‘To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth
Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?’
— ‘Be not perturbed,’ said she. ‘Though apart in fame,
As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.’
Thomas Hardy, ‘Rome: The Vatican: Sala delle Muse’Footnote 1ROMAN ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Adolf Michaelis opened his account of the golden age of classical archaeology, first published in 1903, with a reflection on late eighteenth-century Rome and its enduring primacy in the province of archaeological studies.Footnote 2 That situation could still obtain, Michaelis wrote, thanks primarily to three main factors: the continuous relevance of Winckelmann's legacy, the intensification of excavations at several sites around the city and further afield in the Latium, and the erection of the Museo Pio Clementino. Michaelis also observed that other important excavations were taking place elsewhere and that the focus of attention was progressively widening to include other areas relevant for the history of ancient art and architecture. Developments such as the discovery of Herculaneum (1709, 1738–65), the appreciation of the Paestum temples (1758, by the same Winckelmann, amongst others) and the expeditions to Palmyra, Baalbek, Athens and Ionia under the aegis of the Society of Dilettanti (1749–51, 1764–6) were setting new goals for the archaeological discipline, introducing innovative methods of evaluation, and encouraging a different vision of the ancient world.Footnote 3 Moreover, the transfer of the Farnese collection to Naples, begun in 1787, deprived Rome of a considerable corpus of outstanding art works. Yet the wealth of ancient statuary available in the city remained such that its prestige, virtually unchallenged since the Renaissance, would not be called into question for at least another decade. The fatal blow came with the deposition and captivity of Pope Pius VI (1797–9) and the Napoleonic spoliations. Other factors, such as inevitable comparisons with the Elgin Marbles removed from Athens to London in the early nineteenth century, shook traditional certainties about the nature and quality of ancient sculpture in the Roman collections — so much so that experts felt increasingly compelled to draw a firm dividing line between Greek originals and Roman copies.
An event of major significance during the period in question was the opening of the Museo Pio Clementino. Erected between 1776 and 1784 to complement and absorb the statues in the Belvedere Courtyard and to accommodate the enlarged Vatican collections, it carries its association with Pope Pius VI (1775–99) and his predecessor Clement XIV (1769–74) in its name.Footnote 4 The pontificate of Pius VI in particular, while often censured for an excess of extravagant expenses and nepotistic practices, was nevertheless characterized — at least initially — by enterprising dynamism and a lucid awareness of what a resolute cultural policy could accomplish.Footnote 5 Before his election, the future pope had shown considerable organizational skills — for example, in his efficient management of the famine crisis of the 1760s in his capacity as civil auditor and secretary to Cardinal Camerlengo.Footnote 6 Nor should one underestimate his ability to mediate in the internal conflicts exacerbated by the suppression of the Jesuit order (1773), or his courage in resisting external pressure from those secular powers anxious to review or even rescind their traditional ties with the Holy See, notably the Kingdom of Naples, the Holy Roman Empire and, ultimately (and most dramatically), France. Moreover, even during this unsettled period prior to the crisis that led to the temporary demise of the Papal States, Pius worked ceaselessly to preserve Rome's pre-eminence in the field of the arts. Soon after his election to the pontificate, he confirmed Giambattista Visconti (1722–84) in the position of Commissario delle Antichità, thus sanctioning an appointment made in 1768 by Clement XIV following Winckelmann's advice.Footnote 7 And when, in 1781, Visconti's health began to decline, the responsibility for Roman antiquities was gradually transferred to his son, Ennio Quirino (1751–1818), who was to become ‘the leading Roman antiquarian, a brilliant man in any age’.Footnote 8 Pius's rule could thus be hailed as a new golden age for the study and appreciation of the ancient world, the glory of which was to provide a lasting pedestal for the fame of its benevolent caretaker. This was the aim not only of the new museum dedicated to the noblest remains of antiquity but also of works of poetry and erudition which would, in line with the Horatian dictum, aspire to build a monument more lasting than bronze. This paper aims to address, in particular, the significance of poetic outputs that marked Pius's age as one particularly congenial to the appreciation of the ancient world. Poetry produced in Rome in that period attained success through an unusually intimate connection with antiquarian studies, and its best examples are attempts to forge a poetic language that could give voice to enthusiasm for all things antique by somehow making itself antique too. Among the protagonists of that achievement were the aforementioned Ennio Quirino Visconti and his younger friend and protégé, Vincenzo Monti, who was to become the most authoritative and versatile Italian poet and man of letters of his generation.
