Invecchiando gli uomini piangono (I narratori) (Italian Edition)

Invecchiando gli uomini piangono

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Yet I should be inclined to prefer the gathering of the storm of discord in Agramante's camp. The thunder-clouds which had been mustering to break in ruin upon Christendom, rush together and spend their fury in mid air. Thus the moment is decisive, and nothing has been spared to dignify the passions that provoke the final crash. They go on accumulating in complexity, like a fugue of discords, till at last the hyperbole of this sonorous stanza that seems justified: His pathos also has its own sublimity. Imogen stretched lifeless on the corpse of Cloten; the Duchess of Malfi telling Cariola to see that her daughter says her prayers; Bellario describing his own sacrifice as a mere piece of boyhood flung away—these are instances from our own drama, in which the pathetic is sublime.

Ariosto's method is different, and the effect is more rhetorical. Yet he can produce passages of almost equal poignancy, prolonged situations of overmastering emotion, worthy to be set side by side with the Euripidean pictures of Polyxena, Alcestis, or Iphigenia. Zerbino is one of the most sympathetic creations of the poet's fancy.

Of him Ariosto wrote the famous line: He is killed by the Tartar Mandricardo before his lady Isabella's eyes: With stanzas like this the poet cheats the sorrow he has stirred in us. Their imagery is too beautiful to admit of painful feeling while we read; and thus, though the passion of the scene is tragic, its anguish is brought by touches of pure art into harmony with the romantic tone of the whole poem. So also when Isabella, kneeling before Rodomonte's sword, like S. Catherine in Luini's fresco at Milan, has met her own death, Ariosto heals the wound he has inflicted on our sensibility by lines of exquisitely cadenced melody: But it is in the situations, the elegiac lamentations, the unexpected vicissitudes, and the strong pictorial beauties of Olimpia's novel, that Ariosto strains his power over pathos to the utmost.

Olimpia has lost her kingdom and spent her substance for her husband, Bireno. Orlando aids her in her sore distress, and frees Bireno from his prison. Bireno proves faithless, and deserts her on an island. She is taken by corsairs, exposed like Andromeda on a rock to a sea-monster, and is finally rescued by Orlando. Each of these touching incidents is developed with consummate skill; and the pathos reaches its height when Olimpia, who had risked all for her husband, wakes at dawn to find herself abandoned by him on a desolate sea-beach.

Catullus in a single felicitous simile, Fletcher by the agony of passionate declamation, surpass Ariosto's detailed picture. The one is more restrained, the other more tragic. But Ariosto goes straight to our heart by the natural touch of Olimpia feeling for Bireno in the darkness, and by the suggestion of pallid moonlight and a shivering dawn. The numerous prosaic details with which he has charged his picture, add to its reality, and enhance the Euripidean quality we admire in it.

In the case of a poet whose imagination was invariably balanced by practical sound sense, the personal experience he acquired of the female sex could not fail to influence his delineation of women. He was not a man to cherish illusion or to romance in verse about perfection he had never found in fact.

He did not place a Beatrice or Laura on the pedestal of his heart; nor was it till he reached the age of forty-seven, when the Furioso had lain for six years finished on his desk, that he married Alessandra Strozzi. His great poem, completed in , must have been written under the influence of those more volatile amours he celebrated in his Latin verses.

Therefore we are not surprised to find that the female characters of the Orlando illustrate his epistle on the choice of a wife. Yet even in Bradamante he has painted a virago from whom the more delicate humanity of Shakspere would have recoiled. The scene in which she quarrels with Marfisa about Ruggiero degrades her in our eyes, and makes us feel that such a termagant might prove a sorry wife. Consequently when, just before her marriage, she snuffs the carnage of the Saracens from afar, and regrets that she must withhold her hand from "such rich spoil of slaughter in a spacious field," a painful sense of incongruity is left upon our mind.

But Bradamante, destined to become a mother, gentle in her home affections, obedient to her father's wishes, tremulous in her attachment to Ruggiero, cannot with any propriety be compared to a leopard loosed from the leash upon defenseless gazelles. After the more finished portrait of Bradamante, we find in Isabella and Fiordeligi, the lovers of Zerbino and Brandimarte, Ariosto's purest types of feminine affection.

The cardinal virtue of woman in his eyes was self-devotion—loyalty to the death, unhesitating sacrifice of wealth, ease, reputation, life, to the one object of passionate attachment. And this self-devotion he has painted in Olimpia no less romantically than in Isabella and Fiordeligi. Still it must be remembered that Isabella had eloped with Zerbino from her father's palace, that Fiordeligi was only a wife in name, and that Olimpia murdered her first husband and consoled herself very rapidly for Bireno's loss in the arms of Oberto.

The poet has not cared to interweave with either portrait such threads of piety and purity as harmonize the self-abandonment of Juliet. Fiordespina's ready credence of the absurd story by which Ricciardetto persuades her that he is Bradamante metamorphosed by a water-fairy to a man, and her love longings, so frankly confessed, so unblushingly indulged, illustrate the passion Ariosto delighted to describe.

He feels a tender sympathy for feminine frailty, and in more than one exquisitely written passage claims for women a similar license in love to that of men. Angelica, who in the Innamorato touches our feelings by her tenderness for Rinaldo, in the Furioso becomes a mere coquette, and is well punished by her insane passion for the first pretty fellow that takes her fancy.

The common faults for which Ariosto taxes women are cupidity, infidelity, and fraud. Ariosto's morality was clearly on a level with that of the novelists from Boccaccio to Bandello; and his apology is that he was not inferior to the standard of his age. Still it is not much to his credit to plead that his cantos are less impure than the Capitoli of Monsignore La Casa or the prurient comedies of Aretino.

Even allowing for the laxity of Renaissance manners, it must be conceded that he combined vulgar emotions and a coarse-fibered nature with the most refined artistic genius. The beauty of its style, the absence of tragedy in its situations or of passion in its characters, and the humorous smile with which the poet acts as showman to the secrets of the alcove, render this tale one of the most licentious in literature.

Nor is this licentiousness balanced by any sublimer spiritual quality. His ideal of manliness is physical force and animal courage. Cruelty and bloodshed for the sake of slaughter stain his heroes. The style of the Furioso is said to have taught Galileo how to write Italian. This style won from him for Ariosto the title of divine. As the luminous and flowing octave stanzas pass before us, we are almost tempted to forget that they are products of deliberate art. The beauty of their form consists in its limpidity and naturalness.

Ariosto has no mannerism. He always finds exactly the expression needed to give clearness to the object he presents. Whether the mood be elegiac or satiric, humorous or heroic, idyllic or rhetorical, this absolute sincerity and directness of language maintains him at an even level. In each case he has given the right, the best, the natural investiture to thought, and his phrases have the self-evidence of crystals.

Just as he collected the materials of his poem from all sources, so he appropriated every word that seemed to serve his need. The vocabulary of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the racy terms of popular poetry, together with Latinisms and Lombardisms, were alike laid under contribution. Yet these diverse elements were so fused together and brought into a common toning by his taste that, though the language of his poem was new, it was at once accepted as classical. When we remember the difficulties which in his days beset Italian composition, when we call to mind the frigid experiments of Bembo in Tuscan diction, the meticulous proprieties of critics like Speron Speroni, and the warfare waged around the Gerusalemme Liberata , we know not whether to wonder at Ariosto's happy audacities in language or at their still happier success.

His triumph was not won without severe labor. He spent ten years in the composition of the Furioso and sixteen in its polishing. The autograph at Ferrara shows page upon page of alteration, transposition, and refinement on the first draught, proving that the Homeric limpidity and ease we now admire, were gained by assiduous self-criticism.

The result of this long toil is that there cannot be found a rough or languid or inharmonious passage in an epic of 50, lines. If we do not discern in Ariosto the inexhaustible freshness of Homer, the sublime music of Milton, the sculpturesque brevity of Dante, the purity of Petrarch, or the majestic sweetness of Virgilian cadences, it can fairly be said that no other poet is so varied. None mingles strength, sweetness, subtlety, rapidity, rhetoric, breadth of effect and delicacy of suggestion, in a harmony so perfect.

None combines workmanship so artistic with a facility that precludes all weariness. Whether we read him simply to enjoy his story or to taste the most exquisite flavors of poetic diction, we shall be equally satisfied. Language in his hands is like a soft and yielding paste, which takes all forms beneath the molder's hand, and then, when it has hardened, stays for ever sharp in outline, glittering as adamant. While following the romantic method of Boiardo and borrowing the polished numbers of Poliziano, Ariosto refined the stanzas of the former poet without losing rapidity, and avoided the stationary pomp of the latter without sacrificing richness.

He thus effected a combination of the two chief currents of Italian versification, and brought the octave to its final perfection. When we study the passage which describes the entrance of Ruggiero into the island home of Alcina, we feel the advance in melody and movement that he made. We are reminded of the gardens of Morgana and Venus; but both are surpassed in their own qualities of beauty, while the fluidity that springs from complete command of the material, is added. Such touches as the following: Again, this stanza, without the brocaded splendor of Poliziano, contains all that he derived from Claudian: Raphael, Correggio and Titian have succeeded to Botticelli and Mantegna; and as those supreme painters fused the several excellences of their predecessors in a fully-developed work of art, so has Ariosto passed beyond his masters in the art of poetry.

Nor was the process one of mere eclecticism. Intent upon similar aims, the final artists of the early sixteenth century brought the same profound sentiment for reality, the same firm grasp on truth, the same vivid imagination as their precursors to the task. But they possessed surer hands and a more accomplished method.

They stood above their subject and surveyed it from the height of conscious power. After the island of Alcina, it only remained for Tasso to produce novelty in his description of Armida's gardens by pushing one of Ariosto's qualities to exaggeration. The dolcezza , which in Tasso is too sugared, has in Ariosto the fine flavor of wild honeycombs.

In the tropical magnificence of Tasso's stanzas there is a sultry stupor which the fresh sunlight of the Furioso never sheds. This wilding grace of the Ferrarese Homer is due to the lightness of his touch—to the blending of humorous with luxurious images in a style that passes swiftly over all it paints.

It is not that Tasso has not invented a new music and wrung a novel effect from the situation by the impassioned fervor of his sympathy and by the majestic languor of his cadences. But we feel that what Tasso relies on for his main effect, Ariosto had already suggested in combination with other and still subtler qualities.

The one has the overpowering perfume of a hothouse jasmine; the other has the mingled scents of a garden where roses and carnations are in bloom. Ariosto's pictorial faculty has already formed the topic of a paragraph, nor is it necessary to adduce instances of what determines the whole character of the Orlando Furioso. Otherwise it would be easy to form a gallery of portraits and landscapes; to compare the double treatment of Andromeda exposed to the sea monster in the tenth and eleventh cantos, [44] to set a pageant in the style of Mantegna by the side of a Correggiesque vignette, [45] or to enlarge upon the beauty of those magical Renaissance buildings which the poet dreamed of in the midst of verdant lawns and flowery wildernesses.

