Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille. Benedetto Croce

      CHAPTER I

      A CRITICAL PROBLEM[1]

      The fortune of the Orlando Furioso may be compared to that of a graceful, smiling woman, whom all look upon with pleasure, without experiencing any intellectual embarrassment or perplexity, since it suffices to have eyes and to direct them to the pleasing object, in order to admire. Crystal clear as is the poem, polished in every particular, easily to be understood by whomsoever possesses general culture, it has never presented serious difficulties of interpretation, and for that reason has not needed the industry of the commentators, and has not been injured by their quarrelsome subtleties; nor has it been subject, more than to a very slight extent, to the intermittences from which other notable poetical works have suffered, owing to the varying conditions of culture at different times. Great men and ordinary readers have been in as complete agreement about it, as, for instance, about the beauty, let us say, of a Madame Récamier; and the list of great men, who have experienced its fascination, goes from Machiavelli and the Galilei, to Voltaire and to Goethe, without mentioning names more near to our own time.

      Yet, however unanimous, simple and unrestrainable be the aesthetic approbation accorded to the poem of Ariosto, the critical judgments delivered upon it are just as discordant, complicated and laboured; and indeed this is one of those cases where the difference of the two spiritual moments, intuitive or aesthetic, the apprehension or tasting of the work of art, and intellective, the critical and historical judgment—a difference wrongly disputed from one point of view by sensationalists and from another by intellectualists—stands out so clearly as to seem to be almost spatially divided, so that one can touch it with one's hand. Anyone can easily read and live again the octaves of Ariosto, caressing them with voice and imagination, as though passionately in love; but to say whence comes that particular form of enchantment, to determine that is to say, the character of the inspiration that moved Ariosto, his dominant poetical motive, the peculiar effect which became poetry in him, is a very different undertaking and one of no small difficulty.

      The question has tormented the critics from the time when literary and historical criticism acquired individual prominence and energy, that is to say at the origin of romantic aestheticism, when works of art were no longer examined in parts separated from the whole, or in their external outline, but in the spirit that animated them. Yet we must not think that earlier times were without all suspicion of this, for an uncertain suggestion of it is to be found even in the eccentric enquiries, as to whether the Furioso be a moral poem or not, or whether it should be looked upon as serious or playful. But intellects such as Schiller and Goethe, Humboldt and Schelling, Hegel, Ranke, Gioberti, Quinet and De Sanctis, treated or touched upon it in the last century, and very many others during and after their times, and the theme has again been taken up with renewed keenness, in dissertations, memoirs and articles, some of them foreign, but mostly Italian.

      Many of the problems or formulas of problems, which one at one time critically discussed have been allowed to disappear, like cast-off clothes as the results of the new conception of art: that is to say, not only those we have mentioned, as to whether the Furioso were or were not an epic, whether it were serious or comic, but also a throng of other problems, such as whether it possessed unity of action, a protagonist or hero, whether its episodes were linked to the action, whether it maintained the dignity of history, whether it afforded an allegory, and if so, of what sort, whether it obeyed the laws of modesty and morality, or followed good examples, whether it could be credited with invention, and if so in what measure, whether it were finer than the Gerusalemme or less fine, and as to what it was finer or less fine; and so on. All these problems have become obsolete, because they have been solved in the only suitable way, that is to say, they have been shown to be fallacious in their theoretical terms; and to say that they are obsolete does not mean that there have not been some, both in the nineteenth century and at the present time, who have set to work to solve them, and have arrived at unfortunate conclusions in different ways. The unity of action of the Furioso has also been investigated and determined (by Panizzi, for example, and by Carducci); its immorality has also been blamed (by Cantù, for instance); the book of the debts of Ariosto to his predecessors has been re-opened and charged with so very many figures on the debit side that the final balance-sheet of credit and debit presents an enormous deficit (Rajna); the comparison with examples from prototypes under the name of "Evolutionary History of Romantic Chivalry," in which the Furioso according to some, does not represent the summit, but rather a deviation and decadence from the ideal prototype (Rajna again); according to others, the Furioso gave final and perfect form to "The French Epic of Germanic Heroes" (Morf); allegory, contained in a moral judgment as to Italian life at the time of the Renaissance, lost in its pursuit of love, like the Christian and Saracen knights in their pursuit of Angelica (Canello). But whether in their primitive or in their more modern forms these problems are obsolete, for us who are aware of the mistakes and errors in aesthetic, from which they arise; and others of more recent date must also be held obsolete with these, such theories as these for instance (to quote one of them) which undertake to study the Furioso in its "formation," understanding by formation the literary presuppositions of its various parts, beginning with the title. Decorated with the name of Scientific Study, this is mere inconclusive or ill-conclusive philology.

      The work of modern criticism does not restrict itself to the clearing away of these idle and unnecessary enquiries, but also includes a varied and thorough investigation into the poetry of Ariosto, whose every aspect we may claim to have illuminated in turn, and to have given all the solutions as to the true character of the problem that can be suggested. And it almost seems now that anyone who wishes to form an idea upon the subject needs but select from the various existing solutions, that one which shows itself to be clearly superior to all others, owing to its being supported by the most valid arguments, after he has possessed himself of the critical literature relating to Ariosto. It seems impossible to suggest a new solution, and as though the argument were one of those of which it may be said that "there is no hope of finding anything new in connection with it."

      And this is very nearly true, but only very nearly, for a non-superficial examination of those various solutions leads to the result that none of them is valid in the way it is presented, that is to say, with the arguments that support it. It is therefore advisable to indicate some of these arguments, which have already been given, and to deduce from them other consequences, though we may not succeed in framing others which shall shine with amazing novelty. But upon consideration, this will be nothing less than providing a new solution, just because the problem has been differently presented and differently argued: a novelty of that serious sort which is a step forward upon what has already been observed and acquired, not that sort of extravagant novelty agreeable to false originality and to sterile subtlety.

      There are two fundamental types of reply to the question as to the character of Ariosto's poetry; of these the more important is the first, either because, as will be seen, really here near to the truth,