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clumsy Gestes ensemble la vie du preulx chevalier Bayard (1525) with the ideal of a knight “sans peur et sans reproche.” It will seize upon the death of Sir Philip Sidney as romantic. It will survive the allegorizing of Spenser. It is the refuge from the industrial age in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. If fighting and politics remain as ugly as in the fifteenth century, Edwin Arlington Robinson will not be the last poet of romance.
Boiardo makes the contrast very explicit.
[The robber replied] “What I am doing every great lord does in your upper world. They make havoc of their enemies in war for aggrandizement and to cut a bigger figure. A single man like me makes trouble for seven, perhaps ten; they rage against ten thousand. And they do still worse than I in that they take what they do not need.” [Said Brandimarte] “It is indeed a sin to take from one’s neighbor as my world does; but when it is done only for the state, it is not evil; it is at least pardonable.” [The robber replied] “A man is more easily pardoned when he frames the charge himself. And I tell you, and make full confession, that I take what I can from any one who can less” (II xix 40)
O Fame, attendant of emperors, nymph so singing great deeds in sweet verse that thou bringest men honor even after death and makest them eternal, where art thou fallen? To sing ancient loves and tell the battles of giants. For the world of this thy time cares no longer for fame or for excellence (II. xxii. 2).
Then with choice rhymes and better verse shall I make combats and loves all of fire Not always shall the time be so out of joint as to drag my mind from its seat. But now my songs are lost. Of little avail to give them a thought while I feel Italy so full of woe that I cannot sing, and hardly can I sigh. To you, light lovers and damsels, who have at heart your noble loves, are written these fair stories flowering from courtesy and valor. They are not heard by those fell souls who make their wars for despite and rage (II. xxxi. 49-50).
The distinctive difference between the two fifteenth-century romancers is that Malory translates; Boiardo rewrites. Malory may contract or expand, adapt or add; but in general he follows what he calls “the French book.” Boiardo, finding the Italian versions vulgarized (tra villani, II. xii. 3), wishes to make the old tradition once more literary. To restore their dignity, he gives the paladins more than
verse. So romance throughout the Renaissance, as before and since, both survived and was changed. It was rehearsed, translated, printed in its medieval forms; and it was shaped to a distinctive Renaissance pattern.
2. SEPARATE ROMANCES
What the presses most readily carried on from the Middle Age was the separate romances that had not been merged in one of the cycles. The old fairy-mistress story told by Jean d’Arras as Mélusine (1387) was printed at Geneva in 1468. Pontus and the Fair Sidoine, translated into German in 1468, was printed in French at Lyon in 1484 and in German at Augsburg in 1548. Amadis of Gaul traveled from Brittany to Spain and Portugal and back to France. The French prose version printed in 1540 and again in 1548,[33] typically romantic in love, adventure, and chivalry, deserved its popularity also by narrative skill. With some lyric dilation of love and an occasional allusion to classical mythology, the style is generally restrained to the narrative purpose. Description, rarely dilated, is often cleverly inwoven. Dialogue adds not only liveliness, but some characterization. Though the simple transitions sound like Malory’s (“Now the author leaves this and returns to the treatment of the child”), this shifting is not frequent; often it does not really interrupt; and generally the composition has distinct narrative sequence. The knighting of Amadis is not merely a scene in a series; it is a situation, prepared and pointed as at once fulfillment and promise. So the complication of the rings (Chapter XI) is carried out before our eyes through suspense to solution.
In such separate romances the Middle Age had advanced the art of verse narrative. Not only in Chaucer’s masterpiece Troilus and Criseyde, but also in the contemporary Gawain and the Green Knight, the story is carried forward in consistent sequence to a distinct issue of character. The Renaissance, though generally it had other preoccupations, caught some of this vigor in the telling of single romances. One of these, loosely related to the Arthurian cycle without ever being embodied, is of Giron; and this was put into Italian
stanzas by Luigi Alamanni (1495-1556). An industrious and capable man of letters,[34] who spent much of his life in France, he was a convinced classicist. His Gyrone il cortese (Paris, 1548; Venice, 1549), though it was written long after Ariosto had secured fame by quite other methods, shows that he felt the obligation of a single story, distinct from a cycle, to keep narrative sequence.
