Furious orlando

Rugiero rescued Angelicaby Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1819).

Orlando furioso is a chivalric epic poem written by Ludovico Ariosto and whose final version was published in 1532. The poem has exerted a wide influence on subsequent culture. The first version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532. Orlando Furioso is a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in love, published posthumously in 1495). In its historical setting and its characters, it shares some features with the Chanson de Roland (in Old French) of the century. XI, which narrates the death of Roldán. The story is also a book of chivalry that falls within a tradition that began in the late Middle Ages and continued to be popular into the century. XVI and well into the XVII.

Orlando is the Christian gentleman known in French as Roland, and in Spanish as Roldán. The story is set against the backdrop of the war between the Christian champions of Charlemagne and the Saracen army that has invaded Europe and tries to overthrow the Christian empire. The poem deals with war and love and the romantic ideal of chivalry. It mixes realism and fantasy, humor and tragedy. The setting is the whole world, plus a trip to the Moon. The wide cast of characters includes Christians and Saracens, soldiers and sorcerers, and fantastical creatures like a gigantic sea monster called the Orca and a flying horse called the hippogriff. Many themes are intertwined in its complicated episodic structure, but the most important are the paladin Orlando's unrequited love for the pagan princess Angelica, which drives him mad; the love between the Christian warrior Bradamante and the Saracen Rugiero, who are supposed to be the ancestors of Ariosto's patrons, the d'Este family of Ferrara, and the war between Christians and infidels.

The poem is divided into forty-six cantos, each containing a variable number of eight-line stanzas in a real octave (a rhyme scheme of abababcc). The real octave had been used in earlier Italian romantic epics, such as Luigi Pulci's Morgante, and Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato. Ariosto's work has 38,736 lines in total, making it one of the longest poems in European literature.

The work

The very extensive poem and epic is made up of forty-six songs written in octaves (38,736 verses) through which characters from the Carolingian cycle wander, some from the Breton cycle (Merlin's grotto, Reinaldos de Montalbán's visit to England) and even some beings inspired by classical Greek and Latin literature. It is, and this is how the author presents it, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando in Love. Where he left his work unfinished, the defeat of Charlemagne's army in the Pyrenees by the Moors, is where Ariosto begins his, which usually, when reintroducing the characters of his predecessor, devotes one or two eighths to summarizing the adventures narrated by Boiardo in the In Love.

Despite its title, Orlando (or Roldán, if you prefer) is not the absolute protagonist of the poem, but one of the main characters that appear in it: the work is a continuous interweaving of stories of different characters that range from appearing and disappearing in the narrative, meeting and distancing, as Ariosto sees fit; a fabric that constitutes various parallel threads that the author skilfully knows how to weave:

(Praying furious, II, 30, vv. 5-8)

There is, therefore, in the work the unity of action that later so concerned Renaissance theorists and poets and that led Torquato Tasso to write his Jerusalem liberated in a very different way. But despite the fact that a summary of the work would be a very long speech, three points can be established around which the work revolves:

• The item Epic represented by the struggle between Moors and Christians and the different battles that lead among themselves the heroes of the poem.

(Praying furious, I, 1, vv. 1–4)

• The item Lovely whose central figure is Angelica and the most outstanding secondary Orlando. One of these loving events is the one that gives the name to the work, "when [don Roldán] found in a source the signs that Angélica la Bella had committed vileness with Medoro, of whose heaviness he went mad, and ripped the trees, shook the waters of the clear sources, killed shepherds, destroyed cattle, embraced huts, and destroyed other houses.

(Praying furious, I, 2, vv. 1–4)

• The item the of exaltation of the House d'Este, lords of Ferrara in Ariosto times. The work, in fact, is dedicated by Ariosto allo Ilustrissimo e Reverendissimo Cardinale donno Ippolito da Este, suo signore.

(Praying furious, I, 3, vv. 1–4)

Although it is a fabulous and improbable epic poem, the Ariosto peppers the text with adventures that at times seem almost slapstick, like the fable of canto XXVIII in which a queen frolicks with a misshapen dwarf; or sharp ironies, which bring the reader back to the most credible reality, like the comment made by Angelica after having argued before Sacripante that she, after all her adventures, was still a virgin:

(Praying furious, I, 56, vv. 1–2)

Plot

Initial note: The plot of the Furioso is dotted with secondary stories, fables, praise to the Dukes of Ferrara, reports of facts presented as fortune-telling, etc. that habitually interrupt the adventures of the main characters and whose inclusion in this section has been deliberately avoided here.

