BOOK: Giovanni Pontano, "Eclogues. Garden of the Hesperides"

Giovanni Gioviano Pontano: Eclogues. Garden of the Hesperides. Edited and translated by Luke Roman. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 94. Harvard University Press, 2022. 9780674274099. xxx + 285 pp.

The I Tatti Renaissance Library is hobbling along at a snail's pace compared to its best years (when they sometimes published as many as six volumes per year), but it *is* still hobbling along after all. Pontano feels almost like an old acquaintance now — this is the seventh volume by him in the series. Two of these were of his poetry (Baiae and On Married Love), so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect: poems that, while enjoyable enough in their way (and written by someone who clearly *really* enjoyed spending time at his villa in the countryside), are definitely not going to be exciting at any point, and that are going to be full of too many classical allusions for me to really appreciate them. And this is just what we got in the present volume, so I was not in the least disappointed. There are six eclogues of varying lengths, followed by a didactic poem about citrus trees which covers the last 40 % or so of the volume.

Lepidina

This is the longest of the eclogues in this book. A married couple of shepherds, Macron and Lepidina, are observing an interminable procession of nymphs and other similar creatures going to attend the wedding of the siren Parthenope (a personification of Naples, named after the earliest Greek settlement on its location) and the demigod Sebeto (a personification of a river that used to flow through Naples, but was, “by Pontano's time, more myth than reality”; p. 233). The poem ends with hopes of an auspicious marriage and allusions to the future history of Naples.

The nymphs and other deities in the procession are themselves personifications of various geographical features from Naples and its surroundings, including e.g. one named after Pontano's villa in the countryside. Thus, whatever is said about their activities or relations is invariably a thinly-veiled reference to some geographical fact, and fortunately the translator's notes clear up these references or I would stand no chance of understanding anything whatsoever. Indeed some of the references seem so local to Pontano and his life that it's hard to see how anyone could figure them out at all, were it not for the lucky fact that his Eclogues were first edited for publication, shortly after his death, by a close friend of his, Pietro Summonte, who was presumably able to rely on his personal familiarity with the author when writing explanatory notes to the poems. The translator's notes in the present volume often cite Summonte's 1512 edition as his source.

I can't say that I particularly enjoyed reading this poem, but it was nice to see that Pontano was clearly so very fond of the area where he lived.

Meliseus

A shorter and much more enjoyable eclogue, in which the shepherd Meliseus grieves the recent death of his wife Ariadne. It seems to him that the whole natural world of the countryside grieves with him, and even a local nymph eulogizes the deceased woman in a long mourning-song. Towards the end of the poem it seems that Meliseus is slowly getting better, or at least managing to distract himself with work. The poem was inspired by the death of Pontano's own wife (whose real name was Adriana) in 1490.

Maeon

A short eclogue about an unusual combination of topics. The characters are two shepherds who remember their late friend Maeon and contemplate how eventually the man's tomb and his memory will both be forgotten. (These characters stand for Pontano and two of his friends from his academy.) But then their talk turns to the various pleasures of life, mostly in a quite wholesome way (partly about the beauties of the natural environment, partly about the happiness of being together with someone you love), but eventually they end with some praise of the implausible, perverse virility of their farm animals: “Here is the shaggy ram [. . .] in whose broad groin triple testicles swell — this same ram is the husband of all the flock and father of all the flock. He is acknowledged as father of the female who will soon receive him as husband.” (P. 101.) You've got to love animal husbandry :)))

Acon

Another short and rather meandering eclogue. It starts with a bizarre tale of metamorphosis such as the ancient Greeks liked to tell to explain the origin of various plants or animals. In Pontano's version, jealous nymphs kill a girl with their eyes, but a friendly deity restores her to life — as a turnip. . . :)) The Greek gods could be famously unhelpful in these matters, but this struck me as uncommonly idiotic even by their standards.

In the rest of the poem, one gets the impression that Pontano simply liked to daydream about living an idealized rural life with his wife; I imagine that his actual career as a high official working for the king of Naples must have been a bit more stressful than that. In the present poem he is particularly keen on vegetables, and even gives some recipes for combinations that he likes (ll. 24–5, 195–9).

