Italian language

“ It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood. ”

“ Defining Italian literature, therefore, so as to comprise whatsoever is written in any dialect of that "soft bastard Latin" which bears the Italian name, and to exclude all compositions in a language which a Roman would have called Latin, we find none among great literatures whose beginnings are more humble and obscure, or, which at first seems surprising, more recent. ”

“ ITALIAN LANGUAGE.1 The Italian language is the language of culture in the whole of the present kingdom of Italy, in some parts of Switzerland (the canton of Ticino and part of the Grisons) , in some parts of the Austrian territory (the districts of Trent and Görz, Istria along with Trieste, and the Dalmatian coast) , and in the islands of Corsica2 and Malta. In the Ionian Islands, likewise, in the maritime cities of the Levant, in Egypt, and more particularly in Tunis, this literary language is extensively maintained through the numerous Italian colonies and the ancient traditions of trade. ”

“ As soon as a language loses its unbounded capability of change, its carelessness about what it throws away, and its readiness in always supplying instantaneously the wants of mind and heart, its natural life is changed into a merely artificial existence. It may still live on for a long time, but while it seems to be the leading shoot, it is in reality but a broken and withering branch, slowly falling from the stock from which it sprang. The sources of Italian are not to be found in the classical literature of Rome, but in the popular dialects of Italy. ”

“ The beauty of the Italian landscape and the softness of the Italian climate seem naturally fitted to dispose the poetic soul to the dreams of rural life, and the language seems, by its graceful simplicity, peculiarly adapted to express the feelings of a class of people whom we picture to ourselves as ingenuous and infantine in their natures. ”

“ I also observed that Italian was almost universally spoken, the Piedmontese patois comparatively rarely, French not at all. This was an indication of the café's politics. By the persevering use or rejection of the Italian language, political sentiments in this country can be pretty well ascertained. The ministry, bent on its general adoption, have caused it to be substituted in the infant schools for the native dialect, of all the dialects of the peninsula the most guttural and the most mutilated, an innovation the wisdom of which it requires thorough stiff-necked codino-ism not to recognise. ”

“ Italian Words.—Italian literature has been read and cultivated in England since the time of Chaucer—since the fourteenth century; and the arts and artists of Italy have for many centuries exerted a great deal of influence on those of England. Hence it is that we owe to the Italian language a large number of words. ”

“ It therefore followed that during the age of the Renaissance any man of taste or genius, who desired to share the newly discovered privileges of learning, had to seek Italy. Every one who wished to be initiated into the secrets of science or philosophy, had to converse with Italians in person or through books. Every one who was eager to polish his native language, and to render it the proper vehicle of poetic thought, had to consult the masterpieces of Italian literature. ”

“ Italian is also a language which had the good fortune partly to reform its grammar before the invention of printing made the operation almost impossible; and Italian is like English in that it is a very easy language to learn by word of mouth, as the rules of grammar we must needs obey are very few,—tho in this respect English is superior even to Italian. If English is hard to learn when it is taught by the eye instead of the ear, this is because of our cumbersome and antiquated spelling; here the Italian is far better off than the English. ”

“ To translate from Italian into any other language is more than difficult; whereas the Italians can translate any author, not only of the dead but of the living languages, with the greatest facility, and with a correctness delightfully intelligible to the readers of their own country—an advantage also enjoyed by the Germans in a high degree. ”

“ Much which appears to us as mere commonplace in their writings, was for them and their contemporaries a new and hardly-won view of things upon which mankind had been silent since the days of antiquity. The language too, in this form of writing, whether Italian or Latin, moved more freely and flexibly than in historical narrative, in letters, or in oratory, and thus became in itself the source of a special pleasure. ”

“ At the same time there was other poetry of an epic kind, written in a mixed language, of which French was the basis, but in which forms and words belonging to the Italian dialects were continually mingling. We find in it hybrid words exhibiting a treatment of sounds according to the rules of both languages,—French words with Italian terminations, a system of vocalization within the words approaching the Italo-Latin usage,—in short, something belonging at once to both tongues, as it were an attempt at interpenetration, at fusion. ”

“ The first division lists general guides to Italian literature, bibliographies, journals, collections and anthologies, encyclopedias and dictionaries, and literary histories. The remaining divisions consist of essay overviews accompanied by selective bibliographies on literary criticism and philology (with discussions of textual criticism, criticism, literary history, and metrics) ; linguistics and stylistics (language, grammar, and vocabulary; the Italian language; and the history of language in Italy) ; literary periods or movements; and 30 major authors. Indexed by persons. ”

“ In the present rapid sketch of the forms of speech which occur in modern Italy, before considering the Tuscan or Italian par excellence, the language which has come to be the noble organ of modern national culture, it will be convenient to discuss (A) dialects connected in a greater or less degree with Neo-Latin systems that are not peculiar to Italy;3 (B) dialects which are detached from the true and proper Italian system, but form no integral part of any foreign Neo-Latin system ”

“ But on the other hand it remains equally true that, so far as concerns a living confidence and uniformity in the use and style of the literary language—that is, of this Tuscan or Florentine material called to nourish the civilization and culture of all the Italians—the case is not a little altered, and the Italian nation appears to enjoy less fortunate conditions than other nations of Europe. Modern Italy had no glowing centre for the life of the whole nation into which and out of which the collective thought and language could be poured in ceaseless current for all and by all. ”

