PORTRAIT OF MACHIAVELLI
369
For
all
these reasons I refuse to believe that Machiavelli, who
was elsewhere so keen in evaluating good and bad politics, could have
intended explicitly to write the
Prince
in reference to the final chap–
ter. Or that the patriotism and indignation against the barbarians
which undeniably enliven the last chapter, serve also as scaffolding
for the remaining twenty-five. I do believe that the last chapter is
indeed what it wants to appear to be, an exhortation to liberate
and unify Italy; and that all the rest of the
Prince
is instead a kind
of logical, rigorously inevitable, cruel outburst of M.achiavelli's moral
passion. But far from there being a contradiction here, these two
parts-so different in inspiration, in substance-are bound together
by a bond that is primarily psychological.
The bond, in my opinion, is to be sought in the soul of Machia–
velli. That is, in the intrinsic weakness of the man, exhausted as I
have said in respect to ethical values, and yet unable to recognize
this exhaustion-a recognition that would have been a source of
strength, and which in personages like Valentino would have trans–
lated itself immediately into action. Somehow, for all his realistic
sense, Machiavelli failed to feel pride in his abnormality. Probably
there was a residue of a Christian conscience which did not allow him
to arrive at the final consequences of certain theories he had formu–
lated. A Machiavelli really worthy of the accusation of Machiavel–
lianism would have closed the
Prince
with chapter twenty-five, thus
giving us a book which was beautiful rather than wise, perfect rather
than useful, lived and experienced rather than thought through–
a real Medusa's head which would have fascinated and confused
uncomprehending readers for centuries. A Machiavelli who was a
poet and not a practical thinker would have been satisfied to deal
with the fantastic figure of the Prince in an indestructible prose. But
Machiavelli had written the
Prince
not out of a conscious Machia–
vellianism or the conscious wish to condense into one book all that
he had learned and practiced during his years as a professional in
politics; nor with the instinct of a poet who observes with delight
and cherishes a terrible figure in a wholly aesthetic atmosphere. In–
stead, as I have already said, he wrote in order to drag himself up
from the mire of indifference, to prove to himself that he was alive,
to hurt himself and feel the pain. For such a Machiavelli,
under~
mined as he was by this autobiographical situation, there had to be
a catharsis, as a conclusion of the almost voluptuous wallowing in his
