La guerra degli orchi - 1. I figli del lupo (Omnibus) (Italian Edition)

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On each day Humayun wore clothes of the colour appropriate to the planet of the day — on Sundays he wore yellow, on Mondays green, and so on. Humayun was fatally wounded on falling while climbing down from his observatory, on the night of Friday, 24 January , which he had considered auspicious because of the rise of Venus ibid. Saturn, in his benigner aspect as the ancient Roman god of agriculture, is the ruler of those tied to the earth, his ele- ment: As the coldest planet, his season is winter, which accounts for the inclusion of agricultural activities associated with the winter months — woodcutting, ploughing and the slaughtering of pigs.

Of all the animals, moreover, pigs were considered closest to the earth. The idea was that having rejected Christianity, they could not stand on their legs, as their adherence to the Law of Moses would not support them. Like the goat, the pig was an animal associated with Saturn. A goat-like physiognomy, as well as the fetid caprilic smell of goats, were ascribed to the Jews,12 and actually the goat association has persisted in modern anti-Semitism.

This also drew a reponse from the Italian poet Umberto Saba — , whose mother was Jewish. He did so without intending it to reflect negatively on either the Jews or the goat, and yet he did so by appropriating a well-known, and very negative caricature of male Jews. Saba was humanising the goat, attaching a Jewish identity to it, and then universalising the pain that he was reading into her bleat- ing to the pain of everybody who is living.

It is not only Shylock who is portrayed on the stage with a red beard and a hooked nose: The entry for the latter in Jeffrey , p. As Trachtenberg [ , pp. The latter were said to have goatish beards, or were depicted with goat horns, or riding upon a goat, one of the traditional mounts of the devil. That the goat was not only […] an animal belonging to Saturn but also, in the form of the zodiacal sign of Capricorn, one of the two signs or houses associated with Saturn, draws the knot of relationship still tighter. In the words of Zafran , p. The pig was also sometimes the animal attribute of the melancholy humour, as seen for example in a woodcut from the French Calendar of the Shepherds of Zafran also remarks ibid.

One would be mistaken to think that as pigs are not eaten by the Jews, pigs and Jews would not be associated with each other other than by mutual exclusion. Quite on the contrary. Shachar researched the Jewish sow Judensau , a motif in anti-Semitism in Germanic lands. It used to be represented with the body of a sow, suckling not piglets, but adult Jews. The early development of received notions about the Jews in relation to Saturn. To a contemporary viewer, however, these depic- tions would have brought to mind the unpleasant character of the Jewish moneylender or usurer. Saturn, as we have seen, engendered miserliness and avarice: Apparently the Jewish Sabbath was considered to be cold, because practising Jews did not and do not light fire during the Sabbath even though they could light it before , so food may be cold or tepid instead of hot.

The next step was to aetiologise the coldness of the Sabbath, i. In light of much later authors of the fifth century C. Thus, the anonymous author of the Brevis Expositio in Vergilii Georgica first half of the fifth century C. In a travel-poem, De reditu suo On his Return , the pagan Rutilius Nama- tianus relates with irritation about a Jew he saw on board of a ship. De reditu suo is pervaded with consternation at the squalor of the times, blamed on the decline of traditional pagan worship. Before bemoaning the Romans ever ven- turing into Judaea, as presumably through Christianity Jewish ideas con- quered Rome,16 Rutilius Namatianus lashes at Jewish practices: Wight Duff and A.

The original Latin reads as follows: Zafran quotes from the Introductorium maius by ninth or tenth-century Alcabitius known in Europe in Latin translation from Arabic a description of the traits of Saturn by way of a prototypical example: Being bad, and being melancholic were associates of the Jews. Christians did not dispute that Judaism had fathered Christianity, and it was to them old and decrepit. The Jews were dead, being excluded from the eternal life. That Jews were associated with grief and lamenting was considered to be their deserved state, in retribution for the Passion.

As to suspicion, they were suspected of anything evil, and according to a pattern usual in prelogical thinking, they could therefore be portrayed as being themselves suspecting. This is a concept dealt with by Klibansky et al. The accusation of misanthropy had stuck already in pagan Roman times, especially because of the avoidance of interfaith marriages on the part of the Jews.

His rule-based structure for the uncon- scious allows us to make sense of those aspects of thought that do not obey conventional logic. In his book The Unconscious as Infinite Sets, Matte Blanco proposed that the structure of the unconscious can be summarised by the principle of Generalisation and the principle of Symmetry, where it is the latter that contravenes on conventional logic, in that it makes relations reversible.

Matte Blanco called this Symmetrical Logic. It is the mixture of the symmetrical logic of the unconscious and the conventional logic of the preconscious and consciousness, that according to Matte Blanco constitutes the bi-logic. As to wan- dering and long absence from their homeland, these, too, were situations ascribed to the Jews, albeit not by Alcabitius. But Alcabitius then stated about Saturn: The blindfold figure of Synagoga22 i.

Zafran relates how the Father Time-like iconography of Saturn was eventually relinquished: Zafran pointed out that the blood of Jews was thought to be black and putrid ibid. In the Middle Ages, it was claimed that when other birds see the owl hiding during the day, they noisily attack it to betray its hiding place see Fig. The caricatures most resemble those employed at the same time for the Jews. Saturn even wore a Jewish hat. The owl from the Harley MS , Folio 47r. This connection with age, outdated, dying things and the displacement of one god by another provides an analogy to the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

It was the Jews who, according to the dominant medieval concept, sought to destroy their own offspring or son, Christ, but he was miraculously resurrected and a new era born. Thus Saturn and the Jews both represent the unworthy fathers, who are rejected, defeated and displaced by their sons who establish new orders Christianity and the reign of the Olympian gods.

The rejected parents cannot accept this new order but remain isolated misanthropes nurturing their vengeful resentment and hatred. They are thought of as the embodiments of all that is worst in mankind and become the archetypal pariahs of the world. The child-eating ogre the Kinderfresser or Kindlifresser appeared, e. Athena, according to the myth, revived the child. The supersession of paganism by Christianity relegated any persistence of pre-existing spiritual options to the realm of the Devil. But then Kronos eating its children was likened to Judaism or Jewry and the Passion, i.

To further drive in the point that the Jews were dangerous to Christians even in the present, it was con- venient to blame them with still being the child-eating Kronos, with still being prone to doing something atrocious to Christian children. Carlo Porta , the most prominent poet in the Milanese dialect, has a lower-class character utter the following: This is a work of Nissan recalls the following three episodes on public transportation in Milan somewhere between the mids and the early s in Milan.

In one case, an old man in the tramcar on its way to Piazza Cordusio, on seeing a black man walking past the Credito Italiano, shouted: On another occasion, one evening inside a bus of the line 60 travelling in Via Mario Pagano, a young black woman in the front of the bus, dressed as a model, with gold threads in her hair, and perhaps travel- ling in order to attend a photographing session, was shouted at by an angry old man: The victim looked back in fear. She eventually stood up, and had a calm, sub- dued chat with the driver. Once she alighted, the driver gave Nissan a dreamy star, as a silent commentary about the young lady who looked like a celebrity.

The third episode took place in Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, and Nissan observed from the pavement while a tramcar of the line 23 was proceeding in the direction of Lambrate. An old white, besuited man was standing in front of a young black man, visibly apprehensive. A fourth episode took place inside a tramcar travelling along the southern side of the cathedral, in Piazza Duomo. In the almost empty tramcar, between Nissan, who was rather in the back of the vehicle and a few women in the front of the vehicle, three Rom children were sitting in front.

One of them was a boy, and the other two were girls. A middle-aged woman, wearing a rather upmarket coat, started to shout in panic: The two little girls were terrified. The lit- tle boy, instead, offended and defiant, retorted in heavily accented Italian: I carry out a robbery! This is an example in which out of anger, a victim tar- geted because of belonging to a dispreferred ethnic group was retorting by accepting and asserting the for- bidding stereotypical image proclaimed to his face by the perpetrator.

Nor, judging from Fig. The competition was held on the premises of the weekly The Economist. The cartoonist received the award by a prominent politician, Claire Short, previously minister for overseas on another occasion she reportedly [Wistrich ] blamed global warming on Israel. A cartoon showing a gigantic Sharon devouring a non-Jewish child. It is found as early as the talmudic and midrashic literature.

Marcus Jastrow , s. Consider however that the name Shabbetai being given to Saturn in Hebrew may itself have been a response to the Roman association of Saturn with Saturday. This is often given as the interpretation of kywn Kiyyun , the name of an idol in Amos 5: Abraham Ibn Ezra accepted it explicit- ly. The planetary week in Hebrew literature was discussed by Gandz His super-commentator took it even further: At least as early as , Abraham Ibn Ezra was residing in Rome.

In and possibly earlier he was in Lucca, and also in in Mantua; then two years later he was in Verona where he started to write his works of science. He then moved to Provence, and then again to northern France. In he moved from Rouen to London, but in was in Narbonne. He died in or , the place being uncertain: Thus, their inhabitants, e. But then, Judah Ibn Matqah turns to the Land of Israel and the Land of Syria, which according to Ptolemy, are under the influence of Jupiter, Mars and Mercury, which is why the people of those places are merchants and cheaters, and the Land of Syria and the Land of Israel partake in this of Aries and Mars, and therefore they [their inhabitants] are stupid and ignorant of G-d.

At this point, Ibn Matqah proceeds to refute Ptolemy: What Ptole- my did consider, Ibn Matqah avers, was only secondary, and he neglected what is most important, and this makes Ptolemy untrustworthy. Then Ibn Matqah quotes a passage from the Babylonian Talmud at tractate Kiddushin 49b, about the qual- ities of various lands: And then we have conjectures about acceptance of the Saturn association, on not as firm ground, but by way of conjectures.

Moshe Idel suggested this onomastic connection. Benite writes , p. Benite himself, at the risk we fear of engaging in creative homiletics, pro- poses , p. Jewish Male Menses and Melancholic Blood: Imagined Physiology Sub- serving Theology Jewish males were believed to menstruate,30 in medieval Christendom. Just as Eve began to menstruate because of the Fall, which was itself a prefiguration of the Passion, so male Jews were said to menstruate since the Passion.

This was in relation to a legend about the origins of ritual murder, also ascribed to the Jews. Evidence was coaxed out of Scripture, at loci that of course to the Jews mean something else. Saturn is to Ptolemy the farthest planet from Earth, and the ten lost tribes of Israel are beyond the river Sambation ibid. Of course, this made that psalm all the more appealing for Christian polemicists.

Caesarius of Heisterbach d. I am very much loved by my father who guards me so carefully that I cannot come to you nor you to me except on the Friday night that preceeds your Easter. For then the Jews [i. They are so preoccupied by this that they can only pay less attention to other matters. The seasonality of the male menses in spring time dovetails with the belief that Whether we see menstruation as purification or plethora, in either case women have ous to medieval Jews that they themselves were not worshipping sculpted images, whereas their hosting society definitely and ostensibly did.

