chapter 10 From Poggio to Caxton: Early Translations of Some of Poggio’s Latin Facetiae

The seven facetiae by Poggio Bracciolini, or Poggio the Florentine, are a pecu- liar presence in the vernacular versions of the fables of Aesop which began with the compilation assembled by Heinrich Steinhöwel and translated by him into German. This very successful collection was published c. 1476 in Ulm and was subsequently translated and published in French, English (from the French, by William Caxton), Dutch, Low-German, and Czech. Steinhöwel’s compila- tion was expressly intended to be instructive and moralising, and the wisdom expressed in the Aesopian fables offered ample material for this purpose. But the Facetiae are not moralising or edifying at all. Poggio purported to record his collection of jokes and anecdotes in order to demonstrate that Latin was flex- ible enough to be written as a living language. He made a point of explaining that his facetiae were stories (and ‘lies’) swapped by the apostolic secretaries in the antechambers of the papal Curia, and it adds to their comedic effect to imagine the anecdotes emanating from the mouths of these highly edu- cated, well-travelled, worldly men, presumably delivered deadpan and with the appropriate accents. For unlike the mostly animal population of the fables of Aesop and his followers, Poggio’s stories are about humans from all walks of life and living in many parts of the Western world, speaking different lan- guages, their words all rendered in Latin. Merchants, knights, travellers, hus- bands, clerics, princes of the Church, and women—young and old—are gen- erally the protagonists in the brief farces, in which dialogue and situations develop and change with dynamic speed, unlike the more static interactions between the subjects of the Aesopian fables. The facetiae were—deservedly— considered anti-clerical, bawdy, and obscene, but were no less popular for that. When Steinhöwel concluded his fable book with seven of Poggio’s stories, he selected them from the collection of 273 facetiae which their author had consolidated in the mid-1450s. By the middle of the 1470s these were at the height of their dissemination in print in Latin. Steinhöwel was the first to translate a few. What led him to this selection is puzzling. He added a lengthy apology for the inclusion of the bawdiest in his selection (‘De adulescentula quae virum de parvo priapo accusavit’,about the groom who places proof of his manhood on the dinner table, to the admiration of the guests), but justified its

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004279001_012 early translations of some of poggio’s latin facetiae 255 inclusion by pointing out that he was leaving out many other scabrous stories. His apology (in German) was not included in any of the translations of his version. One other story in his selection is mildly sacrilegious, while the story of the priest who was allowed to bury his little dog in holy ground by bribing the bishop is irreverent and outright anti-clerical. Translating Poggio’s stories from the Latin defeats their author’s original purpose, but they seem to have led the translators into newfound freedom in retelling the jokes, at least to some degree. The vernacular languages needed more words to get the meaning across, and translators felt the need to introduce clarifications where the Latin had allowed greater economy of expression. Caxton was a prolific translator, but for all his efforts modern commenta- tors have found him lacking in verbal inventiveness. The style of his transla- tions is usually flat, failing to reflect any interest in finding fresh expressions, his vocabulary remaining painfully close to the originals on which his transla- tions were based. Only in rendering dialogue and inserting small clarifications is Caxton seen as redeeming some of his reputation of being a dull transla- tor. But were his translations always so unimaginative? In Poggio’s brief anec- dotes he encountered prose with far more vibrant qualities than the texts, often with much longer traditions, with which he had previously engaged. Could Poggio’s storytelling have freed him from the somnolent mode that had overtaken him when translating the Aesopian fables? The seven facetiae he found in his model, and the four he added, are therefore worth some explo- ration. In order to establish if, where, and how he intervened in the text, the source for his translation has to be identified as precisely as possible. Recent discover- ies have enabled us to get closer to the Aesopus texts which Caxton translated, including some of the facetiae. But reader be warned: it is a long way to get there.

Caxton as Translator

If Caxton deserves a poor reputation for the quality of his translations, he may make up for it in quantity. He translated no fewer than 23 works into English, mainly from French, but a few from Latin and Dutch.1 In Caxton and His World (1969), Norman F. Blake devoted a chapter to Caxton as translator and offered

1 Three were reprinted by him: The game of chess, (Duff 81–82), The mirror of the world (Duff 401–402), and Reynard the Fox (Duff 358–359).