BOOK: Ludovico Ariosto, "Latin Poetry"

Ludovico Ariosto: Latin Poetry. Edited and translated by Dennis Looney and D. Mark Possanza. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 84. Harvard University Press, 2018. 9780674977174. xxvii + 258 pp.

The ITRL series mostly contains books by authors that I hadn't heard of before encountering them here, but Ariosto is one of the exceptions to that. He is, of course, famous as the author of the Orlando Furioso, an epic poem writen in Italian (which I haven't read yet). The translators' introduction in the present volume goes so far as to call him “the most important Italian poet of the Renaissance” (p. ix). Unlike some of the other Renaissance authors, who tried to write mainly in Latin or at least thought of their Latin works as the most important ones, the ones that would bring them lasting fame (Petrarch comes to mind), Ariosto seems to have felt that his talents lie mostly in Italian, saying that “he would rather be one of the leading writers in Italian than barely a second-rate author in Latin” (p. xv). Thus all of his Latin poetry fits into the present, slender volume — about 70-ish poems, mostly quite short ones.

I rather enjoyed reading the poems in this volume, more so than in many of the other volumes of poetry in the ITRL series. The fact that most of the poems here are quite short makes it easier to read in small increments and avoid getting bored. As always, of course, I can only read the English translation and not the Latin original; and as usual, the translation is in prose, but here it is a more lively prose than in most other ITRL volumes, less stiff and more contemporary. Don't get me wrong, I don't object to old-fashioned language, in fact I like it, but the style of the translations in the present volume made for some very pleasant reading and was a nice change compared to some of the other volumes in the series. At times I thought that the translators were a bit too free in their efforts to come up with equivalents of some of Ariosto's word-plays (XXXI), or by introducing Italian terminology unnecessarily (XVIII:29–33), but I appreciate that they at least made the effort, and often they were successful enough (XXXVI–VII).

Another good thing is that the translators' notes at the back of the book are a bit more extensive than usual, and occasionally they even explain things that I thought should surely have been obvious to everyone (not that that's a bad thing). For instance, do people really need to be told what the poet means when he says that a sculptor “gave life to marble” (p. 220), or who the Fates were (p. 221)?

There are some nice pastoral poems (I, II), a few love poems, a considerable number of epitaphs, a few inevitable cases of sucking up to his patrons, the dukes of Ferrara, and a large number of short epigrams apparently modelled on classical sources.

Among the epitaphs, there's a touching one for Ariosto's father Niccolò (X; he reused some parts of it for another epigram, XI), who died when Ariosto was 26, leaving him as the eldest son to help care for his nine younger siblings (p. 176). Later there are two other poems on the death of his father (XII–XIII), and I was interested to learn that his father had been granted the title of count by emperor Frederick III in 1469 (p. 177). I wonder what happened to that title, as I don't see anyone referring to Ludovico as a count.

A very touching epitaph from the section of poems with uncertain attribution (no. IV): “Two tombs are my resting place, the heart of my husband, who survives me, and this stone.”

Some of the epitaphs are satirical, e.g. No. XLV: “A massive weight of marble shuts Philippa in. Her husband finally saw to it that she wouldn't run off any more.” Or No. L, about a man who supposedly died of sexual exhaustion: “His girlfriend, while she was willing to give him too much, took too much out of him. [. . .] By offering herself too readily, she killed him.” What a way to go :)))

There are also two humorous epitaphs for the poet himself (LX–LXI), joking that “he wanted the tomb to be inscribed so that when his spirit comes on the Last Day, ordered to return into these limbs, it will not roam about for a long time among so many graves” (LX:7–10). But I wonder if that would be enough — “the stones are all changed now in nine grounds out of ten”, etc.

There's also an epitaph (LXI) to Raphael, the famous ninja turtle painter, who “included Ariosto in his portrait of poets on Parnassus in the Vatican Apartments” (p. 220).

There's a punning epitaph of the Marquis of Pescara; as the name of that town means “abounding with fish”, the poem refers to the Marquis as a fisherman: “What did he catch? Cities, stouthearted kings, towns, kingdoms, commanders” etc. (poems of uncertain attribution, II:3–4).

No. XXIX is a fine poem with a twist: it starts innocently enough with the praise of a little girl who takes after her mother, proceeds to “she knows how to fashion herself in every way like her mother and chooses at her tender age who her lovers will be” (o-kay...) and ends by sarcastically praising her mother: “You've done your job so well that, whenever old age creeps up on you and slows you down and you can't live as a courtesan, you can live as a procuress.” :]

There's an epigram about a bad poet (XXXVI), punning on the fact that the Latin word bardus can either be the noun “bard” or the adjective “slow, dull, or stupid” (p. 202). I found this interesting as I had no idea that the word “bard” was already known to the Romans (who borrowed it from the Celts, of course).

One of the longest pieces in this book is No. LIII, a wedding-song welcoming Lucrezia Borgia, the pope's daughter, who was coming from Rome to Ferrara to marry duke Alfonso d'Este. The song is structured as a sort of dialogue between two choruses, one of Roman young men who lament her departure, and one of Ferraran ones who are looking forward to her arrival. At one point the former refer to Lucrezia as “most beautiful virgin” (l. 49), to which the translators say: “definitely not a virgin. She had been married twice before her betrothal to Alfonso and was rumored to have had an incestuous relationship with her brother, Cesare Borgia.” (Pp. 210–11.) :))

A nice, if untranslatable, pun in poem no. LVI: in Latin, est can mean either “he is” or “he eats”, and the poet asks which of these the House of Este is named for :)

I also liked epigram no. LXIV, in which an olive tree complains about having to grow “among the roses of Venus, the bulbs of Priapus, and the vines of Bacchus”: “Undeservedly I will I be said to be indecent, adulterous, and drunk, I who have always been sober, pure and modest” :)) I was interested to learn that “bulbous plants, e.g., garlic, were thought to be efficacious aphrodisiacs” (translators' note, p. 222).

A couple of interesting factoids from the translators' notes: apparently the Argo “was said to be the first ship ever made” (p. 189). I don't remember hearing this before or having the impression that the Argonaut legend is supposed to be taking place that early. And if I remember correctly, the Colchians later chase them in a ship of their own, so they either copied the technology unusually quickly or ships were in fact a well-established thing by then.

And Porcia (the daughter of Cato the Younger), when she learnt that her husband, Brutus (one of Caesar's assassins) was dead (after his defeat by his enemies, Octavian and Marcus Antonius), “she killed herself by swallowing hot coals” (p. 227). Ouch :S But see her wikipedia page for more skeptical accounts of her death.

This was definitely one of the more entertaining volumes of poetry in the ITRL series so far. Let's hope that I'll enjoy Ariosto's epic just as much when (some day... hopefully) I get around to reading it :)