December 10: Benvenuto, I think I'll miss you most of all

Cellini himself. Not pictured: all his fine ladies.

My love for Cellini is well documented. I have come to respect that blowhard Emerson and admire Darwin's thoroughness and appreciate Tennyson's craft, and all that probably contributed to my growth as a human being. [Ed. note -- not really.] But those volumes will stay on my shelves untouched. Cellini, however, a terrible, selfish person, given to violence, addicted to bragging... my love for him will cancel out any human-being-style growth, and he will be with me always.

Here's a sentence whose clauses are all about the same person, and yet what the "and"s connect will make your neck snap:

He was the son of one of the Pulcis, who had been beheaded for incest with his daughter; and the youth possessed extraordinary gifts for poetry together with sound Latin scholarship; he wrote well, was graceful in manners, and of surprising personal beauty; he had just left the service of some bishop, whose name I do not remember, and was thoroughly tainted with a very foul disease.

It will not surprise you to hear that this Luigi Pulci is bad news; he cheats on Cellini's woman -- who he, Cellini, hates, but it's the principle of the thing, and so Benvenuto responds in old-school fashion: that is, with blind, unreasoning rage:

I could see Luigi in the street, together with Pantasilea; and I heard Luigi saying: “Oh, if that devil Benvenuto only saw us, shouldn’t we just catch it!” She answered: “Have no fear; only listen to the noise they’re making; we are the last thing they’re thinking of.” At these words, having made them both well out, I leaped from the window, and took Luigi by the cape; and certainly I should then have killed him with the knife I held, but that he was riding a white horse, to which he clapped spurs, leaving his cape in my grasp...The company at supper rose immediately, and came down, entreating me in a body to refrain from putting myself and them to inconvenience for a strumpet. I told them that I should not have let myself be moved on her account, but that I was bent on punishing the infamous young man, who showed how little he regarded me.

You couldn't even make a movie of this -- it would seem ridiculous. Maybe an HBO comedy series, full of nudity and buggery and people waving their hands in the air.

I mean, what is this even doing in the Harvard Classics (besides being awesome)? I used to suspect that the sour old WASPs up in Boston put it in to make Catholics look bad (today's passage ends with Cellini killing people for the Pope during the Sack of Rome). But now I wonder if it's more 1) to give people some entertainment value for their Harvard Classic investment, and 2) as a dissent from a bohemian. Cellini's life is the classic artist (he was a great sculptor) who refuses to agree to rationality, norms, not getting 15-year-olds pregnant, etc. It's as if the Harvard Classics were 49 volumes of people building civilization and one volume of someone who drinks and wenches and has friends who shit themselves with fright ("Overwhelmed with fright, my poor gossip was suddenly taken ill with the colic, and withdrew to ease himself apart; indeed, he could not buy obey the call.") I love him.

August 18: 16th Century Dudes Part II: Cellini

What Cellini did in his spare time.

For Luther, we are -- or should be -- all in this together:

A cobbler, a smith, a peasant, every man, has the office and function of his calling, and yet all alike are consecrated priests and bishops, and every man should by his office or function be useful and beneficial to the rest, so that various kinds of work may all be united for the furtherance of body and soul, just as the members of the body all serve one another.

Contrast this with the beginning of today's excerpt:

I HAD but just dismounted from my horse, when one of those excellent people who rejoice in mischief-making came to tell me that Pagolo Micceri had taken a house for the little hussy Caterina and her mother, and that he was always going there, and whenever he mentioned me, used words of scorn to this effect: “Benvenuto set the fox to watch the grapes, and thought I would not eat them! Now he is satisfied with going about and talking big, and thinks I am afraid of him. But I have girt this sword and dagger to my side in order to show him that my steel can cut as well as his, and that I too am a Florentine, of the Micceri, a far better family than his Cellini.”

Women, fighting, and revenge -- suddenly we're in a very different part of the 16th century forest. The part where such people where women, fighting, and revenge would also get you in in good with God and Luther's Christian nobility. Here, the King of France is talking after seeing one of Cellini's sculpures (he's already gotten the salt-cellar pictured above):

Since the Cardinal had made him no provision, we must do so, and all the more because the man himself is so slow at asking favours—to cut it short, I mean to have him well provided for... therefore see that he gets the first abbey that falls vacant worth two thousand crowns a year. If this cannot be had in one benefice, let him have two or three to that amount, for in his case it will come to the same thing.

How different from our own time! Not the sweetheart government deal, of course, just the fact that it went to an artist, instead of someone in the asphalt business.

