SIMILE IN THE POETRY OF GIACOMO DA LENTINI

Giacomo da Lentini was the leader of a group of court poets known today as the Scuola Siciliana, which flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century at Frederick II’s Magna Curia. Giacomo da Lentini’s poetic corpus consists of thirty seven poems: twelve canzoni, one discordo and eighteen sonnets (which poetic form Giacomo is believed to have invented). The importance of Giacomo’s poetry within the school is attested by the fact that his poems occupy the most significant position in the Vatican manuscript 3793 (i.e. the beginning) and by the fact that they constitute the largest contribution by a single author to the collective corpus of the school. The purpose of this study is to analyze Giacomo’s use of simile and to offer some observations regarding his use of this figurative device.^[1]

Two traditional ways of classifying simile are according to the content value of the vehicle (i.e. the protasis), as is the case in Caroline Spurgeon’s important Shakespeare’s Imagery, Luigi Venturi’s Le similitudini dantesche, and Pierre de la Jullière’s Rabelais, or according to the categories of things the similes illustrate (i.e. the content value of the apodosis), as Michael Coffey has done in “The Function of the Homeric Simile.” Structuralist and formalist studies on style dealing with simile and compar-ison, such as Ernst Curtius’s European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, and Roger Dragonetti’s La Technique Poétique des Trouvères dans la Chanson Courtoise tend to be more detailed.^[2]

For this study of the simile in the poetry of Giacomo da Lentini, I followed the examples of Antonio Pagliaro and Christoph Schwarze, classifying the similes according to the syntactical structure of the protasis. This metho-dology, chosen for its consistency with other studies of simile in medieval poetry, provides a valid basis for comparison with Provençal and Old French courtly lyrics, on the one hand, and with early Italian poetry from the Frederician period through Dante’s time, on the other.^[3]

In his poetry Giacomo da Lentini makes significant use of the “true” simile, i.e. simile strictly defined as being introduced by “like,” “as” or “than.” Twenty-two instances of such similes occur in the Panvini edition, sixteen being similes of equality and six similes of superiority. The syntactical signposts of the simile of equality are (così) . . . come (and variants como and con), and tanto . . . quanto. Giacomo clearly prefers così . . . come, which appears fifteen times in both canzoni and sonnets, while the tanto . . . quanto signpost is employed only once, in the sonnet Diamante, nè smiraldo, nè zafino. For example, at the beginning of the fifth and final stanza of the canzone Ben m'è venuto cordoglienza (poem 5), the haughty lady whose attention the poet is attempting to capture is likened to the Guelph commune of Florence:

Ma se voi sete senza percepenza

como Florenza, - che d’orgoglio senti,

guardate a Pisa di gran canoscenza,

che teme ’ntenza - d’orgogliosa genti.

The poet urges his scornful lady to reject the pride she displays and to be more like Pisa, whose Ghibellinism was more in harmony with the imperial aspirations of the Emperor Frederick. Panvini notes that during this period of strife among the political powers fighting for dominance in the Italian peninsula, Frederick II adopted a policy of conciliatory politics toward Florence and other Guelph communes: “l’imperatore con una politica remis-siva spera di risolvere pacificamente lo stato di tensione che ha creato l’arrogante comportamento dei Comuni guelfi.”^[4] Attempts to date the canzone by identifying the particular period of tension between Florence and the Regnum have brought forth several theories, but have, on the whole, rendered inconclusive results.^[5]

Specific references to contemporary politics such as the one contained in the above simile and in the verses that follow are rare in the compositions of Giacomo da Lentini, and indeed in the poetry of the Scuola Siciliana as a whole. Such “occasionalism” ran strictly counter to the highly stylized and insulated love experience which Giacomo and his peers wished to describe in their poems. Thus, its singularity renders this simile quite unusual and striking. Moreover, it occupies a position of high relief, in as much as it constitutes the final figurative device of the poem: it is the parting message which the poet wishes to leave with his audience.

