the correct Pindaric structure. His odes are Pindaric Chiabrera's
Pindarics. because he departs from the regular structure of the canzone; because the sentiments and imagery are borrowed from Pindar, not from Petrarch; and because their theme is not love but the praise of dead and living Italian heroes and princes.
The receipt for writing classical odes which Chiabrera used was supplied by Bernardo Tasso in the preface to his Odi. "Sometimes I make the construction full of a shining obscurity as Horace does; at times I depart from the principal subject in a digression and return again; but at times I come to a close in the digression in imitation of the good lyric poets." Artificial obscurity, and artificial digressions into classical mythology, are Chiabrera's recurrent devices for giving the appearance of rapt elevation to his strain, and the result is tumid and artificial. A poem on Enrico Dandolo is occupied with the story of Eteocles and Polyneices. Chiabrera is at his best in dignified moral commonplaces, but he had not the "gran temperamento lirico" which made the torch even of pastoral elegy vibrate so fiercely in Milton's hand,[1] and lends so quickening an effect to Vondel's far less elaborately constructed pæans. There is fire
- ↑ Of the various forms which Milton indicated as suitable for great poetry, "doctrinal and exemplary to a nation," the only one which he never essayed in English was the strict Pindaric ode with strophic arrangement, and laudation for its theme. Had he done so he would, as in epic and tragedy, while giving the form fresh content and motive, have drawn his inspiration directly from the Greek, which Chiabrera did not. See G. Bertolotto, G. Chiabrera ellenista? Geneva, 1891, and Il Ch. davanti all' ellenismo in Gior. ligust. 21, 271, quoted by D'Ancona and Bacci.
