Lauro Martines. Loredana – A Venetian Tale. London: Jonathan Cape,
2004. 261pp. ISBN 0224072536. Ian Campbell and Dustin Thomason.
The Rule of Four. London: Century, 2004. 372 pp. ISBN 1844130053
Browsing the stock of any bookstore confirms that the historical novel is alive
and well. The success of televised history further encourages the audience not
only to read the books accompanying the television series, but also to look out
for more material on related subjects. If this material comes in the form of
more easily digestible novels, so much the better. Two such books have
recently been published, in both cases first novels, which present the authors’
well-informed perspectives on the Italian Renaissance. History light, or rather
lite, this is not.
Lauro Martines is a distinguished Renaissance historian with a long list
of scholarly publications. His most recent book April Blood, written for a
readership broader than just the academic community, offers a depiction of
the Pazzi conspiracy drawn from his own painstaking research. Correcting the
romantic view of the Renaissance as a spell of cultured exchange between the
refined members of the Florentine oligarchy, Martines spared his readers
nothing: blood and gore, treason and murder, torture and executions were as
much part of life in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as they had been
during the ‘dark’ Middle Ages – or as they are now.
Loredana is a love story set in sixteenth-century Venice. It is also a
disturbing story of hate and revenge. A mosaic of Ricordi, letters and written
confessions involves us in the story of a daughter from a good family,
Loredana Loredan, her unhappy marriage, and her subsequent love affair with
the young priest Orso. Reading these pseudo-documents one forgets that
Martines invented them. To those of us familiar with Renaissance texts they
ring true and act as a strong reminder that many of the events unfolding are
not exceptional. In particular the tales of executions, thrown in dispassionately
by some of the narrators, sound entirely convincing and as commonplace as
they would have seemed to a contemporary audience.
Young Loredana’s family has fallen on hard times. Scandal has hit the
family on more than one occasion: for instance, the girl’s elder sister was sent
back home by her new husband, since the marriage could not be
consummated. The family has once more become the laughing stock of
Venetian polite society, and so there is little hope of a good marriage for
Loredana. When she is betrothed to Marco, she can hardly believe her luck:
her spouse to be is young, friendly, and handsome. The deep flaws in Marco’s
character become only apparent after the wedding. For him matrimony is only
a front, an escape from the laws against sodomy. However, far from settling
more or less comfortably into a marriage of convenience, in which both
partners gain outward respectability and secret liberty to do as they please, the
young husband first ignores, and then mistreats his bride. He uses Loredana
as a pawn in his tormented love life, paying with her body for the sexual
favours he craves from his male lovers. At the same time he makes her pay for
the anguish he feels for being trapped in a male body.
Loredana and Marco are both victims. Nothing in Loredana’s
upbringing has prepared her for the situation she finds herself in. She has
learned that a wife’s duty is obedience to her husband but no-one has taught
her that obedience can go too far. Entirely on her own in her husband’s
household, she lacks the human warmth and friendliness of her family, the
approval of her husband, the companionship of friends. Like the abused child
that she is, she blames herself for all the horrible things, the repeated rapes by
Marco’s friends. Yet somehow she finds the inner resolve to strike back at her
husband by taking her pleasure from the ‘lovers’ forced on her, and in the
case of the first of them, by developing some kind of fond friendship with the
man. Meanwhile Marco keeps thinking up new humiliations for his wife, quite
unaware of or unconcerned about Loredana’s course of revenge. Torturing
her gives him brief respite from his own misery. But the hatred he feels gives
him no strength. He hates himself, and this can only stop at his death.
When Marco dies under mysterious circumstances, death sets both of
them free and gives the widow a second chance. Loredana returns to the
family home, works on her neglected education, and keeps her elder sister
company. The sister – who likes to take piety to new heights – is ailing, and
soon requires the spiritual solace of daily visits from a young priest. Thus
Loredana meets Orso, an illegitimate Venetian boy brought up in Tuscany.
Destined for the priesthood, he has so far dedicated his life to comforting
those in prison or on their way to the gallows. Orso has seen much injustice:
girls little more than children being burned alive for killing their offspring
begotten by seduction or rape. This and the general misery of Venice’s ‘lower
city’, excluded from sun, air, and the wealth of the ‘upper’ strata, move him to
join a secret organisation intent to rectify these malaises of society. Within this
organisation Orso is one of the moderates; unlike some other members he is
reluctant to use violence.
Together Loredana and Orso, for the first time in their lives, discover
love as something positive. However, their blossoming relationship is
hampered by Orso’s ecclesiastical status and by Loredana’s circumscribed
movements. Their relationship is also overshadowed by political events, since
more and more members of the secret society are captured, often dead or
dying from a poison capsule each carries in his mouth. Nevertheless, the
Venetian council manages to gather vital information, and it is only a question
of time until the ringleader of the society is arrested, tortured, and executed.
