08-12-1509

Erotic Leisure

The question of the relevance and the meaning of this letter and its (potentially fictional) description of an encounter with a prostitute are controversial. Najemy argues that there might be a structural analogy between M.’s political and professional situation on the one hand and his sexual needs on the other, since both are rooted in forms of dependency:

“Guicciardini had perhaps encouraged him to write something as a way of passing the time in Verona, and the speculation about what sort of writing Machiavelli had in mind pointed in the direction of the Capitolo dell’ambizione. A poem in which “Machiavelli examines the origins of Ambition and Avarice and their influence on nations and governments,” Patapan, “I Capitoli,” 194] However, […] on 8 December, Machiavelli sent Guicciardini another letter containing an ‘account’ of his visit to a Veronese prostitute […] This is not a text that lends itself easily or comfortably to interpretation. As far as we know, Machiavelli wrote nothing else even remotely resembling it in his chancery years. Did it happen? Or was it experimental literary fun? […] In both letters [to L. Guiccardini], Machiavelli complains about feeling isolated, in the one case [see previous letter of 29-11-1509] from political action, conversation and information, in the other from the usual matrimonial remedies for his sexual needs. In both of these states of deprivation he is tempted, either by fantasy (‘vo ghiribizando’) or blindness (‘accecando’ and ‘al buio’), to impulsive acts from which he immediately recoils: in the first case, to writing those angry harangues to his dilatory and always fearful bosses back in Florence; and, in the second, to relieving sexual tension with a woman who disgusts him, causing him to feel disgust for himself and then punishing her for the humiliation and degradation he brings on himself. In both cases he resents his dependence on others (political superiors and women) for the satisfaction of what he takes to be basic needs” (Najemy, Between Friends, 69-70).

According to Ridolfi, however, this letter is just a literary extravaganza by M. (Vita, 178-79), and thus otiose leisure without a purpose.

 

Literary otium and Patronage

Nevertheless, writing little stories of this kind was not only M.’s way to occupy free time but also to promote himself as a poet and/or a novelist (on this aspect, see Bausi, “Politica e poesia,” esp. 383-84). More than a mimetic representation of real sexual activities, this letter, above all, bespeaks a well-known practice of literary otium. In particular, it exhibits characteristics of the genre of the novella and draws from a long ancient and medieval tradition (for a recent account on this tradition, cf. Bettella, The Ugly Woman). One of its distinctive elements is, for instance, the classical situation of eros and sex in the dark, and its comic effects (Bardazzi, “Tecniche narrative,” 1449). The letter’s central subject in particular recalls the literary topic of the descriptio mulieris: Bardazzi (“Introduzione,” 8) mentions Horace’s Epodes and Poliziano’s Latin poem In anum (e.g. see the image of “an old woman’s very large, pendent, and putrid breasts” in Poliziano’s poem, line 14; quote from Simons, “The Crone,” 294), and also Boccaccio’s description of Emilia in Teseida. The latter’s Decameron might also have been a key literary source for M.’s letters in this context, especially novella 8,4, in which the priest of Fiesole sleeps with the ugly Ciutaza, instead of Monna Piccarda as he had planned.

In any event, it is very likely that even when describing times of leisure, as in the letter from 29-11-1509, M. was concerned with politics as well as with the different, in this case somewhat enigmatic, modes of writing about it. Thus, the aim of this Machiavellian art of correspondence might also have been to build a potential alliance with a member of a prominent Florentine aristocratic family such as the Guicciardini and to expand his own patronage network. From this point of view, letters such as this might instrumentalize friendship in order to overcome the social and political differences between writer and recipient.