Renaissance Studies Vol. 10 No. 4

Doni 5 satirical utopia ALLAN CAMERON

There can be few passages of Doni’s extensive prose that can have been so closely analysed as those he dedicated to his mondo suvio,’ and it may be asked why, when so much of Doni’s prose has been ignored, it is necessary to analyse the one short passage which has already attracted so much com- ment. First, it must be said that the mrmdo suvio is an exceptional dialogue in which Doni concentrates many of the recurrent themes of his works in an extremely subtle form. However, the most substantial reason for further consideration of this text is that scholars have for many years been ap- proaching it in a way which has at the very least inhibited our understanding.

With the exception of Grendler, historians and critics have analysed Doni’s mondo suvio as a possible source of radical or materialist ideas, and not in the context of Doni’s other works nor indeed in relation to the text from which it was drawn, while literary critics have until recently considered him little more than a bizarre juggler of other people’s ideas. The mndo suvio, like its creator, has suffered from treatment that has been either too generous (in an anachronistic sense) or too harsh. Bertana in the last century gave us this stark choice of interpreting Doni’s mondo suvw in one or two very different ways: ‘6 l’utopia d’un comunista o 2. ghiribizzo d’un ingegno allegro?’* Belonging to the category of over-generous critics, he naturally plumped for the first option. While critics have of course refined their arguments, this underlying attitude has proved enduring.

Croce’s attitude may fairly be taken to represent much of the established wisdom on Doni. Indeed I think we can accept without further argument his assertion that ‘neppure i piii benevolmente disposti sono riusciti a con- ferirgli un organic0 contenuto intellettuale’, but it is less difficult to accept his second statement: ‘giacchC non bisogna prendere troppo sul serio le satire morali e i disegni di riforme sociali e le intuizioni di nuova astronomia, fisica e sociologia che 6 accaduto di notare in talune sue pagine’.’ If we were to cease to take seriously all works that lacked a coherent intellectual content, we would be rejecting a great deal of very good literature, especially in the field of satire. But there seems to be something else wrong with Croce’s

’ The utopian dialogue in I nondi is published in Opcre di Pictro Aretino e Anton F r a w w h i , ed. C. CordiC (Naples, 1976), 934-47, under the title of Mondo Savio. For the introductory novella to the dialogue, it is necessary to go back to a sixteenthtentury edition, such as I mondi (Venice, Marcolini, 1552), fols. 90”-93’.

* E. Bertana, ‘Un socialista del Cinquecento’, Gimnule Ligurtico, 19 (1892). 362. ’ B. Croce, ‘Anton Francesco Doni’, ch. XVIII, Poeti e sm’ttm. del pim0 e tardo rinacinrento (Ban,

1958), 260.

@ 1996 The Society for Renaissance Studies, w o r d University Press

Doni’s satirical utopia 463

approach, and that is the tendency to judge Doni’s works for what they were clearly never intended to be. ‘I disegni di riforme sociali’ can only refer to the mMtd0 savio, the only work of its kind. Apart from the misuse of the plural, it has to be asked whether this was a fair assessment of the writer’s inten- tions. I would argue that Doni used the utopian ,idea suggested to him by More’s book, whose translation by Lando he had just published, to restate his pessimistic view of human nature which occurs so often in his works.

Attilio Momigliano, too, continued this tradition, and distinguished between Doni the buffoon and Doni the moralist. He claimed that the latter might have had some value, i f i t had not been smothered by the first.’

The century which divides More’s Utopia from Campanella’s Cittci del sob produced a series of utopias: Francesco Patrizi (1 529-97),5 Guevara (c. 1480-1544); Agostini (1536-1614)’ and Ludovico Zuccoli (1568-1630/1).8 Although the works and their authors are very different, they are often corn- pared and appear together in political and utopian anthologies. One com- mon theme is the sixteenth-century interest in the architectural aspects of the ideal city. Firpo has gone so far as to suggest that it was not so much the discovery of new continents and civilizations which led to the success of the genre, but the invention of artillery which made the medieval city with its stone walls obsolescent? Doni’s city with its radial layout was cer- tainly no exception, but his utopia is one of the more extreme: only he, More and Campanella suggested a communist society based on the obligation to work.” Doni’s nwnd~ savio is a short dialogue in which a wiseman describes his utopian dream and a madman comments on it with considerable insight.

