The Use and Abuse of Literature - Marjorie Garber [18]
I wonder if members of the Shakespeare Association of America had this warning in view when they set in place, many years ago, the social event known as the Malone Society Dance.8
Alberti’s treatise is full of such monitory, and minatory, advice. “For serious students all pleasures are a bad idea and harmful.”9 “[T]he odors of food and wine, and those of Venus, cause the senses to empty the mind and fill it with shadows, to spatter the intellect with dirt, to dull the powers of perception and to occupy the seat of memory with doubts and suspicions and with various amatory images that thoroughly perturb the spirit.”10
Furthermore, once one is embarked on this path—let’s call it graduate school—it becomes difficult to change course. “Once having started, you will be afraid to turn to lighter things and abandon serious study without some immense good reason. You will be forced to choose which burden you can bear with less harm to your pride, the frank admission that your mind is not good enough for scholarly work or the implication that your spirit and character are too craven to stand up under the strain.”11 Remember that this is advice to aspiring scholars in the fifteenth century—not today. Alberti is particularly adept in the use of personification, speaking in the voice of the books that might be used or abused: “When you wish to buy some clothes, isn’t it true that your library will say to you: ‘You owe me that money, I forbid …’ If you wish to pursue the hunt, or music, or the martial arts or sports, won’t the books say: ‘You are stealing this energy from us, we will not bring you fame or reputation!’ ”12
So much for pleasure. What about wealth? Scholarship is expensive and low-paid. Consider “those forms of ostentation associated with the achievement of the doctorate.” These include big sums “for clothes and university gowns, for a celebratory feast, even for remodeling the house and embellishing it.”13 The very spirit of humanistic learning is inimical to the goal of wealth. “No one who is not degenerate chooses to put elegant learning second to moneymaking. No one who is not deeply corrupted will think of making learning a form of commerce for his own enrichment.”14 Again, let me remind you that he is talking about Italy in the fifteenth century. Alberti’s time seems to have been a heyday for the public intellectual as pundit: “It is very well known that the man who wishes to make money from academic knowledge cannot begin to sell anything until he has proved himself to have some extraordinary level of knowledge. Hence we see them showing off whatever brilliance and learning they possess in speeches, disputations and debates, at schools and [universities] and public occasions.” For if they “get people to think that they are considered learned by the public,” this will, they believe, “lead more readily than actual merit to the earning of money. So they want to be called doctor and see men admire their gold clasp …”15
A life of learning, it seems, is likely to be nasty, brutish, and short. It is not until the advanced age of forty that “these covetous men can possibly earn money,” and how many can be expected to live beyond forty? (The Use and Abuse of Books was written when its author was in his twenties.) “If few among those who lead an easy life do so, surely you will find many fewer quattrogenarian scholars.”16 If this marks a difference between Alberti’s time and ours, so does another of his criteria for worldly success: the ability to gain wealth by marriage. The scholar cannot compete with the athlete or with the “nicely groomed and polished lover.” He should avoid marrying either a poor woman or a young one, since “youth is an age unfavorable to scholars and offers them little security.”17 If a scholar insists on marrying, he should choose “some little elderly widow.” (Here, in case we should mistake his tone, Alberti interjected an aside to the reader: “If I seem to be joking in this discourse about matrimonial