The De Aetna of Pietro Bembo: A Translation
[In this excerpt, Kilpatrick introduces his English translation of De Aetna, Bembo's first Latin dialogue, which was originally published in 1496. Kilpatrick stresses the work's demonstration of Bembo's broad learning.]
Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), Venetian, humanist, cardinal, papal secretary, “papabile”, began his literary career in 1496, with the publication by the Aldine Press in Venice of a Latin dialogue entitled: Petri Bembi De Aetna Ad Angelum Chabrielem Liber. This book had apparently remained untranslated until 1970, when a handsome commemorative edition was printed in Verona in three bilingual issues (English, Italian and German). The Latin-English issue, with a translation by Betty Radice, was limited to one hundred and twenty-five copies.1 The following translation is only the second.2
De Aetna is a significant work not just because it is Bembo's first, and a landmark in typography.3 It presents a fascinating first-hand account of the ascent of Etna by an adventurous young man whose wide scholarly interests were to earn him in time a respected position among humanists and scientists. But it is also an impressive work of renaissance letters. In it the young Bembo reveals an easy familiarity with a wide range of ancient authors, philosophical and poetic, a delicate mastery of the Ciceronian Style, and a sensitive (at times puckish) grasp of character portrayal through dialogue.
In 1903, S. Günther presented a paper at the Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche, titled, “Il Cardinale Pietro Bembo e la Geografia,”4 in which he detailed Bembo's scientific interests, especially his relations with the mathematician Filippo Faraone—there is extant a letter to Bembo in which Faraone describes the eruption of Etna in March of 1536 after being dormant for forty years.5 Bembo's interest in geography was shared by a number of renaissance humanists, such as Petrarch, Buondelmonte, Flavio Biondo, and Enea Silvio.6 (Günther felt his patience badly abused by Bembo's garrulous father in the dialogue.)7
On the scientific side, Bembo's descriptions and theorizing show a close familiarity with the doctrines of the ancient philosophers and geographers, particularly Aristotle, Strabo, and Seneca: these three writers catalogue ancient views on earthquakes and volcanoes from Thales to Poseidonius.8 Bembo quotes or cites by name writers such as Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, Aristotle, Theocritus, Vergil, Ovid, Strabo, and Pliny as authorities on Etna and volcanoes. (Horace is cited too, but as Orazio morale, not as an authority.) He certainly could have been familiar with the pseudovergilian didactic poem Aetna and with the Etna passages of Lucretius and Claudian.9
The volcanic theory that dominates ancient geographical writing, beginning with Anaxagoras, is that of subterranean winds forcing their way in and out of chambers beneath the earth and producing fire by friction.10 The sea is a concomitant factor, whether it blocks the exhalations or forces its way right into the holes and passages of the earth.11 That the sea does not dampen volcanic eruptions, as Pietro observes, could be demonstrated by submarine eruptions.12 The potential of compressed air to do all this is fully accepted as part of the hypothesis.13
The setting and style of the dialogue are Ciceronian, a formal allusion to the De Legibus, with its shady bank and poplars. The longed-for plane trees recall Plato's Phaedrus.14 Bernardo's comparison of life to a banquet is Lucretian;15 the quibble about “the truest fable” recalls Strabo.16 His enthusiasm for information about Etna is like Seneca's, while his fears about climbing to the crater echo both Aetna and Claudian.17 The philosophy of life advocated by Bernardo and willingly subscribed to by Pietro is Senecan, but it is given a Horatian twist at the end.
It would be tempting to pass this off as mere Renaissance erudition, and there is no doubt that Bembo is revelling in his youthful knowledge. But De Aetna is also a highly entertaining work, and what seems to contribute most to that is the part of Bernardo Bembo himself, cast in the role of Nestor, that garrulous elder statesman of the Iliad (Bembo tells us he has been studying Homer in Sicily with Constantinos Lascaris). A precursor by a century of Polonius, Bernardo becomes the object of tender, affectionate satire. He is old, devoted to his city's welfare and his family's, a scholar, a moralist (a bit of a pedant), an exponent of moderation and self-control, and a realist. Pietro, on the other hand, casts himself as a youthful romantic, a poet, and an idealist. Bernardo's affectionate jests at his fanciful, rather poetic beliefs in “his Faunus” and pastoral deities are deftly parried by his son's gentle and tactful Horatian appeal for moderation in all things of life: from dining to philosophy. Perhaps most tactful of all is the way he gives his father the last word, a sincere defence of reason, self-control and virtue, beginning and ending with Homer: Ulysses is contrasted with his crew, whose ears must be stopped against the Sirens, and with the lazy and prodigal young men of Phaeacia and Ithaca. The first is perhaps inspired by Cicero; the second, a direct quotation from Horace.18 The final tableau is of Bernardo's departure into his study, lost in his thoughts once more.
Above all else the De Aetna is intended as a gift to Bembo's father, and a tribute to his wisdom, humanitas and love. We see him here, rich in years, through the eyes of a son whose gratitude and understanding has reached a new maturity.
My colleague Professor A. C. Hamilton has suggested that De Aetna may have at least one Renaissance offspring. In 1580, Gabriel Harvey published a controversial “Familiar Letter” addressed to “M. Immerito” (Edmund Spenser), being one of
Three Proper and wittie familiar Letters lately passed between two Universitie men: touching the Earthquake in April last, and our English refourmed Versifying. With the Preface of a wellwiller to them both.
