whitebeard

Don't curse the darkness, light a candle.

The Casentino and Its Story

CHAPTER I

THE VALLEY ENCLOSED

“Beneath him with new wonder now he views,  to all delight of human sense exposed, in narrow room, nature's whole wealth, ea more,    a heaven on earth     …" 
ABOUT twenty-five miles north-east of Florence there lies in the heart of the sterile Apennines a green and fertile valley called the Casentino. Here the Arno takes its rise, and flows for many miles of its early course, fed by a thousand rivulets on its way. The Valley is shaped like a great conch, and surrounded on all sides by the high mountains. From the main Apennine chain which walls it on east and north the mountain barrier is continued without a break by the long range of the Pratomagno on the west, and the two lines converge again on the south, leaving there, how­ever, one narrow opening into the outer world. This configuration is very striking, and some think it accounts for the name Casentino, or Clusentinum in the Latin form, which they would derive from claudere­ Italian chiudere – to shut in. If this theory be as just as it sounds, we may turn the name in English into the Valley Enclosed, a designation appropriate in more than one sense. 
Monte Falterona, which rises 6000 feet above the level of the sea, is the loftiest mountain of the Casen­tino, and out of its side, very high up, springs the Arno . The traveller who would understand the position of the Valley and the course of the historic river should climb on some fresh dear day to the top of Falterona, whence you look upon one of the vastest and most famous prospects in . Standing on the heap of stones which crown the painfully-won summit, your eye ranges over half the length of the peninsula, and over its entire breadth from western to eastern seas. You understand from here how on the one side with the rising sun the wisdom of the ancient East touched this fortunate land, and how on the other the vanishing glory of the evening drew the imagination of the peoples into the mysterious regions of the future and the unknown. Might one figure as a ship plough­ing the infinite waters, then here upon the back of Falterona would be seated the mighty oarsman, with an oar dipped in either ocean. Within these vast boundaries many historic cities may be descried in the immense plain of the Emilia and the Romagna to the north and east, stretching to the Adriatic coast; and in the west, over the broken crests of the near hills and the distant woods which embosom Vallombrosa, Florence sits far off within misty hollows, ringed by populous slopes. On the south-west rises the wall of the Pratomagno, shutting out the view beyond, the faint pyramid of Monte Amiata alone rising behind it, and Arezzo lies within the folds of the southern hills, hidden from sight. Y ou stand at the centre of the Apennine system, and the great ramifications of the mountains spread away in all directions, continuing themselves far off in strange shapes against the sky. And right below, rocked in their very midst, lies the Casentino, loveliest and most fruitful spot in all the Appennine region :
". . . dov' è sì pregno
l' alpestro monte, ond' è tronco Peloro,
 che in pochi lochi passa oltra quel segno."
But to see everything that it is possible to see from Falterona you must be up there at daybreak in early summer. Then, if ever, provided the morning is dear, you will discover the Slavonian Sea and the Tuscan. The Mediterranean , however, is never actually visible, and it is only on a morning of rare serenity that a glimmer on the eastern horizon makes known to you the tremolar della marina. At the same time everything around is revealed with an almost terrible distinctness.
The mountains close about one, dark and awed, shrink­ing in the rose of dawn. Cities, villages, farms tell out their buildings in the valleys and plains, as if come to judgment; and one's spirit, all alone, stripped of the veils which protect it from reality, trembles amid this cold and awful purity. Sunrise in the mountains is a moment so sublime that to mortals it is a terror, not a joy. Senses and imagination are numbed by its intoler­able perfection and the spectacle of the ever renascent day induces a strange weariness. 
But when the Sun has risen at last in flames out of those far-off waves, and ascending draws the mists up out of the earth, throwing over the scene the rainbow robes of illusion, one’s soul begins to move unafraid. The full autumn noon is the hour of deepest enchant­ment on the Falterona. What pride of the eye then that gorgeous riot of purple peaks and slopes, and the loveliness of green valleys sparkling within them; those limpid forms of the distant ranges swelling and sinking one beyond the other, prolonged in. iterated cadences till they fade in the incandescence of the sky beneath the sun; those golden snows that shape themselves far off above the ethereal rose and violet of the east, and all that infinite expanse of earth's tossed and rolling blue, losing itself in heaven's deep azure! To the north the strange mass of hills which forms the outer barrier of the upper Romagna presents at this hour a wonderful spectacle. A wilderness. of naked volcanic rocks, shooting upwards in close serried ranks of spearlike points and peaks, barren of verdure, unslaked by streams, unrenewed by the snows which cool the loftier heights, it might be the dry anatomy of some burnt-up world. Yet now in this enchanted noonday it appears transfigured, a magic shadowless region, its million facets cut out of palest, finest gold streaked with porphyry, and veiled in a quivering flame of rose. Beyond, in the immense level of the plain, clustered palaces glimmer within the low-lying grey heat vapour,  like cities guessed at under the surface of the sea ;  and as your eye travels farther and farther you will perceive, infinitely far off, hovering above the brooding mystery of the north, against the green and azure white of the sky, certain golden apparitions, the shapes of the Alpine snows! They might be the ramparts of some kingdom cc that never was on land or sea." 
