Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello

Innovative for its time, but an underwhelming read today

Italian writer Luigi Pirandello won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is best-known and highly acclaimed as a playwright, though he also published novels, short stories, and poetry. His play Six Characters in Search of an Author was first staged in 1921. At that time, the audience responded with jeers. History has been kinder, however, and the play is now regarded as a groundbreaking work in theatrical history. For its time, the play pushes the envelope of what was acceptable on a stage in a way that presages the works of later “Theatre of the Absurd” playwrights like Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett.

The play consists of three acts. The scenes take place on a stage during rehearsals for a play, so the sets present a behind-the-scenes look at the theatrical process, from a relatively bare stage to some apparently unfinished stage decorations for the future performance to come. The members of a theatre troupe are gathered on the stage, rehearsing for the production of a play (also by Luigi Pirandello). Then, in through the backstage door wanders a family of six unnamed individuals, led by a father figure who explains that they are six characters looking for a playwright to dramatize their story for the stage. The manager of the theatre company resents the interruption of his rehearsal and demands that the interlopers leave immediately. The six characters, however, manage to relate enough of their story—involving extramarital affairs, a broken marriage, and prostitution—to pique the director’s interest. He decides to adapt the family’s story for the stage and produce it as a play to be performed by his company.

This sort of meta-drama would have been very novel and even shocking to Pirandello’s audience of 1921. A century later, however, such plays-within-plays have become commonplace in theatre, television, and film. Actors in today’s biopics frequently collaborate with their subjects on the development of their characters (if those subjects are still living), much like the relationship between the stage director and the family depicted here. In the postmodern era, the boundaries and intersections between fiction and reality have been explored to much more extreme lengths than Pirandello has done here. Charlie Kauffmann’s films Being John Malkovich and Adaptation spring to mind, or even some episodes of Seinfeld. By comparison to these and many other recent examples, Characters in Search of an Author feels relatively pedestrian. But someone had to break every boundary first, and thus the value of this play relies on its historical precedence and subsequent influence. There have been plays-within-plays going back to Shakespeare and likely earlier, but Pirandello certainly takes a leap forward here in terms of thinking outside that box.

When performed on a stage, Six Characters in Search of an Author might very well be a lively and entertaining play. When read from the page, however, it is far from enthralling. The dialogue consists largely of the theatre company and the family disagreeing about how the story should be told. One side will say, “It should be done like this!” and the other responds, “No, that’s wrong, let’s do it this way instead!” over and over again for 70 to 90 minutes. To today’s readers, the play isn’t absurd enough to be funny and isn’t serious enough to be compelling drama. It may have historical significance, but you’d be better off reading works by those “Theatre of the Absurd” writers who built on Pirandello’s idea.
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Bound in Venice: The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book by Alessandro Marzo Magno

Informative but disorganized, frequently digresses into trivia

Following the pioneering of the printing press (in the Western world) by Johannes Gutenberg and others in Germany, German immigrants soon brought the technology to Venice. At that time, Venice was more than just a city in Italy, which had not yet formed into the nation we know today. The Republic of Venice included a stretch of territories in Italy, Greece, the Balkans, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Venice’s unique position as a center of world trade, a mulitcultural melting pot, a hub of intellectual activity, and a religiously tolerant environment makes it the ideal blooming ground for the publishing industry. By the early 16th century, roughly half of the books published in Europe were printed in Venice. In his 2013 book Bound in Venice, Italian journalist Alessandro Marzo Magno chronicles the rising, thriving, and eventual decline of this publishing boomtown. Along the way, he provides mini-biographies of important historical figures, such as printer extraordinaire Aldus Manutius and blockbuster author Pietro Aretino, and highlights landmark books in the history of Venetian printing.

In substance and structure, Magno’s book is similar to The Bookshop of the World, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen’s 2019 study of printing and publishing in the 17th-century Netherlands. Separate chapters cover different genres of publishing (e.g. religious books, medical books, music publishing, maps and atlases) or publishing in different languages (e.g. Hebrew, Greek, Armenian). However, unlike Pettegree and der Weduwen’s study, which is very articulate, logically organized, and really brings the time and place of its subject to life, Bound in Venice is a disorganized mess. Magno jumps all over the place chronologically, his prose lurches from one topic to another like a string of non-sequiturs, and he frequently goes off into digressions that amount to little more than trivia. He can’t seem to mention the name of a city, for example, without adding that oh, by the way, this is where some totally unrelated person comes from, be they athlete, actress, or politician of any century but the one he’s talking about. There are a whole lot of parentheses in this text, even parentheses within parentheses, and much of what’s printed between the covers of Bound in Venice could be considered merely parenthetical information. About the best one can glean from this incoherent stream of names and dates are the details of some historic firsts—first book published in Armenian, first medical book published with illustrations, first published geological treatise, first periodical, first board game, and so on. If all these firsts were compiled into an appendix, there would be no reason to read the book.

