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VINCENZO DA FILICAIA

(1642-1707)

ITERARY historians agree that Italian poetry reached its lowest ebb in the early part of the seventeenth century. The verse of the imitators of Marini degenerated into mere artifice. Brought to a high technical perfection, it yet lacked substance and truth of feeling, and was become a mere plaything in the hands of skillful versifiers. Near the end of the century a group of Roman literary men founded a society called "The Arcadia," whose avowed object was to repudiate this verse-making à la mode, and to bring

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VINCENZO DA FILICAIA

poetry back to nature. But they marred still further what they had set out to mend. In their hands simplicity became inanity. Instead of returning to nature they played at being shepherds and shepherdesses, while their pastoral Muse wore patches and French heels.

In this period of make-believe, almost the only genuine voice was that of Vincenzo da Filicaia. Born in Florence in 1642 of an ancient and noble family, he was liberally educated, at first in the schools of his native city and afterwards at the University of Pisa. Then, withdrawing to a small villa near Florence, he gave himself up to study and to writing. Like all his contemporaries, he began by composing amatory verse. After the marriage and early death of the lady whom he had celebrated, he burned all these youthful effusions, and dedicated his muse to God and to Italy. In 1683, when John Sobieski raised the siege of Vienna and saved the civilization of Europe from the invading Turks, Filicaia, thrilled by the heroism of the Polish king, celebrated his victory in six famous odes. Uplifted by the grandeur of his theme, the poet rose to heights of lyric enthusiasm. that set him among the inspired singers of his country. Read in all the courts of Europe, the modest poet who had hardly dared to show his verses to his friends, suddenly found himself face to face with a European reputation. The Christian nations, trembling to see their fate hang in the balance, found in these odes a passionate expression of their joy in deliverance, and of their admiration for the warrior king.

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The brilliant Christina of Sweden drew the poet into her circle in Rome, and undertook to educate his two sons. Cosmo III., Grand Duke of Florence, made him governor of Volterra and of Pisa. Filicaia spent the last few years of his life at Florence, where he had been raised to the rank of a senator. He died in that city Septem

ber 24th, 1707.

Although himself an Arcadian, and the most noted of that school, Filicaia was remarkably free from its extravagances. He was saved from bathos by the depth of his thought, the strength and energy of his expression, his mastery over technique, and the genuineness of his enthusiasm. Yet, sincere though he was, he did not quite escape the charge of affectation. His fame in consequence has undergone some mutations. Much of his poetry is still read with admiration, and his famous sonnet on Italy, which Byron has so finely paraphrased in the fourth canto of Childe Harold,' all Italians still know by heart.

I

TIME

SAW a mighty river, wild and vast,

Whose rapid waves were moments, which did glide
So swiftly onward in their silent tide,

That ere their flight was heeded, they were past;

A river, that to death's dark shores doth fast

Conduct all living with resistless force,

And though unfelt, pursues its noiseless course,
To quench all fires in Lethe's stream at last.
Its current with creation's birth was born;

And with the heaven's commenced its march sublime,
In days and months, still hurrying on untired.

Marking its flight, I inwardly did mourn,

And of my musing thoughts in doubt inquired
The river's name: my thoughts responded, Time.

OF PROVIDENCE

UST as a mother, with sweet pious face,

JUST

Turns towards her little children from her seat,
Gives one a kiss, another an embrace,

Takes this upon her knees, that on her feet;

And while from actions, looks, complaints, pretenses,
She learns their feelings and their various will,

To this a look, to that a word dispenses,

And whether stern or smiling, loves them still;

So Providence for us, high, infinite,

Makes our necessities its watchful task,

Hearkens to all our prayers, helps all our wants And even if it denies what seems our right, Either denies because 'twould have us ask,

Or seems but to deny, or in denying grants.

TO ITALY

TALIA, O Italia! hapless thou,

Who didst the fatal gift of beauty gain,—
A dowry fraught with never-ending pain,
A seal of sorrow stamped upon thy brow:
Oh, were thy bravery more, or less thy charms!
Then should thy foes, they whom thy loveliness
Now lures afar to conquer and possess,

Adore thy beauty less, or dread thine arms!
No longer then should hostile torrents pour

Adown the Alps; and Gallic troops be laved
In the red waters of the Po no more;

No longer then, by foreign courage saved, Barbarian succor should thy sons implore,—

Vanquished or victors, still by Goths enslaved.

