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  What joy is stronger? Andrea half closed his eyes, almost as if to prolong that particular thrill which was the herald of inspiration within him, when his spirit was preparing itself for the work of art, especially that of writing poetry. Then, full of delight never experienced before, he began to explore rhymes with a slender pencil on the small white pages of his notebook. The first verses of a song by Lorenzo the Magnificent came to his mind:

  Lightly and quickly depart

  my thoughts from within my soul . . .14

  Almost always, in order to start composing, he needed to be given a musical intonation by another poet; and it was his custom almost always to derive it from the ancient Tuscan versifiers. A hemistich by Lapo Gianni, by Cavalcanti, by Cino, by Petrarch, by Lorenzo de’ Medici, the memory of a cluster of rhymes, the conjunction of two epithets, any concordance of beautiful and well-sounding words, any rhythmical phrase, was enough to open the vein for him, to give him, as it were, the note La15 that would serve him as foundation of the harmony of the first stanza. It was a kind of rhetorical topic applied to the search not for an argument, but for preludes. The first Medicean septenarius in fact offered him the rhyme; and he distinctly saw everything that he wished to show his imaginary listener in the figure of the herm; and together with the vision, at the same time, in his mind the metrical form spontaneously presented itself, into which he had to pour, like wine into a goblet, the poetry. Since his poetic sentiment was twofold, or rather, arose from a contrast, namely from the contrast between his past wretchedness and his present resurrection, and since in his lyrical activity he worked toward spiritual elevation, he chose the sonnet; the architecture of which consists of two orders: the higher one represented by two quatrains and the lower one represented by two tercets. Thought and passion, therefore, expanding in the first order, would be concentrated, reinforced, elevated in the second. The form of the sonnet, although being wonderfully beautiful and magnificent, is in some ways imperfect; because it resembles a figure with the torso too long and the legs too short. Indeed the two tercets are in reality not only shorter than the quatrains, by number of lines; but they also seem shorter than the quatrains, for the rapidity and fluidity of their pace in comparison with the slowness and majesty of the quatrain. Whoever knows how to conceal these deficiencies is the greatest craftsman; whoever, namely, reserving for the tercets the most precise and most visible image and the strongest and most sonorous words, succeeds in making the tercets stand out and harmonize with the upper stanzas without, however, losing any of their essential lightness and rapidity. The Renaissance painters knew how to balance an entire figure with a simple flourish of a ribbon or the edge of a garment or a fold.

  Andrea, while composing, studied himself with curiosity. He had not written verse for a long time. Had that interval of idleness harmed his technical skill? It seemed to him that the rhymes, emerging gradually from his brain, had a new flavor. Consonance was coming to him spontaneously, without his having to search for it; and thoughts were emerging from him already in rhyme. Then, suddenly, an obstacle stopped the flow; a line rebelled against him; all the rest broke up like a disconnected mosaic; the syllables struggled against the constraints of the meter; a musical and luminous word, which pleased him, was excluded by the severity of the rhythm despite every effort; from one rhyme a new idea arose, unexpectedly, to seduce him, to distract him from the original idea; an epithet, despite being appropriate and exact, had a weak sound; coherence, the quality so long searched for, was completely missing; and the stanza was like a medal that has turned out imperfectly through the fault of an inexperienced founder who could not properly calculate the quantity of molten metal necessary for filling the mold. With intense patience, he would replace the metal in the crucible; and start the work over from scratch. In the end, the stanza would turn out complete and precise; some lines, here and there, had a certain pleasing asperity; through the undulations of the rhythm, the symmetry became very evident; the repetition of the rhymes made clear music, recalling to mind with the harmony of its sounds the harmony of thoughts and reinforcing with a physical bond the moral bond; the whole sonnet lived and breathed like an independent organism, in its unity. To pass from one sonnet to the other, he held a note, just as in music the modulation from one tone to the other is prepared by the seventh chord, in which one holds the key note in order to make it the dominant one of the new tone.

  He composed in such a way, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, with a pleasure he had never experienced; and the quiet place, in truth, seemed to have emerged from the fantasy of a solitary egipane16 devoted to lyrical poetry. The sea, as the day advanced, flashed between the tree trunks as between the intercolumniations of a jasper portico; the Corinthian acanthi resembled coronations felled from those arboreal columns; now and then in the air, pale bluish green as the shade of a lacustrine cavern, the sun shot forth golden darts and rings and discs. Certainly, Alma-Tadema would have imagined there a Sappho with violet locks, seated below the marble herm, versifying on a seven-stringed lyre, amid a chorus of pale girls with flame-colored hair intent on drinking from the Adonic verse the accomplished harmony of each stanza.

  When he had completed the four sonnets, he drew a breath and recited them silently, with an internal emphasis. The apparent break of the rhythm in the fifth line of the last sonnet, caused by the lack of a tonic accent and hence of a grave pause in the eighth syllable, seemed effective to him and he kept it. Then he wrote the four sonnets on the quadrangular base of the herm: one sonnet on each face, in this order.

  I

  Four-sided herm, do your four faces

  know my wondrous tidings?

