Complete Poetical Works of Ludovico Ariosto Read online

  Ludovico Ariosto

  (1474-1533)

  Contents

  The Epic Poems

  ORLANDO INNAMORATO by Matteo Maria Boiardo

  ORLANDO FURIOSO

  The Italian Text

  CONTENTS OF THE ITALIAN TEXT

  The Dual Text

  CONTENTS OF THE DUAL TEXT

  The Biographies

  BRIEF BIOGRAPHY: LODOVICO ARIOSTO

  ARIOSTO: CRITICAL NOTICE OF HIS LIFE AND GENIUS by Leigh Hunt

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2015

  Version 1

  Ludovico Ariosto

  By Delphi Classics, 2015

  COPYRIGHT

  Ludovico Ariosto - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2015.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

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  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  The Epic Poems

  Reggio Emilia, a city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region — Ariosto’s birthplace

  In 1474, the poet Ariosto, author of ‘Orlando Furioso’, was born in the Malaguzzi palace, near the present day town hall. He was the first son of a knight from Ferrara, who was in charge of the Citadel, and a noblewoman from Reggio, Daria Maleguzzi Valeri.

  ORLANDO INNAMORATO by Matteo Maria Boiardo

  Translated by William Stewart Rose

  Although Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love) was not composed by Ludovico Ariosto, it has been included in the collection as the epic poem inspired Ariosto to write a sequel, Orlando Furioso — his magnum opus. Orlando Innamorato was composed by the Renaissance author Matteo Maria Boiardo, who was of noble lineage, ranking as Count of Scandiano, with seigniorial power, serving as an ideal example of a gifted and accomplished courtier. The epic poem was published from 1483 (first two books) to 1495 (third book) and concerns the heroic knight Orlando (Roland).

  The narrative is largely inspired by the Carolingian and Arthurian cycles, while featuring its own original framing structure. As the plot is not woven around a single pivotal action, the inextricable maze of contrived episodes are seen to be linked, first, with the quest of beautiful Angelica by love-smitten Orlando and the other enamoured knights, then with the defence of Albracca by Angelica’s father, the King of Cathay, against the beleaguering Tartars and, finally, with the Moors’ siege of Paris and their struggle with Charlemagne’s army.

  Consisting of 68 cantos and a half, the epic is composed in the ottava rima stanza rhythm — a rhyming scheme used for long poems on heroic themes, comprising three alternate rhymes and one double rhyme, employing the a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c pattern — as originally used in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio. Boiardo began the poem when he was 38 years old, though he was interrupted for a time by the Ottoman–Venetian War (1463–1479). He is believed to have continued till 1486, when the poem was left unfinished.

  The narrative introduces the beautiful Angelica, daughter of the king of Cataio (Cathay), who comes to Charlemagne’s court for a tournament in which both Christians and pagans participate. She offers herself as a prize to whoever will defeat her brother, Argalia, who in the consequent fighting competition imprisons one of the Christians. But the second knight to fight, Ferraguto, kills Argalia and Angelica flees, chased by leading paladins, especially Orlando and Rinaldo. Halting in the Ardenne forest, she drinks at the Stream of Love (making her fall in love with Rinaldo), while Rinaldo drinks at the fount of hate (making him conceive a passionate hatred of Angelica). She asks the magician Malagigi to kidnap Rinaldo, and the magician brings him to an enchanted island, while she returns to Cataio where she is besieged by King Agricane, another of her admirers, in the fortress of Albraccà. Orlando arrives to kill Agricane and to free her, in which he succeeds. Afterwards, Rinaldo, who has escaped from the enchanted island, tries to convince him to return to France to fight alongside Charlemagne: consequently, Orlando and Rinaldo duel furiously.

  In spite of its unfinished state and some deficiencies in rhythm, Boiardo’s epic would have a lasting impression on European literature. It is renowned for the poet’s ardent devotion to the theme of love and loyalty, giving warmth and appeal to legends that had otherwise become colourless and cold. The story of Angelica’s struggles and Orlando’s pursuit were continued in Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto in 1516. Another Renaissance poet, Torquato Tasso, borrowed many of Boiardo’s epic conventions, although his Jerusalem Delivered does not use the Orlando frame.

  The original title page

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION.

  BOOK I.

  BOOK II.

  BOOK III.

  A nineteenth century drawing of Matteo Maria Boiardo

  TO HENRY RICHARD, LORD HOLLAND,

  Who, at a late period of my labours upon the “Furioso,” suggested the present work as its necessary prologue.

  KIND peer, who, mid the tempest of debate,

  Hast gladly wooed and won the Southern muse,

  Where, crowned with fruit and flower of mingling hues,

  She in a grove of myrtle keeps her state,

  This I had entered by a postern gate,

  Like stranger, who no certain path pursues,

  Or garden’s lord, that hath his own to choose,

  Hadst thou not shewn a better entrance late:

  That portal led me to Morgana’s1 towers,

  Where fierce Orlando found the dame at play;

  And though, too fast for me, from fields of flowers,

  She flies to savage waste, and will not stay,

  It will content me but to paint her bowers,

  If this be granted by the scornful fay.

