BOOK: Giovanni Pontano, "Dialogues" (Vols. 2 and 3)

Giovanni Gioviano Pontano: Dialogues. Vol. 2: Actius. Edited and translated by Julia Haig Gaisser. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 91. Harvard University Press, 2020. 9780674237186. xi + 463 pp.

Giovanni Gioviano Pontano: Dialogues. Vol. 3: Aegidius and Asinus. Translated by Julia Haig Gaisser. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 92. Harvard University Press, 2020. 9780674248465. xi + 264 pp.

Eight years after the first ITRL volume of Pontano's dialogues, the remaining two volumes have finally been published — better late than never :)

Actius

The second volume contains just one dialogue, Actius, which is thus much longer than the two dialogues we saw in the first volume. Apart from that you might say it has much in common with Antonius. The characters are Pontano's humanist friends, who together with him constituted a kind of “academy”, though perhaps this term suggests a more formal institution than this really was (the translator of the present volume consistently calls it a “sodality”, which seems to be little more than a fancy Latin term for ‘a group of friends’).

There is pretty much no plot, and frankly very little dialogue; it is more like a series of monologues. The friends take turns delivering long and learned speeches which they must surely have prepared in advance, and the result in many ways resembles less a normal conversation between people than a formal session of some learned society, with papers being read and lectures being given. The topics do not change quite so frequently and wildly as they do in Antonius. The dialogue is named after Actius Sincerus, the academic pseudonym of the poet Jacopo Sannazaro (we had a volume of his poetry in the ITRL a few years ago; see my post about it), who does the largest share of the talking in this dialogue.

I wonder how Pontano's friends felt about appearing as characters in his dialogue, characters which (I presume) deliver Pontano's opinions that may or may not have agreed with what that particular friend really thought. Well, judging by the introduction that one of these friends wrote for the first printed edition of Pontano's dialogues (which he prepared for publication after Pontano's death), they seemed to like it (vol. 2, p. 341–9).

Well, without further ado, let's have a look at the various topics discussed in this dialogue:

§1–4: a short comical scene as an introduction, involving two peasants that appear before a notary to transfer the title of a house from one to the other. Much of the humour here seems to be is supposed to be derived from word-play, ridiculous personal names and the like; but I didn't find it very funny. One of the peasants is so uneducated that when he hears, in the text of the contract, something about buying the house “for himself, his children, [. . .] with the entire posterity”, he thinks this refers to the back part of the house and keeps insisting that he wants to buy the anterity as well. At the end of the scene, Pontano's humanist friends show up as witnesses to the transaction, at which point the dialogue turns into a learned discussion between them and all pretence to a plot is hastily abandoned.

§5–10: Actius remembers his late friend, Ferrante Gennaro (a Neapolitan diplomat), who appeared to him in a dream and told him that the soul after death yearns to be reunited with the body.

§13–18: various Latin usages that some pedants object to, but that actually have plenty of support in the work of important Roman authors.

§19–21: dreams and where they come from; they are a mechanism whereby an external mind (mens) provides an individual person's mind (animus) with information, prophecies etc. (a view “of dubious orthodoxy”, n. 61 on p. 404).

§22–56: a long section about the various sound effects in (Latin) poetry, especially rhythm but also effects arising from a juxtaposition of sounds, either pleasing repetition of the same sounds or syllables (this includes a discussion of alliteration, a term apparently coined by Pontano himself; see n. 233 on p. 419), or rough clusters of harsh consonants if that's the effect that the poet wants to go for.

Pontano gives countless examples, especially from Virgil, in which we can supposedly observe these things; but sadly, I was able to profit very little from this section, and overall found it much more boring than I had hoped. Knowing no Latin, I could notice some of the repetitions of sounds, though I'm not sure if they really have such a big effect on how the line sounds as Pontano claims; but maybe my sense of these things just isn't finely-tuned enough.

But when he talks about rhythm, he loses me completely. I guess that the problem is that in Latin poetry the metre was based on the length of syllables, but besides this words also had stress, so the poet had, as it were, two (somewhat) independent things to play with, and could use this to achieve a certain rhythm. But since I don't know any Latin, I had no idea which vowels are long, couldn't feel the metre of the verse, and could make only the most tentative guesses as to which vowels are stressed.

If there really is any rhythm in the examples Pontano gives, I was unfortunately not in the position to notice it or appreciate it; and the English translations of his examples convey (with a very few exceptions) only the meaning of the originals, not the sound effects that may be present in them.

It also didn't help that Pontano often speaks of rhthym in very impressionistic terms, as something that can be ‘weak’ or ‘strengthened’ and the like, and clearly has many quite determined opinions along the lines of ‘a word of x syllables, in the y-th foot of the line, does/doesn't sound good’. Such statements, without any explanation of why they are supposed to be true, are of little use to someone like me, but would probably be interesting to someone that knows Latin. But I would love to read something about this topic with examples in Slovenian or English, where I'd have some chance of seeing what's going on.

§57–60: miscellaneous Latin etymologies. They don't all sound quite as wacky as some of the others that we've encountered in the ITRL series over the years, but I'm still not quite sure how much to trust them. For instance, there's the idea that a root am ‘round’ is the basis of such diverse words as hamus ‘hook’, annus ‘year’ “because it returns in a circle”, amnis ‘stream’ “because the courses of rivers are usually full of turns”, anulus ‘ring’ and anus ‘anus’ from their shape, anus ‘old woman’ because “an old person's posture bends forward [. . .] and becomes curved” (§59).

§61–8: a comparison of history and poetry. Nowadays historians probably think of themselves as doing some sort of social science, but in ancient times, as well as in Pontano's day, one gets the impression that history was thought of as more of a branch of literature; the historian and the poet both “undertake the narration of matters far removed from the business at hand” (p. 207), the difference is only in whether they are real or fictional. There is also a difference in style: “history is purer in style, poetry more extravagant” (p. 199); he continues with a funny analogy: the difference between the style of history and that of poetry is like the difference between a sober matron and a heavily made-up girl :))). Pontano gives a number of examples from Livy and Sallust of historical writing with a literary, even poetic, quality (§64, 67).

