Review of: Eugenia Fosalba (ed.), Clasicismo horaciano en tiempos de Garcilaso de la Vega

Bulletin Hispanique, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 125, 1, 2023

Abstract

The fourth collective publication of the Pronapoli team is the magnificent book that we now have the pleasure of reviewing: Horatian Classicism in the Times of Garcilaso de la Vega, Bulletin Hispanique, Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 125-1, 2023. Eugenia Fosalba explains in the preface to such a compelling contribution to classical studies in relation to the work of the Toledan poet that statements about Garcilaso's poetry, such as those by Pietro Bembo, Paolo Giovio, and Girolamo Seripando, all agreeing on the excellence of his Horatianism, led its director to steer the second edition of the project “Garcilaso in Italy” in this direction. The objective was to understand the reason for this excellence (translated into the recognition of his suavitas or sweetness, typically Horatian), by studying the Italian, and especially Neapolitan, context that made it possible. However, it also seems indispensable to take into account the European tapestry in which the poet moved. In this regard, the simultaneous discovery during these investigations of two Latin odes by Garcilaso, unknown until now, which were unveiled at the Neapolitan congress (in April 2022, Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa), the origin of this book, is further proof of the profound accuracy of the orientation given to the new Garcilasian research directed by Eugenia Fosalba: on one hand, the aforementioned appearance of the ode in praise of Pietro Bembo and another ode dedicated to Johan Alexander Brancassius, discovered by Maria Czepiel, who analyzes in the volume the Horatian and Sannazarian sources in both works; the project's principal investigator, on the other hand, analyzes the meaning of the term suavitas, which, as explained by the great advocate of our poet in Naples, Girolamo Seripando, in his text dedicated to the Exequies of the Emperor (1559), has to do with the finest and most creative imitation proper to the orator, and not to the simple interpreter; the researcher also provides some Horatian sources not previously considered, in the opening of the Ode ad florem Gnidi, a source intertwined with Lyra I of Pontano, which replaces the river of the Venusian with the Tyrrhenian sea, here, like the Pontanian, stony, marble-like.