SOURCE: McAuliffe, Dennis J. “Vittoria Colonna and Renaissance Poetics, Convention and Society.” In II Rinascimento: Aspetti e Problemi Attuali, edited by Konrad Eisenbichler and Olga Zorzi Pugliese, pp. 531-41. Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1982.

[In the following essay, McAuliffe discusses the aesthetic assessments made of Colonna's poetry and the different criteria used for evaluation by Renaissance and modern reader. He also considers her use of conventional techniques, and concludes that Colonna's poetry reveals a depth of critical understanding even as it relies on established rules of composition.]

Vittoria Colonna is far better known as an historical figure than as a poet. Every student of the Renaissance knows that she is the woman friend of Michelangelo's later life and many know that she was active in Italian “evangelismo” in the pre-tridentine years, along with such religious leaders as Reginald Pole and Gasparo Contarini in the orthodox camp and Juan de Valdés, Bernardino Ochino and Pietro Carnesecchi in the so-called “heretical” one. But the Marchioness of Pescara has been both lightly treated and misunderstood in her role as widely published (in her own time) woman writer of the first half of the sixteenth century.

Carlo Dionisotti in Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Torino 1967) points out that it was in this period as in no other period of Italian literature before or since that there emerged a group of women writers. This phenomenon began with the publication in 1538 of Vittoria Colonna's Rime which, to quote Dionisotti (p. 191):

fu come una scintilla caduta nella paglia. Non meno di quattro edizioni di quelle rime apparvero l'anno dopo, e non meno di quattordici, senza contare le antologie, fra il 1540 e il 1560.

Although Dionisotti's figures err on the conservative side, he correctly identifies a phenomenon which has not yet received thorough investigation either by literary or historical critics. There have been various attempts to reevaluate certain members of this group, notably by Benedetto Croce, but a comprehensive study of these women humanists remains to be written. Undertaking such a study one must be careful to avoid treating them as a curiosity, as isolated products of a culture in decline.

There are many aspects of Vittoria Colonna's poetry which excite the curiosity of the contemporary critic of Renaissance poetry. For example, a critical edition of the Rime, including those lost compositions recently discovered in anthologies and manuscripts, is badly needed. The latest edition, on which our reading is presently dependent, is that done by Ercole Visconti in 1840. Another gap in our evidence is that Vittoria's early education in the Montefeltro/Colonna household has never been stressed. It would be interesting to determine, for instance, the influence on her poetry of her father Fabrizio Colonna, Machiavelli's expert on warfare and rhetoric in Dell'arte della guerra. Still another aspect is Vittoria's involvement in “heroic” literature which started from her first juvenile composition, the Epistola, in which she sought to heroize and angelify her husband, Ferrante, after the battle of Ravenna; and which continued through her Rime Deploratorie in which she completed the process of heroification and angelification of the then deceased Ferrante; and which culminated in her spiritual and literary conversion set forth in her Spiritual Sonnets.

Today I wish to focus on still another problem, that of the aesthetic judgement of Vittoria Colonna's poetry and the difference in criteria used by some Renaissance and some modern readers. My considerations are twofold. First, briefly, how should one interpret the poetess' Petrarchism and, secondly, does her use of poetic convention preclude her accomplishing her poetic objective.

It is difficult to discuss the lyric poetry of the Renaissance as genre since, as Spingarn¹ points out, “per essa non si ebbe una teoria propriamente detta”, and those critics who deal with it were, like Bembo, mostly interested in its formal structure and style. On one point, however, there was overwhelming agreement:²

Il modello di ogni poesia lirica era il Petrarca e l'avvicinarglisi più o meno fu considerato come segno di successo o d'insuccesso.

The traditional negative criticism of such imitation of Petrarch has been unfortunate especially where Vittoria Colonna's verse is concerned:³

scimmiottatura meccanica ed esteriore, velleità di ricreare il segreto di una grande poesia col riprodurne le parole e i suoni; deserto di ispirazione personale; insincerità; … uniformità desolante degli infiniti imitatori.