RESUMPTION OF EXCAVATIONS
In 1775 archaeological excavations were being conducted in the Roman Campagna near Tivoli; more specifically, in the areas within and around Hadrian's Villa and in the so-called Praedium Cassianum, an estate that had allegedly belonged to the notorious anti-Caesarian conspirator C. Cassius Longinus. A source of much-admired classical statues since the sixteenth century — such as the Capitoline Antinous (Rome, Musei Capitolini), the Townley and Vatican Discoboli (British Museum and Musei Vaticani respectively) and the Crouching Venus (Rome, Museo Nazionale delle Terme), amongst others — in the 1760s and 1770s the site attracted the attention of antiquarians of the calibre of Giovan Battista Piranesi and of foreign, especially British, excavators and collectors.Footnote 9 According to the account in the first volume of Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782) (Fig. 1), recently assessed by Jeffrey Collins, statues of Apollo Citharoedus, seven Muses, Pallas and other minor deities began to be unearthed from the site in 1775, along with herms of illustrious men mostly with their names inscribed on the column base. Four of these still had their heads attached (Aeschines, Antisthenes, Periander and Bias), six had no head (Pittacus, Solon, Cleobulos, Tales, Anacreon, Chabrias), and of six others only part of the plinth and the inscription survived (Peisistratos, Lycurgus, Pindar, Archytas, Hermarchus of Mytilene, Diogenes). A sample illustration of their various states of conservation is given in a plate in the sixth volume, devoted to the description of busts (Fig. 2). Pius promptly acquired the artefacts as well as the site, after which there sprang from the soil, in due course, the statue of yet another Muse, two headless herms of Phidias and Bacchylides, two herms of Pericles, and several other items.Footnote 10
Fig. 1. Il Museo Pio-Clementino (1782–1807), I, title page. Heidelberg University Library.
Fig. 2. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXII (‘Erme e frammenti’). Heidelberg University Library.
The Pope's direct intervention represented in many respects a new departure. It stimulated a number of campaigns with an almost exclusive focus on the retrieval of ancient statuary, and the Tivoli findings marked an important progression in the study of ancient portraiture.Footnote 11 The newly discovered statues of the Muses contributed to a revival of the debate on the correct identification of the figures in the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene (London, British Museum; formerly Rome, Palazzo Colonna) and in the Sarcophagus of the Muses (Paris, Louvre; formerly Rome, Capitoline Museum).Footnote 12 Moreover, owing to the fragmentary state of so many of the ancient statues and the frequent exchange of parts, notably heads, the task of assigning credible features to persons of the ancient world remained a thorny one: the facial characteristics of many a famous Hellene had remained unidentified or dubious up to that point.Footnote 13 Hence the significant advance brought about by the new discoveries, which also allowed the acquisition of important biographical details. The few surviving letters on respective plinths led, for example, to conjecture that the name of Anacreon's father was Scylax and the birthplace of the Athenian general Chabrias was the Attic village of Aexonia, or Aexone.Footnote 14 The greatest sensation, however, was caused by the reappearance of the two herms of Pericles; one of which, bearing the inscription ‘Pericles the Athenian, [son] of Xanthippos’ (Fig. 3), was also reproduced in the frieze adorning the title-page of the first volume (Fig. 1) and has imprinted the features of the Athenian ruler in the minds of school pupils around the world ever since. Visconti found further confirmation of the authenticity of Pericles’ features in a passage from Plutarch's Parallel Lives (Pericles 3.2), where the Athenian leader is said to have been traditionally portrayed wearing a helmet to cover the unusually oblong shape of his head, the sole imperfection of an otherwise handsome appearance.Footnote 15 It was equally remarkable that Pericles’ heads should emerge shortly after a herm of his celebrated spouse Aspasia had been excavated in the area around Civitavecchia (Fig. 4). Visconti maintained that the features of this herm, carved in a more archaic style, did insufficient justice to a woman of such legendary beauty and intellectual distinction, unduly maligned by envious rivals and malevolent playwrights; yet the coincidence of the double find was a striking one.Footnote 16
Fig. 3. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXIX (‘Pericle’). Heidelberg University Library.
Fig. 4. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXX (‘Aspasia’). Heidelberg University Library.
News of the discoveries, amplified by the opening of the Museo Pio Clementino, resonated widely among scholars and the educated public of all nations, and reached its peak when the event was praised in verses of ravishing beauty by a promising young poet, Vincenzo Monti.
