L'occhio di Atteone: Nuovi studi su Giordano Bruno.

Michele Ciliberto. L'occhio di Atteone: Nuovi studi su Giordano Bruno.

Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002. xiv + 148 pp. index. bibl. [euro]20. ISBN: 88-8498-039-9.

Michele Ciliberto and Nicoletta Tirinnanzi. Il dialogo recitato: Per una nuova edizione del Bruno volgare.

Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002. xii + 172 pp. index. append. [euro]19. ISBN: 88-222-5129-6.

These books offer new perspectives on Giordano Bruno's thought and works. Of the two, I would judge Il dialogo recitato the more interesting and valuable to the Bruno scholar. L'occhio di Atteone covers some material known already to Bruno experts (although in a more detailed way) and introduces some new perspectives, especially to the literary scholar.

Following a preface and prologue (written by Ciliberto), Il dialogo recitato is divided into two parts. Part 1 consists of four chapters (the first three of which are written by Ciliberto and the last by Tirinnanzi). This part of the book is historical. It goes through the "fortuna" of Bruno's Italian dialogues, starting from the nineteenth century editions by Vittorio Imbriani and Paul de Lagarde to Giovanni Gentile's canon in the early twentieth century (especially 1907-08), thence to the new canon of the Italian dialogues by Giovanni Aquilecchia in the 1950s, and concluding with the new Italian editions that Ciliberto and his colleagues at the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento are producing at the turn of the twenty-first century. Part 2 of the book (three chapters, the first and third of which are written by Ciliberto) commences with a chapter on how Bruno's Italian dialogues may have been recited (and not simply read). This is followed by a chapter on how the new edition of the dialogues ought to be punctuated so that they will be in the dramatic reciting form that Bruno intended. The third chapter of part 2 discusses how and to what degree Bruno participated in correcting galleys of his dialogues. The situation was more complex than has previously been thought, as Bruno read only some galleys and the printers and other correctors themselves were not always proficient in Italian.

Part 2 is very exciting. For example, we can now actually imagine the dynamics of Bruno's voice--how he spoke and would have recited the dialogues to an audience. There is also an interesting contrast between the punctuation of Bruno's Italian dialogues, on the one hand, and of his Latin works (whose punctuation is similar to that of Machiavelli's Discorsi), on the other hand. The latter two were intended to be read while the former was intended to be recited, as part two argues. This is a reason why the new editors ought to keep Bruno's punctuation and reject the more "modernizing" punctuation of Aquilecchia's canon. In brief, the authors argue that the level of the strictly expressive should be preferred in the new editions to an "abstract level of authenticity" (117-18).

There are three appendices. The first presents a systematic table of errors and of publication variants contained in the redactions of Folio D of the Cena de le ceneri, placing in contrast the Neapolitan copy (N) with the version presented in the Trivulsian copy (T). It deals particularly with pages 371-83 (T) and 1535-47 (N). This table allows some understanding of the contrast of errors in the edited versions and puts in question what can be construed as the authentic text (115).

Appendices 2 and 3 contain Caelium Britannicum: A Masque at White Hall (18 Feb. 1633) by Thomas Carew and Ben Jonson's News from the New World Discovered in the Moon, presented at Court before King James in 1620. Both masques show the influence of Bruno's recited dialogues and how they were easily transformed into English recited and dramatic forms.

The overall lesson of Il dialogo recitato is that, given the fact that Aquilecchia's "modernized" version of Bruno's dialogues is not better in many ways than Gentile's 1907-08 canon based on principles of pronunciation and that it is also not preferable in important ways to La Garde's and Imbriani's of the nineteenth century, the new "recited" editing of Giordano Bruno's Italian dialogues by Ciliberto and his colleagues, whose guidelines are set forth in this book, is likely to be somewhat based on earlier editorial decisions than Aquilecchia's.

L'occhio di Atteone consists of four chapters. The first ("Tra disincanto e furore") was used, with another title, as the introduction to Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani (Milan 2000). The second essay ("Bruno e l'Apocalisse"), also with a different title, was published in Rinascimento, II s., XL (2000). The third and fourth chapters ("Il gioco degli occhi e del cuore negli Eroici furori" and "Sogno, ombra, dissimulazione: Variazione di una tema") were presented by Ciliberto at conferences in May 2000 and December 2001, at the Kunsthistorisches Institut di Firenze and the College de France, respectively. The latter will also be published in French.

The first essay surveys views of Bruno from his own time until the nineteenth century. He was condemned in 1600 as a "pertinacious and obstinate heretic." Others viewed him as a "man in full revolt" who decided to die for his convictions. By the time of the Risorgimento, the legend of Bruno as a "hero and martyr of free thought" had fully emerged. Between the time of his execution and the Risorgimento, many other views had been expressed. Pierre Bayle said that Bruno, unlike Giulio Cesare Vanini, had died only for the confusion of his ideas. Kepler (the only writer between 1600 and the nineteenth century, according to research I have done, who said that the Nolan was a Copernican) also said that Bruno died because he believed both in the inutility of all religions as well as in God's presence throughout the world. Marin Mersenne said that Bruno was one of the most perfidious men who have walked the earth. Tycho Brahe had little regard for Bruno and referred to him as "Giordano Nullano."

These views were naturally quite different from those that Bruno had of himself. He saw himself as the heroic philosopher in the Cena de le ceneri where he said that he was superior to Copernicus who was a mere mathematician while he, the Nolan, "has surmounted the air, penetrated the sky, wandered among the stars, opened the cloisters of truth,... loosed the tongues of the dumb ... and strengthened the lame." Such views of the heroic philosopher can thenceforth be found throughout all the Italian dialogues.

The second chapter discusses another view that Bruno had of himself--as Acteon. He is always "il furioso." Ciliberto especially concentrates on Gli heroici furiosi wherein the author as Acteon transforms himself from the hunter to the hunted--Diana, wisdom, Godlike. The third essay, again about Furori, focuses on Bruno's use of the Petrarchan imagery of the eyes and heart. This is of course not difficult to do, for Gli Eroic furori is infused with these terms on practically every page.

The last essay discusses variations on the theme of dream and shadow (drawn from Pindar's Le Pitche, 8:95-96). In this paper originally given before a French audience, Ciliberto draws from Bruno and also from L. B. Alberti (Momus), Machiavelli (Principe and Discorsi), Francesco Guicciardini (Ricordi), Shakespeare (Hamlet), Francois La Mothe Le Veyer (Dialogues faits a l'imitation des anciens), and from Pierre Charron (De la sagesse).

In this last essay and throughout the whole book, Ciliberto's vast learning on Bruno and on European literature is impressive. It is no wonder that Michele Ciliberto is a present leader of Brunonian studies as well as a wider spokesman for Renaissance literature throughout Europe. Both these books are of interest and are well worth reading by all scholars of Renaissance texts, philosophy, and literature.

EDWARD A. GOSSELIN

California State University, Long Beach, Emeritus