It does not take much to realise that the end of the Taberancle at Shiloh, from the period of the Judges, was projected forward for a polemic purpose extolling the Kingdom of Judah, against the northern, secessionist Kingdom of Israel, itself led by the tribe of Ephraim. Christian scriptural exegesis resorts to allegoric interpretation in a sweeping manner not found in Jewish exegesis where allegory only predominates in the interpreation of Song of Songs.

But there was more to it. The first hemistich of v. Men have no such thing, and are driven to regular artificial blood-letting, to phlebotomy, to achieve the same objective that women reach naturally. Men were most often bled in the spring, but also at other times for those who got little exercise. The classical authorities in medicine, Hippocrates and Galen, differed in how they explained menstruation. To Galen instead, menstruation is the expelling of plethora, i. Nosebleeds were one possibility. David Katz , p. The early modern border between male and female was highly fluid, like the female humoral constitution itself.

So too it is read 1 Sam 5 that mice bubbled up from the earth and the Lord struck Ashdod in the secret place of their buttocks [the anus? It was everlasting shame because an infirmity of this type is most vile. And some say that the Jews endure this shame because they suffer a flux of blood as vengeance for the passion of the Lord, and that is why they are so pale.

An alternative to haemorrhoids was the claim that Jews urinated blood. There are different associations of ideas, according to whether male Jews are claimed to actually menstruate, or ascribed menses are rationalised as haemorrhoids. Some early modern Jews came to internalise the latter ascription, as they found it to make sense that as the stereotypical Jewish lifestyle was sedentary all the more so because of the ideal35 of diligence at learning , this would be conducive to a higher incidence of haemorrhoids among Jews.

The stereotype according to which male Jews are less masculine,36 do not excel at sports, and the like, has loomed and still looms large, there is considerable literature about the subject, and we can- not delve into this here. Nor can we deal here with medical or pseudo-medical arguments against or in favour of circumcision, even though there has been and still is such a debate within the discourse of modernity.

Deriding Jews because of circumcision is as ancient as ancient Roman attitudes toward the Jews. This attitude was perpetuated in Western civilisation. In a quodlibetal disputa- tion an academic exercise from around from the University of Paris, one 34 In his Quaestiones de animalibus 9: The scholarly habitus continues to be a formative part of male Jewish identity as well as a source of pride and prejudice in pro- and anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Suffering from an array of shared symptoms that ranged from gout to the golden vein, male Jews and intellectuals became pathologized similarly. However, Jews naturally withdraw themselves from society and from being connected with others, as is patent, therefore they are melancholics. It is this complexional coldness governing their na- ture that makes women unable to complete the digestion of blood, resulting in the necessity to purge the body of its coarse and undigested blood via menstruation.

Rohrer blamed occupational, spatial seclusion, and early marriage and thus, to him, too early sexual activity for the sickly and unmanly body of male Jews. Kassouf proceeds to remark and quote as fol- lows ibid. More specific diagnoses show that scholars and Jews were particularly prone to melancholia and hypochondria, their bodies and demeanors exhibiting an explosion of symptoms to be interpreted. The pale complexion of the Jew, his crooked posture, his never-ending expres- sions of anxiety, his constant worry about every appearance of offense that crosses his path; his behavior at home that is seldom accompanied by laughter; all this and much more should lead us to assume that a majority of Jews has no small tendency toward melancholy.

Regardless of this the Jew still longs very 38 Resnick , pp. One of the things that Resnick remarked about the popular medical text Omnes homines, was: Jews, like women, have a cold complexion, not by nature perhaps but because they live in fear and are idle. This kind of phenomenon, of Jewish physicians internalising representations of Jews asserted in non-Jewish medical discourse, was to become commonplace in the late nineteenth century.

In the case of The Treatise on Procreation, arguably what was at work was not the appropriation of a negative caricature, but agreement about some physiological causes in relation to lifestyle, such as living in fear of the hostile gentile society, being downtrodden because in exile and because Jerusalem is destroyed, and a prevalently sedentary lifestyle. Kassouf remarks , p. The explicit connection with scholarship reemerges in the eigh- teenth century among writers such as Johann Adolf Behrends who continue to prop- agate a connection between too much Talmud study and hemorrhoids: By the early modern period, haemorrhoids had become an option for ratio- nalising the medieval Christian belief that Jewish males menstruate.

There already was a tradition relating the piles to the Jews. Galen in the second century speaks of the digestive problems of Jews, and the link between Judaism and haemorrhoids. Medicalised Jewish Identity in the Nineteenth Century and Beyond In the nineteenth century, pseudo-medical theorisation about Jewish disease developed within the discourse of modern science. Medical fictions about race have not died out even at present Gilman Also during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when spurious pseudo-scientific ascriptions to Jews and other groups were burgeoning, melancholia was one of the traits ascribed to Jews.

In a scholarly forum, Boudin , Gilman remarks , p. Gilman juxta- poses this to what anti-abolitionists in the United States made of their claim that enslaved Black people were less subject to mental illness that when free. Even some Jewish physicians accepted the commonplace. Even the Freudian turn away from biology into psychodynamics did not do away with the myth of Jewish mental illness Gilman , pp. Mosse also remarks ibid. The iconography of insanity was transferred to other outsiders, and the close connec- tion drawn between Jews, blacks, and madness provides a central argument for Difference and Pathology [ ].

In the interpretation of that data the anti-abolitionist forces, headed by John C. Calhoun, argued that blacks suffered more frequently from mental illness when free than when enslaved. The contemporary demand for legal equality was translated into its antithe- sis, madness and its resultant dependency. The Jews were seen as covertly ill, ill in a manner that provided the observer with proof of his own emotional and intellectual superiority.

European biology served, especially in Germany and France, to reify accepted attitudes toward all marginal groups, especially the Jews. However, the reality was quite different. While the fantasy of the privileged group would have banished the Jews out of sight, into the asylum, the best it could do was to institutionalize the idea of the madness of the Jews.

Thus, like women, who were also making specific political demands on the privileged group at the same moment in history, Jews could be dismissed as unworthy of becoming part of the privileged group be- cause of their aberration. Their writings centered on the premise that such evolution would occur only if Americans would avoid three dangers in the psychological realm: And yet, Heinze points out ibid. This in turn was the rationale, in European dominant culture over the centuries, of fingering the only kind of good Jew if any , namely, the converted Jew.

But Gilman , p. But it was not merely the mus- cles of the Jews but also their minds that had atrophied in the ghetto. It was the new Jew, rather than the old Jew who was believed by Nordau and oth- ers to be free from those features. University of Illinois Press, Journal of Modern Jewish studies, 8 1: Modern Language Notes, 39 3: Un enciclopedista ebreo alla corte di Federico II. Biblioteca filosofica di Queaestio, The Ten Lost Tribes: Male Menstruation in History and Anthropology. Journal of Psychohistory, The Pattern of the Days in Ancient Rome.

The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by Holbrook Jackson. The original was published in by Hen. The Anatomy of Melancholy, edited by T. Original work published in Phoenix of Orion Books , , pbk. The Saga of the Great Mughals. Penguin Books India, , revised Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, Jews and Mental Illness: Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Reprinted in his Disease and Representation: Also in Italian, Bologna: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness.

Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. The Johns Hopkins University Press. The Case of Sigmund Freud: The Johns Hopkins University Press, ; paperback, Silberstein and Robert L. New York University Press, pp. Race and Contemporary Medicine: Biological Facts and Fictions. Patterns of Prejudice, Also published as a book, London: Jews and American Popular Psychology: Reconsidering the Protestant Paradigm of Popular Thought.

The Journal of American History, 88 3 , pp. Saturn and Shabbetai Zevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism. Jeffrey, David Lyle ed.

Arcadia, secondo i manoscritti e le prime stampe

The Myth of Jewish Male Menses. Journal of Medieval History, Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. The Shared Pain of the Golden Vein: Eighteenth-Century Studies, 32 1 , special issue on Nationalism: The Jews in the History of England, Nelson, ; Nendeln, Lichtenstein: Jews, Sports and the Rites of Citizenship. On the Melancholy of Tailors. In his The Works of Charles Lamb. Therapists to the Jews: Images of the Jews in the Exempla of Caesarius of Heisterbach. In From Witness to Witchcraft: The Unconscious as Infinite Sets.

Misericord Owls and Medieval Anti-Semitism. In The Mark of the Beast: The Burlington Magazine, , March, pp. Quaderni Storici, 27 In Generation and Degeneration: Duke University Press, , pp. Resnick, Irven [sic] M. The Harvard Theological Review, 93 3 , pp. Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World. Saturn and the Jews. Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts, Chapter 3 in his Emotion in Aesthetics. Philosophical Studies Series, Italia Jerusalem , 2: The Left Hand of G[-]d: Despair in Medieval and Renaissance Tradition.

Studies in the Renaissance, University of Missouri Press. Dialogus Miraculorum by Caesarius of Heisterbach. The Devil and the Jews: Ungar, Ruti and Michael Berkowitz eds. Jewish and Black Boxers in Britain. Jewish Center for Public Affairs, no. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, IX, Utet, Torino , pp. Celestino Corsato che arricchiscono e rendono ragione sia della definizione globale del concetto sia dei soggetti che ne esperimentano o ne patiscono gli effetti. Ma il termine trasferisce immediatamente lo scrittore e il lettore agli effetti che quella disposizione fisio- logica crea a livello psicologico: Sui presupposti antropologici secondo i modelli dicotomico [corpo-anima] o tricotomi- co [corpo-anima-spirito] cf.

Per le riflessioni di carattere generale si rinvia a A. II, e Mondadori, Milano , p. Mi viene a noia la vita! Essa comporta pericoli morali: Palla, Milano , p. Giovanni, che era rimasto ammirato della preghiera insistente del tribuno, apparso in visione notturna alla moglie, le disse: La narrazione mette in evidenza il dilemma tra salute e morte, tra speranza di guarigione ed enorme tristezza fisica e psicologica causata dalle sofferenze della malattia, unitamente alla paura della inevitabile fine. Il superamento della tristezza mortale avviene con il concorso di due azioni che si saldano nel rende- re bella e buona la vita presente: La soluzione per i monaci che eventualmente fossero raggiunti da un moto di tristezza sta nelle motivazioni contenute nelle persuasive parole di Apollonio: I Padri della Chiesa e gli scrittori ecclesiastici fanno sempre e primariamen- te riferimento alla Bibbia per le loro riflessioni e argomentazioni, inserendovi citazioni isolate o esplicandole nei commentari esegetici di singoli libri.

Deve essere reso comprensibile attraverso i significati e le sfu- mature che ad esso attribuiscono gli scrittori cristiani dei primi secoli che stia- mo esaminando. Il male oscuro, Qiqajon, Magnano ed. Palestina, Siria, Mesopotamia, ecc. Secolarizzandosi, la nozione perse molto della sua sostanza. Talvolta veniva assimilata alla tristezza, altre volte diveni- va simbolo di ozio o di tiepidezza spirituale. Nella terza Visione del Pastore si legge: I, Roma , pp.