Bound in Venice is made even harder to endure by its atrocious grammar. This can likely be blamed, however, not on the author but on his translator, Gregory Conti. The English prose is replete with incomplete sentences, orphaned clauses, and unfinished thoughts. Repeated and unnecessary words abound. The punctuation is so haphazard that it almost reads as if the commas were placed by arbitrarily throwing darts at the manuscript. On the bright side, I didn’t notice many spelling errors.

Despite all its faults, those with an avid interest in the history of books are bound to find plenty of interesting nuggets of information in this miscellany of data and anecdotes. If anyone can find pleasure in a jumbled mishmash of arcane factoids, it’s a bibliophile. Just know what you’re in for. If you are looking for an authoritative history on 16th-century book production in Venice, expertly written with impeccable scholarly rigor, this isn’t it (at least not the English edition).
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The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti by Charles William Russell

Sizing up the world’s greatest polyglot

During his lifetime, Cardinal Joseph (or Giuseppe) Mezzofanti (1774-1849) had the reputation of being the greatest polyglot (multilinguist) in the history of the world, or at least the Western World. Born in Bologna, Italy, Mezzofanti was a librarian and professor of oriental languages at the University of Bologna before being promoted to service in the Vatican, where he taught clergymen from all over the world at the College of the Propaganda. Despite having never traveled outside of Italy, Mezzofanti is said to have spoken at least thirty languages fluently enough that he was often mistaken for a native speaker. In addition, he had varying degrees of familiarity and reading skills with dozens of other languages and dialects. Mezzofanti seems to have possessed a photographic memory, or at least its auditory equivalent, and was able to switch effortlessly from one language to another in mid-conversation without missing a beat. In his 1858 book The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, Irish clergyman and scholar Charles William Russell provides a biography of this hyperpolyglot and scrutinizes eyewitness reports of his multilingual prowess.

Before Russell can properly assess Mezzofanti’s remarkable linguistic abilities, he first feels the need to establish a baseline of comparison. For this reason, the first quarter of the book is not about Mezzofanti at all, but rather an “Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern.” Russell outlines a history of multilingualism from ancient times to the present, highlighting exceptional linguists and polyglots of Europe and the Middle East. Though Russell crams a great deal of arcane history into this brief overview, it is quite interesting and easy to read. Russell establishes that no one prior to Mezzofanti had been recorded to have linguistic abilities approaching his. This is a valuable summary; it’s only fault being that it ends around 1850. Since then, several polyglots have arisen to challenge Mezzofanti’s reputed achievements, including Harold Williams, Emil Krebs, Kenneth L. Hale, and Georg Sauerwein among others.

Russell’s main purpose in charting the life of Mezzofanti is to ascertain as closely as possible what languages Mezzofanti knew and how well he knew him. Since Mezzofanti himself was modest about his abilities and published almost nothing in the field of linguistics, this makes for a difficult task. Since the book was published shortly after Mezzofanti’s death, Russell is able to rely on the testimony of many witnesses and acquaintances of the polyglot cardinal. (Russell himself met Mezzofanti on more than one occasion.) Not all the statements are positive. Some of Mezzofanti’s contemporaries claimed his skills were overhyped and that he was little more than a glorified human parrot. Those affirming Mezzofanti’s legendary powers, however, far outnumber his detractors. By comparing numerous accounts, Russell is able to compile a tentative list of Mezzofanti’s languages and his reputed degree of knowledge in each (see below).

The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti is not a conventional biography. Because of Russell’s investigative focus into Mezzofanti’s specific abilities, the subject’s life story gets the short shrift. The book often reads more like a box of assorted letters than a biography. Russell’s text can get boring and repetitive at times, and the book also includes copious footnotes that veer off into all manner of digressions. Nevertheless, the remarkable accounts of Mezzofanti’s abilities will fascinate any reader interested in languages. Those who don’t want to commit to the long haul can simply read Chapter XVII: Recapitulation, which summarizes Russell’s findings quite adequately and succinctly.

