Why a National Literature Cannot Flourish in the United States of North AmericaRocchietti, Joseph
General
Why a National Literature Cannot Flourish in the United States of North America
Rocchietti, Joseph
American literature; United States -- Social life and customs
the scanty refreshments had not been supplied by wit, with which nature
did not favor those poor italian brains! The american lady, I have
already quoted, says in her Alida: “Superfluous refinements in eating,
and drinking are among the enjoyments least important to a rational
being. Do not let us poison a feast to a neighbor, by the mortifying
reflection that he can make no similar return. An evil spirit of
competition is thus awakened, and all true hospitality destroyed.”
While Mr. Headley claims as an american, a beautiful english lady,
whose charms had been transmitted from her american mother, he sadly
writes of not having found in Italy not a really pretty woman; and the
only one he met, who was called the belle of the city, it was, what he
would term, of the doll kind. And mind here, benevolent reader, that
the Italy of Mr. Headley, is nothing else but the city of Genoa! He has
not yet gone out of it.
To define beauty, I have nothing else to say, that a beauty is the
beauty of different men, who have different sight, and different
feeling. The artist will always draw it as he feels it himself. But,
he who pretends to settle rules on beauty, must needs not know what
beauty is. The beauty of one’s eyes cannot be the beauty of another,
though rules we find settled by different nations. The Venus of De
Medici is a greek beauty, whom a greek would love in preference to any
italian, english, french, chinese, or indian beauty. But the chinese
will always prefer the chinese, as well as the indian the wild one. He
who compares the music of Hyden or Mozart, with the music of Rossini
or Bellini, shows too plainly, he does not understand the art. He who
wishes to see pretty women, has only to step into the car, and in a few
hours he will see in Baltimore a great many. But, if he delays five
or six years longer, he might meet there the ugliest in the world, so
the glory of the world is transient. Once, in passing through a small
city of France, all the women I saw in that place were so pretty, that
I thought to have fallen into the garden of Armida. Still, though we
know that every dog has its happy days, there are travelers who did
not pass but six months in Italy, running through ten cities of that
populous country, who, like Mr. Headley, asserted not to have seen one
single pretty italian lady. I did pass myself more than six months in
one single city of America, without having met one pretty lady, when to
my astonishment, I met in that very city, on a public walk, beauties as
cheerful as the sun. To bless this being of war, called man, nature did
scatter beauties in every part of this singular planet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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