‘ A. Momigliano, ‘La maschera del Doni’, Studi m poeria (Bari, 1938). 61-7. F. Patrizi &a Cherso, La n’tth felice (Venice, Giovanni Grifiio, 1553). This rather pedestrian

Neoplatonist tract is not so much a utopia as an ideal version of the contemporary city state, an aristocratic maritime republic. Published a year later than Doni’s utopia, it belongs to an entirely different literary world.

‘Antonio de Guevara, Marc0 Aurelw con relox de principes (Seville, Juan Cromberger, 1537). I referred to hngiano’s translation, Aura, libro di Marm Aurelw, mn l’horologro de’princfpi (Venice, Portanari, 1562); there were, however, other editions in the 1540s. ’ Ludovico Agostini, La rgubblica imnurginmia, in Scritti politici del ’500 e ’600, ed. Bruno Widmar

(Milan, 1964), 701-55. This work was written between 1575 and 1580, but not published until this century.

Ludovico Zuccolo, La rgubblica d ’ E d r i a e aim' diologhi politin‘, ed. Rodolfo de Mattei (Rome, 1944). This list is by no means exhaustive and could also include Vincenzo Squaldi, La rgublica di Lab, ~ y c m dcua mgionc di stat0 in un h i n o crrirtocractiw (Bologna, 1640) and Mario Teluccini (il Bemia), Artnnid~m. Dove si contngono le gmndcrrc de gli Antipodt (Venice, 1566). ’ Luigi Firpo, ‘La citd ideale degli utopisti del rinascimento’, in La citth idealc neUa tradiziac

clnssica c biblico-cristiana, ed. Renato Uglione (Turin, 1985). 258. lo cf. T. Campanella, CittCi del sok, in Scritti politit5 del ’500 e del ‘6G0, 763-810. Generally Plat0 and

More are considered the most important influences on this work, but given that Grendler has shown that Campanella’s sonnet Senno s m fmra de’saui was taken from the introductory novella to Doni’s nroizdo s&, we can reasonably assume that Campanella was very well acquainted with Doni’s utopia. Indeed, his utopia is to some extent a toning down of Doni’s, with an added religious interpretation. Equally the poem adds a religious dimension by relating the people’s madness to sin (original sin?), and discards Doni’s genial concept of the relativity of madness. Of course the whole question is given an extra twist by the fact that Campanella himself had to feign madness in order to avoid the death sentence, and previously the pmm was supposed to refer exclusively to that. The influence of Doni on Campanella is certainly an area for further study.

464 Allan Cawon

It was Grendler who first pointed out that the introductory novella was essential to the understanding of the mrmdo savw. This constitutes a major step forward and opens the way for further interpretations. With hindsight it is difficult to understand why the dialogue was isolated from the novella, but it is more understandable if you consider that the general approach was that which in Anglo-Saxon countries is termed ‘History of Ideas’. Indeed criticism should not be levelled at historians who might be expected to ignore Doni’s literary skills, so much as at ‘literary criticism’ which has for so long dismissed this uvventuriere hlla pennu. The underlying theme of the ntondo suvio is not political at all; it is the nature of madness and wisdom, and this theme is carried over from the introductory novella.

It seems to me, however, that Grendler has only partially followed through his reassessment of the text. He has more or less accepted the traditional view whereby the popular voice (in this case that of the Pazzo) is little more than comic relief while the real ideas come from the Savw, who, according to Grendler, speaks for Doni. This leads to a certain lack of clarity on the intentions of Doni’s utopian project, if it can be so defined. He writes: ‘The narrator, Savio, clearly speaking for Doni, concluded that although one could construct a “wise” world, he suspected that it would become a ‘‘crazy” world. That is, if there was such a thing as wisdom in the world, it could not prevail.’” This statement attributes to Doni a rather facile paradox, and somewhat misrepresents the structure of the dialogue. The Savw does not question the mndo suvio at all, he simply recounts his dream which the Pazzo comments and subverts. The mMtd0 suvio is impossible but some of its inten- tions are laudable. It is the Parzo and not the Seuio who realizes this. Grendler appears here to miss the point of the introductory novella whose importance he so correctly points out. Doni not only claims that ‘wise’ and ‘mad’ are indefinable terms, and that seemingly wise behaviour often disguises madness, but also takes this fairly common sixteenth-century argument one stage further, implying that wisdom is defined exclusively by the beliefs or behaviour of the majority. This argument is developed in the utopian dialogue itself: according to the Suvio the one difference between the real world and the mndo suvio is that in the real world there are a great deal of passions and therefore of definitions of madness or sanity: ‘le cagioni del diventar matto sono infinite che noi altri abbiamo; onde, levate via le occa- sioni, ci sarebbe pochi pazzi, o noi saremmo tutti pazzi a un modo’,’’ and

