Aretino's Dialogues (review)

Be warned! Aretino's Dialogues (Ragionamento and Dialogo, also called Sei Giornate) are obscene, and, in my view, darkly so. English translations of them are a relatively recent phenomenon: anonymous Paris 1889; Samuel Putnam Illinois 1926; anonymous, but perhaps based on Lisieux's French version of 1882, Odyssey Press, 1970 and other private presses. I found the first edition of Putnam, who has a critical and biographical essay headed 'Pietro Aretino, poison-flower of the renaissance', not in the British Library catalogue, but advertised in an antiquarian's 'Erotica & Sexology' list. Putnam (died 1950) preceded Raymond Rosenthal (died 2005) as an American translator of Romance languages. The latter was particularly known for his translations of the works of Primo Levi.

Rosenthal's translation (from the best critical edition, by G. Aquilecchia) was first published in 1971. It was republished in 1994, and in this new edition remains the only modern English translation of these works. Rosenthal's original Preface (enlarged in 1994) has been made an Afterword, and its place has been given to Alberto Moravia's review (1972). This review says little about the translation itself, but evaluates Aretino, 'the perfect son of his century' (p. viii), who deals with sex by 'holding it at arm's length and laughing at it' (p. ix). He was not the satirist or moralist he has been dubbed in his excuse, but an 'extraordinary storyteller' implicated in the decadence and corruption he so vividly describes (p. ix).

Margaret Rosenthal's new Introduction raises the issues of satire and pornography again, setting Aretino in his cultural and historical setting – 'Rome Babylon' before the Sack and the Venetian republic after it. Anyone who wants a lighter excursion to this world might try Sarah Dunant's best-seller In the Company of the Courtesan (Virago, 2006). Not only is The Ragionamenti the first item of Dunant's bibliography, but their author himself, scourge and guide of courtesans, is a leading character in her novel. Margaret Rosenthal provides an excellent guide to modern scholarship on Aretino's erotic writing.

The edition provides other aids such as an up-to-date bibliography and a Chronology. It is a pity that some misprints remain: read 'attack of' p. xxiv n. 19, Priapea p. 4, Capranica p. 209, exaudi p. 210. For the general reader, some minimal notes explaining historical and literary references would also be welcomed.