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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The writers who exerted the greatest influence on the development of De Sanctis' thought are Vico and Hegel. We do not know exactly when De Sanctis became acquainted with Vico's theories. As early as 1833 he struck a friendship with Enrico Amante, who at that time was deeply immersed in the study of Vico, and he shared an apartment with Amante for three years, between 1837 and 1840. It is possible—and even probable—that De Sanctis was introduced to the study of Vico by his friend. Be that as it may, it is certain that the esthetic ideas of Vico constituted a powerful factor in the development of De Sanctis' critical theories. Cardinal tenets of De Sanctis' criticism—such as the sensuous character of poetry, phantasy conceived as the peculiar poetic faculty, the antithesis between poetry and philosophy, the psychological rather than logical approach to poetry—are obviously derived from the Principi d'una scienza nuova.
1 Memorie e Scritti Giovanili, (Napoli: Morano, 1930), i, 70, and passim. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from De Sanctis' works are from the Cortese's edition.
2 Croce points out three of such traces: first, De Sanctis' tendency to present some writers as moments of a dialectical process, e.g. Boccaccio as the antithesis of Dante; secondly, the esthetic value given occasionally to the “content,” in contradiction with his fundamental principle of the absolute esthetic value of “pure form”; and finally, his insufficient development of the concept of lyricism of art. Croce, B., Saggio sullo Hegel e altri Scritti, (Bari: Laterza, 1913), pp. 397–405.
3 De Meis, A. C., Commemorazione, in In Memoria di Francesco De Sanctis ed. by M. Mandalari (Napoli: Morano, 1884), p. 116. Quotations are given in my own translation, unless otherwise indicated.
4 One of these synopses was published by Croce in Critica, vii (1909), 240–243 and republished by Cortese in his edition of Memorie e Scritti Giovanili, ii, 221.
5 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iv, 336.
6 De Sanctis after having stated that “Science has filtered into Poetry and cannot be eliminated from it, because this corresponds to the present conditions of the human spirit,” and that “genuine poetry is nowadays as impossible as genuine faith,” concludes that “faith has gone, poetry is dead.” And thus far he is in agreement with Hegel. But he immediately adds a qualification which in reality is a negation of his previous statements. “Or rather,” he says, “faith and poetry are immortal: what disappeared is one particular manner of being. Now faith issues from conviction, poetry springs from meditation: they are not dead, they are transformed.” Saggi Critici, i, 31–32.
7 Letter of Sept. 20, 1857, in Critica, xii (1914), 196–197.
8 Pagine, Sparse (Bari: Laterza, 1934), pp. 14–32.
9 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iii, 63.
10 Critici, Saggi, iii, 434.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., iii, 435.
12 Ibid., p. 433.
13 Ibid., ii, 146.
14 Ibid., p. 121.
15 La letteratura ilaliana nel secolo decimonono, ii, 25.
16 Saintsbury, G., The later Nineteenth Century (New York: Scribner's, 1907), p. 260.Google Scholar
17 In Croce, B., Gli Soritti di Francesco De Sanctis e la loro varia fortuna (Bari: Laterza, 1917), p. 51.
18 For Croce, see references to De Sanctis in most of his works; Cesareo, G. A., “L'estetica del De Sanctis,” Nuova Antologia, ccxxvii (1909), 353–373; Muscetta, C., “La poetica realistica e gusto del De Sanctis scrittore,” in Studi Desanctisiani (Napoli: Guida, 1932), pp. 11–53.
19 Cesareo quotes De Sanctis' statement that the poet shapes reality into something new which did not exist before, and therefore he “creates” it. But if we recall the stress that Croce lays on the uniqueness of the artistic experience, we shall admit that the terms “intuition” (or “vision”), and “creation” may be considered equivalent, the former stressing the subjective, the latter the objective side of art.
20 Critici, Saggi, ii, 99.Google Scholar
21 It has already been remarked that De Sanctis is not always consistent in his terminology. The terms “Image” and “Phantasm” are used sometimes as synonyms and sometimes to indicate two different concepts, i.e., the product of the organizing faculty (Image) and that of the creative faculty (Phantasm). The term Image has been chosen in the present discussion because it seems to recur with greater frequency in De Sanctis' writings. “The proper field of the poet is the image....” Saggi Critici, i, 259. “... not only image is not banished from Leopardi's poetry, but it is its condition, an integral part of the whole: if you exclude it, his poetry will lose its meaning.” Saggi Critici, i, 37.
22 Ibid., ii, 97.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., i, 249.
25 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iv, 39–40.