Incidentally, there's a funny instance of anachronism in translation on p. 229: one of the participants in the dialogue admonishes another by saying “I am certainly not going to allow you range any farther, Altilio, and waltz around [exultare] outside the prescribed limits”. And of course you can't help thinking ‘wait a minute, this dialogue was written in the 15th century, and the waltz was invented circa 1800...’ The OED's earliest citation of this word in English is from 1781, and Byron wrote a satirical poem about this new, shocking, lewd form of entertainment in 1812, when it was introduced into England. Thus seeing it here in a 15th-century context is definitely a bit jarring.

§69–72: again a section about etymology, this time mostly about words that emerged as contractions of earlier forms: e.g. vinum ‘wine’ is supposedly a contraction of vitinum, derived from vitis ‘vine’ (p. 239). He is particularly interested in words containing x, which he says is often from an earlier ss (p. 231); this surprised me as I had the impression that the change usually goes in the opposite direction, e.g. we see that Latin x developed into Italian ss, and likewise for other ‘hard to pronounce’ combinations of a stop and another consonant (ct and pt turned into tt).

§73–88: the discussion of historical writing is resumed. The historian should of course be truthful and unbiased, and his style should be neither too long-winded nor so terse as to be obscure. Poliziano recommends an interesting technique that he calls “speed” (celeritas), which he describes as “a short and precise summing up or enumerating and combining of several things and words at the same time” (§76); he gives a few examples of this and they do seem to move the narrative forward at a very lively pace.

He gives some oddly specific advice on what things a historian should write about, and in what order (§79–84) — oddly specific in that it seems to assume that you're Sallust or Livy and are writing about ancient Roman politics and warfare :) When reporting on speeches made by generals before battle, you should include “not only the things reported to have been said by commanders but also what they might have said” (§82) — a bit too speculative for my taste, but unsurprising if you remember that they saw history as almost a branch of literature.

But what I found even more disappointing is that Pontano specifically enjoins the historian to “assume the role of a judge, to praise, condemn, admire, disparage, pity” (§85) — but surely that is precisely the last thing I want a historian to do. Passing judgment is cheap and easy and I can do it myself if I want to; what I expect from the historian is the part that I can't do myself, namely to figure out what really happened.

§89–94: an interesting comparison of the different goals of poetry and rhetoric. The orator, Pontano says, may be satisfied even if he does merely a solid job; but a poet seeks to win admiration, and will be a failure if he produces a work of merely average quality. Historians borrow some elements of a poetic style to make their writing more elegant (§93). “[O]f all learned men it was the poets who appeared first” (§94), and the earliest ancient philosophers and lawgivers followed their example by writing in verse.

Aegidius

This dialogue is named after Egidio (or Giles) of Viterbo, a learned monk who however does not appear in it directly and is only mentioned briefly near the beginning and end (§6–11, 66–7).

§1–5: the dialogue opens with two visitors, Suardino and Peto, who come to Naples to meet Pontano and attend some meetings of his circle. Later a number of Pontano's friends will also appear in the conversation, though the details of their arrival are left unspecified.

After some preliminary chitchat, the conversation turns to a recently deceased preacher, friar Mariano, and his successor, Egidio (§6). Pontano recounts a short sermon by Egidio (§7–11). This sermon confirmed my impression that I just don't like sermons as a genre. It proceeded mostly by blind assertion, free association, and vigorous gesticulation, never gave any real arguments for its claims, and obviously relied on the assumption that the audience already agrees with everything in it. This makes sense, of course — sermons are meant to be heard by a congregation in a church, after all. It just means that there's not much point in a non-believer like me reading them.

§12–16: on the immortality of the soul; Pontano claims that the belief in it was the original and more or less universal state of affairs, while the idea that the soul might be mortal is a comparatively recent innovation by a few foolish philosophical schools.

§17–18: on the recent death of Gabriele Altilio, who then appeared in a vision to a certain monk, enjoining Pontano and his friends to use their learning for good religious purposes rather than for “trifles and silly stories”. Later we also hear Altilio's last words (§37).

§19–23: Pontano talks about the origin of oracles: “heavenly powers know what things they will set in motion in the future” (§21).

§26–29: a discussion on where a didactic poet should begin his instruction. For example, Virgil, in a section about beekeeping, starts by teaching how to choose a site for your bee-hive; but in a section about farming, he starts not by teaching how to choose a location of your field, but jumps straight to ploughing. Pontano's discussion of this apparent inconsistency struck me as rather pointless — as if there was any need to justify a poet's random choices in matters like this. He observes, reasonably enough, that where the poet begins depends on what he assumes the audience to know already (e.g. how to choose the location of your field; §28).

§30–34: an interesting comparison of the pagan ideas about Elysium and christian ideas about heaven. Except for the presence of god in the latter (§34), Pontano describes them in such a way that they appear quite similar. In both systems there was the idea that the soul is a sort of prisoner in the body (§30), is released after death, and goes to a better place if the person took good care of it in life.

§35–6: they briefly remember their friend Actius (Jacopo Sannazaro), who has followed his employer, King Federico, into exile in France. Pontano includes a poem composed by Actius on his departure.

§38–43: Pontano's friend Cariteo announces that he now follows Hermes Trismegistus rather than Plato (§38) — in other words, his fondness for mystical neoplatonic arglebargle has intensified :)) Somewhat more seriously: his reason seems to be that Hermes is even better compatible with christianity. Discussing how god was able to create the universe from nothing, Cariteo's explanation is that it wasn't really from nothing, since everything was already encompassed in the “Word of God”... (§41).

§44–45: an interesting if somewhat hair-splitting terminological discussion about two closely related words, carentia (lack) and privatio (privation), both of which were previously used in §40. Poliziano says that some philosophers inappropriately use the latter one instead of the former, and that privatio is suitable only when something has been actively deprived of something, rather than when it already lacked that something to begin with. It was interesting to see that English has borrowed so many Latin words that much of this discussion almost makes sense in English as well :) Incidentally, it seems that the word private is also from the same root (p. 77).

§46–57: a discussion on the validity of astrology. Pontano tries to strike a middle course between total credulity (like that of Marsilio Ficino) and total skepticism (like that of Pico della Mirandola). He suggests that the stars do have some influence, especially over the material world, the elements and humours in the human body — but at the same time people still have free will and it would be foolish to expect that astrology can predict the future exactly.

