'Soft bastard latin' : Byron and the attractions of Italian

Abstract

Byron's ear for language and for languages is well attested. For Italian, in particular, he had a special affection, cultivated from an early stage in life when he was still living in England. As Peter Vassallo has shown in detail and as Andrew Nicholson has conclusively demonstrated by his editorial work, 'Byron was able to read Italian long before he set foot in Italy.' This knowledgeable interest is demonstrated by the books catalogued for auction in 1816 which included Italian dictionaries, a grammar, Zotti's Italian Vocabulary and Graglia' s Guide to Italian (1803 ). His knowledge of the language both led to and was increased by his reading of Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Bembo and Metastasio (all claimed as early as his 1807 reading list) and his engagement with Italian history; in tum, this familiarity with Italian must have helped him to advise on Leigh Hunt's The Story of Rimini (which was based on the Paolo and Francesca episode in Canto V of Dante's Inferno, and which Byron greatly admired for its 'originality-& ltalianism' ). It provides an explanation for the fact that the opening epigraph of his narrative poem The Corsair (taken from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata) and the epigraphs to each of its three cantos (all taken from the Paolo and Francesca episode) are couched in untranslated Italian. It also suggests why he was able to explain a flirtation with a singer at the Italian Opera in terms which were unmistakeably, if comically, linguistic: 'whenever Italian is spoken I always strive to repair ye inroads want of practice make[s] in my memory of that dearest of all languages. ' And perhaps a shared interest in Italian was one of those factors which drew him, surprisingly, to a friendship with Leigh Hunt. [excerpt]