A TRANSLATION OF APULEIUS’ METAMORPHOSES AND THE DEBATE ABOUT FICTION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY:
L’ASINO D’ORO BY AGNOLO FIRENZUOLA (1550)

FRANÇOISE LAVOCAT

Any exploration of my long-standing interest in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses must begin by investigating the history of interpretation as it is related to a changing consciousness of fictionality.¹ This evolving historical consciousness is far from linear (moving from simple unawareness to awareness), but instead uneven, complicated by disconcerting regressions (or what seem to be relapses, based on a teleological view of intellectual history).² Sixteenth-century translations of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses are an excellent case study in a puzzling phenomenon: a shift from literary and allegorical meaning to factual and referential interpretation, along with the rise of demonological knowledge.³ I, as well as other scholars,⁴ have noticed an impoverishment of allegorical interpretations of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in the time following Beroaldo’s commentary. This de-allegorization can be linked to a new historical and factual reading, according to which Apuleius’ Lucius is an actual magician. This reading was based on the belief that real metamorphosis is possible, perhaps due in part to the influence of Jean Bodin. In any case, at the beginning of the seventeenth century Apuleius’ tale was broadly considered to be merely autobiographical—as was, for example, by Jean de Montlyard (whose translation of Apuleius’ text was published in 1612).

More broadly, from the beginning of the seventeenth century the use of the first person became largely incompatible with fiction. Indeed, the number of first-person narratives began to decrease. According to my research, only 7.5% of fictional texts published in France between 1611 and 1623 were first-person narratives, as opposed to 9% between 1585 and 1610 (thirty-three texts for the whole period). Among this small group of first-person narratives, 25% were republications or translations of older fiction: La Fiammetta by Boccacio, El Lazarillo de Tormes, El Buscón by Mateo Aleman, and the Metamorphoses by Apuleius.⁵ I presume that this was due to an increasing difficulty at the time in grasping the status of a fictional, first-person narrator. Indeed, even today, it is sometimes difficult to comprehend this status and it often becomes the source of competing interpretations. Narratologist Käte Hamburger is right to claim that first-person narratives are a particular kind of fiction, based on simulation. It is therefore especially interesting to examine Apuleius’ Metamorphoses in relation to the problem of interpretation that is inherent in the use of a first-person narrative.

I will focus on a fascinating case of translation-adaptation by Agnolo Firenzuola. L’asino d’oro was written in Rome in 1524–1525, completed around 1532, and published for the first time in Venice in 1550.⁶ It was republished three times in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, and then included in several editions (one or two every century) of Firenzuola’s complete works in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.

This text, far from being the most famous Italian translation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, is seldom cited by current specialists on the topic (such as Julia Haig Gaisser, Olivier Pédeflous, Giuseppina Magnaldi, and Gian Franco Gianotti). Franziska Küenzlen, however, compares translations of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses by Beroaldo, Sieder, Michel, Lopez de Cortegana, and Firenzuola in her doctoral dissertation.⁷ Some of my analysis overlaps with that of Küenzlen, but while she approaches the topic from a linguistic perspective I will focus instead on other aspects, in particular those connected to the history of fiction and the intellectual shift from fiction to fact mentioned above. Since a central feature of Firenzuola’s translation-adaptation is the use of a first-person narrator—referencing not Apuleius but himself—we must ask ourselves the following question: what kind of interpretation (allegorical? fictional? factual?) is triggered by the autobiographical appropriation of L’asino d’oro by Agnolo Firenzuola?