In the still splendour of the noonday the whole scene seems changed into the airy fabric of dreams. Vision and imagination make mock of reality. The mountains lose solidity, and appear ethereal shapes, sculptured in the sky, or vast looming shadows beneath the sun, and the whole world before one seems no more than the substance of a thought-an illusion projected by one's mind upon the void. 
And as one looks down into the Casentino, far beneath, the Valley Enclosed itself becomes a thought, a memory. The past grows more vivid than the present, and the course of the river below symbolises itself into an image of the strong currents of life and paSSiOl1 which once coursed through the Valley. In days long gone by, that little space circumscribed by the green hills, and now so peaceful, contained within it some of the most strenuous forces of Italian history. The chain of castled heights along the course of the river, and the rock-built towers that watch from their crags down each lateral valley, recall the feudal system which once dominated Italy, when in the general deluge, in which law and order were submerged after the downfall of the Empire and the successive invasions of the country, authority retreated to the hill-tops and lodged itself in the strong arm of the independent baron. The Casentino, held by the great Counts Palatine, the Guidi, who sword in hand had stretched their dominion over all the upper Apennine valleys on either side of the mountains and far into the Romagna, was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the seat of a power to which the yet weak and insignificant communes around gave homage and obedience. 
This was the period when the Valley was most closely connected with the outer world. The traffic of life had not yet beaten out broad tracks and easy roundabout ways, but men on mule-back went straight over the face of the hills to their destination. Merchants and travellers frequented the mountains, and villages now mean and dwindled and almost in­accessible upon their rocks were then quite in the world's path, and there was many a great abbey, now but a heap of ruins lost in the forest far up the higher slopes, where only the hunter goes by, which was then a centre of human intercourse and political activity. The Valley was probably more populous at that time than now; where princes inhabited, men were sure to gather together.      
But the castles, broken and roofless, tell to-day a story of slow decline and final downfall; of barons oppressed and crushed by the growing power of the cities ; of individualism overthrown by the resurrection  and triumph of the social principle of community. Proud and isolated, each on its hill-top, they are the desolate relics of a long-vanished order of things. The vineyards that grow over the field of Campaldino down there beside Poppi cover the traces of the dire struggle of Guelf and Ghibelline, which, resulting in the victory of the Florentines over the Aretines, gave the death­blow to the independence of the Guidi and to the principles which they represented. 
But in the days of its ascendency in the Valley the Sword did not rule alone. lt was challenged by the Cross. The footsteps of those who preached the gospel of peace may still be seen upon the mountains. Hidden within dark groves of pine trees among the crags and precipices of the gran giogo, yonder, to the south-east, is Camaldoli, with its hermitage, the high habitation of San Romualdo and his followers. Far to the west we have already marked the woods of Vallombrosa, which San Giovanni Gualberto chose for the home of his new brotherhood. South-eastward, again, that dark rock resting upon the hill-top, full in heaven's eye, is La Verna, where San Francesco received the Stigmata-the most holy place in the religious history of the Middle Ages. These fortresses of the spiritual power are set higher upon the hills than the strongholds of the Guidi. The climbing feet that scorned the earth were not content with the lower peaks. Naked and alone they conquered the heights and planted upon them the Cross. From there they sent forth their voices into the Valley below, calling to the people to be at peace and to come up and praise God in unison with the voices of Nature. And to this day, though the castles have fallen to pieces and the Sword is buried at last, the Cross remains the common symbol of the hills. It is set upon the utmost peaks, and at every turn of the paths below. Till recently Camaldoli and Vallom­brosa were still great monasteries; and even now the Eremo keeps its contemplative occupants, and La Verna is a thriving centre of the active Franciscans.
