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marie..
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CITAZIONEWritten with a wonderful irony, this is a must read for anyone interested in the period, and for those who simply enjoy intelligent historical fiction.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/arti...l#ixzz2Sozi2s1f
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.CITAZIONEThe Borgias' story was too big for one book. There's more to come: emotion, action & Machiavelli - Sarah Dunant @BBCRadio3 #BloodandBeauty
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marie..
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Trovato e comprato XD vi farò sapere!
Edited by ‚dafne - 17/5/2013, 00:58. -
marie..
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Ne ho letto veramente poco prima di dormire, comunque vi dico quel che ci ho trovato.
Il libro si apre nel 1492, al momento dell'habemus papam, ma appena prima di svelare chi sia il papa torna indietro e si concentra sul conclave, con una panoramica sui "candidati" e poi un focus su Rodrigo e Giovanni de' Medici. Ve lo dico in maniera spiccola: Rodrigo e Giovanni ricordano moltissimo quelli di Borgia. La descrizione fisica, in realtà soprattutto quella di Rodrigo, corrisponde a quella storica, ma i loro comportamenti, il modo di parlare, la presenza sono di Borgia: tanto lo spagnolo è scafato e ne sa una più del diavolo quanto il giovanotto è sudaticcio, impacciato, attaccato alle gonne del padre morto e al ricordo di una ragazza (???) di Pisa.
Rodrigo è gentilissimo e suadente ma alla fine fa fesso Giovanni, che comunque non se ne accorge, assicurandosi di fatto il suo voto.
Con ciò si potrebbe pensare che la Dunant abbia capito tutto e sia una grande scrittice di fiction, ma il realtà è tutto piuttosto blando. Si vede che scrive per le donne aggiungendoci il tocco di colore politico.
Passa il conclave e gli Habemus Papam per strada svegliano Giulia e Lucrezia, che stanno dormendo insieme a casa di Adriana. La Dunant scopre subito le carte svelando il motivo per cui le hanno fatto scrivere il libro: Cesare e Lucrezia. La bambina, spiega il libro, non ama dormire sola e infatti da piccola andava sempre nel letto di Cesare. Giulia la prende in giro dicendole che quando si sposerà e se ne andrà in Spagna non avrà Cesare con sè. Le due hanno un rapporto scherzoso e confidenziale, da vere sorelle, e vengono bacchettate da Adriana, che è descritta come un po' tracagnotta e antipatica, quasi una balia zitella, che però è molto affezionata a tutt'e due.
Sono arrivata qua XD poi vi aggiorno.
Ah, è scritto al presente.
Un passettino CL:CITAZIONE‘Papà says that I will marry in the newly decorated chambers of the Vatican palace,’ she says at last. ‘Imagine that. With our pictures on the wall. Though I am not sure they will be finished in time. Johannes Burchard is arranging it all.’ She makes a face. ‘He reminds me of a toad.’
‘Too thin. He is more a lizard. Those flaps under his chin.’
She giggles. ‘And the eyes.’ She flicks her own back and forwards, cold, blinking. She pauses. ‘You know that Juan is to give me away.’
No, he did not know this. She can see it in the way he freezes slightly.
‘But I will dance with you first,’ she says fiercely. ‘Well, after my husband.’
Edited by ‚dafne - 27/11/2014, 22:06. -
marie..
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Sono arrivata abbastanza in là, quindi riaggiorno.
Il problema principale è che il libro parla di tutti i Borgia e nessuno in particolare. Non si ha il tempo di affezionarsi a nessuno e alcuni episodi sono semplicemente riassunti, tanto perché ci dovevano stare.
Al contempo, però, parla solo dei Borgia noti in The Borgias, tranne qualche menzione sporadica per Adriana, quindi non è nemmeno una vera panoramica che racconti qualcosa di nuovo.
Personaggi (può essere spoileroso):
-Rodrigo ha perso mordente e adesso è il solito papa di cui leggo ovunque. Ha frequenti discorsi di stampo politico con Cesare, che è quello di The Borgias, né più né meno, giusto un po' più spietato certe volte (nulla di cui esultare per veridicità storica)
-Pedro compare fin dall'inizio come messaggero e guardia di Cesare. Ha un breve incontro con Lucrezia prima del convento.
-Lucrezia mi sembra perfetta, non ha niente del mito, è intimamente buona ed intelligente, ingenua il giusto per una che non ha mai messo il naso fuori di casa. E' molto tenera, ricorda costantemente la Lucrezia dei primi quattro-cinque episodi di TB. La cosa che non mi spiego è quanto piange Juan quando non se l'è filato per tutto il libro.