Ariosto begins the action of his Furioso a little before the point where that of the incomplete Enamorado ends abruptly: Orlando has just returned from his adventures in the Orient in the custody of the beautiful Angélica (with whom he has fallen madly in love), and appears in the Christian camp in the Pyrenees where Charlemagne intends to face the Saracen invasion of Agramante, king of Africa, and Marsilio, king of Zaragoza. Reinaldo is there, who is also fighting for Angélica's love, much to the spite of her who hates him; because they both drank from two different sources: Reinaldo from the source of Love and Angelica from the source of Hate. On the eve of the battle, Charlemagne, to avoid any dispute between Orlando and Reinaldo, entrusts the princess to Námo, Duke of Bavaria, and promises that he will be the one whose valor stands out most against the Moors.

But the Christians are completely defeated and Angelica takes advantage of the confusion to flee on the back of a palfrey. During her escape, she is discovered and pursued by Reinaldo, who has lost his horse Bayardo and is looking for her. Despite Reinaldo's disadvantage, who must follow her on foot, she is hit twice; but first Ferragús, Marsilio's nephew, and then Sacripante, king of Circassia, (both also in love with Angélica) hinder Reinaldo's pursuit. Finally, Angélica runs into a hermit who knows necromancy and to whom she tells her story. The hermit invokes a demon who, in the habit of a page, makes Reinaldo believe that Angelica has returned to Paris with Orlando. Reinaldo, who at this point recovers Bayardo, storms back to Paris, where Charlemagne is already preparing the predictable assault of the victorious Moors on his capital. Shortly after Reinaldo arrived and without him having time to inquire about Angelica's whereabouts, the Emperor entrusted him to travel to England to gather reinforcements. Reinaldo reluctantly accepts the assignment and during the boat trip he is surprised by a storm.

Meanwhile, Bradamante, Rinaldo's sister, goes in search of Rugiero who, although the son of the Christian Rugiero of Reggio, has been raised by the magician Atlante, and serves King Agramante. In the Enamorado Rugiero remained, along with Gradaso, king of Sericana, taken prisoner by a knight riding a hippogriff. While searching for him, he runs into the perfidious Pinabel, from the house of Mainz, a secular enemy of the house of Claramonte to which Reinaldo and Bradamante belong. However, they do not recognize each other and Pinabel promises to tell him where to find the hippogriff's knight's castle so that he can rescue, along with Rugiero, his beloved. On the way, Pinabel discovers the identity of her partner and secretly plans to betray her. Finally, she finds the opportunity causing Bradamante to fall to the bottom of a cavern. The maiden from the fall does not die and the cave turns out to be the tomb of Merlin, where the magician Melisa is found. There Melisa makes him know what her offspring will be with Rugiero, Este's house; and what industry she must follow in order to rescue him from the impregnable castle. To do this, she must get hold of Angelica's ring, which is now worn by the dwarf and thief Brunelo. The ring has a double magical power: put on the finger, it undoes any charm; Put in the mouth, it makes the wearer invisible. Bradamante finds Brunelo, tricks him into leading her to the castle and, within sight of the fortress, she snatches her ring from him and ties it to a tree. With the ring on her finger, she manages to be invulnerable to the magic of Atlante, who is the knight of the hippogriff, and defeats him. The castle disappears, because it was all the work of the enchantments of Atlante, and the knights and ladies who are there are free. Among them Rugiero, who briefly meets Bradamante again, but who, when riding the hippogriff, is involuntarily led away from the frank lady.

Giulio Bonasone: Rugiero in the garden of Alcina. Buril. National Library of Spain

The hippogriff finally leads Rugiero to the island of the magician Alcina, where Astolfo, Duke of England, turned into a myrtle, tells him how he has been loved by Alcina and how, later, the magician has reduced him to such a state. Rugiero intends to leave the island, but ends up in the magician's fortress. There he falls in love with the charms of the enchantress and loses memory of the world. Meanwhile, Bradamante looks for Melisa, gives her her magic ring and asks her to look for Rugiero. She is there, she fulfills the task, warns Rugiero of the magician's falsehood and advises him to use her ring. Rugiero does so, discovers the true face of her seductress and prepares to flee from her. Melisa for her part returns to Astolfo her human form and together with him he marches to the kingdom of Logistila, where Rugiero will also arrive later.

For his part, Reinaldo, after crossing Scotland, where the storm had dragged him, arrives in England, receives the desired reinforcements from the king and with them takes the road to Paris.

