Ariosto Today: Contemporary Perspectives 9781442670983

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara
The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso
The History of the Furioso
‘The Nightingale in a Cage’: Ariosto and the Este Court
Ariosto: Landscape Artist
The Advertising of Fictionality in Orlando furioso
A Reading of the Interlaced Plot of the Orlando funoso: The Three Cases of Love Madness
The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto
The Theatre of Ariosto
From Poem to Theatre to Cinema: Luca Ronconi’s Orlando furioso
Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader
Contributors

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ARIOSTO TODAY

Contemporary Perspectives

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ARIOSTO TODAY Contemporary Perspectives

Edited by Donald Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi

U N I V E R S I T Y OF T O R O N T O PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2003 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 0-8020-2967-1

Printed on acid-free paper Toronto Italian Studies: Major Italian Authors (General Editors: Massimo Ciavolella and Amilcare A. lannucci)

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Ariosto today : contemporary perspectives / edited by Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella and Roberto Fedi. (Toronto Italian studies. Major Italian authors) ISBN 0-8020-2967-1 1. Ariosto, Lodovico, 1474-1533 - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Ariosto, Lodovico, 1474-1533. Orlando furioso. I. Beecher, Donald II. Ciavolella, Massimo, 1942- III. Fedi, Roberto IV. Series. PQ4587.A75 2003

851'.3

C2002-904926-1

This book has been published under the aegis of the Charles Speroni Chair of the Department of Italian, UCLA. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

Finally! after seeming to have been seized by the 'never-ending' grip of Ariosto, the emancipated editors give thanks to our contributing authors - one and all for their boundless patience, and send a special note of appreciation to Hiroko Fudemoto for her immeasurable assistance.

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Contents

Preface

ix

Introduction

3

DONALD A. BEECHER, MASSIMO CIAVOLELLA,

and ROBERTO FEDI Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara

18

DENNIS LOONEY

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 32 ANTONIO FRANCESCHETTI

The History of the Furioso 55 ALBERTO CASADEI

'The Nightingale in a Cage': Ariosto and the Este Court 71 GIORGIO MASI

Ariosto: Landscape Artist 93 MONICA FARNETTI

The Advertising of Fictionality in Orlando furioso DANIEL JAVITCH

106

viii Contents A Reading of the Interlaced Plot of the Orlando furioso: The Three Cases of Love Madness 126 ELISSA B. WEAVER

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 154 ROBERTO FEDI

The Theatre of Ariosto 176 STEFANO BIANCHI

From Poem to Theatre to Cinema: Luca Ronconi's Orlando furioso 195 SANDRO BERNARDI

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 209 LUCIA RE

Contributors

233

Prefacee

From the end of the quattrocento through the first three decades of the cinquencento, Ariosto concentrated his literary efforts in an attempt to elaborate the subject matter of his early exercises into more mature works, culminating with his celebrated poem,the Orlandofurioso in its numerous revisions and various editions). A current reading of his works reveals that Ariosto was not a writer who believed, as it was previously thought, that literature is something escapist or fantastic in nature, but one who, in writing and rewriting his works, tried to reinterpret literary tradition while incorporating the new literary instruments that were available to him at the time. In other words, Ariosto's literary production is an integration of tradition and invention. When he assumed the task of rewriting his previous works, he may well have considered them a bridge to the literary values of the past, while still challenging himself to maintain his own poetic interpretation and vision of the world. Understandably, he regarded the practice of only paying homage to literary tradition as a limiting, and ultimately uproductive exercise. The combination of tradition and innovation can provide the artist with a renewed freedom of expression only if the artist has first been fully versed in the legacy of the past. From this point of view Ariosto can be considered an exemplary representative of the Italian Renaissance. The essays in this volume consider both of these aspects of Ariosto's 'poetics.' The minor works and the Furioso are examined in their kinship to the classical and the humanistic tradition, and in relation to each other. The essays offer recent interpretive evidence as well as fresh

x

Preface

insights into the critical discourse on Ariosto's literary production by both Italian and North American scholars who, in the last few decades, have found in Ariosto's works a fertile ground for current literary methodologies. Their contributions focus on textual analysis and narratology in the delineation of a complete status quaestionis on the literary and cultural figure of Ariosto. The essay by Dennis Looney studies Ariosto's use of ancient or classical texts as a source of his writing; from his earlier letter in 1498 to his final revision of Orlando furioso in 1523. The contaminatio of classical litterature, which depends on a deliberate mix of medieval and classical literary forms, is also at play in much of Ariosto's lyric poetry, as it underlies the theatrical works he created for performance in the ducal theatre of the Este family. Antonio Franceschetti in his examination of the Orlando furioso as a sequel to M.M. Boiardo's Orlando innamorato, also investigates how Ariosto assumes episodes and characters from the Innamorato, and then proceeds to alter them completely from their original tone. Relying on the instruments afforded by 'textual bibliography,' Alberto Casadei offers a comparative reading of Ariosto's three printed editions of the Orlando furioso, both from the point of view of composition and from the philological perspective. The critical focus of Giorgio Masi is the Este court in Ferrara, which is an essential element for any research on Ariosto in particular, and on the Renaissance in general. Monica Farnetti, on the other hand, underscores how Ariosto draws his landscapes in the Furioso, riot only from the Este court and its surroundings, or from scenes of everyday life in Ferrara, but also from the 'real' and imagined world at large - a most extraordinary trait of this narrative. Daniel Javitch shows that Ariosto highlighted the fictional status of the Furioso not just occasionally but ubiquitously; and he indicates the ways that Ariosto modified many of the conventions of chivalric romance that he inherited in order to advertise the fictionality of his poem. Elissa Weaver's contribution discusses the medieval romance narrative technique of entrelacement: interlaced plot structure as used by Ariosto in the Orlando furioso and, in particular, the way this technique creates meaning in the three episodes of the poem whose theme is love madness. Roberto Fedi examines Ariosto's attempt to reorganize the Rime (his lyric poems) into a 'canzoniere' form similar to the Petrarchan model, while investing the 'new' collection with its own autonomy and immediacy of language. Stefano Bianchi, in his close study of Ariosto's playwriting, reminds us that, of the number of plays

Preface xi Ariosto wrote during his some twenty years of theatrical engagement, the most significant is the Cassaria (1508), universally praised as the first 'modern' play since it is written entirely in the vernacular (instead of Latin) and is free of extensive borrowing from classical models. Sandro Bernardi's essay affirms that Ariosto's great epic, so 'modern' in its various manifestations, is worthy of that twentieth-century medium par excellence - cinema - as testimony to the continual contemporaneity of Ariosto's poetry; and, that the church staging of the Orlando furioso in 1969 by Luca Ronconi was a significant experiment, in line with the anti-traditional tendencies of theatre during those years. Finally, Lucia Re analyses how, beyond the most obvious convergences and affinities, Ariosto is persistently present throughout the structure in all of Calvino's writing. The article by Elissa Weaver was originally published in Italian under the title 'Lettura dell'intreccio dell'Orlando furioso: il caso delle tre pazzie d'amore,' in Strumenti critici 34 (1977): 384—406. The article by Roberto Fedi constitutes a full rewriting of his chapter 'Preistoria di un canzoniere: le Rime di Ludovico Ariosto' in La mzmoria della poesia: Canzonieri, lirici e libri di rime nel Rinascimento (Roma: Salerno, 1990).

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ARIOSTO TODAY

Contemporary Perspectives

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Introduction

DONALD A. BEECHER, MASSIMO CIAVOLELLA, AND ROBERTO FEDI

Let us agree that one of the greatest hallmarks of Ariosto's literary career is the remarkable degree of individualism and innovation he achieved in works that everywhere pay homage to a vast repository of antecedent forms, styles, and narrative parts. These ostensibly contrasting vectors may be called tradition and invention or imitation and novelty. That one might seek precisely through this practice an expression of personal poetic revelation and a particular vision of the world is one of the paradoxes of any age. There can be no doubt that Ariosto's creative works were compulsively grounded in the axiomatic habits of humanism, beginning with the premise that creations meriting the highest consideration carry within them, through imitatio, the clear markers through which they may be aligned with the master works of antiquity, or with those of the European literary tradition; the great artist, then, is the one who forcibly transcends that legacy. One of the most instructive of challenges for the close reader of Ariosto is to identify those critical criteria whereby Ariosto would have collected his lyric poems into a canzoniere, rewrite his prose comedies into verse, and increase the number of cantos from forty to forty-six while integrating elements of Pietro Bembo's significant work - Prose della volgar lingua (1525) - for the third edition of the Orlando furioso (1532). Indeed, how does one qualify as an informed reader of Ariosto, and how does the reading mind decipher the many literary references? This challenge is passed on even to the non-coterie reader. To that end the essays in this collection serve as gatekeepers to the various strategies available to the reader of Ariosto who is confronted everywhere by conventions,

4 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi

traditions, and the 'mannerist excesses' that arise from the referentialities of creative imitation. These 'excesses' appear most readily in the Orlando furioso where emphasis is placed upon fantasy, with a programmatic exploitation of coincidentia oppositorum, of humour, of narrative bizarraries and superficial effects. The renowned Italian critic Francesco De Sanctis, in his monumental History of Italian Literature (1870-1), set the tone by praising Ariosto for his divinity as an artist while admonishing him for his lack of substance or true sentiment. For him, the Furioso was a fantasy creation of mere adventure, a child's world of broken narratives, a literary toy, causing the adult in us to say of these childish things: 'They are paper soldiers and paper castles.'1 Nevertheless, De Sanctis remained uneasy in the presence of such consummate artistry. Ariosto's may be a world of the imagination, yet it is a self-critical one, shot through with ironies that call attention to hidden purposes of a potentially 'higher' order. This is but one point of entry into the question of thematics, however, on a scale extending from divertimento to an indictment of human folly. The qualified praise of the nineteenth-century critics was not the nadir of the poem's reputation. For post-romantic readers, at least, Ariosto's imaginary worlds were one with his superlative style, even though he seemed lacking in a high moral vision. In fact, the ebb-tide came during the period of the Counter-Reformation, when pedantic stylistics and moral zeal were revisited upon the works of the 'pagan' Renaissance. The pre-eminence of the Furioso became the subject of debate in Ferrara only shortly after the poet's death. The politics of literature to which Ariosto had been attuned during his lifetime did not abate with his death. The quest for the reduction of all that was great in art to rules and formulae continued to take its toll. Later there was competition from the Gerusalemme liberata (1581) of Torquato Tasso, carefully conceived in that climate of regularization and utility, for it was one of the fixations of the sixteenth-century critical mind to describe in terms of formulae and precepts the recognized literary genres in order that excellence might be determined in almost quantitative fashion. Had Ariosto followed the rules? Had Ariosto not taken unprecedented liberties in his handling of Boiardo's Orlando innamorato? Giovan Battista Pigna conceded that Ariosto had abducted the rules and thereby altered the traditional 'matter' of chivalric romance. As such precepts took hold in the new devout climate, Ariosto's poem receded from the ideal. When Tasso's Liberata appeared, with its accommodation of Catholic

Introduction 5

austerity, comparisons between the two works became an industry. De Sanctis was anticipated by three centuries in the emerging distrust of Ariosto's unbridled fantasy and freedom of invention, his playful absurdities and excesses. The moment for such things had passed, in favour of moral activism and a strenuous defence of Catholic orthodoxy. Even the more sober Tasso, toward the end of his life, agreed that he had not been sober enough, and set about to revise thoroughly his Liberata, in the interests of conformity both to classical poetic practices and to Catholic orthodoxy, in his Gerusalemme conquistata (1593). That was the beginning of the eclipse, although Ariosto enjoyed the ongoing approbation of a select few supporters, including Galileo Galilei, who offers: '[W]hen I enter into the Furioso, I see a wardrobe open up, a stage, a production gallery, ornate with a hundred statues by the most celebrated sculptors, with an infinite number of complete stories, and the best ones by illustrious painters, with a large number of vases made of crystal, agate, lapis lazuli, and other gems, and then finally filled with rare, precious things, marvellous and of utmost excellence.'2 Galileo's appreciation would seem to suggest the dangerous world of 'art for art's sake' that is barely to be separated from the diversionary and extravagant, except that in baroque fashion, Galileo recognized the 'world' of artifice and the genius of the maker who, out of pure invention, nevertheless left nothing to random improvisation. He was seen as the true maker, the painter and sculptor of marvels and surprising descriptions. Such inventiveness extended to the elegance of language. Galileo intuited that at the core of the poetry and compositional technique, the abundance of episodes, characters, and situations, was nothing less than a vast 'idea' created by an extraordinary mind. Such a poem could not be put on trial by pedants; in fact, itjudged those readers whose faculties fell short of its genius. In the Furioso, harmony and serenity are brilliantly wrought from the daunting multiplicity wherein all the parts coexist without contradiction in an act of consummate balance. Paradoxically, the appraisal in baroque aesthetic terms came to its apogee only in the twentieth century when, in 1918, Benedetto Croce spoke of Ariosto as the poet of 'armonia,' as a god who 'created' his universe from nothing, loving it for better or for worse, capturing in it the dialectic, the rhythm, and the harmony of creation. Croce carries the e pluribus unum of Galileo into a philosophical ideal (he speaks only of the Furioso) of a universe arising from nothing that is harmonious as creation itself, and watched over by the poet-creator. Following Croce, critics laboured to impose a greater dimension of reality upon his fantasy

6 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi

realism, to liberate it from philosophical idealism and reground it in history. Following the lead of Pio Rajna in Lefonti dell' 'Orlando furioso,' first published in 1876, both the positivist and philological schools of criticism took up the cause. Their studies have given encouragement to contemporary critics to carry forward the historical, philological, and structural analyses of the poem. In particular, these efforts have led to clarifications concerning the narrative mechanisms of the epic, the author's relations with the Este court, and, generally, to a more precise appreciation of Ariosto's contribution to the Italian Renaissance and to letters on a world-wide basis. Moreover, there has been an increasing sense of the need, not to decentralize the Furioso, but to reread all of Ariosto to discover the scope of his productivity, the place of his comic plays and lyric poetry, and the relationships of all these works to each other. The Furioso gains in its dimensions with the recognition that it was a project of thirty years' duration, and that the author produced not one but three editions (with 'additions' in each). By comparison, Ariosto's work in other genres tends to fall into the shadows, even to the point of adverse evaluation. The lyric poems, some of which predate the Furioso, are only now gaining consideration as studies for the 'lyric' sections of the epic - studies in poetic moods and temperaments. These poems are not the mere imitations of Petrarch they have often been taken for, but crafted positions in relation to the Petrarchan legacy. Altogether they are more immediately personal and intimate than poems in that tradition are inclined to be, signalling a more contemporary inspiration than formal imitation would allow. In similar ways, the comedies are classical extrapolations, yet remodelled into court festival plays rich in contemporary social allusion and texture. Such 'multipurpose' works are reminders that their author was also an active servant to the Este court, one of its official representatives, and the governor of the Garfagnana (in those times a wild region not far from Lucca) from 1522 to 1525. He was likewise an impresario and director of cultural events in Ferrara, particularly in matters theatrical. There is every reason, then, to think that his works are not the idle confections of a detached humanist, or a remote 'smiling' man; instead, they are the creations of one who was involved in the current intellectual and political debates of his time. In one sense Ariosto is the Renaissance man, apt for many offices and a proven performer as a diplomat and administrator. Yet he was a man of very personal predilections at the same time, a man devoted to 'making' and to the idea of beauty, a man who evinced a touch of melancholy

Introduction 7

concerning his era and his career, who registered the darker sides of the Renaissance - the decadence of knowledge, the bitterness of conquest and defeat, and the sense of a glorious moment passing. Cervantes places a sonnet written to the valiant Don by Orlando himself at the opening of Don Quixote (ca. 1605), establishing the degree to which the Furioso had marked an age, and the extent to which it signalled the apogee of Renaissance fancy on the precipice of irony and decline. A similar kind of dissonance was exposed in Cervantes's Don Quixote in those places where the hero takes an Ariostian landscape for reality itself. In that sense, the full fictionality of the Furioso was perceived as an alternate reality so desired by some as to confuse the foundations of cognitive orientation. If there is a common denominator in the articles to follow, it is surely that Ariosto's creations are charged with allusions and allegiances that invite and demand recognition. Many of these referents have long since been identified: Ariosto and the classics; the Este court culture, princes, and patronage; the milieu of medieval romance; the ethos of Petrarch; the new poetics offered by Bembo; and the progressions of contemporary humanist thought. These are not of the same order, however, for some relate to subtle social ironies, if not being merely private asides, while others participate in the various aspects of Ariosto's entire ars poetica - aspects that are at once buried and revealed in everything that he created. There is, hence, a measure of the allegorical in what he wrote, insofar as there are intimations of primary and secondary readings in every inflection, intimations of complaint or moral reflection, of generic human qualities or underlying systems - epiphanies of accident and intent. Much of the critical endeavour in the essays to follow is devoted to acts of identification that are based on methodological rationales of probability, each requesting that the reader implement a certain reading strategy, each bringing an additional set of resonances to an understanding of the texts. The unspoken bias of the collection is that in spite of the surface distractions for which Ariosto has been so much celebrated (and criticized), he is an artist of the intertextual par excellence. The processes are so pervasive as to raise questions not about where we should meaningfully begin, but where we should cry 'Enough!' and call a halt. In an immediate and self-evident sense, the Furioso recommends itself as a prospective roman a clef. The epideictic and celebratory insets involving members of the Este court are easily identified. After all, the Furioso was an Este court poem, a dynastic foundation myth bestowed by

8 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi an artist upon his patrons. Must the narratives not then allegorize themselves across time and generations? The suggestion is potentially treacherous, particularly to the degree that readers detect relations of irony between the chivalric fictions and the less than perfect realities of the contemporary court. From the point of view of the poet as courtier, such referentiality must be politic and contained, the subversive and tendentious assiduously avoided. Increasingly, however, critics have become attuned to movements along the gradient from high praise to covert satire. Renaissance humanism was, above all, a cultural perspective based on imitatio. Hence, for Ariosto, imbued as he was with this philosophy, creation was an act carried out in relation to things already made. It was insufficient, however, merely to seek inspiration in the works of the ancients; it was also necessary to manifest those alignments in select ways, making apparent to the reader correspondences apt for identification arid comparison. In this vein, reception becomes a constant banquet of sameness and difference overtly registered, whereby the new functions in a constant state of referentiality to other texts. That is a given. Once again, there is a gradient, however, this time ranging from pure derivativeness, even plagiarism (as an act devoid of any moral condemnation), to contaminatio and metamorphoses of varying degrees, to borrowings so interfused as to function at the level of mere nuance or deja vu. To account for such measures, we must resort to the 'meme,' or minimal unit of transferrable cultural content from memory to memory, for these are the elements subject to reinscription from creative work to creative work. Ariosto's vocabulary was broad, but in all certainty the narrative elements of the plays of Plautus, the identifying marks of the Petrarchan and Bembian lyric, and the language of the chivalric epic are but several of the dominant elements absorbed from two thousand years of Western culture. Here, then, is a second and arguably far more demanding source of referential materials than those potentially drawn from experiences in court life. There is a subcategory of these referential domains that may be expressed under the heading of court culture or 'the Ferrarese literary renaissance.' That is to say, there was a particular allegiance in the works of Ariosto to the artistic achievements and stylistic idiosyncrasies of his own city-state of Ferrara. This is but a refinement of the question regarding intertextuality. That a continuity of thought and artistic preoccupation might emerge which belonged to a place is, in itself, a thesis to ponder, but certainly in conventional historical terms Ferrara was recog-

Introduction 9

nized as a cultural and artistic 'carrefour,' a fame merited by the many interconnected achievements produced within its borders. Ariosto's work is arguably a dialogic development within this context in all of his genres of writing, and thus, by extension, a studied contribution to the Ferrarese renaissance. This view does not contradict the fact that Ariosto was an omniscient borrower, but asserts that his work is, at the same time, the culmination of indigenous trends based on indigenous models. In the articles to follow, something of Ariosto the courtier will gain in relief, the man of a geographical region having its own cultural chronology, and the man of a regional readership having its own experiential touchstones. Integral to the enjoyment of such referents is a semiotics of correspondences on all levels, structural, historical, and thematic, whereby comparative 'epiphanies' recommend themselves to momentary consciousness. For example, historical tags are preconditions to historicizing Ariosto's work. Where they are reinforced through iteration, even as leitmotifs, the connections are strengthened and the pleasures of recognition heightened. Tagging these signs is a matter of cross-cultural knowledge, of comparative reading, of which there is a great variety in the articles to follow. To anatomize the categories of the referential is invariably to posit something of a theory of cognition. It is tantamount to spelling out categories of memory and experience of a residual nature apt for occasional excitement by incoming literary stimuli. Many likenesses fire subliminally, but a rare few crowd into consciousness; to these competing victories we attach significance. The question is how we prepare the recombinant memory field for play. Received knowledge is a level of memory, the by-product of inferences, dialogically enriched and latently present as touchstones of identification and analysis to which all new input is submitted. Identification by analogy runs from the archival to the contemporary, and from the 'meme complex' to entire structures, themselves reduced to paradigms. Much of the work is passive and instinctual, briefly attentive to the ongoing recognition of discrete detail. The intertextual resonances, because of the degree of their presumed intentionality, however, would seem to request more significant degrees of attention as pleasures to be derived from the text. There are several strategies in particular in the works of Ariosto of an intertextual nature that require special recognition, each relying on quite particular cognitive skills for its actualization. One pertains to the comedies. There is a dimension well beyond liter-

10 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi ary source hunting that relates to the assessment of any Italian play in the erudite tradition, for that very designation, 'erudite,' depends upon a relationship to the some twenty-two then known plays of Plautus and Terence. To be erudite meant expressing in practice a shifting but minimal number of features that generically characterized the plays of the ancients - features both typological arid structural. Without a manifestation of these features at critical-mass level, the play must fail the erudite test that alone gives it respectability. That was a humanist game in which Ariosto was a knowing and innovative participant. Indeed, innovation was a critical part, for while allegiance was everything, a margin-testing allegiance was better. It was Ariosto, more than any other writer in the period, who served an apprenticeship in the performance and translation of those ancient plays in a way that prepared him to create the first comedies entirely in the Italian vernacular through which the inherent properties of humanist orthodoxy were retained. He was the true inventor of the genre, the writer who, without stating the rules, illustrated the requisite density of referentiality critical to the game. The judges in the contest of 'variation orthodoxy' were not only the academicians who discussed these plays, but the audiences who attended them, bearing to the performances cumulative and for the most part fresh memories of contributions in kind from the classical tradition. Instinctually they knew the character types, the generic functions of each, the vocabulary of intrigue, the typical exploitations of outdoor spaces, and the ethos of new comedy, much as we are perhaps today versed in the formulae of television situation comedy. That is to say, they were familiar with the ways of Plautus and Terence perceived through iteration and inference. For them, arguably, seeing an Ariosto play was above all an intertextual kind of procedure. It was the reception of novelty against the requisite markers of membership, a kinetic act of determining sameness and difference, not unlike those we employ in orienting ourselves in our own worlds of daily reality. Part of those correspondences pertain to the game of imitatio - derived from a known aesthetic frame of reception - but part are the simple gestures of half-recognition, suspension, and resolution that satisfy the most fundamental levels of epistemic demand - things pertaining to knowledge temporarily undisclosed for which the mind craves resolution, as in jokes or riddles. In this latter form of referential orientation we pass from the game of genre classification to the urgency of rendering the different into categories of the familiar. To make the point more concrete, a play such as Isuppositi should be

Introduction

11

seen as a continuous collage of situation and character drawn from Terence's Eunuchus and Plautus's Captivi, with a fair dose of motivic and lexical allusion derived from other canonic works. This is no arcane affair, for the sources are announced most playfully in the prologue; it is an invitation to all spectators to see everything new as something old, and to revel in the structural analogies, topical references, and studied reconfigurations. Here is a play that demands an entirely corresponding set of referents in syncopation with the developments of the unfolding plot. Together they recall a multitude of memories within a memory theatre that is conditioned by the properties of genre - reaching for what Louise George Clubb has called elements of 'high specific density, weighty with significance from previous incarnations.'3 We may look upon these potential identifications as buried treasures meant to remain where they are, yet critics continue to believe that annotating the parallels is germane even to the modern reading experience. A second form of referentiality pertains to the Furioso, in which Ariosto employs the special narrative technique of entrelacement. This is a demanding form of intratextuality insofar as the correspondences are not calibrated to information outside the text, but to resonances within the text. The interlacing effect is gained by breaking off one narrative in order to take up another, and even a third, before returning to the first, each intervening narrative itself being subject to strategies of interruption, inset, and eventual continuation. Such an approach to narrative continuity, arguably, cannot have been taken without a perception of compensating gains. All narratives, for their success, depend upon memory of what has passed, whetted by curiosity at the least, if not by the emotional enhancements of suspense. Where narrative breaks off, suspense is itself suspended, and memory must be more long term if the story is to be recovered at a later point. The difference is that intervening memories, suspenses, and experiences arise to colour the return. One possible effect is a reification of all the stories through the perception of connectors among them. Memory and suspense continue to seek resolution even in the insets, constructing resonances, even motivic reinforcements. A new gradient appears, with merely suspended action at one extreme and runaway analogues at the other. Ariosto's narrative presents a cognitive wonderland wherein presumptions of authorial intentionality emerge from the loosest of pattern identities. Central to the matter is the question of density of feature and reasonable probability. The Furioso, as in Spenser's later Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), is an expositor's playground because of the rich potential for the detection of

12 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi harmonious overtones, making both authors procedural masters of the ars combinatoria. Yet the pursuit is clearly an invited one, for the strategy of interrupted narrative can have no other rationale. Still another intertextual reading strategy involves the three editions of the Furioso that Ariosto himself prepared for press. Quite logically, this is not a reading program intended by the artist as part of the complete reception of his work. Nonetheless, the exercise is an irresistible one for those who seek to know more about Ariosto's creative practices and maturation as an artist. One bias potentially modified in the process is that last versions must necessarily be the best. If Ariosto made telling insertions to his second and third editions of the epic, it is natural to look to them for clues concerning his changing attitudes toward style, aesthetic standards, and ultimately the meaning of the poem. Some observers have detected in these additions fundamental shifts in sensibility resulting from altered humanist ideals and the altered social and political conditions of the 1520s and 1530s - the invasions of the French and imperial forces and the sack of Rome. Yet the objection will always return that the 'additions' are not of an autobiographical nature, that Ariosto's three versions do not constitute essentially three different poems, each with its own ethos. Even so, there are choices to be made among these editions if only on aesthetic grounds: which of them represents Ariosto the artist at his finest? A parallel case in point is Wordsworth's long autobiographical poem The Prelude, first published in 1805, but revised extensively up to the time of the author's death in 1850, leading to very different versions. The last one should have represented his final testament, yet for many the initial version, with its greater freedom and spontaneity, its pagan spirited and more enchanted voice (progressively eroded by the despondencies, rigidities, and confirmed Christian ideologies of the aging poet) recommends itself as the finest of all. The parallel with Ariosto is loose at best, but it illustrates the nature of the choices involved. In related terms, the first Furioso demands its due by dint of being a work created in Ariosto's youth, with all the merits and faults of a first vision. Poems are of their times, the products of artistic moments, and are later subject to the passage of time arid to ideological drift. It is telling that the earliest version of the Furioso has been thought to be more 'romantic,' whereas the latter is more 'classical,' given the gradual disciplining of Ariosto's artistry through 'additions' that reflect his awareness of the changing rules to writing. There are tones within the final version that for some readers conventionally suggest a darker mythic

Introduction

13

frame of reference subsequently held by the poet. There is still another suggestion that such tones signify the spiritual transformation of Ariosto's vision. All such observations rely upon the way in which the multiple editions are read against each other in the search for trends implicit in the order of emendations. It would be misleading to suggest that the riddle is the quintessential forme simple of Ariosto's writing. Nevertheless, intertextual inflections are recognized only when they are processed as clues, archetypes, and inferences. These parallel narratives can then be searched for reifying inflections that, by their similarity, we recognize as being less than accidental although much is left to the reader in discerning exactly which ones are the significant analogies. This is nowhere more the case than with the reading of Ariosto's plays against the background of the ancients. The point was made previously that comparative reading was in every likelihood the primary goal for original audience members, and particularly for the cognoscenti. Now, without denying a word of this, it must also be stressed that Ariosto played hide-and-seek at the same time with his points of reference. That is to say, what was perceived as manifest in order to qualify the play as erudite was also conceived as a riddle. From the outset, Ariosto wanted to maintain his artistic distance to the point of anxiety. If Plautus and Terence are the incontestable gods of every erudite machine, as it were, those tell-tale features may yet be so subdy interfused as to obscure their identities even to their own authors. This is Ariosto's literary version of the thimble game in which the object is hidden in plain view, disguised merely by the 'busyness' imposed by the other objects in the room. The players of this game are each required to find the thimble, first visible to the most observant player, and last to the least observant, who is often helped with such teasing remarks as 'It's right there in front of you' or 'Watch that it doesn't bite you,' until finally, he too manages to see it. The game is a test of object recognition involving something constantly available to the sight, but for our purposes it is a metaphor for the seen but not perceived in accordance with pattern-recognition proclivities. The prologue launches the game with the parallel assertion that what spectators seek of the old will appear entirely new because it is disguised by the busyness of the new trappings and surroundings. Ariosto teases with the prospect that his art is full of clues that are omnipresent yet covert. Much of the critical debate regarding Ariosto's artistry revolves around these two points. Croce celebrated the patterning of a godcreator, but patterning that is both self-conscious and strategically hid-

14 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi den. It is all of a piece with the capacity for these plays to move from contingency to contingency within a frame of generic expectation toward stasis in a new order concerning family, fertility, and the reallocation of material wealth. The experience of the referential increases in complexity when the original text, either disguised as a source or even revealed to the audience, is then troped in the process of imitation through ironization. The prospect of parody most clearly appears in Ariosto's handling of Boiardo's Orlando innamorato (1487). The simplest construction to be put upon the relationship is that Ariosto took up the unfinished poem with the intention of completing it in homage to Boiardo. Yet readers of the two poems cannot fail to conclude that Ariosto riot only transcends the substance of the original in extending its episodes and the acts of its characters, but imposes a complete metamorphosis upon its ethos. To the extent the Innamorato is a sustained point of reference for the reader of the Furioso, the points of difference and departure will declare themselves. It is a compound relationship, as Ariosto himself intended. Parody is a strange mode, for its effects are reciprocal, at once intending to defame, though never to destroy, the original text, and in a certain sense to honour the original through a relationship of irony. The author of the initial work relies upon the second writer in having his own identity renewed whenever the strength and integrity of that work cannot be destroyed by the parodist. Subversion by parody, then, must always reconfirm the existence and value of the original text. Parody is markedly more 'political' than the intertextual confirmation of the erudite, let us say, because the ironist is at work. Where are the dividers between approbation and subversion? Parody is, after all, an imitation made with the intent of calling attention to differences as a measure of what is important to the second writer. This is to invoke a very special cognitive response in the act of 'analogizing,' wherein the orientation between two similar things is marked by an act of value judgment. How does the parodist instruct his readers to make those value associations? Once again it is based on the evaluation of inflections and probabilities. What does it mean that the Furioso, in comparison to its source, is so charged with excessive energy and comedic episodes that it becomes a form of high burlesque in the process? That Ariosto's Orlando goes mad in such flamboyant ways is a parodic formula of the chivalric protagonist. Both referential reading strategies and the artistry of diversionary fantasy point back to underlying questions about fiction and fictionality

Introduction 15 itself. At the point of first contact, what contract is established with regard to knowledge and purpose? Is it the nature of these chivalric adventures to suspend disbelief in the interests of establishing the reality of their world, or is this from the outset a hyperbolized fictionality that calls attention to its own artifice, warning us simultaneously to keep a certain distance from its fancy and amorality so that we do not lose the moral and epistemological bases of our own lives? This point will emerge from time to time in the articles to follow: is the Furioso to be considered intertextually with the 'text' of our own consciousness in the form of real and edifying experiences, or as a 'siren' text constantly crying 'Beware!' as something out of Coleridge's Kubla Khan"? Part of the verbal being of the poem is the anxiety it produces around the powers of its own fictionality - a matter of continuing interest in a reading age that is no longer compulsive about the need for didacticism in art but that is caught up with questions of utility. This is but a new entry into the history of the poem's critical tradition, polarized between the moralists obstructed by the catering to hedonistic escape and the realists' effort to reclaim the poem for mimetic application. The contest indicates the equipoise of the poem itself between invention and exemplum, the monodimensional and the allegorical. That very instability, abetted by modern angst, will serve more effectively than any other factor to keep the poem in the forefront of critical attention. There has been a residual force in the Furioso sufficient, moreover, to maintain its influence upon subsequent artists, such as Antonio Vivaldi, whose dramatic eighteenth-century opera was one of the first of several to draw from the narrative complex, but more recently Italo Calvino, who endorsed Ariosto as an artistic mentor, and Luca Ronconi, who reinterpreted the Furioso in modern theatre and in film. Here is a different and still emerging field of intertextualities. Readers and spectators can continue to perform the magic of analogy-making and inference whereby relationships of dependence and independence are measured. In the case of the recent theatrical and cinematic adaptations, the comparative process demands remarkable finesse because the borrowing is selective and transmuted - particularly through the translation into new media. What is the camera in relation to the narrative eye, and indeed how may the camera techniques of modern cinema serve to remind us of Ariosto's own kinetic approach to landscape? Even more exacting is the matter of how to deal with the inevitable mimetic displacement of the Furioso, the retelling of the story but on a more familiar and 'realistic' level while still maintaining the markers of allegiance to the original

16 Donald A. Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi work. All around are the pitfalls of intertextuality; at the same time, we are reminded of why we are so compellingly drawn to this ingrained activity to confirm what is known with more of the same. Departures, however slight, are jarring to us and become sources of delight only when they declare their allegiances both to some measure of reality and, in addition, to some antecedent literary touchstone. We are creatures of constant reorientation, the literary environment itself providing an extended terrain for one of the principal transactions of consciousness. Intertextuality is one of our greatest survival advantages and one of our greatest compulsions. This is clearly the case in our sense of spatial orientation. We do well to know where we are at all times in relation to home, or to sanctuary, or to the unreached destination. As we shall read in this volume, the Furioso plays upon this factor by creating a geography of its own that seeks out a liminal zone between the imagined and real worlds. It is incumbent upon readers, as it is upon the characters, to plot movements through space in an expanding landscape, and for the reader to juxtapose such orientations with those in parallel narratives. This geography is a multidimensional one, often superimposed upon a map of the Mediterranean and surrounding territories. The combined cartographic and fantastic features serve to orient and disorient at once as the reader travels between the mythic and the historical. The most intuitive observers, as will be discussed, have perfectly calibrated these border-crossing metamorphoses in terms of alternating 'pleasures,' which may vary from a location of exuberance to one of anger, from a place of serenity to one of encroaching threat, and so forth. It is no exaggeration to say that the Furioso is a panoramic display of the pathetic fallacy, in which every changing landscape is simultaneously a relation of character and a colouring of event. Place is both a theatre possessed of an iconic coherence and a correlative to qualities of the inner life. Hence particular and tactile descriptions constantly drift into emblem, and place into theme. There is an imaginative movement through space traversed by the protagonist that is followed in the mind's eye. There are moments when that point of view itself seems kinetic, as when the narrator provides an emerging landscape. Place and character interact, each defining the other, whether in the close-up detail of intimacy or in the far-off scope of the sublime. In these matters, Ariosto's analogues are best seen in the Hypnerotomachia poliphili (1499) of Francesco Colonna and in the Arcadia (1504) of Jacopo Sanriazaro. It is no simple process whereby the mind creates ambiance out of select

Introduction

17

words and fills in around them a continuous landscape - indeed, how words of mere identification simultaneously generate the place-notseen, and how these places can be stored in memory for almost exact recall upon subsequent readings of the work. Ariosto was a painterly poet causing place to ensconce action through the brain's collusion in emblem making. The essays that follow will touch upon Ariosto as a literary giant in the context of each of his works, and as a maker who imbeds in his writings a semiotics of allegiance, then navigates through those signs toward other levels of adventure, novelty, and discovery. Accordingly, these studies include the many emanations of the interreferential: the noises of archival data, the chatterings of the ancients, and the constant murmurings of narrative sources set against the background surgings of social, political, and artisitic change. To embrace all such vectors in Ariosto's work at once is to come closer to a complete and ideal reading. Notes 1 Francesco De Sanctis, History of Italian Literature, trans. Joan Redfern (2 vols, 1931; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968). 2 '... quando entro nel Furioso, veggo aprirsi una guardaroba, una tribuna, una galleria regia, ornata di cento statue antiche de' piu celebri scultori, con infinite storie intere, e le migliori, di pittori illustri, con un numero grande de vasi, di cristalli, d'agate, di lapislazzari e d'altre gioie e finalmente ripiena di cose rare, preziose, maravigliose, e di tutta eccellenza.' Galileo Galilei, Considerazioni al Tasso, in 'Scritti letterari' ed. Alberto Chiari (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1970), 503. 3. Louise George Clubb, Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara DENNIS LOONEY

Ariosto's knowledge of the classical languages and literatures was uneven. On the one hand, he was a superb student of the Latin tradition, as evidenced by his accomplished Latin verse that won him praise from even the sternest critic, Pietro Bembo (Pigna 74). On the other, he knew no Greek, made little or no attempt to learn it, and lamented this lack in his education. Still, his situation was typical for writers in the second half of the quattrocento. Authors coming of age in the generation of Ariosto and Machiavelli learned about the expressive possibilities of literary Italian in part by imitating Latin. They developed an appreciation of literary style through the intense study of the poetry of Horace, Virgil, and Ovid and the prose of Cicero, Livy, and the elder Pliny, among others. A philologist like Poliziano, who composed verse in both the classical languages as well as Italian, was an exception. Ariosto does not comment on his education or upbringing in his letters, nor are there any descriptive contemporary reports on the early years of his life. For our information on these matters, we must rely mainly on excerpts from his autobiographical Satires and on those passages in his other works that bespeak his classical interests. In the sixth satire, addressed to Bembo and composed between 1524 and 1525, Ariosto refers directly to his engagement with classical literary culture. The ostensible occasion of the poem is the author's request that his friend help him locate a tutor of Greek for his son, Virginio, who was around fifteen at the time (6.13-15). Ariosto explains that he has taught the boy something of the Latin tradition:1

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara 19 Gia per me sa cio che Virgilio scrive, Terenzio, Ovidio, Orazio, e le plautine scene ha vedute ... (6.142-4) [He already knows from my instruction what Virgil and Terence wrote, and Ovid and Horace, and he has seen the plays of Plautus ... ]

But he goes on to confess that he does not know Greek well enough to teach it to his son. His priorities have always been with Latin: che '1 saper ne la lingua de li Achei non mi reputo onor, s'io non intendo prima il parlar de li latini miei. (6.178-80) [If first I do not understand the language of my native Latins, knowledge of the Achaean tongue can bring me no distinction.] The author then recounts in some detail the autobiographical circumstances that first fostered and eventually hindered his education in the classics. The remembrance of things past yields to what seems at first glance a typical humanistic encomium of classical culture, concluding with a plea that Bembo help Ariosto's son make his way to the top of Mount Parnassus. In a discussion of this satire, Albert Russell Ascoli, reading it in conjunction with the presentation of Brunette Latini in Inferno 15, argues convincingly for the implicit critique Ariosto makes of humanist education (107-20). The autograph copy shows that he rewrote the verse to highlight the noun 'umanista' in the poem (6.25), but any positive value associated with this relatively new word in the Italian language is undermined by its context: 'Few humanists are without that vice which did not so much persuade, as forced, God to render Gomorrah and her neighbour wretched!' (6.25-7). By impugning humanists as sodomites, Ariosto suggests that the typical humanistic education is deficient and sterile. This criticism is borne out in the development of Ruggiero's character in the Furioso- he who is destined to be none less than the founder of the Ferrarese House of Este and progenitor of Ariosto's (sometime) patrons. Humanism, then, came with its discontents, which shed some light on what is, ultimately, Ariosto's idiosyncratic use of the classics. But before we can survey what our poet does with his classical predecessors in his various works, we need to understand the value put on the classics by

20 Dennis Looney the cultural context out of which he grew. In 1429, Niccolo III of Este invited Guarino Veronese (1374-1460) to Ferrara to establish a school for the young prince, Leonello.2 Guarino already had a reputation as an excellent teacher, especially of Greek, and he had taught in Venice and Florence. His school in Ferrara rapidly gained prestige throughout Europe, rivalling even the University of Bologna (Sabbadini 2:37-8). In 1436, it served as the basis for the foundation of the Studio, precursor of the University of Ferrara. Guarino personally directed the school until his death in 1460, when his son Battista (followed in turn by his son Alessandro) assumed its direction. The school was deservedly famous, and the extent and duration of its fame were Guarino's own doing (Grafton and Jardine 1-28). The teacher never ceased reminding former students that they owed their successes to their training in the liberal arts. While the stated rhetorical goal of the program was to produce good citizens, its primary goal was more modest. Guarino designed the curriculum to underscore the general educatio of the student, his 'upbringing,' with the teacher very much, to borrow from Quintilian, in loco parentis. Since the majority of his students took room and board at the school, Guarino oversaw their progress day and night, for better and for worse. Guarino laments in a letter that one of his boarders tried to sell a copy of an Ovidian work to a wandering scholar. But in this one instance, at least, the scholar got the better of the surrogate parent, for Guarino expressed more concern about the potential loss of a text — it was a handsome copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses - than about the ethos of his young charge (Sabbadini 1:140). This is probably the exception that makes the case, for he usually managed to combine with equanimity the duties of the teacherparent and the humanistic bibliophile. Guarino's understanding of pedagogy derived from several sources. First, his own experience as a student predictably affected the kind of teacher he became. He was a product of medieval schooling, which introduced the student to the rudiments of Latin through jingles, rhyming ditties, and versified artes. Students then used their linguistic skills to work their way through the anthologies (Jlorilegia) that served as the texts of the old curriculum. The subjects studied in the typical medieval classroom were grammar, rhetoric (advanced composition and reading), and dialectic (analytic philosophy). With this kind of education as a foundation, Guarino spent approximately five years, from 1405 to 1409, studying Greek literature in Venice and Constantinople with the great Hellenist, Manuel Chrysoloras (Geanakoplos 28-30). From his

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara 21

Byzantine teacher, Guarino learned the rudiments of Greek and was then led deep into the mysteries of classical literature. At the same time, he was also introduced to the mundane but extremely useful practice of taking notes as he read, which he perfected once back in the West. He had each student compile reading notebooks, handy collections of annotations to be used as guides for later readings. These notes were of all sorts: lexical, grammatical, syntactical, morphological, and, to a lesser extent, literary critical. Compiling the notes was half the process, organizing them into some sort of rationally coherent whole to which the student could later make reference was the other. The second source of Guarino's pedagogical program was a literary one: Quintilian's De institutio oratorio,. His school's threefold sequence of courses followed the outline recommended in the Institutio I-II: beginning with elementary courses that taught phonology and morphology through simple readings, progressing to the next level called the grammatical for its focus on points of grammar and syntax, and culminating in advanced courses in rhetoric that treated issues of literary style. The first sequence of courses emphasized oral work and memorization, much in keeping with Guarino's own experiences as a schoolboy. The middle sequence was divided into two segments called method and history. The course in method introduced the student to the grammar and syntax of classical Latin and Greek, while the course in history introduced him to classical authors whom the student analysed grammatically - this was always Guarino's starting place - and then read for historical and mythological knowledge. Among the authors used in the historical segment were Herodotus, Virgil, Ovid - the Metamorphoses and the Fasti — Statius, Justinian, and Valerius Maximus (Sabbadini 2:35). Guarino often required students to translate as part of the process of mastering the languages they studied (Berrigan). This occurred at all levels of instruction but became a more useful part of the process at the higher levels, where the student could study the style of the author under investigation through translation. Guarino no doubt corrected these classroom versions and sometimes must have done so against translations of his own. The teacher completed, for example, a working copy of a Latin version of Herodotus's Histories 1.1-71, likely intended for classroom use (Truffi). The final sequence of courses involved the study of rhetoric, and it is in this part of the curriculum that Quintilian's philosophy of education is most visible. The student worked his or (in some rare cases) her way through texts by Cicero, Quintilian's Institutio, and the Rhetorica ad

22 Dennis Looney

Herennium, a text of the first century BC attributed to Cicero that Guarino later came to disavow as Ciceronian. In keeping with the program of Quintilian, the student concluded his education with the study of classical oratory. The ideology espoused in this final segment of the curriculum derived from the Roman ideal that the man who speaks well is a good man. Quintilian defines oratory precisely in these terms as the science and art of speaking well (scientia et omnis facultas dicendi, l.Pr.18) and the orator as the good man (vir bonus, l.Pr.9-10). Yet such a goal was not always possible. Guarino confesses in private letters that he cannot necessarily and automatically transform the student, even the able and willing learner, into a civic leader; the transformation occurs where and when it will outside the classroom. True, the student's education will have had an effect on his development, but it cannot guarantee a specific development (Grafton andjardine 26-8). In recognizing this fact, Guarino admits that there are limitations to humanistic educatio, and he prepares the way for Ariosto's own doubts about the appropriateness of the educational program founded on the classics. Nevertheless, the impact of Guarino on the humanistic culture of the period was unquestionably great. Not only did he teach princes, humanists, courtiers, and poets; he also educated teachers, most notably Vittorino da Feltre, who headed the ducal school of Mantua.3 Followers like Vittorino heralded Guarino's method and curriculum beyond the walls of his modest classrooms in the Estense castle. They voiced none of the inconsistencies the master at times sensed in his own program. The ideology espoused publicly by Guarino's school - that the learned citizen is a better citizen - became a commonplace in Renaissance discourse. Even though Ariosto did not attend Guarino's school, he benefited from its presence in Ferrara. Being from a well-connected family, he was in close contact with students of the school,4 and at least one of his private tutors had connections with it.5 It is impossible to determine the precise influence of the school on his work and to present specific evidence that might show how Guarino's use of classical authors in the classroom affected him. But we can speak with less hesitation about the indirect influence Guarino's school had on Ariosto, as well as on other writers and artists of Renaissance Ferrara. The school and the Estense court attracted humanists from abroad. Guarino's lifelong interest in the language and literature of Greece brought many Greeks and their would-be students to Ferrara. Indeed, many of the day's leading humanists sat at his feet to learn the language.

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara 23

The council of the eastern and western branches of the Church in 1438 also heightened interest in the culture and language of the ancient Greeks. Writers growing up in Ferrara during these decades were in a position to take advantage of its rich humanistic activity. They saw, read, and heard works inspired by humanism's reassessment of the classical past. And they used the manuscripts and printed editions that were lodged in the school of Guarino and the ducal library (or copies of those books in circulation). Ariosto took advantage of the cultural moment to absorb as much classical culture as he could. Primarily because of the legacy of Guarino's school, he had the means, linguistic and material, to read Latin texts in the original and Greek works in Latin translation. Ariosto's earliest surviving letter documents his desire to participate in the humanistic culture of Ferrara (ed. Stella 131). In the letter, sent to the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1498, he requests that Platonic and Neoplatonic works be sent to him in Ferrara. The letter suggests the poet's central role in the reception of the mystical-theological doctrines of Neoplatonism in Ferrara. Indeed Neoplatonism, which was revived in the Florence of Lorenzo and Ficino and received eagerly in Ferrara, had a great impact on Ariosto when he was studying philosophy at the University of Ferrara in the 1490s. At the age of twenty-one, in 1495, Ariosto had already had the honour of delivering the inaugural oration for the academic year at the university, choosing as his theme the praise of philosophy.6 But Ariosto's philosophical studies were cut short by the death of his father in 1500, which forced upon him financial burdens and unaccustomed familial responsibilities, to which he refers in the sixth satire, mentioned above. In another revealing passage from Satire 6, Ariosto alludes to the demands of his life as breadwinner, 'oppressed by the yoke of the cardinal of Este' (233-4), who enlisted his aid on numerous missions: e di poeta cavallar mi feo: vedi se per le baize e per le fosse io potevo imparar greco o caldeo!

(6.238-40)

[and from a poet made a horseman of me. Behold whether, dashing over cliffs and through ditches, I had the leisure to learn Greek or Chaldaic!]

We cannot be certain whether by Chaldaic Ariosto means biblical Ara-

24 Dennis Looney

male or the language of the ancient Babylonians, but with either he calls to mind the esoteric subject matter that serious Neoplatonists sought to master. By 1525, when Ariosto included this reference in the sixth satire, he had moved beyond his youthful enthusiasm for the doctrines of Neoplatonism. In fact, in his Erbolato, written around 1530, the author parodies the work of Pico and other Neoplatonists. Even in a minor work like the Erbolato, one can observe much about Ariosto's relationship with classical culture and its reception in Ferrara.7 The Erbolato is composed in the form of a speech delivered by one Master Antonio Faventino. Faventino, an amalgam of several identifiable contemporaries of Ariosto, is portrayed hawking a miraculous medicinal potion in the town square. In the venerable tradition of the charlatan or quack doctor he claims that his herbal medicine - the 'erbolato' that gives the work its title - is a universal remedy for any illness. His pseudophilosophical description of the importance of medicine for humankind, in part based on the proem to book 7 of Pliny's Natural History (which he cites at 1.35), eventually becomes a theatrical sales pitch for his elixir. As the rhetoric modulates from a pastiche of Pliny and Neoplatonic oratory to the verbal playfulness of street theatre, we witness Ariosto's searing criticism of the humanistic academy and its relation to the marketplace. That vague sociological construct, the marketplace of ideas, gives way to the actual market stall from which Faventino tries to sell his brainchild. Even in as brief a work as this, we have a prime example of how Ariosto employed the classics in an ironic critique of his own contemporary culture. Despite his Horatian disdain for all the hoopla of courtly life (Satire 3.40-4), Ariosto remained aware of what was happening around him, and he disapproved of much of what he saw. Here, as elsewhere, he uses the classics and classical rhetoric to criticize the culture of the classicists. While such a critique is not evident in Ariosto's lyric poetry in Latin, this body of his work nevertheless deserves re-evaluation. It has been well over a century since Carducci crafted his magisterial essay on these approximately seventy-five poems, La gioventu di Ludovico Ariosto e la poesia latina a Ferrara. Although there is no indication that Ariosto intended these poems to be published as a volume, Pigna assembled them into a collection that he brought to light in 1553. The Carmina reveal a wide-ranging awareness of the Latin lyric tradition, with imitations of Horace, Catullus, Tibullus, and Ovid, among others, and even, 'for some epigrams, the clear influence of Greek poets of the Anthology, known perhaps in Latin translations' (Sapegno 177). The most interest-

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara 25 ing aspect of the collected Latin lyrics is arguably the collocation of subsequent versions of a given poem. We can observe the author's attempt at perfecting the Latinity of, for example, 'Ad Philiroem' (poem 2), and numerous epitaphs (14, 61), including his own (58). We see him experimenting with classical metres, diction, and style, aspects of which reappear in his Italian Rime and in his narrative poetry. Ariosto's dramatic works benefitted from and contributed to the revival of Terence and Plautus in northern Italy in the late quattrocento. The restoration of Latin comedy in Ferrara began in the 1470s and 1480s under the impetus of Ercole d'Este, who was an avid reader of classics in translation. Ercole sponsored public events that frequently included recreations of comedies from Roman antiquity. Ariosto himself may have performed in a version of Plautus's Menaechmi at the wedding festivities of Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d'Este in 1491 (Gardner 27). In several of his plays, Ariosto, in keeping with the conventions he inherited from Roman comedy, accounts for his artistic choices in prologues to the audience. These passages are as close as we come to getting something like theory from Ariosto's pen. In the opening lines to the prose version of / suppositi, for example, he states that he has followed both Terence and Plautus. He goes on to note that in so doing, he is treating his Latin models as the Roman authors treated their Greek ones: he is part of a tradition of imitators imitating imitators. Qui tra 1'altre supposizioni el servo per lo libero et el libero per lo servo si suppone. E vi confessa in questo 1'Autore avere e Plauto e Terenzio seguitato, de li quali Fun fece Cherea per Doro, e 1'altro Filocrate per Tindaro, e Tindaro per Filocrate, 1'uno ne lo Eunuco, 1'altro ne li Captivi, supponersi: perche non solo ne li costumi, ma ne li argumenti ancora de le fabule vuole essere de li antichi e celebrati poeti, a tutta sua possanza, imitatore; e come essi Menandro et Apollodoro e li altri Greci ne le lor latine comedie seguitoro, egli cosi ne le sue vulgari e modi e processi de' latini scrittori schifar non vuole. (Commedie, 199.16-27) In this play, among other things, the servant is substituted for the master and the master for the servant. The author confesses that in this he has followed both Plautus and Terence, the one who substituted Cherea for Dorus, the other Philocrates for Tindarus, and vice versa, one in the Eunuchus, and the other in the Captivi. He has done so because he wants to imi tate the celebrated classical poets as much as possible, not only in the form of their plays, but also in the content. And just as they in their Latin plays

26 Dennis Looney followed Menander, Apollodorus, and other Greek writers, so he, too, in his vernacular plays is not averse to imitating the methods and procedure of the Latin writers. (Ariosto, The Comedies ofAriosto 53) Ariosto's remarks recall a passage from the opening of Terence's Andria, familiar to Renaissance readers and audiences, in which the Roman playwright explains that he has combined two comedies of Menander into his own. Terence's image for this combination of sources is contaminatio, the mixing of multiple models through imitation. Ariosto, for his part, does his models one better by combining two plays of two different authors (Clubb 33). But he assures the audience at the end of the prologue to I suppositi that his Roman models 'non 1'arebbono a male, e di poetica imitazione, piu presto che di furto, li darebbono nome' (198, 31) [... would not be offended and would call it poetic imitation rather than plagiarism (53)]. This bold mixing of sources is characteristic of Ariosto's artistry in general and it is most noticeable in his major work, the Furioso. This practice of composition by mixing and contaminating sources presents the biggest challenge for the critic of Ariosto's narrative poetry. It is difficult to deal with a poetic text like the Furioso that depends so extensively on combinations of intertexts for its significance. Daniel Javitch confronts this issue of the fullness of poetic imitatio in 'The Imitation of Imitations in the Orlando furioso1 (215-39). He avoids focusing on merely a pair of poets, the imitator and the imitated, by examining, for example, Ariosto's allusions to Virgil's allusions to Catullus. Guido Baldassarri (23-58) and Eduardo Saccone (161-200) similarly have discussed Ariosto's allusive recall of Statius's reading of Virgil in the episode of Cloridano and Medoro (Furioso 18-19), which Latin models in turn allude to scenes from Homeric poetry. While the analysis of such telescoping of the imitative act does indeed avoid a reductive dyadic study, it is limited to specific passages in the Renaissance poem. These studies and others confirm that isolating Ariosto's allusions to classical works in the Furioso is not only a frustrating critical exercise, but also one that undermines the poetics of the Renaissance poem. Indeed, to isolate any one kind of source in the Furioso for analysis is inappropriate, because, throughout the poem, Ariosto engages in what I have called elsewhere the 'compromising' of sources ('Rhapsode'). Compromising sources means more than simply 'contaminating' them. I use the term 'to compromise' to examine the process of literary historicization that engaged the creative energies of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Torquato Tasso,

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara 27 among others, as they confronted the distinction between classical and medieval sources. Specifically, I use the verb in two ways, to denote distinct moments in the incorporation of allusions into the text. First, I intend that it keep its basic sense of exposing something to suspicion. Ariosto's allusions to the classics, for example, encourage a reader to return to the authorities to whom he alludes with a raised brow, to read them anew. This literary-historical phenomenon contributed to the reception of the classics in Italy. Yet I am more interested in what effect compromised classical allusions might have (or might have had) on individual critical interpretations of the poems in question. This focus on practical criticism suggests 'to compromise' in its second sense. 'To compromise' is derived from Latin mittere, 'to send,' and the prefixes cum and pro, suggesting together the sending of one thing forth (pro) among (cum) others. Ariosto's narrative regularly draws attention to a single, specific model, which may be either classical or vernacular, setting it forth, as it were, among other sources.8 This may happen for any number of reasons (aesthetic, ideological, poetic). Usually the privileging of a certain source is only momentary; subsequent developments in the narrative undercut the source, so that it is compromised in the term's first sense. For the sake of brevity we can only consider Ariosto's treatment of epic in the Furioso, although, to be sure, he also compromises classical satire, pastoral, drama, and lyric, by assimilating examples of these genres into the narrative. He registers the Furioso s epic pretensions by paraphrasing the beginning and ending verses of the Aeneid at his poem's beginning and ending - but the reader who expects to find the poem full of the stuff of epic will be disappointed. The poem's titular hero, who carries much of its epic burden, goes mad at the narrative's middle, and, therefore, cannot move inexorably toward the completion of his appointed task in the manner of an epic hero. The protagonist's course is characteristic of romance, for he wanders off his literal track, eventually falling into madness. To be sure, the narrative characteristics of romance defy the straightforward teleology of epic: deviation, diversion, and digression are typical of its design (Parker). And there is at least one notable romance precedent for Orlando's madness: Chretien de Troyes's Yvain also deviates from the typical behaviour of a proper knight. Orlando, however, exists in a netherworld somewhere between the two generic possibilities offered by epic and romance. He sets out on a quest for Angelica like a good knight of medieval romance (9.7.6), zigzagging inevitably along the way. But despite occasional deviations

28 Dennis Looney like the episode of Olimpia (9.11) or Atlante's castle (12), his application to the quest has an epic seriousness about it. The narrator draws our attention to the heroic expansiveness of Orlando's search in an unusual classical allusion that likens his search for Angelica to Demeter's for Persephone (12.1-4). And just before he comes upon the site of Angelica's betrayal (as he sees it), a simile of Homeric inspiration describes Orlando in heroic terms.9 When Orlando finds himself in the pastoral-romance setting at the end of canto 23, whereas the romance knight in him should defer the quest and indulge momentarily in this place of pleasure, the epic misfit goes berserk. Ariosto's treatment of Orlando as a creature who moves between two genres, two traditions, two kinds of narrative, depends on his immediate predecessor, Boiardo. Orlando, a traditional figure in medieval FrancoItalian literature, is associated with the chanson de geste, the heroic war poetry of the Middle Ages. In that literary tradition he fights and dies nobly as befits Charlemagne's most heroic knight. For later Italian writers, however, Boiardo's treatment of Orlando is the prism through which prior literary representations of his heroism are refracted. Peter DeSa Wiggins puts it well: 'In blending the "Matter of Britain" with the "Matter of France," Boiardo heaped upon Orlando, the preux of the chanson de geste, the unfamiliar responsibilities of the courtois of courtly romance' (Figures 112). Boiardo has his version of the traditional character do something heretofore inconceivable: his Orlando falls madly in love — the title of the poem is Innamoramento d'Orlando, 'Orlando's Falling in Love.' In such condition he is hardly the stuff of literary heroism. Add to this mix the resurgent classical humanism that was coming into its own at the beginning of the cinquecento in Ferrara and one can see that Ariosto had his hands full (not to say tied) when he began to sketch his own picture of Orlando. His version recalls the figure of medieval legend and bears a faint resemblance to Boiardo's courtly lover, but at the same time there is much to suggest that his Orlando is a creature of the new classicism. Perhaps, as has been suggested, Ariosto's Orlando plays the part of a 'burly male Dido,' if not exactly that of a new Aeneas (Wiggins 113). In other words, the reception of the classical tradition is compromised by the other traditions that Ariosto's chronological position requires him to hold in the balance. Here the intervention of medieval romance contributes to turn Ariosto's would-be Aeneas into an imitation of Dido in a compromise of the Virgilian epic model. In other episodes of the poem similar confrontations occur between romance and epic, often brought about through the imitation of somewhat more

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara

29

marginal classical models like Lucan (Quint 35-8) and Lucian (Marinelli 166-95).10 I explore this dynamic in more detail elsewhere, examining, in particular, how counter-classical epic narrative from antiquity, especially Ovid's Metamorphoses, which bears some resemblance to medieval romance, contributes to Ariosto's compromise of the Virgilian narrative ideal.11 Ariosto's Furioso had become wildly successful when he died in 1533. Its popularity continued to grow over the subsequent decades of the sixteenth century, and the poem became an important touchstone in the debates over narrative poetry. In the end, the Furioso became a classic in its own right, a vernacular classic, in part due to its intense promotion by members of the Venetian publishing world and by members of intellectual academies, but perhaps also due to certain intrinsic or internal aspects that may indeed have enabled its readers to see it as a classic (Javitch Proclaiming). While not disconnected from the topic of Ariosto and the classics, the critical fortune of the Furioso as a new classic is another chapter in the poem's story. Notes 1 I follow Wiggins's translation, which is based on Segre's text. 2 For information on Guarino's life and school, see Sabbadini, Bertoni, Woodward, Schweyen, Grendler, and Grafton and Jardine. 3 Guarino in turn sent his sons to the school of Vittorino. See Grendler 130. 4 For an account of student life in Ferrara, see 'Ludovico studente,' in Catalano 1:86-103. Nicola Maria Panizzato (d. 1529), a lifelong friend of Ariosto (mentioned in Furioso 46.14.8), was a student of Battista and eventually became a teacher of Latin and Greek at the university. Ercole Strozzi, Boiardo's cousin and friend of Ariosto, also studied under Battista. See Cosenza 5:438. 5 Ariosto was probably tutored from 1486 to 1489 by Luca Ripa (fl. 1480s), who taught at the school during these years. Domenico Catabene (fl. 1480s), a law student at the university and a boarder in the Ariosto household in 1485, also may have tutored Ariosto. See Catalano 1:88-9. 6 Only a fragment of this work, 44 verses in Latin hexameters, remains; see 'De laudibus philosophiae' in Fatini's ed., 179-80. 7 In a forthcoming edition and translation of the Erbolato, co-authored with Giovanna Fogli, I examine the work in more detail. 8 Rhu (20-2) discusses how Torquato Tasso treats Homeric poetry in this way.