Mezzofanti’s languages
Though there is no definitive list of the languages that Mezzofanti knew, author C. W. Russell draws from the accounts of many who knew, met, and conversed with Mezzofanti. In the conclusion to The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, Russell sums up his findings on Mezzofanti’s linguistic abilities as follows [my notes in brackets]:

I. Languages frequently tested, and spoken with rare excellence:

1. Hebrew
2. Rabbinical Hebrew
3. Arabic
4. Chaldee [a.k.a. Chaldean or Aramaic]
5. Coptic
6. Ancient Armenian
7. Modern Armenian
8. Persian
9. Turkish
10. Albanese [Albanian]
11. Maltese
12. Greek
13. Romaic [Byzantine Greek]
14. Latin
15. Italian
16. Spanish
17. Portuguese
18. French
19. German
20. Swedish
21. Danish
22. Dutch
23. Flemish
24. English
25. Illyrian [a language of the Balkans]
26. Russian
27. Polish
28. Czechish or Bohemian
29. Magyar [Hungarian]
30. Chinese

II. Stated to have been spoken fluently, but hardly sufficiently tested:

1. Syriac
2. Geez [a.k.a. Classical Ethiopic]
3. Amarinna [possibly Amarhic, an Ethio-Semitic language]
4. Hindustani
5. Guzarattee [Gujarati, of India]
6. Basque
7. Wallachian [a dialect of Romanian]
8. Californian [a Native American language, possibly of Baja California]
9. Algonquin

III. Spoken rarely, and less perfectly:

1. Koordish [Kurdish]
2. Georgian
3. Serbian
4. Bulgarian
5. Gypsy language [a.k.a. Romani]
6. Peguan [a.k.a. Mon, a language of Myanmar and Thailand]
7. Welsh
8. Angolese [presumably one of the native languages of Angola]
9. Mexican [Spanish dialect, or a Native American language?]
10. Chilean [Spanish dialect, or a Native American language?]
11. Peruvian [Spanish dialect, or a Native American language?]

IV. Spoken imperfectly; a few sentences and conversational forms:

1. Cinagalese [a language of Ceylon, a.k.a. Sri Lanka]
2. Birmese [Burmese]
3. Japanese
4. Irish
5. Gaelic
6. Chippewa Indian
7. Delaware
8. Some of the languages of Oceanica

V. Studied from books, but not known to have been spoken:

1. Sanscrit [Sanskrit]
2. Malay
3. Tonquinese [a Vietnamese language]
4. Cochin-Chinese [a Vietnamese language?]
5. Tibetan
6. Japanese
7. Icelandic
8. Lappish [language of the Sami, or Lapps, in Northern Scandinavia]
9. Ruthenian [a Slavic language of Lithuania]
10. Frisian [a Germanic language of the Netherlands]
11. Lettish [a.k.a. Latvian]
12. Cornish (old British of Cornwall)
13. Quichua (ancient Peruvian)
14. Bimbarra (Central African)

VI. Dialects spoken, or their peculiarities understood:

    1. Hebrew

            Samaritan

    2. Arabic

            Syrian dialect (fluently)

            Egyptian dialect

            Moorish

            Berber

    3. Chinese

            Kiang-Si dialect

            Hu-quam dialect

    4. Italian

            Sicilian

            Sardinian

            Neapolitan

            Bolognese

            Lombard

            Friulese

    5. Spanish

            Catalan

            Valencian

            Majorican

    6. Basque

            Labourdain

            Souletin

            Guipuscoan

    7. Magyar

            Debreczeny

            Eperies

            Pesth

            Transylvanian

    8. German

            Ancient Gothic

            Rhetian (Grisons)

            Sette Communi dialect

            Dialects of Northern and Southern Germany

    9. French

            Provençal

            Tolosan

            Burgundian

            Gascon

            Bearnais

            Lorraine

            Bas Breton

    1o. English

            Somersetshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire dialects

            Lowland Scotch

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The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries by Massimo Listri

Cathedrals to knowledge and the treasures they contain
If you are a lover of historic libraries, it would be hard to find a more satisfying tribute to these venerable institutions than The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries, published by Taschen in 2018. This mammoth tome measures in at a whopping 11.5” x 15.5” page size (the dimensions listed on Amazon do not appear to be quite right, unless there’s an even bigger edition than the one I read), and weighs in at more than fifteen pounds. The book is packed with huge full-page photos by Massimo Listri, an accomplished architectural photographer, whose images are beautifully reproduced on top quality paper. The lavish production is impressive, but of course you pay for it with the steep cover price.

Before praising this volume, one must first point out its limitations. As is typical of books with similar titles, the “World” means mostly Europe. The contents include photos and text on 50 libraries in Europe, two in North America (The Morgan Library in New York and the Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Mexico), and three in South America (one in Brazil and two in Peru). Even the European selections only extend as far east as Sweden, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Also typical of the “beautiful library” genre of coffee table books, this volume does not include any modern architecture. It is heavy on the Renaissance and Baroque styles, with only a few libraries built in the late nineteenth century and one (The Morgan) in the early twentieth. Amidst all the ornate museum-quality Baroque and Rococo decoration, a few interesting buildings feature more austere monastic architecture and have clearly suffered from the clutter and weathering of age.

