Mazzini Quotes

Uno scrittore non vive la vita come se questa gli cadesse addosso dal cielo, ma prevede e disegna ogni istante con metodo e precisione. Scoperchia e studia il mondo alla ricerca del congegno che lo fa funzionare, per poterlo sovvertire. Non gli interessa veramente chi sei e cosa fai, ma quanto materiale emozionale puoi fornirgli, quanta parte di te può trovare spazio, e in che modo, all'interno della sua opera.

Quello che rende sopportabile il giorno è che infine arriva sempre la notte, a legittimare le nostre bugie.

A volte è sufficiente omettere una parte della verità per creare una bugia.

Niente mi ha mai tediato così a fondo nella vita quanto avere vent’anni.

Love and respect a woman. Look to her not only for comfort, but for strength and inspiration and the doubling of your intellectual and moral powers. Blot out from your mind any idea of superiority; you have none.

A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.

Da qualche parte c’è un uomo che ha imparato a sovvertire l’ordine del tempo, così che il mondo viva delle sue menzogne. Uccide il giorno dormendo, rifugiandosi nel cuore di una notte che non finisce mai. Uccide quella verità che nasconde per primo a se stesso, poiché ha capito che il modo migliore per mantenere un segreto è dimenticarlo.

Non ho atteso una risposta ai miei quesiti e sono rimasta seduta dov’ero, pronta ad alzarmi e ballare da sola sul brano seguente, che mi auguravo non essere un lento. In effetti, questo è forse il più grande difetto che si potrebbe imputarmi. Mi è sempre piaciuto pensarmi legata a un passato che non ho mai conosciuto, imprigionata in un tempo che non mi appartiene, ma sono solo un’esponente della mia generazione, e la mia generazione va di fretta. I lenti, a quanto pare, non li conosce più.

La maggior parte della gente non riesce a capire come qualcuno possa avere un successo internazionale a soli vent’anni e scegliere deliberatamente di gettare tutto al vento. Lo considera un delitto. Nell’immensa fiera dell’ego che è il mondo in cui viviamo puoi scegliere di rinnegare la tua stessa famiglia, di infischiarti della legge e di farti beffe della religione – di dissacrare insomma qualsiasi valore tradizionale – ma non puoi scegliere di rinunciare al successo. Semplicemente, è qualcosa di impensabile. Io l’ho fatto, e loro hanno deciso che dovevo essere pazzo.

So long as you are ready to die for humanity, the life of your country is immortal.

Il Ventesimo secolo ha preteso di racchiudere tutte le battaglie dentro un’unica guerra e le ha dato, a seconda del contesto, dei nomi diversi. La logica è sempre la stessa: estirpare l’individualità dalle persone per confonderle in una massa. Le masse sono alienanti per chi vi vive all’interno e pericolose per chi invece resta fuori, in quanto annientano ogni forma di pensiero originale e hanno la furia cieca di un bulldozer.

Barbie, perché non abbiamo un bambino?" "Smettila di fare domande stupide e comincia a scoparmi." "Cosa significa scopare?" "Quando lo capirai, i nostri problemi saranno finiti." Aveva come l'impressione che invece sarebbero appena iniziati.

The primary experience that Garrison, Mill, and Mazzini had in common was that of being antislavery in an age of slavery. But they also defended democracy in an age of aristocracy, monarchy, and doubt about democracy’s future.

Attorno a noi ci sono colori che prima non avevo mai notato. Il blu dei pavimenti. L’azzurro degli infissi. Il giallo ocra nelle ombre. Le sfumature viola sui soffitti, e dentro agli occhi della gente. Gli aloni verdi dei nostri destini. E le sbarre: all’improvviso sono dappertutto. Sulle porte, alle finestre, tra i nostri comuni pensieri. Il vecchio frenocomio non mi era mai sembrato tanto vivo, e presente, come da quando abbiamo ucciso il suo passato. Prima, gli echi delle sue storie erano molto più forti. Adesso, le nostre vi si sono sovrapposte. Difficile stabilire a chi appartengano le grida che si odono di notte. Mi chiedo se forse non siamo tutti connessi – noi, che restiamo, e coloro che hanno perso l’occasione per andare – nel nostro sentirci dimenticati da chi amiamo. Ma forse è solo quello che succede in ogni parte della terra. In fondo, siamo tutti prigionieri di qualcosa. Di una stanza. Di noi stessi. Non c’è peggior luogo di reclusione di un cuore abbandonato. E non c’è peggiore abbandono di quello di chi si abbandona da solo.

