That is to say, I was studying manners, in the elder sense of the word, wherever I could get at them in the frank life of the people about me, and in such literature of Italy as was then modern. In this pursuit I made a discovery that greatly interested me, and that specialized3 my inquiries4. I found that the Italians had no novels which treated of their contemporary life; that they had no modern fiction but the historical romance. I found that if I wished to know their life from their literature I must go to their drama, which was even then endeavoring to give their stage a faithful picture of their civilization. There was even then in the new circumstance of a people just liberated5 from every variety of intellectual repression6 and political oppression, a group of dramatic authors, whose plays were not only delightful7 to see but delightful to read, working in the good tradition of one of the greatest realists who has ever lived, and producing a drama of vital strength and charm. One of them, whom I by no means thought the best, has given us a play, known to all the world, which I am almost ready to think with Zola is the greatest play of modern times; or if it is not so, I should be puzzled to name the modern drama that surpasses “La Morte Civile” of Paolo Giacometti. I learned to know all the dramatists pretty well, in the whole range of their work, on the stage and in the closet, and I learned to know still better, and to love supremely8, the fine, amiable9 genius whom, as one of them said, they did not so much imitate as learn from to imitate nature.
This was Carlo Goldoni, one of the first of the realists, but antedating10 conscious realism so long as to have been born at Venice early in the eighteenth century, and to have come to his hand-to-hand fight with the romanticism of his day almost before that century had reached its noon. In the early sixties of our own century I was no more conscious of his realism than he was himself a hundred years before; but I had eyes in my head, and I saw that what he had seen in Venice so long before was so true that it was the very life of Venice in my own day; and because I have loved the truth in art above all other things, I fell instantly and lastingly11 in love with Carlo Goldoni. I was reading his memoirs12, and learning to know his sweet, honest, simple nature while I was learning to know his work, and I wish that every one who reads his plays would read his life as well; one must know him before one can fully13 know them. I believe, in fact, that his autobiography14 came into my hands first. But, at any rate, both are associated with the fervors and languors of that first summer in Venice, so that I cannot now take up a book of Goldoni’s without a renewed sense of that sunlight and moonlight, and of the sounds and silences of a city that is at once the stillest and shrillest in the world.
Perhaps because I never found his work of great ethical15 or aesthetical proportions, but recognized that it pretended to be good only within its strict limitations, I recur17 to it now without that painful feeling of a diminished grandeur18 in it, which attends us so often when we go back to something that once greatly pleased us. It seemed to me at the time that I must have read all his comedies in Venice, but I kept reading new ones after I came home, and still I can take a volume of his from the shelf, and when thirty years are past, find a play or two that I missed before. Their number is very great, but perhaps those that I fancy I have not read, I have really read once or more and forgotten. That might very easily be, for there is seldom anything more poignant19 in any one of them than there is in the average course of things. The plays are light and amusing transcripts20 from life, for the most part, and where at times they deepen into powerful situations, or express strong emotions, they do so with persons so little different from the average of our acquaintance that we do not remember just who the persons are.
There is no doubt but the kindly21 playwright22 had his conscience, and meant to make people think as well as laugh. I know of none of his plays that is of wrong effect, or that violates the instincts of purity, or insults common sense with the romantic pretence23 that wrong will be right if you will only paint it rose-color. He is at some obvious pains to “punish vice24 and reward virtue,” but I do not mean that easy morality when I praise his; I mean the more difficult sort that recognizes in each man’s soul the arbiter25 not of his fate surely, but surely of his peace. He never makes a fool of the spectator by feigning26 that passion is a reason or justification27, or that suffering of one kind can atone28 for wrong of another. That was left for the romanticists of our own century to discover; even the romanticists whom Goldoni drove from the stage, were of that simpler eighteenth-century sort who had not yet liberated the individual from society, but held him accountable in the old way. As for Goldoni himself, he apparently29 never dreams of transgression30; he is of rather an explicit31 conventionality in most things, and he deals with society as something finally settled. How artfully he deals with it, how decently, how wholesomely33, those who know Venetian society of the eighteenth century historically, will perceive when they recall the adequate impression he gives of it without offence in character or language or situation. This is the perpetual miracle of his comedy, that it says so much to experience and worldly wisdom, and so little to inexperience and worldly innocence34. No doubt the Serenest35 Republic was very strict with the theatre, and suffered it to hold the mirror up to nature only when nature was behaving well, or at least behaving as if young people were present. Yet the Italians are rather plain-spoken, and they recognize facts which our company manners at least do not admit the existence of. I should say that Goldoni was almost English, almost American, indeed, in his observance of the proprieties36, and I like this in him; though the proprieties are not virtues37, they are very good things, and at least are better than the improprieties.