The photography in this book is equally focused on the architecture of these libraries and the treasures they hold. Some of the libraries are only represented by two of Listri’s photographs, while others merit as many as ten. The profile for each library features pages from their most prized volumes (not taken by Listri but provided by the institutions themselves) such as centuries-old illustrations from illuminated manuscripts, engraved frontispieces, and rare maps. One great thing about this large-format volume is that Listri’s photos are so large and of such high resolution that you can actually read the spines of the books on the shelves, which really heightens the feeling of being there. (One of the photos is unfortunately printed in reverse, right to left.) One library in Germany no longer contains any books at all, just painted faux spines where the books used to be. The text by art historian Elisabeth Sladek provides an informative and concise summation of each library’s history, architectural significance, and most important holdings. The book also features an introductory essay on the general history of libraries by Georg Ruppelt, a former director of two of the libraries featured. The book is trilingual, with text printed in English, French, and German.

This volume is worth its cover price for enthusiasts who can afford to pay it, but for the rest of us, another beautiful thing about libraries is that you can read books for free, including this one. Knowing Taschen, they will probably eventually come out with a smaller, cheaper edition at a later date, but it won’t compare to the luxurious experience of this large-format edition. In the meantime, a reasonably priced substitute is The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World by Jacques Bosser and Guillaume de Laubier, but this Taschen volume surpasses it in every way.
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The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Murder mystery with Church history
The Name of the Rose, first published in 1980, is the highly acclaimed first novel by Italian author and professor of philosophy Umberto Eco. The book is a mystery novel set in a 14th century Benedictine monastery in Italy. The “detective” in this mystery is William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan friar, who has come to the monastery to participate in a diplomatic summit between representatives of Pope John XXII and a group of monks accused of heresy. William is accompanied by a young Austrian monk, Adso of Melk, who, like a good Doctor Watson surrogate, serves as narrator. Upon arrival, the two discover that a monk has recently been found murdered, and the abbot asks William, renowned for his reasoning powers, to look into the matter.

In his initial descriptions of William’s physical appearance, personality, and deductive techniques, it seems as if Eco has intentionally patterned his detective after Sherlock Holmes. Early on, Eco also riffs on a scene from Voltaire’s Zadig (regarded by some to be the first piece of modern detective fiction) when William provides a detailed description of a horse that he has never seen, simply by exercising his prodigious faculty of reason. Like any good classic mystery thriller, The Name of the Rose includes a few great scenes of intense suspense, including late-night forays into a spooky labyrinthine library that any lover of old books would be happy to get lost in.

Make no mistake about it, The Name of the Rose is a brilliant mystery, even for those who don’t habitually read mystery novels. There is no getting around the fact, however, that in order to enjoy this mystery you are going to have to spend hours reading about the history of the Catholic Church. The depiction of life inside a medieval monastery is really quite fascinating, but the historical context gets quite tedious. It often seems as if Eco is just using the mystery story to showcase his erudition. Thankfully, he is not pushing any religious agenda; he just comes across as a guy who is obsessed with the minutiae of European history. He loves to go off on any digression, flashback, or dream sequence that will allow him to inject as much arcane knowledge into the proceedings as possible, necessary or not. His prose (at least the English translations I’ve read) is usually a pleasure to read, but often in mid-narrative he will break off into a list that goes on for pages—of decorations in a chapel, for example, or books on a shelf—just to indulge in obscure vocabulary. It is difficult to keep track of all the monks in the supporting cast and the distinguishing differences in their theological views.

The Name of the Rose inspires mixed emotions. On the one hand, one wishes all historical novels could be written this intelligently (as opposed to, for example, the works of Dan Brown, who writes Eco-esque books that seem aimed at a junior high audience). On the other hand, if you’re not avidly interested in the history of the Papacy, the Franciscan and Benedictine orders, or debates on the poverty of Christ, at times this book can be a total bore. Though The Name of the Rose is plotted better than Eco’s second novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, I prefer the latter simply because the historical content is less narrowly focused and more interesting to me personally. The Name of the Rose is certainly a work of great literary merit, but many readers, even fans of mysteries or historical novels, will likely find it tiresome.
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How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life by Massimo Pigliucci

Irvine’s been there, done that
Stoicism is an ancient school of philosophy that originated in Greece in the 3rd century BC. Its most famous spokesmen from ancient times—Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius—taught their followers the path to a life of tranquility and virtue through the mindful exercise of reason in mastering desires, emotions, and judgments. Stoicism has enjoyed a resurgence of sorts in recent years because its ancient tenets and techniques have proven to be a timelessly effective code of living. Stoicism is the basis for modern cognitive behavior therapy, and has also given rise to a number of self-help publications, the latest of which is Massimo Pigliucci’s 2017 book How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life. As the title suggests, Pigliucci makes the case for Stoicism as a way of life and offers practical suggestions to today’s readers on how to apply Stoic concepts to their daily lives. While this is a great idea, it has been done before, most notably by William B. Irvine in his 2009 book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. In my opinion, the more books about Stoicism the better, and Pigliucci’s entry is a welcome addition to the Stoic corpus, but it doesn’t really cover much new ground.