  William Stewart Rose.

  1 See the adventure of Morgana, the type of Fortune, who, flying from her garden into a wilderness, is taken by Orlando, Book II.

  INTRODUCTION.

  IT is many years since I first entertained a vague idea of translating the Orlando Furioso, and circumstances of little importance to the reader, led me more recently to undertake it in earnest. This work was again laid down; and afterwards resumed at the instance of a distinguished friend; and by an odd coincidence, I am indebted also to the suggestion of another eminent person for the idea of the present translation of the Orlando Innamorato, which, I should observe, is intended to be auxiliary to that, my first and greater undertaking, though I need scarcely say, that the story of Boiardo is a necessary prologue to the poem of Ariosto.

  It was my intention to have translated the first mentioned work, exactly upon the model adopted by Tressan in his version of the French romances, a scheme afterwards executed with so much better success, by my late excellent friend, Mr. George Ellis, in his English work of the same description. A further consideration of the subject, however, induced me to imitate them only in their general plan of illustrating a compendious prose translation by extracts, without seeking to add poignancy to this, by what might give a false idea of the tone of my original. I recollected that I st
ood in a very different predicament from that of either of these authors; that, to compare my work with the one, which is most likely to be familiar to my readers, the ‘Specimens of early English Romances,’ the originals are composed in a spirit of gravity which can hardly be confused with the gay style of the translator, and therefore nobody can be misled by the vein of pleasantry which runs through Mr. Ellis’s work, and which is sure to be exclusively ascribed to the author of the Rifacimento. This, however, would possibly not be the case with me, as the Innamorato is in a great measure a humorous work, of which I might give a false impression, by infusing into it a different species of wit, from that which distinguishes it; a consideration which induced me to adopt the scheme I have pursued in the following sheets. This project is to give a mere ground-plan of the Gothic edifice of Boiardo, upon a small scale, accompanied with some elevations and sections of the chambers; which I have sought to colour after my original: or, (to speak more plainly,) the reader is to look for the mere story in my prose abridgement, while he may form some notion of its tone and style, from the stanzas with which it is interspersed.

  The story indeed, which seems most likely to interest the English reader, is that which took a strong possession of the imagination of Milton, who refers with more apparent enthusiasm to the Innamorato, than to the Furioso, and whose apparent preference is justifiable, if a richer stream of invention, and more consummate art in its distribution, are legitimate titles to admiration.

  In this latter qualification more especially, Boiardo, however inferior as a poet, must be considered as a superior artist to Ariosto; and weaving as complicated a web as his successor, it is curious to observe how much he excels him as a story-teller. The tales, indeed, of Ariosto, (and the want of connexion among these is, in my eyes, his most essential defect) are so many loose episodes, which may be compared to parallel streams, flowing towards one reservoir, but through separate and independent channels. Those of Boiardo, on the contrary, are like waters, that, however they may diverge, preserve their relation to the parent river, to which their accession always seems necessary, and with which they reunite, previous to its discharging its contents into their common resting-place. A short example may serve to illustrate what I have laid down. A damsel in the Innamorato relates to Rinaldo the adventures of two worthies named Iroldo and Prasildo, a narration which is interrupted, and which, though good in itself, at first appears to be an insulated episode. Rinaldo, however, afterwards falls in with Iroldo and his friend; and this history, thus resumed, unites itself naturally with that of the paladin. It is thus that all the stories are dove-tailed one into the other, and form a mosaic, as striking from the nice union of its parts, as from the brilliancy of its colours.

  Boiardo’s art, though here indeed he cannot be said to excel Ariosto, is as conspicuous also in the direction of the strange under-current of allegory which pervades his poem, as it is in the distribution of his stream of story; while the sort of esoteric doctrines conveyed by it, gives a mysterious interest even to what we imperfectly comprehend.

  Such indeed is the case with many of the fables of the Odyssey, and even of the Iliad; where the allegory, moreover, is always subservient to poetry, and poetry is never made subservient to allegory. This remarkable piece of judgment in the Greek poet has, I think, been well imitated both by Boiardo and Ariosto, and it is the neglect of this principle which has made allegory so often offensive in the Faery Queene of Spenser. The obtrusive nature of this has been well compared by Mr. George Ellis, in his Specimens of the early English poets, to a ghost in day-light. It is, moreover, destructive to all character; for Spenser’s heroes being mere abstract personifications of some virtue or vice, we almost always know what they are to do, though their actions are often unnatural, if considered as the actions of human beings. Hence it is that we are never entertained with pictures of manners in the Faery Queen, while these form one of the great charms of the poems with which I am contrasting it.

  It may however be said with justice, that we are to ascribe this more picturesque effect of allegory, rather to the spirit of the age than to that of the fabulist. For it is perhaps true that all early fable is purely allegorical; that this is by degrees mixed up with other circumstances, and it is in this mixed character that it is most conducive to poetical effect. But in a later age and later process of refinement, when there is a greater tendency to abstract, allegory is stript of her adventitious ornaments, and is at last forced upon us in poetry, painting, and sculpture, unveiled, or unencompassed by that sort of pleasing halo which is necessary to give her effect.

