Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, reviled by many, may be the most important book ever written about Power and Leadership

 

The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli (1532)

            Where can I begin? It is hard to say when it comes to the  diplomat, politician and writer Nicolo Machiavelli.  For one, he lived at a time of great tumult in the peninsula we now refer to as Italy.  City-states would war against each other.  Princes from foreign countries would take turns assisting and then attacking various fiefdoms and principalities.  Naples hated Florence.  Pisa hated Naples. The Tuscans hated Pisa.  It was endless.  Nicolo Machiavelli, considered a good public servant, was at times placed in powerful and prestigious political positions, where he availed himself very well.  When revolts happened, as they so often did back then, Nicolo would end up displaced and exiled, only to be asked back by a new leadership.  Eventually, Nicolo Machiavelli was arrested and placed in custody.  He was a middle-aged man at that time, and this is when he began to write the works we know him for today.  Preeminent among them is The Prince, an amazing work of political genius, detailing the lessons Nicolo learned watching, assisting, and escaping from, various princes and kings.

            I learned all of the above once I started reading The Prince, as I did some research into Nicolo Machiavelli’s life.  I mention this because the general knowledge I had on Machiavelli was nearly complete hyperbole.  The name Machiavelli, and the term “Machiavellian,” have come to signify a person without scruples, willing to do anything, even hurt his own people, in order to gain and keep power.  This is a massive over-simplification of what Machiavelli states in his book.  It helps to understand that Nicolo Machiavelli did not begin to write the works we know him for until a regime change in his home forced him into incarceration.  It was as a prisoner that he focused his thoughts and had the time to write, distilling the chaos of the warring nations of Europe and the Italian city-states, as well as the various traits witnessed in the countless princes, kings, regents, governors, etc. whose fortunes rose and fell with the political tide.

            During his incarceration, Machiavelli had time to process his experiences.  Using the books he brought with him, he proceeded to distill the wisdom learned during a lifetime of study and civic duty.  The work that ensued, The Prince, is a masterpiece of political wisdom.

            The first chapters are devoted to explaining the different types of state, and how they are acquired.  He describes the two basic ones, Republics and Principalities, and goes into greater detail about the principalities.  Machiavelli discusses hereditary principalities, those received through a family line, and describes how these type of states have the least difficulty in being held by their prince.  The country and people are long-accustomed to the reigning family, and will continue to support the Prince, unless he is of an extremely low character. 

Mixed principalities are also discussed.  These arise either as new states, or as part of an older country that has decided to form its own government.  New leaders burden the people, forcing them to accommodate strangers, feed invader armies, etc.  Many enemies are created, both the locals who have seen their leaders killed and replaced, and the previous enemies of the new prince, who rail at seeing the prince gain new territory and wealth.  This makes for a very unsteady prince, ripe for revolution, or invasion.  Referring to a new principality located in a foreign land with foreign language, Machiavelli suggests it is far better to create a colony than to erase the old rule completely.  The successful new prince will relocate himself to the new land, to better allow the people to see him, and to better cut off any rise in revolt.  The new prince should make himself the defender and leader of the less powerful neighbors as well, for this keeps a new foreigner from taking over once the people are fed up with the latest prince.

Machiavelli, often in this book, will distill his ideas into statements that, when read out of context, seem like the stereotypical “Machiavellian” ideas.  For example, in discussing the situation explained above, Machiavelli states the following, “…one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”  This seems cold and calculating, but the mind and decisions of a prince cannot be held to the same morality as that of a peasant.  The enemies of a common person can cause much harm, but the enemies of a prince can destroy whole nations.

In reference to the mighty Roman Empire, Machiavelli states that the reason the empire lasted so long, and was able to annex and absorb countries and peoples from far and wide, was because, for the most part, Rome was not a conqueror of nations.  Rome, instead, would be asked to come take over a region, which they would do via the use of colonial methods.  They would support the neighboring states, but not let them get too powerful.  They kept down the greater powers of their strong enemies, and never allowed them to gain any authority.  The Romans, foreseeing trouble, would immediately take action, never letting any resentment breed into revolution.

Throughout the Prince, Machiavelli provides detailed examples from history.  During his life, France had detached itself from the Roman Catholic Church, which caused the church to rise in power in the neighboring states of Spain and Italy.  The church then helped the princes of Spain and Italy attack France at every turn.  Machiavelli states the following, “From this a general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.”

