Four and Twenty Minds/Chapter 18
XVIII
ALFREDO ORIANI[1]
I
Seven years ago there died, after fifty-seven years of restless and imprisoned life, a man whom his fellow men had neither loved nor understood. He died alone as he had lived; he died in this season of death which had inspired his most poetic pages.
One cannot say that he died forgotten, because he had never won fame. The novels written in his youth had aroused a curiosity which failed to develop into glory. His other, stronger books, his books of synthesis, had been received in silence by a generation incapable of understanding them. In recent years a little youthful appreciation had brought the rare smile to that face of his, graven by the acids of melancholy, but had not canceled the look of proud sadness impressed upon it by the neglect of his contemporaries. He had just begun to emerge from the silence into which a deaf and brutal indifference had banished him, when Fate thrust him into that other silence from which there is no emerging save at the summons of glory.
Some three years before Oriani’s death, Giosue Carducci had passed to the heaven of recognized glories, amid a national adoration which took well nigh the form of apotheosis. Carducci was a greater man than Oriani, to be sure, but they differed far more widely in fame than in desert. They were not friends, but Oriani would have been the one man worthy to be the companion of Carducci, through the loftiness of his genius and the virility of his eloquence; far more worthy than the so-called disciples of Carducci, who were scarcely capable of following feebly the letter of his work, and were utterly remote from its spirit, from its temper, from its dignity—parlor kittens playing about the bed of a sick lion whose roaring days were over.
As poet and as philologist, Oriani would have suffered by the comparison; but as thinker and as historian he unquestionably surpassed Carducci, and would have surpassed him still more notably had he felt around him that affectionate and intelligent approval which may be scorned by those who fail to win it, but serves none the less to encourage even the most vigorous. Both men loved Italy with a jealous and passionate love, and both lashed Italy for the faults of her decadence—even as all those who have loved her deeply have reproached her bitterly. And here there is food for the thought of those who regard all that surrounds them as perfect and heroic, who cannot unite the dart of Archilochus to the song of Pindar, who fancy that patriotism is composed of caresses and flatteries.
In Carducci this passion for Italy came chiefly from the practice of art: in Oriani it came from meditation on the past. The former was a lyrist who in the depths of history saw only an indefinite Nemesis; the latter, a “prophet of the past” who brought the dead to life that they might tell their secret to the living, a man who could discern in the nation’s experience the manifold elements of an age-long plot, and fateful preparations for the future. Equally intense in their adoration, they drew their nourishment from different sources—those of Carducci more traditional and literary, those of Oriani more conscious and political. Oriani’s eloquence was more excited and more modern, and his view, trained to the telescopic perspectives of philosophy, was of longer reach.
To those who have been slow to perceive or quick to forget, this comparison will seem strange and irreverent. Interest in Oriani was revived by a man whom many esteem even though they differ with him—Benedetto Croce—but the common throng of readers will not permit comparisons between those who have and those who have not received all the licenses, passports, and visés of academic, governmental, and journalistic glorification. Without diplomas and brevets, the greatest man is but an outcast—and intermarriages are prohibited as severely as in royal Rome. Alfredo Oriani was not the laureate of any creed, of any party, of any school. Even since his death—though death at times wins pardon for unconventionality in greatness—he has not succeeded in breaking down the invisible wall that shut from him the air and the light of recognition. “Life is a prison without a window,” says an English writer. Such it was indeed for Oriani.
But I, being free from legitimist considerations, can and will compare him to the great—not that I may play the Plutarch, nor that I may exalt one who needs no exaltation, but as a matter of didactic necessity. Despite all efforts, Oriani is still unknown; and the only way of giving an impression of him to those who do not know him is to bring him into relation with those who are well known—even though these latter appear far greater than Oriani, even though Oriani be made to seem a casual intruder. II
The dominant quality of Oriani’s style was eloquence. His mental attitude was primarily historic. A writer by instinct, abundant without recourse to the recherché, solid but never dull, laconic and epigrammatic in spite of an apparent prolixity, colorful without display, lofty without over-emphasis, he was better qualified to command than to narrate, to persuade than to describe. He was a born orator, though he seldom spoke in public. His prose reflected the constant activity of a mind stirred by high thoughts and qualified to summarize them in rapid and illuminating surveys. His method of proceeding by contrasts and antitheses recalls Victor Hugo and Ferrari, with whom he must certainly have been familiar.
But the orator cannot be a true artist in the sense in which we now use that word: that is, he cannot be disinterested. In the orator, together with the real and powerful art of expression, there exists a desire to convince himself and others which is foreign to the pure artist, since it is of practical origin. When Oriani gave himself up to his own imagination, or when in his novels he succeeded in living in his characters, he approached art as we understand it. He was not always as original or as perfect as others before or since his time, but he was a true writer of the best Italian quality.
