G. Singh 510 `ASPASIA` - Rivista di Studi Italiani

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'ASPASIA': AN APPRECIATION
Each of Leopardi's poems, as is commonly known, has, for the most
part, a thematic as well as a stylistic autonomy. "Aspasia" is no
exception. Among his longer poems dealing with the theme of love —
"Ultimo canto di Saffo," "Il primo amore," "Alla sua donna," "A Silvia"
and "Il pensiero dominante" — it is, both on the sentimental and the
stylistic plane, the most effusive as well as the most subjective and
autobiographical. Occasioned by Leopardi's unreciprocated love for
Aspasia (Fanny Targioni Tozzetti), it is almost a modern love poem, in
the sense of a poem such as Meredith's "Modern Love" (although
without the elements of bitterness and morbid obsessiveness of the
latter) more than in the conventional Dantesque or Petrarchan sense. But
it would be wrong as well as reductive to call it merely that. In dealing
with the unrequited passion of love — love not so much lost as never
possessed (Tennyson's lines "It's better to have loved and lost / Than
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never to have loved at all" would hardly apply to the author of
"Aspasia") — Leopardi has to come to terms with the bitter-sweet
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memories of that passion, "the strongest known to humanity," as
Thomas Hardy calls it, while he is, at least poetically, still under its
sway, as evidenced by the tenderly fond yet dramatically charged
manner in which he evokes Aspasia, the object of his love, at the very
outset of the poem:
Torna dinanzi al mio pensier talora
Il tuo sembiante, Aspasia. Ο fuggitivo
Per abitati lochi a me lampeggia
In altri volti; ο per deserti campi,
Al dì sereno, alle tacenti stelle,
Da soave armonia quasi ridesta,
Nell'alma a sgomentarsi ancor vicina
Quella superba vision risorge.
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The dramatic force and directness of these lines — comparable to the
beginning of a modern poem such as Montale's "Casa dei doganieri"
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("Tu non ricordi la casa dei doganieri"), in which the poet goes straight
to the heart of the matter, involving both himself and Aspasia as well
as us instantaneously in it — attest to the still smouldering ashes of the
burnt-out passion and with it of all his hopes and fears and illusions —
"l'estremo inganno" — coming to an end. No wonder — having
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achieved, to paraphrase Milton, "calm of mind all passion spent" — he
can now look back upon what he underwent, calmly take stock of it and
analyse its nature, origin and consequence with an almost clinical
detachment.
But in the very act of analysing the nature of that passion — at once
cause of so much ecstacy and so much agony ("mia delizia ed erinni")
— the poet cannot help celebrating it and, to a certain extent, reliving it,
so tenacious is the hold of memory and nostalgia. In fact the tenacity
of memory — the memory of the woman he loved and desired —
becomes a willing accomplice in the process of Aspasia's image
establishing itself, even beyond the pale of "love, desire, and hate," as
a "presence that is not to be put by," which accompanies the poet
ubiquitously, "per abitati lochi [...] ο per deserti campi, / Al di sereno"
or "alle tacenti stelle," thereby constituting a fitting tribute and
testimony to the durability of that passion, even though he seems to
have closed his account with it, as it were, on the emotional plane. No
wonder he can open-heartedly and unreservedly confess:
E mai non sento
Mover profumo di fiorita piaggia,
Né di fiori olezzar vie cittadine,
Ch'io non ti vegga ancora qual eri il giorno
Che ne' vezzosi appartamenti accolta,
Tutti odorati de' novelli fiori
Di primavera, del color vestita
Della brun viola, a me si offerse
L'angelica tua forma, inchino il fianco
Sovra nitide pelli, e circonfusa
D'arcana voluttà.
The vividness and concreteness of detail which characterizes his
recollection is proof of the authenticity as well as of the sincerity of the
poet's passion for Aspasia, so that every detail not only adds to her
portrait, but, to some extent, also to that of his own emotional make-up,
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as a result of which he is helplessly exposed to the wily charms of his
mistress who:
[...] dotta
allettatrice, fervidi sonanti
Baci sccocavi nelle curve labbra
De' tuoi bambini, il niveo collo intanto
Porgendo, e lor di tue cagioni ignari
Con la man leggiadrissima stringevi
Al seno ascoso e desiato.
The lover is completely overwhelmed. "Apparve novo ciel, nova terra,
e quasi un raggio/ Divino al pensier mio" — verses that poetically
epitomize what Shelley, Leopardi's contemporary, was to describe so
rapturously in his prose piece on "Love," and what Robert Louis
Stevenson, in his famous essay "On Falling in Love," was to expatiate
on so memorably.
