"Machiavelli, Niccolo - Prince, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Machiavelli Niccolo)

should be elevated into a living moral force, capable of inspiring the
people with a just recognition of the fundamental principles of
society; to this "high argument" "The Prince" contributes but little.
Machiavelli always refused to write either of men or of governments
otherwise than as he found them, and he writes with such skill and
insight that his work is of abiding value. But what invests "The
Prince" with more than a merely artistic or historical interest is the
incontrovertible truth that it deals with the great principles which
still guide nations and rulers in their relationship with each other
and their neighbours.

In translating "The Prince" my aim has been to achieve at all costs an
exact literal rendering of the original, rather than a fluent
paraphrase adapted to the modern notions of style and expression.
Machiavelli was no facile phrasemonger; the conditions under which he
wrote obliged him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his
substance grave, his manner nobly plain and serious. "Quis eo fuit
unquam in partiundis rebus, in definiendis, in explanandis pressior?"
In "The Prince," it may be truly said, there is reason assignable, not
only for every word, but for the position of every word. To an
Englishman of Shakespeare's time the translation of such a treatise
was in some ways a comparatively easy task, for in those times the
genius of the English more nearly resembled that of the Italian
language; to the Englishman of to-day it is not so simple. To take a
single example: the word "intrattenere," employed by Machiavelli to
indicate the policy adopted by the Roman Senate towards the weaker
states of Greece, would by an Elizabethan be correctly rendered
"entertain," and every contemporary reader would understand what was
meant by saying that "Rome entertained the Aetolians and the Achaeans
without augmenting their power." But to-day such a phrase would seem
obsolete and ambiguous, if not unmeaning: we are compelled to say that
"Rome maintained friendly relations with the Aetolians," etc., using
four words to do the work of one. I have tried to preserve the pithy
brevity of the Italian so far as was consistent with an absolute
fidelity to the sense. If the result be an occasional asperity I can
only hope that the reader, in his eagerness to reach the author's
meaning, may overlook the roughness of the road that leads him to it.

The following is a list of the works of Machiavelli:

Principal works. Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa, 1499; Del modo di
trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati, 1502; Del modo tenuto
dal duca Valentino nell' ammazzare Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da
Fermo, etc., 1502; Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro, 1502;
Decennale primo (poem in terza rima), 1506; Ritratti delle cose dell'
Alemagna, 1508-12; Decennale secondo, 1509; Ritratti delle cose di
Francia, 1510; Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, 3 vols.,
1512-17; Il Principe, 1513; Andria, comedy translated from Terence,
1513 (?); Mandragola, prose comedy in five acts, with prologue in
verse, 1513; Della lingua (dialogue), 1514; Clizia, comedy in prose,