The syntactical structure of the simile of equality in Giacomo’s poems breaks down into three types, according to the syntax of the protosis: simple prepositional phrase (i.e. nominal simile), prepositional phrase modified by a subordinate clause, and subordinate clause. In the nominal simile, the two terms being compared must be nouns or noun substitutes, not verbs. The verbal action of the secondary term is limited to an understood but unexpressed repetition of the verb in the primary term of the simile: “come ’l zitello (oblia), eo oblio l’arsura” (poem 25:5-7). Structurally, therefore, such similes tend to be simple in the extreme, and, in medieval poetry, often formulaic. Frequently they serve to reiterate a well known analogy rather than to surprise the audience with a novel image. A static quality characterizes this kind of simile. Homeric examples are “Thetis rises out of the sea like a mist, Apollo descends like the night.” European literature of the Middle Ages produces many such epigrammatic compari-sons: “plus bele que fee,” “hir eyen greye as glas,” “bianca più che burro,” and so on. In the Lentinian corpus there are four nominal similes of equality: come romeo (poem 13:25-29); come la finise (poem 27:9-14); come lo nome (poem 31:12-14); and come ’l zitello (poem 25:5-7).

Although the use of overt comparisons in poetry was clearly discouraged by medieval rhetoricians, in fact, short formulaic similes of the type “noir comme diable” abounded in both Latin and vernacular poetry. William Patton Ker writes: “Medieval writers used them, and used them well, when they wrote Latin, and in Latin verse similes are very frequent.” Echoing the same sentiment, Edmond Faral notes: “Dans la pratique, et pour ce qui est de la comparaison abrègée, la littérature en fournit, à toutes les époques, en latin et en langue vulgaire, des exemples extremement nombreux.”^[6] This difference between theory and practice is explained in part by the continuing strength of moribund oral traditions, such as the chanson de geste, in which the short formulaic simile was used profusely. Committed to memory, formulaic elements were drawn upon by the storyteller when the narrative called for them. While the courtly lyric is not considered to be formulaic or orally generated in the same way the chanson de geste is, the studies of Rupert Pickens, Paul Zumthor and others document the close ties between the courtly lyric and oral genres. Pickens’ controversial decision to publish all variations of the songs of Jaufré Rudel as authentic texts suggests “that Jaufré, like many poets down to the present day, was a troubadour who constantly reworked his material.”^[7] The medieval concept that poems were not formally fixed by virtue of their having been preserved in written form, but that they could be reworked any number of times, even in performance, clearly emphasized the oral side of courtly lyric poetry. While the poetic text is for us primarily a fixed visual object, it was for medieval audiences primarily an auditory experience, and for the medieval poet-performer an art that vacillated between the fixity of written form and the fluidity of oral creation.^[8]

By the third decade of the thirteenth century, when Giacomo da Lentini and his peers were composing poems at Frederick’s court, the creative experience had changed considerably from that of the early troubadours. Whereas the troubadours may have felt free to rework their texts, sometimes even in performance, as a result of interaction with their audience, the poets of the Sicilian School composed their lyrics on paper with the idea that the first manuscript version would be the definitive text. Nevertheless, the persistent presence of short, formulaic, nominal similes in the poetry of the Scuola Siciliana reflects the “atmosphere heavy with the esthetics of oral composition,” to which Pickens refers.^[9]

The second syntactical structuring in which a simile of equality finds expression in the poems of Giacomo da Lentini consists of a prepositional phrase modified by a dependent clause. In the poetry of Giacomo da Lentini, I have documented a total of eight similes of equality of this type, ranging in syntactical complexity from the elementary to the very elaborate. In the descort Dal core mi vene (poem 13), for example, we find an instance of a simile of equality which is fairly simple in structure:

onde lo core m’abonda

e de gli occhi fuori gronda

e sì dolcemente fonda

come lo fino or che fonda. (my emphasis)

As in the Florence simile mentioned above, the informa-tion which provides the key to the comparison is con-tained in the subordinate clause, which in this case is “che fonda.” The tears of the suffering lover flow like gold when it is smelted. In this simile, much of the efficacy of the figure is derived from an adnominatio, the rhyme-word “fonda” being used in two different senses: first at the end of line 149 with the meaning “to disperse,” and then at the end of the following line with the meaning “to melt or smelt.”^[10]

