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The Imitation of Imitations in Orlando Furioso

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Daniel Javitch
Daniel Javitch*
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Extract

Recent commentary on poetic imitation in the Renaissance has tended to emphasize competition, to value kinds of imitation that strive to surpass their models, and therefore to disregard or even deprecate modes of imitation that seem to consist of little more than respectful duplications. It has too readily assumed that imitative poets can only achieve originality by defying or somehow asserting their difference from their models. In the following essay I seek to challenge such assumptions by examining the practice of a major Renaissance poet who managed to assert his modern voice through imitatio while refusing to engage in competitive struggle. I do not mean to suggest that Renaissance poets were not given to competitive imitation. For purposes of subsequent contrast it is worth considering rapidly why emulation frequently did characterize the imitative practice of some of these poets.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , Summer 1985 , pp. 215 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1985

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References

1 Quintilian, Institutio Oratorio. X.2.9-10. “Seel etiam qui summa non appetent, contendere potius quam sequi debent. Nam qui hoc agit ut prior sit, forsitan, etiamsi non transierit, aequabit. Eum vero nemo potest aequare, cuius vestigiis sibit utique insistendum putat; necesse est enim semper sit posterior qui sequitur.” See Pigman, G. W. III, “Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly, 33 (1980), 1–32, esp. pp. 16-32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I use Pigman's English translation of the passage from Quintilian.

2 Greene, Thomas M., The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, 1982)Google Scholar. Greene discusses the relation between the growing sense of anachronism and the four imitative strategies of Renaissance poets in Chapter 3 (pp. 28—53). F ° r his comments on “dialectical” imitation, see pp. 45-47. It should be said that Greene's four types of imitation are kept distinct from aemulatio which he avoids as a critical term because of its “psychologistic tincture” (p. 59).

3 Here and henceforth I cite from Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso, a cura di Emilio Bigi (2 vols.; Milan, 1982)Google Scholar.

In the prose translation of Guido Waldman (Oxford, 1974) which I will cite henceforth the passage reads: “As a purple flower fades and dies if the ploughshare has severed it in passing; or as a poppy in a meadow hangs its head if it be weighed down with overmuch moisture; so, as all colour drained from Dardinel's face, he departed this life.“

4 ”… and his drooping neck sinks on his shoulder: as when a purple flower, severed by the plough, drops in death; or as poppies, with weary neck, bow the head, when weighted by some chance shower.” Translated by H. R. Fairclough (Cambridge, Mass., 1934). All subsequent translations of the Latin poetry are drawn from the Loeb Classical Library Series.

5 As Ariosto avows to Bembo in his Sixth Satire (lines 169ff.) he never found the occasion to learn Greek nor to become familiar with the Greek poets. Like other contemporaries who lacked Greek he read Homer in Latin. The printed Latin version of the Iliad available to him was Lorenzo Valla's translation (of Books I-XVI) first published in 1474. I cite from Homeri Poetae Clarissimi Mas per Laurentium Valleiisem Romanum e Graeco in Latinum translata … . (Venice, 1502), fol. xxxiiiv.

6 Those readers who may have needed help recognizing his models could turn to printed commentaries on Ariosto's imitations that began appearing in editions of the Furioso as early as 1542. The first such commentaries (for example Lodovico Dolce's) tended to identify a single model or source for a given passage in the Italian poem, but as more annotated editions appeared after the middle of the century the multiplicity of models imitated in particular episodes became recognized increasingly. The commentary that accounts most fully for Ariosto's practice of imitating several models at once is Alberto Lavezuola's appended to the 1584 edition of the Furioso published in Venice by Francesco dei Franceschi: Osservationi del Sig. Alberto Lavezuola, sopra il Furioso di M. Lodovico Ariosto, Nelle quali si mostrano tutti i luoghi imitati dall'Autore nel suo Poema. Though I am sure that discerning readers before him were aware of it, Lavezuola is the first commentator to point out that Ariosto's double simile for the death of Dardinello is modelled not only on Virgil's simile but also on Virgil's models in Catullus and Homer. See his Osservationi on Canto XVIII (fol. 15v).