Therefore we find but little of landscape-painting for its own sake and small sympathy with the wilder and uncultivated beauties of the world. His scenery recalls the backgrounds to Carpaccio's pictures or the idyllic gardens of the Giorgionesque school. Sometimes there is a magnificent drawing in the style of Titian's purple mountain ranges, and here and there we come upon minutely finished studies that imply deep feeling for the moods of nature. Of this sort is the description of autumn [47] ;. The illuminative force of his similes is quite extraordinary.

He uses them not only as occasions for painting cabinet pictures of exquisite richness, but also for casting strong imaginative light upon the object under treatment. In the earlier part of the Furioso he describes two battles with a huge sea monster. The Orc is a kind of romantic whale, such as Piero di Cosimo painted in his tale of Andromeda; and Ruggiero has to fight it first, while riding on the Hippogriff.

It is therefore necessary for Ariosto to image forth a battle between behemoth and a mighty bird. He does so by elaborately painting the more familiar struggles of an eagle who has caught a snake, and of a mastiff snapping at a fly. The mixture of imagery with prosaic detail brings the whole scene distinctly before our eyes. When Orlando engages the same monster, he is in a boat, and the conditions of the contest are altered.

Accordingly we have a different set of similes. A cloud that fills a valley, rolling to and fro between the mountain sides, describes the movement of the Orc upon the waters; and when Orlando thrusts his anchor in between its jaws to keep them open, he is compared to miners propping up their galleries with beams in order that they may pursue their work in safety. The same nice adaptation of images may be noticed in the similes showered on Rodomonte.

The giant is alone inside the walls of Paris, and the poet is bound to make us feel that a whole city may have cause to tremble before a single man. Therefore he never leaves our fancy for a moment in repose. At one time it is a castle shaken by a storm; at another a lion retreating before the hunters; again, a tigress deprived of her cubs, or a bull that has broken from the baiting- pole, or the whelps of a lioness attacking a fierce young steer. Some of Ariosto's illustrations—like the plowman and the thunderbolt, the two dogs fighting, the powder magazine struck by lightning, the house on fire at night, the leaves of autumn, the pine that braves a tempest, the forest bending beneath mighty winds, the April avalanche of suddenly dissolving snow—though wrought with energy and spirit, have not more than the usual excellences of carefully developed Homeric imitation.

Others illuminate the matter they are used to illustrate, with the radiance of subtle and remote fancy. Of this sort is the brief image by which the Paladins in Charlemagne's army are likened to jewels in a cloth of gold: A common metaphor takes new beauty by its handling in this simile [53] ;. Both Homer and Virgil likened their dying heroes to flowers cut down by the tempest or the plow. The following passage will bear comparison even with the death of Euphorbus: One more example may be chosen where Ariosto has borrowed nothing from any model. He uses the perfume that clings to the hair or dress of youth or maiden, as a metaphor for the aroma of noble ancestry: The unique importance of Ariosto in the history of Renaissance poetry justifies a lengthy examination of his masterpiece.

In him the chief artistic forces of the age were so combined that he remains its best interpreter. Painting, the cardinal art of Italy, determined his method; and the tide of his narrative car ried with it the idyl, the elegy, and the novella. In these forms the genius of the Renaissance found fittest literary expression; for the epic and the drama lay beyond the scope of the Italians at this period.

The defect of deep passion and serious thought, the absence of enthusiasm, combined with rare analytic powers and an acute insight into human nature, placed Ariosto in close relation to his age. Free from illusions, struggling after no high-set ideal, accepting the world as he found it, without the impulse to affirm or to deny, without hate, scorn, indignation or revolt, he represented the spirit of the sixteenth century in those qualities which were the source of moral and political decay to the Italians. But he also embodied the strong points of his epoch—especially that sustained pursuit of beauty in form, that width of intellectual sympathy, that urbanity of tone and delicacy of perception, which rendered Italy the mistress of the arts, the propagator of culture for the rest of Europe.

Of Boccaccio's legacy the most considerable portion, and the one that bore the richest fruit, was the Decameron. During the sixteenth century the Novella , as he shaped it, continued to be a popular and widely practiced form of literature. Nor is this predominance of what must be reckoned a subordinate branch of fiction, altogether singular; for the Novella was in a special sense adapted to the public which during the Age of the Despots grew up in Italy. Since the fourteenth century the conditions of social life had undergone a thorough revolution. Under the influence of dynastic rulers stationed in great cities, merchants and manufacturers were confounded with the old nobility; and in commonwealths like Florence the bourgeoisie gave their tone to society.

At the same time the community thus formed was separated from the people by the bar of humanistic culture. Literature felt this social transformation. Its products were shaped to suit the taste of the middle classes, and at the same time to amuse the leisure of the aristocracy.

The Novella was the natural outcome of these circumstances.

Its qualities and its defects alike betray the ascendency of the bourgeois element. When a whole nation is addressed in drama or epic, it is necessary for the poet to strike a lofty and noble note. He appeals to collective humanity, and there is no room for aught that savors of the trivial and base. Homer and Sophocles, Dante and Shakspere, owed their grandeur in no slight measure to the audience for whom they labored. The case is altered when a nation comes to be divided into orders, each of which has its own peculiar virtues and its own besetting sins.

Limitations are of necessity introduced and deflections from the canon of universality are welcomed. If the poet, for example, writes for the lowest classes of society, he can afford to be coarse, but he must be natural. An aristocracy, taken by itself, is apt, on the contrary, to demand from literature the refinements of fashionable vice and the subtleties of artificial sentiment. Under such influence we obtain the Arthurian legends of the later middle ages, which contrast unfavorably, in all points of simplicity and directness, with the earlier Niebelungen and Carolingian Cycles.

The middle classes, for their part, delight in pictures of daily life, presented with realism, and flavored with satire that touches on the points of their experience. Literature produced to please the bourgeois , must be sensible and positive; and its success will greatly depend upon the piquancy of its appeal to ordinary unidealized appetites.

The Italians lacked such means of addressing the aggregated masses of the nation as the panhellenic festivals of Greece afforded. The public, which gave its scale of grandeur and sincerity to the Attic and Elizabethan drama, was wanting. The literature of the cinque cento , though it owed much to the justice of perception and simple taste of the true people, was composed for the most part by men of middle rank for the amusement of citizens and nobles. It partook of those qualities which characterise the upper and middle classes. It was deficient in the breadth, the magnitude, the purity, which an audience composed of the whole nation can alone communicate.

We find it cynical, satirical, ingenious in sly appeals to appetite, and oftentimes superfluously naughty. Above all it was emphatically the literature of a society confined to cities. It may be difficult to decide what special quality of the Italian temperament was satisfied with the Novella. Yet the fact remains that this species of composition largely governed their production, not only in the field of narrative, but also in the associated region of poetry and in the plastic arts.

So powerful was the attraction it possessed, that even the legends of the saints assumed this character.

Renaissance in Italy, Volume 5 (of 7), by John Addington Symonds

A notable portion of the Sacre Rappresentazioni were dramatized Novelle. The romantic poets interwove Novelle with their main theme, and the charm of the Orlando Furioso is due in no small measure to such episodes. Popular poems of the type represented by Ginevra degli Almieri were versified Novelle.

Celebrated trials, like that of the Countess of Cellant, Vittoria Accoramboni, or the Cenci, were offered to the people in the form of Novelle. The best serial pictures of the secondary painters—whether we select Benozzo Gozzoli's legend of S. Augustine at San Gemignano, or Carpaccio's legend of S.

Ursula at Venice, or Sodoma's legend of S. John at Prato—are executed in the spirit of the novelists. They are Novelle painted in their salient incidents for the laity to study on the walls of church and oratory. The term Novella requires definition, lest the thing in question should be confounded with our modern novel. Although they bear the same name, these species have less in common than might be supposed. Both, indeed, are narratives; but while the novel is a history extending over a considerable space of time, embracing a complicated tissue of events, and necessitating a study of character, the Novella is invariably brief and sketchy.

It does not aim at presenting a detailed picture of human life within certain artistically chosen limitations, but confines itself to a striking situation, or tells an anecdote illustrative of some moral quality. This is shown by the headings of the sections into which Italian Novellieri divided their collections.

We read such rubrics as the following: The Novelle were descended in a direct line from the anecdotes embedded in medieval Treasuries, Bestiaries, and similar collections. The novel, on the other hand, as Cervantes, Richardson, and Fielding formed it for the modern nations, is an expansion and prose digest of the drama. It implies the drama as a previous condition of its being, and flourishes among races gifted with the dramatic faculty. Furthermore, the Novelle were composed for the amusement of mixed companies, who met together and passed their time in conversation.

All the Novellieri pretend that their stories were originally recited and then written down, nor is there the least doubt that in a large majority of cases they were really read aloud or improvised upon occasions similar to those invented by their authors. These circumstances determined the length and ruled the mechanism of the Novella.

It was impossible within the short space of a spoken tale to attempt any minute analysis of character, or to weave the meshes of a complicated plot. The narrator went straight to his object, which was to arrest the attention, stimulate the curiosity, gratify the sensual instincts, excite the laughter, or stir the tender emotions of his audience by some fantastic, extraordinary, voluptuous, comic, or pathetic incident.

He sketched his personages with a few swift touches, set forth their circumstances with pungent brevity, and expended his force upon the painting of the central motive. Sometimes he contented himself with a bare narrative, leaving its details to the fancy. Many Novelle are the mere skeletons of stories, short notes, and epitomes of tales. At another time he indulged in descriptive passages of great verbal beauty, when it was his purpose to delight the ideal audience with pictures, or to arouse their sympathy for his characters in a situation of peculiar vividness.

Or he introduced digressions upon moral themes suggested by the passion of the moment, discoursing with the easy flow of one who raises points of casuistry in a drawing-room. Again, he heightened the effects of his anecdote by elaborate rhetorical development of the main emotions, placing carefully-studied speeches into the mouth of heroine or hero, and using every artifice for appealing directly to the feelings of his hearers.

Thus, while the several Novellieri pursue different methods at different times according to their purpose, their styles are all determined by the fact that recitation was essential to the species. All of them, moreover, have a common object in amusement. Though the Novellieri profess to teach morality by precept, and though some of them prefix prayers to their most impudent debauches of the fancy, [58] it is clear that entertainment was their one sole end in view. For their success they relied on the novelty and strangeness of their incidents; on obscenity, sometimes veiled beneath the innuendoes and suggestive metaphors of Italian convention, but more often unabashed and naked to the view; on startling horrors, acts of insane passion, or the ingenuities of diabolical cruelty.

