SOURCE: Catani, Remo. “The Mixed Blessings of Tradition: An Examination of Carducci's ‘Idillio maremmano.’” In Italian Lyric Tradition: Essays in Honour of F. J. Jones pp. 73-90. Cardiff, U.K.: University of Wales Press, 1993.

[In the following essay, Catani uses “Il maremmano” to showcase Carducci using the classical form to avoid rather than temper emotion.]

When, after long gestation, Giosue Carducci eventually came to compose ‘Idillio maremmano’ in September 1872, he was Professor of Italian Literature at Bologna and an established poet, patriot and public figure.¹ Much to the annoyance of his wife Elvira Menicucci, he had for some time been pouring his heart out for an erudite, coquettish, sophisticated lady from Milan, Carolina Cristofori Piva, who was to figure as the Lidia of the Odi barbare. In all their years together he had barely given Elvira an affectionate mention, and now, in ‘Idillio maremmano’, he suddenly wrote what on the surface seems to be a love poem for a blond, buxom country lass imaginatively plucked from his idealized childhood and early adolescence in the Maremma of well over twenty years before. He cries: ‘Meglio era sposar te, bionda Maria!’ (32) It has already been suggested that Elvira is unlikely to have been overjoyed at this latest utterance from her famous husband.²

Nor has it gone unnoticed that Carducci moves uncomfortably in the mainstream of the traditional Italian love lyric. Often forcefully formulated or skilfully adorned, his declarations of love remain unconvincing. Carducci is, for Thovez, fundamentally literary and non-poetic: he has no true awareness of love, and his women are ‘motivi verbali, eleganti manichini letterarii vestiti di incerti paludamenti classici’.³ Croce's more perceptive and sympathetic evaluation finds a voluptuous appeal in the love poems, but recognizes that, though simple and sensuous, they are subordinate in significance, providing only ‘qualche istante di abbandono e di sogno’ to a poet who is clearly categorized as heroic rather than amorous.⁴ Even if Luigi Russo has insisted more recently on the importance of the role played by Giosue's relationship with Carolina, his only true love, in his poetic development, it is Thovez's thesis that has persisted in critics such as Renato Serra who writes: ‘Le sue passioni e i suoi tormenti erano tutti letterari … Egli non ha mai scritto un verso d'amore, altro che per reminiscenza o esercitazione letteraria’.⁵

Nowhere does Carducci show greater stylistic unease in the expression of love, or does his considerable literary inheritance contribute more to the creation of that unease, than in the poem ostensibly inspired by the memory of his fair-haired Maria. This re-examination of the famous idyll aims to throw light on two vexed questions in Carduccian criticism: that of the composition's stylistic coherence, and, by extension, the more fundamental question of the efficacy of Carducci's often over-academic literary borrowings. In doing so, it will also direct attention to an important dimension of the theme central to this volume: the ambivalence of the lyric tradition which is shown to be capable of impeding renewal by stifling, under the weight of its own influence, the originality essential to the poetic process itself.

Maria's precise identity, if indeed she ever existed, is manifestly of no consequence.⁶ But the rapprochement made with Carolina Piva has an undoubted relevance. Russo finds himself better able to comprehend the great poet's predilection for a simple rustic girl in the light of the following words written to Lina (Carolina) not long before the poem was composed: ‘Io, democratico in tutto, in amore sono aristocratico: odio le cameriere, aborro le figure borghesi: quell'ideale di bellezza alta, svelta, languida, come un tronco di palma, tenera e fina, voluttuosa e spiritosa, ridente e altera a un tempo, quell'armonia di grazia di piacere e di decoro … mi rapiscono.’⁷ The association, however, of such an aristocratic figure with ‘il fianco baldanzoso ed il restio / Seno’ (10-11) of Carducci's ‘giovinetta’, even when she is presented walking in classical adornment through the cornfield (16-30), is not obvious. Giosue's love poems and letters are always more about himself than about literature or the women who are the object of his love. The link between Lina and Maria can be made more convincingly earlier in the same letter of 23 April 1872, on a more subjective level:

Mi par di essere tornato a venti anni! E non avrei mai creduto di dover più amare! parte gli studi aridi e lunghi e solitari a cui mi abbandonai perdutamente negli anni che seguirono il mio venticinquesimo, parte il disprezzo e lo sdegno che ho della società moderna … parte l'oblio e l'odio degli uomini, mi avevan dovuto fare al cuore come uno smalto … e in vece io amo, deliro, come a venti anni; e vorrei, o Lina, soffocarti di baci.⁸

The spontaneous, unadulterated sentiment of youth clashes with a burning disdain for the stultifying effects of academic and civic pursuits; just as it does in ‘Idillio maremmano’ (40-5). Is it permissible then for us to equate the languid society lady with the peasant girl? After all, Lina too has brought him back to his youthful reveries. In another letter, written just ten days earlier, he writes: ‘Superba regina, tu hai richiamato ai sospiri e ai sogni di un giorno il poeta degli epòdi, oh via, non mi par vero!’⁹ Certainly, the numerous letters addressed to Lina, so attentively read by Russo, can be seen as an expression of an unspecified need for love, love seen as solace, as forgetfulness.¹⁰ On 24 April he writes: ‘Oh potessi, un momento, un solo momento, obliar tutto su'l tuo cuore, e di lì passare al seno della terra antica, solo riposo per me!’¹¹ And in ‘Idillio maremmano’ he writes: ‘E il cuor che t'oblïò, dopo tant'ora / Di tumulti ozïosi in te riposa …’ (4-5).

