Ridicule Part 2: Sprezzatura

The rigors of playing at ridicule bring us to the origins of an Italian word that I learned recently-- sprezzatura-- meaning "nonchalance" or "studied carelessness." The movie Ridicule exemplifies the meaning of this word, and how it was valued at court. A quick read on Wikipedia (where else?) lays out the invention of the word and a way of being and behaving that originated among courtiers. Although this film takes place in the 1700s, it's not difficult to see how sprezzatura has remained alive and well in some spheres of our culture today. 

Like the film's hero, we Americans are somewhat inherently earnest because few of us are descended from someone who came here on a whim. The young nobleman isn't going to Versailles on a whim either, just to see the sights and buy the latest fashions and trinkets, although he does do that as a social necessity. After seeing the travails and expense that our Sir Newbie goes through to prove his lineage-- which is required for his fitness to enter the King's court to present his case-- it's less difficult to imagine what many of America's first idealists envisioned: a more accessible system of representation to a wider population. While the success of that ideal is perennially debated, it's at least easy to see from this film just what kind of system they had grown weary of. Also, it's easy to see why Benjamin Franklin enjoyed his time spent in Versailles so well-- just look at the vixen again.

(When it comes to misleading movie marketing, the previous image is a good example. This actress does not play a vixen. She is the equally earnest and proper daughter of a medical doctor, who is trying to aid and assist our hero. The temptress in the film is actually an older and sophisticated courtier, played by the beautiful Fanny Ardant. However, this young Mathilde is also distracted by life at court and isn't completely smitten with Science at all times).

A bird and a bee in a Versailles garden

From the standpoint of creative endeavors, this film dispels the mystique of artistry as being easy and undemanding to a select few, and reinforces the knowledge that no one can do marvelous things without putting in a great deal of effort. When a desired effect is reached several times, then it can get less challenging and then stylish, but it is definitely not effortless.

The best stories about other people serve to help us recognize what sort of situation we find ourselves in, and what knowledge we need to navigate it. A brief run-down of the history of sprezzatura will add to the appreciation of Ridicule, and also to an apprehension of how pointless art can quickly lead to pointed artifice, along with the loss of one's spirit and place in the world. The original mission can get swamped by the machinations of ever-changing societal conventions.

Gallain de Batailles by Francois Joseph Heim, depicting the Palace of Versailles

From Wikipedia:

Sprezzatura is an Italian word originating from Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it".

It is the ability of the courtier to display "an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them".

Sprezzatura has also been described "as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance".

The word has entered the English language; the Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "studied carelessness".

The Occasional Critic: Ridicule

I received feedback about Liza, the Occasional Critic, that asked for more of her musings on movies, and so I will hand today's posting over to her. I didn't realize she had seen so many foreign films with subtitles. She usually seems too practical and busy for those, but she assures me that the best ones are worth the additional reading required for the experience.

On the 1996 film Ridicule:

Judith Godreche as Mathilde, a young woman more interested in Science than Marriage

While the cover art of the movie features a half-clothed beauty turning to us with a come-hither gaze, she is not the principal actor. Instead, this film follows the fortunes of a young estate owner, whose land has fallen into marshy pestilence. His servants are falling ill and dying, as is happening to other landowners in the area. As a single man, he is entreated upon and sent to the King's palace of Versailles to plead for a grant to have the area drained and restored to prosperity. The families have taken up a collection to add to his own money to finance his sojourn. His is a heavy burden, to keep his ancestral home and its people from being swallowed up by the bog.

What does any of this mundanity have to do with this vixen staring at us so invitingly? Perhaps she is a symbol of the distractions our uncertain but determined hero encounters, once he begins the ordeal of trying to secure an audience with the King. At this time in the court's history, having a biting and satirical wit was all the rage, as opposed to other times, when piety and waxing religious sentiments were fashionable. He is from neither extreme, being somewhat provincial, and so he needs to be brought up to social speed if he is to save his land. The court at Versailles is, of course, the complete opposite of this nobleman's estate. Everyone and their surroundings are bright, refined, progressive and lightning quick. Fortunately for him, it turns out that he does indeed have the rapier wit or l'esprit that men of this era were expected to display, to prove not only their intelligence but also their rightful earthly place. An aristocrat by divine right shouldn't need to try very hard to be dazzling. Apparently, the dazzle comes pre-ordained from the heavenly realm, even if it illuminates in a diabolical manner.

