Tuscan language

“ Thus care and intelligence will produce a language, which, if not the pure old Tuscan, is still Italian, rich in flowers and fruit like a well-kept garden. It belongs to the completeness of the ‘Cortigiano’ that his wit, his polished manners, and his poetry, must be clothed in this perfect dress.{382}
When style and language had once become the property of a living society, all the efforts of purists and archaists failed to secure their end. Tuscany itself was rich in writers and talkers of the first order, who ignored and ridiculed these endeavours. ”

“ The Tuscans spoke a dialect which most closely resembled the mother-tongue, Latin—one which afterwards Tuscan poetry. became almost exclusively the language of literature, and which was already regarded at the end of the 13th century as surpassing the others; “Lingua Tusca magis apta est ad 900 literam sive literaturam”: thus writes Antonio da Tempo of Padua, born about 1275. Being very little or not at all affected by the Germanic invasion, Tuscany was never subjected to the feudal system. ”

“ Language can be never spoken of by a foreigner to any effect of conviction. I have heard our countryman. Mr. Greatheed himself, who perhaps possesses more Italian than almost any Englishman, and studies it more closely, refuse to decide in critical disputations among his literary friends here, though the sonnets he writes in the Tuscan language are praised by the natives, who best understand it, and have been by some of them preferred to those written by Milton himself. ”

“ In the ancient compositions in the vulgar tongue, especially in poetry, non-Tuscan authors on the one hand accommodated their own dialect to the analogy of that which they felt to be the purest representative of the language of ancient Roman culture, while the Tuscan authors in their turn did not refuse to adopt the forms which had received the rights of citizenship from the literary celebrities of other parts of Italy. ”

“ If we go back to the time of Dante, we find, throughout almost all the dialects of the mainland with the exception of Tuscan, the change of vowels between singular and plural seen in paese, paisi; quello, quilli; amore, amuri (see B. 1; C. 3b) ; but the literary language knows nothing at all of such a phenomenon, because it was unknown to the Tuscan region. But in Tuscan itself there were differences between Florentine and non-Florentine; in Florentine, e.g. it was and is usual to say unto, giunto, punto, while the non-Florentine had it onto, gionto, ponto, (Lat. unctu, &c.) ”

“ The language however which is spoken is the most classical and pure Italian and except the above mentioned aspiration it is delightful to the ear; peculiarly so to those who come from the north of Italy, and have only hitherto heard the unpleasing nasal twang of the Milanese and the exceeding uncouth barbarous dialect of Bologna. Another striking peculiarity is the smart appearance of the Tuscan peasantry. They are a remarkably handsome race of men; the females unite with their natural beauty a grace and elegance that one is quite astonished to find among peasants. ”

“ To conform to Tuscan was for Neopolitans most nearly like acquiring another language. But even there, and much more readily in other parts of Italy, Tuscan was accepted and increasingly practiced as literary Italian. Used by scholars who also wrote Latin, Italian naturally learned from Cicero and Vergil more logical and rhythmical sentence habits, more adroit shaping of verse. Thus the best result of humanism, perhaps, was the one least sought by the humanists, the refinement of the vernacular. ”

“ To repair that loss is the duty of one who had made literature his study. If he desires to benefit his fellow-countrymen, he will not use a dead language, imperfectly comprehended by a few learned men, but will bend the idiom of the people to the needs of erudition. "I willingly admit," he argues, "that the ancient Latin tongue is very copious and of beauty polished to perfection. Yet I do not see what our Tuscan has in it so hateful that worthy matter, when conveyed thereby, should be displeasing to us." ”

“ The epic which he wished to write in the universal language of scholars, and which might have had its ten lines in the history of literature, would sing itself in provincial Tuscan, and turns out to be written in the universal dialect of mankind. ”

“ Young Italy rejects Manzoni, though not irreverently; Young Italy prizes his works, but feels that the doctrine of "Pray and wait" is not for her at this moment,—that she needs a more fervent hope, a more active faith. She is right.
It is well known that the traveller, if he knows the Italian language as written in books, the standard Tuscan, still finds himself a stranger in many parts of Italy, unable to comprehend the dialects, with their lively abbreviations and witty slang. ”

“ It is Homer himself who tells us, in a striking passage (Il. iv. 437) that all the Greeks spoke the same language—that is to say, that they understood one another, in spite of the inevitable local differences. Experience shows how some one dialect in a country gains a literary supremacy to which the whole nation yields. So Tuscan became the type of Italian, and Anglian of English. But as soon as the dialect is adopted, it begins to diverge from the colloquial form. ”

“ In each district its own dialect became the law, so that people at Naples, at Rome, at Florence, at Bologna, at Venice, and at Milan, were speaking in distinct manners of their own, while recognized Italian language there was none. Dialects exist in all these places, and in many more, even to-day; nevertheless there is an orthodox Italian language, the “Tuscan speech with the Roman utterance,” in which cultivated people endeavour to speak, and which is the only language recognized for serious literature. Many still imagine that it was Dante who made that language. ”

“ And sometimes both these causes were combined with others, and gave promise of a poetry full of freshness and originality, which, however, as it advanced, was met by a spirit more vigorous than its own, beneath whose predominance its language was forbidden to rise above the condition of a local dialect, or became merged in that of its more fortunate rival;—a result which we early recognize alike in Sicily, Naples, and Venice, where the authority of the great Tuscan masters was, from the first, as loyally acknowledged as it was in Florence or Pisa. ”

“ If the older Italian poetry assumed or maintained forms alien to Tuscan speech, these forms were afterwards gradually eliminated, and the field was left to those which were purely Tuscan and indeed purely Florentine. And thus it remains absolutely true that, so far as phonetics, morphology, rudimental syntax, and in short the whole character and material of words and sentences are concerned, there is no literary language of Europe that is more thoroughly characterized by homogeneity and oneness, as if it had come forth in a single cast from the furnace, than the Italian. ”

