Note 18 — INTRODUCTION. Part I. CARLO GOZZI AND PIERO ANTONIO GRATAROL.
John Addington Symonds translation
De Musset, in order to support his view of Gozzi as the precursor of Romanticism and of Hoffmann, strains to the utmost the chapter on Contrattempi in the Memoirs. He furthermore professes to have extracted a very bizarre account of the reasons why Gozzi abandoned his Fiabe—in plain words, because the elves and spirits he brought upon the stage were resolved to be revenged on him—from a letter addressed to Gasparo by Carlo Gozzi (Mémoires de Charles Gozzi, pp. 184-188). De Musset adds no reference to the source of this alleged letter, which is mentioned by neither Magrini nor Masi. Indeed, Signor Ernesto Masi informs me that he knows nothing about it. I too have failed to discover it. In his Memoirs, and in the prefaces to several plays, Gozzi gives a very different account of the reasons why he stopped producing Fiabe. I am loth to draw the conclusion that the letter in question was a deliberate forgery of Paul de Musset's. Further researches may bring it still to light, but at present it has to be regarded with the greatest possible suspicion.