Modern commentators (e.g. C. Segre and E. Bigi) refer to one other Latin model for Ariosto's second simile to explain his use of “ne l'orto,” namely Ovid's similar comparison for the death of Hyacinth (Metamorphoses X. 189-95).

7 Aside from similes there are other imitations of imitations on a small scale that I do not include in my discussion, for instance passages that rarely take up more than two octaves in a particular episode. A good example is the account in Canto VII of Ruggiero's eager anticipation of his first night in bed with Alcina. The stanza describing his impatient waiting for her to come up to his bedroom (VII. 24) imitates Ovid's account of Hero awaiting her lover Leander in Heroides XIX.53-54, a passage which itself echoes Tibullus I.8.65-66, and which Ariosto also alludes to in his description of Ruggiero.

8 Medoro's prayer to the moon to shed light on the battlefield so that Dardinello's body can be recognized (Orlando Furioso XVIII. 184) imitates Dymas’ similar prayer for moonlight to reveal where his chief lies among the dead on the battlefield (Thebaid X. 365-70). Ariosto's simile comparing Cloridano seeking to rescue Medoro from the foes surrounding him to a lioness defending her cubs (Orlando Furioso XIX. 7) is also closely modelled on the simile Statius uses to describe Dymas’ final stand against the enemy (Thebaid X.414-19).

9 Orlando Furioso di M. Lodovico Ariosto … . (Venice, 1567). Dolce makes this general observation at the end of Canto XVIII in reference to st. 165ff. [It] ”… seems to be taken from Virgil's [account of] Nisus and’ Euryalus in the ninth of the Aeneid; nonetheless it is perhaps more similar to that of Hopleus and Dymas in Statius’ tenth book; which can be seen from the main objective of Medoro and Cloridano who go out to retrieve the body of their king, as Hopleus and Dymas do with theirs; something which does not occur in the story of Nisus and Euryalus.”

10 For modern commentary on Ariosto's use of and departures from Virgil and Statius in the Cloridano and Medoro episode, see Rajna, Pio, Le fonti dell’ “Orlando Furioso” (Florence, 1900 2)Google Scholar; Saccone, Eduardo, “Cloridano e Medoro, con alcuni argomenti per una lettura del primo Furioso ,” Modern Language Notes, 83 (1968), 67–99 Google Scholar; Moretti, W., “La storia di Cloridano e Medoro,” Convivium, 37 (1969), 543-51Google Scholar; Emilio Bigi's comento in his edition of O.F., I, 789-807.

11 Lodovico Dolce makes this observation in his Brieve Dimoslratione di molte comparationi et senlenze dall’ Ariosto in diversi autori imitate which first appeared as an appendix to Orlando Furioso di M. Ludovico Ariosto…. (Venice, 1542), and was reprinted in most of the twenty-eight editions of the Furioso published by Giolito between 1542 and 1560, as well as in other mid-century editions. “This fiction of Olimpia left alone on the island by ungrateful Bireno is the same as Ariadne abandoned by Theseus; therefore whoever wishes to see how well and successfully Ariosto could imitate and make use of others’ writing, should read all of Ovid's epistle: the one that Ariadne writes to Theseus.“

12 “Neither waking nor asleep, Olympia reached out to embrace Bireno, but in vain. / She found nobody. She withdrew her hand. Again she tried: still nothing. She swept one arm this way, the other arm that; she reached out first with one leg then with the other: nothing.”

13 Here and henceforth I cite from Ouidius Naso, P., Heroides, ed. Arthur Palmer (Oxford, 1898)Google Scholar. I am indebted to Emilio Bigi's careful record of Ariosto's imitation of Heroides X (and also of Catullus 64) in the notes to his edition of the Furioso, pp. 402-412. “Half waking only, languid from sleep, I turned upon my side and put forth hands to clasp my Theseus—he was not there! I drew back my hands, a second time I made essay, and o'er the whole couch moved my arms—he was not there!” Translated by Grant Showerman (Cambridge, Mass., 1914).

