The Piazza

“With fairest flowers,

Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele.”

This quote, taken from Shakespeare’s play “Cymbeline,” serves as the epigraph for “The Piazza” and sets a tone of transient beauty and impermanence. The character Fidele symbolizes faithfulness and enduring love and highlights the story’s exploration of ideals in the face of changing realities. It encapsulates the temporal beauty of nature and the human longing for permanence within it, themes that resonate deeply throughout “The Piazza.”

“And beauty is like piety.”

This fragment, drawn from the narrator’s reflection, subtly intertwines the concepts of beauty and piety, hinting at a deeper, almost spiritual reverence for the natural world. In the context of “The Piazza,” this comparison can be seen as a nod to the American landscape piety prevalent in Romantic literature, where nature is often viewed with a religious-like awe. However, Melville’s use of this analogy also carries a parodic undercurrent, questioning the idealization of nature and the romantic notions associated with it.

“For though, of old, when reverence was in vogue, and indolence was not, the devotees of Nature, doubtless, used to stand and adore—just as, in the cathedrals of those ages, the worshipers of a higher Power did—yet, in these times of failing faith and feeble knees, we have the piazza and the pew.”

This quote offers a critical examination of how the perception of nature and spirituality has evolved over time. Melville contrasts the past, where active reverence for nature was akin to religious devotion, with the present, where such admiration is more passive and confined to spaces like piazzas or pews.