Machiavelli: Wise Guy

So, was the man whose name has become synonymous with political manipulation and ends = means duplicity merely a satirist ? Was Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince intended to be read for giggles rather than for counsel?

Peter Constantine, winner of the PEN Translation Prize and a National Translation Award, has just published a new translation of The Prince , and it’s winning raves for how elegantly it has captured the ” pith of Machiavelli’s brilliant Italian prose .”

Now, imagine picking up any number of classics you’ve read before and reading them again with the idea that they were really intended as lampoons. Select a few titles at random—say, Crime and Punishment, The Scarlet Letter, The Magic Mountain and Oliver Twist —and now read them again, but this time as if the authors had intended to elicit guffaws, or at least wry smiles, not only at the dysfunctions of their respective societies, but also at the plights of their characters.

For some authors it would be a natural—think Kafka. For some titles, it would definitely make for some entertaining text—think Atlas Shrugged played as farce. (I’m rather keen on The Fountainhead , however, even if Roarke/Wright’s aesthetic is that of the average airport’s baggage-claim area.)

I see a whole new set of Cliffs Notes written for a whole new generation of ironists . . .