Marino and Italian Baroque

Abstract

Together with a phenomenal revival of enthusiasm for Baroque art in recent decades has come a rediscovery of literary movements and writers of that age who for several centuries were scarcely noticed, or if noticed, were held up to ridicule. One of the most atrociously maligned of those authors was the Italian poet Marino. In his own time he was regarded by many as the poet laureate of Europe; and many of the poets of his and the succeeding generation form the school of "Marinismo." In Italian literature Marinismo is synonymous with Baroque; consequently, I shall focus my discussion on the chief exemplar, Marino, and his place in the movement. Marino's major work, the Adone (Adonis in English), was published in Paris in 1623, the same year as the First Folio of Shakespeare; and the appearance of Adone was heralded throughout Europe as an occasion of major importance. The poem was generally received with great enthusiasm and for half a century was esteemed one of the most brilliant achievements of the era. Such enthusiasm on the part of contemporaries, even if it does not now seem entirely justified, compels us, as students of the period, to take serious cognizance of the work. One point is immediately evident: Marino's poem was of and for the aristocracy, an aspect which reveals a kinship with the architecture and much of the painting, sculpture, and music of the movement. Marino spent his adult years in court circles in Naples, Rome, Turin, and Paris; he admired the external brillance that those courts had attained; and his poem reflects their visible image and their values to a considerable degree, as we shall see. The body of Marino's poetry includes, in addition to Adone, several hundred lyrics, amorous, religious, and eulogistic; a large collection of poems on artists and works of art (La Galleria); a fine group of mythological tales (La Sampogna); and a short religious epic, La Strage degr Innocenti (The Slaughter of the Innocents). This last work brought Baroque intricacy and flair to the already popular epics on Biblical themes. Crashaw's translation of the first canto, entitled Sospetto d' Herode, is, incidentally, more Marinistic than the original. The first aspect of Marinismo to be examined should be its style, which was its trademark. The writers and critics of the age characterized their writing with the terms ingegno and acutezza, signifying "wit," "ingenuity," or "the genius of creativity." Remember that the writers and artists of the early seventeenth century were awed by the masters of the Renaissance and