The humor of beffe and burle , jests played by rogues on simpletons, practical jokes, and the various devices whereby wives and lovers fooled confiding husbands, supplied abundant material for relieving the more tragic stories. Lastly, the wide realm of pathos, the spectacle of beauty in distress, young lovers overwhelmed by undeserved calamity, sudden reverses of fortune, and accidents of travel upon land and sea, provided the narrator with plentiful matter for working on the sympathy of his readers.

Of moral purpose in any strict sense of the phrase the Novelle have none. This does not mean that they are invariably immoral; on the contrary, the theme of a considerable number is such that the tale can be agreeably told without violence to the most sensitive taste. But the novelist had no ethical intention; therefore he brought every motive into use that might amuse or stimulate, with business-like indifference. He felt no qualm of conscience at provoking the cruder animal instincts, at dragging the sanctities of domestic life in the mire of his buffoonery, or at playing on the appetite for monstrous vice, the thirst for abnormal sensations, in his audience.

So long as he could excite attention, he was satisfied. We cannot but wonder at the customs of a society which derived its entertainment from these tales, when we know that noble ladies listened to them without blushing, and that bishops composed them as a graceful compliment to the daughter of a reigning duke. In style the Novelle are, as might be expected, very unequal. Everybody tried his hand at them: Yet all affected to be following Boccaccio. His artificial periods and rhetorical amplifications, ill-managed by men of imperfect literary training, who could not free themselves from local jargons, produced an awkward mixture of discordant faults.

Yet the public expected little from the novelist in diction. What they required was movement, stimulus, excitement of their passions. So long as the tale-maker kept curiosity awake, it was a matter of comparative indifference what sort of words he used. The Novella was a literary no-man's-land, where the critic exercised a feeble sway, and amateurs or artists did what each found suited to his powers. It held its ground under conditions similar to those which determined the supply of plays among us in the seventeenth century, or of magazine novels in this. In their material the Novelle embraced the whole of Italian society, furnishing pictures of its life and manners from the palaces of princes to the cottages of contadini.

Every class is represented—the man of books, the soldier, the parish priest, the cardinal, the counter-jumper, the confessor, the peasant, the duke, the merchant, the noble lady, the village maiden, the serving-man, the artisan, the actor, the beggar, the courtesan, the cut-throat, the astrologer, the lawyer, the physician, the midwife, the thief, the preacher, the nun, the pander, the fop, the witch, the saint, the galley-slave, the friar—they move before us in a motley multitude like the masquerade figures of carnival time, jostling each other in a whirl of merriment and passion, mixing together in the frank democracy of vice.

Though these pictures of life are brightly colored and various beyond description, they are superficial. It is only the surface of existence that the Novelliere touches. He leaves its depths unanalyzed, except when he plunges a sinister glance into some horrible abyss of cruelty or lust, or, stirred by gentler feeling, paints an innocent unhappy youthful love. The student of contemporary Italian customs will glean abundant information from these pages; the student of human nature gathers little except reflections on the morals of sixteenth-century society.

It was perhaps this prodigal superfluity of striking incident, in combination with poverty of intellectual content, which made the Novelle so precious to our playwrights. The tales of Cinthio and Bandello supplied them with the outlines of tragedies, leaving the poet free to exercise his analytic and imaginative powers upon the creation of character and the elaboration of motive. But that in spite of all their faults, the Novelle fascinate the fancy and stimulate the mental energies, will be admitted by all who have made them the subject of careful study.

To render an adequate account of the Novellieri and their works is very difficult. At Florence Firenzuola penned stories with the golden fluency and dazzling wealth of phrase peculiar to him. Il Lasca's Cene rank among the most considerable literary products of the age. But it was chiefly in the North of Italy that novelists abounded. Giraldi's hundred tales, entitled Hecatommithi , issued from Ferrara.

They were heavy in style, and prosaic; yet their matter made them widely popular. Cademosto of Lodi, Monsignor Brevio of Venice, Ascanio de' Mori of Mantua, Luigi da Porto of Vicenza, and, last not least, the illustrious Matteo Bandello, proved how rich in this species of literature were the northern provinces.

The Lombards displayed a special faculty for tales in which romance predominated. Venice, notorious for her pleasure-marts of luxury, became the emporium of publications which supplied her courtesans and rufflers with appropriate mental food. The Tuscans showed more comic humor, and, of course, a purer style. But in point of matter, intellectual and moral, there is not much to choose between the works of Florentine and Lombard authors.

Following the precedent of Boccaccio, it was usual for the Novellieri to invent a framework for their stories, making it appear that a polite society of men and women called in Italy a lieta brigata had by some chance accident been thrown upon their own resources in circumstances of piquant novelty. One of the party suggests that they should spend their time in telling tales, and a captain is chosen who sets the theme and determines the order of the story-tellers. These introductions are not unfrequently the most carefully written portion of the collection, and abound in charming sketches of Italian life.

Thus Il Lasca at the opening of Le Cene feigns that a company of young men and women went in winter time to visit at a friend's house in Florence. It was snowing, and the youths amused themselves by a snow-ball match in the inner courtyard of the palace. The ladies watched them from a loggia , till it came into their heads to join the game. Snow was brought them from the roofs, and they began to pelt the young men from their bal cony. Girolamo Parabosco places the scene of his Diporti on the Venetian lagoons. A party of gentlemen have left the city to live in huts of wood and straw upon the islands, with the intention of fowling and fishing.

The weather proves too bad for sport, and they while away the hours of idleness with anecdotes. Bandello follows a different method, which had been suggested by Masuccio. He dedicates his Novelle to the distinguished people of his acquaintance, in prefaces not devoid of flattery, but highly interesting to a student of those times.

Princes, poets, warriors, men of state, illustrious women, and humanists pass before us in these dedications, proving that polite society in Italy, the society of the learned and the noble, was a republic of wit and culture. Alessandro Bentivoglio and Ippolita Sforza, the leaders of fashion and Bandello's special patrons, take the first rank.

Fame usurpate by Vittorio Imbriani

Either directly addressed in prefaces or mentioned with familiar allusion in the course of the narratives, these historic names remind us that the author lived at the center of civilization, and that his Novelle were intended for the entertainment of the great world. What Castiglione presents abstractedly and in theory as a critique of noble society, is set before us by Bandello in the concrete form of every-day occurrence.

Nor does the author forget that he is speaking to this company. His words are framed to suit their prejudices; his allusions have reference to their sentiments and predilections. The whole work of art breathes the air of good manners and is tuned to a certain pitch-note of fashionable tone. Meanwhile Ariosto has parodied the opening of Dante's 'Inferno' with its sublime: Mi mise dentro alle segrete cose.

Lidia is the inversion of Francesca ; for her sin was, not compliance with the impulses of nature, but unkindness to her lover. This travesty is wrought with no deliberate purpose, but by a mere caprice of fancy, to entertain his audience with a novel while he flouts the faiths and fears of a more earnest age. For Ariosto, the child of the Benaissance, there remained nothing to affirm or to deny about the future of the soul. The Inferno of the middle ages had become a plaything of romance.

Astolfo now pursues his journey, looks in on Prester John, and scales the mountain of the Earthly Paradise. There he finds a palace wrought of precious stones, and in the vestibule an ancient man with venerable beard and snowy hair. This is no other than S. Con accoglienza grata il cavaliero Fu dai santi alloggiato in una stanza: Fu proyyisto in un' altra al suo destriero Di buona biada, che gli fu abbastanza.

De' fmtti a lui del paradiso diero, Di tal sapor, ch' a suo giudicio, sanza Scusa non sono i duo primi parenti, Se per que! John, delighted with his courteous guest, discourses many things about Orlando, his lost wits, and the moon where they haye been stored with other rubbish. At the close of their conyersation he remarks that it is a fine night for a journey to the moon ; and orders out the fiery chariot which erewhile took Elijah up to heayen.

It holds two passengers with comfort ; and after a short yoyage through the air, Astolfo and the EyangeHst land upon the lunar shores. The stanzas which describe the yalley of yain things and useless lumber lost to earth are justly famous for their satire and their pathos. The list is long ; nor was Milton unmindful of it when he wrote his lines upon the Paradise of Fools. He has no dread of the prosaic and the simple. Inexhaustibly yarious alike in thought, in rhythm, in imagery, and in melody of phrase, he yet keeps close to reality, and passes without modulation from seriousness to extraya- gantfnn, returning again to the sadness of profound reflection.

Human life to Ariosto was a comedy such as Menander put upon the Attic stage ; and the critic may ask of him, too, whether he or nature were the plagiarist. John is waiting at Astolfo's elbow to point out the Fates, spinning their web of human destinies, and Time carrying the records of history, to the river of oblivion. It is a sad picture, did not Ariosto enliven the most sombre matter with his incorrigible humour.

By the river bank of Lethe wait cormorants and swans. The former aid Time in his labour of destruction. The latter, who symbolise great poets, save chosen names from undeserved neglect. This leads to a discourse on the services rendered by writers to their patrons, which is marked by Ariosto's levity. He has just been penning praises for Ippolito. John is even made to hint that his good place in Paradise is the guerdon of a panegyric written on his Master: Gli scrittori amo, e f o 11 debito mio ; Ch' al vostro mondo fid scrittore anch' io: E sopra tutti gli altri io feci acquisto Che non mi pu6 lovar tempo nb morte ; E ben convenne al mio lodato Gristo Bendermi guidardon di si gran sorte.

The episode of Astolfo's journey to the moon abounds in satire upon human weakness in general. Paris is besieged by the assembled forces of the Saracens.

God accepts the Emperor's prayer, and sends Michael down to earth to find Discord and Silence, in order that the former may sow strife in the Saracen camp, and the latter lead reinforcements into Paris. Michael starts upon his errand: DoYunqne drizza Michelangel V ale, Fuggon le nubi, e torna il oiel serene ; Gli gira intomo un aureo cerchio, quale Veggiam di notte lampeggiar baleno. He flies straight to a monastery, expecting to find Silence there.

The choir, the parlour, the dormitory, the refectory are searched. Wherever he goes he sees Silenzio written up; but Silence cannot be found. Discord presents herself, and is recognised by her robe of many-coloured fluttering ribbons, dishevelled hair, and armful of law-papers. Fraud, too, accosts the angel with a gentle face like Gabriel's when he said Ave!

To Michael's question after Silence, Fraud replies: Yet if you are very anxious to lay hands on him at once, haste to the haunt of Sleep. This cavern is described in stanzas that undoubtedly suggested Spenser's ; but Ariosto has nothing so delicate as: A trickling stream from high rock tumbling down, And ever drizzling rain upon the loft, Mixed with a murmuring wind much like the sown Of swarming bees.

