Why Read the Classics?

by Italo Calvino

  [1974]

  Brief Anthology of

  Octaves from Ariosto

  On this, the 500th anniversary of Ariosto’s birth, I have been asked what the Orlando Furioso has meant for me. But saying where, how and how much my predilection for this poem has left traces in my writings would force me to go back to work already done, whereas the Ariostan spirit for me has always meant thrusting forward, not turning back. In any case, I feel that such evidence of my predilection is so obvious that the reader will find it unaided. I prefer to use the opportunity to go through the poem again, and to attempt to select a personal anthology of octaves, guided both by memory and by chance reading.

  The quintessence of Ariosto’s spirit lies for me in the lines which introduce a new adventure. On several occasions, this situation is signalled by a boat approaching a riverbank on which the hero happens to be (9.9):

  Con gli occhi cerca or questo lato or quello

  lungo le ripe il paladin, se vede

  (quando né pesce egli non è, né augello)

  come abbia a por ne l’altra ripa il piede:

  et ecco a sé venir vede un battello,

  su le cui poppe una donzella siede,

  che di voler a lui venir fa segno;

  né lascia poi ch’arrivi a terra il legno.

  (The knight was searching with his eyes the whole riverbank to find some way (since he was neither fish nor bird) to cross to the opposite bank, when suddenly he saw a boat coming towards him, with a woman sitting at its stem gesturing that she wanted to come to him, but without letting the boat reach the bank.)

  A study which I would like to have carried out, and which, if I do not manage it, someone else can do in my place, concerns this situation: a seashore or riverbank, a person on the bank, a boat a little way off, bringing news or an encounter which will initiate the new adventure. (Sometimes the situation is reversed: the hero is on the boat and the encounter is with someone on land.) A survey of the passages which contain similar situations would culminate with an ottava of purely verbal abstraction that amounts almost to a limerick (30.10):

  Quindi partito venne ad una terra

  Zizera detta, che siede alio stretto

  di Zibeltarro, o vuoi Zibelterra,

  che l’uno o l’altro nome le vien detto;

  ove una barca che sciogliea da terra

  vide piena di gente da diletto

  che solazzando all’aura mattutina,

  gía per la tranquillissima marina.

  (Leaving this place, he came to a land known as Algeçiras, which lies at the Straits of Gibraltar, or if you prefer Gibalterre, since both names are used of the place; there he saw a boat setting sail, full of people bent on relaxation, enjoying the morning breeze and cutting through the calmest of seas.)

  This brings me to another research topic I would like to investigate, but which has already been studied: place-names in the Furioso, which always carry with them a hint of the nonsensical. It is above all English place-names that supply the verbal material with which Ariosto most enjoys playing, thus qualifying him for the title of the earliest Anglophile in Italian literature. In particular one could illustrate how names with exotic sounds set in motion a mechanism of exotic images. For instance, in the heraldic puzzles of canto 10 we find visions like those in the style of Raymond Roussel (10.81):

  Il falcon che sul nido i vanni inchina,

  porta Raimondo, il conte di Devonia.

  Il giallo e il negro ha quel di Vigorina;

  il can quel d’Erba; un orso quel d’Osonia.

  La croce che là vedi cristallina,

  è del ricco prelato di Battonia.

  Vedi nel bigio una spezzata sedia:

  è del duca Ariman di Sormosedia.

  (The falcon lowering its wings over the nest is worn by Raymond, Count of Devon. The or and sable crest belongs to the Earl of Winchester; the dog to the Earl of Derby; the bear to the Earl of Oxford. The crystalline cross you see there is that of the rich Bishop of Bath. And that broken chair you see against the grey background belongs to Duke Hariman of Somerset.)

  Talking of unusual rhymes, I cannot omit canto 32 stanza 63, in which Bradamante moves from the world of African place-names to the winter storms which envelop the Queen of Iceland’s castle. In a poem which generally has a stable climate like the Furioso, this episode — which opens with the most dramatic drop in temperature found in the space of a single octave — stands out for its rainy atmosphere:

  Leva al fin gli occhi, e vede il sol che ‘l tergo

  avea mostrato alie città di Boceo,

  e poi s’era attuffato, come il mergo,

  in grembo alia nutrice oltr’a Marocco:

  e se disegna che la frasca albergo

  le dia ne’ campi, fa pensier di sciocco;

  che soffia un vento freddo, e l’aria grieve

  pioggia la notte le minaccia o nieve.