  Light and quick, spirits leave singing

  from my heart’s hidden places.

  My valiant heart barred all corrupted sources

  and cast out every single impure thing

  it smothered every flame which could be shaming

  and broke all bridges against besieging forces.

  Singing, spirits rise upward. Well do I hear

  the hymn; and unquenchable, powerful

  laughter seizes me, concerning my great peril.

  Pale, yes,17 but like a king, I take great pleasure

  in hearing in my heart the laughing soul,

  while I stare at the already vanquished Evil.

  II

  The soul smiles on its dear ones who are distant

  while I stare at the already vanquished Evil

  which thrust me into those fiery tangles

  as into volcano-nourished forests.

  Now the great circle of human suffering

  she enters, a novice in robes of hyacinth,18

  abandoning behind her the false labyrinth

  where beautiful pagan monsters19 were roaring.

  No more does the Sphinx seize her with golden nails

  nor does the Gorgon leave her turned to stone

  or the Siren enchant her with its long ode.

  Up high, atop the circle, a very pale

  woman, making the act of communion

  holds between her pure fingers the sacred Host.

  III

  Away from the snares and away from the anger

  and away from the harm, she stands calmly and strong

  like the one who can, right till Death comes along

  know Evil, without suffering its danger.

  —O you who make all the winds so fragrant

  and under whose rule all harbors are embraced

  At your feet my destiny is placed:

  My Lady, please will you grant me your consent!

  In your pure hand it dazzles so,

  that longed-for sacred Host, like the sun.

  Will I thus not see the sign that consents?

  And she, so benign to those who bow down low

  says the words, giving them communion:


  —Your Love has been offered; indeed it is present.

  IV

  I—she says—am the supernatural Rose

  begotten in the breast of Beauty

  It is I who impart the most supreme ecstasy

  It is I who bring exaltation and repose.

  Plow with sad cries, soul that is suffering,

  in order to harvest with songs of gladness.20

  After long affliction, my sweetness

  will exceed in sweetness every other thing.—

  —Let it be so, My Lady; and from my heart may there be

  much blood gushing, and rivers flowing on the earth,

  and may immortal pain make it new once more,

  and let those whirlpools overwhelm me,

  cover me; but may I see from the depths

  the light that on my undefeated soul you pour.

  DIE XII SEPTEMBRIS MDCCCLXXXVI.21

  CHAPTER II

  Schifanoja1 rose up on the hill, at the point where the range, after following the coastline and embracing the sea as in an amphitheater, turned inward and curved down toward the plain. Although it had been built by Cardinal Alfonso Carafa of Ateleta in the second half of the eighteenth century, the villa had a certain purity of style in its architecture. It formed a quadrilateral, two stories high, in which porticoes alternated with apartments; and the arched openings of the porticoes lent the building agility and elegance, as the Ionic columns and pillars appeared to have been designed and harmonized by Vignola.2 It was truly a summer house, open to the sea winds. On the side facing the gardens, on the slope, a vestibule led to a beautiful two-flight staircase descending to a landing enclosed by stone balustrades, like a vast balcony, decorated with two fountains. Other stairs extended from each end of the balcony down the slope, stopping on other levels until they ended almost at the sea, and from this lower area, they appeared to one’s view like a kind of sevenfold path meandering among the magnificent greenery and the dense rosebushes. The marvels of Schifanoja were its roses and its cypresses. The roses, of every kind, in every season, were sufficient pour en tirer neuf ou dix muytz d’eaue rose,3 as the poet of the Vergier d’honneur4 would have said. The cypresses, pointed and dark, more solemn than the pyramids, more enigmatic than obelisks, were inferior neither to those of Villa d’Este nor to those of Villa Mondragone, nor to any other similarly gigantic ones that tower over the glorious villas of Rome.

  It was the custom of the Marchioness of Ateleta to pass the summer and part of the autumn at Schifanoja, since she, despite being one of the most worldly among the ladies, loved the countryside and rustic freedom and hosting friends. She had shown infinite care and concern to Andrea during his illness, like an elder sister, almost like a mother, tirelessly. A deep affection bound her to her cousin. She was full of indulgence and forgiveness for him; she was a good and sincere friend, able to understand many things, quick, always gay, always shrewd, witty and spiritual at the same time. Although she had crossed the threshold of thirty about a year before, she maintained a wonderful youthful vivacity and a greatly pleasing quality, for she possessed the secret of Madame Pompadour, that beauté sans traits5 that can enliven itself with unexpected graces. She also possessed a rare virtue, the one commonly called “tact.” A delicate feminine gift was her infallible guide. In her relations with innumerable acquaintances of both sexes, she always knew, in every circumstance, how to comport herself; and she never made mistakes, she never weighed upon the lives of others, was never inopportune or importunate; she did everything and said every word at the right time. Her behavior toward Andrea, in this slightly strange and moody period of convalescence, could not be, in truth, more delicate. She sought in every way not to disturb him and to ensure that no one disturbed him; she gave him full freedom; she appeared not to notice any eccentricities or gloominess; she never bothered him with indiscreet questions; she made sure that her company was easy when being in each other’s presence was unavoidable; she even stopped making witticisms in his presence, to save him the trouble of making a forced smile.