Silence, summoned by the archangel, sets forth to meet Kinaldo. Discord also quits the convent with her comrade Pride, leaving Fraud and Hypocrisy to keep their places warm till they return. But Discord does her work inadequately ; and the cries of Bodomonte's victims rise to heaven. This rouses Michael from his slumber of beatitude. He blushes, plumes his pinions, and shoots down again to earth in search of Discord among the monks.

He finds her sitting in a chapter convened for the election of officers, and makes her in a moment feel his presence: Indi le roppe un manico di croce Per la testa, pel dosso e per le braccia. The robust arch- angel tearing Discord's dishevelled hair, kicking her, pound- ing her with his fists, breaking a cross upon her back, and sending her about her business with a bee in her bonnet, presents a picture of drollery which is exceedingly absurd. Nor is there any impropriety in the picture from the poet's point of view.

Michael and the Evangelist are scarcely serious beings. They both form part of his machinery, and help to make the action move. Yet he some- times touches the sublime by force of dramatic description or by pathetic intensity. The climax of Orlando's madness has commonly been cited as an instance of poetic grandeur.

Yet I should be inclined to prefer the gathering of the storm of discord in Agramante's camp. The thunder-clouds which had been mustering to break in ruin upon Christendom, rush together and spend their fury in mid air. Thus the moment is decisive, and nothing has been spared to dignify the passions that provoke the final crash.

Si strinsero le madri i figli al seno. His pathos also has its own sublimity. Imogen stretched lifeless on the corpse of Cloten ; the Duchess of Malfi telling Cariola to see that her daughter days her prayers ; Bellario describing his own sacrifice as a mere piece of boyhood flung away — these are instances from our own drama, in which the pathetic is sublime. Yet he can produce passages of almost equal poignancy, prolonged situations of overmastering emotion, worthy to be set side by side with the Euripidean pictures of Polyxena, Alcestis, or Iphigenia.

Both were supreme artists in an age of incipient decadence, lacking the convictions of their predecessors, and depending for effect upon rhetorical devices. Both were rpayiKwrarot in Aristotle's sense of the phrase, and both were romantic rather than heroic poets. Zerbino is one of the most sympathetic creations of the poet's fancy. Of him Ariosto wrote the famous line: He is killed by the Tartar Mandricardo before his lady Isabella's eyes: With stanzas like this the poet cheats the sorrow he has stirred in us.

Their imagery is too beautiful to admit of painful feeling while we read ; and thus, though the passion of the scene is tragic, its anguish is brought by touches of puie art into harmony with the romantic tone of the whole poem. So also when Isabella, kneeling before Eodomonte's sword, like S. Catherine in Luini's fresco at Milan, has met her own death, Ariosto heals the wound he has inflicted on our sensibility by lines of exquisitely cadenced melody: Olimpia has lost her kingdom and spent her substance for her husband, Bireno.

Orlando aids her in her sore distress, and frees Bireno from his prison. Bireno proves faithless, and deserts her on an island. She is taken by corsairs, exposed like Andromeda on a rock to a sea- monster, and is finally rescued by Orlando. Each of these touching incidents is developed with consummate skill ; and the pathos reaches its height when Olimpia, who had risked all for her husband, wakes at dawn to find herself abandoned by him on a desolate sea-beach.

Saxea ut effigies Bacchantis prospioit: Catullus in a single felicitous simile, Fletcher by the agony of passionate declama- tion, surpass Ariosto's detailed picture. The one is more restrained, the other more tragic. But Ariosto goes straight to our heart by the natural touch of Olimpia feeling for Bireno in the darkness, and by the suggestion of pallid moonlight and a shivering dawn. The numerous prosaic details with which he has charged his picture, add to its reality, and enhance the Euripidean quality we admire in it. In the case of a poet whose imagination was invariably balanced by practical sound sense, the personal experience he acquired of the female sex could not fail to influence his delineation of women.

He was not a man to cherish illusion, or to romance in verse about perfection he had never found in fact. Therefore we are not surprised to find that the female characters of the ' Orlando ' illustrate his epistle on the choice of a wife. Yet even in Bradamante he has painted a virago from whom the more delicate humanity of Shakspere would have recoiled. The scene in which she quarrels with Marfisa about Buggiero degrades her in our eyes, and makes us feel that such a termagant might prove a sorry wife. After the more finished portrait of Bradamante, we find in ' See above, Part i.

The cardinal virtue of woman in his eyes was self-devotion — loyalty to the death, unhesitating sacrifice of wealth, ease, reputation, life, to the one object of passionate attachment. And this self- devotion he has painted in Olympia no less romantically than in Isabella and FiordeligL Still it must be remembered that Isabella had eloped with Zerbino from her father's palace, that Fiordeligi was only a wife in name, and that Olimpia murdered her first husband and consoled herself very rapidly for Bireno's loss in the arms of Oberto.

The poet has not cared to interweave with either portrait such threads of piety and purity as harmonise the self-abandonment of Juliet. Fiordespina's ready credence of the absurd story by which Bicciardetto persuades her that he is Bradamante meta- morphosed by a water-fairy to a man, and her love-longings, so frankly confessed, so unblushingly indulged, illustrate the passion Ariosto delighted to describe.

He feels a tender sympathy for feminine fraUty, and in more than one ex- quisitely written passage claims for women a similar license in love to that of men. Angelica, who in the 'Innamorato' touches our feelings by her tenderness for Binaldo, in the ' Furioso ' becomes a mere coquette, and is well punished by her insane passion for the first pretty fellow that takes her fancy.

The common faults with which Ariosto taxes women are cupidity, infidelity, and fraud. Still it is not much to his credit to plead that his cantos are less impure than the Oapitoli of Monsignore La Gasa or the prurient comedies of Aretino. Even allowing for the laxity of Renaissance manners, it must be conceded that he combined vulgar emotions and a coarse-fibred nature with the most refined artistic genius.

Nor is this licentiousness balanced by any sublimer spiritual quality. His ideal of manliness is phyEdcal, force and animal courage. Cruelty and bloodshed for the sake of slaughter stain his heroes. This style won from him for Ariosto the title of divine. As the luminous and flowing octave stanzas pass before us, we are almost tempted to forget that they are products of deliberate art. The beauty of their form consists in its limpidity and naturalness. Ariosto has no mannerism. He always finds exactly the expression needed to give clearness to the object he presents.

Whether the mood be elegiac or satiric, humorous or heroic, idyllic or rhetorical, this absolute sincerity and directness of language maintains him at an even level. In each case he has given the right, the best, the natural investiture to thought, and his phrases have the self-evidence of crystals. Just as he collected the materials of his poem from all sources, so he appropriated every word that seemed to serve his need. The vocabulary of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the racy terms of popular poetry, together with Latinisms and Lombardisms, were alike laid under contribution.

Yet these diverse elements were so fused together and brought into a common toning by his taste, that, though the language of his poem was new, it was at once accepted as classical. The sentiments, though superficial, are exquisitely uttered. His triumph was not won without seyere labour. He spent ten years in the composition of the ' Fnrioso ' and sixteen in its polishing. The autograph at Ferrara shows page upon page of alteration, transposition! The result of this long toil is that there cannot be found a rough or languid or inharmonious passage in an epic of nigh on 40, lines.

If we do not discern in Ariosto the inexhaustible freshness of Homer, the sublime music of Milton, the sculpturesque brevity of Dante, the purity of Petrarch, or the majestic sweetness of Virgilian cadences, it can fairly be said that no other poet is so varied. None mingles strength, sweetness, subtlety, rapidity, rhetoric, breadth of efitect and delicacy of suggestion, in a harmony so perfect. None combines workmanship so artistic with a facility that precludes all weariness. Whether we read him simply to enjoy his story or to taste the most exquisite flavours of poetic diction, we shall be equally satisfied.

Language in his hands is like a soft and yielding paste, which tanes all forms beneath the moulder's hand, and then, when it has hardened, stays for ever sharp in outline, glittering as adamant. While following the romantic method of Boiardo and borrowing the polished numbvrs of Poliziano, Ariosto refined the stanzas of the former poet without losing rapidity, and avoided the stationary pomp of the latter without sacrificing richness. He thus efTected a combination of the two chief currents of Italian versification, and brought the octave to its final perfection.

When we study the passage which describes the entrance of Ruggiero into the island home of Alcina, we feel the advance in melody and movement that he made. Such touches as the following: Again, this stanza, without the brocaded splendour of Poliziano, contains all that he derived from Claudian: Chi tempra dardi ad un mscel pii!

Raphael, Gorreggio and Titian have succeeded to Botticelli and Mantegna ; and as those supreme painters fused the severaT excellences of their predecessors in a fully developed work of art, so has Ariosto passed beyond his masters in the art of poetry. Nor was the process one of mere eclecticism. Intent upon similar aims, the final artists of the early sixteenth century brought the same profound sentiment for reality, the same firm grasp on truth, the same vivid imagination as their precursors to the task. But they possessed surer hands and a more accomplished method.

They stood above their subject and surveyed it from the height of conscious power. The dolcezzOf which in Tasso is too sugared, has in Ariosto the fine flavour of wild honeycombs. This wilding graoe of the Fenarese Homer is due to the lightness of his touch — to the blending of humorous with luxurious images in a style that passes swiftly over all it paints.

Bat we feel that what Tasso relies on for his main effect, Aiiosto had afaready suggested in combination with other and still subtler qualities. The one has the overpowering perfume of a hothouse jasmine ; the other has the mingled scents of a garden where roses and carnations are in bloom. Ariosto's pictorial fMulty has already formed the topic of a paragraph, nor is it necessary to adduce instances of what de- termines the whole character of the ' Orlando Furioso. Therefore we find but little of landscape-pointing for its own sake and small sympathy with the wilder and uncultivated beauties of the world.

His scenery recalls the backgrounds to Carpaccio's pictures or the idyllic gardens of the Giorgionesque school. The one is Angelica, the other Olimpia. Of this sort is the description of auiuma: The illuminative force of his similes is quite extraordinary. He uses them not only as occasions for painting cabinet pictures of exquisite richness, but also for casting strong imaginative light upon the object under treatment. In the earlier part of the ' Furioso ' he describes two battles with a huge sea monster.

The Ore is a kind of romantic whale, such as Piero di Cosimo painted in his tale of Andromeda ; and Buggiero has to fight it first, while riding on the Hippo- griff. It is therefore necessary for Ariosto to image forth a battle between behemoth and a mighty bird. Or, again, when Buggiero is afraid of wetting his aerial courser's wings: When Orlando engages the same monster, he is in a boat, and the conditions of the contest are altered.