Alamanni’s Dedicatory Epistle, after relating the Arthur stories to history, and mentioning some dozen of the Arthurian heroes, expounds tournaments and the quests of errant knights, and offers his Gyrone, as Caxton offers his Malory, to educate toward true valor. Confessing that he has not always followed his source in detail, he promises later “another new work of poetry made in the ancient style and order and imitating Homer and Vergil ” [This was fulfilled in the last years of his life by his Avarchide ]
The first five books proceed as follows. After preliminary adventures, Gyrone goes to his bosom friend Danain at Malahalto. On news of a tournament they decide to go disguised in black arms (II). But Danain’s wife languishes for love of Gyrone and gains permission to go thither also under escort while the two friends lodge with a hermit. After combats on the way, they arrive at the tournament as Sagramor is victorious in the first jousts The beauty of Danain’s wife arouses the jealousy of the other ladies and the passion of the Greek king Laco His ardor and his threats to seize her are overheard by Gyrone, who courteously rebukes him in a lecture
Further description of the combats at the tournament (III) leads to the final victory of Gyrone and Danain. While Laco still yearns (IV) toward Danain’s wife, a messenger arrives to conduct her to a neighboring castle. Laco parts from Meliadus, as Gyrone from Danain. Thus Laco and Gyrone are left sighing for the same lady in the same forest. They meet, express their admiration of each other, and sleep side by side in the wood
In the morning Laco routs single-handed the lady’s whole escort (V). The lady appealing eloquently to his honor in vain, Gyrone arrives and fells him. While the lady debates with herself whether to reveal her love, and Gyrone is torn by the conflict of his own with his loyalty to Danain, they are irresistibly drawn together. In a flowery mead by a spring they prepare for love. But Gyrone’s lance falling knocks his sword into the spring. When he has retrieved it, he reads as never before its inscription summoning to honor, and turns it in shame on himself. A peasant supervening betrays their sad plight to Laco
Thus the story is brought definitely to a situation of character Obvious as the Renaissance manipulation is in the space given to love, the handling makes this not merely lyric interlude, but story motive. Though Alamanni is unwilling, or unable, to carry this through the 28,000 lines of his twenty-four books, though he often fails to give that salience to critical situations which is evident here, he nevertheless achieves what the Renaissance cyclical romances generally ignored, narrative sequence. All he needed to make his Gyrone shorter, tighter, more compelling, was firmer control of fourteenth-century narrative art.
For a classicist Alamanni is remarkably sparing of the fashionable Renaissance allusions. He does, indeed, use that paganizing phrase which was satirized by Erasmus. “In the consecrated temples, devoutly about the sacrifices in accordance with true example, they listened, adored, and besought the immortal Father”; when Malory would say, “They heard their Mass and brake their fast.” But in spite of many Vergilian similes and of occasional orations to troops, Alamanni’s classicism is not intrusive. Apparently he thought it had small place in romance.
3. THE ARTHURIAN CYCLE IN MALORY
Among Renaissance romances presenting a traditional cycle in medieval form the most distinguished is Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. Caxton’s preface is a manifesto of romance; and his table of contents displays most of the stories that had gradually been brought together by the Middle Age at the Round Table. Between the “enfances” of the first book and the last great battle in the west are Balin and Tristan; that Percival, here called Gareth or Beaumains, who was reared apart in the wildwood; the mighty Lancelot, his mistress the Queen, and Elaine who died for love of him; the quest of the Grail; the traitor Modred. They are not composed in a narrative sequence. Balin, Gareth, Tristan, for instance, remain separate stories. For there is no real connection in Balin’s glimpse of an earlier Grail story not used in Malory’s Grail books, or in Gareth’s coming to Camelot and his knighting by Lancelot. But there is no
confusion. The separate stories are told straightforwardly; the main persons become familiar; and the exposure of Guinevere makes a crisis contributing to the subsequent ruin of the goodly fellowship. The Morte d’Arthur is not merely a series. But its distinction is in style. Malory’s prose follows that medieval habit which may be called pure narrative, the telling of a story singly for its story values. It was not the only medieval narrative habit; nor is he the only fifteenthcentury author to follow it; but it stands out both in contrast to classicism conceived as ornamental dilation and in his own quiet mastery Without parade, without pause for ornament, he maintains a grave simplicity that ranges from homeliness to eloquence. His rhythm—he has little other sentence art—lingers or quickens with the action, and answers the emotion.
Is that knyght that oweth this shelde your love? Yea truly, said she, my love he is God wold I were his love (XVIII xiv)
Than syr Bedwere cryed: “Ah! my lord Arthur, what shal become of me now ye go from me and leve me here allone emonge myn enemyes?” “Comfort thy self,” sayd the kyng, “and doo as wel as thou mayst; for in me is no truste for to truste in. For I wyl in to the vale of Avylyon to hele me of my grevous wounde” (XXI. v).
4. THE CAROLINGIAN CYCLE ON THE STREET
The other cycle, the Carolingian, was popularized in Italy by street story-tellers, who seem to have been, on the piazza before audiences of artisans and shopkeepers, somewhat like the medieval jongleurs before their successive groups of pilgrims. Their narrative art can be only guessed; for it was oral. But the guess is helped by the persistence, even to the present time, of the Carlomagno marionettes. The recital animated by these large puppets—for it is recital, not drama—is of a traditional version called I paladini di Francia, and goes on day after day by mere aggregation, and with many tirades.
