VIII. SAPPHO IN ITALY IN THE 18th AND 19th CENTURIES
Reading edition
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Sappho was rehabilitated and countless works of literature and art show her influence. Though the old perverse idea pervades all forms of literature and art in many insidious ways and Sappho loses her real personality and becomes a heroine of Romance, and although the legends connected with her are given a prominent place in the sunlight, yet even this proves her great potentiality in modern times.
The romantic Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), who translated passages from the Odyssey and wrote an interesting essay on the Popular Errors of the Ancients, composed also a Last Song of Sappho. In this poem, drawn from Ovid, he has given the modern reader a strong impression for better or worse of the stormy and passionate soul of the great poetess. As in his Brutus, Leopardi is giving his own views of life, which are biased by his physical affliction; but he blends his sorrow with that of nature and rises, especially in the third stanza, almost to the heights attained by Aeschylus in his Prometheus. He ends his song with beautiful mysterious pathos:
Placida notte, e verecondo raggio Della cadente luna ... ... Bello il tuo manto, o divo cielo; e bella Sei tu, rorida terra. Ahi di cotesta Infinita beltà parte nessuna Alla misera Saffo i numi e l’empia Sorte non fenno.
Thou peaceful night, thou chaste and silver ray Of the declining Moon; ... Fair is thy sight, O sky divine, and fair Art thou, O dewy earth! Alas, of all This beauty infinite, no slightest part To wretched Sappho did the Gods or Fate Inexorable give ... (F. H. Cliffe)
One is reminded of Sappho’s silver moon in Leopardi’s calm first lines, and also of Sappho’s autumn fragment in the lines “where in shade Of drooping willows doth a liquid stream Display its pure and crystal course....” Leopardi also translated the famous midnight song (p. 78) and imitated the third fragment in La Impazienza. Carducci’s (1888) comment on Leopardi is worth quoting: “la poetessa di Lesbo non fu nè brutta nè infelice come il Leopardi l’accolse a imagine sua da una tarda tradizione, e che della bellezza e dell’amore intese gustò, e cantò più non potesse il Leopardi.” Leopardi believed in two Sapphos, as did Zannoni (1822), following the judgment of Visconti. About 1793, Pagnini (Pilenejo), wishing to praise Teresa Bandettini Landucci, likened her to Sappho in genius but not in habit:
Te rediviva Saffo ognuno estima Pari d’ingegno, e d’arte a quella prima: Ma per costumi e voglie in tutto sei (Vanto maggior) dissimile da lei!
Parini about 1777 dedicated an ode to Lady Pellegrina Amoretti d’Oneglia on her graduation from the University of Padua, La Laurea, in which he said that if instead of studying law she had given herself to literature she would have been the equal of Sappho. In 1782 Verri published Le Avventure di Saffo, in which there is a paraphrase of the second ode. This romance was written in good literary style and had some fine thoughts and considerable Greek atmosphere. It went through more than a dozen editions, and was twice translated into French. In 1787 Parini celebrated the seductive qualities of a Venetian Signora Cecilia Tron in a poem of which I quote the first two stanzas:
Che più dalla vivace Mente, lampi scoppiavano Di poetica face, Che tali mai non arsero L’amica di Faon; Nè quando al coro intento Delle fanciulle lesbie L’errante violento Per le midolla fervide Amoroso velen; ...
One evening in 1827, as the story goes, the great Manzoni in the presence of Lamartine called La Palli, the happy-hearted Italian poetess, a “Saffo novella.” Eurica Dionigi was called the “Saffo Lazia,” and Anassilide was named “Saffo campestre” by the inhabitants on the Piave. Their verses, however, fall far short of the real Sappho. In 1857 Giovanni Meli published La Morti di Saffu; and many another Italian writer has published poems in her honor, Gemma, Cipolla, Botti, etc.
Tragedies on the subject of Sappho in Italy have been few, among others those of Luigi Scevola (1815) and Salvatore Cammarono (1842); that of Leopoldo Marenco (1880) pictured Sappho as one of the Furies who was rejected by Phaon when he became enamored of another woman. Giovanni Pacini (Naples, 1840) first produced an opera on the theme, but changed the figure of Phaon to one who fell in love with Sappho and became jealous of Alcaeus, but was ready to die with him.