POETRY AND ARCHAEOLOGY
A native of the province of Ferrara, from a very young age Vincenzo Monti (1754–1828) showed a marvellous facility for versification both in Latin and Italian, together with an astounding aptitude for drawing on the most disparate sources of inspiration: the Latin elegiacs, Dante, Ariosto, coeval and ‘lighter’ poets like Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni (1692–1768) and Ludovico Savioli (1729–1804), as well as solemn epic poets like Milton and Klopstock. In 1775 he was still in Ferrara and affiliated under the name of Autonide Saturniano with the local branch — or ‘colony’ as it was then called — of the Roman Academy of Arcadia. The Arcadians’ academic double name ordinarily alluded to mythical lore conveyed through ancient pastoral and idyllic poetry. By adopting the name ‘Autonide’, Monti styled himself as a descendant of Autonoe, daughter of Harmonia and of Cadmus, the mythical founder of Thebes, and mother to Actaeon. The second name was generally intended to refer to a region, either real or fictitious, over which the name's bearer ideally exercised his or her own poetical jurisdiction; so that ‘Saturniano’ presumably alluded to the Virgilian Saturnia tellus (Aeneid 8.314–36; Georgics 2.173), that is, Golden Age Latium under the rule of the god Saturnus.
From Romagna Monti moved to Rome in 1778. Like many fellow subjects of the Papal States, he contributed to a tendency that grew significantly during that half-century (1769–1823) in which Peter's throne was successively occupied by three prelates from Romagna: Clement XIV (Giovan Vincenzo Ganganelli) from Santarcangelo di Romagna, Pius VI (Giovannangelo Braschi) from Cesena and Pius VII (Niccolò Chiaramonti), also from Cesena. In the summer of 1779 Monti seized his chance. On 16, 20 and 23 August the Academy of Arcadia called three public gatherings to celebrate the restored health of the Pope and to formulate the Quinquennial Vows for the happy continuation of his rule — an ancient Roman tradition revived by the Christian pontiffs. At the third and final gathering, Monti recited La prosopopea di Pericle, an ode of 156 agile, swift-running seven-syllable verses where Pericles’ herm sings the praises of Pius's enlightened pontificate.Footnote 17
A veritable furore followed the performance of the poem, which was hailed as a celebration of the auspicious wedding between ancient art and modern poetry. Monti was surprised at such a reaction: he had hurriedly composed his ode (so he claimed) in only two days and there is no doubt that his declamatory skills, cultivated through the practice of improvisation, must have played a role in inspiring such general admiration.Footnote 18 Success, however, continued to accrue well beyond the initial performance. Cardinal Giovanni Carlo Boschi demanded that a copy of the text be printed on a single sheet, framed and placed next to Pericles’ herm once this was brought into the museum that was still under construction — an honour seldom conferred on verse that celebrated art works.Footnote 19 The ode appeared in print twice that year, in Rome and in Ferrara, and in dozens of subsequent editions. It was Monti's first great success, marking a radical new turn in his production and career.Footnote 20
In the poem, Pericles’ speaking herm declares it a propitious time for him to see the light of day again; although not in Greece but in Rome, after the many centuries of neglect caused by the barbarian invasions (Mi seppellì la barbara / Vandalica ruina, 11–12; Ed aspettai benefica / Etade, 33–4). He sees the familiar features of other illustrious Hellenes re-emerge around him (Vedi dal suolo emergere / Ancor parlanti e vive … Le sculte forme argive, 49–52), while those of his beloved spouse Aspasia await him to seal their love beyond the grave (Qui la fedele Aspasia … Al fianco suo m'aspetta, 69–72). After a sweeping and proud account of his past attainments as ruler of Athens (97–124), he acknowledges their inferiority before those of Pius, whose patronage of the arts has forever settled the issue of Rome's pre-eminence over Greece (Grecia fu vinta, e videsi / Di Grecia la ruina / Render superba e splendida / La povertà latina, 129–32). The voice of the herm concludes by formulating the aforementioned quinquennial vows for a long and prosperous pontificate (Vivi, o signor. Tardissimo / Al mondo il ciel ti furi, 145–6). Despite being sent from the pagan Erebus these vows are no less genuine or worthy of acceptance (149–56).
One can appreciate how the ode struck a sensitive chord with so many listeners and readers. Firstly, it presents a sequence of salient images. Particularly memorable are the stanzas evoking the lamentable condition of classical art during the barbaric age, as well as those vividly picturing the faces of the ancient sages re-emerging from the soil, or those hailing the golden age of Athens under Periclean rule:
(Yet the Athenian arcades, its temples and high walls never did look so comely as when I had them in my care.)