  Andrea, who understood that delicacy, was grateful.

  On September 12, after the herm sonnets, he returned to Schifanoja with unusual joy; he met Donna Francesca on the stairs and kissed her hands, saying to her in a playful tone:

  —Cousin, I have found Truth and the Way.

  —Hallelujah! said Donna Francesca, lifting her lovely rounded arms. —Hallelujah!

  And she went down into the gardens and Andrea went up to his rooms, his heart uplifted.

  After a short while, he heard knocking on the door and Donna Francesca’s voice asking:

  —May I come in?

  She entered carrying in her overall and in her arms a great bunch of pink, white, yellow, vermilion, and russet roses. Some, large and pale, like those of Villa Pamphily, very fresh and all pearled with dewdrops, had something almost vitreous between each leaf; others had dense petals and an abundance of color that brought to mind the celebrated magnificence of the purples of Elissa and Tyre;6 others resembled clumps of scented snow and provoked in one a strange desire to bite and swallow them; others were made of flesh, truly of flesh, voluptuous as the most voluptuous forms of a woman’s body, with a few subtle venations. The infinite gradations of red, from violent crimson to the discolored hue of the ripe strawberry, mingled with the finer and almost imperceptible variations of white, from the candor of immaculate snow to the indefinable color of freshly drawn milk, of the communion host, of the marrow of a reed, of opaque silver, of alabaster, of opal.

  —Today is a holiday, she said, laughing; and the flowers covered her chest almost to the throat.

  —Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Andrea said, helping her to place the bundle on the table, on top of the books, on the albums, on the covers of his drawings. —Rosa rosarum!7

  After she had freed herself, she brought together all the vases in the room and began to fill them with roses, composing many small bouquets with a choice that revealed a rare taste in her, the taste of the great hostess. Choosing and composing, she spoke of a thousand things with that gay volubility of hers, almost as if she wanted to compensate for the parsimony of words and laughter she had employed until then with Andrea, out of respect for his taciturn gloominess.

  Among other things, she said:

  —On the fifteenth we will have a lovely guest: Donna Maria Ferres y Capdevila, wife of the plenipotentiary minister of Guatemala. Do you know her?

  —I don’t think so.

  —Indeed, you couldn’t possibly know her. She has been back in Italy for only a few months; but she will spend next winter in Rome, because her husband has been appointed to that post. She is a very dear childhood friend of mine. We were together in Florence for three years, at the Annunziata Institute; but she is younger than I am.

  —Is she American?

  —No; she is Italian, and from Siena, what’s more. She was born a Bandinelli, and baptized with the water of the Gaia Fountain. But she is quite melancholic by nature; and so sweet. The story of her marriage, also, is not very happy. That Ferres is not a nice man at all. However, they have a little girl who is a darling. You’ll see: very pale, with so much hair, and two immense eyes. She looks a lot like her mother . . . Look, Andrea, at this rose! Doesn’t it look like velvet? And this one? I could eat it. But look, really, doesn’t it look like an ideal custard? What a delight!

  She carried on selecting roses and talking amiably. A full scent, as inebriating as a hundred-year-old wine, arose from the bunch; some corollas were disintegrating and their petals were being caught among the folds of Donna Francesca’s skirt; through the window, in the blond sun, the dark point of a cypress could just be seen. And in Andrea’s mind, a line of Petrarch’s was singing insistently, like a musical phrase:

  Thus he distributed the roses and the words.8

  Two mornings later, he offered as a reward
to the Marchioness of Ateleta a sonnet, quaintly formed in the old-fashioned way, and handwritten on a parchment adorned with decorations in the style of those that illuminate the missals of Attavante and Liberale da Verona.

  Schifanoja in Ferrara (O glory of the Estes!),

  where Cossa emulated Cosimo Tura

  depicting triumphs of gods in his murals,

  never bore witness to such joyous feasts.

  So many roses she bore in her dress,

  Mona Francesca, to nurture her guest’s soul

  as Heaven ever by chance did hold,

  little white angels, to garland your tresses.

  She spoke and selected those blooms

  with such beauty that I thought:—Has perchance

  a Grace come, along the paths the Sun burns?

  My eyes were mistaken, drunk on perfumes.

  A verse of Petrarch rose up to the heavens

  “Thus he distributed the roses and the words.”

  Thus Andrea began once again to approach Art, experimenting, inquisitively, with little exercises and dalliances, but meditating deeply on less frivolous works. Many ambitions that had once stimulated him began once again to stimulate him; many old projects surfaced again in his mind, modified or complete; many old ideas presented themselves to him again in a new light or a better light; many images, once merely glimpsed, shone out at him brightly and clearly, without him able to realize how they had developed. Sudden thoughts rose up from the mysterious depths of consciousness and surprised him. It seemed to him that all these jumbled elements accumulated deep inside him, now combined with his particular disposition of will, transformed into thoughts with the same method by which stomach digestion processes foods and changes them into bodily matter.