4. Iacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530). Elegies 2.9, “On the Ruins of Cumae.”

Portrait by Titian

He invented Arcadia.

Last week we met Giovanni Pontano, This week we meet one of his friends and pupils, Iacopo Sannazaro, who attended the Accademia Pontaniana. In Latin he wrote the epic De Partu Virginis (The Virgin Mary in Childbirth), gaining him the depressing title of “The Christian Virgil” and a place on many pious reading lists; the Eclogae piscatoriae (substituting fishermen for Virgil’s shepherds); and twenty-four elegies in three books tinged with the knowledge of the passage of time; death is a fixed feature of the landscape.

A sketch from The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance:

Sannazaro, Jacopo (1457–1530), Italian poet, born into a noble family in Naples, where he lived for many years at the court. In 1501 he followed King Federico into exile in France, returning to Naples after the king's death in 1504. With the support of Pontano, Sannazaro became a member of the Neapolitan Academy (see academies).Sannazaro wrote in both Latin and Italian. His most important Latin poem was De partu Virginis (1526), an epic on the birth of Jesus. His principal work in Italian was L'Arcadia, a pastoral romance in which verse eclogues are linked by a prose narrative. L'Arcadia proved to be enormously popular, and established the shape of European pastoral for the next two centuries.

And from Nauert, Charles G. 2004. Historical Dictionary of the Renaissance (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press):

SANNAZARO, JACOPO (1458–1530). Neapolitan humanist and poet. During his youth at Naples, he was a member of a circle of local humanists led by Giovanni Pontano. During the 1480s and 1490s he developed a reputation as a poet in both Italian and Latin. When his patron, King Frederick of Aragon, was dethroned and exiled to France, he shared the exile until the king’s death in 1504 and then returned home to his rural villa, where he spent the rest of his life, busy writing but removed from court life and politics. In Latin he wrote Virgilian-style Piscatorial Eclogues and a Christian epic on the birth of Christ, De partu Virginis (1526). His most important poetry, however, was his vernacular pastoral poetry, especially the lengthy Arcadia (1502 and 1504). This work, with its many allusions to classical poets and modern ones like Dante and Petrarch, describes an imaginary society of cultivated shepherd-poets and provides an allegorical account of his own romantic quest for the woman he loved. Arcadian pastoral poetry had great influence on later Renaissance literature, not only in Italy but also in England, in the work of Sir Philip Sidney; in Spain, in the romances of Jorge de Montemayor and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra; and in France, in the pastoral poetry of Honore d’Urfé.

Hic, ubi Cumeae surgebant inclyta famae

     Moenia, Tyrrheni gloria prima maris;

Longinquis quo saepe hospes properabat ab oris

     Visurus tripodas, Delie magne, tuos;

Et vagus antiquos intrabat navita portus,                           5

     Quaerens Daedalie conscia signa fugae:

(credere quis quondam potuit, dum fata manebant?)

     Nunc silva agrestes occulit alta feras.

Atque ubi fatidicae latuere arcana Sibyllae,

     Nunc claudit saturas vespere pastor oves.                     10

Quaeque prius sanctos cogebat curia patres,

     Serpentum facta est, alituumque domus.

Plenaque tot passim generosis atria ceris,

     Ipsa tua tandem subruta mole jacent.

Calcanturque olim sacris onerata trophaeis                        15

     Limina: distractos et tegit herba Deos.

Tot decora, artificumque manus, tot nota sepulcra,

     Totque pios cineres una ruina premit.

Et jam intra solasque domos, disjectaque passim

     Culmina setigeros advena figit apros.                            20

Nec tamen hoc Grajis cecinit deus ipse carinis:

     Praevia nec lato missa columba mari.

Et querimur, cito si nostrae data tempora vitae

     Diffugiunt? urbes mors violenta rapit.

Atque utinam mea me fallant oracula vatem:                      25

     Vanus et a longa posteritate ferar.

Nec tu semper eris, quae septem amplecteris arces:

     Nec tu, quae mediis aemula surgis aquis.

Et te (quis putet hoc?) altrix mea, durus arator

     Vertet; et Urbs, dicet, haec quoque clara fuit.                30

Fata trahunt homines: fatis urgentibus, urbes,

     Et quodcumque vides, auferet ipsa dies.

