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Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordan (1913–1994)

Teoksen Two Renaissance Book Hunters tekijä

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Two Renaissance Book Hunters (1974) — Toimittaja — 54 kappaletta

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First of all, I come not to bury Poggio Bracciolini but to praise him, for his letters are charming, witty and reflective of the age in which he flourished. But this book, Two Renaissance Book Hunters, has within its pages a great deal to complain about. Before we get to that, however, let us begin at the beginning on a more positive note.

Interest in Poggio was rekindled a few years ago with publication of Steven Greenblatt's The Swerve which dealt with, among other things, his discovery at the Swiss monastery of St. Gall of Lucretius' great poetic work On the Nature of Things which had been lost for a millennium. But even more important to the Renaissance humanists was the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian, a lost book by the father of rhetoric no less, not to mention seven — or was it nine —lost orations of Cicero. Many more ancient texts were discovered by Poggio and his fellow book hunters, most of which have lapsed back into obscurity. But at the time, some people wanted to erect statues to Poggio and especially Bartolomeo Aragazzi, about whom almost nothing is known today (in English anyway) but who participated equally in these discoveries.

Poggio was also famous for having served in the Roman Curia for fifty years as secretary to seven popes. This number was inflated by the fact that three of them were claiming the papal throne at the same time. The resulting Church turmoil culminated in the Council of Constance (1414-1418) which settled the longstanding Western Schism and issued in the long term of Martin V (1417-1431).

But after the abdication of Antipope John XXIII, the papacy was actually vacant for two years, so Poggio and his humanist friends in service to the Curia were at leisure in 1416-1417 to search for books. It was in this period that he traveled the twenty miles from Constance to visit St. Gall in Switzerland, and he later traveled to Baden in Germany. These were the sites of his major finds.

After the election of Martin V, the Church was still fraught with turmoil, and it was some time before Martin felt safe to return to Rome. Poggio received an invitation to work for the Bishop of Winchester, Cardinal Henry Beaufort, so he punted and went to England for five unproductive years (1418-1423). It was during this time that the correspondence with Niccolò de' Niccoli began in earnest.

Either Poggio was a bit of an egoist or he was reluctant to presume a right to publish other people's letters, for he made certain that several hundred of his own were published in his lifetime, but almost none of his correspondents' letters have survived. And more's the pitty. This book suffers by the one-sidedness of the correspondence. Gathered here are 93 letters of Poggio to Niccolò but none in return to give us an equal flavor of his writing. A hazy picture of Niccolò forms through Poggio's reflections and the accompanying notes.

Before this review takes a turn for the worse, a word should be said about the translation. It is excellent. Poggio wrote almost exclusively in Latin, and Ms. Gordan has transmitted his personality almost flawlessly, capturing his wit, his annoyance, his enthusiasm — in short, his charm, which comes through nicely. As a window into the world of fifteenth century Italy, this collection serves very well.

Now, as to the complaints. I was prepared to issue a diatribe against the pedantry and even the organization of this book, but there simply isn't room. Let me try to hit the high spots — or should I say low spots?

First, there is a group of several letters dating from the period around Poggio's discoveries (1416-1418) that are relegated to an appendix. They are either to or from some of Poggio's closest, life-long humanist friends, and they convey the feeling of excitement generated among humanists as a result of those finds that initially brought fame to Poggio and some of these same people. These letters set the table; this is where it all began. They introduce some very important characters who appear again and again in Poggio's letters to Niccolò, and they would have provided a nice introduction to these names, who became quite familiar by the end, if only they had been placed in a prologue at the beginning of the book. I was well into the letters before it dawned on me that the discoveries had been made. I kept waiting to read of something new and exciting, but throughout this correspondence both Poggio and Niccolò were engaged in borrowing and copying manuscripts from far and wide either to share with others or to augment their own libraries. The era of discovery had passed. I think the book suffers by this unfortunate editorial placement. If you decide to read this book, after the introduction, go directly to the appendix.

Second, as stated above, these letters are translated from the Latin originals. But the translator has chosen to retain the Latin form of all proper names, some of which are quite obscure even to Wikipedia. But the Italian forms even sound familiar to a nonscholar such as myself. The unknown Nicolaus de Niccolis becomes the more familiar Niccolò de Niccoli; Leonardus Brunus Aretinus becomes Leonardo Bruni aka Leonardo Aretino; Cosmus de Medicis and Nicolaus de Medicis become Cosimo and Niccolò de' Medici, and the list goes on. The question is raised: If you're going to translate a book presumably for the benefit of the average reader, why not translate the names into the most commonly recognizable forms?

