Poussin and Nonnos

• Autores: Malcolm Bull
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 140, Nº 1148, 1998, págs. 724-738
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Nonnos is thought to have lived in the fifth century A.D. and to have come from Panopolis in Egypt. His two surviving works make a curious pair, being a forty-eight book epic in Greek hexameters about the life of Dionysus, and, in the same metre, a paraphrase of the fourth gospel. Neither poem has enjoyed great renown. The Dionysiaca was unknown in the middle ages, and the manuscript came from Byzantium to Italy only in the fifteenth century. It was first published in 1569, and translated into Latin in 1605. In consequence, although the epic provided a comprehensive account of the life of Bacchus, including many stories not found elsewhere, it had a limited influence on artistic and literary culture in the early modern period and was sparingly used even by mythographers. The exceptions to this general neglect are mostly French. The Greek edition of the Dionysiaca, published in Antwerp in 1569, was almost immediately used as the basis for a complex decorative programme, designed by Jean Dorat and executed by Niccolo dell'Abate and his son, which celebrated the entry of Charles IX and Elizabeth of Austria into Paris in 1571.' It was in France too that the only vernacular translation appeared - Claude Boitet de Frauville's Les Dionysiaques; ou Les metamorphoses, les voyages, les amours, et, les advantures et les conquestes de Bacchus aux Indes, published in Paris in 1625.2 Unlike the Latin translation, this was a relatively accessible work written in straightforward prose without the Greek text or any critical annotation. Insofar as Nonnos ever found a wider audience it was through this edition.