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I' VII II The Pseudo-Vespucci 1. FLAWS AND CRUDITIES AFT E R Magnaghi's studies, the authenticity of the reports attributed to Amerigo Vespucci-the Mundus Novus (August 1504) and the letter to Pier Soderini known in various reprints and translations as the Quatuor Navigationes (September 1504)-is generally rejected. They were drafted by some unknown and not very talented scholar in the early sixteenth century on the basis of the Florentine's few and sober original letters, and rushed into print to exploit the momentary thirst for information on the New World and the eternal hunger for tales of marvels and fantasy. The crudeness of the author's Latin, the naivety of some of his chronological patchwork, and his general tone, half boastful and half puerile, betray a man of little learning. Perhaps he also wanted to exalt Florence and Amerigo's four voyages to compare with Genoa and Columbus's four voyages . He certainly had no hesitation in spicing his story with scandalous and obscene details-for instance that the savages when they defecate "do everything not to be seen" whereas they urinate without restraint, even "while standing talking to us," and are quite unembarrassedl-anything, in fact, to add zest and piquancy to his work, which would richly deserve Vico's stinging definition: "tales of travelers seeking to make their books marketable with monstrous details." 2 In short his work is something more akin to a popular adventure story than a deliberate and calculated scientific forgery. Oviedo, who did in fact know and admire "the learned Amerigo, who was a great seafarer and a learned cosmographer," 3 does not appear ever to have used the reports attributed to him, which in 1513 were already viewed with skepticism 1. Bandini, op. cit., p. 12. 2. Giambattista vico, La Scienza Nuava (Bari, 1911-16), I, 174. Magnaghi (Vespucci [19261. p. 28) describes the work as "crammed with contradictions and crude errors." 3. Hist., XX, I: II, 9b. Humboldt's statement that "Oviedo nowhere mentions Amerigo Vespucci" (Examen critique, IV, 278) is explained by the fact that he was only acquainted with the first nineteen books of Oviedo's Histaria (I, 134n), the others having remained unpublished until 1851-55. Thus the argument that Humboldt deduced (IV, 133-34, and V, 188-89) from Oviedo's supposed "silence" on the priority of the discovery of the South American continent ceases to apply. 45 46 FROM COLUMBUS TO VERRAZZANO by the scholarly world.4 Oviedo, who was scrupulous about citing his sources and refers to numerous other chroniclers of the period, never mentions any of Vespucci's writings and only quotes him in connection with the latitude of Cape St. Augustine. Nor is it likely that he deliberately ignores them out of any proColumbian and therefore anti-Vespuccian sentiments (the long-lasting quarrels between the supporters of the two explorers are well known) 5 since, as we have seen, he recalls the Florentine with profound respect. One might at most conjecture that he was displeased at the pseudo-Vespucci's insistence on speaking of a new world, in reference to the lands that Oviedo claimed to have been known to and owned by the mythical prehistoric monarchs of Spain; and he might well have been even more offended by the gross inaccuracies in what claimed to be an original description of the nature and natives of America. Meanwhile the glory of the name of America, spreading throughout the civilized world, cast a reflected glow on the writings attributed to the first legitimate bearer of that name. The growing fame of the continent lent greater credence to Amerigo's accounts. What better source of information on the new lands than the reports by the person who had-albeit involuntarily-given them their name? The Mundus Novus and the Letter of Amerigo Vespucci on the Islands Newly Discovered in Four of His Voyages were therefore read avidly, reprinted, and translated: they raced across Europe, and traces of them are found in Thomas More, Erasmus, and the French poets of the Pl€iade. At the end of the eighteenth century Jefferson was still using them in his polemic against Buffon. 2. ENTHUSIASM FOR AMERICA If they are therefore of no value whatsoever as a "source" for the knowledge of nature in America, they do have a value, indeed considerable value, for the history of the legend of the New World. In outline, in fact, the pseudoVespuccian account depicts America as splendidly new, bursting...

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