Books & Reviews Archive

The book centers on Odysseus’s return to his home and is structured into four parts: the preamble, in which a council of the gods, on Athena’s proposal, resolves to allow Odysseus to resume his journey home by ordering Calypso to release the hero; the decision of Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, to rid himself of the suitors, who continue to frequent the palace and squander his father’s estate. After a futile appeal to the people to aid him in the struggle against the suitors, Telemachus journeys to other rulers to learn of his father’s fate and to discover whether it is possible to overcome the state of uncertainty in which he finds himself and give his mother in marriage, taking full possession of his inheritance; Odysseus’s journey to the Phaeacians, with the storm scene and the encounter with Nausicaa (the most beautiful pages of the poem) and the recounting of his adventures; the arrival home, the gradual unveiling of his identity, and the slaughter of the suitors. By many authors, the *Odyssey* is interpreted as the return of Ulysses (and thus of the traveler) and as an exaltation of his intelligence and cunning. In truth, it is a highly complex poem in which different narrative themes unfold and contrasting personalities are set against one another. A first theme is undoubtedly that of travel, and above all, of the sea. It is no coincidence that the most mesmerizing pages of the poem are those of Book V, which recounts the storm and the shipwreck of Odysseus: > A towering wave surged down upon him, with terrible fury, and sent the raft spinning round. Far from the raft he was hurled, and the rudder slipped from his hands: clean down the middle snapped the mast beneath the horrific blast of clashing winds, and far off into the sea fell sail and yardarm. Long did he remain submerged, unable to rise swiftly to the surface beneath the onslaught of the mighty wave... at last he surfaced, spewing from his mouth the bitter brine that streamed in rivulets from his head . > To the castaway, and more generally to the guest, shelter and hospitality must ever be offered : so speaks Nausicaa to her handmaidens in Book VI: > Halt, handmaidens: whither do you flee at the sight of a man? Do you take him perchance for an enemy?... Yet this is a wretched castaway who has come upon us, and we must tend to him: from Zeus come all strangers and beggars; and a gift, however small, is dear . The theme of hospitality is one of the dominant threads of the *Odyssey*, corresponding precisely to the collective feeling of a people of seafarers who are acutely aware of how quickly fortune, and wealth, can change. A second theme is constituted by the complex personality of Odysseus, well epitomized by Athena’s words in Book XIII: > Shrewd and cunning indeed would be he who could surpass you in all manner of deceit, even were it a god who encountered you. Audacious, fertile contriver, never sated with wiles, will you not even now, in your own homeland, cast aside your guile and those lying tales that have been dear to you since infancy? Come, let us speak no more of this, for we both well know the art of cunning . Ulysses is a consummate weaver of tales, and it is telling that his famous adventures are not related by the poet, but are recounted by Odysseus himself to the Phaeacians. Are they true occurrences or fairy-tale fabrications, like those he spins with such ease to the swineherd Eumaeus, to his wife, and to his own father? But who is Odysseus—a perpetual wanderer, a man by now accustomed only to fighting and traveling? It is extraordinary that at the very moment he reveals himself to Penelope, instead of embracing her and expressing his love, he must at once inform her of the prophet Tiresias’s prediction, according to which he is destined to leave Ithaca once more to undertake a new voyage and ultimately perish in the sea. There seem to be in Odysseus no feelings toward his son, his wife, and his father, who nevertheless suffered so deeply: the sole moment of genuine tenderness appears to be directed toward his mother, in the splendid verses of Book XI: > And thrice I sprang forward, my heart urging me to embrace her; thrice from my hands, like a shadow or a dream, she slipped away: a sharper agony pierced me to the core, and addressing her I spoke winged words: Mother mine, why do you flee when I yearn to hold you? . A third theme is represented by Telemachus and the intricate process through which, having grown up without a