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Jacob Burckhardt
La civiltà del Rinascimento in Italia. Un tentativo di interpretazione [The Civilization of The Renaissance in Italy. Attempting an Interpretation]
Edited by Maurizio Ghelardi
Nino Aragno Publisher, 2006
Isbn 88-8419-290-0
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| Jacok Burckardt in the 1890s |
[1] In 1860 Jacob Burckhardt publishes in Basel the first edition of his Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. A second edition in German will appear in Leipzig in 1869. The first Italian translation of the work dates back to 1876, edited by Domenico Valbusa; it is based on the second German edition, but takes account of indications and additions specially sent by Burckhardt to Valbusa. All Italian editions published to date are conducted from the version provided by Valbusa. In this sense the present volume is of particular interest, because it provides the first Italian translation conducted on the first German printed edition of 1860.
[2] The translation proposed by Ghelardi fits, moreover, in an operation of much larger breath. For the first time, in fact, the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is flanked (in another volume) by the Italian translation of the Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien (History of Renaissance in Italy), a work that, in the intentions of Burckhardt, had to be complementary to the Civilization of the Renaissance and was published only in a still plenty incomplete version,
[3] Text of the strip :
"After having published The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien) in 1860, Jacob Burckhardt proposed himself to complete the overall design on Italy Renaissance, which he had exposed in some conferences in 1858, with a second part on the art of Italian Renaissance.
The entire project, found manuscript among the papers of the Basel scholar, is published here for the first time in its entirety, together with a new translation of the first edition of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.
More than a century later, and as a first print ever, the Italian reader can gain the full reconstruction of this major project, in which the works of artists, historians and scholars are analysed in relation "to the tasks they had to perform", and in relation to " the conditions of a cultural tradition", which the author believes to be the foundation of European civilization.
This new (and unpublished) edition does not only shed a new light on the genesis and content of one of the classics of Renaissance historiography, but also provides an important contribution to understand that, for Burckhardt, “to merge history of the culture and history of art”, to conceive Renaissance as "the mother and the father of the modern man both in thought as in the construction of forms" was also an attempt to investigate and reflect on what he thought was the political and cultural destiny of his own time.
… the critical edition of the works of Jacob Burckhardt, planned in 28 volumes, is being published by the editors of Monaco Beck and Schwabe in Basel.
Maurizio Ghelardi is one of the curators of this edition."
[4] It is reported below the review published on the Sunday edition of the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore dated 21.10.2007, a few months after the release of the work (the original article - signed by Giulio Busi - is stored within the volume).
Jacob Burckhardt
The severe inventor of Renaissance
by Giulio Busi
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| Sandro Botticelli, Allegory of Spring |
It is not true that culture does not pay. In the end, one thousands Swiss francs are still a lot of money, and right there, on the note printed by the Swiss National Bank, stands the austere face of Jacob Burckhardt, the "inventor" of Renaissance. Burckhardt was, moreover, a protagonist of the Swiss intellectual life in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the University of Basel, where he taught for almost forty years, could claim the contribution of other names of great calibre, such as Friedrich Nietzsche.
By a curious paradox, the rediscovery of the distinctive Italian nature of Renaissance came from this Protestant erudite of German language, looking to Italy with a passionate scepticism. All Burckhardt’s work is an oxymoron of style and thought: a cautious work, almost icy in his judgments, yet animated by a profound astonishment at that strange people of the South, capable of turning the most ferocious selfishness into a creative miracle.
The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, published for the first time in 1860, has practiced a real scientific dictatorship for over a hundred years. You cannot imagine the Renaissance without these demanding pages. Even the critical review of recent decades has really never freed us from Burckhardt, from his tormented classicism, always ready to transmute itself into a late-romantic rêverie [note of the translator: day-dream].
The best way to understand Burckhardt, and at the same time to "get rid" of him, is to read him again today as a monument of the nineteenth century in search of himself. "The fundamental phenomenon of our time is the feeling of temporariness ... – it wrote the great Basel citizen - ; as soon as we rub our eyes, we realise ... to be on one of the millions of waves set in motion by the Revolution." Yes: at the Renaissance Burckhardt had arrived to attempt to understand, and possibly repair, the epic fracture of the French Revolution. Naturally averse to what he thought was a dangerous revolutionary egalitarianism, Burckhardt sought to identify the genetic code of modern man, that audacious Prometheus who claims the right to grab the becoming with his own hands.
As expected, for the Swiss professor all trouble had started South of the Alps. But these were still charming troubles, full of intense hues like a sentimental diary of the Grand Tour [note of the translator: a journey across Europe at the search of cultural identity]. Burckhardt wrote in the years since the reunification of the Italian peninsula, when Italy, a great sleeping nation in Europe, was turning into a prodigy of modernity. Across the continent, and even beyond the ocean, a new interest spread for our country, no longer seen as a simple deposit of art works, but as a vital culture, and indeed as a model to imitate.
To this nineteenth century fashion the book Burckhardt contributed in a decisive way, in making the educated middle classes aware of the glories of Italy-based individualism: "This awesome people! This birth right of Europe ... Alfieri’s words are still valid: Italy is the country where the ‘plant of a man’ succeeds growing better than anywhere else." A vigorous plant, which, however, according to Burckhardt, had taken roots in a desperate reality of anarchy and oppression. His descriptions of Italian city states in the fourteenth-fifteenth century, full of conspiracies, poisoning, and fratricide crimes, often achieve the tones of fiction. He believed, however, that exactly the collective perception of illegality and uncertainty of social life had given birth to a lucid analysis capacity (i.e. the objective science of reality), together with a subjective (and equally revolutionary) capacity of self-consciousness. Surviving and thriving in conditions of extreme social instability meant for the men of the Renaissance developing a new perception of human action, based on the adequacy between means and ends.
The beautiful edition, curated by Maurizio Ghelardi for Aragno Publishers, combines the Civilization of the Renaissance with a ponderous volume on the arts of the Renaissance, so far unpublished in Italian. Methodical to the extreme, the art historian Burckhardt is perhaps less glamorous than the dowser of individualism, but having access to his work in its entirety makes us better appreciate his ambitious project.
Of course, many ideas now appear aged: for example, his belief that Renaissance was essentially a secular movement to free from religion; or his conviction that it has developed almost exclusively in major centres, particularly in Florence. Despite this, for anyone who shares the view that history should be first and foremost a story of "the man who suffers, who yearns and acts", the old man drawn on a thousand Swiss francs note is still a great guide.
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