Accordingly we have a different set of similes. A doad that fills a valley, rolling to and fro between the mountain sides, describes the movement of the Ore upon the waters ; and when Orlando thrusts his anchor in between its jaws to keep them open, he is compared to miners propping up their galleries with beams in order that they may pursue their work in safety. The giant is alone inside the walls of Paris, and the poet is bound to make us feel that a whole city may have cause to tremble before a single man. Therefore he never leaves our tajicj for a moment in repose.

At one time it is a castle shaken by a storm ; at another a lion retreating before the hunters ; again, a tigress deprived of her cubs, or a bull that has broken from the baiting-pole, or the whelps of a lioness attacking a fierce young steer. Others illuminate the ' Canto zi. Of this sort is the brief image bj which the Paladins in Charlemagne's army are likened to jewels in a doth of gold. Homer had compared the wound of Menelaus to ivory stained by a Mseonian woman with crimson.

Both Homer and Virgil likened their dying heroes to flowers cut down by the tempest or the plough. The following passage will bear comparison even with the death of Euphorbus: Come purpureo fior langnendo muore, Che 1 vomere al passar tagliato lassa, O come carco di superchio mnore n papaver nell' orto il capo abbassa: One more example may be chosen where Ariosto has borrowed nothing from any model. The unique importance of Ariosto in the history of Renaissance poetry justifies a lengthy examination of his masterpiece. In him the chief artistic forces of the age were so combined that he remains its best interpreter.

Painting, the cardinal art of Italy, determined his method; and the tide of his narrative carried with it the idyll, the elegy, and the Novella. In these forms the genius of the Renaissance found fittest literary expression ; for the epic and the drama lay beyond the scope of the Italians at this period. But he also embodied the strong points of his epoch — especially that sustained pursuit of beauty in form, that width of intellectual sympathy, that urbanity of tone and delicacy of perception, which rendered Italy the mistress of the arts, the propagator of culture for the rest of Europe.

Of Boccaccio's legacy the most considerable portion, and the one that bore the richest fruit, was the ' Decameron. Since the fourteenth century the conditions of social life had undergone a thorough revolution. Under the influence of dynastic rulers stationed in great cities, meichants and manufacturers were confounded with the old nobility ; and in commonwealths like Florence the bourgeoisie gave their tone to society. At the same time the community thus formed was separated from the people by the bar of humanistio culture.

Literature felt this social transformation. Its products were shaped to suit the taste of the middle classes, and at the same time to amuse the leisure of the aristocracy. The Novella was the natural outcome of these dicnmstances. Its qualities and its defects alike betray the ascendency of the bourgeois element. When a whole nation is addressed in drama or epic, it is necessary for the poet to strike a lofty and noble note.

He appeals to collective humanity, and there is no room for aught that savours of the trivial and base. Homer and Sophocles, Dante and Shakspere, owed their grandeur in no slight measure to the audience for whom they laboured. The case is altered when a nation comes to be divided into orders, each of which has its own peculiar virtues and its own besetting sins.

Limitations are of necessity introduced, and deflections from the canon of universality are welcomed. If the poet, for example, writes for the lowest classes of society, he can afford to be coarse, but he must be natural. An aristocracy, taken by itself, is apt, on the contrary, to demand from literature the refinements of fashionable vice and the subtleties of artificial sentiment. Under such influence we obtain the Arthurian legends of the later middle ages, which contrast unfavourably, in all points of simplicity and directness, with the earlier Niebelungen and Garolingian Cycles.

The public which gave its scale of grandeur and sincerity to the Attic and Elizabethan drama, was wanting. It partook of those qualities which characterise the upper middle classes. It was deficient in the breadth, the magni- tude, the purity, which an audience composed of the whole nation can alone communicate. We find it cynical, satirical, ingenious in sly appeals to appetite, and oftentimes super- fluously naughty. Above all it was emphatically the literature of a society confined to cities. It may be difficult to decide what special quality of the Italian temperament was satisfied with the Novella, Yet the fact remains that this species of composition largely governed their production, not only in the field of narrative, but also in the associated region of poetry and in the plastio arts.

So powerful was the attraction it possessed, that even the legends of the saints assumed this character, A notable portion of the ' Sacre Bappresentazioni ' were dramatised Novelle, The romantic poets interwove Novelle with their main theme, and the charm of the ' Orlando Furioeo ' is due in no small measure to such episodes. Ursula at Venice, or Sodoma's legend of S. Benedict at Monte Oliveto, or Lippo lippi's legend of S. They are Novelle painted in their salient incidents for the laity to study on the walls of church and oratory. The term Novella requires definition, lest the thing in question should be confounded with our modem novel.

Although they bear the same name, these species have less in common than might be supposed. Both, indeed, are narratives; but while the novel is a history extending over a considerable space of time, embracing a complicated tissue of events, and necessitating a study of character, the Novella is invariably brief and sketchy.

It does not aim at presenting a detailed picture of human life within certain artistically choien limita- tions, but confines itself to a striking situation, or tells an anecdote illustrative of some moral quality. This is shown by the headings of the sections into which Italian NovelUeri divided their collections. We read such rubrics as the follow- ing: The Novelle were descended in a direct line from the anecdotes embedded in medieval Treasuries, Bestiaries, and similar collections.

The novel, on the other hand, as Cervantes, Bichardson, and Fielding formed it for the modem nations, is an expansion and prose digest of the drama. It implies the drama as a previous condition of its being, and flourishes among races gifted with the dramatic fiaculty. All the Novellieri pretend that their stories were originally recited and then written down, nor is there the least doubt that in a large majority of cases they were really read aloud or improvised upon occasions similar to those invented by their authors. These circumstances determined the length and ruled the mechanism of the Novella, It was impossible within the short space of a spoken tale to attempt any minute analysis of character, or to weave the meshes of a complicated plot.

The narrator went straight to his object, which was to arrest the attention, stimulate the curiosity, gratify the sensual instincts, excite the laughter, or stir the tender emotions of his audience by some fiBkntastic, extraordinary, voluptuous, comic, or pathetic incident. Sometimes he contented himself with a bare narrative, leaving its details to the fancy.

Many NoveUe are the mere skeletons of stories, short notes, and epitomes of tales. Or he intro- duced digressions upon moral themes suggested by the passion of the moment, discoursing with the easy flow of one who raises points of casuistry in a drawing-room.

Again, he heightened the effects of his anecdote by elaborate rhetorical development of the main emotions, placing carefully studied speeches into the mouth of heroine or hero, and using every artifice for appealing directly to the feelings of his hearers. All of ihem, moreover, have a oommon object in amnBement. Though the NovelUeri profess to teach morality by precept, and though some of them prefix prayers to their most impudent debauches of the fancy,' it is clear that entertainment was their one sole end in view.

For their success they relied on the novelty and strangeness of their incidents ; on obscenity, sometimes veiled beneath the in- nuendoes and suggestive metaphors of Italian convention, but more often unabashed and naked to the view; on startling horrors, acts of insane passion, or the ingenuities of diabolical craelty.

The humour of beffe and burle, jests played by rogues on simpletons, practical jokes, and the various devices whereby wives and lovers fooled confiding husbands, supplied abundant material for relieving the more tragic stories. Lastly, the wide realm of pathos, the spectacle of beauty in distress, young lovers overwhelmed by undeserved calamity, sudden reverses of fortune, and accidents of travel upon land and sea, provided the narrator with plentiful matter for working on the sympathy of his readers. Of moral purpose in any strict sense of the phrase the Novelle have none.

This does not mean that they are invariably immoral ; on the contrary, the theme of a considerable number is such that the tale can be agreeably told without violence to the most sensitive taste. But the novelist had no ethical intention; therefore he brought every motive into use that might amuse or stimulate, with business-like indifference. He felt no ' See Bandello'8 Introduction to Nov, zxxv.

IN ITALY qualm of conscience at provoking the cruder animal instincts, at dragging the sanotitiea of domestic life in the mire of bis buffoonery, or at playing on the appetite for monstrous vice, the thirst for abnormal sensations, in his audience. So long as he could excite attention, he was satisfied.

We cannot but wonder at the customs of a society which derived its entertainment from these tales, when we know that noUe ladies listened to them without blushing, and that bishops composed them as a graceful compliment to the daughter of a reigning duke. Everybody tried his hand at them: Yet all affected to be following Boccaccio. His artificial periods and rhetorical amplifications, ill-managed by men of imperfect literary training, who could not free them- selves from local jargons, produced an awkward mixture of discordant faults.

Yet the public expected little bom the novelist in diction. What they required was movement, stimulus, excitement of their passions. So long as the tale- maker kept curiosity awake, it was a matter of comparative indifference what sort of words he used. The Novella was a literary no-man's-land, where the critic exercised a feeble sway, and amateurs or artists did what each found suited to his powers. It held its ground under conditions sinular to those which determined the supply of plays among us in the seventeenth century, or of magazine novels in this. In their material the Novelle embraced the whole of - It may be mentioned that not all stories were recited before women.

Bandello introdaoes one of his tales with the remark that in tbeabeeoee of the ladies men may be less careful in their choice of themes Nov, xz3i. The exception is singular, as illustrating what was thooght onfit for female ears. Though these pictures of life are brightly coloured and various beyond description, they are superficial.

It is only the surface of existence that the NovelUere touches. He leaves its depths unanalysed, except when he plunges a sinister glance into some horrible abyss of cruelty or lust, or, stirred by gentler feeling, paints an innocent un- happy youthful love. The student of contemporary Italian customs will glean abundant information from these pages ; the student of human nature gathers little except reflections on the morals of sixteenth-century society. It was perhaps this prodigal superfluity of striking incident, in combination with poverty of intellectual content, which made the Novelle 80 precious to our playwrights.

The tales of Cinthio and Bandello supplied them with the outlines of tragedies, leaving the poet free to exercise his analytic and imaginative powers upon the creation of character and the elaboration of motive. But that, in spite of all their faults, the Novelle fiEuscinate the fancy and stimulate the mental energies, wiU be admitted by all who have made them the subject of careful study. At Florence Firenzuola penned stories with the golden fluency and dazzling wealth of phrase peculiar to him.

II Lasca's ' Gene ' rank among the most considerable literary products of the age. Giraldi's hundred tales, entitled ' Hecatommithi,' issued from Ferrara. They were heavy in style, and prosaic; yet their matter made them widely popular. Cademosto of Lodi, Monsignor Brevio of Venice, Ascanio de' Mori of Mantua, Luigi da Porto of Vicenza, and, last not least, the illustrious Matteo Bandello, proved how rich in this species of literature were the northern provinces.