In nenadoma me je napolnila radost, da sploh sem. Ni važno, kako in kje, da le obstajam. Dokler lahko. Bolje je živeti še tako usrano življenje, kot sploh nobenega.

L'istruzione, e la ricchezza, posson essere sorgente di bene e di male, a seconda delle intenzioni colle quali s'adoperano.

Credevo di aver fatto la migliore delle mosse e invece fu un errore madornale. Rievocavo l’accaduto dell’estate precedente e la solidarietà maschile di Mattia, senza neppure immaginare che con le ragazze era tutto diverso. Le ragazze non sono creature di cui ci si possa fidare.

In un altro tempo io ero il falco e vivevo di giorno: della vita vedevo le luci. Lui era il lupo e viveva di notte: della vita vedeva le ombre. Io ero sempre in ritardo, mentre lui correva alla velocità del suono. Com’è logico supporre, non ci saremmo mai potuti incontrare, se non si fosse creato uno squarcio nel tempo per cui ci trovammo nello stesso luogo nell’istante in cui io non ero ancora un falco, e lui aveva già smesso di essere un lupo. Per ventiquattro ore appena sovvertimmo l’ordine del tempo, finché il giorno divenne notte e la notte divenne giorno, e il falco vide attraverso le ombre, senza esserne aggredito, e il lupo guardò verso la luce, senza esserne accecato. Poi io mi rituffai nella lentezza dei miei giorni, e lui riprese a correre nella frenesia delle sue notti. E ora vorrei non desiderare di ricondurlo dentro al mondo insieme a me. Vorrei non osservare ogni suo gesto segreto cercando di capire se posso accettare quella segretezza dentro la mia vita, e conoscere già la risposta. Vorrei non provare vergogna di me stessa al pensiero che lui non mi avrebbe ancora chiesto niente di tutto questo. Mi fa rabbia la sua lucida follia, che sottintende un coraggio più grande del mio. Ci vuole coraggio per essere pazzi, perché il mondo non ce lo permette.

Če ne izkusiš dobrote domačih, težko zaupaš tujcem

Ebbi la sensazione che vivessimo soltanto per turbare le coscienze della gente.

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.

Kako sem se trudil! Pa vse zajebal.

As Mazzini put it, writing in 1849: 'The masters of the world had united against the future.' But they had also left a poisoned chalice no less toxic than the acqua tofana whose menace exerted such a spell. When the future caught up with them, in 1917-18, it detonated a series of events which would cost the lives of untold millions and lead to the near-destruction of European civilization.

La cosa più bella che può capitare a uno scrittore, a qualcuno che passa la sua vita a raccontare, è sentirsi raccontare. E quando scopri qualcuno che ti assomiglia veramente (ce ne sono) ti accorgi di quanto la persona su cui ti eri incastrata era sbagliata per te, e tu sbagliata per lui, e di quanto forse lei invece sia giusta, e quasi spero che ce la farà, che ce la faranno, perché è quello che conta, diventare un plurale – finché siamo io e te, come eravamo io e te, non cambia mai niente - e poi magari nessuno di noi si incontrerà mai, continueremo a essere soli in quel modo che soli non siamo, coi nostri fantasmi d’orgoglio e dolore, la nostra paura, un manipolo di sogni che a volte sono forti e hanno il potere di distorcere la trama del mondo e altre volte ci gravano addosso perché quella forza non la troviamo, vogliamo possiamo, ed è il mondo che distorce la trama di noi – io, te, lui, lei… così simili nel nostro essere – diversamente - alla deriva.

Gli anni Novanta e i vecchi bar, sale oscure, le nostre facce sbattute. Avevo un brutto maglione sformato comprato al mercato puzzava di pioggia e stivali da motociclista con cui affrontavo scalciando i caustici corridoi della vita. I colori non erano mai saturi, la gente non era mai vivida. Gli anni Novanta erano pieni di luci al neon e lampadine agonizzanti, e affumicati – c’era un sacco di fumo, ovunque andassi. A volte, non si vedeva niente.

