The Memoirs of Count Carlo Gozzi; Volume the Second. Gozzi Carlo

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1

Despériers lived in France between 1480 and 1544. He was servant to Marguerite de Navarre, and a writer of Rabelaisian humour. His two principal works are called Cymbalum Mundi and Nouvelles, Récréations et Joyeux Dévis.

2

The Orco was a huge sea-monster, shaped like a gigantic crab. It first appeared in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (Bk. iii. Cant. 3), and was afterwards developed by Ariosto, Orl. Fur. (Cant. 17).

3

This was one of Gozzi's own comedies.

4

These words have so much local colouring that they must be left in the text and explained in a note. A sotto portico at Venice is formed by the projection of houses over the narrow path which skirts a small canal or rio; the first floor of the houses rests on pillars at the water-side. A ponte storto is a bridge built askew across a rio, not at right angles to the water, but slanting. A riva is the quay of stone which runs along the canals of Venice, here and there broken by steps descending into the water and serving as landing-places.

5

See above, vol. i. p. 299.

6

The narrow foot-paths between lines of houses at Venice are so called. They frequently have scarcely space enough for two men to walk abreast.

7

One of Pietro Longhi's pictures in the Museo Civico at Venice represents exactly such a scene as this in the workroom of a tailoress. The beau is there, and the woman prepared for flirtation.

8

Gozzi had a distinct object in writing these chapters on his love-affairs. Gratarol's accusation of his having been a hypocrite and covert libertine lay before him. He wished to make a clean breast of his frailties. To suppress this portion of his apologia pro vitâ suâ would have been to do him grave injustice. The Memorie must always be read as an answer to Gratarol's Narrazione. See Introduction, Part i.

9

There is a good deal said about this man in Casanova's Memoirs.

10

The translator of this narrative has taken the trouble to make this tedious detour on foot. The quarter in which Gozzi lived, remains exactly in the same condition as when he described it. His old palace has not altered; and the whole of the above scene can be vividly presented to the fancy by an inspection of the localities.

11

The following paragraphs, to the end of the chapter, are extracted and condensed from vol. iii. chap. v. of the Memorie.

12

A magistracy composed of four patricians, who controlled the manners of the town in matters of lawless and indecent living.

13

Messer Grande corresponded to the Bargello at Rome, and was the chief of catchpoles and constables.

14

This chapter on Gozzi's contrarieties, which I have supplemented with a few passages from the incoherent notes at the end of the Memorie, has received undue attention from Paul de Musset and critics who adopt his untrustworthy version of Gozzi's autobiography. De Musset strove to base upon it a theory that Gozzi was the victim of his own fabulous sprites. See Introduction, vol. i. p. 23.

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