I guess the Luther-Cellini comparison is a lesson in the power of ideas, because Luther helped get thousands of people killed and Cellini had to do it one at a time ("To him I said in Italian: 'If you offer any resistance to what I shall propose, upon the slightest word you utter I will stab you till your guts run out upon this floor.'") But, to be fair to Cellini, he was busy with other things. Here's the little hussy Caterina, who he married off at sword's point, hired as a model, and then beat to a pulp:

On the following morning Caterina came to our door, and knocked so violently, that, being below, I ran to see whether it was a madman or some member of the household. When I opened, the creature laughed and fell upon my neck, embracing and kissing me, and asked me if I was still angry with her. I said, “No!” Then she added: “Let me have something good to break my fast on.” So I supplied her well with food, and partook of it at the same table in sign of reconciliation. Afterwards I began to model from her, during which occurred some amorous diversions; and at last, just at the same hour as on the previous day, she irritated me to such a pitch that I gave her the same drubbing. So we went on several days, repeating the old round like clockwork. There was little or no variation in the incidents.

To quote Luther, "Jesus!" That's probably the high point of today's excerpt, in terms of jaw-dropping action, but getting the next model (15) pregnant and summing up the incident with, "This was the first child I ever had, so far as I remember. I settled money enough upon the girl for dowry to satisfy an aunt of hers, under whose tutelage I placed her, and from that time forwards I had nothing more to do with her" is a close second.

It's incredible. I guess Reformation looks pretty good with crazy men like these running around, although, from a consumer's point of view, the scamp wins, always. On January 2, 2009, when I'm done with this, I'm going to get a fire going in the fireplace and curl up and read Cellini.

May 6: You've tried the rest...

I am a shallow person, and what proves it is that the favorite thing I've read all year, chosen from all the great works I've skimmed -- the literature I've flipped to the end of, the philosophy whose summaries I've read on Wikipedia -- is still Cellini getting blessing from the Pope to murder. He is my favorite, and I had never heard of him before, so thanks Harvard.


Today's Cellini isn't quite up to that, (what with the instructional part where you can learn how to make your own 16th-century bronze statue), but he is still a man who never has any emotion unless he can have it to the utmost! of! emotion!:

NO sooner had I got to bed, than I ordered my serving-maids to carry food and wine for all the men into the workshop; at the same time I cried: “I shall not be alive tomorrow.” ...

While I was thus terribly afflicted, I beheld the figure of a man enter my chamber, twisted in his body into the form of a capital S. He raised a lamentable, doleful voice, like one who announces their last hour to men condemned to die upon the scaffold, and spoke these words: “O Benvenuto! your statue is spoiled, and there is no hope whatever of saving it.” No sooner had I heard the shriek of that wretch than I gave a howl which might have been heard from the sphere of flame. Jumping from my bed, I seized my clothes and began to dress. The maids, and my lads, and every one who came around to help me, got kicks or blows of the fist, while I kept crying out in lamentation: “Ah! traitors! enviers! This is an act of treason, done by malice prepense! But I swear by God that I will sift it to the bottom, and before I die will leave such witness to the world of what I can do as shall make a score of mortals marvel.”

Unsurprisingly, he pulls it off ("they had learned and seen things done which other masters judged impossible"). And afterward, he reports, he had salad. The ancients -- they're just like us!

One of my flaws as a writer is that I tend to avoid writing BIG EMOTIONS, which, of course, is what makes drama. Cellini never falls into this error. It is what makes him such a delight to read, although he sounds like the type of guy who, if you knew him in real life, you would set the clocks ahead before he came over -- so that after a couple of hours of his holding forth on his greatness, and his weeping on your shoulder at the excellence of your sausage and peppers, you could finally say, "Gee whiz, look at the time!"

Apr 14: Hello Old Friend

I missed one, yesterday, obviously, so instead of doing today's (which was about Sir Francis Drake), I am indulging myself with yesterday's reading -- Cellini! He's my favorite. Why? Here's how today's selection opens:

NOW let us return to Piero Torrigiani, who, with my drawing in his hand, spoke as follows: “This Buonarroti [Michelangelo, to you -- ed.] and I used, when we were boys, to go into the Church of the Carmine, to learn drawing from the chapel of Masaccio. 1 It was Buonarroti’s habit to banter all who were drawing there; and one day, among others, when he was annoying me, I got more angry than usual, and clenching my fist, gave him such a blow on the nose, that I felt bone and cartilage go down like biscuit beneath my knuckles; and this mark of mine he will carry with him to the grave.”

Tip to young writers: always try to add a scene where Michelangelo's nose gets broken like a biscuit. Today's selection involves the perils of freelancing; specifically, how hard it is to get paid -- something that hasn't changed a bit since the Renaissance:

...I took it into my head, as soon as I had finished them, to change my master; I had indeed been worried into doing so by a certain Milanese, called Pagolo Arsago. 2 My first master, Firenzuola, had a great quarrel about this with Arsago, and abused him in my presence; whereupon I took up speech in defence of my new master [and] I reminded him of the money he owed me. He laughed me in the face; on which I said that if I knew how to use my tools in handicraft as well as he had seen, I could be quite as clever with my sword in claiming the just payment of my labour.