father, he is forced, in spite of himself, to become an adult. How different he is from his father!. He is full of uncertainty, of doubt, torn between love for his mother and the desire to reclaim his estate and his independence. The youth’s doubts render him a modern character, precisely because he is rich in intimate contradictions—the fruit of the conflict between his role (that of prince), his affection toward his mother, and the fact that he does not measure up to his father’s strength: he cannot string the bow! > By Zeus, not I... do hinder my mother’s marriage; indeed, I bid her marry whomsoever she pleases, and I offer her countless gifts. Yet I dare not drive her from the house against her will with a peremptory command: may a god forbid it! (Book XX), but then he must assert himself over his mother herself and finally become an adult: > Mother mine, as for the bow, no one among the Achaeans has more mastery over it than I... come, return to your chambers and attend to your own tasks, the loom and the distaff... Astonished, she returned to her chambers, keeping the prudent counsel of her son close to her heart (Book XXI). A fourth theme is embodied by the figure of Pallas Athena, who constitutes the true protagonist of the epic. Not only is Odysseus’s release from Calypso owed to the goddess, but above all, it is her constant counsel and guidance that allow Telemachus and Odysseus to act with due circumspection. We are not dealing with miraculous and incredible deeds (with marvels), but underlying the entire poem is the theme of intelligence and independence of judgment, personified precisely by Athena. In an article in *La Repubblica* of November 25, 2006, Book XXIII is commented upon, in which Penelope recognizes Odysseus. The woman seeks a secret sign to confirm that the man is truly Odysseus, for the waiting has been too long and she must be certain, > because Penelope believes in only one form of knowledge: that of secret signs, grounded in her own memory and that of Ulysses . To Telemachus, who accuses her of having "a heart harder than stone," Penelope replies: > My child, the heart within my breast is struck dumb: I can speak no word to him, nor question him, nor look him in the face. Yet if he is truly Odysseus returned to his homeland, oh, full well and easily shall we recognize one another: for we have secret signs between us, known to ourselves and to no one else . And when Odysseus gives her the sign (the bridal bed carved out of a great olive tree that cannot be moved because of its roots), Penelope recognizes her husband and "straightway her knees and heart gave way," and then both rediscover their former love: > and upon him fell an even greater urge to weep; he wept as he held close his bride, dear to his heart and faithful;... so longed-for was her husband to her gaze that she would not unloose her white arms from his neck .

We are in 1930s Italy, at the height of the Fascist era. In a small village on Lake Como, four good-for-nothings spend their time lingering in taverns and playing pranks. One day, as a favor to the village prostitute, they poison the pigeons that typically congregate in the squares and streets. One of these pigeons is given to an elderly woman, who dies from the poison. From this incident unfolds a whole sequence of events centered on the village *maresciallo*. He is the classic figure of the *carabiniere*: dutiful, stern yet pragmatic and sensible, attempting to resolve the locals' troubles by acting as a «benevolent paterfamilias». The narrative moves swiftly, buoyed by a lively, stripped-down style, weaving through somewhat absurd situations—such as a brother fretting that his skinny, pious sister might marry a friend endowed with exceptionally exaggerated sexual attributes—and singular characters, like the wife of the *podestà*, who believes herself to be three people in one and is constantly shifting personalities. The atmosphere evoked by the author is the familiar one handed down to us regarding Fascist Italy: an absurd regime, unloved yet endured, while at the same time paternalistic and condescending. The book’s greatest virtue is that it is a very smooth read, yet both characters and settings remain superficial and distant. The former verge on mere caricatures; the latter (Lake Como and village life) ultimately prove irrelevant. The deft narrative pacing fails to compensate for the vacuity of its content. Why not read it? Because it only makes sense to read it on a train, when one is thoroughly exhausted.