Secondly, the imagery employed is made memorable by the use of frequent but perfectly, almost unassumingly, embedded classical reminiscences, mainly derived from Horace, Virgil and Ovid. The few passages transcribed above show Monti's subtle art of quotation. Grecia fu vinta … (129) is a topical allusion — one of the many interspersed in Italian verse from all ages — to the Horatian dictum Graecia capta ferum victorem coepit et artes / Intulit agresti Latio (‘Captive Greece conquered her savage victor, and introduced the arts into rural Latium’, Ep. 2.1.156–7); yet one could also perceive in it an echo of 1750s and 1760s polemics, when the old controversy had been revived among artists and antiquarians.Footnote 21 Vivi, o signor. Tardissimo / Al mondo il ciel ti furi (145–6) is an equally patent allusion to Horace (Serus in coelum redeas, diuque / Laetus intersis populo Quirini, ‘Late may you return to heaven, and long may you remain among the Quirites’, Carmina 1.2.45), by which the Christian appropriation of the pagan quinquennial vows is underlined. Even minimal junctures, for example l'ardue mura (98), harking back to the Virgilian ardua moenia (‘high walls’, Aeneid 12.45), contribute to the sustained tone of the whole.Footnote 22 Thirdly, and finally, a vibrant enthusiasm, tempered with affection, permeates the entire poem and reaches emotional intensity in Pericles’ recollection of Aspasia — a stanza that Monti polished to perfection in subsequent versions of the poem:
(I am not oblivious to my former ardour — Love excites it, and nurtures it beyond the grave.)
MONTI AND VISCONTI
The Roman context in which this singular feat took place has been meticulously investigated since the general resurgence of interest in neoclassical arts and letters. Recent contributions in particular have shed new light on Monti's early Roman years.Footnote 24 Still, it is surprising to note that, amid many stimulating insights into Monti's relationships with a number of individuals, the association with Ennio Quirino Visconti should not yet have received a dedicated contribution commensurate with its importance. Two fortunate partial exceptions are the essays of Francesca Fedi and Mauro Sarnelli on Monti's early years in Rome, where Visconti features prominently.Footnote 25 As Fedi rightly states in the opening pages of her contribution on Monti's encounter with Roman neoclassicism, the friendship with Visconti was a defining moment in the young Ferrarese poet's career.Footnote 26 This circumstance entails a number of considerations, which aim to give Visconti's role a greater prominence than it has hitherto received.Footnote 27
At the time when the two first met, Visconti was already set to become a distinguished scholar, albeit in the shadow of his still-active father. On the other hand, he had not yet abandoned the cultivation of poetry. He was thus fostering ambitions that went beyond the customary discharge of such obligations as the production of occasional verse. This clearly transpires from Monti's Saggio di poesie, published in the late spring or early summer of 1779. This is introduced by a ‘Discorso preliminare’, in which Visconti is addressed as an older and more learned friend, as well as a mentor and a severe arbiter on matters of classically inspired poetry — he is, in effect, presented as a new Tibullus, by way of the Horace-inspired address Enni, Pieridum nostrarum candide Judex (‘Ennius, candid judge of my Muse’).Footnote 28 It is worth noting here that Visconti took the assignment very seriously. In his ‘Discorso preliminare’, Monti reserved for himself a broader and somewhat garrulous prerogative to pursue eclectic imitation, with a declared preference for the Hebrew poetry of the Psalms, a fashionable literary trend at the time.Footnote 29 This is probably why Visconti, when asked later to write about the Stato attuale della romana letteratura (1785), did not let friendship soften his lucid verdict on the young Monti's vagaries.Footnote 30
Back in 1779, however, Monti's ‘Discorso preliminare’ voiced a fear that Visconti's preoccupation with ancient statues and coins might become too exclusive, thus preventing him from completing his translation of Pindar into Italian verse. If Visconti feared that his affection for his Greeks was unrequited, Pericles’ recent reappearance was there to prove the contrary, as Monti wrote to reassure his friend.
Ma se fosse lecito indovinare i pensieri dei morti, si potrebbe credere che anche i Greci siano innamorati di Voi, o che almeno abbiano la smania, dirò così, di vedervi, e di essere veduti. Ne avete una prova in Pericle, il quale dopo di essere stato nascosto per tanti secoli agli occhi diligenti della curiosa posterità, dalle campagne di Tivoli di dove è stato disotterato, è venuto ultimamente a trovarvi, e a farsi da voi riconoscere in persona con un bel volto degno veramente d'Aspasia, e con un grand'elmo in testa scolpito dal bravo artefice forse sulla forma di quello che portava quel giorno che vinse i Sicioni. Ma io non vorrei che in grazia di Pericle vi dimenticaste di Pindaro. … In vece di contemplare la testa di Pericle, o di esaminar qualche medaglia non ben conosciuta, giacché di medaglie e di antiquaria ne sapete abbastanza, date di piglio alla lira di Pindaro, e arricchitela d'auree corde toscane.Footnote 31
Were one permitted to guess the thoughts of the dead, it would seem the Greeks are returning your affection for them, or are at least fostering a yearning, as it were, to see you, as well as to be seen. You have proof of this in Pericles. After remaining hidden from the searching eye of curious posterity for so many centuries, he has recently come to visit you from that Tivoli countryside where he was dug up, and he has let himself be recognized by his handsome face, truly worthy of Aspasia, and by that impressive helmet — the work of a valiant artist — he was perhaps wearing the day he defeated the Sikyones. Yet I would not wish that Pericles made you forget your Pindar … Instead of gazing at Pericles’ head or examining some obscure medal (for you know enough already about medals and other antiquarian matters), do seize Pindar's lyre, and add to it a set of golden Tuscan strings.