’’ P. F. Grendler, Critics of the Italian Wor4 1530-1560, Anton Fr-w hi, Nicob Franc0 and @ , t p w Lard0 (Madison, Wis., 1969), 171.

Operc di Pictro Aretino c Anton Francesco h i , ed. C. CordiC (Naples, 1976). 943. There are many references to the relative nature of madness and sanity in the works of Doni, including but to a lesser degree the works that were not published by Marcolini. One fairly typical example is a Dicnia that appears in the Fogiie && zucm &I Doni, which was published by Marcolini in 1552: %alinetto Strozzieri, essendo menato a spasso per una terra, vide alcuni di quei cittadini che avevano aria di pazzo a dicianove soldi per lira, e domandato l’huomo che l’accompagnava che gente era quella, gli rispose - Sono i nostri savi -. - 0 io havrei voglia - disse egli - di vedere i vostri pazzi, poi che questi son savi’ (p. 53).

Doni’s satirical utopia 465

‘non si pub resistere a tanti, nC difendersi da le migliaia de’ p~poli’ .’~ In the introductory novella, the downfall of the savi is due to their failure to under- stand that madness is socially defined, and their own wisdom is in any case little else but ambition and the desire for power, producing another kind of bizarre behaviour. The savi know about the imminent epidemic of madness, but decide to keep quiet about it while protecting themselves. In their sealed room they behave like madmen in their joy, anticipating their future power, but on leaving once the danger has passed, they put on a great show of dignity and reserve to impress the purri, the maddened citizens of this land. Their plan was grossly miscalculated, they had not understood that any form of wisdom has to be recognized as such by the majority.

It should perhaps be pointed out that a great many of Doni’s dialogues are between one speaker who is knowledgeable, or seemingly knowledgeable, and another who, although decidedly more plebeian, hides behind his mask of buffoneria a great deal of common sense. Another example could perhaps show how deeply engrained is the habit of simply ignoring or misinterpreting that second, plebeian voice. When Grendler discovered that one of Doni’s dialogues was commenting on six of the seven laws laid down in another utopia, Relox de princepes, written by the Spanish humanist Antonio de Guevara, he asserted that ‘following Guevara’s order, Doni closely para- phrased the laws, omitting only the law concerning inheritance,” and com- mented briefly, approving them’.15 Now an assumption has been made here that one of the speakers represents Doni, and that Doni’s viewpoint is easy to extract from the text. He cannot be referring to Borgo the speaker who makes his position clear from the beginning: ‘Legge furfante mi pare a me che sono, parte da vero e tutte da beffe.’16 On the other hand, Ghioro, who comments on what Borgo is reading, is hardly wholehearted in his approval. On hearing the law that after the third child had been born to a single mother all further children should be sacrificed to the gods, he says: ‘Oh questa si che sa di buono! ma di cattivo puzza asski. Oh che bestialitP!’” Further on, commenting on this and on the last law that states that all women be sacrificed to the gods at the age of forty and all men at the age of fifty:

10 son chiaro: so che si doveva trovare in cotesto paese gli uomini radi e ricchi; tanta poverti non ci debbe regnare. Ma odi tu: le brigate diventan cattive come elleno invecchiano, e si fanno pessimi come coloro che si pensano di non morir mai e di viver lungo tempo, e aggruzzolano, accib

’I Opcrc di Pichv Arctino e Anton Francam h i , 944. ” It would seem that the seventh law had already been omitted in the Italian translation, which

would probably explain the same omission by Doni, who was in all probability monolingual in spite of his occasional claim to have translated from various languages (perhaps a venial lie for publicity purposes).

