Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

The Inner World of the Pastoral 127
and kids. These alterations, however, are only adaptations that change the surface
of the poetry, not the substance. Again, Virgil uses the pastoral to investigate
the nature of poetry and the genre, and Sannazaro uses the pastoral to
investtigate that same, now ancient, poetry. As in the classical tradition, the first
Piscatoria is programmatic, and an investigation of its themes and forms will
reveal much about the whole cycle of poetry.
Sannazaro’s first Ecloga is a dirge, a poem in which Lycidas—here a fisherman
rather than a shepherd—mourns the loss of his beloved Phyllis, closely
paralleling Virgil’s fifth Bucolica, in which Mopsus laments the death of Daphnis.
Such lamentations were a central topos of the pastoral, so Sannazaro’s
choice of mourning as a theme is firmly set in the pastoral tradition. Like
Virgil’s Eclogue V, Sannazaro’s involves a dialogue between two poets; again,
this is squarely within the Virgilian pastoral tradition—a dialogue provides a
dialectic method to reach a consensus on the defining characteristics of pastoral
verse, a question that particularly interested Sannazaro. Even though the first
Piscatoria is closest in theme to Virgil’s fifth Ecloga, the first allusion to
Virgilian poetry in the Piscatorial Eclogues is to Eclogue I (Mustard, 1914).
Mirabar, vicina, Mycon, per litora nuper / Dum vagor (Sannazaro 1.1-2)
Mirabar quid maesta deos Amarylli vocares (Virgil 1.1.36)
Sannazaro begins his poem with an address by Lycidas to a fellow fisherman: “I
was wondering, Mycon. . .why the raven should be calling after me more than
his wont, and why the dripping wildfowl. . .were filling the gloomy rocks with
their mournful cries.” Lycidas is surveying his piscatorial world, noticing that all
of nature is mourning the death of Phyllis. Similarly, in Virgil, Mopsus observes
nature mourning the loss of the shepherd Tityrus. Phyllis has died, but Tityrus
has been exiled; in both cases, the state of the pastoral landscape reflects the
voice of the narrator. Sannazaro’s allusion invokes the tremendous sense of the
loss of Tityrus and highlights the opposition between the pastoral and the nonpastoral
world, setting up themes of opposition and nostalgia that are present in
works by both Virgil and Sannazaro.
In the same opening, Sannazaro also uses Virgil to legitimize his new
marine setting. The litora of the first line is rarely mentioned in Virgil’s poetry,
but his second eclogue provides one such instance: “nuper me in litore vidi, cum
placidum ventis staret mare” (Virgil 2.25-26). In this passage, the shepherd
Corydon describes his abundance and the perfection of his current idyllic
setting, which includes the vision of a calm sea as he stands on the shore. Thus,
even in Virgil’s world, the seashore could be complementary to the pastoral
world. Sannazaro later expands on Corydon’s vision in the Piscatoriae.
The remainder of Lycidas’ introduction (lines 1-11) serves two purposes:
to introduce the reader to the new setting of the pastoral and to move from
nature’s sorrow to Lycidas’ particular sorrow. Regarding the first goal,
Sannazaro describes the seashore in detail: ravens and waterfowl provide the