A VENETIAN PLAYWRIGHT.

Otago Witness, Issue 1810, 30 July 1886, Page 33

A VENETIAN PLAYWRIGHT.

Carlo Gozzi, born m 1720, was the son of an impoverished noble of provincial descent, but a citizen of Venice ; his mother was a Tiepolo by birth, and a patrician of the bluest blood ; his elder brother, Gasparo, the journalist, was a witty and brilliant writer, who devoted his pen to the good cause of emancipating the Italian written tongue from the bondage of pedantry. As a younger son of the numerous brood filling the decaying family palace at San Canziano, Carlo grew to manhood among the shifts and straits of a needy, happy-go-lucky house* hold, m which literary pursuits and family pride were the only consolations for perpetual family strife and increasing impecuniosity. Poetry and debt, literati and usurers were the companions of hia childhood. He tells us himself that " Casa Gozzi was an asylum for poets," and Masi adds: "Yes, and an asylum for lunatics also !" It was soon seen that the shy and silent little Carlo shared the literary tastes of his elders. He early showed a turn for_ comedy, and, with one of his sisters, delighted his parents by improvising a lively parody of the accustomed family quarrels. By the time he was sixteen he had scribbled four long poems besides numberless prose compositions and sonnets. When about 20 he entered the military service, and went to Zara, on the staff of his Excellency Querini, the new Proveditore Generale m Dalmatia and Albania. He remained there three years and wrote an interesting report of his experiences, interspersed with very acute and ironical remarks on the state of the province and the manner of its government. But he obtained no promotion, came back to Venice as poor as he had started, and only seemed to have mainly distinguished himself m .private theatricals and the composition of laudatory odes on his chief. He was once required to recite one of these poems to Querini while riding behind him at full gallop, and his account of the incident is extremely funny. On his return he made a praiseworthy attempt

to reduce to order the chaos of domestic affairs, and thereby found himself m a hornet's nest. In his spare time he wrote a great deal of feeble verse, but made no mark m literature until the great squabble with Goldoni and Chiari began. His disposition was morbidly eccentric, and totally unlike the sweet and genial nature of his brother Gasparo. He was iiritable, restless, moody, vain, and full of strange fads. Before reaching middle age he was au already obstinate Conservative, and opposed to every innovation, whether m politics or literature. Even m dress he admitted no change, and throughout life prided himself on retaining the full wig, wide-flapped coat and buckled shoes of the exact pattern worn m his youth. Hir. busy, frctfnl imagination played him the strangest tricks, and cast a fantastic light on the simplest affairs of daily life. The slately Venetian noble, pacing the sunlit stones of fit Mark's Square, or mingling m the yny crowd of the Procuratie, was no less a victim to supernatural terrors than some benighted peasant m the lonely glades of the Black Forest. He believed himself the sport of malicious imps who, continually pursuing him, caused mistakes as to his identity, and bamboozled him at every turn. Strangers clapped him on the back, and claimed him. as a bosom friend ; he was addressed by the names of totally dissimilar persons, and often found himself m awkward and bewildering positions. Persistent ill-luck disturbed his clays and upset his arrangements, and all was the work of evil spirits. He gives the drollest description of how once returning home from a journey m mid-winter, and longing for rest and refreshment, he f omul his house topsy-turvy, blazing with wax candles and crowded with masks. His servants had vanished, no one heeded his remonstrances, and presently a strange Maggiordomo stepped forward and graveh r explained that, since he had kindly lent his palace to his neighbour Bragadino for a three days' festivity, he had better retire to an inn until it was" over. Perhaps, of all his critics, Goethe came nearest to deciding Gozzi's place m literature by grounding his chief praise on the intimate relation he discerned between the Venetian's tragico-burlesq les and the character of the Venetian people. Seen from an English point of view the Fiahe show many points of resemblance with the witty extravaganzas by the late Mr Planche, that wore the delight of ' the town some twenty-five years ago. Like them they are founded on nursery tales, their personages preserve modern feelings and attributes m the midst of preternatural events ; strokes of satire on the actualities of the day are woven into the dialogues of genii, fairies, and magicians, and m place of the popular songs and catch-V7ords utilised by the English playwright we have the drolleries of the masks to relieve the vicissitudes of much-tried heroes and heroines. But the Venetian Count had loftier aims than the genial Englishman, who only wrote to amuse, and these we would not appear to slight. Signor Masi holds that, although it was perhaps natural for Gozzi's Fiabr, to be forgotten during the mighty changes m literature at the beginning of this century, they deserve resuscitation now. " For," he adds "m the history of the Italian stage they represent the past as opposed to the modern realism of Goldonian comedy, and as the last form of the ancient Comedia dell' Arte and the old popular plays. Also, because m the heat of the philosophical movement that, with the arrogance of intellectual pride, sought to demolish the entire social framework of old Europe, tiheji-al/e formed a fantastic literary episode, and their popularity was, for some year, so great as almost to cast doubt on the causes and effects of the Goldonian reform." Count Carlo Gozzi survived to an advanced age. He outlived his friends as well as his fame, and long before his death, m 180G, few of his fellow-citizens knew that the sad, solitary, bent old man, m the costume of the last century, daily to be seen on the Iliva dci Schiavoni, had once been a famous dramatist, and had all Venice at his feet. — Ltnda Villahi. — The National Eeview.