5. PULCI
Italian literary manipulation of the Carolingian cycle in verse romances began with Luigi Pulci (1432-1484). His Morgante maggiore (1481, though largely written by 1470)[35] is selective. Though it bulks large with more than 30,000 lines of verse, it does not rehearse the deeds of the paladins by the serial method of installments. At the end of Canto 5 two main stories, Orlando’s and Rinaldo’s, are brought together. At the end of Canto IX, having meantime moved together, the two arrive, with the other persons whom they have picked up on the way, for the relief of Montauban and of Carlomagno at Paris. There is narrative progress from salience to salience. The dialogue is lively. Though it does not amount to characterization, it suffices for speed and for mood.
Said Rinaldo, “Wilt thou be so obtuse as not to look at that damsel? Thou wouldst not be acceptable as a lover ” Said Oliver, “Thou art ever for thy jokes Yonder is something more serious than word-play” (IV 61)
Oliver looked at Rinaldo, hardly able to hold his gaze for weeping, and said: “’Tis true that man cannot hide love and coughing. As thou seest, dear brother, love has caught me at last with his claws. I can no longer hide this desire. I know not what to do, what to decide. Cursed be the day on which I saw her. What am I to do? What dost thou advise?” Said Rinaldo, “Believe me, thou wilt leave this place. Leave the lady, marquis Oliver Our intention was not to yearn, but to find Orlando” (IV 88-90)
The naughty machinations of Malagigi are, indeed, comic interpolations; nothing comes of them; but the machinations of Gano have narrative function. There is hardly any separable description. Love laments are sketched, not dilated. Pulci is interested, and interests us, in his story as a story. To this end he takes a free hand with events. We have the usual paynim siege of Paris or of Montauban, but no attempt to include all the items of tradition. Pulci takes what he wishes and puts it where he wishes.
To call the poem a burlesque is misleading. The incidental farce, as in Boiardo and Ariosto, is rather appeal to Renaissance fondness for the grotesque as contrast. Though Pulci may have wished to pierce the inflation of the Carolingian street tirades, he was too clever to think of holding parody through 30,000 lines. Reducing the
medieval aggregation to an intelligible story, he also, with an art more delicate than burlesque, reduced the style. Turning from both medieval gravity and Renaissance luster, he brought romance down to earth. Oliver falls in love promptly, utterly, and successively. The humor of this in real life Pulci frankly seeks. When two knights dare each other, he renders their speech not as oration, but as homely flyting. He is irreverent in the way of fashionable conversation. But his main object and achievement, as it is not parody, so it is not satire. It is pleasant, often humorous story of familiar antiquated persons in traditional events and setting, but in daylight.
6. BOIARDO
Boiardo, indignant at the degradation of the Carolingian heroes among the vulgar—how did he proceed toward elevation?
Who will give me the voice and the words, and utterance magnanimous and profound? (I xxvii 1)
Till now my song has not ventured far from shore. Now I must enter upon the great deep, to open immeasurable war. All Africa lies beyond that sea; and all the world flashes with men in arms (II. xvii. 2).
The poet seems to nerve himself, as Vergil at the opening of Aeneid VII, for loftier diction. The average Renaissance poet of the next century would invoke the Muses for that “high style” which had come down from classical through medieval rhetoric. But the words of Boiardo’s invocation are not heightened thus; nor is his diction generally. He not only omits the Muses here; he is very sparing with classical allusion throughout.
Book I mentions the Cyclops, Circe, Thyestes, Medusa, the Centaurs, Vulcan, Atalanta, the dragon’s teeth, and Hercules; Book II, a faun, the easy descent to Hades, the god of love, Pasithea, Narcissus, the Laestrigonians and Anthropophagi, the goddess Fame, Arion, and the Sibyl. Hector’s arms are brought in as a piece of medieval derivation from Troy. Classical similes are inserted here and there, as if conscientiously: the meeting of two winds, fire in
grain, a boar or bear at bay, two bulls or two lions. Nor does Boiardo strive for other ornament. His heightening is rather the sheer extravagance of epic brag.
Their blows were heard nearly a mile in the wood (I. iii. 59).
They came with such a battle-cry as made earth tremble, and sky and sea (I. iv. 51).
The moat brimmed with the blood of the slain (I. xi. 32).
Fire came to his heart and his face, and flamed from his helmet. He ground his teeth. His knees so clamped Brigliadoro that the mighty steed sank in the path (I. xv. 19).
The grinding of his teeth could be heard more than a bow-shot (I xv 33)
Otherwise his words are usually as simple as Malory’s. So far, classicism has made no headway in Renaissance verse narrative.
