'Proud to the Humble, to the Haughty Meek'

I came to Leopardi by way of Beckett, thanks to a stray remark in Proust (1930). My brother and I, when young, both read that way. Each book linked naturally to at least one other, a reassuring discovery, especially when you have previously read almost nothing worthwhile. It suggested we would never run out of books. Supply and demand would always balance. My first direct encounter with the Italian poet was Poems from Giacomo Leopardi (1946), translated by the English poet John Heath-Stubbs. It’s a slender volume, just seventeen poems and an introduction, and it was almost love at first sight. Here is where I first read “To Himself” and those well-known bitter lines: 

“For spleen and bitterness

Is life; and the rest, nothing; the world is dirt.”

 

Recently I learned of an anthology Heath-Stubbs and David Wright edited in 1950, The Forsaken Garden: An Anthology of Poetry 1824-1909. The bracketing years represent, respectively, the year Byron died and the year Swinburne and Meredith died. The editors strive to avoid the customary labels – Augustan, Romantic, Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite, et al. – and as a result include many minor poets previously unknown to me. Along with Barnes and Clough we meet an interesting, more obscure poet, Thomas Pringle (1789-1834). Born in Scotland, in 1820 he moved to South Africa where he edited two newspapers and served as secretary for the Anti-Slavery Society. Here is a sonnet, “A Common Character,” written in 1825 in Cape Town:

 

“Not altogether wicked — but so weak,

That greater villains made of him their tool;

Not void of talent — yet so much a fool

As honour by dishonest means to seek:

Proud to the humble, to the haughty meek;

In flattery servile, insolent in rule;

Keen for his own--for others’ interest cool;

Hate in his heart, and smiles upon his cheek.

This man, with abject meanness joined to pride,

Was yet a pleasant fellow in his day;

For all unseemly traits he well could hide,

Whene'er he mingled with the great and gay.

--But he is buried now-- and, when he died.

No one seemed sorry that he was away!”

 

Not a stellar poem but as a character study it reminds me of one of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s portraits, minus the tacked-on suicide.