26 Ibid., ii, 200.
27 Critici, Saggi, i, 258.Google Scholar
28 Ibid, iii, 208.
29 Ibid., ii, 24.
30 The History of Italian Literature, English tr. by J. Redfern (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1931), i, 335.
31 Critici, Saggi, i, 179.Google Scholar
32 The History of Italian Literature, i, 70–71.
33 La letteratura Italiana nel secolo decimonono, ii, 13.—This distinction is criticized by Croce who, however, recognizes its value as an empirical principle. “The doctrine appears to be endorsed by facts and therefore looks plausible and is readily accepted and continually reproduced, as, on several occasions, in the history of esthetic ideas. It was not altogether unknown in the days of Ariosto himself, if Giraldo Cinzio can be held to have suggested it, when in his description of an allegorical picture, in which were to be seen the two great Tuscans ‘in a green and flowery meadow upon a hill of Helicon’ Dante with his robe fast ened at the knees, ‘manipulating the circular scythe, cutting all the grass that his scythe met with,’ while Petrarch, ‘robed in senatorial robe, lay there selecting among the noble herbs and the delicate flowers.’ In spite of this, it is altogether unsustainable as an exact theory, because it introduces an unjustified and unjustifiable dualism, which is altogether impossible to mediate, since each of the two terms contains the other and nothing else, thus demonstrating their identity: the poet is poet because he is an artist, that is, he gives artistic form to feeling, and the artist would not be an artist, if he were not a poet, that is to say, if he had not a feeling to elaborate.” Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille, English tr. by D. Ainslie (New York: Holt, 1920), pp. 41–42.
34 Critici, Saggi, ii, 249.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., ii, 161.
36 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 46.
37 Ibid., i, 45.
38 Ibid., iv, 197.
39 Critici, Saggi, i, 41.Google Scholar
40 The History of Italian Literature, i, 172.
41 Critici, Saggi, iii, 379.Google Scholar
42 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iii, 89.
43 The History of Italian Literature, i, 172–173.
44 Ibid., i, 162.
45 Ibid., p. 238.
46 Ibid., pp. 238–239.
47 Saggi, Critici, i, 32.
48 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iii, 89 ff.
49 Ibid., iii, 195.
50 Croce, B., Saggio sullo Hegel, p. 393.Google Scholar
51 Critici, Saggi, ii, 321.Google Scholar
52 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 162.
53 Ibid., iii, 129.
54 Critici, Saggi, i, 104.Google Scholar
55 Ibid., pp. 104–105.
56 Ibid., iii, 458.
57 Manzoni, ed. Gentile (Bari: Laterza, 1922), p. 232. With slight verbal changes in La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 253.
58 Critici, Saggi, ii, 255–256.—De Sanctis consistently adhered to this concept of the amorality of art. “It was natural for old Æsop to explain moral truths by means of stories, in times when thought was still poetry, still enveloped in myths; but nowadays to ask of poetry as passport this sort of fabula docet, a teaching, a ‘moral purpose,‘ as they call it, is to falsify both morals and poetry; each has in itself its truth and reason for being.” Saggi Critici, i, 160–161. See also La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iii, 129.Google Scholar
59 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 79.
60 Ibid., p. 81.
61 Critici, Saggi, i, 288.Google Scholar
62 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, ii, 324.—This viewpoint, sound in itself, was at times exaggerated in its verbal expression, as in the author's esthetics of ugliness. “Ugliness in Nature, as in art, has the same right to be there as beauty, and is often there with greater effect, because of the conflict in the poet. Beauty is itself alone; ugliness is itself and its opposite, containing a contradiction that makes its life more rich, more fertile of drama. Very often it is more interesting and more poetic than beauty: Mephistopheles is more interesting than Faust, and Dante's Hell is more poetic than his Paradise.” The History of Italian Literature, i, 192. In his essay on “Francesca da Rimini,” he maintained that honest women are not poetical: “The man that fights and wins may, in some cases, be a poetic character, but a woman's aureole is her weakness. From a woman, who under the sway of passion, struggles victoriously, no moralist will ever succeed in drawing anything but an unesthetic character—virtuous, respectable, but unesthetic.” Saggi Critici, ii, 326.
63 Pagine Sparse (Bari: Laterza, 1934), p. 25.
64 Petrarca, p. 27.
65 Saggi Critici, iii, 225.
66 Ibid., iii, 225.
67 Pagine Sparse, p. 25.
68 Critici, Saggi, ii, 278.Google Scholar
69 Ibid., iii, 278.
70 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, ii, 327.
