Il Novellino: The hundred old tales

The Emperor Trajan was a most just lord. Going one day with his host of cavalry against his enemies, a widow woman came before him, and taking hold of his stirrup, said: Sire, render me justice against those who have wrongfully killed my son. And the Emperor answered: I will give you satisfaction when I return.

As we see, the versions are almost identical, and the similarity continues in about the same degree throughout the two versions of the same tale.

The opinion has been put forward that Francesco da Barberino had a hand in the shaping of the final collection of tales. This theory was advanced by Federigo Ubaldini in 1640. Adolfo Ancona, certainly one of the weightiest authorities on early Italian literature, is of the opinion that the Novellino was the work of one man. The matter is complicated by the existence of more than one manuscript.

The first edition of the tales was printed in Bologna in 1525 by Carlo Gualteruzzi of Fano under the title Le Ciento Novelle antike. In 1572, there appeared in Florence the Libro di Novelle et di bel Parlar Gentile, under the editorship of Monsignor Vicenzo Borghini. This latter edition differs considerably from the Gualteruzzian version, contains tales which do not appear in the earlier version and omits others contained therein. The discussions concerning the two versions soon began. But the authenticity of the Gualteruzzian version is now generally accepted, though the matter can by no means be considered as finally settled. Borghini in his edition seems to have sought to remove from the text all the moral and ascetic tales or those deriving from monkish or ecclesiastical sources. According to D’Ancona, the version of Borghini is an altered and much edited one, while the original edition of Gualteruzzi corresponds with the different codexes of the work, except in the case of the Codex Panciatichianus Palatinus, which has recently come in for accurate examination at the hands of Professor Sicardi, who has written a long essay prefacing his edition of the Novellino. Sicardi, it may be mentioned, holds by the theory of the plural authorship of the tales. A curious fact in connection with the early editions of the Hundred Old Tales is that it has been alleged that an earlier edition than that of Gualteruzzi published in Bologna in 1525 exists in England. It is supposed to have been offered for sale by a London dealer in first editions, and to have passed into private hands. I have not been able to verify the truth of the existence or not of this alleged early edition.

The manuscripts of the Cento Novelle Antiche are eight in number, and seven of them correspond with the editio princeps of Gualteruzzi. Only one, the Codex Panciatichianus, discovered by Wesselofsky, and published by Biagi in 1880, differs materially, and contains some thirty tales and proverbs which do not appear in either of the two principal editions of Gualteruzzi or Borghini.

The eight codexes are: the Codex Marciana, which is in Venice; the Vatican manuscript; while the other six are in Florence. Of these, one is in the Laurentian library, three are in the Palatine section of the National Library, while the remaining manuscripts are to be found in the Magliabechiana section of the same institute.

The tales contained in the Novellino divide themselves into sections. We have the Biblical stories founded on occurrences related in the Old Testament, and generally containing inaccuracies and alterations in the names and places of the characters referred to. This in itself, as may also be argued in the case of some of the tales deriving from the Greco-Roman sources, would seem to prove the popular origin of the collection. The unknown compiler took the oral story as he found it, even if it contained facts chronologically or historically at variance with the Biblical narrative. We have an instance of this in story number IV of the present collection, where, instead of the prophet Gad giving David the choice of punishments, an angel is made to appear and tell David that he has sinned. Again, in Novella XII, the compiler has mixed up the names of Joab and Aminadab, while in Novella XXXVI, the account of the second half of the tale is not according to the Biblical narration.

Another portion of the stories derive from French and Provençal sources and the Arthurian cycle is drawn on more than once. The story of how “The Lady of Shalot died for love of Lancelot of the Lake”, which is one of the most beautiful of the entire collection, is an instance in point. The Novelle telling of the Lady Iseult and Tristan of Lyonesse, and the short one numbered XLV are also from the Arthurian romance. Of probable Provençal origin are the tales concerning the Young King and William of Borganda, the tale of Messer Imberal del Balzo, and perhaps the two tales regarding Richard Cœur de Lion, as well as the story on the Doctor of Toulouse, that about Charles D’Anjou and “What happened at the Court of Puys in Provence”. Many of the tales are taken from French originals, such as those dealing with the Astrologers of France, with Messer Roberto di Ariminimonte (LXII), while it is possible that the stories dealing with the young King and Richard Cœur de Lion came from the French and not the Provençal. The novelle deriving from the knightly romances may also very well be of French origin.

Another section of the tales would appear to have their origins in the classics, and among these are the stories dealing with Trajan, Cato, Seneca, Socrates, Hector and Troy, Narcissus, Hercules, Aristotle and others.

A number are of oriental origin. Among these may be mentioned the novella treating of Prester John, of “the Greek kept in prison”, “How a jongleur lamented before Alexander”, “God and the Minstrel” and the last one in the book about the Old Man of the Mountain.