Both the poet's childhood in the Tuscan countryside and a classical world which assumes personal, intimate significance serve distinctly and at varying moments as a haven far from the cruel blows of fate and from the disenchantment and apparent futility of public endeavour. At other moments, they merge into a single concept, a single symbol of love, warmth and comfort, a single elegiac myth. There is an ambivalence in his ‘Seno della terra antica’. Against Thovez's condemnation of Carducci as an exterior, academic poet lacking in depth of feeling and subjectivity, Croce and others in his wake have highlighted these twin currents in Giosue's sad poetic flow. Sad because his one sincere note is, as De Lollis puts it, ‘la nota elegiaca dell'irremediabilmente svanito’. Carducci is more than the renowned poeta-vate of the heroic moment: he is also the ‘poeta del rimpianto’ who, despite his attacks on Romantic excess, reveals a Romantic need for the illusion of beauty in the fleeting moments of the past and in a remote yet personalized antiquity.¹²

Carducci's erudition and profound belief in tradition assure an abundance of literary sources and echoes in his works. ‘Idillio maremmano’ is no exception: scholars have cited numerous authors of widely varying style and stature, from Petrarch to Poliziano, Parini and Prati, to the more obscure Mazza, Zanella, Savioli and Scalvini.¹³ Unmistakable in Giosue's idyll is the voice of Leopardi in ‘Sogno’, ‘Le ricordanze’ and ‘A Silvia’.¹⁴ Yet the Renaissance, with its love of antiquity, was an age with which Carducci was more in tune than with his own century, even in the guise of the greatest and most classically imbued of all its Italian poets. Insufficient weight has been given to Poliziano's influence in the composition of ‘Idillio maremmano’, despite the mention of possible borrowings from the first book of the Stanze per la giostra.¹⁵ It is not difficult to link specific words, phrases and images in the idyll with others in the fifteenth-century poem. Carducci bemoans the loss of his young country girl, but his mind is on carefree, invigorating hunting trips in the Maremma:

Meglio era sposar te, bionda Maria!
Meglio ir tracciando per la sconsolata
Boscaglia al pian il bufolo disperso,
Che salta fra la macchia e sosta e guata …

(33-6)

It is to this same dream that he returns with regret at the close of the poem:

Oh miglior gloria, ai figliuoletti intenti
Narrar le forti prove e le sudate
Cacce ed i perigliosi avvolgimenti
Ed a dito segnar le profondate
Oblique piaghe nel cignal supino …

(55-9)

Simple, country pursuits without doubt, but in Carducci's mind not disconsonant with those that delight Poliziano's ‘bel Iulio’, engaged Hippolytus-like in the hunt, ‘dando sovente a fere agro martiro’ (St. IX, 4), protagonist in an idealized golden age:

Quanto è più dolce, quanto è più sicuro
Seguir le fere fuggitive in caccia
Fra boschi antichi fuor di fossa o muro,
E spïar lor covil per lunga traccia!

(St. XVII, 1-4)

A classical dream? Certainly, but one that embraces the same honest, liberating endeavour that Carducci longs for:

Ah quanto a mirar Iulio è fera cosa!
Rompe la via dove più il bosco è folto
Per trar di macchia la bestia crucciosa,
Con verde ramo intorno al capo avvolto,
Con la chioma arruffata e polverosa,
E d'onesto sudor bagnato il volto.

(St. XXXIII, 1-6)

The gentler touch that depicts the young Iulio protecting his face from the sun with a green branch echoes an earlier description: ‘E 'l volto difendea dal solar raggio / Con ghirlanda di pino o verde faggio’ (St. X, 7-8), but it also brings to mind Carducci's description of a Juno-like Maria walking majestically through the cornfield: ‘Sparso tra' verdi rami il sol ridea / Del melogran, che rosso scintillava’ (26-7). Indeed, Poliziano's celebrated description of the nymph Simonetta in the first book of the Stanze (XLII-L) was also in all probability in Carducci's mind in his idealization of Maria who, like Simonetta, is presented in divine form: ‘Al tuo passar, siccome a la sua dea, / Il bel pavon l'occhiuta coda apria / Guardando, e un rauco grido e te mettea’ (28-30). The nymph in Iulio's vision subdues and placates all around her with a calm, burning glance:

Volta la ninfa al suon delle parole,
Lampeggiò d'un sì dolce e vago riso
Che i monti avre' fatto ir, restare il sole.