“ He refers to men of education and good manners, upon whom, in the absence of a local center of refinement, fell the duty of reforming the vernacular. The peculiar conditions of Italy, as he described them, were destined to subsist throughout the next two centuries and a half, when men of learning, taking Tuscan as their standard, sought by practice and example to form a national language. ”

“ Men of delicate perception, like Alberti and Lorenzo de' Medici, felt that the honors of posterity would fall to the share of those who cultivated and improved their mother tongue. Thus the earlier position of the humanists was recognized as false. Could not their recent acquisitions be carried over to the account and profit of the vernacular? A common Italian language, based upon the Tuscan, but modified for general usage, was now practiced in accordance with the rules and objects of the scholars. ”

“ It certainly speaks for the lenity of the Tuscan Government that he should not have spent much of it in prison, for his satires from 1833 to 1847 circulated widely in manuscript, and some were printed in Switzerland in his lifetime. They must suffer with posterity for their general relation to temporary circumstances; but Giusti will ever retain the honour of having been the first to apply ordinary Italian speech to the poetical expression of new ideas and new needs, thus enlarging the domain both of language and of literature. ”

“ Convent education, the homes of the patrician and the citizen, the little gig of the fattore, with the small, wiry ponies of the region, the local antiquarian and doctor, the letter-carrier, family servant, lady-superior, pharmacist, the noble and plebeian, the costumes, phrases, and natural language characteristic of that non-commercial and isolated Tuscan city before the days of railroads and annexation, are drawn with emphasis and significant detail. Shades and causes of character are finely discriminated ”

“ To this category belongs “Persicomele!” (“Peaches and apples!”) the favourite exclamation of the jolly ecclesiastic in a sketch of Mario Pratesi’s, quoted in this volume. It will also be remembered how another Tuscan writer, Renato Fucini, makes a conscientious priest—shocked at the strong language used by his ecclesiastical superior, who flings “Giuraddio’s” and “Per Dio’s” about him on the smallest provocation—neutralise the effect, so to speak, by adding the milder and more legitimate “Bacco.” The Tuscans are celebrated throughout Italy for profane swearing. ”

“ No Tuscan ever would or even could tolerate the introduction of any of the words or phrases belonging to other dialects; and they endure the mistakes of foreigners with less disgust than the uncouth pronunciation of their countrymen of the north and east of the peninsula. Nor will they allow that even the well educated among these use classic modes of speech. This is the point of contention; for their antagonists insist, that they are in as full possession as the Tuscans of pure Italian, drawing it from the same sources— namely, the best writers of the country ”

“ Therefore in writing, I believe it is proper to use Tuscan words used only by the ancient Tuscans, because that is great proof and tested by time, that they are good and effective to express the sense in which they are used. And besides this, they have that grace and venerableness which age lends not only to words, but to buildings, to statues,, to pictures, and to everything that is able to attain it, and often merely by their splendour and dignity they make diction beautiful, by virtue whereof (and of grace) every theme, however mean it be, can be so adorned as to merit very high praise. ”

“ The tenacity with which the Tuscans still maintain their claim to these vases, and to the style of ruins found at Pæstum, with every sort of evidence against them, is a curious exemplification of the character of that people. A Tuscan cannot bear to give up any thing which appears to make for the honour of his country. ”

“ Of all the people in the whole of proud old Tuscany assuredly none were so easy-going and vivacious, none so light-hearted and full of poetry as those Livornese people passing to and fro below us. The more I had dwelt among the Tuscan people the more I loved them. There is surely no other people on the face of the earth so entirely lovable, even with their many sad faults, as they; none so gregarious, so neighbourly, so courteous, kindly or poetic, none so content upon the most meagre fare that ever held body and soul together. ”

“ Of the manifold charms of Tuscany, perhaps there is none so great or so enduring as the charm of manner peculiar to its rural population. Frank without being free, deferential but never servile, not without a fine reserve yet with never a touch of shyness, withholding not a certain tribute to social superiority, while tacitly intimating the fundamental equality that appertains to human brotherhood, the demeanour and speech of Tuscan contadini keep intercourse perpetually fresh, and impart to conversation on the tritest and most familiar themes perennial liveliness and interest. ”

“ They are mountaineers, a strong race. At pallone one day, I saw muscles "all a-ripple down the back," arms and shoulders, which would have intoxicated the great old "amatore del persona" himself. For their vivacity, it is racial; I think all Tuscans, more or less, retain the buoyant spirits, the alertness as of birds, which crowned Italy with Florence instead of Rome or Milan. Tuscan Art is a proof of that, and Tuscan Art can be studied at its roots in Pistoja: you see there the naked thing itself with none of the wealth of Florence to make the head swim. ”

“ Those of Sicily and the south approximate more to a Spanish type, and share the effects of Greek and Arab occupation. The dialects of the center, especially the Tuscan, show marked superiority both in grammatical form and phonetic purity over the more disintegrated and corrupted idioms of north and south. It might be suggested that Tuscan, being less modified by foreign contact, continued the natural life of the old rustic Latin according to laws of unimpeded self-development. ”

“ Similarly the Tuscans must have been influenced by the grace, the sparseness, the serenity of the olive, its inexhaustible vigour and variety; yet how many of them ever painted it? That a people should never paint or describe their landscape may mean that they have not consciously inventoried the items; but it does not mean that they have not æsthetically, so to speak nervously, felt them. Their quality, their virtue, may be translated into that people's way of talking of or painting quite different things: the Tuscan quality is a quality of form, because it is a quality of mood. ”