Leopardi's acknowledgement, even at this late stage, of the power
of Aspasia's charm and beauty enables us to gauge the depth of the
disillusionment he, after "all the passion and all the pain" is gone, still
feels on account of her. The subsequent history of his passion and of
how it turned sour leads to self-scrutiny and self-analysis, which in turn
helps the poet understand the nature of his relationship with his beloved,
both his and her psychology, the nature of unrequited love as well as
the woman's character in general working to dominate him:
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Cosi nel fianco
Non punto inerme a viva forza impresse
Il tuo braccio lo strai, che poscia fitto
Ululando portai finch'a quel giorno
Si fu due volte ricondotto il sole.
Few poets after Cavalcanti in the Italian tradition (in Donna mi prega
— see Pound's brilliant exegesis of and creative comment on it in his
Literary Essays, edited by T. S. Eliot), and Shakespeare and Donne in
the English tradition, have succeeded in probing into the psychology of
the passion of love, how that passion works and what effect it produces,
with such subtlety and poetic depth as Leopardi in "Aspasia":
'Aspasia'
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Vagheggia
Il piagato mortal quindi la figlia
Della sua mente, l'amorosa idea,
Che gran parte d'Olimpo in se racchiude,
Tutta al volto ai costumi alla favella
Pari alla donna che il rapito amante
Vagheggiare ed amar confuso estima.
Or questa egli non già, ma quella, ancora
Nei corporali amplessi, inchina ed ama.
Alfin l'errore e gli scambiati oggetti
Conoscendo, s'adira; e spesso incolpa
La donna a torto.
Speaking in the multiple capacity of poet and psychologist, lover
and victim of love as well as, to use a Dantesque word, a "conoscitore"
of human nature at an almost Shakespearian level, Leopardi postulates
that a woman cannot fully fathom the depth of love and admiration she
inspires in her lover, and that she cannot even comprehend the qualities
and attributes the generous lover spontaneously bestows upon her.
Consequently, he comes out with a drastically negative judgement of
women in general as being incapable of imaginatively grasping the
nature of the effect their beauty produces on men:
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A quella eccelsa imago
Sorge di rado il femminile ingegno;
E ciò che inspira ai generosi amanti
La sua stessa beltà, donna non pensa,
Né comprender potria. Non cape in quelle
Anguste fronti ugual concetto. E male
Al vivo sfolgorar di quegli sguardi
Spera l'uomo ingannato, e mal richiede
Sensi profondi, sconosciuti, e molto
Più che virili, in chi dell'uomo al tutto
Da natura è minor. Che se più molli
E più tenui le membra, essa la mente
Men capace e men forte anco riceve.
That Leopardi's own knowledge of women was, by force of the
particular circumstances of his life, both scanty and superficial, is not
enough to discredit or invalidate his view of them — a view that was
not uncommonly held in his age and that women's subsequent
emancipation or liberation hasn't succeeded in dispelling altogether even
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today. In what might appear to be a tour-de-force, the disillusioned
lover breaks his personally motivated conclusion that the woman, being
in respect of man "al tutto/ Da natur minor" and in mind "men capace
e men forte," into a major and minor premise rolled into one, from
which he deduces — another but by no means disinterested conclusion
— that she couldn't therefore imagine "quel che tu stessa / Ispirasti
alcun tempo al mio pensiero." In other words, he turns his own sense
of his moral superiority to one who, as a woman, is incapable of
appreciating what she calculatedly inspired in him: "smisurato amor [...]
