[Julie Steiner]

NOTES ON THE POEM CHOICE:

Hmmm, a snippet from Orlando Furioso...I wonder whose this could be...

Obviously the dog-versus-fly scenario, which most audience members have probably witnessed firsthand, helps us to more vividly imagine the sea-monster-versus-knight-riding-a-winged-horse scenario, which (show of hands?) few have seen.

However, even the more ordinary scenario in the second stanza has an unexpected twist. Since our hero, Ruggiero, has been identified with the fly, readers are asked to take the pest's point of view--a perspective to which they are probably unaccustomed. Meanwhile, the reader's longstanding empathy for flies' victims sneakily extends from the beleaguered mastiff to the beleaguered sea monster, both of whom want the satisfaction of crushing what's stinging them. We now understand, and even somewhat feel for, the mindset of the monster, even though we still root for Ruggiero.

So, the familiar second stanza does more than just illustrate the fantastic first stanza; it makes our experience of both the mundane and the imagined more multi-dimensional.

I do wish the almanac-like discussion of what the various months are known for were a little less intrusive in the second stanza, but if Ariosto put it in there, the translator can't do much about it. And I guess that it does ground that bit more firmly in the realm of the audience's firsthand knowledge. Still....


NOTES ON THE TRANSLATION:

The smoothness of the rhyme and meter and the naturalness of the diction really help me to get lost in the story. "Integument" seems like an awfully high-register word, but I don't find it jarringly so; it helps that the high-register "adamant" in the preceding line has prepared us for it somewhat (and also that the surrounding language feels so effortless).

I'm loving the surprising stresses and pause of "keeping nearby, but out of harm's way – just" in the line before the snapping teeth. Since those final stresses are so dramatic, though, I think I'd prefer a return to straightforward meter in the next line, rather than "The dog's jaws make a futile snapping sound". Perhaps something like "The snapping teeth make such a futile sound". The jaunty spirit of the "happy hound" bit seems just right, even though it's a departure from the letter of the text.