian religious folk poetry of the thirteenth century produces its most beautiful works in treatments of this scene. Such a free flow and indeed dramatic outburst of pain, anxiety, and pleading as is achieved in Jacopone’s accumulated vocatives, imperatives, and urgent questions, would not, I believe, have been possible in the thirteenth century in any other European vernacular. It reveals a freedom from self-conscious restraint, a sweetly passionate abandonment
to feeling, a release from all timidity in public expression, compared with which the earlier and most of the contemporary works of the Middle Ages seem awkward and impeded. Even Provençal, which almost from the beginning, from Guilhem de Peitieu on, possesses great freedom of expression, is outdone by such a text, if only because its repertoire contains no such great tragic theme. It would perhaps be rash to maintain that Italian literature owed this freedom of dramatic expression to Saint Francis, for it was doubtless implicit in the character of the people; but it cannot be denied that, a great poet, an instinctive master of the art of acting out his own being, he was the first to awaken the dramatic powers of Italian feeling and of the Italian language.

8

FARINATA AND CAVALCANTE

“O Tosco che per la città del foco

vivo ten vai così parlando onesto,

24
piacciati di restare in questo loco.

La tua loquela ti fa manifesto

di quella nobil patria natìo

27
a la qual forse fui troppo molesto.”

Subitamente questo suono uscìo

d’una de l’arche; però m’accostai,

30
temendo, ut poco più al duca mio.

Ed el mi disse: “Volgiti: che fai?

Vedi là Farinata che s’è dritto:

33
da la cintola in su tutto ’l vedrai.”

I’avea già il mio viso nel suo fitto;

ed el s’ergea col petto e con la fronte

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com’avesse l’inferno in gran dispitto.

E l’animose man del duca e pronte

mi pinser tra le sepulture a lui,

39
dicendo: “Le parole tue sien conte.”

Com’io al piè de la sua tomba fui,

guardommi un poco, e poi, quasi sdegnoso,

42
mi dimandò: “Chi fur li maggior tui?”

Io ch’era d’ubidir disideroso,

non gliel celai, ma tutto gliel’apersi;

45
ond’ ei levò le ciglia un poco in soso.

Poi disse: “Fieramente furo awersi

a me e a miei primi e a mia parte,

48
sì che per due fiate li dispersi.”

“S’ei fur cacciati, ei tornar d’ogni parte”

rispuosi lui “l’una e l’altra fiata;

51
ma i vostri non appreser ben quell’arte.”

Allor surse a la vista scoperchiata

un’ ombra lungo questa infino al mento:

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credo che s’era in ginocchie levata.

Dintorno mi guardò, come talento

avesse di veder s’altri era meco;

57
e poi che il sospecciar fu tutto spento

piangendo disse: “Se per questo cieco

carcere vai per altezza d’ingegno,

60
mio figlio ov’è? perchè non è ei teco?”

E io a lui: “Da me stesso non vegno:

colui ch’attende là, per qui mi mena,

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Forse cui Guido vestro ebbe a disdegno.”

Le sue parole e ’l modo de la pena

m’avean di costui già letto il nome;

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però fu la risposta così piena.

Di subito drizzato gridò: “Come

dicesti? elli ebbe? non viv’elli ancora?

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non fiere li occhi suoi il dolce lome?”

Quando s’accorse d’alcuna dimora

ch’io facea dinanzi a la risposta

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supin ricadde, e più non parve fora.

Ma quell’altro magnanimo a cui posta

restato m’era, non mutò aspetto,

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nè mosse collo, nè piegò sua costa;

E, “Se,” continuando al primo detto,

“elli han quell’arte,” disse, “mal appresa,

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ciò mi tormenta più che questo letto. …”

(“O Tuscan! who through the city of fire goest alive, speaking thus decorously; may it please thee to stop in this place. Thy speech clearly shows thee a native of that noble country, which perhaps I vexed too much.” Suddenly this sound issued from one of the chests: whereat in fear I drew a little closer to my Guide. And he said to me: “Turn thee round; what art thou doing? lo there Farinata! who has raised himself erect; from the girdle upward thou shalt see him all.” Already I had fixed my look on his; and he rose upright with breast and countenance, as if he entertained great scorn of Hell; and the bold and ready hands of my Guide pushed me amongst the sepultures to him, saying: “Let thy words be numbered.” When I was at the foot of his tomb, he looked at me a little; and then, almost contemptuously, he asked me: “Who were thy ancestors?” I, being desirous to obey, concealed it not; but opened the whole to him: whereupon
he raised his brows a little; then he said: “Fiercely adverse were they to me, and to my progenitors, and to my party; so that twice I scattered them.” “If they were driven forth, they returned from every quarter, both times,” I answered him; “but yours have not rightly learnt that art.” Then, beside him, there rose a shadow, visible to the chin; it had raised itself, I think, upon its knees. It looked around me, as if it had a wish to see whether someone were with me; but when all its expectation was quenched, it said, weeping: “If through this blind prison thou goest by height of genius, where is my son and why is he not with thee?” And I to him: “Of myself I come not: he, that waits yonder, leads me through this place; whom perhaps thy Guido held in disdain.” Already his words and the manner of his punishment had read his name to me: hence my answer was so full. Rising instantly erect, he cried: “How saidst thou: he held? lives he not still? does not the sweet light strike his eyes?” When he perceived that I made some delay in answering, supine he fell again, and shewed himself no more. But that other, magnanimous, at whose desire I had stopped, changed not his aspect, nor moved his neck, nor bent his side. “And if,” continuing his former words, he said, “they have learnt that art badly, it more torments me than this bed. …”)
The Inferno of Dante Alighieri
. English version by Dr. J. A. Carlyle. “Temple Classics” edition. J. M. Dent, 1922.

This episode from the tenth canto of the
Inferno
begins with Virgil and Dante walking along a secret pathway among flaming chests whose lids stand open. Virgil explains that they are the tombs of heretics and atheists, and promises Dante fulfillment of his hinted wish to communicate with one of the spirits there confined. Dante is about to reply when he is taken aback by the sound of a voice which rises from one of the chests, beginning with the dark o-sounds of
O Tosco
. One of the condemned has raised himself erect in his chest and addresses them as they pass. Virgil tells Dante his name; it is Farinata degli Uberti, a Florentine, a Ghibelline party leader and captain, who died shortly before Dante’s birth. Dante stations himself at the foot of the tomb; a conversation begins, only to be interrupted a few lines later (l. 52) as abruptly as the conversation between Dante and Virgil had been. This time again it is one of those condemned to the chests who interrupts, and Dante recognizes him immediately, by his situation and his words: he is Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, the
father of Dante’s early friend, the poet Guido Cavalcanti. The scene which now takes place between Cavalcante and Dante is brief (only 21 lines). As soon as it comes to an end with Cavalcante’s sinking back into his chest, Farinata resumes the interrupted conversation.