The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the First — Text and Context

But was the book worth translating? Would it not suffice to leave the few existing copies in their obscurity, and to indicate their value for historians by composing a critical treatise on the author and his times?

My own predilection for autobiographies, and my sense of their utility, caused me to reject this alternative. I decided to translate, and to illustrate my translation by tolerably copious original essays.

While engaged upon the work, I have not, however, felt always quite at ease. It has recurred to my mind that many readers of these volumes will exclaim: "An English version of Gozzi's self-styled 'useless memoirs' cannot fail to be twice as useless as the original!" Not all people share that partiality for autobiographies which in me amounts almost to a passion.

Besides, I had to face other difficulties. The three chapters which contain the narratives of Gozzi's love-adventures could not be omitted. They are too valuable for the light they throw upon his age, and too important in the man's estimate of his own character. Their suppression would have been unfair to Gozzi, and would have shorn his Memoirs of some brilliant bits of local colour. Nevertheless, I knew that the frankness and the cynical humour of these episodes are out of tune with modern taste. Much is pardoned by the virtue of our age to classics--to Plato or Cellini--which would not be excused in a writer of inferior eminence. But Gozzi is no classic. The fact of his neglect by his own nation proves that overwhelmingly. Why drag him from deserved oblivion if these love-stories are indispensable to the rehabilitating process?

My answer to this perplexing query was that the debated passages are good in literature, true to nature, sound in moral feeling. Their candour is the candour of a cleanly heart, resolved to bare its secret by an effort of self-portraiture. Gozzi describes passions common to that age, and ours, and every age; but he also shows how a determined character, upright and honourable, can free itself from the entanglements of natural frailty. The lesson may be somewhat harsh, but it is salutary. Gozzi has written no single word unworthy of a man of principle--nothing which is calculated to make vice alluring. Only one--

"Who winks, and shuts his apprehension up From common sense of what men were and are, Who would not know what men must be:"--

only such an one can take exception to the narratives of Gozzi's love-adventures.

Reasoning thus, I determined to include the love-tales in my translation, having already decided that no translation could be given to the world without them, and that the book was worthy of resuscitation. But I felt myself justified in removing those passages and phrases which might have caused offence to some of my readers.

To translate Gozzi with the minute attention to his style which I bestowed upon Cellini would have been unpractical. I should even have inflicted an injury upon my author. It is in many respects an annoying style; redundant, unequal, diffuse; bearing the stamp of garrulous senility and imperfect (though copious) command of language.

To condense and manipulate the Memoirs at my own free will, following the plan of Paul de Musset's abridgement, seemed to me unscrupulous, even if I abstained from that amusing writer's deliberate mystifications.

I resolved to convert the larger portion of the book into equivalent English, allowing myself the license of curtailing certain passages, and rearranging the order of some chapters. All cases of important condensation or omission have been indicated in my notes. My account of the Memoirs and the causes which led to their publication (Introduction, Part i.) sufficiently explains my right to transpose material from one place to another. Readers of the Introduction will perceive how carelessly and accidentally, to serve occasion, the original and unique edition was put together. It is due in part, I think, to Gozzi's indifference and haste of compilation that so curious a specimen of autobiography fell into almost absolute oblivion.

We have only one edition of the _Memorie_, that of Palese, under the date Venezia, 1797. Therefore nothing need be said upon the topic of bibliography. I may, however, mention that the few copies of this rare book which have fallen under my inspection present some features of difference, indicating the random way in which the sheets were made up for publication.

Among English critics of distinction, one only, so far as I am aware, has mentioned Gozzi's Memoirs. That is Vernon Lee, in her _Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy_. But Vernon Lee knew the book only through Paul de Musset's "perversion." Accordingly, what she has to say about the man is less valuable than the vivid, if not always accurate, account she gives of his _Fiabe_.