Baudelaire, "Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs"

An essay ("Some advice for young men of letters") by this French poet.  You can read the original here. 

The precepts we are about to read bear the fruit of experience, with experience implying a certain amount of blunders. Everyone has made all or nearly all of these mistakes, so I hope that the experience of others will serve to verify my own.

In other words, said precepts have no other aim than that of a vade mecum, no other utility than that of puerile and honest politeness. An enormously useful aim! Imagine a code of etiquette written by a good-hearted and intelligent Madame de Warens, or a mother teaching us the art of dressing practically! This is why I wish to infuse with brotherly tenderness these precepts dedicated to the young literati.   

ON GOOD AND BAD LUCK IN LITERARY DEBUTS 

Young writers who, when speaking of a young colleague with tones admixed with envy, say "This was a fine debut, he really was in luck," do not consider that every debut has always had precursors, and that this debut is the effect of twenty other debuts unknown to these same young writers.

In terms of establishing a reputation, I do not know that there has ever been a bolt from the blue. Rather, I think that any success comes, in arithmetic and geometric proportion to the writer's power, as the result of prior successes often invisible to the naked eye. There is a slow aggregation of molecular successes, but never miraculous or spontaneous generations.

Those who say "I've had bad luck" are those who simply have not had enough success yet and do not know it.   

Here I am taking into account the almost innumerable circumstances that envelop human desire, circumstances which have their own legitimate causes. They form a circumference in which our willpower is enclosed. But this circumference is moving, living, and turning; every day, every minute, every second it changes its circle and its center. In this way are all human desires therein cloistered; as these desires vary from moment to moment in their reciprocal game, there arise the elements of what constitutes freedom.
    
Freedom and destiny are two opposites; yet seen from far and near, they compose one desire.

This is why there is no such thing as bad luck. If you suffer misfortune, it is because you lack something: learn what this something is and study the interplay of neighboring desires and you may travel the circumference of this circle more easily.

One example from a thousand. Many writers whom I love and admire rage against current popular pulp – Eugène Sue, Paul Féval – logogriphs in action. But the talent of these people, however frivolous it may be, is not any less, and the anger of my friends does not exist, or rather, it exists to a lesser degree, because it is of lost time, the least precious thing in the world. The question is not whether the literature of the heart or of the form is superior to that which is currently popular; this is all too true, at least to me. Yet you would merely be half right until you demonstrate as much talent in the genre you wish to enter as Eugène Sue demonstrates in his own; until you ignite as much interest with new means; until you possess equal power and superior power in another sense; until you double, triple, and quadruple the dose up to an equal concentration, you no longer have the right to curse the bourgeois, because the bourgeois will be standing right next to you. Until then, vae victis! For nothing is real but that power which is supreme justice.      

ON COMPENSATION
    
However beautiful a house may be it is, first and foremost, even before its beauty may be demonstrated, a certain number of meters high and a certain number of meters long. Of literature, which is the most invaluable of materials, the same can be said: literature is first and foremost a filling-out of columns. And the literary architect whose name alone does not guarantee any profit should sell at all costs.
    
There are young people who quip: "Since this of so little value, why should I put myself to so much trouble?" They could have indulged in the finest of works; and in such a case they would only have been cheated by actual necessity, by the law of nature. They cheated themselves. Badly paid, they could still have found some honor in such a pursuit; but badly paid, they were dishonored.
    
Everything I could possibly write on this subject may be summarized by this supreme maxim which I offer to all philosophers, all historians, and all businessmen for their contemplation: Beautiful sentiments do not a fortune make!

Those who say, "Why should I kill myself for so little?" are the same who, much later, once they have gained honor and respect, intend to sell their books for two hundred francs per story line, and who, once rejected, return the next day to offer them at a 100-franc loss.

The reasonable man is the one who says: "I believe it is worth so much because I am a genius; but one has to make a few concessions. I will make them, so as to have the honor to be one of your geniuses."   
 
ON SYMPATHIES AND ANTIPATHIES

In love, like in literature, our sympathies are involuntary; nevertheless they must be verified, whereby reason also has a part to play.

True sympathies are excellent because they make two people into one; fake sympathies are detestable because they are only about one person, minus primitive indifference, which is better than hate, the necessary consequence of deception and disillusionment. 

This is why I admit and admire camaraderie, provided that it is founded on the essential commonalities of reason and temperament. It is one of the healthy manifestations of nature, one of the numerous applications of that sacred proverb: United we stand, divided we fall.

The same law of straightforwardness and naïveté must regulate our antipathies. Nevertheless, there are people who fabricate hates as much as admirations, that is, to the point of giddiness. This is highly imprudent; this means making an enemy for yourself without advantage or profit. A blow without meaning harms the intended rival no less, not to mention the harm that may befall a witness on the left or right side of the combat scene.