affanni intensi/ [...] indicibili moti e [...] deliri." Her inability to
appreciate the effect of what was on her part apparently a calculated
move adds something at once tragic and pathetic to the lover's lot. He
compares Aspasia's role, almost as if in order to disinculpate her —
another gesture characteristic of "generosi amanti" — to that of a
musician who is unaware of "quel ch'ei con mano ο con la voce adopra
/ In chi l'ascolta." At this point a marked shift in the poet's attitude to
Aspasia is registered — a shift analysable in terms of a fundamental
change in his own feelings for her and in what she has come to mean
to him now in respect of the past:
Or quell'Aspasia è morta
Che tanto amai. Giace per sempre, oggetto
Della mia vita un dì:
The change, nevertheless, is not so drastic — nor, unconsciously, does
the poet wish it to be so — that he does not want to remember her from
time to time or, rather, to let himself be haunted by her who "pur come
cara larva, ad ora ad ora / Tornar costuma e disparir." Apropos of her
coming and disappearing from time to time, Leopardi could almost say
to Aspasia what Hardy tells his dead wife's phantom which leads him
to the places they used to haunt together when she was alive: "Trust me,
I mind not, though Life lours,/ The bringing me here; nay, bring me
here again! I am just the same as when / Our days were a joy, and our
paths through flowers." For, in Leopardi's case, however much his
feelings and his attitude towards Aspasia might have changed, the
thread of nostalgia for his passionate love for her cannot altogether be
broken, and in any close psychological self-scrutiny, he himself would
admit that it is unbreakable. That is why, even though Aspasia, the very
thought of whom once tormented him, is now dead, and torments him
in that way no longer, she still enjoys a privileged existence in the
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poet's memory — so privileged indeed that she is acknowledged to be:
"Bella non solo ancor, ma bella tanto, / Al parer mio, che tutte l'altre
avanzi." This is no mere compliment on the part of the incurably
nostalgic and sentimental lover, but an objective constatation of a fact
in the registering of which the lover-poet gauges the depth of his loss
and his regret.
Be that as it may, that unmatchable beauty of Aspasia hurts him no
longer, since whatever feeling of love he might have had for her in the
past is now gone for ever: "Quell'ardor che da te nacque è spento," and
he gives an emotionally as well as psychologically subtle analysis of the
reasons why:
Perch'io te non amai, ma quella Diva
Che già vita, or sepolcro, ha nel mio core.
Quella adorai gran tempo; e sì mi piacque
Sua celeste beltà, ch'io, per insino
Già dal principio conoscente e chiaro
Dell'esser tuo, dell'arti e delle frodi,
Pur ne' tuoi contemplando i suoi begli occhi,
Cupido ti seguii finch'ella visse,
Ingannato non già, ma dal piacere
Di quella dolce somiglianza un lungo
Servaggio ed aspro a tollerar condotto.
The irresistible impact of the "celeste beltà" of the ideal woman whom
he loved as the real woman, in other words of "la figlia della sua
mente" was such as to overcome in him whatever reservations he might
have had as to her moral character, and however conscious he might
later on have become of her deceitful character as a result of which he
ended up as a willing and conscious slave to her.
But now that he feels he has freed himself from his passion of love
for Aspasia, he can afford to confess to her that she was the only
woman "a cui piegar sostenni / L'altero capo, a cui spontaneo porsi /
L'indomito mio cuor." Behind such a confession there is an implicit
awareness of the willingness with which he subjected himself, more
than shame or regret. In other words, such a confession is another way
of recollecting and justifying to himself the passion of his love for her
— a love that, for all his affirmations to the contrary, is not altogether
extinguished even now.
A sense of disillusioned calm, not altogether free from a certain
degree of resentment because such a love turned to ashes, because not
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requited, adds to the lover's determination not to fall in love again, not
to stake his dignity and self-respect, not to let his "altero capo" and his
"indomito cor" be humilitated once more — and the firmer the
determination, the securer he feels, or he thinks he feels, from the hold
of his mistress:
Narra che prima
E spero ultima certo, il ciglio mio
Supplichevol vedesti, a te dinanzi
Me timido, tremante (ardo in ridirlo
Di sdegno e di rossor), me di me privo,
Ogni tua voglia, ogni parola, ogni atto
Spiar sommessamente, a'tuoi superbi
Fastidi impallidir, brillare in volto
Ad un segno cortese, ad ogni sguardo
Mutar forma e color.
The detailed recollection of what he had to undergo when in love fuels
the fire of his effort to re-possess himself and extricate his previous self
from its involvement in so desperate a situation. He wants to turn what
was desperate into a positive strength — the strength to relinquish, on
the sentimental and emotional plane, what he never really possessed on
any plane at all. The fact that the yoke of unreciprocated love that
rendered his enchantment slavish has now gone and can affect him no
longer is conveyed with a blunt force: "Cadde l'incanto, / E spazzato
con esso, a terra sparso / Il giogo; onde m'allegro" — the forcefulness
of the statement being metaphorically rendered by the suggested image
of something fine and beautiful like a priceless vase being shattered.
The image of what is shattered beyond repair, vanished beyond recall,
serves to toll a final knell to his love for Aspasia, and threatens him
with the prospect of a loveless future — a future no better than "una
notte senza stelle a mezzo il verno" and full of tedium. More than
anything else, he is now, after a "lungo vaneggiar," eager to embrace
"senno con libertà" and lie idly on the grass and watch "il mar la terra
e il cielo" without any feeling whatsoever of loss, in a mood not so
much of what Montale calls "la divina Indifferenza" as in a calculated
attempt to distance himself from the consequences of what he had
described in "A se stesso" as "l'inganno estremo."
