Aretino: "the miraculous monster of mankind"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XVIII (final)

The Renaissance wanes in the loss of Italy's dream of cultural supremacy: "sapped of religious faith, politically disrupted, dominated by the barbarian, Italy was demoralized; and the deepening despair of its society was manifest, like a phosphorescence of decay, in its lust for fame."

Roeder presents his fourth "lawgiver," Aretino, as a prophet of art ("the lust of the eye was the first revelation of his gospel") and, it would seem, media culture and consumerism -- Aretino forms a partnership with the painter Titian, marketing his work to noble patrons.

"The real religion of Italy," Roeder writes, "the impulse with which the Renaissance had been laboring all along, was the deathless passion of art."

Ushering in the modern (even postmodern) age, Aretino was adept at "persuading the world to accept him at his own valuation." In turn he assayed the value of others: "he created and controled public opinion; he dispensed censure and honor and made and unmade reputations."

Roeder continues: "He was the lawgiver of the vainglory of life. . . . Though his reputation rested on nothing more solid than puff, he lived on it."

More consumerism. Aretino "composed a whole series of epistles to the Venetians in praise of the table, spending hours of delicious gustation in the recollection and anticipation of food."

A random Roederism: "Life was a puzzle to those who lived it and a pattern to those who watched it."

Aretino considers himself "a miraculous monster of mankind" and sees his enormous appetites as a testament to the glories of God's creation.

He sees Christ as in all things benevolent and forgiving: "Christ, so far as we know, in His humanity, left no prisons nor wheels nor ropes nor flames to torture those who, if they have misread His laws, confess their error. He punishes with mercy all those who cry."

His self-image so closely tied to his robust nature, Aretino dreads the arrival of old age even more than most men: "No. A thousand times no -- against the dread advances of age Aretino mustered all his animal spirits and shook his whole body in vigorous denial."

Aretino's achievement: "Of all the ideals for which men had lived and suffered and died he had made a mockery and a farce; he had voided every creed and discredited every code; his work was done. He had accomplished his mission. He had destroyed all the superiorities of man to nature."

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"They hung to Rome like a plague"; death of a man whose philosophy "became a self-portrait"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XVII

Even when peace is negotiated between Pope and Holy Roman Emperor, the lawless troops, demanding back pay, will not leave Rome.

"Famine and pest had followed the sack . . . the armies were rapidly depleted [by disease, desertion, feuds, hunger] but the survivors were tenacious and clung to Rome like the plague."

From his safe perch in Venice, Aretino launches caustic slavos against the Pope and his advisors.

The Pope is evacuated by the Emperor to Orvieto, which is where he receives the famous embassy from Henry VIII seeking to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Castiglione dies shortly after success of his efforts to reconcile the Pope and the Emperor; at the point where his service to others has finally been rewarded by his elevation to Bishop. Thus, poetically perhaps, Castiglione lives only so long as he is serving the ambitions of others.

Though it began as a portrait of others, "The Courtier" finally became a self-portrait of its author. After believing so determinedly in others, Roeder concludes, Castiglione was at last forced by his book's publication to believe in himself.

"'The Courtier,' so long in maturing and so often remoulded, underwent one more transformation in his mind and emerged with a new value and its last moral meaning. It was his religion."

Roeder reports that in later years the Emperor Charles is said to have kept three books by his bedside: Machiavelli's "The Prince," Castiglione's "The Courtier," and the Bible.


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The industry of destruction; death of "a sheep in wolf's clothing"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XVI

Aretino is alternately panygerist and critic and given to exceeding his boundaries -- the polar opposite to Castiglione who revels in boundaries.
Running afoul of the Pope and nearly dragging his current patron, Federico. Gonzaga, into that ditch, Aretino finds himself an outcast from the courts of the powerful.

Embracing that role, Aretino styles himself as "the Truth Teller, born to strip men of their pretences; and of all their pretences, the most transparent were their pretensions to honor, truth, loyalty, courage. Princes, like parasites, knew no law but self-interest and he was their Scourge."

Aretino takes refuge in Venice, "the liberal asylum of the outcast, the expatriate, the freethinker."

With the Spanish Imperial armies surging into Italy, Federico worries about the future of his principality: "he was in the position -- the lofty position of the weathervane -- to scan the map of Italy and discern the drift of the morrow."

Roeder describes the new sack of Rome by murderous, plundering Spanish and German troops: "day after day the industry of destruction progressed . . . the city was divided into districts and the harrow passed over it slowly, exhaustively.

Amorality, then as now, of the banking and legal professions: "To meet the needs of the army, banks reopened and notaries reappeared, drafting inventories, registering bills of ransom, cashing notes of exchange, and storing loot. Like maggots on a charnel pile, they digested the disaster." Extortion becomes an industry, torture a pastime of idling troops.

German troops engage in a daily revelry of sacrilidge, tormenting priests, staging mock masses, and proclaiming Luther the pope.

Looking out over the devastation and rapine from his refuge at Castel Saint Angelo (with "slaughtered innocents lying moth-like below its walls") the Pope "as a cat licks itself, wept himself clean."

On Machiavelli's death, Roeder concludes he was "a sheep in wolf's clothing," that however unscrupulous his principles, his integrity was "flagrant" and his patriotism unstinting.

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The rise of satire

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XV

Leo's favorite pastime is hunting. Roeder describes one five week fit of venery that involved a cavalvade of 2000 hunters, traveling to far-flung Papal preserves, pursuing an array of beasts including red deer, wolves, hares, hosts, stags, and hedgehogs.

Leo plays cards with abandon: "he played cards briskly, promptly paying his losses and flinging his winnings over his shoulder."

Roeder introduces the satirist Aretino whose anonymous lampoons give him great influence over the affairs of the Vatican. Recognizing satire and gossip as the lifeblood of the Vatican, Castiglione sees the low-born Aretino's dominance of that form as a portent of further social decay.

Machiavelli finally advances within the Medici ranks not because of his political theory but due to his satire -- the success of his play "The Mandrake."

Pope Leo dies and Cardinals are assembled to elect successor, with both Medici and Gonzagan heirs vying.