30 Dennis Looney 9 The description of the fight between Orlando and Mandricardo (23.83.6-8) may allude to Valla's prose version of Homer's Iliad 12.421-4. See Bigi's edition, 985. 10 David Quint also considers Ariosto's use of Lucan and Claudian in the substantial fragment in octave stanzas in the Cinque canti (trans., 2-22). 11 See 'Narrative Choices in OrlandoFurioso,' chapter 3 of my Compromising the Classics.

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Cinque canti: Five Cantos. Trans. Alexander Sheers and David Quint. Intro. David Quint. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. - The Comedies of Ariosto. Trans. Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. - Commedie. Ed. A. Casella et al. Milan: Mondadori, 1974. - Lirica. Ed. Giuseppe Fatini. Bari: Laterza, 1924. - Orlando furioso. 2 vols. Ed. Emilio Bigi. Milan: Rusconi, 1982. - Le Satire. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. - The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto. Trans. Peter DeSa Wiggins. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976. Ascoli, Albert Russell. Ariosto's Bitter Harmony. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Baldassarri, Guido. II sonno di Zeus: Spermimentazione narrativa delpoema rinasci-

mentale e tradizione omerica. Rome: Bulzoni, 1982. Berrigan, Joseph R. 'The Latin Aesop of Ermolao Barbaro.' Manuscripta 22.3 (1978): 141-8. Bertoni, Giulio. Guarino da Verona fra letterati e cortigiani aFerrara (1429-60). Geneva: Olschki, 1921. Carducci, Giosue. La gioventu di Ludovico Ariosto e la poesia latina a Ferrara. In Opere, vol. 13. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1939. 115-374. Catalano, Michele. Vita di Lodovico Ariosto. 2 vols. Geneva: Olschki, 1931. Clubb, Louise George. Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Cosenza, Mario. Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists and of the World of Classical Scholarship in Italy, 1300-1800. 5 vols. Boston: G.K Hall, 1962. Gardner, Edmund G. The King of Court Poets. 1906; New York: Haskell House, 1968.

Ariosto and the Classics in Ferrara 31 Geanakoplos, Deno John. Greek Scholars in Venice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. Grafton, Anthony, and Lisa Jardine. From Humanism to the Humanities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Grendler, Paul F. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Javitch, Daniel. The Imitation of Imitations in the Orlando furioso.' Renaissance Quarterly 2 (1985): 215-39. - Proclaiming a Classic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Looney, Dennis. 'Ariosto the Ferrarese Rhapsode: A Compromise in the Critical Terminology for Narrative in the Mid-Cinquecento.' In Interpreting the Italian Renaissance: Literary Perspectives. Ed. A. Toscano. Stony Brook, NY: Forum Italicum, 1991. 139-50. - Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. Marinelli, Peter V. 'Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of "Orlando furioso. "'Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. Parker, Patricia. Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Pigna, Giovanni Battista. Iromanzi... Venice: V. Valgrisi, 1554. Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Rhu, Lawrence F. The Genesis ofTasso's Narrative Theory. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. Sabbadini, Remigio. Guariniana: Vita di Guarino Veronese. La scuola e gli studi di Guarino Veronese. 2 rpt. vols. bound in 1 with original pagination. Ed. Mario Sancipriano. 1891, 1896; Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1964. Saccone, Eduardo. II soggetto del 'Furioso.' Naples: Liguori, 1974. Sapegno, Natalino. 'Ludovico Ariosto.' Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 4 (1962): 172-88. Schweyen, Renate. Guarino Veronese: Philosophie und humanistiche Pddagogik. Munich: Fink, 1973. Truffi, Riccardo. 'Erodoto tradotto da Guarino Veronese.' Studi italiani dijilologia classica 10 (1902): 73-94. Wiggins, Peter DeSa. Figures in Ariosto's Tapestry: Character and Design in the 'OrlandoFurioso.' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986. Woodward, William H. Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921.

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso

ANTONIO FRANCESCHETTI

Writing in the second half of the sixteenth century, when the aesthetic ideals of unity, completeness, and perfect fusion between the various parts of a literary work were predominant, Torquato Tasso, who deeply shared and believed in those ideals, suggested that the plot [favola], that is, 'the form of the poem which can be defined as the texture or combining of facts or things,' should be 'whole, ... aptly large, and ... one.' As for the first point, it was obvious that 'the Orlando innamorato and the Furioso are not whole, and are incomplete with regard to their component parts: the Furioso has no beginning and the Innamorato has no conclusion.' For Tasso, there was only one way to eliminate the problem: 'The Orlando innamorato and the Furioso ... should not be considered as two distinct books, but just one poem, which was begun by one poet and completed by the other, with the same threads, even if better tied together and coloured. Looking at it this way, it is a whole poem, which is missing nothing essential to the understanding of its plots.'1 Today we are no longer satisfied with the simple acknowledgment that the stories left unfinished by Boiardo find a conclusion in the Furioso, and we are definitely convinced that the two poems are 'two distinct books' ['due libri distinti']. Rather, we are more curious to see how Ariosto developed the adventures, the characters, and the situations of the Innamorato in order to see more of the differences and to identify his original elements. Boiardo's poem underwent a substantial transformation within the Furioso, and our major interest lies in discerning the ways in which its 'threads' have been 'tied together and coloured' by Ariosto. It is unfortunate that, at least from the extant documents, he, appar-

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 33

ently, never bothered to write down any of his ideas on the Innamorato. We know nothing about his feelings concerning the attitudes and the ideals of his predecessor, nor of his own intentions and criteria in continuing the unfinished work. He preferred to leave us with the intricate task of solving many problems regarding the relation between the two poems and the differences in character and mentality of the two authors. It seems, however, that Ariosto did not conceive of his poem merely as a continuation of Boiardo's. To be sure, Duke Alfonso, writing in 1509 to Cardinal Ippolito, expressed himself differently: 'We would like you to send us that addition which messer Ludovico Ariosto made to the Orlando inamorato.'^ Yet Ariosto himself wrote something quite different in a letter to the Marquis of Mantua in 1512: 'I have been told that Your Excellency would like to see a book of mine, which I started a long time ago (continuing the invention of Count Matteo Maria Boiardo).'3 The Furioso is presented here as an original work (not like the other continuations of the Innamorato published at the beginning of the sixteenth century) , in which Ariosto expands what had been invented by Boiardo; he does not indicate as his purpose the completion of what his predecessor had left unfinished. Consequently, he preferred to give it a completely new title, Orlando furioso, stressing rather the madness than the love of Orlando. In fact, the two works have so little in common, apart from the general plot and the names of most characters, that to put them together under the same title would only be misleading. Also, the Furioso ends with the marriage of Ruggiero and Bradamante, and does not tell about the death of the former, which had been announced by Boiardo. The originality of the new poem is stressed at its very beginning: Diro d'Orlando in un medesmo tratto cosa non delta in prosa mai ne in rima: che per amor venne in furore e matto ... (1.2) [I shall tell of Orlando, too, setting down what has never before been recounted in prose or rhyme: of Orlando, driven raving mad by love - ...]

'Cosa non detta in prosa mai ne in rima' [What has never been recounted in prose or rhyme]: no reference to the previous poem or its author as is to be found in the first octave of the fourth book published by Niccolo degli Agostini.4 There is no reference to Boiardo and the Innamorato in the letters that Ariosto wrote to the Doges of Venice and

34 Antonio Franceschetti Genoa in 1515 and 1516 in which he seeks to secure the copyright for his work (Lettere 157-60); yet Niccolo degli Agostini, writing for the same reason to the Doge of Venice in 1505, mentions 'a work of his in Italian verse, which is the end of all the books of the Orlando inamorato.^ A question one is entitled to ask has to do with Ariosto's choice of topic for his work. It has been shown that in the period following the diffusion of the other great chivalric poem of the Italian Renaissance, the Morgante by Luigi Pulci, and the publication of the first sixty cantos of the Innamorato in 1483, this literary genre seems to have lost its reputation among the most qualified authors of Italian literature. During a period of some twenty to thirty years, many chivalric poems dealing with the adventures of Charlemagne and his heroes were written and rewritten, printed and reprinted, to satisfy the needs of a little-educated public that apparently found in those tales the same satisfaction offered in modern times by mystery or science fiction books and movies. This kind of production, however, was regarded with contempt by those who were more committed to the cultural environment, a contempt very similar to that expressed by Petrarch in a famous passage of the Trionfi about the knights of the Arthurian cycle, when he mentions 'those who fill pages with phantasies, Lancelot, Tristan and the other knights errant, about whom common people daydream, wandering.' Boiardo himself added very little to his Innamorato in the last eleven years of his life - less than nine cantos, in comparison to the sixty already published. He preferred to spend his time on other works such as translations and a comedy. From this point of view, Ariosto's choice must be regarded as highly unconventional and daring; he had previously practised other literary genres, and he was going to test and come back to others during the following years, but his main commitment up to his death remained the Furioso. Within the chivalric tradition itself Ariosto had at least two other possibilities that he might have tried: first, he could have started a completely new story, as Boiardo and other poets of the time (such as Francesco Cieco da Ferrara, author of the Mambriano] had done. With the diffusion of printed books, it was common practice at the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth to elaborate upon, and to increase in length and number, the adventures of the various personalities of Orlando, Rinaldo, Ulivieri, and so forth. No consideration was given to even the most obvious chronological problems - had Orlando really lived through only a portion of those adventures, he would have died at Roncesvals not as a young and glorious hero, but

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 35

rather a very aged and exhausted Methuselah. On the other hand, Ariosto could have followed the example of Luigi Pulci in his Morgante, that is, he could have chosen one of the many Carolingian poems available in manuscripts and prints and rewritten it, giving to his work a different cultural meaning and more substantial artistic qualities.8 Instead, he preferred to continue the Innamorato, that is to say, the best poem produced by the previous generation. He was not put off by the failures of the other writers who in those years had tried to continue and conclude the story of Boiardo. He was courageous not only for choosing the chivalric genre, but also for competing with the greatest chivalric poet who preceded him in the history of Italian literature. The result of this competition is very well known: nowadays, the Furioso is a textbook for Italian high school students, while the Innamorato, with the exception of a few episodes, is strictly reserved for scholars and experts of Italian Renaissance literature. Actually, there is no doubt that Ariosto is a much greater poet than Boiardo and can be compared only with the most famous authors of European literature. But if we consider the Innamorato in relation to other, better-known works of the second half of the fifteenth century such as Le stanze by Poliziano or the Morgante by Pulci, we must admit that Ariosto did a poor service to unfortunate Boiardo. The glory and reputation of the Furioso completely obscured the relevance of the earlier poem. The Innamorato is artistically inferior to the Furioso, but it is certainly a very important work from the point of view of the history of culture and of ideas. It is the expression of the fantasies and ideals of an aristocratic member of the court of Ferrara towards the end of the fifteenth century, and it allows the modern reader to gain a better knowledge and understanding of a cultural environment that occupies a very important place in the history of the Italian Renaissance. I think it is wrong to consider the Innamorato only as the main source of the Furioso, as has been done for centuries, but it is equally wrong to believe that Boiardo's poem represented only a source for Ariosto, and it stood at the same level as the many other literary works that, in various degrees, influenced the writing of the Furioso. It has been pointed out that in Ariosto's poem there are very few episodes or details that do not reflect, in one way or another, some previous literary tradition. Indeed, the sources for even the few moments generally considered as original have occasionally been discovered. The critics of the historical school of the last century, such as Pio Rajna and Augusto Romizi, worked very hard in this direction; nevertheless, the greatness of Ariosto

36 Antonio Franceschetti

remained, and remains, unshaken, because in the work of art it is not the originality of the episode or the detail that matters, but rather the personality of the author and the individuality of his creation. It is very important to raise the question of sources and to distinguish among them. The case might arise in which a cue taken from a text may be developed into an episode or a specific situation more or less originally by other writers. To give an example within the context of the Furioso, I will cite Ariosto's episode of Cloridano and Medoro in relation to the tale of Euryalus and Nisus in the Aeneid and of Hopleus and Dimas in the Thebaid. By contrast, there are source texts that represent a total background, a definite starting point for successive authors in the creation of their own work. Such is the case of the Innamorato in relation to the Furioso. Boiardo's poem cannot simply be considered the text from which Ariosto derives the main line of his plot and the defining traits of most of his characters. The function of the Innamorato is in fact much more subtle, specific, and precise. It is from this very poem that Ariosto developed his model of the chivalric genre, and from which the spiritual world of the Furioso, consciously or unconsciously, was derived. Undoubtedly many more components were present at its birth; on specific occasions Ariosto had in mind other works and other writers than Boiardo and the Innamorato. But one must agree with the following statement by Segre: 'In relation to the purely instrumental function of the other chivalric works or collections of short stories ... one can say that the book by Boiardo was for Ariosto a friend constantly questioned, a model for the beauty of the new poem.'91 should add that the Innamorato was also the ideal boundary within which the Furioso originated. Ariosto could accept or refuse the situations and the solutions of the Innamorato, he could change them or imitate them, but he could not forget and ignore them. Besides, while he was writing the Furioso he knew perfectly well that the public of the court of Ferrara was thoroughly acquainted with the stories and characters of his predecessor. In fact, Ariosto takes for granted that his audience is very familiar with the situations and circumstances that appeared in the Innamorato and has no need to have them retold. In the Furioso there are only a few episodes written by Boiardo that are partially repeated and, somehow, re-elaborated: for instance, Alcina's kidnapping of Astolfo on the back of a whale that the knight believes to be an island (Inn. 2.13.5614.8; Fur. 6.32-42), the liberation of Lucina, prisoner of the ogre (Inn. 3.3.22-4.10; Fur. 17.25-68), and Fiordespina's falling in love with Bradamante, whom she believes to be a knight (Inn. 3.8.63-9.11; Fur. 25.26-

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 37

30). In all cases the stories are told by characters not by the narrator, as in the Innamorato, and bring some new insights and different perspectives into the episodes. Otherwise, when the narrator of the Furioso must make reference to something that happened in the Innamorato, he does so with brevity, stressing that his audience is able to follow what was happening. Thus it is with Angelica's magic ring: 'Why should I enumerate all the instances it has proved its virtues? You know them as well as I do'; with Marfisa, who abandoned her armour while running after Brunello: 'This is a story I think I need not expand on, so I'll say no more about it'; with the duel between Ruggiero and Mandricardo, because of the eagle that both have as their insignia: 'I shall not recall it, you already know'; with Gradasso's wish to possess Durindana and Baiardo: 'I think you will have read this elsewhere'; with Balisarda, forged by Falerina, taken by Orlando, stolen by Brunello and given by him to Ruggiero: 'You will of course have read the whole tale'; and so on. ° The same kind of expressions are used by the narrator when he is mentioning some details that appear previously in his own poem; see, for example, the case of Argalia's magic lance, trusted by Astolfo to Bradamante (23.15): 'Why Astolfo gave it to her, and where and when and from whom he himself had had it, I believe I need not repeat.'11 In this situation, Ariosto could not possibly have thought that his audience would miss his changes and alterations in the stories and characters of the Innamorato. They might overlook some of them, but they would certainly grasp the most evident ones. Ariosto himself knew and remembered perfectly well the text of Boiardo. The study of the sources of the Furioso made by Pio Rajna, and the numerous notes written on this point by many subsequent critics, confirm it beyond any possible doubt. As a consequence, it is improbable that Ariosto was suddenly inspired to continue the Innamorato by just a superficial reading, or that he gave to his continuation a different spirit and character without really knowing what he was doing. On the contrary, his real intentions and purposes in designing his poem appear much more clearly when we compare his characters and his episodes with those of Boiardo. It is particularly in the general lines of the 1516 edition of the Furioso and in the episodes of the first cantos that we can understand much better the origin and the meaning of the poem. At this point, he concentrates on developing the character of Orlando from the hero in love to the hero who becomes mad for the sake of love. He has before him only the story of Boiardo, not yet his own, which is still in a state of germination. By the time the third edition was published in 1532, other criteria and dif-

38 Antonio Franceschetti

ferent stimuli might have influenced and altered his original intentions. In order to be able to discuss them, however, it is first necessary to clarify those original intentions. Given the many theoretical approaches and interpretations offered by critics of the Furioso, I believe that a systematic work of control and definition must start with a comparative analysis of the two poems. I will necessarily limit myself to just a few examples. I would like to examine how Ariosto develops some episodes of the Innamorato, how he imitates them and, at the same time, completely changes their original tone, how he uses specific narrative structures that were peculiar to his predecessor, and how he modifies the distinctive features of some of the major characters. Let us start from the development of specific episodes. From the moment that Ariosto picks up the strands of Boiardo's story (at the beginning of the first canto), he gives it a completely different meaning and tone. We are no longer confronted with the beautiful tale of the Innamorato, but with its rational interpretation. Boiardo made frequent reference to the 'gesti smisurati' [deeds no man can measure] and the 'mirabil prove' [stupendous feats] (1.1.1) that Orlando performed for the love of Angelica. Ariosto speaks of the 'infiniti et immortal trofei' [countless immortal trophies] (1.5) left in Orient by the hero for her sake. It would appear that he is merely paraphrasing Boiardo's expressions; but in fact, he provides his audience with a specific evaluation that Boiardo had apparently never conceived when he created the deeds and the victories of his hero (such as the great battles under the walls of Albraca, where his beloved Angelica is besieged by other suitors; or the destruction of the enchanted garden of the sorceress Falerina, where many innocent knights and damsels had previously been killed by a series of monstrous beings; or the liberation of the prisoners of Morgana, which the evil enchantress, embodying Fortune, kept in a glass palace at the bottom of a magic lake). Boiardo, on the one hand, insists that Orlando never accomplished as many enterprises as in the period in which he was in love with Angelica, and on the other hand describes those enterprises; Ariosto instead tends to provide an interpretation and an evaluation, emphasizing their number (through the adjective 'infiniti'), the fact that they were successful (through the noun 'trofei') and their memory will last forever (through the adjective 'immortal'). At the same time, he avoids saying that those are the greatest deeds of Orlando, for reasons that we will see shortly. This is one of the peculiar aspects of Ariosto who is always rational,12 not only about

The Orlando innamarato and the Genesis of the Furioso 39

the situations that he himself is creating in his poem, but also about those created by Boiardo. The same rational qualities of the poet as the narrator are transferred to the character of Orlando, in contrast to the same character found in the Innamorato who leaves Albraca at a certain point and goes back to France simply because Angelica tells him to do so, giving no thought to the dangers, advantages, or the consequences of this trip. Speaking about this decision, Boiardo specifically comments: 'The count could hardly disagree / (not that he thought about it).'13 Instead, with Ariosto, the first idea to cross Orlando's mind was a very specific one: keeping Angelica close to himself was going to be much easier in his homeland, among his friends and relatives, than in the foreign kingdom of Cataio, surrounded by so many enemies. Unfortunately, as Ariosto himself comments at this point, 'il giudicio uman ... spesso erra' (1.7) [Such is the waywardness of human judgment!];14 as soon as the two reach the French army, Angelica is taken away from her lover by will of the emperor, and poor Orlando can only repent having gone there. For Boiardo, and according to the tradition of the chivalric code, Orlando simply did what he had to do, that is, obey a suggestion of his lady without giving any consideration to its consequences. For Ariosto, Orlando undertook the trip because he saw a personal advantage in it, and consequently he becomes an example of how easily men deceive themselves with their inadequate 'giudicio.'15 Normally, in the Innamorato as well as in the tradition of chivalric literature, the behaviour of the character is justified and explained on the basis of an official code of courtesy and established rules that everybody is expected to obey. Ariosto apparently does not believe anything of the kind and tends to point out the real, individualistic impulses that control human behaviour. Another significant example of this belief is the case of Bradamante in canto 2 of the Furioso. In an idyllic meadow surrounded by lovely trees she meets a knight with 'gli occhi molli e '1 viso basso' (2.35) [his eyes were downcast and tear-softened]; immediately the gentle lady warrior speaks to him in search of the cause for his suffering. The situation is common to both the Innamorato1^ and the tradition of chivalric literature; the search for the cause of suffering in others is motivated by courtesy, and by the noble wish to help or at least to console. After all, the duty of any knight in the idealized literary tradition is to alleviate the suffering of others and to fight in the name of justice. For Ariosto, however, the story is quite different. Bradamante asks the traditional question for another and almost unbelievable reason:

40 Antonio Franceschetti Questo disir, ch'a tutti sta nel core, de' fatti altrui sempre cercar novella, fece a quel cavalier del suo dolore la cagion domandar da la donzella. (2.36) [The desire people commonly feel to enquire into other people's affairs led the damsel to ask the knight the reason for his sorrow.]

We no longer have the chivalrous conduct of the medieval knight, but only the concrete, human curiosity of the everyday person. Equally astonishing is the behaviour of Ferrau in canto 1. The Spanish knight is searching a river with a stick looking for his lost helmet when suddenly Angelica, pursued by Rinaldo, arrives screaming. Ariosto maliciously comments: ... perche era cortese, e n'avea forse non men dei dui cugini il petto caldo, 1'aiuto che potea, tutto le porse, pur come avesse Felmo, ardito e baldo.

(1.16)

[As he was chivalrous, and (perhaps) no less hot-headed than the two cousins (Orlando and Rinaldo), he hastened boldly to her rescue, reckless of his lost helmet.]

These few lines are full of implications. And here I include the adverb 'forse' [perhaps], as found in the original (but not in Waldman's translation) , because it is central to my analysis of this passage. First of all, Ariosto is clearly insinuating that, had Ferrau's breast not been as warm for Angelica as those of Orlando and Rinaldo, his chivalry and courtesy would not have been sufficient to induce him to fight for the unfortunate, frightened maid. For the knight in love who wishes to show his beloved how precious she is to him, however, what better occasion than to engage in a battle with a pursuer who is threatening her, without wear ing a helmet? Certainly Angelica will notice how bold and brave Ferrau is, how little he cares for his personal safety just to defend her. At least this is what Ferrau wishes, but, as we already know, human judgment is quite often wrong. Angelica does not stop to appreciate how 'ardito e baldo' [daring and fearless] he is, and continues to run away on her horse. Unfortunately, in this spectacular show of bravery there is one slight flaw: every reader of Boiardo is well aware that Ferrau is invulner-

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 41

able and that for him it makes no difference whether he fights with or without his armour. In an episode of the Innamorato he goes so far as to tell another knight, Argalia, that he wears it just as an ornament, not because he needs it (1.2.7). One must not be deceived by the adverb 'forse,' with which Ariosto pretends to question the love of Ferrau (already well known from Boiardo's poem) for Angelica. Ariosto certainly had not forgotten it, just as in the preceding octave he had not forgotten that the Spanish knight had not heard any news of her for a long time; in fact, he had last seen her in canto 3 of book 1 of the Innamorato, some sixty-seven cantos earlier. Ariosto often uses the dubitative adverb not in order to impugn a truth maintained by Boiardo, but rather to express doubt with regard to another apparent truth. This happens in canto 1 when he speaks of Angelica's virginity, which she proclaims in front of Sacripante (1.55-6). He seems to question it, but in fact he accepts it from the Innamorato without any doubt as he shows later in his poem, when the maid allows her lover Medoro to take her 'prima rosa, / ... non ancor tocca inante' (19.33) [first rose, ... hitherto untouched] . Here, two different levels of reality face each other. Ferrau engages Rinaldo in a duel apparently because he is courteous, but really because he loves Angelica and is certain to make a great impression fighting in front of her without a helmet. Angelica is a virgin, but if Sacripante believes that a maid who goes through so many adventures involving so many lovers is still a virgin, he is a naive daydreamer. And perhaps, according to Ariosto, the real daydreamer was Boiardo, who maintained Angelica as a virgin in spite of all her adventures and lovers17s. The case of Ferrau is a clear example of how Ariosto humanizes his characters. Boiardo presents them in a very idealistic way, Ariosto in a very realistic one. In literary tradition an author may choose between at least two main attitudes when depicting his characters. The first shows us the person as he appears to be and to act in public, perhaps with some minor faults, but substantially honest, responsible, good, intelligent, and so on. The second shows us the man when he is by himself, when his behaviour is undisclosed to anyone but the reader, who alone is privileged to draw conclusions. Both Boiardo and Ariosto follow these two different approaches. Where most readers are willing to identify themselves with the noble knights of Boiardo's poem, very few would allow even their closest friends to share in their innermost thoughts, or to observe their private behaviour in the same way that Ariosto so ruthlessly exposes them.

42 Antonio Franceschetti Keeping this in mind, we begin to understand the real meaning of Ariosto's famous line: 'Oh gran bonta de' cavallieri antiqui!' (1.22) [Great was the goodness of the knights of old!]. Such is the narrator's comment on the interruption of the duel between Rinaldo and Ferrau, who decide instead to join together in the pursuit of Angelica. In this case, Ariosto is directly imitating an episode of the Innamorato, yet changes it so completely that it is impossible to doubt his intentions. In Boiardo's poem, Orlando and Ferrau get involved in a duel next to the sleeping Angelica. The noise they make wakens the maid who, frightened at their sight, runs away. Orlando would then like to stop fighting, and asks his rival to allow him to follow her since their duel was pointless now that she had fled. But Ferrau refuses. According to him, their duel must continue until one of them is killed; only the winner will be allowed to follow the beloved maid. So they continue to fight until another figure appears who prevents the tragic end as foreseen by Ferrau (1.3.77-4.12). Once again, the situation undergoes a radical change with Ariosto. Rinaldo suggests to Ferrau that they stop fighting and follow the fleeing Angelica together, then once they have reached her, decide which one should win her. The reaction of this new Ferrau is simply astonishing. Not only does he accept the proposal, but since Rinaldo has no horse, he also offers him a ride on his. Why not? Four eyes are better than two, and there is no point in wasting energy that can be advantageously used for the benefit of both. Perhaps Ferrau has in mind his negative experience from the Innamorato in which he prevented Orlando from following Angelica, and was himself prevented from seeing her again until his duel with Rinaldo in canto 1 of the Furioso. According to Ariosto, this is, therefore, the 'gran bonta de' cavallieri antiqui.' For the reader of the Innamorato, the situation of the Furioso becomes a sad parody; the rivals in love become friends at the moment they see how useful and profitable the common pursuit might become. Ariosto suggests that for his idealistic and optimistic predecessor, Ferrau's instincts are stronger than his intelligence; but a man really does behave differently when he thinks first of his own well-being. According to Ariosto, two enemies may become allies the moment they see a common advantage, waiting to resume their fight later on. The history of Italian and European states during this period proves that he was absolutely right. The behaviour of Ferrau at the conclusion of this episode again confirms this sad understanding of human psychology. He leaves Rinaldo at

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 43

a crossroad and, after some wandering within the wood, finds himself at the same point where he started. One of Boiardo's lovers would at this point become truly mad, but not one of Ariosto's. Apparently Ferrau completely forgets Angelica and the possibility that Rinaldo might reach her first, and again starts to look for his helmet, which had fallen into the river. It is better to look for the helmet that is close than to think of the distant Angelica, whom the other lover has probably already found and possessed. Ariosto reflects through his characters the psychology of the everyday person, and does not simply project idealized behaviour onto them that is typical of Boiardo and of his creatures. Ariosto himself has no illusion about the goodness of those 'cavallieri antiqui' and the soundness of those sudden alliances among them. This is the point he is trying to make in another episode occuring shortly after this, when the same Rinaldo interrupts a duel with Sacripante and abandons him in the middle of the forest without a horse while following the ever-fleeing Angelica. What are we to conclude? Should we be embarrassed if the Christian Rinaldo does not do to a Saracen enemy what another Saracen enemy did to him? This humanization of the character, this sudden fall from an ideal world to everyday life becomes even more conspicuous when one considers in canto 1 of the Furioso the personality of Sacripante. The noted Boiardo critic, Giulio Reichenbach, has called him 'il cavaliere errante della disdetta' (159) [the unfortunate knight errant] and the most romantic character of the Innamorato. In the Furioso he undergoes such a complete transformation that he becomes hardly recognizable. We see him at first approaching the thicket where Angelica is asleep, without noticing her presence: II cavalliero in riva al fiume scende sopra 1'un braccio a riposar le gote; e in un suo gran pensier tanto penetra, che par cangiato in insensibil pietra. Pensoso piu d'un'ora a capo basso stette, Signore, il cavallier dolente; poi comincio con suono afflitto e lasso a lamentarsi si soavemente, che avrebbe di pieta spezzato un sasso, una tigre crudel fatta clemente. Sospirando piangea ... (1.39-40)

44 Antonio Franceschetti [The knight sat down on the bank of the stream and rested his cheek on his arm; so deeply did he lapse into thought that he might have been turned to unfeeling stone. More than an hour, my Lord, the sorrowing knight sat, his head bowed in thought. Then he began to lament, a mournful, weary sound, and yet so sweet that out of compassion the very rocks would have split, and a cruel tigress would have turned gentle. He sighed and wept...]

From the psychological point of view this Sacripante remains very close to the character we met in the Innamorato, but his attitudes become so human and real that we can no longer recognize him. A knight in Boiardo may be depressed or sad, but he would never sit for so long on the ground with his face resting upon one of his arms! In fact, this is a posture that Orlando in the Innamorato explicitly criticizes as typical of a woman, not of a man. Upon learning from Astolfo that Rinaldo is following Argalia and Angelica, the hero goes to lament on his bed, weeping 'come un vil garzone' (1.2.22) [like the worst recreant]. But the thought that Rinaldo might be reaching the woman he loves brings him suddenly to his senses; his own behaviour stands in contrast to that of his cousin's: [...] io, come dolente feminella, tengo la guancia posata alia mano, e sol me aiuto lacrimando in vano. (1.2.25) [While, weeping like a woman, I / Cradle my cheek in hand, and try / To cheer myself with useless tears.]

What to Boiardo's hero is a shameful and disgraceful attitude becomes natural and normal to Ariosto's man. After hearing her lover's complaints, Angelica makes a significant mistake: she reveals herself to Sacripante, sure to find in him a safe escort to return to her far Asian kingdom. She believes that she can trust him as a lover. In the Innamorato he was always so respectful and submissive that she feels he would never try anything too daring. Unfortunately, the man of Ariosto is not the knight of Boiardo; as soon as Sacripante realizes that he has in his power the longed for maid, in that lonely and idyllic place, he immediately decides to pass to the 'dolce assalto' (1.59) [gentle assault]. In his mind, Orlando, who did not want or did not know how to take that same step so often open to him in the

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 45

Innamorato, is not a hero of courtly love, but a fool and a simpleton. After all, he thinks, 'a donna non si puo far cosa / che piu soave e piu piacevol sia' (1.58) [There is nothing that a woman finds so delectable and pleasing]. Angelica's mistake was that she counted more on the appearance than on the substance of the man; but, Sacripante too makes a mistake. He cannot resist challenging the unknown knight to a duel when his arrival interrupts Sacripante's 'dolce assalto.' It is useless to add that the 'dolce assalto' could have gone uninterrupted had Sacripante let the other knight go by. But he 'crede ben fargli votar 1'arcione' (1.61) [confident that he would sweep him from the saddle]; unfortunately, we know by now how often human expectations are wrong in Ariosto's poem. Sacripante not only will be defeated, but he will fall under his own dead horse. Angelica will have to assist him in extracting himself and he will later discover, to his total shame, that the winner was a woman, Bradamante. The last touch to this character appears in the final octaves of the canto. After being kicked by the horse Baiardo, who is otherwise quite docile with Angelica (1.74-5), and then being advised by the maid to run away at the approach of Rinaldo, Sacripante feels insulted: Son dunque (disse il Saracino), sono dunque in si poco credito con vui, che mi stimiate inutile, e non buono a potervi difender da costui? Le battaglie d'Albracca gia vi sono di mente uscite, e la notte ch'io fui per la salute vostra, solo e nudo, contra Agricane e tutto il campo, scudo?

(1.80)

['Am I,' replied the Saracen, 'am I held in so little esteem by you, that you reckon me of no use, of no avail to defend you against him? Have you already forgotten the battles at Albracca, and the night when I alone stood as your shield and refuge against Agrican and all his men?']

One could observe, and the thought is probably crossing Angelica's mind, that his preceding duel with Bradamante does not offer the best guarantee of Sacripante's ability to defend her from another champion. As for the night at Albracca, the reader of the Innamorato has to agree; but the episode is quite different in the narration of Boiardo and in the preceding quotation of Sacripante. He was not defenceless, rather he

46 Antonio Franceschetti was covered by a shield. He was riot alone, but followed by a group of his soldiers. He was not fighting the whole army of Agricane, which reached the fabulous number of two million two hundred thousand men, but simply some three hundred knights who had remained with their king in the besieged city (Innamorato 1.11.24ff.). Under those circumstances, Sacripante's behaviour was certainly very brave; but he is relating the episode as a veteran who is trying to impress his friends or his grandchildren. Once again, this boasting is so very human. After what happened with Bradamante, Sacripante must try as hard as possible to redeem himself in front of the woman he loves, reminding her of his single night of bravery. A modern scholar of Ariosto has written that it is pointless 'to criticize the absence of prominent characters with a complex psychology' in the Furioso.18 This fact reflects one of the essential aspects of Ariosto's intuitions about life, namely, that pure villains and saints are not very common. According to Ariosto, the great characters, the heroes of good or evil, are exceptional. They might exist, but they are rare. Reality consists of average persons, who are confused, uncertain, never too sure of what to do and how to act. They believe they can, and at times in fact they do, control the lives of others, without realizing how much their own lives are controlled by others. A character of Boiardo usually presents a main psychological feature that the poet almost always respects, even without probing into it. Ariosto prefers instead to eliminate any specific feature in his characters, who act and react in each situation according to a temporary stimulus, which may change completely later on. To emphasize a determinate element would mean to overshadow or to limit the others, since according to Ariosto there is nothing final in human psychology. Today's hero might become a coward tomorrow. Moreover, the one who looks like a hero to one person may look like a monster to another in the same situation. This at least is the case with Rodomonte when the Saracen army attacks Paris. From the point of view of Agramante's army, he is a hero; from the point of view of his own soldiers, who perish in the fire between the two circles of walls surrounding the city, and of the Parisians who are massacred by him, he is a monster.19 Tragedy and comedy, elegy and humour, commitment and superficiality, sentiment and apathy, generosity and selfishness are, according to Ariosto, all aspects of the same reality that keeps alternating in front of us and within us. Between two moments the difference is very little and may change according to the perspective of the observer.20 At the mercy of the circumstances of life, man changes and acts more out of chance

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 47

than by his conscious will in relation to those intimate possibilities that are always present in all mankind. Perhaps the only character to whom this rule does not apply completely is Orlando. Boiardo represents him as valiant but rather feeble and a bit funny when facing women and their tricks; Ariosto prefers to take him seriously because of his desperate, tragic love for Angelica. The adventures of the protagonist in the Furioso can be summarized briefly. First, he goes through some minor adventures while searching for Angelica, whom he either never finds or, when found, immediately loses again. Then, upon discovering that she married another man, he loses his head and wanders around like a beast committing cruel and senseless actions. When he recovers his senses, he finds himself completely cured of his love and again becomes a hero, conquering Biserta, the capital city of Agramante's African kingdom, and killing Agramante himself in a special duel on the island of Lipadusa. The following are the comments of the narrator upon Orlando's recovering his senses: Poi che fu all'esser primo ritornato Orlando piu che mai saggio e virile, d'amor si trovo insieme liberate; si che colei, che si bella e gentile gli parve dianzi, e ch'avea tan to amato, non stima piu se non per cosa vile. Ogni suo studio, ogni disio rivolse a racquistar quanto gia amor gli tolse. (39.61) [His old self once more, a paragon of wisdom and manliness, Orlando also found himself cured of love: the damsel who had seemed hitherto so beautiful and good in his eyes, and whom he had so adored, he now dismissed as utterly worthless. His only concern, his only wish now was to recover all that Love had stolen from him.]

If this is the conclusion reached by Ariosto with regard to Orlando's experiences, what is left of the beautiful love story of Boiardo? In the Innamorato one frequently reads not only that Orlando was one of the greatest heroes of the past for his enterprises and adventures, but also that his most remarkable deeds are those that he lived out when he was in love with Angelica. The same goes for the other heroes of the poem: their most admirable ventures are conditioned and inspired by love. In the fabulous world created by the imagination of Boiardo,

48 Antonio Franceschetti ... Amore e quel che da la gloria, e che fa I'omo degno ed onorato, Amore e quel che dona la vittoria, e dona ardire al cavalliero armato.

(2.18.3)

[Love is the source of glory and / Brings worth and honour to a man, / For victory is what Love grants; / Love makes an armed knight valiant.]

In the same way, in the first sonnet of the Amorum Libri, Love is not only excused, but is identified with the essence of man's life and behaviour, particularly of man in his youth, when he is at the same time author and protagonist of his own chivalric romance: ... certo, chi nel fior de' soi primi anni sanza caldo de amore il tempo passa, se in vista e vivo, vivo e sanza core. (1.12-14) [But yet I know that he whose flowering youth / is passed away without the warmth of love / may seem to live, but lives without a heart]

In Ariosto's world, on the contrary, Love becomes a terrible monster that would destroy the hero, if a supernatural power were not able to rescue him and to make him a hero again. According to Boiardo, nothing is more wonderful than the deeds accomplished by Orlando for love of Angelica; according to Ariosto, nothing is less worthy of attention than those enterprises. From this point of view, the first edition of the Furiosois more indicative of the intentions and ideas of Ariosto than the last one, since Orlando's adventures are very limited and traditional: he becomes a prisoner in an enchanted palace, he frees a princess from some bandits arid a knight from a group of soldiers, and he fights with some other knights. There is nothing exceptional in all this; in the Innamorato and in the tradition of chivalric literature practically everybody does the same, without being an invincible hero. It would be easy to provide further cases and examples. Nevertheless, the conclusion would remain the same. At the time of Boiardo, Italian literature offered to European culture the dreams, totally separated from everyday life, of Poliziano's Stanzeand Orfeoorthe lovely dreams of Sannazaro's Arcadia, all arising from a world of pure imagination. At the time of Ariosto, it was a different story: Machiavelli was completing his shocking Prince, Guicciardini was working on his disillusioned Ricordi

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 49

The difference was only that of a single generation; but one generation can make a lot of difference, much more so when one thinks of the political changes in the Italian peninsula during those thirty years. According to the documents we have, Ariosto did not give any reason or any criteria for his 'addition' to the Innamorato. Perhaps this was a deliberate omission because he did not want to explain why he had changed it so much, and thus it is our duty, as modern readers and critics, to discover it. Only a direct comparison of the two poems and of their characteristics will allow us to better understand the spirit and mentality of one of the greatest European poets. Notes This essay elaborates several points which I discussed in earlier studies on Boiardo and Ariosto, particularly in a paper given at the international conference organized by the Accademia dei Lincei to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of Ariosto's birth. Translations not found in the bibliography are mine. 1 'la forma del poema che difinir si puo testura, o composizione de gli awenimenti o delle cose'; 'intiera ... di convenevol grandezza, e ... una'; TOrlando innamorato e '1 Furioso non sono intieri, e sono difettosi nella cognizione di quel che loro appartiene: manca al Furioso il principio, manca all'Innamorato il fine'; 'si dee ... considerare F Orlando innamorato e '1 Furioso non come due libri distinti, ma come un poema solo, cominciato dall'uno e con le medesime fila, benche meglio annodate e meglio colorite, dall'altro poeta condotto al fine; e in questa maniera riguardandolo, sara intiero poema, a cui nulla manchi per intelligenza delle sue favole.' Tasso 122-3. 2 'haveremo a caro la ni mandi quella gionta fece m. Lud.co Ariosto a lo Innamoramento de Orlando': Catalano 93. The word 'giunta' is used instead by Ariosto in a letter to Mario Equicola of 15 October 1519, referring to some new parts of the poem he was writing at the time: 'io faccio un poco di giunta al mio Orlando furioso' [I am making some addition to my Orlando furioso] (Lettere 172). 3 'me e stato fatto intendere che vostra ex.ua haveria piacere de vedere un mio libro al quale gia molti di (continuando la inventione del conte Matteo Maria Boiardo) io dedi principio': Lettere 151. This is the only extant document in which Ariosto mentions the Innamorato in relation to the Furioso.

50 Antonio Franceschetti 4 Quoted in Harris 1.33. 5 'una sua opera in verso vulgar, che e il fin de tuti i libri delo Innamoramento de Orlando': Harris 1.33. 6 See Dionisotti and Bruscagli (particularly 107-10). 7 '... quei che le carte empion di sogni, / Lancilotto, Tristano e gli altri errand, / ove conven che '1 vulgo errante agogni': Triumphus Cupidinis 3.79-81. 8 This is not the place to examine the thesis according to which it is the Orlando that derives from the Morgante, and not vice versa. This thesis is supported by Orvieto (11 and 51; the same idea, and/or the possibility that both poems derive from a common source, has been more recently and extensively discussed by the critic in the context of a round table, 'II Morgante e la piu recente critica pulciana' at the 15th annual convention of the American Association of Italian Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, 20-22 April 1995). From our point of view the situation does not change; the fact of rewriting an extant poem remains the same. Indeed, it was done, with different degrees of alteration, in several printed editions of chivalric poems of the time. 9 'Di fronte alle mansioni puramente strumentali delle altre opere cavalleresche o novellistiche ... si pud dire che il volume del Boiardo fosse per 1'Ariosto un amico continuamente interrogate, un paragone alia bellezza del poema nuovo': 50. 10 'a che voglio io tutte sue prove accorre, / se le sapete voi cosi come io?' (11.5); 'questa istoria non credo che m'accada / altrimenti narrar; pero la taccio' (18.109); 'io nol diro, che gia v'e manifesto' (26.101); 'credo ch'altrove voi 1'abbiate letto' (31.91); 'so che tutta 1'istoria avete letta' (41.26). For the various ways in which Ariosto takes over or makes references to episodes of Boiardo see Delcorno Branca, Ponte, Brand, Marinelli, and Sangirardi. 11 'perche la le die Astolfo, e dove e quando, / e da chi prima avuta egli 1'avea,/non credo che bisogni ir replicando': 32.48. Most commentators interpret the line 'da chi prima avuta egli 1'avea' as a reference to Melissa, who in the Furioso returns his armour and the lance to Astolfo after freeing him, together with the other knights transformed into various things by Alcina (8.15-18). I would suggest the possibility that here Ariosto is thinking of the episode in the Innamorato in which Astolfo 'prima' [first] got that lance, when he, who has been defeated and is a prisoner of Argalia, is left alone in the middle of a wood because his conqueror flees, interrupting his duel with Ferrau. If this were the case, we would have, one after the other, two references to previous details, one in the Furioso and one in the Innamorato, that the narrator omits using the same expression.

The Orlando innamarato and the Genesis of the Furioso 51 12 On this aspect of Ariosto see in particular Jenny. 13 'quivi non fu gia molto che dire, / ne il conte vi penso troppo ne poco': 2.18.13. 14 On this famous line, in which 'si racchiude il senso generale di gran parte del libro e tanta osservazione di passioni umane' (328) [are enclosed the general meaning of a large part of the work, and so much observation of human passions], see De Blasi and Santoro (particularly 92-110). The same concept is expressed by Ariosto on various occasions: see, for instance, the narrator's comment on the people who do not understand the real motives of Bireno's kindness toward the young daughter of Cimosco, with whom he has fallen in love: 'Oh sommo Dio, come i giudicii umani / spesso offuscati son da un nembo oscuro!' (10.15) [Gracious Lord, how often is man's judgment clouded in dark mist]. Or when the owner and the sailors abandon a ship during a storm, jumping into the sea where they all drown, while the ship itself safely reaches the shore: 'Oh fallace degli uomini credenza!' (41.23) [How fallible are men's expectations!]. 15 Analogous to Orlando's 'repenting' is Falerina's, for having made the enchanted sword that the hero uses to destroy her garden. This episode appears in the Innamarato; while Ruggiero in the Furioso uses the same sword, Ariosto writes that Falerina made it, and goes on: 'Averlo fatto poi ben le rincrebbe,/che '1 suo giardin disfar vide con esso' (25.15) [Much did she regret having made it when she saw it used to destroy her garden]. In Boiardo's poem, after she sees the garden destroyed, the enchantress weeps and laments, but has no thought of any kind about the sword (2.5.15-24). 16 See, for example, the meeting of Ranaldo with Iroldo (1.16.60-2). 17 Another, analogous use of 'forse,' independently of Boiardo's text, can be found in the Furioso with reference to Doralice, after the duel in which Ruggiero kills Mandricardo. Speaking of all the women who go and congratulate with the winner, the narrator maliciously adds about her: 'forse con 1'altre ita sarebbe in schiera, / se di vergogna un duro fren non era. / lo dico forse, non ch'io ve 1'accerti, / ma potrebbe esser stato di leggiero' (30.71-2) [might perhaps have joined the other women were she not inhibited by shame. I say perhaps, not that I can prove it, but she might have done so easily enough]. The unstable and sensual character of Doralice can make it certain for the reader that she was more interested in the conquest of the handsome Ruggiero as a new lover than in crying over the dead, old one. 18 'rimproverare Fassenza di personaggi di forte rilievo e di complessa psicologia':Caretti31. 19 It is interesting to note that when Charlemagne incites his men against Rodomonte, who is destroying Paris, he uses an expression that Boiardo

52 Antonio Franceschetti employs for a monster: the line 'questo can che gli uomini devora' (Orlando furioso 17.15) [this dog that devours men] repeats the words used in the Innamorato to indicate the dragon that defends one of the doors of Falerina's garden, 'il dragone che gli omini divora' (2.4.6) [the dragon that devours / men]. 20 Another example of how the perspective of the observer modifies the characterization of a person can be seen in a reference to Rinaldo that concerns Angelica. When Ariosto mentions the 'tempo che da lei tanto era amato / Rinaldo, allor crudele, allor ingrato' (1.75) [the days when she was so enamoured of Rinaldo, who was so cruel to her then, so unresponding to her love], the repetition'of the adverb stresses the point of view of the woman and the change, not so much of the knight, but rather of the way in which she looks at him. In fact, the adjective 'crudele' is used very often by Angelica, in love, when she speaks of Ranaldo in the Innamorato (see, e.g., 1.3.47 and 48; 1.5.16; 1.27.37); and he could certainly be considered 'ingrato' by her, for not being thankful after she saves him from the monster of Rocca Crudele (1.9.13-22), stops Orlando who is going to kill him while he is unconscious (1.28.27-35), or returns to him his horse Baiardo (1.28.42-7).

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Lettere. Ed. Angelo Stella. Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto. Ed. Cesare Segre. Vol. 3. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. 109-493. - Orlando furioso secondo I'edizione del 1532 con le varianti delle edizioni del 1516 e del 1521. Ed. Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1960. - Orlando Furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Amorum libri. Trans. Andrea di Tommaso. Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1993. - Opere volgari: Amorum Libri - Pastorale - Lettere. Ed. Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo. Bari: Laterza, 1962. - Orlando innamorato. Ed. Riccardo Bruscagli. 2 vols. Turin: Einaudi, 1995. - Orlando Innamorato. Trans. Charles Stanley Ross. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Brand, Charles P. 'Ariosto's Continuation of the Orlando Innamorato.' In Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller. Ed. Cecil H. Clough. New York: Alfred F. Zambelli; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976. 377-85.

The Orlando innamorato and the Genesis of the Furioso 53 Bruscagli, Riccardo. 'Ventura' e "inchiesta" fra Boiardo e Ariosto.' In Ludovico Ariosto: lingua, stile e tradizione. Proceedings of the Congress organized by the towns of Reggio Emilia and Ferrara, 12-16 October 1974. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 107-36. Rpt. in Stagioni della civiltd estense. Pisa: NistriLischi, 1983. Caretti, Lanfranco. Ariosto e Tasso. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Catalano, Michele. Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti. Vol. 2. Documenti. Geneva: Olschki, 1931. De Blasi, Giorgio. 'L'Ariosto e le passioni (Studio sul motivo poetico fondamentale dell' Orlando furioso).' Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 129 (1952): 318-62; 130 (1953): 178-203. Delcorno Branca, Daniela. L'Chrlando furioso e il romanzo cavalleresco medievale. Florence: Olschki, 1973. Dionisotti, Carlo. 'Fortuna e sfortuna del Boiardo nel Cinquecento.' II Boiardo e la critica contemporanea. Proceedings of the Congress on Matteo Maria Boiardo, Scandiano - Reggio Emilia 25-7 April 1969. Ed. Giuseppe Anceschi. Florence: Olschki, 1970. 221-41. Franceschetti, Antonio. 'Appunti sull'Ariosto lettore dell'Innamorato.' Convegno Internazionale Ludovico Ariosto. Rome - Lucca - Castelnuovo di Garfagnana - Reggio Emilia - Ferrara (27 September-5 October 1974). Atti dei Convegni Lined, 6. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1975. 103-17. Harris, Neil. Bibliografia dell' 'Orlando innamorato.' 2 vols. Modena: Panini, 198891. Jenni, Adolfo. 'Raziocinio dell'Ariosto.' Studi in onore di Alfredo Schiaffini. Rome: Ateneo, 1965. 577-85. Marinelli, Peter V. Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of'OrlandoFurioso.' Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987. Orvieto, Paolo. Pulci medievale: Studio sulla poesia volgare fiorentina del Quattrocento. Rome: Salerno, 1978. Petrarca, Francesco. Rime, Trionfi epoesie latine. Ed. Ferdinando Neri, Guido Martellotti, Enrico Bianchi, and Natalino Sapegno. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1951. Ponte, Giovanni. 'Boiardo e Ariosto.' La Rassegna della Letteratura Italiana 79 (1975): 169-82. Rajna, Pio. Lefonti dell'Orlando furioso. Reprint of 2nd edition (1900) with new unpublished material. Ed. Francesco Mazzoni. Florence: Sansoni, 1975. Reichenbach, Giulio. 'L'eroe mal fortunato: Sacripante.' Atti e memorie dell'Accademia Patavina di Scienze Lettere ed Arti 75 (1962-3): 159-74. Romizi, Augusto. Lefonti latine dell'Orlando furioso. Turin: Paravia, 1896. Sangirardi, Giuseppe. Boiardismo ariostesco: Presenza e trattamento dell' 'Orlando innamorato' nel 'Furioso.' Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1993.

54 Antonio Franceschetti Santoro, Mario. Ariosto e il Rinascimento. Naples: Liguori, 1989. Segre, Cesare. Esperienze ariostesche. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. Tasso, Torquato. Discorsi dell'artepoetica e delpoema eroico. Ed. Luigi Poma. Bari: Laterza, 1964.

The History of the Furioso ALBERTO

CASADEI

1

The 1974 celebrations marking the five hundredth anniversary of Ariosto's birth also signified the beginning of a renewed and urgent interest in studying, independently of one another, the three versions of the Furioso (printed in 1516, 1521, and 1532). Before these celebrations, studies had been conducted on this crucial problem pertaining to the understanding of the poem, which were further justified by the release of a critical edition in 1960. However, many of these early studies attempted to demonstrate the superiority of the last version (1532) without offering an objective and systematic analysis of each of the first two against the final version. The emphasis of those investigations, instead, always dealt with the variations (that is, modifications) among the three versions, paying greatest attention to the final result, as opposed to the initial motivation for writing the poem. Attempts at analysing the variations among the versions by commentators and scholars like Ludovico Dolce and Giovan Battista Nicolucci, who was nicknamed 'il Pigna,' were recorded as early as the sixteenth century. Nicolucci made a list of changes identified among the various versions of the Furioso in his Scontri de' luoghi mutati dall'autore ..., found in the third book of I romanzi, published in Venice in 1554, while Girolomo Ruscelli, in the preface to the Furioso which he edited (Venice, 1556), claimed among other things to have seen a copy of the poem dating back to 1532, corrected by Ariosto himself in anticipation of a fourth edition that was never completed due to Ariosto's death on 6 July 1533. Quite apart from the imprecision of many of these attempts to

56 Alberto Casadei

record and study the variations, they at least manifested an interest in matters linguistic and stylistic; their purpose in fact was to demonstrate the increased 'purity' of the language, or the improved rhetorical construction of the third edition. This manner of analysis was predictable during a period in which the rules of the classicists had already become very rigid. Such comparisons were re-proposed frequently until the end of the nineteenth century, after which time the study of variations became much more systematic. It was at the beginning of the twentieth century that this approach to the study of the three editions attained interesting new dimensions with the volume Le correzioni all' 'Orlando furioso'written by Maria Diaz (even though errors were still present). Further importance was given to this type of research by the re-publication of the first two versions of the poem, edited by Filippo Ermini on behalf of the Roman Philological Society (1909-11), and above all by the publication, approximately twenty years later, of / frammenti autografi dell' 'Orlando furioso, 'edited by Santorre Debenedetti (1937). Even though this latter work presented only variations among the manuscripts and the last printed version, this masterful edition gave rise to numerous studies. The first of these was the celebrated article by Gianfranco Contini, entitled 'Come lavorava 1'Ariosto' (1937) [How Ariosto Worked], in which he presented certain fundamental principles regarding the methods to be adopted when examining the variations. Contini's methodologies have been used subsequently in many studies concerned with both the stylistic and the structural aspects of the Furioso. During the 1960s, aside from the publication of the critical edition of the poem, many other contributions were made that, once again, turned the attention of scholars to the importance of a diachronic study of the three versions. In particular, two works by Carlo Dionisotti on the Cinque canti (an attempt at a continuation of the poem written by Ariosto probably between 1519 and 1521, though published posthumously: see section 4.2 below), demonstrated, among other things, that the many phases of the formulation of the Furioso could not be reduced to a progression towards perfection, and that the version of 1516, on its own, is 'un capolavoro assoluto' [an absolute masterpiece] (Dionisotti Appunti375). In the years leading up to the 500th anniversary of Ariosto's birth, var ious hypotheses pertaining to the interpretations of the three versions of the work were advanced. In 1974, in Ferrara, the distinguished scholar Lanfranco Caretti, in a presentation later published with the

The History of the Furioso 57

title Codidllo, reversed his prior beliefs in the matter by asserting that the revisions to the third Furioso were made in response to the political chaos provoked by the battles between the French and the Imperialists in Italy, and were tantamount to a form of 'rinascimento letterario' [literary renaissance] (Caretti 107). The first Furioso, by contrast, came into being in a more tranquil historical era. Two years later, Cesare Segre affirmed instead that, notwithstanding the additions and the variations, the Furioso of 1532 remained, substantially, that of 1516, and that Ariosto did little more through his revisions than improve certain formal aspects of the poem (cf. Tntroduzione' to Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. C. Segre: xxviii-xxx). These different points of view (the first predominantly historical-ideological, the second structural-formal) must be examined more closely to understand their respective motivations (see section 5). In the meantime, it is necessary to add that in 1974 an interpretation of the entire poem appeared that considered both the changes and the elements of continuity between the three versions. This study appears in the essay Tl "soggetto" del Furioso' by Eduardo Saccone (in a volume with the same name, 201-7). This essay provided an innovative avenue of inquiry that was later developed predominantly in the United States. Yet, despite his own work, Saccone remained of the conviction (see 'Le maniere' 95-111) that between 1970 and 1990 very little had been done to examine further the question of the relationship between the versions. Subsequently, in addition to the important Tntroduzione' by Emilio Bigi in his annotated edition of the Furioso (1982), an extensive profile of Orlando furioso edited by Corrado Bologna was published in 1993. Nevertheless, many problems that could only be resolved by specific research have long been postponed, and only recently have new contributions on the evolution of the poem been proposed (see Casadei, // percorso, and the new annotated edition of the Furioso by Remo Ceserani and Sergio Zatti). In order to pursue the issues briefly outlined above, our critical considerations (to be examined in sections 3 to 5) will include the following: a) the structural features of the Furioso of 1516 and its relation to the chivalric genre b) the structural features of the Furioso of 1521 and the function of the Cinque canti c) changes made to the Furioso of 1532 and their effect on the original project

58 Alberto Casadei

Before continuing with this discussion it is necessary to deal with the period of composition of the poem to better understand the factors that lead Ariosto to write a sequel to the Orlando innamorato (Orlando in Love) written by Boiardo. 2.1 In all probability Ariosto began working on the Furioso around 1504—5. It is commonly accepted that he narrated a fair bit of the poem to Isabella d'Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga, during the first part of 1507. It is noted that on 3 February of that year Isabella wrote from Mantua to her brother Ippolito, to whom Ariosto had dedicated the poem, to let him know that the narration of the new episodes of Orlando and the Paladins had given her great pleasure. Other information about the composition of the Furioso is documented in subsequent years, up to September of 1515, when preparations had begun for the first publication of the Furioso - which was completed by 22 April 1516. Even before he decided to undertake a sequel to the Innamorato, Ariosto had begun a composition in tercets (the metre of Dante's Divine Comedy), now identified by the title Obizzeide (in Ariosto Opere minori 164—71; cf. Casadei II percorso 23-34). It was an incomplete text of 211 verses, in which homage was paid to a descendent of the Estes, the lords of Ferrara, under whose patronage the poet had perhaps just been enlisted and for whom this rough draft was written for purely encomiastic reasons. This text best qualifies under the heading historical epic, which, following the model set out by Virgil's Aeneid, sings the praises of a noble family. Among the recent poems in the genre was the Borsias, an important poem in Latin, well known to Ariosto, written near the end of the fifteenth century by another Estense courtier, Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. It is important to note that in the Obizzeide the epic material was fused with the earliest material from the Breton chivalric tradition ('Cantero 1'armi, cantero gli affanni / d'amor ...'in which 'love and war' are spoken of, as they are in the Innamorato and the Furioso. Clearly, Ariosto had already chosen to deal with this topic from the outset of the sixteenth century, a task that risked appearing rather commonplace. During that period, in fact, the most innovative works, such as the Arcadia written by Jacopo Sannazaro and Pietro Bembo's Asolani, were very different from the poems of love and war, which reached their greatest success in the previous century. Why, then, did Ariosto decide to continue the Innamorato'?

The History of the Furioso 59 2.2

Boiardo's fame was still current, when, in 1505, the first sequel to the Innamorato, the Quarto libro by Niccolo degli Agostini, was published in Venice. It was, however, mainly a commercial undertaking directed at a large audience, one that no longer paid homage to the great House of Este. For this reason, a need was felt for a Ferrarese courtier to continue the adventures of Ruggiero, whom Boiardo had conceived as the founder of the Este dynasty. In 1505 Ariosto had just begun his Furioso, an undertaking that was immediately acknowledged with great favour by the noble court. However, it must be noted that he chose to continue the Innamorato for other reasons too, for in that epic he saw a text with great potential, both in terms of its content as well as on a formal level. As many modern critics have pointed out, Ariosto was highly proficient at rewriting earlier literary works; in the Innamorato he found at his disposal all the material necessary for writing a piece in the chivalric tradition (cf. the article by Franceschetti in this volume), but more importantly he found many interrupted episodes that could not only be concluded but could also be reinterpreted. Thus, Ariosto was able to combine classical and modern models, and conclude episodes conceived by Boiardo by using perhaps Ovid or Virgil; at the same time, he could add touches of irony or parody, or introduce levels of allegory. Each of these processes has been studied in recent years (cf. Marinelli, Sangirardi), affirming that the Furioso maintains a very close relationship with the Innamorato, while it draws less on fifteenth-century poems of chivalry (the exception being the Morgante of Luigi Pulci). It is important to determine how Ariosto, beginning with the 1516 edition, distinguishes his epic from that written by Boiardo.

3.1 The first Furioso was divided into forty cantos instead of the forty-six found in the last version. In 1532, in fact, episodes dealing with Orlando and Olympia (cantos 9-11), with the Rocca of Tristano (32-3), with Marganorre (37), and with Ruggiero and Leone (44—6) were inserted into the structure of the poem, for a total of more than seven hundred stanzas (cf. 'Tavola comparativa,' in Ariosto I frammenti 157-60). The 1516 version was published by Giovanni Mazocco dal Bondeno, who had been an active printer for some time in Ferrara before the printing of

60 Alberto Casadei the Furioso. The best paper was requested and the run was of approximately 1300 copies (cf. Fahy 97-101). Rather close attention was paid even to the format, which included some extremely innovative aspects for a chivalric poem, such as precise indications of the beginnings and endings of each canto. Furthermore, there appeared a xylograph (depicting bees being removed from a tree stump with fire) and various figurative elements linked to a motto ('Pro bono malum,' meaning 'Evil instead of good' or 'Evil in return for good'), which has given rise to many interpretations (Fahy 116-18). Finally, as far as the language of the text is concerned, it can be said that the first version contains a fair number of dialectal traits, and specifically non-Tuscan traits (at the time of Ariosto, Tuscan was already the basis for Italian poetic language). Nonetheless, these dialectal forms are significantly less frequent than they are in the Innamorato or in the Mambriano, another Ferrarese poem of that period. Angelo Stella, one of the most important contemporary scholars of Ariostian stylistics, has noted that, notwithstanding certain variations, the 1516 version already shows marked differences from the more typical forms of the Padua area (cf. Stella 49-64). In short, Ariosto was seeking to distinguish himself from his predecessors in the first Furioso by directing his attention decisively toward the Tuscan language, even though he did not always make correct use of its forms - understandably so, given the lack of clear and unambiguous grammatical norms. It is also likely that some of the nonTuscan vocabulary was used consciously for its particular expressive and comical value. From a metric-syntactic perspective, at least three major differences with respect to the Innamorato are clearly evident: a rare use of hendecasyllables with accents on the fourth and seventh syllables, which give an unpleasant rhythm and stress; a syntactic division of the octave according to even measurements (in other words, phrases are developed respecting the couplets that make up the octave); and an abundant use of hypotaxis, that is, of subordination, which allows for the creation of syntactic periods of four and sometimes six verses. All this generates a noticeable change in the development of the narration, which results in a much more fluid arid flowing verse with respect to Boiardo's original. With the use of enjambements, Ariosto proposed certain modifications to the successive versions (cf. section 4.1), as has been noted by the most authoritative scholars on metrical matters. Yet even in this case the differences with respect to his predecessors are stronger than those with respect to the second and third version of the Furioso.