There are too many examples throughout human history showing this to be a truth. New leaders distrust those that helped them achieve their goal, for they may very easily help someone else replace them.  The true genius of Machiavelli was his ability to distill wisdom and experience down to the bare bones.  The most complex of ideas are shared in a way that allows us, nearly half a millennia later, to understand the concepts in a rich and subtle manner.

Machiavelli discusses how and why princes use soldiers and mercenaries.  He details why homegrown soldiers are always preferable, and gives examples of lords and princes whose demise came about due to their injudicious use of their armies.  For example, a chapter is devoted to the ways that the descendants of Alexander managed to maintain control of the kingdom taken from Darius after the great Alexander’s death.  Other chapters explain the difference in holding a kingdom won by one’s own arms and people, a kingdom won by the use of other’s arms and people, or a kingdom won by wickedness. 

Just as there are many ways to gain power, there are an equal number of ways to lose it.  Machiavelli goes into great detail discussing the many issues princes must face and the best ways to handle them.  It is here that many interpreters and readers seem to misunderstand Machiavelli’s intent.  Much like the naturalist who seeks to describe the life of an apex predator, (and most princes and lords are indeed apex predators), Machiavelli needs to explain in an unbiased and, to modern ears, callous manner exactly what works and does not work in maintaining a kingdom.  He is not discussing how to best be a “good” king.”  He is merely expounding on how to best become, and stay, a king. 

A normal person’s actions may affect a few dozen people, but a prince’s actions affect whole nations.  There is not one decision that a prince makes that does not injure someone, either by actual physical, fiduciary, or psychological harm.  Choosing an ambassador, for instance, can grant a person great prestige and rank, but, to those considered but not chosen for the position, enmity and hate can and do arise.  Deciding to send aid to an ally can enrage the people of one’s kingdom who are hungry, or desperate.  Marrying a princess from one nation can cause another nation to wage war on you.  It is for these situations, unusual or unknown to the common man, that Machiavelli applies his wisdom.

A key chapter discusses whether it is best to be loved or feared as a leader.  Machiavelli does not hold back.  Even though love is the Christian virtue, and what all men should seek to share and spread amongst each other, a prince that is loved is in a far more tenuous position than one who is feared.  All it takes is one mistake, one error in judgement, one scandal, and the people whose love was taken for granted can and do turn on a leader with vehemence.  A prince who is loved has a hard time determining who may be lying or plotting.  A prince who is a fair man, but harsh in his punishments, will come to be feared and respected.  The fear comes from an honest place of not wanting to offend or draw the ire of the prince.  The trick for both loved and feared leaders is to work hard to make certain that the fear or love does not transmute into Hate.  A hated prince is in the worst position, for both his allies and enemies can easily find common ground.  There is no safety for a hated prince.  If lucky he may just get deposed, but for the most part, hated leaders end up in tragedy.  They are tortured and killed.  Their families are killed.  Their friends are killed.  Those in the government that worked closely with them are killed.  A hated leader will bring the worst out in humanity.

Machiavelli clearly states that it is best for a leader to be feared.  If not feared, it is better for him to be loved.  These are both abstract and concrete truths.  Machiavelli writes, “…men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”  Machiavelli was not an idealist.  He understood that man is driven by need and desire.  Most people do not care who their prince is.  They just want stability and fairness, regardless of who is in power.  They will only love you if it is to their advantage to do so.  Princes work by rules and so do the people.  A prince whose people see as soft or weak will have his wealth and power slowly and surely eaten away, especially by those closest to him.  A feared prince, however, helps maintain a level of order and place, for a subject must know and accept that they are a subject, just as a leader must know and accept that they are a leader, and fear comes with the territory.  We all know parents whose children pay them no mind, who lack the inherent respect a child should have for their mother or father.  Machiavelli knew that princes see themselves as the father figure for their nation or kingdom.  A smart prince will see that his children/subjects have a healthy fear and respect of his powers.

Frankly, I could write so much more about this relatively short book.  I feel I have just scratched the surface of the countless subjects Machiavelli touches on.  There are writers I have come across who use language freely, writing endless pages and chapters, merely to share a wisdom better served through a short, succinct statement.  Machiavelli is the exact opposite.  He brings so much knowledge, experience, and wisdom to the writing of the Prince that each sentence is loaded with meaning.  This is best type of writing.  It has survived to be read, studied, and pilloried these many centuries because of its inherent value.  Anyone who will rise, or seeks to rise, to a position of power, whether as a leader of a company, city, state, or nation, should read this book carefully.  It provides the most sage advice and profound warnings while sharing the best historical precedents.  There is no fluff in this work.  These doughnuts are all jelly.  I highly recommend this to anyone willing to ignore the cult of personality built around Nicolo Machiavelli.  It will expand your mind and provide you with a deeper understanding of the politics and power plays we experience today, almost five hundred years after Machiavelli laid it all down in his prison cell, (especially if you have just finished watching the series finale of Succession on the HBO). 