Even in his novels his eloquence now and then got the better of him. Some problem suggested a page of reflection, some name led to an essay in criticism, some story turned into a literary or philosophic discussion—just as some of his biographical portraits began like stories. But throughout his work the life pulsed strongly.
For the eloquence of Oriani was not the empty eloquence of the professional man of letters, nor the sophistical eloquence of the lawyer. It was an eloquence warm with passion, nourished with facts, sustained by ideas, rich in intuitions and in discoveries, an eloquence that sought to persuade both intellect and heart. It transported you, with the freshness of its allusions and the rapidity of its evocations, to the summit of one of those mountains from which—if you have the breath to reach the top—you may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth, all the activities of mankind. It was the eloquence of a historian deeply interested in the past, of a thinker passionately concerned with his problems, of an Italian enamored of Italy. It had nothing in common with that eloquence which is too often the tiny voice of mediocrity transmitted through the megaphone of literature.
When it comes to poetry, I agree with Verlaine’s dictum: “Prend l’éloquence et tord-lui le cou!” But history, even when viewed by a poet, is history and not poetry: that is to say, it is an artistic representation of events, but it is at the same time a meditation on events. That lyric liberty which is independent of subjects and of anecdotes, as we of today maintain, cannot be expected from one who, like Oriani, writes and rewrites a historical discourse on Italy and the Italians.
To my mind, the greatness of Oriani lies in his syntheses, long or short, of the remote or the recent past, and in the marvelous portraits which enliven those syntheses. The only men to whom you can compare him are Carlyle in England, Michelet in France, and Giuseppe Ferrari in Italy. And in some respects he was their superior. He lacked the Englishman’s humor and originality; his scholarly preparation was less than that of the Frenchman; the Italian surpassed him in philosophic genius. But no one of the three wrote pages as clean-cut and impressive as those of Oriani—pages in which the poet’s sense of life, the philosopher’s sense of space, the keenness of the historian, and the filial love of the citizen are fused in a synthesis which wins us completely. Fortunately, too, he did not have the apocalyptic moralizing of Carlyle, the democratic emphasis of Michelet, or the mechanistic and mathematical mania of Ferrari. He equals them in their best qualities, and surpasses them in others.
To Ferrari in particular he owes much, even in point of style—though his style is not without reflections of Foscolo, Guerrazzi, and Carducci as well. It has been pointed out that certain passages in the Political Struggle in Italy are derived from Ferrari’s History of the Revolutions of Italy; but the influence is limited to a single part of Oriani’s book, and in any case proves nothing against him, since he, assimilating the skill and the method of Ferrari, was merely going on to discuss epochs not treated by Ferrari, and proving thus that he had the right to take over the results of his predecessor, summarizing and illuminating them.
His Political Struggle in Italy—though it is ill proportioned, since the first third goes to the fall of the Napoleonic empire, while the remaining two-thirds treat of the nineteenth century—is the only modern general history of Italy that is more than a storehouse of facts or a manual of dates. It is Oriani’s masterpiece, though finer single pages may be found in other volumes, for instance in the collections of miscellaneous essays entitled To Dogali, Sunset Shadows, and Bivouac Fires.
III
Like all those men of genius whose curiosity is equal to their energy, Oriani was polygonal: a fortress with spurs and loopholes in every direction. Unlike those narrow spirits who are proud of their fixed itinerary, he did not confine himself to a single path. He was poet and critic, narrator and philosopher, historian and essayist. His activity was as diversified as his mind was concentrated. His fecundity in thought was as great as his facility with the pen. He was as prodigal with the riches of his spirit as only the rich, and the generous rich, can be. In works of widely different purpose and content he maintained himself always upon the same level. Always and everywhere he was true to himself.
There are few men, I think, who can compare with him as essayists. (Does any one still remember that flaccid little Milanese Renan called Gaetano Negri?) His hundred pages on Machiavelli—in To Dogali—are hundreds of times truer, deeper, and more instructive than all the volumes of Villari and Tommaseo. Here again, to be sure, the inspiration comes from Ferrari; but it is Oriani whom we have to thank for pointing out the convergence of Machiavelli’s glory and greatness in art, in the creation of prose—a truth not even glimpsed by the very man who ought ex officio to have discovered it: De Sanctis.
His newspaper articles—in the last years of his life he had to devote much of his time to newspaper work—were very notable indeed. They were not pleasant improvisations nor witty digressions: they were serious, weighty, ill suited for the public. His ability to mount from the little fact to the great idea, from the fleeting moment to the most remote past or the most fantastic future, from the individual to the universal, from the materialism of appearances to the purity of a transcending idea, shines brilliantly throughout this work. It would seem that in these last years of weariness he sought to accomplish his most heroic feats. In comparison with him Rastignac is but flat champagne, Scarfoglio a parlor volcano, Bergeret a gossip of the tea-table.
