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HUMANISM ’S OTHER INHERITANCE : T HE BRUTAL INTERTEXTUALITY OF BOIARDO ’S ROCCA CRUDELE
NATALIE CLEAVER
Summary : In Book I of the Orlando innamorato , Ranaldo travels from Palazo Zoioso to Rocca Crudele, a distinct adventure that exists almost as a separate novella within the poem. At Rocca Crudele, he encounters an exceptionally violent scene that is composed of the most horrific moments of cruelty drawn from classical and vernacular literature. The intertextual referents of Rocca Crudele are completely stripped of anything redeeming, leaving only atrocities as the poem confronts the problem of the imitation of past evils instead of virtues. This paper argues that Rocca Crudele is a place set apart in the world of the Innamorato , where its normally reveren - tial and humanist approach to the past fails temporarily. Rocca Crudele refuses interpretation as a site of pragmatic or moral instruction and instead reflects upon the potential perils of imitation as a pattern of behav - ior when the cultural legacy of the past is not always exemplary.
Despite its longstanding associations with the pleasures of reading and the poetry of escape, the Italian romance epic is no stranger to the violence and cruelty of war. Yet few moments in renaissance poetry can rival the unflinchingly gruesome description of the events at Rocca Crudele in Book I of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato . In addition to its demon - ic monster, fearsome giants, and walls draped with human limbs, this tale within the poem layers infanticide upon betrayal, torture upon revenge, cannibalism upon ritual sacrifice, and necrophilia upon rape. Rocca Crudele is a virtual museum of horrors that should be all the more aston - ishing given the stubborn persistence of Boiardo’s reputation as a light - hearted and whimsical poet. 1 The excessive violence of Rocca Crudele stands out among other romance epics of the Renaissance, but it is also remarkable within the
1 In his introduction to the Innamorato , Aldo Scaglione opens by praising Boiardo’s “facili muse e spirito sereno” (9). More recently, in a volume on the Este court, Dennis Looney writes: “Boiardo does not allude to the Phaethon story in his vast narrative, Orlando innamorato , for the world of his poem is sim - ply too bright to allow such darkness into it” (“Ferrarese” 4).
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world of the Innamorato . No other scene in the poem is comparably dis - turbing or graphic; it seems to revel in adding detail after gory detail. This violence is particularly at odds with Boiardo’s address to his audience in the poem’s opening octave: “Signori e cavallier che ve adunati / Per odir cose dilettose e nove, / Stati attenti e quïeti, ed ascoltati / La bella istoria che ‘l mio canto muove” (i.1). 2 Ranaldo’s adventures at Rocca Crudele are nei - ther delightful, nor particularly novel, except perhaps in aggregate, and the brutality is especially surprising in a poem that does, after all, claim to sing the pleasures of love. The peculiarity of this bleak scene is increased by the fact that it stands alone like a distinct novella within the poem. Its unusually graphic layer - ing of violence seems to have no moral, aesthetic, or narrative connection with the rest of the poem, as the episode begins and ends with complete destruction. Yet the Innamorato practically starts with this story, and its presence so early in the poem demands some explanation. The few schol - ars who have written in detail about Rocca Crudele have argued that it rep - resents the “foreign and exotic horrors” of Herodotus (Murrin), the nega - tive exemplarity of poor governance, as part of Boiardo’s larger didactic project for the Estense rulers (Cavallo), and a humanist lesson in the moral imagination and universal ethics derived from an encounter with a foreign “other” (Ross). 3 While all of these scholarly treatments of the Innamorato are engaging readings of the poem, I will argue that the encounter at Rocca Crudele has nothing either usefully instructive or exotically foreign about it. Instead, I understand it as a humanist reflection on the problem presented by imita - tion when that which is imitated is negative and non-exemplary behavior – a confrontation between a perspective that generally considers both his - tory and literature to be moral and pragmatic instruments of instruction and the darkest, most violent moments of the past. 4 Without rejecting the
2 Citations of the Innamorato are from Bruscagli’s edition. All quotations are from Book I; references are therefore to canto and stanza. A final bibliography of all translations and editions of primary sources cited is included at the end. 3 Francesca Battera’s “Boiardo tragico?” is also dedicated to an analysis of Rocca Crudele, but despite its title, the article focuses primarily on Boiardo’s relation - ship to magic, which lies outside of my scope here. 4 “For humanist historiography…the past is seen as a reservoir of models for pre - sent action. Past and present are linked through a relationship of simili - tude…The words, deeds, and even the bodies of the illustrious ancients were seen as signs of excellence and patterns for behavior. Without them, and with - out the theory of history as repetition, the very notion of a cultural rebirth or re- — 38 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 39
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authority or vitality of the past as a model for present behavior in his poem as a whole, Boiardo offers at Rocca Crudele an unorthodox meditation on imitation as a habit that operates almost involuntarily regardless of the quality of the thing imitated. Rocca Crudele is a limited moment of recog - nition within the Innamorato that the literary inheritance carries both the good and the ill of the past with it. The events at Rocca Crudele are based on a brutal and unforgiving intertextuality that takes the most gruesome details from the tragic tradi - tion of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, from the histories of Herodotus, and from the epics of Rome, including the Aeneid , the Pharsalia , and the Metamorphoses , layering these horrors one on top of the other, building them into a single elaborate and unredeemable narrative, that is unreadable in a moral or pragmatic terms. Far from reflecting a fear - ful “otherness,” the basis for Rocca Crudele is distilled from the founda - tional classics of the European literary tradition. For Boiardo, this inheri - tance is part of an unbroken pattern of imitation from the classical world to the Renaissance, as the events at Rocca Crudele equally assimilate ver - nacular literature, including the Arthurian tradition, Dante, and Boccaccio. The castle serves as an isolated space in which the darkness of the literary tradition can be examined critically, a space where the poem can dwell on the problem of inherited evils without the danger of conta - minating its larger narrative. Within the walls of Rocca Crudele, Boiardo confronts the traumas of the past and their effects on the present. The pattern of intertextuality at Rocca Crudele is exceptional not so much for the number of sources from which Boiardo draws his material as for the unusually bleak use he makes of them. Here, the poet strips his sources of everything positive, of that which might justify or contextualize its violence—of anything that might allow this intertextual past to be understood as exemplary—leaving his reader with a scene that clearly cannot support a moralizing or productive reading. Yet the result is still an act of imitation; Rocca Crudele does not offer a solution to the problem of the non-exemplary past, so much as a containment of its horrors. It reflects a skepticism about the humanist inheritance that recognizes that not all of the past is useful, and it repre -
naissance is unthinkable. The early Renaissance is imbued with a somewhat anx - ious reverence toward the classical world. It understands the priority of antiqui - ty to be ontological as well as historical: ancient poetry, political life, and phi - losophy are seen to be sources of value – moral, martial, linguistic, which moder - nity must appropriate through the hermeneutic motion of a leap across centuries of perceived darkness toward a past light” (Hampton 8-9). — 39 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 40
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sents an underlying threat that the evils of history and literature will resur - face unbidden. For this reason, the episode is framed by two moments of absolute destruction and separated from the rest of the poem by a failure of epic and romance narrative strategies at both its beginning and the end, failures that mark it as a particularly problematic site of reading. 5 The bru - tal intertextuality on which the castle is constructed represents a temporary allowance for the worst to emerge from the past, suggesting that if the problem of involuntary imitation cannot be resolved, it can at least be iso - lated, much as the monster of Rocca Crudele is contained in his prison. Despite the characteristically loose structure of Boiardo’s poem, 6 the early events of the first book are generally focused on the court of Charlemagne and the pending war with Gradasso, and it seems fair to say that the Innamorato begins in the world of epic. In the first major romance deviation of the poem, Ranaldo arrives at Arden Wood, where he unwit - tingly drinks from the fountain of Merlin. Its water transforms Ranaldo’s passion for Angelica into hatred, and releases him from her pursuit. Boiardo explicitly notes that Merlin created the fountain for the express purpose of solving the romance problem of excessive desire: in this case, Tristan’s incestuous love for Iseult. Merlin’s curative project does not suc - ceed, however, since the unlucky Tristan never arrived at the fountain. 7 On intertextual terms, Ranaldo’s adventure is born of a romance failure. Though Merlin’s fountain does not accomplish its original purpose, its cre - ation has lasting and unintended effects, as Ranaldo’s future is shaped by the inadvertent inheritance of an earlier romance tradition. Meanwhile, Angelica drinks from the river of love, pursing Ranaldo as he flees. 8 She turns to the imprisoned magician Malagise, promising him