(This book can be downloaded and/or read here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm )

 

♦

Finding Meaning and Purpose, even in the worst of times, is what makes us Human

 

Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl (1946)

            In the past 6 years that I have published reviews of the books I read, there have been a few that dealt with the horrors of war as seen by people held in prison, concentration, and extermination camps.  In each narrative, the brutality and base evil that humans are capable of seems overwhelming, and unavoidable, but there are always people who manage to keep some semblance of humanity burning inside them, allowing them to continue to seek life where others seek oblivion.  This goes for both the oppressed and the oppressors.  Viktor Frankl was a doctor whose entire family ended up in the Nazi concentration camps.  Out of dozens of extended family members, only he and his brother survived the horror.  This book is not only an accounting of his experiences, but of how they shaped what he calls Logotherapy, his method of psychiatric therapy focused on the Search for Meaning.  Logos means “ideas”.  This therapy focuses on helping us reframe how we see the universe, our place in it, and the meaning found within.

             Viktor Frankl reached a very deep understanding of what it is that makes us human, and what keeps us moving forward in spite of insurmountable odds, or oppressive horror.  Because of this, he saw that what truly drives humanity to neurosis and makes life unbearable is the lack of meaning, especially during suffering.  In the early 1900’s, Dr. Sigmund Freud saw the source of man‘s neuroses as mainly rooted in failed Sexual development.  Other prominent psychiatrists of the era saw our neuroses as developing from our will to Power, especially what happens when the human is powerless over their own life.  Viktor Frankl realized something else far more important and pervasive.  Most human neurosis arise from the lack of Meaning in our lives.  He understood, and saw clear evidence of this in the concentration camps, that a human can survive, and maybe even grow, in the middle of endless suffering if only there is something which can provide meaning to their existence. 

            Some people find meaning in religion or spirituality.  Others find it in living for someone, like a child, or a lover.  Some of the people who managed to survive with their minds intact found comfort in helping those around them.  It does not matter what it is that provides Meaning in our life, as long as it is honest to ourselves and exists apart from us.  Humans need to know that there is something out there bigger than our suffering.  Dr. Frankl quotes Nietzsche often, stating the following: “Those who have a ‘Why’ to live, can bear almost any ‘How.’”

            Dr. Frankl provides examples of individuals from the camps who each found their own reason for why to continue living.  One woman, suffering from Typhus, kept a peaceful air about her.  When asked about it, she mentioned that she talked to the willow tree outside their barracks, and that the tree talked back to her.  When asked what the tree said, she stated that the Tree told her, “I am Life.  Life continues.  Life is eternal,” and that these thoughts alone helped her deal with her slow, agonizing death.  She could not even see the tree, just a few branches through a dirty window.  That was enough for her to avoid true despair. True despair kills, and it kills quickly.  Viktor Frankl describes how they could all tell 24-36 hours ahead of time when a fellow inmate would die.  They saw the signs, clear as day, that this individual’s will to live had disappeared.  Perhaps they smoked their last saved cigarette.  Perhaps they failed to wake up on time and slept all day.  Perhaps they stopped talking their usual patter.   In the rigorously regimented routines of the death camps, any deviation was noted.  It was not the pain that killed these people.  It was not the starvation, the beatings, or the terror.  It was that they saw no further reason to continue living, to continue breathing and waking up.  Frankly, this was the end goal of these extermination camps, to make the poor people inside realize they were subhuman and deserved to be exterminated.

            The second part of this book details Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy, and the way that helping people by adjusting their views on life and its meaning and purpose.  He describes many of his patients who had severe neuroses, and who he helped through Logoterapy. They received help in adjusting what they saw as the Meaning of their lives.  He also describes how the lack of Meaning causes neurosis. 

            For example, Viktor Frankl describes a study done among European and American university students.  The study asked the students to describe their level of boredom, to try and correlate why boredom leads to feelings of nihilism (that nothing matters, that there is no meaning anywhere).  About 12% of European students felt their life was meaningless.  About 60% of American students felt this way.  In Europe, social, familial, and regional ritual and tradition provide a framework by which European students frame their lives and the meaning of their lives.  These traditions do not exist in America.  Sixty percent of American students felt they had no real framework by which to assign meaning to themselves and their existence.  When a human feels disconnected from their surroundings, apathy abounds.  Nothing matters.  Alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual carelessness and deep rage fester.  Meaning is lost.