«Se desço ao meu coração, encontro cinzas e uma lareira extinta. O vulcão cumpriu seu incêndio e dele apenas restam o calor e a lava que se agitam à superfície, e, quando tudo se houver gelado e as coisas se houverem cumprido, nada mais restará - uma indefínivel lembrança como que de algo que pudesse ter sido e que não foi - a lembrança dos meios que deveriam ter sido empregues para a felicidade e que se deixaram perdidos na inércia dos desejõs titânicos escorraçados de dentro de nós, sem que tão-pouco tivessem podido chegar cá fora, que minaram a alma de esperanças, de ansiedades, de votos sem fruto... e depois nada», Mazzini era um desterrado, um desterrado da eternidade.

Niso vse knjige za vsakega in ne ob vsakem času. Nekatere moraš brati mlad, druge star.

E poi c’è lei. Tu non la conosci, ma siete legate da un fatto di sangue. L’hai vista, una volta, sebbene tu non riesca a ricordare di averla neppure sentita parlare. Forse hai visto una sua fotografia. Forse hai guardato a quella fotografia così a lungo, e così forte, che il suo volto ti è ormai familiare. Non vorresti che lo fosse. Di lei non sai niente, solo che ha un nome suggestivo, che suona come Devota, e che una sua mossa imprevista sulla scacchiera potrà invalidare la tua strategia. Non puoi seguirla, puoi solo immaginarla, mentre si aggira per le strade avvolta in una nebbia che la rende invisibile agli occhi del mondo. Ma lei segue te, sempre, per quanto non se ne accorga. E, se potesse capirlo, non lo vorrebbe.

The merits and services of Christianity have been industriously extolled by its hired advocates. Every Sunday its praises are sounded from myriads of pulpits. It enjoys the prestige of an ancient establishment and the comprehensive support of the State. It has the ear of rulers and the control of education. Every generation is suborned in its favor. Those who dissent from it are losers, those who oppose it are ostracised; while in the past, for century after century, it has replied to criticism with imprisonment, and to scepticism with the dungeon and the stake. By such means it has induced a general tendency to allow its pretensions without inquiry and its beneficence without proof.

I remember once, in talking to Mr. Burne-Jones about modern science, his saying to me, ‘the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul.’ But these are the intellectual speculations that underlie art. Where in the arts themselves are we to find that breadth of human sympathy which is the condition of all noble work; where in the arts are we to look for what Mazzini would call the social ideas as opposed to the merely personal ideas? By virtue of what claim do I demand for the artist the love and loyalty of the men and women of the world? I think I can answer that. Whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his aid is a matter for his own soul. He may bring judgment like Michael Angelo or peace like Angelico; he may come with mourning like the great Athenian or with mirth like the singer of Sicily; nor is it for us to do aught but accept his teaching, knowing that we cannot smite the bitter lips of Leopardi into laughter or burden with our discontent Goethe’s serene calm. But for warrant of its truth such message must have the flame of eloquence in the lips that speak it, splendour and glory in the vision that is its witness, being justified by one thing only - the flawless beauty and perfect form of its expression: this indeed being the social idea, being the meaning of joy in art. Not laughter where none should laugh, nor the calling of peace where there is no peace; not in painting the subject ever, but the pictorial charm only, the wonder of its colour, the satisfying beauty of its design.

Meanwhile, we have at last sent our letter (Mazzini’s) to George Sand, accompanied with a little note signed by both of us, though written by me, as seemed right, being the woman. We half despaired in doing this, for it is most difficult, it appears, to get at her, she having taken vows against seeing strangers in consequence of various annoyances and persecutions in and out of print, which it’s the mere instinct of a woman to avoid. I can understand it perfectly. Also, she is in Paris for only a few days, and under a new name, to escape from the plague of her notoriety.