  (Finally she looks up and sees that the sun has now gone behind King Bocchus’ Mauritanian cities, and then plunged itself, like some diving bird, into the bosom of the all-nourishing sea beyond Morocco; but if she thinks that she will find shelter enough sleeping out in the open brushwood, this is a foolish thought: for a cold wind is blowing, and the air is heavy, threatening rain or snow by nightfall.)

  The most complicated metaphor belongs, I would say, to the register of Petrarchan love-lyric, but Ariosto injects into it all his need for dynamic motion, so that this ottava seems to me to hold the record for maximum spatial dislocation in describing a character’s feelings:

  Ma di che debbo lamentarmi, ahi lassa,

  fuor che del mio desire irrazionale?

  ch’alto mi leva, e sí nell’aria passa,

  ch’arriva in pane ove s’abbrucia l’ale;

  poi non potendo sostener, mi lassa

  dal ciel cader: né qui finisce il male;

  che le rimette, e di nuovo arde: ond’io

  non ho mai fine al precipizio mio.

  (But alas, what should I blame except my irrational desire? It lifts me so aloft, and flies so high in the sky that it reaches the sphere of fire which scorches its wings; then unable to bear me up, it drops me from the sky. But this is not the end of my ordeal, for it sprouts wings anew, and is burned again, so there is never any end to my rise and fall.)

  I have not yet exemplified an erotic ottava, but the most outstanding examples are all too well known; and if I wanted to choose something less predictable, I would end up fixing on something rather heavy. The truth is that in the most sexually charged moments Ariosto, a true inhabitant of the Po valley, loses his touch and the tension goes. Even in the episode with the most subtle erotic effects, the canto of Fiordispina and Ricciardetto (canto 25), the finesse resides more in the story and its overall frisson than in any isolated stanza. The best I can do is to cite a proliferation of limbs intertwined like something in a Japanese print:

  Non con piú nodi i flessuosi acanti

  le colonne circondano e le travi,

  di quelli con che noi legammo stretti

  e colli e fianchi e braccia e gambe e petti.

  (Winding acanthus never surrounded columns and rafters with more knots than those with which we tightly bound our necks and sides and arms and legs and breasts.)

  The truly erotic moment for Ariosto is not so much one of fulfilment as one of anticipation, of initial trepidation, of foreplay. That is when he reaches the heights. The undressing of Alcina is very famous but never fails to leave the reader breathless (7.28):

  ben che né gonna né faldiglia avesse;

  che venne awolta in un leggier zendado

  che sopra una camicia ella si messe,

  bianca e suttil nel piú escellente grado.

  Come Ruggier abbracciò lei, gli cesse

  il manto; e restò il vel suttile e rado,

  che non copria dinanzi né di dietro,

  piú che le rose o i gigli un chiaro vetro.

  (but she wore no skirt or petticoat; instead she came clothed i
n a light silk wrap which she had put over a shift that was white and transparent and of the highest quality. As soon as Ruggiero embraced her, her wrap came off, and she was left in the thin, see-through shift which offered no more covering either in front or behind than clear glass does to roses or lilies.)

  The female nude preferred by Ariosto has none of the Renaissance fondness for exuberance: it could easily be part of the present taste for adolescent physiques, with their hint of cold whiteness. I would say that the movement of the octave approaches the nude like a lens going over a miniature but then departing, leaving everything rather vague. Staying with the most obvious examples, in that mixture of landscape and nude study that is the Olimpia episode, it is the landscape which wins out over the naked body (11.68):

  Vinceano di candor le nievi intatte,

  et eran piú ch’avorio a toccar molli:

  le poppe ritondette parean latte

  che fuor di giunchi allora allora tolli.