Election drags on for so long, that one Cardinal dies in the process and rations for electors are reduced to one meal a day and then to just bread and water in order to hasten their deliberations.

Astoundingly, the new Pope, Adrian VI, is Flemish and a reformer who lives in a small corner of the Vatican with a single housekeeper. Aretino rails against his pedantry. Rome's economy, dependent on Papal largesse, collapses.

Adrian lives only a short time and, after another long conclave, a new Medici Pope is elected: Clement VII.


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Castiglione: "Life compressed into a sheaf of shining pages"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XIV

Castiglione's "The Courtier" a testament to his formative years at the peaceful, enlightened court of Urbino. Roeder calls it a "theory of the leisure class."

His goal is to bring the principles of the now dissolved court of Urbino -- conviviality, conciliation, adaptability, self-discipline, humanity -- into practice in the tumultuous world of Rome and Italian society in general.

Manners "the convivial form of morals . . . elementary and unchanging." but even as he writes "The Courtier," Castiglione can see the futility, the belatedness of his tribute.

Upon completion of "The Courtier," Roeder has Castiglione reflect "there it lay, the substance of his life, compressed into a little sheaf of shining pages."

Having experienced too early the "hardening world of pleasure and intrigue," the once charming boy favorite of Julius, Federico Gonzaga has coarsened into a surly, lustful, and perhaps murderous youth. Isabelle d'Este places him under Castiglione's tutelage.

The Medici Pope Leo senses the spirit of the time and it is not religion (Savaranola) or politics (Machiavelli) but rather art. Thus "swarms of artists, scholars, poets" flocked to Rome to take advantage of his prodigality.

Leo is not drawn to the strife of Michaelangelo, prefering instead the graceful facility of Rafael. Leo: "in art he loved ease and charm; life was strenuous enough, and much too harsh."

After Lorenzo d'Medici's death, his uncle Pope Leo tries to reconcile with the previously ousted Gonzaga clan: "he applied on every occasion the emollient salves of his softest phrases to the sore spot . . . The mere mention of the name of Gonzaga set his mouth flowing with unctious saliva."

The loyal Castiglione then sent as an emissary to Rome to negotiate on behalf of the Gonzaga.

Castiglione writes from the court of the inconstant, calculating Pope: "this is the house of change and variation and it is difficult to discover its secrets."

Negotiating with Leo, Charles V of Spain, recently made Holy Roman Emperor, uses suppression or support of the Lutherans as a bargaining chip.

Leo's indecisiveness: "he vacillated like a delicate instrument, vibrating nervously to every atmospheric disturbance."

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"Old Mortality" Concludes: "The scene was another and yet the same"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Seven

Henry returns incognito from refuge in Europe; with ascension of William and Mary, political and religious situation has now reversed, with the Whigs in power and the Jacobites insurgent. Claverhouse has become a rebel, fighting with the Highlanders.

Dietary advice from Henry's aged maid: "I would approve o' your eating butcher-meat maybe as often as three times-a-week -- it keeps the wind out o' the stamack."

Surveying the Inn at Howff after the absence of many years -- and with many lives lost in the interim -- Henry observes melancholically how "the scene was another and yet the same . . . let the tide of the world wax or wane as it will, enough will be found to fill the places which chance renders vacant; and in the usual occupations and amusements of life, human beings will succeed each other as leaves upon the same tree, with the same individual difference and the same general resemblance."

The rural dram house keeper (significantly, she has gone blind) Mistress Maclure has extended her charity to those on both sides of the conflict -- "blaming nane and condemning nane" -- and only suffered for doing so.

Balfour, become a delusional hermit, holds some secret that allows him to control the fate of the Bellenden property, now in the hands of a usurper, Basil Olifant.

Of Olifant, Balfour confides: "These lands are a bit between his jaws and a hook in his nostrils, and the rein and the line are in my hands to guide them as I think meet."

In final confrontation, it is the amoral, apolitical, irreligious Cuddie who fires the shot that brings everything to right.

Poking fun at his own pat narrative resoultions and happy endings, Scott's stand-in in the book's conclusion opines: "every volume of a narrative turns less and less interesting as the author draws to a conclusion; just like your tea which, though excellent hyson, is necessarily weaker and more insipid in the last cup."


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Dining with General Claverhouse

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Six

Upon breaking-up nest of Cameronians and thus rescuing Henry, Claverhouse orders summary execution of armed rebels and, in tone that suggests it is a legal nuisance, interrogation of unarmed preacher (Macbriar).

Then, in a sentence that suggests Morton's status is now that of an indulged and favored beast, Claverhouse instructs his orderly "let Mr Morton be civilly used and see that the men look well after their horses; and let my groom wash Wildblood's shoulder with some vinegar, the saddle touched him a little."

Claverhouse dines as the insurgents are executed. Noting Henry's distress, he philosophises: "in the beginning of my military career I had as much aversion to blood spilt as ever man felt; it seemed to me to be wrung from my own heart; and yet, if you trust one of those whig fellows, he will tell you I drink a warm cup of it every morning before I breakfast."

Claverhouse continues: "Men die daily -- not a bell tolls the hour but it is the death-note of some one or another; and why hesitate to shorten the span of others, or take over anxious care to prolong our own? It is all a lottery."

In transit the next day, Claverhouse expounds on what he sees as the difference between those killed by Balfour of Burley and the blood he and his troops shed: "There is a difference, I trust, between the blood of learned and reverend prelates, of gallant soldiers and noble gentlemen, and the red puddle that stagnates in the veins of psalm-singing mechanics, crack-brained demagogues, and silly boors; some distinction, in short, between spilling a flask or generous wine, and dashing down a can full of base muddy ale."

Claverhouse mock-distraught at Henry's lack of knowledge of chilvaric literature: "Did you ever read Froissart?" No. "I have half a mind to contrive you should have six months' imprisonment in order to procure you that pleasure."

Claverhouse maintains a "Black Book" with information on individual citizens, whether insurgent or not, much of it gathered by "loyal" ministers. Henry remonstrates: "Does it not revolt a mind like yours to follow a system that is supported by such minute inquiries after obscure individuals?"