Boiardo’s sentences, as Malory’s, are typically aggregative, sometimes even crude. Instead of tightening a sentence or a stanza, he remains frankly diffuse. Fluent, sometimes slack, he runs on as if orally. His verse is pleasantly varied. Though he hardly ever lets a line end with a down-beat, he freely begins either up or down, or shifts to a dactyl. A stanza rarely runs over; but it is often linked with the next by refrain, as in popular poetry. Here and there the closing line of his octave sounds like an experiment in the direction followed later by Spenser. Inferior in stanza control to Boccaccio and to Ariosto, diffuse, somewhat careless, he is always agreeably and sometimes charmingly fluent.
Yet description, which became a regular Renaissance cue for dilation, Boiardo handles economically. Even where he is conventional he does not dilate; and usually he is both distinct and concise.
That spring was all adorned with white and polished alabaster, and so richly with gold that it shone in the flowery mead (I. iii. 33).
A fair rich palace made of marble polished so smooth as to mirror the whole garden (I viii 2)
Secret gardens of fresh verdure are above on the roofs and hidden on the ground. Gems and gold pattern all these noble and joyous places. Clear springs unstintingly fresh are surrounded by shady thickets Above all, the place has an odor to give oppressed hearts their joy again (I viii 5)
His stories pictured on walls (depintura istoriata) whether fresco or mosaic, have a literary source. They are from the Troy stories pictured on the walls of Dido’s palace in Aeneid II. Boiardo’s briefer rendering may have been suggested by the “epigrams” of the Greek Anthology, or by survivals in southern Italy of such pictures with verse inscriptions. Certainly his palaces and gardens often recall the Norman-Arab art of Sicily. For it is art that he pauses to note oftener than scenery. In all this his classicism is both discreet and artistic. He does not borrow; he adapts.
The larger scene, the field of the traditional struggle of East with West, receives more definite geography. The haze over medieval Ermonie had been often pierced by merchant voyagers. Though there are still the Isole Felice or Lontane, we read now of Aragon and Barcelona, Granada, Toledo, Seville, Valencia, and Gibraltar; of Agrigentum and Mongibello as well as of Sicily at large; of Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes; of Aigues Mortes, Bordeaux, Gascony, Languedoc, Perpignan, and Roussillon; of Damascus, Niniveh, Trebizond, and Tripoli.
The traditional chivalric equality of Saracen knights with Christian, as in Malory, is emphasized.
King Charles the Great with genial face had seated himself among his paladins at the round table Before him were also Saracens, who would not use chair nor bench, but lay like mastiffs on their rugs, scorning the usage of the Franks (I. i. 12-13).
The paynim king Balugante, divining Rinaldo’s irritation at some of his fellow Christians, sends him a courteous and discerning message Saracen knights are armed, titled, respected as are Christian, and mingle with them freely Their bravery is not merely admitted; Rodomonte is a legendary demon of force, and Ruggiero in his pagan days is a pattern of both force and courtesy
The traditional echoes of folklore are repeated. Feraguto’s strength revives when he touches earth. A child stolen in infancy is recognized. Herbs are gathered under a new moon. Ruggiero, as Percival, is brought up beyond sight of arms. There are waters of forgetfulness, a loathly lady waiting to be restored by a kiss, a magic steed, a white hart, a monster adversary transformed, and a retreat under water.
Grotesque interludes, barely touched by Malory, found occasionally elsewhere, and quite regular in Italian popular versions, are not only admitted by Boiardo; they are dwelt upon with evident relish. Thus Rinaldo fights with a giant.
Of no avail the furious assault; of no avail the baron’s nimble skill He could not reach so high Suddenly Rinaldo dismounted and with one bound leapt upon the giant’s croup when he was not looking He knocked his helm and his steel cap to pieces and, redoubling his strokes as if he were hammering iron at the furnace, he split the great head in two Fell the giant with a rush that made the earth shake (I. iv. 64-65).
Orlando leapt even higher, so that again and again he met his giant face to face—in the air. Angelica threw into a monster’s mouth a cake that stuck his teeth together, so that Rinaldo might safely, though with enormous effort, strangle him. Rodomonte bare-headed at sea hears his hair rattle with ice. Astolfo is beguiled to board a whale, and Rinaldo follows, both on horseback.
On Bayard he plunged into the sea after the great fish in desperation. That whale went slowly, slowly; for it is very large and by nature grave (II. xiii. 65).
Marfisa, the woman knight, had her horse stolen and pursued the thief long in vain. The conception is grotesque; the execution, pure farce.
