consisting of losing the way, chance encounters, mistaken paths, and changes of plan.
It is this zig-zag traced by the galloping horses and by the oscillations of the human heart that introduces us into the spirit of the poem. The pleasure deriving from the rapidity of the action instantly blends with a sense of breadth in the amount of time and space available. This aimless wandering is inherent not just in the knights but also in Ariosto himself: it is almost as if the poet when beginning the narration does not yet know at the start of the narration the direction the plot will take, though subsequently it will guide him as though perfectly planned. Yet he has one thing totally clear in his mind: his own mixture of narrative élan and informality, what we might define, to use an adjective loaded with meaning, as the ‘errant’ movement of Ariosto’s poem.
These characteristics of Ariosto’s ‘space’ in the poem can be perceived either on the scale of the whole poem, or in individual canti, or on an even more minute scale in each stanza or even each line. The ottava is the unit in which it is easiest to recognise what is distinctive about his poetry: Ariosto is relaxed in the ottava, he feels at home in it, and the miracle of his poetry resides above all in this nonchalance.
This is so for two reasons above all. One is intrinsic to the ottava itself, in that it is a stanza which can handle even lengthy speeches as well as an alternation of sublime, lyric tones with more prosaic, humorous notes. The other reason is inherent in Ariosto’s method of writing poetry, which is not bounded by limits of any kind: unlike Dante, he has not set himself a rigid division of subject-matter, nor any rules of symmetry which would force him to write a set number of canti or set number of stanzas in each canto.In the
Furioso
the shortest canto contains 72 stanzas, the longest 199. The poet can take things easy if he wants, using several stanzas to say something which others could say in a single line, or he can concentrate into a single verse something that could be the subject of a lengthy discourse.
The secret of Ariosto’s ottava resides in his following the varied rhythm of the spoken language, in the profusion of what De Sanctis called the ‘inessential accessories of language’, as well as in the swiftness of his ironic asides. But the colloquial is only one of the many registers he deploys, which extend from the lyric to the tragic and sententious and which can all coexist in the same stanza. Ariosto can be of memorable concision, and many of his verses have become proverbial: ‘Ecco il giudicio uman come spesso erra!’ (This is how human judgment errs so often!) or ‘Oh gran bontà de’ cavallieri antiqui!’ (Oh the wonderful goodness of the ancient knights!). But it is not only with such asides that he executes his changes of speed. It has to be said that the very structure of the ottava is based on a discontinuity of rhythm: the first six lines linked by just two alternating rhymes are then followed by a rhyming couplet, which produces an effect which today we would term
anticlimax
, a brusque shift not only in rhythm but also in the psychological and intellectual atmosphere, from the sophisticated to the popular, from the evocative to the comic.
Of course Ariosto plays with these contours of the ottava as the expert he is, but the play could become monotonous without the agility of the poet in giving movement to the stanza, introducing pauses and full stops in varying positions, adapting different syntactic structures to the metre, alternating long and short sentences, splitting the stanza in two or in some cases tagging another stanza on to the first, constantly changing the narrative tenses, switching from the remote past tense to the imperfect, the present, then the future, in short creating a whole array of narrative planes and perspectives.
This freedom and ease of movement which we have noted in his
It is this zig-zag traced by the galloping horses and by the oscillations of the human heart that introduces us into the spirit of the poem. The pleasure deriving from the rapidity of the action instantly blends with a sense of breadth in the amount of time and space available. This aimless wandering is inherent not just in the knights but also in Ariosto himself: it is almost as if the poet when beginning the narration does not yet know at the start of the narration the direction the plot will take, though subsequently it will guide him as though perfectly planned. Yet he has one thing totally clear in his mind: his own mixture of narrative élan and informality, what we might define, to use an adjective loaded with meaning, as the ‘errant’ movement of Ariosto’s poem.
These characteristics of Ariosto’s ‘space’ in the poem can be perceived either on the scale of the whole poem, or in individual canti, or on an even more minute scale in each stanza or even each line. The ottava is the unit in which it is easiest to recognise what is distinctive about his poetry: Ariosto is relaxed in the ottava, he feels at home in it, and the miracle of his poetry resides above all in this nonchalance.
This is so for two reasons above all. One is intrinsic to the ottava itself, in that it is a stanza which can handle even lengthy speeches as well as an alternation of sublime, lyric tones with more prosaic, humorous notes. The other reason is inherent in Ariosto’s method of writing poetry, which is not bounded by limits of any kind: unlike Dante, he has not set himself a rigid division of subject-matter, nor any rules of symmetry which would force him to write a set number of canti or set number of stanzas in each canto.In the
Furioso
the shortest canto contains 72 stanzas, the longest 199. The poet can take things easy if he wants, using several stanzas to say something which others could say in a single line, or he can concentrate into a single verse something that could be the subject of a lengthy discourse.
The secret of Ariosto’s ottava resides in his following the varied rhythm of the spoken language, in the profusion of what De Sanctis called the ‘inessential accessories of language’, as well as in the swiftness of his ironic asides. But the colloquial is only one of the many registers he deploys, which extend from the lyric to the tragic and sententious and which can all coexist in the same stanza. Ariosto can be of memorable concision, and many of his verses have become proverbial: ‘Ecco il giudicio uman come spesso erra!’ (This is how human judgment errs so often!) or ‘Oh gran bontà de’ cavallieri antiqui!’ (Oh the wonderful goodness of the ancient knights!). But it is not only with such asides that he executes his changes of speed. It has to be said that the very structure of the ottava is based on a discontinuity of rhythm: the first six lines linked by just two alternating rhymes are then followed by a rhyming couplet, which produces an effect which today we would term
anticlimax
, a brusque shift not only in rhythm but also in the psychological and intellectual atmosphere, from the sophisticated to the popular, from the evocative to the comic.
Of course Ariosto plays with these contours of the ottava as the expert he is, but the play could become monotonous without the agility of the poet in giving movement to the stanza, introducing pauses and full stops in varying positions, adapting different syntactic structures to the metre, alternating long and short sentences, splitting the stanza in two or in some cases tagging another stanza on to the first, constantly changing the narrative tenses, switching from the remote past tense to the imperfect, the present, then the future, in short creating a whole array of narrative planes and perspectives.
This freedom and ease of movement which we have noted in his
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