Why get up and go to work?  Why bother cleaning my house?  Why bother caring about anything at all?  These are all deep existential questions, and Logotherapy aims to help the individuals answer that for themselves, allowing them to understand that our lives are always a part of something greater, even if it all seems hopeless.  Even the least of us can find meaning greater than ourselves.  Think of the homeless man that still finds a way to feed a stray cat or dog.  Think of the political prisoner who uses their letter writing to achieve a greater end than just their release.  Think of the woman who suffer through a life with a horrible man, but still manage to provide their children with love and a home and a loving mother.  Why we live is more important than How we live.  We are all responsible for how we behave, regardless of the situation.  Even in the brutality of Auschwitz concentration camp, there were still some guards, although few in number, who stayed human, who still sought to protect the inmates, who would go out of their way, risking punishment, to provide some sick men extra bread.  They did not do these things because they thought they could change the system, but because it would make them INHUMAN not to do these things.  The very best of us live our lives for the greater good. 

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor E. Frankl

(This book is available for download as a PDF file here: https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/mans-search-for-meaning.pdf )

Céline Blows My Mind, Which is Awesome

Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1932)

            One of the greatest sources of information about books and writers that I am not aware of comes from the authors I read.  Charles Bukowski, and his raw, unvarnished views on the world around him, always fascinated me, and when I read a quote stating that Bukowski considered Louis-Ferdinand Céline “…the greatest writer of 2,000 years” I was intrigued, having heard mention of this French author whose style and mind helped set the stage for the modernist works of the 20^th century.  As I always like to note any synchronicities around me, soon after reading that quote by Bukowski I was listening to the Doors, specifically the song “End of the Night.”  Looking up the song I found that it was a reference to a Céline novel titled “Journey to the End of the Night.”  I had to go and find this novel, and see what all the fuss was about!

            We jump right into the story of Ferdinand Bardamu, a veiled double for our author, and his cynicism about the world he inhabits, France during The Great War.  While talking about the terrible state he and his companions find themselves in, with the war getting closer and closer to them, our protagonist rashly jokes he will join the army, as he has no other prospects.  The crowd’s patriotic fervor eggs him on.  He proceeds to fool around, joining a column of marching soldiers.  By the time he realizes that the cheering crowds have thinned out, he was inside the army compound and in the military.

            The novel jumps from there right to Bardamu in the middle of a predictably chaotic and pointless skirmish, and his cynical view of things stands in sharp contrast with the patriots and flag-wavers he encounters.  His superior officers are brain-dead nitwits, some seeking glory, and others seeking power, with no concern for the safety and well-being of the men they lead.  This is a point that Céline/Bardamu reiterates constantly.  He finds the war to be as stupid and vapid as the cheering morons who support the war from the safety of their cafes and parlors.

            We follow Bardamu as he proceeds to go AWOL, get discovered by another patrol, gets sent to a far-flung outpost in Africa, manages to find his way out of that, get “Shanghaied” on a steam-ship, and then make his way to the United States.  In New York, he sees the glittering lights, absorbs countless films at the air-conditioned movie house, and is overwhelmed by the massive amount of beautiful, young, energetic, hopeful women he sees.  Compared to the lifeless women he knew in France it was a big change. 

            From the moment he entered the military, Bardamu’s tale coincides with a fellow Frenchman named Robinson. They run into each other in the Army, again in NYC, and then again in France once Bardamu returns home.  Bardamu eventually ends up in Medical school, and becomes a doctor for hire in one of the poorest parts of the poor parts of Paris.

            Throughout these adventures, Bardamu lets fly with some of the wittiest and most caustic analysis of the world around him that I have ever read.  I can see why Bukowski, Heller, Beckett, and others were such big fans.  Céline lays bare every bit of corruption, chicanery, and falsehood that we all live under.  These lies and obfuscations help make our society function as a whole but they destroy the individual mind and will.  I would love to re-read this novel with a highlighter in my hand so I can mark every amazing sentence and truth.

