Читать книгу Gian Vittorio Rossi's Eudemiae libri decem - Группа авторов - Страница 11

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s active literary life largely coincided with the period known as the Baroque. Though there is no consensus regarding the precise dates that demarcate this era,1 the Baroque period in Italy more or less coincides with the seventeenth century (Seicento).2 The Baroque aesthetic was characterized by meraviglia (wonder or marvel), and comprised elements intended to act on the emotions of the reader or viewer: the supernatural or fantastic (favoloso), a surprising and pleasing style achieved via clever metaphor and ornament (concetti or concettismo), and the application of wit (arguzia) that allows the reader or viewer to “[glimpse] the truth of things in a unique way.”3 As Peter RietbergenRietbergen, Peter explains, the Baroque aesthetic was all-encompassing; it was not just an artistic style but “a style of living wherein all elements of life were fundamentally united” to create a sense of wonder.4 The author who is best known for representing the Baroque literary aesthetic of meraviglia is Giambattista MarinoMarino, Giambattista, though he had already died by the time the Baroque era reached its apex under Pope Urban VIIIUrban VIII, Pope.5

The Baroque aesthetic was a response to a critical historical moment for the Roman Catholic Church. During the post-Tridentine Catholic reform movement, or the Counter-Reformation, the Church sought to reassert its power and to reestablish Rome as the physical and spiritual center of the Catholic world.6 The consolidation and maintenance of temporal and spiritual power required the participation of the populace. The Baroque aesthetic—embodied in theater performances, music, public recitations, architecture, monuments, and highly visible displays of wealth—served to overwhelm and delight the reader or viewer, while at the same time leading him or her to embrace what the Roman Catholic Church deemed correct spiritual teaching (delectare et docere).7

One of the main drivers of culture in Baroque Rome was the Jesuit order, whose Collegio Romano was the principal institution for secondary education. The Jesuit curriculum was based on principles of what FumaroliFumaroli, Marc terms “Christian humanism,” a fusion of the disciplined rules found in CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius and QuintilianQuintilian with the meditative and contemplative approach to spirituality as found in the Exercitia spiritualia of Igantius of Loyola.8 Under the Jesuit-educated, humanist pope Urban VIIIUrban VIII, Pope, and his nephew, Cardinal Francesco BarberiniBarberini, Francesco, Rome experienced a cultural renovatio that Fumaroli describes as a second Roman Renaissance.9 During this period Rome became a beacon for intellectuals and artists from all over Europe, who traveled to Rome in order to be part of this flourishing activity in literature, art, and science. Many of these intellectuals and artists were members of the Accademia degli Umoristi, which became an important arbiter of the best style (optimus stylus).10

Baroque literature has often been dismissed as extravagant, decadent, and representing “the nadir of Italian literature.”11 Scholars who resist this assessment do so from different vantages. IJsewijnIJsewijn, for example, argues that such a characterization tends to reflect only vernacular works, and that any adequate assessment of the literary output of Seicento Rome must also take into consideration Latin works of the period. In his view, “many of the flaws which critics usually find in the Italian writings of the age, such as bad taste and extravagance, are markedly absent from the best of their Latin counterparts.”12 FumaroliFumaroli, Marc, on the other hand, argues that the very distinction between Baroque and Classical aesthetic is exaggerated and unnecessary, and that both the rigorous standards of Ciceronianism and individual (even eccentric) Baroque style are manifestations of the limitless ways one can express one’s relationship with the immutable logos of the Catholic Church, which was forced to become more flexible and open to different means of expression after the Reformation.13

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio was certainly aware of these aesthetic debates. Classical authors provided the touchstone that guided his style and often put him at odds with the more experimental trends embraced by his contemporaries. As GerboniGerboni, Luigi explains, Rossi expressed a clear preference for Ciceronian Latin over the sort of style he described as “new and sublime,”14 criticizing those who rejected the “pure, clear words and manifest meanings” of CiceroCicero, Marcus Tullius, in favor of overwrought meraviglia, as privileging form over substance: “Always inflated and swollen, they spread their wings and reach for the mountaintops, only to grasp clouds and emptiness.”15

It is not only in his letters that RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio inveighs against this new style. Eudemia also serves as his vehicle for criticizing writers who turn their back on ancient authors. In Book Three, for example, he includes poems on such subjects as a honey apple, a beard, and a pomegranate, and the narrator mentions someone who composed a laudatory poem to a gnat. These compositions and references serve to make fun of the Baroque proliferation of paradoxical encomia, poems in praise of everyday objects.16 In addition, in Books Four and Nine, the two Romans meet people who, respectively, express indignation at being compared to ancient authors and insist on their own superiority. One of them declares: “I would be embarrassed to compose verses that are anything like VirgilVirgil’s”17; while the other insists that the writings of ancient authors be measured against his own: “He endeavored to measure ancient authors … against the criterion of his own acumen and dislodge them from their long-standing supremacy.”18 Thus Rossi’s novel, aside from being a social critique, is also an artistic one, to the detriment of his own contemporaries.

To reiterate RietbergenRietbergen, Peter’s assessment, the Baroque aesthetic was an all-encompassing lifestyle that included “banquets and behavior and books.”19 RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s Eudemia parades this all-encompassing aesthetic before his readers’ eyes. Writing in elegant Latin, he lays bare a society, fashioned and fostered by the powerful Barberini family and their circle, that cultivated literary and artistic showmanship, opulent displays of wealth, lavish banquets, luxurious dress, and enormous villas complete with sumptuous decorations, fountains and spectacular gardens, all fueled and supported by a corrupt system of patronage and favors.