The History of the Furioso 61

Moreover, it should be noted that many fundamental rhetorical devices (for example, the use of diphthongs or enumeration) were in full evidence in the first edition as a result of the influence of Petrarch, whom Ariosto will utilize as a model with greater frequency (though often subjecting him to polite parody). It is only through a careful analysis of the first Furioso that one may be able to further delineate these aspects. It is nonetheless possible to state that by 1516 the linguistic-rhetorical features of the poem were already well defined and were the results of choices that Ariosto never completely changed, even if he corrected them at various times (cf. section 5.1). It is necessary, now, to examine the entire structure of the text to see just how much the episodes added in 1532 changed it. 3.2

In effect, the structure of the first Furioso cannot be derived by simply removing the episodes mentioned above from the third version. Aside from the fact that there exist about ten stanzas that were eliminated primarily for political reasons (cf. Casadei La strategia 73-7) and a few other additions made in 1521 (cf. section 4.1), the insertion of the adventures of Ruggiero and Leone creates a distancing of parts of the text that are otherwise tightly linked. The 1516 edition concluded quite differently from that of 1532, as can be seen through a brief analysis of the episodes. It was detected some time ago that the concluding section of the Furioso is of an epic nature, beginning at least from the battle of Lipadusa (41.68ff.) and extending to the final duel between Ruggiero and Rodomonte (46.101-40). However, in this section, as in the entire poem, one can distinguish an alternation of 'epic' episodes, involving widespread references to the Aeneid and to the chansons de geste, in which the narration of the adventures and quests of the Paladins prevails. This alternation assumes, in the end, a particular significance, because the episodes are extremely dense with allusive meaning. In the first Furioso the long sequence in which Rinaldo is the protagonist (42.28ff.) was placed just before the last canto of the poem, and was presented as a sort of 'comment' on all the scenes, beginning with those linked by 'la pazzia d'amore,' the madness of love. Rinaldo, in fact, having freed himself from the rage caused by his jealousy of Angelica, faces various tests of his wisdom, from which he learns that 'there is little point in seeking what one does not wish to find' (cf. 43.6.3-4) ['non

62 Alberto Casadei conviene cercare quello che non si vorrebbe trovare'j. This is, clearly, an ironical formulation, with a Horatian flavour, which is still present in the 1532 version. However, in the first version of the Furioso these and other concluding considerations drawn by Rinaldo constitute a type of 'morality' (as in fairy tales) with an emblematic value, precisely because they almost directly precede the last canto of the poem (40). In this last canto all the narrative plots left unresolved unravel themselves one after the other: the Paladins believe everyone to be in Paris; Astolfo frees the hippogryph; and the marriage of Ruggiero and Bradamante is finally celebrated with a great feast at the court of Charlemagne. The latter situation brings the entire story back to the beginning of the Innamorato, which opens with the king at a banquet with his Paladins - a sort of 'circular closing' of all the romantic episodes, which however constitutes only a momentary happy ending. In fact, the return of Rodomonte and his subsequent duel with Ruggiero (of an epic nature, as it is modelled after the duel between Enea and Turno that concludes the Aeneid) causes a sharp rupture in the apparently tranquil concluding section. It is in this battle undertaken by Ruggiero against death that the first Furioso suddenly demonstrates all the anxiety and anguish that up to that point seemed to have been exorcised from the text. In the first version, this episode was substantially dominated by irony; the mixing of the epic and the 'romanzesco' of the comic and the tragic was always very clever and monitored. In the 1532 version the themes of tension increase throughout the progression of the text and the ending is profoundly modified (cf. section 5.2). However, before we can speak of the last version of the text, it is necessary to pause a moment to look at the text of 1521 and the Cinque canti.

4.1 The second version of the Furioso was published in Ferrara, on 13 February 1521, by the press of Giovanni Battista da la Pigna, a Milanese printer of whom there are no other known publications. This version was prepared in a great hurry, as we learn from a letter dated 8 November 1520 to Mario Equicola, a learned courtier from Mantua, to whom Ariosto writes that the first version had been sold out, though he does not speak of having prepared a new one. Thus this version was published in a few weeks, with very little revision of the proofs. For this reason, this edition appears to contain many more errors than the first, as is also demonstrated by a long Errata-corrige drawn up by Ariosto himself. This printing

The History of the Furioso 63

was somewhat limited: of the perhaps five hundred copies only three survive today, in comparison to the twelve copies of the first edition and the twenty-four or more of the final version (cf. Fahy 101-2). To this edition Ariosto added eleven stanzas, while removing as many, and corrected 2912 of the 32,944 verses (cf. Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Debenedetti, 3:397-405; also cf. Catalano 1:530 n. 27). In many cases these corrections were due to specific errors, that is, those located in a specific area of the text. Ariosto also conducted more general corrections, which will be briefly considered. The second Furioso does not change significantly at the textual level. Nonetheless, from a linguistic perspective one notes the elimination of certain dialectal forms from the Po Valley, which were present in the edition of 1516, and also the elimination of numerous Latinisms, that is, forms derived directly from Latin that do not correspond to Tuscan forms. Furthermore, expressions that were considered too base, common, or comic (often taken from the Innamorato), were also eliminated. Evidently, these words were no longer considered dignified, hence were inappropriate for a refined audience. In effect, rules having to do with proper etiquette were becoming more rigid during this period, and for this reason many words that were considered far too explicit were eliminated from conversation and banned from use in poetry (Mazzacurati 15-64). Above all, between 1516 and 1521 Ariosto improved his knowledge of Tuscan by spending time in Florence and Siena (as he states in the Prologue to the play // negromante, completed in 1520), and by further emulating literary models such as those he found in the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio. From a metric-syntactic perspective, one encounters at least two important changes with respect to the first edition: the elimination of a fair number of enjambements, which created unpleasant rhythms, and the correction of several phrases that were unclear because they contained too many subordinate clauses. As far as the first phenomenon is concerned, one can observe that Ariosto became much more sensitive to the 'prosaic' effects of certain enjambements after having employed them in his Satire (written beginning 1517), specifically to obtain a colloquial tone nearly resembling everyday conversation. As far as the second phenomenon is concerned, Ariosto had, by 1516, attempted to distinguish his work from previous chivalric poems, which made frequent use of parataxis (the placing of related clauses in a series without connecting words), thus increasing the hypotaxis. This procedure sometimes produced an imbalance in the rhythm of the stanzas, and while, in 1521,

64 Alberto Casadei

Ariosto wanted to improve this aspect (as we have seen with respect to enjambements), he decided also to correct the syntax where necessary. The structural changes were, by contrast, very few. Often stanzas were added only to better explain certain particulars of the story that were unclear or incongruous. In one case, though, the inserted stanzas are of a particular interest: they are the ones that deal with the battle of Lipadusa (cf. 42.20-2), in which the narrator speaks directly to a real character, the noble Federico Fregoso, in response to an objection he had regarding the verisimilitude of the story. It is a meta-narrative response that befits the ironic mode of dealing with chivalric material, which has already been discussed in relation to the first Furioso. In its totality, the appearance of the second version presented several 'linee correttorie' [corrective lines], corresponding to Ariosto's new linguistic and literary experiences, thereby making it clear that the Furioso was, in all of its phases, a 'work in progress.' In comparison to the version of 1516, the unmodified part of the 1521 text is far superior to the modified part. This second version was prepared in haste, and did not completely correspond to the project of expansion envisioned by its author. In effect, the second Furioso would have been quite different if the poet had completed an additional section, of which only the Cinque canti remain. 4.2

The fragment, composed of five cantos, was published posthumously for the first time in 1545, in the appendix of an edition of the Furioso released by the famous Venetian typographer Manuzio. A second publication, with the addition of several stanzas and various corrections, was printed in 1548 by another important Venetian publisher, Giolito. Apart from these two editions, the fragment itself was handed down from a manuscript belonging to one of Ariosto's relatives during the mid-sixteenth century, and it is currently preserved in the Public Library of Ferrara. Cesare Segre, who is responsible for the preparation of the modernday critical edition of the Cinque canti (see Ariosto Opere minori 583-754), was the first to attest to the authenticity of the fragment, which previously had been greatly debated (Segre Studi 150-1). As far as the date of composition is concerned, in 1960 Carlo Dionisotti (see 'Per la data' 1-40) maintained that the fragment was first conceived in 1519-21, even though Ariosto reworked and corrected it at least until 1526-8, as is demonstrated by the linguistic forms analysed by Segre (Studi 165-7).

The History of the Furioso 65

The interpretation of these cantos depends, above all, on the use Ariosto wanted to make of them. According to some critics, they constitute a new poem, different from the Furioso (Beer 143-9), but in reality the links with the latter are very strong, so much so that one can show precise similarities between certain stanzas. It is one of these similarities that has allowed us recently to demonstrate that Ariosto intended to place these cantos after the last canto (40) of the 1516 version, thus expanding his poem (Casadei Ilpercorso 13-127). This view corresponds entirely to what the poet himself had written in one of his letters to Mario Equicola, dated 15 October 1519, in which he speaks of 'un poco di giunta' [a brief addition] that he was composing for the Furioso (almost all present-day scholars refer to the Cinque canti using this expression). This fragment narrates battles involving all of the principal Paladins, as well as the citizens and kings of all of Europe, battles caused by the intrigues woven by Gano Maganza (he who betrays Orlando) and by the sorceress Alkane. Ariosto was clearly proposing a theme common to chivalric poems of the fifteenth century, specifically that of the snares created by Gano to trap the Paladins, which had been given very little space in the Furioso. However, in the Innamorato Boiardo had written (3.i.3) that Ruggiero would be killed by Gano, and Ariosto reiterates this prophecy in his poem (41.61-2). In other words, in these cantos he was planning a continuation of the story he had found in the Innamorato, even though in all probability he would not have described Ruggiero's death, as many years would have had to pass before this occurrence (41.61.3-4). Hence, this augmentation was authorized by Ariosto's original plan, 'nell'antico progetto complessivo' [in the old overall project], even though the tone of the fragment is very different from that of the Furioso. In fact, in addition to an increase of 'esperimenti canterini' [experiments in the style of the cantari] in the Cinque canti (typical of the chivalric compositions of common origin, called 'cantari'), the principal models are no longer Boiardo and Virgil, but rather Pulci in his Morgante and Lucan in his Pharsalia. There are several potential reasons why Ariosto consciously made his text more coarse and almost dissonant. First of all, the Cinque canti were composed during a difficult phase in the poet's life, as attested by the Satires. In all likelihood, the intrigues of the Este court, in which Ariosto was personally involved, were one of the fundamental reasons for the fragment. Yet this alone is not sufficient to justify the darkened political vision that one can draw from these cantos,

66 Alberto Casadei and which involves not only a single court (that of Charlemagne), but all the courts of Europe. One does well to recall that this period saw the beginning of the struggles between Francis I of France and Emperor Charles V for the control of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as an increase in the schisms that brought about the separation of the Lutherans and the Calvinists from the Catholic church. In his new text, Ariosto speaks more or less directly about all of these historical occurrences, proposing his own personal, disenchanted interpretation of the political situation of that era (Zatti 30-40). The final stanzas, which speak of the serious defeat of Charlemagne, are by implication not ironic but tragic and pessimistic reflections of a political reality. The Cinque canti have often been considered a monotonous text in comparison to the Furioso. These cantos, undoubtedly, present certain innovative traits (as seen in the Council of the demons which opens the narration) that in some cases are borrowed by Tasso in his Gerusalemme liberata. Furthermore, the tragic material permits the attainment of a grandiose tone in certain passages, as in the ending, which has been compared to the film Alexander Nevsky by the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. This project of augmentation would have greatly changed the appearance of the Furioso, because on the one hand it would have made it more similar to the style and themes of chivalric poetry of the fifteenth century (such as the Morgante), while on the other hand it would have rendered the episodes of Ruggiero and the other Paladins as a sort of allegory of the contemporary political situation. Ariosto did not add these cantos to the poem in 1521, because they had not been completed when he decided to quickly publish the new version. When, at the end of the 1520s, Ariosto attempted to reorganize these cantos in order to use them in the third version of the Furioso, he must have realized that they were no longer appropriate for his purposes. For this reason he abandoned them, but used brief segments of these cantos for the new episodes previously mentioned (section 3.1). During the 1520s, many things had changed, both on the historical-political and on the cultural and literary levels. These changes will be discussed in the following section.

5.1 In 1525 Emperor Charles V defeated Francis I of France in the battle of Pavia, and as a result got a foothold in Italy. After further conflicts, cul-

The History of the Furioso 67

minating in the seige of Rome in 1527, Charles V was crowned emperor in Bologna in 1530. These events, at once marvellous and tragic, left a profound mark on the Italian collective imagination, and are found, more or less explicitly, even in the additions to the third version of the Furioso. Ariosto realized that the chivalric world, still represented by the King of France and his court, had been replaced by an imperial world, endowed with a more difficult brand of symbolism, as discussed by many scholars beginning with Frances Yates. In addition to the changes in the historical-political texture of the poem in the text of 1532 (Casadei La strategia 21-85), the Furioso abandoned the Ferrarese 'municipal' and 'courtly' dimension in which it was born, and moved decisively toward a 'national' and 'imperial' view. This does not imply that the references to the court of Ferrara were eliminated; they are almost all preserved, but stand side by side with numerous other references pertaining to Italian and European history. In 1525, an important event in the literary field was recorded: the publication of Pietro Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua. These samples of prose were in part already known thanks to their circulation in manuscript form, but their official publication signalled definitively the advent of new and precise grammatical and stylistic rules, based on the models of Petrarch and Boccaccio, that would be responsible for directing Italian literature toward classicism. Ariosto adapted his works to these new rules, feeling compelled to correct many of his verses in light of them, even though he had already chosen Tuscan as the language of his Furioso (Segre Storia 35-7). This process implied a large number of changes which, however, did not drastically change the appearance of the Furioso of 1516 and that of 1521; from this point of view, the elements of continuity remain superior to those of change. The Prose by Bembo also provoked a shift in the critical opinions about specific, even new, value judgments regarding literary genres. Because the chivalric poem, after 1516, was the domain of mediocre authors, its status fell to the level of the humble and vulgar. Ariosto found himself having to 'defend' his Furioso, which had already enjoyed a vast and undisputed success. He put together a magnificent edition (containing a xylography of his portrait, prepared by Tiziano Vecellio) and edited it with great care for the press of Francesco de' Rossi of Valenza. It was first released on 1 October 1532 (for its complete history see Fahy 102-75). As far as the text is concerned, he not only improved it from the point of view of language, but improved its overall tone by adopting in the new episodes a more elevated style and carefully

68 Alberto Casadei

selected classical models, eliminating almost completely its comic traits. Furthermore, in these episodes he presented adventures of a 'noble' nature; in some instances, for example, the reader is confronted with clashes between the forces of Good, depicted by the Paladins, and the forces of Evil, portrayed by new and terrible characters such as Cimosco or Marganorre. 5.2 Given these premises, it is interesting to note the change to the ending, which has already been discussed (section 3.2). The insertion of the episode of Ruggiero and Leone interrupts the concluding sequence of 1516-21, in which all the various plot lines were resolved. The new ending proves to be much more complex, because of the increase in the references to Virgil arid other classical models and because of new romantic episodes involving the paladin, Ruggiero. In this addition, as in all the other ones to the 1532 version, there are no further traces of the irony that dominated the first two versions of the Furioso (cf. Casadei Ilpercarso 159-72). The text of the last Furioso contains sections that are more dissonant and anguished by comparison with the 1516 and 1521 editions. These sections were not motivated by Ariosto's withdrawal into himself, that is, they are not due to a personal crisis. Rather, he observes the new historical situation and records the positive and great events as well as the tragic ones. With the third Furioso one can say that Ariosto attempted to create a new type of romance, one that, without recanting completely the ironic form of 1516-21, would be more classical and more tied to the new imperial ideology. The relationship with the chivalric genre, without doubt, changed, just as his relationship with the Ferrarese court changed; still, Ariosto managed to make his poem 'classical' without turning it upside down. The third Furioso is grander and more disquieting with respect to the first and the second, but it is not entirely different. It mirrors its times just as the previous versions spoke of theirs (and as did the Cinque canti, to a certain degree). For this reason, by following the evolution of Ariosto's poem we can re-create the entire historicalcultural evolution of this most important period of the Italian Renaissance. TRANSLATED BY CARMELA COLELLA

The History of the Furioso 69 Note The critical edition of the three versions of the poem is: Ludovico Ariosto Orlando Furioso, secondo I'edizione del 1532, con le varianti delle edizioni del 1516 e del 1521, ed. Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre (Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1960). References were made to this text, even though quotations, for the convenience of the reader, were taken from the third edition.

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Iframmenti autografi dell' 'Orlando furioso.' Ed. Santorre Debenedetti. Turin: Chiantore, 1937. - Opere minori. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1954. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Emilio Bigi. 2 vols. Milan: Rusconi, 1982. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Remo Ceserani and Sergio Zatti. Turin: UTET, 1997. - Orlando furioso. Ed. S. Debenedetti. 3 vols. Bari: Laterza, 1928. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1976. - Orlando furioso, secondo le stampe del 1516 e del 1521. Ed. Fillipo Ermini. 2 vols. Rome: Societa Filologica Romana, 1909-11. Beer, Maria. Romanzi di cavalleria. Rome: Bulzoni, 1987. Bologna, Corrado. 'Orlando furioso.' In Letteratura italiana. Le opere (II). Turin: Einaudi, 1993. 219-352 (with an extensive bibliography). Caretti, Lanfranco. 'Codicillo' (to 'L'opera dell'Ariosto'). In L. Caretti, Antichi e Moderni. Turin: Einaudi, 1976. 103-8. Casadei, Alberto. Ilpercorso del 'Furioso.' Bologna: II Mulino, 1993. - La strategia delle varianti. Lucca: Pacini-Fazzi, 1988. Catalano, Michele. Vita di L. Ariosto. 2 vols. Geneva: Olschki, 1930-1. Contini, Gianfranco. 'Come lavorava 1'Ariosto' (1937). In G. Contini, Esercizi di lettura. Turin: Einaudi, 1982 (first ed. 1974). 232-41. Diaz, Maria. Le correzioni all' 'Orlando furioso.' Naples: Tip. Tessitore, 1900. Dionisotti, Carlo. 'Per la data dei Cinque canti.' Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 137 (1960): 1-40. - 'Appunti sui Cinque canti e sugli studi ariosteschi.' In Studi eproblemi di critica testuale (Atti del convegno - Bologna, 7-9 aprik 1960). Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1961. 369-82. Fahy, Conor. L 'Orlando furioso'del 1532. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1989. Marinelli, Peter V. Ariosto and Boiardo. Columbia: Missouri University Press, 1987.

70 Alberto Casadei Mazzacurati, Giancarlo. II Rinascimento dei moderni. Bologna: II Mulino, 1985. Quint, David. Epic and Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Saccone, Eduardo. 'Le maniere dell'ultimo Ariosto.' In E. Saccone, Le buone e le cattive maniere. Bologna: II Mulino, 1992. 95-111. - // 'soggetto'del 'Furioso.' Naples: Liguori, 1974. Sangirardi, Giuseppe. Bioardismo ariostesco. Lucca: Pacini-Fazzi, 1993 (with an extensive bibliography). Segre, Cesare. 'Storia interna dell' Orlando furioso (1961). In C. Segre, Esperienze ariostesche. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. 29-41. - 'Studi sui Cinque canti' (1954). In Segre, Esperienze ariostesche. 121-77. Stella, Angelo. 'Note sull'evoluzione linguisitica dell'Ariosto' (1974). In L. Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. Ed. C. Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 49-64. Zatti, Sergio. 'I Cinque canti: La crisi dell'autorita.' Studi italiani 8 (1992): 23-40.

'The Nightingale in a Cage'::' Ariosto and the Este Court GIORGIO MASI

'As much as a subject wrongs his prince by acting in ways that are appropriate only to the prince's office and commits the crime of laesae majestatis, so too does a prince err by acting in ways that are appropriate only to the people and commits the crime of laesipopuli: the Duke of Ferrara, by engaging in commerce, monopolies, and other manual trades, merits the greatest reprimand.'1 Thus concluded Guicciardini in the ninetythird aphorism of his Ricordi, as rewritten and collected in 1530. In the first two versions of the Ricordi (1525, 1528), this aphorism was the last of a set of three (A. 67-9, B. 92-4)2 regarding the limits of the power of princes over private citizens; whoever transgressed these limits would become a 'tyrant,' and particularly damning were the effects of princely 'greed.' Alfonso I d'Este instantiated this form of abuse of power to such an extent that in the version of 1528 Guicciardini explicitly denounces him as a 'tyrant.' Alfonso I, the intrepid climber of the walls of Bastia di Zaniolo, was wounded when struck by a stone flung by the besieged inhabitants (an episode commemorated in Orlando furioso: 42.3-5). He was an expert artilleryman who, by firing the 'Earthquake' and 'the Great Devil' at the Spanish, secured victory at Ravenna. He was the warrior prince immortalized by Dossi in the famous painting now hanging in the Este Gallery in Modena; and he was the protagonist in the daring escape from the clutches of Giulio II. He appeared to the author of the Dialogo del reggimento diFirenzeas the quintessential violator of those 'freedoms' that the rich Florentine merchants had always enjoyed under both the Medici and the republican oligarchy. Even the individual politics of Lorenzo,

72 Giorgio Masi Duke of Urbino, quickly stirred up great discontent in Florence because, as Ariosto wrote, 'Laurino makes himself lord of his homeland, and converts public into private' [Laurin si fa de la sua patria capo, / et in private il publico converte] (Satire4.94-5). Piromalli's essay on the Ferrara of Ariosto's era has been questioned and is to a certain extent questionable, yet at least it has the merit of being the first work to unveil and refute the myth - which a superficial reading of the minute archival research of Luzio, Renier, and Bertoni helped to produce - of the idyllic city of art and culture in which all conflicts were resolved in an atmosphere of courtly magnificence. The analysis of Piromalli, as well as more recent historical reconstructions, confirms Guicciardini's harsh judgment, first regarding financial meddling - the fiscal exorbitance due in part to tax collection by unscrupulous assessors - and, above all, regarding the fact that 'the trade practised by the Dukes as private citizens (Alfonso I bought up cured meats, vegetables and fruit, which he then sold retail, together with produce from his own lands),' fell within the 'specific purview' of the 'Este finances' (Piromalli 169). Besides, even the slightest reference to the rigid political hegemony of the dukes is easily verifiable. The Este regime was a true feudal seigniory, and had certainly obstructed the development of a strong merchant class comparable to what had arisen in Florence. In Ferrara, the crimen lese maiestatis was for some time the order of the day (the formula recurs with great frequency in the anonymous Diario ferrarese and in the gloomy Libro dei giustiziati, and it specifies the accusations levied against those enemies of the duke who had been publicly executed). Conspiracies and betrayals with subversive intent were not infrequent, from the plots of Ariosto's uncles with the Venetian enemy in 1482, and the famous conspiracy of Don Giulio and Don Ferrante, brothers of Alfonso, to the decapitation 'ob crimen lesae majestatis' of Nicolo di Rinaldo d'Este, cousin of the duke, accused of having obstructed the latter's reconciliation with Giulio II. Ariosto came to live and work in this climate of rigid political absolutism, in close proximity to the lords of Ferrara. As has often been noted, he had been employed by the Este court from the time of Ercole I, shortly after his father's withdrawal from the commissionership of Romagna in 1497, even though his duties remained undefined, at least until his captaincy of Canossa (1501-3). He was a 'secular cleric' insofar as he received ecclesiastical benefits without having taken vows - an 'ambiguous situation' common to many men of letters of that time (Dionisotti 71). From 1503 onward Ariosto was in service first to Cardi-

The Nightingale in a Cage': Ariosto and the Este Court 73

nal Ippolito and then, from 1518 until his death, to Duke Alfonso I. His long-standing familiarity with court circles brought Ariosto into contact with all the members of the Este household, a good number of whom he will later immortalize in his works, and particularly in the Orlando furioso. Some of the recent ancestors of the dynasty also appear in the more 'courtly' portion of his writings. However, these Este ancestors were not chosen at random. While Duke Borso - a figure proverbial even outside of Ferrara as an example of a past golden age ('the era of Duke Borso' [I tempi del duca Borso]) - is the great pacifier who subdues Marte and Furore (Orlando furioso 3.45), Leonello is only briefly mentioned (3.45.1, 41.67.3). Ercole I, in fact the legitimate restorer of the dynastic line (the brothers Borso and Leonello were the illegitimate sons of Niccolo III), was involved in a struggle with Niccolo (son of Leonello), and therefore had been ostracized by all writers who celebrated the dynasty. Ercole and his wife, Eleonora d'Aragona, are glorified almost without reservation.3 In the poem of dedication to Ercole, De laudibus sophiae, the role of mediator played by the duke between Carlo VIII and Ludovico il Moro is exalted; in the epithalamium for Alfonso's marriage to Lucrezia Borgia, he is glorified for intervening to reclaim land and, above all, as town planner of the famous Addizione. The same operations are glorified in the octaves containing the prophecies of Melissa devoted to the Este family (Orlando furioso 3.46-9). Ariosto's earliest extant work, the Epicedio in terza rima, whose attribution has provoked some controversy, was written instead for the 'saggia Leonora' of the Orlando furioso (13.69.1). In fact, on 11 October 1493 the duchess Leonora died and was eulogized in Latin verse and prose by a host of courtiers, most notably Battista Guarini, Battista Mantovano, and Ercole Strozzi, in tones echoed by this conventional chapter written in the vernacular. Other family members are mentioned in Ariosto's works: Sigismondo, Beatrice, who was married to il Moro; Lucrezia, who was illegitimate and had to settle for marrying Annibale Bentivoglio; and, above all, Lucrezia Borgia, from 1502 the wife of Duke Alfonso.4 The daughter of Alessandro VI is praised in the above-mentioned epithalamium, in the dramatic eclogue of Tirsi and Melibeo (under the name of Licoria in w. 226-85), and in two passages of the Furioso (13.69-71, 42.83), encomia in which she is celebrated for 'la belta, la virtu, la fama onesta' [her beauty, virtue, and honest reputation] (13.69.6). These are in marked contrast to the dubious reputation accorded her, the dedicatee of the Asolani: the sedate portrait of Lucrezia as a member of the Este

74 Giorgio Masi

family conflicted with the vile rumours circulated by her father's and brother's enemies. The references to Don Giulio and Don Ferrante are obviously in a minor key, although with various shadings. The eclogue of Tirsi and Melibeo just mentioned (Opere minori 224-35) has been viewed as a historical allegory of the conspiracy, yet Ippolito's treacherous wounding of Giulio is not mentioned in it, nor is the fact that Ippolito played a decisive role in the discovery of the conspiracy. Thus, some have tried to read this eclogue as an early warning of Ariosto's desire to distance himself from the cardinal's circle. In its condemnation of the dangerous effects of subversive activity, 'une analyse politique lucide' has been noted (Baillet 91). Naturally, one must not forget the literary constraints of the bucolic genre, in which any conflict whatsoever constitutes the polar antithesis of the idyll; nevertheless, elsewhere (I am thinking of the previously mentioned poem of Ariosto's youth, De laudibus sophiae) the fervent exaltation of peace 'is not a simple literary topos (Paoletti 273). Significant, I believe, is the unheeded and disinterested appeal of the Furioso on behalf of the two imprisoned brothers (almost identical in the 1516, 1521, and 1532 editions) O bona prole, o degna d'Ercol buono, non vinca il lor fallir vostra bontade: di vostro sangue i miseri pur sono: qui ceda la iustizia alia pietade. (3.62.1-5) [O virtuous offspring, worthy of the good / Duke Ercole, let not their fault dismay you! / These wretched reprobates are of your blood! / Compassion then, not justice, here should sway you.]5

- in which the contrast between justice' (read: 'the interests of the State') and 'compassion' points to a peculiar human sensibility completely separate from the adulation of a courtier, and finds itself confirmed in actions such as his role as governor of the Garfagnana. We do not have any evidence that those members of the duke's family who had been mentioned by Ariosto in his works, ever, themselves, referred to Ariosto's activity either as court-official or as scholar. Only from the three children of Ercole and Eleonora, who qualified as the 'bella progenie' [beautiful progeny] (Orlando furioso 13.68.7-9), do we have expressions of interest or indifference toward Ariosto's activities, literary or otherwise, and these were pre-eminent among the members

'The Nightingale in a Cage': Ariosto and the Este Court 75 of the Este family praised by the poet: Cardinal Ippolito, Alfonso, and Isabella d'Este, consort since 1490 of Francesco Gonzaga. Among the three, the only one to demonstrate genuine attention and, dare I say, passion for Ariosto's writings (besides simply requesting a copy of the most recent edition of the poem or attending a theatrical performance at court) was certainly Isabella. Even Alfonso had a certain fondness for the romances of chivalry, but such an interest only reflected the style of the era (witnessed by the widespread use of 'chivalrous names'), whereas his sister possessed a refined sensibility, especially for literature and the arts in general, betraying a special liking for the compositions of Ariosto (she had, for instance, great admiration for the plays and in 1529, after attending the Cassaria, requested the autograph of Ariosto's lost translation of Plautus's Menaechmi). A real and true bibliomania is impressively revealed in her correspondence: only in the sphere of chivalrous romance (one should remember her debate at seventeen with Galeazzo Visconti about the relative merits of Orlando and Rinaldo) did she persistently commission research to find the Antafor de Barosia, the Innamoramento del Re Carlo, the Drusiano del Leone, the Dama Rovenza, the Falconetto, and a number of others. More significantly, what is revealed through Isabella's impatient correspondence with Boiardo (Tissoni Benvenuti, 'II mondo cavalleresco' 28-30), and her passionate pleas to Ariosto to revise and complete his poem, are the hierarchies of value that she consciously made to distinguish between the most mediocre romances and works such as the Innamorato and the Furioso.6 Of particular significance is the warm note of thanks dated 15 October 1532 to Ariosto for sending a copy of the poem: M.co messer Lodovico, II libbro vostro d' Orlando furioso, che mi havete mandato, mi e per ogni rispeto gratissimo; et massime perche, havendolo voi ridotto a nuova corretione et ampliato, como mi scrivete, non posso se non prometermi di doverne pigliar novo piacere et diletazione legendolo. Rin gratiovi quanto posso de la memoria che di me mostrate tenere, et vi faccio certo che io disidero mi s'appresenti una occasione di potervi in alcun conto gratificare et farvi nota 1'affettione singolare che vi ho per le rarissime virtu vostre, le quali meritano d'essere favorite. Cosi di cuore mi offero sempre a tutti gli piaceri et comodi vostri. (Catalano 2:325-6) [Most excellent M. Lodovico, your book of Orlando furioso, which you have sent me, is in every respect most welcome by me, especially since you have newly revised and augmented it - as you write to me - I can only expect to

76 Giorgio Masi take new pleasure and delight in reading it. I thank you as much as I can for your remembrance of me, and I assure you that I hope to have an opportunity to reward you and show you the special affection that I feel towards you for your very rare qualities, which merit my favour. Thus I will gladly consent to whatever may please you or you may need.]

This brief and rather colourless outline of the governing Este family, with its starting point in Guicciardini, should not detract us from the most celebrated characteristic of the Ferrara court: it was, using a term popular from Carducci onward, a very important cultural and artistic carrefour, to such a degree that one can speak quite rightly of a Terrarese renaissance.' Ariosto's bond to the court was not, therefore, merely one of passive dependence, but rather had broad human and literary ramifications. The Este family was an indispensable source of income for the poet himself and, after his father's death, for his brothers as well ('I was not the only son nor was Mercury ever friendly to my family and I am forced to live at another's expense ...' [figliolo unico non fui, / ne mai fu troppo a' miei Mercuric amico, / e viver son sforzato a spese altrui], Satire 3.22-4). Ariosto's duties as a courtier obliged him to travel frequently, most notably as a member of the delegation of Ippolito and Alfonso (especially to Rome, Florence, and Mantua) and on occasional extended stays outside of Ferrara (in Canossa in his capacity as Captain for Ercole I, and in the Garfagnana for Alfonso I). At the court, he had the opportunity to associate with the countless men of letters who, in various capacities, gravitated around the duke and cardinal, the greater part of whom, in the last canto of the Furioso, would figure among those who greet the poet at his final destination. Cultural topics worthy of 'courtly' debate ranging from the de mulieribus (matters concerning women) to the supremacy of modern artists over the ancients, with obvious references to Bembo and Castiglione, will filter through into the 1532 edition of the poem. In some measure, an incident symptomatic of this cultural phenomenon at the court occurred in August of 1530 (Catalano 1:597). Ariosto was making linguistic and other corrections to the Furioso, with a view to a third edition - he will write to Bembo on 23 February 1531: 'io sono per finir di rivedere il mio Furioso' (Lettere 347) [I am completing the revision of my Furioso} — when a duel broke out between two Este courtiers, witnessed by Renata of France, over the relative merits of 'Italian' and the vernacular spoken at Ferrara. Accordingly, the court provided Ariosto with an abundant source of

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inspiration, both for the remarkable characters who populated it (drunkards, dwarfs, and buffoons, depicted throughout Ariosto's works and unfailingly identified by Bertoni and Catalano) as well as for the frequent jousting events and the performances staged during carnival, weddings, or important visits. It was also, as Getto subtly noted (231), a setting palpable with a sense of how precarious court life was and how capricious fate could be. The court's geographic location within the dukedom itself subjected it to continual rivalry with the neighbouring Republic of Venice and, from Carlo VIII forward, to shifting international alliances, as well as to the changing whims of the duke. Certainly those passages describing the dramatic consequences to its victims of such political cynicism (I am thinking of the principal additions to the Furioso of 1532 - Olimpia, Bradamante, and Leone - and of the central role of Gano in the Cinque canti in connection with Charlemagne) are attributable to Ariosto's own experiences at the court. For Ariosto, the court also represented the first addressee of his own writings, the privileged spectators of his plays, which he himself directed, and the readers of his rime (lyric poems) and of the Furioso. The production of a play was the court's performance par excellence, and Ariosto was qualified as a 'writer of plays' [compositore de comedie] by Bernardino Prosperi in a letter to Isabella d'Este in 1509, who was already aware of the poet's important work-in-progress (Catalan 2:94). Proof of his specific competence in the field of theatrical direction is found in the appreciative comments by Ruzante to Duke Alfonso of 23 January 1532: 'M. Lodovico Ariosto will be good for preparing the scene' [messer Lodovico Ariosto sera buono per fare acconciar la scena], Catalano 2:319), and by Isabella herself: noi anchora avemo fatte due comedie, ma non recitate con quel bon modo che saria convenutto ne come di ragione doveno esser state le vostre per il governo che ne deve haver hauto mess. Lodovico Ariosto, al quale non si trova hogi di pare alcuno in cosi fatte cosse. (Letter to Coglia of 15 February 1532, Catalano 2:321) [We have just done two plays, but not recited in such a way that might have been fitting, certainly not performed as yours must have been under the direction of M. Lodovico Ariosto, to whom no one else today can compare for doing such things.]

The approval of the court, therefore, sanctioned his success as an art-

78 Giorgio Masi 1st, which first spread from Ferrara throughout what was then known as the Lombard region (comprising Mantua, Milan, Urbino, Genoa, and Venice) - and later to the rest of the Italian states following the multiple publications of the Furioso. Ariosto's years at the court belong to a transitional period in the cultural life of Ferrara. The cultural revival flourishing at the beginning of the fifteenth century thanks to the great tutor of Leonello d'Este, Guarino Veronese, came to an end with the devolution of the city to the Papal States in 1598. Although the history of the principality itself dates back at least to the thirteenth century, one does not want to identify, in this manner, any cultural peaks and valleys or upward and downward turns. Instead, emphasis should be placed upon the existence, during Ariosto's court service between 1497 and 1533, of a long-standing literary and artistic tradition, and of an active 'Ferrarese school.' When we consider Ariosto in relation to the cultural milieu at the Este court, we realize that the label 'the continuer' is well suited to him. That is to say, his originality manifests itself first within traditional genres, rather than in formal literary experimentation, or in the exploration of paths untravelled. This was not only due to the particular characteristics of the municipal poem (which belonged to a Ferrarese tradition dating back at least to the 'times of Niccolo IIP [Catalano 1:262]), but also to the influence of the literary genres which he performed. Already in existence at Ferrara was a rich tradition of erotic and encomiastic poetry in Latin such as Boiardo's Carmina de laudibus Estensium, Pastoralia, and Epigrammata, not to mention the works of Strozzi, Basinio Basini, Giano Pannonio, Guarino Guarini, Luca Riva, Ludovico Carbone, and Fino Fini. There was a lyrical tradition in the vernacular as well (the Amorum libri, the poetic collections of Niccolo da Correggio and Tebaldeo, to name only the most noteworthy). More specifically, there was a tradition of vernacular poetry written in terza rima such as the various translations of classical poets in tercets, the numerous capitoli and eclogues in the collections of the same Correggio and Tebaldeo, and Boiardo's ten eclogues in the vernacular (the two eclogues by Ariosto 'are completely topical' [Tissoni Benvenuti La tradizione 306]). Finally, there was a tradition of stage plays, particularly enjoyed by Ercole I, that included the Timone (translated by Boiardo), the vernacular translations of works (above all by Plautus and Terence) adapted by Battista Guarino and Pandolfo Collenuccio, among others, and, of course, the original Fabula de Cefalo by Niccolo da Correggio, chronologically second in its genre only to Poliziano's Orfeo.

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Even in his only real formal 'innovations,' Ariosto made use of his Ferrarese background. In the unfinished Obizzeide, after the lost Latin epic of his youth, he intended to transfer into the vernacular the Virgilian structure of a historical and encomiastic epic, as had already been attempted in the Sforziadi of Cornazzano and Filelfo, the Esperide of Basini, and the Borsiade of Tito Vespasiano Strozzi. Above all, the Satire, apart from their ties to the only remarkable precedent in Italian by the Venetian Vinciguerra (Ariosto's work, however, differs in content, structure, and model - Horace rather than Juvenal), are closely related only to the four Sermones by Tito Vespasiano Strozzi (1513). The registers adopted by two other isolated antecedents are different: the Satyra of Niccolo Lelio Cosmico8 and that of Marcello Filosseno, which was atypically written in octaves. Nevertheless they are important for Ariosto, at least as 'moral and literary background' [habitat, etico e letterario] (Floriani 54). What is still debated by scholars today is the actual involvement of Ariosto the poet in the ideology and politics of the court, and in his role as courtier (during the very years in which Castiglione would compose and submit to Cardinal Ippolito, among others, the treatise defining the role of the courtier, dedicating it to the poet's second cousin, Alfonso Ariosto). The ambiguity at the root of the debate stems essentially from the polyvalent signs detectable in the reading of Ariosto's works, above all in comparison with contemporary texts that are unequivocally 'courtly.' When word arrived of Ippolito's victory at Polesella in 1509, Ariosto's congratulations contained a brief hint that the victory would provide encomiastic material for the Furioso ('la mia Musa havera historia da dipingere nel padaglione del mio Ruggiero a nova laude de VS.' [my Muse will have a new story to portray in the pavilion of Ruggiero for the added glory of Your Excellency], Lettere 12) and some months later he described to the same cardinal ('con puntigliosa insistenza e dettagliata analisi' [with obstinate insistence and detailed analysis], Caretti 52) the damage done by the French garrison at Reggio. In addition, the victory at Ravenna of 1512, to whose effects Ariosto was an eyewitness, is painted for what it was:9 a horrendous massacre, as also appears from the chilling testimony of lacopo Guicciardini to his brother Francesco on the efficiency of Alfonso's artillery: 'It was a terrible thing, with every hit an empty path was made within the enemy lines, helmets blew with the heads inside, the shoulders of armour flew, men [cut in] half ...' (Chiappini 229 n. 21) [Era una cosa terribile, ad ogni colpo farsi una strada vuota nelle file nemiche, balzar in alto elmetti con teste dentro, volar spallacci, mezzi uomini].

80 Giorgio Masi Ariosto's role at court, according to his own verses, was an ambiguous one. In St John's address to Astolfo (Orlando furioso 35.11-30), the best poetry is described as a potential obfuscation of history, so much so that in order to reveal the truth, one must turn poetic narration 'upside down: Not so pious and benign Augustus was / as Virgil's epic clarion pro claimed' [tutte al contrario] (35.27.6): [Non fu si santo ne benigno Augusto/come la tuba di Virgilio suona] (35.26.1-2). Therefore, Ariosto's solicitation of patronage from the 'sagacious and tactful princes' [bene accord prinipi e discreti] (30.22.5), who evidently had much to hide and embellish, is double-edged. The image, elaborated in these octaves, of the swan-poet who destines his own lord to immortality by removing him from the oblivion to which the courtiers - those feigning toadies - would inexorably consign him, affords a counter-balance to the various metaphors adopted from bird-rearing, present in the Satire, that better serve to emphasize the coercive aspects of Ariosto's connection to the court. The poet lives as 'a nightingale in a cage' [rosignuolo in gabbia] (Satire 3.37), he is the 'bird that changes its cage' [augel che muta gabbia] (Satire4.17), moving from Ippolito to Alfonso. Just as ambivalent is the reiterated theme of ingratitude that is present in Ariosto's works: from the male grata prince mentioned in the elegy De diversis amoribus to the ungrateful foetum lupae of the De lupo et ove epigram, to the image of bees (the poet identified with this symbol of one who performs a good deed by making honey but is poorly repaid, in accordance with the classical tradition), in use from the first edition of the Furioso along with the motto Pro bono malum (described as the insignia of Rinaldo in the Cinque canti 5.46.4—8), and present in different terms in the third edition of the Furioso (44.45).1() It is difficult to believe that its direct target was the cardinal, when the very poem in which the motto appears was dedicated to him. It is certain, though, that the recurrence of the allusive theme suggests anything but the 'faith in the kindness of the world' and the 'serene idealism' thatBertoni attributed to Ariosto (155). The image of poets as caryatids in the Furioso (42.80ff.) seems to confirm for Ariosto Horace's idea of poetry as a 'monumentum acre perennius' [monument more enduring than brass] (Carmina 3.30.1), designed to serve the needs of the political dynasty. Undoubtedly, certain emendations by Ariosto to a number of passages in the first edition that are characterized by Casadei as 'little diplomatic gestures' (La strategia 32-8) are in response to Ariosto's need to adjust to changes in the political direction of the dukedom. The representative forms of the genre of encomiastic genealogy (prophecies and representations)

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adopted in the poem derive directly from the Innamorato, and in turn are connected - as far as the epic deeds of Ruggiero are concerned - to a project of 'restorative' publicity for the Este dynasty, to which a hostile tradition11 directly attributed Gano di Maganza as the family's founder. A role in this project is played by the previously cited Borsiade by Strozzi, although no one knows what chronological relation it holds with the poem by Boiardo (Tissoni Benvenuti, 'II mondo cavalleresco' 30-2). However, before resuming the succession of events narrated by his predecessor, Ariosto first had to reflect on the origins of the term 'd'Este,' addressing a malicious question that seems to point both to the avarice censured by Guicciardini and to the gluttony that was to lead Ippolito to his death. The etymology proposed in a youthful epigram is very different from the one described to Ruggiero by the hermit in the Orlando furioso (41.65.1-6): Sum dat es est, et edo dat es est: genus unde, magister, Estense? an quod sit dicitur, an quod eclat? (Opere minori94) [Sum - I am, is followed by es, and est; edo - I eat, is followed by es, and es whence, master, the family name d'Este? And do they mean 'to be,' or 'to eat'?]

On the other hand, in the tenth chapter of the Rime (Opere minori 1858), in which he turns to Cardinal Ippolito, as in the third octave of the Furioso — That which I owe you ...' [Quel ch'io vi debbo ...] - Ariosto's obsessive insistence on the debt and the obligation of praise seems unadulatory: 'nor ... can I... fulfil the obligation' [ne ... posso ... 1'obligo scior] (w. 7-9); 'fulfil my debt' [sciormi dal debito] (w. 16-17). We are not far from the 'burdens' lamented in the third satire, and the nature of the 'debt' towards Ippolito is specified caustically in the first satire. Moreover, one must not forget the eminently literary nature of these texts: the legend of Ippolito's lack of culture and the idea that he might have considered the Orlando furioso a jumble of'stupidities' [coglionerie] was not born by chance from an arbitrary reading of the first satire (especially of verses 106-8). In reality, the cardinal is the 'privileged interlocutor' of the first edition of the Furioso (Casadei La strategic/, 154). Only after his death in 1520, this exclusive status weakened to the point of fading away altogether in the third edition. Symptomatic of this change is the omission of the realistic octaves AB12 40.64 (cf. C 46.91-2) and A 40.71 (already eliminated from B; cf. C 46.97-8), in which

82 Giorgio Masi emerge Ippolito's strong character, his great influence on his brother, as well as his quite uncardinal-like tastes and habits: Qua con molt'arte e con piu forza lotta, E con robusti gioveni s'afferra: Par ch'abbattuti gia n'abbia una frotta, E s'apparecchi a poner 1'altri in terra. La par ch'egli abbia piu d'un asta rotta, Armato in simulacro d'aspra guerra, A pie e a cavallo, con ogni arma destro, Di tutti li altri e principe e maestro. Vedesi altrove che non pur conserva Ferrara, ma '1 dominio le proroga, Absente Alfonso; e quando la proterva Barbaric intorno ogni citta soggiuoga, Franca la tien fra tutta Italia serva. Ma quanta armato, e quanta volte in toga Ippolito si veggia a fatti degni, Lungo fora a cercar per tutti i segni. [Here with great skill and with more strength he fights, and with strong youths he struggles; a multitude he has already slaughtered, and he's ready to cast the others down. It appears that he broke more than one lance, dressed all in armour befitting a fierce war, on foot or horse, more adroit with every weapon, than all the others prince and master. Elsewhere he is seen not only to save Ferrara, but to extend its domain, Alfonso being absent; and when the arrogant Berbers subjugate all neighbouring towns, he holds it free in an enslaved Italy. But how many times, in his armour or his robes, Ippolito is known by worthy deeds, it would take too long to search for all the signs.]

At the time of the second edition of the Furioso, Ariosto found himself in the service of Alfonso. It has been said that he never directly aimed

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83

his barbs at the duke, yet the third satire and the letters from the Garfagnana betray an attitude that is certainly not deferential. His 'great refusal' of a transfer to Hungary may have appeared - and in fact did appear to the eyes of Ippolito - as a sort of desertion. Hence the judgment that the poet had committed an infraction of his duties as a faithful courtier that Tasso expressed through Ruscelli in the Minturno', nevertheless, this judgment should undoubtedly be understood as an antiphrasis, as can be inferred from the context of the dialogue, modelled on Plato's Hippias major. In fact, the one calling Ariosto 'pusillanimous' is a staunch supporter of the subjugation of courtiers, who is proven wrong and is contradicted by the interlocutor. The scornful criticisms are put in the mouth of Ruscelli-Hippias, probably because of his much-discussed edition of the Furioso, containing the Mutationi et miglioramenti in the last printing of the poem: L'Ariosto medesimo, che fu assai adoperato da' suoi principi e pote avere esperienza eguale al sapere, ne 1'azioni del mondo riusci freddo anzi che no: e, vinto da pusillanimita, si ritiro da' servigi di quel suo magnanimo cardinale, il quale fu 1'ornamento e la gloria di quell'eta. (Tasso 305) [Ariosto himself, who was much used by his princes and was able to have as much experience as he had knowledge, in the things of the world remained rather cold: and, overcome by cowardice, he left the services of his magnanimous cardinal, who was the ornament and glory of that age.]

Ariosto was never completely 'detached from the court' (Getto 231), even though he was able to judge it objectively without betraying the principles enunciated in the Furioso, and above all in the Satire. Nor was Ariosto an 'emule de Virgile' (Baillet 94) in composing the Orlando furioso, which, despite its numerous encomiastic passages, is not univocally definable as a celebration of the Este principality (possibly owing to the nature of these additions as compared, for example, to those of the Morte del Danese). Ariosto always preserved his own independence of judgment within the margins allowed by the individual literary genres. The latter certainly conditioned his writing even more than his bond of dependence upon the court, and for this reason Caretti rightly urged us to draw the elements of a 'self-portrait of Ariosto' from the 'involuntary' reservoir of his letters rather than from the literary repertoire of the Satire (49). From Ariosto's letters, which are rich in emotional content (quite the opposite to Boiardo's own dull 'courtier's officiousness' [Bruscagli 18]), one derives an image that complements

84 Giorgio Masi

but does not contradict that offered by the author of the Satire. Alongside the numerous passages in which Ariosto communicates to the duke his sincere 'compassion' [pieta] for the 'poor folk' [poverhomini] of the Garfagnana, it is necessary to read those resolute and realistic passages in which he would have hanged 'four or five that are in this province' [quattro o cinque che sono in questa provincial (Lettere297); or those in which he proclaims that 'the worst and most biased people in this region are the priests' [li peggiori et li piu partiali di questo paese sono li preti] (144). Still, he admits elsewhere: 'I ingenuously confess that I am not a man to govern other men, for I have much compassion, and cannot bear to deny whatever is asked of me' [lo '1 confesso ingenuamente, ch'io non son homo da governare altri homini, che ho troppo pieta, e non ho fronte di negare cosa che mi sia domandata] (81-2). There is present in Ariosto's work the idea of literature as a panegyrical instrument; at the same time its independence is clearly vindicated. That moral urgency which characterizes the letters and the Satire is actualized in the Orlando furioso precisely in the clear awareness of the leap between imagination and reality that constitutes the foundation of one of the later stylistic registers of the whole text, the one generically labelled as 'irony.' Even the choice of the poem's language - already in the first edition of the Furioso, but with greater awareness in the last - is directed towards a deliberate extra-municipal and anti-elitist dimension: neither a mannered 'courtly' Latin nor a vernacular koine, but a vernacular that finds its roots in the great Tuscan tradition. This choice must be seen within the context of the general tendency in the early sixteenth century, of which the Prose delta volgar lingua is only the ratification. However, Ariosto's poem is a particularly ambitious work, aiming to transform a popular form into 'high' literature, in which the narrator assumes a position that is dignifiedly and openly independent. His selfdescription on the tide-page of the last edition as a 'Ferrara nobleman' [nobile ferrarese] is significant: simply by making himself a continuer of the romance tradition of the Count di Scandiano - and therefore a follower of the epic of Ruggiero in celebrating the 'glorious family' of Ippolito - the poet vindicates his own rank, the dignitas of his family and of his role as artist. A reflection of this tendency to escape from the narrow 'cage' of the court of the city-state is the insertion into the Furioso of 1532 of the stanzas on the relief of the fortress of Tristano (33.1-58), stanzas that replace those on the history of Italy later published by Coppa with the rime. The judgments expressed in them are not completely conditioned

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by the circumscribed political interests of the dukedom, but they defy all invaders, including the French: Accio chi poi succedera, comprenda che, come ha d'acquistar vittoria e onore, qualor d'ltalia la difesa prenda incontra ogn'altro barbaro furore; cosi, s'awien ch'a danneggiarla scenda, per porle il giogo e farsene signore, comprenda, dico, e rendasi ben certo ch'oltre a quei monti avra il sepulcro aperto.

(33.12)

[Thus all successive kings [of France] might understand That victory and honour would reward Whoe'er stood forth as champion of that land Against the onslaughts of a savage horde, Contrariwise, if any should descend To subjugate her or become her lord, Him from his own undoing none should save: Beyond the Alps he'd dig his certain grave.] and the Imperial army, which had been responsible for the most traumatic event of recent history - the sack of Rome: Vedete gli omicidii e le rapine in ogni parte far Roma dolente; e con incendi e stupri le divine e le profane cose ire ugualmente. II campo de la lega le ruine mira d'appresso, e '1 pianto e '1 grido sente; e dove ir dovria inanzi, torna indietro, e prender lascia il successor di Pietro. (33.55) [Here sacrilegious murderers you see, And Rome in all her regions desolate. With rapine, rape and arson equally The sacred and profane they violate. The army of the League, which ought to be The Pope's defender, leaves him to his fate; Hearing the Roman people shriek and wail And witnessing their sorrows, it turns tail.]

86 Giorgio Masi

Ariosto was involved by necessity in an unpleasant task. It is obvious that by accepting it, he would have to adhere to the political views of the court upon which he depended. However, this does not in any way imply that he adhered to the courtier's ethic (and all indications are that he did not), which was to identify with the judgments artd moral laws that best reflected the interests of his own lord. More significantly, Ariosto did not place his role as one 'familiar' to the court ahead of that of the poet. The octaves on the palace of Tristano, as Casella noted in his commentary, embrace the same course of events narrated in the major sixteenth-century historical compilation of Guicciardini, the Storia d'ltalia. In the eighteenth book, the sack of Rome is cast in great dramatic relief. Guicciardini occupies a position in literary histories far distant from that of Ariosto, yet the ambiguous condition of able servant of a hated master, which emerges with such clarity from the Ricordi, unites these two apparently diverse figures under a single sensibility and ethic. Indeed, in the passionate words of De Sanctis: ... [Ariosto] adempie nella vita la parte assegnatagli dalla sua miseria con fedelta, con intelligenza, ma senza entusiasmo e senza partecipazione interiore ... uomo mezzano e borghese come quasi tutt'i letterati di quel tempo, nella sua bonta e tranquillita facilmente stizzoso, e che non sa conquistare la liberta e non sa padre la servitu. (La storia della letteratura italiana 2:16) [... in his life, [Ariosto] faithfully fulfils the role poverty has assigned to him, with intelligence but without enthusiasm, and without involving himself ... middle-class and bourgeois like almost all the men of letters in that era, from goodness and tranquillity he is easily irascible, unable to win his liberty and unable to suffer servitude.]

For the critic, it is not by chance that the text of Guicciardini's Ricordi embodies 'the code of that Italian bourgeoisie, tranquil, sceptical, intelligent, and positive, which succeeded the codes of love and the rules of chivalry' (ibid. 2:111). More recently, one critic saw in Ariosto's 'courtly' works 'not a petty servility, but rather a conscious and unbiased acceptance of the rules of the court that he had to follow in order to protect his "particular interests," a term in the most honourable Guicciardinian sense that Ariosto understood, defended and expanded' (Paoletti 267);13 another went so far as to compare Ariosto to the wise 'expert' Guicciardini of the Ricordi (Caretti 18).

'The Nightingale in a Cage': Ariosto and the Este Court 87

The destinies of the two men seem to run alongside each other without ever intersecting. To my knowledge, on no occasion does one speak of the other or quote the other's writings. In Ferrara, Guicciardini 'studied law' (Sestan 30) between 1501 and 1502, whereas Ariosto was in Canossa on a commission for Ercole I. During the period between 152 and the end of 1523, they governed neighbouring jurisdictions, Ariosto in the Garfagnana, Guicciardini in Modena and Reggio, and in this capacity they faced a common enemy - the indomitable Domenico d'Amorotto. Although neither writer ever mentions the other, there are remarkable coincidences among certain moral verses of the Satire and the Ricordi, coincidences that reveal a sentimental affinity stemming from analogous experiences in service, and these help us to read Ariosto's verse as something other than abstract literary proclamations. I am referring to the tercets that follow the allegorical apologue of the moon on the mountain in the third satire: Questo monte e la ruota di Fortuna, ne la cui cima il volgo ignaro pensa ch'ogni quiete sia, ne ve n'e alcuna. Se ne 1'onor si trova o ne la immensa ricchezza il contentarsi, i' loderei non aver, se non qui, la voglia intensa; ma se vediamo i papi e i re, che dei stimiamo in terra, star sempre in travaglio, che sia contento in lor dir non potrei. (Satire3.229-37) [This mountain is the wheel of Fortune, on whose top the ignorant herd thinks all serenity resides - but it is not there. If contentment were to be found in prestige or in immense riches, I would praise a disposition directed nowhere save towards them; but when we see popes and kings, whom we consider gods on earth, remain forever in travail, how can I say that contentment resides in honours and in wealth?] Compare this with Ricordi C 1:14 Le grandezze e gli onori sono communemente desiderati, perche tutto quello che vi e di bello e di buono apparisce di fuora e e scolpito nella

88 Giorgio Masi superficie: ma le molestie, le fatiche, e fastidi e e pericoli sono nascosti e non si veggono; e quali se apparissino come apparisce el bene, non ci sarebbe ragione nessuna da dovergli desiderare, eccetto una sola: che quanto piu gli uomini sono onorati, reveriti e adorati, tanto piu pare che si accostino e diventino quasi simili a Dio, al quale chi e quello che non volessi assomigliarsi? [Greatness and honour are desired by all, because whatever is beautiful and good can be seen on the outside and lies on the surface; but worries and weariness, annoyances and hazards are hidden, they cannot be seen. And if they could be seen in the same way that good can be seen, there would be no reason to desire them, except for one: the more men are honoured, revered, and adored, the more they almost resemble God, and who would not wish to be like Him?] Other verses of the same satire, II vero onore e ch'uom da ben te tenga ciascuno, e che tu sia; che, non essendo, forza e che la bugia tosto si spenga (Satire3.259-61) [The true honour is that everyone consider you a good man / and that you be a good man, for if you are not, / the facade soon vanishes.] invite an analogous comparison with Ricordi C 44 (having evolved with variations through Q'-Q2 3, A 49, and B 2): Fate ogni cosa per parere buoni, che serve a infinite cose: ma, perche le opinione false non durano, difficilmente vi riuscira el parere lungamente buoni, se in verita non sarete. Cosi mi ricordo gia mio padre. [Do everything that you can to appear good, as this will serve you for an infinite number of things: however, since false appearances do not last, you will find it difficult to appear good for long, if, in truth, you are not. Thus my father taught me.] Historical events and subjective experiences seem to produce similar reactions. The passage from the first edition of the Furioso to the Cinque canti and to the new episodes of the Furioso's third edition, substantiated by a 'total lack of irony' towards a 'new kind of romance,' which antici-

The Nightingale in a Cage': Ariosto and the Este Court 89

pates Tasso (Casadei II percorso 169), presents analogies with the evolution from the Q and A versions of the Ricordi to the B and C versions. From a vision bound to the city and, perhaps, even to the family - in which individual 'prudence' and 'virtue' still have ample sway - one arrives at a more problematic national and international vision, with a heavy awareness of the limitations imposed by events upon the individual, which clearly emerges in the Storia d'ltalia. For both men, the two eras were marked by those fateful three years of utter subversion, from 1527 to 1530, that signalled the end of the true autonomy of the Italian courts and oligarchies. The trauma was shared with equal intensity by the 'courtiers' Guicciardini and Ariosto. TRANSLATED BY DONATO SANTERAMO

Notes 1 'Quanto uno private erra verso el principe e committe crimen lese maiestatis volendo fare quello che appartiene al principe, tanto erra uno principe e committe crimen lest populi, faccendo quello che appartiene a fare al popolo e a' privati: pero merita grandissima riprensione el duca di Ferrara faccendo mercatantie, monopoli e altre cose meccaniche che aspettano a fare a' privati.' Guicciardini Ricordi 93. 2 I have adopted the abbreviations created by Michele Barbi: A = version prior to 1525; B = version of 1528; C = version of 1530. 3 A shadow barely falls on verse 33 of the elegy De diversis amoribus:'... pertaesum est male grati principis ...' (Opere minori 90-1), but soon after (v. 41) the poet maintains that he served 'pio celebri sub principe.' 4 The poet will also mention her brother, Cesare, and also a lady of his retinue that Angela Borgia who was perhaps the cause of the disagreement between Don Giulio and Ippolito - and naturally his son, the future Duke Ercole II. 5 See Reynolds translation of the Orlando furioso. 6 From the letter to Ippolito of 3 February 1507 attesting to the 'great satisfaction' [gran satisfactione] that she derived from the 'narration' [naratione] by the poet 'of the work that he is composing' [de 1'opera che '1 compone] (Catalano 2: 79), up to the letters following the third edition of the Furioso. 7 It would be more appropriate to speak of various 'seasons,' as Getto (239) and Bruscagli (18) have rightly done. 8 Protege of Ercole I and dedicatee of a Latin epitaph by Ariosto (Opere minori 42-4, nn. 16 and 16 bis).

