Part 20 (1/2)
Now thou shalt rest forever, O weary heart! The last deceit is ended, For I believed myself immortal. Cherished Hopes, and beloved delusions, And longings to be deluded,--all are perished!
Rest thee forever! Oh, greatly, Heart, hast thou palpitated. There is nothing Worthy to move thee more, nor is earth worthy Thy sighs. For life is only Bitterness and vexation; earth is only A heap of dust. So rest thee!
Despair for the last time. To our race Fortune Never gave any gift but death. Disdain, then, Thyself and Nature and the Power Occultly reigning to the common ruin: Scorn, heart, the infinite emptiness of all things!
Nature was so cruel a stepmother to this man that he could see nothing but harm even in her apparent beneficence, and his verse repeats again and again his dark mistrust of the very loveliness which so keenly delights his sense. One of his early poems, called ”The Quiet after the Storm”, strikes the key in which nearly all his songs are pitched.
The observation of nature is very sweet and honest, and I cannot see that the philosophy in its perversion of the relations of physical and spiritual facts is less mature than that of his later work: it is a philosophy of which the first conception cannot well differ from the final expression.
... See yon blue sky that breaks The clouds above the mountain in the west!
The fields disclose themselves, And in the valley bright the river runs.
All hearts are glad; on every side Arise the happy sounds Of toil begun anew.
The workman, singing, to the threshold comes, With work in hand, to judge the sky, Still humid, and the damsel next, On his report, comes forth to brim her pail With the fresh-fallen rain.
The noisy fruiterers From lane to lane resume Their customary cry.
The sun looks out again, and smiles upon The houses and the hills. Windows and doors Are opened wide; and on the far-off road You hear the tinkling bells and rattling wheels Of travelers that set out upon their journey.
Every heart is glad; So grateful and so sweet When is our life as now?
O Pleasure, child of Pain, Vain joy which is the fruit Of bygone suffering overshadowed And wrung with cruel fears Of death, whom life abhors; Wherein, in long suspense, Silent and cold and pale, Man sat, and shook and shuddered to behold Lightnings and clouds and winds, Furious in his offense!
Beneficent Nature, these, These are thy bounteous gifts: These, these are the delights Thou offerest unto mortals! To escape From pain is bliss to us; Anguish thou scatterest broadcast, and our woes Spring up spontaneous, and that little joy Born sometimes, for a miracle and show, Of terror is our mightiest gain. O man, Dear to the G.o.ds, count thyself fortunate If now and then relief Thou hast from pain, and blest When death shall come to heal thee of all pain!
”The bodily deformities which humiliated Leopardi, and the cruel infirmities that agonized him his whole life long, wrought in his heart an invincible disgust, which made him invoke death as the sole relief. His songs, while they express discontent, the discord of the world, the conviction of the nullity of human things, are exquisite in style; they breathe a perpetual melancholy, which is often sublime, and they relax and pain your soul like the music of a single chord, while their strange sweetness wins you to them again and again.” This is the language of an Italian critic who wrote after Leopardi's death, when already it had begun to be doubted whether he was the greatest Italian poet since Dante. A still later critic finds Leopardi's style, ”without relief, without lyric flight, without the great art of contrasts, without poetic leaven,” hard to read. ”Despoil those verses of their masterly polish,” he says, ”reduce those thoughts to prose, and you will see how little they are akin to poetry.”
I have a feeling that my versions apply some such test to Leopardi's work, and that the reader sees it in them at much of the disadvantage which this critic desires for it. Yet, after doing my worst, I am not wholly able to agree with him. It seems to me that there is the indestructible charm in it which, wherever we find it, we must call poetry. It is true that ”its strange sweetness wins you again and again,” and that this ”lonely pipe of death” thrills and solemnly delights as no other stop has done. Let us hear it again, as the poet sounds it, figuring himself a Syrian shepherd, guarding his flock by night, and weaving his song under the Eastern moon:
O flock that liest at rest, O blessed thou That knowest not thy fate, however hard, How utterly I envy thee!
Not merely that thou goest almost free Of all this weary pain,-- That every misery and every toil And every fear thou straightway dost forget,-- But most because thou knowest not ennui When on the gra.s.s thou liest in the shade.
I see thee tranquil and content, And great part of thy years Untroubled by ennui thou pa.s.sest thus.
I likewise in the shadow, on the gra.s.s.
Lie, and a dull disgust beclouds My soul, and I am goaded with a spur, So that, reposing, I am farthest still From finding peace or place.
And yet I want for naught, And have not had till now a cause for tears.
What is thy bliss, how much, I cannot tell; but thou art fortunate.
Or, it may be, my thought Errs, running thus to others' destiny; May be, to everything, Wherever born, in cradle or in fold, That day is terrible when it was born.
It is the same note, the same voice; the theme does not change, but perhaps it is deepened in this ode:
ON THE LIKENESS OP A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN CARVEN UPON HER TOMB.
Such wast thou: now under earth A skeleton and dust. O'er dust and bones Immovably and vainly set, and mute, Looking upon the flight of centuries, Sole keeper of memory And of regret is this fair counterfeit Of loveliness now vanished. That sweet look, Which made men tremble when it fell on them, As now it falls on me; that lip, which once, Like some full vase of sweets, Ran over with delight; that fair neck, clasped By longing, and that soft and amorous hand, Which often did impart An icy thrill unto the hand it touched; That breast, which visibly Blanched with its beauty him who looked on it-- All these things were, and now Dust art thou, filth, a fell And hideous sight hidden beneath a stone.
Thus fate hath wrought its will Upon the semblance that to us did seem Heaven's vividest image! Eternal mystery Of mortal being! To-day the ineffable Fountain of thoughts and feelings vast and high, Beauty reigns sovereign, and seems Like splendor thrown afar From some immortal essence on these sands, To give our mortal state A sign and hope secure of destinies Higher than human, and of fortunate realms, And golden worlds unknown.
To-morrow, at a touch, Loathsome to see, abominable, abject, Becomes the thing that was All but angelical before; And from men's memories All that its loveliness Inspired forever faults and fades away.
Ineffable desires And visions high and pure Rise in the happy soul, Lulled by the sound of cunning harmonies Whereon the spirit floats, As at his pleasure floats Some fearless swimmer over the deep sea; But if a discord strike The wounded sense, to naught All that fair paradise in an instant falls.
Mortality! if thou Be wholly frail and vile, Be only dust and shadow, how canst thou So deeply feel? And if thou be In part divine, how can thy will and thought By things so poor and base So easily be awakened and quenched?