To the same Brunetto Latini--the teacher of Dante--who, in his 'Canzoni,' adopts the customary manner of the 'Trovatori,' we owe the first-known 'versi sciolti,' or blank hendecasyllabic verses, and in his apparent absence of form, a true and genuine passion suddenly showed itself.The same voluntary renunciation of outward effect, through confidence in the power of the inward conception, can be observed some years later in fresco-painting, and later still in painting of all kinds, which began to cease to rely on color for its effect, using simply a lighter or darker shade.For an age which laid so much stress on artificial form in poetry, these verses of Brunetto mark the beginning of a new epoch.84About the same time, or even in the first half of the thirteenth century, one of the many strictly balanced forms of mere, in which Europe was then so fruitful, became a normal and recognized form in Italy--the sonnet.The order of rhymes and even the number of lines varied for a whole century, till Petrarch fixed them permanently.In this form all higher lyrical and meditative subjects, and at a later time subjects of every possible description, were treated, and the madrigals, the sestine, and even the 'Canzoni' were reduced to a subordinate place.Later Italian writers complain, half jestingly, half resentfully, of this inevitable mould, this Procrustean bed, to which they were compelled to make their thoughts and feelings fit.Others were, and still are, quite satisfied with this particular form of verse, which they freely use to express any personal reminiscence or idle sing-song without necessity or serious purpose.For which reason there are many more bad or insignificant sonnets than good ones.
Nevertheless, the sonnet must be held to have been an unspeakable blessing for Italian poetry.The clearness and beauty of its structure, the invitation it gave to elevate the thought in the second and more rapidly moving half, and the ease with which it could be learned by heart, made it valued even by the greatest masters.In fact, they would not have kept it in use down to our own century had they not been penetrated with a sense of its singular worth.These masters could have given us the same thoughts in other and wholly different forms.But when once they had made the sonnet the normal type of lyrical poetry, many other writers of great, if not the highest, gifts, who otherwise would have lost themselves in a sea of diffusiveness, were forced to concentrate their feelings.The sonnet became for Italian literature a condenser of thoughts and emotions such as was possessed by the poetry of no other modern people.
Thus the world of Italian sentiment comes before us in a series of pictures, clear, concise, and most effective in their brevity.Had other nations possessed a form of expression of the same kind, we should perhaps have known more of their inward life; we might have had a number of pictures of inward and outward situations--reflexions of the national character and temper--and should not be dependent for such knowledge on the so-called lyrical poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who can hardly ever be read with any serious enjoyment.In Italy we can trace an undoubted progress from the time when the sonnet came into existence.In the second half of the thirteenth century the 'Trovatori della transizione,' as they have been recently named, mark the passage from the Troubadours to the poets--that is, to those who wrote under the influence of antiquity.The simplicity and strength of their feeling, the vigorous delineation of fact, the precise expression and rounding off of their sonnets and other poems, herald the coming of a Dante.Some political sonnets of the Guelphs and Ghibellines (1260-1270) have about them the ring of his passion, and others remind us of his sweetest lyrical notes.
Of his own theoretical view of the sonnet, we are unfortunately ignorant, since the last books of his work, 'De vulgari eloquentia,' in which he proposed to treat of ballads and sonnets, either remained unwritten or have been lost.But, as a matter of fact, he has left us in his Sonnets and 'Canzoni' a treasure of inward experience.And in what a framework he has set them! The prose of the 'Vita Nuova,' in which he gives an account of the origin of each poem, is as wonderful as the verses themselves, and forms with them a uniform whole, inspired with the deepest glow of passion.With unflinching frankness and sincerity he lays bare every shade of his joy and his sorrow, and molds it resolutely into the strictest forms of art.Reading attentively these Sonnets and 'Canzoni' and the marvelous fragments of the diary of his youth which lie between them, we fancy that throughout the Middle Ages the poets have been purposely fleeing from themselves, and that he was the first to seek his own soul.Before his time we meet with many an artistic verse; but he is the first artist in the full sense of the word--the first who consciously cast immortal matter into an immortal form.Subjective feeling has here a full objective truth and greatness, and most of it is so set forth that all ages and peoples can make it their own.Where he writes in a thoroughly objective spirit, and lets the force of his sentiment be guessed at only by some outward fact, as in the magnificent sonnets 'Tanto gentile,' etc., and 'Vede perfettamente,' etc., he seems to feel the need of excusing himself.
The most beautiful of these poems really belongs to this class-- the 'Deh peregrini che pensosi andate,' ('Oh, pilgrims, walking deep in thoughts,' from Vita Nuova.) Even apart from the 'Divine Comedy,' Dante would have marked by these youthful poems the boundary between medievalism and modern times.The human spirit had taken a mighty step towards the consciousness of its own secret life.