The only saving graces that Vittoria possessed, in respect to this general definition, it seemed, were an occasional personal inspiration, as in the Epistola, and, of course, a total sincerity.⁴ But in the light of recent scholarship's attempt to describe literary phenomena synchronically with regard to their geographical, sociological and linguistic patterns, it seems worthwhile to define the structures of Petrarchan convention or ‘code’ in a reassessment of the poetry of the Marchioness of Pescara.

In describing Petrarch as a model for Bembo and other sixteenth-century poets Amedeo Quondam in a recent study entitled Petrarchismo mediato made the following observation in opposition to the view cited above:⁵

Il modello non è soltanto unico, ma totale e soprattutto egemone: l'esperienza della scrittura, nei suoi confronti, può realizzarsi soltanto entro gli opposti, ma organici poli della mimesi e della mascheratura. E ciò si determina perché l'imitazione non è certo un gesto spontaneo, ma passa attraverso la mediazione teorica e pratica del Bembo: la proposta del modello-Petrarca si transforma pertanto in codificazione di uno specifico sistema linguistico, rigidamente normativo e selettivo.

Quondam is pleading the case for a reevaluation of Petrarchism in order to establish its real historical meaning. Leaving aside the historicizing attitude of degrading the value of such poetry simply because it repeats the model and questioning the ‘values’ of its originality, he wishes to 1) specify its aesthetic function and 2) decipher its social code. A little further on in the same essay Quondam states what he feels is the essential function of Petrarchism.⁶

Ed è la funzione essenziale del petrarchismo nel contesto dell'organizzazione della disciplina: aver realizzato un processo reale di unificazione linguistica dei colti entro le specifiche coordinate del sistema codificato dal Bembo.

Thus the lyric according to Quondam's colleague, Giulio Ferroni,⁷ becomes a means of social transmission, the form in which literature most easily presented itself as a closed system of communication, an exchange of stereotyped attitudes. Paraphrasing Baldacci (Il petrarchismo italiano nel Cinquecento, Milano 1957, pp. 86-164) he further affirms that all of Bembo is supported by the desire to make Petrarch into a model of integral human behavior, a norm not limited to pure exercise of verse technique or amorous thematic but tending to present itself as a complete spiritual and ideological figure (cifra).⁸

Vittoria Colonna's participation in this process of codification begins with her earliest extant composition, the Epistola a Ferrante Francesco d'Avalos, suo consorte, nella rotta di Ravenna. In this poem the Petrarchan mood is immediately established by the use of the dialogue form with the absent lover, the series of dichotomies on which the reasoning is founded, the confessional character of the poetic expression, and the use of classical references. I have pointed out elsewhere some of the classical and modern sources of this composition. I have also shown that Vittoria was consciously mythicizing the figure of Ferrante so that he resembled the Petrarchan image of Laura, feudal lord and cruel keeper of his soul, as Vittoria brings out by Petrarchan use of parenthesis in describing her dream-vision.

Quando ad un punto il scoglio, dove posa
Il corpo mio (che già lo spirito è teco)
Vidi coprir di nebbia tenebrosa

Further evidence of Petrarchan influence may be seen in the use of poetic diction as in the above tercet “nebbia tenebrosa” or in the line which Wyss⁹ admired above all the others for its expressive power:

Servo il tuo letto abbandonato e solo.

In the Secular Sonnets Vittoria makes her verse conform even more strictly to the petrarchist poetic, first of all, by her choice of the sonnet form. In a recent doctoral dissertation comparing Vittoria Colonna to Marguerite de Navarre, the author concluded (and this is the prevailing critical point of view) that Vittoria belonged to a group of poets who were not gifted with a strong sense of independence and, for this reason, resigned themselves to accept the sonnet form. She says:¹⁰

Elle ne possédait pas un esprit synthétique et original capable de la placer au dessus des autres “faisseurs” de sonnets. Au cours de sa vie, son inclination la porta vers une matière qui n'avait pas encore été abordée par un grand nombre d'auteurs; mais elle n'a pas su profiter de ce moment favorable n'ayant pas un don poétique exceptionnel. La marquise exprimait ses méditations avec la terminologie d'un pétrarquiste médiocre. L'imagination lui faisait défaut; ses sonnets sont de fragiles compositions que l'inspiration religieuse—sans doute sincère—ne suffit pas à élever au niveau de la poésie immortelle.