Is Grendler, Critics of the Italian World, 165. *‘ I mumi, ed. E. Chiorboli (sari, 1928), I, 26. I’ Ibid. I, 26.

466 Allan Cameron

che non manchi loro; e di qua viene che poehi godano e molti stentano.I8

Again in reply to the law that all liars should be executed, Ghioro predictably comments: ‘Certo se codesta legge fosse per la cristianitii, che noi ci rimar- remmo pochi.’ Doni is clearly using this commentary as a satirical device; he is not approving of these outlandish laws any more than Swift was seriously suggesting that the Irish could resolve their famines by selling their one-year- old children as meat.Ig

Ghioro therefore speaks for Doni just as much as Borgo. This is equally true of the Pmzo and the Suvio, as can be shown in the scepticism he expresses over the possibility of suppressing human passions, which reflects that of the author: ‘Mi par gran novita veramente che si ritrovi un mondo che ciascuno godi tutto quello che si gode in questo nostro, e che non abbino gli huomini se non un pensiero, e tutte le passioni sien levate via.’“ Passions are the root of human madness, but a rationalist and conformist society would be mad to think it could ever eliminate them. The Pmzo con- tinues to express the more sober view. When the SmiO explains how two hand- some men took them by the hand and lead them to the mrmdo suvio, he rejoins that he certainly couldn’t have been there, and on hearing a description of the city’s layout, he suggests that they should exchange names. The Pazro, like many of the plebeian or popular voices in Doni’s dialogues, has two functions, first to develop or explain the Suvio‘s statements and secondly to criticize them. This distinction can best be shown if we return to the dialogue based on Guevara’s Rebx. In the original, an elder of the Garamantes tribe*’ expounds the laws and explains them at the same time. Doni, on the other hand, divides the laws and the explanations between two speakers, creating a more readable and more theatrical dialog0 serruto. But he doesn’t limit himself to breaking up other peoples’ ideas into a more marketable literary form, he also adds his own particular style of criticism, which is often con- tradictory and intentionally so. Thus the Pmzo praises the communalization of women because it would destroy family relationships and all the pain that these create. Here the role is explanatory, and has perhaps been given to the Puzzo simply to maintain the rhythm of the dialogue. However, the Parro obviously has a think about it, because he twice says that he doesn’t like the idea, and in the second case he explains his objection: ‘La non mi piace cotesta ordinazione, a esser privo d’uno ardente desiderio amoroso e d’uno infervorato desio.“ The Puzzo understands that human relationships could never respond to reason alone, nor does he want them to. It can be seen from

I s Ibid. I, 27. Doni is expanding on Guevara’s statement: ‘gli huomini pensando d’aver a viver

’’ Cf. A Modest PropoSa, The Writings ofJonathan Swift (New York, 1973), 502-9.

‘I The tribe shows little affinity with the promiscuous and homonymous tribe in Pliny’s Natural

molti anni facilmente diventano viciosi’. Aura, libro . . . , €01. 52”.

Opere di Pietro Aretino e Anton Frmaco hi, 936.

History. Operc di Pietro Aretino e Anton Francesco hi, 942. n

Doni’s satirical utopia 467

these few quotations how Ghioro in Z marmi and the Pazzo in Z mondi are basically the same character, undecided commentators, praising and censur- ing at the same time. For the Puzzo, human passions, which he admits are responsible for most of human misery, do have a certain value. This attitude, probably shared by the author, is summed up in his comment on the mrmdo suvio in general: ‘La mi pare codesta stanza un viver da bestie in certe cose, e in altre da mezzi huomini e mezzi cavalli, e altre tutte da h~omini.’’~

Grendler’s main thesis is that Doni and his fellow poligrafi were critics of their contemporary Italian world. This thesis was useful in the sixties to correct ancient prejudices and to mark out a new area for study. Much has been done since, and for purposes of literary criticism, this definition tends to oversimplify the .motivation of these writers as well as overlooking the diversity between them. To distinguish Doni’s utopia from other contem porary utopias, Grendler writes:

The primary purpose of the other utopias was didactic: Doni’s was destruc- tive. More, Guevara, and Agostini were counsellors to kings who attempted through their books and civil careers to persuade rulers to follow a more human Christian policy. Doni, the lowborn literary adventurer, hated the signori. His New World was a total rejection of the Cinquecento.“