§58–65: more terminological discussions. Pontano complains that people inappropriately use dispositio (“arrangement” or disposition) to refer to a person's natural inclinations or aptitudes, but in his view that word is only appropriate for something that has been deliberately arranged in some order, not for a natural aptitude (§59); he suggests the word habilitas (“ability”) instead (§60). I think his complaints, both here and earlier, make a lot of sense, but I wonder how successful he was with them. Unfortunately, when enough people misuse language in a certain way, their misuse becomes the new standard. It seems that even a dead language wasn't entirely immune to this problem.

Asinus

This dialogue is quite unlike the previous ones, and felt like a breath of fresh air. There is very little of the pedantic monologues on obscure philological subjects here, and a lot more actual dialogue. If the previous ‘dialogues’ read more like thinly-veiled academic treatises, this one felt more like actual fiction, so that I'm almost wondering if I should put a spoiler warning here before I summarize its contents. And if the previous dialogues are somewhat strait-laced, this one is just plain bizarre, as if the author had kissed all sense and sanity goodbye and embarked for one last voyage aboard the good ship Fancy.

§1–10: news comes to Naples that the war between the king of Naples and the pope is over, to which it seems that Pontano's work as a diplomat had also contributed very substantially (§4). But Pontano does not appear directly in this part of the dialogue; we see things from the perspective of unnamed random people, a traveller and an innkeeper, the latter of which is of course very happy because the peace will be good for his business (§2, 5–6). A group of Irish pilgrims also appears in the inn (§7, 10), though they don't participate in the dialogue. This all feels fairly whimsical, as does the whole dialogue — random unexpected things keep happening out of nowhere, for no obvious reason and without developing into anything obviously significant for the story as a whole. I'm sure there are people who like that sort of fiction, but I'm not really one of them.

Incidentally, it seems that, despite his efforts as a diplomat, Pontano couldn't resist one last barb at the pope's expense, and, pointing out that the pope himself has a son and a daughter, suggests mischievously that this is “a miraculous proof of the Christian religion”: “Indeed, if little grandchildren are born from God, doesn't it perhaps follow that Christ himself also came forth from a woman's womb?” (§10) I expected that the pope in question would be Rodrigo Borgia, but it turns out to be his immediate predecessor Innocent VIII (n. 26 on p. 206).

§11–18: the dialogue now finally switches to its main subject. Asinus, of course, is the Latin word for an ass or donkey, and it turns out that Pontano has evidently gone mad in his dotage, he now has a pet ass, decks it out in all sorts of finery and rides it around the town (§11). Three of his friends, whom we already encountered in earlier dialogues, hear about this and decide to visit Pontano at his villa, about one hour's walk uphill from Naples, to see if they can bring him to his senses. He had still been sane during his recent time as a diplomat in Rome, at any rate (§16–17).

§19–20: a short scene between Pontano and his steward Faselius (a ‘speaking name’, as often with minor characters in Pontano's dialogues: it's from phaselus, ‘bean’; n. 42 on p. 208). They discuss the grafting of plants and disagree on how much importance the phase of the moon has on it — another example of a whimsical, unexpected change of topic.

§22–26: things are getting increasingly ridiculous. In this scene, Pontano and his stableboy are brushing and petting the ass and listening, with rapt delight, to the animal's braying and farting... and more: “after great thunderclaps, great showers of rain; could it have been done mor egracefully and more to the rhythm? O Arabian wares, perfumes of Saba!” (§22). But the ass proves to have a bad temper, it kicks the boy (§24) and eventually Pontano as well (§26). This is what finally brings him to his senses and makes him realize how foolish he has been.

§27–29: the steward announces he is going to get married, and he and Pontano quite happily come to an arrangement whereby, in exchange for money and various gifts, Pontano will be a... third party to their marriage. The bride is apparently young enough that her pubic hair doesn't grow yet (§29), which sounds like it would raise a few eyebrows in some quarters nowadays (and other things in other quarters perhaps :]). But I don't judge, and I think we can all be glad that at any rate the frisky old devil hasn't tried to screw the donkey :)

§30–32: Pontano's friends, having observed the last several scenes from hiding, now emerge and make no allusion to his recent madness, being apparently content just to see that he is cured of it. Indeed Pontano himself acts as if nothing had happened (“I have recently contemplated affairs of the heavens in this solitude”, §32), and the dialogue thus ends on a happy if somewhat sudden note.

Well, this was certainly a wild ride. I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing. The translator's introduction suggests (vol. 3, p. x) that this dialogue might be “an allegory in which Pontano uses the ass to inveigh against some ungrateful and powerful person”, but it's not clear who that might be. And even if this were true, there's still so many other things in the dialogue that make no sense at all (e.g. the sudden shifts of topic, lurching whimsically into all sorts of random directions) and that show Pontano in a bad light (his insane infatuation with the ass, not to mention his indecent arrangement with the steward and his wife). The dialogue was written late in Pontano's life, and perhaps by then he had simply decided that he had, to put it in a vigorous modern idiom, run out of fucks to give.

In any case, the zaniness of this last dialogue helps conclude the whole series on a pleasant note, after the middle three dialogues which could sometimes be a little on the boring side. But from a certain perspective, all these dialogues are interesting to read, because they are quite unlike anything we usually encounter today. Nobody mixes fiction with academic elements in their writings nowadays, or writes philological treatises in the form of dialogues. I'm not saying that they should, of course — clearly this is the sort of thing that is only viable when an academic discipline is in its infancy. So Pontano's dialogues are an example of something that we probably won't see any more of today, and reading them is a little like visiting a museum to see a fossil skeleton of some extinct animal that you won't see in nature any more; something new and different, even if not super exciting.

*

These two volumes also mark a little milestone for me: for the first time since the ITRL series was started almost 20 years ago, I have caught up with it, and read all the volumes that have been published so far. Woo hoo :) Now I plan to go back and re-read three early volumes that don't have their posts on this blog yet, because I had initially read them before starting the blog. So, stay tuned.

BOOK: Paolo Giovio, "Notable Men and Women of Our Time"

Paolo Giovio: Notable Men and Women of Our Time. Edited and translated by Kenneth Gouwens. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 56. Harvard University Press, 2013. 9780674055056. xxi + 760 pp.

