from Orlando furioso

Astolfo’s voyage to the moon
 
CANTO 34 [Scene: The knight, Duke Astolfo, is given lodging in the Earthly Paradise (Eden).]
 
Welcomed by all of them, the knight was placed
in a well-lit room; in another, his steed
was given forage. Then the duke was graced
with fruits that our first parents had received.
While savoring their sweet and luscious taste,
he was inclined to think Adam and Eve
might be forgiven for not holding true
to everything God had told them to do.
 
As much as need determined, and what might please,
the English duke took of food and repose
(for all conceivable amenities
were gathered there). When blushing Dawn arose,
leaving her bed and ancient consort (whom she’s
never forsaken, or so the story goes),
he also rose from bed, and there, at the door,
John the Apostle, beloved of the Lord,
 
took his hand, saying things of which the sum
must be unspoken in my poetry.
“Perhaps you don’t know about France, my son,”
he then began explaining, “or you can’t see
the scope of the disaster: God’s champion,
Orlando, has been punished terribly
for shirking duties—for the Lord will send
rebukes to those he loves, when they offend.
 
“From birth, God granted him tremendous strength
and fortitude to the highest degree—
what is more (and this has no precedent)
created him impervious to steel.
He did this to confirm the Count was meant
to guard the faithful, and to keep them free—
in the same way that Samson was foreseen
as barricade against the Philistine.
 
“But the good Count has reaped a meager yield
in spite of all of his advantages:
the greater that his duty is to shield
the faithful, the worse his dereliction is.
Blinded by lust, he shuns the battlefield
and woos a pagan woman he calls his.
And Christendom has suffered from his fights
with his own cousin, which jealousy incites.
 
“And for these reasons, God has made him mad
and made him go about with naked chest
and clouded him so much that, it is said,
he recognizes no one (himself the least).
In the same way—so scripture can be read—
God turned Nebuchadnezzar to a beast:
for seven long years, he lived like an ass,
feeding on hay, and pasturing on grass.

“But since Orlando’s faults and wrongdoings are
less grave than those of Babylon’s great king,
God has imposed an interval, a bar
of just three months to purge away his sin.
And if you’ve been allowed to come this far,
becoming more informed of everything,
it’s to reveal what you’ve been sent here for
and how to minister Orlando’s cure.
 
“Know, too, that you must travel farther in
your journey with me, all the way to where
we leave the earth itself, because within
the moon (our closest planet) is a rare
item indeed—Orlando’s medicine—
which we must now procure by flying there.
And when the moon is in the highest part
of heaven tonight, we will make our start.”
 
With this, John didn’t signal talk was done—
his conversation turned to other fare.
But when the sea had locked away the sun
and a horned crescent moon rose in the air,
a chariot that was designed to run
across the stars was readied for them there:
it had once flown Elijah to the skies
above Judea, away from mortal eyes.
 
The old saint took a team of horses, bright red,
harnessed them, and hitched them to the car.
When he and the duke settled in, he sped
the chariot skyward. Climbing the air,
he circled wide at first, then shot ahead
and soon arrived at the eternal fire;
by miracle or skill with which he turned
the vehicle, no passenger was burned.
 
They crossed the orb of flame and otherwise
continued to the moon, taking no rest.
For the most part, and to the duke’s surprise,
it seemed to be unscratched steel. Nonetheless,
he also saw it was of equal size
to all that’s gathered here—or not much less— 
including the wide ocean, which, as it rounds
this great globe of ours, inscribes its bounds.
 
Astolfo was astounded twofold here:
how large, at close range, the moon seemed to be!
(though seen from earth it was a tiny sphere),
and how, conversely, if he wished to see
the mountains of the earth, he had to peer
down into darkness, squinting constantly—
for since it isn’t lit up like a star,
the earth can’t radiate its features far.

