Selected Letters of Alessandra Strozzi

Modern Language Review, The, April, 1999 by Judith Bryce

Selected Letters of Alessandra Strozzi. Bilingual edition. Trans. with an introduction and notes by HEATHER GREGORY. (Biblioteca Italiana) Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. 1997. ix 252 pp. 32 [pounds sterling] (paperbound 12.95 [pounds sterling]).

Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi (1408-71) would be surprised and perhaps not best pleased to know that her private letters, written over a period of twenty-three years to her sons, who were at first in exile from Florence and then, after 1466, frequently absent from the city on business, were publicly available in the late twentieth century and destined, indeed, to reach an even wider readership through this first English translation of part, at least, of that correspondence. She would be further surprised to find herself in the company of the male creative writers who have featured so far in this bilingual series, her presence disrupting any more conventional view of the 'Italian classics' (to use the publisher's term). The names of Gene Brucker and Lauro Martines on the editorial board help to explain the phenomenon, which constitutes a very welcome contribution towards the study of women's lives and women's literacy in late medieval Europe.

Out of the seventy-three extant letters, Heather Gregory has translated thirty-five, in full or in part, choosing them for their power to convey an (auto)biographical narrative and to be illustrative of the attitudes, concerns, and activities characteristic of their author (pp. 7-8). As would be expected, the life events selected range from her daughter Caterina's engagement in 1447, through the death of her youngest son, Matteo, in Naples in 1459 and the protracted marriage negotiations concerning the others, to the births of grandchildren in the last letters, while the index is both revealing and striking in its inclusion not only of proper names but also of topics ranging from Florentine politics, breastfeeding, and constipation, to money, chickpeas, and plague.

As in the case of the recent Italian edition by Angela Bianchini (Milan: Garzanti, 1987), Gregory's Italian text is based on the edition published by Cesare Guasti in 1877, together with the single additional letter of 8 November 1448 first published in 1890, which Gregory does in fact include. With a doctoral thesis and publications on the fifteenth-century Strozzi, she is well qualified for her task and her brief introduction places Alessandra, her relationship with her sons and with her daughters, and the family's political, social, financial, and domestic circumstances, in the context of an array of excellent modern scholarly writing on the social and political history of this period (although should one describe the events of 1434 as a coup d'etat?). Absent from the final bibliography, however, are some of the few studies specifically addressing Alessandra (for example, those by Pezzarossa and Doglio and the linguistic analysis by Wanner). The notes at the end of the volume refer to the English translation only and, while not extensive, do assist readers by offering clarification as to the identity of the many individuals who populate the letters, and brief explanations of the political and other references.

Gregory writes, not surprisingly, about her 'considerable trepidation' in undertaking even a partial translation. Indeed, the letters, with their syntactic and other ambiguities, do at times cause considerable headaches. The translation reads well overall, although a more detailed comparison of randomly chosen sample passages raises inevitable quibbles as regards omissions, the odd dubious translation, or evident mistake. For example, on pages 46-47, 'e non avendo altra compagnia' refers to Matteo rather than to Alessandra; 'ordinare di andare in villa che ma' piu non v'andai' implies that she has just never found the time to go there rather than never having been to the villa before; 'abbiatemi per escusata' is clearly addressed to the recipient of the letter rather than to a third party. On pages 212-19 we have the unaccountable omission of significant phrases: 'e a me non pare ch'ella [her daughter-in-law] debba andare' following 'she doesn't want to go' (to the wedding of Lorenzo de' Medici), and 'per questo San Giovanni' in relation to clothes to be made for the daughter-in-law. Errors (or puzzling translation choices) are 'e che perventura lei sarebbe in parto' translated 'as she might still be in bed' rather than conveying the more direct idea of actually giving birth (pp. 213-14); a 'giornea' is more of an overdress than a cloak (pp. 214-15). A small flurry of problems arises on pages 216-17: 'Di' che arai a mente di pigliare forma e modo della schiava', 'Iddio vi dia pur grazia torniate sani', 'en su 'l pulito', and 'Si che venite a vostra posta', while 'si che e rincarato' refers to the price not of the textually intervening grapevines but of wine. On pages 217-19, 'novita' requires 'news' rather than 'revolt' in order to cover three separate incidents: a prisoners' revolt in the Stinche, an uprising in Prato, and an earthquake. On pages 218-19, 'in this land' seems not quite appropriate for 'in questa terra' in this particular context, and 'lunedi' is given by mistake as 'Friday'. One might also raise objections to some choices of tense, such as 'delle genti ci capitano assai; e a me tocca tutto' which is translated in the past (pp. 212-13) or to the omission of structural features such as 'prima ... poi' (p. 213). Lastly, on a point of register, there is the decision to translate 'albergo' as 'hotel' rather than as 'inn' (p. 161).