The Massacre of the Innocents

by Giambattista Marino, Erik Butler (Translator)

A harrowing 17th-century account in verse form of King Herod’s campaign to murder the male infants of his kingdom A finely crafted epic and literary monstrosity from the seventeenth-century "poet of the marvelous": the harrowing account, in four bloody cantos, of King Herod and his campaign to murder the male infants of his kingdom to prevent the loss of his throne to the prophesied King of the Jews. The book starts in the pits of Hell, where the Devil stokes the flames of Herod's paranoid bloodlust in his troubled sleep, and concludes in the heights of Heaven where the "unarmed champions" march on to eternal glory. In between is an account of physical and political brutality that unfortunately holds too clear a mirror to world events today. The Massacre of the Innocents describes unbelievable cruelty while championing the nobility of suffering, all brilliantly translated and presented in ottava rima.

Italian poet and adventurer Giambattista Marino (1569–1625) was deemed "the king of his age," and his very name came to define the style of an marinismo , a shorthand summation of the bizarre inventiveness and ornate excesses of Baroque poetry. In and out of jail, and escaping an assassination attempt by a rival, Marino spent a good part of his life in Northern Italy and France before returning to his birthplace of Naples. His most famous work, L'Adone (Adonis), stands as one of the longest Italian epics ever written, and for two centuries was deemed a monstrous epitome of Baroque bad taste.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

222 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1632

About the author

È considerato il massimo rappresentante della poesia barocca in Italia, identificata, dal suo nome, anche come marinismo. La sua influenza su letterati italiani e stranieri del Seicento fu immensa. Egli era infatti il rappresentante di un movimento che si stava affermando in tutta Europa, come il preziosismo in Francia, l'eufuismo in Inghilterra (dal romanzo di John Lyly Euphues), il culteranismo in Spagna.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty cool but doesn't quite measure up to other epics poems. Produces the imagery and variety appreciated in Tasso or Ovid but lacks sublime depth.

[Kaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review reflects only upon the translation, my lack of comprehending Italian being fully in account.