Other lakes and rivers, and fields, are there,
which are at once the same and something else;
other plains and valleys, and mountains where
some castles nestled; towns with citadels;
houses so large the duke would later swear
on earth there really were no parallels;
and solitary forests with leaves like flame
where wood nymphs hunted every sort of game.
 
Astolfo didn’t pause for such a thing;
it wasn’t what he had flown up to see.
And John soon steered him to a narrowing
valley between two mountains by a sea.
There everything that’s gone or vanishing
because of what we’ve done (or destiny),
miraculously, is distilled from air—
for everything lost here collects up there.
 
Not only wealth and kingdoms (things that break
apart and rise again, grow and decay)
but all that is beyond the give and take
of Fortune, in spite of her extensive sway.
There’s much fame there that Time will slowly make
less here or, like a beetle, eat away,
and, sinners that we are, we send up there
infinite promises and endless prayer.
 
The tears and sighs of lovers, hopeless wait,
purposeless gambling (or a like pursuit),
idleness fancied as a natural state,
and empty plans that never will bear fruit:
the vainest wishes so proliferate
their clutter is in piles and underfoot.
In short, if you went there, you’d come across
all of the things down here that you had lost.
 
And as Astolfo paced among those mounds
he asked questions, like a novice who seeks
greater understanding. Startled by sounds
of riots (issuing from bladders’ leaks),
he was informed that the bladders were crowns
worn by the Persians, Assyrians, and Greeks—
all of those kings of old who once had fame
and lie forgotten, almost to the name.
 
Silver and gold fishhooks, lying in a hoard,
greeted him next, and John made clear that these
were gifts of men who vainly sought reward
from monarchs whom no one could ever please.
Those garlands hiding nooses? He was assured
that they were nothing more than flatteries.
And as for the cicadas he saw burst—
odes praising patrons, rhyming at its worst.
 
Doomed love affairs took on the beautiful
and odd form of shackled gems. And he knew
that eagles’ talons there comprised the full
power lords vested in stewards they thought true.
Bellows (with which the nearby slopes were full)
were princes’ favors spent with much ado
on Ganymedes and close friends of the hour,
fading as quickly as their youthful flower.
 
Next he saw ruins of towns and fortresses
with treasure spilled and strewn like fallen leaves.
He asked about them. “Treaties gone amiss,”
said John, “and ill-concealed conspiracies.”
Then he saw snakes with women’s faces—that is,
the handiwork of counterfeiters and thieves.
And he saw bottles of different broken sorts—
the promises of service in stingy courts.
 
He saw a lake of soup, almost a sea,
and asked his mentor what was there, so massed.
“That,” John explained, “is all the charity
left by a person after he has passed.”
The duke continued, walking on to see
a garden, sweet at first, that soured fast.
This thing (if I may say so) that came to fester
was Constantine’s Donation to Sylvester.
 
Astolfo saw much birdlime—that is to say,
dear ladies, all your charms transformed to snare.
It would take ages if I were to portray
in verse all things expounded to him there.
And in that task, I’m sure my wits would fray,
for the moon holds all foibles in her care.
Folly alone is lacking there, they say:
it stays down here and never goes away.
 
Actions and days he had lost long ago
confronted him (or so he seemed to sense),
but with no John, how would he ever know
these forms were drawn from his experience?
Next he saw something that we think we’ve so
much of, we don’t pray for: I mean good sense.
A mountain lay there—a pile somehow
larger than anything he’d seen till now.
 
Sense was a thin, fine liquid in the main,
apt to evaporate if not kept sealed
and could be seen in jars whose size would wane
or wax as needed or the case revealed.
The jar encompassing the mighty brain
of Anglant’s lord was biggest of the field.
And it was quite distinctive due to its
italicized inscription: Orlando’s Wits.

The other jars he saw there likewise shone
with all the names of those whose sense they housed.
And among these, Astolfo saw his own,
but what surprised him even more was how
those whom he thought had all their wits were shown
to have so few, and that he must allow
if men seem senseless, it’s because they are—
to judge by liquid levels in each jar.
 