Questa ragazza è una ragazza copertina. Tutto quello che c’è dentro è già stato visto e rivisto. Formulato in pensieri da altri cervelli, in milioni di altri tempi. Gli stessi scatti ammiccanti e blandamente maliziosi, gli stessi risultati di stupidi test della personalità. Gli stessi consigli su come preservarsi dalle scottature estive, consigli che poi non segui mai. Gli stessi Ti Accompagno A Casa e come andrà finire, neanche questo è una grossa novità. Questa ragazza pensa, non sto baciando un uomo. Sto baciando la sua solitudine. La donna che l’ha umiliato. La stanchezza di restare fino a notte inoltrata in un posto dove non va più nessuno. Sto baciando il peso dei suoi errori, la disperazione di regalare a suo figlio una vita migliore. Della sua. Di quella di tutti quanti noi. Questa ragazza pensa, perdonami se non me la sento di scoparmi i tuoi guai.

The Kingdom of God is Within You —Tolstoy 2. What is Art? —Tolstoy 3. The Slavery of Our Times —Tolstoy 4. The First Step —Tolstoy 5. How Shall We Escape? —Tolstoy 6. Letter to a Hindoo —Tolstoy 7. The White Slaves of England —Sherard 8. Civilization, Its Cause and Cure —Carpenter 9. The Fallacy of Speed — Taylor 10. A New Crusade —Blount 11. One the Duty of Civil Disobedience —Thoreau 12. Life Without Principle —Thoreau 13. Unto This Last —Ruskin 14. A Joy for Ever —Ruskin 15. Duties of Man —Mazzini 16. Defence and Death of Socrates —From Plato 17. Paradoxes of Civilization —Max Nordau 18. Poverty and Un–British Rule in India —Naoroji

Like Keats he may wander through the old-world forests of Latmos, or stand like Morris on the galley’s deck with the Viking when king and galley have long since passed away. But the drama is the meeting-place of art and life; it deals, as Mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social man, with man in his relation to God and to Humanity. It is the product of a period of great national united energy; it is impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the age of Elizabeth in London and of Pericles at Athens; it is part of such lofty moral and spiritual ardour as came to Greek after the defeat of the Persian fleet, and to Englishman after the wreck of the Armada of Spain.

I read, in yellow, on the roof tile of a low structure: "Silvano free." He's free, we're free, all of us are free. Disgust at the torments that shackle us, the chains of heavy life. I leaned weakly on the blue-painted wall of a building on Via Alessandria, with letters cut in the stone: "Prince of Naples Nursery." That's where I was, accents of the south cried in my head, cities that were far apart became a single vice, the blue surface of the sea and the white of the Alps. Thirty years ago the poverella of Piazza Mazzini had been leaning against a wall, a house wall, as I was now, when her breath failed, out of desperation. I couldn't, now, like her, give myself the relief of protest, of revenge.

YURT - Birçok zamanlarda ve birçok yerlerde yurtseverlik tutkulu bir inanç olagelmiş ve en iyi kafalar bu inancı tamamıyla onaylamışlardır. Bu, Shakespeare zamanında İngiltere'de de böyleydi, Fichte zamanında Almanya'da da böyleydi, Mazzini zamanında İtalya'da da böyleydi. Daha hâlâ Polonya'da, Çin'de, Dış Moğolistan'da böyledir. Bu inanç, Batı ulusları arasında hâlâ son derece güçlüdür; bu inanç, siyaseti, kamu harcamalarını, askeri hazırlıkları vb. kontrolünde tutmaktadır. Ne var ki, aydın gençlik bunu elverişli bir ülkü olarak kabul edememektedir, gençlik bu inancın, baskı altındaki uluslar için uygun olduğunu, ama baskı altındaki uluslar baskıdan kurtulur kurtulmaz, daha önce kahramanca olan milliyetçiliğin hemen baskıcı hale geldiğini anlamış bulunuyor...

È la mia anima ad aver scelto la sua, perché in essa ha individuato il substrato ideale in cui continuare a esistere anche quando sarò morta. Un uomo può deporre in una donna un figlio, per avere la certezza che la sua vita prosegua, ma una donna deve necessariamente ricorrere ad altro per non sentirsi morire. Davvero, non credo che nessuna donna desideri essere amata. Una donna vuole essere lasciata libera di amare, di deporre il proprio amore dentro un uomo, a germogliare.