Angélica, left in the company of a hermit, is led by him to a lonely beach, where the old man intends to abuse her. She does not succeed due to her advanced age and there she is kidnapped by the barbarian people of Ebuda who intend to give her alive as an offering to the Orca. In Paris, Orlando, consumed by love for Angelica, has a premonitory dream that warns him of the danger his beloved is in, and in disguise he leaves Paris in search of him. During the way he has news of the town of Ebuda and suspicious that Angelica may be there, he embarks; but an untimely storm drags him to the Netherlands, where he helps Countess Olympia, who is harassed by King Cimosco. He defeats this king, restores Olympia and her husband Bireno to her primitive dignity, and prepares to head for Ebuda. However, Bireno falls in love with another woman and abandons Olimpia to her fate.

The action returns to the kingdom of Logistila, where Melisa instructs Rugiero in riding the hippogriff. He rides it and travels with it through Asia and Europe. He passes England and then Ireland and nearby, on the island of Ebuda, he watches as a naked Angelica waits to be devoured by the sea monster. He manages to rescue her from her and flees with her to French Brittany. There they both dismount and Rugiero is captivated by Angelica's beauty, but as she is putting the ring that the knight had previously entrusted to her in her mouth, she becomes invisible and flees from him and is determined to return to her kingdom of Cathay. At the same time that he loses Angelica, he loses the hippogriff that he had left tied to a tree in order to harass Angelica, soon Rugiero watches how a giant fights a woman who seems to be Bradamante and follows them.

Olympias, alone and abandoned. she is captured by the people of Ebuda who offer her to the Orca in exchange for Angelica. Orlando finally arrives on the island, rescues Olimpia and kills the monster. Uberto, King of Ireland, also arrives, who falls in love with Olimpia, takes her as his wife and swears to avenge Bireno's vileness. Orlando, for his part, decides to continue the search for Angélica, but ends up being tricked by Atlante who has built a magical palace in which whoever comes to him sees what he most desires and wastes time chasing him through his rooms in vain. There they are already prisoners of their own desire also Fierabrás, Sacripante, Gradaso and Brandimarte. Rugiero arrives after the giant and Bradamante, because these are actually misshapen figures that are part of the enchantment. Angelica, by chance, also arrives at the palace, although the power of her ring frees her from her deceit. She sees Sacripante and Orlando and, since she needs a knight to protect her on her return to her land, she chooses that it be Sacripante. She becomes visible to him, but Orlando and Ferragús who are close to her also see her. Noticing her, the princess flees and the three knights go after her, moving away from the palace and her enchantment. There, Angelica changes her advice and decides that the power of the ring is enough for her to travel safely, so she puts it in her mouth and disappears from the three of them. Meanwhile, Ferragús manages to get hold of the famous Almonte helmet, which Orlando wore.

After the loss of the helmet, Orlando supplies himself with another and defeats two armies of Saracens. After that, he sees light in a cave and enters it. Inside is Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Galicia and in love with Prince Zerbino, son of the King of Scotland. She tells Isabel the story of her and how she has become the prey of some criminals in that horrible den. The captors arrive at this, Orlando kills them all and leaves with Isabel to whom he offers her protection. Along the way they come across a knight who is being held captive and at this point, without revealing the identity of the knight, Ariosto turns his attention to Bradamante.

Writing

Ariosto began the continuation of Boiardo's work around 1505, ten years after the sudden death of the Count of Scandiano had left Enamorado unfinished. He asked his friend Bembo for advice on how to undertake the continuation and, despite the fact that he encouraged him to continue it in Latin, he ignored the advice and continued the work in the same meter (the eighth) and with the same language (the Ferrarese dialect). with whom Boiardo had written his work. At the age of ten, in April 1516, a first version of the Furioso in forty songs was published in Ferrara, mainly intended to be read by the Ferrarese court. However, Ariosto was not entirely satisfied with the first version of his work, and in 1521 he published in Ferrara a second version with minor modifications and in somewhat more Tuscan language. During this time, between 1518 and 1519, he also wrote five cantos (see next section), which he did not decide to add to the work.

The work was already a considerable success with seventeen reprints, but Ariosto still set out to make a thorough revision and bring it closer to the public throughout Italy. At that time he was seething in Italy with the "discussion about the language", that is, the discussion about what should be the educated Italian language. Ariosto followed the thesis defended by Bembo, who published what is considered the first grammar of Italian (his Proses on the vulgar language ) in 1524, and undertook a profound Tuscanization of the text following Petrarch as the language model for his poetry. He also added six songs, with which the work reached forty-six, and produced notable changes in the rest. The result of all this was the third and final version of 1532.