One day, during a fencing lesson, a creditor came to harass me; I chased him back to the staircase with my foil. Upon my return, the master-at-arms, a peaceful giant who could have thrown me to the ground just by blowing on me, said: "How you pour out your antipathy! You, a poet! You, a philosopher! Ugh!" I had wasted time when I could have made two attacks; I was winded, ashamed, and, what is more, despised by a man – the creditor – to whom I had done nothing too horrible.

Indeed, hate is a precious liquid, a dearer and more costly poison than that of Borgia, because it is made with our own blood, our health, our sleep, and two thirds of our love! With it one should be stingy!

ON INVECTIVE  

Invective should be employed only against the henchmen of error. If you are strong, attacking a strong man means losing yourself; if you are merely in disagreement on a few points, he will always be on your side on certain occasions. 
    
There are two methods of invective: a curved line, or a straight line, which is the shorter route.
    
You will find a sufficient number of examples of the curved line in the sagas of Janin. The curved line plays to the gallery, doubtless, but does not teach it anything.   
    
The straight line is now being successfully employed by several English journalists; in Paris, it has fallen into disuse. Even Granier de Cassagnac himself seems to have forgotten it. It involves saying, "Mr. X. is a dishonest man and, what is more, an imbecile; this is what I shall set out to prove" and, of course, proving it! Primo, secundo, tertio, and so forth. I recommend this method to all those who have faith in reason and hard knuckles.    
    
A failed invective is a deplorable event; it is an arrow that returns, or at least skins your hand as it departs, a bullet whose ricochet may kill you.
    
ON METHODS OF COMPOSITION
    
Nowadays one is obliged to produce a lot. We have to go fast; we have to hurry slowly; we have to make sure that all our blows land, and that not a single stroke is wasted.
    
To write quickly, one needs to have pondered the matter a great deal, lugged around a subject in one's head while out for a walk, in the bath, in a restaurant, almost even at one's mistress's place.
    
Delacroix said to me once: "Art is a thing so ideal and so fleeting that the tools are never clean enough and the means never sufficiently expedient." The same can be said of literature; I am thus no proponent of erasing or crossing out: such an action troubles the mirror of our thoughts.
    
Some of us, those most distinguished and most conscientious – Édouard Ourliac, for example – begin by taking and filling up a lot of paper; they call this covering a canvas. The goal of this confused operation is to ensure that nothing is lost. Then, each time that they recopy their work, they prune and de-branch it. The result, even if excellent, is a waste of their time and talent. Covering a canvas does not mean loading it with colors, but sketching with charcoal, or having light and transparent masses at one's disposal. The canvas must be covered in the author's mind the moment that he takes up his pen to write the title.
    
They say that Balzac filled his manuscripts and proofs in a fantastic and disorganized manner. Consequently a novel passes through a series of geneses, in which not only the unity of the sentence is dispersed but also the unity of the work. It is undoubtedly this bad method which often imbues an author's style with an element of diffusion, of being jolted or hurried, of being still a draft, all of which composes the great chronicler's single flaw.
    
ON DAILY WORK AND INSPIRATION
    
Debauchery is hardly the sister of inspiration; we have finally smashed this corruptive kinship. Rapid enervation and the weakness of certain beautiful natures bear sufficient witness against this odious prejudice.

Very substantial but regular fare is the only thing needed by prolific writers. Inspiration is decidedly the sister of daily work. These two opposites do not exclude one another any more than all the opposites in nature. Inspiration obeys, like hunger, like digestion, like sleep. In the mind there doubtless exists some kind of celestial mechanism of which one should not be ashamed; instead it is from here that we should extract the most glorious part, like doctors remove things from the mechanism of the human body. If we wish to live in opinionated contemplation of the work of tomorrow, daily work will serve as an inspiration, like a legible piece of writing serves to elucidate our thoughts, and like calm and powerful thoughts allow us to write legibly. Because the period of bad writings is long gone. 

ON POETRY   
    
As for those who successfully give themselves over or are given over to poetry, I advise them never to abandon it. Poetry is one of the arts that yield the most; but it is the type of investment whose dividends one receives very late on; that said, the dividends are very large.
    
I challenge the envious among you to quote me some verse which an editor may have destroyed.   

Morally speaking, poetry establishes a demarcation between first-rate and second-rate minds, so that even the most bourgeois readers are not spared this despotic influence. I know people who only read Gautier's serials – often the most mediocre ones – because he wrote La Comédie de la Mort. Surely they cannot perceive all the nuances of this work; but they know that he is a poet.
    
Besides, what could be surprising seeing that every man in good health could go two days without eating, but never without poetry?

Art which satisfies the most imperious of needs will always be the most honored.
    
ON CREDITORS       

You will no doubt recall a comedy entitled "Disorder and Genius"! If disorder has sometimes accompanied genius, all this proves is that genius is magnificently strong; unfortunately, for many young people this title expressed not an accident but a necessity.