institutions. The Aryan emigrants, who spread over the lands of Europe, carried with them the seeds of liberty sown in their blood in their Asian cradle-land. Western historians trace the self-rule of the Saxon villages to their earlier prototypes in the East, and see the growth of English liberty as up-springing from the Aryan root of the free and self-contained village communities. Its growth was crippled by Norman feudalism there, as its millennia-nourished security here was smothered by the East India Company. But in England it burst its shackles and nurtured a liberty-loving people and a free Commons' House. Here, it similarly bourgeoned out into the Congress activities, and more recently into those of the Muslim League, now together blossoming into Home Rule for India. The England of Milton, Cromwell, Sydney, Burke, Paine, Shelley, Wilberforce, Gladstone; the England that sheltered Mazzini, Kossuth, Kropotkin, Stepniak, and that welcomed Garibaldi; the

«Scusami se mi permetto, ma... come potete pensare che un uomo abbia causato un terremoto?» «Beh, tanto per cominciare, di certo non si è trattato di una donna» sentenzia risoluto Syd. «Come sarebbe a dire?» Si sporge nuovamente e sento la panca scricchiolare alla pressione del suo peso. «Vedi, mia cara» e qui mi guarda dritto in fondo agli occhi, «se fosse stato una donna, non si sarebbe accontentato di far tremare la terra.» «Ah, no?» «No.» «E cosa avrebbe fatto?» «In tal caso, avrebbe scatenato l’apocalisse intera.»

How Faiths Spread B ut how do you think, then, that my religion became established? Like all the rest. A man of strong imagination made himself followed by some persons of weak imagination. The flock increased; fanaticism commences, fraud achieves. A powerful man comes; he sees a crowd, ready bridled and with a bit in its teeth; he mounts and leads it.—Dial, et entr. ph., Dialogue 19.

Ricostruire non è mai stato un problema per noi. Chi è rimasto ancorato all’ideale punk degli anni Settanta interpreta ancora il mondo e la vita in termini di demolizione — "distruggi il sistema" e cose del genere. Cose che andavano bene un bel po' di anni fa. Ma i tempi sono cambiati, anche per effetto di quella stessa rivoluzione, e i mezzi di rivolta che erano efficaci allora non hanno più alcun senso in un contesto diverso. Quello che la maggior parte dei ribelli non capisce è che, a forza di distruggere, non è rimasto niente. Per questo, non avendo più niente da abbattere, ci siamo ritrovati a demolire noi stessi.

Vedete, basta cambiare il nome che diamo alle cose per rendere tutto diverso.

Perché nella mia vita, così come in quella di chiunque altro, sono accadute cose ben più assurde di quelle che continuo a ricordare. Non so perché, ma questo è qualcosa che vale la pena cercare di non dimenticare.

Il bibliotecario, non ha sentito ragioni e mi ha affidato di sua iniziativa una copia de I Demoni di Dostoevskij. E mi ha assicurato che mi sarebbe piaciuto. “Nei romanzi si trova tutta la storia di cui abbiamo bisogno” mi ha detto. “Il resto non è mai altrettanto sincero.

Mal bin ich hier, mal bin ich dort, dann bin ich fort.” … Significa: ora sono qua, ora sono là...” “E poi?” “E poi non ci sono più.

An artist is one of two things: he is either a high priest, or a more or less smart entertainer. —GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

Mi fa rabbia la sua lucida follia, che sottintende un coraggio più grande del mio. Ci vuole coraggio per essere pazzi, perché il mondo non ce lo permette.

Una volta ho incontrato il Destino. Vendeva calzini e fermapanni colorati sul piazzale antistante il mio alloggio. [...] Pensai a quanto dev’essere triste la vita del Destino, in un tempo in cui nessuno crede in lui.

On the northern shore of Sicily are still to be seen the magnificent remains of a castle, which formerly belonged to the noble house of Mazzini. It stands in the centre of a small bay, and upon a gentle acclivity, which, on one side, slopes towards the sea, and on the other rises into an eminence crowned by dark woods. The situation is admirably beautiful and picturesque, and the ruins have an air of ancient grandeur, which, contrasted with the present solitude of the scene, impresses the traveller with awe and curiosity.

Poco o nulla dice a un giovane nato negli anni Ottanta una piazza intitolata a Oberdan, a Mazzini, a Garibaldi, a Cavour.

