Che dalla bocca fuori gli
pendea
La coda smisurata d’
un serpente,
E il flagellava per la faccia,
mentre
Il capo e il tronco gli scendean
nel ventre.
Fischia la biscia nell’
orribil lutta
Entro il ventre profondo del
dannato,
Che dalla bocca lacerata erutta
Un torrente di sangue aggruppato;
E bava gialla, venenosa e
brutta,
Dalle narici fuor manda col
fiato,
La qual pel mento giu gli
cola, e lassa
Insolcata la carne, ovunque
passa.
It seems to have been the fate of Grossi as a poet
to achieve fashion, and not fame; and his great poem
in fifteen cantos, called “I Lombardi alla Prima
Crociata”, which made so great a noise in its
day, was eclipsed in reputation by his subsequent
novel of “Marco Visconti”. Since
the “Gerusalemma” of Tasso, it is said
that no poem has made so great a sensation in Italy
as “I Lombardi”, in which the theme treated
by the elder poet is celebrated according to the aesthetics
of the Romantic School. Such parts of the poem
as I have read have not tempted me to undertake the
whole; but many people must have at least bought it,
for it gave the author thirty thousand francs in solid
proof of popularity.
After the “Marco Visconti”, Grossi seems
to have produced no work of importance. He married
late, but happily; and he now devoted himself almost
exclusively to the profession of the law, in Milan,
where he died in 1853, leaving the memory of a good
man, and the fame of a poet unspotted by reproach.
As long as he lived, he was the beloved friend of
Manzoni. He dwelt many years under the influence
of the stronger mind, but not servile to it; adopting
its literary principles, but giving them his own expression.
Luigi Carrer of Venice was the first of that large
number of minor poets and dramatists to which the
states of the old Republic have given birth during
the present century. His life began with our
century, and he died in 1850. During this time
he witnessed great political events—the
retirement of the French after the fall of Napoleon;
the failure of all the schemes and hopes of the Carbonarito
shake off the yoke of the stranger; and that revolution
in 1848 which drove out the Austrians, only that,
a year later, they should return in such force as
to make the hope of Venetian independence through
the valor of Venetian arms a vain dream forever.
There is not wanting evidence of a tender love of
country in the poems of Carrer, and probably the effectiveness
of the Austrian system of repression, rather than
his own indifference, is witnessed by the fact that
he has scarcely a line to betray a hope for the future,
or a consciousness of political anomaly in the present.
Carrer was poor, but the rich were glad to be his
friends, without putting him to shame; and as long
as the once famous conversazioni were held
in the great Venetian houses, he was the star of whatever
place assembled genius and beauty. He had a professorship
in a private school, and while he was young he printed
his verses in the journals. As he grew older,
he wrote graceful books of prose, and drew his slender
support from their sale and from the minute pay of
some offices in the gift of his native city.
