"Save only Madness": Ariosto's moon keeps everything we lose, sorted and labelled
Ariosto sends Astolfo to the moon for Orlando's lost wits, in William Stewart Rose's 1858 English: a close read of the valley where everything we lose is stored, measured and labelled.
Ludovico Ariosto worked on Orlando furioso for about twenty-five years and published it three times: forty cantos at Ferrara in 1516, a revised text in 1521, and the final forty-six cantos in 1532 1. The poem runs to 38,736 lines of ottava rima, in eight-line stanzas that rhyme abababcc.
Ariosto wrote it for the Este court at Ferrara, and it continues a romance that Matteo Maria Boiardo had left unfinished. Its hero is Charlemagne's paladin Orlando, the Roland of French epic, and its engine is his love for the pagan princess Angelica.
When Orlando learns that Angelica has married a wounded soldier she nursed back to health, he goes mad. He tears off his armour and rampages across Europe and Africa.
The cure comes from the moon. The English knight Astolfo, son of Otto king of England, rides a flying horse and carries a horn whose blast scatters armies 2. He chases a flock of harpies into the mouth of hell, climbs to the earthly paradise, and meets Saint John the Evangelist, who tells him where Orlando's wits are kept. The two of them travel up in the chariot of Elijah.
Canto XXXIV is that journey. Astolfo finds a valley on the moon where everything lost on earth is stored, and this passage is the moment he reaches the wits themselves. Later in the poem he brings Orlando's back in a bottle, and Orlando sniffs it and is himself again 1.
The English is William Stewart Rose's. Rose (1775–1843) translated the poem between 1823 and 1831 for the publisher John Murray 3. The copy read here is the 1858 printing in Bohn's Illustrated Library. Rose kept Ariosto's eight-line stanza and its rhyme scheme, in an English line shorter than the Italian's.
Passage
A large provision, next, of twigs and lime —Your witcheries, O women!—he explored. The things he witnessed, to recount in rhyme Too tedious were; were myriads on record, To sum the remnant ill should I have time. 'Tis here that all infirmities are stored, Save only Madness, seen not here at all, Which dwells below, nor leaves this earthly ball.He turns him back, upon some days and deeds To look again, which he had lost of yore; But, save the interpreter the lesson reads, Would know them not, such different form they wore. He next saw that which man so little needs, As it appears—none pray to Heaven for more; I speak of sense; whereof a lofty mount Alone surpast all else which I recount.It was as 'twere a liquor soft and thin, Which, save well corked, would from the vase have drained; Laid up, and treasured various flasks within, Larger or lesser, to that use ordained. That largest was which of the paladin, Anglantes' lord, the mighty sense contained; And from those others was discerned, since writ Upon the vessel was ORLANDO'S WIT.The names of those whose wits therein were pent He thus on all those other flasks espied. Much of his own, but with more wonderment, The sense of many others he descried, Who, he believed, no dram of theirs had spent; But here, by tokens clear was satisfied, That scantily therewith were they purveyed; So large the quantity he here surveyed.Some waste on love, some seeking honour, lose Their wits, some, scouring seas, for merchandise, Some, that on wealthy lords their hope repose, And some, befooled by silly sorceries; These upon pictures, upon jewels those; These on whatever else they highest prize. Astrologers' and sophists' wits mid these, And many a poet's too, Astolpho sees.
Canto XXXIV, stanzas 81–85, in William Stewart Rose's translation, The Orlando Furioso, Bohn's Illustrated Library (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1858), page 216 4. The passage is 302 words, and the wording was read off the page images of that printing. Project Gutenberg carries a transcription of the same translation, which prints "scowering" where the 1858 page reads "scouring" 5. The Italian is quoted below from the critical edition of 1928 6.
Gloss
- "twigs and lime" — Ariosto's line is panie con visco: birdlime, the sticky stuff smeared on twigs to catch small birds, and by extension a snare 7. It is the last exhibit in a list of traps. Rose renders panie as "witcheries," which keeps the spell and loses the glue, and a modern reader takes "lime" for the white powder of builders' mortar.
- "sense" — The Italian word is senno: judgment, common sense, wisdom 8. Rose uses "sense" here and "wit" three stanzas later for the same word, as though the two were freely interchangeable. The bottle in the Italian is labelled Senno d'Orlando, and the poem's title is the loss of exactly this.
- "Anglantes' lord" — Orlando, lord of Anglante, named by his estate instead of his name. The Italian reads il folle signor d'Anglante, "the mad lord of Anglante," and Rose's line leaves folle out 6. An English reader meets a title with the adjective missing, which is where the joke sits.