14 “She tore her hair and beat her breast and strained her eyes, the moon still being up, to see whether anything could be made out beyond the shore—but she could see nothing, only the shore. She called ‘Bireno,’ and at his name the sympathetic caves echoed'Bireno.’ “

15 “The moon was shining; I bend my gaze to see if aught but shore lies there. So far as my eyes can see, naught do they find but shore … . And all the while I cried out ‘Theseus!’ along the entire shore, and the hollow rocks sent back your name to me; as often as I called out for you, so often did the place itself call out your name.”

16 In fact, when Lavezuola comments on Olimpia abbandonala in his Osservationi of 1584 (fol. 9V), he stresses Ariosto's imitation of Catullus 64 more than his imitation of Heroides X.

17 The most recent study I refer to is Florence Verducci's Toyshop of the Heart: Ovid's Heroides, to be published by Princeton University Press. For her discussion of Heroides X as a parody of Catullus 64 see chapter 6, “Ariadne in Extremis.” It is difficult to ascertain whether Ariosto recognized Ovid's parodic intention in this case but, as I have shown elsewhere, Ariosto fully appreciated and was inspired by Ovid's playful treatment of ancient myths. See my “Rescuing Ovid from the Allegorizers,” Comparative Literature, 30 (1978), 97-107.

18 “A rock rose by the water's edge, which the regular action of the waves had eaten away at the base so that it arched out over the sea. Olympia swiftly scaled it (for her agitation lent her strength) and she saw the billowing sails of her cruel lord receding into the distance.“

19 “And now would she sadly climb the rugged mountains, thence to strain her eyes over the waste of ocean tide.” Translation by F. W. Cornish (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).

20 “There was a mountain, with bushes rising here and there upon its top; a cliff hangs over from it, gnawed into by deep-sounding waves. I climb its slope—my spirit gave me strength … . From there—for I found the winds cruel, too—I beheld your sails stretched full by the headlong southern gale.“

21 “What shall I do? What can I do here all by myself? Who will help me, alas, who will comfort me? / I see no man here, nor any sign to show that men live here. No ship do I see which might offer me some hope of escape. I shall die of privation, and there shall be no one to close my eyes or give me burial, if the wolves that inhabit these forests do not first devour me. / O what fear! I seem already to see bears and lions coming out of these woods, and tigers and beasts armed by Nature with sharp fangs and claws to rend me.“

22 “For wither shall I return, lost, oh lost? on what hope do I lean?… Shall I hope for the aid of my father?—whom I deserted of my own will, to follow a lover dabbled with my brother's blood, … and here too is naught but the shore, with never a house, a desert island; no way to depart opens to me; about me are the waters of the sea; no means of flight, no hope; all is dumb, all is desolate; all shows me the face of death.” And: “And for this I shall be given to beasts and birds to tear as a prey; my corpse shall have no sepulture, shall be sprinkled with no earth.”

23 “What am I to do? Whither shall I take myself—I am alone, and the island untilled. Of human traces I see none; of cattle, none.“

24 See Heroides X. 83-86:

I am iam venturos aut hac aut suspicor iliac,

Qui lanient avido viscera dente, lupos;

Forsitan et fulvos tellus alat ista leones;

Quis scit an haec saevas in insulas tygres.

The last line is the variant usually printed in fifteenth-century editions of the Heroides I have consulted.

25 Ludovico Ariosto, Commedie, a cura di A. Carsella, G. Ronchi, E. Varasi in Tutte le Open, a cura di Cesare Segre (Milan, 1974), IV, 197. “The author confesses that in this he has followed both Plautus and Terence … . He has done so because he wants to imitate 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 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.” Translated by E. M. Beame and L. G. Sbrocchi (Chicago and London, 1975), p. 53.

26 The reader is quite often left to recall the receding genealogy of Ariosto's epic similes. For instance, consider the simile that describes Orlando's restlessness when he is first introduced in Canto VIII tossing and turning in his bed, worrying about the fate of his departed Angelica:

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 l'afferma mai:

qual d'acqua chiara il tremolante lume,

dal sol percossa o da’ notturni rai,

per gli ampli tetti va con lungo salto

a destra et a sinistra, e basso et alto.