Notes

Text from Jacobi sive Actii Synceri Sannazarii poemata ex antiquis editionibus accuratissime descripta, ed. Patavii : excudebat Josephus Cominus, 1751. The Hathi Trust has an online copy , where Sannazaro’s text is given the full scholarly treatment with notes by Pieter Vlaming (1686-1733).

1. inclyta: for ínclŭtus or ínclĭtus; medieval and early-modern texts vary greatly in the spelling of i and u, especially from medial weakening, or when a Greek etymology was suspected.

4. Apollo had a famous oracle at Cumae. Aeneas goes to visit Cumae and the Sibyl in Aeneid 6.

5-6. Aeneas sees the temple to Apollo dedicated by Daedalus when he alighted there, after losing Icarus: Aen. 6.14-33.

9: Virgil describes the Cave of the Sibyl at Aen. 6.42-46.

21. deus ipse: Apollo.

22. A dove guided the first Greek colonists to Cumae: Vellius Paterculus, Hist. 1.4.1.
22-23: Recalls Cic.  Fam. 4.5 (see below).

30. The image is taken from Georgics 1.492-47. Here is Peter Fallon’s lovely new translation (Virgil: Georgics, Oxford World’s Classics, 2006):

Nothing surer than the time will come when, in those fields,
a farmer ploughing will unearth
rough and rusted javelins and hear his heavy hoe
echo on the sides of empty helmets and stare in open-eyed amazement
at the bones of heroes he’s just happened on.

Translation:

Here, where there once arose the fabled walls

of Cumae’s fame, the chief glory of the Tyrrhenian sea,

where often a stranger hastened from distant shores

to see your tripods, Great Apollo,

and the wandering sailor entered the ancient port,                           5

seeking signs that witnessed Daedalus’ flight

—who could have believed it, while its fate remained intact?—

there now a deep forest hides the wild animals of the countryside.

And where the secrets of the soothsaying Sibyl once lay hidden,

now a shepherd pens his fat and happy sheep at night.                    10

The Senate house that once gathered the noble elders

has become a home for snakes and birds.

The entry halls filled to the brim with wax masks of noble ancestors

lie collapsed at last under their own weight.

Thresholds once weighted down with sacred battle trophies

are trampled underfoot; and grass covers gods torn down.               15

So many beautiful things, the handiwork of artists, so many famous tombs,

so many pious urns of ashes, a single ruin overwhelms them all.

And now among the empty houses and tumbled columns

lying everywhere, a stranger spears the bristling boar.                     20

Yet their own god did not prophesy this to the Greek ships,

nor did the dove that guided them sent from the deep sea.

And do we complain if the time allotted to our life flies quickly?

Violent death snatches away cities.

O that my oracles might deceive me their poet-prophet,                   25

and I am proved false by a far off future generations.

And yet, you will not exist forever, City who enfolds the seven hills,

nor you, her rival who arises from the midst of the waves.

And you (who will believe it?) the city that nursed me, a harsh plowman

will turn you up, and say, “This too was a famous city.”                 30

Fate sweeps humans away. At the insistence of fate, cities

and everything you see, time itself will bear away.

 There's now a complete new translation by Michael C. J. Putnam, Iacopo Sannazaro: Latin Poetry, 2009, for I Tatti Renaissance Library. There are two good reviews:

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-01-34.html

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660377

See also Marsh, David. 1988. “Sannazaro's Elegy on the Ruins of Cumae,” Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 50: 681-689.

The topos of reflection over the ruins of once noble city is an ancient one. The first to come to Sannazaro’s mind might have been Isaiah 13:21-22:

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. 22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

But Servius Sulpicius’ consolation to Cicero on the death of Tullia was clearly in his mind (Fam. 4.5.4, 248 SB):

quae res mihi non mediocrem consolationem attulit, volo tibi commemorare, si forte eadem res tibi dolorem minuere possit.
ex Asia rediens cum ab Aegina Megaram versus navigarem coepi regiones circumcirca prospicere. post me erat Aegina, ante me Megara, dextra Piraeus, sinistra Corinthus, quae oppida quodam tempore florentissima fuerunt, nunc prostrata et diruta ante oculos iacent. coepi egomet mecum sic cogitare: 'hem! nos homunculi indignamur, si quis nostrum interiit aut occisus est, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidum cadavera proiecta iacent? visne tu te, Servi, cohibere et meminisse hominem te esse natum?' crede mihi cogitatione ea non mediocriter sum confirmatus. 