I. Unproblematic originality

As with all of Firenzuola’s works (with the exception of a treatise against the introduction of Greek letters into the Latin alphabet),⁸ L’asino d’oro was released some years after the author’s death, in 1550 (by Giolito de Ferrari in Venice, republished in 1555, 1556, 1557).⁹ Firenzuola’s brother, Gerolamo, along with his friends, took charge of preparing this first edition. L’asino d’oro was also republished by Filippo Giunta in an expurgated edition in 1598 and 1603 (after the censorship of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses).¹⁰ Born in 1498, Firenzuola wrote this translation in his youth, during a stay in Rome as a priest in the court of pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici) between 1523 and 1526. Afterwards, freed from his monastic vows and seemingly infected by syphilis or malaria, he spent the remainder of his life in Prato, where he created and developed an academic and intellectual circle. He died in 1543 at the age of 50.¹¹

The most remarkable feature of his translation of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is his replacement of Lucius’ name and biography by his own. Lorenzo Scala underlines this choice in his dedicatory letter to Lorenzo Pucci (dated 15 May 1549). But he does not in the least emphasize its originality. He argues that L’asino d’oro was probably dear to its author, because Firenzuola never revealed anything about his own life except in this translation.¹²

We find a second example of the unproblematic reception of this most interesting aspect of Firenzuola’s adaptation in the same letter. Lorenzo Scala explains that Lodovico Domenichi, another author and friend of Firenzuola’s, replaced missing pages in L’asino d’oro with passages of his own:

Indeed, as contemporary critics have shown, Domenichini borrowed several passages from Boiardo’s translation to complete gaps in L’asino d’oro (mainly in book 10).¹⁴ But he also added something of his own to the first book: praise of Firenzuola’s father, Sebastiano, who was a lawyer and humanist scholar. This interpolation suggests that the substitution of Agnolo for Lucius did not raise any questions in Firenzuola’s circle. We may assume that contemporary readers interpreted it as a statement of authorship, probably linked to the use of Italian, at a time when the dignity of vulgar language was being reclaimed. Firenzuola, who sees himself as a successor to Boccaccio and Petrarch, and a friend of Pietro Bembo and Pietro Aretino, replaces Lucius because his translation into Italian makes him as worthy as Apuleius. In Scala’s view, Firenzuola’s linguistic choices (in favour of the purity of the Italian language) and the autobiographical adaptation are probably part of the same agenda. Indeed, Firenzuola’s proper name refers to a place and recalls the author’s familial roots in Florence, as well as his close relationship with the Tuscan language:

Firenzuola’s text indicates a complex identification between high opinions of vulgar language, praise of a city, pride in a lineage, allegiance to the Medicis (repeatedly affirmed), and the metaphorical portrait of a young and promising author who, as we shall see, stages and dramatizes his literary vocation.

For all these reasons, Firenzuola’s autobiographical appropriation of the Metamorphoses is no mere interpolation. Instead, it entails a deep transformation of the entire text. I shall scrutinize some of the elements of this transformation, akin to a modernization, Italianization, and moderate Christianization. I will also try to pinpoint what is at stake in this translation-adaptation of the Metamorphoses.

II. Modalities of modernization

II.1. Places, names, and customs

In the Tuscan fable written by Firenzuola, all the names of people and places are modern and Italian. In contrast to his other works (for instance a pastoral prayer imitating antique religious ceremonies),¹⁵ Firenzuola’s L’asino d’oro does not in the least try to revive the Latin world; without any care for geographical coherence, Thessaly is replaced by Naples, Corinth by Florence, Athens by Siena, Aetolia by Bologna. According to Küenzlen, the choice of Bologna (and not Naples, which was allegedly a city devoted to sorcery) can be explained by the fact that Bolognese faculties of law were famous, and, as we shall see, Firenzuola equates studying law with being an ass. In Firenzuola’s translation-adaptation, Photis is Lucia (translation of the Greek ‘Photis’), Phytoas is Francesco, and Byrrhena is Laura, which is also the name of Firenzuola’s actual aunt. It therefore seems that Firenzuola does not penetrate the world of the Metamorphoses alone; he disguises several historical figures, family, and friends in fictional but unantiquated clothing. Indeed, Firenzuola does not limit the modernization of the antique world to onomastic changes; he accurately transforms all the elements of daily life and customs, leaving no record and almost no trace of antiquity. Among many examples (concerning clothes, dishes, and money),¹⁶ Agnolo and Lucia, unlike Lucius and Photis, no longer mix their wine with warm water (book 2). All mentions of gladiatorial fights are removed. But the best example of this meticulous modernization is the replacement of a pyrrhic dance (in book 10) by a dance described in detailed, technical terms, which seems to have been borrowed from one of the dance treatises of the Renaissance:

Firenzuola, who wrote a treatise in 1541 about feminine beauty,¹⁷ expresses a court ideal of gracefulness and decorum in this passage, close to that of Castiglione (whom he probably knew during his stay in Rome).