I highly doubt that Goethe had any creditors; Hoffmann, disorganized Hoffmann, beset by the most frequent of necessities, endlessly aspired to get himself out of such a situation; he died, as it were, at the moment when longer life permitted his genius to soar with even greater brilliance.

Never have any creditors; pretend to have some if you'd like, this is all that I can pass along to you.  
    
ON MISTRESSES

If I wish to observe the law of contrasts which governs the moral order and the physical order of things, I am obliged to place in this class those women dangerous to all men of letters: the honest woman, the bluestocking, and the actress. The honest woman, because she necessarily belongs to two men, which makes her a mediocre pasture for a poet's despotic soul; the bluestocking, because she is a grown-up tomboy; and the actress, because she has been brushed by literature and speaks in jargon, in short, because she is not a woman in the full sense of the word: her public is more important to her than love.   

Can you imagine a poet in love with his wife and obliged to see her play a role in travesty? I think he would do well to set fire to the theater.

Can you imagine that writer forced to write a part for his wife who has no talent?

Yet another sweating as she tries in epigrams to convey to the audience in the foreground all the sufferings which this same audience has caused her in this most precious existence, this existence which the Easterners would place under three locks before they would come study law in Paris? Because all true men of letters detest literature from time to time, I permit you – free and proud souls, exhausted minds who always need to rest on the seventh day – only two types of women: young women or silly women; love or beef stew. Brothers, must I explain these reasons to you? 

On Perspective

One is scarcely encouraged, at least in certain very privileged parts of the world, to voice cacophonous opinions regarding the preeminence of culture. What we do within our country, say that country's pundits, must be given the full respect of those without, especially if the outsiders are obliged to evaluate these details with fractured lenses. And what entails fractured lenses? Consider a country that you have not visited and whose language you know nothing of; consider again what surfaces when you are asked to picture life in that country; consider finally from where these images, words, and nexuses derive. If you were to commit your unabetted reflections to paper and ask coevals whose experiences are similar to do the same, you may be surprised at the uniformity of your answers. You may learn that the Greeks, for example, are thought of as complicating and proud, nostalgic for a past that is so glorious that the centuries of all the countries in Europe combined could not compare, bitter in a way that their recognition as such has been mostly forgotten by ignorance and political convenience. You may learn that Athens will inevitably be described as crowded, hot under skies as blue as the Greek flag, and in ruins like some city-sized outdoor museum replete with the usual slew of street vendors and charlatans. At length you may learn that Greeks tend to speak good English, have a high opinion of themselves that is foolishly interpreted as arrogance, and may not be the most engaging and obsequious when it comes to making your stay comfortable. Since a great deal of Greek blood courses through my veins I can say without fear of perjury that this synopsis, which any Anglophone knowing nothing more about Greece than the names of a few famous writers will unerringly pronounce, is completely true. Why it is completely true and what we should make of such of constellation of detail is what we may loosely term perspective.

Perspective is almost always right because the masses can look upon their fellow man and sense things that escape the most specialized of laboratorians. When there is a tendency to be shallow, vain, or harmlessly overweening, such a tendency does not elude the watchful eyes of the rabble. It is this same rabble, in fact, who diagnose a situation most accurately because they look to the core of the matter and espy what they have always been told exists, and the kernel of truth in such platitudes is the kernel that pops when we agitate the bag. Take a band of Anglophones in Greece accumulating the impressions mentioned above: a Greek nationalist or an immigrant who typically overidentifies with his forefathers and fights battles that neither they nor he could ever win might be quick to denounce these remarks. How could anyone say anything negative about the society that bestowed upon us democracy, classical art, and philosophy? Do we not owe Greeks the entirety of our civilization? We do very much so, and it is regrettable how insouciantly their legacy is treated by the modern mind, entranced as it is by its own age and accomplishments. Yet what Greece holds (and does not hold) for the modern mind does not surprise me, because what is missing between Greece, its riches, lore, and ingenuity, is approximately two thousand years of equalization. In a curious way Greece remains our illustrious ancestor whose achievements will always surpass our own. And as is habitual among heirs, some will look upon this fact with unending awe, while others will only resent that they did not come first.

This is why those of us who believe in the moral goodness of our world, in its inherent virtue, in man's innate desire to love, be loved, and help the weak and poor, will be able to discern the truth about many places and times, including Greece. Ask an antiquarian about Hellenic civilization and he might show you some fine pottery; ask a classicist and he might recite a poem by this poet; ask a Russian or a Serb and you might be surprised at the chauvinism in favor of their Orthodox brethren. As it were, the truth about Greece lies not the uniformity of superficial observations but in their interlinkage. I may tend to look back upon what occurred two thousand years ago (and well before) with a sentimentally teary eye because my heritage has raised me to understand what the Greeks did as not only significant, but also eternal. I may sneer at people who think that civilizations whose apogees lie in the distant past do not deserve much consideration since we all must confront the here and now. And I may be particularly hasty to justify and defend any odd practices – there were quite a few – of these same Hellenes because their means led to distinctly remarkable ends. I am right and wrong about all these points; where I am right is obvious; where I am wrong will also depend on perspective.