This, however, I must own, had not a great deal to do with my liking38 him so much, and I should be puzzled to account for my passion, as much in his case as in most others. If there was any reason for it, perhaps it was that he had the power of taking me out of my life, and putting me into the lives of others, whom I felt to be human beings as much as myself. To make one live in others, this is the highest effect of religion as well as of art, and possibly it will be the highest bliss39 we shall ever know. I do not pretend that my translation was through my unselfishness; it was distinctly through that selfishness which perceives that self is misery40; and I may as well confess here that I do not regard the artistic41 ecstasy42 as in any sort noble. It is not noble to love the beautiful, or to live for it, or by it; and it may even not be refining. I would not have any reader of mine, looking forward to some aesthetic16 career, suppose that this love is any merit in itself; it may be the grossest egotism. If you cannot look beyond the end you aim at, and seek the good which is not your own, all your sacrifice is to yourself and not of yourself, and you might as well be going into business. In itself and for itself it is no more honorable to win fame than to make money, and the wish to do the one is no more elevating than the wish to do the other.
But in the days I write of I had no conception of this, and I am sure that my blindness to so plain a fact kept me even from seeking and knowing the highest beauty in the things I worshipped. I believe that if I had been sensible of it I should hays read much more of such humane43 Italian poets and novelists as Manzoni and D’Azeglio, whom I perceived to be delightful, without dreaming of them in the length and breadth of their goodness. Now and then its extent flashed upon me, but the glimpse was lost to my retroverted vision almost as soon as won. It is only in thinking back to there that I can realize how much they might always have meant to me. They were both living in my time in Italy, and they were two men whom I should now like very much to have seen, if I could have done so without that futility44 which seems to attend every effort to pay one’s duty to such men.
The love of country in all the Italian poets and romancers of the long period of the national resurrection ennobled their art in a measure which criticism has not yet taken account of. I conceived of its effect then, but I conceived of it as a misfortune, a fatality45; now I am by no means sure that it was so; hereafter the creation of beauty, as we call it, for beauty’s sake, may be considered something monstrous46. There is forever a poignant meaning in life beyond what mere47 living involves, and why should not there be this reference in art to the ends beyond art? The situation, the long patience, the hope against hope, dignified48 and beautified the nature of the Italian writers of that day, and evoked49 from them a quality which I was too little trained in their school to appreciate. But in a sort I did feel it, I did know it in them all, so far as I knew any of them, and in the tragedies of Manzoni, and in the romances of D’Azeglio, and yet more in the simple and modest records of D’Azeglio’s life published after his death, I profited by it, and unconsciously prepared myself for that point of view whence all the arts appear one with all the uses, and there is nothing beautiful that is false.
I am very glad of that experience of Italian literature, which I look back upon as altogether wholesome32 and sanative, after my excesses of Heine. No doubt it was all a minor50 affair as compared with equal knowledge of French literature, and so far it was a loss of time. It is idle to dispute the general positions of criticism, and there is no useful gainsaying51 its judgment52 that French literature is a major literature and Italian a minor literature in this century; but whether this verdict will stand for all time, there may be a reasonable doubt. Criterions may change, and hereafter people may look at the whole affair so differently that a literature which went to the making of a people will not be accounted a minor literature, but will take its place with the great literary movements.
I do not insist upon this possibility, and I am far from defending myself for liking the comedies of Goldoni better than the comedies of Moliere, upon purely53 aesthetic grounds, where there is no question as to the artistic quality. Perhaps it is because I came to Moliere’s comedies later, and with my taste formed for those of Goldoni; but again, it is here a matter of affection; I find Goldoni for me more sympathetic, and because he is more sympathetic I cannot do otherwise than find him more natural, more true. I will allow that this is vulnerable, and as I say, I do not defend it. Moliere has a place in literature infinitely54 loftier than Goldoni’s; and he has supplied types, characters, phrases, to the currency of thought, and Goldoni has supplied none. It is, therefore, without reason which I can allege55 that I enjoy Goldoni more. I am perfectly56 willing to be rated low for my preference, and yet I think that if it had been Goldoni’s luck to have had the great age of a mighty57 monarchy58 for his scene, instead of the decline of an outworn republic, his place in literature might have been different.
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1
regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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rejection
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| n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃 | |
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specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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repression
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| n.镇压，抑制，抑压 | |
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7
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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8
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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9
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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10
antedating
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| v.（在历史上）比…为早( antedate的现在分词 )；先于；早于；（在信、支票等上）填写比实际日期早的日期 | |
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lastingly
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| [医]有残留性，持久地，耐久地 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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17
recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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18
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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transcripts
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| n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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24
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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arbiter
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| n.仲裁人，公断人 | |
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feigning
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| 假装，伪装( feign的现在分词 )； 捏造（借口、理由等） | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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atone
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| v.赎罪，补偿 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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transgression
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| n.违背；犯规；罪过 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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32
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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33
wholesomely
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| 卫生地，有益健康地 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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35
serenest
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| serene（沉静的，宁静的，安宁的）的最高级形式 | |
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proprieties
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| n.礼仪，礼节；礼貌( propriety的名词复数 )；规矩；正当；合适 | |
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37
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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38
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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40
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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41
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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42
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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44
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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45
fatality
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| n.不幸，灾祸，天命 | |
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46
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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47
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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48
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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49
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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50
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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51
gainsaying
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| v.否认，反驳( gainsay的现在分词 ) | |
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52
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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53
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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54
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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55
allege
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| vt.宣称，申述，主张，断言 | |
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56
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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57
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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