The point of view expressed in this dissertation is certainly the prevailing one among modern criticism. But, if the synchronic approach of Quondam and Ferroni be accepted, Vittoria's choice of the sonnet can be explained by totally different reasons. The poetess, as an intelligent, educated participator in the cultural life of her times, realized that, if she wanted to partake in the current literary dialogue, she would have to use accepted currency. This dialogue was carried out by means of an exchange of sonnets at a sophisticated level. A glance at the statistical tables in Quondam's survey of sixteenth-century anthologies is enough to certify that Vittoria Colonna was in effect one of the leading contributors, especially well-represented in the conciliar years immediately succeeding her death. Vittoria's measure of success, therefore, should not be judged on the basis of modern criteria of aesthetics, a fact that will be shown below, but rather on what she contributed to the contemporary poetic discourse. In terms of content Vittoria's contribution was not limited to introducing serious religious subject matter into her Spiritual Sonnets, rather in the Secular Sonnets she wove into her neoplatonic frame-work a degree of personal mythification which was new and marvelous to her contemporaries. In the process of communication which was taking place among Vittoria and her contemporaries there was no question of placing oneself “above the other “makers” of sonnets”, but rather of exchanging concepts and attitudes with one another while increasing one's own expressive ability in the Petrarchan idiom.

The recurrent images in the Secular and the Spiritual Sonnets are the antitheses of light and dark; (human) reason and (divine) spirit; the infirmities and sufferings of this world and the eternal salvation and joy of the other, better world; and the senses bound and fettered on earth and the winged soul in heaven. These images can all be compared with those of the Petrarchan and petrarchist poetic as Vittoria composes sonnet after sonnet in the same mould in an effort to perfect her expression of devotion first to Ferrante then to Jesus Christ.

An outstanding example of how closely Vittoria was able to use Petrarchan imagery is in her repetition of the bitter-sweet antithesis. One of the fundamental themes of Bembo's Asolani (Bk. 2) is that love cannot exist without bitterness.

Ciò sono che amare senza amaro non si possa,
E che da altro non venga niuno amaro
E non proceda, che da solo Amore

Many modern critics have passed negative judgement on Vittoria Colonna's poetry, claiming that it lacks variety and imagination and is, on the whole, “unpoetic”. Ettore Bonora recently stated:

… nella fermezza stessa del suo sentire sembra che manchi la condizione prima alla poesia: l'abbandono agli impulsi secreti e imprevedibili del cuore, i veri trasporti della fantasia.¹¹

This judgement, however, is based on an aesthetic presupposition which, as Northrop Frye has taught so well in his Anatomy of Criticism, is not a sound foundation-stone of literary criticism. What I am proposing now is not a reevaluation of Vittoria Colonna's style based on another opposing presupposition; but rather a reexamination of some aspects of the Rime as poetry, in order to determine exactly what kind of literature it is, and how it is to be understood, if it is to be read at all. Of capital importance to my thesis is the understanding of the poetess' use of convention.

Benedetto Croce¹² in one of his rapid but authoritative judgements stated that, although Vittoria Colonna “veramente fu uno spirito serio e di serietà improntò ogni cosa che facesse”, nevertheless “non era uno spirito di fantasia e poesia”. It becomes clear what the critic means in this regard, when he continues further on in his appraisal, “non già, che in quel travaglio di stile convenzionale, non vengano fuori, quà e là, memorie, impressioni, parole schiette”. And again after talking about the dull nature (impasto opaco) of her style he says that “si esprime con parole che conviene come tradurre per ritrovare la realtà che vi freme sotto …”. Mila Mazzetti while calling Croce's criticism “critica preconcetta” falls herself into the same line of reasoning:¹³

I sonetti di questo gruppo, obbedienti ad una poetica troppo esteriormente celebrativa, sono complessivamente poveri di significato artistico; un posto a parte va però assegnato a quei sonetti in cui al tema celebrativo si unisce il tema delle memorie, ricchi di una più intima carica spiritualmente tensiva.