In the meantime Loredana and Orso plan their escape from Venice...
Martines’s book is more than a novel. It paints a detailed picture of
Venetian Renaissance society, presenting both the love story and the
philosophical concept of the socially and physically layered city as if they were
all part of history. By using the device of the epistolary novel, the author has
access to more than just one voice, and he uses this advantage for character
portraits of the main protagonists. Martines writes well in a variety of styles,
all of them in keeping with the tone of Renaissance documents such as letters
and personal Ricordi. The different characters have depth; over the course of
the story they reveal themselves as less conventional than they may appear at
first glance. It is heartening that Martines is able to see the whole spectrum of
humanity across the possible gradations of sexual persuasion and social rank.
While the minor characters speak to us directly and convincingly, the
least lifelike figure is perhaps the heroine herself. Father and sister are
sketched out with a few secure strokes; Marco comes across vividly if horribly;
the first rapist turned lover somehow manages to present himself as not
entirely bad; and the anguish of the council member discovering his son’s
predicament can be shared by the reader. Orso is a complete and rounded
human being. He is not a bloodless saintly figure but experiences pain,
remorse, temptation and pity. He sins, and he enjoys sinning. He has
overcome childhood traumas by striving to give as much comfort to those
even less fortunate than himself. Surrounded by all these strong
characterisations, Loredana is simply less credible.
Her ‘confession’ is meant to be just that: an unfiltered outpouring of
her horrific experiences as a young girl; a desperate attempt to save the only
man she has learned to love; a justification of what she regards as her own
complicity in the events and a defence of her sinfulness. Thus far the device
works very well. The reader is well aware of the constraints of Loredana’s
upbringing, of the extent to which she has been brainwashed to make her a
consenting pawn of her family and society. If knowledge is power then the
reverse is true as well: it is the girl’s utter lack of information, her isolation
from anyone who could give her sound advice, her lack of preparation for the
workings of the real world outside her childhood home, which leave her so
defenceless before her sadistic husband. It is her very weakness that spurs him
on to find new forms of torture. In this situation one would expect the
heroine to run away, to commit suicide, or to go quietly mad. She might even
kill the husband in self-defence. Not so Loredana.
Hatred and a wish for revenge would be perfectly healthy under
Loredana’s circumstances. But would a girl like her not expect someone else
to avenge her? Kicking, screaming, and shouting abuse might already have
constituted too rebellious a form of behaviour for someone brought up to
obey and to suppress any natural emotion from early on in her life. To find
the strength to fight back, to find the ‘sinfulness’, as Loredana would call it, to
enjoy forced sexual intercourse, despite or because of her own humiliation,
are not reactions easily to be reconciled with the young girl’s previous history
(or our own twenty-first century sensibilities). Obedient though she is,
Loredana is not a masochist. Over the two decades of the narrative the
heroine grows up, discovers hormones, love, and education, but until the end
the suspicion remains that a real girl, even one of her time, would have
behaved quite differently. The devotional literature with which a girl of her
class would have been familiar, full of thirteen-year old virgins sentenced to
death for repudiating suitors and faithful wives choosing death over losing
their honour, does not seem the best preparation for a passionate life within a
happy matrimony, and even less effective preparation for lust in adverse
circumstances as depicted by Martines.
What is a truthful depiction of a girl like Loredana? Is it possible for a
male author, however sensitive and well-informed, to portray her and her
sexuality convincingly? How biased is the reader’s view by his or her own
twenty-first century attitudes to family, society, and sex? Women of previous
generations would be the most appropriate judges both of Loredana’s
character and of the form in which she is presented by Martines.
While Martines uses near-historiography to write historical fiction, the
two authors of The Rule of Four take a different approach to the historical
novel. Their four modern-day heroes are final year students at Princeton, two
of which share a morbid fascination with a genuine Renaissance text. The
enigmatic Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was published in Venice in the early
sixteenth century, and has ever since attracted much scholarly attention.
Outwardly a story of ‘love in progress’, the eclectic mixture of topics and
languages in this work poses so many difficulties to understanding its
significance that almost anything can be read into it. Even the discovery of the
author’s name by spelling out the first letters of each chapter did not
contribute to any greater clarity: now two figures, a Venetian monk and a
Roman nobleman, contend for the authorship of the Hypnerotomachia.
The Rule of Four tells the stories of Francesco Colonna’s book and of the
work and lives of’ present-day scholars trying to come to grips with it. The
father of one of the boys dedicated his professional (and a good deal of his
personal) life to his research on the Hypnerotomachia; his consuming interest
was shared first by a small group of scholars, and later by his son Tom.