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9 In chapter 16, 37ff. of the Rime: 'Io venni dove le campagne rosse / eran del sangue barbaro e latino ...' (Opere minori 204); and in the Furioso: 14.2. 10 An octave to be linked with the verse 'Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes,' attributed to Virgil and quoted in the Vita Vergilii by Donatus. 11 This tradition dates back at least to the fourteenth century, and was tenacious during all of the fifteenth: there are still traces of it at the end of the century in the letters of the impudent Floriano Dolfo to Francesco Gonzaga and Isabella. 12 To designate the three printings of the Furioso I adopt the abbreviations created by Santorre Debenedetti: A = 1516 edition, B = 1521 edition, C = 1532 edition. 13 '... non servilismo gretto, ma adesione spregiudicata e consapevole alle esigenze della ragion dinastica, che 1'Ariosto dovette servire per le necessita impostegli dalla cura del suo particulare, inteso, difeso ed accresciuto nella piu onorevole dimensione guicciardiniana del termine.' 141 have adopted the abbreviations created by Michele Barbi (see n. 2); Q1 = First collection of the Ricordi (1512); Q2 = second collection (1512). With some variation, the concept is already in A 35 and B 60, and is also found in the Consolatona, which also attributes the desire for 'grandezza' [greatness] to 'quegli... sanza lettere o sanza esperienza' [those ... without letters or without experience] (Guicciardini Opere 1.506).

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Lettere. Ed. Angelo Stella. Milan: Mondadori, 1965. - Opere minori. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1954. - Orlando furioso secondo I'edizione del 1532 con le varianti delle edizioni del 1516 e del 1521. Ed. Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre. Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1960. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Lanfranco Caretti. 1966. 3rd ed., Turin: Einaudi, 1981. - Orlando furioso. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. 2 vols. London: Penguin Books, 1977. - Satire. Ed. Cesare Segre. Turin: Einaudi, 1987. Bacchelli, Riccardo. La congiura diDon Giulio d'Este. 1931. 2nd ed., Milan: Mondadori, 1958. Baillet, Roger. 'L'Arioste et les princes d'Este: Poesie et politique.' In Lepouvoir et la plume: Incitation, controk et repression dans I'ltalie du XVIe siecle. Paris: Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1982. 85-95. Belvederi, Raffaele, Virgilio Ferrari, and Arturo Malagu. Ferrara e 1'Ariosto: LaFerrariaeDecus nel V centenario della nascita delpoeta. Ferrara: SATE, 1974.

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Bertoni, Giulio. La biblioteca Estense e la coltura ferrarese ai tempi delDuca Ercole I (1471-1505). Turin: Loescher, 1903. - L"Orlandofurioso'e la Rinascenza aFerrara. Modena: Orlandini, 1919. - 'Lettori di romanzi francesi nel Quattrocento alia Corte Estense.' Romania 45 (1918-19): 117-22. Bruscagli, Riccardo. Stagioni delta civiltd estense. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1983. Campori, Giuseppe. Gli artisti italiani e stranieri negli Stati Estensi. Catalogo storico corredato di documenti inediti per Giuseppe Campori. Rome: Multigrafica, 1969. Carducci, Giosue. La gioventu dell'Ariosto e la poesia latina aFerrara. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1875. Caretti, Lanfranco. Ariosto e Tasso. 1961. 3rd ed., Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Casadei, Alberto. La strategia delk varianti: Le correzioni storiche del terzo Furioso. Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1988. - Ilpercorso del 'Furioso.'Ricerche intorno alle redazioni del 1516 e del 1521. Bologna: II Mulino, 1993. Catalano, Michele. Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti. 2 vols. Geneva: Olschki, 1930-1. Chiappini, Luciano. Gli Estensi. Varese: Dall'Oglio, 1967. De Sanctis, Francesco. Storia della letteratura italiana. Ed. Benedetto Croce. 6th ed. Bari: Laterza, 1958. Dionisotti, Carlo. 'Chierici e laid.' In C. Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana, 55-88. 1967. 2nd ed., Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Dolfo, Floriano. Lettere ai Gonzanga, Ed. Marzia Minutelli. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e letteratura, 2002. Floriani, Piero. // modello ariostesco: La satira classicistica nel Cinquecento. Rome: Bulzoni, 1988. Gardner, Edmund G.. Dukes and Poets inFerrara: A Study in the Poetry, Religion and Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries. London: A. Constable and Co., 1904. Getto, Giovanni. 'La corte estense di Ferrara come luogo d'incontro di una civilta letteraria.' In Getto, Letteratura e critica nel tempo, 219-39. 1953. Milan: Marzorati, 1954. Guicciardini, Francesco. Opere. Ed. Emanuella Lugnani Scarano. Turin: UTET, 1970. - Ricordi. Ed. Giorgio Masi. Milan: Mursia, 1994. Gundersheimer, Werner L. Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. - Ferrara estense. Lo stile delpotere. Trans. Vittorio Vandelli. Modena: Panini, 1988. Lambertini, Gastone. La corte estense a Ferrara. Ferrara: Cassa di Risparmio, 1983.

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Luzio, Alessandro and Rodolfo Renier. 'La coltura e le relazioni letterarie di Isabella d'Este Gonzaga.' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 33 (1899): 1-62 ('I. La coltura') and 35 (1900): 193-257 ('II. Le relazioni letterarie. 2. Gruppo ferrarese'). Marini, Lino. 'Lo stato estense.' In Storia d'ltalia. Ed. Giuseppe Galasso. XVII, I ducati padani, Trento e Trieste: 1-211. Turin: UTET, 1979. - Peruna storia dello stato estense. Bologna: Patron, 1973. Masi, Giorgio. T segni dell'ingratitudine: Ascendenze classiche e mediovali delle imprese ariostesche nelFurioso.' Albertianab (2002): 141-64. Fade, Marianne, Lene Waage Petersen, and Daniela Quarta, eds. La corte diFerrara e il suo mecenatismo (1441—1598). Atti del convegno - Copenaghen, 21—23 maggio 1987. Modena: Panini, 1990. Paoletti, Lao. 'Cronaca e letteratura nei "Carmina."' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 265-82. Papagno, Giuseppe, and Amedeo Quondam. La corte e lo spazio: Ferrara estense. Rome: Bulzoni, 1982. Pasquazi, Silvio. Rinascimento ferrarese. Caltanissetta-Rome: Sciascia, 1957. Piromalli, Antonio. La cultura a Ferrara al tempo di Ludovico Ariosto. 1953. 2nd ed., Rome: Bulzoni, 1975. Rossi, Paolo, ed. II Rinascimento nelle corti padane: Societd e cultura. Bari: De Donate, 1977. Sestan, Ernesto. 'Gli Estensi e il loro stato al tempo dell'Ariosto.' LaRassegna della Letteratura Italiana 79 (1975): 19-33. Tasso, Torquato. Prose. Ed. Ettore Mazzali. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1959. Tissoni Benvenuti, Antonia. 'II mondo cavalleresco e la corte estense.' In I libri di 'Orlando innamorato.' Modena: Panini, 1987. 13-33. - 'La tradizione della terza rima e 1'Ariosto.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 303-13.

Ariosto: Landscape Artist MONICA FARNETTI

With his superb literary style of highlighting, and following, the subjects in the Orlando furioso, Ariosto foreshadows the cinematic use of 'panning' and 'tracking' by several centuries. By alternating these two techniques through the narrator - an ideal camera lens - he vividly portrays the fabulous characters and warring heroes in their daring feats, as well as the poem's many extraordinary panoramas: Di monte in monte e d'uno in altro bosco giunsero ove 1'altezza di Pirene puo dimostrar, se non e 1'aer fosco, e Francia e Spagna e due diverse arene, come Apennin scopre il mar schiavo e il tosco dal giogo onde a Camaldoli si viene. (4.11) ... et al fin capito sopra quel monte per cui dal Franco e il Tarracon distino; tenendo tuttavia volta la fronte verso la dove il sol ne viene estinto ... (29.51) ... Montava sopra un'alta torre spesso, ch'i fold boschi e le campagne amene scopria d'intorno, e parte de la via onde di Francia a Montalban si gia. (32.14) Sorge tra il duro Scita e 1'Indo molle

94 Monica Farnetti un monte che col ciel quasi confina e tanto sopra gli altri il giogo estolle, ch'alla sua nulla altezza s'awicina: quivi, sul piu solingo e fiero colle, cinto d'orrende baize e di ruina ... (Cinque canti 1.1) [Across mountains and through forests they travelled until they came to the heights of the Pyrenees which command a view (if the air is not murky) of both France and Spain, and of two separate shores -just as from the saddle in the Apennines on the approach to Camaldoli...];' [... eventually he came up into the mountains which divide France from Spain. As he proceeded in the direction of the setting sun ...] [... She often climbed to a high tower which commanded a view over the dense woods and smiling countryside and over a stretch of the road leading to Montauban.] [There rises between the hardened Scythian and the soft-living Indian a mountain which almost borders on the sky, and it lifts its peak so far above the rest that no other even approaches its height. Here, on the wildest and loneliest rise, girded by awesome cliffs and precipices ...] The incidences of 'panning' cited above may suffice as eloquent examples of Ariosto's 'poetry of space' in which space itself is asserted as a 'compositional element of being and of knowledge' (Getto 81, 120). None would seem more exemplary of a tracking-shot sequence than the well-known passage in which the Ruggiero-hippogryph 'duo' descends onto Alcina's island, thus providing a 'photographic point of view' that has been much discussed by certain critics (Rossi 28). Other critics have noted how the episode is revealed through Ruggiero's own progressive observation of the details, an effect 'caused by an identical correlation of sense to rhythm' (Blasucci 88): ... culte pianure e delicati colli, chiare acque, ombrose ripe e prati molli. Vaghi boschetti di soavi allori, di palme e d'amenissime mortelle, cedri et aranci ch'avean frutti e fiori

Ariosto: Landscape Artist 95 contest! in varie forme e tutte belle, ... e tra quei rami con sicuri voli cantando se ne giano e rosignuoli. Tra le purpuree rose e i bianchi gigli, che tiepida aura freschi ognora serba, sicuri si vedean lepri e conigli, e cervi con la fronte alta e superba, ... saltano i daini e i capri isnelli e destri, che sono in copia in quei luoghi campestri. (6.20-2) [... Here were well-tilled plains and neat hills, limpid waters, shady banks and soft meadows, enticing thickets of cool laurel, of palms and loveliest myrtle, of cedar and orange-trees whose fruit and blossoms were disposed in sundry harmonious ways - ... and safe amid their branches, flitted melodious nightingales. Hares and rabbits were to be espied hopping among the deep-red roses and white lilies which a temperate breeze kept ever fresh; and deer, holding high their splendid heads ... Fawns and nimble goats skipped deftly - many was their number in these rustic parts.]2

In these octaves, the pressing and frenetic rhythm is governed by its 'impetuosity' and 'fluency of narration.' These passages aptly demonstrate the long-recognized notion that the extraordinary rhythm is what best characterizes the Furioso (Calvino Perche leggere i dassici 82). In fact, the assertion that the poem itself 'resists beginning and resists ending' because of its rhythm (ibid. 78) may be better understood when we consider that the Furioso, first inspired by Boiardo's unfinished Orlando innamorato, was then subjected to further 'additions' and refinements by Ariosto that ended only with his death. Furthermore, the fluid rhythm of the Furioso ensures the immense proficiency required to connect the great volume of source material - Carolingian, Arthurian, and the fantastical -with which the poem is suffused with 'utmost liberty' (Segre 49). Certain major Italian novelists of the 1900s (exceptional readers of the Furioso) compiled actual models of locations based upon the descriptions found in the poem. We look first to Italo Calvino, a curious and gifted sightseer who repeatedly returned to Ariosto's 'sites' until he was able to design an accurate and annotated map of their locations. His map, serving as a travel guide for the reader-tourist, offers precise directions to the unreachable castles, fatal crossroads, and dead-end passages, as well as instructions on how best to traverse the tangled forests.

96 Monica Farnetti The map also features the places of either historic or scenic interest: the fountains, palaces, roads, and various look-out points (Calvino 'Orlando furiosodi... Ariosto' passim). Calvino would often 'visit' one particular passage pertaining to the castle of Atlante, which he designated as the architectural metaphor for the entire poem, or for all of literature - indeed for life itself- because at this castle, powerful and treacherous analogies are entertained. There, in addition to what has already been narrated, whatever may be narrated is duly summoned: it is the nexus of every experience in the Furioso (Calvino // castello dei destini incrociatipassim). While Calvino interprets the Furioso as virtual reality, other writers and readers take the poem's landscapes and scenic views literally, so to speak, by determining their geographic co-ordinates and then classifying the locations as either pleasing or horrific, picturesque or sublime. They also draw a distinction between the purely fantastical geography of Ariosto and the one that may be 'real' by comparing the so-called 'real' geography (from the poem) with actual maps of that era. We can include in this group two important critics, Massimo Bontempelli and Antonio Baldini, who, despite their apparently antithetical works, 'L'Ariosto geografo' (1933) and Ludovico della tranquillitd (1933) respectively, share the same scientific bibliography, critical approach, and theory. Following the findings of Michele Vernero (1913), who remains today the unrivalled master-geographer of the Furioso, Bontempelli limits his investigation of the poem's various characters to only two 'exemplary travellers,' Astolfo and Ruggiero. In studying their movements, he notes the similarities and differences between the routes they take and those represented in the maps of Ptolemy, which were among the most prized possessions of the Este court (and likely Ariosto's primary source). He also compares their routes to those prototypical paths, retraced between literature and history, of Dante's Ulysses, Marco Polo, Jean de Mandeville, and Christopher Columbus. Bontempelli's modest objective, in the course of his comparative reading of Ariosto and of Vernero, does not prevent him from intuiting certain relevant factors. Consider, for example, how Ariosto continually shifts between what may be real and what may be imaginary and thus effectively creates a 'magical realism,' or consider how the poem's geography, being supernatural or fantastical, can still respect Nature 'with all her laws' ('Geografo' 533). Bontempelli's appraisal of the geography in the Furioso as a synthesis of imagination and discovery is still valid today, and correct; and it may easily be adapted to changing critical theories because 'geography is always dis-

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covered and this is its fascination, and every discovery is always preceded by an act of the imagination.' Bontempelli continues: [Ariosto] is a master poet, for whom permission from reality to believe in his imagination is not always necessary. Alcina's island existed for Ariosto just as he believed in Ferrara's existence; Earthly Paradise, where he sends his hero, is not less real than are Asia or Europe, where he has already sent him; and we would be greatly mistaken, and disrespectful of Ludovico Ariosto, if we were to make a distinction between where our geography coincides with his, and where it does not. (ibid. 564-5)3 Here, the critic maintains that Ariosto's notion of geography is perfectly consistent with that of his time: essentially empirical, with scientific ambitions, yet still subject to 'mythical' or 'legendary' characteristics. Both Bontempelli and Baldini refer to Vernero as their primary source, and they share the usual assumptions about Ariosto as the totally immobile traveller of the imaginary. Since the poet, in fact, was a steadfast sedentary and devotee of domestic landscapes, Baldini's eponym, delta tranquillitd, is to be understood essentially as Ariosto's categorical refusal to ever travel far from Ferrara. Baldini abandons himself more readily than Bontempelli to a lively commentary on the literary journeys of Ariosto, which he appreciates as landscapes presented to the reader in 'snapshots,' or as postcards from France, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere (preferred locations within the 'immeasurable opening' of the Furioso). The critic indicates examples depicting the different countries' respective anthropological, botanical, architectural, and human features in the 'octaves almost like advertisements for tourists' that are 'illuminated by a splendid Riviera sun' as in the Mediterranean landscapes of Languedoc, arid the island of Limosa, or on the island, '... di lauri e di ginepri e di mortella / e di palme fruttifere e feconde ...' (41.57) [... planted with laurel, juniper, myrtle and fruitful palms ...], where Ruggiero meets the hermit (and where Ruggiero is converted). And, as a model 'of rational architecture,' Baldini points us to the castle of Atlante, 'all of steel at the top of a high cliff.' Da quattro canti era tagliato, e tale che parea dritto a fil de la sinopia ... (4.13) [It rose up four square, its corners cut flush and straight as a line scored out by a joiner ...]

98 Monica Farnetti Or again, in the representation of Spanish women: the Galician, Isabella, is sharply contrasted to the Andalusian, Doralice. Isabella 'grew proud and lean on the winds of the Atlantic/ was 'all seriousness, courageously faithful,' and was always capable of behaving as a 'paragon of continence'; whereas Doralice 'grew on flattery and sweets in the lush gardens of Alahambra,' and appears 'altogether irresponsible and flirtatious' (Baldini 44-5). It is no wonder, then, that Isabella will follow her destiny of love, and rather than be possessed by Rodomonte she chooses to die and thus remains faithful to her beloved, though deceased, Zerbino. However, Doralice, the 'hardhearted' one who 'notices men only when they are alive and doing well' ('Per lei buono era vivo Mandricardo: ma che ne volea far dopo la morte?' [30.73] [Manricardo, alive, was all very well, but what use was he to her dead?]), bids farewell to her readers 'in optimal health.' Baldini's most interesting observations on the landscapes that accompany the entire narrative are ancillary, so to speak, to the Cinque canti and the 'additions' to the final version of the Furioso. To the critic, the later work by the poet is overcast with colder, darker tones starkly contrasting with the brilliant natural colours of 'golden moments' past, as if under the influence of an 'eclipse.' Such comments are normally denounced by most critics, but Baldini further suggests that the darker imagery is expressive of the poet's deep spiritual transformation from the radiating light of an 'all Mediterranean fable' to a foggy northern setting in 'the frozen azure of the Lost Island and the Black forests of Bohemia' (Baldini 53-5). Again, in regard to changing landscapes, the critic unleashes his didactic verve in his commentary on the 'marine apocalypse' incited by the apparition of a sea monster in canto 11: Sea divinities, of a minor order, lose their bearings and run hither and thither, shrieking and crying: Nereids with their braids unbound, Ino with Melicerta 'round her neck,' Glauci, and Tritons compete to escape with the whales, seals, walruses, and sea-lions ... All the sea roils and boils. Even the ocean's high commanders lose all sense of control, and Neptune himself, while trying to yoke the dolphins to his chariot... seeks warm seas, the blue seas. It is understandable that he may have had enough of those green seas of Tramontana. The son of Saturn, the brother of Jupiter and Pluto, must have felt terribly out of place under Odin's watch and the thunder of Thor, in the same way that the medieval Mephistopheles felt uncomfortable among the sphinxes during Walpurgis Night.4

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In his conclusion, which almost seems conceived under the banner of Ariosto's fantasy, Baldini describes how cultures, mythologies, and divinities clash in a near cosmic confrontation. They each differ according to which geography and which climate they belong to, and, in this manner, reflect the journeys of the spirit and the seasons of the human soul: Classical mythology does not belong in that sea of herrings, just as it does not belong in the Black Forest of Bohemia or along the river banks of Moldova. Against this forest, interwoven with poisonous badgers, funereal cypresses, and black oaks full of wolves, barn owls, and smaller owls, Charlemagne and his paladins, their lances and swords poised, must arm themselves with axes, like many of the woodsmen of Holder in the second of the Cinque canti... Seen from among the sombre bohemian octaves of his great maturity, how thoughtlessly beautiful and transparent the colours of his youthful, frisky octaves appear: Damascus, in celebration with King Norandine's games, and all the windows and loges brimming with vegetables, carpets, and beautiful women, just as in the more amusing paintings of Carpaccio and Giambellino! (Baldini 58-9)5

However, Baldini's keen intuition regarding such dramatic shifts in climates and divinities that govern different episodes of the Furioso does not appear to be either thorough or entirely indisputable, since the knowledgeable reader can find rich and varied landscapes throughout the entire length of the poem. What is remarkable is that Ariosto offers landscapes that are mediated by different registers of culture and taste. We know that the study of distinct and effective philosophies of landscapes founded upon well-defined aesthetic classifications (the sublime and the pleasing, the horrid and the picturesque) was to become possible in the nineteenth century after Sensism and Rousseau. These philosophies can be adapted to precise, poetic and powerful allegories, such as the romantic 'landscape of the soul' or the twentieth-century, postFreudian 'landscape of the self; and yet, in the sixteenth century, Ariosto had already discerned, at least intuitively, a different symbolic scheme for the various kinds of space in which his heroes move. As such, his system was destined to influence, if not to change profoundly, the relationship of a character to its surroundings. The sampling of locations in the poem may initially appear rather elementary, or even obvious; however, the very paradigms of a landscape experience - the desert and mountains, the woods and clearings, the sea and islands, the countryside and valleys in rural foothills or mountains -

100 Monica Farnetti are properly identified and validated. Each one surfaces from the poem's atlas as a distinct physical and symbolic 'class' of landscape. With such effective imagery it does not matter if some critics protest the absence of a 'third dimension' (Getto 83), or, when comparing Ariosto's streets, rivers, and woods to those of Cervantes, that they consider the contrast between figure and ground at times mechanistic (Fumagalli 489): 'And the poetry of the streets, which will play a major role in Cervantes's masterpiece, does not appear ... to advance, except in a minor way, the poetic world of the Furioso (Getto 117). For what remains meaningful here is the symphonic dimension of the landscape and its power to convey itself into the senses of the characters and to resonate with their emotions and circumstances (Momigliano 292-3). What also clearly emerges is the poet's insight into the fundamental relationship of the subject to its space. This, in short, is Ariosto's 'poetics of landscape.' During the time in which the Furioso-was written, it may not have been apparent, as it would be centuries and many generations of readers later, how to discern correctly from among the poem's various experiences one of an idyllic nature distinct from one of contemplation. Nor was it readily apparent how to distinguish an experience of exuberance from one of excitement, or from one of unrest; Orlando's fury is clearly not that of Ortis, nor is Angelica's 'addio' to her native Catai comparable to Lucia's departure, in Manzoni, from the mountains of Como. The distinction to which Ariosto alludes is important: first, take pleasure in 'Beauty' (in a classical sense) and then take pleasure in the 'Horrific' (in an early romantic-gothic sense). The alternation of contrasting pleasures in the poem surges through the scenery and its characters, and, inevitably, through the readers themselves. Since certain landscapes are traditionally identified with particular types of pleasure - the woods and desert with the Sublime, a small valley and island with the Picturesque, and so forth - it is curious that Ariosto supplies further distinctions. For example, the sea described as designating an idyllic and sentimental setting - 'gia per la tranquillissima marina' [already for the tranquil sea] and 'Era 1'aria soave e il mare in calma' (30.10, 14) [the day was serene, the sea calm] - is kept resolutely distinct from the image of a stormy sea - the place of some sacred and sublime experience of terror, and a paraphrase of the apocalypse. Furthermore, the latter setting provides Ariosto with the opportunity to include 'episodes of singular marine value,' with storms that are 'stylistically and technically impeccable' (Bertu 524-5). Again, the mountain valley as a setting favourable for recreation and repose is kept com-

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pletely distinct from the sharp precipices and summit peaks (exemplary locations for a future romantic iconography of the mountain). Finally, the forest-woods, a canonical setting for adventure or exploration, and symbolically as boundless as the desert or sea, is maintained completely separate from the 'grove' in the poem, which is less dense and more inviting since its verdant growth and pleasant experiences do not convey the properties of trial and initiation. Moreover, the grove constitutes a landscape unifier that readily introduces the notion of a park or garden; since it is a natural landscape, located somewhere between Art and Nature, the grove is then suitable for the human intervention of a cultivator, architect, and thinker. Ariosto's interpretation of gardens in the Furioso presupposes those of Boiardo and precedes those of Tasso (in the chronological terms of Este topiary art: between Gerusalemme liberata&nd Aminta). The octaves dedicated to descriptions of the gardens of Alcina and Logistillia (6.21-2, 10.61-3) and of Esperidi (43.57-9), or those on the island of Cyprus (18.138-9), lead to the identification of the garden as the archetype of Earthly Paradise: a place of happiness and Eternal Spring, where flowers and fruit are forever bestowed in a 'blissful coexistence of seasons created according to the Golden Age myth' (Venturi 44). The garden ideally attests to the rivalry between art and nature; humans turn to art in order to create a landscape that may 'compete with Nature and surpass its perfection' (Venturi 45). Interestingly, Ariosto offers additional examples of that rivalry: the landscape of ruins and funerary scenes that betray his proclivity - even a craving - for relics and nocturnal sepulchres (Getto 100). Also to be considered is what may be defined as Ariosto's 'landscape of water': a fabric of river-flows, torrents, sources, and springs that is partly surfacing and partly submerging and that aptly reflects the precept of 'an encomiastic geography, an Este geography in which ... the Ferrarese territory glows, shimmering with water' (Serra 181). Ferrara is the city of exquisite and fateful fountains, especially the dual fountain-spring of the Ardennes, which is an example of 'marvellous practicality.' In an octave celebrated for its irony, 'the extraordinary supernaturalness of the event' is reduced to 'a clinical chart of two mineral waters' (Almansi 183): E questo hanno causato due fontane che di diverse effetto hanno liquore, ambe in Ardenna, e non sono lontane: d'amoroso disio 1'una empie il core;

102 Monica Farnetti chi bee de 1'altra, senza amor rimane, e volge tutto in ghiaccio il primo ardore. Rinaldo gusto d'una, e amor lo strugge; Angelica de 1'altra, e 1'odia e fugge. (1.78) [And the cause was to be found in two springs in the Ardennes, not far apart, whose waters produce diverging effects: the one inclines the heart to love, whereas love loses place in the heart of whoever drinks from the other; what first is fire turns to ice. Rinaldo had tasted the one, and love held him in thrall; Angelica the other and she hated and shunned him.]

Throughout the narration of the Furioso, references are repeatedly made to the spring waters' return to an underground landscape (mirroring the hippogryph's flight to a star-laden one). Indeed, the theme of a world-beyond explodes out of the canto describing Astolfo's descent into the Underworld, which is followed by his rise to Earthly Paradise, then higher still to the moon. Even in the poem's organization of space, modelled after classical outlines of the fabula, and after Slavic and Romance cantos, we find worlds that are parallel to each other and superimposed on one another: earth, imum, and summum. In addition to a horizontal plane (occupied by errant heroes and travellers), Ariosto adds a vertical dimension that serves as an agent of mediation between Heaven and Earth (or regions in the Underworld). The character of Astolfo is critical to this configuration, since he extends the traditional geographic space by travelling high into the air and deep into the sea, into heaven and the hypogeum. Likewise, he expands the poem's imaginative space as conceived by Ariosto: 'full of abysses, dizzying heights and "excessive" distances' (Borgese 90). Such an ungovernable and fantastical expansion compels Ariosto to abandon any traditional and rigid organization of space, since the geographic-imaginative context of the Furioso could not otherwise have been launched. Accordingly, Ariosto's brilliant synthesis of such diverse settings as the Byzantine and Carolingian empires and his elaboration of maps - excursus of towns, cities, and capitals from the East and the West - present further challenges to conventional notions on literary space and travel. The poem also furnishes an atlas that is immeasurable, with terrestrial, nautical, celestial, and subterranean spaces that may even have been conceived by the fertile and prescient imagination of Ariosto the boy, who would survey the world from the observatory in Malo, just north of Vicenza, and diligently proceed to describe it: The lower level

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of the world is bordered by celestial mountains and is overflowing with towns' (Meneghello 81). Travelling in the imaginary,... Man ... goes beyond that level reached in reality. To penetrate the imaginary is to surpass it, to go further' (Christinger 281). Christinger's concept is most attractive in that it is limitless, and we need only recall that in the 'world' of Ariosto, the traveller may continue to descend to a level much lower than the one preceding it, before eventually rising once again, high above and well beyond the borders of those celestial mountains. TRANSLATED (EXCEPT WHERE INDICATED) BY HIROKO FUDEMOTO

Notes 1 The citation from the Cinque canti is to be found in the English prose edition: Cinque canti: Five Cantos, trans. Alexander Sheers and David Quint (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996). 2 English translations of the cited canto verses are to be found in the prose edition of Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, trans. Guido Waldman (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983; 1st ed., 1974). 3 'Poeta massimo e colui cui non occorre a ogni volta il controllo della realta per credere alle proprie immaginazioni. Ariosto credeva all'isola di Alcina quanto alia citta di Ferrara; il Paradiso Terrestre cui sta per awiare 51 suo eroe, non e per lui meno vero dell'Asia o dell'Europa che gia gli ha fatto percorrere, e faremmo gran torto e dispiacere a Ludovico Ariosto se ci permettessimo di distinguere nella sua geografia cio che coincide con la nostra da cio che se ne allontana' (Bontempelli 564-5). 4 'Divinita marine in sottordine perdono la bussola e corrono di qua e di la strillando e piangendo: nereidi con le trecce disfatte, Ino con melicerta 'in collo,' Glauci, Tritoni, fanno a gara a scappare con le balene, le foche, i vitelli e i leoni marini... Tutto il mare ribolle e rimbomba. Ancbe gli alti comandi oceanini perdono ogni controllo e lo stesso Nettuno fa aggiogare i delfini al suo carro ... Cerca i mari caldi, i mari blu. Si capisce che debba averne abbastanza di quei mari verdoni di Tramontana. II figlio di Saturno, il fratello di Giove e di Plutone, doveva sentirsi terribilmente spaesato sotto 1'occhio di Odino e il tuono di Thor, cosi come il gotico Mefistofele si sentiva a disagio tra le Sfmgi della classica Valpurga' (Baldini: on canto 11.58-9). 5 'Spaesata e la mitologia classica in quei mari d'aringhe, com'e spaesata in quella nera selva di Boemia, sulle rive della Moldava, intricata di velenosi

104 Monica Farnetti tassi, funebri cipressi, neri cerri, e piena di lupi, di gufi e di civette, contro la quale, posate lancia e spada, s'armano d'ascia Carlo Magno e i suoi paladini nel secondo dei Cinque canti, come tanti spaccalegna di Holder ... Ma come appaioni spensieratamente belli e trasparenti, visti di tra le cupe ottave boeme dell'alta maturita, i colori delle giovanili ottave soriane, con Damasco in festa per le giostre di Re Norandino, con tutte le finestre e le logge piene di verdure tapped e belle donne, proprio come nelle pitture piu divertenti di Carpaccio e Giambellino!' (ibid.).

Bibliography Almansi, Guido. 'Tattica del meraviglioso ariostesco.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 175-93. Ariosto, Ludovico. Cinque canti. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1954. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Emilio Bigi. Milan: Rusconi, 1982. Assunto, Rosario. Ilpaesaggio e I'estetica. Naples: Giannini, 1973. Baldini, Antonio. Ludovico della tranquillitd. llth ed. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1933. Bertoni, Giovanni. La biblioteca estense e la cultura ferrarese ai tempi del duca Ercole I (1471-1505). Turin: Loescher, 1903. Bertu, Berto. 'II mare nel Furioso.' In L'ottava d'oro. Ed. Paolo Rocca. Milan: Mondadori, 1933. 523-43. Blasucci, Luigi. Studi su Dante e Ariosto. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1969. Bontempelli, Massimo. 'L'Ariosto geografo.' In L'ottava d'oro. Milan: Mondadori, 1933. 547-68. - Giro del sole. Milan: Mondadori, 1941. - Viaggi e scoperte. Florence: Vallecchi, 1922. Borgese, Giuseppe Antonio. 'L' Ariosto nel mondo degli invisibili.' In L'ottava d'oro. Milan: Mondadori, 1933. 69-102. Broc, Numa. La geographic de la Renaissance (1420-1620). Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1980. Calvino, Italo. // castello dei destini incrociati. Turin: Einaudi, 1973. - 'Orlandofurioso di Ludovico Ariosto.' Turin: Einaudi, 1970. - Perche leggere i classici. Milan: Mondadori, 1991. Camporesi, Piero. Le belle contrade: Nascita delpaesaggio italiano. Milan: Garzanti, 1992. Caretti, Lanfranco. Cinque canti. Turin: Einaudi, 1977. Christinger, Robert. Le voyage dans I'imaginaire. Geneva: Mont-Blanc, 1971. Doiron, Normand. 'Les rituels de la tempete en men' Revue des Sciences Humaines, ser. 2, 214 (1989): 43-69.

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Fumagalli, Giuseppina. Taesaggi ariostei.' In L'ottava d'oro. Milan: Mondadori, 1933. 485-520. Getto, Giovanni. Tempo e spazio nella ktteratura italiana. Florence: Sansoni, 1983. Meneghello, Luigi. Libera nos a malo. 1963. Milan: Mondadori, 1986. Mincu, Marin. Mito-fiaba-canto narrativo. Rome: Bulzoni, 1986. Momigliano, Arnaldo. 'Nell'isola di Alcina.' In L'ottava d'oro. Milan: Mondadori, 1933: 291-312. Noferi, Adelia. 'II bosco: Traversata di un luogo simbolico.' Paradigma 8 (1988): 35-66; 10 (1992): 65-82. Olschki, Leonardo. Storia letteraria delle scoperte geografiche. Florence: Olschki, 1937. Rajna, Pio. Lefonti delV'Orlando furioso.' Florence: Sansoni, 1975. Rossi, Massimo. 'La geografia del Furioso.' Unpublished thesis, 1985, Universita degli Studi di Ferrara. Schulz, Jurge. La cartografia tra scienza e arte: Carte e cartografi nel Rinascimento italiano. Modena: Panini, 1990. Segre, Cesare. Esperienze ariostesche. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. Serra, Luciano. 'Da Tolomeo alia Garfagnana: La geografia dell'Ariosto.' Bollettino storico reggiano 7.28 (1974): 151-84. [Various Authors.] Sulk orme di Orlando: Leggende e luoghi carolingi in Italia. Bologna-Ferrara: Interbooks-Centro Etnografico Ferrarese, 1987. Venturi, Gianni. Le scene dell'Eden. Ferrara: Bovolenta, 1979. Venturi Ferriolo, Massimo. Nelgrembo della vita: Le origini dell'idea di giardino. Milan: Guerini, 1992. Vernero, Michele. Studi critici sopra la geagrafia nell' 'Orlando furioso'di Ludovico Ariosto. Turin: Tipografia Palatina, 1913.

The Advertising of Fictionality in

Orlando furioso D A N I E L JAVITCH

In this age of readers so drawn to artistic self-consciousness in works of literature, Ariosto's desire to make conspicuous his poem's artifice and fictionality has been more appreciated than in the past. It could even be said that a characteristic trait of late-twentieth-century criticism of Orlando furioso is the attention it pays and the sympathy it shows to some of the means Ariosto used to advertise his poem's literariness. I say some of the means because the critical attention has been partial. It has focused primarily on the narrator's role in this advertising. Robert Durling's fundamental contribution on Ariosto's narrator considered several of the devices the narrator uses to assert the poem's fictionality (cf. Burling 112-35), but subsequent critics have tended to single out individual stratagems rather than considering them collectively (e.g. Zatti 173-212, on Ariosto's use of Turpin). As a result, the impression has been created that Ariosto highlights the fictionality of his creation occasionally, and largely by narratorial intervention, whereas he really does so constantly, and by a diversity of means that is in itself remarkable. In the following essay I want to illustrate the pervasiveness of this phenomenon by providing an inventory of the various stratagems Ariosto used to achieve it. The inventory will not be exhaustive, but it will be comprehensive enough to make evident how ubiquitously, even programmatically, Ariosto flaunted the fictional status of his poem. One contemporary study of the Furioso that does indicate how frequently Ariosto made its fictionality conspicuous is Emilio Bigi's commentary on the poem. Yet Bigi, too, dwells predominantly on the narrator's role in this flaunting. He is especially fond of pointing out the

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facetiousness of the narrator's truth claims when they serve, as they often do, to authenticate patently fantastic events. One of the wellknown ways Ariosto makes these pseudo-authentications is by exploiting the topos of invoking Turpin, supposedly the original chronicler of Carolingian gesta. Pulci and then, even more regularly, Boiardo jokingly referred to Turpin's authority to warrant fantastic occurrences in their poems (cf. Zatti 177-82). Ariosto continued this tradition but, as Bigi notes at 13.40 (when Turpin is invoked to certify that seven had survived Orlando's initial and extraordinary slaughter of Isabella's captors), the poet 'avails himself of Turpin's authority especially when he offers clarification that seems realistic when in fact it is improbable ... and therefore he uses it as one of the many instruments with which he marks the difference between the literary and fantastic levels of his narrative and that of effectual reality' (Ariosto 1982, 1.531). One of Ariosto's 'tanti strumenti' for demarcating his fiction from reality is to use, instead of Turpin's, his own authority as narrator when making these ironic truth claims. Here, for example, is the narrator explaining the natural origins of the fantastic hippogryph (here, and hereafter, I cite from Bigi's edition): Non e finto il destrier, ma naturale, ch'una giumenta genero d'un grifo: simile al padre avea la piuma e 1'ale, li piedi anteriori, il capo e il grifo; in tutte 1'altre membra parea quale era la madre, e chiamasi ippogrifo; che nei monti Rifei vengon, ma rari, molto di la dagli aghiacciati mari. (4.18) [The horse was no figment - he was real, begotten by a gryphon out of a mare. He had his father's wings and feathers, his forefeet, his head and beak; in all else he took after his mother. He was known as a hippogryph they are a rare breed, from the Rifean hills, way beyond the frozen seas.]'

The solemn insistence about the real existence of this fabulous creature ('Non e finto il destrier') and the precise explanation of its hybrid features only serve to highlight its fantasticalness and, by extension, the fictive nature of the entire episode. Already, a little before the description of the hippogryph's origins, the narrator offers a more subtle instance of facetious authentication that has a similar effect. I am referring to the

108 Daniel Javitch

opening scene of canto 4, when the hippogryph, as it flies through the sky carrying an armed rider, is observed by Bradamante (as well as by the innkeeper who is her host): Grandi eran 1'ale e di color diverse, e vi sedea nel mezzo un cavalliero, di ferro armato luminoso e terso; e ver ponente avea dritto il sentiero. Calossi, e fu tra le montagne immerso: e, come dicea 1'oste (e dicea il vero), quel era un negromante, e facea spesso quel varco, or piu da lungi, or piu da presso. (4.5) [Broad were his wings and of unusual hue; and between them sat a horseman clad in bright polished armour. He was holding his course straight to the Westward, and sank away from view amid the mountains. He was a sorcerer, the innkeeper told them (and told them truly), who often passed this way, sometimes at a distance, sometimes close by.] Here, again, the innkeeper's claim that the magician's flights occur regularly - and the narrator's intervening confirmation ('e dicea il vero') rather than reassuring us about the veracity of the event, makes us more aware of its fictiveness. In addition, the context of the 'low mimesis' of inn life makes the appearance of a winged horse seem even more fantastic than it would be were it to appear in the remote setting of the previous canto. In fact, a regular stratagem Ariosto employs to highlight the fictionality of his narrative is to collocate fantastic occurrences with aspects of quotidian reality in this manner. An example, to stick with the hippogryph, can be found in canto 10 in the course of the marvellous round-the-world flight Ruggiero takes on the winged horse after his stay with Logistilla. At one point, before Ruggiero flies over England, the narrator reminds his audience, in an aside to his patron Ippolito, that Ruggiero is not constantly in the air, but manages to locate comfortable lodgings every night. Non crediate, Signer, che pero stia per si lungo camin sempre su 1'ale: ogni sera all'albergo se ne gia, schivando a suo poter d'alloggiar male. (10.73)

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[You must not imagine, my Lord, that he was constantly on the wing; every evening he put at some hostelry, avoiding poor accommodation as best he could.]

This interjection, facetiously intended to make Ruggiero seem like a normal, down-to-earth (so to speak) tourist, only accentuates the complete \y fabulous nature of his journey. To lend credibility to the more fabulous elements of their fiction, writers have traditionally resorted to detailed description, as though clothing far-fetched events or circumstances with as much detail as possible makes them seem more real. Ariosto regularly makes fun of this technique of authentication by employing it ironically. One can already notice in his description of the origins of the hippogryph (see 4.18 above) how its precise details have the effect of making the fantastical nature of the creature all the more patent. Memorable examples of this facetious use of detail are to be found in the episode devoted to the struggle against Orrilo, the monster who can always reconstitute himself when his limbs are severed (15.65-89). Grifone and Aquilante are shown unable to overcome Orrilo because of this supernatural capacity to repiece himself. Astolfo meets the challenge more successfully knowing, thanks to his magical handbook, that Orrilo can only be overcome if shorn of a fatal hair that protects him. He therefore proceeds to decapitate him and rides off in haste with his head, furiously pursued by the remaining trunk of the monster! Note in the following passage, which describes Astolfo's frantic but successful removal of the hair, how the meticulous attention to details adds to the comic effect by magnifying the discrepancy between the narrator's effort to make the eventseem real and the patent fan tasticalness of the situation: Astolfo intanto per la cuticagna va de la nuca fin sopra le ciglia cercando in fretta, se '1 crine fatale conoscer pud, ch'Orril dene immortale. Fra tanti e innumerabili capelli, un piu de 1'altro si stende o torce: qual dunque Astolfo scegliera di quelli, che per dar morte al rio ladron raccorce? - Meglio e - disse - che tutti io tagli o svelli: ne si trovando aver rasoi ne force, ricorse immantimente alia sua spada,

110 Daniel Javitch che taglia si, che si puo dir che rada.

(15.85-6)

[while Astolfo hastily searched the skull from nape to brow hoping to recognize the enchanted hair which gave Orrilo his immortality. In such a crop of hair there was none which grew longer or more curly than the rest; which one, then, was Astolfo to pick out and sever if he was to kill the miscreant? Better, he decided, to cut or pluck the lot; and for lack of a razor or scissors, he had recourse to his sword, whose razor-edge could shave.]

Incidentally, Astolfo's killing of Orrilo completes an episode that Boiardo suspended precisely at the moment that Astolfo joined Grifone and Aquilante. Yet Boiardo devotes enough narrative to Grifone's and Aquilante's struggle with Orrilo and the crocodile that accompanies him (see Orlando innamorato, 3.iii.2-21) to reveal that the main difference between his and Ariosto's treatment of this adventure lies in the much more self-conscious and playful exposure of its fabulousness in the Furioso. In general, when Ariosto appropriates or develops marvellous or fantastic matter from the Innamorato, he always makes its unreality much more conspicuous than did Boiardo, who, by contrast was prone to confuse fiction and actuality (see Bigi in Ariosto 1982, 40 and 620). Aside from invoking Turpin's or asserting his own authority to warrant the more far-fetched occurrences in his poem, Ariosto takes advantage of other traditional features or topoi of chivalric romance to highlight the fictionality of his poem. Consider, for example, how he exploits the convention of suspending the narrative between the cantos, breaks that ostensibly offer the listeners and the oral reciter a chance to rest. The pauses offer Ariosto the opportunity to begin each canto with addresses to his audience, usually reflections prompted by the narrative that has just been suspended or is about to be resumed. These proemi may serve to bring out the topical relevance of the poem's adventures, or may draw morals from them that apply to the world outside the poem; but when the narrator resumes the narrative, he either makes evident the boundaries between his proemial reflections and the fictional world to which he returns (see, for example, 19.2) or he exploits those boundaries to highlight the fictionality of his characters (e.g., 29.1-2). Occasionally, actions in the poem prompt the narrator to compare them to recent historical events. These historical exordia cannot but make readers aware of the differences between historical truth and the poem's fiction, and they heighten this contrast even more when they speak of the events in the poem as if they had occurred (see, for example, the beginning of canto 34, and the discussion of it in Burling 133-5).

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Narratorial comments within cantos offer Ariosto further opportunities to demarcate his fiction from the world of the reader. The many actions, characters, and adventures of chivalric romance required multiple plot lines that had to be interrupted constantly in order for each of them to progress more or less simultaneously. Thus, in the course of each canto of the Furioso the narrator regularly abandons one strand of the plot to resume the progress of another in order to advance his various plots. These shifts also require the intervention of the narrator, who has to announce his abandonment of a protagonist or a situation in order to take up or return to another. Examples like the following suspension of Ruggiero's adventures (after his escape from Alcina's realm) can be found in almost every canto: Quivi il caldo, la sete, e la fatica ch'era di gir per quella via arenosa, facean, lungo la spiaggia erma e aprica, a Ruggier compagnia grave e noiosa. Ma perche non convien che sempre io dica, ne ch'io vi occupi sempre in una cosa, 10 lascero Ruggiero in questo caldo, e giro in Scozia a ritrovar Rinaldo. (8.21) [Tedious and oppressive was the heat, the thirst and weariness which were all Ruggiero had for company as he pursued his sand-strewn way along the sun-drenched desert shore. Now as I should do wrong to keep you ever attending to the same tale, I shall leave Ruggiero to bake and make off to Scotland to find Rinaldo.] As he does here, Ariosto frequently uses transitions within cantos (for other examples see Bigi's note on this octave in Ariosto 1982, 336) to assert his control of the fate of his characters and thereby to underline their status as fictional creations. In one notable instance, at the start of canto 15, the narrative shifts unexpectedly from the siege of Paris to the story of Astolfo, who is depicted loudly beckoning the author to stop neglecting him and to literally reinscribe him in the text: Di questo altrove io vo' rendervi conto; ch'ad un gran duca e forza ch'io riguardi; 11 qual mi grida, e di lontano accenna, e priega ch'io nol lasci ne la penna. (15.9) [Later I shall relate to you what happened; now I must turn my attention to

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a great duke who is calling and beckoning to me from a distance, entreating my pen to release him onto the page.]

Sometimes this kind of self-conscious transition is also accompanied by a sudden drop in register (about which more later), as in the shift from the decisive epic encounter about to take place at Lipadusa to Ruggiero, who had been last reported swimming for his life after being thrown overboard in a storm: Nel biancheggiar de la nuova alba armati, e in un momento fur tutti a cavallo. Pochi sermon si son tra lor usati: non vi fu indugio, non vi fu intervallo, che i ferri de le lancie hanno abbassati. Ma mi parria, Signer, far troppo fallo, se, per voler di costor dir, lasciassi tan to Ruggier nel mar, che v'affogassi. II giovinetto con piedi e con braccia percotendo venia 1'orribil onde. (41.46-7) [As the new day brightened they were armed and mounted in a trice. They exchanged but few words and, with but the briefest delay, set their lances in rest. But would it not be unpardonable, my Lord, if in my urge to pursue their story, I left Ruggiero in the sea so long that he drowned? The young man struck out through the formidable swell with his arms and legs.]

By flippantly suggesting that if he doesn't return to his chief protagonist Ruggiero will drown - which simply can't happen because he needs him to conclude his poem - Ariosto again reveals how much his characters are always and quite securely in his control.2 Yet even in shifts where the author does not tout his control so explicitly, he regularly suspends the actions of the characters suddenly and arbitrarily enough to remind us of his creatures' purely fietional existence. Ariosto realized that this entrelacement, or interweaving of plot strands, necessarily broke the reader's continuous involvment in the narrative and could be exploited to make even more obvious to his readers the separateness of his fiction from their lives. That is one reason why Ario sto's narrative shifts are so often more abrupt and aggravating than they have to be. Indeed, it is the suddenness of the interruptions more

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than the narratorial asides that follow which most regularly force readers to disengage themselves from Ariosto's make-believe and to recognize it as such. Consider, as a representative example, the sudden break that occurs near the beginning of canto 11 once Angelica, thanks to the magic ring, has escaped Ruggiero's sexual assault after he rescues her from the Orca. Ruggiero is eventually distracted by the noise of a duel between a giant and a knight. As he watches the giant overcome the knight and unlace his helmet for the kill, Ruggiero recognizes that the victim is none other than Bradamante (she turns out to be a fabricated double of his beloved), whereupon he rushes to assist her. The giant seizes the stunned Bradamante, slings her on his shoulder and runs away, furiously pursued by Ruggiero. Just as the chase reaches a critical point, the narrator interrupts it abruptly and shifts to Orlando's adventures, which had been left in abeyance for over a canto: Cosi correndo 1'uno, e seguitando 1'altro, per un sentiero ombroso e fosco, che sempre si venia piu dilatando, in un gran prato uscir fuor di quel bosco. Non piu di questo; ch'io ritorno a Orlando, che '1 fulgur che porto gia il re Cimosco, avea gittato in mar nel maggior fondo, accio mai piu non si trovasse al mondo. (11.21) [The giant ran off and Ruggiero pursued down a path through the deep shade; the path gradually broadened out until it took them clear of the wood into a broad meadow. But enough of these two for now: I am returning to Orlando; he had taken King Cimosco's thunder-machine and thrown it into the depths of the sea, so as to obliterate every last trace of it.]

The acceleration of the tempo, the heightening of tension before the unexpected shift, the defiance of formal expectation by making the break in mid-octave: these tactics regularly characterize Ariosto's sudden transitions. And, as in this example, the poet almost always chooses to interrupt the action at a dramatic moment when the reader's engagement has been fully secured, yet before the action reaches any satisfying conclusion. Examples of such untimely and dissatisfying transitions can be found in almost every canto in the first half of the poem. One evident function of these abrupt transitions is to break our involvment with the char-

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acters or in the dramatic events befalling them. Before we become involved again in whatever plot is resumed after such breaks, we have been pulled out of the fiction long enough to recognize it as such. Actually, after being subjected to these frustrating breaks repeatedly, we grow more poised, and meet the discontinuity with more detachment. We realize, after being 'disillusioned' often enough, that it makes no sense to get so worked up about what is, after all, nothing but a fictive construct manipulated at the author's will. In an earlier article that examined a number of these frustrating interruptions (especially in the sequence between cantos 16 and 18), I proposed that Ariosto thus deprived his readers of continuity and fulfilment not simply to disengage them from his fictional make-believe, but also in order to duplicate the frustration of desire and of expectation constantly experienced by the characters in his poem, to make his readers share, albeit in literary terms, this inevitable existential condition (Javitch'Cantus interruptus' 78-80). The techniques reviewed so far consist, for the most part, of Ariosto's inspired use of inherited conventions of chivalric romance. Actually, his modifications of the narratorial conventions of the romanzo (in particular the recurring and necessary shifts from one plot line to another) are often made, as we can see, in order to foreground the constructed or fictive status of his poem. One is therefore tempted to account for Ariosto's choice of this already obsolescent genre when he undertook the poem (cf. Dionisotti; and also Bigi in Ariosto 1982, 38) precisely in the fact that the romanzo's conventions offered him the readiest means to advertise his poetic artifice. Sergio Zatti suggests as much when he observes that 'the ease with which Ariosto masters narrative techniques allows him to take full advantage of all the resources of an expressive code to the point of revealing its nature as pure fictio (13). However, Ariosto did not simply rely on these generic conventions, but resorted to several other means to detach his readers from his make-believe. For example, Ariosto disengages the reader by another kind of sudden transition - from one stylistic register, or one perspective, to another. These shifts frequently entail a sudden lowering of emotional effect or of tone, and even though they may be only momentary, the disruptions last long enough to detach the reader from the fictive illusion. One memorable instance of such tonal disruption occurs at the moment of Isabella's pathetic death, when Rodomonte is tricked into beheading her, thereby enabling her to escape his sexual advances and to preserve her absolute devotion to the recently killed Zerbino. Instead of ending this pathetic

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sacrifice at the moment she is decapitated, Ariosto, as Lawrence Rhu has observed, 'mischievously attends to the material details of Isabella's immediate post-mortem moments by counting the bounces when her head hits the ground; and he thus effects a spasm of descent in the tone, as well as in the part of the body in question' (45-6): Quel uom bestial le presto fede, e scorse si con la mano e si col ferro crudo, che del bel capo, gia d'Amore albergo, fe' tronco rimanere il petto e il tergo. Quel fe' tre balzi; e funne udita chiara voce, ch'uscendo nomino Zerbino, per cui seguire ella trovo si rara via di fuggir di man del Saracino. (29.25-6) [The brute believed her and used his hand and his cruel sword to such effect that he lopped her fair head, once the abode of love, clean from her shoulders. Her head bounced thrice; from it a voice clould be clearly heard pronouncing the name of Zerbin, to follow whom she had found so novel a way to escape from the Saracen.]

Ariosto is quite ready to compromise moments of high pathos in this way to make his readers conscious of their emotional investments in mere make-believe. He is also quite prepared, for the same reason and by similar means, to forfeit the admiration he can elicit from his description of heroic exploits. For instance, when, at the end of canto 10, Ruggiero confronts the sea monster Orca who has come to devour the exposed Angelica, the poet heightens the narrative to an appropriate epic register by including two extended similes (at 10.103 and 105) to describe Ruggiero's awesome combat with the beast. But as the episode reaches its highest pitch with the description of the monster's slashing tail making the sea rise to the sky, the poet shifts to Ruggiero's logistic worry that the drenched wings of his hippogryph will prevent him from staying airborne: Si forte ella nel mar batte la coda, che fa vicino al ciel 1'acqua inalzare; tal che non sa se 1'ale in aria snoda, o pur se '1 suo destrier nuota nel mare.

116 Daniel Javitch Gli e spesso che disia trovarsi a proda; che se lo sprazzo in tal modo ha a durare, teme si 1'ale inaffi all'ippogrifo, che brami invano avere o zucca o schifo. (10.106) [So powerfully did the ore thrash the water with its tail that the seas surged up to the skies, and Ruggiero could not tell whether his mount was beating the air with its wings or swimming in the waves. Many times he wished himself safely on dry land, fearing that if the hippogryph continued having to endure the flying spray, his wings would be so sodden that he would vainly wish for something floatable, be it only a cockle shell.] The transition, in mid-octave, from the hyperbolic description of the monster splashing heaven to Ruggiero's rather pragmatic concern about a soaking his winged steed cannot withstand, succeeds, if only momentarily, in bringing out the potential ridiculousness of the encounter and, in that comic moment, to make us more conscious of the fantastical rather than epic nature of the episode.4 Such rapid shifts of perspective and of tone, as well as the ability to entertain incompatible views simultaneously, have often been identified as typical aspects of Ariosto's disconcerting narrative manner. What has not been as fully recognized or discussed is how these shifts regularly serve to heighten a consciousness of fictionality and therefore complement the function of those formal features that serve, as we have seen, a similar end.5 Ruggiero's rescue of Angelica from the Orca is rewritten, it will be recalled, in a more serious or at least more consistent 'epic' register in the following canto when Orlando comes upon another damsel (who turns out to be Olimpia) exposed by the Ebudans to the Orca (11.3360). In this version of the encounter, Orlando slays the sea monster after entering its mouth in a skiff and propping its jaws open with an anchor. Orlando's victory is achieved by sheer valour, whereas Ruggiero had to depend on the stunning effects of his magical shield. Moreover, unlike Ruggiero, who tries to rape Angelica once he has freed her, Orlando remains pure, even bashful (11.59) after unchaining the naked damsel. Ariosto's recurring habit of artfully varying the same theme or situation is admirably exemplified in this rewriting of the rescue of Angelica a canto earlier. But besides wanting his readers to appreciate his capacity for variatio, Ariosto also wanted them to recognize how much the difference between the two exactly similar situations was due to sheer poetic technique: a steadier elevated tone in the second rescue versus the fluctuations in register (as discussed above) in the account of Angelica's res-

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cue; the modification of shared stylistic features (e.g., the second extended simile at 10.105 comparing the Orca attacked by Ruggiero to a dog being pestered by a fly seems almost comical in comparison to the more epic-sounding ones at 11.35 and 39), and the alteration of the ethos of the two protagonists. In short, the modified repetition of the same rescue serves to remind readers that what may look like the particular 'truth' of a reported event is almost completely determined by the author's quite deliberate artistic choices and is therefore open to potentially endless variation. When Ariosto displays his artistic input and control by telling the same story or the same situation differently, he sometimes achieves such difference simply by altering narrative tempo. Consider as an example yet another two rescues, this time of young men rather than damsels in distress. One of these is Orlando's freeing of Zerbino when he is about to be executed after falsely being accused of killing Pinabello (23.53-63). It takes eleven octaves from the time Orlando catches sight of the doomed Zerbino (23.53), and hears why he is being executed, to the decimation of Zerbino's captors and his liberation. The rapid pace of this narration is apparent enough, but becomes even more so when we recall that canto 23, (and also 24) follows the interruption of another rescue operation, namely, the one to free Ricciardetto. This operation is not concluded until the beginning of canto 25, but it is initiated in canto 22 (38f.) when a tearful maiden explains to Ruggiero that a young man is about to be burned at the stake that day for his illicit love affair with the daughter of King Marsilio. I will not describe how the narrator dilates the account of this rescue mission. Suffice it to say that by the end of Canto 22, fifty octaves after he has heard about the young man's doom, Ruggiero is still on his way to the site of the execution, at which point the narrative is suspended only to be resumed at canto 25. When we bear in mind the rapidity with which the narrator recounts the very similar rescue of Zerbino from imminent death - and by placing this quick narration in the interim during which Ricciardetto's fate remains suspended, the poet invites a comparison of the two episodes - we realize how much the pacing of the narrative, indeed its duration and thereby its contents, are totally in the author's control. Once again, as with the liberation of the maidens exposed to the Orca, by varying the telling of the rescues of Zerbino and Ricciardetto (largely through alteration of tempo) Ariosto emphatically reveals that what he represents is not determined by any reality outside his poem, but consists of fictional constructs shaped by his quite arbitrary choices.6.

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It gradually becomes evident that virtually every idiosyncratic feature of the Furioso serves Ariosto's intent to highlight the fictional and literary nature of his poem. Take, as yet another of these features, Ariosto's compound imitations. When he imitates prior, especially Latin, texts he frequently chooses models whose own antecedents he imitates concurrently. The numerous instances of these imitations of imitations vary in scale from an epic simile (e.g., 18.153) to narrative sequences of thirty or more octaves. A well-known example is the account of Olimpia abbandonata at the beginning of canto 10, when she finds herself left on a desert island by her faithless new husband Bireno (10.10-34). From the time the Furioso appeared in 1532 (the episode was one of the additions to the final version), readers recognized that Olimpia's pathetic situation was modelled on two Latin versions of Ariadne abandoned on Naxos: Ariadne's epistle to Theseus lamenting her plight in Ovid's tenth Heroides; and Catullus's poem 64, which contains the other major treatment of Ariadne's abandonment in Latin poetry. The two Latin texts had their own affilation: Heroides 10 was itself an imitatio of Ariadne's predicament in Catullus's no. 64. Ariosto knew that Ovid's poem was a revision of Catullus's and he consciously sought to incorporate the two Latin versions in his own redoing of the story. Elsewhere I have shown in more detail how Ariosto's allusions to Catullus's poem in this episode (e.g., 10.23, 27-9) tend to refer to those parts of it that were clearly the subtexts of Ovid's own version, so that a literate reader can hardly discern whether Ariosto is imitating Catullus or Ovid, or Ovid imitating Catullus (Javitch 'Imitation of Imitations' 225-8). The point I wish to make here is that, as the literate reader recognizes the subtexts and their affiliation to each other as well as to Ariosto's surface text, he or she is quite distracted from the representational or referential function of the Italian text, engrossed as he or she becomes in the history of poetic rewriting that the episode embodies. The subtextual layering that Ariosto achieves in this narrative segment serves to foreground its literary origins, and thereby to remind us that his text refers as much to other, prior fictional constructs as to the actions and events it ostensibly signifies. Any poetic text that discernibly imitates a prior work will make its readers disregard, if only temporarily, its representational or referential function, and focus, instead, on the intertextual comparison it invites. However, in the case of Ariosto's 'genealogical' imitations, not only are the readers beckoned to consider more complex arid filiated intertextual relationships, but we are also made conscious of an unending his-

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tory of rewriting in which Ariosto's text is securing its place. This kind of effect is very apparent in the closing segment of canto 18, which recounts Cloridano's and Medoro's night sortie in search of their sovereign Dardinello. Again, this episode consists of a complex imitation of two affilated Latin models: Virgil's account of the fateful expedition of Nisus and Euryalus in Aeneid 9 (176ff.); and the night sortie of Dymas and Hopleus in Statius's ThebaidX.347f£.), itself an imitation of the Virgilian episode. (Cf. Javitch 'Imitation of Imitations' 220-2). Literate readers would also know that Virgil's episode was itself an imitation of the nocturnal exploits of Odysseus and Diomedes in Iliad 10. Moreover, the tradition invoked in Ariosto's imitation - Statius's rewriting of Virgil's rewriting of Homer's episode - serves to explain why a night expedition became a standard component of epic plots. Part of Ariosto's intent, when he chose to imitate Virgil's episode as well as its Statian imitation, was to emphasize that his poem was part of a literary system, that he was perfectly able to satisfy what had become certain generic expectations for readers of heroic poetry. 'Given, dear reader, that we are in an epic sequence,' one can imagine him saying, 'here is a night expedition for you, and in case you're not aware of its literary origins, let me make apparent its impressive pedigree.' In any case, whatever other emotional effects Ariosto's account of Cloridano and Medoro may produce, his imitation of imitations serves in yet another way to advertise the fictionality of his narrative, here by virtue of the episode's relationship to a corpus of past fictions. Why did Ariosto so constantly draw attention to the fictional, constructed, and literary nature of his poem? One objective was to gain more autonomy for his poetic creation, but why did he find it necessary to make his sixteenth-century readers more aware of the essential separateness of his poem from their world? One needs to bear in mind that for many of those readers imaginative literature was conceived as coterminous with reality, and was presumed to bring about action and beneficial results. To be sure there were those who dismissed such literature as sheer lying, or as useless and harmful fantasy. Still, those who valued poetry, especially the humanists, argued for its didactic, and ethical, utility. They either maintained that poetic fiction was 'integumental' that is, fictional narrative contained wisdom and moral doctrine that the reader obtained by unwrapping its alluring cover; or that it served, like historical narrative, as a magister vitae - that is, its representations of virtue and vice were there as examples to guide arid even shape the moral

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behaviour of its audience. Poetry was seen to have other benefits - for example, it was appreciated for its celebratory or commemorative ends - but it was primarily valued and justified for its social and moral utility rather than for its aesthetic pleasure. The kind of aesthetic autonomy that has been ascribed to poetic fiction since the Enlightenment was not generally acknowledged in Ariosto's time. In short, a poem's fictional world was not yet generally perceived as essentially separate from the real world of its readers (cf. Tompkins 206-11). Ariosto took so many measures to demarcate his fiction in order to challenge these assumptions. By exaggerating the gaps between his fiction and the real world, he sought to inhibit what might be called transitive readings of his poetry. That is to say, he wanted to block the pragmatic reflexes of readers conditioned to transfer fictional representations directly to their actual lives. I suggested earlier that, when Ariosto represented admirable or virtuous behaviour on the part of his characters, he regularly exposed the imaginary or (by his conspicuous imitation of prior poets) purely literary nature of their conduct. He did this, I would contend, to discourage the tendency of his readers to identify with his protagonists or to consider them as viable models, in short, to disinvite their emulative impulses. One can see that highlighting the fictive apartness of the poem's actions went hand in hand with other blocks Ariosto erected to discourage 'exemplarist' readings of his narrative. I am thinking, for example, of his deliberate efforts to make his erratic protagonists behave inconsistently or idiosyncratically enough to inhibit the simplistic moral allegoresis readers customarily imposed on poetry. The most notorious case is the one of Ruggiero who, after having escaped from Alcina's realm of illusion and seemingly gained selfcontrol under the tutelage of Logistilla, suddenly reverts (at the end of canto 10) to unbridled desire as he tries to rape Angelica after rescuing her from the Orca. This sudden breakdown in what readers would be conditioned to interpret as Ruggiero's exemplary ethical itinerary not only aimed to demystify a tradition of allegorical poetics but also, as Albert Ascoli has intelligently demonstrated (224-35), to undermine the humanist poetics of education by mimetic examples. Space does not permit me to examine the various other instances where Ariosto discourages the impulse to read the actions of his characters as exemplary mimesis.7 However, it is worth noting that when sixteenth-century exegetes tried to reduce those actions to protreptic moralism ('this is the way you should behave' and 'this is the way you should not'), their allegorie had to disregard much of the comic action, as well as the surface and style of the poetry in each canto, precisely

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because what was disregarded would qualify or even contradict the simplistic didacticism they imposed on the text (cf. Javitch Proclaiming a Classic 33, 37-8). Sir John Harington, Ariosto's Elizabethan translator, perpetuated this effort to moralize the poem by making 'speciall note,' at the start of his commentary on each canto, 'of all the good matters by which the honest reader might take profit.' Here, for instance, are some of the lessons he thought readers could derive from canto 15: In Charles is to be noted the providence of a wise and valiant prince; In Astolfo that by the power of his home ridds the country of theeves and malefactors we may learne to apply the talents are given us to good uses; In Griffin that after all his devotions at Jerusalem comes again to Origilla we may note the frailtie of flesh and withall that outward holynesse without inward zeal availeth nothing. (Ariosto 1972, Harington trans., 174)

This example suggests that Harington wanted his readers to move through the superficial idiosyncracies of the litera to the more conventional and assimilable moral truths they supposedly signified. Yet Harington was an intelligent enough reader to perceive that there were aspects of the poem that impeded the instrumental function he wanted the text to have, chief among them Ariosto's various means of advertising his fiction's apartness from actuality. He quite correctly realized that Ariosto's flippant narratorial intrusions, his tongue-in-cheek authentications of fantastic events, his abrupt interruptions, his disconcerting drops in stylistic register - that is to say, most of the features discussed earlier in this essay - obstructed the moral transfer that readers were to make from the fiction to their lives. So, as I have shown elsewhere, he took advantage of his prerogative as a translator and systematically altered or undermined the effects of, or simply omitted many of the passages from the Furioso cited in this essay as well as the poem's most disenchanting interruptions. He hoped thereby to diminish the very sense of the fiction's apartness from his reader's life that Ariosto had originally sought to produce (Javitch Proclaiming a Classic, esp. 141—4, 152—7). Ironically, these modifications that Harington took the liberty of making in order to safeguard the poem's didactic efficacy are perhaps the best early evidence we have that Ariosto foregrounded the fictionality and autonomy of his verbal creation in order to impede such efficacy. I do not wish to suggest that by asserting its apartness Ariosto sought to deprive his poetic fiction of all moral function. One must try to distinguish the sort of autonomy he wanted to gain for his poem from art for art's sake, which is what De Sanctis maintained Ariosto had produced.