If one may reject the critical criteria that the first condition of poetry is the surrender of the poet to the secret impulses of the heart and that artistic significance consists in distinguishing memories and impressions from tedious conventional style, then one is free to search for more congenial criteria upon which to base a casebook of criticism. For Vittoria Colonna's poetry just such a foundation is available from the pen which is the most eloquent of her contemporaries on the subject of poetics, that of Pietro Bembo. It has already been noted in what high esteem Bembo held the poetry of the Marchioness of Pescara and in a letter to Giovio he explains why he held Vittoria's poetry in such high esteem.¹⁴

La Poesia della Colonna è grave, è gentile, è ingegnosa, et è insomma eccelentemente e pensata e disposta e dettata.

(Cited by M. Mazzetti, art. cit., p. 59).

It is important to note that this letter was written by Bembo in 1530 when Vittoria was presumably still composing the Rime Deploratorie and he is, therefore, commenting on the very poetry which Bonora, Croce and Mazzetti are condemning. Bembo's criticism is based on a different kind of critical principle from that used by the modern critics who have been cited. Bembo does not rely on the external reality for his judgement but rather on the internal rules of composition. He is saying that Vittoria is a good student of literature, that she has understood the rules and conventions and is following them well. When Mila Mazzetti cited Bembo's theory of poetics from the Prose della volgar lingua she did not explain that he was drawing heavily on Cicero's De oratore and that he goes on to rate the sound values of vowels on the basis of the criteria he had established. I cite Bembo again:¹⁵

Due parti sono quelle che fanno bella ogni scrittura, la gravità e la piacevolezza … sotto la gravità ripongo l'onestà, la dignità, la maestà, la magnificenza … sotto la piacevolezza ristringo la grazia, la soavità, la vaghezza, la dolcezza …

Bembo's criteria are not based on value-judgements from external experience or ‘reality’ but rather on the way the poet plies his craft. He is not assuming as “many critics”, including the ones cited above, “assume that poetry is a record of a poet's experience”, to use Northrop Frye's words.¹⁶ Bembo does not seem at all interested in the poet's life-experience, he is interested in how well the poet has assimilated and is able to use the conventions of poetic usage that have been handed down to him. It is not, of course, as if the poet's life-experience was to be ignored but rather that it should be expressed in poetry in a certain way.¹⁷ Professor Frye in his essay on Shakespeare says:

The Renaissance poet [Frye is talking about Shakespeare in this essay] was not expected to drift through life gaining “experience” and writing it up in poetry. He was expected to turn his mind into an emotional laboratory and gain his experience there under high pressure and close observation. Literature provided him with a convention, and the convention supplied the literary categories and forms into which his amorphous emotions were to be poured. Thus is imaginative development and his reading and study of literature advanced together and cross-fertilized one another.

Such criticism as that of Adolph Gaspary (Storia della letteratura italiana, Torino 1891) post-nineteenth century critical opinion on Vittoria's Rime seems especially misguided in the light of Bembo's and Frye's criteria:¹⁸

Ne nasce una grande monotonia ne' suoi versi, perché manca il contatto con circostanze reali; si ha una continua ripetizione di un sentimento di abbandono, di un unico desiderio, quello di seguire l'amato.

As an illustration of what Bembo means by grave, gentile, ingeniosa and pensata, disposta, dettata, the sonnet to which his comments refer deserves consideration.¹⁹

Ahi quanto fu al mio Sol contrario 'l Fato
Che con l'alta virtù de i raggi suoi
Pria non v'accese, che mill'anni, e poi
Voi sareste più chiaro, ei più lodato?
Il nome suo col vostro stil ornato,
Che dà scorno à gli antichi, invidia à noi,
A mal grado del tempo havreste voi
Dal secondo morir sempre guardato.
Potess'io almen mandar nel vostro petto,
L'ardor, ch'io sento, e voi nel mio l'ingegno,
Per far la rima à quel gran merto uguale,
Che cosi tempo 'l Ciel non prenda a sdegno
Voi, perche preso havrete altro soggetto,
Me, ch'ardisco parlar d'un lume tale.