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"Thou art unwise Henry Morton"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Five

Henry reflects on how "our best and most praiseworthy feelings" become degraded: "the liberal principles of one man sink into cold and unfeeling indifference; the religious zeal of another hurries him into frantic and savage enthusiasm."

Balfour correctly guesses and highly disapproves Henry's motives for wanting to remain near the besieged castle -- to protect his beloved, Edith, and his mentor, Major Bellenden.

Balfour: "thou art unwise, Henry Morton, to sacrifice this holy cause to thy friendship for an uncircumcised Philistine, or thy lust for a Moabitist woman." Henry: "I neither understand your meaning, Mr. Balfour, nor relish your allusions."

Later, Henry remonstrates with Balfour on the zealot's plan to summarily execute Evandale: "we are in arms to put down such cruelties, not to imitate them."

Prevailing unworldliness at the front lines of the insurgent army does not inspire confidence : "their piquets and patrols were more interested and occupied in disputing the true occasion and causes of wrath, and defining the limits of Erastian herecy, than in looking out for and observing the motions of their enemies."

Sectarianism undermines insurgent army. When Henry seeks to save the bridge crossing from falling into the hands of Claverhouse, the Cameronian (zealot) dominated cavalry will not follow him as he has been condemned by the maniac Mucklewrath as an Erastian.

Fleeing from the royal troops, Henry and loyal Cuddie find themselves amid some of the most ardent Cameronians, including Macbriar and Mucklewrath.

Looking for a celestial cause for the defeat, they look threatenly at Henry, believing that God has delivered him into their hands. Cuddie: "they'll kill him, the murdering loons, and think they're doing a gude turn."

Having decided to murder Henry at the expiry of the Sabbath, the zealots begin a vigil to look for a sign of heavenly approbation for the slaughter.

Henry freed when Cuddie enlists Claverhouse to break-up the Cameronian nest.


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The council of the zealots

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Four

Henry's moderation and neutrality: he finds nothing to admire either in the oppressed religious zealots with their "gloomy fanaticism" and the "envenomed rancor of their political hatred" or in their military oppressors "the misrule, license, and brutality of the soldiery, the executions on the scaffold, the slaughters in the open field."

If the Bible in Lewis' "The Monk" is a compendium of all that is sinful, in "Old Mortality" it is a justification for extreme, ruthless, and ecstatic violence. For Balfour and Mause, the Bible demands the exercise of violence.

Henry cites to Balfour (Burley) his own respect for scripture as a guide to behavior but protests the Dissenters "wrest[ing] of certain passages out of their context" in order to justify killing.

Motive for Balfour's attempt to lure Henry into the insurgent camp is revealed in aside to the fanatical preacher Macbriar: that they must temporarily abide "Laodiceans and Erastians" in order to mass sufficient numbers against the Government.

Scott makes clear the personal ambition that underlies Balfour's militant religiosity.

Erastianism = "subjection of the church of God to the regulations on an earthly government."

In reading papers of the deceased Bothwell, Henry sees a once honorable man driven by failed love and adversity into depravity and coarseness. In the same documents, Balfour sees the myriad forms of Satan's influence.

Council of the insurgents a raucous event, theological rather than political or military. "The smoke . . . formed over the heads of the assembled council a clouded canopy as opaque as their physical theology."

(Turgenev will also use "smoke," in novel of that name, as a metaphor for the unsubstantiality of Revolutionary ideology).

Heated dispute between moderate (Poundtext) and radical (Kettledrumle) clerics broken-up by Balfour; the silenced divines "continued to eye each other like two dogs who, having been separated by their masters while fighting, have retreated, each beneath the chair of its owner . . . each indicating by occasional growls, by the erected bristles of the back and ears, that their discord is unappeased."

Theological debate reignited by ravings of bloodthirsty, apocalyptic madman Habakkuk Mucklewrath: "slay, slay -- smite -- slay utterly -- let not your eye have pity! slay utterly, old and young"

Henry agrees to serve with insurgents, with goal of "softening the horrors of Civil War" and opposing atrocities.

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"Thou shall be zealous even to slaying"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Three

Claverhouse, the military commander and scourge of the Dissenters, rides a horse without a single white hair -- said by those he pursues to be "a gift from the Prince of Darkness" himself.

Lady Bellenden's breakfast for the visiting military host of the archaic variety: "the priestly ham, the knightly sirloin, the noble baron of beef" and flagons of beer, wine, and mead.

Lady Bellenden so seduced by rank that she cannot see Bothwell's degradation. In her own way, she is as single-mindedly deluded as her bible-quoting former servant Mause.

Claverhouse has a soft and courtly exterior that hides "a spirit unbounded in daring and ambition." He is "careless in facing death and ruthless in inflicting it on others."

Claverhouse's regiment has, as ornaments, black trumpeters: "six negroes in white dresses, richly laced, and having massive silver collars and armlets."

Claverhouse leads his troops against body of insurgents led by Balfour.

Balfour kills officer sent to treat for peace, horrifying his companions. To which Balfour replies: "is it not written, Thou shall be zealous even to slaying?"

Balfour fights with and kills Bothwell. Bothwell says: "Base peasant churl, thou hast spilt the blood of a line of kings"

Balfour replies: "Die bloodthirsty dog! Die as thou hast lived! Die like the beasts that perish -- hoping nothing -- believing nothing!"

And Claverhouse's whispered aside to the news of Bothwell's death: "the King has lost a servant and the Devil has gained one."

Claverhouse moves through melee untouched: "the awe on the insurgents' minds was such that they gave way to Claverhouse as before a Supernatural being."

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"A piece of lighted match betwixt the fingers"

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part Two

At the miser Milnwood's table, all members of the household are watched "by sharp, envious eyes which seemed to measure the quantity that each dependent swallowed . . . In its progress from the lips to the stomach."

The robust appetite of the recently-arrived Cuddie causes Milnwood to regard him as a "cormorant."

Dinner interrupted by entry of the opportunist Bothwell and his troops in search of the religious fanatic Balfour: "in they tramped, a tremendous clatter upon the stone floor with the iron-shod heels of their large jack boots and the clash and clang of their long, heavy basket-hilted broadswords."

All members of the household -- for guilt or conscience or fear of being plundered -- find reason to fear Bothwell's domiciliary intrusion.