   I want to tell you about something that gave me a lot of comfort, on the chance that it might lessen your grief too.
   On my way back from Asia Minor, I was sailing from Aegina to Megara, and I began to look at the landscape all around me. Aegina was behind me, Megara in front of me, Piraeus on the right, Corinth on the left, all of them flourishing towns once upon a time, now lying tumbled and in ruins before my eyes. I began to think to myself: “Ah, we little humans get upset if one of dies or gets killed, and our lives should be even shorter, when so many corpses of cities lie abandoned in one area. Can’t you restrain yourself, Servius, and remember that you were born a human?” Believe me, I was more that a little bucked up by that reflection.

St. Ambrose reflected on the passage (Letters 1.39):

Sed doles quod dudum florentissima repente occiderit. Verum hoc nobis commune non solum cum hominibus, sed etiam cum civitatibus terrisque ipsis est. Nempe de Bononiensi veniens urbe a tergo Claternam, ipsam Bononiam, Mutinam, Rhegium, derelinquebas, in dextera erat Brixellum, a fronte occurrebat Placentia, veterem nobilitatem ipso adhuc nomine sonans ; ad laevam Appennini inculta miseratus, et florentissimorum quondam populorura castella considerabas, atque affectu relegebas dolenti. Tot igitur semirutarum urbium cadavera, terrarumque sub eodem conspectu exposita funera non te admouent unius, sanctae licet et admirabilis feminae, decessionem consolabiliorem habendam; praesertim cum ilia in perpetuum prostrata ac diruta sint; haec autem ad tempus quidem erepta nobis, meliorem illic vitain exigat ?
Itaque non tarn deplorandam q uam prosequendam orationibus reor : new moestificandam lacrymis tuis sed magis oblationibus animam eius Domino commendandam arbitror.

The topos has a distinguished history. So a sampling (feel free to add your own melancholy reflections on the mutability of fortune).

Horace Odes 3.3.40-44:


              dum Priami Paridisque busto

insultet armentum et catulos ferae


celent inultae, stet Capitolium

     
fulgens triumphatisque possit


              Roma ferox dare iura Medis.

As long as herds of cows trample on the tomb

of Priam and Paris and wild animals without fear of reprisal

hide their cubs, let the Capitoline stand

glowing and let fierce Rome be able to give laws

to the conquered Medes.

Both Nisbet-Hubbard and Shorey on this passage cite, E. Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam xviii:

 They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
And Bahram, that great hunter—the Wild Ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.

And Byron recalls this passage:

Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV.44.389 ff.

                    XLIV

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him,

The Roman friend of Rome's least-mortal mind,

The friend of Tully: as my bark did skim                                    390

The bright blue waters with a fanning wind,

Came Megara before me, and behind

Aegina lay, Piraeus on the right,

And Corinth on the left; I lay reclined

Along the prow, and saw all these unite

In ruin, even as he had seen the desolate sight;

                    XLV

For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd

Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site,

Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd

The few last rays of their far-scatter'd light,                                400

And the crush'd relics of their vanish'd might.

The Roman saw these tombs in his own age,

These sepulchres of cities, which excite

Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page

The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage.

                    XLVI

That page is now before me, and on mine

His country's ruin added to the mass

Of perish'd states he mourn'd in their decline,

And I in desolation: all that was

Of then destruction is; and now, alas!                                         410

Rome -- Rome imperial, bows her to the storm,

In the same dust and blackness, and we pass

The skeleton of her Titanic form,

Wrecks of another world, whose ashes still are warm.

                    XLVII

Yet, Italy! through every other land

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side;

Mother of Arts! as once of arms; they hand

Was then our guardian, and is still our guide;

Parent of our Religion! whom the wide

Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven!                              420

Europe, repentant of her parricide,

Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven,

Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven.

And Alphonse de Lamartine, (1790-1869), Le lézard.

3. Giovanni Pontano (1426-1503), “When You Laugh.”

Portrait medallion by by Adriano Fiorentino

Giovanni Pontano was one of the nicest and most talented people of the Italian Renaissance. A manuscript of his forms the background to this page.

(The Wikipedia article is a bit lame: mostly just the old EB 11th ed.).

A bare sketch from The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance (link depends on your subscriptions):

Pontano, Giovanni, or (Latin) Giovanni Pontanus

(1426/9–1503),

Italian humanist, diplomat, and neo-Latin poet, born in Cerretto (Umbria) and educated in Perugia. In 1447 he entered the service of King Alfonso I of Naples, serving as tutor to the duke of Calabria; in 1486 he was appointed chancellor of the kingdom by Ferrante I, and in 1495 he negotiated the surrender of Naples to Charles VIII of France in the opening campaign of the Wars of Italy.