(St. L, 1-3)

The peasant girl of Carducci's dream is made to assume the same role:

Alta e ridente, e sotto i cigli vivi
Di selvatico fuoco lampeggiante
Grande e profondo l'occhio azzurro aprivi!

(19-21)

But, rather than in a disempassioned listing of literary correspondences, Poliziano's presence is better perceived in the continuance of the same envious affinity that led Carducci to edit and borrow from him many years before he wrote ‘Idillio maremmano’. As early as October 1857 Carducci proposed to the Florentine publisher Gaspero Barbera an edition of all Poliziano's Italian works to be ready by the following June.¹⁶ In the long canzone, from his period of classical apprenticeship, ‘Alla memoria di D.C.’ (Juvenilia), written a month after the tragic suicide of his brother Dante in November 1857, the influence of Poliziano's Iulio is already very clear.¹⁷ With a group of friends in Florence, Carducci founded a literary review entitled Il Poliziano in 1859.¹⁸ His research into the manuscripts was scholarly and painstaking, but it was a labour of love.¹⁹ In reviewing Carducci's edition for La Nazione in December 1863, Teza highlights the attraction exerted by Poliziano, ‘lo scrittore elegante che contempera le tradizioni latine agli eccitamenti della musa di popolo’.²⁰ Of particular interest is Carducci's long essay on Poliziano's poetry in the vernacular, composed in October 1863 as an introduction to his edition.²¹ The exceptional, relaxed achievement of the earlier poet, produced by the natural conjunction of the classical and the rustic is what impresses Carducci and leaves him envious.²² In Simonetta he admires ‘la dignità restituita alla materia, alla carne, alla forma’.²³ Above all, Carducci is envious of Poliziano because he happily combines consummate classical learning with popularity and accessibility:

E qui sta la meraviglia; come non ostante i classicissimi studi dei quali sa pur pompeggiarsi, il Poliziano riuscisse poeta popolare a' suoi giorni, e di fama popolare siano tuttora le Stanze; delle quali come di parecchie ballate la grazia e la bellezza nativa è palese a tutti i leggitori senza bisogno di dissertazioni che insegnino a gustarle.²⁴

For Poliziano, Leopardi and Carducci alike the origins of the Italian lyric tradition lie in the ancient world. Poliziano and Leopardi however impart their classicism with an ease that Carducci fails to attain. It is consonant with the natural elements they directly observe and record in their poetry, whereas in Carducci the classical and literary are all too often, as in ‘Idillio maremmano’, ill-attuned to the rustic and popular. The irony is that such a dissonance was abhorrent to Carducci himself. ‘I letterati ritoccano, ripuliscono, riordinano: quando son grandi, ricreano la creazione popolare, quando son piccoli, la scimiotteggiano.’²⁵ He distinguishes ‘quel classicismo tecnico che è quasi uno spogliatoio teatrale’ from ‘quel classicismo eterno che è l'armonia più intima del concetto col fantasma e della contenenza con la forma’.²⁶ He is averse to jarring academism and strives towards a practical linguistic syncretism that shuns the abstract, towards a ‘ritorno alle origini’ in which the classical and popular coincide.²⁷

Carducci's efforts are not always successful, but there are several compositions of clear classical inspiration that are successful. ‘Alessandrina’ (Rime nuove, May 1872), third of the Primavere elleniche, describes his loved one in an Elysian setting far removed from the Maremma. It lacks raw, rustic vigour but combines the classical and sensual well to produce a voluptas that, even if perceived as stylized, has the merit of avoiding artificiality and maintaining a unified tone. Elsewhere, we have already noted, the return to Rome and Greece transcends the parameters of civic thought and literary classicism to become an ideal source of refuge and solace. ‘Fantasia’ (Odi barbare, April 1875) is such a poem. His loved one speaks and the sweet harmony of her voice transports his soul on a fantastic journey that not only aspires towards a remote, serene age but adds an intimate dimension in its description of personal ecstasy and abandon. ‘Fantasia's’ debt to Baudelaire's ‘Parfum exotique’ has not gone unnoticed, and indeed in the metrical experimentation of the Odi barbare Carducci manages to achieve effects that communicate the enivrement or the ennui of the modern psyche.²⁸ Even in the most emotive poems of personal tragedy in Rime nuove Carducci turns, openly or unthinkingly, to his classicism, and throughout his entire poetic production he experiences little difficulty in placing it convincingly at the service of the widest range of expression.²⁹