As part of interrogation, Bothwell threatens to torture Henry "by tying a piece of lighted match betwixt your fingers."

Cuddie's mother Mause an endless font of Biblical imprecation.

Riding with Henry as his prisoner, Bothwell affably explains how a soldier gets his fill of brandy at every household -- served by the Royalists out of affection, by the moderates out of fear, and by the radicals through force.

The royal-blooded but disenfranchised Bothwell on why he has not been recognized by James II: "his most sacred majesty is more engaged in grafting scions of his own than with nourishing those planted by his grandfather's grandfather.

Henry to be tried by: "the military commission, to whom it has pleased our king, our privy council, and our parliament that used to be tenacious of our liberties, to commit the sole charge of our goods and our lives."



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Old Mortality: Portrait of a Fanatic

Walter Scott, Old Mortality: Reading Notes, Part One

Scott's "Old Mortality" set in period of Stuart Restoration, when Scottish Presbyterians ("Covenanters") suppressed as subversives harboring Republican (Roundhead) sympathies.

Story presented as told by an itinerant craftsman who travels from gravesite to gravesite -- thus his nickname "Old Mortality" -- restoring inscriptions on headstones of forgotten Presbyterian martyrs.

Jacobite royalists enforce recreation -- sports, dancing -- as well as military drills for young men in order to seduce them from severity of Covenanter society.

"To compel men to dance and make merry by authority, has rarely succeeded even on board slave ships where it was formerly sometimes attempted by way of inducing the wretched captives to agitate their limbs and restore their circulation during the few minutes they were permitted to enjoy the fresh air upon deck."

May Day celebration includes traditional game of shooting the "Popinjay": brightly feathered target suspended from a pole at great distance from the contestants.

Scott's account of rivalry of green-caped gentry and fashionable noble to hit Popinjay will be told by him again, much more elaborately, in archery contest won by Robin Hood in "Ivanhoe."

Scott introduces two zealots: the crude Royalist bully Bothwell (of royal blood, but disposessed) and the uncompromising dissenter Balfour, on the run having assassinated the Archbishop. (Later he will introduce the almost Satanic Claverhouse as the polar opposite to Balfour; the consummate cynic to Balfour's true believer).

Scott's hero Henry Morton, winner of the Popinjay contest, tries to navigate between the two extremes, but in a brave manner, like his dead father, rather than a cautious one, like his penurious uncle.

Uncompromising covenanters such as Balfour (also known as Burley) see the "indulged" Presbyterian ministers as tools of the Royalists: "a fighting of the wars of darkness with the swords of the children of light."

The brave fanatic (one could say terrorist) Balfour on his eventual fate: "my hour is not yet come. That I shall one day fall into their hands and be honorably associated with the saints whom they have slaughtered, I am full well aware. And I would that hour were come; it will be as welcome to me as ever wedding to bridegroom."

For all his ardor and certitude, Balfour still expresses doubt to Henry as to the source of an inspiration that causes him to violate "feelings of natural humanity" in order to serve divine will.

Balfour to Henry: "think ye our conquests must be only over our corrupt and evil affections and passions? No; we are called upon, when we have girded our loins, to run the race boldly, and when we have drawn the sword, we are enjoined to smite the ungodly, though he be our neighbor, and the man of power and cruelty, though he were of our own kindred, and the friend of our own bosom."

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The Prince: "A code of cultured savagery"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XIII

Florence is besieged by Julius' Spanish allies and the Republic falls, bringing the return of the previously deposed Medici. Upon Julius's death, Giovanni Medici is named Pope (taking the name Leo X) and Florence is once again ascendent.

Machiavelli's connection to the former Republican government of Florence places him under suspicion and he is arrested. At first, he cannot believe he can so quickly be disgraced -- "January does not vex me, provided February favors me." But he is falsely implicated in a plot, imprisoned, and tortured.

Machiavelli's friends arrange for his freedom and he goes into exile. There, impoverished, he consorts by day with rural tradesmen -- a butcher, a miller and two furnace makers -- but at night figuratively dons "royal and Curial robes" and mentally enters the world high politics, the world of The Prince.

The Prince, Roeder suggests, is in one sense Machiavelli's application for employment by the Medici, specifically Giuliano Medici who seeks to parlay his brother's Papacy into a state much as Caesare Borgia attempted. In line with this, The Prince is also an attempt to rehabilitate the memory of Caesare Borgia and his campaign to create a powerful state from Italy's patchwork of squabbling, divided city states. Ironically, Giuliano will be more influenced by Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, which is being written at the same time in another corner of Italy.

Roeder suggests that, in the end, The Prince "unwittingly confirms Savanarola," replacing the Friar's religious faith with a faith in the State and thus equally vulnerable to the liberatory spirit of the era. It is, thus, backwards looking, doomed to failure and "a melancholy work."

"For the salvation of Italy [Machiavelli] prescribed a code of cultured savagery, which was too primitive to be sucessfully practiced by a race which, for better or for worse, had outgrown barbarism."

"For how long does the world overlook the inoffensive?"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XII

In his military campaign to reclaim Perugia and Bologna for the Holy See, Julius II brings virtually the entire College of Cardinals with him as part of his baggage train.

When Castiglione returns to Urbino after his mission to England, he sees the vulnerability of that kingdom of ease and joy: "it needed so little to dispell that idyllic world -- a mere breath of struggle . . . how long does the world overlook the inoffensive?"

In order to free her husband from Venetian prison, the cultured Isabelle d'Este reluctantly agrees to send her beloved 10 year-old son and heir, Federico, to live with the Pope as a sign of good faith and parole.

Isabella's husband, Duke Francesco Gonzaga is "a virile nonentity" who spends most of his time with his dogs. "His animal coarseness, his primitive vanity . . . were a perpetual provocation to the civilized woman he had married."

Isabelle's ambition for her son Federico, on the other hand, is for him to be "a humane and enlightened Prince." Federico was Isabella's "living image, with his silken hair, his innocent eyes, his tender and manly nature; at eight he was already singing Virgilian hexameters at her knee, in a thin, high childish treble." His father, Duke Francesco, had grumbled at this cultured heir, threatening ineffectually "to take the boy over and make a man of him."