But there was still time for a long kiss. That's what the Hollywood movies had taught us. In a house on fire, on a sinking ship or in any other impossible situation thought up by a script writer, there's always time for a kiss.

Look, I write a romantic novel. More erotic than romantic. Let's call it what it really is: a fuck novel. People read it. Many people. They get excited. They become lustful. They need a fuck. They'd like to re-enact one or two scenes from the book. They go and try it out. They fuck. Can you imagine? A large number of excited readers rolling on beds. And what are you like after a good fuck? Tired and satisfied. A crowd of tired and satisfied readers. A lot of energy going into fucking. Immense quantities. Energy, that would otherwise have been used for fighting and being nasty to each other. And look, the world has changed a little bit. For the better. There you are.

After Mazzini’s death on March 11, 1872, Pike allegedly took over worldwide operations of the Illuminati. The trail following who was individually running the Illuminati becomes a bit clouded after Pike’s passing, but from what I’ve gathered I believe the Rothschilds now personally hold the reins of Illuminati leadership

It can be something of a relief to turn from the slow-moving dreamtime of Thomas Hardy and George Eliot to the faster pace of George Sand's European world, a world, as Marx read it and we still read it today, in revolutionary turmoil. Sand was a shrewd, committed, and radical observer of the half-dozen regimes that rose and fell in France during her lifetime. As Minister (without portfolio) of Propaganda, she played an active political role—greater than any woman before her—in the revolutionary government of 1848. Correspondent of Mazzini, of Gutzkow, of Bakunin, she was in touch with most of radical Europe. In all her work, her fiction and nonfiction, ideology remains a principal excitement, never a bore.

The woman talked and talked. Instead of words, balloons were coming from her mouth.

You've got to decide during puberty. Between death or growing old. After that, everything else is self-delusion.

The moonlight distorted trees into shapes unknown to me. I didn't feel comfortable. I'm a city child. Neon lights and rubbish bins are my type of exterior.

When Proudhon (1809–65) offered his ‘Philosophy of Poverty’ (La Philosophie de la Misère) to Marx for criticism, Marx thought this bourgeois socialism dangerous: ‘To leave error unrefuted is to encourage intellectual immorality.’ He wrote a tremendous attack on Proudhon: the ‘Poverty of Philosophy’ (1847), which was the first exposition of Marxist philosophy and ‘the bitterest attack delivered by one thinker upon another since the celebrated polemics of the Renaissance’. It is also immensely funny. Marx was concerned to show that Proudhon did not understand the Hegelian dialectic. Proudhon saw it as struggle between good and evil, therefore he would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good side, eliminate the bad. But then, says Marx, the dialectical process would stop. ‘What constitutes dialectical movement is the co-existence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category. The very formulation of the problem as one of eliminating the bad side cuts short the dialectic movement.’ This implies the primacy of contradiction. ‘Genuine progress is constituted not by the triumph of one side and the defeat of the other, but by the duel itself which necessarily involves the destruction of both.

In The Irony of American History Reinhold Niebuhr sees ‘the necessity of using the threat of atomic destruction as an instrument for the preservation of peace … [as] a tragic element in our contemporary situation’. It is not tragic, but ironic only; it is not tragic, because we are involved in it, we cannot be detached about it. Tragic vision has a movement, or rhythm: first an initial standpoint outside the drama, detachment; then a self-projection into the drama, identification; and lastly, the discovery of the universal relevance of the drama, the recognition of having been told a truth about all mankind, including ourselves. This is the catharsis, the self-recognition, which brings a deeper understanding of the human predicament. We admire and pity Oedipus or Othello, or Lord Cecil and the League of Nations men because we identify ourselves with them and then recognize ourselves in them, but there is no such movement of tragic understanding in relation to our contemporary situation. The only emotion we can feel about the threat of atomic destruction as an instrument for peace is self-pity, and this is not a tragic emotion: it is notoriously the most unpurifying and impure of all emotions, the very opposite of self-recognition as part of universal humanity. Niebuhr, a Christian Machiavellian [see Appendix II], in his Irony of American History (1952) falsifies the relation of irony and tragedy and shows the Machiavellian's inability to understand the nature of tragedy.

