- Performer Name:
- Quattromani; Rossetti
- Performance Venue:
- Performance Date:
- Author:
- Rossetti, Gabriele
- Date Written:
- Language:
- English
- Publication Title:
- Gabriele Rossetti: A Versified Autobiography
- Article Title:
- Page Numbers:
- 31-35
- Additional Info:
- Trans. and ed. William Michael Rossetti
- Publisher:
- Sands
- Place of Publication:
- London
- Date Published:
- 1901
Text:
[31] I interrupt the verse-narrative for a moment, to point out that Rossetti here recounts—what was of leading importance in his Neapolitan career—how he came to be an improvising poet. Luigi Quattromani was a renowned improvisatore, and (so far as I infer) little or [32] not at all an author of verse written and published. The date when Rossetti first knew him, and soon afterwards began improvising, is not here defined; I suppose it may have been towards 1810. When my father came to London in 1824 he resolved not to prolong the practice; thinking, and no doubt rightly, that, although he might excite some surprise and attention by improvising, it would on the whole lower his position as a serious professional man in the teaching and literary vocation. Yet he did occasionally give a specimen of his prowess as an extempore poet; the latest notice I find of such a performance was in his family-circle, in 1840. If I myself ever heard him improvise, I have forgotten it. The observations which he here makes on the dangers of the habit, both to health and to purity of poetic style, are worth noting. He first proceeds with a description of Quattromani's doings.
Whenso I heard him touch on David's harp,
All fervid with extemporaneous power,
Upon his face shone out the impassioned soul
Which spread around spontaneous bursts of light:
And that same flame I saw a-shine in him
On mine own spirit did I feel descend.
Yes, what I heard meseemed not possible;
'Twas ecstasy to me, enchantment, dream.
[33] But what appeared incredible almost
Was coming to be realized in myself.
On my way home I tried to do the like,
And oh astonishment! I also sang
Line after line: so strange the upshot seemed
That I renewed the essay for several days.
By daytime and by night assiduously
Did I repeat that same experiment.
Often with Quattromani I conferred,
Who gave my verses not a little praise;
And once the blind old man exclaimed to me—
'Alternate with me in an improvise.'
And, after a few trials and demands,
He took me up with so much ardent zest
That 'mid the pomp of images produced
He gave me many a 'viva' from his heart.
He closed by saying: 'For poetic strifes
Nature has given you athletic power.'
'Persist,' he often said to me, 'persist,
And let no sloth impede you on your road.
A poet you were born, and those who seek
To change your course—believe this—envy you.
What you at your commencement do with me
Might seem the fruit of lengthy studying.'
And often did our verses alternate
In choice assemblies with co-equal praise,
So much men's judgments wavered in the scales
That 'twixt us victory remained in doubt.
But this impressed on me the stamp of worth—
What honour to contend with such a man!
[34] He, like a living mirror, faces me,
And, seeing myself in him, I can but grieve.
He old and blind, and I too blind and old:
And he died poor, and I am dying poor.
But which of us the more deplorable?
He in his country, I exiled by fate!Oft on this foreign shore I've asked myself,
Did my addiction to extempore song
Harm me, or profit? I remain in doubt.
But this, without nice solving, I'll affirm—
I was becoming palsied and in spasms.
A Galen's rigour ought to cry it down,
And thus prevent so miserable an end.
'Twas so my Brother Dominick expired,*
Who in such efforts was expert and apt.
I never heard that brother of mine recite—
He left me a child, but I remember him;
And well I know that he at Parma's bar
Was greeted as a re-born Cicero.
Youthful he died, far from his family—
And wherefore died? Because he improvised.
More than one symptom has convinced me clear
That, through my leaving off that exercise,
Exile, in that alone, has been my friend:
And so, from much reflection I can say,
That mental strain leads to paralysis.
Nor only with regard to healthful life
[35] Makes it the nerves uncertain and unstrung,
But as to writing with correctness too
I fear at last it worsens toward neglect.
Yes, that it harms the style I can but think:
To work a-sudden is not working well.
Thou who wouldst merit the Phœbean wreath,
O youth, take caution 'gainst this same abuse;
For these my verses, written slipshod-like,
Perhaps derive from that ill-wont of mine;
For now I hurry verse to follow verse,
And reel them off as 'twere a kind of talk.
Good composition craves a needful space,
Not emulous capricious fantasy.*He died in Parma in July 1816, aged forty-three. The paralysis which killed him had been going on for about a twelvemonth. My father had himself more than one stroke of paralysis in his closing years.—W. [editor's note]
Notes:
- Collected by:
- DP