In addition to the demand for parole, Isabella sees the advantage of removing sweet Federico from Duke Francisco's influence. When the Duke is released from the Venetian prison, she sends Federico to the Vatican, accompanied by "tutors, a major domo, a lutist" and a collection of holy relics.

Wittingly or not (Julian II is widely rumored to be more than fond of young boys and his obsession with Michaelangelo's art further suggests his appreciation of the male form), Isabella's dispatch of the angelic, 10 year-old Federico to Rome has the result of taming the martial Pope; Julian become Federico's (and, thus, Isabella d'Este's) "hostage" to good behavior rather than the other way around.

Castiglione: Scion of an abolished world

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part XI

Roeder introduces the third of his major Renaissance Italian "law givers" -- Castiglione. As Savanarola was situated as one who rises through his ability to speak and Machiavelli as one who sees, so Castiglione is presented as one who listens.

The nobly born Castiglione part of "a small and antiquated class, which the new age was rapidly outmoding . . . its roots lay in an abolished world and its traditional employments -- military, diplomatic, ecclesiastical -- had deteriorated with the rise of the new mercantile civilization of the Renaissance."

Roeder suggests that the aristocratic and religious mentalities share essential traits: both rely on discipline and discrimination and on the repression of what is new and vital. As religion has morals, so the aristocracy has manners.

Castiglione finds a haven in the remote mountain city state of Urbino, which had been seized by Cesare Borgia as part of his land grab, but then restored to its Duke Guidobaldo upon the ascension of Julius II.

Guidobaldo and his wife Elizabetta make of Urbino an "isolated, irresponsible" enclave of art, mirth, and joy, drawing to that city refugee and dispossessed nobles. Guidobaldo and Elizabetta's Urbino "the expression of an urbane, mellow, and balanced spirit, of an exquisite mean which only a ripe culture could produce."

"Honesty in pawn to necessity"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part X

The Borgia Pope dies and his body swells to enormous proportions: "the cheeks were enormous, the nose had doubled, the tongue clogged his mouth, the skin was black." All this gives rise to rumors of poisoning as his body is unceremoniously crammed into a coffin.

Caesare caught fever at same dinner and lies deathly ill. He survives his father and -- as his power base is the Vatican armies -- is relieved when choice for the next Pope is elderly and ailing, a caretaker. He reigns for 26 days.

Though scrupulously honest, Cardinal della Rovere makes a bargain with Caesare Borgia in order to amass votes to become Pope (Julius II). "They had compromised him, but his honesty had only been in pawn to necessity."

Julius almost immediately turns on Caesare, who quickly crumbles and goes penniless into exile. His eclipse as rapid as Savaronarola's; more ignomunious if less violent. At one point, in effort to stave-off exile, Cesare tries to reconcile with Duke of Urbino, who is visiting with Julius in Rome; when Guidobaldo refuses to admit him, Cesare sneaks in through secret Vatican passageway and prostrates himself, asking forgiveness, before the appalled noble.

Just as the Friar could not rule from soulcraft alone, so the Condotteri could not succeed by physical might alone.


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The Borgia Papacy

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part IX

Vatican scandals under the Borgias include myth of the "chestnut supper" at which it is rumored "50 naked courtesans and valets groveled on the floor -- gamboling for chestnuts and copulating at the feet of the Holy Father.

Cesare Borgia creates a power base from his command of the Vatican armies during his father's Papacy.  Machiavelli sees in the Borgias' reputation for sexual appetite an expression of their political vitality.

Caesare Borgia is effective both in the field and in negotiations; he "had the grace of a bullfighter and the practiced unction of a churchman" and "for all his muscular bearing, he might have seemed dapper."

The mercenary Vitellozzo Vitelli plots against his captain Caesare: "moody with syphylis, he nursed a sullen venereal anger and roused other malcontents."

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Machiavelli: open eyed and close mouthed

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part VIII

The young Machiavelli begins his first government job just weeks after Savonarola's burning. Described by Roeder as "open-eyed, close-mouthed . . . his only handicap was the originality of his mind"

Italian city states in this time do not have citizen soliders; warfare carried out by freelance militias (condotta) or mercenaries.

From fiasco of Pisan Wars, Machiavelli concludes that force requires faith (such as Savanarola inspired) to succeed. He sees Savaranola as both astute and a simpleton.

Regarding the impressionable nature of the populace, Caesare Borgia perceives: "in the political arena the glamor of crime, the reputation of mystery, swiftness, and ruthlessness was an immense asset."

Machiavelli sees a force of nature at work in Cesare Borgia's deployment of raw power in securing himself a state in Romagna.

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The burning of Savanarola

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part VII

Savanarola sternly criticized by Vatican as an "innovator" and abandoned by his political partisans in Florence. Roeder concludes that "the great theocratic experiment had failed . . . He had demonstrated exhaustively the sterility of Christianity either as a system of statecraft or a way of practical life."

Roeder avers that "the Roman tradition had been broken by two calamities, the barbarian invasions and the effeminizing influence of Christianity." Latter calls to mind that Savaronola, in Roeder's account, entered monastery out of failed romance and disgust over the masculine behavioral norms of his fellow students."

Roeder relates Machiavelli's witnessing of Savanarola's last sermons. Suggests that while Machiavelli sees clearly everything on the surface, he fails to understand Savanarola's inspiration, his sincere belief in his rightness. Machiavelli's insights are purely cerebral; he is blind to the spiritual.

On failure of Savanarola's trial and torture to reveal any motives for his pronouncements other than sincere belief, Roeder writes that "the Renaissance was trying the Middle Ages."

Savanarola hanged and burned in the Piazza -- with children casting stones at his corpse -- sharing the fate of so many "vanities" burned during his ascent.

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The burning of the vanities

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part VI

The burning of the vanities: "amid billowing crowds of smoke, the great pyramid of vainglories collected by [Savaronarola's] children. -- lewd pictures and books, lutes, cards, mirrors, and trinkets -- crumbled on the piazza, filling the nostrils of the godly with the acrid satisfaction of sic gloria."

