THE DEBATE ON BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN ITA
Patrizia Bettella
68
THE DEBATE ON BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN ITALIAN
SCAPIGLIATURA AND BAUDELAIRE
T
he process of aesthetic change which takes place in European
culture during the middle of the nineteenth century, leads from
idealistic to modern forms of art. The literary speculations of
Victor Hugo, the post-idealistic philosophy of Karl Rosenkranz, and the
critical work of Charles Baudelaire mark the unprecedented success of
the ugly as autonomous category of artistic creation.
In Italian culture, where literature is still fully governed by the
idealistic canon, it is the rebel and unconventional group of the
Scapigliati which first enter the debate on beauty and ugliness. The
poems of Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga, Giovanni Camerana and Giulio
Pinchetti, albeit not resulting in a successful and organic plan of new
poetic, mark the opening of Italian literature to the European discourse
of modern aesthetics.
In this paper I shall first briefly examine the importance of the
category of the ugly in nineteenth century aesthetic discourse and then
see how the Scapigliati attempt to incorporate the ugly in their
formulation of a new poetics, particularly in relation to Baudelaire's
Fleurs du Mal. The Scapigliati articulate their views of new art in the
form of dualismo; the categories of beauty and ugliness, identifiable
also in the terms Ideal and Real, are at the centre of their search for ars
nova. A series of common metaphors of ascent and fall, heaven and
earth, recur and interconnect their poems, but ultimately the two terms
of the dualismo remain separate and do not lead, like in Baudelaire, to
the formulation of a new form of art. Despite the impossibility to
overcome the oppositions between beauty and ugliness, the Scapigliati
challenged the traditional aesthetic canon, in which the ugly did not
have adequate space of representation, and contributed to the opening
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
69
of Italian literature to the most current aesthetic trends in European
culture.
The rise of the category of the ugly
In classical aesthetics, from the Middle Ages until the eighteeenth
century, the category of the ugly occupies a subordinate position in
literature and other arts. Ugliness is confined to the comic or morally
reprehensible, it enters the artistic scene only to highlight by contrast
the beautiful and good, therefore ugliness does not exist as autonomous
aesthetic category. During the nineteenth century the ugly is
represented in serious contexts and comes to the foreground as an
independent aesthetic entity. Victor Hugo in his Préface de Cromwell
(1827) reverses the system of traditional aesthetic values by
acknowledging the role of the grotesque and the ugly in modern
literature as essential components of romantic and modern drama. For
its critical impact on the canon of classical beauty the Préface is
considered a true manifesto of French romanticism and of new poetics.
A re-evaluation of the Christian message leads to the representation of
those aspects of life which are less attractive, so that art can better
portray the variety of reality, composed of beauty and ugliness, good
and evil:
Le christianisme amène la poésie à la vérité. Comme lui, la muse
moderne verra les choses d'un coup d'oeil plus haut et plus large. Elle
sentira que tout dans la création n'est pas humainement beau, que le laid
y existe à côté du beau, le difforme près du gracieux, le grotesque au
reverse du sublime, le mal avec le bien, l'ombre avec la lumière . (11)
1
For Hugo art should imitate nature, not the ideal, and nature is
composed of multiplicity and variety. In modern life the grotesque is
crucial because it allows us to portray those aspects of reality which are
deformed, horrible, comic and droll. While in classical art the ugly is
depicted only to create a contrast with the beautiful, in modern art Hugo
identifies the ugly as an autonomous category, whose function is not
1
Victor Hugo, Préface de Cromwell, Oxford: Clarendon, 1925. Unless
otherwise stated, translations are mine. "Christianity leads poetry to truth. The
modern muse shall see things from a higher and wider perspective. It shall
feel that everything in the creation is not humanly beautiful, that the ugly
exists beside the beautiful, the deformed beside the graceful, the grotesque as an
implication of the sublime, the evil with the good, the shadow with the light".
Patrizia Bettella
70
merely subordinate and oppositional. Hugo's aesthetics plays a central
role in the nineteenth century discourse of beauty and ugliness in art. In
its attempt to account for all aspects of reality, modern art must
abandon idealistic views of perfection and concede that beauty and
ugliness co-exist.
The debate on ugliness reaches its peak with the publication in
Germany in 1853 of Karl Rosenkranz's Aesthetik des Hässlichen
(Aesthetics of the Ugly), the first philosophical treatise entirely devoted
to the subject of the ugly, an event which indicates an unprecedented
relevance of this category in the aesthetic discourse. In his essay
Rosenkranz, a disciple of Hegel, attempts to formulate systematic
classification and categorization of ugliness in art .
The nineteenth century preoccupation with the ugly effects the full
development of a new concept of art, in which ugliness is essential to
the representation of modernity . Through the ugly, modern aesthetics
attempts to give new meaning to what otherwise has no artistic value,
and seeks to rehabilitate "die nicht mehr schönen Kunsten" (the arts
which are no longer beautiful), to quote the title of a series of essays
edited by Hans Robert Jauss in 1968. Jauss' article on "The Classic and
Christian Justification of the Ugly in Medieval Literature" underscores
the revolutionary role of Hugo's Préface, where the ugly does not
perform a merely antithetical, subordinate function, but is introduced as
self-sufficient category in the realm of what is representable in art
(146). Modern poets characteristically question the canonical
distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly. According to Hugo
Friedrich, Baudelaire's poetry is a paradigmatic example of critique to
traditional aesthetic categories . In the Fleurs du Mal Baudelaire
2
3
4
2
Despite Ronsenkranz's proclaimed disapproval of ugliness in its extreme
forms, he articulates a structure of different intensity and degree of ugliness in
art, which range from absence of form, to incorretedness, to deformity, to
repugnance. This last reaches its highest intensity in the diabolic, which is to be
avoided at all costs. The ugly which Rosenkranz finds entirely acceptable is the
caricature, which he finds well represented in contemporary art. For a well
informed introduction, see the "Presentazione" of the Italian edition by Remo
Bodei (Estetica del brutto, Bologna: il Mulino, 1984, pp. 7-39)
Remo Bodei points out how in France, after the consolidation of Hugo's
theories in the period between 1830-48, the Romantic socialist movement finds
its expression in the motto "Le laid c'est le beau!" (The ugly is the beautiful).
Deformed individuals such as Notre-Dame de Paris' Quasimodo are considered
heroes of a new art, which welcomes the grotesque and the horrid (13).
Hugo Friedrich's essay on the structure of modern poetry (Die Struktur der
modernen Lyrik, 1956, English translation by Joachim Neugroschel, Evanston:
3
4
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
71
proposes a modern aesthetics, in which it is possible to perceive the
beauty of evil, of the horrible and disgusting, together with the
beautiful. Baudelaire is attracted to the grotesque, to the
unconventional, all aspects that contribute to the portrayal of reality in
its complexity and paradox. Baudelaire acknowledges the aesthetic
value of the grotesque and proposes art which can widen its
representational scope by including both the ugly and the beautiful .
According to Friedrich, Baudelaire's concept of modernity goes beyond
that of the romantics: "It...turns the negative into something
fascinating. Poverty, decay, evil, the nocturnal, and the artificial exert
an attraction that has to be perceived poetically..., the repulsive is
joined to the nobility of sound, acquiring the 'galvanic shudder' that
Baudelaire praises in Poe" (25, 26). Baudelaire's aesthetic precepts are
presented in some of his essays . In "Réflexions sur quelques-uns de
mes contemporains" (1861), he envisions a concept of art capable of
embracing and including everything: the grotesque and the sublime.
Baudelaire praises Hugo for his ability to represent universality in his
poetry: "Ainsi Victor Hugo possède non-seulement la grandeur, mais
l'universalité" (471). He also praises Gautier, who mastered the art of
depicting beauty and managed to extract a mysterious and symbolic
beauty even from grotesque and hideous objects (478). In Le Peintre de
la vie moderne (1863) Baudelaire formulates a new theory of the
Beautiful (a rational and historical theory of the Beautiful), based on the
5
6
7
Northwestern University Press, 1974) underscores the modernity of
Baudelaire's poetry, which upsets traditional aesthetic categories of beauty and
ugliness.
For a complete treatment of the grotesque in Baudelaire's aesthetic vision, see
Yvonne Bargues Rollins' Baudelaire et le Grotesque, Washington: University
of America Press, 1978.
For all quotations I referred to the edition Charles Baudelaire, Ouvres
complètes, Paris: Seuil, 1968; unless otherwise stated traslations are my own.
According to Luciano Anceschi ("Il problema estetico di Charles Baudelaire",
in Autonomia ed eteronimia dell'arte, Firenze: Vallecchi, 1959) Baudelaire
could not accept a model of art which would not pose a rigorous distinction
between art, philosophy and history. Nor could he accept that the only form of
modern art is drama. Baudelaire strives to overcome a model of art whose final
goal is moral and not simply artistic. The attitude of Baudelaire towards Hugo
changed from almost hostile (Salon de 1846) to partly reverential, until 1858,
when Baudelaire paid homage to Hugo in his essay on Gautier. Here he praised
Hugo for his ability to represent the grotesque, especially in Notre-Dame de
Paris. Baudelaire also sent a copy of his "Tableaux Parisienne" to Hugo asking
him for a preface. In this section of the Fleurs some poems are dedicated to
Hugo. ("Le Cygne", "Les Sept Veillards", "Les petites Vieilles").
5
6
7
Patrizia Bettella
72
relativity of beauty and not on absolute parameters: beauty contains
eternal and relative elements; the relative aspect of beauty is
circumstantial and depends on a certain culture, fashion, morals (54950). Baudelaire postulates a duality in art, which corresponds to the
duality of the individual. In modern times art contains a duplicity: the
contingent, the transitory, and also the eternal and immutable. For him
the beautiful is always bizarre. "Le beau est toujour bizarre". The role
of art is to express a metaphysics, a transcendent concept of the human
condition of duplicity. As Yvonne Rollins points out, "Pour lui
[Baudelaire] le grotesque est avant tout l'expression artistique d'une
vision philosophique de la condition humaine. Vision que reconnaît
l'animal en l'homme, le péché et la déchéance" (35).