This dialogue features Giovio and two other interlocutors, inspired by real people: a military officer named d'Avalos and a lawyer/politician from Naples named Muscettola. Over the course of three days, they talk about notable military commanders, writers and poets, and famous women of the day. A very large number of people are presented in each of these three categories, and relatively little is said about each of them, an approach that I didn't find terribly interesting; but along the way, our protagonists take numerous detours into other more or less related topics, so that the book as a whole still makes for a relatively varied and fairly interesting read. I was also utterly stunned by the enormous effort of the editor/translator, who has managed to identify nearly all of the hundreds of people mentioned by Giovio (most of whom are far from notable by our present-day standards), and added little biographical endnotes about each of them.

Another very impressive thing about the dialogue is the identity of the speakers. Giovio has recently been working as a high papal official in Rome, which was then sacked by the Spanish army; he managed to get out and take refuge on the island of Ischia. And d'Avalos is a high-ranking officer in the Spanish army! And yet there is not the slightest trace of hostility between them, the conversation is utterly civil and friendly throughout the entire book.

Dialogue 1: Military commanders

This dialogue deals mostly with military and political topics. Renaissance Italy is notorious for its chronical warfare, and at the time this dialogue was written the situation was particularly bad, foreign rulers had begun to get involved in the action, a Spanish army had just recently sacked Rome, etc. The characters in the dialogue claim that this has been accompanied by an all-round decline of virtue, courage, etc. (they even hold up the Turks as an example of a society with more virtuous people and princes; 1.18–19), and start by asking why this is happening (1.21).

Apparently some people had suggested that this must be due to some sort of astrological influence of the stars and planets, but Muscettola, reasonably enough, rejects this silly idea (1.30). Instead he argues that the problems began when Italian states started inviting foreigners to interfere in their quarrels, and that the warfare hadn't been as cruel and brutal while it was just Italians fighting other Italians (1.33–4).

Giovio adds that the situation in Italy had been deteriorating ever since the late Roman empire, although it had improved briefly one or two generations before his time, i.e. in the 15th century (1.45–51). Muscettola praises the progress in that period: invention of cannons, printing, and the discovery of the New World (1.51–4). D'Avalos complains about the difficulty of maintaining discipline amongst the unruly mercenary soldiers of his day (1.61–6). Giovio suggests that present-day warfare is more brutal and dangerous than before thanks to technological progress (1.70–3).

Muscettola argues that the Italian soldiers are still brave and skilled, even if they fight under foreign rulers (1.76–8). D'Avalos agrees regarding the rank and file, but adds that there is now a lack of good commanders; he enters into a lengthy comparison of the present commanders with those of the previous generations (1.79–86, 100–6, 110–13). Giovio defends the ability of two contemporary leaders, Pope Clement and Doge Andrea Gritti of Venice (1.90–3).

D'Avalos briefly recounts the “thirteen pitched battles” since the coming of the French army into Italy (1.114–27), and describes a few contemporary commanders that he regards as praiseworthy (1.132–50), as well as a few slightly less illustrious ones (1.152–6, 163–7), and, having exhausted the cavalry and the infantry, he then moves on to naval commanders (1.173–6).

D'Avalos says that thanks to the current technological and political conditions, it's often a good idea to employ delaying tactics and avoid pitched battles (1.177–80). He mentions the various virtues that a good commander should have, and argues that none currently has all of them in a high degree (1.183–7). The discussion so far was about Italian commanders, and now d'Avalos moves on to foreign ones (1.188–97, 200–2). He declares all contemporary commanders inferior to his recently deceased cousin and comrade-in-arms, the marquis of Pescara, upon whom he heaps the highest praise (1.203–16).

Dialogue 2: Literature

Partly, this dialogue consists of brief presentations of various Italian authors of Giovio's time and of the recent past. Some of these are more or less well known and on several occasions Giovio and his interlocutors mention some of the works that I've already read in the previous I Tatti Renaissance Library volumes; but many of the poets and writers they mention are quite obscure (the translator's introduction, p. xv, describes them as “third-rate talents of whose works few scraps have survived” — ouch!). The translator's notes are wonderfully extensive and wherever Giovio mentions some writer and his works, the notes mention where those works have been published. For the better-known poets, this may be earlier ITRL volumes or other modern editions; but for the “third-rate talents”, the translator has invariably managed to dig up obscure 15th- and 16th-century editions, published by long-forgotten Renaissance printers. Compiling these notes must have taken an enormous amount of work.

Another topic that is often discussed in this dialogue (and which I found more interesting than the catalogues of authors) is that of language: is it better to write in Latin or in the vernacular language, i.e. in Italian? They spilled a lot of ink over this topic in Renaissance Italy, and it appears that by Giovio's time, Italian was pretty clearly winning. A couple years ago I read another ITRL volume from approximately the same period, Lilio Giraldi's Modern Poets (see my post from back then), and he was quite grotesquely contemptuous towards literature in Italian. Giovio and his interlocutors take a much more reasonable approach; they are a bit sad that Latin is declining, but they recognize that literature in Italian can be valuable as well.

Early on, d'Avalos observes that lately more and more authors write in Italian, even some of those who formerly wrote in Latin (2.9); Muscettola and Giovio suggest that this is because it's easier to write in the vernacular, you can express yourself more fully in your native language and you don't need such long years of study to do it (2.42–3); you can still borrow and translate successful passages and turns of phrase from Latin authors as well (2.10–11); you reach a wider audience and easier praise by writing in Italian (2.47, 2.76); skilled Latin orators are no longer encouraged and rewarded like they were in the past (2.77–8).

Some poets, on the other hand, went to the opposite extreme and neglected Latin in favour not of the vernacular but of Greek, or, in some cases, even Hebrew! Muscettola and Giovio don't think highly of such efforts, as they seem to be more about trying to show off than producing really good poetry (2.34–5).

Regarding the vernacular, they acknowledge that through the effort of various authors it will gradually be refined into a language no less respectable than Latin itself; and after all, the ancient Roman authors wrote in the vernacular language too, it's just that to them the vernacular language was Latin (2.39). Muscettola, who previously said that using Greek instead of Latin is pointless ostentation, recognizes that some day using Latin instead of Italian will be regarded in the same way too (2.40).

Muscettola mentions Bembo and Sannazaro (2.7–8) as examples of particularly good neo-Latin authors. Giovio goes into a longish catalogue of poets, most of whom were completely unknown to me (2.12–27, 32–3). Asked why so many poets seem to fail to develop after a promising beginning of their career, he suggests it's because they get corrupted by being praised too much and too soon (2.28–9); plus, your natural talent defines a plateu of ability beyond which you can't rise even with effort (2.30–1).

