Political Theorist

NICOLO MACHIAVELLI, The Florentine--Giuseppi Prezzolini--Brentano ($3.50).

Machiavelli has become little more than an adjective signifying ruthless scheming duplicity. The present biography makes it quite clear that a man is behind the adjective, a true Florentine who slung mud and cobble stones in street-fights along the Arno, swapped bawdy yarns over a noggin of wine, curried favor with whatever political power there happened to be.

The Man with a curled lip, Nicolo Machiavelli, watched the puss-in-the-corner competition of petty princes, watched hired captains of mercenaries scheming to prolong their lucrative warfare, watched Ludovico break the unwritten rule of the game and call in Charles VIII, Foreigner, to settle a local dispute, while all Italians smiled, bowed, tossed flowers in the French king's path, stones in his wake. With still more of a curl to his lip, Nicolo watched Savonarola hypnotizing the garish Florentine crowds into demure god-fearing citizenry, and the street gamins into veritable "boyscouts of the Lord." He suspected the Friar of charlatanism, perhaps because he tried to rationalize the colorful sermons that so inspired a people who felt, but understood nothing.

In 1498 Nicolo was elected by the Grand Council Secretary of the Republic of Florence, a lowlier post than the sound of it. For 14 years he compiled minutes, addressed envelopes, jogged ahorseback on 23 insignificant missions abroad, to say nothing of countless trips on domestic matters. Wherever he went he gleaned bits of information which he fitted into his political philosophy.

Of all the personages he encountered on these wanderings--prelates, merchants, scholars--the most significant was Caesar Borgia, whose unscrupulous diplomacy Nicolo observed, admired, immortalized in The Prince, treatise of political theory.

Meanwhile the futility of hired soldiers preyed upon Machiavelli's thoughts. By dint of pulling every known string, he was authorized to organize a national conscription similar to the system he had noted in

Switzerland. At the test of fire it proved a dismal failure.

With the ascendancy of the Medicis, Nicolo lost his job, was accused of plotting against the new rulers, banished to his poverty-stricken country villa. Here he was reduced to the boorish society of the pot-house--backgammon and trie trac with butcher and furnace-makers replaced learned converse with the intellectuals of Florence. Though he filled much of his time with wine, women, and oaths, he was forced out of sheer boredom to pore long hours over his beloved Latin--history, comedy, philosophy (translated from the Greek)--and set down his own political philosophy (The Prince, The Discourses), his own broad humor (Mandragola).

The Significance. In consciously picturesque manner, Author Prezzolini quickens hazy impressions of the man Machiavelli, details a rather commonplace life in a rich setting of mediaeval Florence, declares nothing too trivial to report of so great a man. But the essence of that greatness, to wit, the political theory which influenced Napoleon, Mussolini, remains unanalyzed but for the textbook generalities.