Читать книгу Gian Vittorio Rossi's Eudemiae libri decem - Группа авторов - Страница 12

RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s first publications date to the early 1600s and were printed in Rome under his real name, Ioannes Victorius Roscius: Orationes novem (Luigi ZanettiZanetti, Luigi, 1603); Oratio de Christi Domini ascensu (Guglielmo FacciottiFacciotti, Guglielmo, 1604); and De diuturna aegrotatione toleranda oratio (Carlo Vullietti, 1605).1 In 1629 he published a collection of poems in Viterbo titled Rime spirituali, also under his real name (this time in the vernacular), Giovanni Vittorio de’ Rossi. This was the last work Rossi would publish in Italy.

After he had retreated to private life upon the death of Cardinal Peretti di Montalto in the early 1620s,2 RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio began writing a series of humorous vignettes, often poking fun at people in his literary circle behind pseudonyms. These stories apparently delighted his friends, who encouraged him to publish them.3 By 1631, as indicated in a letter to Giovanni Zaratino CastelliniCastellini, Giovanni Zaratino, Rossi was actively in search of a dedicatee: “I could publish [my satire] with a dedicatory letter to you and, to the best of my ability, gain honor for you and praise for myself.”4 We know that Castellini declined this offer because Rossi wrote to him again three years later, informing him that the bookseller Giovanni Battista TamantiniTamantini, Giovanni Battista, whom he refers to by the pseudonym ThaumantinusThaumantinus (Giovanni Battista Tamantini),5 was supposedly going to help him get his as-yet-still-unpublished novel printed in Venice.6 No Venetian edition ever materialized. Instead, looking back in a 1646 letter to Kaspar SchoppeSchoppe, Kaspar, Rossi explained the circumstances by which Eudemiae libri VIII finally came to be published by the ElzeviersElzeviers (firm) in Leiden:

One day my bookseller friend7 came to me with John BarclayBarclay, John’s ArgenisArgenis, which I was eager to take a look at. Jokingly, I said to him: “I also have a book that is not too different from this.” Then he said, “Give it to me, I want to read it.” I gave it to him straightaway, thinking that I would never want it back. But hardly two years had passed from that meeting with him when he showed me the book, which I thought had met a bad end, having been published in Leiden.8

Unlike his earlier works printed in Italy, Eudemiae libri VIII was the first of many books RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio would publish under his pseudonym, Ianus Nicius Erythraeus.9

After its publication in Leiden, Eudemia libri VIII circulated in Northern Europe, where it came to the attention of Fabio Chigisee Alexander VII, Pope, who had been named Papal Nuncio to Cologne in 1639. Indeed, an early biography of Chigi indicates that the bishop was always eager to read things that were new, unique, and interesting.10 Chigi knew RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio from when they had met in 1626 at a meeting of the Accademia degli Umoristi, which the former had the opportunity to attend when he moved to Rome from Siena to embark on his ecclesiastical career—and it probably did not hurt that Chigi himself appears in Book Three of Eudemia as a noble young man named TyrrhenusTyrrhenus (Fabio Chigi) attending a meeting of a literary academy.11 Chigi’s delight in reading Eudemia prompted him to write to Rossi in April of 1641, saying, “Your Eudemia recently came into my hands among the many other books that arrived from Holland.”12 This letter initiated a friendship and correspondence between Chigi and Rossi that lasted until Rossi’s death in 1647.

By the early 1640s RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio had found himself with few avenues to publishing. Because of Eudemia’s rocky reception in Italy (about which more later), Roman—and presumably Italian—printers were no longer willing to publish his works, and Rossi remained dissatisfied with a 1642 French edition of his Dialogi that Gabriel NaudéNaudé, Gabriel had arranged to be printed in Paris, complaining that it was full of errors.13 Encouraged by Chigi’s enjoyment of his satire, Rossi took Naudé’s advice and asked the bishop for help in publishing his collection of imagines (biographies), which he titled Pinacotheca imaginum illustrium.14 Chigi found Pinacotheca worthy of publication and assigned the task of finding a printer to the German priest and scholar Barthold NihusNihus, Barthold, who worked as an editor for both the ElzeviersElzeviers (firm) and Joan BlaeuBlaeu, Joan.15

