No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Eyes of Argus: The Political Art of Niccolo Machiavelli
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
One way of seeing Machiavelli is as a literary artist who appreciated, in his figurative portraiture of princes, that an effective likeness will always reveal to the attentive eye, something of the prince, of his audience, and of the portraitist himself. And since politics is an activity in which, on his understanding, there is no absolute truth, but only multifarious effectual truths; a comprehensive depiction of political life must embrace irreconcilable points of view as diverse as those of individual princes, the people, and “each man.” The observer's task thus demanded perspectival powers that would test the fabled eyes of Argus. This article sets out the evidence supporting such an interpretation in individual texts of Machiavelli's works, while suggesting how each contributes to the completed literary artistry of his brilliantly evoked world of pictures in words of political aspiration, failure and achievement.
Résumé
Une façon de considérer Machiavel est en tant qu'artiste littéraire qui, en ses portraits figuratifs des princes, appréciait que toute description réussie ne peut que dévoiler quelque chose du prince, du lecteur, et du portraitiste lui-même. Selon Machiavel, la politique est une activité dans laquelle il n'y a pas de vérité absolue, mais plutôt de multiples vérités possibles. Une représentation compréhensive de la vie politique doit embrasser des points de vue irreconciliables, aussi divers que celui de chaque prince, du peuple et de I'individu. La tâche de I'observateur exige done la perspicacité égale aux yeux Iégendaires d'Argus. Cette interprétation est offerte ici, fondée sur I'évidence de textes choisies de I'oeuvre de Machiavel. Elle souligne en même temps combien ces textes contribuent à toute la création artistique et littéraire de Machiavel: ce monde qu'il évoque si brillamment dans un langage d'aspiration, d'échec, et d'accomplissement politiques.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 555 - 576
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1984
References
* Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Golden Ass, chap. 1, in Gilbert, Allan (ed.), Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. 2 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 752.Google Scholar
1 Stephen, Leslie and SirLee, Sidney (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945-1950), 182.Google Scholar
2 The Prince, chap. 18, in Gilbert, Allan (ed.), Machiavelli: The Chief Works and Others, vol. 1 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 66–67. (Emphasis added.) Further references to this three-volume work will be entered by an identification of the original Machiavelli text, followed by a bracketed volume and page number, indicating where it can be found in Gilbert. For example: The Prince, chap. 18 (1: 66-67).Google Scholar
3 See, for example, Works (I: x, 10, 34, 254, 452, 484), (3: 1284), and Hale, J. R. (ed.). The Literary Works of Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, xi-xxvi, and “A Dialogue on Language,”Google Scholaribid., 175-90.
4 Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, February 4, 1513-(1514), (2:937).
5 The Prince, Dedication (1: 10-11). (Emphasis added.)
6 Familiar Letters (2: 896-97); see also footnote 26 below.
7 The Golden Ass, chap. 1 (2: 752). Argus, in classical mythology, was a giant with 100 eyes, set to guard the heifer Io. After his death, his eyes were transferred to the peacock's tail. In reading his story of the golden ass, Machiavelli informs us, “everyone may learn how the world has grown bad, because as quite the same I hope to paint it for you.”
8 Anglo, S., Machiavelli: A Dissection (London: Gollancz, 1969), 292.Google Scholar
9 Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1958), Introduction.Google Scholar
10 SirBerlin, Isaiah, “The Originality of Machiavelli,” in his Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 25–79.Google Scholar
11 Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, December 10, 1513 (2: 930).
12 Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini, May 17, 1521 (2: 973).
13 The Prince, chap. 15 (1: 57). (Emphasis added.)
14 Ibid. (1: 58).
15 Ibid., chap. 18 (1: 67). (Emphasis added.)
16 Ibid. (1: 66).
17 Discourses, Book 3, chap. 3 (1: 425). See also Book 3, chap. 30 (1: 497).
18 Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, April 9, 1513, April 29, 1513 (2: 900-01, 910). (Emphasis added.)
19 Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, August 26, 1513 (2: 922).
20 The Prince, chap. 18 (1: 64-65, 73).
21 Ibid. (I: 65).
22 Ibid., chap. 25 (1: 91).
23 Ibid. (1: 90).
24 Ibid. (1: 91).
25 Minogue, Kenneth, “Theatricality and Politics: Machiavelli's Concept of Fantasia,” in Parekh, B. and Berki, R. N. (eds.), The Morality of Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972), 148–62.Google Scholar
26 Familiar Letters (2: 895). (Emphasis added.) Gilbert follows the traditional attribution, indicating this letter as sent from Machiavelli to Piero Soderini, January. 1512-(1513). But recent evidence suggests it was probably composed earlier, in September 1506, and addressed not to Piero Soderini, but to his nephew, Giovan Battista Soderini.
27 Plamenatz, John, “In Search of Machiavellian Virtù” in Parel, A. (ed.), The Political Calculus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), 157–78.Google Scholar
28 Advice to Raffaelo Girolami When He Went as Ambassador to the Emperor (1:116).
29 The Legations (1: 140); On the Matter of Dealing with the Rebellions Peoples of the Valdichiana (1: 161); Discourses, Book 3, chap. 29 (citing Lorenzo de' Medici), (1:494); Tercets on Ambition (2:738): Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini. May 17, 1521 (2: 973).