5 Or, as David Quint remarks in a different context, it is a poem “that deliberate - ly falls apart” (164), at least temporarily. 6 As Robert Durling long ago demonstrated, the seemingly careless structure of the poem is in fact part of Boiardo’s own self-construction as author: “Boiardo, it is said, lacked the gift of form – or lacked the energy and concentration nec - essary to produce a thoroughly shaped poem – was in fact a mere improviser, albeit a highly gifted one…The poem contains a rationale of its peculiar nature, and, indeed, the fact that Boiardo should be accused of being an improviser is ironic evidence of the success of the rhetorical self-representation of the Poet…” (103-04). 7 “Tristano isventurato, per sciagura / A quella fonte mai non è arivato, / Benché più volte andasse alla ventura, / E quel paese tutto abbia cercato” (iii. 34). 8 For the inversion of the male-female pursuit and its resonance with Ovid’s Narcissus, see Cavallo, Ethics , esp. 36-41. — 40 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 41
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his freedom if he will bring Ranaldo to her. Unaware of the change in Ranaldo’s sentiments, Malagise willingly agrees, and flies to ask Ranaldo to satisfy the fair Angelica’s desires. 9 The potency of Merlin’s fountain is such, however, that Ranaldo categorically refuses the desperate pleas of Malagise, declaring that he would rather die than go near Angelica. Incensed by Ranaldo’s refusal, Malagise disappears after threatening him: “Quasi per te ne l’inferno m’ho dato: / Tu me vôi far nella pregion morire. / Guârti da me; ch’io ti farò uno inganno, / Che ti farà vergogna, e forse danno” (v.31). 10 Since his appeals have failed, Malagise resorts to trickery; he arranges a dual between Gradasso and Ranaldo, then sends a demon dis - guised as Gradasso to fight. About to be vanquished, the demon turns and flees, luring Ranaldo onto a ship which then departs. The deceit of the fraudulent Gradasso clearly recalls Book X of the Aeneid , where Juno similarly traps Turnus with the phantom of Aeneas. Both Turnus and Ranaldo contemplate suicide, lamenting the shame of appearing to have fled battle. Ranaldo recognizes immediately that he has lost his honor, crying: “Io me ne vado; or chi farà mia scusa, / Quando serò de codardia appellato? / Chi non sta al paragon, se stesso accusa: / Più non son cavallier, ma riprovato” (v.51). 11 Thus the path to Rocca Crudele begins with an epic failure as well—an apparent violation of chivalric and military values. 12 As Ranaldo prays, the enchanted ship without a pilot flies through the Strait of Gibraltar, then travels south and east, till finally com - ing to a stop at a palace by the sea. Before the nature of the place is disclosed, the poem shifts to follow Orlando before returning to Ranaldo. Orlando’s adventures in Cantos 5
9 Malagise describes Angelica’s desires to Ranaldo in sexual terms (see v. 27), though her request is not so explicit. 10 The curse of the House of Atreus has been repeatedly suggested as one of the intertextual models for Rocca Crudele; to my thinking, it is potentially relevant with respect to the temperamental character of Malagise, whose malevolent anger and magical powers are responsible for bringing Ranaldo to both Palazo Zoioso and to Rocca Crudele. Yet it is also important to remember that the dis - mal situation at the castle is brought about, not by a curse, but by the repetition of past violence. 11 For other structural parallels with Aeneid X, see Looney, Compromising 78-90. 12 Ranaldo’s plight is all the more shameful because he finds himself guilty of the very cowardice for which he just previously mocked the false Gradasso: “…Aspetta un poco, re gagliardo: / Chi fugge, non cavalca il mio Baiardo. / Or debbe far un re sì fatta prova? / Non te vergogni le spalle voltare?” (vv. 43-44).
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and 6 are the only other major detour that precedes the scene at Rocca Crudele. I will return later to Orlando’s journey, but for now, I want to fol - low Ranaldo to Palazo Zoioso, first named at the beginning of Canto 8. Boiardo has just promised to continue his tale of things miraculous for “allegrezza e pianto” (vii.72), but by the end of Ranaldo’s disastrous adven - ture, it is difficult to understand where we are to locate happiness at Rocca Crudele. 13 At first, Ranaldo is content with this joyous palace, until it is revealed that the place was created by Angelica. 14 The mere mention of her name sends Ranaldo into a frenzy and he despises the palace as “un loco pien di pianto” (viii.12). He is determined to flee, but since he is trapped on an island, he can only return to the same crewless ship and wait for it to leave. Finding that the boat will not depart, he despairs and again con - siders suicide: “E fa pensier, se non se pô partire, / Gettarse in mare ed al tutto morire” (viii.15). Previously, concern for his immortal soul and the fear of hell stopped Ranaldo from killing himself, 15 but staying on Angelica’s island seems to be a fate worse than knightly shame. This stalled moment between the Palazo Zoioso and Rocca Crudele is a peculiar rupture in the Innamorato . The refusal of the boat of romance to move is a remarkable pause in a poem that flits easily from adventure to adventure – almost as if it marks a textual hesitation before the coming events at Rocca Crudele. Why the boat initially refuses to move, then departs suddenly for Rocca Crudele, is never made entirely clear. Before Ranaldo can drown himself, however, the boat unexpectedly begins to move again, and the next day it arrives on shore near “una gran selva e strana” (viii.16). This dark wood is our first Dantean marker of the hellish landscape that is to follow. Once on shore, Ranaldo meets an old man who begs him to save his daughter, who has just been kidnapped by a high - wayman. Ranaldo quickly catches up with the thief, who drops the girl and sounds a horn that summons a vicious giant. The giant fights Ranaldo, but not getting the upper hand, he leaps across a bridge, with Ranaldo in pur - suit. The giant then releases a trap door and Ranaldo tumbles into a dark cavern, where he is later chained and bound.
13 If “allegrezza” refers to the Palazo Zoioso, then those joys are short-lived indeed. Within eleven octaves, Ranaldo is once again fleeing in distress. 14 “Per tua cagione è tutto edificato, / E per te solo il fece la regina; / Ben ti dei reputare aventurato, / Che te ami quella dama pellegrina. / Essa è più bianca che ziglio nel prato, / Vermiglia più che rosa in su la spina; / La giovenetta Angelica se chiama, / Che tua persona più che il suo core ama” (viii.11). 15 “Sempre il timor de l’anima e lo inferno / Li vetò far di sé quel mal governo” (v. 53). — 42 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 43
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After a pause for a somewhat humorous interior monologue where Ranaldo laments his bad luck, 16 the giant drags him across the main bridge to the “crudel castello.” 17 The sight that awaits Ranaldo must add to his feelings of self-pity:
Teste de occisi nella prima fronte, E gente morta vi pende apiccata; Ma, quel che era più scuro, eran disionte Le membra ancora vive alcuna fiata. Vermiglio è lo castello, e da lontano Sembrava foco, ed era sangue umano. (viii.25)
Here we have our first glimpse into the depth of the intertextual pat - terns on which Rocca Crudele is constructed. The severed human heads which adorn the walls recall Sir Gawain’s journey to the Dolorous Guard in the prose Lancelot. There, he finds burial inscriptions on the tombs of the slaughtered champions of Arthur’s court, and above them their “heads”:
Li clers commenche les lettres a lire sor les tombes et trueve sor une des tombes escrit: “Chi gist chil et veés la sa teste” et en pluseurs lieus dist ensi et noume chevaliers assés de la maison le roi Artu et de sa terre. Et quant mesire Gauvain ot qu’il sont ensi mort, si en pleure moult dure - ment, car il quide bien et tout li autre que che soit voirs, et si estoit de tex i avoit, et de tex i avoit il menchoigne dont les lettres estoient faites la nuit devant. (XXVa,8) 18
The idea of displaying helmets is literalized as real heads at Rocca Crudele, where there is no need to stage signs of its evil rituals; genuine evi -
16 ‘Or ti par che fortuna ruïnosa / Una disgrazia dietro a l’altra invia! / Qual sorte al mondo è la più dolorosa / Non se paragia alla sventura mia” (viii. 24). 17 The castle will not be given its proper name, Rocca Crudele , until ix.10. 18 “The hermit began to read the words on the gravestones and found on the first: Here Lies So-and-So and Up There Is His Head; and that is what he found in a number of places, along with the names of many knights of the household and land of King Arthur. When Sir Gawain thus heard that they were dead, he broke into bitter tears, for he believed, and his companions did, too, that the words were true; and in some cases they were, but in others the words were lies that had been engraved only the night before” (I. 25.338). The display of dead knights turns out to have been mostly staged the previous evening by the people of the town, who want Arthur to intervene and destroy the Dolorous Guard. — 43 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 44
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dence of “la crudele usanza” of the castle is all too proudly exposed. The confused mix of heads and body parts may also recall Ovidian and Virgilian descriptions of the cave of Cacus, who is also a source of trouble for the locals prior to his destruction by Hercules. 19 Yet, Boiardo hastens to remind his readers, even more horrible than the severed heads on the wall are disjointed the limbs of the murdered, some of which are still alive. A precise precedent for this detail is a bit more perplexing, 20 though perhaps it finds inspiration in Lucan, who never seems to run short of body parts. The idea of the still living corpse may allude to the gruesome death of Marius in Book II of the Pharsalia :
