Patrizia Bettella 68
THE DEBATE ON BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN ITALIAN SCAPIGLIATURA AND BAUDELAIRE
T
he process of aesthetic change which takes place in European culture during the middle of the nineteenth century, leads from idealistic to modern forms of art. The literary speculations of Victor Hugo, the post-idealistic philosophy of Karl Rosenkranz, and the critical work of Charles Baudelaire mark the unprecedented success of the ugly as autonomous category of artistic creation.In Italian culture, where literature is still fully governed by the idealistic canon, it is the rebel and unconventional group of the Scapigliati which first enter the debate on beauty and ugliness. The poems of Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga, Giovanni Camerana and Giulio Pinchetti, albeit not resulting in a successful and organic plan of new poetic, mark the opening of Italian literature to the European discourse of modern aesthetics.
of Italian literature to the most current aesthetic trends in European culture.
The rise of the category of the ugly
In classical aesthetics, from the Middle Ages until the eighteeenth century, the category of the ugly occupies a subordinate position in literature and other arts. Ugliness is confined to the comic or morally reprehensible, it enters the artistic scene only to highlight by contrast the beautiful and good, therefore ugliness does not exist as autonomous aesthetic category. During the nineteenth century the ugly is represented in serious contexts and comes to the foreground as an independent aesthetic entity. Victor Hugo in his Préface de Cromwell (1827) reverses the system of traditional aesthetic values by acknowledging the role of the grotesque and the ugly in modern literature as essential components of romantic and modern drama. For its critical impact on the canon of classical beauty the Préface is considered a true manifesto of French romanticism and of new poetics. A re-evaluation of the Christian message leads to the representation of those aspects of life which are less attractive, so that art can better portray the variety of reality, composed of beauty and ugliness, good and evil:
Le christianisme amène la poésie à la vérité. Comme lui, la muse moderne verra les choses d'un coup d'oeil plus haut et plus large. Elle sentira que tout dans la création n'est pas humainement beau, que le laid y existe à côté du beau, le difforme près du gracieux, le grotesque au reverse du sublime, le mal avec le bien, l'ombre avec la lumière1
. (11) For Hugo art should imitate nature, not the ideal, and nature is composed of multiplicity and variety. In modern life the grotesque is crucial because it allows us to portray those aspects of reality which are deformed, horrible, comic and droll. While in classical art the ugly is depicted only to create a contrast with the beautiful, in modern art Hugo identifies the ugly as an autonomous category, whose function is not
1
Patrizia Bettella 70 merely subordinate and oppositional. Hugo's aesthetics plays a central
role in the nineteenth century discourse of beauty and ugliness in art. In its attempt to account for all aspects of reality, modern art must abandon idealistic views of perfection and concede that beauty and ugliness co-exist.
The debate on ugliness reaches its peak with the publication in Germany in 1853 of Karl Rosenkranz's Aesthetik des Hässlichen (Aesthetics of the Ugly), the first philosophical treatise entirely devoted to the subject of the ugly, an event which indicates an unprecedented relevance of this category in the aesthetic discourse. In his essay Rosenkranz, a disciple of Hegel, attempts to formulate systematic classification and categorization of ugliness in art2
.
The nineteenth century preoccupation with the ugly effects the full development of a new concept of art, in which ugliness is essential to the representation of modernity3
. Through the ugly, modern aesthetics attempts to give new meaning to what otherwise has no artistic value, and seeks to rehabilitate "die nicht mehr schönen Kunsten" (the arts which are no longer beautiful), to quote the title of a series of essays edited by Hans Robert Jauss in 1968. Jauss' article on "The Classic and Christian Justification of the Ugly in Medieval Literature" underscores the revolutionary role of Hugo's Préface, where the ugly does not perform a merely antithetical, subordinate function, but is introduced as self-sufficient category in the realm of what is representable in art (146). Modern poets characteristically question the canonical distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly. According to Hugo Friedrich, Baudelaire's poetry is a paradigmatic example of critique to traditional aesthetic categories4
. In the Fleurs du Mal Baudelaire
2
Despite Ronsenkranz's proclaimed disapproval of ugliness in its extreme forms, he articulates a structure of different intensity and degree of ugliness in art, which range from absence of form, to incorretedness, to deformity, to repugnance. This last reaches its highest intensity in the diabolic, which is to be avoided at all costs. The ugly which Rosenkranz finds entirely acceptable is the caricature, which he finds well represented in contemporary art. For a well informed introduction, see the "Presentazione" of the Italian edition by Remo Bodei (Estetica del brutto, Bologna: il Mulino, 1984, pp. 7-39)
3
Remo Bodei points out how in France, after the consolidation of Hugo's theories in the period between 1830-48, the Romantic socialist movement finds its expression in the motto "Le laid c'est le beau!" (The ugly is the beautiful). Deformed individuals such as Notre-Dame de Paris' Quasimodo are considered heroes of a new art, which welcomes the grotesque and the horrid (13).