Pontano's writings included works on astrology (De rebus coelestibus), moral philosophy (De prudentia and De fortuna), political theory (De principe), and the history of the Neapolitan war in which he had played a part (De bello Neapolitano). He also wrote moral dialogues and Latin poetry, including lyrics and didactic verse. He was the most eminent member of the Neapolitan Academy, which later became known as the Accademia Pontaniana.

Bibliography

J. Bentley Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (1987).

From The Hermaphrodite: Antonio Beccadelli, trans. Holt N. Parker (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010). I Tatti Renaissance Library:

Beccadelli’s other great accomplishment was founding the first of the Academies that would nurture intellectual life in the following centuries, the Academia Neapolitana. By 1447 Beccadelli was planning a formal recreation of the Academies of the ancient world. There had already been literary meetings in the royal library, to which Beccadelli made many contributions. The new venue, a setting which favored open and unstructured discussions, was the remains of the Roman arches in the Strada dell’Anticaglia near Beccedelli’s home, which came to be called the Porticus Antoniana. Towards the end of Beccadelli’s life, the running of the academy passed to Pontano, and it came to be called the Accademia Pontaniana. This fell into desuetude in 1542, was revived in 1808, was repressed by the fascists in 1934, again revived by Croce in 1944, and continues today.

When Barbara and I visited Naples, with clues from the description, we tracked down the location, and made a quasi-pilgrimage to the first modern Academy:

My own sketch of Pontano, from “Renaissance Latin Elegy,” in Blackwell Companion to Roman Love Elegy, ed. Barbara K. Gold. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. 476-90:

Propertius and these poets in turn influenced Beccadelli’s friend Giovanni Pontano (1429-1503), who took over the direction of Beccadelli’s Academy, the first of the Renaissance. Pontano was in many ways the best and most appealing Latin poet of the Renaissance. In prose he ranged over astronomy, philosophy, satire, and vivid dialogues; he was no less prolific and admired in poetry.
His early Pruritus (“The Itch,” 1449) was directly inspired by Beccadelli’s Hermaphrodite, but suppressed (and reused) in the more lyrical Parthenopeus (or Amores) in a variety of meters with a central character of Fannia. His greatest work in elegy is the three books of De amore coniugali (1480-84), which begins with an address to Elegy herself and his own epithalamium (1.2) to the love of his life, Adriana Sassone (whom he addresses as Ariadna, not least because he is forced to abandon her so often for official duty). They end with epithalamia for his daughters. These poems show clearly not only how conventional forms were used to express new and personal sensibilities but also how new genres were created. For the first, a good example is 3.2 (“Natalem Domini sine me”), where he urges his wife to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s with all the old customs even though he must be away. For the second, Book II includes one of the most remarkable experiments in the history of Latin verse, in which the Neapolitan lullaby is recast into twelve Latin neniae (2.8-19), which freely draw on Catullan diminutives to weave hypnotic sound patterns. After Adriana’s death, she is present in all his poetry. In the Baiae, he even castigates her for leaving him so bereft (1.12, 1.13, 2.29). Yet he is human, and while he fills the countryside of Ferrara with gods, myths, and flowers in the Eridanus, he also confesses to an old man’s passion for the earthly Stella, and appeals to his wife’s spirit for understanding. The Tumuli (which turned Alexandrian epigram into the French tombeaux; Furno 2003, 172-76) include hers and his. The Eclogues (in hexameters) begin with the inset lament of Melisaeus (a name other poets then used for him) lamenting his lost wife. Even in the middle of De hortis Hesperidum (two books of georgics taking how to grow lemon and orange trees in Italy as his starting point), gathering fruit reminds him of similar times with Ariadna, whose premature death may have spared her much suffering (1.318-35). See Thurn, N. 2002. Drei neapolitanische Humanisten über die Liebe: Antonius Panormita - Hermaphroditus, Ioannes Pontanus - De amore coniugali, Michael Marullus - Hymni naturales. St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae.

I’ll put up some of these later on.

Now on to the poem. Baiae 1.15:

Ad Batillam

Cum rides, mihi basium negasti,

Cum ploras, mihi basium dedisti;

Una in tristitia libens benigna es,

Una in laetitia volens severa es.            

Nata est de lacrimis mihi voluptas,         5

De risu dolor. O miselli amantes,

Sperate simul omnia et timete.