Savanarola picks-up the intensity of his attack on the corruption of Rome and the church: "O whore of a Church, you have shown your foulness to the whole world, and your stench rises to Heaven."

Savanarola's intransigence: "the Friar was governed by a logic deeper than reason. Intoxicated with conviction, stimulated by struggle . . . His inveterate habit of simplifying every problem, reducing it to the simple black and white of right and wrong, had at last developed into an obsession."

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"The virus of power"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part V

In expelling French from Italy, Venetians enlist the mercenary Stradiouts: "the savage, head-hunting Albanian cavalry who had been promised a gold coin and a kiss from the lips of their commander for every French head."

In power vacuum following French invasion and expulsion, Savaranola grasps political power: "the virus of power had entered his veins and in its most insidious form, as an inalienable responsibility."

Another Maoist (or Taliban) resonance in Savaronarola's program of organizing Florentine youth into squads of moral enforcement teams as part of his campaign to suppress Carnival.

Savaronarola's young moral enforcers even more active during Lent: "they attacked the pastry sellers, they remonstrated with richly-dressed women, and when the remonstrance failed, stripped them of their veils and vanities."

Here the resonance is with Hitler's Nazi youth or Stalin's Communist Youth Brigades: "with the zeal of converts and the ardor of minors, they spied on and reported the sins of their parents" and patrolled the taverns and streets, causing dice games to break-up.


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Savanarola as Mao

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part IV

Election of licentious, greedy, but politically astute Roderigo Borgia as Pope: "a large bovine man, he weighed two hundred pounds worth of stability and order."

Savaranola heightens the level of his prophecy of godly retribution, the emblem of which becomes an arm and sword reaching down from the clouds with the words: "the sword of the Lord, swift over the earth and sudden."

Savaranola's reform of his convent of San Marco resonant of Mao's cultural revolution: a stamping out of property and individuality achieved by inciting the zeal of the youngest followers followed by a period of relaxed stringency and a fascination with pageantry (including one in which a young boy is dressed-up as the Virgin and adored by the chanting monks).

Also thought of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson post-9/11 and Katrina in Savanarola's gleefull greeting of the murdurous French invasion of Italy as act of personal vindication and godly retribution: "Lo the sword is come, the prophecies are verified, the scourging has begun . . . the time of singing and dancing is over; now is the time to weep your sins with torrents of tears."


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From mystagogue to demagogue

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part III

Roeder describes Savaronarola's transformation from scourge of the clergy to social critic -- "from mystigogue to demagogue" -- and, thus threat to Lorenzo di Medici's "invisible dictatorship."

The Medici acquire political power to protect their fortune, perceiving that: "wealth without power is insecure"

Lorenzo believes that "man is moved by self-interest" and thus, for him, Savaronarola is "a moral anomaly."

Lorenzo "lived by flair, by shrewdness, always alert to the promptings of life, improvising his conduct with every occasion, consistent to nothing but continual variety."

Lorenzo practically stalks Savaronarola, trying to bring him into his orbit. Only on his deathbed does Lorenzo succeed, but the intractable monk places conditions on hearing his confession. Upon Savaranola delivering the last, that he restore the freedom of Florence, Lorenzo "stares at him incredulously" then "slowly rolls over and dies."

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"He craved it with a hungry and connubial ardor"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part II

Savonarola, known for raging against clerical excess, recruited to preach in Florence by the effete intellectual Pico del Mirandola, who seeks a form of revenge against the church hierarchy for its cracking down on his Humanist intellectual projects.

Preaching to a large crowd of Florentines: "With the voice of the whirlwind he launched his prediction of the imminent scourging of the church . . . The words poured from him like a rhetorical haemorrage, anguish galvanized all his powers, and in a rush of invective, expostilation, threats, and appeals, he pressed and kneaded the multitude until the sluggish mass began to quicken and stir.

As Savonarola's crowds grow, he becomes addicted to oratory: "he craved it with a hungry and connubial ardor."

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"A Stagnant Replica of the Real World"

Ralph Roeder, The Man of the Renaissance: Reading Notes Part I

Spurned by his first love and finding the world a place where "all vices are lauded and all virtues derided," the wealthy youth Savonarola seeks the "slow immersion into death" of the cloister.

Instead he finds "a small stagnant replica of the real world without," rife with politics, self-indulgence, and careerism. "The entire edifice was rotten with a ramifying network of decay. He saw the issue with the absolute insight of innocent youth, and it affected him like a personal injury."

Roeder later describes resentment of Savonarola by a young sonnambulist monk who ("mischievous as a monkey") plays pranks in his pretended unconscious ramblings and claims religious visions. He becomes jealous when Savonarola, who had dismissed the younger monk's visions, begins to report his own far more stern prophesies.

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Books Read in 2008

The final total for books read in 2008 came-in at 59, including some very lengthy works (indeed, Moby Dick was at best the 5th longest book read this past year).

The year began with the last parts of Eugene Sue's sprawling (21 volume; 2000+ page) Mysteries of the People and ended with Phineas Finn, the second volume of Anthony Trollope's "political" series: The Palliser Novels. From Sue's ardent chronicle of the struggle of the French proletariat to Trollope's respectful anatomy of degrees of rank among the British upper crust suggests what is lost as my French-dominated reading of the past ten years gives way to more British texts.

Other trends included a fair amount of nonfiction including, in sequence, books related to World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. I finally caught-up with several of Hemingway's major works. I picked-up the pace on Walter Scott, finding more nuance in his works (one needs, I think, to look past his central characters) than had previously been apparent. I also continued to work through key high gothic novels, which provided some of the best reading of the year. Discovered as well that Thomas Hardy's more obscure novels are surprising and very offbeat (including overt gay and lesbian characters).

Spent the month of August with back-to-back accounts of the American form of destructive obsession: first Nixon in Rick Perlstein's Nixonland and then Ahab in Melville's Moby Dick -- both leaders took their ships down with them.

Favorite 2008 Readings: Probably James Hogg's Private Confessions and Memoirs of a Justified Sinner, Nicholson Baker's angry slow-burn on WWII history in Human Smoke, and rereading Kipling's Kim.