Luc SCh 87 , pp. Ermeneutica, simbologia, fonti, Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, Roma , pp. Osserva come si comporta il diavolo… Ne elenca tre, ma il nome di esse tuttavia non proviene dai testi dei vangeli canonici Quando smetteva di lavorare, pregava. Poi tornava a sedere e a intrecciare la corda e, dopo essersi interrotto di nuovo, tornava a pregare: Per il testo greco cf.

Egli ne esce tranquillizzato, rasserenato, quieto, in pace, illu- minato e convinto nei pensieri, forte e sollevato nello spirito, lieto ed esultante per la salvezza. Esempio ne sia il fatto che i salmi, che era solito cantare con tanto trasporto e attenzione, ora li cantava con fret- ta, come se si fosse stancato presto di quel celeste ministero, quasi gli desse poco alimento per il suo spirito; la preghiera lo stancava. Ormai la passione di natura libidinosa lo aveva tutto preso; la bramosia stava per riportarlo al secolo, irreparabilmente. Pure prese il cibo presente e sod- disfece ai bisogni della fame.

E siamo al terzo giorno: Nerissimo, durissimo; pareva inoltre che vi avessero messo i denti sia topi che cani. Mentre osserva, scorge la cella di alcuni fratelli. Gli si domanda anche come uno sia in grado di sottrarsi ai lacci del demonio, e come sia possibile sottrarsi ai suoi funesti pensieri Evagrio il Pontico, in Rivista di Ascetica e Mistica 13 Bunge Sophia, 24 , Trier , pp. Cento capitoli sulla vita spirituale, Qiqajon, Magnano ed. In definitiva, il programma di Evagrio concerne chiunque, poco importa ove egli viva.

Ammalatosi, venne persuaso da Melania ad abbracciare la vita monastica. Sospettato di dottrine eretiche nella lunga controversia origenista56 e con- 52 G. Il male oscuro, a cura di Valerio Lanzarini, Qiqajon, Magnano , pp. Alcune opere tuttavia ci sono pervenute in traduzioni siriache e armene; altre tramandate in greco o sotto il suo nome o attribuite a Nilo. La dottrina spirituale e il lessico utilizzato da Evagrio diventano patrimonio del monachesimo orientale e raggiungono e si diffondono nelle tematiche spirituali in quello occidentale.

V-VI , in Origene. Manuale sistematico, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo , pp. Di questa, Evagrio aveva appena trattato, precisamente nei due paragrafi precedenti. Il male oscuro, pp. Testo greco e trad. Tre immagini si stagliano nella descrizione evagriana della tristezza: Sui due tipi di tristezza lodevole: Al malato non basta un solo cibo, e al monaco accidioso un solo lavoro.

Che fine e precisa descrizione, psicologica e ricca di dettagli, del monaco accidioso! Evagrio lo coglie in tre momenti: Dapprima fa che il sole appaia lento a muoversi, o immobile, e che il giorno sembri avere cinquanta ore. E se trova qualcuno che in quei giorni abbia contristato il monaco, il demone si serve anche di questo per aumentare la sua avversione. Preghiera e accidia si combattono, si escludono reciprocamente. Non abbandonarti al pensiero della collera, combattendo interiormente colui che ti ha contristato, e neppure a quello della fornicazione, immaginando continuamente il piacere.

Istituzioni cenobitiche De institutis coenobio- rum e Conferenze Conlationes. Texte latin revu, Introduction, traduction et notes par J. Guy SCh , Paris , pp. V,1 SCh , p. IX,4 e 13 ibid. LXX , altrimenti sarebbero destinati a essere bruciati Cui hac in parte suffragari etiam videtur D. Ex ira, inquit, tristitia oritur; quia turbata mens, quo se inordinate concu- tit, eo addendo confundit; et cum dulcedinem tranquillitatis amiserit, nihil hanc nisi ex perturbatione sub- sequens maeror pascit.

Verum aliter Cassianus, aliter Gregorius tristitiam accipit. Cassianus enim tristitiam ab acedia distinguit, unde et separatim et distincte de hac et illa agit hoc libro et sequenti; at D. Gregorius acediam tristitiam nominat, et quidem convenientius, ut D. Thomas asserit q. Leonardo's representation of the body as a microcosm parallels the patterned represention of action in Ariosto's poetic cosmos. For Leonardo, organic change produces order in the natural world; similarly, the seemingly chaotic narrative of the Furioso actually produces its own order. Machiavelli's explanation of the effects of historical repetition and change illuminates the meaning of narrative repetition and change in Ariosto's epic.

Stoicism and the History of Ideas A brief review of the literature on Renaissance Stoicism reveals that, with a few notable exceptions, this period has been largely overlooked in the history of ideas. Zanta concentrates on the emergence of neo-Stoicism and the harmonization of Christian and Stoic thought. She catalogues the participants in this tradition from its originators, the Church Fathers, to both humanist and Reformation authors. The neo-Stoic tradition reaches its fullest realization in the works of the two major late sixteenth-century philosophers, Justus Lipsius and Guillaume Du Vair.

Stoicism, as a philosophical system, can be formulated in a very general fashion, as follows: Pomponazzi de- scribes man's relation to the cosmos according to this Stoic correspon- dence between physics and morals. Leonardo's analogy of nature to art shows the aesthetic implications of this correspondence. Machia- velli's concept of cyclical change in history shows the political conse- quences of the Stoic connection between physics and morals.

Not surprisingly, the most recent studies of Renaissance Stoicism concentrate on late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century French authors and neglect these earlier Italian authors. However, Spanneut gives only a very general explanation of why any of these authors might be considered Stoic. So, for example, Spanneut mentions Giordano Bruno for the impor- tance of cosmology to his thought, even though his theory of infinite worlds corresponds more to an Epicurean than to a Stoic physics. For a comparison of the difference between Epicurean and Stoic physics, see Saunders, Justus Lipsius, , , Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 29 Conversely, Spanneut omits Leonardo and Machiavelli, whose works are informed by the structure of Stoic cosmological theory.

In his biography of Coluccio Salutati, Ronald Witt discusses the appeal of Stoic ethics— the emphasis on virtue for its own sake, the need for the individual to stand against the ignorant crowd— to the early Italian humanists. My discussion of Pomponazzi, Leonardo, and Machiavelli only begins to reconstruct some sense of the Stoicism of the early sixteenth century.

In particular, when it comes to Renaissance intellectual history a combination of critical prejudice and positivistic methodology has caused the neglect of Stoicism. The critical prejudice may be Epicure- an, Platonic, Aristotelian, or a combination of these philosophies. It is easy to see why intellectual historians tend to concentrate on Plato and Aristotle, since their works are so important in the Renaissance reinterpret ation of ancient philosophy and since they are considered the two greatest ancient philosophers. However, positivistic source study has its limitations.

From the point of view of source study, had Pomponazzi never identified some of his positions as Stoic, scholars would never have commented on the Stoic content of his works. The more recent studies of Marcia Colish and Jill Kraye attempt to remedy the neglect of Stoicism in intellectual history. Kraye, in particular, 14 Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: In Kraye's account, not until the late sixteenth-cen- tury was there positive expression of Stoic philosophy, the focus of which was upon Stoic morals. The limitations of intellectual historical methodology— both that which caused the earlier total neglect of Stoicism and that which underpins the later, more responsible, if still limited, approach to Renaissance Stoicism— is implicitly criticized by William Bouwsma.

In his suggestive and wide-ranging essay on Renaissance Stoicism and Augustinianism, he corrects the imbalance of attention to Platonism and Aristotelianism in the history of Renaissance thought, and he also stresses the Stoic foundation of morals in physics: The Stoicism of the Renaissance, perhaps especially when it was least aware of its Stoic inspiration, was based, like ancient Stoicism, on natural philosophy and cosmology, a point of some importance in view of the common supposition that Renaissance thinkers only drew isolated, practical ethical pre- cepts from Stoic sources.

In other words, Stoic accounts of morality necessarily imply Stoic physics. Bouwsma was not the first to comment on the importance of Stoicism in the intellectual life of the Renaissance. John Herman Randall calls certain Renaissance views "Stoic" in characterizing Pomponazzi as representative of the "spirit of the age": The notion of human things, not just divine things, as an object of wisdom, the belief in human reason as an interpreter of the material universe, and the importance of strictly human concerns as intelligible through human means— all these ideas, Stoic in their inspiration, Rice argued, contributed to the growth of secular thought.

Still, the renewed interest in human reason and in the material world that so much of early modern Italian culture displays need not be rejected because of the anachronistic concept of "secular humanism. Dobbs on Stoic physics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bouwsma's view of cosmology as the basis of Renaissance Stoicism had been a minority opinion amongst intellectual historians.

The cosmologically based ethics of Pomponazzi are a point of comparison for the ethical issues raised by the Funoso's structure. Leonardo's account of how the motion of the human body describes its order as a microcosm sheds light on how the Funoso's action creates a pattern analogous to the cosmos. The structure of history in Machiavelli's Discorsi provides a parallel to the structure of narrative in the Furioso. Turning to the political implications of Stoic cosmolo- gy, I will examine whether or not these versions of Stoicism confirm that it, like Cynicism, presents a "post-political conception of self," Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed.

In his essay on the harmony of the Furioso, Croce gives this suggestive description of Ariosto's irony: One might say that Ariosto's irony is similar to the eye of God, who watches creation moving, all creation, loving it all equally, in good and in evil, in the greatest and in the smallest, in man and in the grain of sand, because he has made it all, and only seizing in it the motion itself, the eternal dialectic, the rhythm and the harmony.

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Certain of the cosmic qualities which Croce attri- butes to Ariosto's epic could be explained in either Neoplatonic or Aristotelian terms. Taken as a whole, however, these qualities are those of the Stoic cosmos. First, implicit in the notion of "creation moving" is the biological model of the Stoic universe. The Stoics, like Aristotle, thought of the cosmos as a living organism.

For the Stoics, the principle of vital heat governed the constant motion of the uni- verse as well as the human body. Furthermore, as materialists, the Stoics identified this vital heat with the human soul and with the soul of the universe, unlike Plato and Aristotle, for whom the soul was 21 Bouwsma, "The Two Faces of Humanism," See especially these remarks: The essential Stoic strategy for dealing with a tyrant is not interference but indifference" Benedetto Croce, Ariosto, Shake- speare e Corneille, Second, the assertion that "God.

The Stoics as materialists embraced the concept of unified order issuing from change in the natural world, while Plato feared and distrusted natural change. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks, Deel 24, no. Wade Baskin Chicago and London: Press, , , where he describes Plotinus' argument that evil is devoid of real existence Enn.