II.2. Christianization and anti-Semitism

In the Renaissance, the modernization of the customs of the Roman empire necessarily meant their Christianization. Firenzuola, who never expressed any devout thoughts in his writings, seems to have been a moderate Christian, although perhaps at odds with ecclesiastical authorities. He converts the Metamorphoses into a modern, but not entirely Catholic, tale; his Christianization of the Pagan world is limited. In Firenzuola’s version, for example, a beggar asking for money at a crossroads begs in front of churches. More significantly, the traditional allegory of Isis as the Virgin (by Filippo Beroaldo in 1500 and Guillaume de Tours in 1517) is missing, because Firenzuola almost entirely removes the last chapter of the Metamorphoses. The ass returns to human form not with the help of any goddess—pagan or Christian—but instead through the mediation of an earthly woman, Costanza Amaretta. The final metamorphosis and return to human form do, however, involve a priest who purifies and blesses the ass in a church. Costanza Amaretta, who is accompanied by a little boy (sitting astride the ass, perhaps as Christ entered into Jerusalem) may also be a reference to the Virgin. Whatever the case, religious commentary is remarkably understated in this text.

The religious modernization of Apuleius’ novel is also noticeable in the anti-Semitic statements found therein. Contemporary critics have never noticed these elements, perhaps because they are unpleasant. They are nevertheless part of the modernization of the text and of its satirical and even referential dimension. The first example involves the transformation of the physician and his wife into a Jewish couple (book 10, the story of the female poisoner). The second and most significant example is a satirical development that is also found in book 10: the ass’ target is a certain Martino Spinosa, allegedly one of the author’s enemies. The ass alludes to an ecclesiastical condemnation that contemporary critics never clarify (nor understand).¹⁸ He also criticizes the Italian reception of Spanish people banned for religious reasons—that is to say, Jews or descendants of Jewish families:

Besides this anti-Semitic charge, it would perhaps be of interest to know the consequences of the aforementioned condemnation upon Firenzuola’s life and career. Is it linked to the relinquishment of his religious status? Either way, this example demonstrates that the work’s autobiographical dimension is not limited to a brief summary of the author’s genealogy at the beginning of the work (as Scala claims in his dedicatory letter); autobiography and modernization pervade the whole adaptation, and they are inherent to its intent and meaning.

III. The stakes of autobiographical appropriation

III.1. From Christian to personal allegory

The replacement of Lucius by Agnolo is explicit, steady, and repeated; the other characters, Lucia and Laura (themselves substitutes for Photis and Byrrhena), frequently hail or address him using the name ‘Agnolo’. The table of contents in the 1550 edition introduces the third book in these terms: ‘Presa del Firenzuola. Accusa contra l’autore. Risposta dell’autore. […] Il Firenzuola divenuto asino. Il Firenzuola Asino è bastonato dal proprio famiglio’ (‘Capture of Firenzuola. Accusation of the author. The author’s response. […] Firenzuola turned into an ass. Firenzuola, the Ass, is beaten by his own servant’). The end of the story is summed up as: ‘Agnolo ritornato d’Asino nella propria forma’ (‘Agnolo returns from the Ass to his original form’). The identification between the character and the author (by the author himself, as well as the editor of his work) is complete. Yet this uncanny substitution has never really been interpreted, and, when it has, it has been as a self-affirmation of Firenzuola as the author, rather than simply the translator, as I previously stated. An interpretation of this sort is developed by Teoli, for example, in his late edition of this work from 1863.¹⁹ His interpretation is plausible, because it fits with the status of translation in Renaissance Italy. Moreover, his interpretation can be corroborated by the emphasis Firenzuola places upon aesthetic and auto-referential statements. For instance, he develops (in the second book) an ekphrasis of the statues of Diana and Acteon which is an opportunity to celebrate the genius of the artist who imitates life and movement to perfection, as well as the account of the prophecy that forecasts the literary fame of the narrator.