71 Critici, Saggi, iii, 45.Google Scholar
72 Ibid., p. 46.
73 Sonnet “Dante onde avvien ...” tr. by E. A. Tribe in A Selection from the poems of Giosuè Carducci (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1921), p. 24.
74 Petrarca, p. 27.
75 Ibid., p. 27.
76 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 72.
77 Ibid., iv, 208.
78 The History of Italian Literature, i, 152.
79 Ibid., ii, 628.
80 Ibid., ii, 632.
81 La litteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iii, 200–201.
82 Critici, Saggi, i, 51–52.Google Scholar
83 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 101.
84 Critici, Saggi, iii, 457.Google Scholar
85 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 106.
86 Petrarca, p. 110.
87 Soggi Critici, ii, 310.
88 Petrarca, p. 14.
89 Critici, Saggi, ii, 130.Google Scholar
90 “Is Opitz to speak on Dante? And he discusses Love, Grace, the woman in the Middle Ages. ... Is Nettement to speak of Delavigne, Barbier, Victor Hugo? And he gives you the history of Louis Philippe, of the opinions and passions in vogue at that time. By these historical promenades you recognized the French School.” Saggi Critici, i, 53–54.
91 Ibid., i, 211.
92 Ibid., pp. 73–74.
93 Petrarca, pp. 14–15.
94 Cf. the comparison between Dante's Lucifer and Milton's Satan (The History of Italian Literature, i, 200; Saggi Critici, iii, 9); the contrast between the melancholy of Dante and that of Petrarch (The History of Italian Literature, i, 282 ff.); the comparison between the description of the rose by Politian and the one by Ariosto (Ibid., ii, 497–498).
95 La Letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iv, 338.
96 Ibid., p. 341.
97 Ibid., i, 121.
98 Critici, Saggi, i, 306.Google Scholar
99 Ibid., ii. 132.
100 Ibid., p. 134.
101 Ibid., p. 133.
102 Ibid., ii, 127.
103 Ibid., p. 20.
104 Petrarca, p. 11, Cf. also Saggi Critici, i, 201.
105 La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, i, 277.
106 The History of Italian Literature. i, 184.
107 Ibid., ii, 491.
108 Ibid., pp. 843–844.
109 Saggi Critici, i, 49–65.
110 Ibid., ii, 319–337.
111 Ibid., p. 322.
112 Ibid., ii, 322.
113 Ibid., p. 327.
114 Ibid., iii, 177–217.
115 Ibid., p. 204.
116 The History of Italian Literature, i, 434.
117 Ibid.. i, 358–359.
118 Ibid., ii, 558–559.
119 “He obviously ... was determined toward criticism by the influence of the French Romantics, especially Sainte-Beuve... . He shows himself of the nineteenth century in general an d of the tribe of Sainte-Beuve in particular by being almost nothing but an essayist.” G. Saintsbury, A History of Criticism (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1904), iii, 589–590. The author repeats substantially the same opinion in his The Later Nineteenth Century (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1907), p. 260, where he affirms that “De Sanctis owed most to France and to Sainte-Beuve.” It would be underrating De Sanctis' culture to doubt his acquaintance with Sainte-Beuve's criticism; nevertheless it can be confidently stated that he never admired the French critic enough to set him up as his model. Sainte-Beuve's name recurs only three times in De Sanctis' works and always in connection with the article on Leopardi which Sainte-Beuve published in the Revue des deux Mondes, Sept. 15, 1844; an article which De Sanctis judged as follows: “Although the critical structure raised by Sainte-Beuve is faulty and mediocre, the article has lasting value for its solid foundations as the author had the good fortune to secure the most exact information on Leopardi's life and works.” La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iv, 341.
120 “His best disciple was the great Italian critic De Sanctis (1817–83), a professor at Naples, who owed to Villemain, not to Sainte-Beuve, the literary principles which enabled him to write his Storia della letteratura italiana (1870–72), in which he showed rare psychological knowledge of genius and art.” P. Van Tieghem, Outline of the Literary History of Europe since the Renaissance, Engl. trans. by A. Leffingwell McKenzie (New York: The Century Co., 1930), p. 262. The translator, perhaps unintentionally, left out the concluding sentence “oeuvre de premier ordre et qui a fait école.”