Yet the ideal of their founders, the standard-bearers of the Cross, has suffered a change too with time. The numbers who flocked up after them brought the world with its needs and cares into those high places, where the spirit had reigned alone, beneath the open sky. Temples arose, with roofs to shut out the stars, and the Church, ever at work to imprison the idea in a material form, has reared great worldly institutions upon those pure impulses of the individual soul towards God. 
Besides the Warrior and the Saint, another power appeared in the Valley-the Poet. This one aimed at uniting the other two, of welding the Sword and the Cross, as represented by the Empire and the Papacy, into twin foundations for the temple of God upon earth. Immediately be1ow us is the fount of the Arno, from under which the exiled Dante indited his burning epistles to Florence and to the Emperor Henry VII., reiterating, in words great with the images of classic and sacred story, his lofty theory of the divine mission of the Emperor, and calling upon the one to submit, and upon the other to come quickly and fulfil his task. But the voice cried in the wilderness. Sooner than that of warrior or saint, the hope of the poet seemed to fail and perish. The temple of his dream was not to be built that way, and the world rolled on unheed­ing, moved by a purpose which was hidden from him. 
Years after, mindful of the expectation of de1iver­ance for his Italy which had filled his heart beneath the springs of Arno, and of its nonfulfilment by reason of the opposition of Florence and the Tuscan League, he placed himself once again in imagination under the fount on Falterona and launched upon the stream an immortal denunciation of its waters, its valley, and the degenerate dwellers upon its banks. These verses are a piece of "satirical topography" ( Ampère, Voyage Dantesque) which has no parallel in literature. Nowhere can one grasp them in their full significance so well as here upon the top of Falterona, where one may follow the torrent of the poet's words almost with the bodily eyes along the whole length of the "accursed and ill-­fated ditch," from its source immediately below to where after its more than hundred miles of course it restores its waters to the ocean. 
". . . Per mezza Toscana si spazia
un fiumicel che nasce in Falterona,
e cento miglia di corso nol sazia, 
                                . . . . . . . . . . . degno
       ben è che il nome di tal valle pera:
            chè dal principio suo, dov' è sì pregno
       l'alpestro monte, ond' è tronco Peloro,
       che in pochi lochi passa oltra quel segno,
            infin là 've si rende per ristoro
       di quel che il ciel della marina asciuga,
       ond' hanno i fiumi ciò che va con loro,
            virtù così per nimica si fuga
       da tutti, come biscia, o per sventura
       del loco o per mal uso che li fruga:
            ond' hanno sì mutata lor natura
       gli abitator della misera valle,
       che par che Circe gli avesse in pastura.
            Tra brutti porci, più degni di gaIle
       che d'altro cibo fatto in uman uso,
       dirizza prima il suo povero caIle.
            BotoIi trova poi, venendo giuso,
       ringhiosi più che non chiede lor possa,
       ed a lor, disdegnosa, torce il muso.
            Vassi cadendo, e, quanto ella più ingrossa,
       tanto più trova di can farsi lupi
       la maledetta e sventurata fossa.
        Discesa poi per più pelaghi cupi,
trova le volpi, sì piene di froda
che non temono ingegno che le occupi." 
"Through the midst of Tuscany there spreads a stream which rises in Falterona, and a course of a hundred miles satiates it noto . . . . . ., but verily 'tis meet that the name of  such a vale perish, For from its beginning (where the rugged mountain chain, whence  Pelorus is' cut off, is so fruitful that in few places it exceeds  that mark), As far as there where it yields itself to restore that which the sky   soaks up from the sea, whence rivers have that which flows with them, Virtue is driven forth as an enemy by all, even as a snake, either  because of the ill-favoured place or of evil habit which incites  them; Wherefore the dwellers in the wretched vale have so changed their   nature that it seems as if Circe had them in her pasturing. Among filthy hogs, more worthy of acorns than of other food  made for the use of man, it first directs its feeble course. Then, coming downward, it finds curs snarling more than their  power warrants, and from them scornfu11y turns aside its snout. On it goes in its descent, and, the greater its increase, the more it finds the dogs growing to wolves, this accurst and ill-fated ditch. Having then descended through many deep gorges, it finds the  foxes so fu11 of fraud that they fear no wit that may trap them." 
-Purgatorio, C. xiv., vv. 16-18 and 29-54, Temple Classics Ed.    
