from Orlando Furioso

LUDOVICO ARIOSTO

Ludovico Ariosto was the most popular Italian writer of the sixteenth century; when you read the passage that follows, you’ll see why. Although the most popular book of the century in England, John Lyly’s Euphues, mires you in its logorrheic cesspool, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso wins you over with high adventure, poetic charm, daring rescues, and dastardly wit. It’s also pretty saucy, which elicited no small amount of blushing from its first English translators.

In this particular scene, one of the heroes, Ruggiero, comes to the castle of the evil witch Alcina, who disguises herself as a beautiful woman to seduce him. Romantic encounters are typical in the tradition of courtly literature, but, as with the Spenser excerpt on page 164, authors couldn’t come right out with the sex and sexuality, but had to mute it within suggestive, though not explicit, descriptions. Spenser had his woman spill red wine on her lap; Ariosto resorts to other clever tactics. First breasts that hint at what lies beyond (there is always a veil, however transparent), then an ingenious explanation of why he can’t describe the totality of their actions. It’s a great rhetorical turn; would that pens could always be so pointed.

[Alcina] was so well formed
that I can not describe her better without a painter’s skill:
With long blond tresses tied in a knot;
Gold itself has no more luster.
Her delicate cheeks were spread
With the mixed color of roses and lilies;
Like polished ivory her serene brow;
and everything in perfect proportion . . .

Snow white was her neck; her breast white as milk;
her neck was slender, her breast broad and full.
Two sour apples, fashioned as from ivory,
Rose and fell like waves on the sea,
When the wind disturbs its peaceful calm.
Of her hidden parts, not even Argus
With his hundred eyes could see,
But one could judge that what lay beyond
Corresponded well to what was in view . . .

[Ruggiero] jumped from the bed and took her in his arms.
Nor could he wait for her to undress,
for she was wearing neither gown nor petticoat—
she had come in a light mantle put over a simple nightgown
white and of the finest texture.
As Ruggiero embraced her, her mantle slipped off,
leaving only the thin, transparent nightgown,
(which, before and behind, concealed no more than
a pane of glass would conceal a bouquet of flowers).

Never did ivy cling so tightly to the stem around which
it entwines than did these lovers cling together,
drawing from each other’s lips so fragrant a succor
as not to be found in any flower grown on scented Indian sands.
But of the great pleasures this couple shared, it would be easier for
them to say,
For often they each had more than one tongue in their mouth.

—translated by Jack Murnighan