We saw his mangled frame with a wound for every limb; we saw every part of the body mutilated and yet no death-stroke dealt to the life; we saw the terrible form taken by savage cruelty, of not suffering the dying to die. The arms, wrenched from the shoulders, fell to the ground; the tongue, cut out, quivered and beat the empty air with dumb motion; one man cut off the ears, another the nostrils of the curved nose; a third pushed the eye-balls from their hollow sockets and scooped the eyes out last of all when they had witnessed the fate of the limbs. Few will believe
19 Cf. Aeneid VIII.190-7 and Fasti I.550-8. The connection to the Fasti is men - tioned by Bruscagli in the notes to his edition. Ovid’s account emphasizes the peril Cacus presents to his neighbors: “Cacus the infamous terror of the Aventine woods, No slight evil to neighbours and travellers.” (551-52); “Cacus, Aventinae timor atque infamia silvae, / non leve finitimis hospitibusque malum.” 20 Razzoli suggests the house of Amycus, King of the Bebryces in the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus as a source for these still-living limbs. Those arms are lifeless, however, though still in armor.: “But before the rock were various terrors: sev - ered arms torn from men sent flying, and lifeless though still clad with the gauntlet, and bones all foul and mouldering, and heads in a dismal row. You could see those for whom the straight-pitched blow had left nor name nor vis - age.” (IV.181-5); “at varii pro rupe metus: hic trunca rotatis / bracchia rapta viris strictoque immortua caestu / ossaque taetra situ [et] capitum maestissimus ordo / per piceas, quibus adverso sub vulnere nulla / iam facies nec nomen erat.” 21 “cum laceros artus aequataque vulnera membris / vidimus et toto quamvis in corpore caeso / nil animae letale datum, moremque nefandae / dirum saevitiae, pereuntis parcere morti. / avulsae cecidere manus exectaque lingua / palpitat et muto vacuum ferit aera motu. / hic aures, alius spiramina naris aduncae / ampu - tat, ille cavis evolvit sedibus orbes / ultimaque effodit spectatis lumina membris. / vix erit ulla fides tam saevi criminis, unum / tot poenas cepisse caput.” For a further account of Lucan’s role in the Innamorato , see Zampese, “Lucano (e Seneca tragico).” — 44 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 45
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such an atrocity, or that a single frame could be large enough for so many tortures. 21 (177-87)
Boiardo invites us to imagine these dismembered limbs twitching on the walls, like Marius’s still flopping tongue. 22 The delight in cruelty dis - played in torturing the bloodthirsty Marius is a pleasure well-known the inhabitants of Rocca Crudele, though they choose their victims at random, and no revenge motivates their fury. The bloody detail of the living parts adorning the walls is also revealed as reference to execution by quartering later in the canto: “Alcun se scanna, alcun vien impiccato; / Squartansi vivi ancora alcuna fiata, / Come veder potesti in su la entrata” (viii.52). Here, the likely literary precedent is the death of Ganelon at the end of the Chanson de Roland . Like Marius, Ganelon is guilty, and his death by equestrian quartering is represented as a just pun - ishment. The Oxford version emphasizes the moral propriety of his execu - tion: “Turnét est Guenes a perdicïun grant: / trestuit si nerf mult li sunt estendant, / e tuit li membre de sun cors derumpant; / sur l’erbe verte en espant li cler sanc. / Guenes est mort cume fel recrëant. Hom ki traïst, nen est dreiz qu’il s’en vant” (3969-74). 23 The Venice 7 manuscript of the Chanson de Roland , which was likely in the possession of the Gonzagas dur - ing Boiardo’s lifetime, 24 similarly frames the extreme cruelty of the punish - ment as justifiable only because it is commensurate with his crime. At his
22 The death struggle of Marius’s tongue may already recall Philomela’s excised tongue in Ovid’s Metamorphoses , itself a very important subtext for Rocca Crudele: “When she saw the sword Philomela offered her throat, hoping for death. But [Tereus] gripped her protesting tongue with pincers as it kept calling her father’s name and cut it off, still struggling to speak, with his pitiless blade. The root withered in her throat; the tongue itself lay quivering on the dark earth, murmuring low; and, as the tale of a snake twitches when severed, so too her tongue, and with its last dying spasm, it sought its mistress’ feet.” (VI.553-60); “iugulum Philomela parabat / spemque suae mortis uiso conceperat ense; / ille indignantem et nomen patris usque uocantem / luctantemque loqui compren - sam forcipe linguam / abstulit ense fero. radix micat ultima linguae, / ipsa iacet terraeque tremens immurmurat atrae, / utque salire solet mutilatae cauda colu - brae, / palpitat et moriens dominae uestigia quaerit.” 23 “Ganelon is given over to terrible destruction; all his muscles are severely stretched and all the limbs of his body break; the bright blood spills out on the green grass. Ganelon dies like a cowardly felon. It is not right that one who betrays should boast of it.” 24 See Dugan, “Introduction.” — 45 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 46
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death, the whole crowd gathered to witness the execution screams at Ganelon: “Culverz traïtre, or avez comparé / la trahison que vos avez mené, / la male foi que vos avez porté / as doce pers qui mort furent jeté” (8372- 5). 25 Despite its intertextual echoes, the violence at Rocca Crudele is stripped of the context for violence present in its precursors. Instead, its inhabitants prey on the innocent without motivation; their violence cannot be processed and restored to the narrative by moral or poetic justification. The last two lines of our introduction to Rocca Crudele return finally to Dante: “Vermiglio è lo castello, e da lontano / Sembrava foco, ed era sangue umano.” In Canto VIII of Inferno , as Dante and Virgil approach the city of Dis, Dante notes that its buildings appear to be red-hot, and Virgil tells him that this is caused by the eternal fire burning within the city:
E io: “Maestro, già le sue meschite là entro certe ne la valle cerno, vermiglie come se di foco uscite fossero.” Ed ei mi disse: “Il foco etterno ch’entro l’affoca le dimostra rosse, come tu vedi in questo basso inferno.” (70-5)
What appears to be fire in Dante’s hell is actually fire; what appears to Ranaldo at a distance to be fire is in fact human blood – Rocca Crudele is more infernal than hell itself. The octave in which the castle is first described piles on one horrific detail after another, culled from classical and vernacular sources, but without the narrative structures that have previ - ously made them “readable,” and which might render them didactically useful or ideologically palatable. Here we are in no Dantean moral uni - verse, we are offered no metaphoric representation of a state at civil war. There are no traitors to be punished, nor, as we shall see, is Ranaldo come to save us from Cacus like a new Hercules. After this exterior view of Rocca Crudele, Ranaldo is dragged before a vile old woman, who tells him that he will die in accordance with the cus - toms of the castle, but first she recounts to him the history that caused
25 “Vicious traitor, now you have paid for the betrayal you have wrought, the bad faith you have kept with the Twelve Peers, hurled to their deaths.” In fact, in Venice 7, Charlemagne’s court spends a long time debating what is the most hor - rible punishment they can imagine for Ganelon. They eventually chose quarter - ing as even worse than being flayed alive and left in the sun covered in honey for goats to lick. 26 The woman is dressed in “una vesta oscura” (viii.26), which, like the “selva” at 16, continues the Dantean echoes that permeate the episode. — 46 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 47
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these customs to be established. 26 The castle was formerly called Altaripa, and it was ruled by Grifone and his wife, Stella. Grifone was a perfect knight, the image of chivalry, who offered his hospitality to all who passed, and Stella was the fairest of ladies. One day, Grifone encounters Marchino, the lord of Aronda, while they are hunting in the woods. (This Marchino is the husband of the old woman now recounting the story, who is never named in the poem.) By chance, Marchino sees Stella and is immediately seized with desire for her. 27 Able to think of nothing but this obsessive pas - sion, Marchino conceives of an elaborate deceit, hides in the woods, and slays Grifone by treachery. Having prepared beforehand armor identical to Grifone’s, Marchino returns to Altaripa in the guise of its lord, then slaugh - ters everyone—the young, the old, and the women—all but Stella. After this malicious betrayal of the good Grifone, Marchino attempts to woo Stella, strangely becoming a sort of courtly lover, rather than using force. 28 His attempts are unavailing. Stella only reviles him for the murder of Grifone: Ella pensava lo oltraggio spietato Che li avea fatto il falso traditore, E Grifon, che da lei fu tanto amato, Sempre li stava notte e dì nel core; Né altro desia che averlo vendicato, Né trova qual partito sia il megliore. Infin li offerse il suo voler crudele Quello animal che al mondo è di più fele. (viii.36) This dangerous animal is the narrator, Marchino’s jealous wife. Enraged by her husband’s betrayal, she slaughters and butchers their two sons, and after setting aside their heads, serves their bodies to Marchino. She then departs to find Poliferno, the king of Orgagna, to encourage him to come to Rocca Crudele to avenge the deeds of her husband. Before they can return with his forces, however, Stella brings before Marchino the two disfigured heads of his children and says: “…L’uno e l’altro volto / Son de’ toi figli: dàgli sepoltura. / Il resto hai tu nel tuo ventre sepolto: / Tu il divo - rasti: non aver più cura” (viii.44).