The extent to which he succeeded in imparting the popular or the rustic with equally relaxed conviction is more debatable. The intention and deep-felt desire to do so are not in doubt. In ‘Idillio maremmano’, Maria is quickly transformed from an apparition of tender, long-forgotten love to the ‘espressione … della forte e sana e libera esistenza campagnuola’ perceived by Getto, the ‘robusta donna a capo nudo’ seen by Baldini.³⁰ Critics from Croce onwards have been struck by the similarity between Carducci's idyll and his Alcaic ode ‘La madre’ (Odi barbare, April 1880).³¹ In the idyll he writes:

Ché il fianco baldanzoso, ed il restio
Seno a i fren del vel promettean troppa
Gioia d'amplessi al marital desio.
Forti figli pendean da la tua poppa
Certo, ed or baldi un tuo sguardo cercando
Al mal domo caval saltano in groppa

(10-15)

And in the ode:

Or forte madre palleggia il pargolo
forte; da i nudi seni già sazio
palleggialo alto, e ciancia dolce
con lui che a' lucidi occhi materni
intende gli occhi fissi …

(13-17)

A similar vignette emerges from the opening quatrains of ‘Alle fonti del Clitumno’ (Odi barbare, June 1876), and in ‘Canto di marzo’ (Odi barbare, March 1884) he exhorts: ‘Chinatevi al lavoro, o validi omeri … schiudetevi a gli amori, o cuori giovani’ (26-7). Was Maria then not an early love after all, but no more than an earth-mother to be admired dangling babies from her breast and revelling in ‘La giustizia pia del lavoro’ (‘La madre,’ 36)? As Getto observes, these descriptions ‘vogliono creare un clima non meramente fisico ma di sano significato morale’.³² Although such sentiments and the sculptural figures that embody them have in the past been praised by eminent critics, it is more difficult to see their appeal in our present disabused age. The Fascist era has intervened; bitterness and derision have followed in its wake. A. S. Novaro wrote in ‘A Mussolini’ (1935): ‘E le madri alla gonfia / Mamella appesero ancora / I poppanti come gioielli’; in 1947, Baldini found the image ‘sardanapalesco’.³³Romanità and sanità were of course eminently laudable in Carducci's eyes. In ‘Congedo’ (Rime nuove, August 1873) the poet himself is presented as a blacksmith or craftsman (‘grande artiere’) who produces songs to incite men to civic endeavour and hymns that celebrate beauty, friendship and other wholesome virtues.

The impression changes, however, when these rustic figures are allied to the sad, personal association with his beloved Maremma. They are then able to recapture the intimacy and depth of feeling which assure an apparently authentic and spontaneous poetic quality more acceptable to our modern ear. The association with the Maremma is sad because he knows that his idealized past which contrasts so sharply and painfully with present reality has gone for ever. None the less, the dream is a fount of solace. A ray of sunlight or the advent of April can trigger off visions that warm his soul, only to leave it cold and dark again when they vanish. But the Maremma's primary role is to console by allowing the poet to escape to a happy past that remains eternal. In ‘Sogno d'estate’ (Odi barbare, July 1880) his own personal rustic Elysium takes its place alongside his classical ones. His heart returns to his ‘cari selvaggi colli che il giovane april rifioria’ (8) and he sees himself in the company of his brother Dante walking with their radiant young mother in a colourful rustic setting:

… su 'l rio passeggiava mia madre
florida ancor ne gli anni, traendosi un pargolo a mano
cui per le spalle bianche splendevano i riccioli d'oro.
Andava il fanciulletto con piccolo passo di gloria,
superbo de l'amore materno …

(10-14)

The comparison with Maria is easy to make.³⁴ A similarity can even be seen in the haunting figure of his grandmother in ‘Davanti San Guido’ (Rime nuove, December 1874) where the sentiment often runs parallel to that in ‘Idillio maremmano’. The equally famous sonnet ‘Traversando la Maremma toscana’ (Rime nuove, April 1885) contains no mother-figures, but it does encapsulate the ambivalence towards the Maremma which seems to pervade his most successful compositions: ‘Ben riconosco in te le usate forme / Con gli occhi incerti tra 'l sorriso e il pianto’ (5-6). Occasionally the smile fades completely and a full awareness of his tragic loss prevails, as in ‘Nostalgia’ (Rime nuove, September 1874) where memory leads to controlled desperation rather than illusory comfort.³⁵

