If you are reading this, thank you for doing so. I have had some ups and downs in the last few months, and this post puts down a marker that I will be posting more regularly. I am still working through the longest text of the project so far but I am almost finished with it and that represents a great opening up and liberation almost from one of the most arduous tasks of the project. Thank you for sticking with me.
I have a Youtube Channel that I have not updated in a few months though I have continued to make videos. I foresee a time where I am able to update this feed more often now that I have a consistent work and home life schedule.
There is an Instagram also that I have not updated and may shut down eventually.
There is a Pangobooks store as well but I think Pango is only an app so it is hard to find. I may set up a legitimate online store at some point but that is not now.
This month I read:
Benvenuto Cellini - The Autobiography of Cellini
Pseudo Dionysius - The Celestial Hierarchies
Consentius - “De Barbarism”
Benvenuto Cellini - The Autobiography of Celllini
I pulled Cellini (which an audiobook version that I listened to half of pronounced Cha-lini) just the name from the Small Works List of World Lit 1000-1600. For some reason, the Google Random Number Generator has been favoring World lit categories for the last few pulls and this particular list which is not how truly random number generators work but I infer a deliberate care that this automata displays in broadening my horizons. Cellini’s name was not familiar to me. If I had to guess I thought he was a painter before I began the introductory research into the name that I did. It is not often the case that there is a specific work that a name on my list is known for and so many times I just guess. This is a survey of books and so I don’t try to get hung up on these details at the time of selecting. If I missed an author’s undoubtable masterpiece I am happy to go back at some point or put that other work on the Big Book List to make sure that I hit it at some point. I did this with Octavio Paz. I read Labyrinth of Solitude which was incredible but I really want to read The Monkey Grammarian at some point and loved Labyrinth so much that I felt Paz deserved to entries at least.
Cellini’s autobiography is the only thing that he ever wrote and so it made the selection process easy this time. Cellini begins his autobiography by stating that he started to write this document by hand but it was taking him too long and so he tasked a young man to dictate what he spoke out loud to the boy. I would love to have been in that room during certain times in the description of events. Just the idea that he would have to tell this to another human being before he published it makes me think that there were even more heinous crimes not told to the boy. There is a gloss that he puts on certain events that even the thing that is revealed is deeply troubling at times. Cellini was a scoundrel through and through. He was impatient, impetuous, hot tempered, and ruthless. According to his own account, he may have killed 4 or 5 people, now none of them were in cold blood by the culture of the time. In all cases, the Pope both Pope Clement and the other one, I can't remember his name at the moment, absolved him personal (like in person placing their hands on him) of these crimes.
This absolution worked as a get out of jail free card for Cellini which is astounding to me. It was literally a document that the Pope would sign saying that even though Cellini had killed your loved one that in this time you could justly go and find Cellini and kill him, this document the pope would sign would say - not this time- and Cellini can move about freely knowing that the Pope had his back. This practice raised a flurry of questions in my mind as to what was the nature of law enforcement at this time. I don’t think there were police necessarily, and I apologize for introducing a deep ignorance here, but it appears to me that what we would think of police were castle guards and people who worked for the authorities at the time and that could be the mayor of the town you were in or the duke of the region you lived in or the Pope’s retinue. If this is the case, then the only crimes you could commit would be adjudicated by these authorities and so necessarily the only crimes they cared about in Cellini’s case was his actions towards their own interests. I’m going to put it plainly, this is a violent and corrupt society of Florence and Rome which are the two places he happens to be. It is topsy turvy in a way that would make ever interaction you had a joust of power and influence that would be unnerving. Cellini seems to be sincere in his interest in wanting only to make artful golden things and the ways in which this society takes possession of his skills is difficult for him to manage. Couple this constant dance he has to do with his virulent impatience and arrogance, his unquenchable thirst for a rough and tumble life and he was a menace honestly to his community.
One notable moment from the text that I found fascinating was his interaction with a noted necromancer of his era. He describes having fallen in love with a young girl, 15 at the time when Cellini is 30. The girl’s mother doesn’t want Cellini around and so they flee Rome for their home country of Sicily. Cellini is heartbroken and deeply infatuated with the girl in an almost physical illness. He meets a Catholic priest who dabbles in the occult, and this priest introduces him to a necromancer he knows. The idea is that they will do an incantation for Cellini to get the girl back. They go through the whole occult process, and then the necromancer remembers that they will need a virgin (of either sex) present for the occasion. Cellini runs out to get a shop boy he knows and brings him to the ceremony where they have drawn circles on the ground outside of the coliseum for some reason. The boy shows up and says to Cellini, ‘oh- i’ve done this before.’ And I laughed out loud at that moment. This examples speaks to the nature of the text that it is a difficult read, disturbing at times to hear the bravado Cellini musters to tell of some heinous things he has done, and then there are moments that you can see Cellini’s charm that attracts people of power to himself.
