Latin verse of the Renaissance: The collection and exhibition at the Houghton Library The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Stoddard, Roger E. 1990. Latin verse of the Renaissance: The collection and exhibition at the Houghton Library. Harvard Library Bulletin 1 (2), Summer 1990: 19-38. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:42661197 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA 19 Latin Verse of the Renaissance: The Collection and Exhibition at the Houghton Library Roger E. Stoddard nlike the developing vernacular literatures of the time that were segregating U authors and readers by language, Neo-Latin literature could be shared in the Renaissance by all the learned world. Major authors and scholars composed and read Latin verse, creating an extensive and serious body of European literature. Many years ago I found that Rodney Dennis, Curator of Manuscripts in the Harvard Col- lege Library, shared my interest in it. Convinced of the permanent value of the texts, which were largely undervalued by scholars, librarians, collectors, and booksellers, we spurred each other on to collect. It could hardly be claimed that Harvard was without considerable resources in the field. Any strong collection of incunabula and later Renaissance books will include ROGERE. SrooDARDis Cura- Latin verse, and the libraries of Charles Eliot Norton and Mary Bryant Brandegee, tor of Rare Books in the Harvard College Library and received in 1905 and 1908, strengthened what was already here. The availability Senior Lecturer on English in of the Constantius fund seems to have encouraged librarians at Widener to improve the Department of English and on it. William A. Jackson, Houghton's founding librarian and Harvard's rare books American Literature and Lan- acquisitor from 1938 until his death in 1964, obtained many of the rarities, includ- guage, Harvard University. ing Latin verse written by authors important in fields outside literature. Still, impor- tant books and manuscripts remained to be found, as may be seen from the receipt dates in the catalogue that follows. Two Paris booksellers and one from New York had anticipated our dedication to the subject. Georges Heilbrun was a source of both major and minor items; his published catalogues are rich in the literature. Andre Jammes of the Librairie Paul Jammes devoted a graceful catalogue to Poeteslatins de la renaissance(95 items, 1968). All the while Emil Offenbacher of New York, a dealer best known for his exper- tise in the history of science, hoarded the books, selling hardly a one. Buying heav- ily from Heilbrun andJammes, we enticed Offenbacher to sell all the original editions that Harvard lacked. Thanks to the George L. Lincoln and Amy Lowell funds, hundreds of books and several manuscripts came to the Library, so that over one thousand volumes of fifteenth and sixteenth-century verse are now here. The col- lection is the best in the United States. Each acquisition is a story in itsel£ Completing the eight-volume set of Pontano (1505-1512) was hard enough, but finding his Lullabies, printed in a 1498 collec- tion of Tifernus, seemed impossible. Only Yale had the book in this country, but Fred Schreiber found a copy for us. Likewise, the often-reprinted Zodiacusvitae of 1535 was held only by the Bancroft Library, but Diana Parikian located it so that 20 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN we did not have to accept Bancroft Librarian James Hart's generous offer of a loan. A puzzling gap was the Coryciana of 1524, the most beautiful of the anthologies, printed in Arrighi's handsome Chancery type. That book came from Georges Heilbrun's shelves. H. P. Kraus supplied most of the manuscript anthologies, coming as they did from his remainder of Sir Thomas Phillipps's collection. The only serious desideratum that I can think of just now is the Pano-printed verses of Marco Antonio Flaminio, 1515. His poetry lived on in the published antholo- gies, but that first, separate volume is one very rare book. Finally, Rodney Dennis and I thought we were ready for a celebration. We began to circulate a kind of prospectus for an exhibition, illustrated catalogue, and sym- posium. Much to our dismay, we found that we were still ahead of our time, so far as funding was concerned. Never mind that in 1975 Pierre Laurens had selected and translated his Musae Reduces;Anthologie de la poesielatine dans ['Europede la Renais- sance(Leyden, E.J. Brill) and in 1979 Alessandro Perosa and John Sparrow had seen into print their long-awaited RenaissanceLatin Verse,an Anthology (Chapel Hill, North Carolina), while Fred J. Nichols had selected and translated An Anthology of Neo- Latin Poetry (New Haven, Yale). We went ahead anyhow. The Harvard Classics Department was immediately and unfailingly helpful. Col- leagues there shared with us income from the