It is a truism that in Leopardi's life and thinking, love played a
crucial role. Even more than the search for truth or the pursuit of
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knowledge, it was love that was his master-passion, as his letters, his
prose writings and his poetry all bear out. In his Canti, from "Ultimo
Canto di Saffo" onwards, love, in one form or another, is the leit-motif
of much of his poetry, so that he could well have concurred with the
English poet, Robert Graves, that love gives us the courage not to die
while we are still alive. But in "Aspasia" he expresses his feeling of
love and his attitude to it in a frankly personal and autobiographical
way, while at the same time conferring on his intimate outpourings or
confessions that artistic impersonality which makes for universality. One
could not have said of Leopardi what Robert Browning said of
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Shakespeare. Wordsworth, in his sonnet on the history of the sonnet,
had observed that "With this key / Shakespeare unlocked his heart."
"Did Shakespeare"? asked Browning, and added: "if so, so much the
less Shakespeare he." In Leopardi's case, even more than in that of
Petrarch, one can say that the more he unlocks his heart, the more he
is himself both as a man and as a poet. Nor can one judge Leopardi the
way he himself judged Petrarch: "Il Petrarca, tanto imitato [...] pare egli
stesso un imitatore; que' suoi tanti pensierini pieni di grazia ο d'affetto;
quelle tante espressioni racchiudenti un pensiero ο un sentimento,
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bellissime [...] ora paiono trivialissimi."
What, then, distinguishes Leopardi's love poetry throughout is the
unmistakable stamp of sincerity — a rare quality in poetry, and
something of a different order from Dante's quasi-mystical love,
Petrarch's sentimentalism, or Montale's "occasions." Love — "Eternal
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Passion! Eternal Pain!" — is treated in Leopardi's poetry as something,
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to quote Wordsworth, "felt in the blood and felt along the heart." No
poem of his is so intimately and at the same time so frankly
autobiographical as "Aspasia." It is both a "spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings" and a clinical diagnosis of love — its origin ("or in
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the heart, or in the head"), its impact on the rejected lover, the kind
of suffering and humiliation such an experience entails for him, and a
vivid record of the moral and psychological catharsis he undergoes in
order to regain not only "senno con libertà," but also a certain sense of
triumph ("conforto e vendetta") over his own dejected and dispirited
self. Being no longer "me privo di me stesso" he can now afford to
contemplate tranquilly ("neghittoso immobile") — a sort of vendetta in
action — what can never hurt or betray him: "il mar la terra e il ciel."
The personal is thus redeemed by and sublimated into the impersonal,
and what the poet renounces or resigns himself to becomes a strength
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with which to master his experience and go beyond it, if not altogether
transcend it.
G. SINGH
Queen's University,
Belfast, Northern Ireland
NOTES
"In Memoriam"
"Preface" to Jude the Obscure.
"Le Occasioni"
"Samson Agonistes"
Love, Shelley tells us, "is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or
fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our thoughts the chasm of
an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community
with what we experience within ourselves" (Shelley, "On Love"). On a less
philosophical and less idealistic plane, Stevenson ("On Falling in Love" in
Virginibus Puerisque) describes the effect of falling in love as "out of all
proportion with the cause," the person loved becoming the "very gist and
centrepoint of God's creation," and all our thoughts being "bound up with the
one master-thought" concerning that person. The love of life itself becomes
"translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and
desirable a fellow-creature." The experience of falling in love — the most
masterful of emotions — raises us above and distinguishes us from other
mortals, from "the innumerable army of anemic and tailorish persons who
occupy the face of the planet with so much propriety"; it "arrests the petrifying
influence of years, disproves cold-blooded and cynical conclusions, and
awakens dormant sensibilities," and makes the lovers believe in immortality,
because, says Stevenson, "there seems not room enough in life for so great a
tenderness," or, to quote Montale, life becomes "più breve del tuo fazzoletto."
"Inferno," Canto V, 9.
"After a Journey," Satires of Circumstance.
"Spesso il mal di vivere ho incontrato," Ossi di Seppia.
"Scorn not the sonnet, critic, thou hast frowned."
Zibaldone.
Matthew Arnold, "Philomela."
"Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey."
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene I: "Tell me where is
fancy bred, / Or in the heart or in the head?"
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