8
The debate on the ugly in the Scapigliatura
In Italian literature, where even the romantic movement is still
dominated by idealistic forms of representation, the second half of the
nineteenth century marks the first attempts to deal with the new
aesthetic category of the ugly. Remarkably the interest for the ugly
originates from the Scapigliati, rebel artists active primarily in Milan,
the major and more open cultural centre in the country. The
Scapigliati's attitudes in life and art ran counter the rules of bourgeois
society. Disillusioned with the situation of Italy after the unification in
1860, they expressed their dissent in the political and literary scene.
Their reaction against contemporary society was marked by anarchist
rebellion, and unconventional behaviours, similar to the French
bohemians. They were often leading a poor existence and their lives
ended tragically and prematurely, as a consequence of disease,
excessive drinking, drug addiction or suicide. Arrigo Boito, Emilio
Praga, Giovanni Camerana, Giulio Pinchetti and others, challenged the
conventional literary canons and iniatiated the search for a new art,
where ugliness is essential to the aesthetic process. They were attracted
to anti-classical forms of literary expression, and drew their inspiration
from European literature: Hugo, Baudelaire, Hoffmann, are among their
favourites. In the Scapigliati the meditation on the ugly marks an
attempt, although not organized and systematic, to challenge the
narrow-mindedness of Italian midddle class culture. Their innovative
approach starts with a re-evaluation of European romanticism, which
8
"For him the grotesque is above all the artistic expression of a
philosophical vision of the human condition. A vision which recognizes
the animal in man, the sin and the fall".
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
73
had not been very influential in Italy. What appeals to the Scapigliati is
the grotesque, the ugly, the ghostly, all those aspects of reality which
were neglected by the national literary tradition. The Scapigliati
perceive that art can not represent the complexity of reality only with
the traditional tools of idealistic aesthetics; it can not limit its scope to
ideal beauty but must depict reality in every aspect, including also what
lies in the mud, what is horrid, macabre and disgusting. The decaying
ideals of Italian Risorgimento, the disapproval of bourgeois society, the
desire for renewal, the refusal of the tradition, drive the Scapigliati
towards the unconventional and the ugly. For them, however, Italian
romantics such as Alessandro Manzoni and Ugo Foscolo are still a very
strong influence, or rather, the reference point of their critical discourse.
Boito and Praga are the heirs of those great Italian romantics but they
are deeply aware that artistic inspiration must originate elsewhere,
namely in European literature.
Critics have pointed out Baudelaire's influence on the Scapigliati,
particularly on Boito, Praga and Camerana. Some even state that
Scapigliatura itself has a special link with Paris and Baudelaire, since
both Praga and Boito opened their artistic career with a trip to Paris
between 1859 and 1862; there they could read or possibly even meet
Baudelaire, the poet who was most congenial to their artistic
temperament . Since the Scapigliati neither belonged to a "school" nor
to an organised group, their innovative ideas are not expressed in a
definite program. However their critical thought can be extracted from a
series of poems, exchanged between Boito, Praga and Camerana, the
so-called poems of friendship . Arrigo Boito, regarded as the central
9
10
9
These artists, who could read and even write French had the opportunity to
read Baudelaire in the original language. However we have no proof of any
direct encounter of either Boito or Praga with Baudelaire. Pietro Gibellini ("La
voce di Baudelaire, la libreria di Praga", in Indagini Otto-novecentesche,
Firenze: Olschki, 1983, pp. 47-64) considers Praga's encounter in Paris in 1858
with Les fleurs du mal crucial for the Scapigliati and for Italian culture, since
Baudelaire's work, exposes Praga to the inaugural book of modern lyric (47).
For more bibliographical references to the relations between Praga and
Baudelaire see the note on page 48 of Gibellini's article and Jean-Claude
Bouffard, "Un disciple de Baudelaire: Emilio Praga", Revue de Littérature
Comparée 45 (1971), 159-79; Douglas Β. Cook, "The Introduction of
Baudelaire in Italy", in Papers on Romance Literary Relations, Evanston: Dept.
of Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, 1975, pp. 73-81.
10
Gaetano Mariani in his seminal work Storia della Scapigliatura
(Caltanissetta-Roma: Sciascia, 1967) is the first to identify these poems as
Patrizia Bettella
74
figure of the group, sets the parameters of his new aesthetics in the
11
poem entitled "Dualismo" included in his collection Il libro dei versi .
This poem, composed in 1863, is considered a true manifesto of the
Scapigliatura poetics. One year later Emilio Praga composed
"Preludio", a response in verses to his friend's poem, which illustrates
some programmatic themes that apply to the entire group. Boito later
replied to Praga in a poem dated 1866. Giovanni Camerana is also
involved in the poetic exchange of epistles, since Boito addresses to the
young artist one of his poems in 1865; Camerana in turn, composed the
poem "Ad Arrigo Boito" a year later 12 . "Dualismo" articulates Boito's
problematic views on beauty and ugliness. It introduces one of the key
motifs of Scapigliatura: the dualism. The dichotomy between beauty
and ugliness is expressed in the opposition between the Ideal and the
Real. For an artist like Boito, who has already lost faith in a traditional
aesthetic vision, the categories of beauty-ugliness imply numerous
complications: the desire for beauty and ideal is still present in the
scapigliato artist, but it can not be fulfilled. This loss of faith in the
ideal urges the artist to represent a reality which encompasses also
horrendous and ugly aspects. Dualism refers to a composite reality,
which includes opposite aspects:
Son luce ed ombra; angelica
farfalla ο verme immondo,
sono un caduto cherubo
dannato a errar sul mondo,
ο un demone che sale,
affaticando l'ale,
verso un lontano ciel.
Ecco perchè mi affascina
l'ebbrezza di due canti
ecco perchè mi lacera
l'angoscia di due pianti,
"liriche deH'amicizia"(28). Chapter II looks in detail at the "spunti
programmatici" (68) which are contained in these poems.
Arrigo Boito, Libro dei versi, Torino: Casanova, 1902. All quotations are
from this edition.
Other poems of friendship include Praga's "All'amico" dedicated to Boito,
included in the section "Vespri" of Penombre, Camerana's "A Emilio Praga"
(June 1865), which was composed only six months before the one "Ad Arrigo
Boito" (January 1866). Camerana expresses his concept of new art also in the
poem "Emancipazione", which is not directed to one poet-friend but rather to an
entire group of "amici".
11
12
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
75
ecco perchè il sorriso
che mi contorce il viso
ο che m'allarga il cuor.
E sogno un'arte eterea
che forse in ciel ha norma,
franca dai rudi vincoli
del metro e della forma,
piena dell'Ideale
che mi fa batter l'ale
e che seguir non so.
E sogno un'arte reproba
che smaga il mio pensiero
dietro le basse imagini
d'un ver che mente al Vero
e in aspro carme immerso
sulle mie labbra il verso
13
bestemmiando vien . (5-10)
The poet, who perceives himself as embodied in images of
luminosity and darkness and symbolized in two opposite animals
(butterfly and worm), is urged by two chants, the one of the Ideal in
capital letters and the one of the real, the truth in lower case letters,
much baser than the rarefied Truth presented by national romantics. The
duplicity of chant reveals the impossibility to follow the precepts of
traditional aesthetics and indicates the prospect of a new concept of art
based on the co-presence of opposite categories. However the balance
between the opposites is rather unstable as is demonstrated by the
alternating presence in these verses of the conjunction " e " , " o " ; the poet
seems first to identify with the duplicity of shadow and light, but
immediately modifies this formulation into a disjunctive one: "angelica
farfalla ο verme immondo", "caduto cherubo...o demone che sale". The
Scapigliato artist is still tied to the traditional aesthetics and therefore
13
"I am light and shadow; / angelic butterfly or filthy worm, / I am a fallen
cherub / damned to err in the world, / or a demon who ascends, / with fatigued
wings, / towards a distant heaven. /.../ That is why I am fascinated / by the
charm of two songs, / that is why I am torn / by the anguish of two laments, /
that is why this smile / which twists my face / or opens up my heart. /.../ And I
dream of an ethereal Art / which perhaps has its rules in heaven, / free of the
rude constraints / of meter and of form, / full of the Ideal / which makes my
wings flap / and that I do not know how to follow. /.../ And I dream of an evil
Art / which diverts my thought / to the base images / of a truth that lies to the
Truth / and immersed in harsh poetry / the verse comes to my lips /
blasphemously".
Patrizia Bettella
76
naturally attracted to its ideals of absolute perfection; however he faces
a miniscule "vero" of petty realism, very distant from the "Vero" of the
idealistic doctrine. The irredeemable contrast between ideal and reality
leads the Scapigliato to the representation of a fractured world,
constantly hovering between the ideal-beautiful and the ugly-real. The
artist shares his plight with humanity; he sees the individual as a
funambulist that attempts to keep his equilibrium between good and
evil:
Come istrïon, su cupida
plebe di rischio ingorda,
fa pompa d'equilibrio
sovra una tesa corda
tale è l'uman, librato
fra un sogno di peccato
e un sogno di virtù . (10)
14
Boito's conceptualization bears significant resemblance with
Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Boito's poem echoes Baudelaire
particularly in the first section of the collection, where "Spleen et Idéal"
are kindred to Boito's vero / Ideal. In Baudelaire's opposites however,
the co-existence of beauty and ugliness is less problematic and unstable.
Good and evil are deeply intertwined and impossible to separate:
perfect classical beauty is paired with the disgusting aspects of reality,
as the poem "Hymne à la Beauté" illustrates. Here beauty and horror,
good and evil, are perfectly integrated:
Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme,
Ο Beauté? Ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
Et l'on peut pour te comparer au vin.
Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques;
De tes bijoux l'Horreur n'est pas le moins charmant,
Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l'enfer, qu'importe,
Ο Beauté! Monstre énorme, effrayant, ingénu!
De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,
Qu'importe, si tu rends, -feé aux yeaux de velore,
14
"As a funambulist, / over an audience greedy of risk, / who boasts his balance
/ on a tight rope, / so is man, hovered / between a dream of sin / and a dream of
virtue".