This text was translated and put into the Penguin canon because it gives the best window into the life of a person living in this era. I read Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier which was written in Spain from around this time, 1530s. I am sure that Cellini would have been familiar with Castiglione as they were both from Northern Italy and involved in court life at that same time. Cellini lives from 1500 until 1560s. Cellini would have been deeply familiar with courtly life in Northern Italy. Cellini mentions the Duke of Urbino at one point in the text which is where Courtier is set. It was interesting to hear from an almost commoner of the era what everyday life was like, the rhythms of Cellini’s daily activity and pursuits to compare with what Castiglione would care to focus on, comedy being one element that Castiglione encouraged in the life of a courtier is true in Cellini’s work as well. I could go on and on here, but what I will say is that The Mysteries of Udolpho paint the Italians of this era as rascals and bandits. Cellini paints himself, though he wouldn’t have thought of himself as one, as a rascal as well. Cellini’s autobiography was not published during his life and didn’t make it into wide circulation until the 1700s before Radcliffe writes her horror novels. I could see how this image of this era of Northern Italy would inspire a young woman trying to draw a tableau of a suspenseful landscape could focus in on these details of power and corruption in Italian castles. That does not make it so necessarily, but if you had this document in mind you can see where the mistreatment of young woman (as Cellini brags of beating a model of his black and blue) would jump out at you as a writer of horror.
I found these interesting tidbits on Wikipedia and now want to go chase down this reference in Huck Finn:
Cellini's life is an occasional point of reference in the writings of Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer mentions Cellini's autobiography as an inspiration while freeing Jim in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Also our old friend Dumas was captured by the raucous life of Cellini as he wrote a fictionalization of Cellini’s life from the viewpoint of an apprentice and this did not surprise me in in the least (also from Wikipedia):
The life of Cellini inspired the French historical novelist Alexandre Dumas, père. His 1843 novel L'Orfèvre du roi, ou Ascanio is based on Cellini's years in France, centered on Ascanio, an apprentice of Cellini.
Pseudo Dionysius - The Celestial Hierarchies
Two entries in this project could not be further apart at this point. Pseudo Dionysius is what I pulled right after I finished Cellini and the whiplash here was extreme. I got to the point with Cellini that I was finished with his bravado and violence. I started by reading the text as Penguin published it on paper. I got probably 60% of the way through this way. I have been listening to the incredibly long Romance of the Three Kingdoms and so I want to keep my listening and reading separate and chose to read Cellini. It was decent enough reading physically but I just got stuck in the middle and couldn’t muster to care about his life at a certain point. I listened to the rest and was captured by that portion as he goes to France and is imprisoned for awhile and really encounters some difficulty. This changes him somewhat but he falls back into some difficult behavior after his time in prison as well. Nevertheless, I was glad to be done with it and jumped straight into Pseudo Dionysius.
I pulled Pseudo Dionysius from The Small Works list as well from the list right before Cellini's, 300 to 1000 C.E. World Lit. It was easy to figure out what to read of this author. There is some deeply internal debate about this author in the Christian canon but to an outsider he was an influential author of the Dark Ages into the Medieval period in Europe. The author takes the name Dionysius to refer to the character that is mentioned with Paul in the Book of Acts. There is no evidence that this person was the same person. The dating of his work is from the 400 to 500s C.E., hundreds of years after Paul. P-D as I will refer to him wrote 4 documents that were widely circulated though never formally affirmed by the church canon so far as I can see. He is not sainted as far as I know. The four works that he wrote were short: Divine Names, The Musical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchies, and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchies. I found a text that had all four of them in it. It appears to me from my research and from reaching out to friends that have encountered this work that the middle two, The Mystical Theology and The Celestial Hierarchies, are the documents worth reading. I may go back and read the other two at some point. These documents combine to about 80 pages of text. The first, Mystical Theology, is only about 10 pages in the text I read.
I want to say here that I am not sure what the value of a text like this outside of the deeply situated Christian context would be. The first text describes for an ancient audience a type of Christian theology that may not have been common at the time. There is some evidence for this perspective in the Jewish expression of theology towards a more mystical understanding of the God of the Old Testament. P-D describes several moments in the Old Testament where God is hidden from the viewer and the character in the story. I am familiar with these moments described and upon reading this material I was surprised and reoriented to these passages in a new way that I found intriguing. I didn’t get much more out of the text than that. The Celestial Hierarchies was a similar experience to me. P-D does not go onto to name and describe things that are not themselves discussed in the Bible. He makes some leaps in logic about the ways that some of the angels are described to declare that these are fixed roles and natures from one reference in the Bible that at times seems like a stretch to me as a 21st century reader. I have not read a real treatment of the topic of angels in quite this way before and so there was a lot here that was interesting to me. As an extension of the Mystical Theology, P-D portrays a God in the interaction with the angels and by extension humans in a very high and exalted position that was interesting to me as well.
