Potpourri

Born in Ferrara, in 1474, Lodovico Ariosto lived there and composed his labyrinthine Orlando Furioso for Ferrara’s ruling family, the Este. During its four-hundred-year existence it has been translated into many languages, but the Anglo-American reading public is not so familiar with it as are Romance language readers. There is no first-rate translation of it in English, nor are there editions easily accessible in good type and format.

An intricate romantic love story set within a confusing saga of Saracen and Christian wars for the possession of Europe in Charlemagne’s day, the poem is a complex of high-flown versification, Renaissance conceits, abstruse history and mythology, convoluted subplots, and involved allegorical compliments to patrons and patrons hoped for. To readers who revel in the esoteric and to omnivorous poetry lovers, it brings a delight similar to that of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. But to the general reader it remains a lost literary world or, at best, a curious echo. Ariosto left his impress upon the main stream of English letters — the Elizabethans knew him well— but today his Furioso remains literally a closed book. Its legends have become children’s stories. Bulfinch gathered them into his Legends of Charlemagne; even he failed to integrate them into tales as beautiful and exciting as the Arthurian cycles.

Fragonard, the glove merchant’s son who became the favorite decorator-painter of the pre-Revolution French court, made some 137 drawings for Orlando Furioso. These drawings, extraordinary examples of the light, movement, textures, and fantasy which have made Fragonard famous, are more than excellent illustrations of Orlando’s exploits: through their numerous details, they permit a comprehensive look into the eighteenth-century mind. Orlando, his lovely Angelica, and all Charlemagne’s paladins are, naturally, more rococo than early Gothic. Orlando’s hand outstretched for vengeance conjures up romantic eighteenth-century France and the elaborate court of a Louis rather than Ariosto’s robust Renaissance Italy or Charlemagne’s medieval land. These drawings are, however, unique both as works of art and as inadvertent historical documents.

Fragonard Drawings for Ariosto is not only an art and publishing event but an occasion of literary importance. The volume contains three explanatory essays, bibliographies, ample quotations from the Furioso (unfortunately most of these are in Italian), and notes. “Fragonard the Draughtsman,”by Elizabeth Mongan of the Rosenwald collections, is outstanding. Her e. say blends sound art criticism, a concise account of Fragonard’s life, and a brief but memorable glimpse of his times. Technical experts rarely write readable prose; Elizabeth Mongan’s prose is not only readable: it has a distinctive style.

A ten percenter is an agent — that is, a person who arranges the employment of other persons who then pay him ten per cent of their earnings. The designation has been specially employed for theatrical, literary, lecture, and concert agents. But when a ten percenter becomes genuine big time, when he becomes a manager who arranges — and perhaps subsidizes — long tours, he usually gets more than ten per cent (some lecture agents get as much as sixty per cent) and he is then an impresario. In the concert-dance world, S. Ilurok is doubtless the world’s leading impresario. Now in his memoirs, succinctly titled Impresario, he tells all — or almost all — about how he got that way. He tells the story, but Ruth Goode, a ghost sensibly materialized for all to see as part author, probably wrote most of it down.

Impresario is not literature, nor does it pretend to be. It is a fluctuating chronicle of. temperament (mostly artistic), and extravagance (mostly emotional), and makebelieve. It belongs to that special department of letters, memoirs, for which the only criteria are how much the autobiographer tells, how well he tells it, and how important to the reader is what he tells. These memoirs are diverting despite pedestrian writing, because the people they portray are fascinating — and Sol Hurok has seen them at their most unusual. The celebrities here have been Hurok’s life; he has been theirs. The result is revealing, full-length, backstage portraits of Pavlova, Chaliapin, Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, Marian Anderson, Shan-Kar, the Ballet Russe, the Ballet Theatre, and all the others Hurok has managed. But even more impressive is Hurok’s personal story — how an obscure immigrant from a remote Russian village arrived in this country, a few rubles in his torn pocket, and within two decades became one of our most potent cultural forces. That makes heartening reading.

Louis Diat is chef at New York’s Ritz-Carlton. Some forty years ago he came, from years of experience at the London and Paris Ritzes, to the Manhattan caravansary. But even before his culinary endeavors in those kitchens, he had become food-wise in the Bourbonnais kitchens of his mother and grandmother. They, too. were famous cooks. But they did not write books. On a busman’s holiday, Monsieur Diat wrote Cooking a la Ritz. It revealed some of the Ritz’s most famous gastronomieal secrets, and it was a great success. Now he has written a Home Cookbook — you can too cook Ritz.

There is a special delight in reading cookbooks. This pleasure is intensified when the books offer something extra in the way of amusing writing. M. F. K. Fisher’s cookbooks and Richardson Wright’s stand high in kitchen lit erature. For the charm with which Louis Diat presents his early cooking adventures and the economical good sense with which he generally introduces his recipe groups, his Home Cookbook deserves to stand beside Miss Fisher’s and Mr. Wright’s volumes. There is a brief but pointed introduction by Monty Woolley, former college professor and hard-working gourmet.

The publishers assert that the book is the answer to the prayers of inexperienced or hasty cooks. But you had better not set about whipping up a Lobster a l’Armnricainc unless you have a long day to spare and twenty-two ingredients including olive oil (almost impossible to get), four tablespoons butter (almost equally difficult), and a few other delectables which the publishers assure us are “available to American housewives.” I have, however, enjoyed Monsieur Diat’s cookbook as much as I have, on occasion enjoyed his cooking, even if I don’t agree with his publisher’s blurbs. There are six hundred recipes, all interesting to read.