For those who have never read a philosophy book, Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic may be the easier entry point to the subject, but Irvine’s book is still remarkably accessible and more substantial in its content. The one unique twist to Pigliucci’s approach is that he carries on an imaginary conversation with the ancient teacher Epictetus, whose Discourses is arguably the most important fundamental text of Stoicism. To illustrate Stoic concepts, Pigliucci uses a brief saying or story from Epictetus as the basis for each chapter and elaborates upon it with examples from his own life. The drawback to this approach is that Epictetus’s contributions to the dialogue tend to be oversimplified and overshadowed by Pigliucci’s personal reflections. While I agree with many of Pigliucci’s views on politics and society, I don’t agree that he should have devoted so much ink to them in this book. While examples are important to connect the ancient philosophy to modern life, in this case it feels like examples make up the bulk of the book. Furthermore, while one of the advantages of Stoicism is its adaptability, Pigliucci seems too ready to depart from the ancient teachings in favor of his own personal interpretation or modern compromise. In contrast, Irvine also used helpful personal examples to support his text, but he places the philosophy at the forefront and does a better job of letting the Stoics speak for themselves.

The best part of Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic is its final chapter, entitled “Practical Spiritual Exercises,” which offers a dozen specific cognitive and behavioral practices that budding Stoics can utilize to hone their thoughts and actions in order to live, as the Stoics say, in accordance with nature. Recommendations such as “Examine your impressions,” “Remind yourself of the impermanence of things,” and “Speak little and well,” may seem like simple rules to follow, but in practice they require repetition, discipline, and fortitude to be effective. Again, many of these exercises have been previously suggested by Irvine and other writers of the new Stoic movement, but Pigliucci does an exceptionally fine job of laying them out in an organized and accessible manner that encourages the reader not only to try them but also to persist and succeed.

Though How to Be a Stoic feels a lot like an Irvine redux, there is still room for one more philosopher under the stoa. Irvine himself gave his blessing to Pigliucci’s book, and it will no doubt succeed in recruiting more than a few new students to this worthy school of thought.
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Stoicism Today: Selected Writings, Volume One. Edited by Patrick Ussher

Applying ancient philosophy to modern life
Stoicism is an ancient school of philosophy founded in Athens in the 3rd century BC. It is a practical philosophy, intended as a guide for how to live one’s life. The Stoics stressed that we have no control over what happens in our lives, only control over our perceptions. They advocated living one’s life in accordance with nature (not “nature” as in grass and trees, but “nature” as in the order of the universe). By concentrating one’s thoughts and choices on what is good and virtuous, and disregarding the “indifferent” distractions of everyday life, one can avoid negative emotions like fear, anger, grief, and frustration, and live a life of happiness and tranquility.

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning resurgence in Stoicism, with modern writers producing manuals on how to apply Stoic principles to life in today’s world, such as William B. Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life. Along similar lines, Stoicism Today is a blog published out of the University of Exeter in England, edited and largely written by a team of British philosophers. This 2014 book, edited by Patrick Ussher, is the first volume of writings reprinted from the blog. 36 articles are included in the collection, covering a mixed bag of Stoic-related topics.

The collection starts out strong with essays summarizing and explaining the core concepts of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca. These ancient Roman writers are the most prominent Stoics whose teachings survive today. The 21st-century writers clarify the ancient Stoic precepts and discuss their applicability to modern life. Though the bloggers hold PhDs in philosophy and command a thorough understanding of their subject, they do a great job of expressing these complex concepts in language that is accessible to the general reader, without dumbing down the subject matter.

While the first half of the book provides a good, broad education on Stoicism, the second half covers a diverse assortment of topics and perspectives. A section called “Life Stories” consists of accounts by people of various walks of life on how they use Stoicism in their daily lives and work, including a lawyer, a doctor, and a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury. The most fascinating and inspiring story is that of Sam Sullivan, a quadriplegic who became mayor of Vancouver. Next is a section on how Stoicism can be applied to parenthood and the education of children. This is followed by a section on Stoicism and psychotherapy which will mostly appeal to psychiatric professionals, as it will likely be over the head of most general readers. Three articles deal with the concept of Stoic “mindfulness” and its relation or lack of relation to Buddhism. Finally, the book falls apart somewhat with its final section on Stoicism in popular culture. It includes an excerpt from a Stoicism-infused novel about prison inmates which is OK, but also a sample chapter from a horrible science fiction novel. The book’s final selection is a pretty good examination of the portrayal of Stoicism in the Star Trek television series.