30 Discourses, Book 3, chap. 12 (1: 459).
31 Machiavelli to Luigi Guicciardini, December 9, 1509, in Bondanella, Peter and Musa, Mark (eds.), The Portable Machiavelli (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 60.Google Scholar
This letter is not included in Works. The letter is given over to a comically exaggerated recounting of Machiavelli's adventures with a grotesque prostitute, whose mouth, he says at one point “looked like Lorenzo de'Medici's.”
32 Discourses, Book 1, chaps. 27, 30 (1: 254-55, 261).
33 The History of Florence, Dedication (3: 1030). (Emphasis added.)
34 Discourses, Dedication (1: 188-89). (Emphasis added.)
35 Discourses, Book 1, chap. 26 (1: 254).
36 Ibid., Book 1, chaps. 29, 47, 58 (1: 257-61, 291-94, 315, 316-17).
37 See Burckhardt, Titus, Siena: The City of the Virgin, trans, by Margaret Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 40–43. Burckhardt suggests that the allegorical style represented by Lorenzetti goes with moral reflection, and corresponds to the needs of those whose primary ideal in life is “the ethical laws regulating trade and traffic, and likewise, on the plane of the soul, profit and loss, merit and demerit… it is the fruit of the action that counts.” This he contrasts with the symbolic forms which were the dominant artistic mode of the middle ages, and which corresponded to the needs of contemplation and honour.Google Scholar
38 Tercets on Ambition (2: 735-39).
39 Discourses, Book I, chap. 10 (1: 222-23).
40 The Prince, chap. 19 (1: 70-76).
41 Ibid. (1: 73, 76).
42 Discourses, Book 1, chap. 10 (1: 222). (Emphasis added.)
43 Ibid. (1: 221). (Emphasis added.)
44 Ibid., Book I, chap. 58 (1: 315). (Emphasis added.)
45 Ibid., Book I, chap. 2 (1: 200).
46 Ibid., Book I, chap. 9 (1: 218): Book I, chap. 3 (I: 201).
47 Ibid., Book I, chap. 49 (1: 296).
48 The History of Florence, Book 2, chap. 34 (3: 1125).
49 Gilbert, Felix, “Introduction,” in Dunne, M. Walter (ed.), History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), xvi-xvii. The “flash of lightning” reference is to the apparent coincidence of the death of Lorenzo de'Medici and the Church of Santa Reparata being struck by a bolt of lightning (see The History of Florence, Book 8, chap. 36 [3: 1434], and Discourses, Book 1, chap. 56 [1: 311]).Google Scholar
50 Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini, August 30, 1524 (2: 978).
51 Cited in editorial matter (3: 1028).
52 See Felix Gilbert, “Introduction.” xiii-xvi. In the structure of the History. Gilbert says, “one can see a truly Machiavellian mind at work.”
53 See Quentin Skinner, , Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 82–83. and The History of Florence, Book 4, chap. 6; Book 5, chap. 33 (3: 1192-93. 1280).Google Scholar
54 The History of Florence, Preface (3: 1031-32).
55 Ibid., Book 3. chap. 1 (3: 1140): Discourses. Book 1, chap. 16 (1: 236-37).
56 The History of Florence, Book 3, chap. 1 (3: 1140).
57 Ibid., Book 4, chap. 1 (3: 1187).
58 Ibid., Book 3, chap. 1(3: 1141).
59 See his A Pastoral: The Ideal Ruler (1: 97-100).
60 The Prince, chap. 12 (1: 47).
61 See Tercets on Ambition (2: 735-39). Gilbert suggests of this work of Machiavelli's that “more clearly than any of his other works it shows his sympathy for innocent people subjected by conquerors to the violence of war.” But see, too, the Tercets on Ingratitude or Envy (2: 740-44), where Machiavelli castigates the people as well as princes for being self-interested and lacking in patriotism.
62 The Art of War, Book 7 (2: 724). See too The Life of Castruccio Castracani (2: 533-59), where Machiavelli appears to be, as a writer, as much a sculptor in words as Fabrizio would be in military deeds: at any rate, with a certain artistic hubris, he announces in the dedication that “I have chosen to bring [Castruccio] back to the recollection of men.” Doubtless his '“biography” is more artistic contrivance than fact: most of the words he puts into Castruccio's mouth derive, it seems, from Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers.
63 From the Preface of Chabod's 1944 edition of The Prince, cited in Whitfield, J. H., Discourses on Machiavelli (Cambridge: Heffer, 1969), chap. 8.Google Scholar
64 Mandragola, Act 4, scene 2 (2: 807).
65 Ibid., Act 2, scene 3 (2: 788-89).
66 Machiavelli to Francesco Guicciardini, after October 21, 1525 (2: 987). It is in the historical works—the Discourses and The History of Florence—that he is, arguably. a “tragic writer.” For his succinctly expressed views on “comic” writing, see his Clizia, Prolog (2: 824).
67 Tercets on Fortune (2: 748-49).
68 The Art of War, Dedication (2. 567). In his A Discourse on Remodeling the Government of Florence (1: 113-14), he speaks pointedly of those who, “when unable to form a republic in reality… have done it in writing, as Aristotle, Plato and many others.…” For Plato's views on the connection between writing and painting, see Phaednts, 275d, in Hackforth, R. (ed.), Plato's Phaedrns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), 158.Google Scholar
69 Discourses, Book I, chap. 10 (1: 220).
70 Epigrams, 2: Argus (3: 1463).