But Doni’s destructiveness is primarily literary and not political. I prefer Tenenti’s interpretation which is that More is the utopian writer who makes the clearest social statement: ‘la prima parte dello scritto di Tommaso More pub addirittura essere considerata come un manifesto contro l’ingiustizia ~ociale’.’~

It is doubtful that in Doni’s case we can talk simply of a rejection of the Cinquecento, except in the obvious sense that every writer has to judge any question through the experience of his own time. While it is true, as Grendler points out, that Doni often refers to the myth of the golden age when man lived happily in a state of innocence andXmplicity, it is also true that when he refers to societies other than sixteenth-century Italy he rarely sees them as better than his own. Both Doni and More are destructive, because destruc- tion is, as it were, the satirist’s trade, but it is exactly the detailed reference to contemporary society that makes the latter’s work didactic while Doni’s is not. We have therefore a lack of topical reference in the mondo suvio com pared with other writers. Indeed, his only topical reference is a light-hearted remark in the introductory novella, which draws a comparison between modern dancing and singing and the behaviour of the ancient people once

* Ibid. 943. P. F. Grendler, ‘Utopia in Renaissance Italy: Doni’s “New WorldJHist Ideq 26 (1965), 479-94;

re ublished in Culture and Censorship in Late Rmaissonce Italy and France (London, 1981). 493. ’ Albert0 Tenenti, ‘L’utopia nel Rinascimento (1450-1550)’, Studi Storin’, 7 (1966), 689-707. Cf. T. More, Utopia, trans. Paul Turner (London, 1965). 44. Tenenti‘s assertion can be confirmed by this page alone, which condemns rack-renting and the death sentence for thieves, both being specific political points about contemporary England.

468 Allan Cawon

they were driven mad by fumes. On the other hand, Gomas More, with his practical experience as a courtier, understood the major economic and political questions of his time, and entered into more detailed argument, such as his attack on enclosures. Neither utopia is actually being proposed as an absolute model; both are a statement on human nature and society, and where Grendler is quite correct is in his assessment that one was written to influence the world, the other in a spirit of total pessimism. And it seems to be that Doni’s pessimism goes a good deal further than those who, like Guicciardini, felt that they had been born in the wrong era: he is saying that human passions necessarily make humanity unhappy and that any rational organization of the state to suppress those passions would inevitably lead to a society in which all human feeling would be atrophied, begging the ques- tion of whether man could ever seriously hope to escape his passions, the inner source of his discontent.

It is often said that Doni’s ideas are rarely pursued with intellectual rigour, and we can, I think, accept Ferrero’s judgement that ‘Tutta la vita del Doni uomo e scrittore 2 percorsa da una volubiliti inquieta, i infirmata da una nativa inettitudine a impegnarsi a fondo in nessuna cosa: sentimenti, pen- sieri, azioni, scritti letterari.’’6 Perhaps the Pauo is in fact admitting this on behalf of the author when, at the end of this dialogue, he declares: “on aver per male che io mozzi il tuo ragionamento, come si dice, fra due terre; per- chi i pazzi non son tenuti a far se non quanto porta il cervello, e la lor0 bizzarria.’n But Doni makes up for any lack of cohesion and rigour in the m m t h suvio by the range and originality of his ideas and by the power of his satirical verve. His mondo suvio has elements that are new, but the majori- ty are taken from other writers:’ the originality consists in the way he puts them together and the meaning he gives to his utopia. His main source is clearly Thomas More’s Utopia, so it is in relation to this work that we should start to look at his mndo suvio in detail.

The two utopias are similar on some minor points such as being made up of identical cities and in their dislike for horses (very inegalitarian animals), as well as in the fundamental nature of their economies. They are of course communist societies, without money, where the rule ‘to each ac- cording to his need’ is certainly applied, while ‘from each according to his ability’ is, at the very least, tempered by a rigid organization of labour where shirkers are not tolerated. If anything is required, the citizen or, in More’s more patriarchal society, the oldest male in each house would simply collect it from a shop or store where the problem of scarcity never arose. The Suvb and Pmzo argue for this kind of economy on a similar basis to More’s

S d t i scelti di picho Aretinu e di Anton Francesw h i , ed. G. G. Ferrero (Turin, 1951), 22.