Here and there Giovio quotes short passages from the poems he discusses, and I was pleasantly surprised by how nicely they are translated here. ITRL translations of poetry often strike me as dull and most of the time they are in prose, but here they are in verse and really pleasant verse too.

After the neo-Latin poets have been exhausted, Muscettola provides a similar catalogue of those writing in Italian (2.56–66), and Giovio continues in a similar way with Italian prose writers (2.67–74, 79–82). He also talks a little about his own life and work, especially his Histories of his own time (2.86–96). They mention that lately the study of Latin is making better progress abroad than inside Italy (2.100), and towards the end of the dialogue Giovio mentions a few noted foreign authors, especially French ones (2.118–21). They also have some discussion about the usual problems of how to become a good neo-Latin author: whom to imitate, how closely to imitate, how much to borrow, etc. (2.106–14). A few years ago, there was an entire volume on that topic, Ciceronian Controversies (see my post from back then), and I still think that all this mostly just proves that trying to write good literature in a foreign language (especially a dead one) is largely futile.

Dialogue 3: Famous women

It seems that this sort of thing was practically a minor genre during the Renaissance; the very first volume in the ITRL series was a book by Boccaccio on exactly the same topic. Anyway, this dialogue starts with some eminently reasonable ideas. In an interesting contrast to what he was saying about military captains in the first dialogue, d'Avalos now says that women of the present generation are no less eminent than those of the past, and that any claims to the contrary are just misguided complaints of cranky old men (3.9–10); Giovio adds that they are in fact even better now because more attention than formerly is being paid to women's education and not just to their fertility (3.12). Giovio and Muscettolla take ancient Greeks and Romans to task for describing (and treating) women as inferior to men (3.20–6). Muscettolla points out that it is unjust to deny women an education and access to public life, and that if they were not denied these things, “it would be clear [. . .] that they had not lacked the natural abilities for attaining the honor of glorious virtue, but only the opportunity for doing so” (3.27).

After such a promising start, I was a bit disappointed by how the dialogue continued. D'Avalos agrees with Muscettolla in principle, but says that in practice this unjust treatment of women cannot be fixed as it would disrupt everything: “These things aren't possible without there being a destructive confusion in all affairs” (3.35). After that, the catalogues of famous women begin in earnest and mostly follow the criteria summarized by d'Avalos thus: “fame of lineage, distinction of beauty, and refinement of intellect and character” (3.37), to which he then adds a fourth requirement: chastity. As a result of this, most of the women mentioned here are various upper-class ladies who are invariably described as beautiful and presumably reasonably well brought up, as you might expect in that class, but who for the most part aren't described as having done anything particularly memorable. I thought they would manage to dig up some women who had written some literature or painted something or taken up some sort of career, but there's almost none of that, just an endless procession of idle aristocrats.

This catalogue of famous women is organized along geographical principles, moving from region to region, from town to town. Giovio deals with Milano (3.45–53), Venice (3.54–64), various minor cities of northern Italy (3.68–74), Genoa (3.75–85), Florence (3.87–96), Siena (3.97–8); then Naples (3.100–39), Rome (3.141–79), concluding with a long section in praise of Vittoria Colonna (3.179–209), at whose estate on the island of Ischia Giovio lived for a while after escaping from the Sack of Rome.

One good thing about this dialogue is that when dealing with a certain city, they don't just talk about women from there, but also a little about the city itself, its customs, the character of its people, etc. It's a nice reminder of the times when culture varied much more even over relatively short distances. We get a few curious factoids along the way; for example, apparently in Venice the dowries were so cripplingly high among the upper classes that a father who was so unlucky as to have several daughters might very well just marry off one of them, and pack the rest into a convent. As a result, the nunneries, being full of young women that didn't really want to be there and had no real sense of religious calling, seem to have become veritable hotbeds of fornication (3.58–9).

But that's nothing compared to Genoa where, if Giovio is to be believed, the whole city is practically a big den of decadence and depravity like something straight out of a 1920s pulp story. “Throughout the city during wintertime, in accordance with longstanding practice, nightly vigils suitable for nurturing love affairs are thronged to an almost unbelievable extent.” (3.77) “[T]hrough every season of the year Genoese women engage continually in love affairs and the pleasures of the wellborn. [. . .] even the very slave girls, bought from Scythians and Numidians, devote their holidays to lovemaking. They occupy themselves in licentious games and in unrestrained dances [. . .] But there is no greater opportunity for lascivious behavior or for making impudent advances to women than when matrons in small boats cruise along the shores and sail into the open sea to catch fish.” (3.79) I can't help feeling that the truth probably was considerably less exciting, but it makes for an enjoyable read anyway.

*

All in all, this was a pleasant enough book to read, but best taken in moderate doses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found the dialogue about the poets to be the most interesting; the one about women was a bit of a disappointment as I was hoping to hear more about women writers or artists instead of just idle aristocrats; and as for the dialogue about military commanders, it wasn't as boring as I feared it would be in view of my lack of interest in military matters.

BOOK: Francesco Filelfo, "On Exile"

Francesco Filelfo: On Exile. Edited by Jeroen de Keyser, translated by W. Scott Blanchard. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 55. Harvard University Press, 2013. 9780674066366. xxvi + 485 pp.

This book reminded me a little of Pontano's dialogues, which I read a few months ago (see my post from back then). Filelfo's book is likewise presented in the form of dialogues, and although exile is nominally their main topic, the speakers tend to talk about a number of different things and jump from one subject to another often (though not as often as they did in Pontano's dialogues).

Like dialogues usually do, these have a bit of a back story, which is apparently closely tied up with the turbulent political life of 15th-century Florence. Cosimo de' Medici had gradually risen from being ‘merely’ a rich banker to become one of the most influential people in Florence; eventually, his opponents — who seem to have been mostly traditional aristocrats that resented the influence of this new upstart — managed to get him expelled from the city, but soon afterwards he got back and then it was his opponents' turn to be exiled. Filelfo's sympathies clearly lie with the anti-Medici faction, and several of its notable members appear as characters in this work; the dialogues are presented as conversations amongst them at a point in time when they have already been sentenced to exile but haven't actually departed from Florence yet.