What then of ‘Idillio maremmano’? Is it to be taken as flawed in its hesitation, in its lack of resolution and uniformity? If so, the indecision should not be ascribed to Maria's ambivalence in itself, which can be accepted as the poetic representation of an inner vacillation, a confluence of emotions. It is Carducci's stylistic uncertainty in the idyll that is less acceptable. But this too is a point at issue: critics have disagreed across the years, alternating in the acceptance or rejection of controversial terzine. Croce sees an authentic rustic unity that renews the traditional theme of the pastoral by harmoniously conveying a directly experienced reality.³⁶ De Lollis shifts the emphasis to the elegiac theme of regret, but challenges Croce's perception above all through an awareness of the poem's stylistic unevenness. For him, Maria's ‘fianco baldanzoso’ and ‘restio seno’ clash with the preceding Leopardian echoes in 7-8 (‘Ove sei? senza nozze e sospirosa / Non passasti già tu’), just as the ‘striscia di sobrio paesaggio leopardiano’ of 50-1 (‘E verdi quindi i colli e quindi il mare / Sparso di vele’) is at odds with the Juno-like portrayal of Maria in 16-30. It is this crucial portrayal that provokes De Lollis's principal charge against Carducci of ornate Arcadian artificiality.³⁷ Baldini's exhaustive literary references only serve to draw attention to stylistic fluctuations and incongruities, yet he faithfully follows the Crocean line in considering the idyll a ‘poesia di sodo fondo rusticano’ and firmly rebutting De Lollis's accusation.³⁸ The impression of excessive pastoral decoration however has persisted alongside the prevalent rustic interpretation. The divergence of critical opinion in the years immediately following Carducci's death is mirrored fifty years after the event in the variance between Giovanni Getto and Luigi Russo.³⁹ Getto views the composition as an ‘idillio campestre’ and Maria as an embodiment of healthy country living. His carefully considered analysis marks a progression in the presentation of the rustic viewpoint: he senses a tension between the idyll's deeply autobiographical inspiration and the literary nature of its formal expression, and he feels the need for a reasoned rather than peremptory riposte to those who perceive a stylistic dichotomy in this tension. He identifies three distinct tonal areas: the vigorous ‘rilievo possente’ of the earth-mother (8-15); the long rimpianto in conclusion (31-61) with its ‘duplice registro delle voci forti e di quelle delicate’; and the ornate vision of Maria as a demi-goddess (16-30), which is, in Getto's opinion, a necessary interposition intended to attenuate the poem's initial forceful style and avoid an unacceptable clash between the opening and closing sections. Russo, on the other hand, does not shrink from drawing our attention to a ‘dissidio formale’: ‘vorrebbe essere un componimento di carattere popolaresco-realistico, e saltano fuori molte formule classicheggianti’; or from expressing, like De Lollis before him, his aversion to the apparition of Maria in the cornfield. He takes particular exception to her ‘chioma flava’ (23), to the ‘serto di fiori’ (18) she carries in her hand, to the ‘cíano seren’ (22) with which her eyes are compared. He avoids a confusion of Carducci's intention with the result: ‘Si tratterebbe d'un amore rusticano, e la rusticità dell'ispirazione avrebbe dovuto salvare il poeta da certe stonature classicistiche.’

Giosue did try to avoid the dissonance. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the reworked manuscript draft of the first twenty-one lines, where he is seen striving to convey robust vigour and wholesome sensuality unadorned by literary refinement.⁴⁰ ‘Certo il natio / Villaggio adorni ancor florida sposa’ in the first draft becomes ‘certo il natio / Borgo ti accoglie lieta madre e sposa’ (8-9). The ‘fianco baldanzoso’ of 10 is a revision of ‘fianco giovinetto’. Lines 13-15 in the original draft read:

I figli che pendean da la tua poppa
Certo già innanzi agli occhi tuoi scherzando
Al mal domo destrier saltano in groppa.

The sons become ‘forti’ and ‘baldi’; ‘scherzando’ is deemed inappropriate; the literary ‘destrier’, reminiscent of Poliziano, gives way to a matter-of-fact ‘caval’. In its final version, the vision of Maria in the cornfield begins:

Com'eri bella, o giovinetta, quando
Tra l'ondeggiar de' lunghi solchi uscivi
Un tuo serto di fiori in man recando,
Alta e ridente.

(16-19)

The first draft reads:

Com'eri bella, o fanciulletta, quando
Tra l'ondeggiar dei solchi biondi uscivi
Un tuo mazzo di fiori in man recando,
Bionda tu stessa.

The changes add force and a touch of down-to-earth sensuality, with the exception of the substitution of ‘serto’ for ‘mazzo’, which takes the opposite, pastoral path that De Lollis and Russo find so jarring. Even more florid lines are to come:

Come 'l cíano seren tra 'l biondeggiante
Or de le spiche, tra la chioma flava
Fioria quell'occhio azzurro; e a te d'avante
La grande estate, e intorno, fiammeggiava.

(22-5)

The first draft is unfortunately unknown to us. It would have been interesting to see if he had initially considered the simple ‘fiordaliso’ and ‘capelli biondi’. In any case, the revision to ‘serto’ introduces a clear change of direction: in these pivotal lines (16-30), Carducci opts unequivocally in his final version for a classical, literary style that stands in stark contrast to the one he is at pains to sustain in the preceding lines.