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
77
rhythme, parfum, lueur ô mon unique reine !L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds? (54)
15
Here the two opposites are inseparable, good and evil, infernal and
divine are not alternative but co-present; the attraction for perfect
classical beauty is accompanied by horrendous aspects of reality. In
"Hymne a la Beauté" the opening rhetorical question denotes
Baudelaire's metaphysical reflection on the essence of what is beautiful,
there's a suspicion that beauty can lurk in the ugly, that reality is a
mixture of divine and infernal. The answer to the rhetorical question is
not that beauty originates from the exclusive domain of either heaven or
the abyss, but rather that beauty is to be found in both the divine and the
infernal. As Baudelaire states in "Mon coeur mis à nu", "II y a dans tout
homme, a toute heure, deux postulations simultanées, l'une vers Dieux,
l'autre vers Satan" (632). For Paul Allen Miller the relation between
the poles is not so much a synthesis or coexistence of opposites as "a
simultaneous tension, an interdependency, interaction of polarities"
(370). It is neither the subordination of one pole to the other, nor the
dialectical sublimation of the contradictions but a fruitful interaction
and simultaneous mutual determination. In contrast with Boito's vision,
here Baudelaire admits that beauty and horror, good and evil interact.
For Boito the acceptance of hideous reality takes place to the detriment
of ideal beauty, which is unattainable and irremediably lost. For Boito
acknowledging the presence of the ugly means abandoning classical
ideals of beauty, as he concedes in the famous lines of another poem of
friendship, addressed to fellow poet Giovanni Camerana: "Non
trovando il Bello / ci abbranchiamo all'Orrendo" (72).
16
17
15
Translations of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal are from C. F. MacIntyre,
One Hundred Poems from "Les Fleurs du Mal", Berkeley-Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1947. "Do you come from the deep sky or the
abysm, / Ο Beauty? Your gaze, infernal and divine, / pours forth both crime and
kindness in confusion, / and one for this might liken you to wine /...You walk
upon the dead, at whom you jeer; not least among your jewels Horror glances
/...what matter whether you come from heaven or hell, / Ο Beauty, monstrous,
dreaded, ingenuous one! / Angel or Siren, from Satan or God, what matter /
whence, if you can make-0 dove-eyed fairy, / with rhythm, perfume, light, my
one queen!-better / the hideous world, and time not quite so dreary? (55-57)
16
"There are in all men, all the time, two simultaneous postulations, one
towards God and the other towards Satan".
17
Paul Allen Miller, "Beauty, Tragedy and the Grotesque: A Dialogical
Esthetics in Three Sonnets by Baudelaire", French Forum 18.3 (1993), 319-33.
Patrizia Bettella
78
("Since we do not find the Beautiful, / We cling on to the Ugly"). This
poem uses the plural "noi", revealing the intention to address his
message to the entire group of new poets, embodied in young
Camerana . In Boito ugliness has become the inevitable alternative to
the lack of beauty. Since this poem was composed in 1865, two years
after "Dualismo", the sense of precarious balance of the artistfunambulist, has taken a sharp turn towards the horrid. Boito will not be
able to further develop his conceptual formulation and later on he will
completely abandon the Scapigliato positions of his early years.
In the poems of friendship the Scapigliati elaborate a set of common
metaphors which recur in their representation of the "dualismo" motif.
The oppositional structure created by Boito is centered around concepts
of beauty-ugliness which are embedded in metaphors of dantesque
reminescence: light-darkness, good-evil, ascent-fall, heaven (sky)-earth,
buttefly-worm . The semantic nucleus of Boito's conceptualization can
be traced to figures of flying high, opposed to the fall to earth and mud.
Boito represents the beautiful-Ideal in metaphors of elevation ascent
and flying of animals, be it the one of the "farfalla" or of the "cherubo"
or simply in the image of "ali", "cima", "volo" all symbols of "Arte
eterea", to be opposed to the metaphors of falling down to earth:
"verme immondo", "caduto cherubo", "fango", "umida gleba" as
symbols of Boito's "Arte reproba".
Emilio Praga, another key figure of the Scapigliatura, shares the
same plight as Boito. "Preludio", the first poem of Penombre (1864),
the most baudelairian of his collections, is almost a verse reply to his
friend in art and author of "Dualism". This composition opens in the
18
19
18
Camerana's reply to Boito's verse is also a poem in the plural. According to
Elio Gioanola, La Scapigliatura, Milano: Marietti, 1975, p. 202, Camerana
reproposes Boito's dualism, the contrast between the glorious promises of the
dreams and the disappointment of reality, between the aspiration to the absolute
and the prison of the contingent.
Boito's poetic language is deeply indebted to Dante's Commedia. Boito's
"Angelica farfalla" comes from Purgatorio X, 125: "nati a formar l'angelica
farfalla". The dualismo itself is presented in terms that evoke Dante's journey of
descent and ascent, since all the metaphors associated with "Ideal" ultimately
relate to Heaven, to a lofty airy dimension, whereas the "reale" is represented as
the fall of the "caduto cherubo" to earth and mud. Although Boito appropriates
Dante's language, his is not a theological but simply an aesthetic discourse.
More on Dante's influence on the Scapigliati is in Carlo Paolazzi's article,
"Cultura e 'paradiso perduto': note di fortuna dantesca tra gli Scapigliati", in
Novità e tradizione nel secondo Ottocento italiano, Milano: Vita e Pensiero,
1974, pp. 262-337.
19
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
79
plural "Noi", Praga also speaks for the entire group of new artists. The
poet feels the need to take a distance from the tradition of the "padri",
namely the national romantics: "Noi siamo i figli dei padri ammalati; /
20
aquile al tempo di mutar le piume" . The new poetics implies severing
the tie with the tradition embodied by Alessandro Manzoni, ("Casto
poeta che l'Italia adora", ("chaste poet whom Italy adores"). The
Scapigliati can not rely on Manzoni's faith in the Truth, their poems
deal merely with "Noia", doubt and the unknown:
Ο nemico lettor, canto la Noia,
l'eredità del dubbio e dell'ignoto,
il tuo re, il tuo pontefice, il tuo boia,
il tuo cielo, eil loto! (221)
21
Praga expresses dualism in two opposite entities and employs the
same oppositions, "Ideale" and "fango". He associates everything
horrible and real with mud; the earth, the mud, is the diametrically
opposite place to the heavenly aspiration of the poet. In Praga we find
the same images of Boito to represent the dualism: the Ideal is
embodied in figures of flying or winged creatures (for Praga poets are
"aquile" whose wings need to be replaced) which aspire to the highest
sky, whereas the real is embodied in figures of earth, mud and dirt (for
Praga "fango" and "loto" are thematic words).
Structurally Penombre presents remarkable relations with Les
Fleurs du Mal. "Preludio", in liminal position, touches on issue that
appear in Baudelaire's introductory poem to the Fleur. "Au Lecteur"
like "Preludio" is a poem in the plural. Baudelaire and Praga both
present "Ennui" as the painful condition of the poet, although Praga's
relation with the reader is a completely negative one (the reader is
enemy for Praga), there is no sympathy or sense of a common
predicament. In Baudelaire's aesthetics of ugliness, beauty shares with
the bizarre, with the horrid. In Friedrich's words: "He [Baudelaire]
frankly desires ugliness as...the possible beginning for an ascent to
ideality" (26). The new beauty includes ugliness, deformity and the
grotesque. In Mario Richter's view "Hymne à la Beauté" presents
"Beauté" as a personal form of (the) sublime; one that transcends the
dualistic system accepted by western culture. Baudelaire creates his
20
Emilio Praga, Opere, a cura di Gabriele Catalano, Napoli: Fulvio Rossi,
1969, pp. 221-22. All quotations are from this edition. "We are the sick children
of our fathers; / eagles at the time to shed our feathers".
"O reader, enemy, / heritage of doubt and of the unknown / your king, your
pontiff, your executioner, / your heaven, your swamp!"
21
Patrizia Bettella
80
own beauty, the real sublime, a true beauty which reveals illusion and
22
truth, the precarious and the absolute .
The Italian Scapigliati express their situation of artists in terms
analagous to Baudelaire's, but the oxymoric condition of the individual
for them does not lead to a new form of artistic beauty, rather, it
remains a dilemma. For Baudelaire ugliness offers the possibility to
reach a new type of ideality, in other words, Baudelaire's satanism, his
ugly is a triumph of evil ("evil devised by intellingence" not "merely
animal evil", Friedrich, 28) in an attempt to gain "some entry into
ideality" (Friedrich, 28). In Baudelaire's system the individual is always
straining upward, in his thirst for infinity. Yet, essentially torn, he is a
homo duplex, who must satisfy his satanic pole to understand his
heavenly one. At the peak of Baudelaire's ideality we find the
completely negative and new meaningless concept of death. The
Scapigliati do not reach such an outcome to their quest for a new
beauty, ideality. Exemplary in this respect is the conclusion of the
Fleurs du Mal, in contrast to the last poem of Praga's Penombre.
Baudelaire ends the Fleurs with the perspective of the "Voyage":
Ο Mort...
Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il réconforte!
Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,
Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe?
au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau! (124)
23
In Baudelaire from death can originate the new. Praga, instead,
concludes his collection with "Desolazioni" ("Desolations"). In this
poem Praga makes an assessment of his attempts to formulate the ars
nova and sums up the stages in the poet's search for the new art; he
realizes that it was nothing but a ghostly illusion, and ends with the
awareness that dreams are over and it is time to search somewhere else:
Vissi aspettando un mio fantasma bello
che mai non giunse;
vissi a fior d'acqua, fra i giunchi materni,
e il sudiciume non cercai del mondo;
ma l'empia ressa dei calci fraterni
22
Mario Richter, "Le sublime dans 'Hymne à la Beauté'", in Dix Études sur
Baudelaire, Paris: Champion, 1993, pp. 35-44.
"O Death.../ Pour us your poison that it may renew / our strength. Fire burns
our brains. Now let us leap- / Heaven or Hell, what matters?- into the deep, at
the bottom of the Unknown to find the «ew!"(329)
23
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
81
turbava il fondo,
e, poiché il fango sal come la nube,
come l'incenso e la prece devota,
sul bianco viso del natante impube
giunse la mota!
i sogni allor sono svaniti,
e tu ti accorgi che diventi serio...
e un'anima di cento anni che ingora
un odiato involucro ventenne,
geme dietro le rose e canta: è l'ora
di alzar le penne! (359-60)
24
These last verse ("è l'ora di alzar le penne") with its metaphorical
reference to the wings which can enable the poet to fly high, in perfect
circularity, reconnects this final poem to "Preludio", where the great
hopes for change were expressed through the same avian metaphor
("aquile al tempo di mutar le piume"). Metaphors of flying in the high
sky and flapping wings so common in the Scapigliati, express poetically
the ambition to achieve a new art, through images of flight, be it that of
"farfalla" and the "caduto cherubo /.../ che sale, / affaticando l'ale",
"Ideale / che mi fa batter l'ale" in Boito's "Dualismo", or the "stender
l'ali a così audace volo" in Camerana's poem "Ad Arrigo Boito".