Moreover, the metamorphosis, as Firenzuola explicitly interprets it, is the story of a literary and amorous education. At the beginning and the end of L’asino d’oro, Firenzuola explains that the shape of an ass symbolizes the years spent studying law and practicing the function of a lawyer (as Firenzuola actually did at the tribunal of the Curia). Studying and practicing poetry, however, under the amorous authority of a beloved woman (Costanza Amaretta), is akin to becoming a man from a platonic perspective—that is to say, reaching a superior state of self-consciousness through love and artistic creativity.

This change of vocation from law to literature recalls Ovid’s biography, as he recounts it in the Tristia. But in Firenzuola’s text, it is not only a literary reference. Rather, it refers to his own dedication to poetry and to the consequences it has had for him: leaving Rome, the papal court, and later his religious identity (including ecclesiastical benefits at the end of his life). Firenzuola stages his choice of vocation. At the beginning of I Ragionamenti (an unfinished work modelled on the Decameron, in which Costanza Amaretta is the main character), he explains that he wrote his first works after Costanza’s death, following her last wishes. In the last book of L’asino d’oro, Firenzuola also mentions Costanza’s death, presented as the starting point and incentive for his literary vocation. This woman, real or imagined (one critic expresses doubts about her historical identity²⁰ despite her being presented as a referential character), is based on the model of Dante’s Beatrice or Petrarch’s Laura. The metamorphosis through art and love has to be understood as a general and exemplary programme of humanist and courtly education.

Firenzuola also touches upon a more traditional interpretation of the metamorphosis from human to animal form (and vice versa); it can be seen as standing for the passage from a licentious life to a virtuous life, respectively embodied by Lucia and Costanza, sensual and virtuous love, according to Marsilio Ficino’s lesson. But the sexual licence symbolized by the donkey also corresponds to the period of Firenzuola’s life that was spent in the priesthood. The way in which he applies the Apuleius fable to his own life is therefore potentially scandalous—no wonder that it was never published while the author was living. One may also think that the use of an autobiographical first person, in a narrative talking about a magical operation and a monstrous coupling, is a tricky endeavour. However, the editions of L’asino d’oro that were released after Firenzuola’s death, even expurgated,²¹ demonstrate that the work was not considered to have exceeded the limits of propriety. Indeed, its ultimate interpretation depends on the status of the first person, along with the multiple choices available to the reader between an allegorical and a literal reading.

Following our line of analysis, the suggested and appropriate reading of L’asino d’oro is neither allegorical, in the traditional, religious sense of the term, nor literal. In relation to the three traceable positions on the Metamorphoses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries— religious allegory (Beroaldo), entertainment with poor moral meaning (Louveau, Adlington), and a literal reading based on demonological thinking (Bodin, Montlyard)—Firenzuola’s represents a completely original, hermeneutical view. Identifying himself with Lucius makes these three attitudes nonsensical. Since paganism is erased from his modernized world, any metaphorical consistency with Catholicism becomes pointless. Since personal reference is involved, this piece of fiction cannot be reduced to meaningless trifles. Finally, since Firenzuola, unlike Apuleius, cannot be charged with sorcery, the metamorphoses and magical phenomena described in the book are merely fictional.