A fortnight had she followed him, nor was fed meantime on aught but leaves The false thief, who was most astute, sped his flight with quite different food For he was so quick and so bold that every tavern he saw he would enter and fall to eating, and then flee without paying his shot
And although the taverners and their waiters were after him with their pitchers and jugs in their hands, off he was, wiping his mouth and grinning (II xv 68-69)
Love, announced in the title Orlando innamorato and frequently asserted, has little more scope in Boiardo than in Malory. Whether the title expresses an original intention abandoned, or an appeal to court ladies, or merely a certain period in the hero’s life, Boiardo’s interest was elsewhere.
Long time Morgan, Alcina, and their magic wiles have kept me waiting; nor have I shown you a good sword-stroke (II. xiv. 1).
The good sword-stroke is what he gives with both hands, even as Malory.
Since the main interest is single combat, and all the fighters, even the Saracens, are memorable, there is a long roll of persons. Of the hundred mentioned in the first five cantos about a third never reappear; few are characterized consecutively; none is consecutively in action for any considerable period. The long poem is frankly a series, not a sequence. Boiardo’s usual method is to carry one of his stories to a crisis, leave it to pick up another, and so on.
Let us now return to Astolfo, who remained, you know, alone at the fountain (I. ii. 17).[36]
As the Carolingian recitals on the piazza, or behind the marionettes, the Orlando innamorato may be entered at almost any point. What is there heard or read is interesting mainly for itself, very little as arising from previous action and characterization or as preparing for what follows. To say, then, that it fuses the two cycles is quite misleading. Boiardo brings in an Arthurian name, Tristan or Lancelot, as simply as he adds another Carolingian. He puts Merlin’s well in the forest of Ardenne. He interpolates Morgan le Fay among the Orlando stories. But fusion, whether of these Arthurians or of his own Carolingians, is not in all his thoughts. He is engaged not in composing the Carolingian story, but in rehearsing the Carolingian stories.
Boiardo’s Orlando, then, is a collection of heroes fighting in the struggle between East and West. Within that frame, as within the frame of Arthur’s Round Table, tradition had collected many stories. Boiardo finds room for them, and even for others quite unrelated. Those of the greatest knights, Orlando, Rinaldo, Oliver, and their ladies and friends, the obligatory stories, he can tell by installments because they are familiar and have been already connected. The others he inserts here and there for variety. Not only does he accept the medieval cyclical aggregation, he ignores the later medieval achievement of narrative sequence in smaller scope through characterization.
A certain Tisbina, who has nothing to do with Charlemagne, is in much the same dilemma as Chaucer’s Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale; and her Iroldo’s response is much the same as that of Dorigen’s Arveragus. Chaucer’s solution is convincing, in spite of impossible marvels, because it is motivated by Dorigen’s character. Boiardo’s solution is inferior because it is quite extraneous and casual. His Tisbina is not characterized sufficiently to motivate the story toward any convincing issue.
Much less is Boiardo concerned to motivate his whole story. His Orlando in love is even removed for long stretches from the great struggle; and Boiardo interrupts both the love and the struggle to tell of Tisbina and Iroldo or insert a fabliau. [37] True, his poem remained unfinished; but evidently he had no idea of making it a coherent whole. His Latin and Greek did not suggest to him the shaping of verse narrative. Discernible in his style, though never intrusive, they do not move his composition; for composition was not his concern. Ignoring alike the medieval progress and Pulci’s narrative cleverness with his own material, he was content with abundant activity, variety, and fluency.
But in another use of the classics he forecast the Renaissance habit of encomium. Ruggiero, legendary ancestor of his Ferrara patrons, brought up in paganism and remote from deeds of arms, is sought by Agramante for his great expedition against the Christian West. Ruggiero’s aged tutor warns Agramante against the ultimate consequences of taking the marvelous youth into France.
Charlemagne, he says, may be defeated, and our pride and courage enhanced;
... but afterward the youth will become Christian, and ah! traitress house of Maganza, which heaven should not tolerate on earth in the end Ruggiero shall have through thee his death.
Would that were the final grief! But his descendants shall remain Christian, and come to honor as great as any the world knows today They shall keep all, all generosity, all courtesy, sweet love and joyous state in a house the flower of the world.
I see Hugo Alberto di Sansogna descend to the Paduan plain, expert in arms, in intellect, in all the ways of glory, generous, noble, and above all humane Hear, ye Italians: I warrant you He who comes with that standard in hand brings with him all your redemption Through him shall Italy be filled with prowess
I see Azzo I and Aldobrandino III, nor know which to call the greater; for the one has killed the traitor Anzolino; the other has broken the Emperor Henry. Behold another Rinaldo paladin. I say no more of him than Lord of Vicenza, of Treviso, of Verona, who strikes the crown from Frederick.