The passion for righteousness which fired these words was spent long agp, and with the decline of the Middle Ages the Casentino ceased to have any influence upon the world outside its mountains. Even the message of the Cross was suffocated by worldly ambition, or enfeebled by lack of zeal. The only share which the Valley had later in the historic movements of the great city, whose life it fed with the waters from its hills, was in giving hospitality to the philosophic thought and speculation which' occupied the chosen minds of the  Renaissance, when all strenuous struggle for good or evil was over in Italy. For it was in the woods of Camaldoli yonder that the Medicean Platonists carried on, during the summer heats, their famous discussions on the ideal life and the true aim of human existence, while enjoying the hospitality of the learned and genial successor of San Romualdo, the Prior Mariotti. 
 So in a spiritual dilettantism the last echoes of the great ideas which go to determine the issues of history die out in the Casentino. Since then the Valley has remained remote and forgotten, strewn with the wrecks of its tumultuous days. Its fairness remains to it, touched by the pensiveness which belongs to the scenes of old struggles and passion. And it has its own life, quiet and strong. The forests clothe themselves every spring afresh, the flowers come again, and the Arno is replenished continually at its source. And if one seeks out the villages and farms high up among the woods of the Casentino, one finds them still the abundant source of a strong fresh peasant life, sweet-blooded, pastoral, full of melody, shut in by the hills from con­tact with the vulgarising influences of modern progresso In these little communities a primitive equality and simplicity reign; the present is not an unchanged version of the conscience-stricken Middle Ages, but of a much more ancient past, carrying one back to the times when flocks and herds were first brought to feed upon the mountain grass and upon the acorns of these many times millennial forests. Capo d'Arno, the source of the historic stream, is in a cleft of the hill immediately beneath the summit of Falterona. The spot is hidden in a wilderness of low beech scrub, and is not easy to find unless the guide be well acquainted with the hills: one is apt to be misled by the lesser rivulets that one comes across on the quest. But having scrambled out at last from the tangled thickets into a pleasant green space beside the famous fount, one feels that it would be impossible to mistake any other for this, the royal stream. For Arno does not steal out almost unseen from the earth like some beginnings that grow to great ends. Its first appearance is worthy of its storied course. A mass of rocks heaped up by earthquakes and storms form a sort of conch within the lap of the mountain, and out of them the springs pour forth from some inexhaustible well in the heart of the earth in a semicircle of seven jets, full and strong, which leap down over the rocks and boulders of the ravine, uniting in a torrent which even in this its babyhood is abundant and loud. You follow its progress with the eye, from the first fall over the rocks between the steep hillsides to that deep gorge below, where the brother streams, Arnino and Arnaccio, bring the earliest tribute, and down to the sharp turn westwards where it flashes silver in the deep shadow of the opposite hills. Then marking the sweep of the gorge southwards again, you are carried in imagination along the track of the Dantesque topography, past Porciano and its porci and away and away down the Casen­tino, out at the gateway beyond Bibbiena, to that sudden disdainful turn of the " snout " away from the curs of Arezzo. And now, still with your mind's eye, you pursue it on its northward flow along the Val d'Arno, till direct1y opposite its source it emerges into view again in the far-off valleys, bearing upon its full-grown flood Florence, fairest of all cities, but peopled, in the poet's eyes, with wolves. Dim and dreamlike, her Cupolone grows upon the sight. Thus in one moment you may lift your eyes from the be­ginning to the culmination of the great current which beauty and the kindliness of men and time's proofs clear from the curse of foulness and calamity. which Dante's impatient spirit put upon it. 
 And in the people that dwell beside the springs of Arno one sees the elements and beginnings, young and ever renewed, of that human life which at its meridian in history made the city there below the wonder of culture and art that she once was, and that in memory she will always remain, when by the vast are of her spirit's flight in the empyrean of beauty and joyousness she proved herself too great to be contained in the cosmos of the medioeval sage. For her the future, not the past. Florence , denounced by Dante and going on her way unmoved, not straight to the goal, but very far round as her river goes, is justified at last, and we recognise her now in the sum of all the deeds of all her sons, nobler than that noblest of them all. 
It happens often, in. still fine weather, that the distant view is hid in mist.  On mild days in October and November, beyond the multitudinous velvet folds of the near hills the world will appear a wide, tranquil, white sea, out of which the long backs of the mountain ranges rise blue and shadowy, one behind the other, in still and suave lines, till they melt into the sky. On such a day let the past repose beneath its pall. The present is so sweet that it suffices. In truth, for those who sit here at the beginning of things the present seems to be far behind the past, and all that winding course of the river and progress of the centuries is as it were to come. The green lawn upon which you sit beside the murmurous cradle of Arno is as it always has been, and a stray shepherd or hunter of thousands of years back would have warmed himself by just such a crackling flame of beech twigs as your guide has lighted now.