-C'è Fiammetta, che è una novità rispetto a quasi tutti gli altri romanzi. Ma ha solo brevi menzioni e scene ancora più brevi.
-Sancia si innamora di Cesare, poi quando lui si stanca di lei cade in depressione e diventa una moglie semidevota. Non ricordo una relazione con Juan, lui ci prova ma lei non gliela.. vabbè, capito.
-Jofré è perso di Sancia ma è uno smidollato e i suoi complessi si traducono in scatti violenti.
-Juan è Juan di The Borgias, prima stagione intendo, forse un po' meno macchietta ma siamo lì. E' appena morto e NON l'ha ucciso Cesare. Ci sono indagini in corso.
-Vannozza inizia ad avere più spazio, ed è sempre fantastica. Tiene testa al papa e lo umilia un po' dimostrandogli di non sentire la sua mancanza e praticamente di non aver bisogno di lui.
-Giulia è innamorata di Orsino ma non torna da lui, o almeno per adesso è ancora a Roma. Per caratterizzare meglio la bellezza di Giulia la Dunant ha scelto di concentrarsi sui capelli, descrivendola come una sorta di Rapunzel.
-Giovanni Sforza è esattamente come me lo immagino io, codardo, senza carattere, non cattivo. A modo suo ama Lucrezia ma teme i Borgia.
Cesare e Lucrezia (SPOILERS):
-Sono quelli di The Borgias nella prima stagione. Lucrezia è attaccatissima a Cesare che la vuol proteggere ed ha delle pulsioni, diciamo, nei suoi confronti. Ne è geloso. Quando si parla di annullare le nozze con Giovanni, cosa su cui Lucrezia ha scrupoli avendo consumato, Rodrigo manda Cesare a parlare con lei. In un momento di debolezza di Lucrezia lui la bacia. Lucrezia è turbata e se ne va a San Sisto.. -
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Devo dire che non mi sta convincendo molto , già il fatto che Cesare sia quello di The Borgias per me è troppo un male....voglio dire che alla fine tendono sempre a farlo diventare una macchietta a lui e poi SANCIA MOGLIE DEVOTA AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAH . . -
marie..
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SPOILER:
Lucrezia e Perotto non fanno niente: restano romantici & platonici. L'infante è figlio di Rodrigo e Giulia. Cesare, comunque resta incazzatissimo con Perotto perché è geloso di Lucrezia, e lo fa imprigionare e poi uccidere. Lucrezia lo perdona perché ha già perso Juan e perdere anche Cesare sarebbe "come perdere se stessa".. -
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Credo lo leggero in bibliotcea, però ammetto che legegre che l'Infante è figlio di Rodrigo e Giulia è un variazioen interessante, am non compensa il resto . -
marie..
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Spoilers, nuova puntata XD
-Personalmente ho sempre trovato difficilissimo *shippare* Lucrezia e Alfonso, ma qui ce l'ho quasi fatta. Lui è un po' troppo perfetto, ma alla fine ci sono passi piacevoli tra lui e Lucrezia.
-Cesare non sopporta la vista di Rodrigo junior. Da parte sua, Lucrezia vuole moltissimo bene a Cesare, ma lo teme.
-Charlotte è liquidata prestissimo, nonostante sia presentata come un bel personaggio.
-Chi ama Cesare/Caterina deve prepararsi a vederli smontati pezzo per pezzo, soprattuto lei e la sua conclamata bellezza. Cesare la fa verbalmente a pezzi.
-Assedi e battaglie sono descritti bene, niente di indimenticabile ma tutto a posto.
-C'è una scenetta con Fiammetta e un pappagallo che mi ha fatto una gran tenerezza XD ho quasi shippato Fiammetta e Cesare.
-C'è un passo in cui Cesare si ritrova con gli sfoghi di sifilide che ho trovato piuttosto bello, ben scritto, mi è rimasto impresso XD
La considerazioni generali sono sempre le stesse: il libro si lascia leggere ma non approfondisce nulla e non è mai memorabile. Ormai l'ho quasi finito, forse il prossimo post sarà il verdetto finale XD
Edit: verdetto finale. Buono ma niente di che. Lucrezia, la morte di Alfonso e il pappagallo di Fiammetta sono le mie cose preferite XD
Edited by marie. - 25/5/2013, 13:11. -
.CITAZIONEDunant moves with ease from the great salons of power to the intimacies of the bedchamber; she revels in the gorgeous details of clothes, jewels, tapestries and food, while pulling back the velvet curtain on corruption and brutality. So consummate courtier Cesare Borgia rides out to war glittering with wealth, while beneath his costly fabrics his flesh is rotting with syphilis. Lucrezia is partially rehabilitated as a loving girl whose desire to please her relentlessfather too often results in the back-street murders of men she loves.
