1469-1527
Famous (or infamous, depending on how you look at him) political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli was born on this day in the independent Republic of Florence in what is now Italy (birth name: Niccolò di Bernardo del Machiavelli). Machiavelli's father was a very prominent local attorney and town/republic citizen servant of Florence. Despite this, and the prominence of the ancestry of the family, Niccolò was never a full citizen of the republic. He was, however, eventually appointed to an official position of production of official Florentine government documents sometime after the year of 1498; he was then elevated to secretary of the Deci di Libertà e Pace. In the first year of the new century, Machiavelli actually raised and led an army of patriotic Florentine citizens, with their attack and defeat of neighboring Pisa. Of course, the writer is most famous for his work The Prince, a very famous/infamous political work first published in 1532--five years after his death. What needs to be pointed out, is that Machiavelli, though living during the Italian Renaissance, the years spanning his lifetime were also extraordinarily uncertain, violent, and extremely corrupt. Italy was groaning under the strain of an extant and politically corrosive rule from the Vatican--an extension of attempts at continued rule from Rome, the rise of secular city/states and the violent crumbling of the Holy Roman Empire. It should also be pointed out that The Prince can be read as a vicious satire; though if any reader of Machiavelli's works has read his follow up work to The Prince, Discourses on Livy--which masquerades as a history on Ancient Rome--and turns out to be anything but....it is, in fact, more a pure contemporary theory of political thought and conduct--it is clear that he did actually mean a good deal of the "advice" contained in The Prince. Basically, he regarded naked political ambition--open evil behavior to remain in power--more an exercise in a form of honesty, since he firmly believed that politicians were by nature: sneaky, dishonest and secretly criminally minded. To be a politician or ruler, free of "sneaking deception"--a person willing to openly engage in any behavior to stay in power--was a point of recommendation by the philosopher. He is also regarded as one of the most influential advancers in thought to the modern rule of Republicanism. In the world of film, there have been less the twenty productions of his work on the large and small screen; and only one of those came in the silent era. That film, Monna Vanna, was a German production and dates from 1922. The principle writer on that project was one of Germany's first female writers for the screen Olga Alsen. The film stars Paul Wegener--who is famous for his appearances in The Golem films, and Lee Parry--a German leading lady who made her film debut in 1919. The work is based on one of Machiavelli's many fictional/non-political works (a play) and was directed by Richard Eichberg. It would be almost 20 years before another film based on his work was produced. The first ever Italian production of one of his fictional tales, The Mask of Cesare Borgia was released in late September of 1941. His work first came to television another 20 years after this, with the made-for-tv comedy Mandragola which was produced for East German television and broadcast in late May of 1961. One of the only times that any of his political writings was used in a filmed production was also the first time that his work was used in an actual television series--in this case a mini-series. The Age of the Medici (1972-1973) was an Italian production with three episodes (and was, interestingly, the debut of American actor Fred Ward). While the debut of his work in a full television series came in 1976 in the episode La Mandragore of the long running French series Au théâtre ce soir. To date, the most recent use of his material came in 2010 in the short Canadian produced film Machiavelli's The Prince, which sports a runtime of 30 minutes. Machiavelli's downfall came in 1512, when after a local political upheaval, he was eventually arrested and tortured. After his release, he was effectively banished from Florence for a time (though, he himself, more than once referred to it as "retirement"). He eventually returned to die in the Republic of Florence (of what is not certain) at the age of 58 on the 21st of June. He is interred in a unique burial located at the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence.
No comments:
Post a Comment