I've just finished Book I of Cellini's two book autobiography. I have Symonds' translation in a single volume published by the Book League of America in 1937. Having been to Florence, Rome and Milan recently, Cellini's stories about himself and his adventures become truly vivid. At first, I could not imagine anyone being so self-agrandizing and so unabashedly boastful about his intentions, his artistic abilities and his view of his world. The man becomes so endearing through his writing, however, that I was not put off; rather, I found myself chuckling at his gall and style. His relationships and adventures with Popes Clement VII and Paul III, the Medici families, other artists, cardinals, dukes and jailors make for hilarious reading. His genius comes through and lingers as the reader ponders the historic figures and politics of Renaissance Italy. I'm beginning Book 2 today with great anticipation. What an ego! Symonds translation in 1937 is fine. He offers footnotes that aid the reader's following of the chronology. Further, Symonds often gives the phrase as Cellini wrote it, should there be different nuances in translation.

One of the first and yet one of the greatest autobiographies of all time. Any celebrity or would be celebrity thinking of dashing off a quick "life" or apologia pro vita sua could do worse than start by reading or re-reading this fantastically intense and life-enhancing book

This piece is an excellent portrayal of life during the Italian Renaissance, but more importantly, the book is purely entertaining. Benvenuto Cellini tells the story of his life in a vivid tale of kings and prostitutes, artists and dukes, soldiers and necromancers, all the while proclaiming himself the absolute protagonist of his world. Cellini's autobiography is filled to capacity with egotism, but this only makes the story more interesting. In a good piece of literature of this type, a person wants to see a main character with absolute confidence in himself; a superhero if you will. Benvenuto may not be a superhero, but he tells his life story as if he was the greatest of all such legendary folk heroes. If children read this book or were read this book during their childhood, perhaps on the playground at recess, kindergartners would say: "Hey let's play superheroes, I get to be Superman, I get to be Benvenuto Cellini." With the master goldsmith's stories about fending off six armed men with a single dagger, without a thought of fear in his mind, who wouldn't be solidly entertained?

..the most sublime aspirations... the subtlest intuitions...
the darkest forebodings...the audacities of passion...the
freedom of the senses... put on personality... and
assume a robe of carnal beauty.
-- John Addington Symonds, "The Genius of Greek Art."
* * * * * * * * *
The joy here is that this second volume is available in
this excellent reprint from the University Press of the
Pacific (Honolulu). The sadness is that, so far, Volume
I is not offered here.
Never having read anything by Symonds, I took a chance
based on my own love of Greek art and literature, and
several allusions to this work in studies on Victorian
aestheticism, and decided to order this volume. I am
glad that I did.
Symonds is a critic and a writer -- with a fine sense
of sight, and a poetic/artistic gift for expressing what
he sees in words. Almost every paragraph offers the
sort of lines or phrases that ring with a stirring sense
of beauty and aptness. I find myself underlining and
starring wondrous phrases and sentences.
This Volume 2 starts with Chapter XIV -- which means that
Volume 1 contains Chapters I-XIII. Also from Symonds'
introductory words, Volume I deals with the poet dramatists
Aeschylus and Sophocles. One has to remember that the Greek
dramatists were considered primarily POETS; the dramatic
form was the vehicle through which their poetry was
expressed.
The chapter titles of this Volume 2 tell us what
Symonds covers -- and it is both amazing and excellent,
in quality of focus and quality of expression. The
chapter titles going from Chapter XIV through Chapter
XXV are: Greek Tragedy and Euripides; The [Dramatic]
Fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; The
Fragments of the Lost Tragic Poets; Ancient and Modern
Tragedy; Aristophanes; The Comic Fragments; Herondas;
The Idyllists [poets who wrote idylls: Theocritus, Bion,
Moschus]; The [Greek]Anthology; Hero and Leander; The
Genius of Greek Art; Conclusion. Of course, all of
these chapters must be read -- but the chapter which
glows with light and poetry is "The Genius of Greek
Art."
Unfortunately, the considerate hosts for these reviews
only offer the option of a maximum of 20 words which
can be quoted. The temptation with Symonds' wonderful
insights expressed in poetic prose, is to quote, and
quote, and quote. But as Symonds says of the Greeks:
"License was reckoned barbarous.... Hellenes, born to
be free men, took pride in temperance." He goes on to
say that their "sophrosyne" or self-restraint was
co-extensive as a protective virtue with their "to
kalon" (ideal of form) -- and this was the essence of
their Greek-ness, the quality beloved by Phoebus [Apollo]
in whom there was no dark place or any flaw. Interestingly,
Symonds makes the case that we cannot perfectly understand
the Greek mindset completely, even if we look at similar
scenery (in Greece today) in similar light -- for they
were looking at it with Greek eyes and Greek minds. And
they lived with a different sense of themselves and of
the world -- not burdened by our cultural baggage
from doctrinaire prohibitions and moralistic damnings.
One of the excellent additonal features of this volume
is that the excerpts from the works which Symonds cites
in Greek are then translated, either in the text itself
or in footnotes. One of the most entrancing sections of
"The Genius of Greek Art" is that in which Symonds talks
of the olive tree -- Athene's gift to Hellas -- and he
describes its beauty against the landscape, in the light,
and against the color of the sea and sky. Then he relates
the qualities of that tree and its definition to the
Greek artistic values.
As he says, the Genius of the Greeks appears before
us like a young man newly come from the wrestling ground,
anointed, chapleted, and very calm...
* * * * * * * * *

Somewhere in France, Michel Montaigne was working on his immortal "Essays." Gibbon described him as the only man of liberality in the 16th century, aside from Henry IV. His honesty, his good will, and his probing nature have recieved the acclaim of posterity.