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The Lombards displayed a special faculty for tales in which romance predominated. Venice, notorious for her pleasure- marts of luxury, became the emporium of publications which supplied her courtesans and rufflers with appropriate mental food. The Tuscans showed more comic humour, and, of course, a purer style. Following the precedent of BoccacciOi it was usual for the NoveUieri to invent a framework for their stories, making it appear that a polite society of men and women called in Italy a lieta brigata had by some chance accident been thrown upon their own resources in circumstances of piquant novelty.

One of the party suggests that they should spend their time in telling tales, and a captain is chosen who sets the theme and determines the order of the story-tellers. Thus 11 Lasca at the opening of ' Le Gene ' feigns that a company of young men and women went in winter-time to visit at a friend's house in Florence. It was snowing, and the youths amused themselves by a snow-ball match in the inner courtyard of the palace. Snow was brought them from the roofs, and they began to pelt the young men from their balcony.

A party of gentlemen have left the city to Uve in huts of wood and straw upon the islands, with the intention of fowling and fishing. The weather proves too bad for sport, and they while away the hours of idleness with anecdotes. Bandello follows a different method, which had been suggested by Masucdo. Alessandro BentivogUo and Ippolita Sforza, the leaders of feishion and Bandello's special patrons, take the first rank. What Castiglione presents abstractedly and in theory as a critique on noble society, is set before us by Bandello in the concrete form of every-day occurrence. Nor does the author forget that he is speaking to this company.

His words are framed to suit their prejudices ; his allusions have reference to their sentiments and predilections. The whole work of art breathes the air of good manners and is tuned to a certain pitch-note of fashionable tone. We may draw conclusions as to their corruption and essential coarse- ness in the midst of refined living and external gallantries.

See my Sketches and Studies in Italy. Matteo Bandello was a member of the petty Lombard nobility, bom at Castelnuovo in Tortona. Peter Walsh, a self-described solitary traveller, comes from an Anglo-Indian family. Sally Seton has French origins. Miss Kilman is of German descent. Septimus himself is an immigrant, the same goes for his wife. In the novel there are mentioned various Irish characters, like Moll Pratt and Mrs.

Walker, or other immigrants, like a young woman coming from Edinburgh, or the presence of Americans the stereotype of the bargain-hunting, gullible American tourist is to be noticed. Woolf's novel reveals the hybridity of a cosmopolitan center like London long before the term was used among postmodernist scholars. They reveal the provisionality of fixity, as their house later became part of a golf course, while Eugenie outlived him. Yet, the two terms are not just binary categories, there may be continuities between them just as with the two trends.

Caren Kaplan, in her book Questions of Travel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacement, defines these terms as follows: They may feel imprisoned in their relationships, for instance. He is imprisoned with Sarah in a relationship of mutual dependency, each clinging to the other as an embodiment of desires for different lives, as if in an echo of the relationship between Lucrezia and Septimus. Characters feel insecure, as if they were living in a chaotic world, a world without meaning because of the happenings in their lives.

For Septimus, it is the death of Evans during the war that makes the world appear meaningless to him. She finds herself in a different world, in a different country and then she goes back to an empty home as her family was killed during the war in Croatia. The stream of consciousness reflects a fragmented representation of the world in the fragmented thoughts. Thoughts are presented in the novels as they occur to the characters, and time is not chronological, in the sense that characters move in their thoughts and memories between past and present.

Irreconcilable feelings are part of Clarissa. In this way she gains approval, admiration from her guests. At times she has doubts about her self-worth, for instance: Lyrical moments, aside from expressing opposed feelings, offer characters a sense of order at times.

Walking or driving on the streets of London also have this effect, as we have previously seen. All these are intensely felt moments. Characters make other efforts to make order and bring peace into their lives. Self-analysis is used by characters in both authors. Their analysis of past events is such an attempt. Clarissa has her own insecurities.

He loses his job, then his wife leaves him. Afterwards he gets a hobby, cooking. He finds another job and redemption by means of his love for Sarah. Both authors favour inner experience, which leads to more views on reality. Every character may perceive the world differently. Septimus seems to live in a world of his own until he can no longer make the difference between reality and fantasy.

His inner world of thought and feelings, however, is something normal for what he has gone through and yet nobody understand him. Yet he himself has his own way of perceiving the world. What is more, George tries to understand how the others have seen various events, to see through their perspective. Conclusions In these two novels, two worlds are represented: The inner world is influenced by the outside world and also plays a part in perceiving the outside world.

The stream of consciousness as well as common images, themes, the same one-day duration bring the two novels close to one another. The one-day duration is associated with Modernism and the break with traditional narratives may be associated with both Modernism and Postmodernism.

Such features play an important part in representing the fictional worlds. Another important element is the setting. The two novels have Modernist features judging by their approach to the role of the city of London in allowing the characters to explore not only its streets but also their memories, their inner worlds. The geographical side of London may stand for a wish to order a chaotic world in which the characters feel at times that they live in. Epiphanies or moments of being give characters a sense of order to their representation of the world.

Features of the trends too are debatable. Freedman, Ralph , The Lyrical Novel: Guignery, Vanessa , Re- mapping London: Kaivola, Karen , All Contraries Confounded: Pesso-Miquel, Catherine , From historiographic metafictions to bedtime stories: Winnberg, Jakob , An Aesthetic of Vulnerability: Many Italian writers have adopted some of the strategies which clearly can be considered as pertaining to this precise tendency of development of the modern novel. Among the most important strategies one can count the rewriting.

It resides in rewriting the past and recompose it in accordance with the understanding and the codes of the contemporary reader. Thus the past becomes some kind of reservoir of subjects and ways of expression which now can be used in new narrative structures. For the Italian novelists, the best model remains Italo Calvino, an author of modern allegories, a puzzler who has enriched Italian literature with intricated meta-fictions.

His followers, whether they admitted it or not, authors as Umberto Eco, Antonio Tabucchi or Alessandro Baricco, in spite of adopting for non-literary reasons some simplifications, have still managed to find new values for the rewriting technique. Postmodernism, avantgarde, rewriting, metafiction, irony, possible world. Non sono gli scrittori ad opporsi a questa nuova tendenza felicemente sfruttata dalla cultura statunitense sin dagli anni Cinquanta del secolo scorso e molto ben accolta in paesi come Germania, Francia o Gran Bretagna.

Ceserani, Raccontare il postmoderno, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino , p. Spanu, Trieste, Gamberetti , pp. Questa sorta di visione inquisitoria, oltre tutto, riesce sempre a obnubilare la chiarezza di percezione dei fatti letterari. Il passato viene considerato da questi creatori una miniera in cui scavare per far uscir fuori dimenticate, e non di rado aspramente vituperate dagli oltranzisti del Modernismo novecentesco, ricchezze.

Qualche anno fa, in un mio libro dedicato ai prodotti romanzeschi di Umberto Eco13 , cercavo di stabilire le tappe che conobbe nel suo crescere la storia della rappresentazione letteraria. Quando accadde tutto questo? Achille, Edipo, Amleto, Don Quijote, Faust e tantissimi altri, usciti — come nelle antiche storie — dalle teste dei loro vari creatori e padri. Infatti, si trattava di una crisi del narrare avvenuta in seguito ad una proliferazione di scritti che peccavano di cerebralismo, di astrattezza.

Un lauto banchetto di significanti Gli scrittori e i pensatori postmoderni hanno scoperto che la tesi abbastanza pessimistica di Adorno va emendata: Per descriverlo, la diegesi postmoderna si appoggia su strategie nuove tra cui, conseguentemente, basilare rimane la riscrittura. In questo modo procede per esempio Alessandro Baricco quando compone City. Calvino, da grande puzzler e trickster, propone un viaggio testuale a sfondo teorico che si configura poi sorprendentemente come allegoria della lettura vista nella sua 14 Cfr.

Non ci vien detto il nome di questo umile vate il quale, dopo una terribile tempesta, raduna intorno a se tutti i bambini e gli racconta la storia del mago che benedice il mare. Baricco, Oceano mare, Rizzoli, Milano, Quando Baricco riscrive Omero Con il bizzarro libretto intitolato semplicemente Omero, Iliade 17 , la cui undicesima edizione veniva offerta dalla Feltrinelli nel al mercato letterario, Baricco, un sottile e convalidato riscrittore ha cercato evidentemente di superare certi limiti connaturali di questa tecnica o filosofia del comporre che dir si voglia.

Per prima cosa ho praticato dei tagli per ricondurre la lettura a una durata compatibile con la pazienza di un pubblico moderno. Baricco, Omero, Iliade, Feltrinelli, Milano, Tutto questo va di pari passo con una sorta di pulizia stilistica: Come tuo padre, ho passato la soglia della triste vecchiaia. Sono venuto fin qui per riportarmelo a casa, in cambio di splendidi doni. Gli occhi di Achille si riempirono di lacrime. Piangevano, i due uomini, nel ricordo del padre, del ragazzo amato, del figlio.

Le loro lacrime, in quella tenda, nel silenzio Baricco, Alessandro , Oceano mare, Rizzoli, Milano. The concept covers narrative methods and formulas often attributed to the postmodernist literature, such as mise en abyme, metalepsis, heterotopia, fragmentarism, transtextuality, procedural writing, parody, genre hybridity, autofiction etc. The present study emphasises two general aspects. On the one hand, it focuses on the transformations undergone by the genre literature horror, adventure, erotic or crime fiction which, in its canonical forms, has aimed at providing an intense verisimilitude effect.

The latter has been however seriously relativised, although not suspended, by the postmodernist approach. Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of my selves is to do it? Afortunadamente, yo he sido el primero Prada Uno de estos recursos es la correctio, que consiste en volver sobre lo dicho para matizar o rectificar: Al mismo tiempo, los relatos de Juan Manuel de Prada emplean el lenguaje connotativo y velado del erotismo propiamente dicho y, asimismo, privilegian las manifestaciones sentimentales de la novela amorosa.

Hutcheon, Linda , Poetica postmodernismului, Univers, Bucarest. This mutation is calling other reformulations inside the conceptual field which commonly characterize the Arab Islamic political systems. The old traditional referents are replaced by a new schema of understanding the power. Traditional categories that set up the political systems in the Arab-Islamic world are easily identified, and also identifiable, in the contemporary development of events. This study, which resorts to the archaeology of concepts, is trying to look into realities and conceptual frameworks which are said to condition the current political developments in the Arab space.

A continuous polarization of social forces, accompanied by a biased redefinition of political options are other descriptions which commentators use especially when referring to the situation in Egypt, which has a great potential for unpredictable development. Speaking in terms of the cultural and political heritage, the analysis can be extended, in order to strengthen the general framework of the research, towards the developments following the Libyan revolution, with recrudescing fragmentations of the tribal type, or towards the mainly denominational revolutionary conflicts in Bahrain or Syria.

