Angelica che fugge
.
(Rinaldo is in pursuit, consumed with anger; but let us follow Angelica who is fleeing.)
or:
Lasciànlo andar, che farà buon camino
,
e torniamo a Rinaldo paladino
.
(Let us leave him now, for he will make good progress, and instead go back to the paladin Rinaldo.)
or again:
Ma tempo è ormai di ritrovar Ruggiero
che scorre il ciel su l’animal leggiero
.
(But now is the time to go back and find Ruggiero, who is scurrying over the sky on the winged horse.)
While such shifts in the action take place in the middle of a canto, the close of every single canto promises that the story will continue in the following one. Here too the explanatory function is usually assigned to the final rhymed couplet which rounds off the last octave:
Come a Parigi appropinquosse, e quanto
Carlo aiutò, vi dirà l’altro canto
.
(How he came to Paris and how much help he gave Charlemagne will be told in the next canto.)
Often in order to conclude the canto Ariosto pretends once more that he is a bard reciting his verses before a courtly audience:
Non piú, Signor, non piú di questo canto;
ch’io son già rauco, e vo’ posarmi alquanto
.
(No more, my lord, no more of this canto, for I am now hoarse, and want to have some rest.)
Either that or — although this happens more rarely — he pretends that he is in the physical act of writing:
Poi che da tutti i lati ho pieno il foglio
finire il canto, e riposar mi voglio
.
(Since I have filled the sheet of paper all over, I want to end the canto and go and have some rest.)
So it is impossible to give a single definition of the structure of the
Orlando Furioso
, because the poem possesses no rigid geometry. We could resort to the image of an energy field which continually generates from within itself other force fields. However we define it, the movement is always centrifugal; right from the outset we are immediately in the middle of the action, but this is true both for the poem as a whole as well as for each canto and each episode.
The problem with every introduction to the
Furioso
is that if one starts by saying ‘This is a poem which is in fact a continuation of another poem, which in turn continues a cycle of countless other poems …’, the reader is immediately turned off: if before starting this poem, the reader has to know what happened in all the preceding poems, as well as in those that preceded the preceding poems, when will it ever be possible to start Ariosto’s poem? But in fact every introduction turns out to be superfluous: the
Furioso
is a book unique in its genre and can, or perhaps I should say must, be read without reference to any other text that either precedes or follows it. It is a self-contained universe, across whose length and breadth the reader can roam, entering, exiting, getting lost.
The fact that Ariosto makes us believe that the construction of this universe is nothing but a continuation of someone else’s work, an appendix, or as he himself terms it a ‘gionta’ or addition, can be interpreted as a sign of Ariosto’s extraordinary discretion, an instance of what theEnglish call ‘understatement’, that is to say that particular form of self-irony which leads us to downplay things that are actually enormously important. But it can also be seen as a sign of a conception of time and space which rejects the closed paradigm of the Ptolemaic universe, and opens itself towards the infinity of both past and future, as well as towards an endless plurality of worlds.
From its opening words the
Furioso
presents itself as the poem of movement, or rather it presents a particular type of movement which will inform the poem’s entire length: a zig-zag. We could trace the general outline of the poem by following the constant intersections and divergences of these lines on a map of Europe and Africa, but the first canto alone is enough to give us its flavour: there three knights pursue Angelica through the wood, in a convoluted dance
.
(Rinaldo is in pursuit, consumed with anger; but let us follow Angelica who is fleeing.)
or:
Lasciànlo andar, che farà buon camino
,
e torniamo a Rinaldo paladino
.
(Let us leave him now, for he will make good progress, and instead go back to the paladin Rinaldo.)
or again:
Ma tempo è ormai di ritrovar Ruggiero
che scorre il ciel su l’animal leggiero
.
(But now is the time to go back and find Ruggiero, who is scurrying over the sky on the winged horse.)
While such shifts in the action take place in the middle of a canto, the close of every single canto promises that the story will continue in the following one. Here too the explanatory function is usually assigned to the final rhymed couplet which rounds off the last octave:
Come a Parigi appropinquosse, e quanto
Carlo aiutò, vi dirà l’altro canto
.
(How he came to Paris and how much help he gave Charlemagne will be told in the next canto.)
Often in order to conclude the canto Ariosto pretends once more that he is a bard reciting his verses before a courtly audience:
Non piú, Signor, non piú di questo canto;
ch’io son già rauco, e vo’ posarmi alquanto
.
(No more, my lord, no more of this canto, for I am now hoarse, and want to have some rest.)
Either that or — although this happens more rarely — he pretends that he is in the physical act of writing:
Poi che da tutti i lati ho pieno il foglio
finire il canto, e riposar mi voglio
.
(Since I have filled the sheet of paper all over, I want to end the canto and go and have some rest.)
So it is impossible to give a single definition of the structure of the
Orlando Furioso
, because the poem possesses no rigid geometry. We could resort to the image of an energy field which continually generates from within itself other force fields. However we define it, the movement is always centrifugal; right from the outset we are immediately in the middle of the action, but this is true both for the poem as a whole as well as for each canto and each episode.
The problem with every introduction to the
Furioso
is that if one starts by saying ‘This is a poem which is in fact a continuation of another poem, which in turn continues a cycle of countless other poems …’, the reader is immediately turned off: if before starting this poem, the reader has to know what happened in all the preceding poems, as well as in those that preceded the preceding poems, when will it ever be possible to start Ariosto’s poem? But in fact every introduction turns out to be superfluous: the
Furioso
is a book unique in its genre and can, or perhaps I should say must, be read without reference to any other text that either precedes or follows it. It is a self-contained universe, across whose length and breadth the reader can roam, entering, exiting, getting lost.
The fact that Ariosto makes us believe that the construction of this universe is nothing but a continuation of someone else’s work, an appendix, or as he himself terms it a ‘gionta’ or addition, can be interpreted as a sign of Ariosto’s extraordinary discretion, an instance of what theEnglish call ‘understatement’, that is to say that particular form of self-irony which leads us to downplay things that are actually enormously important. But it can also be seen as a sign of a conception of time and space which rejects the closed paradigm of the Ptolemaic universe, and opens itself towards the infinity of both past and future, as well as towards an endless plurality of worlds.
From its opening words the
Furioso
presents itself as the poem of movement, or rather it presents a particular type of movement which will inform the poem’s entire length: a zig-zag. We could trace the general outline of the poem by following the constant intersections and divergences of these lines on a map of Europe and Africa, but the first canto alone is enough to give us its flavour: there three knights pursue Angelica through the wood, in a convoluted dance
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