Recently Andrea Vitali has brought to my attention an article by a linguist discussing the stanza using the term bagatella cited by Muratori in his 18th century etymological examination, pasted by Ross at viewtopic.php?p=11028#p11028 and translated by Marco in the next post. Muratori dates it to Jacopone da Todi, around 1298:
Lassovi la fortuna fella
Travagliar qual bagattella
Marco has a translation of the whole poem, including the whole stanza for the lines Muratori quoted:
I leave to you wicked fortune
who acts like a bagattella:
whenever she seems most beautiful,
she slips away as an eel.
In the original:
Lassovi la fortuna fella
Travagliar qual bagattella
quanto più si mostra bella
come anguilla squizza via
The problem is that this version cannot be found anywhere earlier than 1617, in Le poesie spirituali del B. Iacopone da Todi frate minore [...] con le scolie, et annotazioni di Fra Francesco Tresatti, Venezia, Nicolò Misserini, 1617, p. 5. This information is from Alessandro Parenti, “Gherminella e Bagattella,”
Lingua Nostra, Vol. LXIX, Fasc. 3-4, Sept. -Dec. 2008. Parenti observes, as I translate him:
The text is certainly apocryphal and perhaps even fifteenth-century, if we trust the rubric that we read in a 15th century Palatine codex: ‘canticum actum Padue nono Kalendas Maij anno domini 1415.’
This codex seems to be the earlier of two manuscripts containing the poem, the one in Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze, Palatino XCVIII, c. 51v. From the end of the 15th or beginning of the 16th century, Parenti says. The ms. says the poem is from 1415. There it reads, Parenti reports, giving only the first two lines:
Lasso la fortuna bella / Travagliar sua baccatella
There is also another manuscript, this time in Verona, also inspected by Parenti (he does not say where in Verona, but it has the number CCCCLXIV and was published in Lettera settima del Padre Sorio a Pietro Fanfani, in L'Etruria, 1, 1851, pp. 679-87, on p. 685):
Lasso ancor fortuna fella/ travagliar sua bagatella.
"Lasso" is the same as "Lassovi", "I leave" but with the "to you" part tacitly understood, as it is a repeated opening.
Finally, there is a printed version online of 1514, which I add to the above
Lassove la fortuna fella
travagliare sua bagatella
quanto piu se monstra bella
come anguila squiza via
We do not need to be concerned about the variant spelling "baccattella" for "bagattela". This spelling is found also in the 15th and 16th centuries, meaning precisely the same as "bagattella", either as "trivial matter" or as "trick". (Just enter that spelling into Google. Two should come up.) But what does it mean in the poem? The common feature to all the pre-17th century versions is the word "sua" before "bagatella". If that is correct, then Fortune is not being compared to a bagatella, because, to take the oldest:
I leave [to you] beautiful fortune
to travagliare (act, perform, work, suffer) its bagatella/baccatella
the more it shows itself beautiful (i.e. the more it flatters and entices)
the more it slips away like an eel.
the bagatella is the result of Fortune's action, not something to which Fortune is being compared as an agent. It is the trick or trivial matter itself, not the one who works tricks or engages in trivia.
This is me speaking, not Parenti. Parenti thinks that the meaning is something else entirely, namely, that "bagatella" here means "puppet." He gets this from a Neopolitan-Italian dictionary of the nineteenth century (it is online). One of the meanings is puppet performances, and the puppets themselves. He also cites two other articles in
Lingua Nostra and a Milanese word he says is similar, although without citing any dictionary. In addition he asserts that the word "bugatt" means "puppet" as well as "doll", an assertion readily confirmed in online dictionaries. He relates it to the Provencale "bavastels" and "bagastels", meaning puppets and other equipment of that type of performer, from which also "baastels", which evolves into "bateleur" for the one who operates the "baastels".