But his style could not win popularity. A roughness of manner, a solemn austerity, a passionate eloquence gave sacredness and majesty to every theme he handled. Like the mythical king who turned whatever he touched to gold, so Oriani gave the air of greatness to all subjects, even the most trivial. He was not a man of laughter. Everything was serious to him—love and history, woman and frailty. When his indignation was aroused he could attack a man or an idea with a persistent fusillade of scornful invectives, but he never attained the ridicule that can slay as surely as an insult. His spirit was inherently tragic. He lacked the ability to laugh and to make others laugh; his irony was too bitter, his mocking turned always into apostrophe or reproach.
In his novels an underlying conviction of the inevitability of sorrow prevents the development of any sense of pleasure. His satire of provincial and bourgeois manners is pitiless. Nearly all of his heroes are blameless unfortunates, souls exceptional or commonplace, destined alike to suffering. With the artist’s intuition, Oriani has discovered the terrible law that governs great and small—the tendency of life toward a centrifugal futility. The tragedy which fills Defeat is more impressive than the detail of any conjugal drama: perfection itself leads to unhappiness. Even under the best conditions human experience tends toward the impossible.
The novels of Oriani are by no means perfect works. Some of them are old-fashioned, others are monotonous. They all lack that exquisiteness and novelty which readers have sought in this popular and ephemeral genre since the time of Flaubert. But if we think of the novelists who were contemporary with him, we can do no less than put him on a par, here too, with men who in point of fame surpassed him so much as not to be aware of his existence.
The most popular of these novelists, Fogazzaro and d’Annunzio, are but women in comparison: Fogazzaro a mystic devotee with leanings toward gallantry; d’Annunzio an adventuress with leanings toward mysticism.
Oriani and Verga, far superior to the other two in sobriety, solidity, honesty, and energy, are the real men of the group. But they are too hard for teeth that prefer sweetmeats (women readers determine popularity!) and by the side of the other two they appear inferior and uncouth. They were both deeply attached to their own regions—Romagna and Sicily—they were both upright artists, sad with a manly sadness, recorders of misfortune and decadence, scorners of ornament and trickery. And they both await a fairer judgment. One of them died all but unknown; the other, all but forgotten, waits still for death.
Oriani did not write any one novel that can be called a masterpiece, but in every one of his novels there are pages in which nature lives in its full freshness of sound and color, pages of relentless and cruel psychology in which the wretched souls of wretched men are revealed with a homicidal lucidity. When the definitive history of the Italian novel of the nineteenth century shall be written, the importance of Oriani will inevitably be recognized, and he will receive the place to which the profundity of his genius and the vigor of his art entitle him. To find his compeers one must go to the great French novelists of the nineteenth century. IV
This is not intended as a commemorative essay: Oriani does not lend himself to the usual solemnities. Nor is it an introductory essay: it would take a book, not an article, to present Oriani. Nor is it an apology or a vindication: time is working quietly to prepare readers for those who deserve them.
Oriani might have chosen as motto for his Political Struggle the proud phrase of Kepler: “My book can wait for its reader.” His spiritual life was as sad as his own novels. His love was not requited, his intelligence was not recognized, his greatness remained as lonely as a fire dying uselessly in a desert.
Only in recent years has this hungry wanderer begun to win justice. I am offering my testimony for what it may be worth. My testimony is that of a man called destructive, and yet it is more capable of tenderness and admiration than are many of those who so judge it. My testimony maintains that Oriani is not forgotten and must not be forgotten.
I never knew him personally. In 1905 I had the honor of publishing in the Leonardo an unpublished chapter of his Ideal Revolt; but I never saw him. Perhaps it is just as well: we should hardly have had time to smooth our angularities through intimacy. But now that he is dead, I feel as though I had known him, I feel him nearer, I might almost say that he has become my friend. I seem to have seen that sad and deeply-lined face of his, those wide-open eyes that saw only high and distant things. I seem to have heard his voice thundering the pleas of idealism amid friends in the café or on the street. But I never knew him.
They say that one evening, not many years before his death, when he was leaving Bologna for Casolavalsenio, he was sitting alone in the dark in a third-class compartment, when some one stepped up to the open door and asked: “Who is in here?”
And out of the darkness came a great deep voice that answered: “The greatest writer in Italy!”
The reply was meant as a melancholy jest and a lyric sarcasm, but it was not without its truth. Alfredo Oriani was in reality one of the greatest Italian writers of the nineteenth century.
- ↑ Written in October, 1916, for the seventh anniversary of the death of Oriani.