  Spazio fra lor tal discendea, qual fatte

  esser veggiàn fra piccolini colli

  l’ombrose valli, in sua stagione amene,

  che ’l vemo abbia di nieve allora piene.

  (Her skin outdid virgin snow in its whiteness and it was smoother to the touch than ivory: her little round breasts were like fresh mozzarellas. The space between them was like the shady valleys we see between gentle hills, in early spring, which winter has filled with snow.)

  These shifts towards vagueness cannot blind us to the fact that precision is one of the chief poetic values cultivated by Ariosto’s narrative vene. In order to document how much richness of detail and technical precision an octave can contain, one has only to choose from the duel scenes. I shall limit myself to this stanza from the final canto (46.126):

  Quel gli urta il destrier contra, ma Ruggiero

  lo cansa accortamente, e si ritira,

  e nel passare, al fren piglia il destriero

  con la man manca, e intomo lo raggira;

  e con la destra intanto il cavalliero

  ferire al fianco o il ventre o il petto mira;

  e di due punte fé sentirgli angoscia,

  l’una nel fianco, e l’altra ne la coscia.

  (Rodomonte charges his horse against him, but Ruggiero, on foot, cleverly avoids it, and stepping aside grabs the horse’s reins with his left hand, and turns it round. At the same time, with his sword in his right hand, he aims blows at his enemy’s side, stomach or breast; and in fact makes him feel the pain of two sharp jabs, one in the side and the other in the thigh.)

  But there is another type of precision which one must not ignore: that of reasoning, the argumentation that unfolds within the enclosure of metrical form, which he articulates in the most detailed way, attentive to every implication. The maximum agility, of a type I would define as almost forensic, is to be found in the defence which Rinaldo, like a skilful lawyer, conducts against the crime passionnel of which Ginevra is accused, when he does not know whether she is guilty or innocent (4.65):

  Non vo’ già dir ch’ella non l’abbia fatto;

  che nol sappendo, il falso dir potrei:

  dirò ben che non de’ per simil atto

  punizïon cader alcuna in lei;

  e diró che fu ingiusto o che fu matto

  chi fece prima li statuti rei;

  e come iniqui rivocar si denno,

  e nuova legge far con miglior senno.

  (Now I am not saying she did not commit this act, for since I do not know the facts for sure, I might then be saying something false; but I will certainly say that no punishment must fall on her for such an act, that he who first framed these evil laws was either unjust or mad, and that as unjust laws they must be revoked, and a new law passed with wiser counsel.)

  The last thing I should exemplify is the violent octava, one which contains maximum slaughter. Here there is an embarrassment of choice: sometimes it is the same formulae, indeed even the same verses, which are repeated or simply reordered. At a first, cursory glance, I would say that the record in the violence quotient for a single stanza is to be found in the Cinque canti (4.7):

  Due ne partí fia la cintura e l’anche:

  restâr le gambe in sella e cadde il busto;

  da la cima del capo un divise anche

  fin su l’arcion, ch’andò in pezzi giusto;

  tre ferí su le spalle o destre o manche;

  e tre volte uscí il colpo acre e robusto

  sotto la poppa dal contrario lato:

  dieci passò da l’uno a l’altro lato.

  (He sliced two of them between the belt and the hips: their legs remained in the saddle while their upper half fell down; another one he split from the top of the head down to his seat, which then fell cleanly into two pieces; he struck three others in the back, either on the right or left shoulders, and in these three cases the strong, painful lance-blow emerged on the other side under their nipple; ten others he ran through from one side to another.)

  We note immediately that this homicidal fury has caused damage the author did not foresee: the repetition of the rhyme-word lato without it having a different meaning is clearly an oversight which the poet did not have time to correct. Actually, if one looks carefully, in the context of this catalogue of wounds which fills the stanza, the entire final line turns out to be a repetition, since being run through with a lance has already been exemplified. Unless this fine distinction is implied: while it is clear that the three preceding victims are run through back to front, the last ten victims could present a less usual case of lateral run-through, the lance going through from side to side not back to front. The use of lato (side) seems more appropriate in the last line if it is used in the sense of fianco (hip). Instead in the penultimate line lato could have been easily replaced by another word in ‘-ato’ such as costato (ribcage): ‘sotto la poppa al mezzo del costato’ (under the nipple in the middle of the ribcage), a correction which Ariosto could not have failed to make had he continued to work on what are now known as the Cinque canti.