This collection by its very nature is a hodgepodge, and the selections vary greatly in quality as well as subject matter. The core team of philosophers are good writers for the most part, but the ensemble cast of guest bloggers is hit and miss. Nevertheless, if you’ve read all the Stoic classics and are looking for further advice on how to put Stoicism into practice, you’re bound to find something here that will interest you.
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The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella

Fantasy island
The City of the Sun was written in 1602 by Tommaso Campanella, an Italian philosopher and Dominican brother. It is a utopian work, obviously influenced by its predecessors, Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Compared to those earlier works, Campanella’s ideal society is more imaginative, less practical, and as a result more fun for the modern reader. Campanella structures his political and philosophical discourse in the form of a dialogue between “a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitalier and a Genoese Sea-Captain, his guest.” The former says very little, while the latter regales him with details of a fascinating foreign land referred to only as the City of the Sun. This perfect metropolis is located either on or near the island of Taprobane, which is part of Sri Lanka.

The city is built upon a high hill in the form of seven walled concentric circles. Within the highest and innermost circle sits a temple where resides the city’s highest official Hoh, also referred to as Metaphysic. Beneath him rules three princes named Power, Wisdom, and Love, who act as cabinet ministers over their respective domains. Subordinate to them are a number of lesser “doctors” named after their areas of influence—e.g. Cosmographus, Arithmeticus, Poeta, Logicus, etc. The economic system at work is essentially socialistic, similar to More’s Utopia, but the political structure is rigidly hierarchical, with authority trickling down literally and figuratively from the top of the hill. Each official seems to have totalitarian rule over his underlings. The rulers of the City of the Sun are not just politicians, they are also priests, so their authority is reinforced by their altitudinal proximity to God himself. The religion practiced in this theocratic society is a form of Christianity, but one rendered almost unrecognizable by its obsession with astrology. The seven known planets, a frequent motif in their architecture and ceremonies, are in fact the inspiration for the seven-tiered city.

For today’s reader, two positive aspects of Campanella’s ideal city really stand out. One is the devotion to knowledge. Despite their isolated location, the inhabitants of the city are familiar with the scholarship of the world, and great philosophers and religious leaders are venerated. The seven walls of the city are painted with educational murals depicting the arts and sciences. The second remarkable characteristic of this society is its commitment to physical health, both through diet and exercise. Even among the women, strength is admired over delicate beauty. The citizens practice a sort of universal military discipline that’s reminiscent of ancient Sparta. In fact, much of life in the City of the Sun seems strictly regimented, which, despite the religious and poetic touches, leans unpleasantly towards fascism. Even in matters of love and sex, Campanella advocates a system that sounds a lot like eugenics.

The City of the Sun is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The magistrates with all their illustrative titles, the astrological imagery, and the architectural grandiloquence create an experience equivalent to stepping into a beautiful allegorical painting. In the long run, however, one would likely chafe under this authoritarian hierarchy. This is one society that’s just begging for a rebellion. Such is the appeal of utopias, nevertheless. Regardless of its feasibility or practicality, The City of the Sun is a splendid, trippy dream. Over 400 years after its creation, it still stirs the imagination.
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The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss

The legend made flesh
Spartacus. The very name is the stuff of legends. His slave rebellion against the Roman Empire in the first century BC has served as inspiration for countless dissenters and revolutionaries over the past two millennia. But who was he, really? In his 2009 book The Spartacus War, Barry Strauss attempts to shed some light on the age-old story of this gladiator, insurgent, and icon. Those familiar with the film and literary adaptations of this hero’s saga will find his true story every bit as fascinating and stirring as the fictional epics he inspired.

Unfortunately, not many ancient accounts of the Spartacus uprising still exist, and most of those that are extant are second- or third-hand accounts. Strauss knows these original sources inside and out, and summarizes the available historical record clearly and concisely. Where gaps appear in the scanty narrative, he fills them in with contextual information and educated speculation. For example, we know very little about Spartacus’s wife, except that she was a priestess of the god Dionysius. Strauss describes the religious rituals of the Dionysius cult at this period of time and details what the life of such a prophetess might have been like. We know Spartacus was a gladiator, so there’s plenty of information in the book about the daily lives of gladiators and those who owned them. Strauss situates the Spartacus rebellion within a broader history of slave uprisings and rebellions faced by ancient Rome. The political and military careers of all the Roman generals who attempted to quell the rebellion are also examined in detail. If any first-hand blow-by-blow accounts were ever written of the battles fought between the rebels led by Spartacus and the forces of Rome, they have not survived the ages, but Strauss knows an awful lot about ancient warfare and makes the reader feel like he’s right there on the ground amidst the fighting, spattered with blood, sweat, and gore. Some scholars may complain that there’s too much imaginative license taken in The Spartacus War, but for general readers with an avid interest in the ancient world this is a gripping and informative read.