It may well be then, as Getto would have it, that this classical adornment has a conscious functional role, that it is intended to temper an over-robust tone in preparation for the final rimpianto. But what in that case of the discord between the rustic and classical heard by De Lollis and Russo, and indeed, as his revisions show, by Carducci himself? In the final analysis, Getto's attempt at patching up stylistic uncertainty and tonal inconsistency is unconvincing, not only in his presentation of the ‘delicatezze’ of 16-30 as ‘immagini familiari alla fantasia del Carducci’, but also in his description of unfortunate moments of empty sublimity (37 and 39-45) and irascibility (60-1) as minor blemishes. De Lollis and Russo are of course correct in seeing a dichotomy of style. But in dismissing classical adornment one should remain aware that it was Carducci's literary soul that drove him to emulate Poliziano's crisp, magical combination of the rustic and classical, whereas Giosue's penchant in fact was towards a more forceful depiction often associated with an idealized Maremma. There is a further reason for Carducci's vacillation in ‘Idillio maremmano’: neither style is an adequate vehicle for the expression of personal grief; neither can easily sustain an ensuing rimpianto. Poliziano's natural world, for all its realism, is a classical dream far from individual travail, just as Carducci's vital, sun-drenched countryside is an illusory source of comfort in the past that is the diametric opposite of present loss and suffering. When this essentially consoling function is recognized, it combines happily with the present reality. To take just one example, this is illustrated in the closing lines of ‘Sogno d'estate’: when the radiant vision passes, Carducci returns content to his comfortable life in Bologna with his own children:

Passâr le care imagini, disparvero lievi co'l sonno.
Lauretta empieva intanto di gioia canora le stanze,
Bice china al telaio seguia cheta l'opra de l'ago.

(35-7)

The stylistic defect of ‘Idillio maremmano’ is not just that Poliziano's envied combination of the popular and classical is not achieved, or even that such a combination, however successful, is in its own turn badly conjoined to the vigorously rustic. In whichever manner it is presented, nature in Carducci cannot in stylistic terms, as it can in Leopardi, bear the superimposition of painful personal loss. Thovez uses Leopardi as a yardstick for measuring Carducci's failure. He writes: ‘il Leopardi aveva scrostato la forma da ogni eleganza di scuola e si era ridotto a una nudità sublime: il Carducci l'arricchí di nuovi adornamenti.’⁴¹ The use of such a comparison to impute artistic regression has been amply refuted by Croce.⁴² As a straightforward comment on Carducci's stylistic shortcomings, however, it should be dismissed with caution.

In his refutation, Croce writes: ‘ogni poeta ricomincia da capo il viaggio.’⁴³ But each poet sets out with the ambivalent legacy of the lyric tradition at his disposal, and is free to draw on it as he chooses. It is certainly true that forced, academic borrowing makes for compositions that are hybrid and stilted, militating against the renewal of tradition. By the same token it is possible to bring the renewal about by directing attention to the shortcomings rather than the achievements of the past through ironical rather than admirative imitation. It was no doubt Carducci's conviction that he too in his turn would leave a literary legacy. Some successors, even in spite of themselves, echoed him with serious intent.⁴⁴ Others not so. Baldini cites a possible parody in Gozzano.⁴⁵ A much more irreverent one is to be found in Govoni's ‘Sul fiume’:

Dove sei, bionda Lilly, molle giunco
del mio fiume? Già vecchia,
sfiancata dai bestiali parti,
decrepita, due peli incanutiti
la chioma al vento come orifiamma …
I grandi occhi fulminei, grinze pietre;
la bocca senza denti che fu un giorno
un bocciuolo di rosa offerto al sole
come il nodo di rughe innominabile
dove ha l'uovo cantato la gallina;
le mani di velluto così pronte
a difenderti a oltranza, forse ad arte,
da ogni carezza troppo ardita,
per ritirarsi poi vinte in disparte,
due patte di schifosa tartaruga:
è questo il tuo ritratto odioso, o Lilly,
Gesú! Gesú!, mio dolce molle giunco
di fiume …

(124-41).⁴⁶

Would Giosue Carducci, the respected Senator and Nobel prizewinner, have approved? How could a poet who strove throughout his life with such single-minded dedication for an awareness of the past and for the continuing revitalization of the Italian lyric tradition possibly have objected?

Notes

1. The autograph MS of the first twenty-one lines of IM bears the note: ‘Pensata aprile 1867; scritta settembre 1872.’ Cf. Poesie di G. C. nei loro autografi, ed. by A. Sorbelli (Bologna, 1935), tav. IX. A. Baldini, ‘“IM” (vv. 1-21)’, in Fine Ottocento (Florence, 1947), 242.

2. Cf. P. P. Trompeo, Carducci e D'Annunzio (Rome, 1943), 69.

3. Cf. E. Thovez, Il pastore, il gregge e la zampogna (Naples, 1910), 71: ‘nemmeno il più acceso degli erotomani può credere che le Lidie, le Lalagi, le Dafni, le Line carducciane siano donne di carne ed ossa.’