An example of a more elaborate simile with the same syntactical structure (i.e. prepositional phrase plus depen-dent clause) occurs in the sonnet Sì come il sol, che manda la sua spera, (poem 15). Opening the sonnet, the simile occupies two quatrains and, as in the previous simile discussed (poem 13:146-49), involves an ingenious play on a homonymous rhyme word, in this case “spera,” which renders the sonnet, modelled on the trobar ric, extremely elaborate in form:

Sì come il sol, che manda la sua spera

e passa per lo vetro e no lo parte,

e l’altro vetro che le donne spera,

che passa gli occhi e va da l’altra parte,

così l’Amore fere là ove spera

e mandavi lo dardo da sua parte;

fere in tal loco che l’omo non spera,

e passa gli occhi e lo core diparte.

The ability of the sun’s rays to pass as if by magic through glass, and the analogous ability of the mirror’s reflection to pass through the viewer’s eyes and form a mental image “da l’altra parte” (‘on the other side’) are compared to the power of Love’s devastating darts to penetrate the body of the lover unimpeded and imperceptibly. The stylistic pattern of this sonnet will continue to be very popular in the Duecento. One poet who used it to particular advantage, especially with bestiary themes in the vein of the troubadour Rigaut de Barbezieux and the Frederician poet Stefano de Protonotaro, is the Tuscan Chiaro Davanzati.

What is important to note in this simile is that all of the information crucial to the understanding of the comparison has been structured into the subordinate clause. The basic image of the simile is that Love wounds like the sun: “sì come il sol . . . così l’Amore fere.” Thus, the details about how Love wounds like the sun are absent from the unmodified protasis and apodosis. The elaborate “scientific” commentary on how the sun has the magical property of being able to pass through glass, and on how the mirror’s reflection is registered in the brain of the person gazing into the mirror, give the simile all its vigor and all this information is located in the subordinate clause. Without it, therefore, the simile would be unextraordinary and ineffectual. The other six similes of equality in Giacomo’s poems with this structure (prepositional phrase plus subordinate clause are: sì como la nave/c’a la fortuna getta ogni pesanti (poem 1:49-54); como Florenza che d’orgoglio senti (poem 5:33-36); com’aghila quand’a la caccia è giunta (poem 14:7-8); sì come il sol, che manda la sua spera (poem 15:1-8); come nocchier ch’à falsa conoscenza (poem 18:7-8); sì como ’l parpaglion, ch’à tal natura/non si rancura (poem 27:1-4); como la speni che fiorisci e ingrana (poem 31:9-11).

The third type of syntactic structuring in which a simile of equality may be couched is that in which the secondary term of the comparison consists of a subordinate clause. In this type of simile, the comparison that is being made is no longer one between two nouns or noun substitutes, but between two verbal actions. In its most elegant form, this type of simile of equality becomes what is commonly known as the epic simile. Long, expanded, and complex protasis, and sometimes apodosis, serve to construct a stylistic edifice which vivifies the audience’s compre-hension of the text. In the following epic simile, for example, taken from Homer, the advancing Greek troops are likened to an approaching storm cloud:

As from his watching place a goatherd watches a

cloud move on its way over the sea before the

drive of the west wind; far away though he be he

watches it, blacker than pitch is, moving across

the sea and piling the storm before it, and as he

sees it he shivers and drives his flocks to a

cavern, so about the two Aiantes moved the

battalions, close-compacted of strong and

god-supported young fighters, black, and jagged

with spear and shield, to the terror of battle.

