Triumphi (Vincenzo Calmeta)

Triumphi

Title page of the original posthumous edition
Language	Literary Italian vernacular
Genre	Poem
Publication date	1510 (?)

The Triumphi of Vincenzo Calmeta is a poem in five cantos, inspired by Petrarch and Dante, composed in terza rima of hendecasyllables. Written in 1497, the poet laments the untimely death of Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, of whom he was secretary, and rails against cruel Fate, invoking death to allow him to follow her, then moves to a deeper meditation on human misery, Fortuna, and God, extending even to apostasy. The woman then appears to him in angelic guise to comfort him and lead him out of his "past error", showing him that in truth everything is governed according to God's just will.

Structure and themes

Certosa di Pavia: the tombstone of Beatrice d'Este in a woodcut by Giuseppe Barberis.

The work opens with a dedicatory letter to Beatrice preceded by "Vincenzo Calmeta to Beatrice d'Este, greetings" (Vincenzo Calmeta Beatrice Estense S.D.), followed by a sonnet in her honour. The five chapters are each preceded by rubrics that illustrate their content and serve as a preamble. The print is closed by four sonnets attributed to the poet and probably composed for the death of Serafino Aquilano, his dearest friend.

The main theme is love for the woman who, following in the footsteps of the Dolce Stil Novo, leads the poet to salvation. Also in this case, according to Rossella Guberti's interpretation, this is a purely spiritual love, not physical, in a philosophical-religious vision: Beatrice is a guide for the poet's lost senses.

The work, which fits into the Renaissance tradition of Trionfi, draws inspiration from Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and Francesco Petrarca's Trionfi, of whose works it re-elaborates motifs and suggestions in an original way. Beatrice d'Este thus represents here the successor of Dante's Beatrice and Petrarch's Laura. The poet's vividly emphatic tone, the motif of excessive love, of voluptas dolendi (taking pleasure in pain) and of isolation from the social context towards wild nature, on the other hand, hark back to contemporary fifteenth-century poetry. The recurring pairing of grief and bucolic setting derives from the tradition of the disperata, which stages the deviant effects of love-madness.

Furthermore, as Claudia Berra observes, "asocial and irrational isolation" (the poet indeed retires to a villa surrounded by woods), "caused by grief for unhappy love", effectively recalls the madness of the paladin Orlando in Ludovico Ariosto's Furioso (though written after Vincenzo's death), "investigating the most obscure and subversive power of passion". In the case of the Triumphi, the poet-protagonist manifests all the symptoms of a growing fury: anger, weeping, shouting, hybris, suicidal fury, up to the final fainting. He undergoes a journey that begins as sentimental and becomes gnoseological, but always remains more on the path of devotion than of actual love. Love-passion would thus be absent, "supplanted by the secretary's veneration for his lady".

On the other hand, certain verses of an epicedium composed on an unspecified date (perhaps 1501) by the humanist Pier Francesco Giustolo and dedicated to Vincenzo seem to offer a different interpretation regarding the author's feelings. It is the lament of a young poet, a pupil of Vincenzo, who in the blessed heavenly grove delights the souls of the dead with the verses that Vincenzo himself taught him:

The crowd inhabiting the happy grove marvels at the boy for the grace in his voice; especially Beatrice, longed-for, is cheered by your song, and willingly recognises her own praises, and finally, having set down the lyre, takes him by the hand and, leading him with her among the pleasant shades, asks about you, Calmeta, about your harmonious song, and readily forgives you your subsequent loves.

— Epicedion by Pier Francesco Giustolo., [...] stupet accola turba / felicis nemoris pueri cum voce decorem; / praecipueque tuo cantu affectata Beatrix / mulcetur propriosque libens agnoscit honores / ac demum posita pueri testudine dextram / abripit et, secum per amoena umbracula ducens, / de te deque tuis fidibus, Calmeta, sonoris / quaeritat et curis ignoscit sponte secundis.

Among the throng of souls, therefore, there suddenly appears a Beatrice who cannot be identified other than with the Duchess of Milan herself. She asks the young poet about Vincenzo's current condition and says she forgives him for his "curis secundis", plausibly translatable as "subsequent loves". In a later edition of the epicedium, the printed one, Vincenzo's name was removed, while Beatrice's underwent various substitutions: first an attempt was made to transform it into that of an anonymous Lycore; this attempt having failed, the name Beatrix became Hermosine, a mysterious woman loved by Angelo Colocci, who carried out a veritable literary theft, substituting himself for Vincenzo as the work's dedicatee.