Nature shows forth her treasure Lo! the marquis who lacks no point of honor. Blest the age, and happy they who shall live in a world so free! In his time the golden lilies shall be joined to that white eagle whose home is in heaven; and his domain shall be the flower of Italy from the one fair seacoast to the other.
And if the other son of Amphitryon, who there appears in habit of a duke, has as much mind to seize dominion as he has to follow good and flee evil, all the birds not to say the men who act in this great play would flock to obey him But why should I gaze further into the future? Thou destroyest Africa, King Agramante (II xxi 54-59)
With reminiscence, perhaps, of Dante, this is obviously patterned on Vergil. The historical vision of the house of Este has its model in the vision of the Augustans. Encomium with Boiardo is neither so frequent nor so fulsome as it was to become with Ariosto and with Spenser. Was that, perhaps, one reason for his double eclipse? He was first superseded by Ariosto and then rewritten by Berni.
7. ARIOSTO
The brilliant Orlando furioso (1516) of Ludovico Ariosto (14741533) is one of the most typical verse narratives of the Renaissance, as it was the most popular. More accomplished than Boiardo in diction, verse, and composition, and more responsive to the Renaissance, Ariosto still follows the same serial plan. The two poets differ more in degree than in kind. Both were trained in the classics; both began by writing Latin; both offer romance as inspiring contrast with actuality.
O great hearts of those ancient knights! They were rivals; they differed in religion; they still felt the rude and wicked strokes aching throughout their bodies; and yet through dark woods and crooked paths they went together without distrust (i 22)
[War has been debased through the diabolical invention of artillery (xi. 22-25)]. How foundest thou ever place in human hearts, O invention criminal and ugly! Through thee military glory has been destroyed, through thee the craft of arms dishonored, through thee valor and prowess so diminished that oft the knave seems better than the good soldier.
And though Rinaldo was not very rich in cities or treasure, he was so affable and genial and so prompt to share with them whatever he had that not one of his meinie was drawn away by offer of more gold. A man of Montauban never forsakes it unless great need constrains him elsewhere (xxxi. 57).
O famished, deformed, fierce Harpies, who in blinded and misguided Italy, perhaps as punishment of ancient sins, bring to every table divine judgment! Innocent children and faithful mothers drop with hunger while they see one feast of these foul monsters devour what might have kept them alive [Italy cries] Is there no one of you to free your tables from the filth and the claws ... as the paladin freed that of the Ethiop king? (xxxvi. 1-3).
Encomium with Ariosto becomes pervasive. Animated of course by the personal ends of a court poet, it serves also the literary end of magnificence, the first aspect in which the Renaissance viewed epic.
Who will give me the voice and the words fit for a subject so noble? Who will lend me wings strong enough to attain my lofty conception? Far greater than its customery heat must be the poetic furor in my breast. For
this part I owe my lord, since it sings of the noble line from which he sprang.
Among the illustrious lords issued from heaven to govern the earth, never seest thou, O Phoebus who surveyest the wide earth, a race more glorious in peace or in war, nor any whose nobility has been kept longer, and shall be kept, if that prophetic light which inspires me errs not, so long as the heavens revolve about the pole (iii. 1-2).
The Vergilian vision of Augustan Rome is heard again in Merlin’s prophecy. Epic rolls of honor muster the English warriors, the women of Este, even the painters. Besides these are many incidental references, especially at canto openings.
Of courtesy, of nobility, examples among the ancient warriors were many, and few are there among the moderns But of impious ways enough was seen and heard in that war, Hippolito, whose captured standards thou hast used to adorn our temples, as thou broughtest to thy ancestral shores their captive galleys laden with prey (xxxvi. 2).
The mission of the poet to confer fame, proclaimed by Ariosto and repeated by Ronsard, is also seen in bitter contrast. The speaker is St John the Evangelist.
So worthy men are snatched from oblivion worse than death by poets. O intelligent and wise princes who follow the example of Augustus in making writers your friends, and thus need not fear the waves of Lethe. Poets, as singing swans, are rare, poets not unworthy of the name; for heaven prevents too great abundance of famous ones by the great fault of stingy lords, who by oppressing excellence and exalting vice banish the noble arts We may suppose that God has deprived these ignorant men of their wits and darkens their light of reason in making them shy of poetry, that death may quite consume them For wicked as their ways might be, if only they knew how to win the friendship of Apollo they might rise from their graves in sweeter odor than nard or myrrh.