For their part, the ElzeviersElzeviers (firm) were open to publishing Pinacotheca. Eudemia libri VIII had proven to be a commercial success, and they were already sitting on a second edition of the novel, which the author had augmented by two books. As NihusNihus, Barthold informed Chigi, however, their presses were busy with other projects for the following seven months, so they would not be able to get started on it right away.16 BlaeuBlaeu, Joan had more capacity to begin immediate production, prompting Nihus to select him for the project, with the arrangement that the biographies would be published under the name of the Cologne-based printer Cornelius ab EgmondtEgmondt, Cornelius ab.17 Pinacotheca—with its lively biographies of priests, poets, theologians, scientists, philosophers, and artists, who lived between the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century—remains the work for which RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio is still best known.18 Blaeu himself published three volumes of Pinacotheca over five years, and new editions of the work continued to be published into the eighteenth century, the final one in 1729.19

Much to BlaeuBlaeu, Joan’s satisfaction, Pinacotheca proved to be a bestseller20; so much so that, by April 1644, NihusNihus, Barthold informed Chigi that Blaeu was more than willing to publish all of RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio’s works.21 By the end of that same year, Blaeu had nine of Rossi’s works in production: the first and second edition of Exempla virtutum et vitiorum; another press run of Pinacotheca, as well as a second edition titled Pinacotheca altera; a religious work titled Documenta sacra ex Evangeliis; an expanded collection of dialogues titled Dialogi septendecim; a collection of letters from Rossi to his friends and acquaintances titled Epistolae ad diversos; a collection of Rossi’s letters to Fabio Chigisee Alexander VII, Pope titled Epistolae ad Tyrrhenum; and the second, augmented edition of his novel, Eudemiae libri decem. As was stated earlier, this last was supposed to have been published by the ElzeviersElzeviers (firm), but they never seem to have got around to it. In fact, as late as January 1644, Nihus was still informing Chigi that the Elzeviers were intending to print the second edition, but their presses continued to be unavailable.22 No explicit reason is given for this slow-walking of the second edition by the Elzeviers, whether their presses truly could not accommodate it, or whether they were reluctant to publish the work a second time based on the mixed reception of the first edition. In any case, by October of 1644 Eudemia was on Blaeu’s presses—but not without editorial intervention by Nihus to remove a few questionable passages.23

The collaboration among RossiRossi, Gian Vittorio, Chigi, NihusNihus, Barthold, and BlaeuBlaeu, Joan resulted in the publication of more than fifteen titles, from 1643 to 1649, some of which remained popular and continued to enjoy new editions into the first half of the eighteenth century.24 Until now, the only edition of Eudemia to be issued in print after Blaeu’s was Johann Christian FischerFischer, Johann Christian’s 1740 Eudemiae libri decem, editio novissima, which includes a preface that reconstructs the work’s publication history based on Rossi’s letters. In 1998 the University of Kentucky’s Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures published an online version of the Latin text of Eudemia libri decem in Retiarius: Commentarii Periodici Latini, its archive of Neo-Latin texts. This online version includes notes by Jozef IJsewijnIJsewijn and a preface by TerenceTerence TunbergTunberg, Terence.25 In 2006 Gian Piero MaragoniMaragoni, Gian Piero published a sample critical edition and translation, into Italian, of Eudemia Book One.26 To my knowledge, the present edition is the first translation, into any language, of Eudemiae libri decem in its entirety. It includes notes to both the Latin and the English texts, the former primarily indicating where Rossi is quoting from other authors, and the latter explaining Classical and contemporary historical and cultural references. The identities behind the pseudonyms of this roman à clef are found in Appendix A.

Fig. 3:

Iani Nicii Erythraei Eudemiae libri VIII. [Leiden]: [Bonaventure and Abraham ElzevierElzevier, Abraham], [1637]. Image courtesy of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Fig. 4:

Iani Nicii Erythraei Eudemiae libri decem. Coloniae Ubiorum [i.e., Amsterdam]: Apud Iodocum Kalcovium [i.e., Joan BlaeuBlaeu, Joan] [1645]. Image courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.