4
proposes a modern aesthetics, in which it is possible to perceive the beauty of evil, of the horrible and disgusting, together with the beautiful. Baudelaire is attracted to the grotesque, to the unconventional, all aspects that contribute to the portrayal of reality in its complexity and paradox. Baudelaire acknowledges the aesthetic value of the grotesque and proposes art which can widen its representational scope by including both the ugly and the beautiful5
. According to Friedrich, Baudelaire's concept of modernity goes beyond that of the romantics: "It...turns the negative into something fascinating. Poverty, decay, evil, the nocturnal, and the artificial exert an attraction that has to be perceived poetically..., the repulsive is joined to the nobility of sound, acquiring the 'galvanic shudder' that Baudelaire praises in Poe" (25, 26). Baudelaire's aesthetic precepts are presented in some of his essays6
. In "Réflexions sur quelques-uns de mes contemporains" (1861), he envisions a concept of art capable of embracing and including everything: the grotesque and the sublime. Baudelaire praises Hugo for his ability to represent universality in his poetry: "Ainsi Victor Hugo possède non-seulement la grandeur, mais l'universalité"7
(471). He also praises Gautier, who mastered the art of depicting beauty and managed to extract a mysterious and symbolic beauty even from grotesque and hideous objects (478). In Le Peintre de la vie moderne (1863) Baudelaire formulates a new theory of the Beautiful (a rational and historical theory of the Beautiful), based on the
Northwestern University Press, 1974) underscores the modernity of Baudelaire's poetry, which upsets traditional aesthetic categories of beauty and ugliness.
5
For a complete treatment of the grotesque in Baudelaire's aesthetic vision, see Yvonne Bargues Rollins' Baudelaire et le Grotesque, Washington: University of America Press, 1978.
6
For all quotations I referred to the edition Charles Baudelaire, Ouvres complètes, Paris: Seuil, 1968; unless otherwise stated traslations are my own.
7
Patrizia Bettella 72 relativity of beauty and not on absolute parameters: beauty contains
eternal and relative elements; the relative aspect of beauty is circumstantial and depends on a certain culture, fashion, morals (549-50). Baudelaire postulates a duality in art, which corresponds to the duality of the individual. In modern times art contains a duplicity: the contingent, the transitory, and also the eternal and immutable. For him the beautiful is always bizarre. "Le beau est toujour bizarre". The role of art is to express a metaphysics, a transcendent concept of the human condition of duplicity. As Yvonne Rollins points out, "Pour lui [Baudelaire] le grotesque est avant tout l'expression artistique d'une vision philosophique de la condition humaine. Vision que reconnaît l'animal en l'homme, le péché et la déchéance"8
(35). The debate on the ugly in the Scapigliatura
In Italian literature, where even the romantic movement is still dominated by idealistic forms of representation, the second half of the nineteenth century marks the first attempts to deal with the new aesthetic category of the ugly. Remarkably the interest for the ugly originates from the Scapigliati, rebel artists active primarily in Milan, the major and more open cultural centre in the country. The Scapigliati's attitudes in life and art ran counter the rules of bourgeois society. Disillusioned with the situation of Italy after the unification in 1860, they expressed their dissent in the political and literary scene. Their reaction against contemporary society was marked by anarchist rebellion, and unconventional behaviours, similar to the French bohemians. They were often leading a poor existence and their lives ended tragically and prematurely, as a consequence of disease, excessive drinking, drug addiction or suicide. Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga, Giovanni Camerana, Giulio Pinchetti and others, challenged the conventional literary canons and iniatiated the search for a new art, where ugliness is essential to the aesthetic process. They were attracted to anti-classical forms of literary expression, and drew their inspiration from European literature: Hugo, Baudelaire, Hoffmann, are among their favourites. In the Scapigliati the meditation on the ugly marks an attempt, although not organized and systematic, to challenge the narrow-mindedness of Italian midddle class culture. Their innovative approach starts with a re-evaluation of European romanticism, which
8
had not been very influential in Italy. What appeals to the Scapigliati is the grotesque, the ugly, the ghostly, all those aspects of reality which were neglected by the national literary tradition. The Scapigliati perceive that art can not represent the complexity of reality only with the traditional tools of idealistic aesthetics; it can not limit its scope to ideal beauty but must depict reality in every aspect, including also what lies in the mud, what is horrid, macabre and disgusting. The decaying ideals of Italian Risorgimento, the disapproval of bourgeois society, the desire for renewal, the refusal of the tradition, drive the Scapigliati towards the unconventional and the ugly. For them, however, Italian romantics such as Alessandro Manzoni and Ugo Foscolo are still a very strong influence, or rather, the reference point of their critical discourse. Boito and Praga are the heirs of those great Italian romantics but they are deeply aware that artistic inspiration must originate elsewhere, namely in European literature.