Aeneas was not so pious, nor Achilles so mighty, as their fame, nor Hector so brave There have been thousands and thousands who might with truth have been put before them; but the palaces or great villas bestowed by their descendants have given them sublime honors without end at the honored hands of writers Augustus was neither so holy nor so benign as sounds the trumpet of Vergil; but his having good taste in poetry
brings him pardon for his unjust proscription. Nor would he who had against him earth and hell have the less fame, perhaps, if he knew how to keep the writers his friends
Homer made Agamemnon victorious, the Trojans cowardly and dull, and Penelope constant to her husband through the thousand persecutions of the suitors. If you wish to uncover the truth, convert the story to its contrary; that the Greeks were routed, Troy the victor, and Penelope a harlot. On the other hand hear how fame leaves Dido, whose heart was so chaste, to be reputed a baggage, only because Vergil was not her friend. Wonder not that I am oppressed thereat, and that I speak of it at such length. I love writers and pay them what I owe; for in your world I too was a writer (xxxv. 22-28).
This strange parenthesis of satire, dubious in its humor, shocking in its irreverence, sounds today like encomium reduced to advertisement. It sounds also like the bitter retort of realism to that fiction of the courtier which was to have literary vogue through Castiglione. Bitter and foul the actual wars of Italy in contrast to old chivalry; but bitter also the trade of those who sing them.
Though often oratorical, Ariosto rarely seeks his magnificence by elaboration of style. He has too much taste, too much concern for popular appeal. He even admits the appeal of the traditional epic brag. Rodomonte alone sacks a city; Grifone throws a knight over the wall; great rocks are hurled from ships; and—triumph of rodomontade—the fragments of a combat fly up to the sphere of fire and come down lighted.
There are a few reminiscences of the Aeneid, fewer of Horace, fewest of Dante and Petrarch. Classical allusion has become a common decoration. Aurora is already obligatory for dawn. Occasionally a classical periphrasis (“Hardly had the Licaonian seed turned her plow through the furrows of heaven” xx. 82) is obscure; or there is incongruity in combining Avernus and the Sibyl with Merlin’s grotto, or the Fates with Death, Nature, and St John. But allusion is neither paraded nor often intruded. Classical similes, much more frequent than with Boiardo, are evidently sought for decoration. They are one of the signs that Ariosto’s time thought of epic in terms of style. But they are used also for vividness; and they range widely.
Besides those drawn conventionally from beasts of prey or from storm, there are many quite sharply individual: wood steaming in a fire, grass ebbing and flowing in the wind, a pile-driver, and a mine cave-in. Ariosto’s decoration is rarely a hindrance, rarely even elaborate. He is easy to read. The bearing of a passage here and there may be dubious because of looseness in the narrative, but never its meaning. He has reconciled dignity with popularity. Instead of posing as literary, he makes his readers feel literary themselves. He puts them at ease in fine company.
In sentence and stanza movement Ariosto has made his poem easy to read by diffuse and various fluency. Writing for entertainment, he uses balance or other word-play only as occasional means of variety. He is neither sententious nor pretentious. His metrical skill, remarkable in range and control, is not put forward for exhibition; it is an accompaniment so flexible to mood as constantly to enhance the connotation. Rarely lengthening the final line of the stanza often using refrain to link stanzas, and sometimes within stanzas, he is most characteristic in making the ottava rima run on not only from line to line, but from stanza to stanza. This fluent ease is by no means impromptu spontaneity. It is the work of ten years. His diffuseness, then, is not carelessness; it is adjustment alike to the immediate audience of the court and to the increasing readers of the press.
Especially significant, therefore, is his handling of description. His landscape is often both brief and conventional.
Winsome thickets of pleasant laurel, of palms and gayest myrtle, of cedar, of orange with fruit and flowers woven in forms most various and all beautiful, make a refuge from the fervid heat of summer days with their thick parasols; and among these branches in safe flight nightingales go singing
Among the purpled roses and the white lilies, which the warm air keeps ever fresh, rabbits and hares are seen at peace, and deer, heads high and proud, without fear that any one may kill or take them, feed or chew their cud at rest. Swift and nimble leap the harts and goats that abound in those country places (vi. 21-2).
But he has a way of animating convention with a sharp word of his own.
When the trembling brooks (trepidi ruscelli) began to loosen the cold ice in their warm waves (xii. 72).
Architecture and decoration often remain generalized, or offer few details. Ampler is pageantry.
With triumphal pomp and great festivity they return together into the city, which is green with branches and garlands. All the streets are hung with tapestries. A shower of herbs and flowers spreads from above and falls upon and around the victors, cast in handfuls from loggias and fair windows by ladies and damsels
In various places where they turn a corner they find improvised arches and trophies displaying pictures of the ruins and fires of Biserta and other worthy deeds; elsewhere, balconies with divers games and spectacles and mimes and plays; and at every corner is inscribed the true title: To the Liberators of the Empire.
With sound of shrill trumpets and mellow clarinets, with harmony of every instrument, mid laughter and applause, joy and favor of the people, who could hardly come close enough, the great Emperor dismounted at the palace, where several days that company stayed to enjoy itself with tournaments, personnages and farces, dances and banquets (xliv. 32-34).
