She wakes in the arms of the beloved sister who
had always befriended her. The cruel efforts against her cease now,
and she writes to her father imploring his pardon, which he gives,
with a prayer for hers. At last she dies peacefully. The story is
pathetic; and it is told with art, though its lapses of taste are
woful, and its faults those of the whole class of Italian poetry to
which it belongs. The agony is tedious, as Italian agony is apt to
be, the passion is outrageously violent or excessively tender, the
description too often prosaic; the effects are sometimes produced
by very "rough magic". The more than occasional infelicity and
awkwardness of diction which offend in Byron's poetic tales are not
felt so much in those of Grossi; but in "Ildegonda" there is horror
more material even than in "Parisina". Here is a picture of Rizzardo's
apparition, for which my faint English has no stomach:
Che dalla bocca fuori gli pendea
La coda smisurata d' un serpente,
E il flagellava per la faccia, mentre
Il capo e il tronco gli scendean nel ventre.
Fischia la biscia nell' orribil lutta
Entro il ventre profondo del dannato,
Che dalla bocca lacerata erutta
Un torrente di sangue aggruppato;
E bava gialla, venenosa e brutta,
Dalle narici fuor manda col fiato,
La qual pel mento giu gli cola, e lassa
Insolcata la carne, ovunque passa.
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