Like Bembo's, Harvey's piece (“A Pleasant and pitthy familiar discourse, of the Earthquake in April last”) is a dialogue within an epistle frame, addressed to an old school friend, recounting a dramatic geological event and its possible causes in a spirit of scholastic inquiry and controversy, but enlived by irony and humor. Harvey presents an Aristotelian analysis of causes, along with classical theories of “winds” and “waters” in veins of the earth, and parodies non-Ramist investigations of the phenomenon and those pamphleteers who make God the efficient cause.19 The comic mixture of logical argument and rhetorical evidence (adding the classical poets as authorities) seems to exploit Pietro's dilemma: “What you are asking for is a philosophical explanation without the use of logical argument.”
Differences in the purposes of the two writers are suggested by the roles of the third parties to the epistles. The youthful Bembo gives pride of place to his garrulous father, whose views he recounts to Angelo. Harvey introduces “A coople of shrewde wittie new marryed Gentlewomen, which were more Inquisitive, than Capable of Nature's works”,20 who react to the tremors with terror and with prayers. He is challenged first by one of the gentlemen, then one of the ladies present to explain them with his “deepe Universitie Cunning”.21 His reply is so convoluted that Mistresse Inquisitiva makes him cease. A “short, but sharpe, and learned Iudgement of Earthquakes”22 follows in response to the Gentleman of the house, which is given a satirical sampling of Latin quotations, complimentary close, and postscript. It is tempting to think that Harvey, with his wide and eclectic reading, knew the De Aetna. That he was familiar with Bembo as a Ciceronian is certain.
Notes
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Petri Bembi De Aetna & Pietro Bembo On Etna. Now first translated into English by Betty Radice and printed in memory of Stanley Morison (Verona: Editiones Officinae Bodoni, 1970). This is an elegant version by a well-known and gifted translator. The present version was first attempted in 1967, and has since profited in a number of places from Radice's. It differs from hers in the use of Italian place names wherever possible: e.g., Piuvego (Pluvicus), Villa Bozza (Nonianum), Punto del Faro (Pelorus). Because the Bodoni edition was limited to 125 copies of the English version, with very few accessible (none circulating) in North America, I believe another translation is both justified and timely. I am most grateful to the Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University for the use of its copy of both the 1496 and 1970 editions of De Aetna, and for permission to reproduce the first page of the former here.
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The text translated is that of Yale University's copy (Beineke Library) of the 1496 edition, incorporating the manuscript corrections catalogued from all the existing copies in C. Bühler, “Manuscript corrections in the Aldine Edition of Bembo's De Aetna,” Proceedings of the Bibliographical Society of America, 45 (1951), 136-42. I would like to thank Mr. William Burton who first suggested this translation, Professor E. David Francis who read it through and improved its accuracy greatly, and Mr. John Hersey, whose fine sense of English style saved it from very many infelicities. I am also grateful to the following geologists whose interest in De Aetna over the years has encouraged me to publish this translation: The late Professor R. F. Flint, Professor A. W. Joliffe, and Professor P. L. Roeder.
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The Roman type for that edition (the first all-Latin work done by Aldus) was cast by Francesco Griffo of Bologna. It would eventually be copied by the Monotype Corporation as “Bembo”. (See the introduction to the Bodoni edition.)
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S. Günther, “Il Cardinale Pietro Bembo e la geografia,” Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche (Roma, 1903), Vol. X, Atti della sezione, vi, 55-68. On Bembo's life and work, see also Vittorio Cian, Un Decennio della Vita di M. Pietro Bembo (Torino, 1885); G. Meneghetti, La Vita Avventurosa di Pietro Bembo (Venezia, 1961); Mario Santoro, Pietro Bembo (Napoli, 1937).
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Günther (57).
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Günther (55). The work of Georgius Agricola (1494-1555), De Ortu et Causis Subterraneorum, was not published until 1540.
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Günther (62-3).
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Arist. Meteor. 2.7-8; Strabo Geog. 6.2.8-11; Sen. N.Q. 6.9.1-24. For a full survey, see S. Sudhaus, Aetna (Leipzig, 1898), pp. 48-72 (Einleitung).
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Lucretius 6.639-703. Claudian 33.160-78.
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Sen. N.Q. 6.9.1.
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Arist. Meteor. 2.8.8.
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N.Q. 2.26.4.
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N.Q. 6.21.1.
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Cic. Leg. 1.1.1-1.5.15; Plat. Phaedr. 229a-30c.
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Lucr. 3.938-9. Cf. Hor. Sat. 1.1.118-19.
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Sen. Epist. 79.2; Strabo 6.2.
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Note 9 (above).
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Cic. Fin. 5.18.49; Hor. Epist. 1.2.27-31.
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I am grateful as well to Professor Hamilton for the following references on Harvey: Gerald Snare, “Satire, logic, and rhetoric in Harvey's earthquake letter to Spenser,” TSE, XVIII (1970), 17-33; Virginia F. Stern, Gabriel Harvey: His Life, Marginalia and Library (Oxford and New York, 1979).
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The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, eds. J. C. Smith and E. De Sélincourt (London, 1912), p. 613.
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P. 614.
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P. 616.
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