Some lose their wits for love, and others part
with theirs for honor, or venturing at sea;
some in vain hopes to move a patron’s heart;
and some for magic spells or jewelry—
others for the most perfect works of art
or most prized things, whatever they may be.
Much astrologic wit collects up high,
and poets’ wits are not in short supply.
 
After the saint of the Apocalypse
allowed him to, the duke got on his toes,
reached up and grasped the phial of his wits,
and opened it right underneath his nose.
Turpin reports: “For some years after this,
the duke was wise.” The record also shows:
“His later straying from the path was said
to be the last time he went soft in the head.”
 
Astolfo looked up at the largest jar—
the one containing all Orlando’s sense—
and seized it. It was heavier by far
than what he had imagined, and more dense.                                            
Before the duke returned to where we are
from that domain of light and subtle scents,
the Gospel Writer guided him to a high
palatial building with a stream nearby.
 
Its rooms were full of flax that was spun out
along with silk and linen, cotton and wool,
dyed in different colors (some pleasing, some not),
and a white-haired lady winding a spool
in its main courtyard, untangling each knot—
as peasant women, when the summer is full,
will skim the moist cocoons off silkworm beds
and harvest all the new silk into threads.
 
With one skein past, another would appear
(a second woman carried them away)
and a third woman sorted out the clear
bright fibers from the ugly sent their way.
Confused, Astolfo asks, “What’s happening here?
What am I meant to make of this display?”
“These women are the Fates,” John straight replies,
“they spin the threads of everyone who dies.

“While there is thread remaining to be spun
a life continues—not one moment more.
Both Death and Nature scrutinize each one
to learn the time of death that is in store.
The third Fate is forever looking on
to make the bright threads heaven’s trimmings, or
to take the threads out of an ugly strand
and fashion them into restraints for the damned.”
 
Among the skeins wound there and reassigned
for further use were those ascribed a plaque
stamped with the name for whom it was designed—
some gold, some silver, and some iron. In fact,
there were so many there, in piles aligned
in neat rows—without ever putting one back,
a swift old man scooped them up by the score
and, never breaking off, came back for more.
 
The old man was so expeditious and spry,
he seemed to be created for speed. In sum:
with nameplates in his mantle, he would fly
away and back to where he started from.
Where he was going with the items (and why)
I will explain in the canto to come,
if you tell me, as usual, that you find
the story pleasing, or something you don’t mind.
 


CANTO 35
 
My lady, who will fly to paradise
to fetch me the wits I’ve lost here below?
For they’ve been seeping out, since your eyes
transfixed me with their arrows long ago—
not that I’m complaining, as long as the size
of my brain is constant, or more or less so:
I fear that any more shrinking will begin
to pare me to the state Orlando is in.
 
But I don’t think there’s any need for me
to fly into the quadrant of the moon
or up to heaven for my recovery,
because I don’t believe my brains are strewn
up there, but in the face and eyes I see
before me now, and in breasts I will soon
sip from (those alabaster hills) with my lips—
that is the way I will retrieve my wits.
 
Astolfo peered into the spacious holds,
gazing at lives-to-be and seeing those
already spun on spools. Among these molds,
he noticed that there was a thread that rose
above the others, shining more than gold.
If gemstones could be crushed with skillful blows
and thinned out and twirled into strands, such thread
would not shine as brightly as this one did.
 
It thrilled him beyond all bounds. And its whole
form was unique, he thought. Then suddenly
he felt a strong desire to know when that soul
was to become flesh, and who it would be.
John made no secret of the date: “in God’s roll,
two decades before the year M and D
in what we would now call ‘the year of our Lord’”—
1480 was the year he pointed toward.
 