            Céline was one of the first authors to make use of ellipses, jumping forward in time with no connective exposition.  Kurt Vonnegut makes use of this method in his novels, and I first found it in Slaughterhouse 5, thinking it was a very cool way to tell a story.  This is Céline’s first novel, and it was a sensation in Paris, with people discussing the crudeness, pain, and horrors that Céline describes casually.  In the Europe before WWI, the aristocracy and well-off lived their lives ignorant of the common masses and their troubles.  This book must have been one bitter pill for them to swallow, as Céline excoriates the people in power, showing their stupidity, greed, and self-delusion.  Not many novels before this one delved into such ugly things.  It really is a great piece of writing.  I am very glad the synchronicities lined up to introduce me to this book.

(This book can be downloaded and read in PDF format here: https://neoalchemist.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/louis-ferdinand-celine-journey-to-the-end-of-the-night.pdf

My first dive into Russian literature pays off

One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1962)

      The name Alexander Solzhenitsyn was known to me.  His place among the great writers of Russian literature was something I was taught as a matter of fact.  I knew very little else than that  when I picked up this, the author’s first published work, a novella that details the happenings of an entire day, from waking to sleep, of a man imprisoned in a Soviet-era prison camp.  It was only after finishing this oddly humorous book that I looked up Solzhenitsyn’s life, and learned that, like Ivan Denisovitch, he too spent some years of his life in a Soviet prison camp.  This came after he had served with honor in the Soviet military, rising to the rank of Captain.  His crime?  It was much like all the other stupid and tyrannical “crimes” used by despots to crush their people.  He was claimed to have made seditious statements against Stalin after his private letters were intercepted and read by the Soviet government.  After he was released from the prison camps, he turned to writing and this novella was the only one of his works to be published in his native Russia.  It is a sad shame that the writing that helped him win a Nobel Prize in literature had to be published surreptitiously in the West, and smuggled back into Russia.  Down with tyrants and despots everywhere!  Burn them all down.

      In this book I found a man who had become so accustomed to his life, and it was barely life, inside the prison camps that his every single thought, from waking to sleep, was concerned with his immediate concerns and needs, with no thought given to escape or freedom, and very little thought given to the state of the world outside the prison camp’s fences.  The tone of the novel reminded me of a Russian Vonnegut, the otherwise ordinary characters matter-of-factly resigned to the stupidities and irrationality inherent in the world they inhabit, finding cold comfort in gallows humor, and seeking every single opportunity to stretch the rules, gain a tiny advantage, or finding ten minutes somewhere to try and keep warm.  Nearly every second is spent by Ivan either plotting on how to make his current situation slightly better, or in watchful fear of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, or even looking at the wrong person for fear of retribution from the camp guards. 

      As Ivan tells it, there are very few moments of true rest for the prisoners.  One of them is the first moments of wakefulness after the morning alarm has been rung.  Ivan stated that, in these fleeting minutes, still in bed, eyes still closed, and his body somewhat warm, he was “free.”  There were no obligations for these few minutes, and he tries to make them last as long as possible.  One of the other times he stated he felt free and that his time was his own, and not the state’s, was the ten minutes he was allotted to eat his servings in the mess hall during breakfast and dinner.  The hour before meals was hectic, with lines, pressing, queues, counts and recounts of prisoners, all in an attempt to feed them in an orderly fashion.  That hour of stress was relieved by the ten minutes of quiet, slow eating.  The instant he was done however, the manic thoughts and worries return. Sad but true.

      As Ivan goes through his day, Solzhenitsyn has his narrator describe the nearly-fractal levels of bureaucratic bullshit that permeated every aspect of life in these Russian prison camps.  One small example is the numbers assigned to the inmates, and painted on their hats and shirts, making it easy for the guards to single them out individually from a distance.  There were several older trustys that were permitted to paint and touch up these white numbers on a black field, for a price, and theirs was a tricky art.  They had to make sure the numbers were legible, for illegible numbers would constitute a violation and ten days in the “cage.”  However, the prisoners requested that the numbers be slightly blurred, just enough that guards further than a few meters way would have trouble reading it.  It was a delicate balance, like everything in the prison camp.  This level of insanity suffused everything in the camps.

      Solzhenitsyn does an amazing thing with this novella.  As I read it and progressed through Ivan Denisovich’s day, I became filled with a dread.  Throughout the day Ivan had managed to save himself from bad situations, plan for the day ahead, manage to finagle two bread rations, get a little tobacco, find a piece of broken hacksaw blade, and lead a work crew building masonry.  I waited for the hammer to fall.  I expected tragedy to spring forth and engulf our narrator, for everything seemed to be going as well as it could for him.  This was not to be.  Solzhenitsyn is not after that.  Instead, he shows us a “good” day, but a day not unlike the hundreds that Ivan had before, and the hundreds that were yet to come.  In this way, it really hit me how BIG this novella was.  We humans can conform to nearly every horror, and assume it as our new normal.  We can go to work and see our fellow citizens be killed and mistreated, and we see it as the normal day to day life we lead.  This nightmare, this waking delusion, is what lies at the heart of all tyranny.  In showing us a non-tragic, normal, ordinary day in the life of a normal, ordinary man, Solzhenitsyn shines a harsh light on the true tragedy involved, that hundreds of thousands of normal, ordinary people were tasked with imprisoning and torturing millions of normal, ordinary people, all at the request of a distant, rich, and aloof government.  It is a great book.