27 I say by chance, but Boiardo’s old woman says neither “caso” nor “fortuna,” instead describing the event as “disaventura,” a turn of phrase nicely in keeping with the episode’s status as both anti-epic and anti-romance. 28 Ross writes that Marchino has not yet raped Stella (47). It is true that the poem never explicitly says she has been violated until after Marchino discovers the murder of his children, yet given of the strong parallel with Ovid’s Philomela, rape may well already be implied. — 47 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 48
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This episode would have vividly recalled Ovid’s story of Procne, Philomela, and Tereus for Boiardo’s audience. Like Marchino, Tereus is immediately inflamed with lust upon seeing Philomela, and after raping her, cuts out her tongue. Ovid’s Philomela manages nonetheless to reveal the crime to her sister Procne. The two sisters kill Itys and feed him to his father:
So Tereus sits on his high, ancestral throne and stuffs his belly with his own flesh and blood. So great is his mind’s blindness that he cries, “Get Itys here!” Procne cannot conceal her cruel joy, and eager to be the her - ald of her butchery, “You have him inside,” she says. He looks around, asks where he is, and as he asks again and calls, Philomela, just as she was, her hair stained with blood, leaps forward and throws the gory head of Itys into his father’s face, nor was there ever a time when she longed more to be able to speak and proclaim her joy in words that matched it. 29 (VI.647-60)
There are however some significant changes to the Ovidian version. First, the myth of Medea is entangled with Ovid’s account of Procne and Philomela. Like Medea, Marchino’s wife kills her two children, where Procne has only a single child to slaughter. Procne’s comprehensible desire to avenge her sister is similarly replaced by the jealous fury of Medea. These changes radically alter the dynamics of the story at Rocca Crudele. Marchino’s wife is utterly vicious. Motivated by nothing but anger and jealousy, she becomes a kind of violent animal, whose wicked cruelty long outlives her husband. All the context that makes Medea’s story more tragic than horrific has been stripped away. As readers, we are not made privy to a long history between Marchino and his wife that makes his betrayal seem worthy of so great a vengeance on her part; she has not abandoned her home and country to follow him and he takes no dramatic vows of faith - fulness. At Rocca Crudele we see only the bloodthirsty frenzy of a betrayed wife, not the dauntless spirit of a semi-divine being. These altered dynam - ics also damage the emotional complexity of Philomela’s story. The hatred of Marchino’s wife extends to Stella, whom she holds responsible for Marchino’s lust. In her infanticide, we find only uncontrollable anger,
29 “ipse sedens solio Tereus sublimis auito / uescitur inque suam sua uiscera con - gerit aluum; / tantaque nox animi est, ‘Ityn huc accersite’ dixit. / dissimulare nequit crudelia gaudia Procne; / iamque suae cupiens exsistere nuntia cladis / ‘intus habes quem poscis’ ait. circumspicit ille / atque ubi sit quaerit; quaerenti iterumque uocanti, / sicut erat sparsis furiali caede capillis, / prosiluit Ityosque caput Philomela cruentum / misit in ora patris nec tempore maluit ullo / posse loqui et meritis testari gaudia dictis.” — 48 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 49
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instead of the tragedy and pathos of Procne’s choice between son and sister:
But when the child came up to greet his mother and he put his small arms around her neck, kissing and charming as small boys do, the moth - er in her was moved, her anger dissolved, and she began to shed tears in spite of herself. But when she felt herself wavering through excess of maternal love, she turned toward her sister’s face and then back and forth between both of them. “One coos, the other has no tongue with which to speak. He calls me mother; why can’t she call me sister? Look at whose wife you are, daughter of Pandion! Will you disgrace your husband? But fidelity to a husband like Tereus is criminal. 30 (VI.624-35)
Marchino’s wife has no such qualms. Her bloody revenge is direct and relentless; the murder of her two children is only the beginning of her reign of terror: Duo fanciulletti avevo di Marchino; Il primo lo scanai con la mia mano. Stava a guardarme l’altro piccolino, E dicea: “Matre, deh per Dio! fa piano.” Io presi per li piedi quel meschino, E detti il capo a un sasso prossimano. Te par ch’io vendicassi il mio dispetto? Ma questo fu un principio, e non lo effetto. (viii.39)
The lack of sympathy between Stella and Marchino’s wife also means that Stella does not appear to be involved in the murders, whereas Philomela participates in Procne’s crime. In a somewhat convoluted plot twist, Stella must become aware of the deed, but only carries the children’s heads to Marchino after his wife has already fed him their flesh, and fled to seek aid from the King of Orgagna. 31
30 “ut tamen accessit natus matrique salutem / attulit et paruis adduxit colla lacertis / mixtaque blanditiis puerilibus oscula iunxit, / mota quidem est genetrix infrac - taque constitit ira / inuitique oculi lacrimis maduere coactis. / sed simul ex nimia mentem pietate labare / sensit, ab hoc iterum est ad uultus uersa sororis / inque uicem spectans ambos ‘cur admouet’ inquit / ‘alter blanditias, rapta silet altera lin - gua? / quam uocat hic matrem, cur non uocat illa sororem? / cui sis nupta uide, Pandione nata, marito: / degeneras; scelus est pietas in coniuge Tereo’.” 31 Hardly an unbiased observer, Marchino’s wife refers to her as “the cruel Stella,” though she herself is far more guilty. Ross writes: “When Stella (perhaps duped by Marchino’s wife) serves Marchino his children, she reveals her tragic inabili - ty to shed the past. She does her cruel deed to avenge her husband, not herself, — 49 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 50
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So far, the history of Rocca Crudele is grounded in two particularly gory episodes from Ovid (as well as the larger mythography of Medea), which turn from tragic to horrific as they are emptied of all the context and emotive potential that previously redeemed their violence in narrative terms. Yet the story is about to become more gruesome. Incensed by the death of his sons, Marchino turns his wrath on Stella, vacillating between “crudeltà” and “amore.” He contemplates torturing her, but hesitates to destroy the physical body that is still the object of his desire. Finally, Marchino has the dead body of Grifone brought to the castle, to which he binds Stella’s body, “viso con viso stretto, e mano a mano,” then rapes her. 32 Boiardo does not shrink from
for she has not yet been violated. She proudly but naively tells Marchino what she has done, as if her vengeance were a point of honor. Marchino catches on to her motivation and seeks to match it when devising a suitable punishment” (47). I find this reading of the episode particularly disturbing. It too easily passes over the violence of the murder of Grifone and of the entire town. Unlike Marchino’s wife, Stella is motivated by feeling for others, not just her own self; she is prin - cipally a victim in this gruesome tale, not the perpetrator of perpetual violence through her refusal to “shed the past.” It seems quite clear that it is Marchino and his wife who cannot let go of their vengeance. I believe that at Rocca Crudele, past violence does not beget present violence in a logical fashion, but in an out-of control-spiral of meaningless repetition. It is especially distressing to characterize Stella’s rape and murder as a just “punishment” by Marchino. To consider Stella guilty requires a sharp allegorical turn and an overt moralizing that I do not see present in the episode. Ross adds: “Stella, too, ties herself to the past. Her pathology is harder to see, since her situation is so tragic, but the point is that law must concern itself with the present, not retribution for what cannot be corrected” (45). Cavallo also describes Stella as “a willing accomplice” to Marchino’s wife, though the poem never says that she helps to murder the chil - dren ( Ethics 56). I believe that this desire on the part of the poem’s readers to find Stella more culpable than she is derives from a need to find a redeeming, moral interpretation that Rocca Crudele denies us. 32 Ross raises the possibility that Stella’s position here indicates anal rape: “Vaginal intercourse would be possible, but the prone position of Stella, tied to her dead husband, suggests that Marchino violates her by anal penetration. His unnatur - al act stresses one final time Stella’s inability to get away from the past, the events behind her…” (38,9). While I strongly disagree with his analysis, which must construct violent rape as a fair punishment, a merited contrapasso in order to uphold his interpretation of Rocca Crudele as a humanist encounter with uni - versal justice, I do think it is likely that Boiardo’s text hints at sodomy. I see this as one more horrific detail that emphasizes the unnaturalness of history and the past at the Castle, and certainly not the “unnaturalness” of Stella’s inability to forget Marchino’s betrayal and the murder of her husband. — 50 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 51