Critics have pointed out Baudelaire's influence on the Scapigliati, particularly on Boito, Praga and Camerana. Some even state that Scapigliatura itself has a special link with Paris and Baudelaire, since both Praga and Boito opened their artistic career with a trip to Paris between 1859 and 1862; there they could read or possibly even meet Baudelaire, the poet who was most congenial to their artistic temperament9
. Since the Scapigliati neither belonged to a "school" nor to an organised group, their innovative ideas are not expressed in a definite program. However their critical thought can be extracted from a series of poems, exchanged between Boito, Praga and Camerana, the so-called poems of friendship1 0
. Arrigo Boito, regarded as the central
9
These artists, who could read and even write French had the opportunity to read Baudelaire in the original language. However we have no proof of any direct encounter of either Boito or Praga with Baudelaire. Pietro Gibellini ("La voce di Baudelaire, la libreria di Praga", in Indagini Otto-novecentesche, Firenze: Olschki, 1983, pp. 47-64) considers Praga's encounter in Paris in 1858 with Les fleurs du mal crucial for the Scapigliati and for Italian culture, since Baudelaire's work, exposes Praga to the inaugural book of modern lyric (47). For more bibliographical references to the relations between Praga and Baudelaire see the note on page 48 of Gibellini's article and Jean-Claude Bouffard, "Un disciple de Baudelaire: Emilio Praga", Revue de Littérature Comparée 45 (1971), 159-79; Douglas Β. Cook, "The Introduction of Baudelaire in Italy", in Papers on Romance Literary Relations, Evanston: Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, 1975, pp. 73-81.
10
Gaetano Mariani in his seminal work Storia della Scapigliatura
Patrizia Bettella 74
figure of the group, sets the parameters of his new aesthetics in the poem entitled "Dualismo" included in his collection Il libro dei versi11
.
This poem, composed in 1863, is considered a true manifesto of the Scapigliatura poetics. One year later Emilio Praga composed "Preludio", a response in verses to his friend's poem, which illustrates some programmatic themes that apply to the entire group. Boito later replied to Praga in a poem dated 1866. Giovanni Camerana is also involved in the poetic exchange of epistles, since Boito addresses to the young artist one of his poems in 1865; Camerana in turn, composed the poem "Ad Arrigo Boito" a year later12
. "Dualismo" articulates Boito's problematic views on beauty and ugliness. It introduces one of the key motifs of Scapigliatura: the dualism. The dichotomy between beauty and ugliness is expressed in the opposition between the Ideal and the Real. For an artist like Boito, who has already lost faith in a traditional aesthetic vision, the categories of beauty-ugliness imply numerous complications: the desire for beauty and ideal is still present in the scapigliato artist, but it can not be fulfilled. This loss of faith in the ideal urges the artist to represent a reality which encompasses also horrendous and ugly aspects. Dualism refers to a composite reality, which includes opposite aspects:
Son luce ed ombra; angelica farfalla ο verme immondo, sono un caduto cherubo dannato a errar sul mondo, ο un demone che sale, affaticando l'ale, verso un lontano ciel.
Ecco perchè mi affascina l'ebbrezza di due canti ecco perchè mi lacera l'angoscia di due pianti,
"liriche deH'amicizia"(28). Chapter II looks in detail at the "spunti programmatici" (68) which are contained in these poems.
11
Arrigo Boito, Libro dei versi, Torino: Casanova, 1902. All quotations are from this edition.