“And since this thread is more than beautiful,”
John said, “and dazzling beyond compare,
the era that it ushers in in full
will be as fortunate, as well as fair.
For it will possess, beyond Fortune’s pull
and Nature’s fostering, all that is rare,
which we attain alone by diligence—
or Fortune’s kindness, or inheritance.”
 
“Between the branches of the river Po,
that king of streams,” he went on, “you can see
a humble village. Rushing waters flow
before it; marsh is behind. It shall be,
in time, a stately city that will show
itself the fairest in all Italy,
not only for its palaces and walls,
but for its customs, scholarship, and laws.
 
“Such eminence, along with such renown,
will not result from mere chance taking root,
for heaven has ordained that this small town
will birth the man I speak of—and will suit
him like the branches that are grafted on
a trunk in order that it may bear fruit,
or ingots jewelers melt, intending them
to form the setting of a precious gem.
 
“No soul that comes to earth will ever be
clothed in a beauty so miraculous.
And it is very rare that souls set free
descending from the highest spheres to us
are worthy as that which Eternity
will grant the Estes with Hippolytus—
for that is the name God will one day lift
above the others for so rich a gift.
 
“Attainments which, allotted far and near,
would make more brilliant every one of these
new souls as they’re embodied, all adhere
to him you urged me speak of with your pleas.
He’ll foster the pursuit of virtue here,
and if I were to paint his qualities,
our dialogue would drift so far off track
the Count would never get his lost wits back.”
 
So Christ’s friend helped Astolfo understand
Ferrara’s future. When both men had seen
all of the rooms in which the souls were planned,
they left the house and went down to a scene
of riverbanks awash with mud and sand
and water eddying in shades of green.
Here they found the old man whose only aim
was to run, bearing plaques that bore a name.
 
Do you remember the old man? I mean
the wrinkly one of whom I started to sing
in the last canto—old in face, not mien—
fast as a deer or any speedy thing?
He filled his mantle with the names of men,
shrinking the pile but never finishing,
and into the dark depths of Lethe, he tossed
his treasure, or let go what he had lost.
 
In short: arriving at the river’s bank,
the wasteful old man suddenly let fall
the plaques with names stamped on them, and they sank
into the turbid waters. Almost all
went to the bottom of that murky tank
and stayed down there, according to some law.
And of the millions that have sunk into
the streambed, those that have been saved are few.
 
Rapacious vultures, every type of crow,
and other birds revolved in disarray
or dived, shrieking in eagerness to go
and fall on suddenly abundant prey.
As soon as they saw plaques dispersed below,
they went to seize them, grasping every way—
some with a sharp beak, some with crooked claw—
but couldn’t go far without letting them fall.
 
For when they tried to soar away in flight,
they lacked the strength they fancied they could wield,
and all the names went into Lethe’s night,
bowing to judgment that can’t be appealed.
But there were two swans there, my lord, as white
as those depicted on your flag and shield,
and with serene assurance, they brought back
the names that fell down to them, plaque by plaque.
 
The kindly swans were able to retrieve
some of the names, in spite of that old man
running and dropping plates without reprieve
till most became lodged in the muck and sand.
Paddling first, then beating wings, they leave
the noxious waters, flying toward the land,
and soon a nearby hill swims into sight
on top of which a temple bathes in light.

This place is sacred to Immortal Fame.
A fair nymph makes her way down from the hill
to Lethe’s banks and gathers every name 
that each swan offers to her with its bill.
Ascending to the shrine from which she came,
she fastens all the plaques so that they will
hang in the center—and she takes great care
that they remain on view forever there.
 
Who was the old man, and why did he go
to the river to drop plaques fruitlessly?
And what of all the birds, from swan to crow,
the hilltop shrine from which the nymph might be
sent to the stream? Astolfo wished to know
the secrets hidden in their mystery—
the old man, Lethe, temple, nymph, and birds.
He questioned John, who answered with these words:
 
“You have to understand: on earth there is
no leaf that moves that isn’t noticed here,
and there are countless correspondences
between the realms—though each maintains its sphere.
The old man’s work is like Time’s, and Time’s his.
For as he shuffles swiftly—despite his beard—
the old man does what Time effects on earth:
burying names of great and little worth.
 