The novel is a skein of narratives, set across different times and environments, yet traceable back to two family stories. Mar is the daughter of Miranda, an Argentine woman, and a Somali father she never knew. Zuhra is Somali, the daughter of Maryam and likewise of an unknown father. They grew up and live in Rome and are Italian, yet neither knows what her mother tongue truly is, both feeling somehow suspended between two identities. As Zuhra says > mama speaks to me in her mother tongue. A noble Somali where every vowel has meaning. In mama's mouth Somali turns to honey. In Somali I found the comfort of her womb, in Somali I heard the only lullabies she ever sang to me, in Somali I surely had my first dreams. But then, each time, in every conversation, word, sigh, the other mother peeks through. The vinegar Italian of neighborhood markets, the sweet Italian of radio hosts, the serious Italian of *lectiones magistrales*. The Italian that I write . Yet the theme of identity, and consequently of language, is not the novel's dominant subject. The book unfolds around the theme of suffering and the rediscovery of oneself. Mar is a young woman who has lost her lover to suicide, along with her child. She endures a difficult relationship with her mother, distant and absent, forever locked in her own grief: she was once the partner of one of the executioners, of those who tortured and murdered so many Argentines, perhaps even the woman's own brother. Zuhra, for her part, was raped as a child after being abandoned by her mother, who for years sought in alcohol a refuge from the social and human destruction of Somalia. The tragedy of their mothers thus hangs heavy over both young women. And it is only through the telling of the harrowing trials Miranda and Maryan had to endure that the thread of the relationship between mothers and daughters can be picked up again, allowing the latter to find a balance of their own. Yet a physical space was necessary, a meeting ground; and this is found in Tunis, in the Arabic language school, where people from so many different worlds gather to study a language that unites so many peoples: a new Esperanto? Will language be what carries us beyond Babel? This is a complex book. From a stylistic perspective, the literary device of parallel stories demands a careful reading, as picking up the narrative thread is not always effortless. The risk of a fragmented narrative is, however, offset by the author's ability to deploy different literary styles: from the idiom typical of young Romans to an expansive and evocative prose, more suited to stories set in the 1960s and 1970s. The style brings into sharp relief the generational divide between daughters and mothers, as well as between the latter and their families of origin. The themes addressed by the book are manifold: the burden and the richness of holding multiple identities, the strength of languages as instruments of growth and social cohesion, storytelling as liberation, existential suffering—especially that of women—and the despair of entire peoples. The novel's center of gravity remains, nevertheless, womanhood, forced to exist in a world of violence and abuse: industrious women, often standing in solidarity, yet all too frequently victims and instruments of male power. Why read it? The writing is remarkably effective, rich in resonance; the characters captivate, the settings—especially the Somali ones—stir profound emotions, and above all offer food for thought for us Italians: a series of exquisite fragments.

Gee’s Bend is an arm of land, bordered on three sides by the Alabama River, where the water forms a sort of vast, arcing hairpin bend. To reach the nearest town, the "Benders" must undertake an hour-and-a-half drive or a fifteen-minute ferry ride—had the ferry not been abolished in the 1960s by the county sheriff with the following unassailable reasoning: > we didn’t close the ferry because they were black, (...) we closed it because they forgot they were black . Gee’s Bend is a unique enclave: all its residents are descendants of the sixteen slaves who settled this strip of land in 1816; geographical isolation and the land's meager appeal allowed the small community to remain untainted by the momentous social and political upheavals that marked American history: the Civil War, racial segregation, the Great Depression, Martin Luther King’s freedom movement. Even when the latter drew them in, holding them up as a paradigm of the exploitation of the African American people, the "Benders" went "over the river," as the great Black leader urged them, fought for him, and grieved his death, but then returned to their land, because > for a woman of color, descended from slaves, (...) the river begs to be crossed, and at the same time bars the way . Yet today this small community, now dwindled to a few hundred survivors, risks vanishing. The project of a new ferry will shatter its isolation once and for all. Moehringer deftly captures this moment, narrating it through the eyes and mind of a small woman of Gee’s Bend. > Mary is made entirely of circles. Her body is round, her face is round, her river is round. In Mary Lee’s world everything is round, because only at the end of something, of a century, of a story, of a sentence, does one truly understand its beginning. (...) She has spent her entire life in this timeless place. How did age manage to track her down? Through Mary Lee, Moehringer retraces the history of Gee’s Bend, interweaving social events with episodes from the woman’s life. It is a gentle, melancholic narrative: there are moments of revolt, there is immense endurance, yet the whole is steeped in resigned benevolence; and this not merely because Mary Lee > is a kind person (... if I can’t laugh and joke with you, if I can’t be nice and friendly, we might as well leave it alone) , but because > a lifetime ago Mary Lee counted on the river to protect her from those who were anything but friendly. (...) Her river is a strong brown God, (...) Eternal, Silent, Gives life, and takes it without hesitation. It is the force that shaped Mary Lee’s world. (...) There are people who spend their lives fighting against what limits them. Mary Lee was baptized in the water that limits her. To her it is a gift, and for what she has been given she gives thanks. This long story brings to mind a great Italian novel: *The Mill on the Po*. As in Riccardo Bacchelli’s book, here too the subject is the humble, the victims, and it is approached just as the conservative Catholic Bacchelli approached it: with nostalgia, as if to say life was better then, when one was isolated, schooling was out of reach, poverty reigned, and one suffered the abuses of white people, but at least one lived sheltered by the great river (here the Alabama, there the Po), in a tranquil, timeless existence. But history marches on, my dear Moehringer, and the exploitation of Black people, of peasants, of the "wretched of the earth" cannot simply be a trite occasion for folklore, for winning an undeserved Pulitzer Prize with a Hollywood-style tale. Why not read it? Trite; better *The Mill on the Po*.