Worst 2008 Readings: Certainly David Wrobleski's absurdly overpraised and insipid The Story of Edgar Sawtelle but also Thornton Wilder's effete The Cabala and the sad spectacle of Russell Banks coasting with The Reserve.

Biggest Surprise: David Rhodes's smart and humane Driftless.

Biggest Disappointments: Nicola Barker's disorganized (though occasionally stunning) Darkmans; Abe Kobo's extended toilet humor in Ark Sakura; rereading Larry Woiwode's Beyond the Bedroom Wall and finding it undisciplined as a whole if still revelatory in places.

Reading Log for 2008:

13-Jan-08, Sue, Eugene: The Mysteries of the People (1857 France)
20-Jan-08, Murakami, Haruki: Hardboiled Wonderland and The End of World (1985 Japan)
21-Jan-08, Dinesen, Isak: Ehrengard (1962 Denmark)
26-Jan-08, Sciascia, Leonardo: Day of the Owl (1961 Italy)
27-Jan-08, Vollman, William: Riding Toward Everywhere (2008 USA)
2-Feb-08, Robb, Graham: The Discovery of France (2007 England)
3-Feb-08, Pollan, Michael: In Defense of Food (2008 USA)
6-Feb-08, Wilder, Thornton: The Cabala, The (1926 USA)
10-Feb-08, Hardy, Thomas: Desperate Remedies (1871 England)
21-Feb-08, Barker, Nicola: Darkmans (2007 England)
5-Mar-08, Scott, Walter: Quentin Durward (1823 Scotland)
22-Mar-08, Collins, Wilkie: The Woman in White (1860 England)
23-Mar-08, Turgenev, Ivan: A Nobleman's Nest (1858 Russia)
30-Mar-08, Conrad, Joseph: Under Western Eyes (1911 England)
5-Apr-08, Dumas, Alexandre: Captain Pamphile (1839 France)
7-Apr-08, Verne, Jules: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864 France)
13-Apr-08, Baker, Nicholson Human Smoke (2008 USA)
27-Apr-08, Halberstam, David: The Coldest Winter, (2007 USA)
3-May-08, Banks, Russell: The Reserve (2007 USA)
7-May-08, Sebald, W.G.: Natural History of Destruction (1999 Germany)
7-May-08, Heim, Scott: We Disappear (2008 USA)
12-May-08, Hemingway, Ernest: Islands in the Stream (1952 USA)
19-May-08, Bird, Robert Montgomery: Sheppard Lee (1839 USA)
25-May-08, Purdy, James: In the Hollow of His Hand (1986 USA)
26-May-08, Millhauser, Steven: Dangerous Laughter (2008 USA)
2-Jun-08, Malloy, Brian: Brendan Wolf (2007 USA)
9-Jun-08, Frederic, Harold: Damnation of Theron Ware (1896 USA)
15-Jun-08, Zweig, Stefan: The Post-Offce Girl (1942 Austria)
22-Jun-08, Wroblewski, David: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (2008 USA)
25-Jun-08, Hanley, James: Boy (1932 Wales)
29-Jun-08, Dylan, Bob: Chronicles, Volume One (2006 USA)
6-Jul-08, Hemingway, Ernest: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940 USA)
15-Jul-08, Kipling, Rudyard: Kim (1901 England)
20-Jul-08, Bock, Charles: Beautiful Children (2008 USA)
27-Jul-08, Hadju, David: Ten Cent Plague (2008 USA)
3-Aug-08 McGrath, Patrick Ghost Town: Tales of New York (2006 England)
21-Aug-08, Pearlstein, Rick: Nixonland (2008 USA)
1-Sep-08, Melville, Herman: Moby Dick, or the Whale (1851 USA)
7-Sep-08, Abe, Kobo: Ark Sakura (1984 Japan)
8-Sep-08, Kantner, Seth: Shopping for Porcupine (2008 USA)
16-Sep-08, Scott, Walter: Guy Mannering (1815 Scotland)
21-Sep-08, Hemingway, Ernest: Farewell to Arms (1929 USA)
28-Sep-08, Hardy, Thomas: A Loadicean (1881 England)
3-Oct-08, Hemingway, Ernest: In Our Time (1925 USA)
5-Oct-08, Didion, Joan: Where I Was From (2003 USA)
12-Oct-08, Woiwode, Larry Beyond the Bedroom Wall (1975 USA)
19-Oct-08, Zola, Emilie: Piping Hot (1888 France)
5-Nov-08, Trollope, Anthony: Can You Forgive Her? (1865 England)
9-Nov-08, Hogg, James: Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824 Scotland)
13-Nov-08, Reid, Forrest: The Garden God, The (1905 Ireland)
16-Nov-08, Arnott, Jake: The Long Firm (1999 England)
25-Nov-08, Scott, Walter: The Antiquary (1816 Scotland)
30-Nov-08, Doyle, Arthur Conan: Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896 England)
30-Nov-08, Lewis, Matthew: The Monk (1796 England)
10-Dec-08, Rhodes, David: Driftless (2008 USA)
11-Dec-08, Bachelder, Chris: Bear v Shark (2001 USA)
17-Dec-08, Rezzori, Gregor von: The Hussar (1960 Austria)
20-Dec-08, Marsh, Richard: The Beetle (1897 England)
30-Dec-08, Trollope, Anthony: Phineas Finn (1869 England)

Reading Notes on Uncle Silas

Reading Notes: Sheridan LeFanu, Uncle Silas
January 2-4, 2009. Transcribed from Twitter.