As Doni wittily admits: ‘Chi 6 dotto che abbi letto la Repubblica di Platone, la leg.-- de’ Iacedemoni, dei Ligurghi, de’ Romani, e insino de’ Cristiani, sa dove il diavol tien la coda; ma chi non 6 esperto in libris, non accade fargli piii pataffi di novelle.’ Opcrc a3 Pictm Aretino e Anton Francc~a, mi, 94.1.

PB

* Opcrc di &tro Aretino c Anton Franusco hi, 946. ¶8

Doni’s satirical utopia 469

Raphael, translating it of course into Doni’s inimitable style. First, this system is supposed to get rid of all the unnecessary and parasitic occupations that exist in a market economy: ‘Oh che possi egli stare in piedi cotesto vivere! poi che la turba de’ notai, de’ procuratori, avocati, e altri lacci intrigati, van- no a monte, a che tanti e tanti inganni e falsid mercantili sono disperse in cotesti paesi. Vedi che and6 un tratto alla malora la stadera, il braccio, lo staio, la mina, la canna, e tante misure che sono a1 mondo per istraziar la gente.’= But more fundamental is the moral effect of such a system where ‘tutte le passioni umane sien levate via’.30 The desire for wealth and the display of wealth are to disappear, wealth and the desire for wealth being one of the major causes of human misery. This theme was close to Doni’s heart and may explain why he published More’s Utopia and then wrote one of his own. One of the almost endless examples of this view being put in Doni’s work is the Sbundito’s statement in an earlier part of I mondi: ‘I1 travagliar nostro si grande non e per vivere; egli 2 voler dominare la vita, la roba, et signoreggiar gli altri huomini, et per voler sodisfare all’apetito humano, il qua1 non si satia mai.’”

But Doni isn’t satisfied that the socialization of property would in fact remove all human passions, unless it was extended to women as well. I have already discussed the Pauo’s varied reactions to the way sexual relations were organized in the mondo suvio, which are in direct contrast to the rigidly monogamous’ society in Utopia. The S u d s solution is based on the argu- ment, considered specious by the Pazro, that love is simply the privation of the object of desire; once desire is fulfilled, love disappears. We are a long way from Plato’s elaborate communal wedding feasts:‘ the male citizen of the d savw, it would seem, would have to frequent the ‘one or two streets of women’,just as he would go to the street of tailors to get his clothes. Doni does not explain what the women who didn’t live in these streets would do, or indeed whether all women were to be squeezed into the confines of what can only be defined as a kind of state brothel. What is clear is that these women would also be the child-bearers. However inhuman, the Pazro (and perhaps Doni himself) might have perceived such a system, the Savw and Pazro together establish that such a system would help mankind in two ways. First, sex without love (‘quell’ordinariaccio senza amore’)’’ would free men (and it is, of course, from the male point of view that Doni is writing) from such negative emotions as jealousy and infatuation with all the ensuing arguments, deceits and violence. Secondly, because nobody knows who their father is, and indeed children are separated from their mothers as soon as they are weaned, to be brought up by the community, the whole structure of family relationships is swept away, and with it the complex network of

p, Ibid. 940. Ibid. 936.

” I m o d (Venice, Marcolini, 1552), 24. Cf. 7 % ~ Republic, pt n Opcrc di picfro Aretino c Anton Francesco hi, 942.

SI

Sl

470 Allun Cameron

emotions and responsibilities that govern behaviour in other societies. The suppression of family ties also leads to greater freedom in education; because a child ‘si faceva o studiare o imparare un’ arte, second0 che gli porgeva la natura’.’‘ In More’s Utopia, natural inclination was not totally ignored, but if a child insisted on learning a trade other than that practised at his home, he or she would be obliged to change family. There can be little doubt of the thoroughness with which Doni has extended an unprecedented equality to the entire male citizenry, and conversely he permits a small margin of individual development which is not allowed in Utopia.