If a connoisseur of the irony of political life is struck solemn by it, if he talks of tragic irony, then he is a ‘wet’ Machiavellian, a Christian. If he is fascinated by it, intellectually interested, he is a central Machiavellian, like the master himself. If he is amused by the irony of political life, he is an extreme Machiavellian, a cynic, a man who enjoys the sufferings and embarrassments of others. Just as Machiavellians do not understand the nature of tragedy, so Grotians are unable to understand the structure or texture of irony, which has several strands. The first is that of mere accident. Thus Cesare Borgia made many precautions against Alexander VI's death… Machiavelli recalls: ‘On the day that Julius II was elected, he told me that he had thought of everything that might occur at the death of his father, and had provided a remedy for all, except that he had never foreseen that, when the death did happen, he himself would be on the point to die... Another strand of historical irony is multiple or cumulative causation of a single result. Thus there were many mistakes in Louis XII's policy in Italy: he destroyed the small powers; aggrandized a greater power, the papacy; and called in a foreign power, Spain. He did not settle in Italy, nor send colonies to Italy, and he weakened the Venetians... A third strand is the single causation of opposite results, or paradox. Marxists like this notion: the bourgeoisie created simultaneously a single world economy and the extreme of international anarchy… A fourth strand of irony is self-frustration, or failure. Men intend one result and produce another... Japan, too, by attempting to conquer China, did much to make China instead of herself the future Great Power of the Orient... A fifth strand in historical irony is that the same policy, in different circumstances, will produce different effects... The sixth and last strand is that contrary policies, in different circumstances, can produce the same effects. This is discussed in an unintentionally amusing way in The Discourses (bk III), when Machiavelli discusses whether harsh methods or mild are the more efficacious. He lists examples where humanity, kindness, common decency, and generosity paid political dividends, including Fabricius' rejection of the offer to poison Pyrrhus. But Hannibal obtained fame and victory by exactly opposite methods: cruelty, violence, rapine, and perfidy.

The foundation of Machiavellian philosophy and its deepest insight is a sense of proportion. It corresponds to the Grotian apprehension of the moral complexity of politics… This is the special picture of political life one gets from reading Machiavelli himself and ‘irony’ is a category of philosophical Machiavellians. The word is not, I think, found in Machiavelli, but political irony is in fact what he very lovingly studied. Irony is a Machiavellian category while tragedy is a Grotian category. ‘Tragedy’ implies a standpoint outside the political drama, in which we experience, for example, admiration for Othello's nobility, pity for his weakness, and terror at Iago's wickedness… Now, it is difficult to adopt a tragic standpoint about politics, because ‘politics’ implies a situation in which we are still involved, where we can still act and affect the outcome, and anyway where we do not know the outcome because the drama is unfinished. To become fully tragic, politics have to be dead politics, that is, history: the tragedy of Athens, and of the League of Nations… Irony is, so to speak, the factual skeleton of tragedy, stripped of its moral and transcendental clothing. In literature it is the warping of a statement by its context; a character means one thing by a statement but we know the context and outcome that he does not, and see it has a different meaning. As Banquo rides away to be murdered, as Macbeth has arranged, Macbeth says to him genially: ‘Fail not our feast’—‘My lord, I will not.’ This is Sophoclean irony and there are other kinds, more complex. Irony can be seen in politics when statesmen pursue ends that recoil upon them, and turn into their opposites. Hugh R. Wilson, in Diplomat between Wars, says that the policy of the USA was of ‘overwhelming importance’ to the League of Nations in the Manchurian crisis, which makes ironic America's fear of, commitment and involvement: however little she wanted to be committed she was certainly involved, and by refusing to commit herself at that time she made her involvement in the struggle with Japan all the more certain. It is equally ironical that Britain and France went to war in 1939 to restore the balance of power in Europe by destroying Nazi Germany, embraced the Soviet alliance for that purpose, and ended with Europe as badly unbalanced by Stalin's power as it had been by Hitler's.

O my Brothers! love your Country. Our Country is our home, the home which God has given us, placing therein a numerous family which we love and are loved by, and with which we have a more intimate and quicker communion of feeling and thought than with others; a family which by its concentration upon a given spot, and by the homogeneous nature of its elements, is destined for a special kind of activity.