Close read
By this canto the valley has already been stocked. Earlier stanzas show Astolfo heaps of old crowns that have swollen into bladders, courtiers' gifts as gold and silver fish-hooks, and flattery as snares hidden in garlands. The rule of the place is that every abstraction gets a body, and the body is absurd.
"Twigs and lime" is the last item, and it is aimed outward. Rose's dashes set the women's beauty off on both sides, so the phrase lands as an aside to half his readers. Panie con visco makes it a bird-catcher's trick: something pretty, smeared, waiting for wings.
Then the poet stops. "The things he witnessed, to recount in rhyme / Too tedious were." This is the old device of refusing a list while proving you could have gone on, and in a poem of 38,736 lines it is also a joke about length. Ariosto had four more stanzas of inventory in him and says he has no time.
The refusal sets up the exception. "'Tis here that all infirmities are stored, / Save only Madness." One item is struck off the inventory, and it is the item the poem is named for. In ottava rima the closing couplet is where the sting lives, and here the sting is an absence.
The next line explains it. Madness stays below because it never leaves: it "dwells below, nor leaves this earthly ball." Every other infirmity can be mislaid, hoarded and catalogued. This one is always in use.
Then the poem turns to the other thing nobody prays for. "He next saw that which man so little needs ... I speak of sense." Sense arrives here as a substance with weight, and it has piled into a mountain: "a lofty mount / Alone surpast all else which I recount."
The following stanza gives that substance its physics. It is "a liquor soft and thin, / Which, save well corked, would from the vase have drained." Wit behaves like a volatile spirit, and the stopper has to stay tight. The Italian says atto a esalar, ready to evaporate; Rose makes it spill.
The flasks are chemist's stock, "larger or lesser, to that use ordained," and the next stanza keeps the measure with "no dram of theirs had spent," a dram being a small apothecary's weight 9. Wit is being dispensed, and Astolfo is reading the shelf.
Then the label. "And from those others was discerned, since writ / Upon the vessel was ORLANDO'S WIT." The hero of the poem walks into his own story as a possessive case on a jar: his wit, and only as much of it as a label can carry. The Italian prints Senno d'Orlando in ordinary type; the English page sets the words in capitals, the size of a title on a spine.
The next stanza hands the joke to the guide. Astolfo finds "much of his own" in the other flasks. The knight sent to recover another man's wits is short of his own, and he is more astonished by his sober acquaintances than by the mountain of it.
The last stanza gives reasons in the flat tone of a ledger: love, honour, trade, patrons, magic, pictures, jewels. Astrologers and sophists come in for theirs, and poets come last, which from a poet is either a confession or a boast.
Rose's hand shows in that final line. His rhyme needs a word after "prize," so he adds "Astolpho sees," and the Italian has no name in that position at all 6. A translator's necessity puts the onlooker back into a stanza from which the poem had let him disappear.
Why it still matters
The image has outlived its plot. "The moon where lost things go" now circulates on its own, as shorthand for memory, for archives, and for everything we back up in the hope of finding it again.
What Ariosto adds to that idea is the paperwork. His moon holds what we lose, sorts it, sizes it, and writes our names on it. Everything is kept, and everything is filed under a person. The unconsoling half is the shelf-mark: your missing years sit in a jar beside someone else's.
He adds the exceptions too. Madness stays below, the one item the archive cannot hold. And the days Astolfo tries to reclaim come back "in different form," unreadable without an interpreter, which is what remembering mostly is.
The cure, when it comes, arrives as a dose. Orlando sniffs his wits out of the bottle and is sane again 1. Ariosto's answer to a man destroyed by love is a physical measure, fetched from the moon by a friend.
Reflection
If everything you have mislaid were filed up there with your name on the jar, what would you go to fetch back — and what would you rather leave on the moon?
References
- 1Wikipedia: Orlando Furioso
en.wikipedia.org
- 2Wikipedia: Astolfo
en.wikipedia.org
- 3Wikipedia: William Stewart Rose
en.wikipedia.org
- 4
- 5Project Gutenberg: Orlando Furioso, trans. Rose
gutenberg.org
- 6Wikisource (Italian): Orlando furioso, Canto 34
it.wikisource.org
- 7Wiktionary: pania
en.wiktionary.org
- 8Wiktionary: senno
en.wiktionary.org
- 9Wiktionary: dram
en.wiktionary.org
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