If only I had taken those dang swordplay lessons, I might be able to get by without an agent today. On the other hand, my agent would definitely have prevented me from doing something like this (Cellini has gotten into a fight with his former masters):

...my rage grew to such a pitch that, turning wholly to evil, and being also by nature somewhat choleric, I waited till the magistrates had gone to dinner; and when I was alone, and observed that none of their officers were watching me, in the fire of my anger, I left the palace, ran to my shop, seized a dagger and rushed to the house of my enemies, who were at home and shop together. I found them at table; and Gherardo, who had been the cause of the quarrel, flung himself upon me. I stabbed him in the breast, piercing doublet and jerkin through and through to the shirt, without however grazing his flesh or doing him the least harm in the world. When I felt my hand go in, and heard the clothes tear, I thought that I had killed him; and seeing him fall terror-struck to earth, I cried: “Traitors, this day is the day on which I mean to murder you all.”

Who knew that the goldsmith business was such a den of passions? I also like that someone who "turns wholly to evil" is willing to admit that, yeah, I'm a little choleric too. Cellini lives not like other men; and, if he made up half this stuff as he is said to, I prefer his embroidery to that of the James Freys and so forth.

Mar 5: Now that's fabrication

On seeing that it could not be helped, I told him before all his servants: “Lock me well up, and keep good watch on me; for I shall certainly contrive to escape.” So they took and confined me with the utmost care.

See, that's how you do it. If you're going to embroider your memoir, put a little swash and buckle into it. Yes, our old favorite Benvenuto Cellini is back again -- after a couple of days of devout Protestants, we get a cheery Renaissance Italian Catholic contrast (imprisoned, he refuses to eat the Pope's food, but a sympathetic Cardinal feeds him.)

Often one of the difficulties of reading excerpts is that you don't know all of the underlying circumstances. In this case it's a strength -- you just focus on the incredible story, which is in five short chapters and runs as follows:

• Cellini is imprisoned by a man who thinks he's a bat.
• He escapes by taking the door off the hinges (a process that takes a long time), and lowering himself down with bedsheets -- perhaps one of the first uses of that escape trope.
• Breaking his leg in the fall, he crawls to town, where, after he's bit by dogs, a servant carries him on his back to the cathedral.
• He's put up by the Cardinal, but the Pope gets wind of it; however, the exploit is so marvelous that a bargain is struck.

That's the end of the excerpt -- a happy ending. But I read ahead and know that Benvenuto gets himself in more trouble, which is foreshadowed by a passage in the excerpt:

I should have been quite safe from recapture by the Pope if I could have stayed there; but my exploits up to this point had been too marvellous for a human being, and God was unwilling to encourage my vainglory; accordingly, for my own good, He chastised me a second time worse even than the first.

William Penn never had it half so good.

Feb 13: Papal indulgences...of murder!

Today is from the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, who I had never heard of, but who gets his own volume in the Harvard Classics. And good thing -- this is easily one of the most awesome, if not the most awesome, readings yet. The following passage shows you why. Setup: Cellini is at Castle Sant'angelo, defending the Pope (a Medici, I believe) during the sack of Rome in 1526:

I fired, and hit my man exactly in the middle. He had trussed his sword in front, for swagger, after a way those Spaniards have; and my ball, when it struck him, broke upon the blade, and one could see the fellow cut in two fair halves. The Pope, who was expecting nothing of this kind, derived great pleasure and amazement from the sight... He sent for me, and asked about it... Upon my bended knees I then besought him to give me the pardon of his blessing for that homicide; and for all the others I had committed in the castle in the service of the Church. Thereat the Pope, raising his hand, and making a large open sign of the cross upon my face, told me that he blessed me, and that he gave me pardon for all murders I had ever perpetrated, or should ever perpetrate, in the service of the Apostolic Church.

Awesome! I mean, not awesome, in that it's a nasty religious-political war, and we have plenty of examples right now of how senseless and awful they are. Except Cellini (whom the introduction describes as "a wonderful combination of artist and knave") doesn't care. He's having a blast:

My drawing, and my fine studies in my craft, and my charming art of music, all were swallowed up in the din of that artillery; and if I were to relate in detail all the splendid things I did in that infernal work of cruelty, I should make the world stand by and wonder.

And that's the other thing that's so awesome about it: Cellini's sky-high opinion of himself. Maybe it's just refreshing because our contemporary memoir style is to talk about suffering, not about how you were this great artist, but unfortunately you had to go to the war where you were even greater:

I went on firing under the eyes of several cardinals and lords, who kept blessing me and giving me the heartiest encouragement. In my enthusiasm I strove to achieve the impossible; let it suffice that it was I who saved the castle that morning, and brought the other bombardiers back to their duty.

Good on the harvard Classics for including this volume. It's not philosophical at all -- just a ripping yarn -- and as such maybe a commentary on all the other philosophies:

Alessandro, in a panic, cried: “Would God that we had never come here!” and turned in maddest haste to fly. I took him up somewhat sharply with these words: “Since you have brought me here, I must perform some action worthy of a man;” and directing my arquebuse where I saw the thickest and most serried troop of fighting men, I aimed exactly at one whom I remarked to be higher than the rest... I discovered afterwards that one of our shots had killed the Constable of Bourbon.

Naturally.