Month: March 2023

Orlando Innamorato, Part 1

I have finished the first eight cantos of Orlando Innamorato, which brings us up to almost one hundred pages of A. S. Kline’s translation. That should put us well on track to finish the book before Easter on April 9th, which is our goal.

I think I made the right decision in buying this edition. Further checking has confirmed that Kline’s is one of only two complete translations of the Orlando Innamorato into English and the only one that attempts to imitate the original’s rhyming scheme. However, Kline’s translation varies considerably in quality and is often clunky. It’s entertaining, but I admit I’m looking forward to finishing it so I can get to Barbara Reynolds’s acclaimed translation of Orlando Furioso, which is a much more readable version of a more famous epic.

Historical Background

I neglected to note in my earlier post that these two works are based on another epic called the Song of Roland, written in Old French in the eleventh century, which is in turn loosely based on a real historical event, the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, which took place in AD 778. The situation described in the Song of Roland is unhistorical, though the battle itself really happened. In real life, Basques attacked Charlemagne’s forces in the Pyrenees during their return to France because, after unsuccessfully besieging Saragossa, Charlemagne tore down the walls of Pamplona. All of Charlemagne’s rearguard was slaughtered, including Roland, who subsequently became the subject of epic poetry. As portrayed in the Song of Roland, however, Charlemagne and his twelve paladins have conquered all of Spain except Saragossa, whose king Marsile first sues for peace but then treacherously attacks the retreating French thanks to Roland’s turncoat stepfather.

Summary

The story as Matteo Maria Boiardo and his successor Ludovic Oriosto tell it is even more convoluted and complicated.

A hundred pages in, and we are still a long, long way from the battle that will form the climax of the second of these two poems. Boiardo goes wherever his imagination happens to take him and does not particularly care if all the various adventures and subplots form a cohesive whole. With his tongue no doubt firmly in his cheek, he tells us that his outlandish tale is definitely true because he has it directly from Archbishop Turpin. Turpin is another real historical figure who entered myth, and is in the Matter of France one of fiercest of Charlemagne’s twelve paladins. Boiardo appeals to his authority whenever the details of his poem get especially ridiculous.

The story starts by introducing a great Saracen emperor, Gradasso, who reigns somewhere beyond India. Most of the world is at his feet, but he covets two things, both of which belong to Charlemagne’s paladins: One is the super-sharp sword Durindana, wielded by Orlando (the Italian name of Roland); it can cut through steel or stone, and its hilt (says the Song of Roland) contains several priceless relics. The second is Rinaldo’s steed Baiardo, the fastest runner and highest jumper of all the world’s warhorses. To secure the world’s greatest sword and its greatest horse, Gradasso plans a military campaign to conquer first Spain and then France. Why would someone from, presumably, the area of Myanmar attack France by way of Spain? Don’t ask questions like that; from Boiardo point of view, there is Christendom in Western Europe and outside of that a great, amorphous mass that might be termed Pagandom, the geographical features of which are malleable.

After Gradasso’s brief introduction, the story starts where it properly should, at a jousting tournament: Charlemagne has invited all the greatest warriors in the world, both Christian and Saracen, to compete. Although the poem is greatly concerned with the defense of Christendom against her powerful enemies, it is not especially pious: When a visiting Saracen king asks Rinaldo how to pay honor to Christian noblemen, Rinaldo promptly replies that Christians are gluttons at table and whores in bed, but above all admire martial prowess. One wonders if Bishop Turpin would approve.

The festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Angelica, a princess of Cathay, who offers to marry any man who can defeat her brother in combat. Cathay, by the way, is ordinarily a name for northern China, but Boiardo seems to think it is a city in India. We may envision Angelica as either a Chinese or Indian princess, depending on our preference.

In any case, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world and the paladins fall instantly in love with her, especially the titular Orlando. Charlemagne’s court wizard Malagigi, however, discovers that Angelica is part of a convoluted plot to destroy France. Shenanigans ensue, and when the dust settles, Angelica has disappeared, Orlando and Rinaldo have ridden off in search of her, and Astolfo—the worst warrior but biggest braggart among the paladins—has come into possession of a magic lance that can instantly unseat any opponent. Astolfo then unexpectedly dominates the jousting tournament, leading to further shenanigans that end with Astolfo imprisoned for brawling.

Meanwhile, Rinaldo drinks from a magic fountain that causes him to hate Angelica, but Angelica drinks from a different fountain that causes her to love Rinaldo. Further shenanigans ensue. Angelica’s lament, when Rinaldo flees from her, results in some of Kline’s best poetry:

Should he not offer me a glimpse, at least,
Of his fair face, so that by gazing there,
I might upon those handsome features feast,
Or quench love’s fire, and so no longer care?
Reason would wish to find desire had ceased,
And yet reason has no place in this affair.
I call him cruel, of harsh unbending will,
Yet, be that as it may, I love him still.