At each instant the world which is forever changing and forever in motion has the plenitude of its perfection. At the same time, Durling's richly sugges- tive discussion of Neoplatonism in the Furioso could be complicated by an examination of the text's rapport with Stoicism. That the Stoic concept of harmony accounts for the poetic effects of the Furioso any more precisely than the Neoplatonic concept of order remains to be seen.

Only a thorough reading of the Furioso which I will provide in the following chapters can set forth the evidence upon which to decide between these rival accounts. A neces- sary preliminary step is to observe the traces of Stoic cosmology in texts contemporary with the Furioso. I will show which Stoic texts could have made the presuppositions of Stoic cosmology available to Pomponazzi, Leonardo, and Machiavelli. I will analyze how they embodied Stoic concepts of order in their works, and I will begin to suggest similarities between the ordering principles in their works and in the Furioso.

The Cosmic Harmonization of Good and Evil In the epilogue to De fato completed in , Pomponazzi appeals to the Stoic hypothesis of cosmic harmony to answer the challenge raised by the problem of evil: Nevertheless, I maintain two things. Indeed the strongest argu- ment is against the belief that God is the cause of sins and thus God sins, which is absurd and in error. But, if we grant that human souls are mortal, as I think the Stoics maintain, accord- ing to me there is nothing which appears troublesome [in their view]. It is in fact no more cruel, if the soul is mortal, that some are crushed by others, some are dominated, some serve, even that one devours another, than that the wolf devours the sheep and the snake kills other animals.

Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 35 keeping with the proper order of the universe, then the rest is also. If so many things do not seem bad, then so many do not seem good; if you take away evil, you take away good. Whence this very order will always be for infinite ages, and will be for infinity, because it is always the case that [this order] has a necessary cause as such; for that reason it is not in our power but in the power of fate.

He rejects the Stoic opinion because "human reason is almost always in error," because "through purely natural things man cannot attain the truth," and therefeore "in all things the determinations of the Church, which is guided by the Holy Spirit, must stand" emphasis mine. Pomponazzi, De fato, EpUogus, Quod stando in puris naturalibus et quantum dat ratio humana, ut mea fert opinio nulla harum opinionum est magis remota a contradictione quam opinio Stoicorum.

Potissimum enim argumentum est adversus eam quod Deus esset causa peccati et sic Deus peccaret, quod absurdum et erroneum videtur. Verum si ponimus animas humanas esse mortales, veluti existimo Stoicos tenere, apud me nihil est quod incommodum videatur. Non plus enim crudele est, si anima est mortalis, quod aliqui conculcentur ab aliis, aliqui dominentur, aliqui serviant, quod etiam unus devoret alium, quam quod lupus devoret ovem et serpens interficiat alia ammalia. Si enim unum est pro decore universi, et reliquum similiter se habet; visi enim essent tot mala, non essent tot bona, si demis malum, demis et bonum.

Unde cum iste ordo semper fuerit per infinita saecula, et in infinitum erit, quod semper est habet causam necessariam et per se; quare non est in nostra potestate sed in potestate fati. Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance Padova: Antenore, , Pomponazzi, De fato, Quare cum Ecclesia damnet fatum ut Stoici ponunt, ideo simpliciter ipsum habemus negare et firmiter Ecclesiae credendum est. An examination of the arguments throughout De fato that inform this conclusion shows how Pomponazzi's moral cosmos is compatible not only with Stoicism but also with Croce's description of the Furioso as cosmos.

If the harmony of Croce's cosmic analogy depends on God's embracing good and evil equally, then so, too, for Pompo- nazzi, the "nature of the universe" requires both good and evil. According to Pomponazzi, "experience proves that there has never been a world without good and evil" and "reason proves according to nature that human things are such that they are able to work rightly and wrongly. Long cites Stoic texts that support an interpretation of the origin of evil consistent with Pommponazzi's account.

As Long explains, "from the perspective of cosmic logos or universal law, the behavior of the bad was regarded by the Stoics as necessary to the economy of the universe as a whole: Cleanthes' "Hymn to the Sun" expresses this harmonization of good and evil: Nothing occurs on earth apart from you, O God, not in the heavenly regions nor on the sea, except what bad men do in their folly; but you know how to make the odd even, and to harmonize what is dissonant; to you the alien is 33 Pomponazzi, De fato, Experimentum quidem quoniam nunquam fuit mundus sine bono et malo.

Ratio quidem quoniam ex natura habent res 1iiimi. Long, "Herachtus and Stoicism," Philosophic See the evidence Long cites: Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 37 akin And so you have wrought together into one all things that are good and bad, so that there rises one eternal logos of all things. Long notes that "[fjrom the perspective of the individual bad man this means that such behavior is a consequence of his own logos being at fault This divine detachment accompanied by a serene acceptance of both good and evil corresponds well to Croce's comparison of Ariosto's irony to the "eye of God.

Pomponazzi repeatedly points out that one of the strongest arguments in favor of the Stoic view of evil is that, unlike the Christian view, it does not logically lead to the absurd conclusion that evil is due to the will of God.

The translation is by A. Long, in Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics London: Duckworth, , As Long points out, "This point of view persists from the earliest to the latest Stoicism. For a literary analysis of the hymn and a discussion of it as the Stoic basis of the idea of order of the cosmos in the Corpus Hermeticum, see Le R. Librairie Lecoffre, , See the evidence he cites: Rist, Stoic Philosophy Cambridge: Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, In an attempt to free God of culpability, Christians, Pomponazzi explains, see God himself as free of all error — either by nature or by will.

In support of his argument, Pomponazzi cites the Psalms: The Stoic view that evil exists because of the necessity of nature is more rational than the Christian view that God voluntarily commits evil, a logical conclusion, Pomponazzi reasons, which results from the Christian belief in God's all-powerfulness. There is another aspect of Pomponazzi's thinking on the cosmos which unites it both with Stoic reflections on the cosmos and with the analogy of Ariosto's poem as Stoic cosmos: Bouwsma describes this conflict as the "cosmic optimism which signifies for the actual experi- ence of men the deepest pessimism.

The magician Atlante's palace potest aliter facere quam facit; quare si mala sunt in universo, hoc exigit universi natura. Secundum vero Christianos, posset Deus sed non vult. Deus voluntarie facit malum; at Stoici ponunt quod ex necessitate naturae. Certud istud est ininvestigabile; credo tamen quod ultima nulla est assignanda causa nisi ex divina voluntate. Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 39 disappears only to reappear and to vanish into thin air.

Alcina's garden dissolves before Ruggiero's eyes. Human desires and visions of reality are revealed as illusory in Astolfo's voyage to the moon. Because of the ironic detachment with which Ariosto represents these changes, and because he sets them in tension with other actions that offset their effects, such changes seem tragic only very briefly; the poet integrates them into the larger comic framework of the poem.

This fictional representation of an apparently ever-shifting cpiste- mology has its discursive counterpart in the philosophy of Pompo- nazzi and of Seneca. Just as the creator of the Furioso constructs and destroys places, images, and characters, so does the creator of the universe, according to Pomponazzi, seem to raise up and then cast man down in a kind of cruel game: Does it not also seem to be a game of the gods that [the uni- verse] generates man in such genius and equipment for man is organizatissimus and immediately after man has been made it destroys him?

For does not God seem like an architect who has constructed a most beautiful palace with great labour and expense lacking in nothing and as soon as he has completed the palace ruins it? Wouldn't this be attributed to insanity on the part of the architect? It is no less unintelligible whether it is as game, or insanity, or folly to guide man to the highest summit and then as soon as he has attained the peak to cast him off and send him down to the depths.

And infinite examples could be adduced which seem to argue either insanity or cruelty, or a game, or the like in God; yet all these [appearances] are saved since the nature of the universe requires them to be such. Therefore if the universe is good, all these things are seen to be good. Pietro Pomponazzi, De fato, 2. Nonne enim Deus videtur similis architecto qui multa opera et impensa construxisset aliquod palatium pulcherrimum in nullo deficiens, et statim confecto palano rueret ipsum?

Non minus et intelligibile videtur an sit ludus, an insania, an insipienza hominem perducere ad summum oilmen, et quam primum limen attigerit ipsum eiicere et in profundum emittere. Et infinita possent adduci 40 CHAPTER TWO Pomponazzi argues that man's perception of his fate as a game of chance is transformed into something good when viewed as integrated into the fate of the universe, which taken as a whole is good.

At the same time, Pomponazzi's rendering of the harmonization of apparent evils in a good universe tends to emphasize how confusing and absurd man's limitations make his life. Even earlier Pomponazzi had written about the paradox between the perfection of the cosmos and the limitations of man, in De immor- talitate animae Citing both Seneca's Epistulae and De consolatione, Pomponazzi affirms the mortality of the soul and the Stoic belief that virtue is the highest good. Pomponazzi likens the diversity of human nature to that in the natural world.

Underpinning this paradoxical Stoic belief in human limitation and the perfection of nature is a cosmology based on change which pro- duces order. It is no accident that amongst those signs of change Pomponazzi enumerates in leading up to the simile of man's life as a game is the process of elemental change, central to Stoic cosmology: Quare si universum bonum est, omnia haec videntur esse bona. Introduction," in The Renaissance Philoso- phy of Man, n. Again the continuum of the world's nature is constituted by the cyclic transmutations of the four kinds of matter. For earth turns into water, water into air, air into aether, and then the process is reversed, and aether becomes air, air water, and water earth, the lowest of the four.

Thus the parts of the world are held in union by the constant passage up and down, to and fro, of these four elements of which all things are composed. However, in the Furioso, the flux which this phrase represents "is welcomed, not hated," as it is by Plato. Rack- ham, LCL , , Nam ex terra aqua ex aqua oritur aer ex aere aether, deinde retrorsum vicissim ex aethere aer, inde aqua terra infima.

Sic naturis his ex quibus omnia constant sursus deorsus ultro citro commeantibus mundi partium coniunctio continetur. Arthur Stanley Pease Cambridge: Press, , 2: As a source for 2. Press, , 47, and , for his commentary on the cosmic cycle in Heraclitus. Change in the cosmic cycle is likened to the change an individual has to suffer in his own life. Seneca challenges the individu- al to understand his own fate as part of the cycle of life and death which governs the entire universe.

In Epistula 71, Seneca describes the craftsmanship controlling what seems to be disorder and decay both in the cosmos and in our lives: For what is free from the risk of change? Neither earth, nor sky, nor the whole. To our minds this process means perishing, for we behold only that which is nearest, our sluggish mind under allegiance to the body does not penetrate to bournes beyond.

Were it not so the mind would endure with greater courage its own ending and that of its possessions, if only it could hope that life and death, like the whole universe about us, go by turns, that whatever has been put together is broken up again, that whatever has been 50 G. The Cosmic Fragments Cambridge: Press, , , Whether or not Plato represents Heraclitus accurately is much debated. Kirk sees Plato's interpretation as distorted, because it overem- phasizes the notion of constant change G. Anchor Press, ], For an opposing view, see W.