12
ecco perchè il sorriso che mi contorce il viso ο che m'allarga il cuor.
E sogno un'arte eterea che forse in ciel ha norma, franca dai rudi vincoli del metro e della forma, piena dell'Ideale che mi fa batter l'ale e che seguir non so. E sogno un'arte reproba che smaga il mio pensiero dietro le basse imagini d'un ver che mente al Vero e in aspro carme immerso sulle mie labbra il verso bestemmiando vien13
. (5-10)
The poet, who perceives himself as embodied in images of luminosity and darkness and symbolized in two opposite animals (butterfly and worm), is urged by two chants, the one of the Ideal in capital letters and the one of the real, the truth in lower case letters, much baser than the rarefied Truth presented by national romantics. The duplicity of chant reveals the impossibility to follow the precepts of traditional aesthetics and indicates the prospect of a new concept of art based on the co-presence of opposite categories. However the balance between the opposites is rather unstable as is demonstrated by the alternating presence in these verses of the conjunction " e " , " o " ; the poet seems first to identify with the duplicity of shadow and light, but immediately modifies this formulation into a disjunctive one: "angelica farfalla ο verme immondo", "caduto cherubo...o demone che sale". The Scapigliato artist is still tied to the traditional aesthetics and therefore
13
Patrizia Bettella 76 naturally attracted to its ideals of absolute perfection; however he faces
a miniscule "vero" of petty realism, very distant from the "Vero" of the idealistic doctrine. The irredeemable contrast between ideal and reality leads the Scapigliato to the representation of a fractured world, constantly hovering between the ideal-beautiful and the ugly-real. The artist shares his plight with humanity; he sees the individual as a funambulist that attempts to keep his equilibrium between good and evil:
Come istrïon, su cupida plebe di rischio ingorda, fa pompa d'equilibrio sovra una tesa corda tale è l'uman, librato fra un sogno di peccato e un sogno di virtù1 4
. (10)
Boito's conceptualization bears significant resemblance with Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Boito's poem echoes Baudelaire particularly in the first section of the collection, where "Spleen et Idéal" are kindred to Boito's vero / Ideal. In Baudelaire's opposites however, the co-existence of beauty and ugliness is less problematic and unstable. Good and evil are deeply intertwined and impossible to separate: perfect classical beauty is paired with the disgusting aspects of reality, as the poem "Hymne à la Beauté" illustrates. Here beauty and horror, good and evil, are perfectly integrated:
Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme, Ο Beauté? Ton regard, infernal et divin, Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime, Et l'on peut pour te comparer au vin.
Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques; De tes bijoux l'Horreur n'est pas le moins charmant, Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l'enfer, qu'importe, Ο Beauté! Monstre énorme, effrayant, ingénu!
De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène, Qu'importe, si tu rends, -feé aux yeaux de velore,
14
rhythme, parfum, lueur ô mon unique reine !-L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?1 5
(54)
Here the two opposites are inseparable, good and evil, infernal and divine are not alternative but co-present; the attraction for perfect classical beauty is accompanied by horrendous aspects of reality. In "Hymne a la Beauté" the opening rhetorical question denotes Baudelaire's metaphysical reflection on the essence of what is beautiful, there's a suspicion that beauty can lurk in the ugly, that reality is a mixture of divine and infernal. The answer to the rhetorical question is not that beauty originates from the exclusive domain of either heaven or the abyss, but rather that beauty is to be found in both the divine and the infernal. As Baudelaire states in "Mon coeur mis à nu", "II y a dans tout homme, a toute heure, deux postulations simultanées, l'une vers Dieux, l'autre vers Satan"1 6
(632). For Paul Allen Miller the relation between the poles is not so much a synthesis or coexistence of opposites as "a simultaneous tension, an interdependency, interaction of polarities"1 7
(370). It is neither the subordination of one pole to the other, nor the dialectical sublimation of the contradictions but a fruitful interaction and simultaneous mutual determination. In contrast with Boito's vision, here Baudelaire admits that beauty and horror, good and evil interact. For Boito the acceptance of hideous reality takes place to the detriment of ideal beauty, which is unattainable and irremediably lost. For Boito acknowledging the presence of the ugly means abandoning classical ideals of beauty, as he concedes in the famous lines of another poem of friendship, addressed to fellow poet Giovanni Camerana: "Non trovando il Bello / ci abbranchiamo all'Orrendo" (72).