Somewhere in Italy, the same time, a more representative portrait was being painted -- the Autobiography of Cellini. While it has the same honesty, it lacks the grace (written in a colloquial style), the liberality, and the meditation of Montaigne. It is probably more represantative of the Renaissance man, and of modern man altogether. Reading Cellini, one comes to understand what Camus meant by the "culture of death" at work in Western history.

Written as a novel (seen, in fact, as a progenitor of the Romantic novel), the Life of Cellini is a remarkable glimpse into the Italy and France in the times of Michelangelo and the Medici. Characters like Francis I of France, Duke Cosimo, Pope Clement VII, and artists like Michelangelo and Titian come to life in brilliant colors. But one shouldn't mistake the intent of Cellini's book as painting a portrait of his times -- no man on earth was ever so in love with himself, and HE is the subject of this book (I had to cringe every time Cellini, about to describe something fantastic, stops and declares "... that is the work of historians. I am only concerned with my affairs..." and leaves off).

I can't say for sure, but the veracity of this book must be almost incontestable, for the most part. Cellini was simply too shameless to be too much of a liar. A few times he tests our credulity: "mistakenly" leaving France with the King's silver, an arbesque "accidentally" firing and killing a man, etc. For the most part, however, we get the whole truth, and in fact more than we wanted to know.

Despite the fame and prestige Cellini comes to, he is little more than a common street rogue and villian. In the course of the book, he murders three people in cold blood, each murder worse than the last (the third time he shoots a man in the throat over a saddle dispute... on Good Friday). He delights in describing his violence ("...I meant to get him the face, but he turned and I stabbed him under the ear."), and he revels in warfare, brawling, and the misfortune of his enemies. Aside from the three murders, there are innumerable foiled and aborted murder attempts. Cellini's sadism reaches new heights when he forces one of his laborers to marry a whore, then pays the woman for sex to humiliate the man. In his descriptions of his crimes, his many run-ins with the law, and his violent disposition, Cellini seems completely unaware of himself and without shame. In fact, the intent of the book is to show him as the virtu -- a hero of divine virtue in a world of lies and deceit.

The portrayal of King Francis alone makes this book worthwhile. He is everything historical events point him out to be. Generous, jovial, and shrewd. The descriptions of the years Cellini spent as Paul III's personal prisoner are another high point, unfortunately capped by the lengthy and horribly tedious poem, "Capitolo," where Cellini clumsily elaborates on his suffering.

As a history and an autobiography, there are few greater works. But aside from its historical and literary value, the Autobiography of Cellini was just fun to read. The audacity and conceit of this horrible man is almost comical, and the loose and efficient prose makes it a smooth read.

Cellini's story reads better than a novel. He is the quintessential Renaissance man. In his service to popes, kings and a slew of dukes he was a goldsmith, painter, sculptor, soldier and he may have had more near death experiences than any other that I have ever read about. Of course, his tale leaves himself always and forever blameless in each conflict, betrayal or other unfortunate episode that he finds himself in, which is tremendously entertaining. At first, the reader is seduced into believing that this man has been wronged countless times by a world full of the most slippery types of people. By the middle of the book, however, it dawns on the reader that Cellini must have played some part in creating the misfortune and danger that he is constantly in. Cellini's writing evokes vivid images of the places and people that he meets. One of the most engrossing stories in the book is Cellini's imprisonment and later escape from the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, where he was confined by order of the Pope (who, according to Cellini, was bent on having him killed in order to prevent his own embarrasement). His escape from the place is a mix of (apparently) classic methods (he climbs down the side of the building using knotted bed sheets!) and terrible misfortune (he breaks his leg, is nearly killed, and is also attacked by mastiffs while crawling away for his life!). Very soon after having escaped the prison, though, he was again imprisoned by the Pope in a wretched and dank little cave in the Pope's own garden (where Cellini claims to have had mystical visions). Cellini has many other adventures in Italy and France (and on his journeys back and forth). Each tale is centered on how he creates his artworks in the service of some nobleman, how the nobleman is always astonished at the work, how Cellini is then betrayed by someone he was kind to (which, through no fault of his own, often puts him in the bad books of the patron). Cellini frequently ends up in a fight where he either wounds or kills the person, and then goes on his happy way. There is a great deal that one could say about this book and its author. It will suffice to state here that the book is a wonderful read, it offers excellent insights into life in the 16th century, and (as is true on my part) it makes the reader crave just half the adventure that this fellow has had.

This book covers the eventful life of a passionate craftsman who lived through major events of the Renaissance. In Florence, Rome, and Paris, Cellini managed to gravitate to the most powerful political and artistic personalities, but his relationships with them were always bumpy. Cellini had an artist's temperament and more - his passionate temper and sense of righteousness, combined with the unscrupulous nature of many he encountered, caused constant friction and turmoil which make the book a nonstop and occasionally violent thriller. The book's one disappointment for those interested in history is the lack of extensive description of the places where he worked and travelled. It's centered on Cellini, his relationships and activities, and his craft. He does however have a great description of the defense of Rome in 1527, in which he was firing artillery from the top of Castel St.-Angelo. George Bull rates five stars for a great translation which captures the spirit of the original, its passion, wit, sarcasm, bitterness and insight. Given the work was written with Florentine colloquialisms, this is an achievement. Highly recommended.