FIRDAUSI

(935-1020)

BY A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON

IRDAUSĪ, author of the 'Shah Nāmah,' or Book of Kings, is the national poet of Persia. With the name of Firdausī in

the tenth century of our era, modern Persian poetry may be said to begin. Firdausi, however, really forms only one link in the long chain of Iranian literature which extends over more than twentyfive centuries, and whose beginnings are to be sought in the Avesta, five hundred years before the birth of Christ.

A brief glance may first be taken at the history of the literary development of Persia. The sacred Zoroastrian scriptures of the Avesta, together with the Old Persian rock inscriptions of the Achæmenian kings, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, form the ancient epoch known as Old Iranian Literature, beginning at least in the fifth century before the Christian era. A second great division in the literary history of Iran is constituted by the Middle Persian. This is the period inaugurated by the Sassanian dynasty in the third century A. D., and it extends beyond the Mohammedan conquest of Persia (651) to about the ninth century. The language and literature of this Middle Persian period is called Pahlavi. The Pahlavi records are chiefly writings relating to the Zoroastrian religion. The Mohammedan conquest of Iran by the Arabs somewhat resembles, in its effect upon Persian literature, the Norman conquest of England. Hardly two centuries had elapsed before an Iranian renaissance is begun to be felt in Persia. Firdausi comes three hundred years after the battle of Nihāvand, in which the eagle of the Persian military standard sank before the crescent of Allah's prophet and the Mohammedan sword; just as Chaucer followed the battle of Hastings by three hundred years.

Such was the literary situation at the end of the ninth century. Firdausi was the poet in whom the wave of the national epos culminated in the tenth century. But as there were English poets who struck the note before Chaucer, so in Persia, Firdausī had his literary predecessors. A mere mention of the more important of these must suffice. Abbas of Merv (809) was one of these earlier bards. Of greater repute was Rūdagi (died 954), who is said to have composed no less than a million verses. But Firdausi's direct predecessor and

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inspirer in the epic strain was Daqiqi. This young poet, like Marlowe, the herald of Shakespeare, was cruelly murdered when he had sung but a thousand lines. Yet these thousand verses are immortal, as Firdausī has incorporated them into his poem and has thus happily preserved them. They are the lines that describe the founding of the religion of Zoroaster, priest of fire. There was possibly a certain amount of tact on Firdausī's part in using these, or in claiming to employ Daqiqi's rhymes: he thus escaped having personally to deal with the delicate religious question of the Persian faith in the midst of the fanatical Mohammedans, who are said to have assassinated Daqiqi on account of his too zealous devotion to the old-time creed. With Firdausī, then, the New Persian era is auspiciously inaugurated in the tenth century; its further development through the romantic, philosophic, mystic, didactic, and lyric movements must be sought under the names of Nizāmi, Omar Khayyām, Jalāl-ad-din Rūmi, Sa'di, Hafiz, and Jāmī.

Firdausī is pre-eminently the heroic poet of Persia. The date of his birth falls about 935. His full name seems to have been Abulqasim Hasan (Ahmad or Mansur); the appellative "Firdausī" (Paradise), by which he is known to fame, was bestowed upon him, according to some accounts, by his royal patron the Sultan Mahmud. Firdausï's native place was Tūs in Khorāsān. By descent he was heir to that Persian pride and love of country which the Arab conquest could not crush. By birth, therefore, this singer possessed more than ordinary qualifications for chanting in rhythmical measures the annals of ancient Iran. He had undoubtedly likewise made long and careful preparation for his task, equipping himself by research into the Pahlavi or Middle Persian sources, from which he drew material for his chronicle-poem. From statements in the 'Shah Nāmah' itself, we may infer that Firdausī was nearly forty years of age when, with his extraordinary endowments, he made the real beginning of his monumental work. We likewise know, from personal references in the poem, that he had been married and had two children. The death of his beloved son is mourned in touching strains. One of the crowning events now in the poet's life was his entrance into the lit-, erary circle of the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, who ruled 998-1030. To Mahmud the great epic is finally dedicated, and the story of Firdausi's career may best be told in connection with the masterpiece.

The removal of the heroic bard Daqiqi by fate and by the assassin's dagger had left open the way for an ambitious epic poet. Firdausi was destined to be the fortunate aspirant. A romantic story tells of his coming to the court of Sultan Mahmud. This legendary account says that when he first approached the Round Table, the

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