15
Translations of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal are from C. F. MacIntyre, One Hundred Poems from "Les Fleurs du Mal", Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1947. "Do you come from the deep sky or the abysm, / Ο Beauty? Your gaze, infernal and divine, / pours forth both crime and kindness in confusion, / and one for this might liken you to wine /...You walk upon the dead, at whom you jeer; not least among your jewels Horror glances /...what matter whether you come from heaven or hell, / Ο Beauty, monstrous, dreaded, ingenuous one! / Angel or Siren, from Satan or God, what matter / whence, if you can make-0 dove-eyed fairy, / with rhythm, perfume, light, my one queen!-better / the hideous world, and time not quite so dreary? (55-57)
16
"There are in all men, all the time, two simultaneous postulations, one towards God and the other towards Satan".
17
Patrizia Bettella 78 ("Since we do not find the Beautiful, / We cling on to the Ugly"). This
poem uses the plural "noi", revealing the intention to address his message to the entire group of new poets, embodied in young Camerana1 8
. In Boito ugliness has become the inevitable alternative to the lack of beauty. Since this poem was composed in 1865, two years after "Dualismo", the sense of precarious balance of the artist-funambulist, has taken a sharp turn towards the horrid. Boito will not be able to further develop his conceptual formulation and later on he will completely abandon the Scapigliato positions of his early years.
In the poems of friendship the Scapigliati elaborate a set of common metaphors which recur in their representation of the "dualismo" motif. The oppositional structure created by Boito is centered around concepts of beauty-ugliness which are embedded in metaphors of dantesque reminescence: light-darkness, good-evil, ascent-fall, heaven (sky)-earth, buttefly-worm1 9
. The semantic nucleus of Boito's conceptualization can be traced to figures of flying high, opposed to the fall to earth and mud. Boito represents the beautiful-Ideal in metaphors of elevation ascent and flying of animals, be it the one of the "farfalla" or of the "cherubo" or simply in the image of "ali", "cima", "volo" all symbols of "Arte eterea", to be opposed to the metaphors of falling down to earth: "verme immondo", "caduto cherubo", "fango", "umida gleba" as symbols of Boito's "Arte reproba".
Emilio Praga, another key figure of the Scapigliatura, shares the same plight as Boito. "Preludio", the first poem of Penombre (1864), the most baudelairian of his collections, is almost a verse reply to his friend in art and author of "Dualism". This composition opens in the
18
Camerana's reply to Boito's verse is also a poem in the plural. According to Elio Gioanola, La Scapigliatura, Milano: Marietti, 1975, p. 202, Camerana reproposes Boito's dualism, the contrast between the glorious promises of the dreams and the disappointment of reality, between the aspiration to the absolute and the prison of the contingent.
19
Boito's poetic language is deeply indebted to Dante's Commedia. Boito's "Angelica farfalla" comes from Purgatorio X, 125: "nati a formar l'angelica farfalla". The dualismo itself is presented in terms that evoke Dante's journey of descent and ascent, since all the metaphors associated with "Ideal" ultimately relate to Heaven, to a lofty airy dimension, whereas the "reale" is represented as the fall of the "caduto cherubo" to earth and mud. Although Boito appropriates Dante's language, his is not a theological but simply an aesthetic discourse. More on Dante's influence on the Scapigliati is in Carlo Paolazzi's article, "Cultura e 'paradiso perduto': note di fortuna dantesca tra gli Scapigliati", in Novità e tradizione nel secondo Ottocento italiano, Milano: Vita e Pensiero,
plural " N o i " , Praga also speaks for the entire group of new artists. The poet feels the need to take a distance from the tradition of the "padri", namely the national romantics: "Noi siamo i figli dei padri ammalati; / aquile al tempo di mutar le piume"2 0
. The new poetics implies severing the tie with the tradition embodied by Alessandro Manzoni, ("Casto poeta che l'Italia adora", ("chaste poet whom Italy adores"). The Scapigliati can not rely on Manzoni's faith in the Truth, their poems deal merely with "Noia", doubt and the unknown:
Ο nemico lettor, canto la Noia, l'eredità del dubbio e dell'ignoto, il tuo re, il tuo pontefice, il tuo boia, il tuo cielo, eil loto!2 1
(221)
Praga expresses dualism in two opposite entities and employs the same oppositions, "Ideale" and "fango". He associates everything horrible and real with mud; the earth, the mud, is the diametrically opposite place to the heavenly aspiration of the poet. In Praga we find the same images of Boito to represent the dualism: the Ideal is embodied in figures of flying or winged creatures (for Praga poets are "aquile" whose wings need to be replaced) which aspire to the highest sky, whereas the real is embodied in figures of earth, mud and dirt (for Praga "fango" and "loto" are thematic words).