According to Filippo Bettini (139-40), Praga's dualism is different
from Baudelaire's in that the French poet perceives the contradictions of
reality but overcomes them in a new vision of artistic beauty . Praga
finds it impossible "to transform the antinomies of reality in a poetically
organic and unitarian image"(139). In Praga the ideological tension and
the linguistic solution are not solved. Praga will overcome the impasse
only by elaborating a new system of linguistic and expressive values,
that will appear in his next collection of verses (Trasparenze).
25
24
"I lived for a beautiful phantom, / which never came; /I lived on the surface
of the water, among the maternal rushes, / and I did not look for the world's dirt;
/ but the evil crowd of fraternal kicks / stirred the bottom, / and since the mud
rises like a cloud, / like incense and the devout prayer, / on the white face of the
impuberal swimmer / came the mire! /...the dreams then have disappeared, /
and you realize that you are becoming serious. /.../ and a hundred years old
soul which wraps / a hated twenty years old body, / groans behind the roses and
sings: it is time / to raise the wings!"
Filippo Bettini, "Emilio Praga: dalla dissimulazione bozzettistica dell'idillio
all'utopia 'perversa' di un'arte, intesa come 'malattia' e come 'trasparenza'", La
Rassegna della letteratura italiana 80.7 (1976), 120-50.
25
Patrizia Bettella
82
Boito, like Praga, reflects upon the concepts of the new art in his
poem "A Giovanni Camerana" which sums up the main themes of the
ars nova. The same metaphors of flying and endless wings reappear but
Boito has to admit that the aspiration to the high ideals is not easily
achieved; "Dio ci aiuti, ο Giovanni, egli ci diede / stretto orizzonte e
sconfinate l'ali" (72); and the only art that Boito can envision is the one
inspired by the "Torva...Musa" ("The gloomy Muse") 2 6 . Camerana, the
young poet, at the beginning of his career replies to the caposcuola in
his poem "Ad Arrigo Boito" and using the plural " N o i " voices the
concerns of a school of young artists appropriating Boito's key words 2 7 .
Camerana is part of that "Stirpe fosca e malata" (83) ("Gloomy and sick
race") which evokes both Boito's "pallida giostra di poeti suicidi" and
28
Praga's "figli dei padri malati" . The young poet acknowledges that the
"arte nova e del futur" (84) was a dream that has not been fulfilled, he
finds in Boito those certainties which the new poets can not achieve; the
neophyte has clearly identified the key issues posed by Boito and sees
in the latter's verses a successful outcome to the contradictions of
dualism, however he doubts that it can work for the new poets:
Perchè noi bimbi, Arrigo,
Stendere l'ali a così audace volo?
Giusto e il torvo castigo.
Or la pallida Inerzia e la Tristezza,
Come due sfingi, stanno a la mia porta.
Tu almeno, Arrigo, la spietata brezza
Disfidi del tuo male;
Entro te pure il sozzo verme annida,
Ma sei nel canto aerea farfalla . (85)
29
26
"May God help us Giovanni, / since He gave us a narrow outlook and endless
wings".
Giovanni Camerana, Poesie, Torino: Einaudi, 1968, pp. 83-85. All quotations
are from this edition.
Many of the Scapigliati had indeed short and troubled lives. Praga was
addicted to alcoholism, Tarchetti died of typhus at the age of 33, Camerana and
Pinchetti committed suicide.
"Arrigo, why should we children, / extend our wings to such a bold flight? /
The surly punishment is right. / Now the pale Idleness and Sadness, like two
sphinxes, are by my door. / At least you, Arrigo, defy the relentless breeze / of
your disease; /.../ Within you the lurid worm may live, / But in your chant you
are an airy butterfly".
27
28
29
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
83
The failure to overcome the contradictions of the dualistic vision,
takes the most dramatic expression in the young Giulio Pinchetti . His
verses, as his life, are marked by the desperate conviction that ugliness
and death are the only outcome to the failed search for the Ideal.
Pinchetti is considered, like Tarchetti, one of those typical Italian
maudits, whose mingling of literature and life, lead to devasting
consequences. He embraces the dualism formulated by Boito and Praga
and makes it something tragic and personal. He perceives human
existence as a "fatal lie", and distorts Boito's and Praga's imagery to his
own end. His poem "Poeta", presents the same dualismo as Boito and
Praga: the predicament of the artist, torn between Ideal and Truth, but
essentially incapable to find a meaning in anyone of the two poles:
30
giace il poeta:-Spartaco
indarno del pensieroinvan lo scosse il vacuo
fantasima del Vero,
invan di fè, di patria,
un Dio gli favellò.
Ed ei, mendico e lacero,
errò implorando calma,
bieca vendetta al secolo
che gli morìa nell'alma,
che gli spegneva il palpito
sacro dell'Idëal . (86-81)
31
30
Little is known about this young poet who committed suicide when he was
only twenty six. He began his career as a journalist for the Gazzetta di Milano,
where he was in charge of the literary and political supplements. Pinchetti was
deeply affected by Foscolo's Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and by Leopardi.
His life was marked by family tragedies: the death of his girlfriend and nineteen
year old sister, and culminates in the death of his mother, whom he adored.
Renzo Negri ["Un epistolario ritrovato (Giulio Pinchetti)", Aevum 46 (1972),
141-45] notes that his letters repeat the scheme of Ortis. Pinchetti joined the
army to participate in the attempted liberation of Rome in 1867. Unable to
participate in the events of the third phase of the Italian independence, he was
so disappointed that he attempted suicide by jumping off the train taking him
back from Rome. These events are reported in his letters to friend Niccolò
Sardi. His only poetic work is a collection of Versi published in 1868. More on
Pinchetti can be found in Gaetano Mariani's Storia della Scapigliatura, pp. 75054. His works (the Versi, the review articles, the letters and other notes) were
collected in Opere, Milano: Marzorati, 1974, edited by Fiorenza Vittori; all
quotations are from this edition.
"The poet lies: as a Spartacus of thought-in vain he was stirred by the
vacuous / ghost of the Truth, / in vain a God spoke to him / about faith, about
31
Patrizia Bettella
84
In this poem Pinchetti takes the dualistic tension to its extreme and
makes Beauty and Ugliness coincide: "Il Bello sta nell'Orrido, / nella
Beltà è l'Orror!" (88). His solution to the dilemma, however, does not
lead to a new ideality, rather, it dooms the poet to self-destruction. For
Pinchetti, whose attitudes in art and life are so inextricably linked, the
outcome is a desperate form of annihilation that eventually results in
suicide. This poem dated 1866 reflects the existential plight of young
Pinchetti, who attempted several times to take his life. His aesthetic
reflections are closely interconnected with his outlook on life and his
letters well illustrate the inability of the young artist to find a
satisfactory solution to the dualism. Already by 1868 the coincidence of
beauty and ugliness is not only the situation of the artist but that of his
entire existence: in a letter to his friend Niccolò Sardi of January 31
1868 he declares that: "I concetti del bello e del brutto si oscurano nella
mia testa, quasi si confondono..." (267). ("The concepts of beauty and
ugliness are obscured in my head, they are amost confused with one
another") and later in March of the same year he writes again to Sardi
wondering why the concept of beauty has become so weak in his mind.
For Pinchetti the dramatic and painful situation leads to suicide, since
art and life seem to allow not possible solution to the predicament .
32
Conclusions
The debate on beauy and ugliness in nineteenth century Europe
contributes to the re-evaluation of the role of the ugly in art. Thanks to
Hugo's Préface ugliness enters the aesthetic canon as an autonomuos
entity and art opens up to modernity and in Rosenkranz's Aesthetik des
Hässlichen the ugly is discussed for the first time in a philosophical
essay, Baudelaire's new concept of beauty in the Fleurs du Mal is
crucial for the Italian Scapigliati. They share Baudelaire's aesthetic
preoccupation with ugliness and the bizarre. Their discourse of beauty
and ugliness springs from the same need to distance themselves from
the classical canon, but the Scapigliati can not achieve a vision which
fatherland. / And he, ragged beggar, / wandered imploring calmly / grim
revenge on the century / which was dying in his soul, / which exstinguished in
him the sacred / impulse towards the Ideal". This poem appears also in Gilberto
Finzi, Lirici della Scapigliatura, Milano: 1965, pp. 155-57.
Pinchetti's flirtation with suicide is fuelled by his declared affinity to
Foscolo's Jacopo Ortis. Also Leopardi's thoughts on suicide are particulary clear
in his mind, since he considers himself one of Leopardi's best admirers and
imitators. In one letter he says: "Chiamo me stesso scimmia di Leopardi"
(March 22, 1868) (273).
32
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
85
includes ugliness in a new ideality. Their attempt to incorporate beauty
and ugliness in their aesthetic discourse, to elaborate a concept of
modern beauty, of real sublime as envisioned by Baudelaire, remains
highly problematic. Boito's dualismo bears no fruit since he himself
will move away from his positions in his maturity, as stated already in
his last "poesia dell'amicizia" to Praga: "Sono stanco, languente, ho già
percorso / assai la vita rea, / ho già sentito assai quel doppio morso / del
Vero e dell'Idea, / Ho perduto i miei sogni ad uno ad u n o " (65). For
Praga the end of Pénombre does not mark the beginning of new artistic
forms but is rather the realization of the need for different solutions and
Camerana, who accepts the challenge proposed by Boito, can not
overcome the contradictions of the dualism either. Pinchetti takes,
instead, the most dramatic approach to the dilemma and projects the
aesthetic tension into his personal life and ends the quest with a tragic
surrender to the ugly in its most uncompromising and pure form of evil,
suicide.
Although for the Scapigliati the debate on the role of the beautiful
and the ugly in the artistic creation failed to produce an ars nova, their
discourse deserves particular consideration: in the closed atmosphere of
Italian culture, they were the first to open up to the innovative ferments
of modern aesthetics and to express their need for revision and change
of the canons of idealism.
33
PATRIZIA BETTELLA
University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta
33
"I am tired, languishing /I have already travelled the long road of my
guilty life /I have already felt the double bite / of the truth and of the
Ideal /I have lost all my dreams, one by one".