Despite recent claims by science and its peremptory minions, perspective on the sun and moon is relative only insofar as we understand ourselves to be glued to a planet that tilts in an endless universe, rendering our small sphere nothing more than a period in a thousand-page novel. We are moving, sure enough, but is your sun or your moon really relative? What to the untrained eye, or better phrased, to the naked eye, really seems to be relative? You may listen to scientists all you want (they certainly like to hear themselves talk), but what does your soul and mind or their collaboration tell you about the stars and sky? Do you ever stop to think whether someone is seeing things the exact way that you see them, an old Romantic convention, or do you really believe that we all see them differently? Are we hoodwinked by our dullness into believing that every moment of every day things are just a bit different to every single person at every single place on earth and that, therefore, there can be no true coincidence of visions? Perhaps a militant astronomer will argue this point and he will end up sitting alone at the end of a long banquet table. But what holds this planet together is something very different, which we may, for lack of a better word, also call perspective.

It has been said that literature, to avoid becoming an arcane cult of a mandarin class, needs to impose its values. And what are its values? Its values may be debated at that same banquet table – but on the other end well out of earshot of the astronomer – yet they involve two persons: the writer of genius and the ideal reader. By definition, one supposes, these cannot be one and the same person. A novelist may compose the perfect story about two lovers, one of whom may be loosely based on himself, the other on the woman whom he will never really forget. He may indicate the details of their palavers, plan their meals and ablutions, temper their attitudes toward the commonality of their relationship, sever bonds with certain salubrious habits to make them more brazen, and grant them a vocabulary that would indicate a higher level of intuition. They will laugh, play, love, sizzle, wince, claw, and break their days into sections that can be analyzed and understood and he will name them as chapters or pages or sentences. They will push their ideas into words and shapes that will dwell within our own words and shapes of our own palavers and meals and ablutions, and we will nod and understand their syntax. And finally – and, some would say, most regrettably – a judgment will have to be pronounced. Is this eternal love or another tale of romance and release? In other words, they will decide either to remain in this connection because fate and desire have willed it thus, or cease to operate in tandem, two branches broken from the same tree or even two flowers who permit intervening weeds to block their closeness. In other words, they will or will not be each other's ideal readers.

That is the choice we face. We may assume the world to be complex and unfathomable in most respects, but we may also choose to understand what part of our world an open mind may perceive as bearing upon his own destiny. The starry sky above us is ours as much as the filth we crush with our jackboots; both of these extremes should frame our reference and our spirit. When you ask me what is a human being, I would respond it is the one living thing on this planet that can relate to both the highest and lowest strata of space and time. Our world in its various and sundry parts is synthesized by one gaze in which we are expected to predict danger, love, fear, ecstasy, and sadness. Classical Greece stretches into Modern Greece as if the Ancients were still speaking through their scions, and yet we perceive the continuum in their profile, their manner, the occasional verb that has been used in the same way for five thousand years. Our perspective is the sum of all mirrors and angles that reflect a unity and solace that cannot be denied, and in its wake we espy, each of us who spends some time to observe rather than project, a clarity that suggests a long tale in a language we might understand at times regarding the matrimony of fate and desire. In fact, we might even go so far as to claim that as life progresses, fate and desire can no longer be distinguished. That last assertion is for the privileged who can choose their fate, their reading, their books, and their perspective. And when they actually look at the world and see only love and hope, then it is we who have become its ideal reader.

A Distancing from Prose

An essay (“Entfernung von der Prosa”) on this novel by this German author.  You can find the original in this collection.

Many might think that, owing to his strict upbringing, it would be painful for an author to let go of his figures and personages, to let them "take shape"; yet this is pain I do not feel. On the contrary, as soon as the manuscript printed black on white is left to the imagination of others, I am amazed to see that the stage dimensions render the novel more alien than is normal to an author. Had someone asked me how I would imagine a character from the novel – tall or short, blond or dark – I would not have been able to say; of his nose, his mouth, his clothes I wouldn't have even had the slightest inkling. During stage testing for The Clown, the protagonist Reinbacher appeared once in the guise of Saint-Just from Danton's Death. He was trying out for both plays at the same time, and strangely enough I found the Saint-Just outfit (green jabot, black boots) perfectly suitable for the role; I would have had no objections to letting him play Hans Schnier in such an outfit. As far as I'm concerned he could also appear as a sort of "Hans in clover," although his story hardly ends "in clover." It might even be possible to have all the characters come out all at the same time in costumes from different plays. The Father in a Lessing role, Marie like the Marie from Woyzeck, the Mother as the queen, a lady of the court, a brothel madam, or Mary Magdalene. As far as I'm concerned they could also all come out in street clothes, maybe getting out of a bus, streetcar or automobile. I do not feel like I am their lord and master who has predetermined what they would wear; I can't even be sure of their dialogues. An actor should not have to say those things that "do not roll off the tongue." 