Coryle

This short poem contains two mythological stories, both it seems more or less entirely invented by Pontano and again involving some personifications of nearby geographical locations. In one story, the nymph Coryle is transformed by a envious witch into a hazel-tree, but this is told too briefly and is barely a story at all. The other story is a bit more playful; a group of women find Amor asleep and tie him up, blindfold him, and throw his bow and arrows away in revenge for all the trouble that he has been causing by making people fall in love. Later the nymph Ariadne finds him, liberates him, and he promptly makes her fall in love as well. Both stories have a connection to the love between Pontano and his wife (not that I would have any chance of noticing this if it wasn't for the translator's notes).

Quinquennius

This is hardly a pastoral poem at all. It consists of a conversation between Quinquennius, who as the name suggests is a five-year-old boy, and his mother. He is afraid of thunder, but she tells him it's just gods roasting chestnuts; then she tells him about Orcus, “a malevolent spirit, who cruelly attacks little boys” if they are naughty, and about an unnamed benevolent god who rewards them with treats if they are good. She is trying to use this carrot-and-stick approach to get the boy to stop wetting his bed at night. I don't know when I last cringed this hard while reading a poem :S But I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, as we already knew Pontano as a keen family man and a doting father and husband from some of his other poems earlier in the ITRL series.

Garden of the Hesperides

Here's something that poets would be unlikely to write nowadays: a didactic poem about the cultivation of oranges, in two books of about 600 lines each. (Actually, while Book I is all about oranges, Book II discusses citrons and lemons as well.) Frankly, I myself also find it hard to see why people thought it a good idea to write such poems, but didactic poems were definitely a thing in ancient times and then humanists like Pontano also liked to follow their example (besides the Garden of the Hesperides, he also wrote didactic poems about astronomy and “celestial phenomena”, p. xix). My idea of poetry is that I want to read something by the likes of, say, Byron or Shelley that will make me feel intense emotions. You certainly won't get *that* from a poem on the cultivation of oranges, which is a subject that is not of the slightest interest to me. But perhaps people like Pontano would say that poetry is simply a medium, and that any subject can be treated in it, and I can't really dispute that.

In any case, Pontano was clearly very interested in the subject of this poem, and presumably had a good deal of first-hand experience with growing oranges around his villas; he writes even about technicalities such as where to plant them, when to water them, how to fertilize them, how to graft them etc. etc. with such an enthusiasm that you can't help being impressed, and at least slightly charmed. But he also likes to switch suddenly from these technical matters to mythological ones, inventing just-so stories involving citruses and creatures from classical mythology (after Adonis was killed by a wild boar, Venus brought him back to life as an orange tree, p. 149; the nymph Alcyone seduced Neptune by offering him a bough with oranges, p. 199; etc.); he reminisces about time spent gardening with his now-dead wife (p. 167); he sucks up to Francesco Gonzaga (p. 221), the ruler of Mantua, to whom he also dedicated the poem; and he peppers his verse with classical and geographical allusions in greater abundance than I would have liked (it is all explained in the translator's notes at the end, of course, but having to read so many notes interferes with the reading of the poem). So there's a good bit of variety here, and I can't say that this poem was an unpleasant read at all, even if perhaps it was not the most exciting one.

Incidentally, the title alludes to the fact that in ancient mythology, the garden of the Hesperides, famous for its ‘golden apples’, was believed to have been located in Africa; and since citrus fruits have a golden colour and were also believed to have came to Europe from north Africa, it wasn't hard for Pontano to link them with the mythical garden (p. 252, n. 8). (But according to the wikipedia, citruses actually originated in southeast Asia.)

Some of his advice about fertilizing the trees is a bit. . . odd: “Indeed, you should take the greatest care to heap on the plant [. . .] dirty old sandals, bits of refuse, and filth derived from mucky streams to drip slow moisture into the deepest roots, once you have led in rain and river water. / The burial of dogs' bodies, squalid with decay, will be especially effective at providing you with heavy fruit and glistening youthfulness” (1.292–303; p. 165).

I liked this passage which likens the grafting of trees to social activities: “The lemon tree receives the orange, the citron the lemon, in hospitality, and they join dinner parties with shared tables. The citron accepts the hand of the orange tree in marriage, and together they exercise their marital rights, and both types of tree lie down in shared beds.” (2.318–21; p. 207.) This sounds very charming and proper, but then a few generations later you end up with monstrous abnormalities :)

Odd: “[t]he town of Amalfi was credited with the invention of the compass, although it had already been in use in China for centuries.” (P. 259, n. 19.)