Long, "Heraclitus and Stoicism. Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 43 broken up is put together again, and that the eternal craftsman- ship of God, who controls all things, is working at this task. It is the constant awareness that we have of Ariosto's craftsmanship, the self-reflexive writerly quality of his work that creates both the ironic perspective of the narrator and the ironic response of the reader. Seneca's challenge to epistemological pessimism relies on our capacity to understand indi- vidual change in relation to cosmic order and the craftsman control- ling it; similarly, the comic effects of Ariosto's poem rely on our awareness of the poet controlling the plot and the overall comic order of the poem as a whole.

The irony through which we experience the events of Ariosto's poem could be likened to the reason through which Seneca argues we should interpret the events of our lives. The Body and Nature in Motion Leonardo's representation of the natural world as at once rationally intelligible and physically sensible exhibits the concrete sense of reason found in ancient Stoicism. Both the Stoics and Leonardo conceive of nature in all its multiplicity as infused with and ordered by divine reason. This paradox of rational order in apparent randomness helps explain how the narrative structure of the Furioso works.

In an essay which illustrates the Stoic underpinnings of Leonardo's thought, Giorgio Castelfranco outlines the ancient Stoic ideas he believes influenced Leonardo: Non terra, non caelum, non torus hie rerum omnium contextus, quamvis deo agente ducatur Quicquid est, non erit, nee peribit, sed resolvetur.

Nobis solvi perire est, proxima enim intuemur; ad ulteriora non prospicit mens hebes et quae se corpori addixerit; alioqui fortius finem sui suorumque pateretur, si speraret, ut omnia ilia, sic vitam mortemque per vices ire et composita dissolvi, dissoluta componi, in hoc opere aeternam artem cuncta temperantis dei verti" Ep. And not only is there in Leonardo the concept of world soul as fire but above all of the absolute rationality of the world soul.

First, there is the aesthetic dimension: Second, there is the synthetic physical dimension that makes God equal to this aesthetic reason, and this reason coterminous with the essence of things, or more simply, with nature. Third, this reason or God is a fire that contains within itself the causes of the whole development of nature. Finally, the spirit of the world that creates beauty, which resides in material reality and which is the creative fire containing the causes of all things, is above all rational.

Of these four concepts, those which bear directly upon a discussion of Leonardo's thought in relation to the Furioso as a Stoic cosmos are reason as the cause of order in art and nature, and the realization and intelligibility of this order in the concrete variety of both nature and art. Before considering the ramifications of Leonardo's concept of nature for his observations on art, let me first draw attention to some of Leonardo's comments on nature that show a striking resemblance to the view of nature in Stoic physics. Leonardo's most general statement about nature and the one with the greatest applicability to all his other comments on both nature and art is as follows: Laterza, , 2: Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 45 [Nature is constrained by the reason of her law, which innately lives in her.

Leonardo does not conceive of cosmic reason as a static rule that is imposed upon nature, but as a living force, which has its reality in the concrete manifestation of nature. This dynamic reason also characteriz- es the Stoic definition of nature, as attested to by Cicero in De natura deorum: Now Zeno gives this definition of nature: Both art and nature are generative.

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Also, the order of each must be under- stood in its concrete complexity. Cleanthes' definition of craft, "a pathmaking disposition" or "a disposition which accomplishes all things by plan or method" [literally: Again it is undeniable that every organic whole must have an ultimate ideal of perfection.

As in vines or in cattle we see that, unless obstructed by some force, nature progresses on a certain path of her own to her goal of full development, and as in painting, architecture and the other arts and crafts there is an M C. The trans- lation is mine. Censet enim artis maxume proprium esse creare et gignere.

If Plato distrusted nature, so much the more did he distrust art. According to the Platonic theory of the forms, nature is a reflection of the true reality of the forms, and art is yet one more step removed from "things in themselves.

An even more striking similarity between Leonardo's and the Stoic theory of nature arises in his articulation of the relation of the microcosm to the macrocosm. Unlike Pomponazzi, who sees man as the mean between the supernatural and the natural world, Leonardo portrays man as neither above nor below nature but in nature. Man is the microcosm of the world— but of a physical world that is ever changing.

For Leonardo, the transitoriness of the world and of man are both like the fate of the butterfly: Ut enim in vite ut in pecude nisi quae vis obstitit videmus naturam suo quodam itinere ad ultimimi pervenire, atque ut pictura et fabrica ceteraeque artes habent quendam absoluti operis effectum, sic in omni natura ac multo etiam magis necesse est absolvi aliquid ac perfici. The visible physical realm, subject to change, is made analogous to the prison in the Myth of the Cave Republic 7. Analogies to Stoic Cosmology 47 him that the desired things come too late, and he is not aware that he will desire his own undoing.

Implicit in Leonardo's analogy is a cosmology in which the world, like nature repeatedly progressing through the seasons, is continually being generated and destroyed. From the perspective of the whole of nature, this process is dynamic, a cause for optimism. The following evaluation of the Stoic acceptance of natural change could well be applied to Leonardo: The universe changes continually, and so does God; for God is the universe.

In the Stoics' view, process is a sign of vitality, not a sign of incompletely realized being. At all points in the cosmic cycle, the logos is equally present in the universe; and the universe enjoys an equal plenitude and perfection at all times. Similarly, Ariosto's narrative presents many different characters in a multiplicity of actions in such a way that we are not allowed to become involved deeply in the fate of any one character.

This is part of what makes the poem comic. If we attempt to understand the Furioso through only part of the poem, or through the stories of individual characters in isolation from the entire plot, the poem becomes more pathetic and tragic than parodie and comic. Taken as a whole, the action of the Furioso is comic. For example, the fate of the lovesick and deluded Orlando seems pathetic only if we overlook the last fifth of the poem, where he makes a brilliantly comic recovery and heroic comeback.

The very instability of the world is less a cause for tears than for laughter in the Furioso. For Leonardo as for Ariosto, the sense of activity hastening from change to change issues into artistic vision, in which differences cohere. As Leonardo sees it, the painter is master of the variety in the universe: The artist's protean imagination generates harmony through representing variety.

This description of the visual artist's control over the diversity of material through the proportion of his vision could be applied to Ariosto's writerly control over a great variety of images, places, persons, and emotions, through the narrative design of the Furioso. The artist's single glance that perceives all these differences in propor- tion is like Croce's account of Ariosto's irony as "the eye of God.

In the Libro del Disegno delli Moti Naturali, Leonardo explains how the motions of the parts of the human body, when traced, form circles turning around their respective centers. From this center, a circle can be drawn which encompasses all the possible motions of the parts of the body.

The stability of possible action in turn forms a whole circle which is analogous to the "first order of the heavenly bodies [primo ordine delli corpi celesti]. The relation between microcosm and the macrocosm is represented physically and dynamically. The stucture described by both text and drawing provides an analogy to the Furioso' s structure as Stoic cosmos.

The action of the poem, like the movement of the body, turns around a center— Orlando's madness. The plot of each section of the poem, like the movement of each part of the body, forms a series of circles around a center. Leonardo's analysis of human motion and Ariosto's poetic method conceive of order in Stoic terms— "made of matter-in- motion.

Cicero has the Stoic exponent Balbus argue against the notion that the cosmos was formed at random: For all its parts everywhere striving for the middle press on uniformly [aequaliter]. Moreover, interlinked bodies endure best when they are bound together by a kind of encompassing bond. This is accomplished by the substance which, performing all things by mind and reason, pervades the whole cosmos and draws and gathers the outermost parts toward the center.

Consequently, if the cosmos is spherical and all its parts are therefore held together everywhere uniformly [aequabiles] the same must happen on earth, so that with all its parts converging toward the middle, which in a sphere is the lowest part, nothing may break through and so cause its great coherence of weight and heavy things to collapse. The Warburg Institute, Munksgaard, , Christensen makes this valuable comparison of Aristotelian and Stoic ontology: And since this is so, it is reasonable that formal logic should be an exhibiting of possible relationships between abstract entities.

To the Stoics the world is made up of matter-in-motion. So, the elements of our experience are primarily events. Geometrical structure representing the possible movements of the human body after Leonardo Codex Huygens, fol. According to the analogy of microcosm to macrocosm, just as all parts of the cosmos move towards the center of the cosmos, all parts of the poem move toward the center of the poem.

The Furioso 's structure can be representeed as a series of concentric circles surrounding a central point Figure 2. Each series of smaller circles stands for eight cantos in which the first and last, the second and second to last, and so forth, correspond to one another, by either similarity or opposition, in terms of theme and plot.

Each section, in turn, corresponds to that section equidistant from the central episode, Orlando's madness. In the section including Cantos , following that at the center of which Orlando loses his wits, the order is disturbed. When Orlando regains his wits in Canto 39, the order of the poem, too, is restored. Figure 2 illustrates this narrative pattern, which will be explained by the narratological analysis in the following chapters. But first an examination of the structure of Machiavelli's historiography will allow for a consideration of the political implica- tions of Stoic cosmology.

Historical Repetition and Change Oh tempo, veloce predatore delle create cose, quanti re, quanti popoli hai tu disfatti e quante mutazione di stati e vari casi sono seguiti, poi che la maravigliosa forma di questo pesce qui mori. Per la cavernose e ritorte interiora ora, disfatto dal tempo, paziente diaci in questo chiuso loco; colle ispogliate spolpate e ignude ossa hai fatto armadura e sostengo al soprapposto monte.

Maxime autem corpora inter se iuncta permanent cum quasi quodam vinculo circumd. Structural outline of the narrative pattern of the Orlando Furioso 54 CHAPTER TWO [O time, swift despoiler of created things, how many kings, how many peoples have you undone, and how many changes of states and varied circumstances have followed, since the marvel- lous form of this fish died here.

Through the cavernous and twisted recess, destroyed by time, you lie patiently in this confined space; despoiled of glue, with bones stripped of flesh and bare, you have made a support and prop for the mountain above you. For the Stoics the order of nature was constructed by the continual process of destruction and creation.

For Leonardo the passing of kings, peoples, and states could be compared to the decomposition of a fish and its subsequent transformation into the formation of a mountain. A similar analogy between historical and natural processes informs Machiavelli's theory of history in the Discorsi. This analogy can be traced back to Polybius' Histories, a text influenced by Stoicism. However, whereas the pessimistic Polybian theory only describes the process of decay, Machiavelli's principles explain how renewal can follow decay.

Machiavelli attempts to solve contemporary political problems by extolling the virtue of the Romans— the excellence of their constitution, their martial valor— and by comparing the history of ancient Rome to that of the Florentine present. In short, he "raises up dead things" in political thought. In analyzing the success of Rome, Machiavelli also transforms the Polybian cycle of constitutions into a process which is more paradoxi- cal and accepting of change.

Che malinconia per lui, che, insieme con le rive incantate a mano a mano dileguantisi, vedeva svanire tanti bei sogni della fervida giovanezza; meo fortunato di Ladislao, cui almeno era concesso riposare in quella terra beata! E che sconforto per chi aveva sognato con lui, e sperato di veder Napoli metropoli di un forte ed indipendente stato italiano; magoa dexteritate.