(Iliad, IV, 275-82)^[11]

In the epic simile, the secondary term or protasis which introduces each comparison is expanded into an independent short story which appears not to be related in any way except figuratively to the main action of the narrative expressed in the primary term. In other words, the protasis is developed “into an independent aesthetic object, an image which for the moment excludes the primary object or tenor with which it is compared.”^[12]

Extended similes are almost nonexistent in the Lentinian corpus. Out of a total of twenty-two “true” similes in a total of thirty-seven texts, only three similes have a syntax which resembles that of the epic simile, i.e. with protasis consisting of a subordinate clause. One of these opens the sonnet Per sofrenza si vince gran vettoria:

Per sofrenza si vince gran vettoria

ond’omo ven spessora in dignitate,

sì con si trova ne l’antica istoria

di Iobo, ch’ebbe tanta aversitate,

chi fu sofrent’e no perdeo memoria

per grave pene ch’a lui fosser date,

onde li fu data corona in groria

davanti la divina maiestate. (my emphasis)

The secondary term is quite long (six lines), while the apodosis consists of only two lines. The pattern of long protasis and relatively short apodosis is characteristic of the extended simile of all periods, from Homer to Milton and after. Usually, however, the short apodosis follows the lengthy protasis, whereas in this Lentinian simile the reverse is the case. In the Lentinian simile the principal verb of the protasis is a rather weak passive construction “sì con si trova ne l’antica storia di Iobo,” which contrasts with the more lively action verbs of the Homeric simile cited above: “as when a goatherd looks . . . and sees a cloud” (my emphasis). In Giacomo’s Job simile, the narrative extension is not introduced by the principal verb of the protasis; rather, it is limited to the subordinate clause that modifies the principal verb, which begins in line 4 with “ch’ebbe tanta aversitate . . .,” and continues to the end of the second quatrain. One is tempted to conclude that Giacomo clearly avoided a dramatic telling of this tale, not wanting the secondary term of his com-parison to be more conspicuous than the primary term.

Although classic epic similes are not found in the poetry of Giacomo da Lentini, some of the comparison figures he employs are potentially quite dramatic. Many of them could, without much effort, have been successfully developed into full epic or per conlationem similes. For example, in the canzone Madonna dir vi voglio, the poet compares his love to a storm-tossed ship at sea:

Lo vostro amor, che m’ave

in mare tempestoso,

è sì como la nave

c’a la fortuna getta ogni pesanti

e campane per getto

di loco periglioso; (my emphasis)

We note the presence of not just one, but two, subordinate clauses in this simile, each modifying the two terms of the simile. Thus, “che m’ave / in mare tempestoso” modifies “amor,” the apodosis, while “c’a la fortuna getta ogni peasanti / e campane per getto / di loco periglioso” modifies the protasis, “nave.” The bare-bones components of the simile are, therefore, simple and without elaboration: love is like a ship. All the detail which makes the comparison come alive and which tells us how love is like a ship is provided in the subordinate clauses. In the subordinate clause qualifying the apodosis, the metaphorical comparison of love to a tempest already sets the tone, and prepares the reader for the simile to follow. The second subordinate clause, which modifies the protasis, contains an entire story, in microscopic dimensions. The reader can envision the sailors throwing the ship’s cargo overboard in a desperate attempt to save themselves and their vessel.

The storm imagery presented in this simile begins in the preceding stanza with the sententia “e non è da blasmare / omo che cade in mare e s’aprende,” and is sustained throughout the stanza under discussion. Giacomo achieves a chain-like effect by adding one nautical comparison to another. At line 55, we read:

similemente eo getto

a voi, bella, li mei sospiri e pianti;

chè, s’eo no li gittasse

parria che soffondasse;

The comparison beginning at line 55 takes as its primary term the secondary term of the preceding simile. Thus, just as the sailors throw their excess baggage overboard in an effort to save themselves, so the persona heaves sighs and releases tears in an attempt to provide some relief for himself. He feels as though he is drowning or suffocating in a sea of oppressive emotions:

e bene soffondara,

lo cor tanto gravara - in suo disio!

The tempest imagery is thus continued right to the end of the stanza. In the final comparison, the poet identifies himself with the sea, which is personified:

Chè tanto frange a terra

tempesta, che s’atterra;

ed eo così rinfrango:

quando sospiro e piango, - posar crio.

Just as the storm dies down after exhausting its rage by beating against the shore, so the lover at last finds a weary peace after weeping and sighing.