Whatever their director tells them to say is an entirely different matter. I would only interfere when asked or when a fragment of a sentence or monologue simply hurt my sensibilities or, in my judgment, those of the actor because it – as we usually found out in tandem – was no longer correct. When the novel came out seven years ago, its coherence was very different from what it is today. The problems, the subject matter, the constellation of characters, the self-fulfilling process of casting out a human being – all of this has not lost a drachma of relevance; only a handful of political and societal details now differs from how things were in 1962 when the book was composed. The novel took shape as we in the Federal Republic of Germany were still officially and publicly prepared not only to confuse denomination with religion – no, a terror of denomination was carried out that yielded high political costs. Here is neither the right time nor place to question expressly and emphatically the C in CDU/ CSU: the party itself is doing so as we speak – well, at least the first party is. And the time may come when this awkward letter is discarded like that part of a pair of antlers which has been of great service in many a campaign to curry favor with voters.

What is important for me is that many political and societal sidelights still possess some kind of "historical" value in the sense that someone could say: "So that's how it was in 1962" – one hundred and fifty years ago. This historical ballast does not encompass everything and it would not be hard to do without it completely; if it were a picture, one might say it needed to be dusted off a bit. Because of this the problems and subject matter have gained in relevance: the casting out of a human being who, unknown to all parties involved, bears Religion as a form of leprosy in itself. Instead of a guitar he could have had a rattle in his hand and it may have been nothing more than a carnival rattle, which was originally a instrument used to warn and protect, an early version of a bomb siren: careful! Here is a person who has no bacteriological hand grenades with him, but instead a bug that unleashes rules and concepts of social order, mentally and physically.  

One could talk at length about "misunderstandings" and the misunderstandings to which the novel was subjected. I admit that I prefer "misunderstandings" when someone claims to understand something that I myself do not completely "understand." A writer who does not permit any kind of understanding of what he has just spent one hundred pages talking about I consider lost and rather hopeless. It may be that the form "work of art" is dying out; this novel, in my view, did not belong to that traditional category in which a secret formula existed, perhaps something akin to –+––+, which would make it impossible for the author to clarify in black and white what he had just constructed. Nothing is more embarrassing than to be asked how I meant this or that, or how this or that could be taken. I simply do not know; and if I ever knew I have long since forgotten the detail because many of the contexts and intricacies of the novel have escaped me: conversations, expressions, considerations, thoughts, witticisms, perhaps a newspaper article or a word that I heard on the radio or saw on television; an apple hanging from a tree, a bird that I saw sitting on a branch, a song, a couple of sounds, and more conversations. Of course a "work of art" arises within and from such coherence, but also from sudden "ideas," the majority of which are rejected. Yet no one, not even the author, can reconstruct these contexts. They could be fragments from a film (perhaps even quite kitschy at that), or borrowings – I could not say for sure. I would require a very calibrated computer with an enormous array of detection tools if I wished to commit myself to statements on these contexts. 

One context that I do remember and will give away, however, is the occasion of its composition. With some friends I once published a journal called Labyrinth; before having to give up the journal we were embroiled in incessant debates about the "deceptive" aspect of all art concealed in every artist. Naturally, all these discussions led to the myth of the labyrinth itself which we reinterpreted in conversation to make Theseus into Christ and Ariadne into Mary, and the labyrinth the world in which the Minotaur prowled. For sure, these discussions were the occasion for the writing of the novel; they comprised a single detail of the contexts, but certainly the most important; and perhaps the novel was an attempt to continue the journal in another way. With the revelation of such a context a possible interpretation arises that is almost too clear. What is certain is that many people got upset for nothing over the novel because they were not meant at all, they were merely the material for a modern-day labyrinth, foundation stones that although used were ultimately discarded. But here I wish to console the official and organizational representatives of visible German Catholicism: your trouble is not in vain. It is very useful, even for a writer.

I am happy to have had the opportunity to thank my friends with whom I created the Labyrinth: the late Werner von Trott zu Solz, Walter Warnach and HAP Grieshaber. Maybe even they did not notice that something of their work was continued here which in another form had failed.

Seven years later the material and themes are still dear to me, only the nursery in which the seeds were sown has become alien. With the result that I can almost talk about it as if I were an outsider.

Montaigne, "Des menteurs"

An essay ("On liars") by this French writer.  You can read the original here.

There is no man whom speaking from memory pleases less than me; therein I recognize but traces of myself. And yet I think there cannot be in all the world a memory as marvelously treacherous as mine own. All my other faculties may be vile and common, but in memory I believe myself to be singular, so rare and worthy of gaining both name and reputation.