Finally, unlike his illustrious predecessors, Vincenzo does not fall asleep, but receives the apparition of his beloved while in a state of "psychophysical daze", only to abandon himself to a pacifying sleep at the end.

[...] in the language of the Triumphi, rather controlled and refined, built on the Florentine model and on the further ennoblement of Latin, with rare lapses into local forms, the 'literary phantom' of the courtly language would seem to take shape. This is no slight reason for interest. But even from the point of view of literary history, the little work appears singular and complex, at the crossroads of different questions and traditions; and it appears the fruit of an ambitious project, pursued by the author with evident commitment, which ill accords with the still unfortunately persistent image of Calmeta as a mediocre and conventional poet, and which, on the contrary, fully befits his reflective and original personality [...]

— Claudia Berra, Reading of Calmeta's "Triumphi".

Profile of Duchess Beatrice in the Cenotaph at the Certosa di Pavia.

The following structure of the work can be observed, where each chapter constitutes the triumph, i.e. the overcoming, of the previous one:

1. Triumph of Devotion/Love (also the Triumph of the Duchess's Chastity) and overcoming of Death and grief over the poet;
2. Triumph of Time and Error/Madness; overcoming of Fortuna;
3. Triumph of Beatrice, bringer of salvation, over Death;
4. Triumph of Wisdom, Virtue and Fame;
5. Triumph of Reason, Faith and Eternity/Immortality.

Genesis of the work

See also: Death of Beatrice d'Este

Already in the compendium to Ovid's Ars Amandi, written between 1494 and 1497, Vincenzo had expressed the desire to celebrate the then-living duchess in a more elevated work: "Elsewhere I hope to show my intellect / raising to flight an immortal phoenix / that will be a lofty subject for my lowly style". The Triumphi were thus not a wholly extemporaneous product.

The work does not appear simply as a courtly consolation, nor does it appear that Vincenzo ever presented it to Duke Ludovico Sforza, Beatrice's husband, who is in any case mentioned only a few times, and always in reference to the woman (that is, as husband or consort). The incipit letter, addressed to Beatrice in the heading, is in reality addressed to the readers (especially posterity), so it would seem that there is no dedicatee or that, if there is, it is Beatrice herself. In the preface, the author declares that he composed the poem in Rome, immediately after receiving news of the woman's death. Thus he writes: "therefore I, who had placed all my hope in her and had dedicated my service to her until death, and finding myself in Rome on some business of mine and unaware of such an event, after her sudden and untimely death was announced to me, so bitterly did I begin to deplore".

The court of Ludovico il Moro. Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale. On the left is Duchess Beatrice d'Este, to whom a courtier, perhaps her secretary, whispers something in her ear.

It is not at all clear when he had left Milan nor why, a motive he deliberately omits to explain, but he is to be believed, as Vincenzo appears convinced that the woman's death occurred "on the fifth day of January", when in reality it dated to the night between the 2nd and 3rd of the same month. This would suggest that he assumed as the day of death the day on which the news reached Rome, the roads being snowy and communications difficult at that time, and that he had "separated himself from human society" and been led "to a pleasant and solitary villa not far from Rome" before waiting for clearer news, unless it is a printing error. Simone Albonico, however, expresses astonishment that Vincenzo had left the court precisely at such a delicate moment in his lady's life.

Mysterious fate

The original manuscript has been lost: only two printed copies remain, printed by Pietro Capha and preserved one at the Palatina Library in Parma, the other at the Trivulziana Library in Milan, in poor condition. Both bear on the title page the title "Triumphi della felice memoria del preclarissimo poeta misser Vincenzo Calmeta. Opera molto dilectevole e novamente impressa".

The two printed volumes bear no publication date, but it is likely that it is posthumous to the author. Based on some clues, the date is fixed by Rossella Guberti at 1510. The wording on the title page in any case confirms that the author had no control over the printing, indeed that he was already dead. It is not possible to state whether this is a editio princeps or a reprint, but "novamente impressa" suggests the second possibility.

Cenotaph of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d'Este, old print.

From the composition (1497) to the first surviving prints (1510) over ten years pass, and it is not known what happened to the work in this interval. Vincenzo may not have wished to publish it for various reasons. Indeed, in that period, with the impetus of the new printing press, the publication of posthumous works by various authors was in vogue. The verses of the epicedium by Pier Francesco Giustolo cited earlier, associated by Augusto Campana with Calmeta and thus with the rhymes in memory of Beatrice, suggest a manuscript circulation or a printed edition prior to that of 1510.