The words grave, gentile, ingeniosa, clearly do not refer to the content of this sonnet which is a conventional invitation from one poet to another to comment on the former's skill. In fact, Bembo did answer this sonnet with his “Cingi le costei tempie de l'amato”. He included this sonnet in a letter to Giovio who was to pass it on to the Marchioness of Pescara with his apologies for taking so long with his answer, but explaining that such a splendid sonnet as hers required time to meditate an answer. It is necessary to quote Bembo's sonnet in its entirety to realize that one is dealing with a fixed literary convention.²⁰

Cingi le costei tempie de lamato
Da te gia in volto humano arboscel, poi
Chella sorvola i piu leggiadri tuoi
Poeti col suo verso alto e purgato
Et se' 'n donna valor, bel petto, armato
Dhonesta, real sangue honorar' voi.
Honora lei; cui par Phoebo non poi
Veder qua giu, tanto dal ciel le dato.
Felice lui; ch'e sol conforme obietto
Alampio stile, e dal beato regno
Vede, Amor santo quanto pote e vale:
Et lei ben nata, che si chiaro segno
Stampa del marital suo casto affetto,
E con gran passi a vera gloria sale.

The grave that these sonnets have in common consists in the stately quality of the rhythm, including the proper measure of stately sounds especially the preponderance of “a” vowels.²¹ The gentile may be considered the careful choice of acceptable vocabulary. And the ingeniosa is the way in which both Colonna and Bembo are able to imitate the intertwining of imagery from the Trecentisti stock while at the same time drawing on the humanist interests in classical literature. The second half of Bembo's criticism is equally able to be illustrated in these two sonnets. Pensata refers to the considerable reading of the classics (Italian and Latin) which the poet brings to his composition. In the case of Vittoria's sonnet the knowledge of how the ancient concept of Fate in the opening quatrain is balanced by the Christian concept of heaven in the final tercet; how ardor is distinguished from ingegno in the first tercet; how the ancient idea of the second death was associated with the perpetuation of one's memory through poetry (an idea resurrected from the ancient poets by Dante and Petrarch). Disposta regards the organization of the material into its relevant parts. For example, the first quatrain begins with a lament but finishes with a compliment while at the same time explaining what the writer is trying to persuade the reader of. The second quatrain amplifies the compliment in an effort to win the reader's entire sympathy. The first tercet states the relative position of the poet and reader vis-a-vis the problem to be resolved. And the concluding tercet solidifies this position with a prayer and a warning.

The proof of Vittoria's preoccupation with sounds, rhythms, vocabulary, and problems of prosody, does not rest on Bembo's commentary alone, but was expressed by the Marchioness in a letter that she wrote to Giovio regarding Bembo's sonnet.²²

dico che non leggo sonetto di niun altro, tanto de' presenti como de' passati, che a lui possa aguagliarsi. Non dirò de' vocaboli elettissimi, sententie nove et sottile senza spezzarse: ma solo la mia maraviglia consiste in veder che alzando sempre el verso va a finir la clausola così lontana senza sforzo alcuno, anzi par che le desinentie vengano sì necessarie a la ben ordinata sua prosa, che la bella et suave armonia loro prima si senta nel anima che nel orecchia, et quanto più si rileggono et più spesso si considerano, maggior admiration porgono, anzi direi invidia …

Bembo also wrote another letter to Giovio showing that he valued Vittoria's criticism and that both poets were talking about the same literary conventions. Bembo says that the Marchioness' words of praise and encouragement were so welcome that they had put him on the road to recovery from a serious fever from which he had been afraid he would die.²³

Vengo ora alle altre parti delle sue lettere, e dicovi, che ella a me pare vie più sodo e più fondato giudicio avere, e più particolare e minuto discorso far sopra le mie rime di quello che io veggo a questi dì avere e saper fare gran parte de' più scienziati e maggior maestri di queste medesime cose.