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describing the grotesqueness of the scene, but continues: “Or fu piacer giamai tant’inumano? / Gran puza mena il corpo tutta fiata; / La damisella a quel stava legata” (viii.46). At this point, Marchino becomes aware of the arrival of the King of Orgagna and his army, and rather than spare Stella’s life, he slits her throat. Unflinchingly, this “lighthearted” poem continues: “Né ancor per questo dapoi la sparagna, / Ma usava con lei morta tutta fiata. / Credo io che il fece sol per darse vanto / Che altro om non fusse scelerato tanto” (viii.47). Marchino is captured, tortured, and executed, and Stella and Grifone are laid to rest inside a beautiful tomb. 33 As the atrocious images of the canto multiply, so do its intertextual lay - ers. The grotesque binding of a living body to a corpse refers to the Aeneid’s description of the Etruscan despot Mezentius: “Unspeakable his butcheries, his frenzies. Gods, bring the same to him – and to his children. He even tied dead bodies on to live ones, hands against hands and faces against faces – his special torture. In this grim embrace, his victims slowly died, in liquid rot” (VIII.483-8). 34 To this grim scene, Boiardo adds necrophilia, a crime so fearful it rarely makes an appearance in literature. His source appears to be the History of Herodotus, which Boiardo himself translated. 35 Herodotus notes that in Egypt the corpses of especially beau - tiful women are not sent to be embalmed until after three or four days, so that the embalmers do not abuse their bodies (II.89). Presumably the decomposition and the stench of the bodies was by that point an adequate deterrent, a fact that redoubles the vileness of Marchino, whose lust is not checked by the disgusting odor of Grifone’s rotting corpse, as the poem is keen to point out. His continued violation of Stella’s dead body also recalls Tereus, who cuts out Philomela’s tongue, yet still, Ovid writes: “Even after this atrocity he is said to have gone back – it strains belief—again and again to her torn body in lust” (VI.561,2). 36 After Rocca Crudele, Tereus pales
33 “Noi qui vennemo, e con cruda battaglia / La forte rocca alfin pur fo pigliata; / E Marchin preso, di ardente tenaglia / Fu sua persona tutta lacerata: / Chi rompe le sue membra, e chi le taglia. / La bella dama poi fu sotterrata / Intra un sepolcro adorno; per ragione / Posto fu seco il suo caro Grifone” (viii.48). 34 “quid memorem infandas caedes, quid facta tyranni / effera? di capiti ipsius generique reseruent! / mortua quin etiam iungebat corpora uiuis, / componens manibusque manus atque oribus ora, / tormenti genus, et sanie taboque fluentis / complexu in misero longa sic morte necabat.” 35 An excellent treatment of Boiardo’s humanist vision and his translation of the History is Looney, “Erodoto,” as well as Chapter 2 of Compromising the Classics . 36 “hoc quoque post facinus (uix ausim credere) fertur / saepe sua lacerum repe - tisse libidine corpus.” — 51 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 52
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in comparison with Marchino, who returns to Stella’s body, not tongueless but lifeless. With reason does his wife claim that Marchino wished to be the most “scelerato” man who ever lived. The word that she uses also recalls another infernal scene, when Virgil reproves Dante for appearing to show sorrow over punishment of the sinners in hell: “Qui vive la pietà quand’è ben morta; / chi è più scellerato che colui / che al giudicio divin passion comporta?” (XX.28-30). In the compounded intertextual horrors of Rocca Crudele, it seems we have found a place where pity is even more dead then in hell, and wickedness even more transcendent. Though Marchino’s death would seem to conclude the horrors of this scene, Stella’s burial is not the grand finale of this episode. Eight months later, a terrible scream issues from the tomb where she and Grifone are buried. A horrid monster has been born from her corpse, the product of Marchino’s necrophilic rape. 37 Marchino’s wife encloses it in a prison, and the inhabitants of Rocca Crudele feed the travelers they capture to this dreadful creature. While the monster has an ancestor in the Minotaur as the hybrid product of an unnatural sexual union, I believe its birth from a dead body to be Boiardo’s invention; it seems to have no classical or ver - nacular precedent. This necrotic birth strikes me as the central symbol of how the past is negotiated, or more correctly, not negotiated, at Rocca Crudele. The reproduction of these textual horrors seems inescapable, sim - ply a vile seed swept along in the flow of literary imitation. Yet these necrotic rebirths fail to be instructive; they are monstrous rather than meaningful. 38 The involuntary and seemingly inevitable reappearance of these echoes of evil is unreadable from a humanist perspective that looks to the past for moral, social, and political guidance. This absence of meaningfulness is reflected in the peculiar relationship of the inhabitants of Rocca Crudele to the monster. The creature is already contained and does not seem to be a threat to them. 39 There is no treaty or
37 Not Marchino’s wife, but the narrator of the Innamorato makes explicit the monster’s origin: “Acciò che abbiati il suo cominciamento, / Fièllo il demonio, questa è cosa certa, / Del seme de Marchin, che ‘n corpo porta / Quella donzel - la che da lui fu morta” (viii.56). 38 Murrin notes the absence of easy allegory: “We would accordingly assume that, as in Virgil, the fabulous episodes should yield the allegorical readings: the mon - sters and the fays with their enchanted gardens, those modern equivalents of the classical marvelous. Boiardo, however, changed the literary presentation of these wonders in two respects: he made them mostly evil, and he made them fantas - tic in a the way we refer to dream sequences” ( Allegorical 54-55). 39 “…no reason is ever offered as to the necessity of feeding the monster with — 52 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 53
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pact to feed it, and there is no sense that the monster can be propitiated by any number of sacrifices. 40 The residents of Rocca Crudele appear to feed it for the sheer joy of killing. Earlier, Marchino’s wife admits that they catch so many unwary travelers that there is always a surplus of potential victims. Those the monster does not eat, the townspeople themselves kill, by cutting their throats or by quartering (viii.52). The appetite for violence of the populace exceeds that of the monster. These are not necessary sacri - fices to propitiate an instrument of divine judgment, but creative execu - tions that have no purpose but the satisfaction of the bloodlust of Rocca Crudele. After this extensive account of the castle’s history, Ranaldo is finally locked inside the monster’s prison. The fight is not easy: the monster has an impenetrable hide, and teeth and claws so sharp that they shred chain mail and armor. The battle continues throughout the day, and as sunset approaches, Ranaldo has been injured four times. He is rapidly loosing blood and has not so much as wounded the creature. As Canto 8 con - cludes, he drops his sword and seems all but vanquished. The beginning of Canto 9 returns briefly to Angelica, who is still waiting for Ranaldo when Malagise arrives to warn her that the knight is captive and in grave danger at Rocca Crudele: “ — Anci non è già morto per ancora, — / Rispose Malagise alla donzella / — Ma non puotrà già far lunga dimora, / Che non sia occisa la persona fella” (ix.5). Terrified that Ranaldo will die, Angelica takes a knotted rope, a silent file, and a cake of wax, then flies on the back of a demon to Rocca Crudele in order to rescue him. Meanwhile, Ranaldo is in fact close to death. Defenseless and bleed - ing, he spots a beam set high in the wall above him and with a giant leap he manages to scramble up. Somewhat absurdly hugging the beam, Ranaldo is out of options, hiding just outside of the monster’s reach: “Era
human flesh instead of killing it or leaving it to die in the sepulcher. Indeed, there is no indication that the lives of the townspeople are in any way endan - gered if they do not nourish the monster, and there exists no agreement between them and it as in traditional tales of this sort” (Cavallo, Ethics 57). 40 Razzoli astutely observed: “Il mostro che esce dal sepolcro di Stella, frutto del - l’incesto di Marchino colla donna morta è uno dei tanti flagelli che gli antichi scrittori dissero suscitati dagli Dei per vendicare orribili colpe. La mitologia ce ne offre non pochi esempi…Dopo questo si noti che, secondo le leggende clas - siche su ricordate, a liberare la terra dal flagello divino basta una sola vittima; nel caso nostro invece (come nella favola del Minotauro), gli infelici dati in preda al mostro sono molti” (49). Even the Minotaur, in Ovid’s version at least, only had to be fed every nine years. — 53 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 54
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venuta già la notte bruna. / Stassi Ranaldo a quel legno abracciato, / Né sa veder qual senno o qual fortuna / Lo possa di quel loco aver campato” (ix.13). I emphasize the peril of Ranaldo’s situation because the episode at Rocca Crudele ends like it began – with a romance failure and an epic fail - ure that mark its boundaries within the rest of the poem. At this moment, Ranaldo’s epic prowess is completely diminished. The principal knights of the tradition are rarely in such great danger, and Ranaldo seems to be as close to death as the confines of the genre will allow. Neither his strength nor his fortune come to his aid. Instead, Angelica arrives and begs him to accept her aid and flee with her. 41 Still in the grip of his hatred for her, Ranaldo categorically refuses, threatening to jump down and be eaten by the monster if she does not leave. Angelica acquiesces, but first she throws down the items she has brought with her. The monster gobbles up the wax, which seals its mouth, and becomes entangled in the knotted rope. The file drops to the floor unnoticed by Ranaldo and Angelica departs. 42 Though Angelica imitates Ariadne who gives Theseus thread and a sword to help him prevail against the Minotaur, 43 Ranaldo’s desperate refusal of her is a rejection of the potential solution offered by the magic of romance.
