Conclusion
In the prologue, Pliny the Elder takes as one of his greatest achievements the textual compilation that gave life to the thirty-six volumes of the Natural History, above all because it allowed him to extract relevant information by establishing a valuable dialogue with the authors consulted. For his part, as has been seen in the previous pages, the poet and humanist Gerónimo de Huerta also boasts an erudition similar to that of Pliny the Elder, by drawing on various sources. In this way, the arduous work of compilation and annotation of Pliny the Elder that gave rise to his Latin encyclopedia was imitated by the Spanish humanist during the sixteenth century with annotations that complement both the anatomical and physiological commentary and the testimony on the intellectual and moral qualities of animals. They also include instructive reflections on the behavior of beasts without leaving aside wonderful stories and events.
Gerónimo de Huerta translated the Natural History as faithfully as possible, while including other animals. Throughout this exercise he managed to make the meaning of the original Latin text available to the Spanish reader, but he also encountered a difficult challenge in the process: adapting the message by inserting extensive annotations, the content of which reveals original research and information on American fauna. In this way, Gerónimo de Huerta’s contribution consists of the work of understanding the meaning of the Natural History in Latin to produce a text with an equivalent meaning in Castilian or Spanish. In this way, the translator in his alternate role as historian contributed to building a bridge of knowledge between peoples from different regions by presenting concepts that had previously gone unnoticed. What is more, he redirected the Plinian past toward new explanations that went beyond territorial limits and supported the continuity of European natural history outside colonization. In this analysis I gave as an outstanding example of such a contribution, chapter XXXIII of book VI of the Historia Natural, which corresponds to the “Division of the earth” and information on Africa, Asia and Europe, since Gerónimo de Huerta adds America to the continental triad. As a result, first, the annotated information circumscribes an inventory relative to the fauna – that is, to the new American wonders that refer to the chronicles of the discovery and conquest of America. The recapitulation of the “nuevo bestiario colonial” – connecting axis between the terra incognita and the marvelous monstrous of the old continent – incorporates the rattle viper, the iguana, the vicuña, the Tamandoa or honey bear, the Antehanno or tapir, the Tatusia or armadillo, the Succarath and the cerigones, which are also drawn in woodcut plates.
The translator’s notes describe in detail the places belonging to what were then called Peruvian, Southern and Mexican or Northern America. They explore their people, customs and economic activities; their flora, types of crops and plants; and their fauna, species and characteristics. Undoubtedly, the breadth and interdisciplinarity of each contribution by Gerónimo de Huerta offers a journey through the history of his own times. In the literary journey proffered by the translator’s wisdom, the itinerary specifically took in a panorama that allows the animals to be studied in their entirety. Sometimes, conceptualized based on models of African, Asian and European fauna; that is, what existed before European explorers arrived on American shores. Additionally, to convey the idea of the extraordinary nature of the animal discovered, the Spanish writer highlighted its strangeness with respect to his own (more enormous, frightening, lethal, for example). Thus, in the process of naming and describing the unknown, comparisons were not lacking and, as the translator pointed out, in the new domains of the Spanish crown there were felines like lions, a kind of tailless pig, dogs similar to wolves, and animals similar to lizards, mules, or a combination of several beasts.
In short, the never-before-seen would reach Europe as extraordinary, discovered things: enormous crocodiles, highly poisonous vipers, cows as big as horses. Likewise, animals that were not within the realm of the normal and were outside everyday limits continued to be carriers of the monstrous, because America was the habitat of the enormous, the frightening and the different. Without a doubt, real and wonderful animals such as the tapir, the armadillo, the opossum, the iguana, and others of American everyday life found a shared space with European wonders in the naturalist encyclopedia par excellence, the Natural History of Pliny the Elder.