Orlando Furioso VIII. 71.

A reader familiar with the Aeneid will, first of all, recognize that this simile imitates the one Virgil uses to describe Aeneas’ worry and sleeplessness on the eve of the war against Turnus:

atque animum nunc hue celerem nunc dividit illuc

in partisque rapit varias perque omnia versat,

sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumne aenis

sole repercussum aut radiantis imagine lunae

omnia pervolitat late loca, iamque sub auras

eregitur summique ferit laquearia tecti.

Aeneid VIII. 20-25

But, in addition, the literate reader may recall that Ariosto also alludes indirectly to the simile that had served as Virgil's model: the similar comparison to flickering light that Apollonius Rhodius uses in the Argonautka (3.7563ff.) to describe Medea's restless thoughts on the eve of Jason's ordeal with the bulls. Whether or not the reader was familiar with Apollonius’ simile, he would know from the commentaries accompanying the Aeneid (e.g. Servius’ reference to it) that Virgil's simile was as “borrowed” as Ariosto's. Kristen Murtaugh discusses the genealogy of the simile describing the sleepless Orlando in Ariosto and the Classical Simile (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), pp. 90-93. She proposes that Ariosto could have known a Latin version of the Argonautka and imitated Apollonius’ simile as well as Virgil's in O.F. VIII. 71. In my opinion Apollonius’ simile remains an implicit rather than an explicit subtext.

27 “As some valiant beast, hunted through the woodlands of Numidia or African Massilia, displays its nobility even in retreat, and withdraws, slow and menacing, into the heart of the forest: thus was Rodomont—hemmed in by this weird, bristling forest of spears and swords and flying arrows, he did nothing to debase himself, but withdrew towards the river with long slow strides / Yet three times anger spurred him to plunge into the fray from which he had retired, and steep his sword once more in blood, dispatching upward of a hundred souls. Finally, though, reason mastered passion, bidding him refrain before the Almighty grew disgusted. Wiser counsel prevailing, he threw himself from the bank into the river and escaped from peril.”

28 I cite from The Aeneid of Virgil, ed. R. D. Williams (London, 1972). “All the more fearlessly the Teucrians press on him with loud shouts and mass their ranks—as when a crowd with levelled spears beset a savage lion: but he, affrighted, yet fierce and glaring angrily, gives ground, and neither wrath nor courage lets him turn his back, nor yet, fain though he be, can he make his way through hunters and through spears. Even thus Turnus in doubt retraces his unhurried steps, his heart seething with rage. Nay, even then twice had he attacked the foe, twice he drove them in flying rout along the walls: but the whole host hastily gathers in a body from the camp … . Therefore, neither with shield nor sword-arm can the soldier hold his own; with such a hail of darts is he overwhelmed on all sides. Round his hollow temples the helmet echoes with ceaseless clash; the solid brass gapes beneath the rain of stones; the horsehair crest is rent from the head, and the shield's boss withstands not the blows: the Trojans and Mnestheus himself, with lightning force, launch a storm of spears. Then o'er all his body flows the sweat and runs in pitchy stream, nor has he breathing space; and a sickly panting shakes his wearied limbs. Then at length, with headlong leap, he plunges in full armour into the river.”

29 Macrobius, Saturnalia VI. 3. In the original the opening statement reads: “Sunt quaedam apud Virgilium, quae ab Homero creditur trantulisse, sed ea doccbo a nostris auctoribus sumpta, qui priores haec ab Homero in carmina sua transtulerant.”

30 I cite from the Opera di Publio Papinio Stazio, a cura di A. Traglia e G. Arico (Turin, 1980). “Perhaps too Euryalus will not spurn his comrade shades, and the glory of Phrygian Nisus will welcome them.” Statius’ reverent stance toward Virgil is reaffirmed in the final address to his book: “Vive, precor; nee tu divinam Aeneida tempta, / sed longe sequere e vestigia semper adora.”

