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History of Italy Course

Sonoma State University Osher Institute—Winter 2015

Dr. Douglas Kenning

Quotations on Italy by non-Italians

Report of fashions in proud Italy, / Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation /

Limps after in base imitation.

(William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Richard II, act 2, sc. 1.

Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong

imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in

either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a

liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two—a proof of the

decline of that country.

(Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), British

statesman, man of letters. Letter, June 22, 1749, Letters Written by the Late

Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl, Earl of Chesterfield, to

his Son, Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl, Esq, 5th ed., vol. II, p. 178, London

(1774).

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

(Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), British author, lexicographer. Quoted in

Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, April 11, 1776 (1791). Said over supper

with James Boswell and the Corsican patriot Pasquale Paoli.)

If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country

[Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot

in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.

(Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. president. Letter, June 8, 1778, to

Giovanni Fabbroni.

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“To poor enslaved Italy, words are not allowed. She can only describe anguish in

her heart thought music. All her hatred against foreign oppression, her enthusiasm

for liberty, all anguish at her impotence, her longing for her past greatness,

pathetic hopes, watching, waiting for help, all this is transposed into her melodies.”

(Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, who visited Italy

in 1827 & wrote music criticism in the 1840s.)

Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

(Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), British poet. Julian and Maddalo, l. 57

(1819).)

How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the

celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist

countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such

a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general?

Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, &c. prove it

abundantly.

(Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), British poet, critic. repr. "Table Talk,"

April 18, 1833)

Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone

very quickly and discuss personal things.

(Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783-1842), French novelist. The

Charterhouse of Parma, ch. VI, Dupont (1839) (trans. by Jeri King).)

When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions

between two lovers.

(Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783-1842)

It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are

Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. "Self-

Reliance," Essays, First Series (1841, repr. 1847).)

It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately

preceding and following it, poisoning had been brought to a pitch of perfection

which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by

history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and

mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.

(Honoré De Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist. (1846, trans. by George

Saintsbury, 1971). About Catherine of Medici, first published (1843),

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Italy is a geographical expression.

(Prince Metternich (1773-1859), Austrian statesman. letter, Nov. 19, 1849.

Memoirs, vol. 7 (1883).

Open my heart and you will see, / Graved inside of it, "Italy."

(Robert Browning (1812-1889), British poet. De Gustibus, st. 2 (1855).

Lump the whole thing! Say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael

Angelo!

(Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910), U.S. author. Dan, in

The Innocents Abroad, ch. 27 (1869).

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.

(E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster (1879-1970), British novelist, essayist. Where

Angels Fear to Tread, ch. 6 (1905).

The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the

corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and

the men and women who live under it.

(E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster (1879-1970), British novelist, essayist. A

Room with a View, ch. 2 (1908).)

Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand . . . borders upon insanity

and absurdity—or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

(Alexander Herzen (1812-1870), Russian journalist, political thinker. Trans.

by Constance Garnett (1924-1927). "Miscellaneous Pieces: Beyond the Alps,"

vol. 3, pt. 8, My Past and Thoughts (1921).)

For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-

discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords

awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete

forgetfulness.

(D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence (1885-1930), British author. Sea and

Sardinia, ch. 6 (1923).)

It's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring

were written by poets living in Italy at the time.

(Philip Dunne (1908-1992), U.S. screenwriter, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Miles Fairley (George Sanders), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). To Mrs.

Muir during a spring shower. From the novel by R.A. Dick.)

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It is unjust that Italy should claim musical pre-eminence, even forcing Italian on

music as its international language, when Italy's genius is so visual. No nation can

build towns as beautiful nor claim a better right to regard nature as a shapeless

substance to be redeemed by urbifaction. The Italians are not Wordsworthian.

Man fulfils himself in the town. There is too much wild nature in music, and it has

to be tamed into simple four-square patterns, as in Verdi and Bellini. The tenor

does not proclaim Byronically to the woods and hills: he is a kind of sexy politician

for the town piazza. The Italians would listen to Aaron, but not to Moses.

(Anthony Burgess (b. 1917), British author, critic. You've Had Your Time, pt.

4 (1990).)

And the angel in the gate, the flowering plum, / Dances like Italy, imagining red.

(Louis Simpson (b. 1923), U.S. poet. Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain (l. 43-

44).

Italy is a poor country full of rich people.

(Richard Gardner (b. 1927), U.S. diplomat, former ambassador to Rome.

quoted in Observer (London, Aug. 16, 1981).)

Until recently the word fascist was considered shameful. Fortunately, that period

has passed. In fact, there is now a reassessment of how much grandpa Benito did

for Italy.

(Alessandra Mussolini, Italian actor, politician, and medical student. As

quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 19 (February 17, 1992).

In Italy, for thirty years, under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and

bloodshed. But they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the

Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had five hundred

years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

(Graham Greene (1904-1991), British author, screenwriter, and Carol Reed.

Carol Reed. Harry Lime (Orson Welles), The Third Man (1949), based On

Greene's Novel.. To his friend, writer Holly Martins.)

The most visited country today is France, but the most re-visited one is Italy.

Patricia Schultz, author of 1000 places to see before you die, as heard on

“Forum”, KQED, 19 Feb 2013.