Elżbieta Górka

A poetic cycle on Hyella from Andrea Navagero’s Lusus: introduction, translation, commentary

The paper presents the first Polish translation of a mini-series of six short poems about Hyella by Andrea Navagero (1483–1529). The selected works are part of Navagero’s famous Latin poetry collection entitled Lusus. The translation is supplemented by an introduction and commentary notes. The Latin text reproduced in the paper is based on the edition of Lusus by Claudio Griggio (2001).

The introduction presents the author’s biography and includes a brief description of the whole collection. Navagero was a diplomat, a poet and the official historian of the Republic of Venice. Collected by friends in Orationes duae carminaque nonnulla, his poems were edited posthumously in Venice in 1530. The most important part of Lusus are bucolic epigrams, a new form of Neo-Latin pastoral developed by Navagero. This minor lyric form called “pastoral play” (lusus pastoralis) gained recognition quickly and was widely imitated in 16th century. The collection also includes other literary genres – bucolic poems, elegies, and erotic poems. However, the most famous is the series of epigrams whose heroine or addressee is Hyella, a girl impossible to identify.

The introduction presents a discussion about the sources and the interpretation of the love poems about Hyella (poems 21, 22, 28, 31, 32 and 37). The most important literary tradition from which Navagero draws inspiration is the Greek and Latin ancient epigram. For poem 21, the source is the Anacreontea 19, while poem 22 uses the motifs of the lamp and the night as the guardians of lovers, both popular in The Greek Anthology. For two other pieces, the direct source is the poetry of Catullus: poem 31 uses Catullus’s carmen 5, while poem 32 combines motifs from Catullus’s carmina 82, 92 and 109. In addition, in poem 28 we find similarities with Ausonius’s epigram 9. Other important sources for Navagero were the poetry of Petrarch and the neo-Catullan poets, mostly Giovanni Pontano, Michele Marullo, and Cristoforo Landino.

A Translation of the First Eclogue “Honorable love and its happy outcome” (De honesto amore et felici eius exitu) from the Adolescentia by Battista the Mantuan

The article presents a translation of the first eclogue from the 15th-century collection of bucolics Adolescentia by Battista the Mantuan (1447–1516). The eclogue, entitled De honesto amore et felici eius exitu, is supplemented by an introduction and commentary. To this day, two critical editions of the work have been published: by Wilfred Mustard (1911) in English, and by Andrea Severi (2010) in Italian.

The introduction presents the author’s biography and gives a brief description of the whole collection, in particular the eclogue under discussion. The Italian poet Battista the Mantuan was a Carmelite and became Blessed of the Catholic Church. A prolific writer, he is best known for his Adolescentia, a collection of bucolics created at a young age, edited and expanded later. Published originally in 1498, Adolescentia quickly gained popularity among readers and were established as school reading.

Other issues discussed in the introduction include the sources of Mantuan’s inspiration, the role of the collection in education and in the Reformation, as well as the reception of Adolescentia. It is also pointed out that the first eclogue should be seen in a wider context of Renaissance eclogues exploring the theme of marriage. The interpretation of the eclogue offered in the article draws on its biblical and ancient sources, i.e. the Book of Ruth and Virgil’s eclogues, respectively, as well as the conventions of the genre, especially of elegy, that affected its form.