The Sibyl of the Apennines - La Sibilla Appenninica

Translator's note

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

In the 12th century the Sibillini mountains were subject to an ongoing territorial dispute between Ascoli and Norcia. This lack of settled government allowed witches and necromancers to thrive, much of their occult activity being centred on the Lago di Pilato. Local legend claimed that, having been condemned to death in Rome, Pilate’s body was taken in a cart drawn by oxen to the Sibillini and hurled into the lake which now bears his name.

The mountains themselves take their name from the Sibyl who was reputed to inhabit that part of the Apennine chain. Her origins can be traced, via mediæval folklore and Roman legend, to ancient Greece five centuries before Christ. The Sibyl was annexed by Christianity in the declining years of the Roman Empire via the new religion’s reinterpretation of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue. The poem describes the Sibyl prophesying that a new Golden Age will be heralded by the reappearance of a virgin and the birth of a child. In reality Virgil’s poem is a puff for his patron, the Consul Gaius Asinius Pollio, rather than a prediction of the birth of Christ.

This book contains an English translation of two fifteenth century texts devoted to the Apennine Sibyl. The earlier of the two pieces, Guerrin detto il Meschino, was written by Andrea da Barberino around 1410 and first printed in 1473. Its central story - an extended sojourn in a magical kingdom - is widespread in European folk tales and literature. The Tannhäuser ballads and Thomas the Rhymer are, respectively, German and English examples from the Middle Ages, and Keats made use of it in La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Similarly, an extensive episode from the 12th century Irish narrative Acallam na Senórach, describing the warrior-poet Oisin’s three hundred year sojourn with Niamh, the daughter of a sea god, forms the basis of Yeats’s poem The Wanderings of Oisin.

Guerrin belongs to the Carolingian group of chivalric tales whose subject matter is linked, however loosely, to Charlemagne. The other important mediæval cycle was the Breton, to which, incidentally, Chaucer pretended his Franklin’s Tale belonged. Although not rated highly as literature Guerrin’s influence can be seen in books which are, notably Ariosto’s early 16th century masterpiece, Orlando Furioso. Guerrin can also be seen as a precursor of the 17th century Spanish picaresque tale, the ancestor of such 18th century novels as Moll Flanders and Roderick Random. And its basic conceit, a physical journey which is also a journey of self-discovery, a search for identity, underpins a fair number of 20th century novels - Joyce’s Ulysses pre-eminent among them. Guerrin was very popular, being reprinted at regular intervals from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. The highly episodic tale sprawls over eight volumes, of which only Volume Five, containing the account of Guerrino’s meeting with the Sibyl, is translated here. However, to set the story in context the first four books are briefly summarised in the Prelude, and Books VI to VIII in the Epilogue.

Andrea del Castagno, La sibilla cumana, Firenze, Villa Carducci di Legnaia

Unlike Barbarino’s tale, Le Paradis de la Reine Sibylle is not a work of fiction. Antoine de La Sale’s book describes a journey he made to the Sibillini mountains in 1420 and recounts the legends he heard about the Sibyl. Le Paradis is dedicated to Agnes, Princess of Burgundy, sister of Philip the Good and wife of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, and was later incorporated into La Salade, a textbook of the studies necessary for a prince. De la Sale was the illegitimate son of a French nobleman but spent much of his adult life in Italy. During his late thirties and early forties he was tutor to René of Anjou’s son, John II, Duke of Lorraine, for whom he wrote La Salade. Unlike Barberino, he enjoys some literary repute thanks to his chivalric tale Le Petit Jehan de Saintré written in 1456.

If you read Italian you will notice that my translation of Guerrin is fairly faithful to Barbarino’s text. However, I have attempted to reflect Guerrino’s deep-rooted insecurity by endowing him with an ideolect which is occasionally jarringly anachronistic. It is also internally inconsistent - sometimes he speaks like the cultured gentleman he has become at other times like the miserable slave he once was. One is reminded of the Oxford-educated Margaret Thatcher lapsing into Lincolnshire dialect - ‘frit’ instead of ‘frightened’ - during Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. There is no real English equivalent of ‘meschino’, comprehending as it does both ‘mean’ or ‘small-minded’ and ‘wretched’ or ‘unhappy’. I chose to translate ‘meschino’ as ‘hapless’ because although it means ‘unfortunate’, being a near homonym of ‘hopeless’ lends it that word’s contemptuous associations. And, lastly, it is slightly archaic, putting it out of kilter with the language of the rest of the translation just as Guerrino is something of a misfit in the world which he inhabits.

I would strongly recommend purchasing the beautifully illustrated guide published by the Club Alpino Italiano, Parco Nazionale dei Sibillini: Le Più Belle Escursioni, if you intend visiting the Sibillini Mountains. Although the guide is in Italian it comes with a supplement containing an English translation of the complete text. Its forty-three itineraries include the route to the Lago di Pilato (Route 3) and that taken by Guerrino in his journey to the Sibyl’s Cave (Route 17). Finally, to remind you of your visit, and to conjure up the atmosphere of Barberino and De la Sale’s stories, the Macerata based group, Ogam, have issued a CD called Il Regno della Sibilla. Further details of the recording can be found on the web at h***:://www.artenomade.com/.

James Richards, Montefalcone Appennino (FM)