Most of the constituent parts of Monti's Prosopopea di Pericle are already apparent in this passage. One can easily recognize the animated traits of Pericles, as well as the other heads'; their ‘yearning … to see you, as well as to be seen’, which was to be translated into the poem's vivid ekphrases; the herm's amorous affection towards the scholar that had elucidated its features, which in the poem will be directed to Pius and echoed in Pericles’ pledge to Aspasia.
A glance at the dates should help establish the time limits within which one ought to set the composition of Monti's Prosopopea di Pericle. The ‘Discorso preliminare’ must date to the late spring of 1779, if one assumes it to be broadly coeval with, if not slightly earlier than, the dedicatory epistle dated 8 June 1779.Footnote 32 In a letter of 30 July, Monti said he had promised to ‘complete’, amongst other things, a ‘canzonetta for the Pope’, which is without doubt the text under consideration here.Footnote 33 The Prosopopea di Pericle, recited in Arcadia on 23 August of the same year, was soon afterwards declared by Monti to have been composed — as has been observed — in ‘only two days’.Footnote 34 Be that as it may, Visconti's influence over Monti's early Roman production cannot be confined within these dates and demands to be examined at greater length.
Presumably aware, despite possible misgivings, of his friend's greater poetic gifts, Visconti urged Monti to write a poem himself on the reappearance of Pericles’ herm; but he did not stay idle either. Visconti wrote in friendly competition an ode entitled Le Muse to celebrate the statues found on the same site in Tivoli, and by recalling the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia in the opening lines paid homage to his friend ‘Autonide’.Footnote 35 Moreover, the metre in which both poems are written consists of quatrains of alternate unrhymed proparoxytone (stress on the antepenultimate syllable) and rhymed paroxytone (stress on the penultimate) seven-syllable lines. This distinctive prosodic structure was intended to imitate the pattern of the Latin distich; it had been adopted and promoted by Ludovico Savioli — one of young Monti's favourite authors — with the deliberate purpose of ennobling the by then largely discredited genre of the canzonetta.Footnote 36 However, Visconti had also elected to use the same metrical form for his celebration of Pius VI's election to the pontificate as far back as 1775, as well as for his ongoing attempts at translating Pindar. On balance, as Mauro Sarnelli has observed, Monti's Prosopopea appears to show greater similarity to Visconti's poem on the Muses than to any other, in consideration of the subject — the praises of the pontiff — and the perceptibly loftier style the subject required.Footnote 37
All this is encapsulated in one of the rooms of the Museo Pio Clementino — the Sala delle Muse. Of the herms on display there, together with those of Pericles and Aspasia (69), the poem mentions only those returned from the excavations with their heads intact. This means that only ‘Periandro’ (51) (Fig. 5), ‘Antistene’ (51) (Fig. 6), ‘Biante’ (54) (Fig. 7) and ‘Eschine’ (57) (Fig. 8) are evoked, the last paired with his rival Demosthenes, whose head (with no indication of provenance) is discussed and reproduced immediately after Aeschines’ in the relevant volume of Visconti's Museo Pio Clementino.Footnote 38 As Jeffrey Collins has shown in his masterful article ‘Marshaling the Muses’, the housing together of the Apollo Citharoedus, the Muses and the herms from Tivoli, with Monti's poem placed next to Pericles’ herm, aimed to be a tangible and perpetual memento of the bond between poetry and antiquarian science. The bond was constructed according to the Hellenic ideal that had also been Winckelmann's, and received further authority from the selection of the statues on display, the carefully orchestrated parietal decoration, the frescoed vault by Tommaso Maria Conca with Apollo as the victorious god of poetry, and the series of four epic poets — Homer, Virgil, Ariosto and Tasso — painted by Conca in the lower section.Footnote 39 For the modern visitor the significance of the arrangement is partly obscured by the presence of the Belvedere Torso, positioned quite ‘out of context’ — as Collins rightly observes — in the middle of the room.Footnote 40 To Thomas Hardy, however, who visited the Sala delle Muse when the Torso was located elsewhere, the joint celebration of the cognate arts of sculpture and poetry was evident. Hardy's verses, the epigraph to this paper, bear witness to the vertiginous message conveyed by the layout of the hall: how could one simultaneously capture both Form and Tune? And yet the beholder's anxiety is soothed by the Muse's softly spoken reassurance that the two ideals are, in fact, one and the same.