121 Croce, B., Estetica, 3rd ed., (Bari: Laterza, 1908), p. 424.Google Scholar
122 Giese, W. F., Sainte-Beuve (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Studies, 1931), p. 235.Google Scholar
123 A discussion of this formula is found in Saggi Critici, i, 199–200. In other essays De Sanctis grants that Villemain is endowed with refined taste and remarkable narrative ability (Saggi Critici, i, 71) but judges him, as “deprived of creative force, without vigor, without power of action. Incapable to grasp a problem in its unity, and to make a complete analysis of its elements, he excels for beauty of thought and style.” (Saggi Critici, i, 239). This is hardly the language of a devoted admirer and faithful disciple.
124 Flaubert, G., Correspondence (Paris: Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1892), iii, 386.Google Scholar
125 The History of Italian Literature, ii, 946.
126 Giornale Storico della letteratura ltaliana, i (1883), 2.
127 Critici, Saggi, iii, 57–59.Google Scholar
128 De Sanctis really undertook the task with the modest purpose of writing a text book.
129 G. Pipitone-Federico, “Lettere di Francesco De Sanctis,” in Saggi di letteratura contemporanea (Palermo: Giannone e Lamantia, 1885), i, 475–476. Also in La letteratura italiana nel secolo decimonono, iv, 389.
130 Croce, B., Una famiglia di patrioti, ed altri saggi storici e critici (Bari: Laterza, 1919), p. 184.Google Scholar
131 In Tonelli, La Critica letteraria italiana negli ultimi cinquant'anni, (Bari: Laterza, 1914), p. 389.
132 F. D'Ovidio, Saggi Critici (Napoli: Morano, 1878), p. 144.
133 Ibid., p. 145.
134 Ibid., p. 148.
135 F. D'Ovidio, Rimpianti (Palermo: Sandron, 1903), pp. 96–136.
136 Ibid. p. 113.
137 Villari, P., “Commemorazione in onore di Francesco De Sanctis,” in Giovinezza, pp. 364–365.Google Scholar
138 In Croce's Gli scritti di Francesco De Sanctis, p. 77.
139 Borgognoni, A., Disciplina e spontaneità nell'arte (Bari: Laterza, 1913), p. 193.Google Scholar
140 A. De Gubernatis, Ricordi biografici (Firenze: Tip. dell'Associazione, 1872), p. 352.
141 In Croce's Gli scritti di Francesco De Sanctis, p. 61.
142 Mazzoni, G., L'ottocento (Milano: Vallardi, 1913), ii, 1178.Google Scholar
143 Graf, A., “Di alcuni giudizii di F. De Sanctis ed altri concernenti il Decamerone,” in Studi su Boccaccio (Castelfiorentino: Società Storica della Valdelsa, 1913), p. 231.Google Scholar
144 Scherillo, M., “Prefazione” to De Sanctis' Prose scelte (Napoli: Morano, 1914), p. vi.Google Scholar
145 In B. Croce, Gli Scritti di Francesco De Sanctis, p. 77.
146 Carducci, G., Opere, x, 36.Google Scholar
147 Carducci, G., Opere, xvi, 194–195.Google Scholar
148 Is it necessary to recall here that, with few exceptions, most of the great Italian philosophers, from Aquinas to Croce and Gentile, are southerners, while most of the great poets, from Virgil down to Carducci and Pascoli, are from Central or Northern Italy?
149 Papini, G., Laborers in the vineyard, Engl. trans. by A. Curtayne (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1930), pp. 165–166.Google Scholar
150 Croce, B., La Critica Letteraria (Roma: Loescher, 1896), p. 113.Google Scholar
151 Ibid., p. 118. Still in his early teens, De Sanctis knew by heart all the Gerusalemme Liberata. Cf. Memorie e Scritti Giovanili, i, 217.
152 Croce, B., La Critica Letteraria, p. 159.Google Scholar
153 In B. Croce, Una famiglia di patrioti e altri saggi storici e critici (Bari: Laterza, 1919), pp. 189–236.
154 Ibid., p. 191.
155 Bertana, E., Review in Giornale Storico delta Letteratura Italiana, xxix (1897), 498.Google Scholar
156 Croce, B., Una famiglia di patrioti, p. 196.Google Scholar
157 Ibid.
158 E., Bertana, op. cit., p. 494.
159 Croce, B., Una famiglia di patrioti, p. 200.Google Scholar
160 Ibid.
161 Ibid., pp. 205–206.
162 Croce, B., Estetica, 3rd. ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1908), p. 425.Google Scholar
163 Ibid., p. 425.
164 Gentile, G., La Filosofia dell'Arte (Milano; Treves, 1931), p. 372.Google Scholar
165 Ibid., p. 368.
166 Scherillo, M., “Prefazione” to De Sanctis' Prose scelte (Napoli: Morano, 1914), p. v.Google Scholar