Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille. Benedetto Croce
philosophical enlightenment, philology in its bad sense or philologism, means rather by "material" or "sources," as they are also called, external things, such as the books which the poet had read or the stories that he had heard told, and on the pretext of supplying in this way the genesis of a work of art ab ovo, it penetrates to the sources of the sources, let us say to the origins of warrior women, of the ogress and the hippogryph of Ariosto. Their procedure suggests that of one who when asked what language a poet found in circulation in his time, should open for that purpose an etymological dictionary of the Italian language, or of the romance languages, or of Indo-European languages, which expound formative ideological processes, either forgotten or thrown into the background of the speaker's consciousness when engaged in speaking. But even if we do not lose our way in such learned and interminable dissertations, if we escape the error referred to above, of forming judgments as to merit upon them, philologistic search for sources and for material becomes capricious and ends by being impossible; because it takes as sources only certain literary lumber scattered here and there, and were we to unite this with the whole of the rest of literature, with the figurative and musical arts, and with other external things which actually surround the poet, public and private events, scientific teachings and disputes, beliefs, customs, and so on, we should find ourselves involved in all endless and infinite enumeration, convincing proof of the illogical nature of such an inquiry. Nor do we make any progress in the determination of the material by limiting it to more modest terms, that is to say, only to certain things which the poet had before him (even if they be documents and information, not without use for certain ends), because the true material of art, as has been said, is not things but the sentiments of the poet, which determine and explain one another, why and for what reason he turns to certain things and not to others, to these things rather than to those. Since we have already described Ariosto's character and shown its reflection in his minor works, now that we are examining the material of the Furioso, we shall find the same character, that is to say, the same complex of sentiments which it will be desirable to illustrate and to distinguish in a somewhat different manner, with an eye no longer directed to the psychology of the man or to the minor works, but just to the Furioso.
And we shall find above all an amorous Ariosto, Ariosto perpetually in love, whom we already know: an Ariosto for whom love and woman are an important affair, a great pleasure which he is not able to renounce, a great torment from which he cannot set himself free. That love is always altogether sensual, love for a beautiful bodily form, shining forth in the luminous eyes, seductive, charming; virtuous too, but relatively virtuous, just as much as avails to prevent too much poison entering into the delicate linked tenderness of love; and for this reason, all ethical or speculative idealisation, in the new or Platonic style, is excluded "Not love of a lady of theology … ": here too, Carducci saw clearly and spoke well. Absent too or extraneous are the consecration and purification of love in "matrimony"; the choice of a wife, the treatment of a wife, are for Ariosto, things differing but slightly from the choice and the breaking in of a horse, and matrimony in its noble ethical sense belongs at the most to his intellect, and to his intellect in so far as it is passive: in the Furioso are to be found the politics and not the poetry of matrimony, and among innumerable ties of free love, the chaste sighing of Bradamante alone aims at "the conjugal tie" with Ruggiero. But the love of Ariosto is healthy and natural in its warm sensuality; it is not sophisticated with luxurious images, it is conscious of its own limits; nor does it suffer from mad or inextinguishable desires, but only from that which was known in the language of the time as the "cruelty" of woman, her refusal or her coldness; but it tortures itself yet more with jealousy and the anxious working of the imagination. The Ferrarese Garofalo, a contemporary biographer, bears witness to the very lively jealousy of Ariosto, saying that since he loved "with a great vehemence," he was "above measure jealous," and "always carried on his love affairs in secret and with great solicitude, accompanied with much modesty"; but this is evident in the matter of the poem itself, being exhibited in many of his personages, descriptions and situations, and finding complete expression in the verse which closes on so pathetic a note: "believe one who has had experience of it." Cruelty on the one side and jealousy on the other, although they torture, do not make