The novel opens with a dream. The protagonist, Stefano, who is also the first-person narrator, is taken hunting by his friend Francesco among the hills of his native Piedmont. The woods are a composite of «cascades and pyramids of assembled nightingales», a paradise of happiness; and then, suddenly, the > treetops were mounds of tiny, corroded, greenish skulls, chiming sinisterly against one another by the millions . The dream foreshadows the overarching meaning of the novel, which unfolds between memory and present life, between violence experienced and imagined on the one hand and the «tangle of everyday things» on the other. > I must force myself to remember. I must try, because these memories lie buried, in bristling confusion and separated from me. I was fine, normal and cheerful and aggressive as long as I managed to live outside of myself . The country house is a significant touchstone for the protagonist, both for the nature surrounding it and for the terrible events that befell him in his youth: the death of his grandfather, the killing of a German soldier, his participation in the partisan resistance. Stefano now lives in Rome, a successful man, but a growing restlessness has prevented him from marrying, and he drags out a monotonous relationship with his now-former fiancée. The decision to visit the old country house together, where his stern father still lives, seems capable of rekindling their relationship, but the weight of memory is too overpowering. > I grew up among the dead, Lu, and I was able to put them aside, to place them far off, by dint of hoping for peace, for the shared and long-awaited victory... And today, it is only right that I return to scrutinize them at my side.... Don't be frightened, Lu, everything will carry on as before anyway, as it always has, even us! even through our own fault! . The return to the places of his youth is futile. «Perhaps, the author concludes, we shall have to submit to an eternal resignation». It is an illusion to hope that returning to the past might bring deliverance from the nightmares born of memory and the disillusionment of youthful hopes and desires: only living «in the humble dawn of each day», devoid of plans and dreams, can offer a measure of peace. It is a deeply pessimistic novel, wherein the writing achieves its finest expression precisely when it assumes lyrical and evocative tones, as in the depiction of the hills and the narration of dreams. In the background loom the momentous events of the post-war era (the bewilderment following the collapse of fascism, the Resistance, the failure to enact the anticipated changes), but what truly interests the author is conveying a sense of existential anguish, and he succeeds precisely through language, through a masterly command of adjectives and punctuation. When, conversely, he turns to sketching characters and constructing dialogue, one witnesses a faltering in the narrative rhythm, which turns monotonous and redundant. Why not read it? Certain passages are remarkably fine and address a highly topical theme: the disillusionment of contemporary Italy. On the whole, however, the novel proves tedious and prolix.

Hans is a young man from a wealthy and influential family who works as a clown and has been left by his girlfriend, Maria. A devout Catholic, the young woman could no longer live with Hans, who is fiercely critical of religion and, more broadly, of bourgeois respectability, and who cannot stand the Catholic circle Maria frequents. Hans turns to drink and finds himself jobless, alone in his flat, attempting to reach out to his friends, his father, and his brother. Met only with rejection, he decides to take to the streets to beg, strumming a guitar and singing liturgical hymns. The novel is heavily rooted in post-war Germany and, from this perspective, distinctly dated. Yet one theme remains universal: the rejection of a hypocritical and disingenuous society that refuses to accept the truth or tolerate any challenge to prevailing social codes. How can one react: with nothingness. > You tried to comfort yourself with Fredebeul’s stale left-wing cynicism: in vain. In vain will you have tried to get angry at Blothert’s stale right-wing cynicism. There is a fine word: nothing. Think of nothing. Not of the Kanzler or the katholon; think of the clown weeping in the bathtub, of the coffee dripping onto his slippers . The theme of nothingness is the novel's central thread, finding its origin in the figure of Henriette—the sister sent to the front to die, the young man’s profound wound, a bereavement never reconciled. Henriette would often detach herself, thinking of nothing, and remark that it was wonderful. Thus, the clown performances become a way of detaching oneself, of viewing the world from the vantage point of nothingness. The time spent in the bathtub, the waiting for the telephone to ring, the mask, and the vagrancy are all avenues through which the author pursues nothingness, thereby separating himself from a world—politico-social, but also personal—that he refuses to accept and that strikes him as monstrous in its vacuity. The narrative pace is swift, interweaving intimate introspections with conversations that are invariably broken off and disappointing. In some ways it recalls that of Javier Marías, with the difference that the caustic vein is far sharper, leaving no room for a gentle, reassuring irony. The narrative arc would seem to lead toward the protagonist's suicide; instead, he finds solace and survival in the clown’s mask, for only behind a mask can one live in a society ruled by opportunism and bourgeois respectability.

