I had not previously gone so far as to call him an epic poet; I had only considered him to be like the first of the grotesques; but after re-reading his work, I found him both sublime and pleasant, and I am now making a humble retraction. It is quite true that Pope Leo X published a bull in favour of Orlando furioso and declared that all those who spoke ill of this poem would be excommunicated. I would not wish to be excommunicated.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Epopée article
Almost two and a half centuries after Voltaire wrote the above article, the third and final version of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso was published at Ferrara in 1532.
It was during these two centuries that this work earned a universal reputation and became a major monument of Western literature.
So much so, that the demanding Lord of Ferney wrote of it, “Ariosto’s novel is so rich and varied, so plentiful in all manner of beauty, that after reading his work from cover to cover, on more than one occasion I have been overwhelmed by the desire to read it again”.
Voltaire, that contemptuous scoffer, bowed before “this wondrous work” without hesitation, which he placed on a par with the Iliad and the Odyssey, just below Don Quixote... |
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