4. B. Croce, G. Carducci: studio critico (Bari, 1961, 6th edn.), 48, 153-4. See too ‘Poesia d'amore e poesia eroica’, in Poesia antica e moderna (Bari, 1950, 3rd edn.), 177-84.

5. Cf. L. Russo, Carducci senza retorica (Bari, 1957), 243-57; R. Serra, Scritti, ed. G. De Robertis and A. Grilli (Florence, 1958, 2nd edn.), II, 444-5.

6. The attempts to identify ‘bionda Maria’ during the poet's lifetime were hardly literary in intent. Leopoldo Barboni, supposedly an eye-witness, recounts a meeting that took place in October 1885 in a café in Castagneto when an old country-woman was brought along to meet the illustrious bard, who of course failed to recognize her. The association of the idyll's source of inspiration with a certain Maria Bianchini was made in an article in the ‘Resto del Carlino’ of 27 November 1901 which provoked a denial in a letter to the editor from Carducci: ‘Vago e delizioso il racconto della Bionda Maria accolto da Lei nel foglio di questa mattina: ma non ha parola che rassomigli a verità’ (Edizione Nazionale delle opere di G. C., XXVII, 328). Barboni's description of the old woman, quoted by Trompeo (Carducci e D'Annunzio, 70-1), is amusing: ‘mezzo risolente e spaventata, i capelli brizzolati, rinfronzolita alla meglio lì per lì per la circostanza solenne e un viso un po' avariato’. Cf. Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 242, and G. C., Rime nuove, ed. P. P. Trompeo and G. Salinari (Bologna, 1961), 261.

7. Ed. naz., VII, 147. Cf. Russo, Carducci, 365.

8. Ed. naz., VII, 146.

9. Ibid., 130.

10. It appears to have gone unnoticed that Russo, attentive though he was, is in fact mistaken in the month of composition of ‘IM’: ‘… fu scritta nell'aprile del 1872, proprio alla vigilia dell'innamoramento del poeta per la Lina Piva. Si direbbe che già nella sua fantasia tumultuassero questi desideri di amore’ (Carducci, 364). By September Carducci's love is in full flight: the majority of letters written in this month (Ed. Naz., VII, 307-51; letters 1439-58) are impassioned love letters to Lina. This error only partly invalidates Russo's argument. Maria could now be seen as an expression during the period of sad separation of his love for Lina in another guise, rather than of a hopeful anticipation of that love. On 22 September he writes: ‘Abbi pietà della mia solitudine, e rivelatimi sotto tutte le forme che il tuo angelico spirito può assumere.’ (ibid., 338).

11. Ibid., 149. Cf. Russo, Carducci, 365.

12. Cf. C. de Lollis, ‘Appunti sulla lingua poetica del C.’, in Saggi sulla forma poetica italiana dell'Ottocento (Bari, 1929) 126-7.

13. Minutiose glosses, occasionally of doubtful relevance, can be found in Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 242-50. See too Trompeo, Carducci e D'Annunzio, 73-8, where the possibility of a foreign influence in Sainte-Beuve is rejected, and G. C., Rime nuove (1961), 261-5, where Carducci's ironical reaction to an alleged source of Maria's ‘restio seno’ (10-11) is cited (p. 262: ‘Ora sapete voi donde ho disegnato quel seno? Da un verso del Foscolo nelle Grazie … Ve ne sareste accorti voi? No? Né men io, né, credo, nessuno’ (Critica ed arte, Ed. Naz., XXIV, 259)). On the other hand, he is said to have confided to Guido Mazzoni, ‘Il troppo ascoltare, ammirando e imitando, i bei suoni altrui, mi ha scemato talvolta l'inspirazione’ (cf. Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 246).

14. The ‘raggio de l'april nuovo’ of line 1 recalls the ray of sunlight at the beginning and end of ‘Sogno’. ‘Ove sei?’ (7) is a clear echo of the call to Nerina in ‘Le ricordanze’ (144-5), just as ‘passasti’ of the following line can be recognized in no less than four lines of the same poem by Leopardi (149, 152, 169, 170), as well as in ‘A Silvia’ (53) which has other clear echoes in 16 (IM 56-7), 25 (IM, 50) and 45 (IM, 23).

15. Cf. Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 247; also N. Busetto, G. C. (Padua, 1958) 181.

16. Cf. Guido Mazzoni's introduction to Le Stanze, l'Orfeo e le rime', edited by G. C. (Bologna, 1912, 2nd edn.), vii-viii. The edition, without the prose writings, did not in fact appear until October 1863. It is interesting to note that Carducci chose to send a copy of his edition with his first deferent letter to Sainte-Beuve of 1 April 1867, the alleged moment of conception of IM; cf. Ed. Naz., V, 103-4.

17. Cf. ‘Qual fu a vederlo con ardor virile / Ruotare in breve giro agil destriero / E disserrarlo per l'aperto campo! / Gli occhi suoi mesti allor mettean un lampo, / Correa co'freschi venti il suo pensiero / De l'anno e de l'età nel dolce aprile’ (12-17).

