His pathos does
not lie in the words, not even in the famous twentythird and following
cantos, where Roland's madness is described. That the love-stories in
the heroic poem are without all lyrical tenderness, must be reckoned a
merit, though from a moral point of view they cannot always be
approved. Yet at times they are of such truth and reality,
notwithstanding all ; and romance which surrounds them, that we might
think them personal affairs of the poet himself. In the full
consciousness of his own genius, he does not scruple to interweave t he
events of his own day into the poem, and to celebrate the fame of the
house of Este in visions and prophecies. The wonderful stream of his
octaves bears it all forward in even and dignified movement.
With Teofilo Folengo, or, as he here calls himself, Limerno Pitocco,
the parody of the whole system of chivalry attained the end it had so
long desired. But here comedy, with its realism, demanded of necessity
a stricter delineation of character. Exposed to all the rough usage of
the half-savage street-lads in a Roman country town, Sutri, the little
Orlando grows up before our eyes into the hero, the priest-hater, and
the disputant. The conventional world which had been recognized since
the time of Pulci and had served as a framework for the epos, here
falls to pieces.
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