The result of all this long and dedicated elaboration is a singular work, universally recognized as one of the pinnacles of European literature. With it, modern languages finally manage to produce a cultured epic poetry at the height of the most admired of Classical Antiquity; and the eighth real one is definitively constituted in the Romance languages as the successor of the Latin hexameter. Such is the formal perfection achieved by the octave of the Ariosto, that critics often refer to it as the golden octave. Voltaire, a devoted admirer of this work, went so far as to declare in his Philosophical Dictionary : «How great is the natural charm of his poetry! To the point that I am unable to read a single one of his songs translated into prose ».

Fortune in Spain

Translations

The work, as in the rest of Europe, soon enjoyed great fortune in Spain, and has been translated several times, mainly in the 19th century XVI and in the XIX century. If a distinction is made between those that respect the original metric (the eighth) and those that do not, the complete relationship is:

• In real octaves:
  • The earliest, 1549, is due to Captain Jerónimo de Urrea. The translation enjoyed an extraordinary editorial success despite the fact that its verses, forced and ripped at times, more remember Boiardo's coarse verses than Ariosto's refined ones. It is the translation that in his Quixote severely censores Cervantes by the mouth of the priest (I,6). Still editing today.
  • A year later, in 1550, a fairly forgotten translation of Hernando Alcocer was published, which knew the printing press once.
  • In 1604 the Lucentine Gonzalo de Oliva finished a new translation in octaves that still remains unprecedented. Diego Clemencín, who gave in 1833 the first news of her, wrote: "Oliva avoided the numerous flaws of Urrea: he translated faithfully; his versification is easy and harmonious, and his book, despite some small moles, more worthy to see the public light than those of many other translators of his time." After spending nearly two centuries hidden was rediscovered in 2017.
  • The 1878 of Vicente de Medina and Hernández, published in notebooks.
  • In 1883, he drew Cheste's count a translation not completely forgotten. He has this translation the curiosity of including three octaves (the first three of Joseph's second song of Espronceda, written as the fruit of a youth exercise that were proposed to carry out Ventura de la Vega, the Earl of Cheste and himself.
  • In 1984, poet Bonaventura Vallespinosa published Orland furiós, full translation to Catalan in octaves, respecting the rhymes and a considerable poetic quality; won the Premi Sant Jordi de Traducció of 1984.
  • Wikisource works in a free translation (under Copyleft) still incomplete.
• In another verse or prose:
  • Diego Vázquez de Contreras translated very freely in prose the Orlando in 1585 with a praiseworthy approval of Alonso de Ercilla, author of La Araucana.
  • In silvas he translated the work Augusto de Burgos in 1846.
  • For his Illustrated Library edited Gaspar and Roig a prose translation in 1851
  • In 1872 Manuel Aranda and Sanjuán published a prosification in two volumes.
  • Francisco J. de Orellana published his prose version in 1883.
  • José María Micó, in 2005, published a version of white endecasylabos that respects the structure of the eighth, although not rhyme, and tries to keep a final pair, the most often sounded. It is the National Award for Best Translation and, in Italy, Nazionale Prize per Traduzione.

Imitations and continuations

Even more important than its translations is the deep mark that the work has left in Spanish literature.

In Quijote, whether in that of Cervantes or in Avellaneda's apocryphal, he is often either quoted or imitated or a source of inspiration for some of the adventures: it is a work highly cited in the scrutiny (I,6); Don Quixote believes he is Don Reinaldos de Montalbán soon after (I, 7), later he confuses a barber's basin with Mambrino's helmet, that is, the one that covered Don Reinaldos' head (I, 21); Orlando's fury is remembered by Don Quixote in his penance in the Sierra Morena (I, 25), etc.

The imitation of Ercilla in the Araucana is such that the most important of Spanish epic poems seems like an Orlando without Orlandos: the songs of the Araucana all begin with a proem that introduces the adventure that will be dealt with within it; all the songs end up inviting the reader to continue reading in the next one or justifying the opportunity to stop the action at that moment; the poem has an addressee who is often addressed in the second person by the poet; etc

The sequels also enjoyed fortune. The most famous are two that return to the love affairs of Medoro and Angélica, the subject of which Ariosto had invited to continue in canto XXX: Las lágrimas de Angélica by Luis Barahona de Soto and La hermosura de Angélica by Lope de Vega.