Giovanni Battista Guarini

“ Which Nature's own hand wrote--What pleases is permitted!...
Go! let us love, the daylight dies, is born;
But unto us the light
Dies once for all, and sleep brings on eternal night.
Over thirty pastoral plays can be ascribed to Italy in the last third of the sixteenth century. The most successful imitator of Tasso was Giovanni Battista Guarini (born 1537) in The True Shepherd (II Pastor Fido) . One quotation will shew how he outvied Aminta. In Act I, Scene 1, Linko says:
Look round thee, Sylvia ”

“ The Pastor fido (first published in 1590) is a pastoral drama composed not without reminiscences of Tasso’s Aminta. The scene is laid in Arcadia, where Guarini supposes it to have been the custom to sacrifice a maiden yearly to Diana. But an oracle has declared that when two scions of divine lineage are united in marriage, and a faithful shepherd has atoned for the ancient error of a faithless woman, this inhuman rite shall cease. ”

“ There was, however, at the end of the 16th century no opportunity for a man of energy and intellectual ability to distinguish himself in the petty sphere of Italian diplomacy. The time too had passed when the profession of a courtier, painted in such glowing terms by Castiglione, could confer either profit or honour. It is true that the court of Alphonso presented a brilliant spectacle to Europe, with Tasso for titular poet, and an attractive circle of accomplished ladies. ”

“ That a single pastoral should occupy so prominent a place in the history of literature seems astonishing, until we reflect that Italy, upon the close of the 16th century, expressed itself in the Pastor fido, and that the influence of this drama was felt through all the art of Europe till the epoch of the Revolution. ”

“ He was at once a learned mathematician, professor of literature and philosophy at Messina, and, from the age of seventeen, was architect to Duke Philibert of Savoy. He designed a very large number of public and private buildings at Turin, including the palaces of the duke of Savoy and the prince of Cacignan, and many public buildings at Modena, Verona, Vienna, Prague, Lisbon and Paris. He died at Milan in 1683.
GUARINI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1537-1612) , Italian poet, author of the Pastor fido, was born at Ferrara on the 10th of December 1537, just seven years before the birth of Tasso. ”

“ In very few cases in all the world and in all ages has it happened that intellectual distinction has been the appanage of one family for as many generations as in that of the Guarini. They came originally from Verona, where Guarino, the first of the family on record, who was born in 1370, taught the learned languages, and was one of the most notable of the band of scholars who laboured at the restoration of classical literature. ”

“ Born in 1537, he was seven years older than Torquato Tasso, whom he survived eighteen years, not closing his long life until 1612. He received a solid education both at Pisa and Padua, and was called at the early age of eighteen to profess moral philosophy in the University of Ferrara. Being of noble birth and inheriting a considerable patrimony, Guarini might have enjoyed a life of uninterrupted literary leisure, if he had chosen to forego empty honors and shun the idle distractions of Courts. But it was the fate of distinguished men in that age to plunge into those quicksands. ”

“ A dishonourable marriage, pressed upon his son Guarino by the grand-duke, roused the natural resentment of Guarini, always scrupulous upon the point of honour. He abandoned the Medicean court, and took refuge with Francesco Maria of Urbino, the last scion of the Montefeltro-della-Rovere house. Yet he found no satisfaction at Urbino. “The old court is a dead institution,” he writes to a friend; “one may see a shadow of it, but not the substance in Italy of to-day. Ours is an age of appearances, and one goes a-masquerading all the year.” ”

“ Later Janus Nicius Erythraeus, that is Giovanni Vittorio Rossi, in his Pinacoteca, compared the play to a rock-infested sea full of seductive sirens, in which no small number of girls and wives were said to have made shipwreck. It is at first sight ratifier a severe indictment to bring against Guarini's play, especially when we remember that a work of art is more often an index than a cause of social corruption. After what has been said, however, of the nature of the sentiment both in the Pastor fido and the Aminta, the charge can hardly be dismissed as altogether unfounded. ”

“ Guarini establishes the doctrine, that in private life a man is as far from tranquillity as in public; he is equally pursued by envy and pride, without the compensation he might find in courtly favour. In his own person he acted on these ideas, and reaped the usual harvest of disappointment and mortification. His wishes were, however, at first {Pg 82} gratified. He was sent, by the duke Alfonso, to Venice, about this very time, to congratulate the new doge, Pietro Loredano; and, his oration being printed, he acquired a reputation for talent and learning. ”

“ Mythological drama is rather opened than established. In 1573 Tasso, fulfilling a similar commission for a court show at Urbino, conformed his Aminta [49] strictly to unity of place and time. But its sequence, though uninterrupted, is hardly dramatic. It proceeds oftener by musical recitative than by action. [148] Lovely to see and hear, it gives more hints for opera than for drama. Battista Guarini (1538-1612) , professor of rhetoric and poetic at Ferrara, and chief court poet after the withdrawal of Tasso, spent years on his pastoral drama Il pastor fido. ”

“ When Tasso was condemned to S. Anna, the duke promoted Guarini to the vacant post of court poet. There is an interesting letter extant from the latter to his friend Cornelio Bentivoglio, describing the efforts he made to fill this place appropriately. “I strove to transform myself into another person, and, like a player, reassumed the character, costume and feelings of my youth. Advanced in manhood, I forced myself to look young ”

“ He determined therefore to leave the court and retire to Padua, a residence in which city, it being not far distant from his estate of Guarina, would offer him, he thought, a convenient opportunity of overlooking his property and restoring order to his finances, which had suffered much during his travels. This was in the year 1582, when Guarini was in the forty-fifth year of his age. It is not clear, however, that this retirement was wholly spontaneous; and the probability is that the Duke and his ambassador were equally out of humour with each other. ”

