Obizzeide

Is the beginning of an epic poem in terza rima or tercet that dates back to the years between1503 and 1504 and was interrupted after the first 211 verses. Ludovico’s intention was to sing the praises of Obizzo d’Este, a forefather of the lords of Ferrara, tied to an ancestor of Ariosto’s, who had lived in the first half of the XIV century and who had served Philip the Handsome. The poet, perhaps shortly after he joined the court of Ippolito d’Este in October 1503, put together the draft for  the purpose of flattery, with the intent of celebrating l’arme e gli affanni d’amor (deeds and loves) of a House worthy of praise. At the heart of the work was the theme of court envy: a noble envy, dictated by a spirit of emulation, that we find again in Cinque Canti. Obizzo is given the honour of taking up a challenge made to the French king by an enemy knight. But this sparks the envy of another knight. Obizzo represents Italian honour, in oppositions to the offence and assaults of the enemy, and is the incarnation of a model of epic and dynastic hero typical of the world of late mediaeval nobility. From a structural point of view, the Obizzeide respects the traditional chivalrous structure, in the style of Boiardo, picked up again and expanded in the Furioso. The use of the tercet instead of the octave makes it however difficult to give the work the airiness needed for story-telling and gives the Obizzeide a broken, fragmented rhythm. The work is typical of that type of epic poetry that was written in exaltation of important Italian noble families, such as the Borsias by Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, a poem in Latin on the deeds of Borso d’Este. The poem’s interest, even if it is uncompleted, lies in the fact that it is a sort of poetic laboratory that is alternative and complementary to the Furioso, an experiment in the epic genre rather than the romance of chivalry, a sort of initial bench test for Ludovico’s narrative aptitude that then went a different way.