Bomarzo“[Bomarzo] is a novel that will make any reader happy.... [A] novel to be read aloud, with the whole family gathered around.” —Roberto Bolaño A lavishly written gothic historical fantasy novel that centers around Pier Francesco Orsini, the tortured duke of Bomarzo and creator of the Italian town’s famously bizarre “Garden of the Monsters.” Forty miles north of Rome, near the village of Bomarzo, Pier Francesco Orsini created a park of monstrous statuary in which the nightmares of the Renaissance stand preserved in stone. In Bomarzo, Manuel Mujica Lainez—one of the major Argentine novelists of the twentieth century—re-creates this dark and legendary duke as a briliant memoirist. From beyond the grave, in a city that sounds suspiciously like Mujica Lainez's own Buenos Aires, Orsini—who now knows his Freud and has read Lolita—looks back at the trials and travails of his sixteenth-century life. Bomarzo is a historical novel in the grand manner, a first-person portrait of a hunchback bullied by his family and determined to prove a villain. It is also a commentary on such historical fictions. But above all it is an immersive story told in a sumptuous style—like one of Poe's Italian tales rewritten by Proust—as Gregory Rabassa's translation beautifully conveys. |
Contents
The Horoscope | 7 |
The Uncertainties of Love | 84 |
The Appearance of Magic | 171 |
Giulia Farnese | 225 |
The Duke of the Cats | 281 |
The Portrait by Lorenzo Lotto | 321 |
A Wedding in Bomarzo | 358 |
Orazio Orsini | 425 |
The Accursed War | 502 |
The Sacred Wood of the Monsters | 563 |
My Lepanto | 623 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abul Adriana dalla Roza Alessandro Annibale Caro armor arms beautiful Benvenuto Benvenuto Cellini Beppo blood Bologna Bracciano brother brought Cardinal castle Cecilia Cellini Clarice Cleria clothing Colonna condottiere cousin crown dark death Diana Orsini dream dressed Duke of Bomarzo emperor Etruscan everything eyes Fabio face father feel felt Florence Franciotto Galeazzo gave Giambattista Gian Corrado Girolamo Giulia Farnese Giulia Gonzaga going Gonzaga grandfather grandmother grandmother’s hand Holy horoscope hump hunchback Ippolito Jacopo kissed knew ladies later light looked lords Lorenzino Lorenzo Lotto Maerbale Matteo Medici memory Messer Pandolfo Mugnano Nencia never Niccolò Niccolò Orsini night nympheum Orazio painted palace Pantasilea Paracelsus perhaps Pier Francesco Pier Francesco Orsini Pier Luigi Farnese pope Porzia princes returned to Bomarzo Rome Saint secret shadows shouting showed Sigismondo Silvio da Narni spite stone strange sword thing thought told took Venice Vicino Violante woman Zanobbi