“ Rarely only can he write his own language. Unlike the German, who begins learning English the day he lands as a matter of duty, or the Polish Jew, who takes it up as soon as he is able as an investment, the Italian learns slowly, if at all. ”

“ In the Englysh tonge contrary, every thinge in a maner so meanly, both for the matter and handelynge, that no man can do worse."
On the Continent, also, this new interest in the classics served to check the growth of native literatures. In Italy especially, for a full century after the brilliant age of Dante and Petrarch, no great literature was produced, and the Italian language itself seemed to go backward. ”

“ A Frenchman both varies his accents and gesticulates while he speaks much more than an Englishman, and an Italian a great deal more than either. Musical pronunciations and expressive gesture are, to this day, the distinction of Italy, and this combination of sign and its aid, sound, the latter being notes for its music, make the sweetest and most liquid language in existence. ”

“ Fortunately for Italy, the Arcadia was a very popular book; fortunately, too, the Latin constructions with which it is replete were not so easily imitated as its general refinement of phrase. By the time of Leo X. inelegance had almost disappeared from Italian literature, and Italy might boast herself the only country in Europe that possessed a perfect literary language; wanting, indeed, the golden simplicity of the thirteenth century, but still the prose of cultivated men, and adequate for every form of literary composition. ”

“ Italian was indubitably the chief language of business, of administration, of the cities, and of the educated classes pretty generally, the one language that everybody knew and without which it was impossible to get along. ”

“ Still, although, as has been well remarked, the enthusiasm for the Crusades excited by itinerant preachers goes far to prove that public addresses were delivered in the popular dialects, there is not a trace of any written Italian language, or a hint of any such vernacular literature as existed, if it hardly flourished, among the Germans, the French, and the Anglo-Saxons. When at length in the twelfth century Poetry unmistakably presents herself in the songs of the wandering students (Goliardi) , her attire is still Latin. ”

“ Persons ignorant of the usual course of literary history might expect in Italian a regular and unbroken development, literary as well as linguistic, of Latin. But, as a matter of fact, the earliest vernacular literature in Italy shows very little trace of classical influence [187] : and though that influence appears strongly in the age immediately succeeding ours, and helps to produce the greatest achievements of the language, it may be questioned whether its results were wholly beneficial. In the earliest Italian, or rather Sicilian, poetry quite different influences are perceptible. ”

“ Wherever you may be, I recommend to you to get as much Italian as you can, before you go either to Rome or Naples: a little will be of great use to you upon the road; and the knowledge of the grammatical part, which you can easily acquire in two or three months, will not only facilitate your progress, but accelerate your perfection in that language, when you go to those places where it is generally spoken ”

“ Scarcely any substantive or adjective comes out of the mouth of an Italian without qualifications of this sort, making the spoken quite different from the written language. A foreigner can never arrive at the right use of these, because they have to be made up at the moment of use, upon no established laws, but entirely by a sort of instinctive perception of fitness. ”

“ There is certainly a larger number of people able to read in Italy than we should be led to expect from the condition of many parts of the country--as for in- stance, the States of the Church--in other respects; but what is more important is the general and undisputed respect for pure language and pronunciation as something precious and sacred. One part of the country after another came to adopt the classical dialect officially. Venice, Milan, and Naples did so at the noontime of Italian literature, and partly through its influences. ”

“ Under the pretext that we speak the French language very badly, and the Italian not at all, he has found means to exclude us from most of his entertainments, which to me personally is not a very great grievance ”

“ It is too early to speak as yet of Italian prose, of which no important example will be found until we reach Dante's Vita Nuova, near the end of the thirteenth century. It need only be remarked that the grace of diction and the intricacy of metrical form which Italian poets had attained by the middle of the thirteenth century, show that the language was already capable of fine prose, and that it was only needful to dispel the superstition that serious subjects must be treated in a learned tongue. ”

“ Our language falls far short of the charms of the Italian, both for variety and harmony. The latter is peculiarly excellent for simple narrative. It is difficult in English to relate without falling too low or rising too high ”

“ THE HUMOUR OF ITALY. Selected and Translated, with Introduction, Biographical Index, and Notes, by A. Werner. With 55 Illustrations by Arturo Faldi.
“Modern Italian light literature is very rich, and those who cannot read the language easily, and yet would like to obtain some notion of what contemporary Italian writers are doing, cannot do better than turn to these pages.... Will reveal to English readers a whole new world of literature.”—Athenæum. ”

“ As regards the ancient writers, the effect would be to renovate them instead of rendering them more archaic, as anticipated by Symonds, so far at least as concerns their vocabulary. Although perhaps an inevitable tribute to Time and Evolution, it is yet no gain to the English language or literature that so much of our early writers should be obsolete; and Italy would do well to preserve as much as possible the speech of the original masters of her tongue, which can be best effected by keeping their phraseology in constant employment. ”

“ The fact that so many Italians, having lived in England and America, can speak English and know something of us and our ways, accounts for much. For a foreign language is the Great Barrier Reef against the voyages of ordinary people towards international understanding. ”

“ The first of the Latin nations to acquire a cultivated vernacular literature was the Provencal. Many reasons, singly insufficient, but cumulatively of great force, may be adduced for this unquestionable priority. The language, which may be roughly but accurately described as a connecting link between French and Italian, as its Catalan and Valencian congeners form one between French and Spanish, is better adapted for poetical composition than French ”