There is one way in which the economy of the mondo sari0 differs markedly from that of More’s Utopia. The latter does away with nearly all specializa- tion. There is no peasant class because all citizens of Utopia have to do a kind of national service in the country, they all make their own clothes and then take up one of a very limited number of trades. On the other hand, Doni, with considerable foresight, organizes a high degree of specialization. Each citizen has a trade (farming is given the same status as any other trade and peasants dress in the same way as city-dwellers), each side of each of the hundred streets which radiate from the central square is apportioned a trade related to that of the opposite side of the street (flour mills opposite bakers, spinners opposite weavers, etc.). Agriculture is organized on a large- scale, single-crop basis. This rationalization of the countryside permits the cultivation of the crop most suited to a particular terrain and the peasant to become particularly skilled in growing just that one crop.’5 The contrast between the extravagant and satirical utopias of More and Doni and what could be termed the ‘conservative utopias’ is most noticeable in relation to the rural economy. Patrizi argued that, because agriculture is ‘faticoso molto, e di grandissimo affanno, vi si richieggiono uomini, che sieno robusti, e possenti a sopportarlo . . . e perchi i cittadini possano pih liberamente lor0 comandare, 12 bisogno che sieno servi’.s6

The inhabitants of the mondo sm&, like their Utopian forebears, eat in com- munal dining rooms, but their regime is even stricter in that they cannot eat elsewhere” and they are limited to ‘sei o dieci sorte di vivande, il piG pih’. Clothing is equally spartan: in Utopia there are slight and unspecified differences according to sex and marital status, while in Doni’s invention, all clothes are identical except for the colour which changes according to the age of the wearer.%

As far as war is concerned, Guevara’s Garamantes are a more probable source for the mondo suvio. They make no preparations for war and are not

Ibid. 944. I do not think this tells us much about Doni’s general attitude to the peasantry, as his writings

generally reflect a citydweller’s contempt for the ViUaM. It is the plebeian’s sharp wit and common sense which he seems most to admire.

35

F. Patrizi, La Gitta felicc, in Sm’tti fmlitici dcl 900 c ’600, 68.

This idea may have been suggested to Doni by the Polyleritae slaves in Part I of Utopia, who

a6

’’ A truly Spartan measure that can also be found in Plutarch’s Lqc O f L y w . 38

were distinguished by the colour of their clothes.

Doni’s satirical utopia 47 1

invaded because they have nothing that could possibly interest a foreign army - an improbable situation which, unlike More’s Utopia, side-steps a difficult moral problem. But the monrlo suvio is really a world closed within itself while Utopia is a civilization that relies on the lack of civilization surrounding it. They use the Zapoletae, a highly expendable mountain people (the antipo- dean equivalent of the Swiss), to fight their wars, and maintain a slave class made up of foreigners and convicted Utopians.

In the treatment of the sick and deformed, the mondo savw takes its rationalism to a most inhuman level: those who are hunch-backed, lame or cross-eyed are unceremoniously dumped into a large well, an idea probably suggested to Doni by the cavern of Apothetae where the Spartans were reputed by Plutarch’to have thrown any unacceptable offspring. The prac- tice draws from the Puzzo the ambivalent comment: ‘La cosa mi va, ma non la lodo’; those who suffer from incurable diseases, such as ‘cancheri, ma1 ffancese, fistole, posteme, tisichi e altri mali’, are given a poison to drink, to which the Puzzo succinctly remarks: ‘Troppa disonest.5’. The Suvio later explains that a similar treatment is meted out to the violently mad. Apart from the clearly humorous intent, these extreme measures, in my opinion, point to what he found unacceptable in utopian society, the results of r a tionalism rigidly applied.

Both More and Doni imply that a society where property didn’t exist would be a society where death would not be feared. In Utopia when a person died in a state of fear, they would be saddened by that person’s foolishness, but where a person died in the knowledge of the better life that awaited him they would sing and rejoice. In the mondo savw, no such distinctions are made; the lifeless bodies which are considered ‘un pezzo di carnaccia (non piii uomo, cadavero, e non cosa da qualche C O S ~ ) ” ~ are buried anywhere in un- marked graves to return to the earth from which it had been taken. So while the 71u)?2do suvio owed much to Utopia, and is, in a way, a comment

on Utopia and utopias in general, Doni’sTundamental question is his own: is our madness caused solely by these inner passions or by the society we live in? And this in turn leads to the question of the feasibility of a rational society such as the one outlined in the Suvio’s dream. Just as there has been a tendency to ignore the introductory novella, there has also been a tendency to dismiss the latter part of the M o d risibile (which is the section in which the mmdo savw is described). Grendler’s assessment of the limited literary value of this later passage is probably correct, but does not exclude all relevance to the numdo suvio. In it Momus and Jove discuss the dialogue and the veracity of dreams:

Giove: Perch6 no vuoi che le credino, sapendo certo che l’huomo non si pub imaginar cosa che non sia stata, o non abbi da essere. M m : Questa cosa poi che la dice Giove non gli fo replica, ma se la dicesse un altro risponderei di no.*

Opere di Pktw Aretino e Anton Francesco hi, 945. ss

* I d , 99”.

