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by Niccolo Machiavelli, translated by Robert M. Adams 
This Book Can Help You Change Your Life
Though much maligned through the centuries, Machiavelli's The Prince has certain practical applications, even to such travellers and dreamers as myself, who follow the scent of impossible visions to the place where they grow, like fruit on a tree, to partake of their strange savor. Robert M. Adams' is the best translation of this work into English, because of a simple device. The center of Machiavelli's work is the cluster of ideas represented by the Italian word "virtu." The translator demonstrates that this word can, depending on its context, mean many things in English: strength, ability, courage, manliness, ingenuity, character, wisdom, or virtue. To translate "virtu" with one single word as many have done is vague and confusing. Therefore Adams, with one simple device, has made the text much more accessible to the reader: wherever the term "virtu" appears in the original work, he places it in brackets beside the term he has chosen to stand in for it, in English. For example, speaking of the influence of Luck on human affairs in Chapter 25 (my favorite chapter, because of its beautiful imagery) Adams translates the Italian "Similmente interviene della fortuna; la quale dimostra la sua potenzia dove non e ordinata virtu a resisterle; e quivi volta li sua impeti dove la sa che non sono fattie gli argini e li ripari a tenerla" as "So with Fortune, who exerts all her power where there is no strength [virtu] prepared to oppose her, and turns to smashing things up wherever there are no dikes and restraining dams." Thus does Adams lead the reader to a better understanding of the work. I myself discovered this translation after a sedentary life, and it made all the difference between how I lived my life then, and how I live it now. I read it when I was in the hospital recovering from Dr. Voronoff's glandular rejuvenation technique, long touted as a means to renew one's energy. The infusion of new life into my tottering body, and the concepts in this book, motivated me to leave behind my sorry existence and travel the world. I always keep this work by my side throughout my journeys, and its magic word "virtu" has gotten me out of many difficult situations, even as it was the force that allowed me to get into them in the first place. Virtu was my wisdom, when I was unofficially detained by close mouthed bureaucrats in the Balkans, who eventually let me continue my travels because of my clever diplomacy; I muttered "Virtu!" to myself as I clambered for forty hard days up the steep slopes of the Andes in search of unclassified protozoa; virtu was my strength, when I fought and killed in self defense the leader of a tribe of Geladas, and became their new alpha male. I would never have done any of these things--indeed, I would not be here writing this--had I not read this work. It has been an inspiration to me, and the principle of virtu is one the most powerful tools in the bag of tricks I have developed as I have travelled the world. |