Structurally Penombre presents remarkable relations with Les Fleurs du Mal. "Preludio", in liminal position, touches on issue that appear in Baudelaire's introductory poem to the Fleur. "Au Lecteur" like "Preludio" is a poem in the plural. Baudelaire and Praga both present "Ennui" as the painful condition of the poet, although Praga's relation with the reader is a completely negative one (the reader is enemy for Praga), there is no sympathy or sense of a common predicament. In Baudelaire's aesthetics of ugliness, beauty shares with the bizarre, with the horrid. In Friedrich's words: "He [Baudelaire] frankly desires ugliness as...the possible beginning for an ascent to ideality" (26). The new beauty includes ugliness, deformity and the grotesque. In Mario Richter's view "Hymne à la Beauté" presents "Beauté" as a personal form of (the) sublime; one that transcends the dualistic system accepted by western culture. Baudelaire creates his
20
Emilio Praga, Opere, a cura di Gabriele Catalano, Napoli: Fulvio Rossi, 1969, pp. 221-22. All quotations are from this edition. "We are the sick children of our fathers; / eagles at the time to shed our feathers".
21
Patrizia Bettella 80
own beauty, the real sublime, a true beauty which reveals illusion and truth, the precarious and the absolute2 2
.
The Italian Scapigliati express their situation of artists in terms analagous to Baudelaire's, but the oxymoric condition of the individual for them does not lead to a new form of artistic beauty, rather, it remains a dilemma. For Baudelaire ugliness offers the possibility to reach a new type of ideality, in other words, Baudelaire's satanism, his ugly is a triumph of evil ("evil devised by intellingence" not "merely animal evil", Friedrich, 28) in an attempt to gain "some entry into ideality" (Friedrich, 28). In Baudelaire's system the individual is always straining upward, in his thirst for infinity. Yet, essentially torn, he is a
homo duplex, who must satisfy his satanic pole to understand his
heavenly one. At the peak of Baudelaire's ideality we find the completely negative and new meaningless concept of death. The Scapigliati do not reach such an outcome to their quest for a new beauty, ideality. Exemplary in this respect is the conclusion of the
Fleurs du Mal, in contrast to the last poem of Praga's Penombre.
Baudelaire ends the Fleurs with the perspective of the "Voyage":
Ο Mort...
Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il réconforte! Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau, Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe? au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!23
(124)
In Baudelaire from death can originate the new. Praga, instead, concludes his collection with "Desolazioni" ("Desolations"). In this poem Praga makes an assessment of his attempts to formulate the ars nova and sums up the stages in the poet's search for the new art; he realizes that it was nothing but a ghostly illusion, and ends with the awareness that dreams are over and it is time to search somewhere else:
Vissi aspettando un mio fantasma bello che mai non giunse;
vissi a fior d'acqua, fra i giunchi materni, e il sudiciume non cercai del mondo; ma l'empia ressa dei calci fraterni
22
Mario Richter, "Le sublime dans 'Hymne à la Beauté'", in Dix Études sur Baudelaire, Paris: Champion, 1993, pp. 35-44.
23
turbava il fondo,
e, poiché il fango sal come la nube, come l'incenso e la prece devota, sul bianco viso del natante impube giunse la mota!
i sogni allor sono svaniti, e tu ti accorgi che diventi serio... e un'anima di cento anni che ingora un odiato involucro ventenne, geme dietro le rose e canta: è l'ora di alzar le penne!2 4
(359-60)
These last verse ("è l'ora di alzar le penne") with its metaphorical reference to the wings which can enable the poet to fly high, in perfect circularity, reconnects this final poem to "Preludio", where the great hopes for change were expressed through the same avian metaphor ("aquile al tempo di mutar le piume"). Metaphors of flying in the high sky and flapping wings so common in the Scapigliati, express poetically the ambition to achieve a new art, through images of flight, be it that of "farfalla" and the "caduto cherubo /.../ che sale, / affaticando l'ale", "Ideale / che mi fa batter l'ale" in Boito's "Dualismo", or the "stender l'ali a così audace volo" in Camerana's poem "Ad Arrigo Boito".