And that brings me to the third complaint: This book has all the trappings of a book for the average educated reader, but this is a disguise. It is really meant for scholars and has been dressed up to look like it would be enjoyable to nonscholars as well. The 1991 reissue is a quality paperback from Columbia University Press. But I didn't have to get too far into the notes to realize that these are way above my pay grade. Some are more useful than others; I won't say they are completely useless. I did manage to ferret out quite a bit of interesting arcana. But the good stuff is buried so deep in the pedantic stuff, that it sometimes takes too much time to get to the kernel of information that you are hoping to find. Sometimes it doesn't materialize. Sometimes you are referred to another source for background, and most of the sources cited are in Latin, Italian, German or, rarely, French. Some are in manuscript form. Who but a scholar has the time or the resources to track down half of what is presented, and once found, the ability to read it? Philologists, content analysts, textual analysts, historiographers, bibliographers, linguists and others soaring in the empyrean heights will find them useful indeed. Would that I had the time, the resources or the knowledge of four languages! Anyway, I am not sure the notes are as helpful as they might have been had they been aimed at an audience that might be able to profit by them. If you want to get a glimpse of what I am talking about, you can preview the Notes at Google Books.

Now that I have gotten that off my chest, on balance, despite the complaints, I thoroughly enjoyed these letters and the sense of immersion in the Renaissance they foster. With the caveats issued above, I can recommend them to lovers of Renaissance history and literature. But be forewarned, it is going to be a bumpy ride.
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Poquette | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Sep 27, 2015 |
I suppose this won't be of interest to many people, but Poggio is one of the great unsung heroes of Western Civilization. He recovered numerous classical texts from where they were moldering in northern monasteries, including Lucretius, Cicero, Quintilian, and Ammianus Marcellinus. The survival of these texts has seems a miracle to me.

The letters primarily date from later in Poggio's career when he lived in London and Rome, where he served as a secretary to the Pope. They give a glimpse of the interests of an early humanist, a lover of Latin literature at a time when those remains were fragmentary and riddled with errors. There's also a sprinkling of church politics and the frustrations of a book collector before the age of Gutenberg. His letters to Niccolo Niccoli convey the warmth of friendship and the gentle rivalry of scholars.

I'm finding the literature of the Italian Renaissance to be richer and more enjoyable than that of almost any other period. Often books that are said to be of marginal interest are quite vivid and engrossing. I believe the literature of this period to be as deep as the visual arts, only less known and renowned.
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le.vert.galant | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jan 26, 2015 |
Besides being a fascinating collection of letters by Poggius, I was drawn in further by, and enjoy most, the nuggets of wisdom he often discloses to his correspondents. Here are a few:

ON THE RARITY OF GOOD, DEVOUT MEN
"The idols of the nations are silver and gold, and the nations are dedicated to belly and bed, and so swollen with pomp and pride that if a man does not worship the image of the beast, he is put to death. The principles of the good life they have turned into a mere display of rhetoric, and what merit they do not gain from their religious devotion, and their good behavior and holy living, they wish to gain through intimidation and pride and superstitious practices. As you write most correctly, if it were not that the words and deeds of our ancestors help us more than the dissolute example set by our contemporaries, through the examples we mentioned, Faith would undoubtedly perish. Our contemporaries know only one thing, that they can do everything for the sake of appetite and greed, to which they subordinate everybody. For very few fight for the Gospel, but many fight for their ease and their wealth" (p. 38).

"For strength, as the Apostle says, is made perfect in weakness. John Chrysostom, whom I prefer to every other author that I ever read, when he was driven into exile from his church, said in a sermon to the people before his departure: 'Let the sea rage, let the floods sound in fury against me, etc., my heart shall not fear, for I stand upon a rock'; and that rock, as you know, is Christ. This too can be said of the Bishop of Bologna, whom, because of his holiness, the mob could not bear; and no wonder; for only the people who displease Christ please the world, as Jerome says in one of his letters" (p. 40).

"The sacred books which I have read and which I am reading every day have cooled off my former interest in the Humanities, to which as you know I have been devoted since childhood. For the sources of these studies are vain and partly false and all worthless. But the source of sacred eloquence is truth and, when that is lost, we can hold nothing to its true course, we can accomplish nothing" (p. 49-50).

"We must endeavor to make our reading about learned men and the precepts of the wise do us some good in life, so that, as the Apostle says, we shall not be revealed as mere hearers of the word but doers of it" (p. 111).
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stephenjchow | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Oct 17, 2010 |

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