The solitary adventures are momentarily interrupted when Gradasso’s forces arrive in Spain. France comes to Spain’s aid but then Spain allies with Gradasso and the united forces attack France, besieging Paris. Charlemagne’s forces are almost defeated but Astolfo is released from prison and, riding forth with his magic lance, challenges Gradasso to single combat, which he wins. Gradasso, surprisingly good-natured about the whole business, turns around and goes home.

Orlando, meanwhile, slays his way through the wilderness, encountering giants and ogres every few steps. As an example of both Boiardo’s use of classical material and his sense of humor, Orlando helps a pilgrim who thanks him by giving him a magic book that can solve any riddle. Soon after, Orlando encounters the Sphinx, who tells him of Angelica’s whereabouts but then demands that he answer a riddle. Orlando, unable to answer the riddle, attacks the Sphinx, kills it after a long and brutal battle, and only afterward remembers the magic book in his possession.

While Orlando—supposedly the greatest of the Paladins even though he’s never where he should be—is dithering around, Rinaldo is abducted by the lovelorn Angelica. Despite her machinations, he easily escapes her. He has various adventures almost indiscernible from Orlando’s and finally arrives at the hair-raising Castle Cruel, where a withered crone and her army of giants feed captured knights to an invincible monster born from a corpse. Rinaldo is thrown into a pit with the monster. He is fighting for his life and bleeding from several wounds. A cliff-hanger ends the eighth canto.

Discussion

Boiardo borrows from anything and everything. The backstory of Castle Cruel pulls from the Metamorphoses and other sources of Greek mythology. The Sphinx from the legend of Oedipus gets a cameo. Tristan and Isolde get a mention. There are probably other references I didn’t recognize.

The story is absolutely all over the place. I wonder if Boiardo had an outline or simply went where his fancy took him. But in either case, he’s very good at remembering his various plotlines. He hasn’t dropped a thread yet, and he has several of them going simultaneously.

But I think what most fascinates me is how all this grew out of a real historical event. If we knew nothing about the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, we might assume the Orlando Innamorato is pure fantasy. But as it turns out, it has an historical core, albeit a deeply buried one. I may muse on that more in a later post.

It Is Imperative to Buy Physical Media

By now, readers are probably aware of the outrage over the soon-to-be published Bowdlerizations of the works of both Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming. Two very different authors, the first is the writer of several well-known children’s books, especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the second is the author of the James Bond novels.

To make perfectly clear where I personally stand, I detest the work of both these men. James Bond is a disgusting pig of a character; I have hated every Bond movie I’ve seen, and when I read Casino Royale to give Bond one more chance to entertain me, I found it boring as well as disgusting. And as for Dahl, I have always found him too mean-spirited for a children’s author.

But that isn’t the point. Disliking these men’s work does not give me or anyone else the right to change what they wrote. Trying to eliminate “offensive” content from them would utterly change the character of their books: If Dahl is no longer allowed to call anyone fat and ugly, and if Fleming is no longer allowed to write about a drunken, philandering misogynist, then all of their novels will be reduced to about two pages in length.

The jackbooted censors who are in charge of the new, bloodless editions of these men’s work have their excuses, of course. They always have excuses. Puffin (Dahl’s publisher) has pointed out that Dahl himself revised his work over the course of his life, but that is obviously a motte-and-bailey argument: The censors are destroying the man’s work on the thin excuse that he himself sometimes revised it. Given his importance in the history of children’s literature, it is obvious that what they ought to do is release critical editions comparing and contrasting the changes Dahl made, not release a censored edition in which they make further changes themselves.

The excuse for altering Fleming’s work is even thinner: The first American edition of Casino Royale was censored, so we might as well turn around and censor everything else, right? That argument is too stupid even to rebut.

Notably, the tabloid Daily Mail discovered that the chief censor working on the Dahl books describes herself as a “non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist who is on the autism spectrum.” That is enough to demonstrate that the alterations to Dahl’s work were not done innocently without ideological motivation. Note especially the pairing of asexual and polyamorous: The English language is allegedly this woman’s job, but she has no concern with the actual meaning of words.

And as for Fleming, the Telegraph reveals some of the alterations. In Live and Let Die, Bond visits a strip club, giving Fleming occasion to write:

Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.

The new version instead reads:

Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.

Whatever one thinks of Bond, the new version is nerveless and clichéd. This is why you don’t mess with other people’s books. And what exactly is the reason for this change? What exactly offended the “sensitivity reader”? I thought feminists liked to call men pigs, and Bond is especially deserving of such an epithet, so what is the problem here? The answer is that there is no answer: “Non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchists” do not have actual principles; their offendedness is as random as their self-descriptions are.