Notes:

Meter: hendecasyllabic (one of Catullus’ favorite meters).

Batilla: the classical Bathylla.

1-2. That is, when she is happy, she has no need of him; when sad, she has cried on his shoulder. Not, I think, with Mathiesen: "When you laugh at me, you have denied me a kiss / When you cry for me, you have granted me a kiss."

negasti: nega(vi)sti, pf.

3-4. unā: adj. with laetitiā, etc. (‘only in happiness’).

4-5: libens  . . . volens: quasi adverbial with the adjective.

7: either indic. or impv.

This little poem illustrates many of the basic problems of reading humanist poetry. The words are all quite simple, but since the rules of classical poetic usage were not always known or followed, the exact syntax and sense can be elusive: what's the connection beween the present and past tenses ("It's as if you have denied")? Does mihi go with rides and ploras: "when you laugh at me"? Is una adverb ("you are simultaneously willing and nice" or adjective? Is sperate indicative (that's how lovers are) or imperative (that's how lovers ought to be)? Whose happiness and sadness?

Translation:

When you laugh, you have refused me a kiss.

When you weep, you have granted me a kiss.

Only in sadness you are willing and kind.

Only in happiness you are wanting and cruel.

I gain pleasure from tears,

and pain from a smile. O pathetic lovers,

you want and fear everything all at once.

I’ve chosen this trifling trifle as first out of Pontano’s work not only for the questions even a simple poem can raise, but also because it was set (as few humanist Latin poems were) as a frottola or madrigal. The best is by Orlando de Lassus (a list of his madrigals). The score (ed. Peter Bergquist, 2001) is HERE. There’s a lovely performance by the Chamber Choir of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, conducted by István Párkai, on an old Hungaroton record:

PLAY THE MUSIC.

Thomas J. Mathiesen gives a detailed analysis in Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 216-25. The music “punctuates” the clauses after mihi, but pays no attention to elision. There are other settings by Tromboncino, in Fioretti di Frottole (Naples, Caneto, RISM 1519⁴). There’s a recording of this, but only the instrumental version on Dulces exuviae (including settings of Virgil and Horace) and by the Canadian Brass. It was also set by Johannes Lheritier in Opera omnia / Johannis Lheritier, ed. Leeman L. Perkins. American Institute of Musicology, 1969.

On the frottola, the first form of the madrigal, the Grove Dictionary (requires subscription) notes:

The sporadic settings of Latin verse found in the frottola repertory are due in large part to humanistic impulses: Isabella d’Este, for example, indulged her love of Virgil by ordering music to his poetry. Such settings include Horatian odes (e.g. Integer vitae, book 1 no.47); portions of the Aeneid (e.g. Dissimulare etiam sperasti, composed by Filippo de Lurano, book 8 no.13); Tromboncino’s setting of Dido’s letter to Aeneas (Aspicias utinam quesit from Ovid’s Heroides, in Antico’s book 2 no.40), which, according to Einstein, is ‘the first love letter in music’; newly written humanistic odes (e.g. In hospitas per alpes, book 1 no.46); and an elegy by Propertius (Quicunque ille fuit set by Cara in Antico’s book 3 no.21). Some of them were composed schematically, as in the ‘Aer de versi latini’ of Caprioli that may be fitted to a distich in elegiac metre (book 4 no.62). Occasionally Latin was used for purposes of travesty (e.g. Rusticus ut asinum in F-Pn Rés.Vm.⁷676 no.64) or religious mockery: a frottola of Honophrius Patavinus (book 6 no.60) starts with ‘Sed libera nos de malo’ (from Pater noster) then switches to Italian (cf Josquin’s In te Domine speravi, book 1 no.56 and Tromboncino’s Vox clamantis in deserto, book 3 no.58). A pièce d’occasion was Lurano’s music to Quercus juncta columna est (book 9 no.1), composed for the wedding festivities of Marc’Antonio Colonna.

There’s a great archived Public Radio introduction to the frottola at:

http://indianapublicmedia.org/harmonia/frottola-renaissance-love/

or http://www.prx.org/pieces/57905-the-frottola-and-renaissance-love.

All of Pontano’s poems from Baiae have been translated by Rodney G. Dennis for Harvard’s I Tatti Library. Julia Haig Gaisser has just done the first volume of his Dialogues for the same series.

The hendecasyllabics are on Perseus.

The first printings of most of his works at CAMENA.