565 The Lies of Poets: Literature as Fiction in the Italian Renaissance Stefano Jossa i P oets lie, it is well known. Vladimir Nabokov used to say that poetry was born when men first lied: Do you know how poetry started? I always think that it started when a cave boy came running back to the cave, through the tall grass, shouting as he ran, “Wolf, wolf,” and there was no wolf. His baboon- like parents, great sticklers for the truth, gave him a hiding, no doubt, but poetry had been born – the tall story had been born in the tall grass. 1 Many centuries earlier, Aristotle had praised Homer for teaching other poets how to lie: “Above all, Homer has taught others the proper way of telling lies.” 2 Renaissance poets seem to have followed Homer’s path. However, their novelty lies in that they question poetry’s truthfulness within poetry itself. The first poet who did so was Ludovico Ariosto, who in Canto XXXV of his Orlando furioso, first published in 1516, had St. John the Evangelist raise the issue of poetry’s truthfulness. Astolfo and St. John are on the moon to recover Orlando’s mind, which he has lost because of his mad love for Angelica; there they find all the things that men lose and waste on the earth. One of these is poetry, which is unreliable because it is made of lies. When questioned by Astolfo about the reason why poetry is there, St. John the Evangelist explains: 1. Vladimir Nabokov, in The Listener, 22 November 1962, pp. 856–858. 2. Aristotle, Poetics, 1460a19, trans. Hamilton Fyfe, London and New York 1927, p. 99. Click to buy NOW! P D F - X C h a n g e V i e w e r w w w . d o c u - t ra c k . c o m Click to buy NOW! P D F - X C h a n g e V i e w e r w w w . d o c u - t ra c k . c o m