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Just because the Italian poet doubted that readers could directly apply what occurred in his fiction to the 'amendment' (Harington's term) of their lives does not mean that these events did not point to some truths about human conduct and experience. Ariosto clearly invited readers to reflect upon the hypothetical events and predicaments represented in his poem, in the way that the narrator does in many of the proemi that begin each canto. But the reflections prompted by the same narrative might differ for each reader, conditioned as they have to be by the possible relevance of what occurs in the world of the poem to the reader's quite particular experience. The narrator's own idiosyncratic responses to the poem's fictional events confirm that these events were not intended to illustrate or signify conventional ethical precepts applicable to every reader in the same way. To be sure, there are instances where readers might be prompted to respond in ways very similar to the narrator's, or they might concur with his intelligent moral reflections, such as those made after Cloridano and Medoro go out into enemy territory to retrieve the body of Dardinello, prompted by the extraordinary devotion they retain for their dead lord: Alcun non puo saper da chi sia amato, quando Felice in su la ruota siede; pero ch'ha i veri e i fmti amici a lato, che mostran tutti una medesma fede. Se poi si cangia in tristo il lieto stato, volta la turba adulatrice il piede; e quel che di cor ama riman forte, et ama il suo signore dopo la morte. Se, come il viso, si mostrasse il core, tal ne la corte e grande e gli altri preme, e tal e in poca grazia al suo signore, che la lor sorte muteriano insieme. Questo umil diverria tosto il maggiore: staria quel grande infra le turbe estreme. (19.1-2) [A man riding high on Fortune's wheel cannot tell who really loves him, for his true and his spurious friends stand side by side and show him equal devotion. But should he fall upon hard times, his crowd of flatterers will slip away. Only the friend who loves from his heart will stand by his lord and love him when he is dead. If the heart were open to view as is the face,

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certain men at court who are great and lord it over their fellows would change roles with certain others held in little account by their lord; the lowly one would become the man of eminence while the notable one would melt into the anonymous throng.]

Readers are likely to concur with these reflections because they corroborate what they've been made to witness, not simply in the prior episode but in the prior segment of the poem as a whole. The Furioso depicts human existence to be so unstable, so beset by error and deception, that what it regularly illustrates is the difficulty, even the impossibility, of reaching reliable judgments. Rather than representing events or actions in a manner that will furnish universally applicable ethical rules, the poem more often makes apparent how insufficient such rules can be in a mutable world that is not governed by reason. Ariosto, then, not only disinvites readers from transferring what occurs in his poem directly to their lives by insisting on the fictional apartness of these occurrences; the mutable and totally contingent world he represents in his fiction also serves to call into question the value or the viability of timeless models of virtue or vice. The non-exemplary usefulness of the Furioso is a subject that deserves a much fuller discussion than my conclusion provides.8 What I hope to have made apparent is that the various means Ariosto uses to highlight the fictional status of his narrative complements his thematic and moral concerns by serving to teach readers to distance themselves not simply from the poem's fictional events, but also from the potential abuses of fiction perpetrated by those who wish to apply it directly to life. Notes 1 Quotations in Italian are from Ariosto 1982. The prose translation by Guido Waldman (Ariosto 1983), though relatively faithful, does not manage to capture the verbal wit and tonal fluctuations that often characterize the Italian verses I cite. 2 Whenever Ariosto asserts his god-like domination of the poem (cf. Burling 126-31), he makes evident that the poem is a universe that he has constructed. See, e.g., the proem to canto 19, where the narrator announces that he will mete out justice, in god-like fashion, to the offending Rodomonte. 3 Of course, when he so desires, Ariosto can choose a perfectly timely moment

124 Daniel Javitch to move from one plot line to another. See, e.g., the shift at 18.69-70, a timely transition that, by contrast, makes all the more evident how deliberately disruptive the prior break is at 18.49. 4 As Ariosto's first readers recognized, Ruggiero's rescue of Angelica is closely modelled on Perseus's rescue of Andromeda in Ovid's Metamorphoses (4.663764). In fact, Ariosto's shift to the problem of Ruggiero's Steed's waterlogged wings develops Ovid's similarly subversive concern about the drenching of Perseus's winged feet (cf. 4.730). On Ariosto's recuperation of Ovid's playful effects in this imitatio see Javitch, 'Rescuing Ovid,' esp. 104-6. 5 Albert Ascoli correctly reminds me that the reader's detachment from the fiction achieved by Ariosto's tonal shifts and by his narratorial intrusions is also achieved, on a larger scale, when the poet inserts into the flow of his mimetic narrative 'non-narrative' segments such as allegorical tableaux (e.g., 34.70-92), ekphrastic or encomiastic digressions (e.g., 26.31-7; 33.1-58; 42.74-96), and, as we have already seen, historical exordia. By breaking the mimesis, and arresting the forward movement of the plot(s), these intrusions also serve to heighten the reader's consciousness of the narrative as a fictional construct. 6 While this essay is not concerned with the poem's self-referential matteror with episodes that are about poetry as such, the most notable of these, St John's disquisition on poets during Astolofo's visit to the moon (35.22-30) is not unconnnected to the techniques Ariosto uses to flaunt his poem's fictionality. After all, some of these techniques corroborate what St John discloses to Astolfo, namely, that the matter of poetry is a construct determined by the poet's will and not by historical truth. On the lunar episode and its relation to Ariosto's ownfictio (as well as for references to other discussions of the episode) see Ascoli 264-303 and Zatti 199-202. 7 Ariosto's implicit critique of the humanists' desire to derive timeless and directly applicable exempla from poetry and history is not an isolated phenomenon in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Guicciardini's doubts about the pragmatic value of historical exempla are well known, and the breakdown of exemplarity in Machiavelli's writings has received increasing attention recently. On Machiavelli see Kahn, for example; and for a broader historical context see Hampton. 8 Indeed, future studies of the poem need to consider with more care what ethical and rhetorical value the Furioso possesses, even as it playfully refuses to have a direct performative function in the world. Such consideration will not only bring a richer understanding of the poem, but it will also serve to define more precisely a poetics that stands between the exemplary mimesis

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assumed by Renaissance humanists and the aesthetic autotelicism claimed for poetry after Kant. I wish to thank Albert Ascoli, Dennis Looney, and Lawrence Rhu for the valuable suggestions they offered after reading an earlier version of this essay.

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso. Ed. Emilio Bigi. 2 vols. Milan: Rusconi, 1982. - Orlando furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. - Orlando furioso, Translated into Heroical Verse by SirJohn Harington (1591). Ed. Robert McNulty. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972. Ascoli, Albert. Ariosto's Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Dionisotti, Carlo. Tortuna e sfortuna del Boiardo nel Cinquecento.' In // Boiardo e la criticia contemporanea. Ed. G. Anceschi. Florence: Olschki, 1970. 220-41. Burling, Robert. The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Javitch, Daniel. 'Cantus interruptus in the Orlando Furioso.' MLN95 (1980): 66-80. - 'The Imitation of Imitations in Orlando Furioso.' Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 215-39. — Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. - 'Rescuing Ovid from the Allegorizers.' Comparative Literature 30 (1978): 97-107. Kahn, Victoria. ' Virtu and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli's Prince.' Representations 13 (1986): 62-83. Rhu, Lawrence. The Genesis ofTasso's Narrative Theory. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. Tompkins,Jane. 'The Reader in History: The Changing Shape of Literary Response.' In Reader-Response Criticism from Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Ed. Jane Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. 201-32. Zatti, Sergio. IIFurioso fra Epos e Romanzo. Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1990.

A Reading of the Interlaced Plot of the Orlando funoso: The Three Cases of Love Madness ELISSA B. WEAVER

Ludovico Ariosto, in his handling of the narration of the Orlando furioso, takes full advantage of the technique known as entrelacement, or interlaced plot structure, in order to give implicit as well as explicit meanings to his stories. Entrelacement, a technique inherited from the Italian and the earlier French chivalric tradition, is an ordering of the narration in which narrative sequences are interrupted, separated, and recombined with other narrative sequences.1 The interruption creates narrative suspense as the reader is made to read stories belonging to different plot lines before returning to the point of disjunction. At the same time, the newly introduced stories are connected by juxtaposition and often by analogy to those they follow and precede or to others similarly structured or narrated, but from which they are separated by the plot. That is, episodes that belong to different narrative sequences, or plot lines, are connected through association (juxtaposition or similarity) and are developed - their meanings expanded in this way. In the capable hands of Ariosto the various plot lines of the poem create a vast and intricate web of meanings. The poet, appreciating the difference between the plot (and in this case plots, the intreccio) and the literal, sequential text of the poem (the discorso), avails himself of the opportunity to create meaning by manipulating narrative space.2 Through the ordering of his stories, which I would call spatial, since it relies on separation, juxtaposition, and parallelism, Ariosto succeeds in adding to his literal, explicit narrative another narrative that is implicit.3 The reader of an episode is invited to see resonances of that episode in others either near to it or

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similar to it (in structure, theme, or language), and as a consequence its meanings multiply, develop, and complete one another. Three episodes in the Orlando furioso that are structurally, thematically, and linguistically similar are those that feature Orlando's encounter with a shepherd (cantos 23-4), Rodomonte with an innkeeper (27-9), and Bradamante with a Gascon (30-2). The most obvious connection among these episodes is the love story recounted to console each of the three unhappy lovers (in the cases of Orlando and Rodomonte, the shepherd and the innkeeper hope to assuage their grief; Bradamente, instead, asks the Gascon for news of Ruggiero in order to reassure herself). In all three cases, the stories affect the listener in a way that was not the intention of the teller and that reflects the (interpretative) predispositions of the respective lovers. The three lovers are portrayed afterwards as mad, albeit to a different degree, and the particular madness of each is seen as a development of his or her love, in which the story has served as catalyst In all three cases the story is articulated in three moments: 1 The lover suffers from love sickness. 2 A person unacquainted with him or her tells a love story to console the unhappy lover. 3 The lover goes mad. The three episodes are also similar in their representation of the lovesickness that manifests itself through the unhappy lover's flight and isolation, lament, and destructive rage. These analogies in the story are reinforced by the recurrence, in all three episodes, of the same figurative language. Taken together the three episodes dramatize themes of central importance to the poem: love madness, the danger of knowledge (especially knowledge of love), the relationship of reality to fiction, and the power of literature; and while each episode has its own characteristics and raison d'etre, they are three versions of a single narrative paradigm (for some semioticians a narreme) 4 that appears nowhere else in the poem in the same form. The three episodes constitute a poetic nucleus, even though they are separated, distanced from one another in the plot. The topos, or conventional portrayal, of the suffering lover who finds no respite serves as an obvious figurative and thematic link among the three episodes; as such it reinforces the other structural and thematic similarities and calls our attention to them. Ariosto employs in all three episodes the literary commonplace of the lover who cannot sleep in a

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bed that symbolizes his unsatisfied desires. In Orlando's case there is the added irony that the bed in which he cannot sleep is the very one in which the lovers Angelica (his beloved) and Medoro slept: sospira e geme, e va con spesse ruote di qua di la tutto cercando il letto; e piu duro ch'un sasso, e piu pungente che se fosse d'urtica, se lo sente. In tan to aspro travaglio gli soccorre che nel medesmo letto in che giaceva, 1'ingrata donna venutasi a porre col suo drudo piu volte esser doveva. Non altrimenti or quella piuma abborre, ne con minor prestezza se ne leva, che de 1'erba il villan che s'era messo per chiuder gli occhi, e vegga il serpe appresso.5 (23.122-3) [He sighed and moaned, and made great circular sweeps of the bed with his arms: it felt harder than rock; it stung worse than a bed of nettles. Amid such bitter anguish the thought occurred to him that on this very bed in which he was lying the thankless damsel must have lain down many a time with her lover. The downy bed sent a shudder through him and he leapt off it with all the alacrity of a yokel who has lain down in the grass for a nap and spies a snake close by.] The analogous moment in the episode of Rodomonte echoes Orlando's predicament and adds the simile made famous by Dante in the Divine Comedy (Purgatory 6.148-51) of the sick woman who cannot sleep, but tosses and turns in her bed.6 Here, of course, since it refers to Rodomonte, Ariosto has changed the reference to a sick man: indi nel letto per dormir si stese fin al partir de 1'aria scura e densa: ma de la notte, a sospirar 1'offese piu de la donna ch'a dormir, dispensa. (28.85.3-6) Come 1'infermo, che dirotto e stanco di febbre ardente, va cangiando lato; o sia su 1'uno o sia su 1'altro fianco

A Reading of the Interlaced Plot of the Orlando furioso 129 spera aver, se si volge, miglior state; ne sul destro riposa ne sul manco, e per tutto ugualmente e travagliato; cosi il pagano al male ond'era infermo mal trova in terra e male in acqua schermo.

(28.90)

[He lay down in bed to sleep until the dense darkness of night had cleared, but it was in sighing over his lady's offences, more than in sleeping, that he passed the night ... A sick man, exhausted and prostrate from a raging fever, will toss and turn; he hopes by turning on one side or the other to feel some relief; but he cannot rest on his right side, or on his left - either way he is equally tormented. So it was with Rodomont, who found no relief from the ill that afflicted him, whether he was on land or on the water.] In the representation of Bradamante's love sickness the word 'inferma' (sick woman) appears and is an obvious link to the earlier episodes. Here, while it assumes various connotations, it also serves as a sign and a key metaphor linking the early part of the episode to that of Rodomonte, which preceded it. The topos of sleeplessness, common to all three episodes, as it recurs, is extended to include envy of the rest that nature accords hibernating animals. Finally, the ties to the episode of Orlando are further reinforced through the precise reprise of expressions used there to describe the hero: inferma disse agli fratelli ch'era, e non volse con lor venire in schiera. E ben lor disse il ver, ch'ella era inferma, ma non per febbre o corporal dolore: era il disio che 1'alma dentro inferma, e le fa alterazion patir d'amore. (30.94-5) Oh quante volte da invidiar le diero e gli orsi e i ghiri e i sonnacchiosi tassi! che quel tempo voluto avrebbe intero tutto dormir, che mai non si destassi; ne potere altro udir, fin che Ruggiero dal pigro sonno lei non richiamassi. Ma non pur questo non puo far, ma ancora non puo dormir di tutta notte un'ora.

130 Elissa B. Weaver Di qua di la va le noiose piume tutte premendo, e mai non si riposa. Spesso aprir la finestra ha per costume, per veder s'anco di Titon la sposa sparge dinanzi al matutino lume il bianco giglio e la vermiglia rosa: non meno ancor, poi che nasciuto e '1 giorno, brama vedere il ciel di stelle adorno.7 (32.12-3) [... (she) told her brothers that she was sick and would not join them. And she spoke the truth: she was sick, though not of fever or bodily ill - it was her desire which blighted the spirit within her and made her distracted with love ... Oh how she envied the bears, the dormice, the somnolent bad gers! How she would like to have slept through that whole period, never waking, hearing nothing until Ruggiero aroused her from her torpid slumbers! But, far from being able to do this, she could not sleep one hour all night. Now one cheek now the other she would press to her wearisome pillow without ever finding rest. Often she would open the window to see if Tithonus' bride was yet scattering her white lilies and red roses before the morning light. And once the day was dawned, she was no less anxious to see the sky decked with stars.] Of Orlando the poet says 'in lui non resto dramma / che non fosse odio, rabbia, ira e furore' (23.129.6-7) [he was drained of every drop that was not pure hate, fury, wrath, and violence] and of Bradamante 'di gelosia, d'ira e di rabbia plena / ... / ritorno furibonda alia sua stanza' (32.35.68) [Bursting with furious rage and jealousy she ... turned homeward fuming]. The word 'rabbia' in 1516 was not in the Orlando episode, and in 1516 and 1521 'ira' was not mentioned in regard to Bradamante; the addition of these words in the 1532 edition reinforced the pathological and linguistic similarities between the two episodes. And the play of correspondences does not end here. The poet narrator includes himself among the lovesick, applying the Dantesque metaphor to his own condition as well: ... simile son fatto ad uno infermo, che dopo molta pazienzia e molta, quando contra il dolor non ha piii schermo, cede alia rabbia e a bestemmiar si volta. (30.2.1-4)

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[... I am like a sick man who has endured all too much pain and, at the end of his tether, gives way to passion and starts to curse.] They are all in love and all 'sick' because of love; sickness is presented as a prelude, or rather as one of the first steps towards madness. A comparison, however, such as the one just undertaken, while it serves to highlight similarities, serves also to expose differences. The bed, which on the literal level fits coherently in the depiction of a sick person suffering from insomnia, acquires figurative meaning as well in these contexts and functions as a symbol of erotic passion. The eroticism, already part of the tradition of the topos (from Ovid to Petrarch and Boccaccio), appears differently in the four cases: it is suffused throughout the story of Orlando's madness;8 it gives a comic dimension to Rodomonte's tale; it is an obvious element of the poet narrator's condition; yet it is only adumbrated in the episode of Bradamante, where jealousy becomes the central issue, a displacement that respects the heroine's chastity. Love as Madness and the Madness of Love In these three episodes love and madness are shown to belong to the same psychological and pathological continuum. They are not distinguished in kind, but rather in degree. Love is a kind of madness and madness is a moment in the trajectory followed by the spurned lover, or the lover who presumes to be spurned.9 It is only in the lunar episode that we get a survey of various forms of madness, and only there is mention made of poetic furor, that species of madness that we should understand to be linked to the poetic inspiration of the narrator. The presentation of love madness occupies a large part of cantos 23 through 32, creating a central grouping of stories connected by plot and emphasizing the importance of the theme.10 It is in the proems (or exordia) of these cantos that the poet narrator defines madness, his own and others', and in the narration of the events that follow madness is illustrated through the stories of Orlando, Rodomonte, and Bradamante; the proems are integrally connected to the episodes and provide an explication of them. The theme in the Furioso is worked out in these narrative and metanarrative zones, and it is developed through the comparison that the reader is compelled to make of the experiences of the various mad characters, including the poet narrator. In the episode of

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Astolfo's voyage to the moon, at the end of this sequence of cantos (precisely cantos 34.71-92 and 35.1-31), the subject is expanded and finally culminates in the representation of the moon as the land of all madness, especially that of poets. ] In the proem to canto 24, love is defined as madness: 'che non e in somma amor, se non insania' (24.1.3) [love ... is nothing but madness], an 'uscire di se,' leaving oneself (24.2.2 my trans.). And it is a sickness: '... '1 male e penetrate infin all'osso' (24.3.8) [the disease has eaten me to the bone]. While it is something definable, specific, it can produce various effects (24.2.1-2): for instance, it allows the poet narrator some moments of lucidity (24.3.3-4). In the proem to canto 30 madness is called a 'cieco furor' (blind rage, 30.1.3), 'cieco' because it has been suppressed by Tira' and Timpeto' (30.1.1-2) ['anger' and 'impulse'; my trans., Waldman has 'sheer pique']. Following the self-destructive phase the madman turns on others: '... '1 cieco furor si inanzi tira/ o mano o lingua, che gli amici offende' (30.1.3-4) [blind rage so impels the hand or tongue that one hurts one's friends; my trans.]. In canto 31 jealousy is introduced and identified with love madness: it is called a 'rabbia' (31.1.8) [rage; my trans.], a 'peste' [plague] that infects and poisons (31.4.5-6), a mortal 'piaga' (31.5-6) [wound] 'che la ragion ... offusca e 1'intelletto,/ e ... tra' fuor de le sembianze prime' (31.6.5-6) [it clouds ... reason and changes ... beyond recognition). This pathogenesis applies to all three cases of love madness dramatized in the narration and connects them with that of the poet narrator. The terminology used to describe the various stages of Orlando's, Bradamante's, and Rodomonte's sickness is, in fact, the same as that used in the proems: disease, internal division and separation from oneself, suppression of reason, and destruction of oneself and of others. From the outset lovers are irrational, but as their condition progresses their reason is further impaired (Orlando's is annihilated) by their suffering (pain, anger, jealousy; and even by wine-induced torpor in Rodomonte's case), and they become destructive. The madness of the characters is depicted through their illogical reasoning: Orlando, when faced with reading something he doesn't want to know, tries to deceive himself ('... usar fraude a se stesso,' 23.118.1); Rodomonte hopes for the defeat of his pagan troops so that he will later be able to save them;12 Bradamante decides not to kill herself in order to meet death in a more satisfying way at the hands of Ruggiero. Even the poet narrator includes among these episodes an instance of his own irrationality in his brief polemical outburst against Angelica and all

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women (29.73-83), for which he asks forgiveness at the opening of the following canto, calling it an unreasonable outburst and one which shows that he is as mad as Orlando (30.1-4). While these essential features of the presentation remain the same, the three characters are made to manifest their madness through quite different behaviour, through actions that demonstrate what proem 24 claims: 'Varii gli effetti son, ma la pazzia / e tutt'una pero, che li fa uscire' (24.2.1-2) [The effects vary, but the madness which promotes them is always the same]. The poet demonstrates the various effects of madness through the different behaviour of the characters; he also distinguishes the three cases by varying how much the omniscient narrator knows about each character's state of mind and how much appears obvious to the ordinary characters of his poem. Orlando is mad both for the narrator who describes him and for all those who see him - his madness is clear to everyone. Rodomonte's madness is less widely acknowledged: the narrator sees it and so does one character, the innkeeper. Bradamante, instead, keeps her madness hidden; it is noted by the narrator, but not recognized by others. The different behaviour of the three mad lovers is related to the different degrees of their love madness and to their different personalities. Orlando's madness becomes total when seeing Angelica's bracelet forces him to accept the truth of the story that first he had read (on the trees, on the fountain) and later heard from the shepherd: 'Questa conclusion' (the exhibition of the bracelet with which the shepherd ended his story) 'fu la secure / che '1 capo a un colpo gli levo dal collo' (23.121.1-2) [This evidence shown in conclusion proved to be the axe which took his head off his shoulders at one stroke]. In the description of mad Orlando the narrator underscores the ferociousness of the destructive phase: once his reason is suppressed and his humanity is thereby destroyed, the great hero takes off his armour, the sign of his civility, and runs about naked like an animal, destroying everything and everyone. In this 'inferno' (23.128.6) of his he repeatedly takes revenge on Angelica, the revenge of a rejected lover.13 Bradamante's interiorization of her madness confers on her a more complex psychology than that of the other characters. After hearing the Gascon's story, and convinced of Ruggiero's betrayal, Bradamante goes to her room 'furibonda' (32.35.8) [in a mad fury; my trans.],14 and, in a moment of blind rage, 'di rabbia infiammata' (32.44.2), she attempts to kill herself. Fortunately (and humorously) she is saved by her armour, which, unlike Orlando, she still wears, a sign that she is still rational, civ-

134 Elissa B. Weaver ilized. It was only a moment of madness, after which her lovesickness manifests itself as symbolic death: Bradamante puts on a new surcoat the colour of a dead leaf and embroidered with trunks of cypress trees that have been cut and will never again be green (32.46-7). The comparison with Orlando is underscored by the recurrence of the motif of armour, which, however, as it is used differently, is an indicator of the distance between the two cases of madness. Until the suffering and doubts about Ruggiero's love are happily resolved, Bradamante will continue to show the symptoms of madness, as do Orlando and Rodomonte. However, hers manifest themselves as moments of attenuated aggression toward others: her fight with Marfisa, her challenge to Ruggiero, even her defeat of more than three hundred Saracens while she talks to Ruggiero. This is all little when compared to Rodomonte's beheading of Isabella, his defeat of so many brave knights at the bridge, and especially the massacre that Orlando perpetrates. Moreover, Bradamante's aggressive actions alternate with moments of wise and courteous behaviour (comparable with the poet narrator's moments of lucidity). Rodomonte, like Bradamante, loses his reasoning powers completely only once. When he learns he has been betrayed by Doralice, Rodomonte is said not to be himself ('da se stesso ... diviso,' divided from himself, 27.131.5-6; 'da se stesso lontano,' far from himself, 27.133.2); and often the narrator observes that he goes beyond what is reasonable behaviour (27.122, 125). When he kills the talkative monk, it is an action easily explained by the fact that he is a pagan bent on destroying all Christians and all of France, but when he kills Isabella, the woman he would like to love, he commits an irrational act which shows that he is no longer in control of himself nor (as a consequence) of the situation. Ariosto presents Rodomonte at that moment as unwary and perhaps overcome by the effects of wine, a beast of a man ('incauto, e vinto anco dal vino forse ... uom bestial,' 29.25.3-5). He had just called Rodomonte the 'unwary pagan' ('incauto pagan') in the line before. This repetition and the attenuation signalled by the word 'perhaps,' both innovations in the edition of 1532, shift the blame from the pagan's drunkenness to his erroneous reasoning; that 'perhaps' removes much of the blame from the wine (both the earlier editions of the poem give as the only explanation the fact that he had been drinking wine all night: 'pel vin che tutta notte sorse,' in 1516, 1521: 27.25.34). Rodomonte's is a moment of destructive madness, when his reason is conquered by Isabella's trick and 'perhaps' also by his drunken stupor.15 Rodomonte does not suspect that Isabella is willing to die rather than

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give up her faith and her virtue; he is predisposed to find women unfaithful and insatiable both because of his own personal experience and because he has heard the innkeeper's story.16 As in the case of Orlando and Bradamante, this instance is followed by other examples of Rodomonte's destructive madness, especially his 'penance,' which consists of making others suffer to expiate his guilt. The particular madness of each of the characters in question is correlated to the differences of their love experiences and has a specific and distinct function in the development of the great themes of the poem. Orlando's love for Angelica is sinful error ('incesto amore/ d'una pagana,' the incestuous love of a pagan woman, according to St John, 34.64.5-6); it distracts him from his duty and harms the Christian cause; therefore, Orlando must suffer 'inferno' (23.128.6). It is Orlando's own figurative hell, comprising women indifferent to love, that is the first stop on Astolfo's other-worldly voyage for Orlando's redemption; divine intervention is necessary to save Orlando. This is also a figurative dramatization of impossible love and vain desire for the unattainable, heroic if, and perhaps precisely because, it is denied from the start. Bradamante's love is instead just and preordained. Yet, as heroine, she must suffer and prove herself worthy of this glorious destiny in a way that parallels though differs from Ruggiero's. In the love of Bradamante and Ruggiero Ariosto depicts the psychology of an exemplary pair of lovers, their worries and joys, her jealousy and his infidelity. Rodomonte is an inconstant lover who so readily transfers his desire for Doralice to Isabella that the narrator compares the change to 'the way with one nail you dislodge another from a board' ('a modo/ che da 1'asse si trae chiodo con chiodo,' 28.98.7-8), a simile of Petrarchan origin (Trionfo d'amore 3.66). The superficiality of his love is depicted at yet another level through frequent recourse throughout the episode to similar echoes of Petrarchan lines that, when applied to Rodomonte, make him the parody of a lover:17 Rodomonte 'rides a long day's journey' ('cavalca a gran giornate,' 27.127.3; cf. Petrarch Rime 272.2: '... vien dietro a gran giornate'); at the inn he is quiet, 'wandering ... from thought to thought' ('di pensiero in pensiero ... vagando,' 27.133.1; cf. Rime 129.1: 'Di pensier in pensier, di monte in monte'); then he sighs 'as though just awoken from a deep sleep' ('come d'un gran sonno allora sciolto,' 27.133.6; cf. Rime 356.14: 'sciolta dal sonno a se stessa ritorna'); and he meets Isabella 'one day as he was standing' at a small church ('standovi un giorno,' 28.95.1; cf. Rime 323.1: 'Standomi un giorno solo a la finestra'). The poet also uses standard Petrarchan

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antitheses to characterize Rodomonte: 'those against him are in his land ... those of his land are against him' ('gli nimici ha ne la terra / ... / se gli fanno i domestici suoi guerra,' 28.88.4-6; e.g., Rime 134.1, 10: 'Pace non ho e non ho da far guerra / ... / bramo di perir et cheggio aita'); 'neither can he stay in the water nor put out the fire' ('ne spegner puo, per star ne 1'acqua, il fuoco,' 28.89.7; e.g., Rime 191 and 361). The motif of his failure to participate in events except superficially runs through all the depictions of this character. As we saw earlier, he is drunk when he kills Isabella and, afterward, as a penitent he makes others suffer for his error: a strange contrappasso it is to make others drink the water of the river to expiate his excessive imbibing in wine. It is also because he is the major representative of the pagan enemy that Rodomonte is distinguished from his two Christian counterparts for the quality of his feelings. Moreover, Orlando and Bradamante will recover from their disorienting experiences, while two defeats at the hands of love (by Doralice and Isabella) for Rodomonte are only the beginning of a series of losses that will lead progressively to his final destruction at the hands of Ruggiero (and the fate of his troops conforms to his - or at least as far as the poem's plot takes the story). The Embedded Story and the Theme of Literary Interpretation A constant in the three episodes examined, and essential to each, is the story embedded in the narrative, the love story told by a character to the protagonist of the episode. This exemplary narrative, narrator-storynarratee, reflects the relationship of poet narrator-chivalric talesimplied court public and also that of poet-poem-listener or reader, and is a sign of literary self-consciousness, a clue that the poem is saying some thing about storytellers and their audience. The pattern, presented three times with crucial variants, at the literal level presents three characters (Orlando, Rodomonte, Bradamante) and the interpretative competence of each; while at once removed, at the level of implicit narration, in the comparison set up among the three situations, it proposes problems that are basic to literature - the relationship between fiction and reality, author and work, author and reader, and between reader and reading. All three stories told have in common a love theme, similar motivation for the telling, and similar state of mind of the hearer; in each as well, the storyteller and listener do not know one another; and, in a certain sense, the reactions of the hearers are the same. The three stories

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are love stories with a happy ending in the marriage (already concluded or imminent) of the lovers (though the variant told by the innkeeper to Rodomonte is more complex, and in it, in addition to the marriage of the young lovers, two other couples are reconciled). The character who narrates, a stranger, seeks to console or reassure his listener with a remarkable exemplum of requited love. The unhappy lover, after hearing the story, does not react as the teller has anticipated, but rather, instead of being pleased, he/she goes mad, each to his/her own degree, but in Ariosto's terms they all go mad. Rodomonte, in a slightly different variant, is at first pleased and then mad. The three tales told share the quality of literariness, as stories within stories, but also in another sense and to different degrees. In the three cases the narrator of the story is aware that his story belongs to a particular literary tradition. The clearest case of that is the bona fide novella of Giocondo, Astolfo, and Fiammetta. The innkeeper himself names his source, Gian Francesco Valerio; the oriental provenance of the tale was probably generally known, and, if not, there was an accessible domestic source in the novelleof Sercambi.18 Men, away from home on a journey, who congregate in the evening to eat and drink at an inn is a typical opening of a novella - a well-worn tradition. The poet narrator says the story can be read as one reads 'fictions' and 'idle tales' ('finzioni' and 'fole,' 28.3.4), and a character in the poem calls it a 'fable' ('favola,' 28.76.8).19 The other, two embedded stories, those of the shepherd and of the Gascon, are of quite another type, despite the narrator's use of a common term, istoria, meaning both story and history, to designate all three (23.118.5; 27.138.3; 29.2.2; 32.29.7); these two narrations, briefer and simpler than the other, could perhaps better be called reportages. Viktor Shklovskii, in his Theory of Prose, proposes some useful distinctions. He argues that the structure of a novella requires both plot and counterplot; there must be a certain lack of correspondence, something that requires resolution.20 He also argues that generally the structure of a novella is a combination of two ways to build a story, either in a linear or in a circular fashion.21 These are definitions that can be easily applied to the innkeeper's story, but only with difficulty to the other two. However, the Russian critic in his general discussion also considers the description of an unproblematic, requited love story. Such a description, he argues, is not sufficient for the plot of a novella and it could only be seen as one if it were read in the tradition of other stories in which the outcome is threatened and delayed by obstacles; since one normally needs a contrasted love story to make a novella, a story with

138 Elissa B. Weaver difficulties to overcome.22 However, in Shklovskii's opinion, even narrations without complications of plot or motifs could be read as novelle if there exists a well-known literary tradition, comprising more elaborate novelle, to which these narrations belong by virtue of their similar general characteristics. The formal distinctions aside, the three stories share other literary features, since they are seen by their narrating characters as works that predate this particular telling, which have been told and can be retold. The novella of the innkeeper belongs to his repertoire and it is said to belong to Valerio's; the tale told by the shepherd is said to be a story that he knows and that he often tells: 'He knew it well and often repeated it to those who would listen. There were many who enjoyed hearing it' ('... che dicea spesso / ... a chi volea ascoltarla, / ch'a molti dilettevole fu a udire,' 23.118.7-8). It is worth noting that it gave pleasure to the audience. The Gascon too tells a story that has been repeated many times, but in this case the story was repeated by others and not by him: 'it was the common opinion and belief throughout the Moorish camp, the topic on everyone's lips' ('... ne 1'esercito de' Mori / opemone e universal credenza, / e publico parlar n'era di fuori,' 32.32.2-4). Even if the Gascon is not aware of the literary nature of his act, he reproduces a work of oral literature, a story that has been told and retold and that is similar in this respect to the stories told by the innkeeper and the shepherd. Lastly, the stories are told without interruptions, in a clear and logical manner - indications (though not determining factors) of artistic intent. To turn now to distinctions of a substantive nature among the stories, the most insistent and significant are those that have to do with the truth value of the story told and with the interpretative skills and predispositions of the three characters to whom the tales are told. The story that the shepherd tells Orlando is true and the reader knows it is because the events to which it refers have been told shortly before, in canto 19. Orlando, however, desperately refuses to believe it until it is confirmed for him by the appearance of an object that he recognizes the bracelet that he had given to Angelica (an object that is both real for him and symbolic of his spurned affection).23 Orlando is an exemplary reader; he is able to arrive at the truth in literary texts (the names of Angelica and Medoro united by love-knots - the simplest form of literary message he was to encounter, the Petrarchan poem written in Arabic, the oral text narrated by the shepherd).24 From Orlando's example we can deduce that literature has a relationship with reality, but one that

A Reading of the Interlaced Plot of the Orlando furioso 139 can involve pretense ('Angelica' could be a different Angelica, 'Medoro' could stand for 'Orlando') or even lying ('he considered how he might yet be mistaken about it; he hoped against hope that it might simply be someone trying to besmirch his lady's name this way,' ['pensa come / possa esser che non sia la cosa vera: / che voglia alcun cosi infamare il nome / de la sua donna e crede e brama e spera'], 23.114.1-4). Yet when Orlando receives material proof in the form of his lady's bracelet, he is forced to believe what he has read. Orlando is a wellinformed reader; he knows how to read even the Arabic language, and he is destroyed because, albeit against his will, he knows too much. The danger of knowing too much is reiterated in the simile in which Orlando, who abhors and flees his bed of torment, is compared to the peasant who jumps up from his resting place on the grass when he sees that a snake hides there (23.123.5-8). The biblical symbol of forbidden knowledge is a warning of what is to come: Orlando, like the peasant, will try to escape but for him it is too late.2° His 'reading' has had an effect on him; it has been the means by which he acquired destructive knowledge. The bracelet alone did not convey that knowledge, but only served to confirm what he read and heard. And in yet another sense literature tricked Orlando, promising him pleasure and repaying him instead with destructive learning: just as the grass hides the snake, the deceptively pleasing appearance of the pastoral setting (where he finds the writing) and of the little house (where he hears the story) hides a danger.26 Finally, the author has had a determining influence on his reader, both as figured in the shepherd-narrator and as the creator of the deceitfully beautiful setting, the former unintentionally the latter intentionally. These notions, aspects of Ariosto's poetics, are developed in the general context of the three episodes and elsewhere (if not everywhere) in the poem. The Gascon's story, while he believes it to be true, as do others, is false in the details of the love story of Marfisa arid Ruggiero, and the poetnarrator explains how the relationship of the two has been misread (32.32-4). Bradamante, nevertheless, believes the story on the Gascon's assurances and also because it confirms her terrible suspicions. She believes it because it is a plausible explanation of Ruggiero's delay in returning, because the Gascon tells the story with convincing detail and corroborating opinions, and because her jealousy has predisposed her to believe it. This situation is foreshadowed in the proem to canto 31, where jealousy is denounced as an 'incurable wound, so easily opened in a lover's heart, through false no less than through just suspicions!'

140 Elissa B. Weaver ('incurabil piaga che nel petto / d'un amator si facile s'imprime, / nori men per falso che per ver sospetto!' 31.6.1-3). Bradamante doesn't seek confirmation of what she has heard, and the information, false in this case, makes her want to die. In Rodomonte's case it is impossible to determine the truth value (in the poem's terms, that is) of the innkeeper's story about the infidelity of all women. The innkeeper says it is one of Gian Francesco Valerie's 'true cases' or perhaps 'exempla' ('veri esempi suoi,' 27.137.5), but 'an old man - a man of shrewdness and courage, and more right-minded than the others,' also said to be 'just and forthright' ('un uom d'eta ch'avea piu retta / opinion degli altri,' 28.76.1-2, 'il sincere / e giusto vecchio,' 28.84.1-2) judges the accusation to be false, calling the story a 'fable' ('favola') and arguing that Valeric is not trustworthy on the subject of women (28.76-7). When Rodomonte refuses to accept the judgment of the wise old man, the narrator says that he 'shunned the truth' ('fuggia udire il vero,' 28.84.5). It would seem then that the narrator agrees with the old man who defends the virtue of women and that the tale must be taken to be false. But how then are we to interpret the poet-narrator's vacillations in passages that follow shortly thereafter, where he first says he believes that most women are faithful, even if his personal experience has always shown them not to be (27.122-4); then he calls women 'a nasty tribe' and says that 'not an ounce of good is to be found in any of them' ('tutte sono ingrate, / ne si trova tra loro oncia di buono,' 29.74.3-4); and finally he asks forgiveness, declaring that his remarks have been nothing more than the ravings of a madman, since he too is mad because of love, madder even than Orlando (30.1-4). Certainly this depiction of the poet-narrator is not one that inspires faith in what he says, and knowing that his madness is caused by love makes his opinions of women particularly unreliable. I do not believe that with this Ariosto wants to suggest the opposite either, that the story is true or that it is false, but rather it seems that he wants his interpretation of the story to be ambiguous, or ironic. A change the poet made in the third edition of the Furioso would seem to confirm the hypothesis of intentional ambiguity: whereas in 1521 he wrote that Rodomonte will see that it was better 'to have bitten his tongue sooner than lie about' women ('mentire,' 27.2.7-8), in the 1532 edition he wrote 'to have bitten his tongue sooner than slander women' ('dir male,' 29.2.7-8 [italics mine]). He substitutes for 'lie' the ambiguous 'slander,' leaving it unclear whether he thinks the story is true or false. And in the same edition of 1532 he also eliminates the final octave of the story as it appeared in the two earlier edi-

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tions, an octave in which the innkeeper repeats with insistence that his story is true (28.75; canto 26 in 1516 and 1521). If we try to resolve the problem by looking at the context of the entire poem, we find that there is almost perfect parity between the faithful and the unfaithful, infamous women; indeed the episode of Rodomorite and the innkeeper is preceded and in part explained by that of Doralice's betrayal, while it is followed by the martyrdom of Isabella in the cause of chastity and constancy. Toward the end of the poem Rinaldo, cured of his love for Angelica, refuses to drink from the enchanted cup that would tell him whether or not his wife is faithful (cantos 42 and 43), and the novelle told to him subsequently affirm the wisdom of his decision. The variety of the examples, the diverse opinions and their different truth values do not allow the creation of a context in which one opinion or the other could be verified; and they teach the reader perhaps how to read 'fictions' and 'idle tales,' that is, as if it were not possible to determine their literal truth. One would need Orlando's bracelet (his 'gemma'), material and irrefutable evidence of the relationship of truth and fiction. Nevertheless, Rodomonte, like Bradamante, believes the story because of a preconception. It is what he wants to hear; it confirms his opinion of women and explains Doralice's behaviour. And this exemplum, which alleges the infidelity of all women, prepares him badly for his encounter with Isabella, the faithful and chaste woman par excellence. Rodomonte is 'unwary' ('incauto,' 29.25.3) because Isabella is not what he expects. The poet-narrator accuses him of failure to discriminate: Ma che parlo come ignorante e sciocco, lo dimostra chiara esperienza. Incontra tutte trasse fuor lo stocco de 1'ira senza farvi differenzia. (29.3.1-4) [Now experience clearly reveals the crass ignorance of his speech. He brandished the dagger of his wrath against the whole sex indiscriminately.]

The novella, like the wine, causes him to make a bad calculation; we could say that it impairs his powers of reasoning. In the examples of misreading by Bradamante and Rodomonte we have the opposite of Orlando's situation; alongside the danger of reading a harmful message, there is the danger of a bad reading, bad in the sense that it is either not true or it is incorrectly understood. A reading influenced by one's feelings is often misleading. The poem teaches the

142 Elissa B. Weaver reader to beware of literature because it is fiction and because as fiction it has an unstable relationship with reality. In an episode that follows close on these three, that of Astolfo on the moon, the poet takes up the subject again and has John the Evangelist himself say that all literature is a lie because it is the expression of the creative power of an author. Stjohn claims to know how to read because he loves writers and was a writer himself: E se tu vuoi che '1 ver non ti sia ascoso, tutta al contrario 1'istoria converti: che i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice, e che Penelopea fu meretrice. (35.27.5-8) [But if you want to know what really happened, invert the story: Greece was vanquished, Troy triumphant, and Penelope a whore.]

That is, Homer is a liar; the truth is the opposite of what we read in a literary text. But since St John himself admits to being a writer, by the same logic he too is a liar; if this is true, the outcome of the Trojan War is again reversed and Penelope's virtue is reaffirmed. The fact that St John is not an ordinary writer but an evangelist (as a writer he lies, but as an evangelist he speaks the truth) is a masterful touch which ensures that it will be impossible to know the truth of the situation on the evidence of literary texts alone. Once again we see at work the ingenious use of intentional ambiguity that characterized the context of the innkeeper's novella. The question is not resolved by the simple equation poetry = lie. Throughout the poem the poet-narrator insists that the most preposterous things are true; in an elegant and playful manner he asserts the truth of the most incredible events, naming as his authority the fictitious book of Turpin.27 This comic insistence on the truth of the obviously false narrative - narrative lies, according to the passages discussed above - directs the reader's attention to the metaphoric nature of the literary text and to the different kinds of truth it embodies - the truths upon which the narrator insists in the proems to his cantos. All of this adds up to a defence of poetry as fiction with its own rules and system of truth, a system that accommodates the expression of many sorts of truths - moral, psychological, and sometimes even historical. A successful reading of the poem, then, must keep in mind the relationship of literature to reality that the poet has set forth, and must look for truth beyond the letter of the text.

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To return to the three episodes under discussion, we see that in each case, independently of the truth value of the narrated story, the hearers of the tale, Orlando, Rodomonte, and Bradamante, are affected in away not anticipated by the tellers. They go mad and, as we have sought to show, the relationship between the narrated story and their madness appears to be causal.28 This notion too is developed in a more conventional way in canto 35, where it is presented in the form of a threat: the poet-narrator tells his patron that as a poet he has the almost divine power either to perpetuate his benefactor's good name in literature or to relegate it to infamy and oblivion. In this there is yet another tenet of Ariosto's poetics: the literary creation has power over the reader, and so the fictional world is shown to belong to the real world precisely because it participates in it and influences it. In the larger context of meaning, created through the connection in the plot (by analogy) of the three episodes, we find a varied portrayal of love, of the psychology of the lover, of madness, and of the human intellect. Here too the poet analyses and dramatizes the relationship, so difficult to determine precisely, between the individual and literature and between literature and reality; he illustrates the complexities of those relationships and insists upon the formidable power of the word. These themes are not presented as independent of one another; the subject of love madness is strictly connected to the epistemological and artistic questions that the poem raises. Each episode stages scenes of interpretation and understanding (Orlando, Rodomonte, and Bradamante analyse, whether well or poorly, the information they read or hear), and others of impaired intellectual capacity (the mad Orlando behaves like a wild beast, Rodomonte gets drunk, and Bradamerite loses control momentarily when she attempts suicide). As we have seen, the madness that overcomes reason is provoked in the three cases by the story told to the unhappy lover - a dramatization of the enormous power of the word. In all three cases the bitter truth that the characters learn or think they have learned is about love. Ariosto seems cynical here: Orlando, the only one of the characters who actually learns the truth, is the one who is most completely destroyed. We must conclude, then, that it is better not to know the truth about love. This lesson is presented even more clearly elsewhere, in the episode mentioned above involving Rinaldo, in which he refuses to drink from the cup that would tell him if his wife is faithful or not (cantos 42 and 43). The connection of the episodes in which Orlando and Rinaldo confront the truth about love is further proof of the structural complexity

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of the Furioso's plot. The Orlando episode has affinities not only with those of Bradamante and Rodomonte, but with several other important episodes as well. Besides the one just mentioned involving Rinaldo, it is also related to those in which Ruggiero encounters Alcina and Logistilla - representations of madness and reason - and, naturally, with all th episodes of the series in which he himself is protagonist. The technique of entrelacement, which does not allow a continuous, linear presentation of the plot, on the one hand stresses individual episodes by isolating them, distancing them from others that are either similar or that feature the same protagonists; this structure invites the reader to appreciate what is unique about the single episode - Orlando's psychology, the frivolous love of Rodomonte and his defeat, a demonstration of Bradamante's love and her virtues, etc. On the other hand, this technique creates various and suggestive connections through analogies among separated episodes and through the mere juxtaposition of episodes that are superficially unlike but which in their immediate context take on new meanings. One could call these two types of relationships among episodes paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Paradigmatic relationships exist, as we have said, between the episode of Orlando's madness and that of Rinaldo's refusal to drink from the cup; the danger of knowing too much about the object of one's love is central to both. Similarly, the two rather salacious stories told to Rinaldo in that episode recall the story told by the innkeeper to Rodomonte; they are connected to it through the literary theme of the exemplum to be interpreted and through that of wine, the emblem of sinful forgetfulness (for Rodomonte) and harmful veritas (for Rinaldo). Significant syntagmatic relationships, that is, connections made by the linking at the conceptual level of contiguous episodes that seem quite different, can be seen easily in the series of episodes interspersed among those of the three mad scenes. The other narrations belonging to cantos 23 through 32 bear thematic affinities; we read and interpret them both as we come to them, as individual episodes, and as part of the larger context to which they belong.29 The Bradamante episode, moreover, has a system of correspondences unique to it; tied to the episodes that follow immediately, it becomes the concrete expression in the poem of the poet's pessimistic view of history. Bradamante's sickness and her symbolic death (cantos 30 and 32), apart from the meaning they have in the development of the character and for her progress in the action, are images of the bitter sixteenth-century Italian political reality depicted in the literal catalogue of the French incursions into Italy (canto 33), in the

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allegorical explanation given to the story of Senapo and the harpies (end of canto 33, proem of 34), and even more synthetically in Bradamante's dream (canto 33). Her preference for the escape from life in dream is at the same time an eloquent defence of Ariosto's art. In this way the episodes are related to one another and the interrelationship gives them meaning. This way of reading the poem - according to repeated patterns that are to be read individually and also in various and increasingly complex contexts - is also an illustration of how Ariosto worked. The poet gave clear indications of how he worked when, in the third edition, he added new episodes, incorporating them in the whole through parallelism and juxtaposition.30 The abandonment of Olimpia is structured like and made to precede the abandonment of Alcina, and Olimpia's exposure to the sea monster and her rescue by Orlando is inserted in the poem shortly after the similar episode with Angelica, Ruggiero, and the monster; furthermore, the latter two ep sodes are also connected through similar descriptions of the two beautiful nudes. These parallelisms, like those found in the three episodes of love madness, provide connections to other narrative segments, yet they are never simply formal devices; they are developed by means of similarities and differences in the behaviour of their protagonists, in their larger themes and simpler motifs, and in their language. The poem proceeds in a linear fashion, alternating stories of chivalry, begun then suspended, and, simultaneously, it develops at different interpretative levels by virtue of its complex and significant system of reciprocal relationships and interconnected contexts. Notes This article was originally published in Italian under the title 'Lettura dell'intreccio dell' Orlando furioso: II caso delle tre pazzie d'amore,' in Strumenti critici 34 (1977): 384-406. This English translation by the author includes some minor changes made largely for the purpose of clarification of the argument; there are also some additions to the notes. 1 The classic studies of entrelacement are Lot 17-28; Frappier Etude 38-46, 347-51 and The Vulgate Cycle' 295-318; Vinaver (1971) and Tuve 362-70, 417-36, where the critic makes several suggestive observations about the Furioso. The subject continues to be of interest to scholars of French literature, as can be seen in the work of Ryding, in a review by Altman (12-19)

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2

3

4 5

6

and in two North American doctoral dissertations, by Rutledge and Chase. For studies of this technique in the Italian tradition see Delcorno Branca 7 romanzi, and especially her L'Orlando furioso. Without using the term entrelacementor referring to the tradition, Pampaloni, nevertheless, analyses this form of plot structuring and the associations and meanings it creates in both his article 'Per una analisi' and his scholastic edition of selections of the Furioso. More recent studies of interlacing in the Italian poem are those by Brand and by Praloran, 'II modello formale' 117-27 and 'Maraviglioso artifirio.' Segre's distinctions are useful. See his 'Analisi del racconto' 3-72; in English trans. 1-56. For Segre ('Analysis' 2) the discourse (discorso) is the surface aspect of the literary text or 'the narrative text as signifier,' and plot (intreccio) is the narrated material with the specific organization it is given in the text, 'textual content in the order of its presentation' (as opposed to what Segre calls in Italian and English fabula, or the content, or, better, its cardinal elements, as rearranged in logical and chronological order). The succession of narrative sequences and their symmetrical relationships are spatial not temporal. Scenes change or recall one another without attention to chronology. Time is not represented as unfolding but rather as a future or past point of reference, and connected narrative moments are often out of phase with respect to one another. For example, a device often used to interrupt a narrative sequence is that of taking the action to a future point in time and then freezing it there until other actions have caught up to that future time: Orlando arrives at the bridge guarded by Rodomonte in canto 24 (octave 14) before the poem has narrated the events in which Rodomonte builds the bridge (in canto 29, octave 33). Time is then functional in as much as it is a pretext for ending an episode and it gives a preview of future events, for which it creates curiosity or suspense; it is a spatial concept in that it is movable, forward and backward. See also Fido on 'prolessi narrative' in the poem. Negri, 61-73, refers to the spatial organization of certain groups of cantos according to geographic oppositions: east and west, cantos 15-20, north and south, cantos 30-40. See Dorfman. My quotations of the Orlando furioso are taken from Cesare Segre's edition; for the occasional references to the text of the 1516 and 1521 editions of the poem I use the edition published by Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre. The English prose translation is that of Guido Waldman unless otherwise indicated. It is Dante's famous apostrophe to Florence, city of frequent and ill-considered changes of government: 'E se ben ti ricordi e vedi lume, / vedrai te somigliante a quella inferma / che non pud trovar posa in su le piume, / ma

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con dar volta suo dolore scherma' (Purgatorio 6.148-51) [And if your memory has some clarity. / then you will see yourself like that sick woman/ who finds no rest upon her feather-bed, / but, turning, tossing, tries to ease her pain (trans. Mandelbaum) ]. 7 The entire scene is also reminiscent of Orlando in the Christian camp, when he cannot sleep for worrying about Angelica's safety and chastity. Both episodes use the image of the insomniac who tosses and turns in bed envying those who can sleep, and even similar language recurs: 'La notte Orlando alle noiose piume / del veloce pensier fa parte assai. / Or quinci or quindi il volta, or lo rassume / tutto in un loco, e non 1'afferma mai... Gia in ogni parte gli animanti lassi / davan riposo ai travagliati spirti, / chi su le piume, e chi sui duri sassi, / e chi su 1'erbe, e chi su faggi o mirti' (8.71.1-4 and 79.14) [That night, Orlando imparted his fleeting thoughts to his restless bed. This way and that he drove them, and herded them all together, but could never pen them in ... Now was the time when every living creature conceded rest to his careworn spirit - some lying in feather-beds, others on hard stones or on the grass, or in the branches of beech and myrtle-trees]. And Bradamante again later: '... poco mangia e poco dorme, e poco, / non che posar, ma ritrovar puo loco' (33.77.7-8) [she ate little, slept little - far from finding rest, she could scarcely contain her emotions]. 8 See Resta 59-83; Dalla Palma 367-76; and Giamatti. 9 Madness in the poem is always love madness. Pampaloni, in his edition of the Furioso (209), gives the following explanation: 'Tutto quanto nell'agire dell'uomo non e controllabile o giustificabile secondo ragione, diventa nella terminologia ariostesca - pazzia. In termini moderni e la componente irrazionale che Ariosto identifica con 1'insania. Naturalmente a varie gradazioni, fino al parossismo furioso ... D'altra parte quasi tutte le virtu e i valori vengono da Ariosto affermati attraverso esperienze amorose, sicche potremo concludere che 1'esperienza amorosa e la suprema prova, la crisi cruciale dell'esistenza, perche offre la massima concentrazione di antagonismo tra 1'ordine della ragione e il disordine del sentimento' [According to Ariosto's definition, any human behaviour that cannot be controlled or justified according to reason leads to madness. In modern terms, insanity is identified with the irrational component of the human being. Naturally, in varying degrees, up to a paroxysm of fury ... On the other hand, Ariosto defines virtues and values according to amorous experiences. Thus we could conclude that the experience of love is the supreme test, the critical dilemma of existence, insofar as it offers the most concentrated form of conflict between the order of reason and the disorder of emotion (trans, mine)]. 10 While this presentation of the theme of madness is central, it is not unique,

148 Elissa B. Weaver nor is it the first development of the subject. It is prepared by a theoretical treatment of the allegorical opposition of the realms of Alcina and Logistilla (cantos 6-8, 10). See Ossola 171-96, who points out the connections between the Erasmian Praise of Folly and the concepts and details of the representation of Alcina's island. Ruggiero's madness consists of the loss of himself for the love of another, a negation of his reason. His return to his senses in the realm of Logistilla is shown to be only temporary, since soon after he attempts to rape Angelica (10.112-15), showing that one is not cured of madness; a return is inevitable (pp. 175-88). This view of madness introduces the subject of the poem, but it is partial, since in the context of the entire work other aspects of madness are emphasized, principally a mad person's self-destructiveness and destruction of others but also jealousy as a form of madness. 11 It is clear that the subject of this episode is not only madness but also poetry, and that in fact the two have something in common. In the first place, the discussions of the power of poetry at the beginning of canto 35 are explicitly connected to the poet's love that has caused him, like Orlando, to lose his wits. The connection is reinforced through the poet's use of the metaphoric language of poetic heights in the proem (35.1-2) and again at the episode's close (35.31.4) to refer to the flight to the moon. Second, the lunar landscape is described as a series of concrete images that correspond to abstract notions, that is, they are signifiers for an earthly signified. As St John says to Astolfo: 'Tu dei saper che non si muove fronda / La giu, che segno qui non se ne faccia. / Ogni effetto convien che corrisponda / In terra e in ciel, ma con diversa faccia' (35.18.1-4) [You must understand that not a branch may move on earth that goes unnoticed up here. For every effect on earth, a corresponding one exists in heaven, albeit under a different guise]. The correspondence moon-earth is exactly that of signifier-signified of figurative speech and, by extension, of poetry. See Ossola: 185: 'Etant donne que toute la folie est sur la terre et sa signification sur la lune, il est evident que dans le discours poetique elle deviendra le lieu specifique de la "translation," de 1'absence done de nom propre. En ce sens la elle n'a pas de nom a elle (... done la Folie est vraiment Nemo Niemand), parce qu'elle est la metaphore de tous les noms perdus de la raison' [Since folly is located on earth and its signification is on the moon, it follows that within poetic discourse folly becomes the specific place of'transfer,' of the loss, therefore, of one's very identity. In that sense folly does not possess a name of its own (... thus folly is truly Nemo [Niemand]), inasmuch as it is the metaphor for all those who are nameless because they have lost their reason (trans, mine)]. 12 Orlando in Boiardo's poem (Innamorato2.29.37-8) expresses the same hope.

