Modern Italian Poets | Page 5

the next city was the highest favor you
could ask for yourself.
In literature, the humorous Bernesque school had passed; Tasso had
long been dead; and the Neapolitan Marini, called the Corrupter of
Italian poetry, ruled from his grave the taste of the time. This taste was
so bad as to require a very desperate remedy, and it was professedly to
counteract it that the Academy of the Arcadians had arisen.
The epoch was favorable, and, as Emiliani-Giudici (whom we shall
follow for the present) teaches, in his History of Italian Literature, the
idea of Crescimbeni spread electrically throughout Italy. The gayest of
the finest ladies and gentlemen the world ever saw, the illustrissimi of
that polite age, united with monks, priests, cardinals, and scientific
thinkers in establishing the Arcadia; and even popes and kings were
proud to enlist in the crusade for the true poetic faith. In all the chief
cities Arcadian colonies were formed, "dependent upon the Roman
Arcadia, as upon the supreme Arch-Flock", and in three years the
Academy numbered thirteen hundred members, every one of whom had
first been obliged to give proof that he was a good poet. They prettily
called themselves by the names of shepherds and shepherdesses out of
Theocritus, and, being a republic, they refused to own any earthly
prince or ruler, but declared the Baby Jesus to be the Protector of
Arcadia. Their code of laws was written in elegant Latin by a grave and
learned man, and inscribed upon tablets of marble.
According to one of the articles, the Academicians must study to
reproduce the customs of the ancient Arcadians and the character of
their poetry; and straightway "Italy was filled on every hand with
Thyrsides, Menalcases, and Meliboeuses, who made their harmonious
songs resound the names of their Chlorises, their Phyllises, their Niceas;
and there was poured out a deluge of pastoral compositions", some of
them by "earnest thinkers and philosophical writers, who were not
ashamed to assist in sustaining that miserable literary vanity which, in
the history of human thought, will remain a lamentable witness to the

moral depression of the Italian nation." As a pattern of perfect poetizing,
these artless nymphs and swains chose Constanzo, a very fair poet of
the sixteenth century. They collected his verse, and printed it at the
expense of the Academy; and it was established without dissent that
each Arcadian in turn, at the hut of some conspicuous shepherd, in the
presence of the keeper (such was the jargon of those most amusing
unrealities), should deliver a commentary upon some sonnet of
Constanzo. As for Crescimbeni, who declared that Arcadia was
instituted "strictly for the purpose of exterminating bad taste and of
guarding against its revival, pursuing it continually, wherever it should
pause or lurk, even to the most remote and unconsidered villages and
hamlets"--Crescimbeni could not do less than write four dialogues, as
he did, in which he evolved from four of Constanzo's sonnets all that
was necessary for Tuscan lyric poetry.
"Thus," says Emiliani-Giudici, referring to the crusading intent of
Crescimbeni, "the Arcadians were a sect of poetical Sanfedista, who,
taking for example the zeal and performance of San Domingo de
Gruzman, proposed to renew in literature the scenes of the Holy Office
among the Albigenses. Happily, the fire of Arcadian verse did not
really burn! The institution was at first derided, then it triumphed and
prevailed in such fame and greatness that, shining forth like a new sun,
it consumed the splendor of the lesser lights of heaven, eclipsing the
glitter of all those academies--the Thunderstruck, the Extravagant, the
Humid, the Tipsy, the Imbeciles, and the like--which had hitherto
formed the glory of the Peninsula."
I
Giuseppe Torelli, a charming modern Italian writer, in a volume called
Paessaggi e Profili (Landscapes and Profiles), makes a study of Carlo
Innocenzo Frugoni, one of the most famous of the famous Arcadian
shepherds; and from this we may learn something of the age and
society in which such a folly could not only be possible but illustrious.
The patriotic Italian critics and historians are apt to give at least a full
share of blame to foreign rulers for the corruption of their nation, and
Signor Torelli finds the Spanish domination over a vast part of Italy
responsible for the degradation of Italian mind and manners in the
seventeenth century. He declares that, because of the Spaniards, the
Italian theater was then silent, "or filled with the noise of insipid

allegories"; there was little or no education among the common people;
the slender literature that survived existed solely for the amusement and
distinction of the great; the army and the Church were the only avenues
of escape from obscurity and poverty; all classes were sunk in
indolence.
The social customs were mostly copied from France,