Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2

time the
resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical
types deserve to be particularly noticed. It is as though the Italian
nation at this epoch, suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by
Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of
open air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing
street-jokes by the genius of masqued comedy.

This most ancient and intensely vital race had given Europe the Roman
Republic, the Roman Empire, the system of Roman law, the Romance
languages, Latin Christianity, the Papacy, and, lastly, all that is
included in the art and culture of the Renaissance. It was time,
perhaps, that it should go to rest a century or so, and watch uprising
nations--the Spanish, English, French, and so forth--stir their stalwart
limbs in common strife and novel paths of pioneering industry.

After such fashion let us, then, if we can contrive to do so, regard
the Italians during their subjection to the Church and Austria. Were it
not for these consolatory reflections, and for the present reappearance
of the nation in a new and previously unapprehended form of unity, the
history of the Counter-Reformation period would be almost too painful
for investigation. What the Italians actually accomplished during this
period in art, learning, science, and literature, was indeed more than
enough to have conferred undying luster on such races as the Dutch or
Germans at the same epoch. But it would be ridiculous to compare
Italians with either Dutchmen or Germans at a time when Italy was still
so incalculably superior. Compared with their own standard, compared
with what they might have achieved under more favorable conditions of
national independence, the products of this age are saddening. The
tragic elements of my present theme are summed up in the fact that Italy
during the Counter-Reformation was inferior to Italy during the
Renaissance, and that this inferiority was due to the interruption of
vital and organic proc

John Addington Symonds (October 5, 1840 - April 19, 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as lamour de limpossible.

Mieszkania Radom Sok Noni