Fortune’s fool
JOANNE PAUL applauds a comprehensive yet vivid portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli, one of the Renaissance era’s greatest – and most controversial – thinkers
On his deathbed at his farm outside of Florence in 1527, the politician, diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli is said to have turned to his grieving friends and told them of a dream he had just had. In it, he had seen two groups of people. The first, dejected and poor, were headed to heaven.
The second group, richly dressed and discussing political and philosophical matters, were damned to hell. It was a scene Machiavelli would have seen represented on countless reredoses, paintings and frescos during a life seeped in the magnificence of the Italian Renaissance. It was a spectre meant to inspire fear, humility and the rejection of earthly temptations. Turning to his friends, the suffering Machiavelli told them he had spied his great heroes and those who had inspired him among the gathering of the damned: men such as Seneca, Tacitus, Plato and Plutarch. With so many interesting people to talk to, he told his friends with a wry chuckle, perhaps he would prefer hell after all.
There is, thankfully, no attempt to sort Machiavelli into the category of redeemed or saved in this rich new biography from Renaissance historian Alexander Lee. His life and times are presented in their complex, contradictory fullness, as is Machiavelli himself. With a deft touch, Lee lets the events of his subject’s life speak for themselves in describing the character of a man who would become known as ‘Mach-Evil’ and whose name would become synonymous with self-interested schemers.
Lacking in natural diplomatic skill, Machiavelli was at best a competent bureaucrat and a moderately impressive speaker. His rather abrupt and unexpected rise came
about largely thanks to his lack of any relevant political connections. Nevertheless, his allure to those who knew him lay in his stinging wit, charm and dark humour; his appeal to those who employed him was his ability to connect sharp insight into contemporary political events with a broad understanding of the ebbs and flows of history and fortune.
Fortune plays as an important role in this biography as it does in Machiavelli’s own work. The elusive figure of Fortuna standing over her wheel, spun at her will and caprice, is inescapable in the constant and bewildering movements of Renaissance politics. The narrative is supported by a steady rhythm of dashed hopes and disappointed expectations as the various players that Lee describes vie to hold their place in a cut-throat and merciless world. Machiavelli himself seems especially attuned to the rise and fall of fortune, though not in a way that allows him to master it. Lee describes with some poignancy the frequent bouts of depression in which Machiavelli found himself when his best-laid plans came to naught.
The relationship between Machiavelli’s life and his times forms the structure of Lee’s biography. The politics of Florence – and even the city itself – feels at times like a character in Lee’s narrative: Machiavelli’s muse, lover and antagonist all in one. The major players in Renaissance politics each make their appearance in Machiavelli’s life, leaving an impression that is reflected in his work. Lee’s ability to make connections between Machiavelli’s political career and literary outputs ensures that the inclusion of the latter does not interrupt the narrative. He is able to provide a lively account of Machiavelli’s daily life while writing his best-known work,
The Prince, and details with great emotion – and historical irony – the devastation felt by its author when he concluded that the work was a complete waste of time. The inclusion of Machiavelli’s many other, and lesserknown, works are a welcome addition, providing a wider understanding of a writer too often defined by a single piece.
There is often a tendency to view the ‘great’ thinkers of the past in a sort of independent isolation. Machiavelli himself wrote that his contemporaries failed to appreciate the context of the classical texts they were reading, and thus had lost touch with their meaning. Although historians of today have learned that works such as Machiavelli’s ought to be read in the contexts of their times, we do at times need a biography such as this one to bring it to life, and to remind us of the many relationships and diverse sources of influence that may act on a writer.
Lee shows Machiavelli at the centre of a number of overlapping networks of friends, colleagues and kin. It is his friends, with whom he whored and philosophised by turns, that serve to prop him up, provide him with relevant political connections and give him an audience to address his ideas to. In writing The Prince, Machiavelli was without many of these friends, but he was surrounded by his family, including those – such as his wife – to whom he never quite devoted enough attention.
Lee’s biography does not claim to say anything new, but rather to bring together
Machiavelli would become known as ‘Mach-Evil’ and his name would become synonymous with selfinterested schemers
existing work to present the reader with a ‘vivid’ experience of Machiavelli’s life as he lived it, against the backdrop of bloody European war and politics. There is no question he succeeds in this, and Lee is to be especially applauded for his even-handed treatment of a controversial historical figure. He also accomplishes his aim of producing an ‘exhaustive’ biography: at more than 750 pages, it is not a light read. To some, these two objectives may appear in competition, and the engaging story of Machiavelli’s life can be lost in the desire to provide a detailed engagement with European politics.
Death, nevertheless, comes all too soon, even in a life of such diverse experience and a biography of such rich detail. Machiavelli died entirely unaware of the profound impact his works were to have on the landscape of European politics, virtually untouched by all the politicking accomplished in his lifetime. The Machiavelli introduced by Lee’s biography seems to have sought vindication of his own relevance above all else.
Nearly 500 years after his death, it is beyond the scope of the historian to say whether Niccolò Machiavelli enjoys paradise or excellent conversation, but there is no question that he remains a significant and – thanks to Lee’s biography – vivid historical figure.