Argument

Dedicatory letter

The poet weaves praises of the duchess with a description of her virtues and activities; he briefly recounts her death, the profound grief shown by her husband the duke, and no less his own.

Beatrice, daughter of the most illustrious Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and consort of the invincible Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, overcome by the bitter pain of childbirth, yielded her soul to heaven in the fairest course of her life, in the year of our salvation 1497, on the fifth day of January, she not yet having completed twenty-two years of her flourishing age. She was a lady most fond of letters, music, singing and every other virtuous exercise, and in matters of state beyond her sex and age, of virile endurance. She expedited affairs with such dexterity and fairness, and no less departed satisfied he who did not obtain the benefit from her Ladyship than he who obtained it. Added to this was a liberality with her, whence one can truly say she was in her times the unique receptacle of every virtuous spirit, through whom every praiseworthy virtue began to be put into practice. Inexorable death shattered such high beginnings, and in the midst of her course both her glory and her happiness were opposed. Her death was generally deplored, not only by all Lombardy, but by all Italy and Christendom. Duke Ludovico her consort made, and makes every day, such demonstrations of restless grief, that for every future century he will leave to posterity a memorable example in such turmoil. Therefore I, who had placed all my hope in her and had dedicated my service to her until death, and finding myself in Rome on some business of mine and unaware of such an event, after her sudden and untimely death was announced to me, so bitterly did I begin to deplore.

— Triumphi, preface

First chapter

For 136 verses the poet laments the woman's premature death. He begins by asking himself, with incredulity, if the news is true. He turns to those who want to learn what suffering is, inviting them to listen to "my unhappy song" and then warns that "if there is anyone in the world who is content", they should turn their eyes away and close their ears, so as not to accompany him "in such torment".

Is it true that she is dead, is this certain, / Beatrice, and that your fair earthly mantle / so soon is covered by a stone? / Whoever wants to learn to shed tears from his eyes / and to hear harsh lamentation with his ears, / let him read or listen to my unhappy song; / and if there is anyone in the world who is content, / let him avert his eyes and also close his ears, / so as not to accompany me in such torment.

— Triumphi, (1–9)

From here begins a heart-rending lament against Death, who has taken from him the dearest good, in dispensing which "the avaricious Heaven" had been so generous to him. It should also be noted that in literary language, "good" means the beloved person. He wishes he had the hundred eyes of Argus, since his own are now consumed by tears, and compares himself to songbirds of myth: a swan of the Meander, a river in Lydia whose waters were home to many swans: according to myth, the swan, already dear to Apollo for the sweetness of its song, sings even more sweetly when it feels death approaching; Philomela, violated by Tereus king of Thrace and transformed into a nightingale; the turtle dove, symbol of pure, faithful and eternal love, since, according to tradition, "it never fails its mate, and if one dies, the other observes perpetual chastity, and never alights on a green branch and never drinks clear water".

Death has taken from me my good, pitiless and cruel, / of which the avaricious Heaven had been so generous to me, / leaving our age naked of glory; / and therefore I would want the lights of Argus, / since these my two fountains have lost their light / because of the bitter tears I ever shed. / I am like the swan on the Meander river / who near Death sings and weeps / often shaking his white feathers; / or like Philomela at dawn / who fills the countryside with mournful notes / because the ancient offence still grieves her; / or like the turtle dove that laments / in troubled water or on a leafless tree / since she has lost her dear companion.

— Triumphi (I, 10–24)

There follows the poet's request to die, so that he may continue to serve his lady devotedly as he did when she was alive. He asks to rest beside her "chaste bones" and even dares to provoke Death with these words:

Pale Death, I do not fear your fury, / for if you were already bitter and dark to the happy, / you would now be sweet to me in such an extreme case. / More than any man living here under the moon / I was happy, now I remain on earth / as an example of Fortuna. / You alone can draw me out of such great strife: / come, deaf one! Because I invoke your aid, / unleash your bitter and deadly blow upon me. / And you, blessed rock and sweet place, / where those chaste bones are laid / which have made me hoarse with weeping, / why did you not grant to my torn and shaken flesh / for its final peace / near you its eternal grave? / Hard earth, blind world and rapacious heaven, / among you you have divided so great a good, / because it was not contained in a single place [...]