  But whether we are to ascribe Boiardo’s success in this particular to the character of his age, or to his own superior judgment, there is, I think, no doubt about the fact, and there is, I think, as little difficulty in conceding to my author, upon other grounds, the praise of skill in executing the singular work of which he was the architect.

  This extraordinary man was Matteo Maria Boiardo, count of Scandiano, and a native of Reggio in the Modenese, who flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century. These are circumstances the more worthy of mention, as some of them tend to explain what may seem most strange in the composition of the Innamorato; such as the provincial character of the diction, and more especially that careless and almost contemptuous tone between jest and earnest, which distinguishes his poem. It is doubtless on this account that Ugo Foscolo observes, in an ingenious critique on the Italian romantic poets, in the Quarterly Review,2 that he tells his story in the tone of a feudal baron; thus applying to him more justly what M. de Balzac has objected to another; of whom he says, “qu’il s’est comporte dans son poe’me comme un prince dans ses etats. C’est en vertu de cette souverainte qu’il ne reconnoit point les lois, et qu’il se met au dessus du droit commun.”

  2 In an article purporting to be a review of Whistlecraft’s poem, (now entitled The Monks and Giants,) and The Court and Parliament of Beasts.

  After speaking of the mode in which he arranged his work, it is a natural transition to the substance with which Boiardo built. This shews strong internal evidence3 of having been taken, in the main, from the old French romances of Charlemagne, or rather from Italian works, raised upon their foundation. Hoole mentions one of these, called Aspramonte, &c., of uncertain date, and we have the titles of two others, which were anterior to the Innamorato, one called Li fat ft di Carlo Magno c del Paladini di Francia, printed in 1481; the other printed in 1491, and entitled La Historia real di Francici) die tratta deifatti dei Paladini e di Carlo Magno in sei libri. Some indeed would seem to deny that Boiardo had dug in these mines, and would wish us to believe, that he not only compounded but manufactured the materials with which he wrought. Such at least would appear to have been the drift of one, who observes that Agramant, Sacripant and Gradassso were names of certain of the vassals of Scandiano. But if he means to insinuate by this, that Boiardo was not also indebted to the other source for his fictions and characters, as well might a critic of to-day, contend that the author of the Monks and Giants., who writes under the name of Whistlecraft, had not borrowed the idea of their cause of quarrel from Pulci, because he has given ridiculous modern names to some of his giants; or that he had not taken the leaders amongst his dramatis persona from the romances of the Round Table, because he has conferred “two leopards’ faces,” that is, his own arms, on the single knight, who perishes in Sir Tristram’s successful expedition.

  3 A single circumstance, which I cite, because it can be appreciated by every body, would convince me that such stories as are to be found in the Innamorato, were not the growth of Boiardo’s century. No author of that age could have imagined the friendly ties of alliance and consanguinity between Christians and paynims, though such fictions are justified by facts: thus we learn from Gibbon that like relations existed between Greeks and Turks, and (as we are informed by Mr. Lockhart, in the preface to his Spanish Ballads, a work which presents as striking pictures of manners as of passion) between Spaniards and Moors. No
r need such things surprise us, though the barriers which now separate Christian and Mahomedan, render them impossible. Nations are like individuals, and when they are brought into close and constant intercourse, of whatever kind, their passions, good or bad, must be kindled by the contact.

  But if Boiardo has apparently taken his principal fictions from the romances of Charlemagne, he has also resorted to other known quarries, and ransacked classical as well as romantic fable for materials.

  This edifice, so constructed, which Boiardo did not live to finish, soon underwent alteration and repairs. The first were made by Niccolo degli Agostini, and later in the same century a second and more celebrated rifacimento of it, from which this translation is composed, was produced by Francesco Berni; whose name has given a distinctive epithet to the style of poetry, in which he excelled, and of which he is vulgarly supposed to have been the inventor.

  This man was born of poor but noble parents, in a small town of Tuscany. He entered the church, to which he had evidently no disposition, as a means of livelihood, and, though as unqualified for servitude as for the discharge of his clerical duties, spent the better part of his life in dependence. He appears, however, to have been blessed with a vein of cheerfulness, which, seconded by a lively imagination, enabled him to beguile the wearisome nature of occupations, which were uncongenial to him; and of this he has left many monuments in sonnets and pieces in terza rima, (styled in Italian capitoli,) consisting of satires and various species of ludicrous composition. The titles of many of these sufficiently attest their whimsicality, such as his Capitoli sugli Orinali, sidle Anguille, his Eulogy of the Plague, &c. &c. But the mode in which he has handled this last subject, will give the best insight into the character of his humour. Having premised that different persons gave a preference to different seasons — as the poet to the spring, and the reveller to the autumn, he observes, that one may well like the season of flowers, or the other that of fruits; but that, for his part, he preferred the time of plague. He then backs his predilection by a rehearsal of the advantages attending this visitation; observing that a man is in such times free from solicitations of borrowers or creditors, and safe from disagreeable companions; that he has elbow-room at church and market, and can then only be said to be in the full possession of his natural liberty. He has rung all sorts of changes on this theme, and nothing can be more humorous than his details.