472 Alkn C a w o n

Although Doni always seems to go off at a tangent, Jove’s claim that human fantasy always stays within the realms of reality, and its rejection by Momus (who represents a kind of plebeian god), points to Doni’s general view that human fantasy is limitless,” while human reality is extremely restricted and in essence varies little from place to place, or from time to time. It is clear that he tends towards the belief that such a society would be impossible, not because it defies the technology of his time or some specific aspect of the Cinquecento society, but because it defies human nature in absolute. Of course an exception has to be made for the obligatory reference to a time when human nature was simply and uncorrupted, but even here the Pazzo, true to his manner, avoids any idealization of the golden age: ‘Quest0 mondo de’ pazzi, o de’ savi che tu voglia dire, che tu vedesti, bisognava farlo quando non si sapeva nulla; che quegli uomini erano grossi come macheroni . . .r44

Doni had an incredible ability to touch on arguments long before his time, and the variety of opinions has been mistaken for a lack of profundity. We have in this sixteenth-century text markers to many of the arguments that were to occupy philosophers and political thinkers in the following centuries. What will be the effects of rationalizing society, of specialization and large- scale production? Is property the root of all evil, the cause of our passions, without which we would become rational and closer to the long lost hap- piness of the Golden Age? And consequently can human nature be changed (a fundamental question between the philosophy of the right and the left)? As with More, there is even an element of Deism which has much interested some critics. Of course we know that this was not More’s real position, so perhaps we should be equally circumspect in applying it to Doni.

It is clear that Doni’s writing is open to many interpretations, and this in my opinion does not detract from but enhances its importance. Perhaps it is because he mainly writes dialogues which are considered above all a philosophical genre, that there has been this tendency either to interpret his works as eclectic, an attempt to cover a poverty of ideas with the mask of a buffoon, or in a more generous vein to force Doni into the straitjacket of later ideas, making him a socialist or a scapigliuto. After rejecting (correct- ly in my opinion) Firpo’s claim that Doni’s utopia is dominated by ‘il piii massiccio materiali~mo’,~~ Ferrero takes the opposite view and warns against attributing to these few pages ‘un significato umano e storico piii alto di quel che non abbiano in realtii.’u This attitude underestimates the

” In I mmmi, Tribolo recounts his meeting with Time whom he asks: ‘Avrei piacere d’intendere qua1 cosa voi avete per piii leggieri. - In quello mi aspettavo che mi rispondesse “il cervello del tale e del tale, o il mio”, e’ disse: - L’intendere, I’intelletto, perchi passa i man, penetra i cieli e vola in un subito dove egli vuole senza offesa o offendere.’ I m i , ed. Chiorboli, I, 56.

di Pictro Areti?IQ e Anton FT-co Doni, 944. This perhaps shows the influence of Machiavelli who argued that it would be easier to set up a republic amongst montmuni rather than townspeople, just as ‘uno scultore t rad piii facilmente una bella statua d’un marmo rozzo, che d’uno male abbozzato da altrui’; Discorsi, I, xviii, 6.

‘’

Is Cf. L. Firpo, ‘L‘utopia nel Rinascimento (1450-1550)’, Studi Stmici, 7 (1966). 689-707. Sm’tti scelti di Pietro Aretino c di Anton Frrmcesco h i , 478.

Don’s satirical utopia 473

quality of the text, dismissing it for a supposed lack of meaning, while it is, if anything, too concentrated in meaning and in the ramifications that it offers. While it is true that many points need to be expanded on, overall the mmfo suvio is a more complex and more original work than the other contemporary Italian utopias, and its composition is one of those flashes of artistic ability that can be found in Doni’s work, a considerable achievements given the conditions in which he had to work.

Glasgow