     

(This book can be purchased here:  ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH )

(When Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, he was afraid to leave the USSR and go to Stockholm for fear of not being allowed to return.  He sent in a written acceptance speech, which is amazing and well-worth reading.  The speech is found here: https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1970/solzhenitsyn-lecture.html )

Following Aguirre's Footsteps Into Madness and the Amazon

Aguirre: The Re-Creation of a Sixteenth Century Journey Across South America – Stephen Minta (1994)

            As a whole, I am not a big fan of travelogues, although I do enjoy them when I happen to come across an interesting one in a magazine or online article.  The kind I do find very interesting, however, is the type that attempts to recreate a journey from history.  I know that people have written books about their attempts to follow great explorers such as Marco Polo, or the route Alexander took to India.  This cool little book is a similar attempt to follow in the footsteps of an explorer, although one far more tragic and brutal than Alexander or Marco Polo.  Stephen Minta sets out to retrace the path Aquirre de Lope, and the Spanish expedition he was a part of, took to leave Lima Peru and head out on the search for the location of the legendary, and wholly fictional, lost city of El Dorado.

            Mr. Minta is very well-read on this topic, having researched the topic extensively.  His insights into the difficulties faced by Aguirre and the others alongside him resonate with his and his traveling partner’s current-day experiences as they seek to retrace the route.  His view of the modern-day issues in Peru, from poverty to corruption to the difficulties of the terrain to the deeply inhospitable nature of the mountains and rain forests surrounding him also help to underscore how, despite the passage of time, the difficulties of governing and living in the high Andes mountains do not seem to change.  The jungle is ever present.  The heat is unbearable.  Roads and trails are sometimes destroyed by who knows what.  The smells of age and sweat and dirt and rot and death are always near.  If it is this difficult to traverse this terrain now, imagine doing it with hundreds of soldiers, hundreds of dogs, horses, and natives, all trying to make headway through what is truly a green hell.

            Lope de Aguirre is one of the oddest historical figures around.  He was described by contemporaries as a severely common, half-lame, unrefined, unattractive, overbearing, and illiterate life-long soldier.  Mr. Minta states that “there is no one who knew Aguirre who ever wrote a good word about him.”  That is a rarity indeed.  In fact, it was during the long and arduous journey across South America that he became even more of a monster, causing the following proclamation to be passed upon his death requiring that: “Wherever the said Lope de Aguirre may have left dwelling houses, these should be leveled to the ground, that no trace or memory of them should remain: and that when they have been so leveled, they should be plowed over and strewn with salt.”  That is something straight out of a horror movie!  To think that this lowly man wrecked so much shop that the Spanish provincial government had to make an example of him after his death is something unprecedented.  I think part of the appeal of Aguirre’s story is that it resonates with that most basic of American myths, the idea that anyone, born anywhere, with nothing to their name, can come reinvent themselves in the New World, even if it is to become a monster.

I am so glad that someone like Stephen Minta has braved the inhospitable Amazon basin to recreate this journey.  I would never do so!  Thank goodness for books.  I first heard of Lope de Aguirre due to the Werner Herzog film, “Aguirre, The Wrath of God.”  I highly recommend the film.  Herzog actually took his cast and crew on a similar, and similarly ill-fated trip through the Amazon to film this movie, and it appears that the spirit of Aguirre was very much alive inside Klaus Kinsky, the madman actor who portrays Aguirre.  The madness is evident on the screen.  Having seen that movie several times, the tale told in this great little book really came alive in my brain.  Being a city-slicker myself, the idea of leaving all I know to traipse through an unexplored wilderness rife with disease, predators, and native tribes seems like pure madness, but then again, it may have taken a madman such as Aguirre to even contemplate these expeditions.  Normal, happy, well-adjusted people do not normally seek to explore, risking death all the while.  Humanity must give thanks sometimes to the nuts amongst us.  They risk what we cannot.

(This book is available for purchase here: AGUIRRE )