VII; Ranoviae, , p. I Il Sannazaro sfoga la sua ira in due sonetti, che pa. Di tuoi chiari trionfi altro volume Ordir credea; ma per tua colpa or manca; Ch augel notturno sempre abborre il lume lt. Scriva chi fama al mondo aver non vuole, A cui non fur giammai le Muse amiche. Scriva chi perder vuoI le sue fatiche, Lo stil, l ingegno, il tempo e le parole lt. DBo scrisse un feroce sonetto contro re Alfonso: Andate voi personalmente al Sangiac e poi al Gran Signore con eccessiva celeritate. Voi intendete lo biBogno: Nec fas ingenium tollere ad astra caput. Quodque diu partum est virtute, et fortibus armis Imperium, faedae servit avaritiae lt.

Ma il lezzo di quella conquista, che dopo tanto apparato era finita in un carnevale, era venuto auche all imperatore, al papa ed a principi che l avevano provocata o favorita. Ferdinando, aiutato dal Graneapitano Consalvo di Cordova, da Veneziani e dal Papa, riconquistb il trono; ma nello stesso anno , nel settembre o nell ottobre, moriva. Auspice te, nostrae nullis ineursibul arces, Succumbent nulli, litora nostra minis. Sed bene habet; cessere metus, cessere pericla; Barbarus hostiles ad sua vertit equ Jam juga, jam lati respirant undique campi, Nee tuba veliferas concitat ulla rates, Tu tamen ad patrios revocabere victor honoree, Maternoeque sinue, Parthenopenque petes.

Fu un sogno anche questo. E Federico, rinchiusosi in castel Nuovo, venne a patti co conquistatori, riserbandosi per altri sei mesi l isola e il castello d Ischia e un intera l Epigr. Qoando, ad Ischia, si apparecchiava a salpare per la Francia, lo raggiunse il Sannazaro, pronto a seguirlo. Aveva venduto due castelli e la gabella del Gaudiello, e nniva a metterne il prezzo 2 a disposizione del suo re.

Campo Vita di J. Tutto era buio per l avvenire della patria. Ma mentre il Sannazaro era in Francia, a Venezia, nel 12 maggio del , veniva in luce un libretto in ottavo, col titolo: I Oon gratia et privilegW. Atergo della prima pagina, c era questa prefazione: Ho voluta farla stampare in questa forma per lo egregio homo maestro Bernardino Verceleso loquale li ha posto ogni studio et diligentia infar dieta Opera sia eorrecta come meritamente rechiede: Nela Inclita et famosissima Cita de Venetia: Molto magnifico ed osservando signore.

In tante cose V. Allego in questo V.

Mi rincreace avere a combattere col vento. Dio Digltized by Google. Le cose mie non meritano uscire fuori, e questo non bisogna che altri mel dica, che Dio grazia il conosco io stesso. Meliw non tangere c14mo. Il meglio che rimanesse a fare era ristampare il libro, ritoccato e compiuto. E ci si mise un amico vero del Sannazaro, anzi uno degl interlocutori stessi dell Arcadia, Pietro Summonte, quello fra gli eruditi del tempo a cui dobbiamo non solo l edizione delle cose sannazariane ma anche del Pontano e del Chariteo. La nuova, bella, corretta e completa stampa compane in Napoli nel marzo del I con somma et assidua diligenza di Petro 8um I manno: Con privilegio del Illustrissimo.

I Gran Capitanio Vice Re: I sotto la pena: In quel tempo il Sannazaro era in Francia; e un usente poteva accennare al Summonte, ch era in Napoli, nel modo come fa lui. Cardinale di Aragona, Petro Summontio. La cagione che principalmente ad questa mia non voluntaria audacia mi mosse Reverendissimo et lllustrissimo Signor mio: Vedendo chiaramente che la fortuna non satia di subvertere li regni: Anchora aIe nostre memorie: Cosa veramente lontanissima et molto diversa dal desiderio di chi scrive.

Non bastava ad questa cieca Dea: In tante cose il nostro Measer Jacobo Sannazaro havere, offeso. Anchora neli suoi scritti: Concio sia cosa che mentre egli in Francia dimora: Per non mancare al vero offido di perfetto et honorato Cavaliero: Furono hor BOn tre anni impresso in Italia le sue colte et leggiadrissime Ecloghe tutte deformate et guaste: Da poi vedendo li impressori Venetiani la cosa easere in prezzo: Peroehe eUa stata compolla IOn gia molti aDni: Non ho po8IIuto supportare: Et per questo senza altra sua ordinatione: Facendole imprimere da quello originale medesimo: Peroehe 8BBendosi nel grembo di essa et coneeputa et portata il debito tempo tal genitura.

Dovea poi ragionevolmente da quella parturirse. Ma se non saM la stampa di quella bellezza: Deveraae ad questa nostra patria concedere pietosa venia. Trovandosi adeBBO per le reE sa" bene cosi. Legga dunque felicemente tua Reverendissima et Illustrissima. Et poi che lo auttore di quella BOI per Bervare fede: La lingua poi, la sintassi, l ortografia sono notevolmente ritoccate con criteri uniformi, e risanate di tutte quelle viziature dialettali venete che avean prese nelle mani del primo tipografo.

Vide mi Acci quantum in hac mea laboriosa provincia mihi 8I8Umam. Cum quia mittit aliquid muneli ei, cuius est munua, videtur temeritatis, atque arrogantiae crimine accusandus. Nostra enim non aliena debemus dono mittere: Ipsa autem id faciena: Sed redeo ad ArDigltized by Google. Sed de his plura, ut spero, coram vel brevi. Se e quanto l edizione aldina differisca da quella del Summonte, vedremo pib.

Onde io credo che esse siano state fatte proprio per questa, Dei due anDi che intercedono fra Digltized by Google. IV Digltized by Google. D intorno si st. Qui la giovenca e il formoso toro, la camusa capra e l immondo caprone celebrano le loro nozze i qui mille giacigli di Driadi, mille covi di Satiri ed antri, graditi nascondigli della Dea delle selve. Ne era a capo Calliope, circondata dalle sorelle. Denique praeeinetumque hederis et virgine lauru, Ad eitharam dulees edoeuere mod Venerat omne genus peeudum, genus omne Cerarum, Atque i1la Cestum luce habuere diem.

Androgeumque, Opieumque, et rustica aaera aeeutua, Commovi laerimia mOl[ pia salta meis, Dum tumulum earae, dum Cestinata parentis Fata eano, gemitus dum, Melisaee, tu Siamo in Arcadia, nella vera e propria terra di Grecia, alla cima oper le falde del monte Partenio. Co i quali tutti erano usati secondo il costume della patria, a lodare i genii, gli beroi et gli Dei. Dopo questo ammaestrati dalle discipline di Philosseno et di Timotheo, facevano I I cinque libri delle Storie di Polibio furono conosciuti ben per tempo dagli umaniati.

Il papa Niccolb V Tommaso da Sa1 7. Tibi vero ingentea ago gratiu agamque dum vivam, quod me URum ex multia, cui hoc munus delegares, elegiati. Finalmente tutta la vita loro si spendeva in queste canzoni, non tanto che si dilettassero d udire le consonanze, quanto per esercitarsi cantando insieme. Ultimamente i giovani fanno ogni anno ai cittadini spettacoli et giuochi ne i theatri con canti et con balli. Volendo fare una natura piacevole et trattabile, la quale da 88 pareva troppo feroce et dura, introdUro prima tutte quelle cose che di sopra habbiamo raccontato, da poi le ragunanze comuni et assaissimi sacrificii, ne i quali gli huomini et le donne si ragunassero insieme; ultimamente le compagnie delle vergini et de i fanciulli.

Tutte le quali cose fecero a questo fine, accioche quello clle da natura era troppo duro ne gli animi loro, per usanza si placasse et piil piacevole si facesse:. Era una gente rozza, che viveva a modo di fiere, ignara di ogni arte e di ogni esercizio umano. Nessun toro ansava sotto l adunco vomere, e nessuna terra era sotto il dominio del coltivatore.

Non si faceva uso di cavalli, ciascuno trascinava se stesso; e la. Quegli uomini andavan nudi e indurivano i loro corpi all aria aperta, buoni a sostenere le gravi piogge e i venti di tramontana 2. E in Arcadia il Sannazaro sperava di potere staccar lui dal pino sacro a Pane lo. Ma finalmente un pastore, bello come Paride, gli domanda dei suoi casi; ed egli, sospirando, li racconta. Se non alla mort. E niente di pib. Allo attingerne direttamente dalla natura viva e reale, preferisce raschiare e rammollire i colori delle tavolozze di Teocrito, di Virgilio, di Claudiano.

E da un accozzo, non sempre organico, di studi e macchiette altrui, vien formando i suoi quadri di paesaggio. Anzi la natura viva del di fuori turba, e bisognerebbe chiuder le finestre per paura che non penetri in casa la tentazione di far di testa propria, alla barba di Longo Sofista e del Boccaccio. Florio, lontano dalla sua Biancofiore, non sa darsi pace e piange e la chiama finanche nel sonno.

Andiamo a pigliar gli usati diletti:. Ma vedendolo cosi malinconico e pensoso, aggiunse: Quali pensieri t occupano? Quale accidente ti ha potuto sl costrignere. Ne teneri anni della mia puerizia sicome voi potete sapere ebb io continua usanza con la piacevole Biancofiore, nata nella paternal casa meco in un medesmo giorno.

La cui bellezza, i nobili costumi e l adorno parlare generarono un piacere, il qual sl forle comprese il mio giovanetto cuore,ch ioniuna cosa vedeva che tanto mi piacesse. In questo luogo mi rilegb in esilio, sotto colore di voler ch io studiassi. Tu dei credere che elli pensano alla tua salute, ed io credo senza dubbio, che questa dimora non sia senza gran bene per te. Dunque confortati; e se per te non ti vuoi confortare, confortati per amor di lei e di noi, acciocch ella e noi abbiam ragione d allegrarci.

Cotesta narrazione boccaccesca somiglia tanto alla sannazariana, che o bisogna supporre che Sincero narri come propria una storia non sua, o che i suoi casi amorosi siano cost curiosamente identici a quelli di Fiorio, da tirarlo involontariamente a descrivere gli stessi momenti psicologici e patologici, quasi con le stesse parole, e a sospirare e a lagrimare nel modo medesimo! Laonde io un giorno incominciai, con dolenti voci, a pregar gl Iddii del cielo e della terra e qualunque altri, che i miei dolori terminassero; e infinite volte dimandai e chiamai la morte, la quale impossibil mi fu di potere avere,.

