Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille. Benedetto Croce
the supreme authority of De Sanctis. Prior to De Sanctis, it is only to be vaguely discerned as suggested by the eighteenth century writer, Sulzer, and more clearly in the German aesthetic writer, Vischer; it was afterwards repeated, prevailed and was accepted, among others by Carducci. According to De Sanctis and to his precursors and followers, in the Furioso Ariosto has no subjective content to express, no sentimental or passionate motive, no idea become sentiment or passion, but pursues the sole end of art, singing for singing's sake, representing for representation's sake, elaborating pure form, and satisfying the one end of realising his own dreams.
This affirmation is not to be taken in a general sense, the words in which it is formulated must not be construed literally, for in that case it would be easy to raise the reasonable objection, that not only Ariosto, but every artist, just because he is an artist, never has any end but that of art, of singing for singing's sake, representing for representation's sake, of elaborating pure form, and of satisfying the need that he feels to realise his own dreams: woe to the artist, who has an eye to any other ends, and tries to teach, to persuade, to shock, to move, to make a hit or an effect, or anything else extraneous to art. The theory of art for art, opposed by many, is incontestable from this point of view, it is indeed indubitable and altogether obvious. The critics who attribute that end as a character of Ariosto's poetry, mean rather to affirm, that the author of the Furioso proceeded in his own individual proper manner with respect to other poets; and they then proceed to determine their thoughts upon the subject in two ways, differing somewhat from one another. Both of these are to be found mingled and confused in the pages of De Sanctis. Ariosto is held to have allowed to pass in defile within him the chain of romantic figures of knights and ladies and the stories of their arms and audacious undertakings, of their loves and their love-making, with the one object of delighting the imagination. Ariosto is held to have depicted that various human world without interposing anything between himself and things, without reflecting himself in things, without sinking them in himself or in his own feelings. He is held to have been solely an objective observer. Now, taking the first case, that is to say, if the work of Ariosto be really resolved into a plaything of the imagination, although he might have pleased himself by doing something agreeable to himself and to others, yet he would not have been a poet, "the divine Ariosto," because the pleasure of the fancy belongs to the order of practical acts, to what are called games or diversion. And in the second case, when he has been praised for being perfectly objective, this is not only at variance with the actual creation of the poet, but is also in contradiction to it—and indeed in contradiction to every form of spiritual production. As though things existed outside the spirit and it were possible to take them up in their supposed objectivity and to externalise them by putting them on paper or canvas. The theory of art for art, when taken as a theory of merely fanciful pleasure or of indifferent objective reproduction of things, should be firmly rejected, because it is at variance with and contradicts the nature of art and of the universal spirit. At the most, these two paradigms—art as mere fancy and art as extrinsic objectivity—might be of avail as designating two artistic forms of deficiency and ugliness, futile art and material art, that is to say, in both cases, non-art; and in like manner the theory of art for art's sake would in those cases be the definition of one or more forms of artistic perversion.
Owing to the impossibility of denying to Ariosto any content, and at the same time of enjoying him and of acclaiming him a poet—an impossibility more or less obscurely felt by some, although without discovering and demonstrating it as has been done above—it has come about that not only other critics, but those very critics who, like De Sanctis, had described him as a poet of pure fancy or pure objectivity, have been led to recognise in him a content, and sometimes several contents, one upon the top of the other, in a heap. One of such contents, perhaps that most generally admitted, is without doubt the dissolution of the world of chivalry, brought about by Ariosto through irony: a historical position conferred upon him by Hegel, and amply illustrated by De Sanctis. But what do they mean by saying that Ariosto expresses the dissolution of the world of chivalry? Certainly not simply that in his poem are to be found documents concerning the passing of the ideals of chivalry, because whether this be true or not, it does not concern the concrete artistic form, but its abstract material, considered and treated as a source of historical documentation. Nor can it mean that he was inspired with aversion to the ideals of chivalry and in favour of new ideals, because polemic and criticism, negation and affirmation, are not art. So what was really meant was (although those who maintain this interpretation often understand it in one or other of those meanings, which are external to art), that Ariosto was animated with a true and real feeling toward the ideals of the life of chivalry, and that this feeling supplied the lyrical motive for his poem. This motive has been disputed in its details in various ways, some holding it to have been aversion, others a mixture of aversion and of love, others of admiration and of pleasure; but before we engage in further investigation, we must first ascertain if there exist, that is to say, if Ariosto really endowed with his own feeling—whatever it be, prevailing aversion or prevailing inclination or a prevalent alternation of the two—the material of chivalry, rendering it serious and emotional, through the seriousness and emotion of his own feeling. And this does not exist at all, for what all feel and see as chivalry in Ariosto's mode of treatment, is on the contrary a sort of aloofness and superiority, owing to which he never engages himself up to the hilt in admiration or in scorn or in passionate disagreement with one or the other; and this impression which his narratives of sieges and combats, of duels and feats of arms produce upon us, has afforded the ground for the above-mentioned opposed theories as to his objective attitude and as to his cultivation of a mere pastime of the imagination. Had Ariosto really aimed, as is said, at an exaltation or a semi-exaltation or at an ironisation of chivalry, he would clearly have missed the mark, and this failure would have been the failure of his art.
What has been remarked concerning the content of chivalry is to be repeated for all the other contents which have been proposed in turn, each one or all of them together as the true and proper leading motive; and of these (leaving out the least likely, because we are not here concerned with collecting curious trifles of Ariostesque criticism, but are resuming the essential lines of this criticism with the intention of cutting into it more deeply and with greater certainty), the next thing to mention, immediately after chivalrous ideality or anti-ideality, is the philosophy of life, the wisdom, which Ariosto is supposed to have administered and counselled. This wisdom is supposed to have embraced love, friendship, politics, religion, public and private life, and to have been directed with great moderation and good sense, noble without fanaticism, courageous and patient, dignified and modest. We admit that these things are to be found in the Furioso, just as chivalrous things are to be found there also; but they are there in almost the same way, that is to say, with the not doubtful accent of aloofness and remoteness, which at once places a great chasm between Ariosto and the true poets of wisdom, such as were for instance, Manzoni and Goethe. The latter of these, in the fine verses (of the Tasso) in praise of Ariosto—who is held to have there draped in the garb of fable all that can render man dear and honoured, to have exhibited experience, intelligence, good taste, the pure sense of good, as living persons, crowned with roses and surrounded with a magic winged presence of Amorini—somewhat transfigured the subject of his eulogy, by approaching him to himself: although, as we perceive from the images that he employed, it did not escape him that in the case of the lovable singer of the Furioso, the wisdom was covered, and as it were smothered beneath a cloud of many coloured flowers. Thus the two principal solutions hitherto given of the critical problem presented by Ariosto, the only two which appear thinkable—that the Furioso has no content; that it has this or that content—each finds countenance in the other and arguments in its favour. This means that they confute one another in turn. And since it is impossible that there should be no content in Ariosto, and on the other hand, since all those to which attention was first directed (admiration or contempt of chivalry, wisdom of life) turn out to be without existence, it is clear that there is no way out of the difficulty, save that of seeking another content, and such an one as shall show how the truth has been improperly symbolised in the formulas of "mere imagination," of "indifferent objectivity" and of "art for art's sake."
[1] In the preparation of this essay, I believe that I have examined all, or almost all, the literature