The Borgias appear as flawed but passionate personalities, painted in all their voluptuous glory against a background of shifting European allegiances. It is a mark of Dunant's skill that these internecine feuds remain intelligible without overwhelming the intimate, human dramas that allow her characters to emerge from the damning gossip of history. Blood & Beauty is a high-class, colourful Renaissance soap opera, and one that will leave readers itching for the next instalment.
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.CITAZIONERightful place in history
[...]
"I've tried to very subtly show how it happened in this book - because they're Spanish, they're interlopers, all the other big Roman families hated their guts and so a lot of what we now know about the Borgias started as gossip. It's like tabloid journalism today. Once said, it can't be unsaid."
For Dunant, it began with an impulse to investigate the existence of women born into power, the only kind of Renaissance female existence she'd left out of her trilogy. "Then when I looked at somebody like Lucrezia Borgia, I thought 'Wait a minute, there's history here and it's wrong'. So having found Lucrezia, I then found all of them."
Her novel opens in Rome of 1492, where in the wake of Pope Innocent VIII's death, 61-year-old Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia is already plotting his route into the papacy and the roles his most favoured illegitimate children will play in shoring up his power.
His papacy is to become defined by nepotism, corruption and creativity, and the names of at least two of his children, Lucrezia and Cesare, will become notorious for the next 500 years.
Dunant's skill in telling the story of this family's rise and fall is to bring them to vivid life within the context of the era.
That she is able to tap so deeply into the turbulent mix of ambition, fear, intrigue and very real danger of a period Rodrigo helped shape, she credits to the work of serious historians who, for the past 30 years, have been saying, she emphasises: "Could we just strip all of this back now, and have a look at what's actually going on? But nobody is reading their history books because people are much more interested in the sensational stuff, such as the (controversial Showtime) TV series, which plays fast and loose with the history.
"But for me it was riveting. I thought if you could put in the real history and show how all the gossip turns into a false history then you'd have a novel that tells you a lot about what we still do now, which is use gossip when we want to slag people off."
Dunant can cite you chapter and verse on the Renaissance but says: "What really surprised me most in researching this book was the history of how syphilis took over Europe.
"It it knocked me so for six that I've just gone on to make a documentary for BBC radio about it. And all of the stuff we know now about syphilis has only been researched since AIDS, yet this disease lasted for four and a half centuries."
read moreCITAZIONEAuthor Sarah Dunant has drilled down into the Italian Renaissance for over a decade — reconstructing a time of artistic innovation, political corruption and war into captivating, and highly accurate, fiction.
"When one talks about the kind of power of the English Renaissance and Shakespeare and whatever and all of that, I think, 'My God, Italy had these 100 years before,' " she tells NPR's Neal Conan.
"It was the cradle of some of the most profound things about modern Western civilization, and you have to go there if you really want to understand the modern world."
In her latest book, Blood & Beauty, Dunant breathes new life into the story of the brilliant, powerful and notorious Borgia family.
Dunant talks about the process of researching and reconstructing centuries-old history, and some of the truths and myths surrounding the infamous family.
Interview Highlights
On the origins of the Borgia family
"We just lump them in with a lot of other Italian families. But it is the great secret about this family that they don't come from inside Italy. They are, in fact, interlopers. And Italy, and especially Rome, is full of very powerful families, a bit like a kind of early version of The Godfather, who really aren't interested in sharing power.
"So when you come to look at the kind of press that the Borgias have had over the 500 years since they kind of died out, what you're looking at is vested interests out to slander them because they were the interlopers. Now, some of those awful things they did is true, but one of the things that I discovered while researching and writing this book is that there was a great deal more depth and nuance and subtlety and things of interest about the Borgias than our old version of how they used to be."
read more
Edited by ‚dafne - 22/6/2013, 11:52. -
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Video CITAZIONEIn a narrative relying on many historical sources, Dunant visually transposes the reader to the 15th-century household of the Borgias. She gives a vivid insight on how the Spaniard outfoxed the strong Italian lobby and beat his strong rival Giuliano della Rovere to the papacy with silver and gold.
She portrays him as a doting father who had to strike a delicate balance to uphold the dignity of the church as well as of his family. She shows that he is human too and feels emotions of joy, pain, grief and pleasure.