Fig. 5. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXV (‘Periandro Corintio’). Heidelberg University Library
Fig. 6. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXXV (‘Antistene’). Heidelberg University Library.
Fig. 7. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXIII (‘Biante Prieneo’). Heidelberg University Library.
Fig. 8. Il Museo Pio Clementino (1782–1807), VI, table XXXVI (‘Eschine’). Heidelberg University Library.
Further evidence of Visconti's and Monti's association during their Roman years is more likely to emerge from scattered private testimonies than from the records of official gatherings. Francesca Fedi has noted that Visconti, unlike Monti, carefully steered clear of the Academy of Arcadia, of which he was never a member. For example, while Monti celebrated the Braschi–Falconieri wedding by publishing La bellezza dell'Universo in a miscellaneous book of poems recited at Arcadia, Visconti's Le Muse, composed for the same occasion, appeared in a different collection promoted by the more obscure and anti-Arcadic Accademia degli Aborigeni.Footnote 41 In fact, Rome provided plentiful contexts for informal gatherings as alternatives to those of the Academy of Arcadia. Prince Sigismondo Chigi's circle, frequented by both Visconti and Monti, was one of them. Another probably less-known testimony, examined by Antonio Giuliano over twenty years ago, points to an even more exclusive situation.Footnote 42 In 1806 the antiquarian Francesco Cancellieri published a dissertation by the late Giambattista Visconti on the recovery, in 1781, of the Palombara Discobolus, together with other works on the same and analogous subjects, to which he added his own copious annotations.Footnote 43 In one of his anecdotal asides Cancellieri reveals that the text of the dissertation, whereby the Discobolus is brilliantly ascribed to Myron, was read out in the spring of 1781 to a select academy of only eight members; the text, however, was not read by Giambattista, but by Ennio Quirino.Footnote 44 Monti was among the attendants, the only poet in a very small company of prelates and antiquarians which included the famous architect Francesco Milizia as well as the theologian Antonio Spedalieri (1740–95), Gibbon's notorious opponent in the quarrel following the publication of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.Footnote 45 The facetious name of that academy was ‘Società Cioccolataria’, for its members used to open their sessions by consuming a chocolate drink — a token of the society's desultory nature, but also of its suitability for more intimate and, despite the jocular name, more scholarly meetings.Footnote 46 In modern academic terms, these meetings would resemble seminar sessions as opposed to crowded assemblies at which emphasis is on oratorical skill and performance rather than on substance.
This pattern of friendly competition and mutual encouragement continued unabated in the years that followed. The opening lines of Visconti's Le Muse inspired the opening lines of Monti's memorable ode Al Signor di Montgolfier (1784), a celebration of the ascension in an aerostatic balloon of Joseph-Michel Montgolfier's followers, Nicolas-Louis Robert and Jacques Charles, and one of the few cases in which verse genuinely manages to tackle a scientific subject without losing either passion or eloquence.Footnote 47 Five years later, Visconti also tried his hand at writing verse on scientific topics and produced the ode Il Triangolo, a poem on the homonymous Northern constellation characterized by masonic undertones.Footnote 48 It is also noteworthy that, with the exception of La bellezza dell'Universo, all the poems mentioned so far, including Visconti's surviving translations from Pindar, are in the same neoclassical Saviolian metre.Footnote 49
Visconti never ceased to lend Monti frank and helpful advice. The Feroniade, an aetiological poem conceived (though never completed) by Monti in 1784 to celebrate Pius's attempt to drain the Pontine Marshes, greatly profited from Visconti's expertise on sources for the history of ancient Latium.Footnote 50 Monti's tragedy Aristodemo (1786), on the other hand, was immediately well received and famously obtained Goethe's approval;Footnote 51 yet after a preliminary reading of the text on private premises, as was then customary before proceeding to a stage performance, Visconti approached Monti and discreetly whispered in his ear that his tragedy had no recognizable catastrophe — a fault which Monti promptly remedied.Footnote 52 Authoritative sources maintain that Visconti also gave impetus to the revival of Dante studies and imitation that characterizes the last decade of the eighteenth century in Rome. He offered the Franciscan friar Baldassarre Lombardi competent advice prior to the latter's 1791 publication of an annotated edition of the Commedia, the first to appear in Rome after the invention of the printing press.Footnote 53 In the absence of further evidence, one can only speculate whether Visconti may have played an analogous role in encouraging Monti to adopt Dantean metre and style for In morte di Ugo Bassville (1793), the poem that returned Dante to the altars of literary appreciation after centuries of neglect.Footnote 54 Finally, Monti continued availing himself of Visconti's philological expertise even after his friend had moved to Paris in 1799 to become the director of the Musée Napoléon. The translation of Homer's Iliad, Monti's crowning masterpiece, was carefully revised by Visconti in notes remarkable for their understanding of the original text and their interpretative accuracy.Footnote 55
RHETORIC AND LYRIC
‘Prosopopea di Pericle. Prosopopoeia, a truly lyric genre, despite its rhetorical name’.Footnote 56 This is Giosuè Carducci's preliminary comment on Monti's poem in his lecture notes for the course he delivered at the University of Bologna during the academic year 1876–7. Negatively affected by the verdict pronounced by the readers of the Romantic Age (a verdict often motivated by political and ideological dissent), Monti's poetry was being reassessed by Carducci according to its own principles and for its intrinsic poetic values, over and above any celebratory and political motivation that may have been reflected in its themes.
