a different Machiavelli

A couple of months ago I came across a letter of Machiavelli's, written during his exile. Machiavelli's fall from grace is among the most spectacular in literary history--it 's right up there with Dante's. After serving as a member of the council of Florence in the 1490s, Machiavelli was crushed when Florence was defeated by the Medicis. He was tortured and exiled, and lost everything--friends, his position, his reputation, and his beloved homeland.

It's hard to imagine overcoming such crippling grief. And, in fact, I'm not sure Machiavelli was ever able to overcome his despair completely. But moments of solace were possible, he writes, through literature and the imagination. In a letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, Machiavelli describes the moments of transformation from the grief of the everyday that came when he entered his study and cast the present behind him:

When evening comes, I return home [from work and from the local tavern] and go to my study. On the threshold I strip naked, taking off my muddy, sweaty workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death; I pass indeed into their world.

There's something so moving about this letter--the Machiavelli here is so different from the man we imagine styling The Prince. I suspect the man in himself was much like the rest of us when we stagger under the weight of grief. He turns and looks inside himself, and he finds a place where it's safe: a place where there are memories that can be controlled and connections that can be made through reading and imagining, and where there is no possibility of betrayal.