The least interesting portions of Strauss’s study occur when he attempts to pin down the exact geographical location where an event took place. Unless you’re a scholar on the subject or intimately familiar with the regional topography, these passages are about as entertaining as reading an Italian road atlas. Beyond these occasional exceptions, however, the book is a smooth and lively read. It’s packed with information, but Strauss’s prose is always crisp, engaging, and accessible.

In closing this review, I must confess that one of my guilty pleasures is the Spartacus TV series from Starz. Like-minded fans will be surprised to find out how closely the makers of that program stuck to the actual history of the Spartacus rebellion. Of course, Strauss’s take on the subject is far less sensationalized, but no less sensational. This book is definitely a must-read for anyone who’s ever admired Western history’s most illustrious freedom fighter.
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Stories by Foreign Authors

A series overview

In 1898, the publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons put out a ten-volume series entitled Stories by Foreign Authors. Each book in the series is a collection of four to six works of European short fiction in English translation, focusing on a different country or region. The breakdown of the ten volumes is as follows. All ten books have been reviewed individually at Old Books by Dead Guys. Click on the links below to read the full reviews.

1. Stories by Foreign Authors: French I
2. Stories by Foreign Authors: French II
3. Stories by Foreign Authors: French III
4. Stories by Foreign Authors: German I
5. Stories by Foreign Authors: German II
6. Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
7. Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian
8. Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian
9. Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian
10. Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian

Altogether the ten volumes contain 51 stories by 48 authors, providing a broad and varied overview of European literature in the 19th century. The selections are a pleasant mix of household names (e.g. Zola, Balzac, Tolstoy), Nobel laureates (Bjørnson, France, Heyse, Maeterlinck, Sienkiewicz), lesser-known luminaries, and a few writers who have since faded into obscurity. The best books in the series are the French and Scandinavian volumes. The worst volume, by far, is the Russian volume. Though it features four literary superstars, the editors may well have chosen the most boring stories from each. Despite this one disappointment, the other nine volumes each have their own hidden treasures. If you are interested in classic literature—Romanticism, Naturalism, early Realism—this series is a great way to sample and discover new authors you may not have encountered before.

These books are in the public domain and can be read online and downloaded for free at various sources. For some unexplained reason, Project Gutenberg and Amazon do not have the three French volumes, though they do have the other seven. Wikisource has several volumes, including the French:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Stories_by_Foreign_Authors

If you’re intimidated by the thought of reading ten volumes, you don’t have to, because Old Books by Dead Guys has already done it for you! Below is a list of the ten best stories in the series. These are the ones you just can’t miss.

“Christian Gellert’s Last Christmas” by Berthold Auerbach
from Stories by Foreign Authors: German II
When a peasant is touched by a passage of verse, he makes a pilgrimage to a local university to thank the author in person.

“The Massacre of the Innocents” by Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian)
from Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish, Greek, Belgian, Hungarian
After a farmer is robbed and his wife and daughters killed, the enraged inhabitants of a Belgian village attack the Spanish soldiers responsible for the act.

“San Pantaleone” by Gabriele D’Annunzio
from Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian
When the sky inexplicably turns blood red, a mob of fanatically religious folk seek solace in their priest, their relics, and their superstitions.

“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant
from Stories by Foreign Authors: French I
A poor woman longs for the luxury and status of a high-class life. When her husband is invited to a ball by his employers, she sees the chance to live her dream, if but for one night.

“Laurette or the Red Seal” by Alfred de Vigny
from Stories by Foreign Authors: French III
An old soldier recalls a story from his naval days when he captained a ship transporting prisoners to the penal colony of Cayenne, Guiana.

“When Father Brought Home the Lamp” by Juhani Aho (Finnish)
from Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian
When a poor family becomes the first in their town to purchase an oil lamp, it becomes an immediate status symbol, elevating them in the eyes of their neighbors.

“The Philosopher’s Pendulum” by Rudolph Lindau
from Stories by Foreign Authors: German I
After having lived a life of disappointment and heartbreak, a man adopts a personal philosophy by which he expects nothing and therefore feels nothing.

“The Substitute” by François Coppée

from Stories by Foreign Authors: French II

A petty criminal, raised in reform schools and prisons, decides to turn his life around, gets a real job, and forms a close bond with a new friend.

“Moors and Christians” by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
from Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish
The owner of a historic estate finds an old parchment on his property. He suspects it to be a treasure map, but, unable to read Arabic, he must first have it translated.

“The Railroad and the Churchyard” by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (Norwegian)
from Stories by Foreign Authors: Scandinavian
Two close friends suddenly find themselves at odds in a power struggle over local politics. Matters reach a boiling point with the proposal of a new railroad through town.