I C Et quod temptabam dicere versus erat ". I lettori che ne hanno voglia, troveranno in questa edizione allineati parallelamente al testo sannazariano, fra gli altri, anche i luoghi del Boccaccio che in massima parte son valsi a formarlo. Ma, prima che per questi, anche per altri innamorati i letti erano stati c: Me,liseo, qui proprio assisimi:. Pontano e i suoi tempi, v. I, nota mostra d ignorare completamente il matrimonio con la Eugenia. Questa nota scettica e spregiudicata ci fa volentieri perdonare al Colangelo lo scerpellone di sette.

Certo, per quanto aenza buon fondamento gli siano stati attribuiti dei figli naturali l, di scappatelle il sticisque Architriis et protocollis ad Historiam Neapoli. Il, c in quo ploratur filius umeus. Ma il povero Sannazaro non parla a nome suo, ma di una signora Letizia, madre sfortunata: Per non disperarsi, i biografi si sono stretti intorno all annotatore del Crispo, ed hanno ripetuto a coro NatuB erat miserae lux unica matris, ocellus Unicus, hune Lachesis noxia Bubripuit. I primi due versi somigliano alquanto a un canto popolare napoletano antico: Extinxitque Sll8S ipsa Erycina faces.

Quae tumulo increvit laurus myrtique rosaeque Pieridom e lacrymis noveris esse aataa. Harm08ine extineta est, Sensusque extinctus amandi. Nemo amat, et numen desiit esse, Venus. VI Digltized by Google. Mi par precio dell opera metter sott oz: Cntdeli" hllpias Immanem pharetram Dei minacis. PU"l grttLtlm Vtlnerem, rimt: Quaerunt ludere, non dolere amantes.

Ed il Colangelo, tratto nel in errore dal De Luna, nel 26, come abbiamo visto, si corresse. Quanto poi la pasf. Non ha saputo il Crispo decidersi a separare l una dall altra. Ma appunto senza separarle, avrebbe potuto immaginare che ". Tutte codeste creature boccaccesche, che non differiscono se non pel colore dei capelli o del vestito 2, purtroppo indurrebbero a crederlo; ma bisogna tener conto che son tutte figlie dello stesso padre, il quale le.

Le donne del Boccaccio, raccolte insieme, farebbero lo stesso effetto di una sala da museo, dove siano schierate l una dopo l altra parecchie statue greche di Veneri, variamente atteggiate ma sempre simili nella loro divina bellezza. Chi che il poeta inglese Don ai aia ricordato. Anche a voler prendere come storica la narrazione dell A,. Di Amarante nell A,. I quali si son preoccupati nel sentire Ofelia, subito dopo di averla chialQata Amaranta, per rimbeccare il rivale che aveva detto: E lo stampatore veneto ha subito corretto e stampato: Vittorio Emanuele di Roma.

Napoli, , e Bartolommeo Gamba nella scelta di c Operette di istruzione e di piarere. Venezia, , ristampando l Arcadia, vi aggiun88J O anch essi le note del PortireUi, in grazia del listemtJ ridotto. Unde odor hicY cineri thura ministrat Amor. Unde pyrd ex pharetra. Ast haec illachrimans quae legit ossa1 Venus. Fortunate lapis, tumuloque beatior omni! Tu tegis in terris siquid honoris erat ,.

IIl, 76 e TI Sannazaro, in fine del romanzo, racconta di una sna visione l. Una Sirena sednta sopra uno scoglio piangeva amaramente; e Jaoobo, tutto intento ad ascoltarla, non si avvede d un ondata che quasi lo travolge. Gli parve poi di vedere un suo c albero bellissimo di arancio. Le quali, pur essendo importanti per la storia della lingua italiana fuori. Insieme con la lingua e le forme poetiche di Dante e del Pet V. I Et quas det iuveni pueUa charo. I Haee aunt suavia dulciora melle I Hyblaeo, et Siculae liquore eannae. I Oaee sola ambroaiaeque neetarillAue I Succoa fondere, sola hahere poeaunt.

Quis tunc divitias, quis aurum et omoes I Assis me potet. I, 6t , addirittura le chiede i baci sull eaempio di Catullo: Da mibi tu, inea lu, tot buia rapta petenti, IQuot dederat vati Leabia blanda suo. I Sed quid pauca peto, petiit ai pauea Catullua I 8asia pauca quidem, si numerentor, erunt. Sa a mente Teocrito e Virgilio, che sono i suoi maestri e i suoi autori principalissimi. Il quale, accennando a paesi ed ai poeti da lui conosciuti, dice pure: Ho presente l ediz. Sette savi, l Esiodo ecc. Teocrito vuoI dire c uomo di divino giudizio.

Lo studio del Sannazaro su Teocrito ci viene anche comprovato dalle lettere ch egli scrisse a proposito del suo poema. Pb essere che sua S. Lac mihi non estate novum non fri-. E poco dopo ci attesta esplicitamente il auo studio giovanile aul bucolico Siracusano: Anche il Poliziano recb in versi latini uno Digltized by Google. Catullo, ad chi Virg. Anzi, sotto un certo rispetto e con una tal quale esagerazione, e l Arcadia e le Piscatorie e il poema De party Virginis si potrebbero addirittura riconnettere aUa serie dei tanti centoni virgiliani di cui fo pieno il medioevo 1.

Ma cotesto culto per Virgilio era tott altro che privilegio di pochi, come invece era quello per Teocrito. E lo studio di Virgilio e della sua I Cfr. Virgilio avrebbe dovuto parere scolorato, snervato, molle ed insipido. E Virgilio galleggia su tutto il non lieto periodo della decadenza romana e riesce a tenersi su anche nella morta gora del medioevo. Anche a lui, sotto il velarne di quegli esametri meravigliosi, par di fiutare un alto ed arcano significato morale e politico; ed anzi.

Ma Dante a buon conto crede al significato allegorico delle egloghe virgiliane: E le prese ad imitare. A giudizio anzi di questo entusiastico. Certo, le egloghe petrarchesehe hanno molte e mirabili bellezze poetiche: Betussi, pago 25f; Venetia, f L una e l altra bucolica fanno degna testimonianza della parentela, rara in ogni tempo e luogo. Ma nelle mani di Virgilio divenne addirittura - e dove non divenne si credette che fosse divenuta - allegorica. Se dunque Virgilio stesso - che per gli uomini del medioevo era il creatore non che del genere pastorale2 ma t Cfr.

Bernardo Pulci scrive nella prefazione della SUa traduzione delle Bucoliche virgiliane t E vien notando, BI. VIU Digltized by Google. Le quali tutte COlle essendo dirittamente considerate, quale studioso huomo. E come Coluceio, molti di quegli umanisti dovettero sentirsi rapiti da cotesto insano amore verso il genere pastorale. Novati, il quale attende da parecchio ad un lavoro completo sul famoso umanista toscano; e dalla sua gentilezza ne ho avute queste.

Pero io non ho ancora perduta la speranza di vederle veair fuori una volta o l altra: Calpurnio Siculo, e, separate da queste, quelle di Aurelio Nemesiano poeta cartaginese, e poi i Bucolicon di Fra. In fine ad un suo opuscoletto, che tratta in forma dialogica della scultura, stampato in Firenze nel , egli scrive: E in fine al volume: J Digltized by Google. E qui pare cbe abbian subito trovata fortuna, cosi da esser messe nelle mani degli scolari insieme con quelle dello stesso Virgilio.

Di cbe Cinzio Giraldi, il classico ed acuto istoriografo di quel periodo letterario, si mostra scandalizzato. Parlando appunto di Calpumio, esce a dire: Fuit quidem cum ego eas omnes septem eclogas avidissime legarem, nam et me puero magni. Pietro Crinito, discepolo del Poliziano e che fu de primi a tentare una storia dei poeti latini da. E fin dal , in Roma si. Il Crinito scrive di lui: Cito qaesto giudizio del Crinito dal libro: Poeta6 tres egregij nutk: HalieutiaSn liber acephalus; M. E queste quattro egloghe pare che siano state conosciute ben per tempo, certo. Nessuno, dopo Virgilio, ha saputo tentare con fortnna il genere pastorale, dice il poeta napoletano.

E forse, anzi senza forse, ha ragione; ma alle volte una sentenza. Cosi ne scrive il Summonte al Puderico stesso, nella lettera dedicatoria del dialogo del Pontano Actius: Etiam ad n08 attulit Ovidii fragtnentum De piscibus, Uratii poetae Oynegeticon cuius meminit Ovidius ultima de Ponto elegia. Un secolo prima del Sannazaro, vi aveva attinto non poco il Boccaccio, quantunque in fondo li Numatiani elegos, quorum tenuitatem et elegantiam e saeculo iUo agnoscas Claudiani lt. Mi pare non privo d interesse un brano della lettera del Logo ad Antonio Fuccaro, che serve di prefazione al volume aldino: Is mihi trium optimorllm et antiquissimorum autborum, qui tam diu Jatuerunt, ut peoitus in oblivionem hominum venerint , copiam fecit: Aurelij Nemesiani, qui idem traclavit argumentum; quibus adiunctum erat P.

Ovidij Nasonis fragmentum de piscibus. II1ud vero dolendum summopere est, quod tam lacer et mutilatus ad nos pervenit, ut non pauca in eo videantur desyderari. Aesiandcr quidem ex vetuatiasimo codice, quod nobilis et cultissimus nostri temporis poeta Accius Syncerus Sannazarius longobardicis literis ICriptum ex GaJlijs secum aJiquando attulerat, quam potuit integre et incorrupte descripsit una cum autoribus iIli coniunctis.

Quorum exemplar mihi cum dedisset, non modo ut edendos curarem volenti mihi permisit, verum etiam id at Cacerem, ultro ipse me est adhortatus lt. Lo Zumbini, per esempio, addita alcune derivazioni del Filocolo dai romanzi di Senofonte Efesio, di Eumanto, di Giamblico, di Eliodoro, di Achille Tazio 3; ed a me sembra che pur tutta la storia del primo innamol amento di Florio con Biancofiore sia ritessuta su quella di Dafni e Cloe nel romanzo di Longo Sofista.

In questa mia edizione dell Arcadia son venuto spesso notando, fra gli altri, anche non pochi riscontri di alcuni luoghi del Sannauro con altri di Longo o di Achille Tazio. Quei romanzi non furono ammessi all onore della stampa se non molto tardi, sulla fine del Cinquecento. Pure, giravano in numerosi manoscritti. Ma se cotesti scrittori greci e latini fornivano al Sannazaro la materia pastorale, la forma del romanzo gliela fornl invece quello fra tre grandi toscani ch era venuto a predicare in Napoli la buona novella della nuova lingua.

Al giovane umanista, avido di quella luee che il mondo classico gli veniva a mano a mano svelando, il Boccaccio, piena la testa e la penna di versi e di sentenze degli antichi scrittori, poteva anticipare la gioia della contemplazione intera e libera d un orizzonte sconfinato e pieno di luee. I romanzi del Treeentista toscano erano come le relazioni e i disegni di quel maraviglioso mondo classico che si ardeva dal desiderio di vedere.