The suggestiveness of the image of the seastorm and its intrinsic dramatic interest make it easy for the audience to visualize the panic-stricken sailors throwing the ballast overboard in an effort to save themselves and their vessel. This successfully delineated impression in turn heightens the audience’s awareness of the torment of the lover, who is somewhat like the sailors in that he is heaving many a sigh in a desperate attempt to liberate himself from the feeling of imminent death which seems to engulf him.

Elements of the extended similitudo per conlationem are clearly present in this simile, but Giacomo’s choice of syntax (prepositional phrase, to which a subordinate clause has been affixed) renders this simile essentially different from the epic simile, in which the dramatic narrative of the protasis is presented in the principal and not in a subordinate clause. By choosing this particular syntax for his protasis, Giacomo has significantly reduced the dramatic impact of his simile, as we may readily appreciate by comparing Giacomo’s tempest simile to an analagous simile in the opening tercets of the Divine Comedy. The beached survivor looks back on the raging sea from which he has just escaped:

E come quei che con lena affannata

uscito fuor del pelago a la riva,

si volge a l’acqua perigliosa e guata,

così l’animo mio, ch’ancor fuggiva,

si volse a rietro a rimirar lo passo

che non lasciò già mai persona viva.

(Inferno I, 22-27)^[13]

The Dantean simile is a true similitudo per conlationen, discouraged in the rhetorical treatises of the previous two centuries. The two terms of the comparison are clearly distinct one from the other, each occupying one tercet. Both terms are introduced by grammatical particles (come and così); and the independent narrative elements of the secondary term are expanded into a microcosmic drama of their own in the first tercet.

Giacomo’s decision as a poet to restrain the dramatic potentiality of his similes is not so surprising, given the prevailing rhetorical theories of the period. The epic simile, generally thought to have been a Homeric invention, was greatly admired by classical authors, and later by modern European poets beginning with Dante on the continent and with Chaucer in England. But during the Middle Ages, the extended simile was not held in high esteem. Indeed, medieval rhetoricians almost universally condemned the use of any overt simile that conspicuously stood out from the main line of discourse of the text. Matthew of Vendome, for example, while excusing the use of such ornamentation by classical poets on the grounds that it was a necessary though undesirable compensation for the meagerness of their poetic subject matter, condemned the application of such “inferior” means of amplification by his own contemporaries, on the grounds that such comparisons tended to subordinate content to style. Similarly, Geoffrey of Vinsuaf divides collatio into two categories: the overt comparison (collatio aperta), which is introduced by clear syntactical signposts, and the collatio occulta, for which no syntactical signpost is needed and which is introduced in such an artful way that distinction between the primary and secondary terms is difficult. Hence, leading aesthetic theorists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries agreed that the prevailing aesthetic ideal was skillful and unobtrusive imitatio of nature. Therefore, if a poet felt constrained to employ simile or comparison in his text, the “hidden” type, in which one of the grammatical terms of introduction were omitted, was much to be preferred. By omitting one of the morphological signposts, it was thought that a comparison could be made without drawing attention to the fact that it was a comparison. Another aspect of the overt simile that was frowned upon was the elaboration of details pertaining to the secondary term which did not immediately appear to be shared by the primary term.^[14] Literary genre also played a role in the presence or absence of expanded similes in poetry. While the epic poem traditionally permitted a grandness and an expansiveness of expression, lyric poetry tended to be much more allusive and ephemeral in expression. It is only with Dante’s Commedia that the epic and lyric tradition merge successfully to create a masterful new poetic statement. The importance of genre in the tendency on the part of thirteenth-century lyric poets to eschew expanded similes should not, however, detract from the significance of the rhetorical ethos which advocated the omission of overt comparison figures.