I have recently learned that this series was a follow up to two previous series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Stories by American Authors and Stories by English Authors. Together they add up to twenty more volumes of 19th-century literature, all available for free download from Amazon or Project Gutenberg. Look for them in upcoming posts at Old Books by Dead Guys.

Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian by Edmondo De Amicis, et al.

D’Annunzio stands out

Gabriele D’Annunzio

This collection of Italian writings translated into English is the ninth volume of the ten-volume Stories by Foreign Authors series published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1898. It contains five short works by four Italian authors. I suspect that the vast majority of English-language readers probably have little knowledge of 19th-century Italian history. At least that’s true of myself, and I confess that this information deficit probably hampered my appreciation of some of these stories. The opening selection, “A Great Day” by Edmondo De Amicis, for example, takes place during the 1870 Italian invasion of Rome, which at that time was part of the Papal States. De Amicis delves deeply into the effect of this church/state conflict on the Italian national psyche, but outsiders unfamiliar with the event will have trouble figuring out which parts of the story are historical fact and which are the exercise of poetic license.

De Amicis has a second entry in the book, “College Friends,” which has more universal appeal. This piece is technically not a story at all, but rather a memoir or essay. De Amicis reflects fondly on his time spent in a military college and speculates as to the ultimate fate of his old friends and classmates. Even though he’s only 25 looking back at 19, he contemplates youth, old age, and death with a mixture of regret and optimism. More than just self-indulgent navel-gazing, this piece is quite moving and life-affirming.

In Antonio Fogazzaro’s “Pereat Rochus,” a simple parish priest finds himself embroiled in an ethical battle when he refuses to turn out a servant who is accused of having an affair with a local bandit. The tone is a bit too frivolous and the clergyman becomes the butt of a few too many jokes. “It Snows” by Enrico Castelnuovo is another story that ultimately leaves the reader underwhelmed. A widower has developed a window-to-window friendship with an attractive widow across the alley, but any thoughts of marriage are stifled by the loyalty he feels toward his dead wife and young daughter. It’s a pleasant enough tale, and sensitively rendered, but it’s too much of a garden-variety melodrama to deservedly represent a nation’s literature.

The real revelation in this book is Gabriele D’Annunzio’s “San Pantaleone.” When the sky inexplicably turns blood red, the inhabitants of a small town seek solace from their priest, their holy relics, and their superstitions. Their panic and fanaticism lead them to a violent confrontation with a rival village. This story has a very medieval feel, but for the brief mention of guns. The stark imagery and bleak atmosphere is reminiscent of the stories of Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, but with the over-the-top violence of a Robert E. Howard gorefest. It’s truly a stunning piece of writing.

Incidentally, three of the selections in this book were translated by Edith Wharton, author of Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence. As a whole, I did not enjoy this Italian collection as much as some of the other volumes in the Stories by Foreign Authors series, but these books are nonetheless valuable for the introduction they provide to lesser-known authors. This time around D’Annunzio was a great discovery for me, and I look forward to tracking down more of his work.

Stories in this collection

A Great Day by Edmondo De Amicis 

Pereat Rochus by Antonio Fogazzaro 

San Panteleone by Gabriele D’Annunzio 

It Snows by Enrico Castelnuovo 

College Friends by Edmondo De Amicis 

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The Life of a Painter by Gino Severini

An insider’s look into the world of modern art

This book is neither a picture book nor a manifesto. It’s a well-written artist’s autobiography, something that is unfortunately quite rare. Severini is not a household name today, but he was a major player in the Paris art world of the early twentieth century. Best known as a Futurist painter, he describes himself as a reluctant member of that movement, and he dabbled in several “isms” over the course of his career. His close personal friends included Picasso, Braque, Gris, Modigliani, Apollinaire, and Cocteau. His acquaintances included just about every famous modern artist in Paris, Rome, and Milan, as well as many you’ve never heard of. His greatest achievement in this book is to diagram, by means of personal anecdotes, the motivations and theoretical concepts of all these artists and their movements, how they influenced one another and how they contributed to the growing, shifting entity that was “modern art.” 

In addition to painting, he includes literature, theatre, music, and architecture in his scope. Along the way, he gives vivid descriptions of the bohemian cafe life of Paris, and the occupational hardships of a (sometimes literally) starving artist. There’s also some fascinating stuff about the business side of art—working with galleries, dealers, and clients—at a period in history when, much to the chagrin of the author, art started to become less about craft and more and more about commerce. Sometimes when talking about his own work, the author’s prose devolves into unintelligible artspeak, though that may be the fault of the translator. Severini is much more knowledgeable about poetry and philosophy than I am, so some of his discussions in those areas were way over my head. Such passages are brief, however, and 90% of the book was enjoyable and informative. I’m not a huge fan of Severini’s painting, but his book pleasantly surprised me.

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