According to Filippo Bettini (139-40), Praga's dualism is different from Baudelaire's in that the French poet perceives the contradictions of reality but overcomes them in a new vision of artistic beauty2 5
. Praga finds it impossible "to transform the antinomies of reality in a poetically organic and unitarian image"(139). In Praga the ideological tension and the linguistic solution are not solved. Praga will overcome the impasse only by elaborating a new system of linguistic and expressive values, that will appear in his next collection of verses (Trasparenze).
24
"I lived for a beautiful phantom, / which never came; /I lived on the surface of the water, among the maternal rushes, / and I did not look for the world's dirt; / but the evil crowd of fraternal kicks / stirred the bottom, / and since the mud rises like a cloud, / like incense and the devout prayer, / on the white face of the impuberal swimmer / came the mire! /...the dreams then have disappeared, / and you realize that you are becoming serious. /.../ and a hundred years old soul which wraps / a hated twenty years old body, / groans behind the roses and sings: it is time / to raise the wings!"
25
Patrizia Bettella 82
Boito, like Praga, reflects upon the concepts of the new art in his poem "A Giovanni Camerana" which sums up the main themes of the
ars nova. The same metaphors of flying and endless wings reappear but
Boito has to admit that the aspiration to the high ideals is not easily achieved; "Dio ci aiuti, ο Giovanni, egli ci diede / stretto orizzonte e sconfinate l'ali" (72); and the only art that Boito can envision is the one inspired by the "Torva...Musa" ("The gloomy Muse")2 6
. Camerana, the young poet, at the beginning of his career replies to the caposcuola in his poem "Ad Arrigo Boito" and using the plural " N o i " voices the concerns of a school of young artists appropriating Boito's key words2 7
. Camerana is part of that "Stirpe fosca e malata" (83) ("Gloomy and sick race") which evokes both Boito's "pallida giostra di poeti suicidi" and Praga's "figli dei padri malati"2 8
. The young poet acknowledges that the "arte nova e del futur" (84) was a dream that has not been fulfilled, he finds in Boito those certainties which the new poets can not achieve; the neophyte has clearly identified the key issues posed by Boito and sees in the latter's verses a successful outcome to the contradictions of dualism, however he doubts that it can work for the new poets:
Perchè noi bimbi, Arrigo, Stendere l'ali a così audace volo? Giusto e il torvo castigo.
Or la pallida Inerzia e la Tristezza, Come due sfingi, stanno a la mia porta. Tu almeno, Arrigo, la spietata brezza Disfidi del tuo male;
Entro te pure il sozzo verme annida, Ma sei nel canto aerea farfalla29
. (85)
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"May God help us Giovanni, / since He gave us a narrow outlook and endless wings".
27
Giovanni Camerana, Poesie, Torino: Einaudi, 1968, pp. 83-85. All quotations are from this edition.
28
Many of the Scapigliati had indeed short and troubled lives. Praga was addicted to alcoholism, Tarchetti died of typhus at the age of 33, Camerana and Pinchetti committed suicide.
29
The failure to overcome the contradictions of the dualistic vision, takes the most dramatic expression in the young Giulio Pinchetti3 0
. His verses, as his life, are marked by the desperate conviction that ugliness and death are the only outcome to the failed search for the Ideal. Pinchetti is considered, like Tarchetti, one of those typical Italian maudits, whose mingling of literature and life, lead to devasting consequences. He embraces the dualism formulated by Boito and Praga and makes it something tragic and personal. He perceives human existence as a "fatal lie", and distorts Boito's and Praga's imagery to his own end. His poem "Poeta", presents the same dualismo as Boito and Praga: the predicament of the artist, torn between Ideal and Truth, but essentially incapable to find a meaning in anyone of the two poles:
giace il poeta:-Spartaco indarno del pensiero-invan lo scosse il vacuo fantasima del Vero, invan di fè, di patria, un Dio gli favellò. Ed ei, mendico e lacero, errò implorando calma, bieca vendetta al secolo che gli morìa nell'alma, che gli spegneva il palpito sacro dell'Idëal31
. (86-81)
30
Little is known about this young poet who committed suicide when he was only twenty six. He began his career as a journalist for the Gazzetta di Milano, where he was in charge of the literary and political supplements. Pinchetti was deeply affected by Foscolo's Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and by Leopardi. His life was marked by family tragedies: the death of his girlfriend and nineteen year old sister, and culminates in the death of his mother, whom he adored. Renzo Negri ["Un epistolario ritrovato (Giulio Pinchetti)", Aevum 46 (1972), 141-45] notes that his letters repeat the scheme of Ortis. Pinchetti joined the army to participate in the attempted liberation of Rome in 1867. Unable to participate in the events of the third phase of the Italian independence, he was so disappointed that he attempted suicide by jumping off the train taking him back from Rome. These events are reported in his letters to friend Niccolò Sardi. His only poetic work is a collection of Versi published in 1868. More on Pinchetti can be found in Gaetano Mariani's Storia della Scapigliatura, pp. 750-54. His works (the Versi, the review articles, the letters and other notes) were collected in Opere, Milano: Marzorati, 1974, edited by Fiorenza Vittori; all quotations are from this edition.