In addition to this natural disadvantage I suffer (for certainly, given its necessity, Plato was right to deem memory a great and powerful goddess), there is another: when one says in my country that a man has no sense, one says he has no memory. And when I lament the failure of my own memory, I am not believed and instead rebuked as if I were accusing myself of senselessness. These parties see no choice between memory and understanding, which would truly worsen my state of affairs. But they do me an injustice because experience has demonstrated precisely the opposite: namely, excellent memories conjoined with foolish judgments. Here also they do me an injustice – I who know nothing as well as being a friend – whereby the same words that accuse me of infirmity represent ingratitude. They discount and mistrust my affection owing to my memory and contort my natural shortcoming into a shortcoming of conscience. "He has forgotten," they say, "this prayer or that vow"; "he no longer remembers his friends"; "he never remembers to say, or to do, or not to mention this or that for my sake." Certainly it is easy for me to forget. But to neglect a task given to me by a friend, this I do not do. May my own misery be enough without my being accused of malice, as malice is just as much the enemy of my own humor.          

To some extent I am able to console myself. Firstly because my poor memory is an evil whose primary purpose is to correct a greater evil that would have easily arisen within me: namely, ambition, an unbearable shortcoming for those wishing to conduct public affairs. As in many similar examples in its development, nature has fortified all other faculties in me to the same extent that it has diminished memory. Otherwise, if the inventions and opinions of others had been summoned by my memory, I might have easily reposed my mind and judgment, without letting them exert their full powers, upon these alien reports. My speech may even be more concise, as the storehouse of memory is surely more stocked with material than that of invention. And if invention had kept me supplied, I would have deafened all my friends with my babble – deafened with subjects which excited my own faculty of their manipulation and employment, as well as animated and guided my discourse – and yet examples from some of my close friends will show what a pity this all is. As their memories furnish them with present and whole landscapes, they start their narratives so far back and embed them with so many extenuating circumstances that, if a story is good, it will be stuffed with goodness, and if it isn't, you will condemn the vitality of their memory or lament their decidedly poor judgment. And it is no small feat to cease a story when it is well along its way, for in no one action does one recognize the power of a horse as in a round and sudden stop.

Even among those who remain pertinent, I see that they wish to but cannot undo their course. And while they search for a fine point at which to halt, they end up traipsing about wobbly-legged in force and speech. Old men are the most dangerous, for in them remains the remembrance of things past even if they lack any memory of how often they have retold these events. I have seen some very pleasant stories become dull and irritating on the lips of a gentleman because each member of his audience had been gorged on the tale a hundred times over. Secondly, I remember fewer offenses endured over the years, as the old man might say. Nevertheless, I would need a protocol of offenses like that of Darius who, so as not to forget the offenses he suffered from the Athenians, made a page sing thrice in his ear each time he sat down to eat, "Sire, remember the Athenians." And yet, the places and books that I see again still smile at me with a new freshness.    

It is not without reason that we say that he who does not consider his memory to be strong enough should not try his luck as a liar. I know full well that grammarians differentiate between telling an untruth and lying. Telling an untruth, they aver, is to say something false which we have taken to be true; whereas the definition of the word "to lie" in Latin (mentire, from which our French mentir stems) seems more akin to going against our own conscience. Consequently, I only wish to speak about those who say things contrary to what they know to be true. These here either wholly invent the untruths, or they disguise and alter a veracious source. In the case of the latter, they often find that once they have made their replacements, it becomes uncomfortable to undo them because the thing the way it really is remains lodged in their memory, impressed by means of knowledge and science. And here it becomes difficult for the truth not to manifest itself to their imagination, at once dislodging the falsehood, which could never have so firm or serene a foothold, as well as evoking the circumstances of its initial acquisition. And all this flows into and obliges the mind to lose the the false and bastardized pieces it has concocted.

As for the stories they wholly invent, in as much as there is no impression to the contrary that will rattle their falseness, they seem to have far fewer fears of mistelling a story. And yet even these creations, since they are vain bodies without hold, will soon elude the memory if not well secured. Of these matters I have had pleasant experiences at the expense of those who profess to speak in no way other than what serves them best in their business, and what pleases the high-and-mighty people to whom they are uttered. Since these circumstances in which they seek to enslave their faith and their conscience may be subjected to many a change, their words will always need to vary. And so they may come to the same object and say to one man one thing and to another man another, to wit, that sometimes this object is gray and other times yellow. And if by chance these men report to one another their so opposite instructions, what shall become of this fine art? Moreover it must often happen that they imprudently defeat themselves; for what memory could endure so many memories in so many diverse forms, all forged from the same subject? I have seen many in my time desiring the reputation of this lovely type of wisdom. What they do not see, however, is that if their reputation is already abroad, there can no longer be any effect.     