"Theatrical performances" seems connected to another meaning of the word "bagatelle," especially in French: amusement. Circus parades are called bagatelle, so is a house dedicated to aristocratic parties: "La Bagatelle." There is also the type of musical composition called "bagatelle", i.e. an amusing little piece. Parenti cites an example where a character in Cervantes' book tells Don Quixote that "bagatella" in Italian means the same as "jugettes" in Spanish, that is. toys, playthings - of which Fortune could be said to make of people.
In that case Fortune in the pseudo-jacopine verse would be compared to a puppeteer, who makes her victim dash around nervously as her puppet. Well, it is possible, although I think "trick" fits best, as it is what the next two lines amplify. In any case we have to then ask, what about the card: did the title "bagatella" refer to the person or to what he did: sleight of hand, creation of illusions, tricks? Or maybe to the card rather than to what is depicted. For example, when the Sermo de Ludo says that "El Bagatella" is the "lowest of all", he seems to mean the card, not what is on the card, although perhaps what he says can be extended that far.
In this regard a stanza by Folengo is instructive, in the
Chaos di Triperuno, In the sonnet meant to incorporate the titles of the five cards Fortuna, Mondo, Temperantia, Stella, and Bagatella, he writes:
Questa Fortuna al Mondo è ‘n Bagattella, ‘
C’hor quinci altrui solleva, hor quindi abbassa.
Non è Temperantia in lei, però fracassa
La Forza di chi nacque in prava Stella.
(This Fortune is to the World a Bagatella,
who first lifts someone up, then brings him down.
There is no Temperance in her, so, she shatters
The Strength of anyone born under a bad Star.
Clearly Fortune is not being called Bagatella as an object produced, a trick or trifle, but rather a powerful agent of tricks, bringing people down just when they thought they had achieved success. Bagatella now names the actor rather than the object of the action, the one in Italian normally called the bagattelliere, as defined by the
Grande Dizionario della lingua italiana of the Crusca Academy, online:
Bagattiliere. sm. Disus. Giocatore di bagattelle; prestigiatore; imbonitore; burattinaio che intratteneva il pubblico per vendere la merce.
(Bagattelliere. masc. noun. Out of use. Player of bagattelle; slight of hand artist; salesperson (or barker or swindler); puppeteer who entertained the public to sell merchandise.)
Moreover, "Bagatella" in Ferrara or Venice seems to be used precisely like "bagatello" in Florence and Milan, and "Bagattino" in Bologna, referring to the person on the card as well as to the card itself.
On the other hand, the feminine form, to describe a trickster, is extremely rare, besides referring to the figure on the card, or something taken from the card. The philologist Ghinassi says ("Un dubbio lessicale di Baldassarre Castiglione, in Paolo Bongrani (ed,),
Dal Belcalzer al Castiglione: Studi sull’antico volgare di Mantova e sul Castiglione, Volume 5, Biblioteca Mantovana, L. S. Olschki, 2006, p. 277):
Bagattella, abbiamo detto, indica (almeno secondo le testimonianze in mio possesso) una 'cosa', azione o strumento, non l'uomo che agisce. Nelle mie ricerche non mi è mai capitato di imbattermi in un baga(t)tella che fosse nomen agentis. Colui che fa uno spettacolo di bagattelle o adopera. le bagattelle è un bagattelliere o un ma(e)stro di o delle bagattelle, non una bagattella.
(Bagattella, as we have said, indicates (at least according to the testimonies in my possession) a 'thing', action or instrument, not the man who acts. In my research I have never come across a baga(t)tella who was nomen agentis. He who makes a show of bagatelle or uses le bagattelle is a bagattelliere or a ma(e)stro of bagatelle, not a bagatella.)
The only exception he gives is Folengo. He uses "bagatella" metaphorically about Time, as something ephemeral and unstable in Baldus (XIV 145-153). Ghinassi says (p. 278). I suppose the same could be said about his "Fortune" metaphor in Triperuno (which Ghinassi does not mention). where there is a stronger sense of agency.
This post continued in the next post (it was too long to fit in one)