*

Book I mostly consists of efforts by Palla Strozzi, one of the soon-to-be exiles, to comfort his son Onofrio, who complains bitterly about having to go into exile (1.17–18). I'm not really sure if there's anything one can usefully say to comfort a person in such a terrible situation, and Palla's efforts certainly didn't strike me as particularly useful. He mostly follows the ideas of ancient Stoic and Cynic philosophers and even goes so far as to quote a number of letters and anecdotes about Diogenes, after whose nickname Cyon (“the Dog”; 1.104–5) the whole school of cynicsm got its name.

I've ranted against stoicism a number of times before, so there's not much point in repeating myself yet again here. Its main underlying idea seems to be that you shouldn't get too attached to anything and then you won't have any reason to feel sad or upset. This is trivially obvious and also completely useless, because it's simply too much at variance with human nature (and sometimes at variance with elementary physiology; see one Theodorus claiming to be unfazed at the prospect of being crucified, 1.79). One might well ask whether a life without such attachments would be worth living at all, even if it were possible to achieve it; but for most people it isn't possible anyway.

Similarly, I doubt that Palla's anecdotes about Diogenes are particularly helpful here. Sure, exile and nearly every other misfortune probably won't perturb you much if you're willing to live like Diogenes did — as a beggar utterly devoid of nearly every possession (as illustrated by the famous anecdote where he decided to forego having a cup once he realized he could just use his hands as a temporary cup while drinking water out of a stream; 1.91). But people generally don't want to live like that, and for very good reason too. At the same time, Palla's praise of Diogenes' attitude strikes me as hypocritical because I strongly suspect that neither he nor the other exiles in this book came anywhere close to any real poverty, even in exile.

Many of Palla's other arguments here also struck me as dubious and unconvincing. When his son complains that they are being exiled unjustly (1.220), Palla suggests that this simply means their persecutors are unjust, and a ‘wise man’ (that largely fictional creature that hasn't yet been seen outside of the pages of Stoic philosophy) naturally won't care what unjust and unwise people think about him (1.83–4).

Occasionally, Palla tries to bring in some ideas that seem inspired more by christian religion than by ancient philosophy, which doesn't really help at all. It's better to be condemned unjustly than justly, he suggests, because at least this means that you didn't actually commit the crime for which you are being condemned (1.221–2). Another religious idea is that all life is a kind of exile anyway, since your true home is with god in heaven, so what does it matter if you live in Florence or somewhere else? (1.183–95; Palla goes on to argue that one shouldn't be too attached to one's homeland, 1.199–212 — easier said than done.) These things maybe make sense if you really believe that god is somewhere out there keeping score and planning to reward you in the afterlife (1.88); but from my perspective as a non-believer, it's completely useless.

But I don't want to seem to harsh on Palla; some of the things he says are useful and interesting, e.g. when he gives examples of notable people who seemed to take their exile pretty well (such as Hannibal, 1.69–72).

Besides, it's not just Palla that I'm annoyed by; Onofrio for his part often paints too bleak a picture of exile and imagines everything in the worst possible terms. He fears that he will be regarded as infamous, that people will imagine he must surely have committed some great crime or he wouldn't have been exiled (1.60); but the impression I got from reading about the history of Renaissance Italy is that it was fairly commonplace for one segment of the political class to get expelled by the other, and then vice versa a few years later and so on. So I imagine that people at the time would understand that just because Onofrio got exiled, that doesn't mean that he was guilty of anything more heinous than having the bad luck of ending up on the losing end of a political struggle for power.

This book also contains a few digressions into other topics that are at best only distantly related to exile. For example, near the start, Palla spends a good deal of time talking about the importance of cultivating wisdom and philosophy (1.23–34) and then trying to define reason, emotion and various related concepts (1.35–54), which struck me as one of those typically philosophical things where I have the feeling that they pulled a lot of verbiage out of where the sun doesn't shine, and that I'm no wiser after having read it than before. A more interesting digression occurs near the end of the book, where Poggio Bracciolini (who appears in this volume as a kind of Epicurean, though of a considerably more base and physical sort than the original Epicurus) provides a nice counterbalance to some of the previous ideas with a long praise of drink and good food (1.142–78).

*

Book II is ostensibly about infamy, but much of it is spent on other things that are only vaguely connected to it. There's a long report (2.26–64) of a speech that one of the soon-to-be exiled noblemen, Rinaldo degli Albizzi, made to pope Eugenius, in which he spends a lot of time arguing that the accusations against himself and his colleagues should not be believed, because they are after all noblemen and therefore honourable and trustworthy and have no reason to harm their city, whereas their accusers (the Medici party) aren't any of those things (especially not noblemen :P). (See e.g. 2.39, 2.41–2, 2.48, 2.62.) Much is made of the fact that Cosimo de' Medici is a banker* and therefore obviously deceitful, greedy, corrupt etc., and his surname sounds like the word for a physician, which was not a very respectable profession in Renaissance Italy and which Filelfo therefore likes to use as the basis of anti-Medici puns (2.65). It's somewhat sad to think that there was a time when some people thought that things of this sort were a reasonable way to argue...

[* I was interested to find in the Wikipedia that Palla Strozzi (one of the central characters of these dialogues, whom we already saw in Book I above) was himself a banker as well :))]

The conversation then finally briefly turns to infamy — Onofrio complains that infamy is an evil (2.68–70), much like he did about exile in the previous book — but is soon derailed again: instead of talking about whether good reputation is really a good and infamy an evil (instead of both being something indifferent), they start to discuss the concept of good in philosophy, a long discussion which was mostly too technical for me (2.95–106, 2.112–54). For good measure, they finish this by taking a detour on the topic of reason, intellect, intelligence and various fine distinctions betwenen these things (2.155–61).

In any case, as far as I'm concerned, they don't end up having any useful advice for poor Onofrio; his father suggests that one has to simply behave virtuously and good reputation will come sooner or later (2.163) and waves away any difficulties in the usual Stoic manner: “those who are just and good cannot suffer infamy, especially in the eyes of good and wise men [. . .] all ill-repute directed at men who are upstanding and have integrity, since it is supported by no roots, must quickly fade and die” (2.172–3). This strikes me as a bit too optimistic; if you are in a position where a lot of people have an unfairly negative opinion about you, this will impact your life adversely in ways that you can't simply wave away with a bit of empty philosophizing. (Of course, in the specific situation that we see in this dialogue, we may well wonder whether sending these people to exile and making them infamous was actually unfair or not; Filelfo is hardly an unbiased observer here.)

