Error

Ariosto’s universe as it emerges from the Furioso is constantly menaced by error. Right from the earliest octaves, when the poet talks about Orlando’s unexpected separation from Angelica upon return to France, we find a most eloquent maxim: ‘ecco il giudicio uman come spesso erra!’ (Orlando furioso, I, VII, 2). The ‘giudizio’ or power of judgement of men is limited, imperfect, and subject to mistakes. Error is closely linked to the idea of the wonderings of the knight errant, taken up in a spiral motion, caught up in a ‘quest’ that has no end. The plurality of situations, moments and gestures enacted by the knights are marked by the unforeseeable dominance of error. Together with folly, which constantly puts at risk the coherent proceeding of the characters, subjected to an insidious deviation, error also endangers the characters’ ability to plan rationally, conditions the heroic values which ought to be the knights’ inspiration, puts at risk the seeking and maintaining of honour.  The incessant pursuit of a desire, that has illusory aspects, obliges these men to  go through a network of fictions dominated by error and the errant, the false certainty, the non coincidence of different desires, the eternal possibility of ‘deviation’. A further passage that gives us the opportunity of verifying the importance of the reiteration of judgement/error can be found in Furioso, X, 15, a propos of the apparent attitude of pity of the traitor Bireno towards the daughter of the king of Frisia, whom he is in love with: ‘Oh sommo Dio, come i giudicii umani / spesso offuscati son da un nembo oscuro!’.