him sad or cause him to give vent to desperate utterances, because, since he had not too lofty nor too madly an intransigent idea of love, although it greatly delighted him, he is not apt to expect too much from it, and knowing the infidelity and the fragility of man, a sort of sense of justice forbids him from bringing his hand down too heavily upon the infidelity and the fragility of woman. Hence comes, not forgiveness, but resignation and indulgence. "My lady is a lady, and every lady is weak"; remarks Rinaldo wisely. Ariosto's is an indulgence without moral elevation, but also without cynicism and inspired with a certain element of goodness and humanity. Reciprocal deception and illusion are inherent to love affairs; but how can they be done away with, without also doing away at the same time with the charm of that bitter but amiable sport? The lover takes care to preserve the illusion by his very passion, which blinds him to what is visible and makes the invisible visible, leading him to believe what he desires, to believe the person who fascinates him, as does Brandimarte with his Fiordiligi, wandering about the world and returning to him uncontaminated: "To fair Fiordiligi, of whom I had believed greater things." Thus the imagination of Ariosto, as these various equal and conflicting sentiments wove their own images, became quite filled with marvellous seductive beauties, perfect of limb, and with voluptuous forms and scenes (Alcina and her arts, Angelica in the arms of Ruggiero who had set her free, Fiordispina); of others which oscillate between the passionate and the comic (Gicondo and Fiametta, the knight who tests the wife he loves too much, the judge Anselmo and his Argia): of others whose love was unworthy or criminal (Origille, whom Griffone strives to save from the punishment that she deserves, notwithstanding her wickedness proved on several occasions and her known treachery; the sons of King Marganorre; Gabrina, who did receive punishment, perhaps because her depraved old age was so repulsive); and above all of the woman who symbolises Woman, for whom the bravest knights sustain every sort of labour and danger, and because of whom a big strong man loses control of himself, and who, herself slave of a love which owns no law outside itself, ends by bestowing her hand upon a "poor servant" (Angelica, Orlando and Medoro). These are but a few instances of the many places in the Furioso, bearing upon love in its various modes of presentation, in addition to the introductions to the cantos and the digressions into which Ariosto pours his whole store of feeling or sets forth his reflections. And the love matter is of so great a volume as to dominate all the rest, possibly in extent, certainly in relief and intensity; so much so, that it is a marvel that among the many attempts to establish the true motive and argument of the poem, by abstracting it from its subject matter, and to determine its design and unity in the same way, no one has yet insisted upon considering it, or has been able to consider it as "the poem of love," of the casuistry of love, to which knightly and warlike life should but provide the decorative background. This theory would certainly seem to be less unlikely than the other, which assigns to it as its end and unity the war between Carlo and Agramante. In any case, this motive is placed second in the protasis to the Furioso, where the first word is not by chance "women," and the first verse ends with "loves" (and in the first edition we even read: "The ancient loves of ladies and of knights"); and the scene with which the poem opens is the flight of Angelica, who is immediately met by Sacripante and Rinaldo who are in love with her, and that with which it concludes is the marriage feast of Ruggiero and Bradamante, disturbed yet heightened in its solemnity of celebration by the incident of the duel with Rodomonte.
Love matter dominates in the Furioso, because it dominated in the heart of Ariosto, where it easily passed over into more noble feelings, into piety that goes beyond the tomb, into justice rendered to calumniated innocence, into kindness ill-recompensed, into admiration for the sacred tie of friendship. Hence, in marked contrast to the beautiful Doralice, so crudely sensual, that when her lover's body is still warm, she is capable of looking with desire upon his slayer, the valiant Ruggiero, Isabella deliberately decides upon putting herself to death that she may keep faith with her dead lover; and Fiordiligi, whose pretty little face, upon which still flitters something of the impudence attributed to her by Boiardo, becomes furrowed with anguish and sublime with sorrow, when she apprehends the loss of Brandimarte. And Olympia stands by the side of Ginevra, trapped and drawn to the brink of ruin by a wicked man, and is rescued by Rinaldo, the righter of wrongs, Olympia whom Orlando twice saves, the second time