68
THE DEBATE ON BEAUTY AND UGLINESS IN ITALIAN
SCAPIGLIATURA AND BAUDELAIRE
T
he process of aesthetic change which takes place in European
culture during the middle of the nineteenth century, leads from
idealistic to modern forms of art. The literary speculations of
Victor Hugo, the post-idealistic philosophy of Karl Rosenkranz, and the
critical work of Charles Baudelaire mark the unprecedented success of
the ugly as autonomous category of artistic creation.
In Italian culture, where literature is still fully governed by the
idealistic canon, it is the rebel and unconventional group of the
Scapigliati which first enter the debate on beauty and ugliness. The
poems of Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga, Giovanni Camerana and Giulio
Pinchetti, albeit not resulting in a successful and organic plan of new
poetic, mark the opening of Italian literature to the European discourse
of modern aesthetics.
In this paper I shall first briefly examine the importance of the
category of the ugly in nineteenth century aesthetic discourse and then
see how the Scapigliati attempt to incorporate the ugly in their
formulation of a new poetics, particularly in relation to Baudelaire's
Fleurs du Mal. The Scapigliati articulate their views of new art in the
form of dualismo; the categories of beauty and ugliness, identifiable
also in the terms Ideal and Real, are at the centre of their search for ars
nova. A series of common metaphors of ascent and fall, heaven and
earth, recur and interconnect their poems, but ultimately the two terms
of the dualismo remain separate and do not lead, like in Baudelaire, to
the formulation of a new form of art. Despite the impossibility to
overcome the oppositions between beauty and ugliness, the Scapigliati
challenged the traditional aesthetic canon, in which the ugly did not
have adequate space of representation, and contributed to the opening
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
69
of Italian literature to the most current aesthetic trends in European
culture.
The rise of the category of the ugly
In classical aesthetics, from the Middle Ages until the eighteeenth
century, the category of the ugly occupies a subordinate position in
literature and other arts. Ugliness is confined to the comic or morally
reprehensible, it enters the artistic scene only to highlight by contrast
the beautiful and good, therefore ugliness does not exist as autonomous
aesthetic category. During the nineteenth century the ugly is
represented in serious contexts and comes to the foreground as an
independent aesthetic entity. Victor Hugo in his Préface de Cromwell
(1827) reverses the system of traditional aesthetic values by
acknowledging the role of the grotesque and the ugly in modern
literature as essential components of romantic and modern drama. For
its critical impact on the canon of classical beauty the Préface is
considered a true manifesto of French romanticism and of new poetics.
A re-evaluation of the Christian message leads to the representation of
those aspects of life which are less attractive, so that art can better
portray the variety of reality, composed of beauty and ugliness, good
and evil:
Le christianisme amène la poésie à la vérité. Comme lui, la muse
moderne verra les choses d'un coup d'oeil plus haut et plus large. Elle
sentira que tout dans la création n'est pas humainement beau, que le laid
y existe à côté du beau, le difforme près du gracieux, le grotesque au
reverse du sublime, le mal avec le bien, l'ombre avec la lumière . (11)
1
For Hugo art should imitate nature, not the ideal, and nature is
composed of multiplicity and variety. In modern life the grotesque is
crucial because it allows us to portray those aspects of reality which are
deformed, horrible, comic and droll. While in classical art the ugly is
depicted only to create a contrast with the beautiful, in modern art Hugo
identifies the ugly as an autonomous category, whose function is not
1
Victor Hugo, Préface de Cromwell, Oxford: Clarendon, 1925. Unless
otherwise stated, translations are mine. "Christianity leads poetry to truth. The
modern muse shall see things from a higher and wider perspective. It shall
feel that everything in the creation is not humanly beautiful, that the ugly
exists beside the beautiful, the deformed beside the graceful, the grotesque as an
implication of the sublime, the evil with the good, the shadow with the light".
Patrizia Bettella
70
merely subordinate and oppositional. Hugo's aesthetics plays a central
role in the nineteenth century discourse of beauty and ugliness in art. In
its attempt to account for all aspects of reality, modern art must
abandon idealistic views of perfection and concede that beauty and
ugliness co-exist.
The debate on ugliness reaches its peak with the publication in
Germany in 1853 of Karl Rosenkranz's Aesthetik des Hässlichen
(Aesthetics of the Ugly), the first philosophical treatise entirely devoted
to the subject of the ugly, an event which indicates an unprecedented
relevance of this category in the aesthetic discourse. In his essay
Rosenkranz, a disciple of Hegel, attempts to formulate systematic
classification and categorization of ugliness in art .
The nineteenth century preoccupation with the ugly effects the full
development of a new concept of art, in which ugliness is essential to
the representation of modernity . Through the ugly, modern aesthetics
attempts to give new meaning to what otherwise has no artistic value,
and seeks to rehabilitate "die nicht mehr schönen Kunsten" (the arts
which are no longer beautiful), to quote the title of a series of essays
edited by Hans Robert Jauss in 1968. Jauss' article on "The Classic and
Christian Justification of the Ugly in Medieval Literature" underscores
the revolutionary role of Hugo's Préface, where the ugly does not
perform a merely antithetical, subordinate function, but is introduced as
self-sufficient category in the realm of what is representable in art
(146). Modern poets characteristically question the canonical
distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly. According to Hugo
Friedrich, Baudelaire's poetry is a paradigmatic example of critique to
traditional aesthetic categories . In the Fleurs du Mal Baudelaire
2
3
4
2
Despite Ronsenkranz's proclaimed disapproval of ugliness in its extreme
forms, he articulates a structure of different intensity and degree of ugliness in
art, which range from absence of form, to incorretedness, to deformity, to
repugnance. This last reaches its highest intensity in the diabolic, which is to be
avoided at all costs. The ugly which Rosenkranz finds entirely acceptable is the
caricature, which he finds well represented in contemporary art. For a well
informed introduction, see the "Presentazione" of the Italian edition by Remo
Bodei (Estetica del brutto, Bologna: il Mulino, 1984, pp. 7-39)
Remo Bodei points out how in France, after the consolidation of Hugo's
theories in the period between 1830-48, the Romantic socialist movement finds
its expression in the motto "Le laid c'est le beau!" (The ugly is the beautiful).
Deformed individuals such as Notre-Dame de Paris' Quasimodo are considered
heroes of a new art, which welcomes the grotesque and the horrid (13).
Hugo Friedrich's essay on the structure of modern poetry (Die Struktur der
modernen Lyrik, 1956, English translation by Joachim Neugroschel, Evanston:
3
4
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
71
proposes a modern aesthetics, in which it is possible to perceive the
beauty of evil, of the horrible and disgusting, together with the
beautiful. Baudelaire is attracted to the grotesque, to the
unconventional, all aspects that contribute to the portrayal of reality in
its complexity and paradox. Baudelaire acknowledges the aesthetic
value of the grotesque and proposes art which can widen its
representational scope by including both the ugly and the beautiful .
According to Friedrich, Baudelaire's concept of modernity goes beyond
that of the romantics: "It...turns the negative into something
fascinating. Poverty, decay, evil, the nocturnal, and the artificial exert
an attraction that has to be perceived poetically..., the repulsive is
joined to the nobility of sound, acquiring the 'galvanic shudder' that
Baudelaire praises in Poe" (25, 26). Baudelaire's aesthetic precepts are
presented in some of his essays . In "Réflexions sur quelques-uns de
mes contemporains" (1861), he envisions a concept of art capable of
embracing and including everything: the grotesque and the sublime.
Baudelaire praises Hugo for his ability to represent universality in his
poetry: "Ainsi Victor Hugo possède non-seulement la grandeur, mais
l'universalité" (471). He also praises Gautier, who mastered the art of
depicting beauty and managed to extract a mysterious and symbolic
beauty even from grotesque and hideous objects (478). In Le Peintre de
la vie moderne (1863) Baudelaire formulates a new theory of the
Beautiful (a rational and historical theory of the Beautiful), based on the
5
6
7
Northwestern University Press, 1974) underscores the modernity of
Baudelaire's poetry, which upsets traditional aesthetic categories of beauty and
ugliness.
For a complete treatment of the grotesque in Baudelaire's aesthetic vision, see
Yvonne Bargues Rollins' Baudelaire et le Grotesque, Washington: University
of America Press, 1978.
For all quotations I referred to the edition Charles Baudelaire, Ouvres
complètes, Paris: Seuil, 1968; unless otherwise stated traslations are my own.
According to Luciano Anceschi ("Il problema estetico di Charles Baudelaire",
in Autonomia ed eteronimia dell'arte, Firenze: Vallecchi, 1959) Baudelaire
could not accept a model of art which would not pose a rigorous distinction
between art, philosophy and history. Nor could he accept that the only form of
modern art is drama. Baudelaire strives to overcome a model of art whose final
goal is moral and not simply artistic. The attitude of Baudelaire towards Hugo
changed from almost hostile (Salon de 1846) to partly reverential, until 1858,
when Baudelaire paid homage to Hugo in his essay on Gautier. Here he praised
Hugo for his ability to represent the grotesque, especially in Notre-Dame de
Paris. Baudelaire also sent a copy of his "Tableaux Parisienne" to Hugo asking
him for a preface. In this section of the Fleurs some poems are dedicated to
Hugo. ("Le Cygne", "Les Sept Veillards", "Les petites Vieilles").
5
6
7
Patrizia Bettella
72
relativity of beauty and not on absolute parameters: beauty contains
eternal and relative elements; the relative aspect of beauty is
circumstantial and depends on a certain culture, fashion, morals (54950). Baudelaire postulates a duality in art, which corresponds to the
duality of the individual. In modern times art contains a duplicity: the
contingent, the transitory, and also the eternal and immutable. For him
the beautiful is always bizarre. "Le beau est toujour bizarre". The role
of art is to express a metaphysics, a transcendent concept of the human
condition of duplicity. As Yvonne Rollins points out, "Pour lui
[Baudelaire] le grotesque est avant tout l'expression artistique d'une
vision philosophique de la condition humaine. Vision que reconnaît
l'animal en l'homme, le péché et la déchéance" (35).
8
The debate on the ugly in the Scapigliatura
In Italian literature, where even the romantic movement is still
dominated by idealistic forms of representation, the second half of the
nineteenth century marks the first attempts to deal with the new
aesthetic category of the ugly. Remarkably the interest for the ugly
originates from the Scapigliati, rebel artists active primarily in Milan,
the major and more open cultural centre in the country. The
Scapigliati's attitudes in life and art ran counter the rules of bourgeois
society. Disillusioned with the situation of Italy after the unification in
1860, they expressed their dissent in the political and literary scene.