“When a thread here is wound upon its reel,
on earth a human life is put to rest;
there, fame remains; here, proof of the real,
and both would last forever and be blessed
if here, the bearded one, and there, Time’s wheel
could cease from doing what none can arrest.
The old man makes the names sink, more or less,
and Time sinks them into forgetfulness.
 
“And just as up here, birds of every size
(black crows and vultures, diving cormorants)
strive to collect the names that catch their eyes,
on earth you’ll find a matching circumstance:
the same thing done by pimps and pretty boys,
gossipers, flatterers, and sycophants—
those who infest the courts and seem to be
more prized than people of integrity.
 
“Those I call ‘courtiers’ (because I must)—
those who know how to mimic hog and ass—
when Destiny (or rather Wine or Lust)
has cut their master’s thread (when he has passed),
all of these supine cowards I’ve discussed
born to stuff themselves from first to last,
recite his name perhaps two weeks, or one,
then let it fall into oblivion.
 
“But as the swans with their glad song convey
the plaques to safety inside the temple wall,
so men of worth will live another day
rescued from death by poets, if at all.
Shrewd and sagacious princes of today,
call to mind Caesar’s actions, and recall
if you make friends with writers, it would seem
you needn’t be afraid of Lethe’s stream!
 
“Poets, too, are rare as swans—at least
those who are worthy to be titled so—
partly due to heaven, which can’t release
too much greatness at once here below,
and partly due to stingy lords, who lease
Talent to beg or bend to Fortune’s blow.
Suppressing good, exalting evil, by starts,
they end up banishing all the fine arts.
 
“God has deceived these fools (it seems to me)
and clouded all their judgment, to the soul,
making them shun immortal Poetry
in order that Death might consume them whole.
For besides letting men ‘live on,’ you see,
Poetry often plays a cleansing role:
if they knew how to make good friends with her,
their lives would come to smell as sweet as myrrh.
 
“Aeneas wasn’t ‘pious,’ Achilles ‘strong,’
or Hector ‘fierce,’ as their fame might suggest.
Thousands of heroes, if not more, belong
in Honor’s roll. So why are they the best?
Large estates and villas, donated for song
by their descendants, make sure they are blessed,
encouraging writers to take up their pens
and sing the themes on which their fame depends.
 
“Augustus was not august, or apt to be
as merciful as Virgil would portray,
but his discerning taste in poetry
has helped make his oppression go away.
Or think of Nero: every enemy
and crime we associate him with today
might not exist, had he known to befriend
writers of verse and prose before his end.
 
“Homer makes Agamemnon ‘ever great’;
the Trojans, ‘cowards’: that’s the short of it.
Penelope is faithful to her mate
and keeps away the suitors with her wit.
But if you want to set the story straight,
transform what happened to its opposite:
Troy won; the Greeks were routed from its shore;
the queen of great Ulysses was a whore.
 
“In contrast, just consider how we see
Dido today, whose chaste heart would not stir.
‘Slut’ is what she is often said to be
just because Virgil never took to her.
Don’t be surprised if this embitters me
and if I talk so much about it here—
for I love writers, and I hope to do
them justice: I was once a writer too.
 
“I have what Time and Death will not allow
any person, or thing, to rob from me:
in praising Christ, I merited somehow
the fortune and reward of what you see.
And I am sad for poets living now
in evil days when even Courtesy
has shut her door to them; now lean and pale,
they beat at it incessantly, to no avail.
 
“But this is my most crucial point: today,
poets and scholars, in the true sense, are rare,
for even wild creatures turn away
from places that provide no food or lair.”
And while the Holy Father spoke this way
two living flames blazed up within his stare.
He nodded to the duke and smiled, and then
his angry eyes became serene again.