You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
taylorklong 's review for:
The Prince: (penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
by Niccolò Machiavelli
This is technically my second time reading The Prince - when I read it in high school I absolutely hated it. I hated its brutal bluntness, how dour and serious it was, and how it felt like it lacked any sense of poetry or what I felt was good writing.
But times have changed, and I have changed.
I've wanted to reread it for a while, in part because of a talk I saw Salman Rushdie give in NYC a few years back. He makes many of the same points that he makes in this video, from a talk he gave in California, but I recall him going into even greater depth at the talk that I attended, and it left me more interested in revisiting this controversial tome.
As an adult (or something like it), I get what Rushdie means, and I appreciated it way more on my second go-through. This particular edition, the Penguin Classics edition with introduction, translator's notes, and a modern translation by Tim Parks also helped with some of the context around the book and its origins. For example, many people read anti-The Prince literature before they ever had the opportunity to read the work itself, because the work itself wasn't properly published for a long time - and after it was, the Pope banned it. I also really appreciated Parks' translation, which breathed some life into the text and made it feel a bit less stodgy or rote than some of the others.
Some of the important context here is that Machiavelli was crushed by the very system that he writes about. He's not writing as someone who's exalted by it or thrilled by it - this is essentially his meditations on power and how it works, and boy howdy does it feel spot on, especially under Tr*mp's ghastly regime.
It was also particularly interesting to read this after reading Hope in the Dark, about the counter movements to this kind of power. There's an interesting discourse to be had about/between the two of them, as The Prince, in showing how authoritarian power is most effective, also reveals its greatest weaknesses. In fact, Parks discusses a theory held by some leftist/liberal thinkers that that was partly Machiavelli's real intent, to expose the ways that power is in the hands of the people.
Lots of food for thought in here, so for that alone I think this will definitely be something I return to.
But times have changed, and I have changed.
I've wanted to reread it for a while, in part because of a talk I saw Salman Rushdie give in NYC a few years back. He makes many of the same points that he makes in this video, from a talk he gave in California, but I recall him going into even greater depth at the talk that I attended, and it left me more interested in revisiting this controversial tome.
As an adult (or something like it), I get what Rushdie means, and I appreciated it way more on my second go-through. This particular edition, the Penguin Classics edition with introduction, translator's notes, and a modern translation by Tim Parks also helped with some of the context around the book and its origins. For example, many people read anti-The Prince literature before they ever had the opportunity to read the work itself, because the work itself wasn't properly published for a long time - and after it was, the Pope banned it. I also really appreciated Parks' translation, which breathed some life into the text and made it feel a bit less stodgy or rote than some of the others.
Some of the important context here is that Machiavelli was crushed by the very system that he writes about. He's not writing as someone who's exalted by it or thrilled by it - this is essentially his meditations on power and how it works, and boy howdy does it feel spot on, especially under Tr*mp's ghastly regime.
It was also particularly interesting to read this after reading Hope in the Dark, about the counter movements to this kind of power. There's an interesting discourse to be had about/between the two of them, as The Prince, in showing how authoritarian power is most effective, also reveals its greatest weaknesses. In fact, Parks discusses a theory held by some leftist/liberal thinkers that that was partly Machiavelli's real intent, to expose the ways that power is in the hands of the people.
Lots of food for thought in here, so for that alone I think this will definitely be something I return to.