As a caution, this is a French movie, so there are a few scenes that may rumple our sense of propriety and perhaps cause some mild squeamishness. The first scene depicts an act of revenge upon an elderly man. A spurned courtier urinates on him as he recites an ancient grievance against his pride. The scene isn't necessary to watch in order to understand the story, but it does set the tone for how terribly seriously wit and style were taken in this time. The players of it have no sense of humor, because careers, stations and livelihoods depended upon refining the sport of Ridicule. As one columnist put it, about the times we ourselves now live in: "The World Turns on a Snark."

Continued in Part 2

An Accidental Elegy

A year has gone by since the death of my uncle, and my trek across country to honor him. The beginning of the trip was detailed in my story "Shining Light, Casting Shade" and was part of what inspired me to start blogging. It has taken a while for me to reflect on everything that trip meant to me, and I have nearly composed my thoughts on it, which touch on the always perplexing topics of "Who am I? What is my purpose?" 

I believe that those questions remain perplexing, even as we get closer to their answers, because life changes us. It is dynamic and requires constant course correction. Weathering changes may get easier, and a sense of self may grow, but for all that, I'm not sure that loss ever becomes less painful. No abstractions or words can ever fill in for a person.

Photo by David Kozlowski 2010 via Flickr

My uncle was one of those people who knew himself and his place in life so well, and was also well-known for how he had spent his time on earth. This made it easy to feel his legacy of authenticity as a priceless gift as I said goodbye. I have more thoughts on this that aren't yet settled, but decided to go ahead and share the poem that I read aloud as part of the eulogy, to mark the anniversary.

I wrote this poem several years ago, just to preserve a rich memory for myself, and had no inkling that it would become public in any way. But it showed up for others when it was timely and took its place with its own purpose.

The Benediction

Uncle Red rests one hand 

on the top of the wheel

of his metallic golden pick-up.

He listens to me chirp and chat

or stays silent when I am.

We gaze upon mellowed fields

ready for harvest.

We pass another farmer

behind another windshield.

Red smiles and steers as

he lifts one large arthritic finger,

the rest relaxed in a curve

and bestows a benediction

on his fellows

                                        -- Lizbeth Leigh 2011

© copyright 2015 Gilded Lily Press

Exceptional Excerpts: Louise Erdrich for Valentine's Day

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

                                                                                           -- from The Painted Drum, 2005

Image of the cosmos from From The Quantum Universe: Everything that Can Happen Does Happen
by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

"Consider the world around you. You are holding a book made of paper, the crushed pulp of a tree...Trees are machines able to take a supply of atoms and molecules, break them down and rearrange them into cooperating colonies composed of many trillions of individual parts... This assembly of particles is able to capture the light that has travelled the 93 million miles from our star, a nuclear furnace the volume of a million earths, and transfer that energy into the heart of cells…"

                                                                                                    -- Astrophysicist Brian Cox

Ol' Man River, Water of a Thousand Faces

Illustration by Erika Yamashiro 2012  

It's a gloomy Tuesday. Here in the Pacific Northwest, fog has settled, along with impossibly bright beads of rain on the leafless fingertips of Japanese maples. I have been having a hard time keeping warm today, getting chills. There is plenty of coffee or hot tea to be had, and the smell of cedar and pine to reinvigorate resolutions.

However, I was in the mood for blues or jazz, and listened to "Ol' Man River", which is about the opposite sort of never-ending day from this one-- sunstruck and hot, swelling with sweat and whiskey and resignation. It's The Sun Also Rises of the South.

Oh, Ray Charles. That carefully controlled voice had me in chills of the inspired kind, as if it had rolled right down every vein of hardship and out to the sea. Sublime.

or go to link on youtube