41 As has been widely noted, the terms she uses are explicitly sexual: “Te potrai far de un alto disio saccio, / Se mai ti venne voglia di volare. / Vien, monta sopra a me, baron gagliardo: / Forse non son peggior del tuo Baiardo” (ix.17). 42 The significance of these three items is not entirely obvious. In his translation, Ross suggests that the knotted rope recalls the chains of love the bind Boiardo in his Amorum libri . The monster who swallows the wax is certainly a reference to Cerberus who is fed cake by the Sibyl in Book VI of the Aeneid and mud by Virgil in Canto 6 of Inferno . The specific resonance of wax here may be its asso - ciation with writing – as the episode at Rocca Crudele draws to an end, Boiardo must write Ranaldo out of this mess and return him to the world of narrative. For the silent file, Ross points out that it may refer to Dante’s Rime 103, “Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro,” where the file represents the poet’s unrequit - ed love and the sorrow that wears out his existence, an association inversely appropriate to the relationship between Angelica and Ranaldo. The specifically “silent” file mentioned in the Innamorato was also associated with theft and fraud. Pulci’s Morgante mentions the “sorda lima” with which Satan tempted Adam (XXVII.126). Either way, the conventional valence of the file is distinct - ly negative. 43 In Tale LXIII of the Gesta Romanorum , the Lady of Comfort warns her knight that a lion awaits him in the garden, advising him to cover his armor in glue so that when the lion attacks its mouth will be sealed shut. She also gives him thread to enable his escape. (The connection is noted by Razzoli.) I can think of no precise precedent, however, for three items like the ones Angelica brings. — 54 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 55
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Angelica’s gifts just barely allow him to escape, as he finally manages to strangle the incapacitated monster. 44 Yet even with the creature dead, Ranaldo find himself still trapped in the prison. At last, he spies the file on the ground, which he attributes to divine providence rather than Angelica, and makes his escape. Now freed, Ranaldo confronts an angry mob of men from the castle whom he easily hacks to pieces. Seeing the destruction, Marchino’s wife flees to the palace where she locks herself in with her guard. Ranaldo breaks down the palace door in pursuit, killing everyone in his path:
Or fuggon gli altri tutti con paura. Intra Ranaldo, e occide l’altra gente; Ma quella vecchia dispietata e scura Stava assettata sopra de un balcone; Giù si gettò, come vide il barone. Ben cento pedi quel balcone era alto: Se la vecchia se occise, io nol domando. Quando Ranaldo vide quel gran salto, – Va – disse – al diavol, ch’io te racomando. – Fatta è la sala già di sangue un smalto: Sempre mena Ranaldo intorno il brando. Acciò che tutto il fatto a un ponto scriva, Non rimase al castello anima viva. (ix.34,5 )
Ranaldo’s absolute destruction of Rocca Crudele ends the episode. Precisely because of Boiardo’s generally humanist attitudes toward the exemplarity of history and literature, critics have found it necessary to map an edifying moral significance on to this conclusion. This has done a great deal of interpretive violence to Rocca Crudele, which is precisely about those aspects of the past that are not morally redeemable. Most of the time
44 Ranaldo takes advantage of the opportunity only because he has no other option, and he exhibits no gratitude toward Angelica. James Nohrnberg writes: “At Castle Cruel, Boiardo’s protagonist regains his claims to approbation as a warrior by a terrific show of valor in the loneliest of circumstances. Yet, his sur - vival here depends, finally, on the intervention of Angelica” (43). His interpre - tation is the positive counterpoint to my suggestion that Rocca Crudele ends with both an epic and a romance failure; rather than see Ranaldo’s strength and Angelica’s amorous desire as two aspects working together to ensure a successful outcome, I see them as two moments of collapse that are such failures that even in combined strength they barely allow him to survive, and only then because it is an expedient to return Ranaldo to the larger narrative. — 55 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 56
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in the Innamorato and in his other works, I believe that Boiardo does hold up the past as a moral authority and a model for imitation, just not at Rocca Crudele, which I see as a very particular literal and figurative repre - sentation of how violence becomes self-perpetuating when the past that is imitated is already corrupted. Wherever critics have found a moral significance in this episode, it has always required a justification of its violence. Murrin sees Ranaldo’s fight as a redemptive harrowing of hell; of its brutal conclusion he writes: “His own remedy is drastic but necessary” (80). Cavallo insists that Ranaldo has learned something from the experience of listening to the history of the castle: “After hearing this novella, Ranaldo understands that he must act to destroy the evil monster and free the town such a curse” ( Ethics 57). 45 Yet Ranaldo has no need of forty octaves of gruesome horror to understand that he should kill the monster. First of all, he has no other choice, being imprisoned, and second, destroying monsters is certainly part of the stan - dard job description of any knight errant. Constructing his efforts here as a generous service to others is especially difficult because he does not so much liberate the town as destroy it. Ross, on the other hand, argues that the poem “…asks us to recognize a difference between violence and cruel - ty, not by a bright line test, but by admitting the possibility, if not proba - bility, of something higher, a concept of natural justice, which the human - ist tradition once represented, symbolized by the eloquence that Boiardo’s poem both mimics and exemplifies” (57). A direct indication that these moralizing readings are not defensible interpretations is the fact that in the final stanza, Ranaldo precisely repeats the actions of Marchino, the very deeds that initiated this perpetual circle of violence. He keeps up the slaughter even though he has now stained the walls with blood, an act reminiscent of the initial description of Rocca Crudele. At ix.35 the result of Ranaldo’s “justice” produces the line, “non rimase al castello anima viva,” where when just one canto before in the cor - responding stanza at viii.35, it is Marchino’s cruelty that produces: “Né dentro vi lasciâr persona viva.” We need not work so hard to understand
45 In Public Duty , Cavallo is more explicit about the negative exemplarity of Book I in particular: “The romance adventures of Book One weave together classical and medieval narratives to warn the princely reader that negligence, inconti - nence, fraud, and/or unjustified force will bring about a ruler’s own demise as well as the destruction of his state” (13). Yet it is very difficult to see how any but the most obvious lessons are taught at Rocca Crudele, or how an prince might need a lesson in negative exemplarity to realize that he should not con - quer a kingdom by fraud and murder. — 56 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 57
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Ranaldo’s final act as something other than a repetition, or even imitation, of Marchino. Rocca Crudele is the story of the re-performance of the neg - ative past that ought not to be the object of imitation, but that nonethe - less is easily caught up in habits of exemplarity. I think the conclusion is meant to be disturbing and destabilizing, not satisfying and instructive. The excesses of Ranaldo’s response ought to raise at least the suspicion that he has inadvertently started this cycle of imitative violence afresh. A final intertextual referent makes clear the disparity between a moral or didactic lesson that can be drawn from even tragic events, and the spiral of non-exemplary horror at Rocca Crudele. The unwitting anthropophagy fil - tered through the story of Philomela also recalls Day IV of the Decameron , and the suicide of Marchino’s wife specifically recalls its ninth tale. 46 There, Messer Guiglielmo Rossiglione murders his wife’s lover, Guiglielmo Guardastagno, and feeds her his heart. When Rossiglione reveals his treach - ery, his wife accuses him of being a “disleale e malvagio cavalier” (23), and say - ing that she will follow so noble a meal with no other, she jumps from the cas - tle window: “La finestra era molto alta da terra, per che, come la donna cadde, non solamente morì ma quasi tutta si disfece. Messer Guiglielmo, vedendo questo, stordì forte e parvegli aver mal fatto; e temendo egli de’ paesani e del conte di Proenza, fatti sellare i cavalli, andò via” (24). The tragedy of Decameron IV.9 is predicated upon the nobility of the love between this pair, and the wife’s willing sacrifice of herself in response to Guardastagno’s mur - der, as opposed to Rocca Crudele’s unrelenting hatred and outwardly direct - ed violence. But more important is Rossiglione’s reaction to his wife’s death. Where Ranaldo responds to the suicide of Marchino’s wife with mockery and scorn, Rossiglione is made conscious of his own crime, realizing that he should fear the reactions of the townspeople and the judgment of the lord of Proenza. Rossiglione’s repentance and recognition of his own guilt is some - thing never exhibited by any of the cast of characters at Rocca Crudele. Marchino never sees a connection between his own treachery and the murder of his sons, his wife’s boundless cruelty sees no culpability in itself, and at the end, Ranaldo unreflectively repeats the same act of violence that began the cycle. Rossiglione’s response shows that he has learned something from the errors of the past, and it stands in explicit contrast to Rocca Crudele, where past sins can only be repeated. Decameron IV.9 also ends with a tomb similar to that in which Stella and Grifone are buried together: “per che da quegli del castello di messer Guiglielmo Guardastagno e da quegli ancora del castello