— Triumphi (I, 43–60)

There follows a deploration of the unfortunate birth and the fate of the child, who died together with the mother, destined for Limbo as unbaptised, while Beatrice has, in his opinion, now been elevated to Heaven:

Ah, hard, bitter and sudden event! / Birth full of grief, full of death, / that gave to two such an early end! / The innocent child, ah harsh fate, / by law inimical to our great failing, / was destined to the Tartarean gates; / but She, as a reward for all her labours, / gave her soul to heaven in immaturity / and her chaste body to the great ancient mother. / As for glory, she lived beyond measure, / dying old in her twentieth year, / though she lived but little in nature, / And she had what heaven rarely grants: / wisdom and fortune in youthful age, / profuse courtesy on high throne, / chaste mind in singular beauty, / sublime intellect in pure and sincere heart, / lofty thoughts in quiet humility, / graces that make each one worthy of empire, / and now with Her they are closed in a small stone, / nor do I hope ever to see them in human body.

— Triumphi (I, 67–87)

Then he invokes her, declaring that he wishes to give her this poem, being unable to give her anything else, since Heaven has granted him only the virtue of poetry:

O clear light of my dark intellect, / I may only give you tears and sighs, / for I can offer nothing else from this breast! / O true phoenix of my ardent heart! / O more exalted glory and happier in heaven / than other blessed and illustrious souls! / My rhymes that were once so dear to you, / although they have lost their accustomed sound / being wholly turned to weeping, / may you deign to receive as a final gift, / since heaven gives me nothing else to give you, / for of all other riches I am bare.

— Triumphi, (I, 106–117)

He finally begs her to pray to God on his behalf, so that He may cause him to die soon and thus allow him to reach her:

[...] may your sweet prayers, O my celestial goddess, / be devoutly offered to God for me. / Ah, may my days soon reach their shore, / and may I leave this mortal burden / that keeps me from coming to find you.

— Triumphi (I, 122–126)

Second chapter

The poet decides to separate himself from human society and retires to a pleasant solitary villa not far from Rome. After some days, overtaken by night while wandering through a wood, he begins for 172 verses a meditation "on God, on the heavens, on fortune and destiny, and finally on human misery":

And therefore, driven by an immense fury, / I began to cry out with such vehemence / that I still burn and tremble when I think of it: / O detestable injury of mortals! / that man with his own tears when he is born / immediately augurs all misery and evil! / Naked he comes into the world, then in swaddling / to preserve his limbs he is wrapped and bound, / and is nourished only by others' means. / All other animals have their instinct: / one is swift in running, another in swimming, another in flight / as more or less they are driven by nature; / he, arrived in this valley of misery, / lies defenceless and overcome, meek, / almost like one who is dead. / His only instinct is weeping, / alone among so many animals born to weep: / ah, impious decree of our nature! [...] because with time malice grows, / pride, lust, wrath and treachery, / blind ambition and avarice. / Is he rich? Then everyone bears him envy; / is he healthy? illness awaits him at the pass; / is he young? old age ever lies in wait for him; / is he virtuous and laden with all goodness? / So be it, but poverty wages such war on him / that beyond necessity he is sparing in his living. / No one ever found himself happy on earth; / therefore the human species is always in pain; / if there is nothing in heaven, he who dies is out of the war.

— Triumphi (II, 121–138; 151–158)

After this violent outburst, he is seized by an "unbridled desire [...] impetuous to die", to such an extent that he truly feels he is dying and believes he is about to see his "goddess" again, who has granted his wish. Therefore, overcome by grief, he lets himself fall onto the grass.

Third chapter

It consists of 169 verses. While the poet is semi-conscious on the meadow, he seems to hear from afar a voice breaking the "nocturnal silence" and softly pronouncing: "O my faithful Vincenzio". It is Beatrice, who has descended from heaven, appearing to console him and draw him out of his "past error". Her head is crowned with roses and her bosom girt with ambrosia, and she reproaches him with these words:

Wretch, why do you consume / the fleeting days in bitter tears, / desiring death hour by hour? / Ah, do not disturb my sweet sojourns! / I am not dead, but have reached a better life / leaving the world and its deceitful shames. / And if I was loosed in the flower of my age / with your grief from the fair earthly prison, / all the happier was the departure, / for it is beautiful to die while life is serene.

— Vincenzo Calmeta, Triumphi (III, 55–64)

The poet, moved and dismayed, feels himself on the point of dying from the sweetness of the "honeyed words", which make him burn and freeze at the same time. He then addresses her with this invocation:

My divine soul and my earthly sun, / speaking and weeping then I said, / how much living without you pains me! / For, losing you, I lost every desire, / your death broke every hope, / nor do I know any more where to fix my thought. / But if in heaven there is any remembrance / of us, tell me, happy and rare soul, / did it not grieve you to leave this place? / To leave your offspring so delightful and dear, / father and husband of such excellence / and servants in painful and bitter life?