So in truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor are we linked to one another if not by words. If we knew the horror and gravity of such lies, we would pursue them with flames more justly than other crimes. It seems to me that we find common amusement in chastising children for innocent mistakes, very poorly chosen, and that we torment them for capricious acts which have neither impression nor import. Whereas, in my opinion, only lying, and a notch below, obstinacy, should be combated in children at every instance from birth to development for they grow with them. And once we have granted their tongue false reins, it is amazing to see how impossible they are to retract. Hence we may see otherwise honest men who to this vice are subjects and slaves. I know a good tailor's lad whom I have never once heard speak the truth, simply because it has never been to his advantage.

If like truth, mistruth had but one face, we would be on better terms, for we would take for granted the opposite of what the liar would say. But the reverse of truth has a hundred thousand countenances and an indefinite playing field. The Pythagoreans make the good certain and finite, and evil infinite and uncertain. A thousand routes to miss the bull's-eye and only one to hit it. I am not sure that I would be able to safeguard my well-being from evident and extreme danger through effrontery and solemn untruth.

An ancient father says that we are better off the in the company of a dog we know than in the company of a man whose language we do not understand. As Pliny states, Ut externus alieno non sit hominis vice – a stranger cannot be said to take the place of a man. So how much less sociable than silence is false language?

King Francis I boasted of having trapped in this way Francesco Taverna, ambassador of Francesco Sforza Duke of Milan, a man very famous in the art of parlour verbiage. He had been dispatched to offer his master's pardons to His Majesty regarding a matter of great consequence. So as to maintain some intelligence sources in Italy from where He was most recently driven, and especially with the Duke of Milan, the King had advised a Gentleman to stay close to the Duke on His behalf. This Gentleman became in effect an ambassador, but in appearance was merely a private citizen who pretended to be there to see to his own personal affairs, whereas the Duke, who depended much more on the Emperor (mostly because at the time he was in a contract of marriage with his niece, daughter of the King of Denmark and present dowager of Lorraine) could not disclose any practice or conference with us without his own great interest. For this commission a Milanese Gentleman by the name of Merveille, and equerry to the King, was found. He was dispatched with some private credentials and ambassadorial instructions, and with other letters of recommendation to the Duke regarding his own private affairs for the mask and show of business. 

In fact, he remained so long with the Duke that the Emperor began to experience a certain amount of suspicion, which led to what occurred subsequently as we might surmise. It happened that, under the guise of murder, the Duke had his trial completed in two days and his head cut off in the middle of the night. Signor Francesco came, however, with a long and counterfeit conclusion about this story, since the King had already addressed His queries to all the Princes of Christianity and to the Duke himself, had His audience with His morning counsel, and was lobbying for His own cause and had raised to this end many plausible justifications. Firstly, his master had never taken our man Merveille for anything less than a private gentleman and this subject, who had come to Milan to conduct business, had never lived under a different guise. Secondly, he disavowed even having known that he had been part of the King's household, nor having known of him to begin with, so that He took him for an ambassador. The King for his part pressed on with various objections and demands and burdened him from every side; finally He got him on the matter of the execution's having been carried out at night, and whether it had been committed in stealth. To which the poor, embarrassed man responded so as to be honest as well as out of respect for His Majesty that the Duke would have been very troubled if the execution had taken place during the day. Anyone could think how he was perceived having been so brutally cut down alongside the nostril of someone like King Francis.

Pope Julius II, having sent an ambassador to the King of England to rouse him against King Francis, the ambassador having heard his duties, and the King of England having delayed his response owing to the difficulties he encountered in preparing what he required to combat such a powerful King, alleged various reasons for this last problem. And the ambassador did not respond well to the matter, saying that he had also considered for his part the same difficulties, and had mentioned all of them to the Pope. From these words so distant from his proposal, which would have been to drive him headlong into war, the King of England found the first argument for that which he would discover later, namely that this ambassador in his private intentions depended on the French side and had revealed his master. His possessions were confiscated and he narrowly escaped losing his life as well.

La Beatrice di Dante

The concluding part to an essay ("Dante's Beatrice") by this Italian man of letters.  You can read the original here.

In The New Life, therefore, we have a Beatrice oscillating between woman and angel; in The Banquet, a Beatrice consumptive from symbol and allegory, a creature without blood or flesh like Anacreon's cicada; in The Divine Comedy, in which everything is completed and merged, here we find ourselves face to face with a whole Beatrice, simultaneously woman and angel, sentiment and reason, symbol and reality. Sketched from the sentiment in The New Life, affected by The Banquet's syllogisms, she is represented as completely derived from the genius of The Divine Comedy, in which Faith, Science, and Art beautifully embrace one another like The Three Graces of Canova.

