MACHIAVELLI IN HELL

Just finished Sebastian de Grazia's in/famous work of intellectual biography: Machiavelli in Hell. It's as idiosyncratic as it is compelling: Rife with amusing Italianisms, scatalogical digressions and pretty Renaissance paintings, it takes a brilliantly odd approach to Machiavelli, the world's most misquoted philosopher after Nietsche and Hobbes. 

This is a work which manages to evoke an intimate portrait of Machiavelli while quoting Mark Twain ("heaven for the climate, hell for the company.") 

Basically, de Grazia presents old man Niccolo as an off-the-wall, off-color and slightly goofy theologian hell-bent on restoring the old Roman notion of virtus, specifically in the person of a principe nuovo who would restore order among the Florentine civitates who left Machiavelli without a job. Fortunately, de Grazia doesn't try to round off the contradictory edges in Machiavelli's writings either. Dense, scattered, the whole thing reads like your favorite professor rambling from behind his desk about his favorite subject and you're not entirely sure he remembers you're there. The editing is appalling, but it's almost the better for it. I will read it again at some point.

But the most important thing I learned about Machiavelli is this: he wrote a novella entitled Belfagor arcidiavolo, which follows the exploits of a devil (Belfagor) sent to earth to investigate the allegations of recent male entrants into hell that they arrived there because of their wives. Belfagor's travails at the hands of one Onesta Donati, whom he marries in the pursuit of the truth, eventually sends him packing, gratefully, back to hell.