Their reaction against contemporary society was marked by anarchist
rebellion, and unconventional behaviours, similar to the French
bohemians. They were often leading a poor existence and their lives
ended tragically and prematurely, as a consequence of disease,
excessive drinking, drug addiction or suicide. Arrigo Boito, Emilio
Praga, Giovanni Camerana, Giulio Pinchetti and others, challenged the
conventional literary canons and iniatiated the search for a new art,
where ugliness is essential to the aesthetic process. They were attracted
to anti-classical forms of literary expression, and drew their inspiration
from European literature: Hugo, Baudelaire, Hoffmann, are among their
favourites. In the Scapigliati the meditation on the ugly marks an
attempt, although not organized and systematic, to challenge the
narrow-mindedness of Italian midddle class culture. Their innovative
approach starts with a re-evaluation of European romanticism, which
8
"For him the grotesque is above all the artistic expression of a
philosophical vision of the human condition. A vision which recognizes
the animal in man, the sin and the fall".
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
73
had not been very influential in Italy. What appeals to the Scapigliati is
the grotesque, the ugly, the ghostly, all those aspects of reality which
were neglected by the national literary tradition. The Scapigliati
perceive that art can not represent the complexity of reality only with
the traditional tools of idealistic aesthetics; it can not limit its scope to
ideal beauty but must depict reality in every aspect, including also what
lies in the mud, what is horrid, macabre and disgusting. The decaying
ideals of Italian Risorgimento, the disapproval of bourgeois society, the
desire for renewal, the refusal of the tradition, drive the Scapigliati
towards the unconventional and the ugly. For them, however, Italian
romantics such as Alessandro Manzoni and Ugo Foscolo are still a very
strong influence, or rather, the reference point of their critical discourse.
Boito and Praga are the heirs of those great Italian romantics but they
are deeply aware that artistic inspiration must originate elsewhere,
namely in European literature.
Critics have pointed out Baudelaire's influence on the Scapigliati,
particularly on Boito, Praga and Camerana. Some even state that
Scapigliatura itself has a special link with Paris and Baudelaire, since
both Praga and Boito opened their artistic career with a trip to Paris
between 1859 and 1862; there they could read or possibly even meet
Baudelaire, the poet who was most congenial to their artistic
temperament . Since the Scapigliati neither belonged to a "school" nor
to an organised group, their innovative ideas are not expressed in a
definite program. However their critical thought can be extracted from a
series of poems, exchanged between Boito, Praga and Camerana, the
so-called poems of friendship . Arrigo Boito, regarded as the central
9
10
9
These artists, who could read and even write French had the opportunity to
read Baudelaire in the original language. However we have no proof of any
direct encounter of either Boito or Praga with Baudelaire. Pietro Gibellini ("La
voce di Baudelaire, la libreria di Praga", in Indagini Otto-novecentesche,
Firenze: Olschki, 1983, pp. 47-64) considers Praga's encounter in Paris in 1858
with Les fleurs du mal crucial for the Scapigliati and for Italian culture, since
Baudelaire's work, exposes Praga to the inaugural book of modern lyric (47).
For more bibliographical references to the relations between Praga and
Baudelaire see the note on page 48 of Gibellini's article and Jean-Claude
Bouffard, "Un disciple de Baudelaire: Emilio Praga", Revue de Littérature
Comparée 45 (1971), 159-79; Douglas Β. Cook, "The Introduction of
Baudelaire in Italy", in Papers on Romance Literary Relations, Evanston: Dept.
of Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, 1975, pp. 73-81.
10
Gaetano Mariani in his seminal work Storia della Scapigliatura
(Caltanissetta-Roma: Sciascia, 1967) is the first to identify these poems as
Patrizia Bettella
74
figure of the group, sets the parameters of his new aesthetics in the
11
poem entitled "Dualismo" included in his collection Il libro dei versi .
This poem, composed in 1863, is considered a true manifesto of the
Scapigliatura poetics. One year later Emilio Praga composed
"Preludio", a response in verses to his friend's poem, which illustrates
some programmatic themes that apply to the entire group. Boito later
replied to Praga in a poem dated 1866. Giovanni Camerana is also
involved in the poetic exchange of epistles, since Boito addresses to the
young artist one of his poems in 1865; Camerana in turn, composed the
poem "Ad Arrigo Boito" a year later 12 . "Dualismo" articulates Boito's
problematic views on beauty and ugliness. It introduces one of the key
motifs of Scapigliatura: the dualism. The dichotomy between beauty
and ugliness is expressed in the opposition between the Ideal and the
Real. For an artist like Boito, who has already lost faith in a traditional
aesthetic vision, the categories of beauty-ugliness imply numerous
complications: the desire for beauty and ideal is still present in the
scapigliato artist, but it can not be fulfilled. This loss of faith in the
ideal urges the artist to represent a reality which encompasses also
horrendous and ugly aspects. Dualism refers to a composite reality,
which includes opposite aspects:
Son luce ed ombra; angelica
farfalla ο verme immondo,
sono un caduto cherubo
dannato a errar sul mondo,
ο un demone che sale,
affaticando l'ale,
verso un lontano ciel.
Ecco perchè mi affascina
l'ebbrezza di due canti
ecco perchè mi lacera
l'angoscia di due pianti,
"liriche deH'amicizia"(28). Chapter II looks in detail at the "spunti
programmatici" (68) which are contained in these poems.
Arrigo Boito, Libro dei versi, Torino: Casanova, 1902. All quotations are
from this edition.
Other poems of friendship include Praga's "All'amico" dedicated to Boito,
included in the section "Vespri" of Penombre, Camerana's "A Emilio Praga"
(June 1865), which was composed only six months before the one "Ad Arrigo
Boito" (January 1866). Camerana expresses his concept of new art also in the
poem "Emancipazione", which is not directed to one poet-friend but rather to an
entire group of "amici".
11
12
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
75
ecco perchè il sorriso
che mi contorce il viso
ο che m'allarga il cuor.
E sogno un'arte eterea
che forse in ciel ha norma,
franca dai rudi vincoli
del metro e della forma,
piena dell'Ideale
che mi fa batter l'ale
e che seguir non so.
E sogno un'arte reproba
che smaga il mio pensiero
dietro le basse imagini
d'un ver che mente al Vero
e in aspro carme immerso
sulle mie labbra il verso
13
bestemmiando vien . (5-10)
The poet, who perceives himself as embodied in images of
luminosity and darkness and symbolized in two opposite animals
(butterfly and worm), is urged by two chants, the one of the Ideal in
capital letters and the one of the real, the truth in lower case letters,
much baser than the rarefied Truth presented by national romantics. The
duplicity of chant reveals the impossibility to follow the precepts of
traditional aesthetics and indicates the prospect of a new concept of art
based on the co-presence of opposite categories. However the balance
between the opposites is rather unstable as is demonstrated by the
alternating presence in these verses of the conjunction " e " , " o " ; the poet
seems first to identify with the duplicity of shadow and light, but
immediately modifies this formulation into a disjunctive one: "angelica
farfalla ο verme immondo", "caduto cherubo...o demone che sale". The
Scapigliato artist is still tied to the traditional aesthetics and therefore
13
"I am light and shadow; / angelic butterfly or filthy worm, / I am a fallen
cherub / damned to err in the world, / or a demon who ascends, / with fatigued
wings, / towards a distant heaven. /.../ That is why I am fascinated / by the
charm of two songs, / that is why I am torn / by the anguish of two laments, /
that is why this smile / which twists my face / or opens up my heart. /.../ And I
dream of an ethereal Art / which perhaps has its rules in heaven, / free of the
rude constraints / of meter and of form, / full of the Ideal / which makes my
wings flap / and that I do not know how to follow. /.../ And I dream of an evil
Art / which diverts my thought / to the base images / of a truth that lies to the
Truth / and immersed in harsh poetry / the verse comes to my lips /
blasphemously".
Patrizia Bettella
76
naturally attracted to its ideals of absolute perfection; however he faces
a miniscule "vero" of petty realism, very distant from the "Vero" of the
idealistic doctrine. The irredeemable contrast between ideal and reality
leads the Scapigliato to the representation of a fractured world,
constantly hovering between the ideal-beautiful and the ugly-real. The
artist shares his plight with humanity; he sees the individual as a
funambulist that attempts to keep his equilibrium between good and
evil:
Come istrïon, su cupida
plebe di rischio ingorda,
fa pompa d'equilibrio
sovra una tesa corda
tale è l'uman, librato
fra un sogno di peccato
e un sogno di virtù . (10)
14
Boito's conceptualization bears significant resemblance with
Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Boito's poem echoes Baudelaire
particularly in the first section of the collection, where "Spleen et Idéal"
are kindred to Boito's vero / Ideal. In Baudelaire's opposites however,
the co-existence of beauty and ugliness is less problematic and unstable.
Good and evil are deeply intertwined and impossible to separate:
perfect classical beauty is paired with the disgusting aspects of reality,
as the poem "Hymne à la Beauté" illustrates. Here beauty and horror,
good and evil, are perfectly integrated:
Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'abîme,
Ο Beauté? Ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confusément le bienfait et le crime,
Et l'on peut pour te comparer au vin.
Tu marches sur des morts, Beauté, dont tu te moques;
De tes bijoux l'Horreur n'est pas le moins charmant,
Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l'enfer, qu'importe,
Ο Beauté! Monstre énorme, effrayant, ingénu!
De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,
Qu'importe, si tu rends, -feé aux yeaux de velore,
14
"As a funambulist, / over an audience greedy of risk, / who boasts his balance
/ on a tight rope, / so is man, hovered / between a dream of sin / and a dream of
virtue".
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
77
rhythme, parfum, lueur ô mon unique reine !L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds? (54)
15
Here the two opposites are inseparable, good and evil, infernal and
divine are not alternative but co-present; the attraction for perfect
classical beauty is accompanied by horrendous aspects of reality. In
"Hymne a la Beauté" the opening rhetorical question denotes
Baudelaire's metaphysical reflection on the essence of what is beautiful,
there's a suspicion that beauty can lurk in the ugly, that reality is a
mixture of divine and infernal. The answer to the rhetorical question is
not that beauty originates from the exclusive domain of either heaven or
the abyss, but rather that beauty is to be found in both the divine and the
infernal. As Baudelaire states in "Mon coeur mis à nu", "II y a dans tout
homme, a toute heure, deux postulations simultanées, l'une vers Dieux,
l'autre vers Satan" (632). For Paul Allen Miller the relation between
the poles is not so much a synthesis or coexistence of opposites as "a
simultaneous tension, an interdependency, interaction of polarities"
(370). It is neither the subordination of one pole to the other, nor the
dialectical sublimation of the contradictions but a fruitful interaction
and simultaneous mutual determination. In contrast with Boito's vision,
here Baudelaire admits that beauty and horror, good and evil interact.