This is a preciously distinct picture of actual Renaissance pageantry. More vividly detailed is the funeral of Brandimarte. Even these, however, are not dilated. They are appropriate to their narrative function. The long descriptive summary of Astolfo’s journey through the Valley of the Moon is an interlude of satire; and Orlando’s battle with the monster Orc is pure grotesque. He rows into the Orc’s mouth, casts anchor there, and, when the monster plunges, tows him ashore. Moreover, both these are narrated; neither is a descriptive pause.
Ariosto does pause, however, to dilate description of the beauty of women. Seven stanzas enumerate the charms of the enchantress Alcina (vii. 10-16).
The fair palace excelled not so much in surpassing the richness of every other as in having the most delightful folk in the world and the noblest. Little did one differ from another in flowered age and in beauty; only Alcina was most beautiful of all, as the sun is more beautiful than any star
In person she was as well formed as the industry of painters can imagine: her blond hair long and tressed; gold is not more splendid and lustrous. Rose mingled with hawthorn white spread over her delicate cheek. Of polished ivory was her joyous forehead, and of just proportion.
Beneath two black and fine-spun brows are two black eyes, as two clear suns, sympathetic in gaze, frugal in movement, about which Love seems to sport and fly, and from which he empties his quiver and visibly steals hearts. Thence descends a nose in which Envy herself could find no fault.
Beneath this, as between two valleys, the mouth besprent with native cinnabar, wherein are two rows of choice pearls, enclosed or opened by fair, sweet lips, whence issues speech of courtesy fit to soften even a base heart, and whence rises the winsome laughter that brings paradise to its place on earth [and so on for three more stanzas]
This is the conventional description called by the Middle Age blason. It is used again for Olimpia bound to the rock, where the situation itself is conventional. A bit of very old folklore, and coming down also through classical mythology as Perseus and Andromeda, it was a commonplace for dilation.
But what Ariosto dilates oftenest is emotion. His characteristic pauses are lyric. Thus he interpolates the medieval compleint d’amour not only again and again, but for long exhalations. Bradamante alone utters a whole series of these laments. The second begins as follows:
Then shall it be true (said she) that I must seek him who flees me and hides? Then must I prize him who scorns me? Must I implore him who never answers me? Shall I endure to hold at heart him who hates me, who thinks his qualities so rare that an immortal goddess must descend from heaven to kindle his heart with love?
In his pride he knows that I love him, that I adore him; nor will he of me for lover nor for slave. In his cruelty he knows that I yearn and die for him; and he waits till after death to give me help. And lest I tell him of my martyrdom, fit to move even his stubborn will, he hides himself from me, as the asp who to keep her venom refuses to hear the charm.
Ah! Love, stay him who hastes so free beyond my slow running, or restore me to the state whence thou hast taken me, when I was subject neither to thee nor to any other Alas! how deceitful and foolish is my hope that ever prayers should move thee to pity! For thou delightest to draw streams of tears from our eyes; nay, thereon thou feedest and livest (xxxii 18-20)
Substantially the same is the famous madness of Orlando. Though Ariosto cleverly gives it narrative enough to relieve its prolongation through twenty-five stanzas, it is a dilated lyric interlude.
The art that dilates these lyrics is rhetoric. Thus they answer not only the learning, but the taste of the Renaissance. With Alcina’s charms and Olimpia’s, they were the favorite passages of the Pléiade. Ronsard, using them often, was especially fond of Orlando’s madness. Beyond the Pléiade, they open a long vista toward Italian opera. To look the other way, back to the Middle Age, is to meet the sharp contradiction of Dante. Paolo and Francesca, or Ugolino, is the poetic antithesis to Bradamante and Orlando.
Such dilated interludes would interrupt any progress of the whole story; and they are not the only interpolations. Traditionally the cyclical romances might pause to add incidental stories, usually told by errant damsels seeking help. Ariosto inserts these freely, and quite as freely others having even less relevance. The story of Ginevra, Ariodante, and Polinesso (Canto V), for instance, though it falls among Rinaldo’s adventures, has its own intrigue and motivation. Equally separable, the fabliau of Fiammetta is told for sex, and prolonged by appended dialogue and comment. “Ladies,” it begins, “and you who hold ladies in esteem, for heaven’s sake give no ear to this story.... Omit this canto; for my story needs it not and will be no less clear without it.” Evidently Ariosto has not planned his cantos as chapters.
A mere glance through the summaries prefixed to each canto will show that the many interruptions are not breaks in the sequence of the whole. There is no such sequence. The poem is a collection of parallel stories taken up in turn, and only thus combined, not
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