The Faunus Poems of Pietro Bembo
[The following excerpt is taken from the introduction to Salemi's English translation of six of Bembo's poems dealing with the god Faunus. Salemi provides background on the mythological figure and declares Bembo's poems “delightful specimens of the neo-Latin lyric at its best.”]
Most casual readers of the classics in translation are familiar with Faunus as the divine father of King Latinus in the seventh book of Vergil's Aeneid. Faunus, it will be recalled, has oracular powers, and he cautions Latinus against allowing his daughter Lavinia to marry within their own tribe. The dispute that subsequently arises between Aeneas and Turnus over the possession of this woman forms the conclusion of Vergil's epic.
Faunus is a woodland divinity, a god associated with wild beasts and sylvan mystery—indeed, Latinus must enter the depths of the Albunean forest in order to consult his father's oracle. Like Artemis and Cybele, Faunus favors the woods, making his home among dense groves where neither axe nor plow has come to disturb the primeval sanctity. As was the case with many native Roman divinities, Faunus came to be associated with a Greek counterpart. Pan was closest in conception to the Latin woodland god—he too dwells in uncultivated regions and has a decidedly feral aspect. Both deities were eminently suited to be patrons of pastoral life and, by implication, poetry which celebrated pastoral concerns.
The Italian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) composed in his youth several lovely pastoral lyrics dealing with the god Faunus. Bembo conflated the image of the Roman god with elements that strictly belonged to Pan, so that these two similar but separate divinities came to be synonymous names for a single god—one who dwelt in the woods, favored humble shepherds and goatherds, promoted the use of the syrinx or reedpipe, and chased constantly but vainly after young nymphs.
Marco Pecoraro, in his study of the chronology and manuscript tradition of Bembo's poetry, points out that all or almost all of the Faunus poems of Bembo were composed between 1490 and 1498 (the exception is “Galatea,” which may be somewhat later).1 Thus they are among Bembo's earliest efforts in Latin verse, and they do breathe a youthful exuberance of spirit. Their vivacity and occasional raciness makes them charming, and the technical excellence of the poems is a sign of Bembo's sure hand at Latin even at this early point in his career.
What prompted the young scholar to take Faunus as a subject? Pecoraro quotes from Bembo's book Aetna (1505) a passage that provides a possible answer. It seems that, on a trip to Sicily, Bembo had visited the forested environs of Mount Etna where he saw, as Pecoraro says, “la dolce campagna etnea, coperta di prati erbosi attraversati da freschi ruscelli, e cinta di alti pioppi e faggi, che procuravano piacevoli ombre alle Amadriadi e alle Naiadi.”2 In describing all this natural beauty to his father Bernardo, Bembo aroused in the old man a desire to know what sort of god inhabited so lovely a region. Bembo replied that Faunus, by traditional consensus, was the tutelary deity of such places, and that he was the protector of the pasturing herds and mountainous wilds. And in the course of speaking about Faunus, Bembo says:
Videre se inquiunt pastores, ipsum deum passim errantem per silvas & pasqua, tum etiam sedentem sub illis arboribus coronatum pinu, & tacentem saepius, interdum tamen etiam fistula solantem amores.3
(Shepherds say that they see this god wandering here and there through the woods and pastures; sometimes sitting under the trees, crowned with pine; more often silent but sometimes assuaging his passions by playing on his reedpipe.)
Here, I think, is the origin of the Faunus poems. Bembo was intrigued by the legend of the rustic divinity, and tried his hand at some small pieces addressed to the god, or using him as a persona. The subject matter of these pieces is traditional—the wooing of nymphs, the praise of pastoral life, the playing of the reedpipe—but the poems themselves are delightful specimens of the neo-Latin lyric at its best. Perhaps because of Bembo's youthful enthusiasm, they are free of the stale formulaic air that hangs about so many Renaissance Latin imitations of classical verse.
My translations and annotations provide, I believe, a good apparatus for understanding the Faunus poems, so I will not comment on the shorter ones here. I would, however, like to draw the reader's attention to “Galatea,” the longest of the poems. “Galatea” deals not with Faunus but his Greek counterpart Pan. (As I have suggested, Bembo uses these names interchangeably to refer to the rustic divinity.) “Galatea” is a curious production; although it echoes the conventional lyric treatment of the wooing of the nymph Galatea by the Cyclops Polyphemus, it presents some notable variations on the theme of pastoral love.
The poem begins with Pan chasing the nymph Galatea, who has coyly lured him on, into the sea. He slips, is overwhelmed by the waves, and is in danger of drowning. Pan's rustic companions on shore (other fauns and satyrs) call to Galatea to save their leader from death. She laughs and congratulates herself on her guile in perpetrating such trickery, but finally rescues the helpless Pan. After bringing him ashore she upbraids him for his folly and impertinence in pursuing her.
Galatea is by no means an unwilling prey in this chase. Bembo suggests that she leads the inept Pan on with her “slow flight,” and that she has deliberately tricked him into entering the sea. The nymph rejoices in his fall, and prolongs his distress. Her final words to Pan, therefore, are not to be read as an indignant attack on a would-be ravisher, but rather as the playful dismissal that a sophisticated girl addresses to a silly bumpkin. Galatea is a culta puella in the Ovidian tradition, one who delights in the beguilement of a foolish lover. And Pan is a parodic version of Polyphemus; as a suitor he is just as distasteful but by no means as dangerous as the Cyclops. Thus Galatea is able to say—as she never could to the much fiercer Cyclops—that he is related to the mountain-goats and should confine his attentions to them.
Pan makes several blunders in his approach to the nymph. It makes little sense, for example, for him to boast of his association with shepherds and sheep as he does, since they would forever be linked in Galatea's mind with the hated Cyclops, himself a shepherd. This is one sign of Pan's essential ineptitude and ignorance, and the incompatibility of his earthly divinity with the subtler and swifter divinity of water. And in fact at the end of the poem this incompatibility forms the substance of Galatea's reproach to the goat-footed god.
A real confusion about water divinities exists in Pan's mind, and it trips him up as well. He calls Galatea a “Neptunian,” whereas her father is Nereus. Nereus, like the god of lake Garda in Bembo's poem “Benacus,” has many daughters or Nereids who are the tutelary spirits of various streams and rivers. Galatea is one of them, and for her to be called a child of Neptune/Poseidon, and hence a sister of the Cyclops, would be particularly offensive.
Notes
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Marco Pecoraro, Per la Storia dei Carmi del Bembo (Venezia-Roma: Istituto Per La Collaborazione Culturale, 1959), pp. 119-20.
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Pecoraro, p. 120.
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Opere del cardinale Pietro Bembo (Venezia: Francesco Hertzhauser, 1729), tom. IV, p. 328. Quoted by Pecoraro in the work cited, p. 120.
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