Carducci associated Monti's Prosopopea with the tradition of the Roman elegy, where ‘shades and [deceased] heroes are made to speak’, and pointed to Propertius, 4.2 and 4.11, as well as some of Propertius’ Renaissance epigones. Yet Carducci also appreciated that, despite its apparent reverence towards tradition, at the same time Monti's Prosopopea constituted a refreshingly new take on that ancient topic.
In somma, è la poesia antica che canta l'instituzione del Museo pio-clementino, il risorgimento dell'ellenismo e l'entusiasmo di Winckelmann in bocca d'un italiano che canta come Properzio.Footnote 57
To reiterate, this is ancient poetry celebrating the institution of the Museo Pio-Clementino; it is Hellenism revived, combined with Winckelmann's enthusiasm, in the words of an Italian who sings with the voice of Propertius.
While he stressed the poem's enthusiastic drive, Carducci did not fail to highlight its opposing and equally relevant self-composure. The combination resulted in something akin to Winckelmann's pithy ideal of fiery creation followed (and counterbalanced) by careful honing.Footnote 58
La perfezione classica è la rispondenza esatta della forma al concetto: e in questa poesia del Monti, così giovane, questa corrispondenza c’è: non fa una grinza. … Placida, calma, vuole ascoltatori che tranquilli si appressino all'entusiasmo sacro del bello. Non contorsioni, non urli: le strofe pioveano qui come le parole di Ulisse (Omero, Iliade, III).Footnote 59
Classical perfection lies in the exact adherence of form to concept, and in this poem by Monti, [written when he was] still so young, that conformity exists, and is faultless … [As] a placid, calm [sort of poetry], it demands tranquil listeners desirous of being admitted to the sacred enthusiasm for beauty. No contortions or shouting here: the stanzas descend [as naturally] as Odysseus’ words in the third book of Homer's Iliad.
How should one assess this intriguing mixture of modernly phrased enthusiasm and classical poise? Monti had himself ascribed his poem to the poetics of enthusiasm and emphasized its spiriting effect (as has been seen) by claiming he had drafted it in two days.Footnote 60 Yet, a good three weeks before the date of the performance, he declared he was about to ‘complete’ the canzonetta for the Pope, which he had evidently begun some time before.Footnote 61 How should one reconcile those two statements?
A tentative answer might be to assign to the expression ‘in two days’ the conventional value of a composition conducted in haste, perhaps in an exalted state, or even in a frenzy, whether real or feigned being of no consequence. In fact, the expression ‘in two days’ enjoys a long and distinctive pedigree and had for a long time represented a hallmark of impromptu composition driven by enthusiasm. Statius declared his Silvae to be poems he had composed in the heat of the moment (subito calore), and ‘none of them had required longer than two days’ to write (nullum enim ex illis biduo longius tractum), if not indeed written in a single day (quaedam et in singulis diebus effusa, Silvae 1 praefatio 3–4). Angelo Poliziano was among the first to revive the cult of Statius in the Renaissance; as such, he similarly declared he had written his play Orfeo ‘over a period of two days, in a permanently tumultuous state’ (in tempo di dua giorni, intra continui tumulti).Footnote 62 The same circumstances would ideally apply to Monti and his poem as well, which incidentally was intended for public recitation just as were Statius’ Silvae and Poliziano's Orfeo. A few years later, Alessandro Manzoni jotted down his celebrated ode on the death of Napoleon, Il cinque maggio, ‘in less than three days’, struck by the news that had reached him in the countryside near Milan on 17 July 1821.Footnote 63 A more recent, and not altogether differing, example might be seen in the ‘original, shorter, version’ of Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox: ‘based on a lecture delivered in Oxford, [it] was dictated (the author claimed) in two days’.Footnote 64
Yet rapid composition, if aimed at a higher goal than mere effect, must necessarily go through a revision process. Subitus calor (to use Statius’ terms) needs to be tempered with an awareness of ‘the lingering triviality of hastily accumulated material’ (manet in rebus temere congestis quae fuit levitas), as Quintilian warned when he addressed the problematic nature of silvae as impromptu writing (Institutio Oratoria 10.3.17). The same issue is evident in Monti's constant revision of his texts and of Prosopopea di Pericle in particular. The changes progressively introduced in the first stanza are both exemplary and revealing in this respect.
