Web of Lucifer

THE Renaissance in Italy bewilders because of the diversity of direction in which its enormous energies exploded. To many, it connotes an amazing development in the arts; to others, a new stirring in religion, philosophy, physics, scholarship, literature, statecraft, exploration, or in pure and applied politics.

It is the last-named phase to which Mr. Samuel devotes his primary attention. His is a novel of men of the Renaissance as political beings, the raw material for Machiavelli’s studies. In our aloof detachment it is possible to forget or ignore the contemporary passion for political intrigue and conquest which animated the Italian Renaissance, when any third-rate princeling with a handful of condottieri might aspire to incredible glories, but the men of that time and place could not forget or ignore them. Even Dante wasted years owed to eternity in the petty quarrels of a small city.

This constant political insecurity was part and parcel of the violence and turbulence of the period, of the brutality and cold amorality, in which all the people lived. That some scholars and poets and artists escaped it and rose above it is one of the strange phenomena of an extraordinary age. A time of seething energy, its fruits were as wild as they were diverse.

In Mr. Samuel’s story, the youthful Giacomo Orso of Picina, an intelligent peasant boy, is brought up in godly fashion but inspired with the dream of a United Italy. Across his path comes the glow ing figure of Cesare Borgia, young, brilliant, a soldier of soldiers, successful above other men — the born leader. To him. Giacomo blindly and loyally dedicates his life. In his service he learns and sees many evil things which he excuses as means necessary to the end. Compromising with his conscience, he comes hate the restraints of goodness; he loses his honesty, his faith, his honor, and almost his soul, and at long last comes through dreadful experience to see Cesare as he is, a man of genius but utterly vile.

The story of Web of Lucifer is as simple ns the story told on a tapestry. It is the background of the tapestry which is really significant. Mr. Samuel does not bring all his characters to life. He fails, I think, to make Machiavelli, for instance, more than a lay figure. Most of the time the reader is out of sympathy with Giacomo, but one does follow his downward rush with horror and pity. It is in the bulk and depth of the picture, in the careful reconstruction and presentation of an amazingly rich and varied scene, that, this book is outstanding. The wholeness of Weh of Lucifer is solid and foursquare. This is not merely an historical novel of obvious virtue and readability. It is a work of art done with entire integrity.
R. E. DANIELSON