Basiorum liber et Odarum liber (review)

This is the first of five planned volumes of the complete works of the Dutch Neo-Latin author Johannes Secundus, famous for the enormous success of his Basia long before Neo-Latin literature began to achieve some status in the modern academic world. Although Secundus did not live to see the first edition of this collection of love poems, its impact on poets throughout Europe — including some of the most famous, such as Ronsard and Du Bellay — has long been acknowledged. While Secundus did not invent the "kiss" genre, he was the first poet to create a unified cycle devoted to the theme.

The texts of the Basia and the Odae followed by Roland Guillot are based on the 1541 edition to be found in the Opera edited by the poet's two brothers. Unfortunately, the Latin is not always as accurate as it could be. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this. On 140 (Basium V, l. 9) we have the impossible reading "Asparans" instead of "aspirans"; on 144 the nonexistent monosyllable "ær" instead of "aër" (air, a disyllabic word required by the meter); on 152 "abste," with the preposition and pronoun run together, for "abs te," and so on. The French translation is on the whole accurate, but the variants are placed after the text rather than at the foot of the page, which makes comparison difficult, and the notes are more concerned with later imitations of the Basia than in providing a commentary on the poems. Indeed, this is a problem with the treatment of the Basia throughout the book. The ninety-four-page introduction devotes no fewer than forty pages to the influence of the poems on later French poets, whereas only six pages are given over to the history of the kiss poem before Secundus, despite a marked presence in French vernacular poetry (Clément Marot) as well as in French Neo-Latin poets (Jean Salmon Macrin, Nicolas Bourbon) before Secundus's own compositions. An appendix gives the full texts of most of the later French imitations.

There are other problems with the preparation of this edition. The index des noms de personnes does not give page numbers for each entry, only the sections of the book in which the names appear, which in the case of the introduction is, as already indicated, ninety-four pages. Similarly, there is a list of incipits also bereft of page numbers. Little care has gone into the layout of the book, with large numbers of blank pages that could have been avoided with a little more care. The bibliography is messy, and not always even in alphabetical order, and there are some important omissions, such as J. R. C. Martyn's edition of the Itineraria (in Humanistica Lovaniensia 42 [1993], 160-251), though the far older French translation by Georges Prévot (Revue du Nord, 9 [1923]) is included. As one might imagine from this general negligence, typographical errors abound.

In some ways, the edition of the twelve odes is more successful. Freed from the burden of the lyric poems' Nachleben, the editor is able to spend a little more time in commenting on the texts themselves.

However, in general terms, this edition is a disappointment, and an expensive disappointment at that. There is no doubt that a good edition of Secundus is needed, but this is not it. It is to be hoped that the editors will take more care with the remaining four volumes of this series.