31 I do not mean to suggest that Ariosto never resorts to parody in his imitations of famous precursors. Elsewhere I propose that Astolfo's adventures in hell and his ascent to the moon in Canto 34—a parodic rewriting of Dante's Commedia—was inspired by Ovid's version of the Aeneid in Metamorphoses XIII and XIV. See my article “The Orlando Furioso and Ovid's Revision of the Aeneid,” Modern Language Notes, 99 (1984), 1023-1036. However, I also maintain that when Ariosto resorts to such parody he does so not in order to undercut or belittle his precursor's achievement but to enact his belief that there are no authoritative or definitive versions of a story or of an historical or mythical event and that all poetic versions, no matter how sanctified they become, are subject to subsequent revision.

32 “If a log with but a soft core of pith is placed in the fire, it starts to whine, because the intense heat consumes the vaporous air inside it, and it sizzles noisily so long as the vapour forces a way out. Just so, the damaged myrtle moaned and hissed in vexation.“

33 Alighieri, Dante, La Divina Commedia, a cura di Natalino Sapegno (Florence, 1955), I, 148-49Google Scholar. “As a green brand that is burning at one end drips from the other and hisses with the escaping wind, so from the broken splinter came forth words and blood together;” Translated by John D. Sinclair (New York, 1961).

34 As Emilio Bigi observes in his note to Orlando Furioso VI.28 (I, 273): “Per tutta la stanza cfr. Filocolo V 6,3 dove il pino in cui è trasformato Idalagos, colpito da un dardo scagliato da Filocolo, si rivolge a lui ‘con doloroso voce', dicendo: ‘O miserabili fad, io no meritai la pena che io porto, e voi non contenti ancora mi stimolate con punture mortali.’ “ See also Ariosto, L., Orlando Furioso, a cura di Cesare Segre (Milan, 1976), p. 1285 Google Scholar. To my knowledge, Alberto Lavezuola's 1584 commentary is the first to recognize that Boccaccio's Filocolo is one of Ariosto's models in this episode. But first he proposes that Ariosto was also modelling himself on Ovid's account of Erysichton's wounding of Ceres’ sacred oak in Metamorphoses VIII. 758-61, 770-73: “La favola poi del Mirto, che stride, e si corruccia per l'offesa fattagli allude alia quercia, ch'Erisittone appresso Ovidio nell'ottavo delle Trasformationi taglio nel bosco di Cerere

Contremuit, gemitumque; dedit decidua quercus

Etpoi

Editus et medio sonus est de robore talis.

Anchor che habbia poi più evidentemente, inquanto al servirsi delle parole, & delle forme del dire imitato il Boccaccio nel 6. del Filocopo [sic] nel descrivere la fonte di Fileno, che si tramuto in quella.” Osseruationi, p. 6.

35 Giovanni Boccaccio, Filocolo, a cura di A. E. Quaglio in Tuttle le Opere (Milan, 1967), I, 555. Subsequent passages in Boccaccio's account of Idalagos echo Dante's Inferno XIII. For example: “Soffio per la vermiglia piaga alquanto il tronco, e poi il sui soffiare convertendo in parole cosi rispose.” (p. 556), recalls Infemo XIII.91-92: “Allor soffio il tronco forte, e poi / si converti quel vento in cotal voce.” Idalagos’ language also betrays the same rhetorical convolutions that appear in Pier della Vigna's speeches.

36 “If he could have believed before … what he had never seen but in my lines, he would not have stretched forth his hand against thee; but the thing being incredible made me prompt him to the deed which grieves myself.“

37 I am indebted to Teodolinda Barolini for making me more aware of the ways Dante undercuts Virgil's authority not only in Purgatorio but already in the Inferno, and especially in Canto XIII. See her Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton, 1984), especially Chapter III. For further discussion of Dante's relationship to Virgil in the Commedia, see Robert Hollander, Il Virgilio Dantesco (Florence, 1983); and “Tragedy in Dante's Comedy,” Sewanee Review, 91 (1983), 240-60.