*

Book III treats poverty in much the same way as the previous book treated infamy. There is a good deal of philosophical discussion that was rather too technical for my taste. For example, they start by arguing whether poverty is a bad thing at all, and before deciding that they seem to think it's useful to discuss a very general-purpose division of things into good, bad and indifferent (3.19–32). A certain type of philosopher seems to have loved this sort of pointless taxonomizing, and we see a good deal of that here. For example, good things can be divided into internal and external (3.21); they waste time discussing how to divide a “class” into several “species” (3.26–7), etc. None of this strikes me as the sort of thing that would actually shed light on anything, least of all on poverty.

Given the uselessly simplistic idea of dividing everything into good, bad and indifferent, one of the speakers (Leonardo Bruni, who was otherwise also a real person, like many of the speakers in this book) proposes that virtue is good, vice is bad, and everything else is indifferent (3.31). This is convenient since it allows you to conclude that wealth and poverty are neither good nor bad in themselves, which can be illustrated by the fact that someone can be rich and yet evil (like that bankster Cosimo de' Medici, the chief villain of this book), or virtuous and yet poor (like the aristocrats fallen on hard times who are the characters of this book, and whose side Filelfo is obviously a supporter of).

Filelfo tries to bolster his case by citing yet more examples from the lives of Diogenes, Crates and the like, which are just as unconvincing and just as useless to a normal person than they were in earlier parts of this volume. If you forget for a moment that Diogenes is a Famous Ancient Greek Philosopher™ and think about him without that aura for a moment, you have to admit that he is basically a homeless beggar who wanders the streets raving and ranting to himself. Nobody should be expected to live like that. If Filelfo can seriously suggest that this is a tolerable way to live, it can only mean that he is completely unfamiliar with anything like real poverty as well as completely devoid of imagination.

Another cheap and entirely unconvincing rhetorical trick is tinkering with definitions, which Filelfo attempts in 3.94: “wealth is not that with which the outer man is adorned by by which the inner man is equipped and embellished”, etc. etc. It's depressing to think that anybody could be expected to fall for this sort of ‘argument’.

From my perspective, the only sane person in this discussion is Poggio, who keeps trying to point out blindingly obvious things like that it's better to be comfortable than homeless and starving, but everyone else gangs up on him and Filelfo takes delight in presenting him as a foolish, shallow, gluttonous, grotesque caricature of a low type of Epicurean (3.126, 3.144). “But who commends Poggio, Rinaldo? Artisans, bakers, philistines, every shameless person.” (3.144. Here's that annoying aristocratic prejudice against tradesmen again.) He must have really had something against Poggio, but to me this is the one sympathetic character in this dialogue. Here's Poggio providing some sensible perspective in 3.85: “That obscure and joyless teaching for living and dining which, I see, originated with Antisthenes, was augmented by Diogenes, and reinforced by Crates, is proper to beasts, and savage ones at that, not to refined human beings.” And that's exactly it — any sort of civilization requires a certain material basis. Living in the sort of poverty advocated by Diogenes & Co. is completely antithetical to that. I suspect that this was as blindingly obvious to most Diogenes's contemporaries as it is to most of us today, and that he was already regarded as a deplorably misguided freak back then as well.

Towards the end of the book, the conversation veers off into another highly technical philosophical discussion (which has little to do with poverty itself), this time about voluntary and involuntary actions (3.107–23, 134–8, 145–62). I don't pretend to have understood very much of that, and I certainly didn't find it particularly illuminating, but I was interested to learn a new word here, namely “appetency”, which I don't think I've ever heard before. One of the speakers, Palla, makes a short conclusion which tries to connect this discussion back to poverty: “choice is not simply will of opinion but something that consists of opinion and appetency together when, after consultation, both agree on a single goal. It remains not only that we need not fear poverty but that we should choose it as the least encumbering of companions for the journey to happiness.” (3.162) But, once again, that's easier said than done.

Still, this book isn't all bad. There are a few paragraphs of fine invective against Cosimo de' Medici, again with the inevitable puns about physicians (3.63) etc.; “Cosimo is a banker, a hireling and a filthy usurer, the single greediest man in all of recorded history. No other vice is more loathsome, more worthy of punishment, none more at odds with an invicible and lofty soul than this.” (3.62.) “Poggio. You speak as though Cosimo spends nothing to equip churches and to provide dowries for young girls. — Leonardo. He provides prostitution for young girls, Poggio! — as if you were the only one who doesn't know that Cosimo makes a practice of furnishing money to certain poor and humble parents on condition that he be the first to pluck the flowers of their virgin dauthers!” (3.65) :)))

*

What to say at the end? I don't think this book is very useful as a consolation to people about to be exiled; and besides, I don't particularly sympathize with the exiles of this book anyway; but much of it was nevertheless pleasant to read, and I had a quite good time ranting against it while writing this post.

BOOK: Giovanni Pontano, "Dialogues" (Vol. 1)

Giovanni Gioviano Pontano: Dialogues. Vol. 1: Charon and Antonius. Edited and translated by Julia Haig Gaisser. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 53. Harvard University Press, 2012. 9780674054912. xxvii + 403 pp.

Pontano was a 15th-century humanist who spent most of his life in Naples. I read a volume of his poetry, Baiae, from the ITRL series some time ago (see my post from back then). This present book contains two of his dialogues, Charon and Antonius; according to the translator's introduction, he wrote three more, which will hopefully appear in a subsequent volume (p. x).

I don't quite know what to make of these dialogues, as I've never read anything like them before. They are a kind of strange combination of fiction and essay. Neither of the two really has much of a coherent topic; Pontano's characters just chat about various things and change their subject every few pages. I suppose you could even say that there's something realistic about that, and one could imagine that Pontano and his humanist friends used to have conversations of this sort, and that Antonius in particular was inspired by them.

Charon

Of the two dialogues in this book, I liked the first one, Charon, better than the second one. It is shorter and not as much of it was spent on topics that I found uninteresting. The setting is a sort of Greek underworld; besides the titular Charon we see two of the infernal judges, Minos and Aeacus, as well as the messenger-god Mercury. These characters talk to each other in various combinations, and occasionally with the souls of dead people that pass through the area as Charon is ferrying them across the Styx.