In the first canto of the *Paradiso*, Dante uses the word “trasumanar” to denote that transcending of human limits without which it would be impossible to contemplate God in all His power; then, as we read this cantica, we discover that the journey through the various Heavens will be a transformation of sight and hearing, so as to endure the light and sounds of the Empyrean. But what if, instead, reconciliation with oneself and with others took place along an inverse path, through silence and blindness? Since childhood, for the protagonist of this novel > the most mundane sentence revealed, with the transparency of crystal, perfections and imperfections, truth and deceit, beauty and ugliness. She felt ashamed of those sentences, which unraveled white as spiderwebs from her hands and her tongue. Divorce and the loss of custody of her son fling her into silence: > it is a cold, rarefied silence, like a shadow deprived of its own body, like the hollow trunk of a dead tree, like the dark space between one meteor and the next. The male protagonist, on the other hand, grew up in Germany and was diagnosed with the gradual, inexorable loss of his sight; he has returned to Korea, where he teaches Ancient Greek to a handful of students, among whom is our protagonist. Through the Greek language, the author seems to invoke Plato's Allegory of the Cave: in this famous allegory, the prisoners see nothing but shadows cast by the fire onto the wall of the cave facing them, believing these visions to be real objects, just as they take the echoes from passersby outside the prison to be real. Were these prisoners to leave the cave, they would discover that those objects and voices were mere illusions; we are condemned to an eternal obfuscation by our senses, philosophy will not save us, and reconciliation will not be attained through sight and hearing, through Dante's noble senses. The encounter will occur only when we entrust ourselves to the other senses, just as our protagonists seem to do: > with eyes closed, he brushes his cheek against her face, (...) kisses her mouth. The wet hair behind her ears, the eyebrows. Like a faint response coming from afar, the cold fingers brush his eyebrows and vanish. (...) Hearts and lips touching, united and eternally separate.  How often have I thought that our enormous, complex brain is a superstructure weighing down on human relationships like a boulder; that animals are happier in their naive immediacy. Perhaps this is what this novel means to say, placing Plato’s language at its core and recounting the strange story of a woman and a man who will ultimately love each other without speaking or seeing one another. Or perhaps it is simply too difficult for us Westerners to understand a novel from a culture and language so distant from our own. It is probable that the author intended to say something else, but this is what I seemed to grasp. Han Kang has enjoyed massive editorial promotion since winning the Nobel Prize. Reading this short novel, one cannot help but wonder whether this fame is due to actual literary quality or rather to an exotic taste, to the desire to discover an as yet unfamiliar country such as Korea. This question arises naturally in light of the lack of distribution of the novels of László Krasznahorkai**, of far greater depth and quality. (see the review of *The Melancholy of Resistance* on this site).** **Why not read it? Extremely difficult to understand.**

In 1919, Kyiv was contested by multiple forces: Anton Denikin’s White Army, backed by the Entente, sought to overthrow the Bolsheviks; the Cossacks under the leadership of the *otaman* Symon Petliura fought for Ukraine's independence; the Red Army struggled to halt counter-revolutionary actions and repel Polish claims over Galicia. Although the novel is set in a specific historical moment, the narrative seems suspended in a timeless world, projected into a despotic reality dominated by disorder and violence—as though conflict, devastation, and crime were the inexorable, immutable hallmark of the borderlands between the West and Greater Russia. A bloody act initiates the tale: the very saber that had killed his father severs clean off the right ear of young Samson; an ear that the boy miraculously manages to retrieve and place inside a candy tin. Samson is frightened and disoriented; left alone, he manages to carry on in a city deprived of heating and food, where everyone’s life hangs by a thread amidst abuses and killings. At that moment, Kyiv is controlled by the Red Army, and it is astonishing how ordinary life persists, and how the new authorities strive to prosecute thefts and murders (even though the "investigators of old" are gone), expend energy taking a census of the population ("three hundred questioning the residents"), persevere in the meticulous bureaucracy of the Tsarist regime (yet paper is running out!), and ensure the supply of electricity, even as the firewood is nearly exhausted. > This is the cacophony of the revolution: too many weapons around, zero security, and a hundred times more bandits and robbers! (...) All that remains are the signatures on the official reports! It is precisely bureaucracy that saves young Samson, providing not only a daily meal, but also a purpose to his solitary life. He turns to the militia