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Ariosto established meaningful connections not only within his poem but also between the Furioso and the Innamorato. 13 See the articles by Resta, Giamatti, and especially Dalla Palma cited in note 8. 14 Waldman translates this as a 'furious rage,' obfuscating the allusion to madness implied by Ariosto's use of the word 'furioso.' 15 See Ossola, passim, for the equation 'oblio = pazzia' (stupor, forgetfulness, oblivion = madness); on the island of Alcina forgetfulness is 'de-raison,' a kind of madness that is the opposite of the reason characteristic of Logistilla's realm. 16 On the novella in the Furioso as exemplum see Delcorno: 550-64. 17 With one exception, 27.133.6, the translations of the Petrarchan reminiscences that follow are either mine entirely or my adaptations of Waldman's. Waldman in these passages has often either missed the Petrarchan allusion or sacrificed it in the interest of providing a more readable English translation. 18 See Segre's note to 28.3. For the oriental tradition of the tale see Scaglione 151-61. 19 Waldman's translation does not distinguish clearly among these terms, nor probably was it Ariosto's intent to do so. Waldman translates the first pair as 'legends and fables' (28.3.4) and for the last term he uses 'tale,' since the statement that precedes it makes clear that it is an untrue tale ('... things that don't hold a grain of truth - your tale is one ...'). While I can do no better than translate fole as idle tales, Ariosto is no doubt alluding to Petrarch's expression Tola di romanzi,' idle tale of romance, from Trionfo d'amore 4.65-6: 'Ben e '1 viver mortal, che si n'aggrada, / sogno d'infermi e fola di romanzi!' 20 I base my rendition of Shklovskii's ideas on two Italian translations of the Russian O teorij prosy (Theory of Prose): '... la costruzione di una novella richiede non solo una azione, ma anche una controazione, una certa mancanza di coincidenza' (Ital. trans. C.G. de Michelis and R. Oliva [Turin: Einaudi, 1976] 74-5) and 'Per la nascita di una novella e dunque necessaria non solo una trama, ma anche una contro-trama, una non-coincidenza' (Ital. trans. M. Olsoufieva [Milan: Garzanti, 1966], 83). 21 '... generalmente la novella rappresenta una combinazione delle costruzioni ad anello e a gradini, complicata da diversi svolgimenti'; Einaudi trans., 80. 'In generale la novella e una combinazione di composizione circolare e di composizione a scala, complicata inoltre dallo sviluppo di diversi motivi'; Garzanti trans., 90. 22 'La descrizione di un amore felice e corrisposto non crea una novella, o anche se la crea, cid e soltanto perche la si percepisce sullo sfondo tradizio-

150 Elissa B. Weaver

23 24

25

26

27 28

nale delle descrizioni di un amore ostacolato. La novella ha bisogno di un amore ostacolato'; Einaudi 74. 'La descrizione di un amore ricambiato e felice non da ancora 1'impressione di una novella, e se nondimeno la da, cio awiene solo perche viene percepita in rapporto a novelle tradizionali che descrivono una storia d'amore ostacolata'; Garzanti 82. Giamatti (36) calls Angelica's bracelet in this episode 'a literalization of the hard truth.' See Giamatti 35: 'This is the dilemma Ariosto sees all of us confronted with; as readers of the poem, we are faced, as Orlando is, with words that are deceptive, inherently deceitful, the medium for fictions, but words that also tell us a hard truth: that as people in the real world, we are faced (as Orlando is in the poem) with symbols, codes, conventions that may not simply shatter us but which may also give our lives meaning and coherence. In short Orlando in the wood of words is Ariosto's image for the reader in the poem, for the reader in the world, and for the tragic predicament he faces, unwilling to believe what he must believe, and, when forced to believe, shattered as a result.' Giamatti's reading of this episode is brilliant; yet one must object to his understanding of Ariosto's use of 'commodita' (23.108.6) in the English sense of'commodity,' merchandise, and hence his interpretation of the love of Angelica and Medoro as a 'crude transaction in physical needs.' The 'commodita del luogo' refers to the 'hospitality of the place' (my trans.; Waldman has 'indulgence'), for which Medoro thanks Nature. Like so many similes in the Furioso this too is of Virgilian origin (see Segre's note to this passage). The simile is used elsewhere in the poem as well and applied to other characters- to Angelica (1.11.5-6) and to a shipmaster (39.32.3-8) - but in this context the snake, always a sign of grave danger, takes on the attributes of the biblical serpent as the danger is that of knowing too much. See Giamatti 34. Earlier in the poem, in canto 8.80-2, Orlando has a dream that first warns him of impending danger; it comes in the form of a Petrarchan vision of a beautiful place and its subsequent destruction. Zumbini (318-19) cites this dream as a prelude to canto 23, as a foreshadowing of the betrayed lover's destruction of the place; he notes that from that moment (8.82) on and until his mad scene (23.111) Orlando is called 'infelice' (unhappy). On this literary device, and in general on the relationship of truth and fiction in the literature of the Renaissance, see Nelson. The specific indicators of causality are reinforced by their order of succession. See Barthes 138-9, taken from a talk delivered on the occasion of the Pesaro New Cinema Festival, 1966: '... tutto quel che viene presentato come

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una successione cronologica di awenimenti o di episodi diventa contemporaneamente, nella Narrazione, una successione logica: vi e una fusione inestricabile fra ilprima/ dopo e Ya causa di/ dunque... II nome di questa logica del tempo e in effetti il Destino: non esiste secondo me nessuna narrazione che sfugga all'idea del destine (o alia idea del senso storico) perche non c'e alcuna narrazione che possa separare 1'idea di una successione cronologica dall'idea di una conseguenza logica' [In Narration, whatever is presented as a chronological succession of events or episodes becomes, at the same time, a logical succession. An inextricable fusion between before/ after and because of / therefore... The name of this temporal logic is, in fact, Destiny. In my opinion there can be no narration without the idea of destiny (or the idea of historical signification), because narration alone cannot separate the idea of a chronological succession from that of a logical consequence (trans, mine)]. 29 There is another good example of this in cantos 21 through 24 in which the actions of the faithless Gabrina are interwoven with those of Orlando, Zerbino, and Isabella. 30 On some of the additions to the 1532 edition and their meaning in the poem (especially on the relationship of Ruggiero and Orlando and on the Olimpia episode) see Segre 'Storia' 31-5.

Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Purgatorio. It. and Eng., trans. Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Bantam, 1982. Altman, Charles. 'Medieval Narrative vs. Modern Assumptions: Revising Inadequate Typology.' Diacritics 4 (Summer 1974). Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1976. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 1960. - Orlando furioso. Ed. Leonzio Pampaloni. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1971. - The Oriando furioso. English prose trans, by Guido Waldman. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Barthes, Roland. 'L'analisi strutturale del racconto.' In Letteratura e cinema. Ed. G.P. Brunetta. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1976. 138-9. (Partial rpt. of'Principi e scopi dell'analisi strutturale.' Nuovi argomenti, n.s. [1966], 104-14.) Brand, Charles P. 'L'entrelacement nell' Orlando furioso.' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana (GSLJ) 154 (1977): 509-32.

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Chase, Carol. 'Etude sur la premiere partie du Lancelot en prose roman du xiii e siecle.' Dissertation. University of Chicago, 1977. Dalla Palma, Giuseppe. 'Una cifra per la pazzia d'Orlando.' Strumenti critici9 (1975): 367-76. Delcorno, Carlo. 'II tradizione dell'exemplum nell'Orlando furioso.' GSL/149 (1972): 550-64. Delcorno Branca, Daniela. Iromanzi italiani di Tristano e la tavola ritonda. Florence: Olschki, 1968. - L'Orlando furioso e ilromanzo cavalleresco. Florence: Olschki, 1973. Dorfman, Eugene. The Narreme in the Medieval Romance Epic: An Introduction to Narrative Structures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969. Fido, Franco. 'I desideri e la morte: Prolessi narrative del Furioso.' In Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Essays in Memory ofArnolfo B. Ferruolo. Ed. Gian Paolo Biasin, Albert N. Mancini, Nicolas J. Perella. Naples: Societa Editrice Napoletana, 1985. 135-43. Frappier, Jean. Etude sur La mart leRm Artu. Paris: Droz, 1936. - 'The Vulgate Cycle.' In Arthurian Legend in the Middle Ages. Ed. Roger Sherman Loomis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. 295-318. Giamatti, A. Bartlett. 'Sfrenatura: Restraint and Release in the Orlando furioso.' In Ariosto 1974 in America. Ed. Aldo Scaglione. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1976. Lot, Ferdinand. Etude sur le Lancelot en prose. Paris: Champion, 1918. Negri, Renzo. Interpretazione dell'Orlando furioso. Milan: Marzorati, 1971. Nelson, William. Fact or Fiction: The Dilemma of the Renaissance Storyteller. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. Ossola, Carlo. 'Metaphore et inventaire de la folie dans la litterature italienne du xvie siecle.' In Folie et deraison a la Renaissance. Bruxelles: Editions de 1'Universite de Bruxelles, 1976. 171-96. Pampaloni, Leonzio. 'Per una analisi narrativa del Furioso.' Belfagor26 (1971): 133-50. Praloran, Marco. 'Maraviglioso artificio': Tecniche narrative e rappresentative nell' 'Orlando innamorato. 'Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1990. - 'II modello formale dell'entrelacement neU'Orlando innamorato.' In Tipografie e romanzi in ValPadanafra Quattro e Cinquecento. Modena: Panini, 1992. Resta, Giovanni. 'Ariosto e i suoi personaggi.' Rivista dipsicoanalisi 3 (1957): 59-83. Rutledge, Amelia. 'Narrative Structures in the Old French Prose "Lancelot."' Dissertation. Yale University, New Haven, 1974. Ryding, William W. Structure in Medieval Narrative. The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1971.

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Scaglione, Aldo. 'Shahryar, Giocondo, Koterviky: Three Versions of the Motif of the Faithless Woman.' Orient \\ (Leiden, 1958): 151-61. Segre, Cesare. 'Analisi del racconto.' In Le strutture e il tempo. Turin: Einaudi, 1974. 3-72. English trans., 'Analysis of the Tale, Narrative Logic, and Time.' In Structures and Time. Trans. John Meddemmen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. 1-56. - 'Storia interna dell' Orlando furioso.'' In Esperienze ariostesche. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. 31-5. Tuve, Rosemond. Allegorical Imagery. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Vinaver, Eugene. 'The Prose Tristan.' In Sherman, ed., Arthurian Legend [see Frappier], 339-47. - 'Introduction' to The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967; rev. PJ.C. Field, 1990. Esp. Ixiv-lxxiii. - The Rise of Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. 68-98. Zumbini, Bonaventura. 'La follia di Orlando.' In Studi di letteratura italiana. Florence: Le Monnier, 1894.

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto ROBERTO FEDI

1

The lyric poems of Ariosto, the Rime, remained virtually unpublished during the author's lifetime, and were edited and printed only posthumously by lacopo Coppa1 in Venice in 1546. We do not know when Ariosto first composed these poems, but it is probable that he began them in his youth, since the first texts are datable to 1493, and that he continued to rewrite them and to add new ones over a lengthy period that included the years he served as governor of the Garfagnana (1522-5) and, later still, while continuing to revise his epic masterpiece, the Orlando furioso (Bianchi ed. 5).2 In fact, it was during this period of artistic maturity and of great literary achievement (Bozzetti 83—118) when Ariosto first alluded to his intention not only to reread the Rime completely but to revise and restructure them into a canzoniere form. The intervention is corroborated by the manuscript Vaticano rossiano (Vr) 633, housed in the Vatican Apostolic Library (apograph by Bozzetti, datable after 1522) .3 However, we know that this intervention remains largely uncertain because of two manuscripts (post-W), commonly referred to as the Ferrara 'twins' at the Ferrara Municipal Library, on which the schema for the proposed canzoniere is visible only when the manuscripts are backlit (see note 2). The 1546 Coppa version, the Rime princeps, instead, combines the texts in a completely arbitrary sequence of sonnets, canzones, madrigals, and capitoli (Carlini 1-40, Segre Opere minori 1171-5, Bozzetti, Bianchi ed. 70-3). In view of its timing, the intervention testified to in the Vr manuscript was an important histori-

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 155 cal reflection by Ariosto precisely because it coincided with his revision of the Furiosofor the third edition of 1532 (in which the number of canti was increased from forty to forty-six). For Ariosto, it was a decisive period regarding the stylistic, formal, and compositional elaboration of the Rime. Indeed, at this time Pietro Bembo's choice of a PetrarchanTuscan language as the only standard for poetry was on the rise, as opposed to the Este court's influence on culture, already in decline. The fact that Ariosto revisited one of his works at this juncture constitutes an important personal reflection on his poetry (Caretti 'Ariosto' 21-7 and 'Codicillo' 103-8; Segre 'Storia' 29-41; Bruscagli 'Stagioni' 23ff. and 'Ventura' 87ff.; Casadei 39-71). With his lyric poems, Ariosto had followed the models of a local, court tradition in emulation of the poetry, from Antonio Tebaldeo to that of Matteo Maria Boiardo; and they were written only prior to Bembo's poetry, from which new concepts and more defined aesthetic guidelines would be introduced (Bigi, 'Vita' 153-88 and 'Liriche' 189227; Vechi Galli 95-141; Fedi, 'Preistoria' 83-115; Bianchi ed. 5-32; Rossi, passim). Despite this transitional moment, the Rime offered a repository of poetic material that Ariosto thought to remodel into a more contemporary collection in both its form and composition. The task was also simplified because he was already writing less in the grand manner of Boiardo (Mengaldo, passim; Tissoni Benvenuti, 'Rimatori' 503-10), which was quasi-medieval and therefore dated in character. 2

In a manner of speaking, the provisional collection of the Rime exists in a zone of compromise. Ariosto's use of the vernacular had enabled him to bypass the linguistic limitations of a northern Italian koine, and yet his initial reluctance to restructure the poems into a canzoniere, evident by the absence of any proposed thematic unifier in the manner of Petrarchan aequitas other than a stylistic one, stands in contrast to his subsequent attempt to produce a whole 'romari out of the single texts. It is possible that the effort could have resulted in a significant contribution to the annals of poetic forms in the sixteenth century, but any arrangement of the Rime into a lyrical-existential sequence was precluded by the dissimilarity in the typology of the texts; therefore, any attempt to restructure such recalcitrant 'microtexts' into one 'macrotext' would inevitably result in the failure of the entire effort.4 Ariosto's resolute turn toward the use of the fourteenth-century Flo-

156 Roberto Fedi

rentine vernacular (so different from the language of Boiardo) clearly indicates the influence of Bembo on his writing.5 However, the provisional collection does not quite convey Bembo's poetic model in the single pieces because, more than the structural filigree work that is always a successive effort, it lacks the psychological and moral implication of Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (RVF). Also missing is the integration of the stylistic component with the ethical-spiritual one that for many early-sixteenth-century poets from Bembo to Delia Casa was the very quality specific to Petrarch (Baldacci, passim; Bigi, Tetrarchismo' 47-8 and 'Aspetti' 69-75). In equal measure, and what is most revealing to us, a component already well diffused by Ariosto's contemporaries is barely discernible in the single texts: the sense of an amorous and poetic ascesis. Thus the Rime, including the sonnets and canzones (exemplary lyrical metres) are not arranged around a critical moment, either historic or emblematic, that would have given justification and meaning to the collection; instead, we find that each and every poem is the result of precise tonal needs and of exercises that were not bound to any particular cultural or poetic practice in the resolution of a theme (Binni 40-1; Paparelli 527ff.). With this in mind, let us subject the Rime to a kind of test. Rather than focusing on Ariosto's effort to construct a canzoniere from the lyric poems, what is of interest to us is the prehistory to this decision; at the same time, we must not diminish the degree of difficulty that Ariosto faced when trying to convert a 1520s poetic form, already dated, into one that was more in line with the new ideology. As an effort, it is simultaneously nostalgic and progressive, created from the privilege of memory.6 3

Local poetic tradition and Boiardo, whose poetry was published at the very close of the fifteenth century, provided Ariosto with the first grammatical elements for a compositional technique as well as the first thematic nuclei for poetry. In fact, if we exclude those canzoni of the Rime in which the Petrarchan and Bembian 'platonic transfigurations' (Bigi Tetrarchismo' 52) are detectable, then, in the remaining poems, we can see where local poetic tradition agrees with the Boiardian one. The result is an episodic canto written in a middle-aristocratic tone in which, contrasting with canonical models, the emotional immediacy is entirely conveyed. In Sonnet 3, for example, the point of departure (a celebrated Petrarchan topos, the 'cameretta-porto' [little room-harbour]

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 157

(RVF 234), is transformed into a sensual anticipation of a night of love (Bianchied. 12): O sicuro, secreto e fidel porto, dove, fuor di gran pelago, due stelle, le piu chiare del cielo e le piu belle, dopo una lunga e cieca via m'han scorto; ora io perdono al vento e al mar il torto che m'hanno con gravissime procelle fatto sin qui, poi che se non per quelle io non potea fruir tanto conforto. O caro albergo, o cameretta cara, ch'in queste dolci tenebre mi servi a goder d'ogni sol notte piu chiara; scorda ora i torti e i sdegni acri e protervi: che tal merce, cor mio, ti si prepara, che appagara quantunque servi e servi. (Sonnet 3) [O safe, secret, faithful harbour, beyond whose great depths two stars, the brightest in heaven and most beautiful - after a dark and lengthy path have guided me; now I can forgive the wind and sea the fierce storms that were sent down on me until now, because, if not for them, I could no enjoy such solace. O dear haven, dear little room, in these sweet shadows you welcome me to enjoy this night, brighter than any sun. Forget now the wrongs, bitter scorn, or insolence, since, dear heart, such a fine reward awaits you, that will satisfy all that you serve and will serve.] The use of a middle, 'earthy' tone in the only spiritual sonnet (23) of the collection connotes an unmistakable homage to that model. However, this sonnet is elaborated according to different values, and it is almost colloquial in expression despite its position as the explicit in the provisionary sequence of the Vr manuscript, its location indicating that an attempt was made to ennoble the poem (Bozzetti 116).7 Once again it is interesting to note that this spiritual component does not propose, as tradition warrants, a Christian solution to the existential drama concerning the antithesis between heaven and earth (Fedi Treistoria' 91-4): Come creder debbo io che tu in ciel oda, Signer benigno, i miei non caldi prieghi,

158 Roberto Fedi se, gridando la lingua che mi sleghi, tu vedi quanto il cor nel laccio goda? Tu che '1 vero conosci, me ne snoda, e non mirar ch'ogni mio senso il nieghi; ma prima il fa' che, di me carco, pieghi Caron' il legno alia dannata proda. Iscusi Terror mio, Signer eterno, 1'usanza ria, che par che si mi copra gli occhi, che '1 ben dal mal poco discerno. L'aver pieta d'un cor pentito, anco opra e di mortal; sol trarlo da 1'inferno, mal grado suo, puoi tu, Signer, di sopra. (Sonnet 23) [How am I to believe, kind Lord, that in heaven you hear my tepid prayers, if, when my voice is crying out that you must free me, you see how my heart enjoys the snare? You who know the truth, untie me, and do not marvel if each of my senses should resist; but do this before Charon can carry me as freight, and turn his wooden boat toward the shore of the damned. Let my wicked wonts be the excuse for my error, eternal Lord, that seem to veil both my eyes, that good from evil I can scarcely discern. To pity a repentant heart is but a human task; but to pull him from the inferno - against his will, to you above - this, Lord, only you can do.]

Several important stylistic details can be observed: the characteristically uncertain tone of the interrogative in the incipit contrasts with the tragic tone of the gravitas', the invocation is then resolved in the second line with its object, Signor benigno, which corresponds to a typical vox media since it can refer to either a divine entity or to a mortal being (as already seen in Petrarch);8 and a sense of worldliness is introduced as the prayer continues in the second quatrain - thus line 6 is decidedly more emphatic than line 5. The resulting imbalance of the final antithesis, in which the poetic T rejects outright any proposal of salvation, is a device that Ariosto uses, even stylistically, to displace Petrarchan aequitas with a syntagma taken from Dante: 'dannata proda.' Here, the lexicon no longer represents a hallmark of an inalienable authority; instead, it becomes but one of the elements of composition, despite the strict criteria of the spiritual sonnet, and within the text other poetic voices (though less canonically sanctioned) are able to be expressed. Naturally the Petrarchan stylistic solution is more apparent where the sonnet assumes paradigmatic tones; hence, in the tercets, the images effort-

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lessly bring to mind Petrarch's own Canzoniere. in the deprecatory sequence of 'errore,' 'usanza ria,' veiled 'occhi,' and one's inability to recognize evil.9 Yet here as well, at the very moment in which the model's full authority should be realized, even within the same syntactical construction, the effect is only partial and does not obey the Petrarchan principle of 'dissension.' Therefore, the syntagma 'mal grado suo' (v. 14) assumes a different value in respect to the canonical one. In Petrarch, it isolates the contrast between the soul, which naturally tends to the divine, and the body that 'mal suo grado' accepts, so to speak, to be bound to the earth;10 whereas in Ariosto, the existential conflict is resolved in placated acceptance of the canonical antithesis: the sinner permits his own salvation, but almost against his will. Here, Ariosto duly pays homage to tradition, but it is an isolated case. For these poems, he compiled and assimilated the lexical elements and traditional techniques into a more stylistically intermediate and bourgeois composition whose tone is differentiated from the Bembian high and tragic tone, or from the atypical and aristocratic one of Boiardo that was technically and structurally closed, and excessively elaborated. 4

While still conserving the poetic canons of that century, the Rime are distinguished by the content of their themes, being prevalently erotic (Ponte 142).n The texts focus on the topoi of the persistence of amorous thought (1, 2, 4, 8, 11, 24, 26, 31-3), of the symbol-image of the chioma [hair] (9, 14-21), of the laberinto [labyrinth] (34), of the celebration of woman's beauty (15, 17, 25), feeling blessed in her presence (5), of being apart (19), and of the joy that feminine charms can bring (20, reminiscent of the Dolce Stil Nuovo). Still present are the motifs on feeling anguish over her illness (30), on contradictory emotions (22), and on remembering the place where love began (12). Finally, as has already been noted, the explicitly erotic theme of love consummated, and enjoyed, is placed in relief (3, 13). The texts interweave these topoi with compositional elements derived from seemingly late-medieval models (18, on a roebuck - see Weise 101-30, 184-9; Tissoni Benvenuti 'Tradizione' 531-91) that have been finely stylized and which preview the appearance of the emblem sonnet (6): a particularly favoured genre retrieved by court poets, to which capitolo 4, 'Non senza causa il giglio e 1'amaranto,' was dedicated. Sonnet 6 is found in the central group of capitoli (in Vr. 8, 12, 13, 4, 9, 3, 4, 6, 5,

160 Roberto Fedi

11, 12, 15), immediately before the non-traditional explicit previously quoted (Son. 23 'Come creder ...'); the remarkably crowded set of texts is a telling sign of the non-Bembian nature of this unfinished canzoniere.12 It may be claimed that an indirect biographical correlation exists, at least in regard to some of the compositions. However, in reading their contents alone, we risk antedating the Rime by mistakenly associating them with the dense array of post-Boiardo court poems, when, in fact, Ariosto's compositional effort signals a turning away from those time-worn structures. His intellectual commitment toward a more precise stylistic technique also liberates him from those much-abused, traditional, and worn out methods of poetry. 5

The external structure of the Rime appears to be already codified, and is devoid of any elaborate or manneristic (after Tebaldeo) architecture; poetic components such as strambotti and barzellette are absent - at least none have been handed down to us, although one may theorize on the likelihood that a Bembian model was used for the capitoli.^ Overall, the metric range of the collection is faithful to the Bembian standard; however, it is really in Ariosto's application of the thematic and technical elements where we can readily identify his reliance on the traits of courtly poetry: conceptual boldness, the insistence upon particular imagery, and the subtle development of metaphors, as well as his dependence upon certain rhetorical devices such as anaphora, replication, symmetry, exclamation, assonance, and alliteration. Sonnet 8 belongs to the 'youthful' phase of the poet, and its relocation (found in Vr) to follow the opening sonnet of the canzoniere cannot be unintentional, suggesting the idea of a love that is yet germinal. Note in the quatrains, for example, the alternation of 'pleasing' rhythms, as Bembo might have said, owing to the use of rhyming couplets and continual assonance, or again, in the tercets, the presence of a more dynamic rhythm that produces a most elegant variatio (Fedi Treistoria' 98-100): Del mio pensier, che cosi veggio audace, timor freddo com'angue il cor m'assale; di lino e cera egli s'ha fatto 1'ale, disposte a liquefarsi ad ogni face. E quelle, del desir fatto seguace, spiega per 1'aria e temerario sale,

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 161 e duolmi ch'a ragion poco ne cale, che devria ostarli e sel comporta e tace. Per gran vaghezza d'un celeste lume temo non poggi si, ch'arrivi in loco dove s'incenda e torni senza piume. Seranno, oime! le mie lacrime poco per soccorrergli poi, quando ne fiume ne tutto il mar potra smorzar quel foco. (Sonnet 8) [Because of my thought that I thus see is so brazen - fear, cold as a snake strikes at my heart; for thought has made himself wings of linen and wax that will only dissovle near any flame. In following this desire, he spreads them to the air and recklessly he rises; but it grieves me that reason does not care, does nothing to obstruct him, remaining indulgent and silent. So great is his desire for a heavenly light I fear that he will fly too high, that he arrives at a place where he will burn and, wingless, return. My tears alone, alas! will not serve to rescue him then, when neither river nor all the sea can put out that fire.] 6

On a stylistic level we observe another device that is typical of the poetic elaboration of Ariosto: the rhetorical and grammatical antithesis that allows opposing elements to be held in balance (Giintert 29-42). This technical 'key' permits more than one tone to be expressed and, owing to its nature of opposition and contrast, the text acquires a livelier, almost cantabile rhythm. Such a device converts the acrimony of dissension into a free and more cheerful motif by which even the misogynistic topos is recast into praise: Aventuroso carcere soave, dove ne per furor ne per dispetto, ma per amor e per pieta distretto la bella e dolce mia nemica m'ave; gli altri prigioni al volger de la chiave s'attristano, io m'allegro: che diletto e non martir, vita e non morte aspetto, ne giudice sever ne legge grave, ma benigne accoglienze, ma complessi licenziosi, ma parole sciolte

162 Roberto Fedi da ogni fren, ma risi, vezzi e giochi; ma dolci baci, dolcemente impressi ben mille e mille e mille e mille volte; e, se potran contarsi, anche fieri pochi.

(Sonnet 13)

[Happy, gentle prison, where, not out of fury or disdain, but out of love and compassion, my sweet and beautiful enemy detains me; other prisoners are saddened as the key is turned, but I rejoice, because it is delight not martyrdom, life not death, no sever judge nor harsh law that I expect - but warm greetings, passionate embraces, and words freed of all retraints; and laughter, endearments, and games [I await]; then sweet kisses that are sweetly impressed, a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand times; and, if counted, even this many would be too few.]

The resolution of the soul's contradictory states is achieved by a technique that may not be readily apparent (Fedi Treistoria' 103-4). Note the quiet incipit that opens with a pentasyllable ('aventuroso') in a line consisting of only three words in perfect symmetry (attributive-substantive-attributive), and the nature of the contrasts in linear sequence beginning with line 6, which are then attenuated with frequent enjambements. The melodic refrain adds to the tempered effect of the final tercet 'ma dolci baci' after the pause of the preceding line, but before the almost can labile repetition of line 13, 'mille e mille e mille e mille volte,' which is then immediately checked by the parenthetical final line: a device characteristic of Petrarch. The theme of erotic homage is highlighted once again when, in Vr, the sonnet is placed to follow sonnets 20 arid 3 (see note 3) and immediately to precede capitolo 8 ('O piu che '1 giorno a me lucida e chiara,/ dolce, gioconda, aventurosa notte ...,' w. 1-2) [author's italics]. The composition exemplifies how far Ariosto had evolved after abandoning early-fifteenth-century poetry models and the methods of moral censure then practised by sixteenthcentury Petrarchan poets. Thus empowered, Ariosto asserts his own original poiesis while also paying tribute to the poets of the courts and to the Latin erotic poets. 7

The poetic standard of the madrigal is an appropriate choice for the lyric poems of Ariosto as this allows for a better assimilation of the Petrarchan model, specifically because it can be distilled into brief

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 163

poetic moments that tend toward absolute values. Throughout the Rime, the poet demonstrates his geographic and historic affinity to the refined non-provincial literary setting that, only a decade before, had given rise to the 'socialization process' of the exemplary and solitary poetic experience of Petrarch's lyric poetry (Mengaldo 19). For such a process the courts could provide both the forum and cultural opportunities. The precious verbal marquetry, the well-structured sonnets, the virtuosity of the court poets and the recombining of sources - from Petrarch, but also thirteenth-century poets, along with the lyric and comic Dante (Vallone 367ff.) to the relatively non-conforming stylistic-linguistic poets of the fifteenth century - all found their historical justification within the confines of the city walls in northern Italy. Here, members of the coterie were eager to decide poetic taste or the choice of a poetic expression. The poetry of Ariosto, which had been established at the turn of the century and which reproduced the traditional Ferrarese model upon which it was grounded, was already compromised by the poetic initiatives of Bembo. Still, Ariosto scarcely acknowledged this sixteenth-century poetic model, the fruit of those poets working without the benefit of any court patronage - the same poets who, after the arrival of the revolutionary printing press in that century, were to communicate beyond those limiting walls. 8

The homage, the madrigal, the lyrical narrative, even the sensual poem form the distinctive components of the poetry of Ariosto, one that lyrically summons images, places, and customs in which any confrontation with the divine is far removed. The sense of sin or temptation of the flesh is absent from the compositions, an absence that was later to become characteristic of sixteenth-century poems, in Delia Casa for instance (Fedi ed. 230-49). In this manner poetry could still act as a filter for open communication. It did not have to serve as a showcase for mere verbal improvisation, nor had it yet become a safe refuge where only in the sublime composition of 'Style' can perfection be achieved. As a result, the vivid depiction, the calm contemplation of a deed, or an image that occasionally becomes isolated in the course of life assume the form of poetry (Fedi 'Preistoria' 107-8): Madonna, sete bella e bella tanto, ch'io non veggio di voi cosa piu bella;

164 Roberto Fedi miri la fronte o 1'una e 1'altra Stella che mi scorgon la via col lume santo; miri la bocca, a cui sola do vanto che dolce ha il riso e dolce ha la favella, e 1'aureo crine, ond'Amor fece quella rete che mi fu tesa d'ogni canto; o di terso alabastro il collo e il seno, o braccia o mano, e quanto finalmente di voi si mira, e quanto se ne crede, tutto e mirabil certo; nondimeno non staro ch'io non dica arditamente che piu mirabil molto e la mia fede. (Sonnet 25) [Lady, you are beautiful and so beautiful that I see nothing more beautiful than you are; look at the brow, or at one and the other star that brighten my way with their divine light. Look at the mouth that is beyond compare, graced with sweet laughter and voice so sweet; and the golden hair from which Love has cast this net from all sides, holding me tight; or the smooth alabaster of the neck and the breasts; or the arms, the hands. And all that finally can be seen of you, and all that can be imagined - certainly all is admirable - nonetheless, I cannot but boldly make the claim that far more admirable is my devotion to you.] Se voi cosi mirasse alia mia fede com'io miro a' vostr'occhi e a vostre chiome, ecceder 1'altre la vedreste, come vostra bellezza ogni bellezza eccede. E come io veggio ben che 1'una e degna, per cui ne lunga servitu ne dura noiosa mai debbia parermi o grave, cosi vedreste voi che vostra cura dev'esser che quest'altra si ritegna sotto piu lieve giogo e piu soave, e con maggior speranza che non ave d'esser premiata, e se non ora a pieno come devriasi, almeno con un dolce principio di mercede. (Madrigal 6) [If only you could look at my devotion to you in the same way that I look at your eyes and hair, then you would see that no other [devotion] can com-

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 165 pare, as I can see how your beauty transcends all other beauty. And as I can clearly see that [your beauty] is worthy [of devotion], and thus my servitude will never seem long or harsh, nor grievous to me; so you should see that your care for this [devotion] is to keep it under a lighter, more gently yoke and with greater hope than it presently has of being rewarded - now in its entirety, as it should - if not, then at least with a sweet beginning of what will be.]

Sonnet 25 - which presupposes the successive madrigal (in reality, a ballad) , with which it forms a kind of coblas capifinidas — can be read as a true summa of the technical methods (revealed in progress) throughout the poems that are more obviously derivative of the Petrarchan formal and material repertory. Hence, the components of that lengthy practice unfold here into erudite plots with the sole objective of rendering the work 'gracious' and 'simple' (Fatini ed. Opere minori 300).14 Thus, reading Petrarch offers a lesson on tempered oratory, and fifteenth-century poets offer their vast and prolific inventory of rhetorical tools: invocation (Madonna ...); iteration (bella e bella); enjambement and strophe (w. 7-8, 11-12); anaphora (miri... miri); enumeration and polysyndeton (w. 3—11); refrain (e quanta e quanta); caesura (v. 12); distant rhyming polysyllables (finalmente ... arditamente); repetition (non staro ch'io non dica); alliteration (mirabil molto e la miafede), and the eurhythmic accentuation of a line. When combined, these poetic devices frame the casuistry normally associated with courtly love, analytic and descriptive of the simple elements of feminine beauty. Some of the most effective examples of ars ariostesca can be found in the distinguishing ways that Ariosto reworks those stylistic elements and frequently abused commonplaces into the altogether fluid, graphic portrayal of a delicate image drawn by the act of remembrance and brought to life here, in its brief apparition, in the madrigalesque homage. Within this new poetic form even the pictorial and colouristic elements, seemingly precious and insistent upon the Boiardian and medieval models, are only partially assimilated; the memory of Boiardo, then, is reduced to a mere learned recollection, and hidden within the poetic narrative: Chiuso era il sol da un tenebroso velo, che si stendea fin all'estreme sponde de 1'orizonte, e murmurar le fronde e tuoni andar s'udian scorrendo il cielo;

166 Roberto Fedi di pioggia in dubbio o tempestoso gelo, stav'io per ire oltra le torbid'onde del fiume aider che '1 gran sepolcro asconde del figlio audace del signor di Delo; quando apparir su 1'altra ripa il lume de' bei vostri occhi vidi e udii parole che Leandro potean farmi quel giorno. E tutto a un tempo i nuvoli d'intorno si dileguaro e si scoperse il sole; tacquero i vend e tranquillossi il fiume. (Sonnet 20) I5 [The sun was enclosed by a shadowy veil that extended to the horizon most far, while the whisper of leaves and thunder roaring across the sky were heard. Though troubled by storms threatening either rain or hail, I was set to cross the murky waves of the fierce river hiding the tomb of the Lord of Delos's daring son, when - appearing from the other bank - I saw the radiance of your eyes and heard the words that, on that day, would have made me Leander. And all at once the enveloping clouds vanished as the sun unveiled itself - the winds were silent and the river was calmed.]

9

The learned reference to mythology (Leander, son. 20) does not detract from the vivacity and the 'earthy and colourful' nature of this poem (Innamorati ed. 28). Nor does Ariosto abandon traditional motifs; instead, he rewrites them into a different composition that is stylistically controlled in an 'agreement of opposites' (Caretti 'Ariosto' 38). Even the five canzoni (of which Vr confirms only the second and fourth), which recall more eloquent rhythms and which likely follow a BembianPetrarchan component, acquire an independence of purpose. Thus, the compositional conformity to Bembo (or Petrarch) in these poems is only partial, because Ariosto uses the component in a manner different from canonical assumptions, in a delineation of rapid and allusive, but nevertheless independent, meanings. For example, in the first lengthy canzone (fourteen stanzas of eleven lines each, with an envoy of six lines, found only in the Ferrara 'twins' and Coppa edition: see note 2), the platonic memory of Ariosto's encounter with Alessandra Benucci is not relegated to some rarefied, mythological, or supernatural framework. Rather, it is expressed within very human and animated surround-

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 167 ings, as is seen in some descriptive inserts in the Furioso in which, as the bearer of serenity, the woman emerges: ... Porte, finestre, vie, templi, teatri vidi piene di donne a giuochi, a pompe, a sacrifici intente, e mature ed acerbe, e figlie e matri ornate in varie gonne; altre star a conviti, altre agilmente danzare; e finalmente non vidi, ne sentii ch'altri vedesse, che di belta potesse, d'onesta, cortesia, d'alti sembianti voi pareggiar, non che passarvi inanti... (Canzone 1.78-88) [... The doors, windows, paths, theatres and shrines that I saw were filled with women: at games, at processions, engrossed in holy ceremonies; and some were ripe, and others tart - mothers and daughters ornate in an array of gowns; some were gathered at banquets, others were nimbly dancing; and finally, I could not see, nor did I hear that anyone else could see, how your beauty, honesty, courtesy, and gracious ways could be equalled, much less surpassed ...] The moment is brief and the pictorial hallmark, at least here, is only fleetingly mentioned; but it is precisely with such individual solutions, either thematic or stylistic, that Ariosto infuses his poetry. Ariosto finished the remaining poems of the Rime in 1522 to 1523 while still serving in the Garfagnana, along with the drafts of texts that were autobiographical arid bitter, and testimonials to his disillusionment. In this spirit, the memories of the Petrarchan poetic tradition, the topoi of being apart, are vividly recreated in sonnet 34 (not found in Vr): Privo d'ogni mio ben, sto pur fermato in cieco laberinto di speranza, e non m'aveggio ch'altro non m'avanza se non guerra, dolor e mortal stato ... (Sonnet 34.1-4) [Deprived of my every joy, I stand steadfast in a blind labyrinth of hope, and there is nothing more before me but war and suffering and mortal plight...]

168 Roberto Fedi

These were to return, along with more classical memories (from Propertius Elegies 1.17.1), in capitolob (1522), as transcribed in Vr: Meritamente ora punir mi veggio del grave error che a dipartirmi feci da la mia donna, e degno son di peggio;... ... Li altri in le lor fatiche hanno conforti di riposarsi dopo, e questa spene li fa a patir le aversita piu ford. Non piu tranquille gia ne piu serene ore attender poss'io, ma '1 fin di queste pene e travagli, altri travagli e pene. (5.1-3, 49-54) [Deservedly now I see myself punished for the grievous wrong committed when I left my lady, but I am worthy of worse ... Others, in their travail, take comfort knowing that they can later rest, and this hope gives them strength to endure the most harsh adversity. No more tranquil nor serene hours may I expect, but at the end of this sorrow and pain, more pain and sorrow.]

10

The provisional collection, as authorized by Ariosto in the transcription of the codex Vaticano rossiano, interferes with our attempt to retrace his literary activity with any certainty in the years following the late 1520s through the early 1530s (Bozzetti 117). We do know that during this period it was incumbent upon him to select new episodes for the Furioso and reconcile the cantos with a Bembian style, and to achieve a new narrative balance. In much the same way that the Este court, or any Italian court after the sack of Rome in 1527, no longer commanded the same power as it had during Ariosto's youthful years of the Furioso, so too the literary horizon had shifted. Bembo's Prose (1525) and Rime (1530) not only furnished early sixteenth-century poets with a stylistic and poetic metre, but also with the notion of a non-aristocratic canzoniere. In a manner of speaking, the works of Bembo had functioned as a metaphoric Procrustean bed, so that any other solitary attempt to write a canzoniere in the vernacular was, in effect, already too late. As a result, at least until the explosion of poetry in print, twenty years of silence followed the example of Bembo (Fedi 'Canzonieri' 23-80). Over time, the canzoniere continued to be cultivated as a minor, alternative form of poetry that was commemorative, bound to an intermediate method between a ver-

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 169

nacular neo-classicism and the aristocratic or local tradition that more properly belonged to the declining courts. It was a poetry of remembrance endowed with the realities of life that occasionally, as in the case of Ariosto's mature years of the 1520s, gained a formal identity, albeit in an embryonic stage. More significantly, Ariosto's attempt to formalize the Rime'was a symptom of the immense effort he had made in adjusting to the new formal trends and to review critically his poetic beginnings; after all, the narrative-existential form was already known to fifteenthcentury poets and to Boiardo (Gorni 51 Iff). Equally symptomatic wa Ariosto's notion of a poetry that was never quite finished, but always subject to refinement; and in the spirit of this never-ending process, the Rime continue to offer opportunities for further discussion. TRANSLATED BY HIROKO FUDEMOTO

Notes 1 The citations from the ^zm^can be found in the Rizzoli edition, edited by Bianchi, which follows those of Segre and Fatini (Lirica), with some corrections to the texts. Recent editions include those edited by Vallone and Santoro; however, some unauthorized versions of the Rime appeared during the poet's lifetime. A first systemization was acquired only with the posthumous Venetian printing of the princeps, in 1546, prepared by lacopo Coppa from Modena. It is based upon the manuscripts furnished by Ariosto's descendants, comprising 3 canzones (according to the enumeration of Fatini-SegreBianchi: 1, 2, 5), 31 sonnets (1-29 and 31-2), 9 madrigals (1-9), 18 capitoli (2-19), as well as some additional stanzas, and one canzone erroneously attributed to him. The princeps, while utilizing the standard of the canzonieri pertaining to the time, consists of an arbitrary arrangement of the components; only in the eighteenth century does Rolli's edition organize them by metrics, thereby initiating an accepted practice. On the problem of textual tradition, and before the fundamental contribution of Cesare Bozzetti, who will be cited later, see Fatini, 'Per un'edizione' and 'Su la fortuna' (in addition to the edition of Lirica, already cited), Carlini, and Chittolina. Again, on the difficulties of attribution, see Fatini, 'LeRimed\ L. Ariosto.' More generally, see Fedi, 'Petrarchismo' and 'Preistoria,' in addition to the Bianchi edition, already cited. 2 The oldest text, from among those datable, is capitolo 1, which is inferred with the death of Eleonora d'Aragona, wife of Ercole I d'Este (1493). The

170 Roberto Fedi earliest of the sonnets, 36, is inferred from the papal naming of Giuliano della Rovere (Giulio II, d. 1503). Those texts not found either in the Coppa printing of 1546, or in the two manuscripts, the Ferrara 'twins': (initialled F1 and F2 respectively; at the Ferrara Communal Library, they are itemized as Cl. 64 and Cl. 365, respectively and contain the canzones 1, 4-5; sonnets 14, 6-10, 12-21; madrigals 1-7; capitoli 2-1$, but are not datable until about the late 1520s), may be deduced as originating from an earlier period, but in any event, not prior to 1503. In the case of the manuscript Vaticano rossiano (Vr) 621, see note 3. On the matter of the poems' dating, see Bigi 'Vita e letteratura' 153-88 and 'Le liriche volgari' 197ff. On the problem of the attributions of some of the texts (in particular, madrigals 8 and 9, capitolo 1, sonnet 35, and other questions), see again Bigi, 'Le liriche volgari' 193 and Bianchi 70—3. The Ariostian canzoniere consists of (as far we know) 5 canzones, 41 sonnets, 12 madrigals (3-4, in reality, are ballads), 27 capitoli (of which one is written in two versions), and 2 eclogues. Perhaps Ariosto's son, Virginio, is referring to compositions that are more unorthodox, or burlesque and popular, when he speaks of'baje' (see Fatini 'Le Rime' 81). On Latin poetry (the Carmina, attributable to the period preceding Cardinal Ippolito d'Este's entry into service in 1503), see Carducci, passim, and Bigi 'Vita' 157ff. 3 In the Vr manuscript, 48 lyric poems are included, but disposed of in a different order from that of the traditional one (which, for convenience, is by metric length) and which describe 'la parabola di un'esperienza esistenziale' (Bozzetti 93) [the parabola of an existential experience]. The order of the texts in Vr, in accordance with the enumeration of Fatini-Segre-Bianchi, is the following: sonnets 24, 8, 32; madrigals 2, 5; canzone 2; sonnet 9; madrigal 3; sonnet 25; madrigal 6; sonnets 10, 7, 15, 18, 12; madrigal 4; sonnets 20, 3, 13; capitoliS, 12, 13, 14, 9, 3, 4, 6, 5, 11, 7, 15; sonnets 2, 16, 17, 4, 14; madrigal 7; sonnets 9, 31, 1; canzone 4; capitoli 17, 10, 19, 16, 18; sonnets 6, 23. The manuscript allows Bozzetti to reconstruct its genealogy from among the most important indicators: 'testimonianze che discendono da un archetipo di cui conservano tutte alcune errori e da cui provengono indipendentemente Vr e un subarchetipo x dal quale derivano a loro volta indipendentemente Cp [la stampa Coppa] e F si ricordi, e anch'esso ricostruibile solo dall'accordo di Fl e F2 che ne sono due coppie indipendenti' (Bozzetti 105) [witnesses in which there are errors are derived from an archetype, and from that [archetype] were independently derived Vrand a subarchetype x, from which were independently derived in turn Cp [the Coppa publication] and F, which, one recalls, is also reconstructible only from the agreement between F1 and F2, of which there are two independent

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 171

4 5

6

7

8

9

copies]. Regarding the structural relationships among these testimonies (Vr represents the more archaic phase, while conserving the image of the canzoniere, as we have said), as well as the possibility of a recovery of the Vr structures, also found in F, see again Bozzetti 109ff. On the concept of macrotext, see Cord 185-200; Santagata 11-75; Erspamer 109-14; Fedi 'Canzonieri' 23ff. and 36 n.24. Bembo was in Ferrara between 1498 and 1500, and often returned throughout 1502-3. Ariosto then had occasion to see him more frequently, whether at the Court of Urbino (1506-12) or in Rome at the palazzo of Leone X, for whom the Venetian was secretary. Confirmation of this friendship can be inferred from Ariosto's poem, in Latin, Ad Petrum Bembum (Carmina, 7), and again from the praises in tribute to Bembo in the Furioso (46.15). Notwithstanding the fact that Bembo's linguistic and poetic theorization occurred at a later date, it is nevertheless certain that its genesis may be referred back to the latter years of the fifteenth century: during his first stay in Ferrara, Bembo also worked on the initial drafts of the Asolani, which the author had been writing since 1497. See Mengaldo on Boiardo. A different case, though similar in its philological formalization, is represented in the Rimeby Michelangelo Buonarotti: see Fedi 'Michelangelo' 264-305. In Vr, on the other hand, the sonnet that day is listed in the enumeration by Fatini-Segre-Bianchi as sonnet 24 ('O messaggi del cor sospiri ardenti' [O burning sighs, messengers of the heart]) was once the incipit. Indeed, it is a proem in which very little is conceded to the theme of repentance, or to that of the Petrarchan itinerarium, but is completely focused on the present. On the proemial sonnet in sixteenth-century poetry in general, see Erspamer 109-14, although, in regard to Ariosto, the author does not consider the findings in Vr: see 110. On the ways of closing texts (even if, in this case, it only concerns single texts, but with some regard for a macrotextual sense), see Smith. See, e.g., Rerum vulgariumfragmenta (RVF) 7, 5-6 ('ed e si spento ogni benigno lume / del ciel, per cui s'informa umana vita'): [and every benign light in heaven that gives form to human life, is extinguished]; 117, 5-6 ('i miei sospiri piu benigno calle / avrian per gire ove lor spene e viva') [my sighs will follow a more benign path where hope is still alive] [italics mine], etc. The citations follow the given texts of Contini. See, from among the many examples of that genre in the RVF, that of the canzone to the Virgin (366,111-12): 'MedusaeTerror miom'hanfattounsasso / d'umor vano stillante'; [Medusa and my own wrongdoing have turned me to stone, uselessly weeping tears]; and on the juxtaposition of the imagery of

172 Roberto Fedi blindness (224, 4): 'un lungo error in cieco laberinto' [a prolonged error in a blind labyrinth]. Also, usanza ria is a Petrarchan expression: see (81, 1-2): ('Io son si stance sotto '1 fascio antico / de le mie colpe e de 1'usanza ria') [I am greatly fatigued by the ancient burden of my faults and wicked wonts]. On the imagery of the veiled eyes, see for example 329, 12-13): 'ma 'nnanzi agli occhi m'era posto un velo / che mi fea non veder quel ch'i' vedea' [but a veil placed over my eyes prevented me from seeing what I saw]. 10 See, e.g., 6, 11 ('Che mal mio grado a morte mi trasporta') [Which against my un/Heads me to my death] [italics mine]. 11 Sonnets 3, cited, and 13, which will be cited later, are dedicated to the theme, not really Petrarchan, of sensual gratification. In the succession of Vr, they are in a central location and indicate the climax of that experience. 12 Only one capitolo, in tercets ('Amor e, donne care, un vano e fello') [Love, my dear ladies, is vain and treacherous], is present in all three of the editions of Bembo's Rime, beginning with the first edition of 1530. Bembo rejected the other capitoli (Bembo 673ff.), except for one from his youth, which was edited for the first time in 1508. 13 On Ariostian metrics, see Fedi 'Preistoria' 97 n. 23; and Bianchi 297-9. Although the sonnet demonstrates a rigorous fidelity to the Petrarchan model in the quatrains, Ariosto's defiance of it can be seen in the more autonomous innovation in the tercets. It is interesting to note that of the two orders of non-Petrarchan tercets, the one, CDE CED, can be found in Boiardo's Amorum libri, in sonnets 12, 74, and 78. 14 The component was widely diffused in the sixteenth century, and was also imitated abroad by the poets of the Pleiade (Du Bellay, Ronsard, Baif). One will notice that in Vr, sonnet 25 is located between two madrigals, 3 and 6 (which are really ballads), the latter of which has already been cited. Also to be found in madrigal (or ballad) 3 is the express appeal to 'Madonna' (v. 3), that recalls the incipit of sonnet 25; in addition, one can also find the rhyming suffix -ede (mercede:vede) that is repeated in lines 11 and 14 of that sonnet. 15 See sonnet 6 from the first edition of Amorum libri ('II canto de li augei di fronda in fronda') [The singing of birds from branch to branch], especially lines 9-14: 'Dovunque e passi move on gira il viso / fiamegia un spirito si vivo d'amore / che avanti a la stagion el caldo mena. / Al suo dolce guardare, al dolce riso / 1'erba vien verde e colorito il fiore / e il mar se acqueta e il ciel raserena.' [Wherever she walks or turns to look, a spirit burns so bright with love that the warmth of summer returns. At her soft gaze, or sweet laughter, the grass grows greener and colours bloom brighter, and the sea calm and the sky serene.]

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173

Bibliogaphy Ariosto, Ludovico. Lirica. Ed. G. Fatini. Bari: Laterza, 1924. - Opere. Ed. Giuliano Innamorati. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1967. - Opere, III. Ed. Mario Santoro. Turin: UTET, 1989. - Opere minori. Ed. Giuseppe Fatini. Florence: Sansoni, 1915 (repr. with new intro. by Fatini, 1961). - Opere minori. Ed. Cesare Segre. Intro. L. Caretti. Milan: Naples, Ricciardi, 1954. Opere minori. Ed. Aldo Vallone. Milan: Rizzoli, 1964. - Rime. Ed. Stefano Bianchi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1992. - 'Le Rime di M. L. Ariosto, non piu viste e nuovamente stampate a instantia di lacopo Modanese [...].' Vinegia conPrivilegio delSommo Pontefice & delEccelso Senato Veneto, 1546 [ed. lacopo Coppa]. - Delle Satire e Rime di M. Ludovico Ariosto. London: Pickard, 1716 [ed. P.A. Rolli]. Baldacci, Luigi. II petrarchismo italiano nel Cinquecento. 2nd ed. Padua: Liviana, 1974 (Isted., Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1957). Bembo, Pietro. Prose e rime. Ed. C. Dionisotti. 2nd ed. Turin: UTET, 1966. Bigi, Emilio. 'Aspetti stilistici e metrici delle "Rime" dell'Ariosto.' Notiziario culturaleitalia.no (Italian Cultural Institute, Paris) 15.3 (1974): 69-75. - 'Le liriche volgari dell'Ariosto.' In Poesia latina e volgare nel Rinascimento italiano. Naples: Morano, 1989. 189-227. - 'Petrarchismo ariostesco.' In DalPetrarca alLeopardi. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1954. 56-70. - 'Vita e letteratura nella poesia giovanile dell'Ariosto.' In Poesia latina e volgare. 153-88. Binni, Walter. 'Le liriche e 1'esercizio stilistico.' In Metodo e poesia di L. Ariosto. Messina-Florence: D'Anna, 1947. Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Amorum libri. In Opere volgari. Ed. P.V. Mengaldo. Bari: Laterza, 1962. Bozzetti, Cesare. 'Notizie sulle "Rime" dell'Ariosto.' Studi difilologia e critica offerti dagli allievi a L. Caretti. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1985. 1:83-118. Bruscagli, Riccardo. 'Stagioni della civilta estense.' Stagioni della civiltd estense. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1983. 15-32. - 'Ventura e inchiesta fra Boiardo e Ariosto.' In Stagioni della civiltd estense. 87-126. Carducci, Giusue. 'La gioventu di L. Ariosto e la poesia latina a Ferrara.' In Opere. Edizione Nazionale XIII. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1963. Caretti, Lanfranco. 'Ariosto.' In Ariosto e Tasso. Turin: Einaudi, 1961. 13-51. - 'Codicillo a L. Ariosto.' In Antichi e moderni. Turin: Einaudi, 1976. 103-8. Carlini, Anna. 'Progetto di edizione critica della liriche di L. Ariosto.' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 135 (1958). 1-40.

174 Roberto Fedi Casadei, Alberto. La strategia delle varianti: Le correzioni storiche del terzo 'Furioso.' Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1988. Chittolina, Roberto. 'Sulle "Rime" dell'Ariosto: Problemi di attribuzione.' Studia Ghisleriana, sen 2, 3 (1976). 296-311. Coppa, lacopo, ed. 'Le Rime di M. L. Ariosto, non piu viste e nuovamente stampate a instantia di lacopo Modanese.' Vinegia con Privilegio del Sommo Pontefice & delEccelso Senato Veneto, 1546. Corti, Maria. Testi o macrotesto? "I racconti di Marcovaldo" di I. Calvino.' In // viaggio testuale. Turin: Einaudi, 1978. 185-200. Delia Casa, Giovanni. Lerime. Ed. R. Fedi. 2 vols. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1978 (new condensed ed. Milan: Rizzoli, 1993). Erspamer, Francesco. 'II canzoniere rinascimentale come testo o come macrotesto: II sonetto proemiale.' Schifanoia 4 (1987): 109-14. Fatini, Giorgio. 'Per un'edizione critica delle liriche di L. Ariosto.' Rassegna Critica della Letteratura Italiana 15 (1910): 19-54. - 'Su la fortuna e 1'autenticita delle liriche di L. Ariosto.' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, suppl. 22-3 (1924): 133-296. - 'Le "Rime" di L. Ariosto.' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, suppl. 25 (1934): 76ff. Fedi, Roberto. 'Canzonieri e lirici nel Cinquecento: Dall'imitazione alia citazione.' In La memoria della poesia: Canzonieri, lirici e libri di rime nel Rinascimento. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1990. 23ff. - 'II canzoniere (1546) di Michelangelo.' In La memoria della poesia. 264—305. - 'Petrarchismo prebembesco in alcuni testi lirici dell'Ariosto.' In Ariosto: lingua stile e tradizione. Ed. S. Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 283-302. - 'Preistoria di un canzoniere: Le "Rime" di L. Ariosto.' In La memoria della poesia. 83-115. Gorni, Guglielmo. 'II canzoniere.' In Letteratura italiana. Ed. A. Asor Rosa. Turin: Einaudi, 1984. 3, pt. 1, 504ff. Guntert, Georges. 'Per una rivalutazione dell'Ariosto minore: Le "Rime."' Lettere italiane23 (1971): 29-42. Mengaldo, Pier Vincenzo. La lingua delBoiardo lirico. Florence: Olschki, 1963. Paparelli, Gioacchino. 'L'Ariosto lirico e satirico.' Italianistica 3. 3 (1974): 527ff. Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere. Ed. G. Contini, notes by D. Ponchiroli. Turin: Einaudi, 1964. Ponte, Giuseppe. 'Nota sull'Ariosto imitatore del Boiardo.' In La personalitd e Vopera delBoiardo. Geneva: Tilgher, 1972. Rossi, Antonio. S. Aquilano e la poesia cortigiana. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1980. Santagata, Marco. Dal sonetto al canzoniere. 1979. 2nd ed. Padua: Liviana, 1989.

The Lyric Poetry of Ariosto 175 Segre, Cesare. 'Storia interna dell' Orlando furioso.' In Esperienze ariostesche. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. 29-41. Smith, Barbara H. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Tissoni Benvenuti, Antonia. 'Rimatori estensi di epoca boiardesca.' In G. Anceschi, ed., II Boiardo e la critica contemporanea. Florence: Olschki, 1970. 503-10. - 'Tradizione letteraria e gusto tardogotico nel canzoniere di M.M. Boiardo.' Giornale Storico delta Letteratura Italiana 137 (1960): 531-91. Vallone, Aldo. 'Lettura delle rime ariostesche (con particolare riguardo ai sonetti).' In Saggi e ricerche in memoria di E. Li Gotti. Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 1962. 3:367ff. Vecchi Galli, Paola. 'La poesia cortigiana tra XV e XVI secolo.' Lettere italiane, 1982.95-141. Weise, Georg. // manierismo. Italian trans. Florence: Olschki, 1971.

The Theatre of Ariosto STEFANO BIANCHI

l In the History of Italian Literature (1870), the eminent literary critic Francesco De Sanctis dismisses the plays of Ariosto as seeming too derivative of Latin models. Accordingly, he describes Ariosto's first comedy, the Cassaria, as a 'reconstruction' of classical texts rather than his own 'creation.' He also expresses strong reservations regarding the other plays, because Ariosto, almost obstinately, had insisted upon composing those works in dactylic verse, 'in order to render the Latin faithfully, since the metre seemed to correspond perfectly to the iambic one' (De Sanctis, 2:498-9). Once liberated of those theatrical works, the critic then discusses the Orlando furioso as exemplifying Ariosto's true artistic spirit, because 'no other work was conceived or laboured upon more seriously' (2:509). Indeed, in the conclusion to his chapter on Ariosto, he decrees the plays to be inferior to the Orlando furioso - that 'work of pure art,' that 'luminous pillar in the history of the human spirit' (2:538). This judgment, combined with certain zealots' resolve to find unconditional proof of Ariosto's plagiarism,1 effectively blocked any further discussion regarding his comedic originality. The Furioso, meanwhile, continued to gain a widespread and absolute prominence, resulting in an increased subordination of his entire theatrical work. Benedetto Croce cannot be more explicit when he prosaically, but concisely, observes that the difference between Ariosto's 'minor' works and the Orlando furioso is the same difference that distinguishes a valley from a mountain. In fact, in his celebrated essay of 1918, Croce candidly

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reveals that despite the numerous and intricate paths found in the 'valleys,' he much prefers the adventures found in the far more spirited elevations of the 'mountains,' because only there could one fully grasp the true nature of that 'poet of Harmony' (a literary formula notoriously destined to protracted use). However, Croce continues, first one must put aside the plays because they have been 'recopied [from Latin texts] and recombined, and therefore laborious' (Croce 29). Such an authoritative restriction may have originated with Ariosto himself, who gave the clear impression that even he did not hold the 'minor' works in much regard, since he personally had not bothered to publish them. Still, Croce's mechanistic conclusion does not take into account the ongoing dissatisfaction that Ariosto had with his corrections, which, in fact, had delayed any distribution of his Latin and vernacular verses, as well as the plays, and the Satire.2 More significantly, Croce overlooks the vital relationship that exists between the Furioso and the 'minor' works (with which Ariosto was still experimenting), whereby the latter serve as studies for, and as 'companion' pieces to, that great poem. Again, owing to this oversight, Croce is not able to evaluate properly the indispensable role that the minor works play in the development of the Furioso's demanding poetic structure (a relationship on which both Caretti, 239, and Santoro, 7-10, have insisted), nor the contribution that they make to the historical development of literary genres.3 With the Cassaria, Ariosto is not only launching the vernacular genre, he is actually creating a landmark in the history of Italian and European theatre. This play, having been inspired by Latin texts, is no longer a simple rewrite of the classics but a work of original invention.4 2

Ariosto's commitment to theatrical writing, which would span more than twenty years, resulted in several works. The Cassaria, in prose, was staged 5 March 1508, while the Suppositi, also in prose, was performed on 6 February 1509. The first version of the Negromante'WSis sent to Pope Leo X in 1520 by Ariosto himself (who had mistakenly expected to stage a Roman performance). The unfinished Studenti, worked upon between 1520 and 1525, was completed posthumously by his brother, Gabriele, under the title La scolastica in 1547, and again by his son, Virginio, as L'imperfetta in 1554. The second version of the Negromante was staged during the same carnival, in 1528, when La Lena was performed for the first time (it was presented again in 1529, with a new prologue and two

178 Stefano Bianchi

additional scenes in the final act); the versification of the Cassaria and the Suppositi was completed between 1529 and 1532. Ariosto did not work on his plays with the same perseverance that he had shown during the writing and meticulous perfecting of the Furioso, yet this was not an episodic or marginal activity for him. One need only recall that his first literary attempts had begun with the stage production of the now lost play the Tragedia di Tisbe, which had been composed for the company founded by Ercole I d'Este in the last decade of the fifteenth century. Moreover, throughout his career he was occupied as a playwright, actor and producer at the duke's court; in addition to these activities, he also authored several translations (now unfortunately lost) of plays by Plautus and Terence.5 Ariosto's interest in the theatre was first prompted, during his youth, by what he had observed of the cultural politics at the Este court. For instance, he noted how the court - always seeking to promote a refined celebration of itself - was quick to adopt any literary device of comedic fiction that ultimately could accomplish this. He also recognized that theatrical writing presented excellent alternatives to epic-encomiastic commissions, which normally required a longer time to complete. In particular, he identified a form of theatre in which the 'disorder' of the play on stage 'mirrored' the reality of the Ferrarese court audiences. Thus, the stage performance takes place in a fictitious location where a disordered variety of mistaken identities, wordplay, chance encounters, and so forth occur haphazardly throughout the plot; meanwhile, and in a manner necessarily detached (in that their lives are being enacted on stage), the refined public sits back admiring the background scenery with its painted palaces and stylized churches - symbols of a 'perpetual,' intangible, political and religious power - while they wait to be completely reassured by the (predictably) happy ending. Not only do such endings serve to restore 'order' to the stage, but, in the case of court productions, they also indirectly serve to perpetuate and glorify the absolutely regulatory function of established authority (Baratto La cornmedia 77-9; Larivaille 'Spazio scenico' 258-9). Under the expectation of that cultural politic, Ariosto was able to convert the knowledge he had gained from the archetypes of Plautus and Terence into other forms that were more autonomous and more personally expressive. However it would be imprecise to characterize his theatrical career as a 'rectilinear course of perfecting'; rather, one should define it more in terms of a 'successive series of diverse projects, each one satisfactorily offered as distinct performance material' (Ferroni 85).