46 The relationship is somewhat tentatively noted by Razzoli and discussed fur - ther by Battera. — 57 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 58
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della donna, con grandissimo dolore e pianto, furono i due corpi ricolti e nella chiesa del castello medesimo della donna in una medesima sepoltura fur posti, e sopr’essa scritti versi significanti chi fosser quegli che dentro sepolti v’erano, e il modo e la cagione della lor morte” (25). In the Decameron , the tomb is virtually symbolic of the humanist vision of the exemplary past; its inscription tells the details and the reason for their tragic deaths, endowing them, like Rossiglione’s repentance, with meaning for the present. At Rocca Crudele, Boiardo transforms this symbolic value into the meaningless site of the literal reproduction of past violence in physical form, as the tomb becomes the cra - dle from which the monster is born. Unlike the complex interweaving of events that typically characterizes the Innamorato , the scene at Rocca Crudele is sharply delineated by the fail - ures that frame it and the absolute destruction that both begins and ends the episode. Moreover, no other events intervene in the main story, nor does Rocca Crudele seem to have other intratextual relationships within the poem: no further mention is made of the episode, its consequences, or its protagonists, other than Ranaldo. 47 Restored to the world of the Innamorato after his destructive escape, Ranaldo declines to return to the boat that brought him there. Instead, traveling along the shore he encounters Fiordelisa who tells him the story of Prasildo, Tisbina, and Iroldo in Canto 12. In some ways, this novella may be understood as a counterpoint to that of Rocca Crudele, 48 but the context of the story is radically different. Based primarily on Decameron X.5, it is a tale of courtly love that glorifies the virtues of generosity and magnanimity. More importantly, the story returns us to the larger world of the poem’s narrative: Prasildo, Tisbina, and Iroldo are not only characters in a fiction recounted to pass the time, but turn out to be living, breathing participants in the action of the poem. 49 I promised earlier to return to Orlando, whose travels in Cantos 5 and 6
47 With the exception of Poliferno, who appears fleetingly during the liberation of Rocca Crudele from Marchino. In Canto 8, he is only described as Orgagna’s king, and is never named. He reappears briefly as a minor knight of Agricane’s in Book I and is mentioned by an unnamed character at the Bridge of Roses in canto 2 of Book II. Cavallo suggests his role in the events at Rocca Crudele is more significant than it may seem. See Public Duty , 26. 48 See Cavallo, the Ethics , especially the conclusion of chapter 6 and chapter 7. 49 “The events in this extended episode are not isolated from the rest of the poem, but carry consequences that reach far beyond themselves…the links in the chain of charity, like the episodes themselves, are inexorably connected, and in mov - ing beyond the confines of the novella, they give a constant thematic force to the varied actions of the poem” (ibid., 72). — 58 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 59
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I characterized as the only other major romance detour of the Innamorato prior to Ranaldo’s trip to Rocca Crudele. Orlando’s adventures are a lengthty intervention before we can follow Ranaldo, and they represent a situation that clearly recalls the potential utility of the literary tradition and contrasts sharply with Ranaldo’s own encounters. While searching for news of Angelica, Orlando encounters a pilgrim whose son has been kidnapped by a giant. When Orlando challenges him, the giant explains that he guards the bridge to a terrible beast who will answer any question asked of her, but who in turn demands the answer to a riddle. Those who fail to answer correctly are slaugh - tered. Orlando defeats the giant and returns the kidnapped boy. In gratitude, the pilgrim gives him a book of such miraculous virtue that it contains the answer to every question. Orlando then climbs the mountain to inquire the whereabouts of Angelica from the monster. She obligingly informs him that Angelica can be found at Albraca, then demands an answer to two questions, “What walks but has no feet?” and “What creature goes about the world first on four, then on two, then on three?” The first of these riddles appears to be Boiardo’s invention, but the second is the traditional question of the Sphinx. Orlando is rather humorously baffled by the second riddle, the answer to which he really ought to be familiar with. Unable to use his wit like Oedipus to solve the riddle and apparently unfamiliar with the literary tradition that would have provided him the clue, Orlando simply kills the creature when she attacks, slicing off her wings, cutting open her belly, and unceremoniously tossing the dead body off the cliff. While Boiardo appears to be poking fun at Orlando’s preference for brawn over brains, it is also clear that Orlando has walked into a situation in which the exemplarity of literature would be of great practical utility, but he neglects to take advantage of it, a fact playfully acknowledged in the next octave, when it suddenly dawns on him that he could have simply consulted the pilgrim’s book. This encounter seems to me to be a counterpoint to Ranaldo’s stay at Rocca Crudele, where he is plagued by the aftereffects of past events, yet where the literary precedents seem to offer no solution or expiation, only a deeper descent into violence. Instead, the story of Oedipus offers Orlando an easy escape, though he fails to take it. One of the peculiarities of Orlando’s adventure is that the monster he kills is clearly a version of the Sphinx—she has the face of a woman, the chest of a lion, and the wings of a peacock—but she is never referred to as such. 50 Similarly, in the next
50 In keeping with the redoubling of signifiers at Rocca Crudele, however, Boiardo’s exaggerated Sphinx also has hawk talons, wolf teeth, bear arms, and the body and tale of a serpent. — 59 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 60
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canto, Orlando meets a one-eyed giant whom he kills in the same manner that Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, stabbing him through the eye with a conveniently misplaced lance. Yet the giant is never referred to as a Cyclops; in these early wonderings of Orlando, it is almost as though the meaning of literary tropes and referents is so transparent that there is no need to label them outright. The Sphinx and the Cyclops pass unnamed because they are already intelligible to the reader. In contrast, the world that Ranaldo enters seems overdetermined. The Palazo Zoioso and Rocca Crudele are true names for precisely what these places are. Here there is no Renaissance tension between appearance and essence: the castle is horrify - ing and the palace is pleasurable, but these clear identifications do not seem to be useful. Like the easily identifiable presence of the stories of Philomela and Medea, all of this material is legible, but not readable. The layered intertextuality of Rocca Crudele offers no visible solution, no path - way out, and no meaningful interpretation ties the episode back into the poem’s larger narrative. The names of the two places where the unmanned boat deposits Ranaldo are also indicative of another interpretative problem at Rocca Crudele. The “teste de occisi” above its walls recall the helmets displayed at the Dolorous Guard, but there, the evil customs of the castle are finally overcome by Lancelot, who changes its name to the Joyous Guard. The inversion of this pattern when Ranaldo travels from Palazo Zoioso toward Rocca Crudele represents a clear crisis in the progression of the poem, par - ticularly when viewed in the light of a humanist educative program. Boiardo’s famously meandering structure need not always be teleological, but this distinct progression from good to bad is disturbing. 51 Ross sees Boiardo’s reversal of the Lancelot adventure as a light matter, a tongue-in- cheek joke within the poem. 52 I cannot agree, first of all, that the episode at Rocca Crudele is humorous. Too many bleak moments from the literary tradition are combined to create its darkness; if there is laughter here I can -