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Patrizia Bettella 84 In this poem Pinchetti takes the dualistic tension to its extreme and
makes Beauty and Ugliness coincide: "Il Bello sta nell'Orrido, / nella Beltà è l'Orror!" (88). His solution to the dilemma, however, does not lead to a new ideality, rather, it dooms the poet to self-destruction. For Pinchetti, whose attitudes in art and life are so inextricably linked, the outcome is a desperate form of annihilation that eventually results in suicide. This poem dated 1866 reflects the existential plight of young Pinchetti, who attempted several times to take his life. His aesthetic reflections are closely interconnected with his outlook on life and his letters well illustrate the inability of the young artist to find a satisfactory solution to the dualism. Already by 1868 the coincidence of beauty and ugliness is not only the situation of the artist but that of his entire existence: in a letter to his friend Niccolò Sardi of January 31 1868 he declares that: "I concetti del bello e del brutto si oscurano nella mia testa, quasi si confondono..." (267). ("The concepts of beauty and ugliness are obscured in my head, they are amost confused with one another") and later in March of the same year he writes again to Sardi wondering why the concept of beauty has become so weak in his mind. For Pinchetti the dramatic and painful situation leads to suicide, since art and life seem to allow not possible solution to the predicament3 2
. Conclusions
The debate on beauy and ugliness in nineteenth century Europe contributes to the re-evaluation of the role of the ugly in art. Thanks to Hugo's Préface ugliness enters the aesthetic canon as an autonomuos entity and art opens up to modernity and in Rosenkranz's Aesthetik des Hässlichen the ugly is discussed for the first time in a philosophical essay, Baudelaire's new concept of beauty in the Fleurs du Mal is crucial for the Italian Scapigliati. They share Baudelaire's aesthetic preoccupation with ugliness and the bizarre. Their discourse of beauty and ugliness springs from the same need to distance themselves from the classical canon, but the Scapigliati can not achieve a vision which fatherland. / And he, ragged beggar, / wandered imploring calmly / grim revenge on the century / which was dying in his soul, / which exstinguished in him the sacred / impulse towards the Ideal". This poem appears also in Gilberto Finzi, Lirici della Scapigliatura, Milano: 1965, pp. 155-57.
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includes ugliness in a new ideality. Their attempt to incorporate beauty and ugliness in their aesthetic discourse, to elaborate a concept of modern beauty, of real sublime as envisioned by Baudelaire, remains highly problematic. Boito's dualismo bears no fruit since he himself will move away from his positions in his maturity, as stated already in his last "poesia dell'amicizia" to Praga: "Sono stanco, languente, ho già percorso / assai la vita rea, / ho già sentito assai quel doppio morso / del Vero e dell'Idea, / Ho perduto i miei sogni ad uno ad u n o "3 3
(65). For Praga the end of Pénombre does not mark the beginning of new artistic forms but is rather the realization of the need for different solutions and Camerana, who accepts the challenge proposed by Boito, can not overcome the contradictions of the dualism either. Pinchetti takes, instead, the most dramatic approach to the dilemma and projects the aesthetic tension into his personal life and ends the quest with a tragic surrender to the ugly in its most uncompromising and pure form of evil, suicide.
Although for the Scapigliati the debate on the role of the beautiful and the ugly in the artistic creation failed to produce an ars nova, their discourse deserves particular consideration: in the closed atmosphere of Italian culture, they were the first to open up to the innovative ferments of modern aesthetics and to express their need for revision and change of the canons of idealism.
PATRIZIA BETTELLA University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta
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