Il sogno, and: La favola, and: Blandin di Cornovaglia (review)

In 2004, three medieval Catalan texts were newly edited and translated into Italian, becoming more easily accessible to scholars from fields beyond Catalan and Romance studies. Each edition, however, embodies a different stage in the comprehension of each text and its context, a point I think essential to bear in mind when approaching these works by means of their new Italian editions.

Bernat Metge's Lo somni is a masterpiece of the Catalan literary canon that has not yet received the international scholarly attention that other authors such as Ramon Llull, Joanot Martorell or Ausiàs March have. It has gone into twelve modern editions, though, and has been translated into French, Spanish (four times), English and now into Italian. Giorgio Faggin's translation is accompanied by Lola Badia's 1999 edition of the Catalan text, one that systematically normalizes the spelling according to the rules of modern Catalan. The volume includes a splendid introduction along with a selected bibliography by Professor Badia, a major scholar of medieval Catalan literature who has been studying Bernat Metge for over twenty years.

Bernat Metge worked during the last quarter of the fourteenth century as a court clerk for Queen Eleanor and the Infante and afterwards King John I of Aragon, of whom he became personal secretary. Lo somni, the last extant piece of Metge's career, is nothing less than a Ciceronian dialogue, full of borrowings from classical sources mediated by Petrarch and Boccaccio, and philosophical content. In his earlier works, Metge preferred an openly comic tone, the meter of romance narrative, the use of Middle Latin sources (Alain de Lille or Arrigo da Settimello), and translation into the vernacular. According to Badia, in spite of the sources Metge used to write Lo somni, he cannot be considered the first humanist in the Iberian Peninsula; unlike later figures such as Joan Margarit, Jeroni Pau or Ferran Valentí, his own ideological agenda had little to do with the novel Italian cultural, philosophical or political projects. The still-debated circumstances surrounding Metge's writing of Lo somni constitute its interpretative cruxes. King John I died suddenly on May 1396. Subsequently, Bernat Metge, along with other royal officials, was prosecuted for corruption, treason, immorality and religious indifference. Lo somni recounts how Bernat, the protagonist, falls asleep in prison and dreams that he is visited by John I, Orpheus and Tiresias. King John argues with Bernat about the immortality of the soul, swaying the latter's skeptical and Epicurean attitudes by his discourse and by his very presence, having come from Purgatory. The King also foretells Bernat's future freedom and makes it clear that it was God who had made him die suddenly to prove the iniquity of the enemies who had put Bernat in jail. Afterwards, Orpheus describes the kingdom of the devil, and Tiresias reprimands Bernat for having confessed to being a happy lover. Tiresias argues with Bernat about women and love until the protagonist wakes from his dream feeling weak, sad and distressed. Badia's introduction guides the reader through the present state of the scholarly debate on the interpretation of Lo somni, raising questions about the political purpose and effectiveness of the work, about whether the accusations against Bernat Metge were justified, and even as to whether the character Bernat was a transparent persona of the author.

Regarding Giorgio Faggin's translation, it has, as far as I can judge, brought the medieval Catalan words to the modern Italian reader successfully and with precision—usually respecting and reconstituting, for instance, the complex original syntax. On two occasions, though, some shades of the original meaning have been lost. After John I's first attempts to demonstrate the immortality of the soul (81), Bernat points out that some of these demonstrations would not be acceptable without faith. According to the translation, Bernat would admit that he relies on his...