The type of simile of equality that Giacomo da Lentini most preferred is the one in which the secondary term of the comparison is expressed syntactically in a prepositional phrase modified by a subordinate clause. Out of a total of sixteen documented similes of equality, eight, or one-half, display this syntax. Both the simple, short, and sometimes formulaic simile of equality of the type “still as a stone,” and the elaborate, epic simile are significantly less used by Giacomo than the simile whose syntax in the protasis is of the type “como la speni che fiorisci e ingrana.”^[15] In my view, the absence in Giacomo’s lyrics of the “epic” comparison par parallèle, as Faral calls it, may have been prompted by a desire to stay within the stylistic and aesthetic guidelines laid down by the rhetoricians of his time regarding the use of similes in poetry.^[16] By employing similes with the prepositional phrase plus dependent clause structure, which are syntactically expanded versions of the formulaic nominal simile, Giacomo is technically able to avoid the similitudo per conlationen construction, and to retain the appearance of the more acceptable per brevitatam com-parison. In my view, Giacomo’s clear preference for the simile of equality with the prepositional phrase plus subordinate clause construction may represent his conscious or unconscious response to the existing rhetor-ical prohibition against the use of overt similes, espe-cially of the expanded variety. In this respect, Giacomo reveals himself to be a traditionalist whose poetry echoes the contemporary aesthetic ideal of art imitating nature.^*

^[1]For the purposes of this essay, the critical edition used was that of Bruno Panvini, Rime della Scuola Siciliana (Firenze: Olschki, 1962); hereafter, Scuola Siciliana. Roberto Antonelli’s critical edition, Giacomo da Lentini: Poesie (Roma: Bulzoni, 1979), attributes to the poet sixteen canzoni, one discordo and twenty sonnets. Throughout I refer to Giacomo’s poems by the numbers assigned by Panvini, e.g. poem 4.

^[2]Caroline Spurgeon, Shakespeare’s Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1935); Luigi Venturi, Le similitudini dantesche ordinate, illustrate e confrontate (Florence: Sansoni, 1874); Michael Coffey, “The Function of the Homeric Simile,” American Journal of Philology, 78 (1957), 113-32; hereafter, “Homeric Simile”; Pierre de la Jullière, Les Images dans Rabelais (Halle: Niemeyer, 1912); Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper and Row, 1953; rpt. 1963); Roger Dragonetti, La Technique Poétique des Trouvères dans la Chanson Courtoise (Bruges: De Tempel, 1960).

^[3]Antonio Pagliaro, “Similitudine,” Enciclopedia Dantesca (1970-78), 256; Christoph Schwarze, Untersuchungen zum syntaktischen Stil der italienischen Dictungssprache bei Dante (Berlin: Homburg: Gehlen, 1970), 334.

^[4]See, for example, the resumé given by Gianfranco Contini, Poeti de Duecento, 2 vols. (Milan: Ricciardi, 1960), I, 62; hereafter, Poeti de Duecento.

^[6]William Patton Ker, Form and Style in Poetry: Lectures and Notes by W. P. Ker, ed. R. W. Chambers (London: McMillan, 1928), 253; hereafter, Form and Style; Edmond Faral, Les artes poétiques du XII^e et du XIII siècle: Recherches et documents sur la technique littéraire du Moyen Age (Paris: Champion, 1924, rpt. 1962), 69; hereafter, Arts Poétiques.

^[7]Rupert Pickens, The Songs of Jaufré Rudel (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978), 32-33.

^[8]Paul Zumthor, Essai de Poétique Médiévale (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 507.

^[11]Richard A. Lattimore, ed. and trans. Homerus, The Iliad (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1951).

^[12]Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 4th ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972); Michael Coffey, “Homeric Simile.”

^[13]Dante Alighieri, La Commedia secondo l’antica vulgata (Torino: Einaudi, 1975).

^[14]Ker, Form and Style, 253; Aubrey E. Galyon, trans., Matthew of Vendome: The Art of Versification (Ames: Iowa State UP, 1980); Margaret Nims, Poetria Nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967).

^[15]Giacomo da Lentini, Angelica figura et comprobata, vv. 9-11.

^*I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. David Hiley, Associate Dean for Research of the College of Liberal Arts, Auburn University, for his expert advice in the grant application process, and to the Humanities Foundation Committee for its generous support in the form of a grant for the completion of this article. Special thanks to Ms. Kay Innocenti, whose able and willing research assistance greatly speeded the completion of this article.