to protest the requisition of his furniture, particularly his father’s desk, where he had stored the candy tin containing his ear. The fine penmanship and lucid phrasing of his formal complaint lead to his hiring in the investigative department. And from here unfolds a thriller, as young Samson is determined to discover the perpetrators of an atrocious crime. The police investigation intertwines with a love story; a census worker comes to live with Samson, yet between them there is only a whisper from the young man, "Marry me"—a word timidly uttered while the young woman sleeps, or pretends to sleep. With a touch of irony, Kurkov writes how > the closeness, unhurried by any passion, breaks the loneliness of young Samson, who feels in his dreams like > an exhausted hero, (...) while a half-naked nymph watched over him. The skillful plot and nimble prose cannot conceal the weaknesses of the thriller, and above all do not spare the reader a sense of disappointment. From the title, one would expect the severed ear to be at the very center of the novel. Through the ear, by some miraculous phenomenon, young Samson can hear from afar, distinct and precise, the intrigues and dangers looming over him. Yet this conceit is never fully exploited; and this is because the author has no intention of resorting to magical elements, choosing instead to remain firmly rooted in a narrative realism, which in turn is laden with a "melancholy anticipation" of something that might alter Ukraine's destiny. Why read it? With gentle irony, it recounts the fraught, agonizing history of Ukraine.

The poem narrates the events of the war between Charlemagne and the Arabs, tracing the journey of Ruggiero, progenitor of the House of Este, toward the Christian faith and his allegiance to the Carolingian king. Alongside Ruggiero, the stories of the other characters unfold, weaving innumerable tales—some grafting onto the main plot, while others appear as seemingly random digressions. From reading the poem, an immensely enjoyable and engaging experience, several salient considerations emerge: its modernity. The relentless pace of the narrative, the closing of each Canto (leaving anticipation for what will follow in the next), the interweaving of diverse storylines (reminiscent of a soap opera), the delight in imagination and marvelous, incredible events (an extraordinary succession of special effects). *Orlando Furioso* stands as a precursor to the prevailing approach in literature and cinema, offering tangible proof of how narrative quality can evoke and construct scenes and settings within the mind—unlike contemporary cinema, which demands a passive spectator. A close reading of *Orlando Furioso* through a modern lens would provide valuable material for reflecting upon and re-evaluating contemporary literature and cinematic production; the pleasure of the imagination. In *Orlando Furioso*, critics have often detected an ironic stance on the author's part toward chivalric literature: the renowned Ariostean irony. In my view, however, what strikes one above all is the primacy of illusion and imagination. Throughout the poem (especially in the first thirty cantos), one senses how much the author relishes creating fantastical, paradoxical, and extraordinary situations. And it is precisely from this pursuit of delight (of writing as an escapism for oneself) that the freshness and originality of the entire work spring; woman and femininity. The true protagonists of the poem are women, who consistently exhibit a strong, distinctively feminine character. Consider the figures of the warrior women (Bradamante and Marfisa), who, despite far surpassing men on the battlefield, display a sense of care and affectionate feelings that are quintessentially feminine. Angelica’s very choice to marry an obscure shepherd over Orlando, driving the latter into madness, seems to underscore the contradiction between the depth of female sentiment and the underlying vacuity of male conduct (dominated by pride and a rigid code of honor). The author clearly takes the women’s side, often overtly, and at other times allowing his preference to emerge through the characterization and the flow of events; realism toward politics. One often speaks of Ariosto’s discretion in avoiding burdening the poem with his personal circumstances and ideas. Despite this reticence, it is evident that Ariosto held a realistic and melancholic—yet not cynical—view of the Italian situation, and specifically of the rulers' inability to resolve the country’s fragmentation and its resulting subjugation to foreign powers. In this sense, Ariosto’s perspective as a "public official" surfaces beyond the author’s explicit intentions, offering a glimpse of a figure of profound stature who, unlike Machiavelli, confronts the subject of politics with realism, yet also with profound civic passion. It is therefore likely that the characters and their fates also symbolize political ideas, thus embodying messages that remain to be deciphered. The literary style is exquisite, with verse clearly derived from Petrarch, yet undoubtedly more accessible to read. Perhaps it is precisely this harmonious rhythm that renders it at times somewhat repetitive, especially when the events and the narrative pace fail to hold the reader’s undivided attention.