  With this modest contribution towards Ariosto’s work in progress, expressed in a spirit of friendliness, I close my homage to the poet.

  [1975]

  Gerolamo Cardano

  What is Hamlet reading when he comes on stage in Act 2? To Polonius, who asks him this, he replies ‘words, words, words’, and our curiosity remains unsatisfied. However, if the To be or not to be’ soliloquy, which opens the Prince of Denmark’s next appearance on stage, offers any clue as to his recent readings, it ought to be a book which discusses death as though it were sleep, whether visited or not by dreams.

  Now this theme is discussed in considerable detail in a passage of Gerolamo Cardano’s De Consolatione, which was translated into English in 1573 and dedicated to the Earl of Oxford, therefore familiar in circles frequented by Shakespeare. Amongst other things, it says, ‘Certainly the sweetest sleep is the deepest sleep, when we are almost like the dead, not dreaming anything; whereas the most irksome sleep is the one that is very light, restless, interrupted by constant waking, tormented by nightmares and visions, as happens to those who are ill’.

  To conclude from this that the book read by Hamlet is definitely Cardano, as is held by some scholars of Shakespeare’s sources, is perhaps unjustified. And certainly that little ethical treatise is not sufficiently representative of Cardano’s genius to become evidence for Shakespeare ever having encountered his work. However, that passage does discuss dreams and this is no accident: Cardano returns insistently to dreams, especially his own, in several passages of his works, describing, interpreting and commenting on them. This is not only because in Cardano the factual observation of the scientist and the reasoning of the mathematician somehow derive from a life dominated by premonitions, signs of astrological destiny, magic influences, and diabolical interventions, but also because his mind refuses to exclude any phenomenon from objective enquiry, least of all those that surface from the deepest wells of subjectivity.

  It is pos
sible that some of the restlessness of Cardano the man comes across in the English translation of his rather awkward Latin. In that case it is highly significant that if it is Cardano’s European reputation — Cardano was famous as a medical man, but his works embrace all branches of knowledge and enjoyed considerable posthumous popularity — which authorises the link between him and Shakespeare, it does so actually on the periphery of his scientific interests, in that vague territory which will be later thoroughly traversed by the pioneering experts in psychology, introspection and existential anguish. These were the areas into which Cardano probed in an epoch in which this branch of knowledge did not even have a name; nor did his enquiries have a clear objective, but were merely driven by an obscure but constant inner necessity.

  This is what makes us feel close to Gerolamo Cardano, today on the fourth centenary of his death. But this is not to take anything away from the importance of his discoveries, inventions and intuitions which ensure that his name figures in the history of science as one of the founding fathers of various disciplines. Nor does it detract from his fame as a magus, a man endowed with mysterious powers, a reputation that followed him around but which he himself also broadly cultivated, and which was at times the object of his boasts, at times the source of his own apparent amazement.

  His autobiography, De Propria Vita, which Cardano wrote in Rome shortly before his death, is the book which keeps his name alive for us both as a writer and as a personality. He was a writer manqué at least as far as Italian literature is concerned, because if he had tried to express himself in the vernacular (and it would certainly have been an Italian as rough and ungainly as Leonardo’s), instead of doggedly composing all his works in Latin (he felt that only Latin could guarantee immortality), sixteenth-century Italian literature would have had not another classic writer, but another weird one, though one that was all the more representative of his age for being eccentric. Instead, adrift as he is on the high seas of Renaissance Latin, he is now read only by scholars: not that his Latin is as clumsy as his critics claimed (in fact the more elliptical and idiosyncratic his style, the more pleasant it is to read him), but because it forces us to read him through a glass darkly, as it were. (The most recent Italian translation is, I believe, the one published in 1945 in Einaudi’s Universale series.)