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3

Ariosto's debt to Latin models in his first comedy, the Cassaria, is evident in its general structure: the subdivision into five acts, the presence of a prologue, the setting in a foreign land, even the title itself- a reworking of Plautus's Cistellaria. The same debt can certainly be recognized in the storyline of the play, and in its portrayal of characters. The story is set in Mytilene (Lesbos island), where two young men, Erofilo and Caridoro, in love with two slaves kept by the procurer Lucrano, would like to buy the women's freedom but lack sufficient funds. Volpino, the servant of the elderly Crisobolo (Erofilo's father), suggests that the young men steal the coffer containing a cloth of spun gold from Crisobolo's shop, and use it as barter for the slaves. According to this plan (as orchestrated by Volpino), Erofilo is to notify the magistrate of the robbery and to accuse Lucrano of the crime. Taking advantage of his father's absence, Erofilo orders a servant to disguise himself as a merchant, and to bring the coffer to Lucrano. Unfortunately, the unforseen return of Crisobolo causes the plan to fail. Volpino tries to convince the elderly man that the theft was executed by the procurer, but aware of the deception, Crisobolo has his servant thrown behind bars. Since Volpino is now gone from the play, another servant, Fulcio, attempts to find a solution for Erofilo's and Caridoro's predicament. Finally, Fulcio decides to frighten Lucrano, in the hope that he will flee, by making him believe that the police are about to arrest him for the theft. Fulcio then falsely advises Crisobolo that Lucrano intends to report his son (Erofilo) to the authorities for fraud, and that Lucrano would also sue Crisobolo to compensate for the insult to his name. Fulcio thus obtains a considerable sum from Crisobolo to buy Lucrano's silence; however, Lucrano will receive only a small portion of the money, the remainder being destined for the four young lovers, who will finally be together. Despite the obvious ties to the Latin play, Ariosto distinguishes himself in the Cassaria by using the comic predicaments to full advantage as he masterfully resolves them one by one. The result is pure entertainment, more free than its Latin antecedents, because it is not unduly subject to any logical-causal demands in its continuity. The resolutions, in brief, are 'games' with which 'si puo far una fabula men trista' [one can write a plot that is less bad] (v. 18, Prologue). Such games are predominant in the 'vertical' (independent) development of the plot, all arising from the literary devices of deceit and mystification that were traditionally ascribed to the roles of the servants (Ferroni 86ff.).

180 Stefano Bianchi In the Suppositi, Erostrato, a young Sicilian completing his studies in Ferrara, falls in love with Polinesta. To be with her, he assumes the role of her father's servant, and introduces himself as 'Dulippo' (actually the name of his own servant). The real Dulippo, according to their scheme, will pass himself off as Erostrato. The arrangement proceeds as planned until the arrival of the old and wealthy Cleandro, who proposes marriage to Polinesta. The false Erostrato (the servant Dulippo, disguised as his master) also asks for Polinesta's hand, and then introduces his 'father' (in the play a Sienese, and in this case, a dullard persuaded to play the part), who pretends that he has just 'arrived' from Sicily to sign the marriage contract of his son. Meanwhile, Erostrato's real father Filogono does arrive unexpectedly from Sicily, and is immediately accused of being an impostor by the servants. Dulippo, playing along with the fictitious plan, must also pretend not to know Filogono, although, by the end of the play, all is resolved for the good of everyone. Cleandro, in fact, discovers that Dulippo is really his son (whom he thought had been killed by the Turks in Otranto), having found the heir he so desperately sought, he relinquishes his request of marriage to the young Polinesta, who, in turn, is now free to marry her beloved Erostrato. In the Suppositi, in contrast to the Cassaria, we observe a more organic and diachronic union of the elements of narration. In particular, we see a successful integration (applied even to Ariosto's later plays) of devices found in Latin models and the short stories of Boccaccio. The integration involves an erotic-sentimental theme (the thwarted love between Erostrato and Polinesta) and the self-propagation of entangled situations and of disguised personae, each of which is unfailingly resolved for the public in the finale. In addition to these solutions, Ariosto does not refrain from assigning an explicit role to the comical and gratuitous asides, which generally appear, as has been noted, in the form of puns and mimed gestures (Ferrone 410-18). It seems that in his first two plays, Ariosto intended to proceed with a survey of his own 'technical' skills for organizing theatrical material. Hence, he shifts between the enjoyment he himself derived from the fine alternation of comical clues, expended in a free and fragmentary form, and his desire to construct a theatrical space that, by its structure, could provide an overview to the play. Thus, the diverse and opposing social settings of the two plays illustrate the attention that Ariosto devotes to detail. The predominantly open set of the Cassaria, with its animated, motley background (the continuous comings and goings of servants, the 'colourful' effect of slang), contrasts with the middle-class,

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student setting of the Suppositi, which, even in terms of its geographical location, is greatly circumscribed. It is no longer the remote easternly setting of Mytilene, but that of a city, which had never been used before, and in this instance, Ferrara. It was essential for Ariosto to conduct such experimentation with the various possibilities available to the scenic space before defining his own theatrical language, that is to say, prior to adopting the hendecasyllable in dactylic metre (starting with the original version of the Negromante). The search for an ideal metric regularity and a mediated tone was thus resolved. Ariosto is now able to use 'an expressive instrument intermediate between the lyric and epic verse of the Italian tradition and the "prose" that is spoken daily' (Bertinetto 352); in other words, such a device lent itself, almost paradoxically, to an 'everyday diction' that had not even been used in the two prose plays (Ferroni 97). However, Ariosto continued to be preoccupied with finding a 'metre' for the internal structure of the 'plot.' Significant in this regard is the transition that can be seen from the first revision of the Negromante to the second, in which the well-honed editing of its preliminary outline demonstrates Ariosto's stylistic command of the language. The second revision also reveals the author's interest in focusing upon, and developing in greater depth, the changing character of the necromancer protagonist. 4

The narrative of the Negromante is set in Cremona. Cintio, fully aware of his adoptive father Massimo's opposition to his marriage to Lavinia, because of her lower social status, proceeds with the marriage anyway without informing his father. Massimo, unaware of his son's secret nuptials, contracts to have Cintio wed Emilia, the daughter of Abondio (a rich and old friend). Unable to oppose his father, Cintio is then obliged to marry Emilia; however, in order to remain faithful to Lavinia, and then to justify the annulment of the second wedding, he resorts to feigning impotence. Worried by the 'spell' that he believes has struck his son, Massimo seeks the assistance of a necromancer who, after being advanced a substantial sum, guarantees the father that Cintio will be cured of his impotence (thanks to mysterious and magical powers). The necromancer is then approached by Cintio himself, who promises to reward him with a considerable amount of money if he does not comply with his father's request, but more importantly, if the necromancer can quickly terminate the imposed marriage. Yet another visitor, the dolt

182 Stefano Bianchi

Camillo Pocosale, calls upon the necromancer's assistance. Camillo is hopelessly in love with Emilia and he too is ready to compensate the necromancer if he desists from curing Cintio and also succeeds in causing the marriage to fail. Astutely taking advantage of all three offers, the necromancer first convinces Camillo to hide in a trunk that would gain his entrance into Emilia's room, where he could be with her. He then makes Massimo believe that said trunk, once placed by the newlyweds' bedside, will have the magical power by which 'insieme s'amino, / se ben fusse or tra lor capital odio' [they will love each other even though between them there would be mortal hate]. And finally, he assures Gindo that he will have ample cause to terminate his marriage to Emilia after he discovers her with another man (having been 'magically' called forth in the flesh), which is to say, the necromancer himself. While en route to Emilia's room with the trunk in which Camillo is hidden, Nibbio (servant to the necromancer) meets Temolo (Cintio's servant). Temolo invents a scheme to distract Nibbio, making him believe that his master has been brutally murdered. Temolo then takes the forsaken trunk to Lavinia's room. Still hidden inside the trunk, Camillo is appalled at what he overhears being said between Cintio and Lavinia. He then abandons his hiding place and flees to the streets, where he meets Abondio, informing the old man that his son-in-law has another wife. After hearing the news, but before punishing his son for his actions, Massimo decides to clarify the matter with Lavinia. Upon seeing Lavinia, and completely unexpectedly, he recognizes her to be his longlost daughter (who had been conceived during his stay in Calabria under the false name of Anastagio). Now, he is more than happy to bless the union of his adopted son, Cintio, and his daughter, Lavinia. Massimo then proposes to Abondio that the marriage between Cintio and Emilia be annulled, and that Emilia be remarried to Camillo. In the final three scenes, not included in the first version, we see the necromancer first at the mercy of Temolo (who had cleverly succeeded in unmasking him), and then abandoned by his own servant, Nibbio, just as the necromancer is ready to make his escape. Here, the figure of the necromancer is granted an absolute preeminence in his theatrical function, and given an overall refinement of those traits that substantially distinguish him from similar literary precedents. One recalls the figure of the procurer from Latin plays, who is almost always limited to a grotesque characterization, or the magiciansorcerer of chivalric poems, who is deliberately enveloped by an impenetrable and fantastical aura. In the case of Bibbiena's Calandria, the nee-

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romancer (Ruffo's) 'miraculous' incantations actually reveal Bibbiena's own objective to extol 'the playful spirited effort of the imagination to devise unusual schemes that are turned upside down for pleasure' (Doglio 'Introduzione' xi). This is certainly not Ariosto's objective, nor is he interested in ridiculing the necromancer. Instead, this necromancer qualifies as a figure with a knowing grasp of day-to-day reality: a patent con man residing in nondescript lodgings, who is one of the all-too-common itinerant professional swindlers, cleverly adapting his appearance and demeanour while making his way through the cities and courts of Italy. Ariosto's own compelling need for a direct association with contemporary issues, as delineated within the prologue to the second edition, is the reason that, within the Negromante, he recreates the 'banchi,' 'fondachi,' and the 'speziarie' of Ferrara (w. 32-3), especially after having recently regained his Ferrarese audience, and subsequent to his failure to recapture 'Roman' (papal) approval.6 (This need may also explain a reference to mercenary soldiers [w. 37-8] during the late 1520s, when Italy was at the mercy of occupying foreign armies.) In the prologue to the Negromante, Ariosto amuses himself with citations from his own writings, and he attempts to 'historicize' his works with comments on his previously written plays (w. 17, 27, 58-9). We are thus obliged to see that his connection to Latin tradition no longer existed in terms of a continuing interior debate that, in the prologue to the Cassaria, had led him to justify the existence of a comic theatre in the vernacular, while still paying homage to past Latin models. In fact, Ariosto expresses his conviction that later authors are entitled to write comedies for the same reason as classical writers, although admitting that 'ne volgar prosa ne rima / ha paragon con prose antique o versi, / ne pari e 1'eloquenzia a quella prima' (w. 10-12) [neither vernacular rhyme nor prose can compare to classical prose or verses, nor equal their eloquence].7 Notwithstanding Ariosto's attempts to clear himself of any suspicion that he was unduly dependent upon classical authors, the accusation continued to be revived. In the prologue to the Suppositi, Ariosto adamantly admonishes his readers that even Plautus and Terence, in their time, had consulted the Greek comedies: 'and as some of the Latin plays by Menander and Apollodorus followed other Greek playwrights, he [Ariosto] likewise does not wish to discredit the influence of Latin writers in some of his vernacular plays and methods and practices. As I say to you, from the Eunuco of Terence, and from the Captivi of Plautus, part of the subject of his [Ariosto's] Suppositi is taken;

184 Stefano Bianchi however, [this is done] so modestly that Terence and Plautus themselves, once made aware, would not be disturbed, and poetic imitation, not piracy, would be the name they would give.'8 Ariosto was fully aware that such 'poetic imitation' was part of an artist's heritage. Still, his desire to compete with classical writers, in a meaningful contest of emulation or competition, would always invite a comparison to those established models. As much in the prologue to the first version as in that to the final version of the Negromante, Ariosto avoids addressing the issue of the relationship between 'imitation' and 'invention' - a well-meditated reticence meant to signify that the 'novelty' of his own plays was a given, and that any further debate would be pointless. 5

The influence of Latin sources upon Ariosto gradually diminishes during the 1520s; in addition, he is no longer interested in using only Boccaccio's short-story model. He now looks to his contemporaries, and to the burlesque poets, particularly to those who worked at the Este court like himself (Antonio Cammelli, called 'il Pistoia,' for example). He is also interested in playwrights working in other courts, or cities, such as Bibbiena, Aretino, Ruzante, and Machiavelli. Ariosto's desire to be socially relevant is clearly shown by the realistic descriptions that run through the entire storyline of the Studenti, in which he attempts to create a 'play of atmosphere,' evident in the meticulous detailing of daily domestic life in Ferrara. Likewise, he accentuates the degree of sarcasm levelled at social conventions; in the Negromante, for example, the public's superstitious and silly faith in sorcery is ridiculed. In the Studenti, Ariosto continues to savour creating intricate and deliberately complex plot lines carried to their extreme; however, he is eventually compelled to curb this tendency, since it 'becomes difficult to manage precisely because of this labyrinthine excess' (Scrivano 73). He responds to such an uncertain experience by minimizing the number of complex plot developments in his subsequent play, La Lena, although his interest in experimentation would remain unchanged. In the deliberate simplicity of La Lena, in which the comical, satirical, and realistic components are directed towards an all-encompassing outcome of unusual immediacy and expressive harshness, Ariosto manages to unite his pessimistic vision of reality with a subtle desecration of the formal ideology of that same comic genre. The plot of La Lena takes place in Ferrara. Flavio is in love with

The Theatre of Ariosto 185

Licinia, and would like to meet her. He convinces Lena (a procuress, wife of Pacifico and lover to old Fazio) to secretly arrange a meeting with Licinia, promising the procuress twenty-five florins for her effort. The meeting is to take place at Lena's home, where Licinia usually goes for sewing and embroidery lessons. In agreeing to the arrangement, Lena intends not only to profit financially, but also to take revenge on her lover (Old Fazio's) stinginess (after all, he is Licinia's father), and, most of all, because he constantly reminds her that she and Pacifico (the inept Pacifico) are living rent-free in one of his houses. Flavio, not in possession of the money he promised to Lena, gives his clothes and beret to his servant Corbolo, instructing him to take them to the pawnbroker in exchange for a loan. Corbolo then runs into Ilario, Flavio's father. Corbolo does not hesitate to try to trick Ilario out of the money, telling him that Flavio has been mugged by strangers; but through a series of events, Ilario almost immediately senses a trap. Meanwhile, at the home of Lena and Pacifico, Fazio arrives with the 'surveyor' Torbido; the old man declares that he has decided to sell the house, and for this reason has called upon Torbido's services to appraise it. In truth, Fazio believes that by doing this he will spite Lena, who lately has become more difficult. Flavio, to avoid discovery during the measuring of the house, is hiding in a casket when a certain Giuliano unexpectedly arrives to claim it. Giuliano had lent the casket to Pacifico, but having heard about the enormous debt incurred by Pacifico to a certain Bartolo, now worries that it will be seized by the authorities. A violent dispute erupts between Giuliano and Bartolo (who by then has arrived on the scene to lay claim to the casket). In an attempt to calm the two contenders, Fazio intervenes, offering to referee the argument; he then transports the casket, in which Flavio is still hidden, to his own home, where it is to remain until its true owner can be clearly determined. Flavio, finding himself in Licinia's home (thanks to the casket) can finally meet with her. Corbolo, in the meantime, deciding to play a new trick on Ilario, tells him a tale in which Flavio has been caught being intimate with Lena, and now her husband, Pacifico, wants to kill his son. Understandably distressed, Ilario promises Corbolo a sum of money to offer to the evil-intentioned Pacifico in appeasement. When Fazio hears of the supposed tryst between Lena and Flavio, he naturally flies into a rage, but his servant Menghino reassures him that he personally had seen Flavio embracing Licinia, not Lena. Recognizing that their children's love is a foregone conclusion, the two fathers agree to the marriage between Flavio and Licinia.

186 Stefano Bianchi

In the two scenes added to the final act for the 1529 performance, we are witnesses to a heated argument between Lena and Pacifico in which she harshly berates her husband about his incurable ineptitude, which had forced her into prostitution when she was younger, and now that she is older, has turned her into a procuress in order to assure their financial survival. In the final scene, Menica (Fazio's maid) also notifies Lena of the imminent celebration of the marriage between Flavio and Licinia, and implores Lena to make peace with her old lover. In the five acts of La Lena Ariosto mercilessly exposes a society's ultimately alienating rigidity, and its 'daily fixed damnation' (Scorrano 'Lettura' 374). He instils the obsessive presence of Ferrara in the illusory tracing of the 'false actions,' re-enacted on stage, that correspond to the conventional activities and rituals of Ferrarese daily life. At the conclusion of the play, the curtain descends over the pettiness and misery of a society hopelessly intent upon maintaining its faith in self-interest. While elaborating on this notion of existence, which visibly borders on tragedy, Ariosto is similarly obliged to discuss the very genre of the play. He parodies the same 'canonical' persona of the servant, and demonstrates how, within the storyline, the servant's interference to alter events to his master's advantage is anything but determining. Contrary to the actions of the servants of Latin theatre, Corbolo's schemes to help his young master — the tale he invents for Ilario that his son has been robbed, or his account of Lena's adultery with Flavio, concocted only to extort money from Ilario and not to indemnify the (presumably) dishonoured Pacifico - are destined to fail. In La Lena, Ariosto is engaging in a malicious duplicity. The public is reminded that they are only watching a performance, while he simultaneously displaces the traditional barriers between the theatrical setting, inside, and that of the city, outside, by presenting all of Ferrara on stage: the pettiness of its citizens as they move throughout their 'real' streets, stands, and piazzas. In the final scene of the play, a certain dignity is conferred upon Lena, who is portrayed as an oppressed victim of that society. Such a character had traditionally been rendered, in literature as in theatre, in a derogatory fashion or in caricature. Ariosto had been motivated initially to conduct the subsequent versification of the Cassaria and the Suppositi by his desire to smooth the 'unevenness' of those youthful works. Indeed, with the verse Cassaria he proposes a new kind of theatre in which the ludic anarchy of twenty years of 'giochi' [games] makes way for lengthier studies on contempo-

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rary social conventions; by contrast, in the versification of the Suppositi he applies a more simple method of linguistic surgery by replacing any terms considered to be too exotic, or regional, with an acceptable Tuscan literary one.10 Although his desire to 'compete' with Latin theatre had already subsided some years before, the comedic style of his plays, after two decades of constant experimentation, had finally been defined by its 'otherness' in respect to classical models. However, the style suggests an underlying, and most palpable, unease, suggesting as well, perhaps, Ariosto's fatigue with his own role, which was always to entertain. TRANSLATION BY HIROKO FUDEMOTO

Notes 1 See, first and foremost, the four articles by G. Marpillero, T Suppositi di Ludovico Ariosto,' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 31 (1898): 291310; T tre elementi della Lenadi Ludovico Ariosto,' Fanfulla della Domenica 20.33, 14 Aug. 1898; 'La Scolasticadi Ludovico e Gabriele Ariosto,' ibid. 20.42, 16 Oct. 1898; and 'II Negromantedi Ludovico Ariosto,' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 33 (1899): 303-39. The citations, in Italian, of Ariosto's comic plays are to be found in the critical edition: Commedie, ed. Angela Casella, Gabriella Ronchi, and Elena Varasi (Milan: Mondadori, 1974). 2 The editio princeps of the Satire dates back to June 1534, probably printed in Ferrara by Francesco Rosso of Valenza, the typographer of the third edition of Orlando funoso; the first edition of the verses in the vernacular was printed in Venice in 1546, publisher unnamed, under the initiative of lacopo Coppa (more details are available in Ludovico Ariosto, Rime, ed. Stefano Bianchi [Milan: Rizzoli, 1992], 57, 70-1); and a selection of verses in Latin, prepared by Giovan Battista Pigna, was discovered again in Venice in 1553 by Vincenzo Valgrisi. In regard to the comedies, during Ariosto's lifetime the clandestine principes of the Cassaria, and of the Suppositi in prose, modelled after the author's abstract copies by the performers, are both undated and without any indication of a publisher (another eight unauthorized editions followed) : according to the evidence supplied by Rhodes, the two principes present traces of linguistic violations in Tuscan, and were edited in Florence between 1509 and 1511 by the publisher Bernardo Zucchetta. On the edition of his first comic play, Ariosto lamented in lines 7-14, in the prologue to the Cassaria (in verse):'... data in preda agli importuni et avidi / stampator

188 Stefano Bianchi fu, li quali laceraronla / e di lei fer cio che lor diede 1'animo. / E poi per le botteghe e per li publici / mercati a chi ne volse la venderono / per poco prezzo; e in modo la trattarono / che piu non parea quella che a principio / esser solea ...' [... she was taken as if prey by the greedy and grasping printers, and then they tore her apart and made of her what their souls desired. And then she was taken to shops and to public markets and sold to whomever would ask for very little; and by the way that they treated her she no longer resembled that which she was or used to be ...]. In two letters, one dated 18 March and the other 17 December 1532, addressed to Federico Gonzaga and Guidobaldo Feltrio della Rovere respectively, the author complains of both editions: '... 1'altre, anchora che sieno a stampa per colpa di persone che me le rubaro, non sono pero nel modo in che io le ho ridutte, massimamente la Cassaria, che tutta e quasi rinovata' [... the others [the Cassaria and the Suppositi in prose], even though they have already been printed, as the fault of persons who robbed me of them; they are not, however, in the condition in which I had revised them, especially the Cassaria, for which almost everything has been rewritten]; '... non mi trovo haver fatto se non quattro comedie, de le quali due, i Suppositi e la Cassaria, rubatemi da li recitatori, gia vent'anni che furo rapresentate in Ferrara, andaro con mia grandissima displicentia in stampa ...' [... I find that I have written four comedies, of which two, the Suppositi and the Cassaria, stolen from me by the performers, already twenty years ago since they were presented in Ferrara, have gone, to my greatest displeasure, to be printed ...] (see Ludovico Ariosto, Lettere, ed. Angelo Stella [Milan: Mondadori, 1984] 469, 490-1). 3 According to the keen observations of Santoro (10): 'The "minor" works, all of them, even if in differing ways, not only exhibit a sufficiently articulate and complex picture of the distinct routes taken by the poet in different directions, and at different times of his literary activity; they also qualify, on various levels, as autonomous works that are distinguished by their own specific identity. In addition to which, and within the context of a literary community from the early sixteenth century, they may claim to be historically relevant, in some cases engraving their value upon the history and the destiny of related "genres."' 4 For a general discussion of the Latin and vernacular sources of Ariosto's theatre, see Casella ed. ix-xlix. 5 For references on the Tragedia di Tisbe, on Ariosto's activities as actor and director, and on the translations of Plautus and Terence (Menaechmi, Aulularia, Andria, Eunuchus), see Catalano 1: 124—5, 304—5, and 586-8. The image of Ariosto as an actor and director was recalled by his brother Gabriele in the prologue of the Scolastica: 'apparve in sonnio / il fratel al fratello, in forma e

The Theatre of Ariosto 189 in abito / che s'era dimostrato sul proscenio / nostro piu volte a recitar principii, / e qualche volta a sostenere il carico / della comedia e farli servar 1'ordine' (w. 118-23) [he appeared as in a dream the brother to his brother, in posture and in dress as when he had appeared on our stage more than once to recite prologues, and at times to shoulder the burden of the play, so as to observe its order]. Already in a letter to Gerolamo da Sestola, dated 15 February 1532, Isabella Gonzaga comments upon Ariosto's remarkable organizational ability as a metteur en scene: 'Noi anchora avemo fatto due comedie, ma non recitate con quel bon modo che saria convenutto ne come di ragione devono esser state le vostre per il governo che ne deve aver hauto mess. Lodovico Ariosto, al quale non si trova hogi di pare alcuno in cosi fatte cosse' [We have just done two plays, but not recited in such a way that might have been fitting, certainly not as yours must have been performed under the direction of Master Lodovico Ariosto, to whom no one else today can compare for doing such things]. See also the letter from Ruzante to the Duke of Este, dated 23 January 1532:'... M. Lodovico Ariosto sera buono per far acconciar la scena' [Master Lodovico Ariosto will be good for preparing the scene]. Both letters are found in Catalano, 2: 319-21. Ariosto also promoted the construction of a permanent theatre at the duke's court, which unfortunately was destroyed by fire on the last day of 1532, shortly after its inauguration. 6 As has been mentioned already, the first version of the Afcgromante was forwarded to Pope Leo X by Ariosto in 1520. The resounding success of the Suppositi (in prose) presented at the Vatican the previous year, some ten years after its debut performance in Ferrara, with scenery by Raphael, and some two thousand spectators in attendance, had won the pope's confidence. He had therefore enthusiastically requested a new play from the poet. The Negromante, begun in 1509, had been left unfinished by Ariosto, who later completed it within a few days. Contrary to the author's expectations, the comedy satisfied neither the tastes nor the expectations of the pontiff, who in fact decided against its performance. From among the reasons that led to the pope's polite censure of the text, the most compelling ones were likely Ariosto's satirical annotations, which, although occurring infrequently in the play, were not the most flattering to the pontifical court, or to the clergy. 7 For Baratto, 'even such cautious affirmations would indicate, in a more general manner, the birth (in those years) of a vernacular literature that appears to possess the characteristics of a new, "classical" literature, even on a theoretical level, in as much as it is able to approach, if not in fact achieve, the excellence of ancient literature. We are speaking of poetry, and theatre, or anything else.' This affirmation that works in the vernacular were equal to

190 Stefano Bianchi the classics constitutes 'a new phenomenon, which is considerable, in the first three decades of the sixteenth century; and, it could be said that the 1532 edition of the Orlando furioso may represent the hallmark of that affirmation, which Ariosto already confirms, without equivocation, in his plays starting from 1508' (La commedia 45). 8 'e come essi Menandro et Apollodoro e li altri Greci ne le lor latine comedie seguitoro, egli cosi ne le sue vulgari e modi e processi de' latini scrittori schifar non vuole. Come io vi dico, da lo Eunuco di Terenzio e da li Captivi di Plauto ha parte de lo argumento de li suoi Suppositi transunto, ma si modestamente pero che Terenzio e Plauto medesimi, risapendolo, non 1'arebbono a male, e di poetica imitazione, piu presto che di furto, li darebbono nome.' 9 Indeed, in the prologue to La Lena performed in 1528, Ariosto did return to the question, if only to confirm by the order of the plays that 'i poeti antiqui ne faceano / poche di nuove, ma le traducevano / dai Greci, e non ne fe' alcuna Terenzio / che trovasse egli, e nessuna o pochissime / Plauto, di queste ch'oggidi si leggono' (w. 16-20) [the classical poets wrote little that was new, just what they translated from the Greek. Terence [himself] did not invent any of the plays that he wrote, and few if any of the ones by Plautus read today originated with him]. In view of this clarification, the comment regarding the expertise of classical poets, 'che molto piu seppono / di noi in questa e in ogni altra scienzia' (w. 23-4) [they knew much more than we know in this and every other science], is most wicked. In his closing, the invitation addressed to his audience, who Ariosto knew might eventually laugh at his 'arroganzia' (v. 30) for having 'dared' to attempt the insurmountable, was meant to 'vindicate in a more subtle manner the novelty and the engagement of his plays which by then had achieved full autonomy from the classical models' (Ferroni 113 n. 68). As had already been the case in the prologues of the Negromante, in the new prologue to La Lena written for the 1529 performance, Ariosto chose the route of silence, preferring to have fun in developing the theme of the coda, the two scenes added to the final act, and assigning to them a wittily obscene double-entendre. His intention to intervene on this issue was only made apparent at the end of the prologue: those who cherished the old customs (or who stubbornly insisted on only classic comedies) were asked, without exception, to leave the theatre in order to 'dar luogo a questi che la festa vogliono' (v. 43) [make room for those who will enjoy the fun]. In any event, for the definitive prologue to La Lena, Ariosto clarified, and asserted (with the same 'arroganzia' that he was pleased to acknowledge in the prologue of the previous year) his complete liberation from the 'obligatory passages' that had been imposed by the structure and the function of the models provided by Plautus and Terence.

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10 One does well to remember that Bembo's indications (expressed, as is known, in the Prose della volgar lingua of 1525) about the constitution of a Tuscan-national literary culture were influential: the same indications that Ariosto had followed, but not in a passive way, in the final edition of the Furioso.

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Commedie. Ed. Angela Casella, Gabriella Ronchi, and Elena Varasi. Milan: Mondadori, 1974. - Lettere. Ed. Angelo Stella. Milan: Mondadori, 1984. - Rime. Ed. Stefano Bianchi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1992. Baratto, Mario. La commedia del Cinquecento. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1975, 1977. - 'La fondazione di un genere (per un'analisi drammaturgica della commedia del Cinquecento).' In // teatro italiano delrinascimento.Convention proceedings, New York, 13-17 November 1978. Ed. Maristella de Panizza Lorch. Milan: Edizioni di Comunita, 1980. 3-24. Bertinetto, Pier Marco. Tl ritmo della prosa e del verso nelle commedie dell'Ariosto.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. Congress proceedings organized by municipalities of Reggio Emilia and Ferrara, 12-16 October 1974. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976. 347-77. Bianchi, Stefano. Tntroduzione.' Ludovico Ariosto, La Lena. Ed. S. Bianchi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1995. Binni, Walter. 'L'esperienza teatrale.' In Metodo epoesia di Ludovico Ariosto. Messina: D'Anna, 1947. 44-70. Borlenghi, Aldo. 'Regolarita e originalita della commedia del Cinquecento.' In Studi di letteratura italiana dal '300 al '500. Milan-Varese: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1959. 122-230. Carducci, Giosue. 'Ludovico Ariosto e le sue prime due commedie' [1874]. In Opere. Edizione Nazionale. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1936. 14: 1-56. Caretti, Lanfranco. Ariosto e Tasso. Turin: Einaudi, 1961. Catalano, Michele. Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti. 2 vols. Geneva: Olschki, 1930-1. Clouet, Dominique. 'Empirisme ou egotisme: La politique dans la Cassaria et les Suppositi de 1'Arioste.' In Les ecrivains et le pouvoir en Italic a Vepoque de la Renaissance. 2nd series. Ed. Andre Rochon. Paris: Universite de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1974. 7-44. Croce, Benedetto. Ariosto. Ed. Giuseppe Galasso. Milan: Adelphi, 1991 [The

192 Stefano Bianchi Croce essay had already appeared in La Critica 16 (1918): 65-112, was included in the book Ariosto, Shakespeare e Corneille (Bari: Laterza, 1920), and was then published in a separate volume (Bari: Laterza, 1927 and successive editions)]. D'Amico, Jack. 'Poetic and Theatrical Perspectives in Ariosto's //Negromanteand Jonson's The Alchemist: ItalicaGQ (1989): 312-22. Davico Bonino, Guido. 'Lo scandalo della Lena.' In Letteratura e teatro: Novestudi, 1966-1978. Turin: Tirrenia-Stampatori, 1979. 3-14. De Luca, Antonio. // teatro di Ludovico Ariosto. Preface by Walter Binni. Rome: Bulzoni, 1981. De Sanctis, Francesco. Storia della Letteratura Italiana [1870-1]. Ed. Niccolo Gallo, intro. Natalino Sapegno. 2 vols. Turin: Einaudi, 1971. Di Bello, Giovanni. 'La fortuna scenica delle commedie di Ludovico Ariosto dalle prime rappresentazioni ai giorni nostri.' Quaderni di Donna Olimpia^ (1993): 27-72. Doglio, Maria Luisa. 'Introduzione' to reprint of Commedie del Cinquecento [1912], vol. 1. Ed. Ireneo Sanesi. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1975. — 'Lingua e struttura del Negromante.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. 427-43. Ferrone, Siro. 'Sulle commedie in prosa dell'Ariosto.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. 391-425 [Also appeared under the title 'Le commedie in prosa dell'Ariosto tra cronaca cittadina e ideologia di corte,' IlPonte, 32 (1976): 209-42]. Ferroni, Giulio. 'Per una storia del teatro dell'Ariosto.' LaRassegna della letteratura italiana79 (1975): 85-128 [Appeared under the title 'Gioco, trucco, illusione: La corte nel corso del tempo,' in Ferroni, // testo e la scena: Saggi sul teatro del Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1980), 99-162]. Grabber, Carlo. Sul teatro dell'Ariosto. Rome: Edizioni Italiane, 1946. Grayson, Cecil. 'Appunti sulla lingua delle commedie in prosa e in versi.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. 379-90. Guidotti, Angela. 'Dall'imitazione all' "arroganzia": Sviluppo della tecnica teatrale nelle commedie deH'Ariosto.' In II modello e la trasgressione: Commedie del primo '500. Rome: Bulzoni, 1983. 25-60. Larivaille, Paul. 'L'Ariosto da La Cassaria a La Lena: Per un'analisi narratologica della trama comica.' In La semiotica e ildoppio teatrale. Ed. Giulio Ferroni. Naples: Liguori, 1981. 117-36. - 'Spazio scenico e spazio cittadino ne La Lena.' In La corte e lo spazio:Ferrara estense. Ed. Giuseppe Papagno and Amedeo Quondam. Rome: Bulzoni, 1982. 1:257-78.

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Marpillero, Guido. 'II Negromantedi Ludovico Ariosto.' Giornak Storico della Letteratura Italiana ?>?> (1899): 303-39. - 'I tre elementi della Lena di Ludovico Ariosto.' Fanfulla della Domenica 20.33, 14 August 1898. - '/ Suppositi di Ludovico Ariosto.' Giornak Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 31 (1898): 291-310. - 'La Scolastica di Ludovico e Gabriele Ariosto.' Fanfulla della Domenica 20.42, 16 October 1898. Plaisance, Michel. 'Lo spazio ferrarese nelle due prime commedie dell'Ariosto.' In La corte e lo spazio: Ferrara estense. 1: 247-55. Former, LA. 'ANon-Performance of IINegromante: Italica59 (1982): 316-29. Quarta, Daniela. 'I versi e i giochi: Appunti sulla drammaturgia di Ludovico Ariosto.' Quaderni di Donna Olimpia 4 (1993): 9-26. Rhodes, Dennis E. 'The Printer of Ariosto's Early Plays.' Italian Studies 18 (1963): 13-18. Rodini, Robert J. 'Dispersion and (Re) integration: Ariosto's I Suppositi and Archetypal Modes of Early Sixteenth-Century Italian Comedy. 'Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 16 (1986): 197-212. Ronchi, Gabriella, and Angela Casella. 'Le commedie e i loro stampatori.' In Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione. 331-45. Sanesi, Ireneo. La commedia. Milan: Vallardi, 1911, 1954. 1: 221-45. Santoro, Mario. 'Introduzione.' Ludovico Ariosto, Opere, 3: Carmina, Rime, Satire, Erbolato, Lettere. Ed. Mario Santoro. Turin: UTET, 1989. Scorrano, Luigi. 'La Commedia dantesca nelle commedie dell'Ariosto.' L'Ahghieri 14 (1973): 53-65. - 'Dante, Ariosto e il gioco della zara.' L'Alighieri 13 (1972): 62-7. - 'La "gran confidenzia" di mastro lachelino e altre osservazioni sul Negromante.' Annali dellaFacoltd di Magistero delVUniversitd di Lecce 1 (1970-1): 37-71. - 'Lettura della Lena.' Annali dellaFacoltd di Magistero dell'Universitd di Lecce, 2 (1972-3): 331-74. Scrivano, Riccardo. 'Spazio e teatro nella Ferrara del Cinquecento.' In Finzioni teatrali: Da Ariosto a Pirandello. Messina-Florence: D'Anna, 1982. 49-117. Stefani, Luigina. 'Introduzione.' Ludovico Ariosto, Commedie: La Cassaria, I Suppositi [in prose]. Ed. S. Luigina. Milan: Mursia, 1997. Ulysse, Georges. 'Notes sur le theatre de 1'Arioste: Les deux versions du Negromante.' Annales de la Faculte des Lettres et Sciences Humaines d'Aix (Langues et Litteratures Etrangeres) 45 (1963): 421-39. Venturi, Gianni. 'Le scelte metriche e teatrali dell'Ariosto.' In Le scene dell'Eden: Teatro, arte, giardini nella letteratura italiana. Ferrara: Bovolenta, 1979. 3-34.

194 Stefano Bianchi Vianello, Valerio. 'Dal testo letterario al testo spettacolare: I prologhi di Ludovico Ariosto.' Biblioteca teatrale4 (1989): 81-103. Zorzi, Ludovico. 'Ferrara: II sipario ducale.' In // teatro e la cittd: Saggi sulla scena italiana. Turin: Einaudi, 1977. 5-59. Zorzi Pugliese, Olga. 'Svestire la commedia: La Lena dell 'Ariosto.' Rivista di studi italiani4-5 (1986-7): 1-10.

From Poem to Theatre to Cinema:

Luca Ronconi's Orlando furioso SANDRO BERNARDI

1. Avant-garde Method and the Recuperation of the Past

Ronconi's Orlando furioso, staged in 1969, was driven by the director's protest against the classical theatrical tradition. In particular, he opposed the division between the audience and the stage and he objected to the spectator being reduced to the relatively passive role of the addressee by the play, which was considered sufficient unto itself. The staging of Orlando furioso developed, in an original and brilliant manner, all of his various theories concerning audience participation, outdoor theatre, and theatre as festival, and called for the abandonment of the stage as a separate and symbolically privileged place. The Orlando furioso was, in fact, a performance conceived for a different type of space, for a 'theatrical place' that could change at will, from the Spoleto church where it premiered to various Italian and foreign town squares, such as that of Milan, where up to seven thousand spectators attended each evening. Certainly, the fixed boundaries of the theatre had been demolished earlier by the Living Theatre inspired by Julian Beck's reflections on the life of the artist and his or her struggle for freedom, by Schechner's research on theatrical space ('all space is dedicated to the performance; all space is dedicated to the public'), and by the experimentation of the Open Theatre, and of the Odin Theatre, headed by Eugenio Barba, just to mention a few. They had all shattered the theatrical structures built up over centuries, and brought theatre back to the streets, to the churches, and to the settings of city life. Moreover, the very recent events in France during May of 1968, best theo-

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rized by the Situationalists, had profoundly affected Ronconi with their playful dimension and the spectacularization of actions and words, events that had opened up new avenues for the interaction of history and performance. Yet, what mattered most to Ronconi was not simply to follow these experiments and to conform to them, but rather to join together the new with the old in order to rediscover that emotion and vitality of the performance that had accompanied Greek theatre or the invention of the Italian theatrical style. As for dramatic performances drawn from literary works, this too was certainly no novelty in 1969. It is sufficient to note that nearly a century earlier, Andre Antoine had affirmed and acted on the necessity of turning to literary narrative in order to renew the tired and worn-out repertoire of nineteenth-century theatre. In fact, Antoine's 'Theatre Libre' was being developed in 1887 to produce for the stage adaptations of literary texts, including Zola's famous Jacques D'Amour. Ronconi, therefore, is not an inventor. If anything, he rediscovers, reproposes, associates, and connects old and new modes that are distant in time and space; he struggles against official theatre in the quest for new spaces and 'new' texts borrowed from literature (even though Ariosto's poem cannot be considered completely new to the theatre, as it originated in the tradition of the chanson and in turn would inspire the lengthy tradition of the 'popular' cantari, whose performances in town squares effortlessly blended improvisation and tradition). Thus, Roriconi sees Ariosto's work as a text originating from a distant tradition arid, at the same time, leaving behind it an equally lengthy one. Ronconi's direction leans toward the recuperation of the text, enfolded in its present, past, and future. Rather than narrating the story of the Paladins' actions and their fantastic adventure in the inescapable forest, Ronconi attempts to recover the meaning and spirit of the work, the image of the indefinite multiplicity of possible stories, the sensation of a space at once small and large, known and unknown, that the poem suggests. Therefore, we have in the first place an Orlando without a plot or with infinite plots, without a centre or with infinite centres, as many as there are readers or spectators, an Orlando as much imagined as represented, and captured like Ariosto's verses themselves between nostalgia and imagination, evoking rather than narrating, an Orlando seen as an open story, as a series of fragments from which each reader constructs his own idea of the story. After all, Ronconi himself used to say that he was not interested in the plot of a theatrical work:

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It's a quirk of mine that if I go to see a play I don't understand the plot, I don't want to understand it, I don't even see it. If I decide to watch The Cherry Orchard or Hamlet, I'm not interested in the story, because I don't believe the plot is a vehicle for understanding; I therefore automatically and instinctively refuse to focus on that aspect ... I also do not think one must read Remembrance of Things Past in its entirety to know what it's about. Equally, it is not necessary to read the Orlando furioso from beginning to end to grasp its spirit. The important thing is to have an idea of the Orlando to know what it can be. Moreover it is not even true that because we read a text, we know it well. In the theatre, there is always the pretense that the performance gives the spectator the key to owning the text, yet this is impossible.1

Therefore, we have a fragmented Orlando, a theory of theatrical synecdoche in which one part stands for the entire work. As a matter of fact, for Ronconi, one part alone, even an incomplete fragment, can evoke in the spectator the complete image of the work, a dimension of 'reading' as an interior phenomenon, as opposed to that of the performance. He sees it as a theatre of possibility and not as one of interpretation, which he has always opposed. Above all, Ronconi has objected to the actualization of a text as a banal form of interpretation, and has always followed Susan Sontag's opinion that 'to interpret is to impoverish' (Sontag 17). Ronconi views the Orlando furioso as separated blocks rather than as a connection of events, as simultaneity rather than succession. This programmatic context justifies his choice of Ariosto's work over other chivalrous poems. The Orlando furioso occupies a privileged place, since it illustrates this organized polyphony, this undulating motion that moved Foscolo to observe, through Didimo Chierico as he watched the waves from the pier at Dunkerque, that 'Ariosto writes poetry like this.' For Ronconi, the Orlando furioso is also the most theatrical of sixteenthcentury poems. He believes that Tasso is always 'a voice that is exquisitely musical, madrigalesque,' whereas Ariosto's is the voice of a performer speaking directly to the curious, amused, and attentive listeners. The criterion of a 'reading,' in which the readers focus attention on certain passages, generates a performance that is distinguished by the plurality of its offering. The spectator cannot see everything at once, but, like a new Paladin, must travel his or her own route through the real and true forest of representation. The adaptation of the text by the poet Edoardo Sanguined perfectly conforms to this assumed aesthetic:

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that of restoring 'the interconnectedness of the adventures, the multiplicity of the narrative levels, the innumerable directions of the story' in Ariosto's poem. One also rediscovers the old notion of the popular theatre that has been obscured by countless misrepresentations: We have in no way made a 'popular' Orlando in the sense of one 'explained for the masses.' What is apparent is rather the cultural density of the poem, which is that of the canton and which we call, for want of anything better, by a term that strikes me as ambiguous, namely 'popular.' The juxtaposition of parts is very reminiscent of a series of cultural threads that cross, are interwoven, and fuse together. The text that finally emerges, disassemble and reassembled, is this Orlando, a real and proper critical study of Ariosto's poem ... It is a bit like a scale model of some geographical formation. It is a microcosm that reproduces a macrocosm: the zones of my Orlando can only replicate themselves and expand until they reach the level of the original poem.2 2. A Performance without a Centre

The spectators who attended the debut performance in the church of San Niccolo at Spoleto found themselves in a deconstructed space, deprived of the traditional theatrical point of reference. The rectangular area contained two stages at the shorter sides, hidden behind two hand-painted cardboard curtains. Instead of an opening scene, Astolfo (played by Duilio del Prete) suddenly appeared among the spectators at the centre of the hall, speaking the opening lines and, with a gesture, indicated Orlando (Massimo Foschi), who burst in upon the people riding in a wagon, threatening to trample the astonished audience. Other wagons followed bearing Rinaldo, Ferrau, Bradamante, Sacripante, and Angelica. They were all involved in chases, escapes, and sudden duels, riding side by side or towards one another. In this first phase of the performance, each actor was on a wooden wagon with a tin horse and the wagons sped among the spectators, who were used as props. They themselves were the mysterious forest in which the Paladins wandered in search of their loved ones. This primary participation of the public in the performance was not without surprise or danger, as the wagons almost assaulted the spectators, who were constantly forced to make sudden unexpected movements. Every area, every space was suddenly uncertain, unsafe, and imprecise, the public constantly on the move trying to follow, to see, to understand at least

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something of what was happening next to, in front of, or behind them. Schechner's idea of environmental theatre was realized in an even larger sense; not only was there a festival and a play, but there was also the dimension of continuous danger that, combined with the feast, enriched it. The set, designed by Umberto Bertacca, united the greyness of the wood with the reflections of the tin horses, accentuating the theatrical machinery, together with the rails and wagons. In later performances at Milan and Florence, it was the public itself, informed by the reviews and the reports in the papers, who participated in the work by pushing the wagons, competing to help. For now, in the first performance, it was astonishment that predominated, the perception of a multiple, diffused space, of an opening of possible stories in which the spectators, as subjects suddenly immersed in a strange reality, perceived some fragments out of which they must try to recompose everything in their own minds, in search of a unity that must vary according to what was seen, and according to the position from which it was seen. Yet, as the performance continued, it constantly changed: the two curtains would rise and two episodes would unfold simultaneously at the two opposite ends of the hall. On one side, Olimpia told Orlando the story of her love for Bireno that was destroyed by the arrival of the rifletoting King of Frisia, who killed him with that infernal instrument. But in her tale, irony and melodrama continuously interacted with the lies of the theatre: Olimpia (Mariangela Melato) spoke of her blonde hair, while from her head there fell a mane of black locks; she wore a ballerina's make-up that was also all in black. Together, these elements converted the story into a parody of the romantic melodrama of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, at the other end of the hall, Bradamante (Edmonda Aldini) was acting with complete detachment, with Brechtian attitudes and tones, constantly addressing the spectators; then, after having listened to the tale of Pinabello, she set off for new adventures on a scaffolding that crossed the entire church from one side to the other, symbolizing a mountain top on which Atlante's castle was situated. Journeys, disappearances, tricks, and illusions accompanied the constant operations of the machinery that revealed these same tricks and illusions at the very moment that they were produced. The theatrical machinery was visible as part of the performance. The castle of Atlante was a series of cages in which the prisoners of the illusion were locked. The liberation of the imprisoned young girls took place on both stages; Isabella, closed in the cave, was saved by Orlando; Angelica, who was freed by Ruggiero, acted instead in the manner of an

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eighteenth-century prima amoroso,. At the centre of the hall Olimpia then returned, exposed to the Orca, and was rescued by Orlando in a spectacular battle with the wooden animal that literally defended itself against the blows of the Paladin and then opened to engulf him, just like the whale in Pinocchio. The performance tended to produce a state of complete and absolute chaos and confusion in which the representation was destabilized, deconstructed, and multiplied. As Franco Quadri observed, the play was being performed everywhere: on the two main stages, on the two broader sides of the hall, and at its centre: Every complicated and romantic action was strongly uttered aloud and jousted in a frenetic rhythm: each of them highlighted the spectacular aspect of the staging. It indulged especially in the funny and vulgar aspects, particularly with the women murderers, who appeared scantily clad and provocative ... Still, whoever was unable to follow all five stories at once and wished to go to the centre at a position equidistant from the various events, could thus see everything, gathering together in this way an absolute music of broken cries that overlapped, agitated interlaced dialogues, words heard out of context, pure sounds: a worthy counterpoint to the tableau unfolding on all sides. The acting degenerated into the style of a curtain-raiser; it was a moment of total confusion and at the same time of rest and of connection to greater and nobler actions.3

After this moment of organized chaos, intended to bring the spectator into a state of liberation and of new participation, the performance returned to a hierarchy of representations. The battle of Paris constituted one of the most masterful moments in all the mise-en-scene. On one side of the theatrical area, upon one of the two stages, was the castle of Charlemagne. On the other side was the Moorish army riding tin horses. The battle took place amidst the public, which once again became the acting area, with infantry that fought among the crowd and horsemen sword-fighting from their wagons. Then the scene of Orlando's final madness unfolded in a type of representative delirium in which the voices multiplied more than ever. Orlando ran across the stage with giant steps grabbing hold of and beating to the ground those enemies who crossed his path; Angelica and Medoro celebrated their wedding as the Paladin finished uttering his long monologue, fighting against himself within a large ring at the centre, isolated like a boxer. A series of open cages - the ones previously required for the imaginary

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castle - now embraced both the actors and the spectators. The Paladins in their cages were intent upon delivering their monologues, advancing their actions and welcoming and conversing with the spectators, while on the stages, representations were taking place of other episodes of the poem that were not part of the main plot. More than ten parallel or intertwined stories occurred simultaneously in the chaos of a production that was taking place everywhere. The verses of the poem would transform themselves into a background murmur, a pure confabulation without content and without end; and it was at this very moment of maximum chaos that Astolfo departed for the moon upon a hippogryph, thus putting an end to the performance. 3. Reactions

To synthesize the effect of the first great experience of Ronconi's work, it can be said that it achieves the polyphony of Ariosto's poem, translating it into a fragmentation of representation wherein scene, action, setting, and time separate themselves into an indefinite series of scenes, settings, and possible stories. The principle of fragmentation also incorporates the concept of the unviewable performance. As Ronconi observed, even the experimental and avant-garde theatres (from the Living, to the Open, to Grotowski, to all the others) had produced performances that had to be viewed or watched, in which the spectator was still at the centre of the representation. For the spectator who arrives at a performance of the Orlando furioso, however, it is a matter of experiencing a performance that, in its totality, no single spectator could ever understand. Only the entire public sees the entire performance; single spectators are able to offer only a limited and singular point of view, as in the perception of real life. They may find themselves at a distance from the action they are observing, or in the middle of it, but they are not able to capture the extraordinary narrative complexity of the complete performance and can only choose their own personal paths within the polyphony of the representation that surrounds them; can only follow some of the five hundred actors who, often altogether, give rise to a world that is continually changing. Individual spectators construct for themselves their own production, which takes place in the (no longer merely metaphorical) forest of human interaction, while Ariosto's verses, performed in different ways and manners, assume a tone that is exquisitely dream-like.

202 Sandro Bernard! The performance, though, also varies within itself: one goes from the style of medieval tournaments (the wagons) to that of courtly performances with the trompe-l'oeil of seventeenth-century machinery, in order to arrive at nineteenth-century melodrama and an expressionist or Brechtian theatre. As Ettore Capriolo observed, in the Orlando there is not only the feel of contemporary imagery, but also a pastiche of styles and stories: One can construct the show by choosing from among the fragments offered, according to one's taste and preference, or also randomly choosing at each fork in the road one that opens up, without feeling obliged to follow a predetermined path ... It is above all a purely theatrical event that captures our attention exclusively by any means at its disposal, not relying on any story to tell, and reducing words to expressions of sounds which carry meaning without being determinant ... notwithstanding the quotations and allusions. In fact, [this is] a theatre that refers to nothing but itself and above all does not ask to survive the time of its own duration. 4 If for many this production meant a rediscovery of theatre in the piazza or, in a new sense, rediscovering the life of the community and a liberation from the hierarchy of the public, for others, as for Corrado Augias, it signified the beginning of a popular theatre in the traditional sense of a flood of little orphan girls and blind men in the most beautiful nineteenth-century tradition. The Orlando staged by Ronconi was more than a thin imitation or parody of the popular, avant-garde, or experimental theatre, and in this it found its strength and its vitality, because it was, in fact, among the most aristocratic of productions. According to Augias: We think that we have before our eyes the Sicilian puppet-theatre - a curtain, steel horses, enchantresses, warriors, escapes, quarrels, love affairs, fits of madness - and we are forced instead to realize that we are marvelling at their witty deformations. Not curtains but parodic backdrops, not eroticism but awkward comic-strip sensuality, not horror and blood but Diabolik and Vincent Price ... The Orlando would only be a success as a collage of sideshow numbers, as the photomural illustration for a country festival. In other words, it becomes a seductive mystification, and it becomes much more so to the extent that the reasons for its remarkable vitality reside in its constant, ironic allegorical cross-references.3 In fact, the characteristic style of Ronconi's performance is the continu-

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ous 'dislocation of meaning,' as the performance is always 'elsewhere.' We believe that we are witnessing a retrieval of certain traditions, yet we are only provided with a brilliant parody: a witty and artful pastiche, the fruit of a great theatrical culture that piles up the most heterogeneous figures and elements into an imposing heap. Italo Moscati found the Orlando to mark the discovery of a thoroughly unknown theatrical space. Ronconi had reclaimed the world of the dream and transformed it into a 'populated and noisy universe.' When the labyrinth came forward from the back of the stage in the finale, it was necessary to decide if one would enter it, or if one would keep to the side, and whoever entered or came near would meet up with the actors who revealed themselves for what they were, individuals who sold fiction for a small price in the hope of being believed. The work of the actor and the theatrical machinery that produced the performance were, therefore, no longer hidden behind the final result, but were themselves that result. The result was the process of the performance itself. As Enzo Siciliano maintained, it was a matter of an authentic 'dive into the world of dreams': Ronconi and Sanguined saw the play as the realization of the dream-like compilation of an almanac, as a dream on the Orlando of Ariosto ... Here than is the space bounded by four walls where you are free to move, but not free enough to be able to leave the game (since we are up to our necks in dreams and unable to escape). Characters come to travel over our heads with the doll-like clarity of ghosts, but with an almost obsessive inner vitality as well. Here, finally, is the phantasmagoric prattling of dreams, whose source we are never able to pinpoint, or else the incongruous silence that draws our imagination toward the moment of escape into drowsy wakefulness.6

The comments, the polemics, the diverse interpretations continued at length, following the production's success after it had moved to the European capitals. Five years after the premiere, IlDramma published a suggestive document: the 'futuristic' reading of the Orlando furioso held by Marinetti on the Mura degli Angeli in Ferrara on 7 July 1929. The magazine, in an unsigned editorial, maintained that in it are found most, if not all, of the characteristic traits of the mise-en-scene of Sanguined and Ronconi. Marinetti's interpretation underlined some of the aspects of Ariosto's poem that could be called futurist avant la lettre, such as the velocity, the aggressiveness, the indefatigability, the sense

204 Sandro Bernard! of flying, the aerial leap of the horses and the horsemen, and, above all, 'the mocking and galliard playfulness that bursts out into innumerable images as well as grotesque and ironic constructions.' For Marinetti, certain verses of the poem manifest the precise intuition of an aviator: Con Ruggier seco il grande augel disease culte pianure e delicati colli chiare acque, ombrose ripe e prati molli. (6.20.&-8) [Here the great bird, after a broad circular sweep, descended with Ruggiero. Here were well-tilled plains and neat hills, limpid waters, shady banks, and soft meadows.] (trans. Waldman 52) In any case, it was a flying Ariosto, an electric or mechanical Ariosto, that was reread by Marinetti: 'And so, the poem of Orlando furioso strives to evoke the future of the synthetic, dynamic, and simultaneous joys of our words in futuristic liberty. And so, the poem of Orlando furioso strives to become a rich adventure film for rapid worldwide screenings.'7 Ronconi a futurist? Who knows? Certainly Sanguined, a famous scholar of the futurist avant-garde, must have recognized these characteristics, or they may have occurred to both authors independently. And, after all, a film was already conceived from Ronconi's theatrical representation of Orlando, even though the results certainly did not follow the direction proposed by Marinetti. 4. The Film The success of the production, which was international (except in New York, where it failed, largely owing to poor organization), brought about a proposal from the RAI, Radiotelevisione Italiana, to produce a television film based on the most important moments of the performance. But the transposition of the theatrical representation, with all the transgressions we have seen, into a movie would need a radical change of forms, for what in the theatre appears shocking would appear as banal and ordinary on film, and vice versa. In cinema, in fact, the spectator is accustomed to fast and various changes to the point of view and thus would not experience on film the sense of estrangement that was present in the staging. It was necessary to invent a different method for the film. Ronconi decided to give the film a vaguely surreal feeling, and

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to film almost all the scenes in the Farnese Villa of Caprarola, a semiabandoned castle, which clearly shows the signs of the past centuries, but which at the same time evokes the atmosphere of the Renaissance court in which the poem was written.8 In this way, we come upon a series of contradictions arising from the difference between the language of cinematography and that of theatrical performance. The myth of the Paladins is presented not as a realistic reconstruction in keeping with the style of cinematic costume drama, but is evoked as an irrecoverable, extinct, past that has faded into a pale scenery that bears scant traces of the period in which this myth was first told and cast in poetic form. Ronconi chooses to set Ariosto's poem in Ariosto's world - perhaps not in that world exactly, but in the historical remains of that courtly world, in the villas that once played host to it. The horses roll on their trolleys through deserted rooms; the forest has become a tangled knot of rooms and hallways. Outdoor scenes are in fact always moved indoors, thereby overturning another so-called law of cinematography, the principle of photographic verisimilitude. There is nothing realistic about Ronconi's film. The rooms of the country houses, as also the cellars and the baths of Caracalla in which some scenes requiring more space were shot - all these places serve as outdoor locales and become woodlots, forests, labyrinths, rivers, islands, castles, town squares, plains, fields, and villages. Everything is obviously fake and yet everything is historically accurate. The sets, designed by Pierluigi Pizzi, at every turn underline this sham quality through a marriage of historic monuments with painted scenery. Astolfo, flying on the hippogryph, skims past painted ceilings depicting images of other pagan myths that are fading with the crumbling of the frescos of this unrestored villa. The mountain that Bradamante climbs on his charger is the spiral staircase of the palace. The horses are no longer the primitive machines of wood and steel of the stage version, but elegant and sophisticated animals with flaring nostrils and great imposing muzzles, frozen in superb poses, obvious plagiarisms from the works of Paolo Uccello, gliding unaided on their trolleys almost magically, with a metallic clatter. The grotto in which Angelica is hiding is a hearth covered by a shrub, the island of Ebuda is a flooded basement, the labyrinthine forests are the hallways of the palace, and the battle of Paris takes place in a barn, a wooden structure somewhere between Notre Dame and a medieval castle, in which Charles and the Paladins appear, looking down at the Moors, who trample the ground just two metres below. Yet the episode with the greatest theatrical effect is certainly the story

206 Sandro Bernardi of Olimpia, again played by Melato. While the camera approaches the narrator, there rises behind her a remarkable set, bearing a drawing of a series of columns, an immense salon, black and white with a nineteenthcentury feel; and while the narrator is speaking, some trolleys glide behind her, like the images evoked by her words, the various characters in her story: the lovesick Bireno on his ship off to fight the Moors, and the diabolical King of Frisia with his rifle that sprays sparks and explosions. Even the landscape changes in accordance with her words and the ships glide slowly past with their warriors, passing before northern sunsets. In short, the villa assigned the role of theatrical setting is photographed with a sophisticated cinematic technique that expands, broadens, and lengthens or, as necessary, restricts and narrows the circumscribed space of the rooms. The trolleys on which the horses slowly glide are often joined together with the trolleys supporting the cameras, creating thereby an effect of synergy between the machines, an alienating and disquieting effect, as though the whole film were a universe inhabited by one giant, alien machine. The director of photography, Vittorio Storaro (Strategia del Ragno, Last Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now, Reds) recalls also the invention of a special dolly: 'a trolley that no foreign company has and that, since it can be disassembled, allows us, especially in real-life settings, to make trolleys either free-moving or on rails, that can go up or down or in circles thanks to a certain type of arm that carries both the camera and the cameraman' (Consiglio and Ferzetti, 177).9 The result is a profound change above all in the spectator-spectacle relationship. If the film preserves all the characteristics of the theatrical mise-en-scene, nevertheless its relationship with the spectator, who sees through the eye of the camera, is completely different. There is no longer the freedom of movement characteristic of the theatrical spectacle, but neither is there a cinematic illusion of reality. We find ourselves faced with a symbiosis of theatre and cinema, existing side-by-side without blending, each remaining true to itself, without seeking that fusion typical of film adaptations, in which the cinema by its very nature absorbs the theatre. The sense of alienation is reinforced by the fact that stories told by characters in the first person, as though in a play, are continually interjected into the main plot line. Taken together, these insertions engender a mythic, abstract, and ahistorical time. The present tense of the film and of the play superimpose themselves upon the mythic time of the events narrated, and to these two temporal layers is added the real

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time of Italian history and art represented by the Renaissance monument that gives the film its setting. There are therefore at least three temporal layers superimposed one upon the other: those of myth (abstract time), of history (the past), and of drama (the present). As Itala Orlando and Piermarco Aroldi have remarked, the television medium has a powerful ability to assimilate whatever texts pass through its circuits, so as always to produce a particular text, with its own rules and conventions. However, in the case of Ronconi's play, this process occurred only up to a certain degree. The filmed production preserves all of the characteristics that it had in the theatre, and the characteristics of television are merely supplementary (Innamorati 11-20). So a hybridization of means adds itself to the hybridization of styles involved in the theatrical production. We cannot say whether we are watching a photographed play, a film, or a documentary about a Renaissance villa embellished with narrative invention. The villa is at once a villa and a forest; the cellar is a cellar at the same time that it can become a sea or a plain. The actors are at once actors and characters, figures that wander through these sets feeling as disoriented as our own senses. In short, everything is itself and at the same time something else, the machinery of the film conceals that of the theatre, but in the decision to leave everything as it is, the machinery of the film is also concealed by using real persons and objects to construct a fictitious universe. The peculiar ambiance of the play-film resides in the force with which everything (theatre, cinema, history) appears in it at once separate and united in a wholly new form. TRANSLATED BY DONATO SANTERAMO

Notes 1 'Dipende da un fatto mio che se vado a vedere uno spettacolo, io la trama non la capisco, non voglio capirla, proprio non la vedo nemmeno. Se vado a vedere Ilgiardino dei ciliegi o YAmleto, il seguito delle vicende non m'interessa, perche non credo che il veicolo della comprensibilita in quello spettacolo sia la trama; quindi il non puntare su questo elemento diventa per me anche un fatto autonomo e istintivo ... Cosi come credo che non sia necessario leggersi, che dire, tutta la Ricerca del tempo perduto per sapere cos'e, ugualmente non e necessario leggere tutto V Orlando furioso da cima a fondo per afferrarne lo

208 Sandro Bernard!

2

3

4

5

spirito. L'importante e percepire un'idea dell'Orlando, sapere che cosa puo essere. Non e poi neanche vero che quando leggiamo un testo sappiamo benissimo cos'e; a teatro invece c'e sempre la pretesa che, una volta rappresentato lo spettacolo, si dia allo spettatore la chiave per essere proprietario di quel testo, cosa che non e possibile' (Ronconi, in Quadri 82-3). '[NJon abbiamo fatto, in nessun caso, un Orlando popolare nel significato di "spiegato al popolo"; e piuttosto lo spessore culturale del poema che si manifesta, che e quello dei Cantari, e che, appunto, in mancanza di meglio, con termine che mi suona equivoco, chiamiamo "popolare"; e anche il montaggio stesso delle parti fa molto pensare ad una serie di filoni culturali che si incrociano, che si intrecciano, che si fondono. Per cui il testo risulta alia fine smontato e rimontato e questo Orlando risulta un vero e proprio saggio critico sull'Or/andoariostesco ... E un po' come una struttura geografica riprodotta in scala. E un microcosmo che riproduce un macrocosmo: le zone dell'Orlando non fanno che replicarsi e ingigantirsi fino a raggiungere il livello del poema' (Sanguined, in Quadri 87-8). 'Tutte azioni complicate e romanzesche, fortemente urlate e giostrate a ritmo frenetico; ciascuna di queste e presentata in modo da mettere il piu possibile in luce la parte spettacolare, indugiando sugli aspetti buffi o volgari, particolarmente nell'episodio delle donne omicide, che appaiono discinte e provocatorie ... Ma chi, neH'impossibilita di seguire fino in fondo le cinque vicende voglia avere uno sguardo generate su questa sezione, potra porsi al centro, in posizione di equidistanza dai diversi interventi, cogliendo cosi una musica concreta di grida spezzate che si accavallano, concitati dialoghi intrecciati, parole estratte dal loro contesto, puri suoni: un degno controcanto ai movimentati quadri in azione sui tutti i lati. La recitazione si degrada nello stile dell'avanspettacolo; e un momento di totale confusione e allo stesso tempo di pausa e di legame fra le azioni maggiori e piu nobili' (Quadri 96). 'C'e il piacere di costruirsi lo spettacolo scegliendo, nell'insieme dei frammenti offerti, secondo le proprie preferenze personali, o anche imboccando a caso a ogni bivio una qualunque delle strade che ci sono aperte, senza sentirsi obbligati ad un itinerario prefissato ... C'e soprattutto la presenza di un puro fatto teatrale, che s'impone alia nostra attenzione esclusivamente con i mezzi che gli sono propri, negandosi persino il supporto di una storia da raccontare, riducendo la parola a espressione sonora, significante ma non determinante ... Nonostante le citazioni e le allusioni e di fatto un teatro che non rimanda a nulla tranne che a se stesso e che soprattutto non chiede di vivere oltre il tempo della sua durata' (Capriolo 12). '[N]oi crediamo di aver sotto'occhio il teatro dei pupi siciliani, un sipario, dei cavalli d'acciaio, maghe, guerrieri, fughe, risse, amori, follie e invece dobbi-

Luca Ronconi's Orlando furioso

6

7

8

9

209

amo renderci conto di ammirare le loro argute deformazioni. Non sipari ma parodie di fondali, non erotismo ma goffa sensualita da fumetto, non orrore e sangue, ma Diabolik e Vincent Price ... L' Orlando sarebbe solo un riuscito collage di numeri da baraccone, la gigantografia di illustrazioni di sagra paesana. Detto in altre parole, diventa una seducente mistificazione; e tanto piu lo diventa in quanto le ragioni della sua impressionante vitalita risiedono nei continui rinvii ironici delle allegoric' (Augias 19). 'Ronconi e Sanguined hanno veduto lo spettacolo come la realizzazione di un almanaccamento onirico, come un sogno sull'Orlando dell'Ariosto ... Ecco, dunque, lo spazio cintato da quattro pared, dove ti send liberissimo nel movimento, ma non tento da poter uscire via dal gioco (nei sogni ci siamo calati fino al collo, senza possibilita di scampo). Ecco i personaggi viaggiare sulle nostre teste con vitalita quasi ossessiva. Ecco, infine, il fantasmagorico vociare dei sogni, senza che mai ci riesca di fissare 1'origine del suono; oppure 1'incongruo silenzio che coglie la nostra immaginazione al punto di fuga del dormiveglia' (Siciliano 25). 'Cosi il poema dell' Orlando furioso si sofrza di evocare le future gioie sintetiche dinamiche e simultanee delle nostre parole in liberta futuriste. Cosi il poema dell' Orlando furioso si sforza di diventare un ricchissimo film di awenture per i nostri schermi di veloce mondialita' (Marinetti 617). Quite independently from Ronconi's, there was also a film version made based upon the stories told in the Orlando furioso: I Paladini - Storia d'armi e d'amori, directed by Giacomo Battiato (Italy, 1983), which again involves Orlando, Angelica, Rinaldo, Bradamante, and other characters from Ariosto in a completely different sort of film: a barren and misty wood, typical of the fantasy genre, particularly suited to sorceresses and the poem's other narrative spells. But the result is rather disappointing. ' [U]n carrello che nessuna compagnia ha all'estero e che, essendo smontabile, permette, specialmente in ambienti dal vero, di fare carrelli liberi o su rotaie, con alzate e abbassate, anche circolari grazie ad un particolare tipo di braccio che porta la macchina da presa e 1'operatore' (Consiglio and Ferzetti 177).

