Moreover, it is
not primarily intended for the public; it has a social rather than a
literary function.
The English with their lyrical genius have impressed the form, as they
have impressed every other form, into lyrical service, and with some
success, it must be admitted. But the Italian sonnet is not lyrical. It
is conversational and intellectual, and many things which English
instinct declares poetry ought not to be. We feel throughout the poetry
of the Latin races a certain domination of the intelligence which is
foreign to our own poetry. But in the sonnet form at least we may
sympathize with this domination. Let us read the Italian sonnets, then,
as if they were prose; let us seek first the thought and hold to that,
and leave the eloquence to take care of itself. It is the thought, after
all, which Michael Angelo himself cared about. He is willing to
sacrifice elegance, to truncate words, to wreck rhyme, prosody, and
grammar, if he can only hurl through the verse these thoughts which were
his convictions.
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