The status of the first person is, therefore, rather complex. As in many sixteenth-century works, it is partly referential, or, rather, intermittently referential. This is clearly suggested in the table of contents, in which the narrator is called ‘The author’, ‘Agnolo’, ‘Firenzuola’, and sometimes ‘l’asino’; under these circumstances, he is probably only, or almost only, a fictional character. The reader is invited to interpret this as a direct reference at certain times (when the narrator talks about his genealogy or Costanza Amaretta) and a loose one at others. The identification of the author with the main character of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses may also function as a model and exemplification of the act of reading; every reader can imagine himself or herself as the protagonist through a thought experiment that is precisely the point of fiction. The broad symbolism of the ass in the Renaissance (ignorance, sin, sexual licence, concealed wisdom) allows for a multiplicity of applications, lending itself to the diversity of the audience. To conclude, there are different ways, based on varying perspectives, of understanding Firenzuola’s highly unique work.²² First, in the framework of the history of translation (as linked to an affirmation of the Italian language and an appropriation of antiquity), this text emphasizes the status of translator as author. This substitution occurs in a culture dominated by paradoxes and a tradition of comical first-person narrative, as with Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, Thomas More’s Utopia, and Lazarillo de Tormes: indeed, it is through his comical and bizarre appropriation of the character of Lucius transformed into a donkey that Firenzuola the translator affirms his auctoriality.

Firenzuola’s adaptation is thus also part of a history of first-person narrative. The status of the first person is complex in this text, as well as in other texts of the same period, because it is simultaneously referential, inter-textual, and fictional. The same goes for the character of Costanza Amaretta, who belongs to different ontological spaces, both inside and outside of fiction. Such a combination was no longer possible by the seventeenth century.

Lastly, this work can be understood within the context of a general history of fictionality. From a narratological perspective, Firenzuola performs a kind of metalepsis, breaching a narrative sphere in introducing himself, the author-translator, into a work of fiction.²³ But this transgression is mitigated, since Firenzuola completely transforms the antique world into a Renaissance setting. This liberty was characteristic of fiction before the seventeenth century and after the nineteenth century (that is to say at times when likelihood was not a decisive aesthetic criterion). To draw a contemporary parallel, today’s internet users and young authors of fan fiction are prone to including a counterpart of themselves in the action. In some ways, Firenzuola’s unique gesture bears a resemblance to ancient and modern modes of self-representation, but it goes further, as the translator here assumes the role of author and main character.

Firenzuola’s translation-adaptation should therefore be understood in the context of the Renaissance affirmation of authorship. Significant elements of this context include a sophisticated (albeit temporary) use of the first person, the free appropriation of antique texts for contemporary and even personal purposes, and, lastly, the development of a consciousness of fictionality and a diversification of the uses of fiction.

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle

Institut Universitaire de France

__________

¹ With regard to the affirmation of fiction in the sixteenth century—under the name of ‘fable’ or ‘poetry’—that was allowed by the victory of the Aristotelian current over the supporters of Platonism, see T. Chevrolet, L’Idée de fable. Théories de la fiction poétique à la Renaissance (Genève 2007).

² With regard to Apuleius in the sixteenth century, see my articles ‘Frontières troublées de la fiction à la fin de la Renaissance: Apulée et le débat sur la métamorphose’, Cahiers du dix-septième: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13.2 (2011) 92–109 [http://se17.bowdoin.edu/2011-volume-xiii-2 (accessed 16 January 2020)], and ‘Zirze ist keine Fable: Verworrene Grenzen in der Spätrenaissance’, in Fakt und Fiktion, Text in Kontext, eds U. Schneider and A. Traninger (Stuttgart 2010) 57–70; on fiction more broadly, see my Fait et fiction, pour une frontière (Paris 2016).

³ This knowledge spread across Europe with the publication of Sprenger and Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum in 1487. In France, its peak was certainly between the 1580s (Bodin, Démonomanie des sorciers, 1580) and 1620 (Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, 1612)

⁴ See, in particular, O. Pédeflous, ‘La traduction de l’âne d’or par Guillaume Michel (1517): une contribution à la poétique du roman au XVIe siècle’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 3.107 (2007) 515–535.

⁵ I have developed this inquiry in ‘Fictions en prose à la première personne (1585–1623)’, Études de langue et littérature françaises, Société d’Études de langue et littératures françaises de l’Université de Kyoto, 14 (2014) 69– 87.