The mountain has returned to a solitude which carries us back beyond the time of the Etruscans, who used to bring their sick to a healing lake not far from Capo d'Arno. This lake is now dried up, but the form of the rocks indicates where it was, and its healing virtue, together with the existence of a temple beside it, is conjectured from the discovery there in 183° of a quantity of votive offerings: bronze objects of Etruscan workmanship, weapons, chains and orna­ments, above all, statuettes, some of them be1onging to the best period of_Etruscan art. Many of these may now be seen in the British Museum.
 The descent, of the_mountain to the little town of Stia far below is a quick slide, first down the steep green glades between the brushwood, very different to the slow climb up. Then follows a de1ightful progress across wild sweet pastures strewn with boulders, and along paths that c1ing to the hillside above the hanging forest of oak, and deep valleys where clusters of dwell­ings show the summer haunts of the shepherd folk. You pass beside vast sheep-folds, and for those who go up by night to see the sun rise on the top the way is barred by great sheep-dogs, white growling bears. till the shepherds come to call them back. But about the end of September the flocks abandon the green Alps and move slowly down to their winter pastures in the far-off Maremma, the marshy region between the mountains and the Tyrrhenian Sea , un­wholesome in summer for man and beast. After they are gone the slopes are solitary except for a thin flock of sheep here and there, or a few large-horned kine. white and gentle-eyed, which belong to the high farms, and crop between the stones all the winter through in the sunny places where the snow does not lie long. They are herded by sweet-faced children with shy eyes,. creatures innocent of the arts of reading or writing, that couch on the rocks in the mild winter sunshine. chattering together, or singing, each one alone, their interminable chants. It is from up here in the mountains" that the vein of natural song springs for which the Tuscan peasants are noted. 
There is another way from the Falterona down to Stia, much longer than the direct path, but leading one through some de1icious places. You descend first a bare precipitous hill. l remember once receiving a strange impression as I came down that way. It was late in October, but the sun burnt with a fervour which its summer rays have not. There had been stormy weather a month earlier, and snow had fallen up here ; large patches still lay high up, filling the open spaces between the thickets. We had ploughed down knee­deep through the drifts, and had come out on the side of the hill, where all was shadeless, stony, dry. Faint with the heat, our throats parched, we looked up behind us to where we had just passed. Over the blinding snow the sky bent down upon us, black in the intensity of its burning blue. Some autumn beech trees made a patch like fire upon the terrible white. l should never have thought that earth could take on so infernal an aspect. We stumbled and slipped down the steep, our feet hurt by the loose stones that rolled from under them, and, following a track over the treeless moor below, we were soon comforted by the sound of water near, and carne suddenly upon a rift in the mountain, out of which water gushed full and abundant, leaping from stone to stone, and welling in little pools. After :Stooping to drink and resting a little while in the shade of the trees that grew in the ravine, we crossed the torrent; and now our way led over lovely pastures and down and down the widening gorge, to the point of the first meeting of the streams. 
Close here there is a mountain farm, set in the midst of natural lawns, dose cropped, cool and verdant, where the waters around make a refresh­ing noise as they rushdown the ravines. Beneath this place we crossed the now swollen Arno , and. entering the chestnut forest on the other side, pur­sued our way through broad spaces of sunshine and shadow, where beneath the golden leaves women and children were picking up the ruddy fruit out of the litter of thorny yellowed husks and creamy skins upon  the ground. The meek kerchiefed heads were lifted as we passed, and mild eyes gazed at us in wonder. One of the women called out after us, “Are you not come from very far off?" To us it seemed that it was she and her companions who were remote, left behind in some golden age in. an eternal afternoon of sunshine and peace.  ­ 
Presently we passed through a tiny village which dung to the hillside. In the steep paved passage between the stone dwellings one or two sybil-like crones were creeping in the sunshine. Continuing round the hill, we reached at last the other side and found ourselves in view once more of the Arno, which had made a great sweep between the hills, and, now a considerable stream, flowing in a wide stony bed, was 18on its way southwards through the upper part of the main valley. Our road went on along the hillside above it, al ways through chestnut woods, till upon the verge of a steep slope in front rose the dark spire of cypresses which stands beside the mountain. church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, and in an hour more we were in the steep street of Stia. 

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dante, noyes