Omero, egli Boccaceio aveva saputo, primo fra gl Italiani moderni, gustare! Ma come che molti auttol i greci habbia veduto, nondimeno per dimostratione del mio precettore ne ho compreso alcuni, de quali secondo il bisogno. Composto per il clarissimo poeta Messer Johanne Boccaccio da certaldo ad instancia,. E solo tre anni dopo, nel , se ne fece a Napoli stessa una ristampa 2. I C Incomincia il libro chiamato nimphale: Boccacci in Certaldo; Bologna, ; pago H. Echi dell elegia latina e specie delle Metamorfosi, che riproducono tanta parte della poesia alesssndrina, e sono come una serie di piccoli romanzi e piccoli.

La severa terzina di Dante viene spesso a smorzare, con la sua studiata e mistica armonia - come una fuga o un canone a moto perpetuo fra mezzo a un pazzo ed allegro turbinio di note -, l entusiasmo lirico e direi melodico del romanziere. Il Sannazaro, che nell. E Dante stesso non era. E per questo non si limitava al solo ninmIe di Amelo: X , Goffredo da Viterbo sec.

XIIl , Benzone aerivono le loro cronache frammettendo appunto versi alla prosa. La tessitura del r0manzo, le descrizioni o di persone o dell aurora o del tramonto, la maniera di lamentarsi per pene amorose, il modo di periodare, le frasi e le parole salvo qualche crudo latimsmo; tutto insomma li del Boccaccio. Il Sannazaro non dice propriamente lo stesso, ma Per la qual cosa anchora. Dopo il proemio, nell Ameio segue un invocazione in versi, che manca nell Arcadia; ma subito dopo comincia nell uno e nell altra la narrlUiofte, con un intonazione identica.

Nelle piagge del quale fra gli strabocchevoli balzi 8urgeva d alberi, di querce, di cerri e d abeti uno folto bosco e disteeo in4no alla IOmmitA del monte. Dalla sua destra tm chiaro fiumicello. In questo cossi facto luogo sogZiono sooente i pastori con li loro gregi da li eicini monti convenire, et quivi in diverse et non ligiere prove exercitarse. Ma U6Imdono una fiata tra l altre quasi tu tti y convicini pastori con le loro mandre quivi ragunati, et ciascuno varie manere cercando de BOllazzare, si dava maraviglioea festa; Ergasto solo.

Ascolta per un pezzetto, poi si va accostando al luogo donde la canzone provie. Altre posti giuso i boscherecci archi e li strati, sopra quelle sospesi i caldi visi, sbracciate, con le candide mani rifaceano belli con le fresche onde. Il Boccaccio riproduceva la scena di Atteone dalle Metamorfosi ovidiane, il Sannazaro invece il madrigale del Petrarca: L uno e l altro attingono a Fasti di Ovidio, e ne traducono pib o men fedelmente lunghi brani: Per mezzo de i quali trovammo molte pastorelle ligiadrissime, che di passo in passo se andavano facendo nuove girlandecte.

Nell Arcadia, alla canzone di Galizio, segue subito la descrizione della pastorella Amaranta: Dopo, veramente il Sannazaro par che si voglia un po ribellare al suo modello. E, per premio, il napoletano continua a porre cerbiatti e vasi intagliati, laddove il Boccaccio avea fatto c apparecchiar ghirlande:. E ciascuna di quelle donne ha una storia d amore da raeeontarci ed una canzone da cantare. TI Boccaccio, con la smania inestinta di narrarci ancora una volta i suoi amori con madonna Fiammetta e di descrivete le belle dame della corte Angioina, c invita ad assistere ad uno di quei seducenti ritrovi, dove tutte quelle donne convenivano Digltized by Google.

Alla memore fantasia dell innamorato di fiammetta si ripresentano, anche piil. Ameto, come nel Filocolo Florio e i Buoi compagni, le ninfe le fanno largo e le cedono il miglior posto. E lei, c0desta maga seducente, diventa centro del romanzo, Digltized by Google. Quando i suoi piedi toccano la terra, rinascono erbette e fiori e mandano un profumo caldo ed inebriante, i ruscelli che pareano ghiacciati scorrono mormorando, e le fulgide onde guizzano spumeggiando fra gli scogli, mentre un popolo di uccelli, che fin allora pareva dormisse, intuona un concento armonioso che s accorda alsusurro delle foglie eal mormorio del fiume.

E come nel Filocolo, avviene nell Ameto: Come in una uggiosa. Peccato che proprio qui al nostro Jaeobo venga meno il coraggio di tener dietro al suo autore. Boccaccio e della Vita Nuova di Dante, la storia d amore della fanciulla d otto anni; e ne fa raccoiltare un altra, tanto per cercar di seguire anche in questo l Ameto che ne ha ben sette, dal pastore Charino: Ma quelle infino nella loro venuta picciole ai nuovi popoli, per la loro cresciuta prole, abbandonarono; e vicini al lago d Averno, via certiBBima agli Iddii infernali e all onde del mirteo mare, e di Vulturno aUa torbida foce, quasi in mezzo, in terra ferma posarono i pam loro; e salutati i vicini monti, li quali d alberi copiosi conobbero.

E con questo consiglio declinando del monte vicini alle poche onde, che tra Falerno e Vesevo stanche mettono in mare. Essi, nel primo fondare, di candido marmo una nobile sepoltura della terra nel ventre trovarono; il titolo della quale, di lettera appena nota, tra loro leggendolo, trovarono che dicea: Gli altri in numero minori, ma non nelIi effetti, infra Salerno ed essi si posero nel poco piano, per una gittata di pietra vicini a primi poeti.

Una lingua, uno abito, e quel medesimi Iddii erano all uno che all altro; solamente gli abitatori erano divisi. Mi par bene riferire qui due dei principali luoghi dell Arcadia che riguardano Napoli, sperando che a qualche lettore, che abbia preso interesse a questa discussione di fonti, non riesca discaro se per questa volta sola deroghi alla legge che mi BOno imposto di rimandare, pel testo dell Arcadia, alle pagine corrispondenti di questo volume.

Coi quali anchora mi tornaro aUa memoria i soaviBlimi bugni, i meravigliosi et grandi edificii, i piacevoli laghi, le dileto tosa et belle iette, i sulphurei monti, et con la cavata grotta la felice costera di Pausilypo, abitata di ville ameniasime et soavemente percossa da le salate onde. Ad questa cogitatione anchora si aggiunse il ricardarmi de le magnificentie de la mia nobile et generosissima patria.

La quale, di the80ri abond. Et sopra tutto mi piacque udirla comendare de studii de la eloquentia et de la divina altezza de la poesia. Al sentir ragionare del suo amenissimo paese, Jacobo dice d essersi commosso fino alle lagrimt: I L anema se ne saglie n P. I Vedi avanti, p. Non si vuoI certo concludere - e sarebbe temerario il farlo - che se nel Boccaccio non ci fossero state visioni, non ce ne sarebbero neanche nell A,. Ma a buon conto li pur degno di nota che nel Boccaccio le visioni non mancano. E come il Boccaccio non sa licenziare un suo libro, senza prima dargli un malinconico addio ed una missione amorosa, cosi il Sannazaro non sa staccare le labbra "dalla soa sampogna senza prima dirigerle una malinconica apostrofe.

Era lei che gli aveva imposto di narrare i casi di Florio e di Biancofiorej e chi sa ora se qu. Panfilo era riuscito a far sua l innamorata Fiammetta. Ed in essa, c se forse in fronda o altra pW si. Come 80D lontani quei giorni in cui un occhiata sola della Digltized by Google.

Non voglio negare che forse in quel momento il Sa. Di questi scherzi i letterati d allora ne facevano; e soprattutto uno scrittore di egloghe ci doveva. Ma che poi la morte di una donna avesse tanto potuto su lui quanto sul Boccaccio l amore di Fiammetta, questo probabibnente il SanDigltized by Google. Se peccati hanno i romanzi del Boccaccio e ne hanno davvero - BOn peccati di eccesso non di difetto: Oltre al racconto amoroso di Sincero, nell Arcat: Il Sann, annacqua tuUo, parafrasando: L amante, che non voleva sentir di.

AVIOrl iIa -, 1. Accenno a Vittorio 1mbriani e alla sua dissertazione intitolata: Una opinione del Manni memorata e contraddetta. Un qualcosa simile basta alla gloria di un uomo " l. Incomincio dal dire che il trovare un piccolo particolare, magari bello e nuovo, non basta da solo a salvare tutta un opera d arte e a conferir vera gloria ad un uomo. Pure, quando, per un momentaneo lampeggiamento di genio, l artista in quel particolare sia riuscito a svelare un nuovo lato del euore umano, una latebra rimasta sconosciuta a tatti gli artisti anteriori, anche quel solo particoI V. Dice l Imbriani, quasi a scusa del suo paradosso: Ma qualche cosa certo sarebbe; soprattutto pel Sannazaro.

I Sovr eaao un stagno. Narciso, C visae correptus imagine formae:. Charino si ferma a tempo per non inciampare, con suo danno, in quest ultima imitazione. Al primo scoppio dei rimproveri di Beatrice: Pareano fatti un flumice corrente, Tant era dali,. I DecameroM, giorno VI, nov. Era montato sopra un cavallo moro benissimo in arnese, ed indossava un mantello nero riccamente gallonato, che serviva a nascondere un grande specchio d acciaio ch ei s era messo sul petto a guisa di corazza.

E per insegua avea un Amore coperto per forza. Ma quando il fedel cavaliere torna, con tanto di barba, dal suo romitaggio, depone nelle mani dell oramai avvizzita regina, insieme col mezzo anello che dovea servire pel riconoscimento, anche ua laup lettera, Della quale le dichiara che sette Digltized by Google.

Lorenzi, il noto autore di commedie buft"e. Ho scelto il mio sposo; eccotene il ritratto. Ma di qui il Lorenzi piglia oeeaaione Per un nuovo Digltized by Google. Che anzi per all: Giornale napoletano di filosof. KE poesia popolare in Italia, non si siano ricordati del racconto dell Heptomtron. IVrp- 84; Lacea, t Onde lo affiitto Prencipe, per li1Ierani di una sl noioaa et continua battaglia, se risolse come. Madama, un amante rischia troppo in simil occasione; ma aendomi gli ordini di V. Cauz Flof uta espa;iola, parte VI, n.

Eppure sono ancor io del parer suo che il Sannazaro non ha da essere l inventore di quel motivo. Confesso peraltro che la fOllte primitiva mi per l abhia da trovare nella letteratura classica e segnatamente negli scrittori greci. E dire che par. Fileno, l amante sentimentale, pel troppoamore portato a Biancofiore e per le troppe lagrime versate, s era tramutato in fonte; e ogni volta che un qualche pellegrino vi si accostasse, le acque gorgogliavano.

Clll aia, ArethUlll, ucer fons. I Fluminia Elei l eterea narravit amorea. TI Sannazaro mostra di avere una conoscenza ben vasta, per i suoi tempi, degli scrittori latini e greci.

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