Louis Curtis bequest "to promote the study of Latin." John]. Slocum, the late Robert H. Taylor, Phyllis Gordan, Mason Hammond, and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Schreiber contributed funds. We planned to pub- lish an illustrated exhibition catalogue, publicize an exhibition, and present a sym- posium. Also, we hoped to print a small selection of verse just to tease our audience into reading. The exhibition would feature the major poets and anthologies, representing other poets and the literary genres. It might omit the occasional poems that outnumber them: pamphlet and broadside verse on births, weddings, deaths, etc. "Only an exhi- bition can show what the books look like," we said, "and only an illustrated cata- logue can convey the appearance of illustrations, types, and layout in some of the most elegant and strong examples of Renaissance book making." Rodney Dennis's wife, Christie, felt that we had to provide translations for our originals if we expected people to read the Latin. Rodney Dennis had the idea to commission new translations. Poematahumanistica decem; Renaissance Latin Poemswith English Translationsby Friendsof the Houghton Library (1986), printed in one thousand copies at the Firefly Press to Larry Webster's designs, was the elegant result. It used up our budget. Obligingly, our generous faculty friends were willing to contribute their serv- ices. On Thursday afternoon 6 February 1986, Dante Della Terza, Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature, introduced the symposium and the speakers: Richard J. Tarrant, Carl A. Pescosolido Professor of Roman Civilization, on "Polizi- ano, Scholar and Poet"; Jan M. Ziolkowski, Professor of Medieval Latin and Com- parative Literature, on "Tito Vespasiano Strozzi's 'Ad psyttacum': a Renaissance Poet Parrots the Past"; and Wendell L. Clausen, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Greek and Latin, "On the Eclogues of Sannazaro." Exhibits illustrated the lectures and the anthology. The audience overflowed the exhibition room, and students sat on the floor. We were very pleased. Since then John J. Slocum has filled a major gap (see item 21 below), and we have made major purchases from the latest catalogue, Gerard Oberle's Amoenitates poeticaelatinae modernae,sive Cataloguslibrorum poetar. latinor.sec. XI-XX (Montigny- Latin Verseof the Renaissance 21 sur-Canne, 1988). Our dream of producing a catalogue of the entire Harvard holding remains unrealized, but the books are here, awaiting singly or collectively atten- tion by scholars who will integrate them in study of one of the noblest of all the imitations of the past. RENAISSANCELATIN VERSE: THE EXHIBITIONAT THE HOUGHTON LIBRARY,16 DECEMBER1985 TO 14 FEBRUARY1986 I. GIOVANNIGIOVIANO PONTANO (1426-1503) 1. Pontano's Naeniae, lullabies addressed to his son Lucio, were appended to the Opuscula (Venice, 1498) of Publius Gregorius Tifernus, Greek professor at Paris. 1984 - Amy Lowell fund *84-181 2. One of three copies exhibited of the first volume, the selected poems (Par- thenopei),of the Accademia Pontaniana edition of Pontano's works. Edited by Pietro Summonte and printed by Sigismund Mayr, eight volumes were published at Naples from 1505 to 1512. All are now at Harvard. Scribal manuscripts corrected by Pan- tano were marked precisely by Summonte for the printer so that the printed ver- sion would preserve both text and arrangement of the prototype. 1974 - J. Gilman d'Arcy Paul fund *flC.P7763.B505p 3. A second copy, preserved in its original gilt brown morocco binding, bears the embossed portrait of Pantano after the medal by Adriano Fiorentino. Lent by the late H. Bradley Martin 4. A third copy, opened at Baiarum fiber primus to show "Loquitur puella fuscula," one of the poems translated in Poemata humanisticadecem. 1976 - Duplicate fund *75-1349 5. Among the poems omitted from the Accademia Pontaniana edition but included by Aldo Manuzio in his edition, Pontaniopera (Venice, 1505), is the Meteoro- rum fiber,a didactic poem on natural phenomena composed by Pantano for his son Lucio. Shown was the passage translated in Poemata humanisticadecem. 1963 - Charles D. Weston, gift; from the library of George Benson Weston *IC.P7763.B505o (A) II. ANGELOPOLIZIANO (1454-1494) 6. The opening lines of Nutriciaand the dedication to Antoniotto Cardinal Gentili were shown. This lengthy verse introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetry is one of four Silvae composed by Poliziano. This first edition is bound with the first edition of another, Manto (both Florence, Miscomini, 1491). 1905 - From the library of Charles Eliot Norton Inc 6151.9 22 HARVARD LIBRARY BULLETIN Hoc uolumine&z, coutinmtur ..Opufcula .. GregoriiTiphani Poctz ,laria:Optfcula IouianiPonraoi Vmbri P~Naua Iouian_i.Pont.aniP~ Epigramara qucdam Franci(cipttauii Pc.:,etzEl(giarum Libdlu .