As the reader will see, the stories in this collection, which represent what is the oldest or almost the oldest work in prose in the Italian language, and the first book of stories in that tongue, have a very special and characteristic style of their own. Their language is the language of the beginnings of a culture, simple to the point of bareness, full of action, wisdom and wit. The narratives are the narratives of a man unused to word-spinning and still a mediæval person of action, a trifle afraid of the mystery of the written word, though probably almost a pedant in comparison with the illiterate world of his time. The language of the tales calls to mind very obviously the style of the Bible, or of the early Hellenic poems, though it is ruder than either. The very simplicity which is one of the charms of the narrative has its drawbacks or rather surprises, especially to modern minds accustomed to a more flexible and more elastic syntax. The personal pronouns have a curious way of getting mixed up in the Novellino. One feels that the story-teller has a perfect, even childish confidence in the reader’s interest, and as a matter of fact, the tales are so short and easily grasped that the doubt as to who is the particular “he” or “she” or “they” referred to is little more than a pedantic one. I have only altered these peculiarities of the prose where it has seemed necessary in order to allow the meaning to come through clearly, for certainly a great deal of the quality and charm of the book lies in its quaint style. To smooth this out overmuch, would certainly destroy the vigour of the original. Many of the tales, as I have said elsewhere, are common to many nations, and it is largely due to the strong if abrupt style of the narratives that they give us such a sharp sense of the period to which they belong.

To read the tales in the present collection provides a remarkable contrast with modern prose, which can never seem to say enough. The compiler or author, if so we may call him, of the Hundred Old Tales, eschews all psychology the meaning of which word he was ignorant of, and abstains from comment unless it be in the nature of moral comment. This latter, of course, comes from the older tradition of Latin tales to which books like the Gesta Romanorum and Disciplina Clericalis belong. But in this case, the moral is pointed out out of respect to the older tradition, from which the author could not quite shake himself free, writing, though he was, in a new idiom. These moralisings which conclude some of the tales, or are allowed to be understood, are more a tribute to the moral than the literary traditions of the times.

The beauty and dramatic effect of some of the tales is extraordinary. The version given of the Lady of Shalot and how she died for love of Lancelot is exquisite in its purity and tenderness. It is quite a little masterpiece of literature.

“The sail-less vessel was put into the sea with the woman, and the sea took it to Camelot, and drifted it to the shore. A cry passed through the court. The knights and barons came down from the palaces, and noble King Arthur came too, and marvelled mightily that the boat was there with no guide. The king stepped on to it and saw the damsel and the furnishings. He had the satchel opened and the letter was found. He ordered that it should be read, and it ran: ‘To all the Knights of the Round Table this lady of Shalott sends greetings as to the gentlest folk in the world. And if you would know why I have come to this end, it is for the finest knight in the world and the most villainous, that is my Lord Sir Lancelot of the Lake, whom I did not know how to beg that he should have pity on me. So I died for loving well as you can see’.”

It would be hard to surpass the pure simplicity of this even in verse. The language moves directly from fact to the written word. There is no hint of conscious colouring, no attempt to heighten the effect by a single adjective. Adjectives indeed are extremely rare in the Novellino, as in all good simple prose for the matter of that. The writer rarely departs from “very beautiful” or “most gentle” or “very rich”. As a rule, the tales are almost adjectiveless, and never are adjectives used to round out an effect or disguise an impoverished period. The rhythm of the tales, almost monotonous perhaps, yet wonderfully strong, moves surely from subject to predicate with the least possible adornment. Adornment, in fact, is not the word to use in this connection, for as such it does not exist. Such adjectival or adverbial phrases as are used are such as are only strictly demanded by the accompanying nouns or verbs. This, of course, is one of the characteristics of good literature in all ages, and especially is to be found in early classic prose.

A typical story of the Middle Ages is the dramatic, macabre tale of the knight who was charged with the custody of a hanged man, and found a substitute for the body which had been taken away by the dead man’s friends in the corpse of the husband of a woman to whom the knight makes love. The love scene which takes place at night by the grave-side of the woman’s husband whom she is desperately mourning is grim and picturesque indeed. We have to go to our own Border and Scotch Ballads to find anything similar. Though the tale is of ancient origin, and is to be found in Petronius, it has all the characteristics of awe, swift passion, gloom and mockery which we associate with the so-called dark ages. The little story outlines a drama of great gloom and power in a few rapid touches. The whole thing is told in some three or four hundred words, but the content is packed with action, and not a word is wasted in ornament or comment. If we take two or three of the lines of the tale individually, we see how rich in action and picturesqueness they are, though a chaster and more ascetic prose could hardly be used.