The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

Musa, tu, che di caduchi allori Non circondi la fronte in Elicona Ma su nel Ciel infra i beati cori, Hai di stelle immortali aurea corona, Tu spira al petto mio celesti ardori, Tu rischiara il mio canto, e tu perdona, S'intesso fregi al ver, s'adorno in parte D'altri diletti, che de' tuoi, le carte.

The captivating enthusiasm of Homer, the majestic simplicity of Vergil are not there; there is a sweetness of expression, a purity of imagery which please. This might be greater, but then the melancholy of the romance would exclude it and the reader would demand the full force of epopoeia.

Besides, the Italians have tried, over and over again, to vary the form of their verses ; some have wished to measure them by musical rhythm ; others have contented themselves with making blank verse. They have neither succeeded completely nor failed completely. Their language sweet and musical lacks force whether in good or in evil. Its words might indeed, strictly speaking, be composed of long and short syllables; but as they terminate, nearly all, in the soft and languid style that we call feminine, it results, therefore, that in the measured verses the poets lack the long syllables to constitute the last foot and to form the spondee; and that in the blank verse they are obliged to terminate them all in the same style ; so that with the measure they create only lame verses, and without the rhyme they make them all equally languid. ^

' Nearly all of the Italian words terminate with one of four vowels, a, e, i, o, without accent: it is very rare that the vowels are accentuated, as the vowel a. When this occurs as in citi, perche, di, fard, etc., then, only, is the final masculine. Now here is what one of their best rWythmic poets, named Tolom^, gives as an hexameter verse:

Questa, per affeto, tenerissima lettera mando

Ate . . . To make this line exact, one feels that the word mando, which terminates it, should be composed of two longs, that is to say, that it should be written 7

98 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

I recall having sometimes read French writers who, not having investigated the character of their tongue, have reproached it for its feminine syllables and have believed that their concurrence was harmful to its force and its harmony. These writers have scarcely considered what this language would be, deprived of its feminine sotmds. For with the little force that it would gain on one side, it would acqtiire such a harshness on the other, that it would be impossible to draw from it four consecutive lines that would be endurable. If all its finals were masculine, and if nothing could change it otherwise, it would be necessary to renounce poetry, or like the Arabs, be resolved to compose whole poems in the same rhyme.

We have just seen that the lack of masculine finals takes away all energy from the Italian tongue; a contrary defect would deprive the French of this mSlange of sweetness and force which makes it the premiere langue of Europe. The English language is lacking in precisely what the writers of whom I have spoken desired eliminated from the French, without foreseeing the grave disadvantages of their desire: it has no feminine finals';

mandd, which could not be without altering the sense entirely. Marchetti has translated into blank verse the Latin poem of Lucretius. I will quote the opening lines. Here is evident the softness to which I take exception and which prevents them from being really eumolpique, according to the sense that I have attached to tMs word.

Almafiglia di Giove, inclita madre Del gran germe d'Enea, Venere bella, DegU uomini piacere e degli Dei: Tu, che sotto il volubili e lucenti Segni del cielo, il mar profunda, e tutta D'animai d'ogni specie orni la terra: . . . etc.

' One must not believe that the mute e with which many English words terminate represents the French feminine final, expressed by the same vowel. Tbis mute e is in reality mute in English; ordinarily it is only used to give a more open sound to the vowel which precedes it, as in tale, scene, bone, pure.

The Essence and Form of Poetry 99 also it is in everything the opposite of the Italian. It is true that it possesses great energy, great boldness of expression, and a grammatical liberty which goes to the full extent; but deprived of sweetness and softness, it is, if I may say it, like those brittle metals whose strength is in stiffness, and which is broken when one would make them flexible. The poverty of its rhymes, denuded for the most part of accuracy of accent and of harmony in consonants, has for a long time engaged the English poets in making blank verse ; and it must be admitted that, notwithstanding the defect inherent in their tongue and which consists, as I have just said, in the absolute lack of feminine finals, they have succeeded in this better than any of the poets of other nations. These lines, all imperfect in their harmony, are however, as to form, the only eumolpique verse that they could make. Shakespeare felt it and made use of it in his tragedies.