Set-up of "Uncle Silas" surrounds young Maude with malign cast of characters, notably the comically devious governess Mdm de la Rougiere. 11:25 AM Jan 2nd from txt

Mdm Rougiere persuades Maud: "come, come, tell me little obstinate or I will break your little finger. Tell me everything." 1:26 PM Jan 2nd from txt

Maud's widowed father a Swedenborgian. He paces in and out of darkness -- and their house situated between visible and spirit worlds. 1:30 PM Jan 2nd from txt

The two portraits of Uncle Silas: the oval of golden-haired boy and full-length of the young rake: "a most expensive and vicious young man" 8:47 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Looking at the childhood portrait, Maud ponders from "what a small seed the hemlock or the wallflower grows." Her shy father the wallflower 8:59 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Cousin Monica speaks of Silas as a "sphinx" and Maud finds his expression unreadable: "derision, or anguish, or cruelty, or patience?" 9:51 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas, caustic, on his daughter Milly: "a very rustic Miranda and fitted rather for the society of Caliban, than of a sick old Prospero." 9:56 AM Jan 3rd from txt

LeFanu compares the reluctance of a sleepy child to go to bed with the struggle of the elderly to resist "the great sleep of death" 10:06 AM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas on Maud's report of beating of miller's daughter: "What a romantic little child, people of that rank think nothing of a broken head." 1:29 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Monica on Silas' ancient butler: "I won't wait for your butler, who would give me cakes baked by King Alfred and Danish beer in a skull." 3:33 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas subject to catatonic fits -- "queer spells" -- as well as selective quotation from the Bible, thus creating a new reputation for piety 3:37 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Monica sees Silas for the 1st time in 20 yrs: "Angels and ministers of grace! Such a specter! That odious smile makes me feel half insane." 3:59 PM Jan 3rd from txt

The bitter Silas to Monica: "We are very like turkeys, we have so much sense and generosity. Fortune wounded me, and the whole brood were upon me pecking and gobbling, gobbling and pecking, and you among them dear Monica. It wasn't your fault only instinct" 4:07 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas' fits: "hoverings between life and death, between intellect and insanity -- a dubious marsh fire existence, horrible to look on!" 5:09 PM Jan 3rd from txt

Silas' inner life a "systematic blasphemy" hidden beneath a deceptive surface that takes on rainments of humanity in order to lure others. 9:13 AM Jan 4th from txt

Silas akin to "goblin of the desert who appear in friendly shapes to stragglers from the caravan, lead them to where they're found no more" 9:18 AM Jan 4th from txt

"How marvelously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers one over the other! Take away that on the surface and straight you find a new stratum." 9:57 AM Jan 4th from txt

Toward end of "Uncle Silas," Mdm Rougiere asks Maud if she is cruel or just stupid. 450 pages spent in her dismal company confirm the latter 8:38 PM Jan 4th from txt

"Uncle Silas" fully partakes of British convention of centering a novel on an insipid figure, with real interest lying in subsidiary figures 8:42 PM Jan 4th from txt

Maud consistently ignores broad hints from other characters as to the plots against her: Christian charity taken to extreme of idiocy. 8:45 PM Jan 4th from txt

Supernatural in "Uncle Silas" just so much Gothic decor. Silas' demonism explained by opium addiction. Swedenborgian veil goes unlifted. 8:49 PM Jan 4th from txt

Reading Notes on The Chrysalids

Reading Notes: John Wyndham, The Chrysalids
Jan 1, 2009. Transcribed from Twitter.

Reading John Wyndham's post-apocalyptic "The Chryaslids," in which religious orthodoxy takes the form of absolute genetic purity. 11:12 AM Jan 1st from txt

Post-apocalyptic environment creates a new "Age of Wonders." Knowledge and tolerance become heretical. People hide "sins" of deviation. 11:22 AM Jan 1st from txt

The sailor Uncle Axel's account of peoples beyond the radiation-scarred "badlands" suggests that all one finds are different orthodoxies. 11:33 AM Jan 1st from txt

Axel "most of them whether they have seven fingers or four arms or hair all over or whatever is wrong, think their type is the true pattern" 11:39 AM Jan 1st from txt

Thought in reading "The Chryaslids" that it is nature's way to be various and in man's way to restrict variety, both moral and biological. 12:04 PM Jan 1st from txt

In parallel events of normal and mutant births to two sisters (David's mother & aunt), reality that all have mutation, deviance inside them. 12:48 PM Jan 1st from txt

Minister: "Accursed is the mutant, the seed of the devil within, trying unflaggingly, eternally to come to fruition, to destroy divine order” 12:54 PM Jan 1st from txt

David's prayer: "Oh God, please, please God let me be like other people. Won't you make it so when I wake up I'll be like everyone else?" 1:21 PM Jan 1st from txt

The eight Chrysalids, who communicate by ESP, are a step forward in evolution and thus abomination to religion which only looks backwards. 2:08 PM Jan 1st from txt

Living in secret, the Chrysalids envy the "norms": "the stupidest norm was happier; he could feel that he belonged." 5:32 PM Jan 1st from txt

"We had no positive -- we were condemned to negatives, to not revealing ourselves, to not speaking when we would, to not using what we knew, to not being found out -- to a life of perpetual deception, concealment, and lying." 5:37 PM Jan 1st from txt

Discovered, David, Rosalind, Petra are declared "deviants," "non-human and therefore not entitled to rights or protections of human society" 7:51 PM Jan 1st from txt

David explains hatred to Petra: "the more stupid [people] are the more like everyone else they think everyone ought to be. And once they get afraid they become cruel and want to hurt people who are different." "I don't see why," insisted Petra. 8:12 PM Jan 1st from txt

Chryaslids and the "Sealand" people precursors of network society and hive mind in their ability to have "think-togethers" 8:37 PM Jan 1st from txt

Proto-internet: Chrysalids and the "Sealand" people also communicate using a kind of graphic (rather than lingual) interface. 8:43 PM Jan 1st from txt

Inability to think collectively doomed the "Old People": "the more complex they made their world, the less capable of dealing with it" 8:47 PM Jan 1st from txt

Sealand woman explains that the oppressed are confused by their social ties and upbringing but that the oppressors are *not* so confused. 10:00 PM Jan 1st from txt

The oppressors recognize the danger of the "superior variant" and wish to suppress the change that it will bring -- to preserve stasis. 10:03 PM Jan 1st from txt

As David + Rosalind descend toward Sealand (New Zealand) they hear a sound like "the buzzing of a hive of bees." David: "our kind of people" 10:13 PM Jan 1st from txt

Seeing killing as part of the natural order, the Sealanders have no particular sympathy for "lower" creatures or less-evolved humanoids. 10:26 PM Jan 1st from txt

"The Chrysalids" interestingly predictive of not just network society -- even the problem of individuation -- but also posthuman philosophy. 10:31 PM Jan 1st from txt