WANDERING WOODS AGAIN 47
impetus, festinare and the like enter the Renaissance critical vocabu-
lary of the silva(e). The fact that Quintilian speaks of oratorical train-
ing, not of poetry, is never taken into account—poetry and oratory
coalesced long before—, and that Quintilian’s own intent is negative
is always ignored. Poliziano also introduced the Greek spelling sylva,
very popular in Neolatin poetry and criticism.^9 And he actually begins
his explanations by referring to slightly different meanings of silva:
matter, Greek ὕλη; and also indigesta materia ̧ unordered material. So
around the term silva three clusters of notions gather, that of improvi-
sation, heat and speed, that of raw (rhetorical) material, and that of the
(arbitrary) collection, anthology, miscellanea.^10 Thus it is not easy to
say what exactly makes up a Neolatin silva, or what its poetics are.
Groundbreaking work has been done here by Perrine Galand, both on
the French sixteenth-century silvae and on the poetics of these “open”,
“flexible”, “dialogic” compositions.^11
What Poliziano appreciated in Statius’ Silvae was the learning
(doctrina), and the variety in subject (argumentorum multiplicitas)
and style (dicendi varium artificium). That Statius does not reach the
sublime heights of Virgil and Homer is just what, according to Po-
liziano, makes him such a suitable example for young men learning to
write Latin poetry.^12 Poliziano knew what he was talking about: when
he was fourteen, he composed an elegy on the death of a beautiful
young girl of the court, Albiera degli Albizzi, which won him such
acclaim that it was chosen as the opening of the collection of poems
on her death gathered for her afflicted fiancé. There, and in his some-
what more mature Sylva in scabiem, written when he was sixteen,
Statius’ Silvae were an important inspiration.^13 The earlier imitations,
of Statius’ consolationes, are more puerile than one might expect of
Poliziano’s genius. For instance: nigra domus tota est (line 9: “the
9 Poliziano speaks of Statius’ Sylvarum liber (Cesarini Martinelli 178.8.13) and
writes sylvam also in the quotation from Quintilian. Fantazzi 2004, XX n. 3 points out
that Poliziano generally calls Statius’ poems Sylvae, but those of his own Silvae.
10 See Galand-Hallyn 1998, 610–2, and for calor and furor also 2001, 132–40.
These notions, stemming from different ancient periods and genres (and frequently
discussed by critics of Statius), come together in the Quattrocento.
11 See especially Galand-Hallyn 1987, 1998, 2002, 2004, also Adam 1988, though
less useful for poetical matters.
12 Garin 1958, 870–2, see Godman 1993, 136–40.
13 In Albieram Albitiam, puellam formosissimam morientem, ad Sigismundum
Stupham eius sponsum. The volume of poetry on the girl’s death exists only in (lux-
ury) manuscript, see Patetta 1917–8.