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The Politics of Envy

Read by Dave Rowe Library Assistant, Winchester Click on photo to hear may take a minute or two to load

Ah my uccellare,

Vettori.

You tell me of your typical day, its colour and its richness

and envy is a stiletto in me. But ah, I have my

uccellare

Vettori.

So, late from bed to the Vatican to snare the gossip of state

while I go over the stile of ambition

to snare the thrushes, in my uccellare,

Vettori.

Lunching with Cardinal de' Medici, Vettori, think of me under

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the stigma of poverty breaking bread

with these diplomats of the turd, ugly peasants,

when I go down from the snare of the uccellare,

Vettori;

when if it is set fine Vettori and you ride out from Rome to

canter

in the sunny country on your fine mare, spare for your

country cousin

just a moment's consideration, for it is then I am entering the

inn

to play the rustic fool gambling with butchers and bakers.

Butchers and bakers! Me, Vettori: ah but I know

how you will rejoin, Vettori -

"You have your uccellare,

"your uccellare where you snare the poor little birds or

mull over old loves reading your Ovid. I see you now,

Niccolo, amid what bliss, what peace, what solitude

what serenity".

What balderdash, Vettori! All you would care for here

in this dismal life is the fall of day when we repair

to our respective libraries, both to dream of history

and statecraft. You might laugh Vettori at me 'plumping

and grooming' The Prince in my courtly study and robes.

Of this more in season, Vettori. It is written in secret

isolation which is my drab fortune. To her I plead

as follows:

Follow me, Machiavelli! "Now you would be a swan

to leave an egg in her belly, now turn into gold that

she might carry

you in her pocket." So long as you are forever Fortune's

favourite

as I was gonfalonier's,

bring me out of purgatory

and off this island of the Archipelago

before it shudders and dissolves and the polar

sea of oblivion rolls over my bones frozen in a lens of ice;

deliver me from purgatory, Vettori,

out of my uccellare

to the Medici.

In 1513 Machiavelli was confined

for one year to the environs of

Florence, having been suspected

of conspiring against the

Medici. Whilst trying to secure

favour in Rome by letter, he

divided his time between his farm

and preparing The Prince in his

study in the evenings. His

preferred spot on the farm was

his uccellare, a wood on a hill

where nets were spread to snare

birds.

in Adam's Apocrypha