Some of the passages reminded me a little of Dante's Inferno — we see a few scenes with grotesquely brutal punishments being meted out to the dead souls (¶6–7, 16) — but most of the dialogue consists of philosophising conversations and most of the dead spirits involved are anonymous fictional people rather than real historical figures like they are in Dante (a rare exception being the appearance of two ancient cynic philosophers, Diogenes and Crates; ¶42–4).

Another difference is that the underworld here is more Greek than christian, whereas in Dante it was the other way around. (There's a curious passage in ¶7–;8 when Minos briefly refers to an appearance of Jesus in the afterworld after he got executed: “by us and by these crowds to whom he was unknown, he was instantly worshipped and adored at first sight” — and yet the underworld is still consistently shown as a pagan rather than christian place.)

The dialogue doesn't really have a plot; the closest it gets to it is the fact that the influx of new dead souls has gone down in the last few days and news of ominous earthquakes and other portents has reached the underworld, and now Minos and Aeacus are trying to figure out what's happening on Earth. In ¶45–8, Pontano uses this as an excuse to complain a little about the present state of Italy, which I imagine must have been a rather well-worn practice at that time.

Some of the other topics on which the dialogue touches at some point are: hope (¶3); silly puns (that only work in Latin; ¶4); human nature (¶9–10); poking fun at horny gods and priests (¶18) and at physicians (¶24); flowers (¶26); ominous earthquakes (¶2, 29–30), a comet (¶31, 35) and a strange solar eclipse (¶35); fate and free will (¶32–4); superstition (¶36–40); odd antics and ideas of Diogenes and Crates (¶20–3, 42–4); silly pedantic grammarians (¶49–53; one of them is actually named Pedanus!); conversations with various shades of the dead (¶56–65).

Antonius

The other dialogue, Antonius, is nearly twice as long as Charon, and was pleasant enough to read in small doses but overall I didn't like it as much. One notable difference is that the setting here is more realistic: a visitor comes to Naples, hoping to see Antonio Beccadelli, the respected humanist scholar; unfortunately it turns out that Antonio has recently died and the dialogue mostly consists of his friends talking about the sort of things they used to discuss with him, and occasionally reminiscing about his ideas and opinions. Thus you could say this dialogue is a sort of tribute by Pontano to his late friend Beccadelli (whom Pontano succeeded as the head of the Neapolitan Academy). Pontano himself does not appear in the dialogue, but his son does at one point, talking about how Pontano's wife is angry at her husband over his numerous marital infidelities (¶99–101; Pontano doesn't seem to be taking his wife's complaints particularly seriously).

Many of the discussions in this dialogue are a bit more technical and philological than in Charon, and a lot of them went right over my head as a result. The translator's introduction has a few interesting remarks about this, suggesting that this sort of discussions were of interest to the humanists because they wrote in Latin themselves and “wanted not merely to read the ancient Latin authors, but to have the knowledge to understand their every nuance [. . .] They wanted, paradoxically and impossibly, to turn themselves into native speakers of a dead language.” (P. xxii.)

Topics mentioned in Antonius include: the tarantula and its bite (¶5; it conveniently provides the Apulians with “a ready excuse for their insanity”); people who flaunt their (unimpressive) knowledge of Greek (¶9–10); Cicero and Quintilian on the purpose of oratory (¶19–26); on ‘status’ and ‘constitution’, two technical terms from rhetorics (¶27–36); Etna (¶38–53); on Virgil being unfairly criticized by Macrobius (¶54–65) and others (¶65–8); the (Latin) word fama and its many meanings (¶59–60); Antonius's ideas in support of Virgil (¶69–70) and against his detractors (¶73–5); poking fun at various towns (¶78), at immorality in Rome (¶79), at grammarians (¶80, 72–91), at other countries (¶81–2), at corrupt monks (¶91), at theological debates (¶95); a parade of masks (¶104).

This dialogue ends with a minor epic poem (about 600 lines long) about the battle at the river Sucro between Pompey and Sertorius in 75 BC (p. 377). It was probably inspired by similar descriptions of battles in actual ancient epic poems. I really had a hard time seeing why anyone could have liked this sort of poetry. Modern-day blockbuster movies are often criticized for having boring pointlessly long action sequences, and the minor epic poem here in Antonius is basically the same thing in a different medium. Most of it is little else than a long sequence of descriptions of hacking, slashing, stabbing, with plenty of details just where a spear entered someone's body, where a horse got slashed along with its rider, etc. etc. There are plenty of things in ancient epic poems that one can enjoy and imitate, but descriptions of battles are not one of them and I can't see why anyone would choose to do so. No doubt I'm just missing the point spectacularly yet again, like I often do.

The poem does get a little more interesting towards the end when a big fire erupts and, with some help from a friendly wind-god, intervenes in the battle. I guess you could again compare this with certain action-movie cliches, but at least I like descriptions of disasters better than of people hacking at each other with swords.

Another thing I liked about this poem is how Pontano sneaked the names of various friends of his into the story, by naming some of the warriors after them (see translator's notes 181, 196, 197, 223, 226, 231). I thought this was a rather amusing idea, especially since most of these people would have been humanist intellectuals and thus probably not particularly warlike (except for Marullus, who spent a part of his career as a mercenary soldier).

Miscellaneous

In Antonius ¶97, one of the interlocutors tells the joke of a man, his son and a donkey, who switch between various configurations of riding the donkey (just the man, just the boy, both, neither) in response to complaints by various passers-by. I didn't realize that this joke was so old; the translator's note 164 (p. 374) says that it's “an old fable that exists in several versions, including those in Petrarch and San Bernardino”.

Pontano's son says in Antonius ¶100: “my mother duly confessed both her own sins and my father's to the priest” :))

One of the characters in Antonius (¶106) is surprised to see a carnival parade, and comments that it's “a new import from northern Italy”. See also translator's note 186 on p. 377: Carnival “is first recorded in Venice and the Veneto in the thirteenth century, but began to spread to southern Italy at the end of the fourteenth”.

Pontano likes to poke fun at the French as being stupid: “the Gauls have no brain”, says Mercury (Charon ¶16); “the French are dreadfully dull and take more care for their bodies than for their minds” (Suppazio in Antonius ¶81). Perhaps some of this anti-French sentiment is because Pontano's employer, the king of Naples, was under serious threat from the French army (p. viii).