Excluding the Community umma from the Exertion of Power Equation. Talking about the modern history of the Islamic space, historians such as Mohammed Arkoun draw at least one continuity line between past and present. It has always been marginalized, submitted to pressure and tyrannies of all kinds, left to the whims of the local power mechanisms, which, in time, led to a regeneration of pre- Islamic solidarity, mostly of the tribal type.

The people, designated by words with a negative connotation similar in meaning to the French phrase le menu peuple, has never been recognized as a possible partner in the governing process. According to the political theories written during the Muslim Middle Ages, the community is the one that gives legitimacy to the leader, but actually the leader 1 We agree with the observation made by Willis The classical power pyramid with the community leader at the top is questioned by the very base of the pyramid- the people- who, as it did not happen very often in the political history of the Arab Islamic space, are now speaking out their minds.

The slogan has provided the Arab world with a desideratum which was turned, at least in the case of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, into a historical reality. Television, a form of manifestation of the popular culture type, became, starting with the s of the 20th century, and mainly after , one of the vectors forming an identity, claiming the right to represent the reality. The liberalisation of the public expression medium produces, as Kraidy Thus, the concerted action 9 Lynch From Morocco to Bahrain, from Egypt to Syria, people denounced the idea of authoritarian leadership and not the form of government that exerted this type of authority.

Economic and social polarisation has reached a very high level in the contemporary Arab space dominated by authoritarian systems, but this is not something new for the political system discussed. The gap between elites and convictions, in a similar or comparable way to that in which the Al-Jazeera station is today used sometimes for airing political messages or for supporting regional political actions. LAURA SITARU masses, clearly and undoubtedly marked at the level of the related Arab linguistic terminology, is a constant of the Islamic cultural world, which has propagated a well-defined separation of social roles through customs, not necessarily through treaties or laws, a separation which is more precise in comparison with other political systems.

Be they republics or monarchies, the Arab states continued to govern by granting power, in a discretionary way, to a caste, either we speak about military or religious regimes. The examples offered by the new Egyptian public sphere ready to react to each gesture of the power that is deemed a deviation from the just behaviour are from now on a prototype of social participation.

Invoking the concept of 18 Sitaru Reforming institutions is in the opinion of Arab commentators a priority of the present historical moment, because, as they put it, the state institutions have inevitably been associated with the oppressive actions of the political regimes recently ousted from power. Social equity or justice should not be mistaken for vindictive actions, neither should it be the appanage of one social category or another, and especially it should not be politicized. Libya is in a slightly similar situation, where tribal-type segregation, this time coupled with a precarious situation of the central institutions, creates the framework for social developments with high potential for conflict.

On the other hand, there are many examples in the history of Islam when ideologies of religious inspiration or not were subordinated to and used by the political factor, as Ferjani remarked. He said that the religious history of Islam is made up of a long series of circumstantial doctrines that use religion to serve strategies and options that were actually chosen without taking into account any religious 22 views.

Mentioning Ibn Khaldoun once again, the evolution of dynastic powers has nothing to do with religion: At the same time the confessional side has become more visible, which makes the Syrian uprising different from the uprisings in the other Arab countries. This is a card whose stake the Asad regime understands very well, a card successfully played in the past by the stakeholder-power, France. In this context, the observers of the Syrian situation draw attention to the fact that the opposition is not made up of only one denomination, but it actually attracted 22 Cf.

Another constant of the political history in the Islamic space, which is at the same time a source of permanent tension in the political organisation and, especially, a very topical issue, is the role of the military power in organising the city. The army is, in the classical hierarchy of the Muslim power, one of the pillars supporting the state dawla , frequently crossing over the demarcation line imposed by its theoretical role.

Of course, at present, armies such as that of Egypt, which are a micro-state in their own right, and also the extremely comprehensive security apparatuses developed along decades of governing by authoritarian political regimes, as was the case of Syria but also of Algeria and Bahrain, to give but a few examples, have a decisive role in the political developments of the moment. In the case of Egypt, after decades of military governing, after decades of anti-monarchy and military revolution which entailed, among other things, the rise to the forefront of political life of some figures coming from the army as was the case with the last three presidents of the Egyptian republic , it is obvious for any knowledgeable observer that the current fight, including the electoral fight, is not waged between general categories such as the religious or the lay categories; we are actually witnessing a clash between a military and militarized system, on the one hand, and a civil society that is now taking shape, on the other hand Neglecting or disregarding the power of the army in ensuring internal political and social peace could have disastrous consequences for Egypt in the coming years.

Actually, the militarization of the political power and of the governing act per se was happening in almost all the Arab countries, except for the monarchies, in the s. Actually, as is well known, a legitimising discourse should accompany the political gesture or action. The role which the army and the military-type structures have in the Arab states that have recently witnessed revolutionary events could be co-related more with the changes of the s, when the series of regime collapses brought the army at the top of the power hierarchy, rather than with a historical tradition in which military castes turned dynasties28 have governed Islam for many centuries Haddad, Bassam , Business Network in Syria.

Lynch, Marc , The Arab Uprising. Who are the major players? Is a low ethnic self-esteem of parents affecting the self-esteem of their child? Without any doubt, yes: But the most often, especially in the non-Rroma school environment, the Rroma child, identified even against his will as Rroma individual, needs am increased self-esteem, able to support him to build up an individual self-esteem, both strong, because they are arising one from the other, being useful in increasing his school participation and performances.

This happens because a child with an increased self-esteem is a child who trusts his own forces, desires and designs this success, assumes responsibilities, has critic spirit, develops dialogues with the others, for motivating with good arguments his positions and actions, is strong, assertive and involved in action, has aspirations and not only on short term, but mostly on medium and long term. Therefore, as the school is an investment on medium and long term, the increased self-esteem is one of the important conditions for the school success of any child.

Rromanipen, ethnic identity, self-esteem, fictional ego, authentic ego, reflective difference, internalized social stigma. Our exploratory study aims to analyze the connection between the self- esteem of the family, expressed also through the assuming of the ethnic identity, the ethnic and individual self-esteem of children and their school success. On other side, what are the effects of a low self-esteem in the family and implicitly, of the child on his school participation and performances?

The direct consequence is the decrease of his school performances. The Rroma, as members of a minority group considered deviant and inferior, have as reference group the majority one, considered as successful and representative and that is why they will internalize the social representations of the majority about Roma and they will perceive them as belonging to Rroma themselves. While such representations are mainly negative, the self image of Rroma becomes negative also and the ethnic self-esteem lows down. The attempt for solving this crush is expressed, very often, by the unconscious assuming of a split, schizoid, dual ego, which conceals and falsify its essence, in order to administrate the need to produce an impression suitable for the society; in other words, it develops a strategy for adjustment to the social environment where it is placed.

The individual rejects or conceals his real deep identity and acts as if not being himself, but someone else, the fictional ego gets the place of the authentic ego and the self-identification is based on the reflective difference: I am what the otherness believes about me, because this otherness is superior to me. The legacy of a exclusion history had decisive effects on the Rroma collective mind.

The deprivation of the individual of his rights and of the access to resources for social development is leading to the lose of ethnic dignity and installation of self-blame and ethnic shame of self: The stigma of the Rroma identity, amplified also by the systematic use towards Rroma, in the contemporary society, of a damage-racial and negative-stereotyped language, doubled by the inability of the Rroma elites to convert themselves into a credible and viable model for Rroma people and to transmit correct and clear information about Rroma, both for Rroma and non- Rroma population, have led to an internalization of the negative image about themselves, which transformed the Rroma self-esteem into a self-stigma or, even worse or equally bad, in a sort of self-hate, both of them almost irreversible, especially in the context of a formal mono-cultural education, of the loss of the identity references and of the absence of institutions able to create and represent the Roma cultural model.

The result of this process of internalization of the stigma led to the construction of a strategy of surviving by halving, by the structure of a somehow schizoid personality, which means fragile and vulnerable at the existential sideslips, led to the rejection of the authentic ego, of the deep ego and to the presence of a fictional ego, fake, deficiently adjusted to the requirements of an alienating society. As deep and extended the acculturation process is, as the ethnic self-esteem is lower and able to convert into self-contempt.

The unique model of reference imposed by the educational system is — the most often autarchic and inflexible — circumscribed by the majority values. But if this would be able to produce a citizen culturally neutral and complete from perspective of observing his civic rights and obligations, it would be possible to say that the society does not lose anything because of the low self-esteem of certain of its members or groups.

Only, the experience proves that an individual with low self-esteem, no matter if personal, of group or ethnic, is easier abandoning not only his ethnic identity, but also his citizen responsibilities. If the social environment is teaching you that you are good for nothing only because you belong to Roma people, you will lose the self confidence, you will internalize this social label and you will not only cease any effort to prove otherwise, but even more, you will cease to assume any responsibility, considering them as exceeding your thinking and action abilities and you will start to behave following the hetero- applied label and to answer the negative expectations of the society by a deviant social attitude.

Therefore, the interest of the whole society would have to be to make efforts for increasing the self-esteem, ethnic included, of its members. The self-esteem of each group, but most of all of a people confronted to a self conception historically negative, as it is the Rroma people, can increase only if the group has the means to find itself as group, as deep membership to common values and shared standards. To be proud of yourself, you must know who you are; to know who you are you need to gather together, to take distance from the others and to see what is keeping you apart from the others and what is making you common to others similar to you.

What would have to develop a people for not falling pray to the slow but sure process of cultural assimilation? The answer is easy to forestall: How should they be cultivated? In formative institutions, through the dialogue with the otherness or the education for diversity. Regarding the Rroma, because of being confronted with a weak self- esteem, it is necessary the knowledge and recognition of the Rroma history and culture first by the otherness, in order that the Roma identity could be later internalized and assumed by the Rroma themselves.

This must happen inside the school, by the inclusion of coherent and consistent information about the Rroma history and culture in the mandatory curriculum for all pupils and through a systematic and pragmatic-oriented ethno-educational inclusion. The discrimination of the Rroma is consequence of a history of social exclusion and institutional racism. The slavery situation in which they have been kept more than five centuries, starting from the first documentary attestations in the Romanian countries, places the Rroma at the edge of the society, being considered as immobile goods, serving as exchange unit.

The slavery affected deeply the Rroma children also, being separated from families, exchanged, sold or given as presents, very often at smaller prices than the animals. The legal abolition of the slavery in , produced as following the pressure of the Western abolitionism, did not bring an essential change from point of view of the placements of the Rroma regarding the majority population, therefore did not reach a spiritual emancipation.

The non- inclusion of the Rroma issues in the public policies led to their relapse into the previous status and to the stigmatization of the ethnic membership. The marginalization and social exclusion of Rroma created in time an important socio-cultural gap between the majority and the Rroma community. The attitude, behavior and dominant policy of the society towards the Rroma oscillated between the racism of exclusion, leading to Genocide and the racism of domination, expressed by cultural assimilation.