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso: Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1964. - Orlando furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

210 Sandro Bernard! Augias, Corado. 'II trionfo del meraviglioso.' Sipario280 (August 1969): 19. Capriolo, Ettore. 'E adesso si chiama teatro.' Sipario28l (September 1969): 10-12. Consiglio, Stefano, and Fabio Ferzetti, eds. La bottega della luce: I direttori delta fotografia. Milan: UBULibri, 1983. Innamorati, Isabella, ed. LucaRonconi e ilsuo teatro. Milan: Universita Cattolica, 1992. Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. L'ottava d'oro. Milan: Mondadori, 1933. 'Marinetti furioso.' IlDrammab (May 1974): 21-3. Moscati, Italo. 'Un nuovo congegno scenico.' Sipario28Q (August 1969): 22. Quadri, Franco. IIritoperduto. Turin: Einaudi, 1973. Siciliano, Enzo. 'Un tuffo nel sogno.' Sipario 280 (August 1969): 25. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964.

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of aReader

LUCIA RE

'Nadie puede escribir un libro.' Jorge Luis Borges, 'Ariosto y los Arabes'

Cesare Pavese, in his 1947 review of // sentiero dei nidi di ragno [ The Path to the Nest of Spiders], was the first to point out Italo Calvino's affinity with the literature of chivalric romance and with Ariosto's writing in particular: 'There is a flavour of Ariosto here' [C'e qui dentro un sapore ariostesco] (246). Since then Pavese's observation has been echoed many times by other critics, and Calvino's subsequent work, including a delightful 'retelling' of the Orlando furioso (1970) has borne out Pavese's intuition. The marks of Ariosto's influence on Calvino are (as Calvino himself observed)] laid bare for all to see in his fiction and criticism. Two central and structurally crucial episodes in one of Calvino's most famous and controversial works, // castello dei destini incrociati [The Castle of Crossed Destinies}, are entitled 'The Tale of Roland Crazed with Love' and 'The Tale of Astolpho on the Moon,' respectively, and are directly inspired by the Furioso. But, one might say, these are rather 'obvious' traces of Calvino's affection for Ariosto. They seem to document a fairly anxiety-free relationship between Ariosto, the great and 'strong' (to use Harold Bloom's term) poet of the Renaissance, and his self-declared epigone. In 1952, the figure of the cavaliere, emblem of the chivalric world and first hint of an intertextual link with Ariosto,2 made its appearance in // visconte dimezzato [The Cloven Viscount], the first novel of Calvino's trilogy

212 Lucia Re

/ nostri antenati [Our Ancestors}. The protagonist of // cavaliere inesistente [The Nonexistent Knight, 1959], the third novel of the trilogy, is one of Charlemagne's knights. His long and impressive name, Agilulfo Emo Bertrandino dei Guildiverni e degli Altri di Corbentraz e Sura, Cavaliere di Selimpia Citeriore e Fez, although not taken directly from the Carolingiari tradition, parodies traditional chivalric names and epithets. Bradamante, Orlando, Astolfo, Rinaldo di Montalbano, and Guidon Selvaggio are some of the characters and names that Calvino takes directly from Ariosto and the chivalric toponomastica. Yet it is Ariosto's estranging and comic rendering of foreign names,3 and the playful associations that they generate, that attracts and influences Calvino the most. (For example, consider the many names of Agilulfo's squire: Gurdulu, Omobo, Martuinzul.) 4 Calvino's parodic appropriation of Ariosto extends well beyond name games, however. // cavaliere inesistente borrows from Ariosto in order to construct a mock-heroic parody of the chivalric world of the Furioso (which is a parody in itself). At the same time, the text offers an estranging, critical reflection on the construction of individual identity in Italy in the 1950s, a world where the fiction of personal identity or 'selfhood' was increasingly determined by the logic of a nascent consumer society. Although complexly intertextual, with allusions to a variety of works including Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, II cavaliere inesistente is most of all a creative gloss of the Furioso. Indeed, the texts by Cervantes and Sterne can be seen as so many crucial steps in an ideal genealogy of self-conscious, parodic, intertextual, and ironic works that link Calvino back to Ariosto. For all of these writers, as for Borges, literature is essentially parodic, not in the sense of a text ridiculing or mocking another, but rather of a text composed in intimacy with another (or many others) in a relation that is critically constructive and ironic, of closeness with distance, of repetition with difference. Yet beyond the obvious convergences and affinities, Ariosto is persistently and even structurally present in all of Calvino. 'Every time I open the Orlando furioso I discover a different book, one which I had not noticed before,' Calvino wrote in 1981. 'To work keeping Ariosto's text open in front of me has always been a creative stimulus for me ... For a long time now, the Furioso has been trespassing ['sconfinando'] into my pages' ('Ariosto geometrico' 166). Most critics, however, have noticed Calvino's Ariostian vein only in passing, and have overlooked this intertextual encounter between one of the few truly original modern masters and the great Renaissance poet. That theirs is indeed an encounter, or, in other words, a reciprocal connection rather than the familiar one-sided

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 213 influence of the predecessor on the successor, is evidenced by Calvino's own trespassing onto the text of the Furioso. At the end of Ticcola antologia di ottave' [A Short Anthology of Octaves], a text commissioned by La rassegna della letteratura italiana for the 500th anniversary of Ariosto's birth, Calvino actually adds his own contribution to the Furioso, emending a rhyme from the unfinished Cinque canti. He describes this as a friendly partaking in Ariosto's work in progress (95). But more significant perhaps is Calvino's bold 1967-70 'retelling' of the Orlando furioso, which is really more a rewriting comparable to Pierre Menard's rewriting of the Quixote. Pierre Menard's 'version' of Cervantes's masterpiece is literally identical to the original, while Calvino's is not, or at least not completely. Calvino reproduces a substantial portion of the original (roughly half of the poem is excerpted), but his own creative and critical contribution is not, or not only - unlike Pierre Menard's - implicit, that is, incor porated within the 'original' text (in between the lines, so to speak). It is also explicitly formulated in the complex textual body surrounding the anthologized original. This textual body, originally conceived for a recording and as a series of broadcasts for the RAI (Radiotelevisione italiana), is an apparatus designed to mimic (or rather to parody) the dreadful genre of Italian high-school literary anthologies with commentary, for it includes a scholarly historical and critical introduction, prefaces, summaries, glosses, and comments for each of the twenty-two anthologized sections of the poem, as well as a selection of notes carved out of Lanfranco Caretti's 1966 Einaudi edition of the Furioso.5 Unlike the genre it parodies, Calvino's text is witty and fun to read. True to its original conception as a series of radio broadcasts,6 it preserves to a large extent the aura of an oral narrative and the warmth and immediacy associated with the sound of a human voice telling a story (as was the case with the original cantari di gesta). Calvino often refers to the act of retelling itself, underscoring the closeness of the narrator to the listener who is being carried along by his voice, and, at the same time, disclosing the pleasure of mediating between text and audience (a triangular variation of textual erotics).7 With Calvino, traversing the space of the Furioso becomes a memorable adventure in and of itself. Calvino's retelling of 'La pazzia di Orlando' (128-36) is a masterpiece of this 'orality effect.' Calvino's prose forms a polished and vividly detailed narrative with its own fast-paced rhythm punctuated by the skilful alternation of summary with scene, dialogue, description, and commentary. Yet the narrative is constructed as an artful counterpoint to the Ariosto excerpts (and therefore it cannot in anyway 'replace it': it would be like

214 Lucia Re reading only the left-hand column of Derrida's Glas, and ignoring the excerpts from Hegel, Genet, and so forth), sometimes anticipating their content, sometimes recounting it, but highlighting directly or, more often, indirectly, that which for Calvino represents the central issues, achievements, and insights of Ariosto's poem. Calvino's retelling also constitutes a critical interpretation, one of the most tactful, loving, and perceptive interpretations of the poem that we have. The retelling of Orlando's madness, for example, emphasizes the meandering, errant movements of a reason impelled by desire to take (against all evidence) a most improbable path to the wished-for conclusion, thus highlighting one of the fundamental (and fundamentally modern) psychological insights of the poem regarding the human psyche. Calvino's critical reflection on Ariosto constitutes a significant part of their encounter (of which the 1970 retelling is only a small if important part), but it has remained mostly unscrutinized,8 perhaps partly because Calvino himself downplayed it with characteristic sprezzatura. But before attempting a more thorough investigation of 'Calvino reader of Ariosto,' a few words are necessary about the value and interest of such an endeavour. I am not interested in revealing or measuring just 'how much' Calvino was influenced by Ariosto, consciously or otherwise (though this is a perfectly legitimate enterprise, and a welcome one for readers and scholars of Calvino).9 Rather, I am interested in tracing the presence of Ariosto in Calvino in order not only to understand more about Calvino, but also to allow 'another' Ariosto to come into view, an Ariosto that we did not previously recognize or know as well; an Ariosto - to adopt the apparently paradoxical formula that epitomizes the logic of a living and dynamic literary tradition - who is a 'reader of Calvino.'10 As early as 1949, Calvino mentions the genre of poems of chivalry in connection with the literature of the Resistance ('La letteratura italiana sulla Resistenza' 42). n In his appreciation of Angelo Del Boca's partisan tales in the same article we may recognize a predilection for the literary qualities that he will later identify and admire in Ariosto: 'the agility of style' [il piglio slanciato dello stile], and a portrayal of the partisan war that has 'a flavour of youthfulness, of mad adventure but filled with thoughts and feelings' [sapore di giovinezza, d'awentura scalmanata ma trepida di pensieri e affetti] (43). The key word here is avventura. The quintessence of the Ariostian spirit for me can be found in the lines that announce a new adventure,' Calvino wrote years later (Ticcola antologia' 89). Avventura will become a crucial operative term for Calvino's poetics, denoting an agile and concise narrative action in which a con-

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 215 stellation of intellectual, political, and erotic implications are inscribed within the structure and spatialization of events. It is the logic of the events themselves, in other words, and their chronotopic organization, that carries the ideological meaning of the narrative and allows the author to get his message across without need for more explicit prese di posizioneor commentary. Calvino's youthful experience of the Resistance and partisan warfare in the labyrinthine woods and hills of Liguria (not unlike the 'boscherecci labirinti' of 13.42 that are the space of adventure in the Furioso) has much to do with this particular sense of avventura. For Calvino, as he pointed out in the 1964 preface to Ilsentiero dei nidi di ragno, the literary and the existential - 'books' and 'life' - are inseparable. The partisan warfare was, as Calvino puts it in the most Ariostian of his early short stories, the 1946 Taura sul sentiero' [Fear on the Footpath], a matter of armed men pursuing each other in the woods, 'un gioco di rincorrersi e nascondersi' (58) [a game of hide and seek] (48). In the preface to // sentiero, Calvino remarks that the Resistance was for him about this fusion of people with landscape, a landscape that had become 'extraordinary and adventurous [with] the pursuit and concealment of armed men' (ix). l2 Calvino had read Ariosto in school (Weaver 28) before rediscovering him later. And while it is true that, as Pavese points out, the traces of a general predilection for the romanzo d'avventure (he mentions Stevenson and Kipling) emerge in Calvino's Ilsentiero, as does his passion for the fairy tale,13 the collective and epic framework of partisan antifascist warfare (within which are inscribed the specific political, erotic, and emotional quests of each individual participant) make it for Calvino an 'adventure' particularly close in spirit to the great struggle of Charlemagne's Paladins against the 'infidels' in the Furioso. It is certainly not fortuitous that the next reference to Ariosto and to chivalric romances that we find in Calvino's published work is in a 1950 letter to Roberto Battaglia, the historian of the Resistance and author of an important autobiographical memoir on his experience as an anti-fascist partisan leader.14 In the letter, Calvino invites Battaglia to write a short history of the Resistance for Einaudi and, almost in the same breath, expresses his intense interest in Battaglia's recently published Novette del Furioso, especially Battaglia's ideas regarding the relationship between fantasy and reality in Ariosto and Ariosto's reasons for choosing the myths of chivalry as his subject matter. Only two years later, Calvino's own adventure with fantasy would be definitively and officially launched with the publication of // visconte dimezzato. Calvino's estranging irony in his treatment of the material in //

216 Lucia Re sentiero, his refusal to write yet another celebration of the heroes of the Resistance, and his tendency to deform and defamiliarize it through the lens of the fantastic, can be compared to Ariosto's similarly ironic and estranging stance towards the materia cavalleresca. In a passage from a 1960 article published in English, Calvino confirms the kinship between Ariosto's irony and his own: 'I think that Ariosto's psychological situation in relation to the literature of chivalry was not so far from the one I found myself in, in regard to the contemporary novel of action and political engagement' ('Main Currents' 14). lo But the irony, of course, is not directed only towards the subject matter itself- whether the myths of chivalry for Ariosto or the myths of the Resistance for Calvino. As Calvino observes, it is the form, or the very way of narrativizing those myths, that becomes ironized. And since irony can never cease, the position of the ironist involves necessarily a degree of self-reflexiveness, a reflection on one's own writing and on the precariousness of one's own position vis-a-vis the tradition that one ironizes. Calvino recognized very early on, in his reading of Ariosto, a mirror image of his own condition of belatedness. Ariosto was a belated, ironic, and sceptical epigone of the tradition of chivalric romances, just as Calvino is a belated, ironic, and sceptical epigone of the modern novel. Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore [If on a Winter's Night a Traveler]) is only the most eloquent proof of the advantages and disadvantages of such a position (a position Calvino consciously adopts beginning with 77 sentiero), and, riot coinc dentally of course, it is, like 77 sentiero, a deeply Ariostian novel. Irony requires a delicate balance. As Calvino perceptively remarks in 'Ariosto geometrico' 168 (and earlier in Orlando furioso raccontato 24), 'Although viewing the deeds of his heroes through irony and the transfiguration of the fantastic, [Ariosto] tends never to diminish their knightly virtues, even if now it seems that one can only use them as pretext for a grand and engrossing game.'Just as Ariosto relies on chivalric myths to captivate his readers and spur them on in the act of reading at the very same time that he ironizes those myths, so does Calvino exploit the conventions of narrativity at the very same time that he is debunking them. What is similar in both texts is precisely their antinomic yet exhilarating effect: the ironic exposure of the mechanisms of mimetic desire only heightens the reader's desire to keep reading. Indeed, the ironic erotics of reading is built into the text as a structural component, part of the technique of entrelacement that Calvino calls montaggio ('Struttura' 79). As Calvino observes, the moments in which Ariosto interrupts an action (often right in the middle of a canto) in order to go on to another

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 217 action are the very moments in which the author reflects back on himself and his historical situation, or thematizes the act of writing itself. These moments are usually located at the end of an octave, where the final couplet functions as a sort of 'anticlimax' (83), both frustrating the reader's desire to know right away how things turned out, and deferring the fulfilment of this desire to a later point in the narrative. A parody of Ariosto's quest romance and its endless erring, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore takes the reader on a wild-goose chase for a lost novel-object of desire (lost through an error in binding), and in so doing it plays selfconsciously with Ariosto's ironic-erotic technique of interruption and deferral (which DanielJavitch has wittily called 'cantus interruptus'). 16 The meaning of avventura that Calvino appropriates from Ariosto, and that, at the same time, he helps us to see in Ariosto, goes beyond the narrative articulation of landscape with armed men and their desires. While in the ancient aventure chronotope of Medieval French romance, as Auerbach says, 'fantastic encounters and perils present themselves to the knight as if from the end of an assembly-line' (135), Ariosto's poem marks the conclusion (and the most brilliant display) of the process of transformation of aventure into a more specific, goal-oriented quest: the inchiesta becomes the informing principle of the Furioso.^1 The originality of the action of the Furioso, compared for example to the alternation of disparate undertakings in the Innamorato, resides, as Sergio Zatti has shown, in its plot tracing the attainment of an individual object of desire on the part of a multiplicity of characters who are often in competition and conflict with one another. While this contributes to orient and finalize the space and the sense of duration in the poem in terms of the logic of quest, however, the logic of the older, freer type of aventure still remains active within it, creating a structural antinomy (a binary structure, Calvino would say) upon which the entire poem is built. On the one hand, there is a specific, goal-oriented movement; on the other, chance occurrences often intervene to divert this movement and lead it astray, to the point of replacing the original goal with another (Zatti 3940). This structuring mechanism of the Furioso coincides with the structuring principle of Calvino's first novel. One of the most controversial aspects of // sentiero is its depiction of the collective, goal-oriented quest of partisan warfare and the anti-fascist Resistance as a movement interrupted and redefined in multiple directions by the conflicting desires and aspirations of the individuals involved in it, so that the ideal space that the novel draws in its apparently finalized development ends up resembling the convolutions of a maze rather than a steady progress

218 Lucia Re toward conclusion. Whether the similarity of structure between the Furioso arid Calvino's first novel is the result of a conscious or unconscious 'imitation' on Calvino's part is not important. What matters is rather that the affinity between Ariosto and Calvino can be traced to a fundamental narrative mechanism, that of the avventura, and to a productive structural antinomy that, in my view, remains a constant device of Calvino's most captivating fictions. Many examples of this affinity can be cited. A whole series of Calvino's short stories from 1949 through 1967, collected under the title Gli amori difficili [Difficult Loves], bears the title 'L'avventura di ...' and the protagonists of the adventures range from a soldier to a car-driver to a photographer. In these stories, Calvino correlates and interweaves movement and action with desire in endless permutations; his is a modern version of Ariosto's inchiesta amoroso,. The story that most perfectly embodies this modern version of Ariosto's quest is perhaps 'L'avventura di due sposi' [The Adventure of a Married Couple]. In it two factory workers who are married to each other but work different shifts are seen pursuing each other and each other's traces - clothes, smells, sounds, warmth - in the space (the house and bed) that they share but in which ironically they hardly ever intersect, except for a few tantalizing and brief moments that only heighten and defer their desire for each other. The perfect circularity of their never-ending quest mirrors the circularity of Ariosto's inchiesta amorosa, in which the object of desire remains perennially out of reach. The closing image of the story, with the woman climbing into bed and reaching for the warmth left by her husband's body, but finding none there because he had slept earlier where he had hoped to find hers, summarizes in its perfect and simple symmetry the logic of the quest. Its pathos may indeed have been inspired directly by a passage in the Furioso, 10.20—1, where Olimpia reaches for her husband's body as well: 'Ne desta ne dormendo, ella la mano / per Birerio abbracciar stese, ma invano. / Nessuno truova: a se la man ritira: / di nuovo tenta, e pur nessuno truova. / Di qua 1'un braccio, e di la 1'altro gira; / or 1'una, or 1'altra gamba; e nulla giova.' [When she, 'twixt sleep and waking, made a strain / to reach her loved Bireno, but in vain. / She no one found; the dame her arm withdrew; / she tried again; yet no one found; she spread / Both arms, now here, now there, and sought anew; / Now either leg; but yet no better sped]. In Ticcola antologia' (91), Calvino points out how much physical movement, particularly displacement through space, becomes a vehicle to express the dynamics of passion in Ariosto. 'L'avventura di un automobilista,' a

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 219 1967 story from Gli amori difficili, in which a man, a woman, and another man called simply X, Y, and Z pursue each other - or rather, the thought and desire of each other - in endless triangulations up and down the monotonous space of a freeway 'without points of departure or of arrival' (108), is a most schematic and effective modern interpretation of mimetic desire and the zigzag but ultimately circular movement of the Ariostian quest. As in Ariosto, the adventure can either be an outer or an inner one. 'L'awentura di una bagnante' [The Adventure of a Bather] has elements of both. It is the story of a woman who loses the bottom half of her bikini while swimming off a crowded beach and spends many hours at sea, eventually hanging on desperately to a buoy, fantasizing about and dreading the arrival of a rescuer before finally being taken back to shore by two very gentlemanly fishermen - a man and a boy. The story i a parody of the 'damsel in distress' motif, especially as found in the episodes of the beautiful naked Angelica (rescued by Ruggiero) and Olimpia (whom Orlando rescues, believing her to be Angelica) tied to a rock off the isle of Ebuda in cantos 10 and 11 of the Furioso. Ariosto's doubling of the rescuing motif is ironically mimicked and estranged by Calvino, who keeps the same number of rescuers but unifies the action. On the other hand, there is only one woman in the Calvino story, but, as Calvino says (Orlando furioso raccontato 57), the two women in the Furioso might as well be one, for their function is identical. The story has many points of interest. For example, it is told from the woman's point of view - an unusual perspective for Calvino. For my purposes here, however, it is most relevant to note that this story epitomizes some key features of Calvino's avventura. His ideological and political portrait of the mentality of the newly affluent middle class in 1950s Italy is inscribed within the simple logic of the events themselves. In the Furioso, characters are defined by their weapons or horses or magic objects, and pursue their lost possessions endlessly as a way of searching for themselves. So here the woman's identity, in an ironic and estranging deformation of the original mechanism in the Furioso, seemingly resides in the lost bathing suit. The loss of the suit ironically represents a veritable loss of identity an identity as fragile and as required by convention as the bikini bottom - without any need for commentary. The story accentuates the process of interiorization of the quest (and of the labyrinth that is its space) that Calvino identifies as a key to Ariosto's manipulation of the structure of adventure in the Furioso (especially, as we shall see, subsequent to the vanishing of Atlante's castle under Astolfo's spell). As Calvino points out

220 Lucia Re in the introductory note to Gli amori difficili, the term avventura for him in many cases denotes an 'inner movement, the story of a state of mind, an itinerary toward silence' (ix). For the woman, the loss of the bathing suit precipitates an inner crisis of identity whereby 'the other,' literally everyone out there - men and women - capable of looking at her naked body, turns into a threatening monster not unlike the dreadful sea monster destined to devour the naked Angelica and Olimpia before the knights rescue them. The lost bathing suit is temporarily replaced, in the end, by a loud orange and green dress borrowed from the wardrobe of a fisherman's wife which, however, ironically makes the woman feel miraculously happy, as if in wearing someone else's clothes at the end of her adventure she had found out something real about herself. The spirit of Ariostian quest and adventure extends well beyond these stories, however; it traverses The Castle of Crossed Destinies and Invisible Cities, as far as Palomar. Calvino writes in Ticcola antologia' that 'the quintessence of the Ariostian spirit for me can be found in the lines that announce a new adventure. Many times this situation is marked by a boat approaching the shore where the hero is by chance (9.9): "Con gli occhi cerca or questo lato or quello / lungo le ripe il paladin, se vede / (quando ne pesce egli non e, ne augello) / come abbia a por ne 1'altra ripa il piede: / et ecco a se venir vede un battello, / su le cui poppe una donzella siede, / che di voler venire a lui fa segno; / ne lascia poi ch'arrivi a terra il legno." [The paladin this bank and the other eyed, / Along the river's channel, to explore, / Since neither fish nor fowl, if from his side / He could gain footing on the adverse shore; / When, with a damsel in the poop, he spied / A ready pinnace that towards him bore: / She steered, as if she would approach the strand; / But would not let her shallop make the land.] A study that I would have liked to undertake regards this situation: the shore of a sea or a river, a character on the shore, and a boat at a brief distance, bringing an encounter or a piece of news from which is born a new adventure' (89-90). How not to recognize an Ariosto-like scenario in Mr Palomar's intellectual and visual adventures (think, for example, of his scrutiny of the wave from the seashore or the naked breast) ? Calvino's adventures of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as his longer narrative texts of the fantastic trilogy, have a linguistic as well as a structural affinity with Ariosto's poem. I am referring to the exactness (exemplified in the passage just quoted) and the technical precision of Ariosto's language, and the down-to-earth nature of his similes and metaphors (celebrated by Calvino in his Orlando furioso raccontato 54, 57 and Tic-

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cola antologia' 93). These render a fantastic situation acceptable and credible to the reader (Woodhouse, Reappraisal 84-7, points out Ariosto's influence on Calvino in this regard). Ariosto's lesson is particularly visible in The Baron in the Trees, where the fantastic premise of Cosimo's life in the trees is made acceptable by the detailed passages describing the practical arrangements of his existence.18 Precision or rather 'exactitude' is one of the six specific qualities of literary texts that Calvino claimed to cherish most in his 1985 Memosfor the Next Millennium. Although Ariosto is mentioned only in passing in the Memos (prepared as a series of lectures to be delivered at Harvard University), the qualities that Calvino discusses may be seen as a distillation of the essential features of Ariosto's text that are a constant point of reference and inspiration in his work. Besides 'exactitude,' Calvino lists 'lightness,' 'quickness,' 'visibility,' and 'multiplicity.' ('Consistency,' which was to be the last lecture, remained unwritten). The essay on 'lightness' is filled with images of flying; it is based on the notion of leaving the heaviness of the world behind through writing, not in order to dream or to escape into the irrational, but to be able to think and look clearly from, so to speak, a bird's-eye view. The celebrated flight of Astolfo to the moon, riding on the back of the hippogryph, and his recovery of Orlando's senses, could easily have served as a central icon for the entire essay (Calvino only refers to the prototype of this episode, the narrative function 'hero flying through the air' identified by Propp in his Morphology of the Folktale). In Orlando furioso raccontato, Calvino describes admiringly the lightness of Astolfo's Rabicano, a horse so weightless that he leaves no imprint on either sand or snow, and under whose impalpable hooves the entire map of the world becomes visible with all its marvels and all that is known about it (85). And indeed 'lightness' for Calvino is the term that best describes the agility of Astolpho's (and Ariosto's) imagination: 'He never reveals anything of himself, of what he feels and what he thinks, yet - or rather, because of this - the Ariostian spirit (this presence that never lets itself be caught and defined) is recognizable above all in him, the lunar explorer who is not astonished by anything, who lives surrounded by the marvellous and uses enchanted objects, magic books, metamorphoses, and flying horses with the lightness of a butterfly, but always to reach practical and completely rational goals' (Orlando furioso raccontato xix). In light of the essay on lightness one cannot help but see in this passage also an idealized self-portrait of sorts. 'Quickness' or rapiditdis essential to the narrative rhythm of the Furio-

222 Lucia Re so. Calvino expresses it best in his memorable incipit to Orlando furioso raccontato: 'In principio c'e solo una fanciulla che fugge per un bosco in sella al suo palafreno. Sapere chi sia importa sino a un certo punto: e la protagonista d'un poema rimasto incompiuto, che sta correndo per entrare in un poema appena comiriciato' (3) [In the beginning there is only a young woman who flees through a wood on horseback. To know who she is is important only to a point: she is the protagonist of an unfinished poem, running to get into a poem that has just begun]. And run with Calvino we do, as his retelling of the Furioso not only underscores the at times breathtakingly rapid rhythm of the adventures and the effect of multiple actions occurring simultaneously, but emphasizes how quick movement and dislocation through time and space in the poem is a figure for the movement of desire itself, which we as readers are made to mimic in our desire to go forward in the text. 'Visibility,' the fourth of Calvino's literary values, is par excellence an Ariostian trait. The vividness of his images is repeatedly emphasized by Calvino in his Orlando furioso raccontato. More interestingly, however, in Calvino's reading of Ariosto, erotics is reabsorbed and reinscribed into either readability or visibility, and the act of seeing is the only truly erotic moment. We have already seen how for Calvino, in his comment on Furioso 9.9, the inception of adventure that he associates with the Ariostian spirit is a deeply visual moment, 'Con gli occhi cerca ... se vede ... a se venir vede' ('Piccola antologia' 80). The erotic adventure is even more specifically tied to an intensely visual experience for Calvino, and specifically to the (implicitly male) gaze contemplating the spectacle of the female body. He cites the famous undressing of Alcina in 7.28 and the elaborate comparison of Olimpia's naked body to a snowy landscape in 11.68, characterizing the octave's approach to the nude as that of a lens that progressively focuses onto a miniature only to distance itself again from the image, which becomes hazy and vague ('Piccola antologia' 93). The voyeuristic and scopophilic economy of male eroticism in Calvino's own work is evident in works ranging from the brilliant 'Awentura di un fotografo' and 'Awentura di un miope' in Gli amori difficili t the optical pleasure-seeking of Mr Palomar.19 Finally, 'multiplicity' - that is, for Calvino, the novel's ability to function as a sort of encyclopedia, 'as a method of knowledge, and above all as a network of connections between the events, the people, and the things of the world' (105) - is a term that accurately describes the Furio50's construction as a complex web of reciprocally interfering and potentially endless adventures.

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 223 As early as in the 1967-70 retelling of the Furioso, and then in the 1974 essay 'The Structure of the Orlando furioso,' which is largely identical to the earlier text, Calvino makes the mechanism of multiplicity explicit in critical terms, providing us with an invaluable key to reading both Ariosto and his own work. Calvino points out that the impression of an endless multiplication of adventures created in the poem effectively defers the sense of the possibility of an ending, a conclusion, or a moment of closure in the narrative, while at the same time distancing any reference to a beginning or moment of inception. ' Orlando furioso is a poem that refuses to begin and refuses to end ... This process of expanding from the inside, making episodes proliferate from other episodes, creating new symmetries and new contrasts, seems to me to explain Ariosto's method of construction rather well. And for him it remained the best method of enlarging the poem, with its polycentric and contemporaneous [sincronica] structure, the events of which branch out [biforcano] in every direction, continually intersecting and diverging' ('Structure' 162-3). This could also easily be, or actually is, a description of the structure of The Castle of Crosses Destinies and Invisible Cities. It is not accidental of course that Calvino's language here recalls the title and structure of one of Jorge Luis Borges's most famous stories in Labyrinths, 'The Garden of the Forking Paths': the tension between the labyrinth-like, potentially endless textual proliferation of 'story' or 'adventure' and the tightly controlled narrative mechanism that generates it accounts for much of the 'originality' of Ariosto - a poet whom Borges, like Calvino, deeply admired and certainly emulated.20 For Calvino, who thus anticipates the conclusions of more recent critics of Ariosto such as Parker and Zatti, the central mechanism of the poem resides in the playful dialectic of a simultaneously centripetal and centrifugal movement. This dialectic can, in essence, be defined as a binary logic, a kind of chess game. Indeed, for Calvino, the Furioso can be compared to 'an immense chess game played on the map of the world' (Orlando furioso raccontato 44). The metaphor of the chess game is of course a familiar one from the vocabulary of Russian formalism and structuralist narratology,21 and it plays an important role in Invisible Cities, where the chess game and the chess board appear as recurring and self-conscious images of the novel's combinatory and oppositional narrative structure. The tarot cards play a similar role in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. In the 1970 prefatory note to Gli amori difficili, Calvino described his interest in such narrative games as follows: '[Wjhat matters most is a geometrical design, a combinatoire, a structure of symme-

224 Lucia Re tries and oppositions, a chessboard on which the black squares and the white squares exchange places in accordance with a very simple mechanism' (x). 22 Unlike many structuralist critics,23 however, Calvino is under no illusion that a literary work such as Ariosto's (or his own, for that matter) can be reduced to a geometric structure of any kind: for Calvino it is not a matter of 'any rigid geometry ... [but rather] of a force field, continually generating new forces within itself ('Structure' 165). In his writing, Calvino was never simply a structuralist but always already a post-structuralist.24 The fundamental structure and logic of this movement or errare that is at the core of avventura and informs it ('the errant movement of Ariosto's poetry' 167) are fully developed already in the first canto of the poem, according to Calvino: 'From the very start the Furioso introduces itself as the poem of movement; or, better, it introduces the particular kind of movement that is going to run through it from top to bottom: movement in broken, zigzag lines. We could trace the general pattern of the poem by following the continual intersection and divergence of these lines ... but we have only to look at the first canto, in which three horsemen are pursuing Angelica, who is fleeing through a wood, in a frenzied dance comprising strayings and chance encounters, blunders and changes of plans. It is with this zigzag traced by galloping horses and the fitfulness [le intermittenze] of the human heart that we are introduced to the spirit of the poem ... Absent-minded behaviour ['II procedere svagato']25 is characteristic not only of Angelica's pursuers, but also of Ariosto himself. One is tempted to say that the poet, as he starts his narrative, does not yet know the outline of the plot that later on will guide him with such precise premeditation' (167). Thus Ariosto not only thematizes the peregrinations of his knights errant, but seems to pursue himself in a wandering kind of narrative. Yet Calvino shows that this is an artfully constructed nonchalance on Ariosto's part, for the complex architecture of the poem is carefully plotted at every turn. Indeed, the poem is firmly anchored to a historically defined centre: 'The siege of Paris is more or less the centre of gravity of the poem' (170). And the intricate maze of adventures is woven around two principal and parallel plot lines:26 the tale of Orlando's madness and of the recovery of his sanity, and the Ruggiero-Bradamante 'predestined but constantly frustrated love' (169) [predestinati ma sempre procrastinati amori]. Calvino's alliterative formula for the Ruggiero-Bradamante plot line concisely summarizes the principle of deferral that animates the quest narrative in both plot lines. As Calvino shows in his 1967-70 com-

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mentary to the text, in the case of the Orlando plot line, 'The war, Charlemagne, the Christian army, Paris under siege must wait a moment, until their most valorous paladin has completed his amorous quest. It is a moment of delay that becomes prolonged ...' (34—5). Thus, the centre becomes de-centred, or rather, as Calvino phrases it, there is also a 'negative centre of gravity' in the poem, which is the enchanted palace of Atlante. Calvino's reading of the enchanted palace clarifies the deeper structural nature of the quest and of deferral as animating principles of the narrative. The enchanted castle, with its illusory architecture, is an image of human desire. At its root there is an apparent lack, an object missing, lost, or abducted - that becomes the object of desire and propels the desiring subject forward in a movement towards (re) possession. But each of the valiant knights who enters the enchanted palace in pursuit of his object of desire finds himself wandering around in empty halls and corridors where there are only other seekers (172). There are no objects, there is only desire: These men wandering through the loggias and down the back stairs, groping behind tapestries and canopies, are the most celebrated Christian and Moorish knights. All of them have been drawn to the palace by the vision of a beloved woman, of an enemy they cannot catch up with, of a stolen horse, of a lost object. And know they can no longer escape from those walls. If one of them makes as if to leave, he hears his name called and turns - and the apparition sought in vain is there, the woman he has to rescue is looking out of a window begging for help. Atlante has given shape and form to the kingdom of illusion. If life is always varied, unexpected, and changing, illusion is monotonous, forever harping on the same string. Desire is a race toward nothingness, and Atlante's enchantment concentrates all unsatisfied longings in the prison of a labyrinth. ('Structure' 172)

Although Calvino nowhere refers to his familiarity with Lacan's work, it is clear that his reading of the enchanted castle is informed by a Lacanian notion of desire, just as it is clear that the illusory architecture of Atlante's enchanted castle is the prototype from which spring the cities of the most Lacanian and most hauntingly beautiful of his inventions, Le cittd invisibili. What is most important, however, in terms of a critical reading of Ariosto's poem, is Calvino's intuition of the central role that Atlante's enchanted palace plays in defining the nature of desire and of the quest in the poem. As 'the enchanter who wants to delay the accom-

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plishment of destiny' (173), Atlante is in many ways - Calvino argues - a double of Ariosto, who defers the predestined conclusion of his story. Indeed, when Astolfo dissolves the enchanted palace, the labyrinth of desire does not disappear; nor can it, without bringing the poem to an end. Rather, 'it ceases to be a place outside ourselves, with doors and stairs and walls, and returns to hiding in our minds, in the labyrinth of thought' (173). The nature of the quest as a process in Ariosto that transcends the search for something material, and turns, especially after the central episode of Orlando's madness, also into an intellectual, spiri97 tual, and emotional search (Ariosto's is also the path of Proust's intermittences du coeur, says Calvino), is implicit in Calvino's characterization of the labyrinth as an inner one. Taking his cue (most likely) from an observation originally made by Caretti (31-2), and expanding it in a structuralist and narratological direction, Calvino remarks in his preface to Orlando furioso raccontato that Ariosto is less interested even than Boiardo was in providing a wellrounded psychological portrait of his characters: it is their movement and function within the narrative that he cares most about (xix): 'the move of each character on the chessboard [of the narrative] follows fixed rules as for the pieces of a chess game. If Olimpia has come into the game as a beautiful woman persecuted by wickedness and misadventure, her role will continue to be [the same]' (45). Yet this particular way of using characters as actants that Calvino and Ariosto share is not at all rigid or dehumanized, and actually, as Sergio Zatti has shown in the case of Ariosto, it highlights certain fundamental psychological mechanisms, such as the workings of mimetic desire and the triangular nature of passions, that belong to the paradoxical truthfulness of the novelistic world studied by Rene Girard. Deferral is so deeply embedded as the governing mechanism of the narrative and of the logic of the quest that, as Calvino remarks in the dizzyingly quick conclusion of Orlando furioso raccontato, the predestined closure and narrative conclusion of the poem is threatened once again with postponement at the very moment it seems imminent: 'We must run now to untie all the knots: Orlando has regained his sanity, Charles has won the war, only the marriage of Bradamante and Ruggiero remains to be celebrated. He has already converted to Christianity, and Rinaldo has already promised him his sister's hand; what other complications could now possibly arise? Yet complications do arise, and they are so vast in scope that they almost open up the space for a new poem within the poem that is about to end' (220). In closing his commentary, Calvino remarks that the poem seems

Ariosto and Calvino: The Adventures of a Reader 227 to wish to defer its own end indefinitely, and that Rodomonte's destined death casts a dark and melancholy shadow on the predestined happy ending (221-2). Earlier on in his commentary, Calvino reflects on the bitterness of Rinaldo's predestined fate which, besides a happy marriage and glorious progeny, also ordains a premature death for him. Here, Calvino notes, the logic of deferral takes on an anguished, almost tragic note: to defer Rinaldo's encounter with his fate also means to delay the moment of his death (28), and this delay might be prolonged and take the form - it seems - of an interminable labyrinth filled with the obstacles, errors, and adventures that shape human existence (24). The Furioso is, therefore, no less than the most 'postmodern' of Calvino's 'novels,' Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (which, like Ariosto's poem, 'refuses to begin, and refuses to end') and Le cittd invisibili, a text that plays against narrative's demands for closure and, at the same time, self-consciously exploits the mechanism of deferral both to heighten and frustrate the reader's desire. Ariosto's text has no beginning, according to Calvino, not only because it starts in medias res, but because it self-consciously presents itself as the continuation of another poem, the Innamorato. Calvino and Ariosto thus both share and exploit to their advantage their condition of being epigones, and ironically turn their belatedness into a principle of originality. Like Borges, theirs is a belatedness without (apparent) anxiety, or rather they succeed in artfully hiding their anxiety of belatedness with sprezzatura. Calvino observes in the same essay that 'the Furioso is a book unique in its kind [that] can be ... read without reference to any other book either before or after it. It is a world of its own that one can travel the length and breadth of, going in, coming out again, and losing oneself in it' (166). This is the 'miracle' of the Furioso for Calvino: that of being so deeply indebted to previous writers and texts of the chivalric tradition and yet of appearing at the same time so self-sufficient: a world in and of itself. Calvino's and Borges's 'originality,' and their status as modern or postmodern 'masters' appear in a similar light: both are among the modern writers who most openly recognize the impossibility of originality and yet - or perhaps because of this - they seem among the most original writers of the twentieth century. Notes Many thanks to Karen Denaci for her help in researching this article.

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1 Ticcola antologia di ottave' 89: 'penso che tali tracce di predilezione siano abbastanza vistose per lasciare che il lettore le trovi da se' [I think the traces of my predilection are conspicuous enough to let the reader find them for himself]. This piece was published originally in La rassegna della ktteratura italiana 19.1-2 (1975). 2 On this point, see Petersen. Petersen is the only critic so far who has attempted a thorough investigation of Calvino as a reader of Ariosto; but she underestimates, in my view, the Ariostian vein of the early Calvino. 3 Calvino ('Piccola antologia' 89) cites the following lines from canto 10: 'II falcon che sul nido i vanni inchina / porta Raimondo, il conte di Devonia. / II giallo e il negro ha quel di Vigorina; / il can quel d'Erba; un orso quel d'Osonia. / La croce che la vedi cristallina, / e del ricco prelate di Battonia. / Vedi nel bigio una spezzata sedia: / e del duca Ariman di Sormosedia.' 4 On Ariostian names in // cavaliere inesistente, and on the associations of Gurdulu's various names, see Calvino's 1964 letter to his Romanian translator, Despina Mladoveanu, in 1libri degli altri 475-6. Petersen points out that the 'evening of departures' in chapter 7 of II cavaliere imitates the entry of Orlando into the quest in Furioso 7. 5 The complex, hybrid nature - in both cultural and literary terms - of this text, which would well be worth a separate detailed study, is implicit from the prefatory 'note' of the publisher, so typical of the 1950s and 1960s culture industry in Italy in its attempt to make the classics more accessible to the 'masses' in a more creative way than through traditional textbooks, while maintaining a veneer of philological and scholarly respectability. The text underwent yet one more metamorphosis in 1988, when it was republished by Einaudi under the neatly reversed title Italo Calvino racconta I "Orlando furioso,' rather than the previous 'Orlando furioso' di Ludovico Ariosto with 'Raccontato da Italo Calvino' as the subtitle in smaller print. In this later version, edited with an introduction and a 'didactic apparatus' by Carlo Minoia, the notes by Caretti have been either entirely removed or recycled in highly simplified form, while most of the Ariosto text (with the exception of a few octaves) has disappeared, alas - perhaps another one of Atlante's tricks? A few 'necessary' prose links have also been added to help Calvino's text (which was also 'slightly cut and retailored') make sense. All in all, a rather dubious operation, to say the least. The motives for this vanishing act are undoubtedly multiple (Calvino tells the story so well, the editor seems to say, that we don't need Ariosto), but can probably be reduced to a single reason: Calvino sells more than Ariosto these days, and he is not around to dispute the legitimacy of this type of recycling. 6 The program was broadcast in 1968. On the 'popularizing' function of

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and ideology of the entire operation, see Woodhouse 'From Italo Calvino' 36-8. 7 See, e.g., the last segment of Calvino's retelling, starting "Vado avanti a rao contare cosi di corsa ...' [I go on retelling in such a rush ...] (221). 8 For a partial exception, see the interesting if sketchy observations in Gnerre, as well as Petersen. Some of the most interesting recent interpreters of the Furioso, for example Ceserani 481-2, have pointed out the need to reread Ariosto through the optic suggested by writers such as Calvino and Borges, that is, along modern and even postmodern lines. 9 Petersen's is the most thorough attempt to date, although much remains to be done. Calvino's fondness for parody and his encounter with Ariosto have inspired a strangely resentful pamphlet by Wiley Feinstein, Humility's Deceit: Calvino Heading Ariosto Reading Calvino (West Lafayette, Ind.: Bordighera Inc., 1995). Feinstein's jocular premises are mildly entertaining, but the self-consciously self-deprecating tone of the pamphlet is tiresome and reminiscent of a professor attempting to sound 'hip' while lecturing to undergraduates. 10 It is this double, chiasmus-like dialectic of 'Calvino reader of Ariosto'-'Ariosto reader of Calvino' that makes Calvino's selective retelling of L'Orlando such a revealing operation. From this point of view, the editor's elimination of most of Ariosto's text in Italo Calvino racconta, justified by the debatable notion that Calvino's prose and Ariosto's octaves are so 'in tune' with each other as to constitute truly 'a single discourse' (147), unduly flattens and impoverishes the original version. 11 Ferretti 108 erroneously reports the reference to be on p. 41. 12 Calvino links his experience of the 'carica epica e awenturosa' [the epic and adventurous push] of the Resistance to his love for Ariosto in 'Tre correnti' 56-7. 13 On this point see my Calvino and the Age of Neorealism 201-2. 14 On Battaglia and Calvino, and the representation of the Resistance see my Calvino 182-6. 15 The article was the sum of a group of lectures delivered in a number of U.S. universities in 1959-60. An Italian version was published in Unapietra sopra under the title Tre correnti del romanzo italiano d'oggi,' but this passage was substantially changed, and the reference to the 'novel of political engagement' taken out. However, in the Italian version there is no indication that the English 'original' was reworked. 16 Calvino points out in 'Un progetto di pubblico' 279 that Ariosto was among the very first writers, or perhaps the first (in the last canto of the Furioso), to use a specular mise-en-abyme, whereby the audience sees itself reflected in

230 Lucia Re

17 18

19

20

21 22 23 24 25

26

the text as if in a mirror and, conversely, the book sees itself reflected in the eyes of the readers it envisions. This type of mise-en-abyme is of course greatly accentuated and multiplied in Se una notte. See Zatti 39 and, for the definition of the Furioso as a quest poem, Carne-Ross 201. In his polite critique of Tzvetan Todorov's theory of the fantastic (which is based on the need of the reader to believe, at least temporarily, in the actual reality of the fantastic events narrated, and therefore limits the fantastic to the 19th century- the century of'belief), Calvino observes: 'In Italian (as originally in French, I think) the words fantasia and fantastico by no means involve this leap on the part of the reader into the emotional flood of the text. On the contrary, they imply a detachment, a levitation, the acceptance of a different logic based on objects and connections other than those of everyday life or the dominant literary conventions ... So we may speak of twentieth-century fantasy, or of the fantasy of the Renaissance. Ariosto's readers were never faced with the problem of believing or explaining. For them ... the pleasure of fantasy lies in the unravelling of a logic with rules or points of departure or solutions that keep some surprises up their sleeves' ('Definitions of Territory' 72). Another trait that Calvino and Ariosto share, and that requires a separate discussion, is their propensity toward self-conscious but unrelieved misogyny. Calvino ackowledges Ariosto's 'attacks' of misogyny in Orlando furioso raccontato, commenting on the episode of Orlando's dragging the corpse of Angelica's dead mare in Furioso 29. The famous 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,' to cite only one other example, with the invention of a fantastic planet that is exactly 'other' than and yet identical to the earth, is in many ways a rewriting of the episode of Astolpho's journey to the moon in the Furioso. One of Victor Shklovsky's ground-breaking works is called The Knight's Move; his Poetics of Prose was published in Italy in 1967. My translation. The prefatory note, and a number of the stories, are unfortunately not included in the English edition. See, e.g., Delia Palma, Le strutture narrative dell' 'Orlando furioso.' See, e.g., 'The Waveres's Tale' and, especially, the note appended to the text in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. Calvino is punning here with the double meaning of both procedere (which means both 'behaviour' and 'going forward' or 'moving forward') and svagato (which etymologically alludes to vagare, or 'to wander' and 'to err'). The parallel between the two plot lines was pointed out by Segre in Esperienze ariostesche, which Calvino must have known.

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27 See Zatti 45 on the metamorphosis of the quest in Ariosto. 28 On this point, and on how Rodomonte's death foreshadows Ruggiero's, outside the boundaries of the poem, see Ascoli.

Bibliography Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso: Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto. Ed. Cesare Segre. Vol. 1. Milan: Mondadori, 1964. - Orlando furioso. Trans. William Stewart Rose. Ed. Stewart A. Baker and A. Bartlett Giamatti. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1968. Ascoli, Albert Russell. Ariosto's Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953. Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Trans, and ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964. Calvino, Italo. Gli amori difficili. Turin: Einaudi, 1958, 1970. - Difficult Loves. Partial trans, of Gli amori difficili, by William Weaver, Archibald Colquhoun, and Peggy Wright. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. - 'Ariosto geometrico.' Per I'Ariosto. Italianistica 3 (1974): 167-8. — II castello dei destini incrociati. Turin: Einaudi, 1973. - The Castle of Crossed Destinies. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. - // cavaliere inesistente. Turin: Einaudi, 1959. — The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount. Trans. Archibald Colquhoun. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. - Le cittd invisibili. Turin: Einaudi: 1972. - Invisible Cities. Trans. William Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. - 'Definitions of Territory: Fantasy.' (1970). In The Uses of Literature. Trans, of Unapietra sopra, by Patrick Creagh. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. 71-3. - Italo Calvino racconta I "Orlando furioso.' Ed. Carlo Minoia. Turin: Einaudi, 1988. - 'La letteratura italiana sulla Resistenza.' // movimento di Liberazione in Italia 1 (1949): 40-6. - Ilibri degli altri. Lettere 1947-1981. Turin: Einaudi, 1991. - 'Main Currents of Italian Fiction Today.' Italian Quarterly 4.13-14 (1960): 3-14. - I nostri antenati. Turin: Einaudi, 1960.

232 Lucia Re - Our Ancestors. London: Seeker and Warburg, 1980. - 'Orlandofurioso'diLudovico Ariosto raccontato da Italo Calvino. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. - Palomar. Turin: Einaudi, 1983. - Mr Palomar. Trans. William Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985. - Taura sul sentiero.' (1946). In Racconti. Turin: Einaudi, 1958. - 'Fear on the Footpath.' In Adam, One Afternoon. Trans. Archibald Colquhoun and Peggy Wright. London: Picador, 1984. 47-53. - 'Piccola antologia di ottave.' (1975). In Perche leggere i dassici. Milan: Mondadori, 1991. 89-95. - Una pietra sopra: Discorsi di letteratura e societd. Turin: Einaudi, 1980. - 'Un progetto di pubblico.' (1974). In Una pietra sopra. 279-81. - Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore. Turin: Einaudi, 1979. - If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Trans. William Weaver. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. - II sentiero dei nidi di ragno. (1947). Turin: Einaudi, 1964. - The Path to the Nest of Spiders. Trans. Archibald Colquhoun. Preface trans. William Weaver. New York: Ecco Press, 1976. - Six Memosfor the Next Millennium. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. - 'La struttura delP'Orlando."' (1974). In Perche leggere i dassici. Milan: Mondadori, 1991. 78-88. - 'The Structure of Orlando furioso.' In The Uses of Literature. Trans, of Una pietra sopraby Patrick Creagh. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982. 162-74. - 'Tre correnti del romanzo italiano.' (1959-60). (Italian version of'Main Currents' [I960]; see n. 15.) In Una pietra sopra. — II visconte dimezzato. Turin: Einaudi, 1952. Caretti, Lanfranco. Ariosto e Tasso. Turin: Einaudi, 1961. Carne-Ross, D.S. 'The One and the Many: A Reading of the Orlando Furioso.' Anon, new series, 3 (1976): 146-219. Ceserani, Remo. 'Due modelli culturali e narrativi nell' Orlando furioso.' Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 161 (1984): 481-98. Delia Palma, Giuseppe. Le strutture narrative dell"Orlando furioso. 'Florence: Olschki, 1984. Ferretti, Gian Carlo. Le capre di Bikini: Calvino giornalista esaggista 1945-1985. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1989. Girard, Rene. Mensonge romantique et verite romanesque. Paris: Grasset, 1961. Gnerre, Francesco. 'Le donne, i cavallier, 1'arme, gli amori...' In Narrare: Percorsi possibili. Ed. Margherita Di Fazio. Ravenna: Longo, 1989. 215-22.

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Javitch, Daniel. 'Cantus Interruptus in the Orlando furioso.' Modern Language Notes 9.1 (1980): 66-80. Parker, Patricia. Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Pavese, Cesare. 'Ilsentiero del nidi di ragno. '(1947). In Saggi letterari. Turin: Einaudi, 1968. 245-7. Petersen, Lene Waage. 'Calvino lettore di Ariosto.' RevueRomane26.2 (1991): 230-46. Re, Lucia. Calvino and the Age of Neorealism: Fables of Estrangement. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. Segre, Cesare. Esperienze Ariostesche. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1966. Weaver, William. 'Calvino: An Interview and Its Story.' In Calvino Revisited. Ed. Franco Ricci. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989. 17-31. Woodhouse, J.R. 'From Italo Calvino to Tonio Cavilla: The First Twenty Years.' In Calvino Revisited. Ed. F. Ricci. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989. 33-51. - Italo Calvino: A Reappraisal and an Appreciation of the Trilogy. Hull: University of Hull Publications, 1968. Zatti, Sergio. // 'Furioso'fra epos e romanzo. Luca: Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore, 1990.

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Contributors

ALESSANDRO BERNARDI is Associate Professor of the History of Cinema at the University of Florence, and has written studies on Kubrick, Kubrick e il cinema come arte del visibile, and on various aspects of the art of filmography, Introduzione alia retorica del cinema and // paesaggio nel cinema italiano. STEFANO BIANCHI teaches in the Linguistic Centre of the University of Florence, and specializes in Renaissance Italian literature. He has published editions of works by Francesco Maria Molza, Ludovico Ariosto, and Veronica Franco, as well as essays and book reviews in literary and linguistics journals. ALBERTO CASADEI is Associate Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Pisa. His principal research is on literature of the sixteenth century (especially Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Tasso), and contemporary poetry and novels (Campana, Montale, Fenoglio). His publications include La strategia delle varianti: Le correzioni storiche del terzo 'Furioso'; II percorso del 'Furioso'; La fine degli incanti: Vicende del poema epico-cavalleresco rinascimentale; Romanzi di Finisterre: Narrazione della guerra e problemi del realismo; La critica letteraria del Novecento. MONICA FARNETTI is Research Fellow at the University of Florence in the Department of Italian, and teaches Italian Literature at the Florence and Northampton campuses of Smith College. She has published studies on Cristina Campo (Tufani 1996) and Anna Maria Ortese (Bruno Mon-

236 Contributors dadori 1998), and has edited the books of Campo, Sotto falso nome (Adelphi 1998), and Ortese, L'infalta sepolta (Adelphi 2000). She is currently working for Adelphi on the edition of the complete works of Ortese (the first volume of the Romanzi was published in 2002), as well as completing the critical edition of the canzoniere of Gaspare Stampa. ROBERTO FEDI is Professor of Italian Literature at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, and Chair of the Department of Comparative Cultures. His publications include studies on Petrarca (F. Petrarcd) and on the lyrical tradition of the sixteenth century (G. Delia Casa, Le rime; La memoria della poesia. Canzonieri, lirici e libri di rime nel Rinascimento); on the relations between literature and figurative arts in the Renaissance (J. da Pontormo, Diario); and on the novel and short story from Boccaccio to Verga (Cultura letteraria esocietd civile nell'Italia unita). ANTONIO FRANCESCHETTI is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Toronto. He is the author of a monograph on Boiardo's Orlando innamorato along with numerous articles on various aspects of Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, and on ItalianCanadian literature and culture. He is the editor of Letteratura italiana e arti figurative, co-edited and co-translated Angelo Beolco's (Ruzzante) Moschetta, and served as editor of Quaderni d'italianistica from 1990 to 1998. DANIEL JAVITCH is Professor of Comparative Literature at New York University. He is the author of Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England and Proclaming a Classic: The Canonization of 'Orlando Furioso.' He has edited the Norton critical edition of B. Castiglione, Book of the Courtier, and is currendy working on a collection of essays on the Orlando furioso. DENNIS LOONEY is Chair of the Department of French and Italian at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published articles on Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and Ovid, among others. His book Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance was nominated finalist for the MLA's Marraro-Scaglione Prize for Italian Literary Studies, 1996-7. He is co-editor (with Deanna Shemek) of the forthcoming Phaethon 's Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara. GIORGIO MASI teaches in the Department of Italian Literature at the University of Pisa. His main research is on Humanistic and Renaissance

Contributors 237 literature: Masuccio Salernitano, Pandolfo Collenuccio (in a monographic study), Boiardo, Ariosto, Guicciardini (as editor of a commentary on his Ricordi}, Machiavelli (in a critical edition of his Arte della guerra), and Anton Francesco Doni. He has also published an essay on Giuseppe Tomasi da Lampedusa's Gattopardo. LUCIA RE is Professor of Italian Literature at UCLA. She is the author of Calvino and the Age of Neorealism and of the forthcoming Women and the Avant-Garde. She is currently working on a study of modernism within Italy and colonial culture in Alexandria, Egypt. ELISSA B. WEAVER is Professor of Italian Renaissance Literature at the University of Chicago. Her academic research includes literary theory, women's literature and culture in the early modern period, especially convent theatre, textual criticism, rhetoric, and prosody. She has edited, with introduction and notes, Beatrice del Sera's Amore di virtu, and is the author of a monographic study of Italian convent theatre from 1480 to 1650, Convent Theater in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women.