At the summit of the intellectual scale, the major intellectual development of the end of the nineteenth century was the discovery of the reality and power of the subconscious in human thought and the irrational in human action. While Bergson and Freud had absolutely nothing to do with fascism, and indeed suffered personally from it, their work helped undermine the liberal conviction that politics means free people choosing the best policies by the simple exercise of their reason. Their findings—particularly Freud’s—were spread and popularized after 1918 by direct wartime experiences such as battlefield emotional trauma, for which the term “shell shock” was invented. At the bottom of the intellectual scale, a host of popular writers reworked an existing repertory of themes—race, nation, will, action— into harder, more aggressive forms as the ubiquitous social Darwinism. Race, hitherto a rather neutral term for any animal or human grouping, was given a more explicitly biological and hereditarian form in the late nineteenth century. Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton suggested in the 1880s that science gave mankind the power to improve the race by urging “the best” to reproduce; he invented the word “eugenics” for this effort. The nation—once, for progressive nationalists like Mazzini, a framework for progress and fraternity among peoples—was made more exclusive and ranked in a hierarchy that gave “master races” (such as the “Aryans,” a figment of nineteenth-century anthropological imagination) the right to dominate “inferior” peoples. Will and action became virtues in themselves, independently of any particular goal, linked to the struggle among the “races” for supremacy.

Without prohibition there would be no temptation.

Bryant died in 1878, ironically because he’d become the park’s go-to guy for dedications and ribbon cuttings. Bryant always showed up, speech in hand. At the unveiling of a bust of Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini on the park’s west side near the sheepfold, the sun was blazing hot; as Bryant sat on the dais, he began to feel weak. He gave his prepared remarks, then walked across the park to rest at his friend James Grant Wilson’s house. As he mounted the front stoop of Wilson’s home, he collapsed, fell backward, and struck his head. Bryant lingered a few days before dying from his injuries.

Americans honored Mazzini; the old-guard Protestants erected a politically charged “Spanish Columbus” on the Mall in 1892 as a rebuke to the Italian-Americans; lovers of poetry (including future assassin John Wilkes Booth) honored Shakespeare—the list goes on and on. After Hitler invaded Poland, the statue of Jagiello, which stood proudly in front of the Poland pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, was orphaned. Eventually, it wended its way to the park too, to serve as a symbol of Polish resistance to Nazism.

She had read accounts of the hero’s welcome Mickiewicz received in Florence when he arrived with his regiment—“O, Dante of Poland!”—and she had given her Tribune readers his full address to the cheering crowds. She learned of Mazzini’s triumphal return to Milan in April; until this month the target of a death warrant, this “most beauteous man,” in Margaret’s estimation, was now greeted as his country’s true leader.

from the war against Austrian rule, taking the course opposite to the one Mazzini had urged in his open letter of six months before. Pressured by Catholic monarchies on the run in France, Austria, and Spain to retreat from civil leadership, Pio Nono now instructed the people of Italy to “abide in close attachment to their respective sovereigns.

broke down. Mazzini stayed with Margaret for two hours that night, and “we talked, though rapidly, of everything.” Margaret confided her own “new, strange sufferings,” as she had to Mickiewicz. Mazzini promised to return as often as possible,

like the French, with their guillotines of the past century, their bloody “June Days” of last summer. Mazzini would negotiate with the French; he had already secured a temporary armistice. Besides, Garibaldi was needed to defend against King Ferdinand’s Neapolitan army, which crossed the border into the Papal States at Frascati as soon as the French withdrew.

perish, lest a foe should level his musket from their shelter.” Margaret pitied Mazzini as the leader of the republic’s desperate stand: “to me it would be so dreadful to cause all this bloodshed, to dig the graves of such martyrs . . . I could not, could not!

Reflecting on the rapid series of events, Margaret wrote to her American readers, “The revolution, like all genuine ones, has been instinctive, its results unexpected and surprising to the greater part of those who achieved them.” In a subsequent session, the assembly voted to call Mazzini to Rome, where he would soon become the most powerful of three triumvirs selected to lead the young republic through its infancy, as the new government prepared to implement a program of drastic reform. A punitive tax on flour would be repealed, a national railway system constructed, church properties claimed for inexpensive housing, and papal lands outside Rome divided among the contadini (Italy’s peasant class).