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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1879)
NO. 0. IIISTOKY OF T1IE BONNET. lfll) As oven the mightiest engines Unit hu man hands have over built must some times bo taken from the truck and thor oughly renovated, so the world's children weary and harassetl must stop to rest and recuperate their wasted energies, and with the old forms worn away, which will serve no longer, wo must fuse again the rusted metal of humanity, in crucibles lined witli experience, learning and patience, and mould it afresh. And ever and anon as languor from overexertion creeps over us, must we slop and rest, until we can all learn wisdom from the picturesque Scotch, and "bide a wee" in peace and and quiet, before frail, human nature is compelled to give way to the destroyer. HISTORY OF THE SONNET. N the year 872 a little province, lying betwecu France und Spam, Bingularly favored in soil and climate, und as siugu larly fuvorcu in the circumstances of its political history, gained its independance, and fo I'm 123 years, under one family of princes, enjoyed, among troublesome times in Europe, a degree ot quiet and prosperity that placed it in advance of the rest of the world in civilization and refinement. It had escaped, by a series of happily conspiring circumstances, the devastations of the wars of Charlemagne, the incursions of the Moors, and all the unquiet movements of Europe during the Middle Ages. Here in tills little province was wrought out the problem of culture that is ever being set anew to the races. A new life had sprung up in the nation; a new language followed, with a new liter ature, which, under theso favorable cir cumstances, came to possess a grace and refinement unknown since the brightest days of Roman literature. It is not, how ever, to be compared witli that literature in any other way. The spirit of the Ian guagc und literature that were fitted to embody the world's greatest system of ju risprudence was, in everything but the traditions of form, different from the one whose very essence was mirth and song. The Provencal troubadours derived the theme and treatment of their poetry, not from the Latin, but the Arabian poets. The immunity of Provence from the troubles of the neighboring states could not last always and the terrors of the In quisition reached even here. The night of the Sicilian Vespers closed down upon Sicily and Provence, equally disastrous to both, and alike destructive of their ma terial prosperity and of their languages but in this sunny season and this Ilcsperi' an garden had sprung up a little llower of poesy that has been transplanted and tak en kindly to the soil of every literature which the world has since produced, even taking root in the somewhat chilly atmo sphere of German mysticism; a short poem, containing always just fourteen lines, and having almost thrice as many arbitrary and hampering rules of rhyme and versification, exercising a poetical jurisprudence, tyrauuus over every form ot sentiment, and surviving the fall of the culture whence it grew. It Is true that the causes of natural decay were at work in the Provencal, even before the wars of tho Alhlgenses drove her merry trouba. dours over into Spain. The differentia tion of form necessitated by the restric. tions of their versification, exemplified chielly In the sonnet, as well as tho eradi tiouary pedantry and rhetoric of the Lat ins, had already brought Provencal liter ature to that stute of over-rcfinemcnl which always precedes total extinction. But no language or theme ever gets be. yond what Lowell calls tho great poet cure, and there appeared a savior to the Sicilian tongue and the Provencal sonnet in the poets witli whom, in the close of the thirteenth century, began the wide spread infiuence of Italy over tho litera. turo of Europe. In Dante, Petrach, and Boccaccio, with all of whom the sonnet was a favorite, and to whom chiefly it owes its long continuenco in favor. The sonnet consists of fourteen lines