The only example of Vittoria as a critic of others' work aside from the passage quoted above is in the letter to Castiglione asking permission to keep the manuscript of the Cortegiano for a further reading. Even though Vittoria is talking about a prose work it is clear that her criteria of judgement are very similar to those she applied to poetry. After briefly mentioning the “bellissimo soggetto e nuovo” she says:²⁴

… la eccellenza dello stile è tale, che con una soavità non mai sentita vi conduce in uno amenissimo e futtifero colle, salendo sempre senza farne accorger mai di non esser pur nel piano ove entrasti; ed è la via si ben culta ed ornata, che difficilmente può discernersi chi abbia più faticato in abbellirla, o la natura o l'arte … Ma che dirò io della proprietà delle parole, che veramente dimostrano questa chiarezza di posser usare altro che 'l toscano? …

Now that it has been established that Vittoria's attitude toward poetry and literature in general was in agreement with Bembo's criteria of criticism, the question may be asked what criteria did she use to criticize her own verse. There is no evidence for this in her Letters but there are many references to her style in the Rime. The most important fact that must be noted in this regard is that those references are conventional and fit into the trope of tapinosis, a denigration of her own ability. One example is in the above-cited sonnet where she compares her style with Bembo's which she finds so much more praiseworthy. In sonnet 86 of the Secular Sonnets when comparing her style to her father's valor she calls it “humble and flat” and says that for that reason she does not write of him. In sonnet 202 of the Spiritual Sonnets she calls her style “lowly and nude”. And on other occasions she reinforces this negative opinion of her style starting with the first sonnet of the Secular Sonnets where she says that she is proud of her sorrow, not of her style. It may indeed be true that Vittoria was humble and retiring by nature as her life-style indicates but it is equally true that there is a long tradition of poets (can Petrarch be considered humble and retiring?) whose attitude toward their style is expressed in exactly the same way as Vittoria's. Only once in her Rime does Vittoria refer to her poetry in a positive way, in sonnet 44 of the Secular Sonnets were she calls it her “alta fatica”.

The conclusion which I feel must be drawn from these considerations is that a careful reading of the poetry of Vittoria Colonna reveals a breadth of skill in the poetic idiom and a depth of critical understanding which must not be unidimensionalized as “non-poesia”. Furthermore, Vittoria's Canzoniere is only one example among many which are awaiting treatment by critics eager to explore the possibilities of poetry of convention understood in the positive, productive direction of Northrop Frye's criticism; and as a statement of the cultural, intellectual and emotional state of the times which has been so properly stressed by critics such as the Carlo Dionisotti.

Notes

1. Joel E. Spingarn, La critica letteraria nel Rinascimento (trad. italiana del dottor A. Fusco), Bari, Laterza 1905, p. 61.

2. Ibid.

3. A. Pompeati, Storia della letteratura italiana, Torino, UTET 1957, vol. II, pp. 516-518.

4. B. Croce, Poesia popolare e poesia d'arte, Bari, Laterza 1933.

5. Roma, Bulzoni 1974, p. 212.

6. p. 217.

7. G. Ferroni and A. Quondam, La “locuzione artificiosa”, teoria ed esperienza della lirica a Napoli nell'età del manierismo, Roma, Bulzoni 1973, p. 16.

8. p. 15.

9. Johann J. Wyss, Vittoria Colonna: Leben/Wirken/Werke, Frauenfeld, Hubor 1916.

10. S. L. Ansermin, La poésie religieuse de Marguerite de Navarre et de Vittoria Colonna, Dissertation, Colorado 1966, p. 162.

11. Critica e letteratura nel Cinquecento, Torino, Giappichelli 1964, p. 94.

12. Op. cit., pp. 429 sgg.

13. Vittoria Colonna, la poesia come vocazione morale, “La Rassegna della letteratura italiana”, LXXVII, 1973, p. 69.

14. P. Bembo, Opere volgari, Firenze, Sansoni 1961, p. 683.

15. Ibid.

16. How True a Twain, in Fables of Identity, New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, p. 88.

17. Ibid., p. 91.

18. p. 149.

19. p. 142, § 1.

20. p. 142, § 2.

21. p. 142, § 3.

22. p. 142, § 4.

23. Bembo to Giovio dated 15 September 1530.

24. Carteggio, p. 24, dated 9 September 1524.