51 Nor is Palazo Zoioso open to the critique we might expect of a locus amoenus as a place of escape. Ranaldo is no Aeneas lingering with Dido, nor Odysseus with Circe. Rocca Crudele offers no moral instruction that redeems Ranaldo by returning him to action and destiny; only his narrow escape from it restores him to the broader consequences of narrative. 52 “For Boiardo’s story humorously reverses a pattern originally established in the vulgate prose Lancelot . In that story Lancelot overcomes the strange customs of Dolorous Guard coincident with the beginning of his intrigue with Queen Guenevere. He then changes the name of the castle to reflect his love affair, call - ing it Joyous Guard” (51). — 60 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 61
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not see it. Ross believes that the horrors of the castle represent the uncon - summated love of Angelica for Ranaldo, and his cruelty toward her. Yet if all the broken hearts of failed loves were to manifest as scenes of such depravity, the world of romance would long since have collapsed upon itself. Moreover, Ranaldo’s rejection of Angelica does not map well onto the events at Rocca Crudele: the murderous betrayal there is born of exces - sive desire, not of courtly rejection. 53 Another Dantean echo in the Innamorato indicates, however, that there is more to this reversal than a witty commentary on the cruelty of lovers. As Rocca Crudele is marked by references to Inferno , the opening description of the Palazo Zoioso invokes Dante’s poem, but not his jour - ney through hell. Boiardo writes: “Di ver ponente, aponto sopra al lito, / Un bel palagio ricco se mostrava, / Fatto de un marmo sì terso e polito, / Che il giardin tutto in esso se specchiava” (viii.2). The mirroring effect of marble so refined as to be reflective recalls the steps that Dante and Virgil encounter at the gates of Purgatory: “Là ne venimmo; e lo scaglion primaio / bianco marmo era sì pulito e terso, / ch’io mi specchiai in esso qual io paio” (IX.94-6). 54 When Ranaldo travels from Palazo Zoioso to Rocca Crudele, it is equally an inversion of Dante’s spiritual journey, not just a play on Lancelot’s amorous adventures. His descent from the gates of Purgatory through the gates of Dis to an encounter with Cerberus suggests that Ranaldo is traveling forcibly through the moral universe in the wrong direction. His bloody revenge and the silent file that releases him from prison, traditionally a symbol of fraud and deceit, hint that Ranaldo’s escape from this particular inferno is contaminated by those very sins found in the lowest levels of Dante’s Hell: fraud and violence. This horrible inversion of the Commedia’s moral journey demonstrates again the uniquely unreadable qualities of Ranaldo’s stay at Rocca Crudele. The elaborate series of intertextual references which are the basis for the episode suggests that, like truth, the past violence of history and literature will out. Just as Marchino’s first act of violence has unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences, a literary inheritance carries its cultural con -
53 Again, if the evils of Rocca Crudele are a manifestation of Ranaldo’s refusal to love Angelica, then the guilty party responsible for the horrors within Rocca Crudele’s internal story becomes the raped and murdered Stella, who rejects the advances of the treacherous Marchino. The much more obvious “punishment” of Ranaldo for rejecting Angelica occurs, not at Rocca Crudele, but in Canto 15 of Book II, when he is forced to drink from the same river that causes her infat - uation with him. 54 The reference is noted by Scaglione in his edition of the Innamorato . — 61 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 62
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texts, both good and bad, along with it; thus cruelty and horror may resur - face unexpectedly along with that which is “dulce et utile.” Rocca Crudele becomes a space apart from the rest of the poem where the worst of this violence may play itself out in isolation. There, Boiardo may give free rein to that side of the literary tradition which, like the still-twitching body parts on the castle walls is “più scuro.” Though this darkness is not com - patible with a humanist program of instruction, Rocca Crudele represents a poetic digression that demonstrates that the negative past cannot or ought not to be simply ignored, and that turning a blind eye to that vio - lence only results in a repeating circle of horror where rotten roots can reemerge. The uneasy feeling that we are left with at the end of Rocca Crudele—that Ranaldo has imitated the very violence that gave birth to the castle’s traditions—is the danger that these horrors may reappear again, unbidden. This is the threat that hangs over the Innamorato , and perhaps, for Boiardo, over all literary projects which are heirs to such a varied inher - itance. The darker traditions of the past cannot be excised; the best that the poet can do is confine them, like the monster in his prison, within the walls of Rocca Crudele where they are segregated from the narrative uni - verse of the poem.
University of California at Berkeley
WORKS CITED
Primary Sources Boccaccio, Giovanni. Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio . Vol. 4. Il Decameron . Ed. Vittore Branca. Milan: Mondadori, 1964. Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Orlando innamorato . Trans. Charles Stanley Ross. West Lafayette: Parlor, 2004. . Orlando innamorato . Ed. Riccardo Bruscagli. Turin: Einaudi, 1995. . Orlando innamorato . Ed. Aldo Scaglione. Turin: Tipografia Torinese, 1951. Chanson de Roland . Ed. Joseph J. Duggan. 3 vols. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Chanson de Roland / The Song of Roland . Trans. Joseph J. Duggan and Annalee C. Rejhon. Turnhout: Brepolis, 2102. Dante Alighieri. La commedia secondo l’antica vulgata . Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. 4 vols. Milan: Mondadori, 1975. Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation. Ed. Norris J. Lacy. Vol. 3. Lancelot , Part I and II. Trans. Samuel N. Rosenberg and Carleton W. Carroll. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010. Lancelot: Roman en prose du 13e siècle . Ed. Alexandre Micha. Vol. 7. Geneva: Droz, 1978. Lucan. Pharsalia . Ed. D.R. Shackleton Bailey. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1988. . Pharsalia . Trans. J.D. Duff. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988. — 62 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 63
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Ovid. Fasti . Eds. E.H. Alton, D.E.W. Wormell, and E. Courtney. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1997. . Fasti . Trans. A.S. Kleine. http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/ Fastihome.htm. . Metamorphoses . Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2010. . Metamorphoses . Ed. R.J. Tarrant. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. G. Valerius Flaccus. Argonautica . Ed. Widu-Wolfgang Ehlers. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1980. . Argonautica . Trans. J. H. Mozley. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1934. Virgil. Aeneid . Ed. Gian Biagio Conte. Berlin: Teubner, 2009. . Aeneid . Trans. Sarah Ruden. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Secondary Sources Anceschi, Giuseppe and Tina Matarrese, eds. Il Boiardo e il mondo Estense nel Quattrocento . 2 vols. Padua: Antenore, 1998. Battera, Francesca. “Boiardo ‘tragico’?” Anceschi and Matarrese. 63-91. Cavallo, Jo Ann. The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso: From Public Duty to Private Pleasure . Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004. . Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato : An Ethics of Desire . London: Associated University Presses, 1993. Duggan, Joseph J. Introduction. The Song of Roland: The French Corpus . Part 3: The Châteauroux-Venice 7 Version. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. 13-110. Durling, Robert M. The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic . Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1965. Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990. Looney, Dennis. “Ferrarese Studies: Tracking the Rise and Fall of an Urban Lordship in the Renaissance.” In Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek, eds. Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara . Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005. 1-23. . “Erodoto dalle Storie al romanzo.” Anceschi and Matarrese. 429-41. . Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance . Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1996. Murrin, Michael. The Allegorical Epic: Essays in Its Rise and Decline . Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Nohrenberg, James. “Orlando’s Opportunity: Chance, Luck, Fortune, Occasion, Boats, and Blows in Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato .” Fortune and Romance: Boiardo in America . Eds. Jo Ann Cavallo and Charles Ross. Tempe: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998. 31-76. Quint, David. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. Ross, Charles Stanley. “Boiardo’s Castle Cruel.” The Custom of the Castle from Malory to Macbeth . Berkeley: U of California P, 1997. 39-57. Zampese, Christina. “Lucano (e Seneca tragico) nell’ Orlando innamorato .” Anceschi and Matarrese. 93-112. — 63 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 64
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