“ The first, and perhaps the most eminent and useful of these, was Guarino Guarini of Verona, born in 1370. He acquired his knowledge of Greek under Chrysoloras at Constantinople, before the arrival of the latter in Italy. Gaurino, upon his return, became professor of rhetoric, first at Venice and other cities of Lombardy, then at Florence, and ultimately at Ferrara, where he closed a long life of unremitting and useful labour in 1460. John Aurispa of Sicily came to the field rather later, but his labours were not less profitable. ”

“ Guarino, after studying Latin under Giovanni di Conversino, had learned Greek at Constantinople, where for five years he lived in the house of Manuel Chrysoloras (1403-8) . No other Italian of that day was probably Guarino's equal as a Greek scholar. Filelfo and Aurispa were indeed the only contemporary Italians who shared his facility in speaking and writing Greek. It was in 1414 that Guarino opened at Venice the first humanistic school which had been established in that city. Vittorino studied Greek with him there for a year and a half. In 1418 Guarino finally left Venice. ”

“ The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible. ”

“ In the same way as it was characteristic of Tasso's rosy view that no law should be allowed to curb the purity of natural love in his dream of the ideal age, so it was characteristic of the spirit of his imitator to seek the ideal in the prudent love that strives towards no distant star beyond the bounds of law. And the fact that Guarini saw fit seriously to oppose a scholastic's moral figment to the poet's age of gold may serve as a sufficient measure of the soul of the pedant. ”

“ Had all this not been, had not the fortune of a suitable genius and the chance of personal surroundings jumped with the historical possibility, we might indeed have had any number of lifeless 'Sacrifices' and 'Unhappy Ones,' but Italy would have added no new kind to the forms of dramatic art. Had it not been for the Aminta, the pastoral drama must almost necessarily have been stillborn, for Guarini was too much of a pedant to do more than to imitate and enlarge, while other writers belong to the decline. ”

“ It is therefore not a little remarkable that the fruit of his retirement—a disappointed courtier past the prime of early manhood—should have been a dramatic masterpiece worthy to be ranked with the classics of Italian literature. Deferring a further account of the Pastor fido for the present, the remaining incidents of Guarini’s restless life may be briefly told. In 1585 he was at Turin superintending the first public performance of his drama, whence Alphonso recalled him to Ferrara, and gave him the office of secretary of state. ”

“ A married and elder man, he had no right to compete in gallantry with the brilliant young bachelor. Destined for diplomacy and affairs of state, he had no cause to grudge the Court poet his laurels. Writing in 1595, Guarini avers that 'poetry has been my pastime, never my profession'; and yet he made it his business at Ferrara to rival Tasso both as a lyrist and as a servant of dames. Like Tasso, he suffered from the spite of Alfonso's secretaries, Pigna and Montecatino, who seem to have incarnated the malevolence of courtiers in its basest form. ”

“ At Turin, where he resided for some time, Guarini conceived a just opinion of the growing importance of the House of Savoy. Like all the finest spirits of his age, Tassoni, Sarpi, Chiabrera, Marino, Testi, he became convinced that if Italy were to recover her independence, it could only be by the opposition of the Dukes of Savoy to Spain. How nearly the hopes of these men were being realized by Carlo Emmanuele, and how those hopes were frustrated by Roman intrigues and the jealousy of Italian despots, is matter of history. ”

“ They both loved the countess of Scandiano. Tasso wrote a sonnet, accusing Guarini of lightness and inconstancy in his passion, as well as of the greater sin of boasting of his triumphs over the ladies of his love. Guarini replied, with bitterness, in another sonnet, accusing his rival of uttering falsehoods that mirrored his own faithlessness, which enabled him to nourish love for two objects at the same time. [35] This contention broke off their friendship; but Guarini was no ungenerous enemy; he possessed a loyal and noble spirit, and never did any thing to injure his unfortunate rival. ”

“ Must you keep my friends out of it also?"
"He was accredited to me, my lord," said the lady, "to me, therefore, he shall come."
"Good madam," returned Guarini, "I admire your taste as a man, but deplore it as a husband. I think the little poet will do better with me."
"Stuff!" cried the Countess, "I might be his mother."
Said the Count: "Madam, I need not deny it; yet it is very evident that you are not his mother." He spoke with some heat.
Lionella was mightily amused. "Jealousy, my lord?" She arched her fine brows. ”

“ Luzzatto derived his whole dramatic inspiration from Guarini. Let no one question this assertion without first comparing La-Yesharim Tehillah and Migdal ‘Oz with the Pastor Fido. The characters and scenes, and even more, the style, are closely alike. Nor is this latter [Pg 123] fact wonderful. John Addington Symonds describes Guarini’s work as “a masterpiece of diction, glittering and faultless, like a bas-relief of hard Corinthian bronze.” Luzzatto produces the same effect in his Hebrew imitation, using a similar metre as well as similar dramatic conventions. ”

“ Tasso's and Guarini's masterpieces mark the point of furthest development attained by the pastoral drama in Italy, or indeed in Europe. With them the vitality which rendered evolution possible was spent, though the power of reproduction remained unimpaired for close on a century. Signor Rossi, in the monograph of which I have already made such free use, mentions a number of plays, whose dependence on the Pastor fido is evident from their titles, though Guarini's influence is, of course, far more widely spread than such eclectic treatment reveals. ”

“ I have said that it would be difficult to assign a preëminence to either of these poems. But it must not be supposed that it is intended thence to insinuate an equality between the authors of them. Tasso would occupy no lower place on the Italian Parnassus if he had never written the "Aminta." His fame rests upon a very much larger and firmer basis. But Guarini would be nowhere—would not be heard of at all—had he not written the "Pastor Fido." ”