He had to form alliances and marital bonds and deceive and induce to remain at the top — so much so that he had to marry off his daughter Lucrecia three times. Each time he gave huge dowries to the grooms who came from influential families. Fearing for his papacy, he used his political acumen to outwit the French king Charles VIII, who wanted safe passage for his crusading troops through the Papal States. Not only does he save his seat but he also sees the back of the French troops and deals a bloody blow to his Italian rivals.
Dunant slices down the character of Borgia and his notoriety from an angle much different than the one used by his detractors who have labelled him as self-seeking and debauched. As the events unfold in the book, it emerges that Borgia was not an imposter, unlike some of the other church leaders during his time who were pious and virtuous from the outside but were actually corrupt to the core and held Borgia to ransom.
“Blood & Beauty” is intriguing, to say the least, and it surely will captivate those who like thrillers such as “The Godfather”.
gulfnewsCITAZIONEBefore reading into this thunderclap a demonstration of divine judgment against Borgia and his power-hungry, lascivious sons — who conspired through murder, war and strategic marriages to dominate Italy at the height of the Renaissance — consider two facts. First: the Borgia pope survived. And second: lightning also made a direct hit this year on the dome of St. Peter’s, on Feb. 11, the same day Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation. Was it the wrath of God or a twist of fate — ordered, as Rodrigo suspects, by “that other deity, Fortuna”? Sometimes a lightning bolt is just a lightning bolt.
In the five centuries since Rodrigo Borgia’s death in 1503, his family name has become synonymous with poison, incest and violent intrigue, and has inspired a host of biographies, paintings, operas, novels, movies and television dramas — the latest of which, Showtime’s three-season series, has just concluded. The Borgias were definitely bad, but were they as bad as all that? Dunant, the author of several previous best-selling works of fiction set in the Italian Renaissance, doesn’t think so.
Did Rodrigo Borgia sleep with his daughter, Lucrezia, as her first husband charged? “Not true,” the author protests in a video on her Web site. Did Lucrezia have a steamy affair with her syphilitic brother, Cesare? “Not true,” Dunant scoffs. Was Lucrezia a serial poisoner? Again: “Not true.” Were the Borgias “tremendous murderers and ruthless merchants?” Well, you’ve got her there.
In “Blood and Beauty,” Dunant follows the path set by Hilary Mantel with “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies.” Just as Mantel humanized and, to an extent, rehabilitated the brilliant, villainous Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, Dunant transforms the blackhearted Borgias and the conniving courtiers and cardinals of Renaissance Europe into fully rounded characters, brimming with life and lust. Here they provoke, if not exactly empathy, then a new understanding, grounded in the context of their brutal times.
Dunant begins her story on a sultry August day in 1492. Pope Innocent VIII has just died, and a crowd of decayed, malodorous cardinals preen and scheme in the Sistine Chapel, striking poses against biblical frescoes as they wait to learn who will win the keys to the kingdom. The air, Dunant writes, “is sour with the sweat of old flesh. Rome in August is a city of swelter and death.” It is the cunning Rodrigo Borgia, Cardinal of Valencia, a “paunchy 61-year-old” and vice chancellor to five previous popes, who will receive the crown. At his nearby palazzo, three of his illegitimate children, Juan, Lucrezia and Jofré, and their guardian, Borgia’s cousin Adriana, receive the good news and prepare to shower the proud Papa with “twittering admiration.” He “sucks in their vigor like great lungfuls of fresh air,” Dunant writes, “so that he becomes stronger and more potent in their presence.”
tutto sul new york times
Edited by ‚dafne - 16/7/2013, 19:40. -
marie..
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CITAZIONEDunant, a stickler for history, says she feels free to make things up only when nobody knows exactly what happened. She did a ''huge'' amount of research before she started writing, based in her apartment in Florence, chasing down original commentary on the Borgias.
''I knew if I could reproduce the bullet-like speed and complexity of those first 10 years in office, I'd have a family drama and a political thriller. Right from the moment the book starts, Rodrigo has this clock ticking.
''So the story told itself: how did they do it? How did they keep their heads above water and almost succeed in forging a dynasty?''
It wasn't only events Dunant needed to know: it was the psychology of her three main characters. She often talks about them in the present tense, as if they're still with her. As she and contemporary historians discovered, the Borgias were not quite the creatures from hell they were made out to be. In particular, Rodrigo's daughter, Lucrezia, had been much maligned. She was rumoured to be a poisoner who kept her venom in a ring on her finger; she was also supposed to be locked in incestuous union with both her father and her big brother, Cesare.