For Boito the acceptance of hideous reality takes place to the detriment
of ideal beauty, which is unattainable and irremediably lost. For Boito
acknowledging the presence of the ugly means abandoning classical
ideals of beauty, as he concedes in the famous lines of another poem of
friendship, addressed to fellow poet Giovanni Camerana: "Non
trovando il Bello / ci abbranchiamo all'Orrendo" (72).
16
17
15
Translations of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal are from C. F. MacIntyre,
One Hundred Poems from "Les Fleurs du Mal", Berkeley-Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1947. "Do you come from the deep sky or the
abysm, / Ο Beauty? Your gaze, infernal and divine, / pours forth both crime and
kindness in confusion, / and one for this might liken you to wine /...You walk
upon the dead, at whom you jeer; not least among your jewels Horror glances
/...what matter whether you come from heaven or hell, / Ο Beauty, monstrous,
dreaded, ingenuous one! / Angel or Siren, from Satan or God, what matter /
whence, if you can make-0 dove-eyed fairy, / with rhythm, perfume, light, my
one queen!-better / the hideous world, and time not quite so dreary? (55-57)
16
"There are in all men, all the time, two simultaneous postulations, one
towards God and the other towards Satan".
17
Paul Allen Miller, "Beauty, Tragedy and the Grotesque: A Dialogical
Esthetics in Three Sonnets by Baudelaire", French Forum 18.3 (1993), 319-33.
Patrizia Bettella
78
("Since we do not find the Beautiful, / We cling on to the Ugly"). This
poem uses the plural "noi", revealing the intention to address his
message to the entire group of new poets, embodied in young
Camerana . In Boito ugliness has become the inevitable alternative to
the lack of beauty. Since this poem was composed in 1865, two years
after "Dualismo", the sense of precarious balance of the artistfunambulist, has taken a sharp turn towards the horrid. Boito will not be
able to further develop his conceptual formulation and later on he will
completely abandon the Scapigliato positions of his early years.
In the poems of friendship the Scapigliati elaborate a set of common
metaphors which recur in their representation of the "dualismo" motif.
The oppositional structure created by Boito is centered around concepts
of beauty-ugliness which are embedded in metaphors of dantesque
reminescence: light-darkness, good-evil, ascent-fall, heaven (sky)-earth,
buttefly-worm . The semantic nucleus of Boito's conceptualization can
be traced to figures of flying high, opposed to the fall to earth and mud.
Boito represents the beautiful-Ideal in metaphors of elevation ascent
and flying of animals, be it the one of the "farfalla" or of the "cherubo"
or simply in the image of "ali", "cima", "volo" all symbols of "Arte
eterea", to be opposed to the metaphors of falling down to earth:
"verme immondo", "caduto cherubo", "fango", "umida gleba" as
symbols of Boito's "Arte reproba".
Emilio Praga, another key figure of the Scapigliatura, shares the
same plight as Boito. "Preludio", the first poem of Penombre (1864),
the most baudelairian of his collections, is almost a verse reply to his
friend in art and author of "Dualism". This composition opens in the
18
19
18
Camerana's reply to Boito's verse is also a poem in the plural. According to
Elio Gioanola, La Scapigliatura, Milano: Marietti, 1975, p. 202, Camerana
reproposes Boito's dualism, the contrast between the glorious promises of the
dreams and the disappointment of reality, between the aspiration to the absolute
and the prison of the contingent.
Boito's poetic language is deeply indebted to Dante's Commedia. Boito's
"Angelica farfalla" comes from Purgatorio X, 125: "nati a formar l'angelica
farfalla". The dualismo itself is presented in terms that evoke Dante's journey of
descent and ascent, since all the metaphors associated with "Ideal" ultimately
relate to Heaven, to a lofty airy dimension, whereas the "reale" is represented as
the fall of the "caduto cherubo" to earth and mud. Although Boito appropriates
Dante's language, his is not a theological but simply an aesthetic discourse.
More on Dante's influence on the Scapigliati is in Carlo Paolazzi's article,
"Cultura e 'paradiso perduto': note di fortuna dantesca tra gli Scapigliati", in
Novità e tradizione nel secondo Ottocento italiano, Milano: Vita e Pensiero,
1974, pp. 262-337.
19
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
79
plural "Noi", Praga also speaks for the entire group of new artists. The
poet feels the need to take a distance from the tradition of the "padri",
namely the national romantics: "Noi siamo i figli dei padri ammalati; /
20
aquile al tempo di mutar le piume" . The new poetics implies severing
the tie with the tradition embodied by Alessandro Manzoni, ("Casto
poeta che l'Italia adora", ("chaste poet whom Italy adores"). The
Scapigliati can not rely on Manzoni's faith in the Truth, their poems
deal merely with "Noia", doubt and the unknown:
Ο nemico lettor, canto la Noia,
l'eredità del dubbio e dell'ignoto,
il tuo re, il tuo pontefice, il tuo boia,
il tuo cielo, eil loto! (221)
21
Praga expresses dualism in two opposite entities and employs the
same oppositions, "Ideale" and "fango". He associates everything
horrible and real with mud; the earth, the mud, is the diametrically
opposite place to the heavenly aspiration of the poet. In Praga we find
the same images of Boito to represent the dualism: the Ideal is
embodied in figures of flying or winged creatures (for Praga poets are
"aquile" whose wings need to be replaced) which aspire to the highest
sky, whereas the real is embodied in figures of earth, mud and dirt (for
Praga "fango" and "loto" are thematic words).
Structurally Penombre presents remarkable relations with Les
Fleurs du Mal. "Preludio", in liminal position, touches on issue that
appear in Baudelaire's introductory poem to the Fleur. "Au Lecteur"
like "Preludio" is a poem in the plural. Baudelaire and Praga both
present "Ennui" as the painful condition of the poet, although Praga's
relation with the reader is a completely negative one (the reader is
enemy for Praga), there is no sympathy or sense of a common
predicament. In Baudelaire's aesthetics of ugliness, beauty shares with
the bizarre, with the horrid. In Friedrich's words: "He [Baudelaire]
frankly desires ugliness as...the possible beginning for an ascent to
ideality" (26). The new beauty includes ugliness, deformity and the
grotesque. In Mario Richter's view "Hymne à la Beauté" presents
"Beauté" as a personal form of (the) sublime; one that transcends the
dualistic system accepted by western culture. Baudelaire creates his
20
Emilio Praga, Opere, a cura di Gabriele Catalano, Napoli: Fulvio Rossi,
1969, pp. 221-22. All quotations are from this edition. "We are the sick children
of our fathers; / eagles at the time to shed our feathers".
"O reader, enemy, / heritage of doubt and of the unknown / your king, your
pontiff, your executioner, / your heaven, your swamp!"
21
Patrizia Bettella
80
own beauty, the real sublime, a true beauty which reveals illusion and
22
truth, the precarious and the absolute .
The Italian Scapigliati express their situation of artists in terms
analagous to Baudelaire's, but the oxymoric condition of the individual
for them does not lead to a new form of artistic beauty, rather, it
remains a dilemma. For Baudelaire ugliness offers the possibility to
reach a new type of ideality, in other words, Baudelaire's satanism, his
ugly is a triumph of evil ("evil devised by intellingence" not "merely
animal evil", Friedrich, 28) in an attempt to gain "some entry into
ideality" (Friedrich, 28). In Baudelaire's system the individual is always
straining upward, in his thirst for infinity. Yet, essentially torn, he is a
homo duplex, who must satisfy his satanic pole to understand his
heavenly one. At the peak of Baudelaire's ideality we find the
completely negative and new meaningless concept of death. The
Scapigliati do not reach such an outcome to their quest for a new
beauty, ideality. Exemplary in this respect is the conclusion of the
Fleurs du Mal, in contrast to the last poem of Praga's Penombre.
Baudelaire ends the Fleurs with the perspective of the "Voyage":
Ο Mort...
Verse-nous ton poison pour qu'il réconforte!
Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous brûle le cerveau,
Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe?
au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau! (124)
23
In Baudelaire from death can originate the new. Praga, instead,
concludes his collection with "Desolazioni" ("Desolations"). In this
poem Praga makes an assessment of his attempts to formulate the ars
nova and sums up the stages in the poet's search for the new art; he
realizes that it was nothing but a ghostly illusion, and ends with the
awareness that dreams are over and it is time to search somewhere else:
Vissi aspettando un mio fantasma bello
che mai non giunse;
vissi a fior d'acqua, fra i giunchi materni,
e il sudiciume non cercai del mondo;
ma l'empia ressa dei calci fraterni
22
Mario Richter, "Le sublime dans 'Hymne à la Beauté'", in Dix Études sur
Baudelaire, Paris: Champion, 1993, pp. 35-44.
"O Death.../ Pour us your poison that it may renew / our strength. Fire burns
our brains. Now let us leap- / Heaven or Hell, what matters?- into the deep, at
the bottom of the Unknown to find the «ew!"(329)
23
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
81
turbava il fondo,
e, poiché il fango sal come la nube,
come l'incenso e la prece devota,
sul bianco viso del natante impube
giunse la mota!
i sogni allor sono svaniti,
e tu ti accorgi che diventi serio...
e un'anima di cento anni che ingora
un odiato involucro ventenne,
geme dietro le rose e canta: è l'ora
di alzar le penne! (359-60)
24
These last verse ("è l'ora di alzar le penne") with its metaphorical
reference to the wings which can enable the poet to fly high, in perfect
circularity, reconnects this final poem to "Preludio", where the great
hopes for change were expressed through the same avian metaphor
("aquile al tempo di mutar le piume"). Metaphors of flying in the high
sky and flapping wings so common in the Scapigliati, express poetically
the ambition to achieve a new art, through images of flight, be it that of
"farfalla" and the "caduto cherubo /.../ che sale, / affaticando l'ale",
"Ideale / che mi fa batter l'ale" in Boito's "Dualismo", or the "stender
l'ali a così audace volo" in Camerana's poem "Ad Arrigo Boito".