18. Cf. Mazzoni's introduction: ‘Nel nome del grande umanista e insieme popolaresco toscano avevano il Carducci e gli altri voluto richiamare la nuova Italia alla riverenza e gratitudine per la grecità e la romanità’ (Le Stanze (1912), xiii).

19. In a letter written to Chiarini on 10 August 1860 he writes: ‘Oh i codici, i codici del Poliziano e dei poeti antichi in Ricciardiana! Io li veggo: io li veggo; io li rivoglio!’ (Ed. Naz., II, 125).

20. Le Stanze, (1912), xxiv.

21. Ibid., 3-244.

22. Cf. ibid., 242, and Ed. Naz., XII, 373-4: ‘Lo spirito del Poliziano … rimase segnatamente in quel che è pregio principalissimo, la congiunzione dell'eleganza antica alla vivezza paesana.’ Also Le Stanze, (1912), 67, and Ed. Naz. XII, 200-1: ‘Nelle lodi della vita campestre … sentirai da principio l'eco dell'epòdo d'Orazio e della Georgica; ma nel bel mezzo un paesaggio toscano ritratto al naturale … cancella la prima sensazione.’ See too Le Stanze (1912), 201-2, and Ed. Naz., XII, 333.

23. Ed. Naz., XII, 203.

24. Ibid., 243.

25. Ed. Naz., VIII, 408. Cf. G. Paparelli, Carducci e il Novecento (Naples, 1953), 38-9.

26. Ed. Naz., VII, 407. Cf. Paparelli, Carducci, 18-19.

27. Cf. Paparelli, Carducci, 40.

28. Cf. M. Praz, Gusto neoclassico (Florence, 1940), 283-6. See too, for example, ‘Alla stazione’ (Odi barbare, June 1875).

29. The two well-known short poems on the death of his infant son Dante, ‘Funere mersit acerbo’ (Rime nuove, 1870) and ‘Pianto antico’ (Rime nuove, 1871), are a case in point. Carducci's classicism is evident in the hemistich from the Aeneid that constitutes the title of the first; but the ambivalent title of the second is equally indicative.

30. Cf. G. Getto, Carducci e Pascoli (Naples, 1965), 45 (the essay on Carducci was first published by Zanichelli in 1957); Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 248.

31. Cf. Croce, Carducci, 90; also Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 247, and Getto, Carducci e Pascoli, 43.

32. Getto, Carducci e Pascoli, 43.

33. Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 247.

34. The month of April assumes a special function in such re-evocations. In ‘Ripresa’ (Giambi ed epodi) written the month after ‘IM’, he cries: ‘E a noi rida l'april, / L'april de' colli italici vaghi di messi e fiori, / L'april santo de l'anima piena di nuovi amori, / L'april del pensier’ (126-9). Cf. ‘Alla memoria di D. C.’, 17. It is interesting to note that ‘La madre’ and ‘Traversando la Maremma toscana’ were both written in April. Baldini (‘“IM”’, 243) also quotes ‘Alla Regina d'Italia’, ‘Vignetta’ and the first of four sonnets to Nicola Pisano.

35. Cf. ‘Là in Maremma ove fiorio / La mia triste primavera / Là rivola il pensier mio / Con i tuoni e la bufera: / Là nel ciel nero vibrarmi / La mia patria a riguardar, / Poi co'l tuon vo’ spronfondarmi / Tra quei colli ed in quel mar (25-32). On G. C.'s poems dealing with the Maremma, see too G. De Robertis, Saggi con una noterella (Florence, 1953), 118-20.

36. Croce, Carducci, 81.

37. De Lollis, ‘Appunti’, 125-7.

38. Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 246 and 248: ‘No, Maria la bionda apparizione nuova … è la donna che Giovanni Fattori e Silvestro Lega impostavano più di gusto sulle loro tele’ (248). Eight years before, in 1939, Trompeo had admired the ‘ritratto macchiaiolo di Maria’ (Carducci e D'Annunzio, 70).

39. Cf. Getto, Carducci e Pascoli, 44-6; Russo, Carducci, 364-6.

40. Sorbelli (ed.), Poesie di G. C., tav. IX.

41. Thovez, Il pastore, 55.

42. Cf. Croce, Carducci, 19-23.

43. Ibid., 22.

44. On Carducci's haunting influence on d'Annunzio, see Ivanos Ciani, ‘D'Annunzio e Carducci (o di una lunga infedelissima fedeltà)’, in Carducci poeta: Atti del Convegno Pietrasanta e Pisa, 26-28 settembre 1985 (Pisa, 1987), 215-43.

45. Baldini, ‘“IM”’, 250.

46. Corrado Govoni, Poesie (1903-1959), ed. G. Ravegnani (Milan, 1961), 1224-5.