Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille. Benedetto Croce
was, since they have at the most indicated vaguely and indirectly in their illogical formula that "his Goddess was Art."
CHAPTER III
THE HIGHEST LOVE: HARMONY
But we on the other hand shall name her, and we shall call her Harmony, and we shall prove that those who assign a simple aim to Ariosto in the Furioso, Art or Pure Form, were gazing at her and seeing her as it were through a veil of clouds. In doing this, we shall at the same time define the concept of Harmony. We cannot avoid entering upon certain theoretical explanations in relation to this matter; but it would be wrong to look upon them as digressions, since it is only by their means that the way can be cleared to the understanding of the spirit which animates the Furioso. There is something comic or at least ironic in this necessity in which we find ourselves, of weighting with philosophy a discourse relating to so transparent a poet as Ariosto; but we have already warned the reader at the beginning that it is one thing to read and let sing to him the verses of a poet, and another to understand him, and that what is easy to learn may sometimes be very difficult to understand.
It is therefore without doubt contradictory to state that an artist has for his special and particular end or content, art itself, art which is the general end of every artist: as contradictory as to say that an individual has for his concrete and proper end, not this or that work and profession, but life. And there is also no doubt that since every error contains in it an element of truth, those erroneous theories aimed at something effectively existing: a particular content, which they were not able to define, and which could never be in any case art for art. Two sorts of judgments of that formula have nevertheless been expressed in relation to two different groups of works of art: those relating to works which seemed to be inspired by a particular form of art, and those which seem to be inspired by the idea of Art itself, by Art in universal; and for this reason our rapid investigation must be divided and directed first to the one and then to the other case.
The first case includes the poetry which may be called "humanistic" or "classicistic": not the classicism and humanism of pedants without talent or taste, but that lively humanism and classicism which we are wont to admire and enjoy in several poets of our Renaissance in the Latin language, such as Sannazaro, Politian and Pontano, and also in later times those extremely lettered writers in Italian, of whom Monti, in his best work, may be said to be the greatest representative and we might add to him Canova, although he has not poetised in verse. What is there that pleases us in them, in their imitations, their re-writing, their cantos of classical phrases and measures? And what was it that warmed and carried them away, so that they were able to transmit their emotion to us and obtain our delighted sympathy? It has been answered that this was due to their remaining faithful to the already sacred traditions of beautiful form, handed down by the school; but this answer is not satisfactory, because pedants also can be mechanically faithful in repeating; we have alluded to these and shown that on the contrary they weary and annoy us. The truth is that the former hold to those forms of art, because they are the suitable symbol, the satisfactory expression of their feeling, which is one of affection for the past, as being venerable, glorious, decorous, national or super-national and cultural; and their content is not literary form by itself, but love for that past, love for some one or other historical age of art. And if this be true, we must place those romantic archaisers in the same class of art with the humanists or classicists, when considering the substantial nature of things. For the former nourish the same feeling and employ the same procedure, not in relation to the Greek and Roman past, but in relation to the Christian and medieval past, particularly in Germany, where they let us hear again the rude accent of the medieval epic, and represent the ingenuous forms of pious legends and sacred dramatic representations, and make themselves the echo of ancient popular songs: this re-writing has often something in it of the pastiche (as the humanists and classicists also have something of the pastiche, which with them is pedantry), yet sometimes produce passages of delicate art, which if not profound, were certainly agreeable to the heart that remembers, to the eternal heart of childhood which is in us.
Ariosto was also a more or less successful humanist in certain of his minor works, as we have said, but in the Furioso, although he took many schemes and details from Latin poets, he stands essentially outside their line of inspiration, for instead of directing his spirit towards the past, he always draws the past towards his spirit, and there is no observable trace in it of Latin-Augustan archaism, or of the archaism of medieval chivalry. For this reason, the view that he had Art itself as his content must be taken as applicable without doubt in the other sense to him and to certain other artists: as devotion to Art as universal, to Art in its Idea, a devotion which is bodied forth in his narratives, his figures and his verse.
Now it must be remembered that Art in its Idea is nothing but expression or—representation of the real—of the real which is conflict and strife, but a conflict and a strife that are always being settled; that it is multiplicity and diversity, but at the same time unity, dialectic and development, and also and through that, cosmos and Harmony. And since Art cannot be the content of Art, that is to say, it is impossible to represent representation (as it is impossible to think thought, so that if thought is made the object of thought, it is always itself and the other, that is to say, the whole), by eliding the term which is superfluous and has been unduly retained, we obtain the result that when it is stated of Ariosto or of other artists that they have for content pure Art or pure Form, it is really to be understood that they have for content devotion to the pure rhythm of the universe, for the dialectic which is unity, for the development which is Harmony. Thus, if humanistic or otherwise archaistic artists do not as is generally believed love beautiful forms, but rather the past and history, it may be said of those others that they do not love pure Art, but the pure and universal content of Art, not this or that particular strife and Harmony (erotic, political, moral, religious, and so on), but strife and Harmony in idea and eternal.
The concept of cosmic Harmony, which has also been called pure Beauty or absolute Beauty, and indeed God, has been much employed in old philosophy, and notably in the old aesthetic (old always being understood in its logical-historical sense, which is still tenacious of life and reappears in our own day, where it might be least expected), and has made an elaboration of the new theory, which conceives of art as lyrical intuition or expression, very laborious. For many reasons that it would occupy too much time and be out of place to detail here, Harmony or Beauty came to be considered as the true essence of Art; hence the impossibility of accounting, not only for many works of art, but for art in general, and the artificial attempts made by the upholders of this doctrine and by criticism to pervert facts in support of a partial and incorrect principle. For the reasons given above, it is easy for us to discern the origin of the error, which lay in transferring one of the classes of particular contents which Art is able to elaborate, to serve as the end and essence of Art. And the one selected was precisely that which owing to its religious and philosophical dignity, appeared to have the power to absorb Art into itself together with everything else and to dissolve the whole in a sort of mysticism. This is confirmed by the historical course of the doctrine, the first conspicuous form of which was Neoplatonism, which reappeared on several occasions in the Middle Ages, at the time of the Renaissance and during the Romantic period. De Sanctis himself, owing to the romantic origins of his thought, was never altogether free from it; and his judgment upon Ariosto bears traces of the transcendental conception of Art as an actualisation of pure Beauty.
Similar traces are to be found in another& doctrine to which De Sanctis held and formulated as the distinction and opposition between the poet and the artist: a doctrine which it is desirable to make clear, not only with a view of strengthening the concept to which we have had recourse, but also because Ariosto himself is numbered among the poets to whom the distinction has been chiefly applied, as he has been held to be distinct and opposed, along with Politian and Petrarch, and perhaps others, as artists, to Dante or to Shakespeare, as poets. The doctrine appears to be endorsed by facts, and therefore looks plausible and is readily accepted and continually reproduced, as on several occasions in the history of aesthetic ideas. It was not altogether unknown in the days of Ariosto himself, if Giraldo Cinzio can be held to have suggested it, when in his description of an allegorical picture, in which were to be seen the two great Tuscans "in a green and flowery meadow upon