The only thing that I can see of interest in this text to someone not deeply embedded in Christian scholarship is the tone and sophistication of language that P-D offers to the Christian canon at this time. This is a departure in kind and complexity from The Life of Anthony or the Early Christian Lives published by Penguin as well. Those hagiographies read like folklore more than complex philosophical writing like P-D. I was surprised by the complexity of thought that P-D brought to his work and am glad to have this fresh experience.
Post Rock Jukebox
It is hard to know what to pick this time because I have discovered thanks to this spreadsheet I have been working through so many excellent post rock bands recently. I think I will go with the one that I am listening to right now which is Mooncake. They only put out two albums during their run Zaris and Lagrange Points but as a stand alone feature Zaris may be one of my favorite post rock albums of all time and right now as I am typing this is my first time hearing it. This album has everything you want in a post rock album, soaring guitars but just constrained enough to not be overpowering, contemplative moments where you realize as you read that something poetic and interesting is happening in between paragraphs. It is a true delight and I hope you find their music as pleasing as I do.
Consentius - De barbarism or whatever else I found
If you can’t tell by now with these very out of the way pulls that I have only been able to pull from the Small Works list for the last few months because I have been tied up with The Romance of the Three Kingdoms for a long time now. Here I pulled a name that comes from the Small Works List World Lit 300 to 1000 right after having read Pseudo Dionysius on the same list. There is a 1 out of 17 chance of that happening but then also that the going rate is to keep in World Lit for 3 pulls in a row at this point. I pulled the name Consentius with no context here. I googled it and it brought me to an unnecessarily complex lineage of this name in Roman history. I feel like I was able to sort out that there was a poet of this name but nothing is known of this person other than an oblique reference in Sidonnius Apollinarius in the ancient record. There is another Consentius who was a well known grammarian from around this time frame in Roman history. Consentius was a Latin grammarian and so going down this path already has some road blocks. I was able to track down that there are texts that Consentius did write and we still have access to them. There was a reference in the Greek and Roman Biographies Dictionary that I had access to online to find the reference under Consentius. It does not reference what he wrote but that his works were included in a catalogue of ancient grammars in the 1600s by a Polish compiler Helias van Putschen. I was able to track down the Tommaso Mari translation embedded in his dissertation text. I read this Latin to English translation in its entirety which is not covered in the Youtube Video reaction because I had not yet found this text. I continued to research with the aid of the librarians at my new university, and found a digital version of the Putschen text as well in scans. If you want a recitation of a comedy of errors, my interaction with this ancient Latin text is rife with role reversals and misunderstanding. I was able to hand translate some of the Latin in the Consentius portion and it did not seem to be leading anywhere helpful.
I was hoping for another Gellius’ Attic Nights where there was a grammar being worked out but that it is couched in some very interesting observations and highlights of tales of the ancient world not found readily available elsewhere. This is not the case with Consentius. This is a technical document for those interested in some of very fine points of Latin grammar. I don’t think it was a waste of time but it didn’t yield anything helpful which happens often in a project like this. Here’s to seeing what I will find next time.
Translator’s Corner
This translator’s corner is dedicated to all three of the translators for this month’s entry. I don’t think I have ever had three translated texts in one month. The other one that I finished, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, will for sure feature a translator’s corner because that human being took on a mammoth work in translation. Here I will say that Cellini’s unknown young man scribe deserves a toast for being recounted some truly abhorrent tales and pressing on anyway. Pseudo Dionysius’ text was translated and featured 3 scholars to start the work that all gave background and scholarly context. Then, Consentius was translated by the twin help of Dr. Tomasso Mari who I emailed during my investigation, and then Google Translate for some it. This is a confusing thing that I am doing and it takes every arrow in the quiver to get through it. Thank you for reading and translating my incoherent ramblings.
Currently Reading
I will mention here that I finished Romance of the Three Kingdoms in its entirety. I will devote perhaps a whole newsletter to this adventure as a mid September post. I look forward to recapturing all of those thoughts and feelings in a subsequent post but know that it has been a titanic relief to clear that one off the books - so much so that I decided to try to read through Finnegan’s Wake as a reward.
The two books that I am reading now are drawn simply and straight forwardly from their respective lists but will probably be transferred one from Big Book List to Small, and one that I drew from the Small Works List is already on the Big Book List and so I will accomplish backwardly what I would have most assuredly accomplished in the reverse. I am sure Bradford’s name will appear in Early American Lit and then the Heptameron is a classic work if I ever heard of one which I had not heard of this text before right now so there’s that.
If you are reading to this point, then I want to say a special thank you for doing so. I appreciate the company on such a long journey. Please leave a comment if you would to let me know why you are reading this document and what you think so far.