In recent years Carducci, in his Primavere Elleniche, makes Sappho and Alcaeus follow Apollo across the Aegean in a boat drawn by two white swans:
D’intorno girano come in leggera Danza le Cicladi patria de’l nume, Da lungi plaudono Cipro e Citera Con bianche spume. E un lieve il séguita pe’l grande Egeo Legno, a purpuree vele, canoro: Armato règgelo per l’onde Alceo Da’l plettro d’oro. Saffo da’l candido petto anelante A l’aura ambrosia che da’l dio vola, Da’l riso morbido, da l’ondeggiante Crin di viola, In mezzo assidesi.
The influence of Sappho on Italian literature is also seen in the many Italian translations of some or all of the fragments; Cappone (1670), Rogati (1783), Pilenejo (1793), Broglio d’Ajano (1804), Leopardi (1816), Benedetti da Cortona (1819), Foscolo (1822), Milani (1824), Zanotto (1844), Jacopo d’Oria (1845), Nievo (1858), Viani (1858), Bustelli (1863), Canini (1885), and others have translated the famous folk-song (see p. 78). Giovambattista Possevini (1565), Francesco Anguilla (1572), Pinelli (1639), Cappone (1670), Corsini (1700), Conti (1739), Verre (1780), Pindemonte (1781), Rogati (1783), Vincenzo Imperiale (1784), Pilenejo (1793), Tommaseo (1827), Comparetti (1876), Ardizzone (1876), Fraccaroli (1878), Ambrosoli (1878), Gemma (1879), Cavallotti (1883), De Gubernatis (1883), Canini (1885) have translated the Hymn to Aphrodite. Rogati (1783), Gori (1801), Montalti (1804), Broglio d’Ajano (1804), Sabbione (1817), Venini (1818), Caselli (1819), Foscolo (1823), Milani (1824), Costa (1825), Accio (1830), Monti (1832), Leone (1843), Nievo (1858), Canna (1871), Fraccaroli (1878), Canini (1885) have translated or adapted the second ode. D’Ajano (1804) gave the first complete version of all the old fragments, and in 1863 Bustelli did likewise,—neither of a high order of merit. In 1890 Cipollini published his verse translation of the first two odes and of the fragment about the Pleiades, which his brother set to music. The latest translation I have seen is by Latini (1914) and it is an excellent piece of work. Italy has had for the last hundred or more years a high regard for Sappho. Cipolla, thinking perhaps of Meleager’s comparison of Sappho’s poems to roses, says:
Ma i fior più belli Eran, Saffo, i tuoi canti, e ben sapevi Destinato a durar presso i futuri, Tra i più cari, il gentil nome di Saffo.
And Zanotto says:
Le corde Lesbie risuonar d’amore Per te, donna gentil, vanto di Grecia; Et il tuo lamento ancor discende al cuore.
Many of the fragments besides those mentioned have been translated into Italian or imitated by Italian writers, as for example Zanella’s famous imitation, A donna ignorante:
Tutta il sepolcro di accorrà: memoria Non fia che di te resti, Perchè le rose, del bel colle Aonio Le rose, non cogliesti: Tu senza nome scendarai dell’Erebo A’tenebrosi porti, E fatua larva fra le larve ignobili Vagolerai dei morti.
Montalti (1804) imitated the fragment on virginity (p. 91), adding, however, much material of his own; and D’Oria (1845) expanded Sappho’s ten words on the evening star into:
Espero amabile, Tu sempre apporti A noi vivissime Gioie e conforti. Tu splendi, e subito Le tazze, piene Di licor, vuotansi A liete cene. Gli armenti all’umile Ovil riduce La soavissima Tua bianca luce; E rende al tenero Seno di quella, Ond’ebbe il nascere, La pastorella.
Zanella (1887) says in his Volo in Ellade, which Cipollini quotes at length, that it is sweet to
Salutar le riviere a cui fedele L’eco dell’Ellesponto ancor ripete L’ardente inno di Saffo e le querele.
There is not space to speak further of Sappho’s influence in Italy; we have said enough to show that Italian poetry has many echoes of Sappho and that Italy still takes an interest in the Lesbian lyrist. Ada Negri with her fiery pictures of passion is to-day called the modern Italian Sappho.