Becoming competitors and subsequently opponents, the scholars of the
father’s generation fall out with one another. After his father’s death, Tom
realises the dangers of choosing the Hypnerotomachia as his field of research,
since it seems more fitting for a scholarly crusader than for a young man still
unsure of whether he wants an academic career or not.
Paul, one of the four students, is an orphan. Lacking living role models,
he has chosen Tom’s father as a substitute. Unaware of the impact the
Hypnerotomachia has had on people’s lives, he embarks on a prolonged
investigation of Colonna’s book, guided by all three of the scholars of the
previous generation. Tom’s father directs his research from beyond the grave,
Curry finances trips abroad, and Taft becomes Paul’s thesis supervisor.
Everyone expects great things from the young man’s work. In this situation
Tom and Paul, who are room-mates, start working together on solving the
riddles of the Renaissance text, while the other two boys in the group make
gallant attempts to preserve their sanity.
Much exciting progress is made by Tom and Paul as a team.
Increasingly complex riddles within the Hypnerotomachia are found and solved
by the two, while Tom is drawn into his friend’s research to the extent of
neglecting his own. It is only when he realises that continuing to help Paul
may spell his own ruin as an academic and as a human being that he returns to
his own work and a more normal existence as final year student with a
girlfriend. In fact, The Rule of Four opens with a scenario in which three out of
the four students have completed their theses and are now contemplating
possible career choices. Only Paul is still working on his thesis; the deadline
looms; he has not eaten or slept properly for a long time; and he is still
wrestling with the final chapter twenty-four hours before the deadline.
In this situation a book comes into his hands, once owned by one of
his mentors. This diary of a Genovese sea captain contains vital clues about
Francesco Colonna and could make all the difference to Paul’s academic
success. Some kind of map once went with the book but is still missing. Soon
the friends suspect Taft of having stolen the book from its previous owner; of
still holding on to the map; and of having played the diary into Paul’s hands
for his own nefarious ends. More revelations are still to come. The friends
discover that Taft and his assistant were both planning to pass off Paul’s work
as their own, trying to cheat the student and one another. Taft himself
explains to Paul that he had already reported him to the university authorities
for plagiarism with the intention of failing a pupil more brilliant and dedicated
than himself.
Crime on paper is soon followed by murder: both the assistant and the
professor are killed. In these dramatic circumstances Tom finds himself
unable to resist Paul’s pleas for help, and spends more and more time trying
to resolve the final riddles of the Hypnerotomachia, while keeping an eye on Paul
who acts ever more strangely. Kate, Tom’s girlfriend, fortunately proves a
strong anchor to the real world: she prevents Tom from going over the edge
once more by choosing Paul and their common research interest over an
emotional and affective life with her. These different conflicts come to a head
during a ball in one of the dining clubs, ending with the building’s
conflagration and Paul’s disappearance.
The Rule of Four paints a disillusioned view of the academic world, in
which professional jealousy and theft of intellectual property are rife. With
murders added, this snake pit is more than a modern-day match for the
cruelty encountered in Renaissance events and texts. The Francesco Colonna
unearthed by the students from the text of the Hypnerotomachia with the help
of the diary and the map tried to save art and civilisation, sacrificing first his
wealth and then his life to prevent the destruction of priceless books and art
works by Savonarola and his fanatical followers in Florence. Following the
clues he left in his Hypnerotomachia, the scholars not only get ever closer to
solving the book’s enduring mystery, but as they progress, they shed layer
after layer of their own humanity and civilisation, sacrificing their friends’ and
students’ prospects, sanity and lives.
Modern-day academia and its dangers have their role to play in The Rule
of Four, but one wonders if Princeton and some of the university’s quaint
customs have not been given too much room. Some of the history,
ceremonies, and explanations of American university life are quite interesting;
even so it is not always apparent why the reader is told all these things. Had
these sections been pared down, they would have given flavour to an
interesting story. As it is, they may be amusing to those who know Princeton
intimately, while being mildly puzzling or even annoying to those who do not.
In its way The Rule of Four is as disquieting a book as Loredana. The
violence and single-minded ruthlessness displayed by some of its characters
are not any less staggering for being directed against people well aware of
what is happening to them and why. The heroes of both novels fight for the
preservation of civilisation and human values as they see them; they all have
to ask themselves at some point how much they are prepared to give for
fulfilling their mission. Both stories leave nothing but victims in their wake.
Death and near-madness befall the characters in Loredana, while in The Rule of
Four even though Paul might have achieved his goal, the events he has had to
go through have made him in all likelihood as dysfunctional a human being as
Tom. There are no happy endings in historical fiction about the Renaissance,
or so it seems.
Dr Andrea M. Gáldy, University of Manchester