Volume II Part 1 (1/2)

The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi

by Count Carlo Gozzi

CARLO GOZZI

xxxI

_Concerning my Physical and Mental Qualities_

In the course of these Meive an exact description of my external appearance and internal qualities, and also to narrate the story of my love-affairs

In stature I ae amount of cloth needed for ive ood luck to be neither crook-backed, laood luck; and yet if I were afflicted with one or other of these deforhtness of heart at Venice as Scarron put up with his deformities in Paris

This is all I know or have to say about my physical frame Fro me that I was handsoly with a view to irritate, in neither of which attempts have they succeeded Dirt and squalor I always loathed Otherwise, if I ever chanced to wear clothes of a new cut, this was due to ue of a snip for over forty years, if I ever racked my brains about such matters, as so many do Fro, I stuck to the sa ed perhaps a hundred ti this period, yet I have never deviated from my adopted style of coiffure In like manner I have worn the same type of buckles; except when I happened to break a pair, and was forced to change them frooldshtest in his shop, because they would break sooner and give hi them

Men who talk little and thinki their brows in the travail of reflection This gives theh I as, yet the innuh anxieties about our family, lawsuits, schemes of economy, literary plans, and so forth, bred in , which, coait, taciturnity, and preference for solitary places, wonthose ere nota surly, sullen, unapproachable fellow, perhaps even an ene, with knitted brows and gloo how to kill an ene the plot of my _Green Bird_

In the society of people new to ic, until I had studied their characters and ways of thinking Afterwards I turned out quite the opposite; not, however, that I may not have remained a fool; but I was one of those fools who utter laconisms, less tiresome to the company than interminable flowery speeches

I was not al, for the sole reason that I was not rich I cannot forht have exercised overdoubtless not more free froht have earned considerably by my numerous published works, but I made a present of theht to profit by giving them to the press Perhaps I shall not be believed when I say that I invariably refused such profit for myself

Yet this is the fact Some who are aware that I was far froain; they will attribute lory or to stupidity I had, however, s were always ency, and satire upon public manners; at the saained the advantage of a certain decent independence, which secured for them toleration, appreciation, and applause on their own merits Had I been paid for theht have stigmatised them as a parcel of insufferable mercenary calumnies, and I should have been exposed to universal odiuradation forfor hire in the employ of publishers or of our wretched co authors, with a view to getting hold of their works; then they turn round and cast their pretended losses in the author's teeth To hear theed on their knees before they sent the their shelves The wretched pence they fling at a writer for some masterpiece on which he has distilled the best part of his brains, are doled out with the air of bestowing alms More fuss is made about it, and it costspaid for masses for the dead, who have no need to clothe and feed theh

But Apollo protect a poet froes! There is not a galley-slave more abjectly condemned to servitude than he There is not a stevedore who carries half the weight that he does; not an ass who gets e, if his drama fails to draw the whole world in a fever of excitement to the theatre

For these reasons, I have always shrunk fro out my pen to hire

On the frequent occasions when faation have emptied my purse, I always chose rather to borrow froe into thesequins In the one case I incurred the pleasing burden of gratitude to ht of shameful self-abasement

Not even the brotherly terift to thes for the stage, preserved ratitude, and the annoyances which are described in the ensuing chapters of my Memoirs Think then ould have become of me if I had been their salaried poet!

Italy lacks noblemen, to play the part of Mecaenas, and to protect men of letters and the theatre Had there been such, and had they thought me worthy of their munificence, I should not have blushed to receive it

Knowing my country, however, and Venice in particular, I never alloweddreae

Sustained by my natural keen sense of the ludicrous, I have never even felt saddened by seeing the h s, turned upside down by the insidious subtleties and sophisms of our century On the contrary, it amused me vastly to notice how all the ood faith that they had become philosophers It has afforded me a constant source of indescribable recreation to study the fantastic jargons which have sprung up like hts, spawned by misty self-styled science, invested with boe

Not less have I diverted myself with the spectacle of all the various passions to which hu their parts with the freedo-place by famous discoverers--just like those devils in the tale of Bonaventura des Periers, whoround until a pack of wiseacres dug theain[1]

The spectacle of women turned into men, men turned into women, and both men and women turned into monkeys; all of them immersed in discoveries and inventions and the kaleidoscopic whirligigs of fashi+on; corrupting and seducing one another with the eagerness of hounds upon the scent; vying in their lusts and ruinous extravagances; destroying the fortunes of their fa real sensibility to languish in disuse, and giving its respectable na indecency into decency; calling all who differ fro incense with philosophical soleht perhaps to have presented theedy; yet I could never see in thehted while it stupefiedof opinion that a man of many friends is the real friend of none Neither time, nor distance, nor even occasional rudeness, interrupted the rare friendshi+ps which I contracted for life, and which are still as firry i affronts or injuries; and at such timatic temper are more decided in their action than the irascible Reflection, however, always calmed me down; nor was I ever disposed to endure the wretchedness which coe