For sure, we do not find herein all the characteristics of a mortal creature, transported alive and palpitating from the immortal realm of art; nor are we speaking directly and powerfully to the heart like Francesca, Desdemona, or Margarete. Yet I say given such a Beatrice, this youngest of angelets, quickly vanished from the world in this way. And given all the circumstances of time and place in which she was born and in which the genius, the love, the character, and the poetry of Dante occurred, she is as she ought to have been. She is not an idea or the symbol of art embodied in a living creature, but a living creature whom Faith, Science, and Art lift upon their wings and then confuse with the light of the supernatural and the infinite.

If you were to snatch her from such an environment, she would lose both substance and life; and she would be destroyed by your hands like the delicate wings of a butterfly. Behold her from afar and leave her in that world in which she was born and where she grew up. Then you will see her drawn only against a diffuse light, like the image of the Madonna seen in dreams and depicted by Fra Angelico. This Beatrice, however, as it were, does not miraculously leap out from the brain of Dante. She is the result of a slow and extremely long elaboration, not only from the mind of our Poet, but also from tradition and the popular poetic consciousness.

Works of art in accordance with the laws are the processes of the creations of nature: isolated phenomena that do not simply appear, but rather are derived from the miraculous disruption of laws. Everything is the product of an ordered and more or less visible labor, and only in a state of superstitious ignorance could one call portentous the existence of a fact whose concatenations and projections are not known. Since art was able to reach all representations of Beatrice, the hetaera of Athens and the matron of Rome would have had to transform themselves gradually into the woman of the Gospels; that Semele and Psyche, victims of the supernatural, became the Virgin Mother, spouse of the Holy Spirit, indicate origins of divinity incarnate.

The religion of Christ provided art with two types of women: the virgin mother – the enigma – and the regenerate adulteress – the scandal. The first is thrust into flight on the art of the supernatural, that is, of mystery, and was the legitimate mother of all the madonnas sung by the medieval poets, in particular by our poets who have babbled on in this matter almost until now. The second, placing art on that spectrum between forgivable and forgiven sensuality, flies upon faith, on the florid path, to slide back ultimately into the brothel. Manon Lescaut, Marion Delorme, and La Dame aux camélias are natural outgrowths of the famous phrase: Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

From all these evanescent madonnas of the Platonic Italian cycle, the firmest, most decisive and most luxuriant figure is certainly that of Beatrice, who is not a complete woman, but rather a complete creature of art. Mandetta, Selvaggia, Laura, to name only some of the most beautiful, remain inferior to the creation of Dante: they have less of the symbolic and more of the real. They are neither women nor ideas; their beloved names are repeated in all tones and with all the sweetness of their lovers. The being who is complete, human, and living, the true divination of the woman of medieval art, is Francesca. She is neither an angel nor a prostitute, but very humanly and almost fatally culpable; not wholly damned by an ascetic and Pharisee art, and not wholly regenerated by an art that is both stingily liberal and unabashedly vulgar. Thus she is a complete woman in the human and artistic sense of the word, whose fatal weakness is a piteous halo, the infinite martyrdom, and love.

After her we would be at pains to find in all of Italian poetry a perfect figure of woman. In Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Sophronia is a statue, Erminia an idyll, Armida an animate symbol recalling both Medea and Ariadne. Ariosto's women are either extravagantly true or extravagantly beautiful: either they are stern and indifferent warriors who later evaporate in a pastoral honeymoon, or legendary figures of magic, or adventurers of seductive nakedness. The best of all of them, Olympia, is simply the restoration of two ancient pictures: one painted by Catullus on two old designs from Euripides and Apollonius of Rhodes; the other a watercolor on similar plans by Ovid.   

For the poets of the sixteenth century, woman was either a sheet of white paper on which their Platonic courtesan songs were inscribed in a beautiful hand, or a filthy sheet of paper on which, gentlemen as they were, they dared to write nothing, leaving to Marino the glory of capsizing on the splendid cornucopia of his obscenities. Among the women of modern poetry, noteworthy are only those of Leopardi; yet Eloisa, Aspasia, and Nerina do not actually live from a life of their own, as they are merely reflections of the poet's soul. 

Of the others it is better not to say a word. It is not worth mentioning that they remain figurines of decalcomania carved with the base shears of Romantic sentimentalism and badly glued to the bottom of a cooking tray, from which the only thing that might surface is the covetous scent of a prepared dish and a simpering crowd of convalescents. Very few of these accused parties, yawning, show any sign of life, because even those born with scrofula would go to take a cure at an ospizio marino.

Our poets need to persuade themselves one blessed time that they may write about their pastoral visions and their stoves, that they may descend from their clouds in which they have lived hitherto, that they may live on earth with mankind and breathe with full lungs the wholesome oxygen of reality. Woman here will not be as singularly feminine as in novels; she will not dominate them like she dominates gentlemen; she will not be an idea or a symbol as in Platonic writings. She will no longer be in the heavens or on the altar, but on earth, amid society, and first and foremost in the family, which is the true domain and perhaps the only one of her virtues.