The initial version, Io degli Eroi di Grecia / Fra l'inclita famiglia / D'Atene, a i prischi secoli, / Splendore e maraviglia … (‘I, from the noble family of the heroes of Greece, the splendour and marvel of Athens of old …’), was first changed to (bar a few minor adjustments) Io degli Achei magnanimi / Fra l'inclita famiglia … (‘I, from the noble family of the magnanimous Achaeans …’), to read eventually as
(I, from the noble family of the valiant Cecropides, the splendour and marvel of Athens in a far from recent past …)
The introduction of a recondite periphrasis (Pericles as the descendant of Cecrops, the founder of Athens) and an elative litotes (un dì non ultimo, lit. ‘in a non-recent time’, in substitution of the more straightforward a i prischi secoli) testifies to a rhetorically enhanced text by way of the increased presence of classical figures of speech.
Similarly, the changes to the second half of the stanza underscore the culturally charged significance of the rescuing of Pericles’ herm, seen as a vindication of the eternal value of classical art against adverse fate. While in the original version Pericles’ words gave a personal and almost intimate account of his unexpected reappearance — Da i ciechi regni io Pericle / De gli estinti ritorno / L'ingenua luce amabile / A riveder del giorno (‘From the dark reign of the dead I, Pericles, am now returning to see the free, endearing light of day again’) — the final version is informed by greater solemnity, indeed monumentality, in alignment with the archaeological subject of the poem and the mission of the new Rome.
(I, Pericles, am returning to see the Latin sky again, a vanquisher of the barbarians, of time, and of destiny.)
Striving for more complex, almost overloaded, poetic diction in combination with rarer vocabulary and markedly figured speech has its roots in an ideal of poetry that may look hopelessly remote from today's sensibility. That ideal, however, permeated the age one has learnt to call neoclassical.Footnote 67 No one characterized that ideal better than the poet whose work sits on the watershed between the Classical and the Romantic Ages — Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837). In a note drafted on 12 September 1823, Leopardi remarked that the great poets of the previous generation, including Monti, had widened the gulf between the language of poetry and that of prose, thus creating two separate languages and a situation that was singularly analogous to that of ancient Greece.
Del resto, il linguaggio e lo stile delle poesie di Parini, Alfieri, Monti, Foscolo è molto più propriamente e più perfettamente poetico e distinto dal prosaico, che non è quello di verun altro de’ nostri poeti, inclusi nominatamente i più classici e sommi antichi. Di modo che per quelli e per gli altri che li somigliano, e per l'uso de’ poeti di questo e dell'ultimo secolo, l'Italia ha oggidì una lingua poetica a parte e distinta affatto dalla prosaica, una doppia lingua, l'una prosaica, l'altra [3419] poetica, non altrimenti che l'avesse la Grecia, e più che i latini.Footnote 68
Moreover, the language and style of the poetry of Parini, Alfieri, Monti and Foscolo are much more properly and perfectly poetic, and distinct from prose, than those of any other of our poets, including specifically the most classical and accomplished of our poets of old. This means that through them and others like them, and through the usage of poets in this and the last century, Italy today has a separate poetic language, which is entirely distinct from that of prose, in effect two languages, one prosaic, the other [3419] poetic, no different from what Greece had, and more so than the Romans.Footnote 69
This revealing comment has a specific bearing on the issue confronted here. An effective revival of the ancient world would not, indeed could not, stop at furnishing some splendid new museum rooms with a few ancient statues and scattered archaeological finds. It not only demanded a different critical language, as the example of Winckelmann shows, but demanded a different poetic language and style as well, which eventually came to resemble, and almost to mimic, the distinct nature of the poetic language of ancient Greece as a markedly separate form of expression from that of prose or of ordinary speech. The Romantic Age would soon reject and ban that ideal, to such an extent as to make it virtually irretrievable and incomprehensible for post-Romantic readers. Yet a language and style it was, that in its time managed to engage with the hearts and minds of readers and viewers, and seemed apt to lead them to that fantastic realm where Form and Tune are one.
