Ludovico Ariosto

Nature made him, and then broke the mould.

Ludovico Ariosto (8 September 1474 – 6 July 1533) was an Italian poet, author of the epic poem Orlando Furioso (1516), "Orlando Enraged".

Quotes

Orlando Furioso (1532)

Of ladies, knights, of passions and of wars, I sing.

• Le donne i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori,
  Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto.
  • Of ladies, knights, of passions and of wars,
    of courtliness, and of valiant deeds I sing.
  • Canto I, stanza 1 (tr. David R. Slavitt)

Orlando, driven raving mad by love—and he a man who had been always esteemed for his great prudence.

• Che per amor venne in furore e matto,
  d'huom che si saggio era stimato prima.
  • Driven raving mad by love—and he a man who had been always esteemed for his great prudence.
  • Canto I, stanza 2 (tr. Guido Waldman); of Orlando.

What a man sees, Love can make invisible—and what is invisible, that can Love make him see.

• Quel che l'huom vede Amor gli fa invisibile
  E l'invisibil fa vedere Amore.
  • What a man sees, Love can make invisible—and what is invisible, that can Love make him see.
  • Canto I, stanza 56 (tr. G. Waldman)

Ah, cruel Love! What is the reason why you seldom make our longings correspond?

• Ingiustissimo Amor, perché sì raro
  Corrispondenti fai nostri desiri?
  Onde, perfido, avvien che t'è sì caro
  Il discorde voler ch’in duo cor miri?
  • Ah, cruel Love! What is the reason why
    You seldom make our longings correspond?
    How is it, traitor, you rejoice to spy
    Two hearts discordant, one repelled, one fond?
  • Canto II, stanza 1 (tr. B. Reynolds)

• Bene è felice quel, donne mie care,
  Ch'essere accorto all'altrui spese impare.
  • Reflect, ye gentle dames, that much they know,
    Who gain experience from another's woe.
  • Canto X, stanza 6 (tr. J. Hoole)

• Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa.
  • Nature broke the mould
    In which she cast him.
  • Canto X, stanza 84 (tr. W. S. Rose)
  • Variant translation: Nature made him, and then broke the mould.
  • Compare: "I think Nature hath lost the mould / Where she her shape did take; / Or else I doubt if Nature could / So fair a creature make." A Praise of his Lady, in Tottel's Miscellany (1557). Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey wrote similar lines, in A Praise of his Love (before 1547). Compare also: "Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, / And broke the die—in moulding Sheridan." Lord Byron, Monody on the Death of the Rt. Hon. R. B. Sheridan, line 117. As reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922).

For rarely man escapes his destiny.

• Che l'uomo il suo destin fugge di raro.
  • For rarely man escapes his destiny.
  • Canto XVIII, stanza 58 (tr. W. S. Rose)

• Che quant' era più ornata, era più brutta.
  • Who seems most hideous when adorned the most.
  • Canto XX, stanza 116 (tr. W. S. Rose)
  • Compare:
    • Beauty when most unclothed is clothed best.
      • Phineas Fletcher, Sicelides (1614), Act II, scene iv
    • In naked beauty more adorned,
      More lovely than Pandora.
      • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674), Book IV, line 713
    • For Loveliness
      Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
      But is, when unadorned, adorned the most.
      • James Thomson, The Seasons, "Autumn" (1730), line 204

• Né spegner può, per starne l'acqua, il fuoco,
  Né può stato mutar, per mutar loco.
  • Such fire was not by water to be drowned,
    Nor he his nature changed by changing ground.
  • Canto XXVIII, stanza 89 (tr. W. S. Rose)

• Quanto più su l'instabil ruota vedi
  Di Fortuna ire in alto il miser uomo,
  Tanto più tosto hai da vedergli i piedi
  Ove ora ha il capo, e far cadendo il tomo.
  • The higher up on Fortune's wheel you see
    A wretch ascend, the sooner he will fall,
    And where his head is now, his feet will be.
  • Canto XLV, stanza 1 (tr. B. Reynolds)

• Ordina l'uomo e Dio dispone.
  • Man proposes, and God disposes.
  • Canto XLVI, stanza 35

Quotes about Ariosto

• But in a farther age shall rise along
  The banks of Po two greater still than he;
  The world which smiled on him shall do them wrong
  Till they are ashes, and repose with me.
  The first [Ariosto] will make an epoch with his lyre
  And fill the earth with feats of chivalry:
  His fancy like a rainbow, and his fire,
  Like that of Heaven, immortal, and his thought
  Borne onward with a wing that cannot tire;
  Pleasure shall, like a butterfly new caught,
  Flutter her lovely pinions o'er his theme,
  And Art itself seem into Nature wrought
  By the transparency of his bright dream.
  • Lord Byron, The Prophecy of Dante (1821), Canto III, lines 106–118 (pp. 31–32)

• I found that I had an affinity with writers like Ariosto and Tasso, at least to the extent of loving their poetry. (“Those allegories of Ariosto and Tasso were in some ways very futuristic with those fantastic voyages-they were almost like science fiction without the science.”) Of course they didn't really have science to use. But they had a similarly disciplined imagination.
  • 1982 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

See also

• Orlando Furioso

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Ludovico Ariosto on Wikipedia