Happy Easter. Admittedly, I did not finish the Orlando Innamorato during Lent as planned. Although I’m enjoying the story, it’s still slow going for me, not only because of so much else going on but because … the poetry of the translation really isn’t good. Mind you, I still think I chose the better of the two alternatives, but there simply is not a good translation of this in English. I really am looking forward to the sequel.
I’ve made it up to Canto XIX, which is not much further than where I was last time, alas. Orlando has lost his memory once and had it restored, Rinaldo has acquired a magical horse, and a lovestruck Saracen king has besieged Angelica in the hope of forcing her to marry him. Orlando has ridden to her aid and he and the enemy king, Agricane, have had repeated duels. In the end, they ride off to a secluded glade, fight once more to the death, and Orlando is victorious. In what is famously one of the poem’s most touching moments, Agricane asks to be baptized in the nearby fountain before his death, and Orlando graciously complies.
The religious outlook behind the Orlando Innamorato is necessarily baffling to the modern reader. At the beginning, Rinaldo proclaims without shame that Christians are known for gluttony, philandering, and war, and the general tenor of the work is less than pious, but there is also a sincere religious sentiment that shows itself at times. One may get the impression—and it may be a correct impression—that religion in the poem is not much at all about how one lives but simply about which god one swears fealty to, similar to a knight’s fealty to his lord. That may in fact be its viewpoint, but it’s unclear (at least to me, since I lack the proper background on the author and the culture of the time and place and so forth) whether that’s part of the satire or whether it’s sincere. It’s always worth keeping in mind that the age of chivalry was over when Boiardo wrote this.
Speaking of religion, I suspect that Kline has modernized some of the references just as Charles Stanley Ross has admitted to doing in his version. Frequently, the Saracens are represented as swearing to Allah, but it is my understanding that epic Christian poems of this sort are wholly ignorant of Islam’s actual doctrines and instead portray the Paynim as worshiping three gods called Apollyon, Termagante, and Mahound. The two latter are mentioned in the Song of Roland on which the present epic is based and portrays the Saracens tearing down their idols of Termagante and Mahound after they lose the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.
Not being an expert in this subject, I’m not sure how this misconception arose. Mahound, at least, is Mohammad, so it’s eeasy to see how that confusion happened. Apollyon is a name from the Book of Revelation, and since Christians have always read their present circumstances into that book, those Christians who were threatened by hordes of Muslims may have simply assumed that Apollyon must be the Muslim god. Termagante, who appears as “Trivigante” in both the Ordlando Innamorato and its sequel Orlando Furioso, is more obscure. I’ve done some looking around, and from what I’ve gathered, nobody is quite sure where the name comes from or how so many people in the Christian West convinced themselves it was the name of a Muslim deity.
At least in Kline’s translation, Trivigante first appears in Canto XVIII, in which Rinaldo does battle with what is so far one of the most interesting characters in the poem: Marfisa, a lady knight of India who has her handmaiden act as her squire. This is the first of the lady knights to appear, though she will be eclipsed in fame and importance later by Bradamante, who becomes one of the central characters and whom Ludovico Ariosto, in the sequel, makes ther the founder of the House of Este, Ariosto’s patron. Marfisa, we will later learn, is sister to Ruggiero, who will become Bradamante’s lover. Marfisa, at least at first, is an ironical character because she is so skilled in combat that she refuses to fight any but the best and most famous knights—which effectively makes her useless in war. She scowls and marches back and forth on a riverbank while the army she’s a part of is being routed, and she has a duel with Rinaldo, whom she seriously wounds, though he escapes because his horse bolts.
The only other character who, so far, has a personality is Astolfo. Astolfo is a clownish boaster with minimal skill who happened upon a magic lance that has made him one of the most formidable knights in a joust but is too silly to realize his recent successes are not due to his own ability. Boiardo clearly has some affection for Astolfo, and if I remember Bullfinch’s summary version correctly, he plays an important role in the epic. We might see him as Marfisa’s opposite: He rushes headlong into battle because of his arrogance and she refrains from it for the same reason.