On the anomic canvass from after , even if the recognition of the Rroma as national minority supposed the gain of some politic and civic rights, the catastrophic damage of their economic and social situation was a consequence of the institutionalized racism. The police is encouraging such anti-Rroma manifestations by its own violent and abusing actions, which we can often consider as racial motivated, many times developed without legal support, like raids in the Rroma communities, excessive use of force, arbitrary use of the weapons, arresting without warrant, violent treatment of the arrested.

The Rroma children are the most affected victims, from psychological point of view and sometimes, even physically, of this abusing treatment. The social exclusion, the racial discrimination and the lack of interest of the state to adopt pro-active policies are composing the roots of the ethnicization of the poorness. One of the consequences of the discrimination is that, from economic-social point of view, the Rroma community is the most disadvantaged in Romania.

The high rates of the poorness and the low level of access to the labor market are inducing to the Rroma families the dependence of the welfare assistance, which is far away of assuring them a decent level of life. Because of the discrimination in the health system manifestations of racial discrimination against Rroma of the medical staff, the refuse of some family doctors to register Rroma on their records, the lack of access to the quality medical act and of the socio-economic factors poorness, inappropriate alimentation, inability to acquire medical drugs, the lack of medical insurance , the health estate in the Rroma communities was visibly damaged during the last decade.

Because of the standard life conditions, the communicable diseases hepatitis , as well as nutrition diseases diabetes , is occupying the first places in the hierarchy of the pathology of Rroma population. The respiratory diseases, the digestive diseases and the cardio-vascular ones are also wide spread among Rroma.

The most often, the Rroma can not pay their health insurances, which is limiting or even excluding the access of children to medical services. As consequence, the Rroma children are more vulnerable to the child diseases and to epidemic diseases like polio, diphtheria and typhus. In this sense, the Rroma children are a special risk category. The alimentation of the Rroma children, as result of their low level of living, is poor, unbalanced and inappropriate.

As consequence, many Rroma children are suffering of malnutrition, anemia, vitamin deficiency, dystrophy, which dramatically reduce their development possibilities and has profound negative effects on their ability for study and their health.

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The access of Rroma children in the education system is still limited. The lack of identity is used as an excuse for not giving the right to attend the school for Rroma children. There are schools refusing the enrollment of Rroma children in school if parents do not have permanent residence in that locality. Forced to work at an early age to ensure their family survival, many Rroma children often abandon the school. There are still reported several cases of Rroma children in segregated schools or classes, where the quality of education and the conditions of study are well below the minimum standard.

With few exceptions, schools in Rroma neighborhoods are in a very bad state. The teaching materials are inadequate and the teachers are not interested in Rroma students. When we speak of segregation, we do not mean education in Rromani language, but schools or classes segregated on ethnic criteria, without this mean being justified by the study of the language.

The Rroma children attending the school are confronted also with the discriminatory treatment exercised by the teachers and with the verbal abuse and not infrequently with physical violence, of the majority pupils, abuses which are not corrected by the teachers or school staff.

To understand the collective mental model inherited by the Rroma children and which is bearing on their individual consciousness, sometimes during their whole life blocking their access to themselves and to the culture to which they belong, it is more than needed an imaginary excursion on the territory of their vernacular culture and of the way in which this one, being in a constant process of ethno-genesis, which excludes the otherness, understood to build up the mentality against Rroma.

Although the Rromani language, history and culture are taught in school, on the parents request, the mandatory school curriculum does not yet include information about Rroma, so that what prevails in the child education in Romania is only the unique model of reference imposed by the educational system of the Romanian society, which continues to circumscribe, autarchic and inflexible, the values of the majority.

In this educational context, where the Rroma are ignored, the only information about Rroma which reach the children being the negative stereotypes biased and unilaterally provided by the mass-media and by the self- sufficient public opinion, it is natural that Rroma parents, having in their great majority an already low ethnic self-esteem, because of the social circumstances of reference, to strengthen and confirm this weak self-esteem through the contact with the school, which is alien for them and that they feel like a closed space, which does not understand them, despises and rejects them.

Therefore, it is natural that the Rroma parents choose not to study Rromani language, history and culture in school, considering such subjects dependent on the majority collective spirit: At school to learn something useful, which can be used later! The Gypsy language, what to do with it? We do not know it and we're better off! We are not that kind of Gypsies! To get a Gypsy accent and to have his colleagues laughing at him?

If I did not want to teach him Gypsy, I knew very well why! If the school, as an authority recognized by the society, does not recognize and not include the Rromani culture, how could Rroma parents, already having a stigmatized identity and a low self-esteem, consider the study of Rromani culture important for their children? Even when trying to capitalize on Rroma culture, the school has often a stereotyped vision about the Rroma pupils, considering that their only significant contribution to the school culture could be the music and dance.

Often, the school itself seems convinced that Rroma do not give importance to the education and this point of view is internalized by the Rroma themselves. Moreover, the school understands by the concept of education exclusively the school education, concept almost generalized in the Rroma collective mentality also: What education to receive in family? What, that one is education? The result is, again, the decreasing of the self-esteem. There are several types of relationship between the Rroma child and school.

What if I am a bit darker, does it mean that I am Gypsy? When I grew up, I discovered a cream which was said to whiten! She told me that this way she will whiten. From that day I started me too to stay there! To please me, my mother was telling me that I have bleached a bit! What results is the destruction of self-confidence and together with it, the drastic reduction of the school performances.

The Rroma child issued from a family that respects, at least partly, the values and standards of the Rromanipen, speaking Rromani, who knows and assumes his ethnic identity, once attending the majority school, sees how his entire system of values and standards of family education is overturned, being identified by the school authority with a space of sub-culture.

Alienated from his own representations of the world and life, the Rroma child feels, though often not on a conscious level, but in the depths of his subconscious, like a prisoner of a deforming institution, where he can not recognize himself and which, instead of protecting him, rejects him and cheats his so fragile horizon waiting. Thus, an irreversibly existential slippage occurs, a break between the projection of the individual self — resulted from the originally self-image, produced by the culture of origin and the reception as deviant of this projection by the school community — produced from the stigmatizing stereotype with which is perceived the axiological system of the Rroma spirituality.

Because it does not promote the model inter-cultural of education and the respect for cultural difference, the school becomes a traumatic element for this child. The results can be: And since then I never was again! I think that they were rather envying me, because my folks had some cash! The rupture from the Rroma collective self, due to the internalization of the stigma and thereby, to the inferiority of the ethnic membership, is leading to the trauma of the individual ego, to a deep state of disociability and to an inevitable existential failure, especially at an age when patterns are established and ways to solve the inherent conflict with the world are looked for.

The stigmatization of the Rroma identity, especially due to a mono-cultural formal education and to the lack of institutions for training and representation of the Rroma cultural model, is amplified also through the routine use by the media of a racially prejudiced and stereotypical language that cultivate and enhance the attitudes and discriminatory behavior of the wide audience.

Often, the Rroma parents identify the difficult economic situation as main cause for the lack of participation of their children to school education: That they could be also dry wood be among us, as everywhere, but we are not all like that! He's no more a Gypsy! I think he's making a big deal, as not coming in here at all! In our time, it was like that, but now the times have changed: To the distrust in the ability of a Rroma to be a good teacher, the distrust in the school is opposed, perceived as an alien institution, even dangerous, able to irrevocably remove the child from the standards and values of the Rromani culture, among them especially the purity: To us, the girls are serious!

Here are some significant examples: The Rroma parents are proud of their children kindergarten and of the fact that it is operating in the Rromani language: If he, as a Romanian, thinks so, then it must be true! Now they are proud of that! We love our school: If it will be dissolved, we shall not come to school and elsewhere we do not like! To us the Rromani language is taught, we have a good teacher! I hope it will be good! The culturally marginalized groups, for instance the stigmatized ethnic or national minorities, like the Rroma minority, have been excluded by the dominant culture from the standardization of the values; that is why this last one is the one which would have to involve itself in the identity reconstruction of the minorities, including the positivity of the cultural diversity and of the values of the minority identities.

Cross-cultural communication is leading to the approaching of the individual from the collectivity which he belongs, considering it as crucial for the social conditioning. In a pluralist society, it is essential to be taken into account that the cultural membership has a fundamental role in the development of the individual, starting with the first steps from childhood.

The multi-cultural societies are realities of the contemporary world, when people belonging to different ethnic, religious, professional, age and so on groups are establishing aleatory contacts when the practical circumstances of the co-existence impose them. But the cultural pluralism does not exclude the existence o a common set of values, standards and principles, which are the basement of the civic identity in the respective physic-social space. The inter-culturality is a process produced at the crossing between two cultures, not being an aim itself, but an instrument de for cooperation and cultural exchange, a method to settle up bridges for dialogue in the mutual understanding, but which can reach it aim only when they are identified and corrected the unnatural transformations of baneful behaviors at the level of intersection of the cultures and when the two or more cultures have an equivalent social representation in the environment of interference and institutions for identity representation and training similar in value and interest degree for the society.

In a situation contrary to the equality between the cultures which are entering in dialogue or produce the inter-cultural change, therefore in the context where we have a dominant majority culture, vernacular, creating standards, considered higher by seniority, stretch or intensity, which controls the levers of power and positive social representation, which has preponderance in the school education and the continuous training of the members of the society and a dominant minority culture, marked by the negative stereotype and by the internalized stigma, considered alien by difference and inferior by the position in the territory of the sub-culture or at least tolerate, never respected, we can not talk about inter-culturality with real and deep meaning of the word.

In this respect, at ideal level, the construction of an inter-cultural society supposes, first of all, the re-construction of the stigmatized identities of the marginalized ethnic groups and the equality of chances for the positive social representation of the minorities and the majority, by the full presence of the minority ethno-cultures in the school education, at all levels and through the establishment of a strong institutional basement for promoting, preserving and developing the ethnic identities cultural centers, museums, schools with teaching in the languages of the ethnic minorities, university departments specialized in the culture and history of the ethnic minorities and so on.

If such conditions are not fulfilled, the place of the inter-culturality is taken by an uneven and inequitable dialogue, in which the majority culture does not respect and understand, but only at most tolerates the minority culture, especially in its stereotype-positive and spectacular aspects, without reaching the basics of the ethnic identity.

What is happening is a subtle acculturation process, under the mask of the fake inter-cultural dialogue, the minority culture being taken over inside the majority culture, where it loses its standards and values, remaining only with the perfunctory elements, easy to understand and assimilate by the otherness too neglectful to identity details and subtleties.

Another concept is connected to inter-culturality and multi-culturalism — the trans-culturality.

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