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Rating: "Apologi Centum" ("One Hundred Apologues"), Leon Battista Alberti (Ita/Florence) December 16-24, 1437. Published as "One Hundred Fables" by Giunti-Nardini in 1979, with translation and interpretation from Latin by Bruno Nardini and illustrations by Adriana Saviozzi Mazza. Here the full text in Latin and here in Italian.
"Dear Aesop, I have learned that the Latins greatly admired your grand and beautiful wit, which manifested especially in writing those Fables that deservedly made you famous, to the point of being called 'divine.' I too have written some Fables; I composed a hundred of them in very few days (you can believe me because I swear it by the sacred name of Fame) and it is these that I venture to send to you. I very much wish to know what you think of them. Please, let me know your impression and the judgment you choose to give. Farewell to you!".(Leon Battista Alberti, Letter to Aesop written in the introduction to "Apologi Centum")
Words, Words, Words...
For "Fable" (not to be confused with "Fiaba" which in Italian Literature has a different meaning) is meant a short story, of literary origin and/or passed down orally, the purpose of which is to convey a lesson with a pedagogical background. Its principal characteristics are the use of animals but also anthropomorphized plants and objects as protagonists and an allegorical structure similar to that of the "Parable" (in the literary meaning and not the evangelical). Born as a genre shortly after the emergence of language, it often draws its origins from various mythologies and in Western culture, the greatest examples (as influence and "popularity") are to be found in the compositions of the legendary (in the literal sense of the term) figure of Aesop: or at least so it must have seemed to Leon Battista Alberti given the "correspondence" written as an introduction to "Apologi Centum" (along with the dedication letter to his friend Francesco Marescalchi) and the style, decidedly similar to that of the mythical Phrygian, adopted for the occasion.
Leon Battista Alberti: an Illustrious Unknown.
"Illustrious because his fame is universally known and unknown because few truly know him. For most of us, he is nothing more than a learned architect of the 1400s, more theoretical than practical, author of a Latin work titled "De Re Aedificatoria". For the Florentines, he is also the designer of the Rucellai Palace, on Via della Vigna Nuova, and the restorer of the facade of Santa Maria Novella; for Italian students, he is the announcer of the world's first literary prize, the famous "Certame Coronario, which he wanted in 1441 to encourage his unruly Latinist friends to write verses in Italian. Yet Leon Battista Alberti was the most representative man of the 1400s and the most "universal" of his great contemporaries.".(Bruno Nardini, from the preface of the volume "One Hundred Fables")
Leon Battista was born in 1404 in Genoa in exile, as his family was expelled (1393) from Florence, before his birth, following the usual power struggles of those years. A member of one of the most prominent "clans" of the era, he was initiated, at a very young age, by relatives, into the disciplines of the "Trivium and Quadrivium": this "universal" approach followed him throughout his life, allowing him to leave a mark in many works in both scientific and artistic fields. He was also a political man: the exile (which ended in 1428 due to papal intervention) and many inherited disputes found upon his "return" (in quotes because he could never set foot in his "homeland" before) to Florence greatly influenced all his literary creations, in which he often included more or less veiled references to his civic and civil condition. "Distressed by the incessant insults of enemies and relatives, I experienced the perfidy of friends, the rapacity of relatives, the slander of the envious, the cruelty of enemies..." he wrote bitterly, in 1439.
In "Apologi Centum" he imbued all his allegorical and poetic verve into short compositions whose moral, as he himself admitted in the dedication epistle to Marescalchi ("If they seem a bit obscure to you in places, it is due to their brevity, which, moreover, I particularly value") was not always entirely clear but often masked in subtle and elegant syllogisms. A moral that mainly targeted the baseness of his contemporaries (of all lineages) and was accompanied by a spirit that was bitter yet understanding toward human affairs.
Lions, Emperors, Gods...
Alberti was a protagonist of the revival of "Humanism" and in these hundred small writings, his curious and (let me use the term) "secular" spirit emerges in an explosion of characters and figures, both contemporary to him (merchants, travelers, etc., etc.) and of Classical origin (nymphs, gods, fauns, etc., etc.), as well as animals and plants, both domestic and non-domestic, typical of Italy of those years, and exotic ones. A literary approach that came from the classical past but was projected toward the future rebirth of human thought after an era of, partial (I remind you that the Middle Ages were not so dark as one is led to believe), obscuration of the same.
In the "insignificant" stories of moths, oxen, foxes, etc., etc., the author described his world but also cast a passionate look toward the future, using stylistic elements, "old" to him by two thousand years and with a literary genre traditionally considered "poor": realizing such "modernity" helps savor these "one hundred early fruits" in their multiple meanings and metaphors.
A lesson that comes to us from the past.
Mo.
"Dear Leon Battista, those who say that Italians are not people of wit, at least from what is known, are mistaken. I must admit, however, that few mortals are granted the privilege of being endowed with as much wit and value as you. You are so pleasant to read, and so truthful, that all your fellow citizens should love you. But unfortunately, there are the envious ones".(Leon Battista Alberti, Letter from Aesop to Leon Battista Alberti written in the introduction to " Apologi Centum")
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