— Triumphi (III, 79–90)

To which Beatrice replies by telling him the experience of her own death:

[...] I will tell you the truth, O faithful recorder / of the footsteps dispensed by me in life. / Feeling at that horrible point the cry / of my relatives, who saw my pulse / already stilled, in my well-living nest / I turned my gaze with pity languid / I saw all my court weeping, / whence truly I grieved to abandon it. / Not that bitter death frightened me, / but too hard it was for me to part / from my sweet and dear and faithful consort; / certain I was that he loved me more than himself, / I spouse and he lord, father and husband: / think how hard parting was for me. / But my just will, united with God, / gave such vigour to my weary flesh / that I directed my heart only to the Infinite Good / and my flesh already pale and white, / endured with fortitude the steep passage, / for always until the end my soul was free. / The great grief was a palm of martyrdom, / I scorned death and the manner of dying, / and yielded my soul to heaven with a sigh, / where now with the other elect spirits I rejoice / and see clearly your faith / which before God I continually praise; [...]

— Triumphi (III, 95–120)

Hearing her account, Vincenzo falls weeping at her feet. Beatrice, moved, with a corner of her mantle wipes his face and explains that she appeared to him because she could not bear to see him in that state, consuming his days in fruitless weeping. She appears to him so resplendent that he can scarcely look at her. Vincenzo questions her about the nature of the Heavens, Fortuna and Destiny, and Beatrice is happy to reveal to him the mysteries of the Universe.

Fourth chapter

Over the course of 160 verses Beatrice explains that God is intent only on working good, but human "imbecile nature" is not capable of understanding it. God created so many eternal essences from nothing: the heavens, the stars, the planets, ideas and signs, but "blind human nature" labours in vain over deceptive astrological calculations, regulating its life on this. But he who tries to dominate the future based on astrology always errs, because God can change it at any moment as He pleases. This appears almost a reproach to Duke Ludovico Sforza, obsessed with astrology. True wisdom comes from Jesus Christ, but she invites the poet to curb his thirst for knowledge, reminding him of the fate of Icarus, "precipitated by rash daring". She reveals to him that God created man last, as a privileged being, so that he might find the world already prepared for him, and that He invested him with great power, since if "he employs his intellect in virtue, from earthly and mortal he becomes immortal". Thus he was in great error in judging every mortal unhappy, because while animals all look downwards, man is the only one who can look at the sky and measure every step with reason. Man is the only one to have mixed in his flesh a divine spirit and endowed with free will. If someone then places his hopes in fleeting goods and feels every event contrary to him, the fault is not Heaven's, but of his "fallacious thought", blinded by earthly goods, ambition and fame. If it is true that, unlike animals, man is born naked, it is also true that he possesses the shield of reason, which has made him master of the earth. Beatrice anticipates the poet's possible questions, namely why, loving him so much, God exposed man to so many mortal sufferings. She replies that man was "so delightful and dear" to Him, that He gave him two lives: one bitter, mortal and finite, the other tranquil, divine and infinite. The first is granted to all who are born, the second only to those who prove worthy of it, since, if it were granted indiscriminately to everyone, it would not be worthy of virtuous souls. Vincenzo, full of shame for his errors, does not even dare to reply to her, but remained "a mute statue".

Fifth chapter

The shortest, of 97 verses, corresponding to the date of the duchess's death. Invigorated by the sweet gaze of the woman who has the power to penetrate to the depths of his heart, the poet begins to question her about Fortuna and whether there is a way to dominate it. Beatrice replies that Fortuna is always unjustly cursed by those who find it contrary, but that, if it has power over fallacious goods, it has no power over the human mind, "because there reason holds its empire". Foolish, then, to seek any stable good in Fortuna, "which is only constant in being variable". No good end can depend on it, which hinders the just and shines upon the wicked. Only he who observes modesty in good fortune and prudence in bad fortune is capable of dominating it. It befits man to maintain a stable faith, which may lead him to beatitude. She therefore invites him to abandon earthly goods to turn entirely to God, "in whom alone consists the supreme good". The living, she says, cannot, like the blessed, fully understand the divine design, but he too, once dead, will be freed from every doubt. Thus concluding her discourse, Beatrice returns to Heaven, accompanied by the harmonious songs of the angels. Vincenzo accompanies her "as far as his eyes can go", but soon falls overcome by a sweet sleep.

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