⁶ Apuleio dell’asino d’oro, tradotto per messer Agnolo Firenzuola fiorentino (Venice, Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1550). The work was probably written in 1525 (D. Maestro, Opere di Agnolo Firenzuola (Turin 1977) 45).

⁷ F. Küenzlen, Verwandlungen eines Esels: Apuleius’ ‘Metamorphoses’ im frühen 16. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg 2005).

⁸ Agnolo Firenzuola, Discacciamento de le nuoue lettere, inutilmente aggiunte ne la lingua toscana (Rome, Lodovico Vincentino and Lautitio Perugino, 1524). As Riviello has shown, Firenzuola, along with Bembo and in opposition to Trissino, rejects the introduction of the Greek letters epsilon and omega, because the Italian language would have lost the clarity and simplicity it had inherited from Latin.

⁹ Apuleio dell’asino d’oro (n. 6, above); as Küenzlen notes, L’asino d’oro was the last Firenzuola work prepared and funded by Gerolamo. Does this mean he did not consider it to be his brother’s most important work? Did he fear censorship? See Küenzlen, Verwandlungen (n. 7, above) ch. 7.

¹⁰ Apuleio dell’asino d’oro. Tradotto per Agnolo Firenzuola (Florence, Filippo Giunta, 1598); Apuleio dell’asino d’oro. Tradotto per m. Agnolo Firenzuola fiorentino, Di nuouo ricorretto, e ristampato (Firenze, nella stamperia de’ Giunti, 1603; the colophon carries 1607, a date difference for which I have no explanation).

¹¹ See T. C. Riviello, ch. 1, ‘Agnolo Firenzuola and the intellectual life (early sixteenth century)’, in Agnolo Firenzuola: The Androgynous Vision (Rome 1986).

¹² This is not entirely true: Firenzuola also mentions his own life events—in particular the death of his beloved Costanza Amaretta—at the beginning of another book, written at the same time as L’asino d’oro: I Ragionamenti (1525, printed in 1548): Opere, ed. A. Seroni (Florence 1958) 37–184.

¹³ All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

¹⁴ A. D. Scaglione, ‘L’asino d’oro e il Firenzuola’, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 126 (1949) 230–31.

¹⁵ I am referring to the ‘Sacrificio pastorale’ by Agnolo Firenzuola (1540) in Opere (n. 12, above) 789–798.

¹⁶ F. Küenzlen gives many examples of these changes, see Verwandlungen (n. 7, above) 349–350.

¹⁷ Celso o Delle bellezze delle donne (1541), in Opere (n. 12, above) 525–596.

¹⁸ Delmo Maestri obviously misunderstood this passage in his critical edition of Firenzuola’s works in 1977 (Opere (n. 6, above) 462).

¹⁹ L’asino d’oro di Lucio Apuleio volgarizzato da Agnolo Firenzuola, con l’aggiunta della Novella dello sternuto tradotta da Matteo Boiardo (Milan 1863). The introduction is written by Marco Teoli.

²⁰ See Adriano Seroni’s claim in his introduction to Firenzuola’s works (Opere, n. 12, above).

²¹ In later editions (1598 and 1603–07), erotic passages are softened.

²² Pompeo Vizzani did publish a translation of the Metamorphoses in which he drew a parallel between Lucius’ story and his own life, but he did not replace Lucius with a character named Pompeo Vizzani: L’ asino d’oro di Lucio Apuleio filosofo platonico tradotto nuouamente in lingua volgare dal M. illust. sig. Pompeo Vizani nobile bolognese; et da lui con chiari argomenti ornato, & da motti dishonesti purgato (Bologna, Heredi di Gio. Rossi, 1607). This translation was published several times in Venice (1629, 1644, 1662, and 1704).

²³ For an updated definition of metalepsis, see J. Pier, ‘Metalepsis’, in The Living Handbook of Narratology, eds P. Hühn, J. Pier, W. Schmid, J. Schönert, J. Chr. Meister, and W. Schernus (Hamburg 2016) [http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/metalepsis-revised-version-uploaded-13-july-2016 (accessed 17 November 2019)].