We can say this, at least: Things are not yet as bad as they are going to get, so there is still time, but the time is growing short. Right now, the censoring of two famous authors is enough to cause widespread outrage, but it should also provoke some questions: How many other, lesser-known authors have been similarly censored without outrage? How many more authors will be censored? How long until the outrage peters out and the censors can march forward unimpeded?

We must buy physical books. We must build ourselves collections of the works we want to preserve. Every one of us must become an archivist. And it is not important only to save literature. We must save older dictionaries and grammar books as well because these same censors are working to corrupt the language, and they have been wildly successful. Get dictionaries and grammar books from 1989 or before; that seems to be the cut-off point after which the institutions were captured.

And as for older copies of now-censored books or books out of print, my opinion on this matter is rapidly changing: I once opposed any violation of copyright, but I now suspect that some copyright-holders do not have a moral right to the properties they own. So now I am tempted to say, scan and share the banned Dr. Seuss books. Scan and share your Roald Dahl novels, your James Bond novels. Bit-torrent the despecialized editions of the original Star Wars movies. And thumb your nose at the copyright holders.

I am not quite there yet. But I am rapidly approaching.

Lenten Reading: The Matter of France

Years ago, I had an annual practice in which I gave up watching or reading any fictional works for Lent in order to focus on some substantial nonfiction reading. These days, my ratio of nonfiction to fiction is much higher, so I’ve abandoned this particular Lenten practice. Nonetheless, I have decided (a little late, since Lent started a week ago) on my Lenten reading, and I invite anyone interested to join me. It is not nonfiction, but that doesn’t matter.

I have decided I wish to read the romantic epic Orlando Furioso, one of the great works of western literature which Ludovico Oriosto produced in 1516 and revised in 1532. The work is a sequel to the earlier, unfinished Orlando Innamorato of Matteo Maria Boiardo. These works together are part of, or are based on, the “Matter of France,” a cycle of literature about the deeds of Charlemagne. Generally, the Matter of France contains few fantastical elements, but the two Orlando epics are pure fantasy containing little historical content but lots and lots of magic, strange creatures, and bizarre journeys. Many anime fans know some names from these epics thanks to the FATE franchise and would do well to familiarize themselves with the originals to clear up misconceptions.

I have previously read Bullfinch’s deceptively titled Legends of Charlemagne, which summarizes these two works in prose. Bullfinch conveys the impression, and may himself have believed, that he is delivering a faithful presentation of the Charlemagne cycle rather than the inventions of two poets. In any case, his work is engaging and makes a good starting point for anyone who finds epic poetry intimidating.

My plan for Lent is to make it through the Innamorato before Easter at least, and then tackle the Furioso itself later. Having decided this, I have to choose my translations, since I don’t read sixteenth-century Italian.

Because the Orlando Furioso is more popular than its prequel, there are more translations available, the earliest being that of John Harington from 1591. That might seem the best option since it is close to the publication of the Italian original—but an online search reveals that it and most early translations are Bowdlerized, leaving out all the steamy parts. I oppose Bowdlerization on principle.

I have therefore decided on Barbara Reynolds’s translation of the Orlando Furioso, which is available from Penguin. From what I’ve seen, Reynolds appears to know what she is doing, and her version does not appear to be an abridgment. Her translation is probably less beautiful than Harington’s, but it is apparently more complete. Also, it was written in the 1970s and does not appear to have been updated, which means it will contain few or none of the corruptions of language so beloved by today’s academics.

Choosing a translation of the Orlando Innamorato is more difficult because there are fewer and less satisfactory options. William Stewart Rose produced an abridged prose version that’s somewhat famous and would probably make a good introduction to the Furioso, but I have already read Bullfinch’s prose summary, so that does not interest me. More recently, Charles Stanley Ross produced a poetic but non-rhyming translation. However, the above-mentioned Barbara Reynolds convincingly eviscerated his work in a thorough review (that, maddeningly, I can’t find again, or else I’d link it). A few samples confirm Reynolds’s opinion that Ross’s poetry is awful. To make matters worse, the most recent edition of his work has a foreword announcing that “terms of gender and religion have been updated.” As already stated, I detest Bowdlerization, even self-Bowdlerization, so the Ross version is a no-go.

I finally decided on the translation by A. S. Kline. It’s recent, so I’m wary of it (a discerning reader should be wary of any translation produced within the last decade), but it might be the best version that is both in English and not abridged. Unlike Ross’s, it does not attempt to keep the meter of the original but—like the original and unlike Ross’s—it rhymes. From what I’ve seen of it so far, the poetry is merely passable, but that will have to do.