According to Filippo Bettini (139-40), Praga's dualism is different
from Baudelaire's in that the French poet perceives the contradictions of
reality but overcomes them in a new vision of artistic beauty . Praga
finds it impossible "to transform the antinomies of reality in a poetically
organic and unitarian image"(139). In Praga the ideological tension and
the linguistic solution are not solved. Praga will overcome the impasse
only by elaborating a new system of linguistic and expressive values,
that will appear in his next collection of verses (Trasparenze).
25
24
"I lived for a beautiful phantom, / which never came; /I lived on the surface
of the water, among the maternal rushes, / and I did not look for the world's dirt;
/ but the evil crowd of fraternal kicks / stirred the bottom, / and since the mud
rises like a cloud, / like incense and the devout prayer, / on the white face of the
impuberal swimmer / came the mire! /...the dreams then have disappeared, /
and you realize that you are becoming serious. /.../ and a hundred years old
soul which wraps / a hated twenty years old body, / groans behind the roses and
sings: it is time / to raise the wings!"
Filippo Bettini, "Emilio Praga: dalla dissimulazione bozzettistica dell'idillio
all'utopia 'perversa' di un'arte, intesa come 'malattia' e come 'trasparenza'", La
Rassegna della letteratura italiana 80.7 (1976), 120-50.
25
Patrizia Bettella
82
Boito, like Praga, reflects upon the concepts of the new art in his
poem "A Giovanni Camerana" which sums up the main themes of the
ars nova. The same metaphors of flying and endless wings reappear but
Boito has to admit that the aspiration to the high ideals is not easily
achieved; "Dio ci aiuti, ο Giovanni, egli ci diede / stretto orizzonte e
sconfinate l'ali" (72); and the only art that Boito can envision is the one
inspired by the "Torva...Musa" ("The gloomy Muse") 2 6 . Camerana, the
young poet, at the beginning of his career replies to the caposcuola in
his poem "Ad Arrigo Boito" and using the plural " N o i " voices the
concerns of a school of young artists appropriating Boito's key words 2 7 .
Camerana is part of that "Stirpe fosca e malata" (83) ("Gloomy and sick
race") which evokes both Boito's "pallida giostra di poeti suicidi" and
28
Praga's "figli dei padri malati" . The young poet acknowledges that the
"arte nova e del futur" (84) was a dream that has not been fulfilled, he
finds in Boito those certainties which the new poets can not achieve; the
neophyte has clearly identified the key issues posed by Boito and sees
in the latter's verses a successful outcome to the contradictions of
dualism, however he doubts that it can work for the new poets:
Perchè noi bimbi, Arrigo,
Stendere l'ali a così audace volo?
Giusto e il torvo castigo.
Or la pallida Inerzia e la Tristezza,
Come due sfingi, stanno a la mia porta.
Tu almeno, Arrigo, la spietata brezza
Disfidi del tuo male;
Entro te pure il sozzo verme annida,
Ma sei nel canto aerea farfalla . (85)
29
26
"May God help us Giovanni, / since He gave us a narrow outlook and endless
wings".
Giovanni Camerana, Poesie, Torino: Einaudi, 1968, pp. 83-85. All quotations
are from this edition.
Many of the Scapigliati had indeed short and troubled lives. Praga was
addicted to alcoholism, Tarchetti died of typhus at the age of 33, Camerana and
Pinchetti committed suicide.
"Arrigo, why should we children, / extend our wings to such a bold flight? /
The surly punishment is right. / Now the pale Idleness and Sadness, like two
sphinxes, are by my door. / At least you, Arrigo, defy the relentless breeze / of
your disease; /.../ Within you the lurid worm may live, / But in your chant you
are an airy butterfly".
27
28
29
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
83
The failure to overcome the contradictions of the dualistic vision,
takes the most dramatic expression in the young Giulio Pinchetti . His
verses, as his life, are marked by the desperate conviction that ugliness
and death are the only outcome to the failed search for the Ideal.
Pinchetti is considered, like Tarchetti, one of those typical Italian
maudits, whose mingling of literature and life, lead to devasting
consequences. He embraces the dualism formulated by Boito and Praga
and makes it something tragic and personal. He perceives human
existence as a "fatal lie", and distorts Boito's and Praga's imagery to his
own end. His poem "Poeta", presents the same dualismo as Boito and
Praga: the predicament of the artist, torn between Ideal and Truth, but
essentially incapable to find a meaning in anyone of the two poles:
30
giace il poeta:-Spartaco
indarno del pensieroinvan lo scosse il vacuo
fantasima del Vero,
invan di fè, di patria,
un Dio gli favellò.
Ed ei, mendico e lacero,
errò implorando calma,
bieca vendetta al secolo
che gli morìa nell'alma,
che gli spegneva il palpito
sacro dell'Idëal . (86-81)
31
30
Little is known about this young poet who committed suicide when he was
only twenty six. He began his career as a journalist for the Gazzetta di Milano,
where he was in charge of the literary and political supplements. Pinchetti was
deeply affected by Foscolo's Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis and by Leopardi.
His life was marked by family tragedies: the death of his girlfriend and nineteen
year old sister, and culminates in the death of his mother, whom he adored.
Renzo Negri ["Un epistolario ritrovato (Giulio Pinchetti)", Aevum 46 (1972),
141-45] notes that his letters repeat the scheme of Ortis. Pinchetti joined the
army to participate in the attempted liberation of Rome in 1867. Unable to
participate in the events of the third phase of the Italian independence, he was
so disappointed that he attempted suicide by jumping off the train taking him
back from Rome. These events are reported in his letters to friend Niccolò
Sardi. His only poetic work is a collection of Versi published in 1868. More on
Pinchetti can be found in Gaetano Mariani's Storia della Scapigliatura, pp. 75054. His works (the Versi, the review articles, the letters and other notes) were
collected in Opere, Milano: Marzorati, 1974, edited by Fiorenza Vittori; all
quotations are from this edition.
"The poet lies: as a Spartacus of thought-in vain he was stirred by the
vacuous / ghost of the Truth, / in vain a God spoke to him / about faith, about
31
Patrizia Bettella
84
In this poem Pinchetti takes the dualistic tension to its extreme and
makes Beauty and Ugliness coincide: "Il Bello sta nell'Orrido, / nella
Beltà è l'Orror!" (88). His solution to the dilemma, however, does not
lead to a new ideality, rather, it dooms the poet to self-destruction. For
Pinchetti, whose attitudes in art and life are so inextricably linked, the
outcome is a desperate form of annihilation that eventually results in
suicide. This poem dated 1866 reflects the existential plight of young
Pinchetti, who attempted several times to take his life. His aesthetic
reflections are closely interconnected with his outlook on life and his
letters well illustrate the inability of the young artist to find a
satisfactory solution to the dualism. Already by 1868 the coincidence of
beauty and ugliness is not only the situation of the artist but that of his
entire existence: in a letter to his friend Niccolò Sardi of January 31
1868 he declares that: "I concetti del bello e del brutto si oscurano nella
mia testa, quasi si confondono..." (267). ("The concepts of beauty and
ugliness are obscured in my head, they are amost confused with one
another") and later in March of the same year he writes again to Sardi
wondering why the concept of beauty has become so weak in his mind.
For Pinchetti the dramatic and painful situation leads to suicide, since
art and life seem to allow not possible solution to the predicament .
32
Conclusions
The debate on beauy and ugliness in nineteenth century Europe
contributes to the re-evaluation of the role of the ugly in art. Thanks to
Hugo's Préface ugliness enters the aesthetic canon as an autonomuos
entity and art opens up to modernity and in Rosenkranz's Aesthetik des
Hässlichen the ugly is discussed for the first time in a philosophical
essay, Baudelaire's new concept of beauty in the Fleurs du Mal is
crucial for the Italian Scapigliati. They share Baudelaire's aesthetic
preoccupation with ugliness and the bizarre. Their discourse of beauty
and ugliness springs from the same need to distance themselves from
the classical canon, but the Scapigliati can not achieve a vision which
fatherland. / And he, ragged beggar, / wandered imploring calmly / grim
revenge on the century / which was dying in his soul, / which exstinguished in
him the sacred / impulse towards the Ideal". This poem appears also in Gilberto
Finzi, Lirici della Scapigliatura, Milano: 1965, pp. 155-57.
Pinchetti's flirtation with suicide is fuelled by his declared affinity to
Foscolo's Jacopo Ortis. Also Leopardi's thoughts on suicide are particulary clear
in his mind, since he considers himself one of Leopardi's best admirers and
imitators. In one letter he says: "Chiamo me stesso scimmia di Leopardi"
(March 22, 1868) (273).
32
Italian Scapigliatura and Baudelaire
85
includes ugliness in a new ideality. Their attempt to incorporate beauty
and ugliness in their aesthetic discourse, to elaborate a concept of
modern beauty, of real sublime as envisioned by Baudelaire, remains
highly problematic. Boito's dualismo bears no fruit since he himself
will move away from his positions in his maturity, as stated already in
his last "poesia dell'amicizia" to Praga: "Sono stanco, languente, ho già
percorso / assai la vita rea, / ho già sentito assai quel doppio morso / del
Vero e dell'Idea, / Ho perduto i miei sogni ad uno ad u n o " (65). For
Praga the end of Pénombre does not mark the beginning of new artistic
forms but is rather the realization of the need for different solutions and
Camerana, who accepts the challenge proposed by Boito, can not
overcome the contradictions of the dualism either. Pinchetti takes,
instead, the most dramatic approach to the dilemma and projects the
aesthetic tension into his personal life and ends the quest with a tragic
surrender to the ugly in its most uncompromising and pure form of evil,
suicide.
Although for the Scapigliati the debate on the role of the beautiful
and the ugly in the artistic creation failed to produce an ars nova, their
discourse deserves particular consideration: in the closed atmosphere of
Italian culture, they were the first to open up to the innovative ferments
of modern aesthetics and to express their need for revision and change
of the canons of idealism.
33
PATRIZIA BETTELLA
University of Alberta,
Edmonton, Alberta
33
"I am tired, languishing /I have already travelled the long road of my
guilty life /I have already felt the double bite / of the truth and of the
Ideal /I have lost all my dreams, one by one".