All propaganda and slander and gossip, Dunant says - the real story is much more interesting.
''They were in their time quite powerful celebrities. As we know, once a tabloid culture says something about someone, even if it's not true, the mud sticks. I'm not trying to suggest they were honourable and wonderful. But the time in which they lived was brutal and corrupt.''
Italy was a gaggle of city states in constant war with each other ''like spatting cats''; popes regularly took mistresses and had children; the corrupt Catholic Church was run by Italians; and the Borgias were outsiders from Spain who spoke Catalan.
''This is a family trying to establish a dynasty in a country not interested in interlopers. Because they didn't succeed, the victors wrote the history. The way in which gossip - often deliberately planted - becomes fact, and fact becomes history, was one of the things I was interested in studying.''
The incest gossip arose from an angry aside from Lucrezia's first husband, Giovanni Sforza. It didn't suit Borgia politics for the marriage to continue, so they were trying to dissolve it by asserting Giovanni was impotent. ''I have known her an infinity of times and the Pope only wants her for himself,'' he complained. Before long, rumour had it that Lucrezia was driven by her terrible incestuous father and brother, and even had a baby by one of them (Dunant believes the child was probably born to the Pope's mistress, Giulia Farnese).
Clearing away "all the muck around her'', Dunant discovered a Lucrezia who loved her family, which in turn expected total obedience from her: ''Of course, that's all she knows.'' In a world where marriage was a political tool, Lucrezia wedded at 13 and had three husbands before she was 20.
''Little by little, she has to come to terms with the prison around her and find her own feet. She has to learn on the job, to become politically savvy and handle emotional feelings.''
Dunant warmed to Lucrezia's father, Rodrigo, who ruled as Pope Alexander VI. ''The more I learnt about him, the more I liked him. When James Gandolfini died, I thought, 'There goes my Rodrigo Borgia'. He's a Tony Soprano. Yes, he's a thug and can be very ruthless, but he also has a sentimental streak and a vulnerability - he loves his children too well. He's very volatile and too smart not to have self-knowledge.
''This is a 61-year-old man having an affair with a 17-year-old. I think Rodrigo liked women as well as loving them. His relationship with Vanozza [dei Cattanei], the mother of his four children, was domestic and the relationship lasted a long time. And he was kind to Giulia. All the way through, I got this feeling he was a man who had a big appetite: for women and for politics - he loved politicking.''
But she didn't feel the same warmth for Cesare. He was a brave warrior, strong and handsome and dashing, but he was also cold. ''The more I looked into him, the more I thought he's what we would now call a sociopath. It's not surprising that when Machiavelli sits down to write The Prince, it's Cesare on his mind. You can't fail to be fascinated by him, but you wouldn't trust him.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/...l#ixzz2ZZaBNEtT. -
marie..
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CITAZIONEWhat made you decide to write about the Borgias?
If you spend any time in the Renaissance, the Borgias are tapping on your shoulder the whole time. At one level, they are the most infamous family in history. It’s not until an Italian historian in the 1940s goes back to the actual records that we discover that quite a lot of what we think we know about them is gossip and rumor put about by their enemies. The mud stuck.
I’m not sure your book exactly clears their name.
That was certainly not my intention. There is a lot of bad behavior in this period, and the Borgias are as badly behaved as a lot of other people, possibly in some cases worse. But you do have to understand the context. The Renaissance is not just pretty and gorgeous. It’s also powerful and at times quite brutal. Rodrigo Borgia takes the papacy having fathered four children of marriageable age, and as long as he is pope, he will use the spiritual and temporal power he’s got to try to create a dynasty. I was amazed by the audacity of how he sets out to do this.
Women often play a pivotal role in your historical fictions, including Lucrezia, the pope’s daughter. How much do you have to enhance the historical record of women’s roles?
For a while, I think there was a tendency either to go looking for the great heroines who had got lost or to tell a story about how oppressed they were. Both of those were admirable political statements about this moment in history and feminism. But the more we looked at history, the more we realized that the whole thing was more subtle; the weave was tighter. Women, rather like now, did what they could in the wiggle room they had in the time that they lived. In some ways that was a quieter heroism, an everyday heroism.
tutta sul Washington Post. -
jborgia.
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The book will be released in French in October. It's very long lol, but to be honest, I didn't expect that the book also come out fast! .
Blood and Beauty (Sangue e onore: i Borgia), Sarah Dunant |
