“I don’t understand,” he replied, intrigued.
“I will do everything in my power to explain,” came the ready, courteous, slightly sinister response. “I was not being quite precise enough when I referred to my feeling as delight. This miraculous language of ours that the great lover, Dante, made potent with his kisses is occasionally clumsy when articulating ideas. Delight is a common word, with a commonplace ring: it suggests a man rubbing his hands and grinning. I did not in fact rub my hands on hearing of your arrival, and I certainly did not grin: my heart simply beat a little faster and I felt the blood accelerate through my veins in a way that distantly reminded me of delight, to which the feeling I am seeking to name is undoubtedly related, for the same deep well feeds all human emotions, whether these appear as stormy seas or gentle ripples on the surface. J’étais touché, might be the best way of putting it, to adapt a precise expression from fencing terminology, a terminology imbued with human feelings, for fencing is an analogous language that you will be as familiar with as I am. The fact is that something touched me and the expression struck me as an accurate one, one that you as a writer — for that is what I hear you are, according to the rumors spread round town by your accomplice and familiar — would certainly understand and approve. I should say that the notion of your being a writer — Bolzano is a small town where no human frailty can be hidden for long — pleasantly surprised me; I have never doubted you had some special vocation, and indeed believed that you had been entrusted with a kind of mission among your fellow human beings, but I must confess I had never, until now, associated you with this particular vocation or role; somehow I always imagined that you were the sort of person whose fate and character was part of life’s raw material, the sort of man who wrote in blood not ink. Because your true medium is indeed blood rather than ink, Giacomo; I trust you know that?…”
“Your Excellency is quick to judgment,” he haughtily replied. “Artists take time and pains to discover the material with which they most prefer to work.”
“Of course,” the duke answered with surprising readiness and almost too much enthusiasm. “Pardon me! What am I thinking! You see how age afflicts me! I had forgotten that the artist is merely the personal embodiment of the creative genius that drives him, that he cannot choose, for his genius will press a pen, a chisel, a brush, or even, occasionally, a sword into his hand, whether he will or no. You will be thinking that the great Buonarroti and the versatile Leonardo — products of our cities, like you — wielded pen, chisel, and brush in turn; and yes, Leonardo, with his remarkable and frightening sense of adventure, even employed a scalpel, so that under the cover of night he might edge a little closer to the hidden secrets of the human body, as well as designing brothels and fortresses; just as Buonarroti, that tetchy and monstrous demigod, scribbled sonnets and plastered domes, and, my dear Giacomo, what plastering, what domes! And he designed arches, funerary monuments, and in the meanwhile, because he had time to spare, he painted The Last Judgment! There’s an artist for you! The human spirit swells, the heart throbs, when it contemplates the enormous scope of such geniuses; ordinary people grow faint when faced with such far horizons. Is that what you mean, when you say you are a writer? I understand, I really do. I am delighted to recognize the fact, my boy, for it explains a great deal to me. We have a very high regard for writers where I come from, and you, in your fashion, are a fine example of the species, as indeed you told your secretary, who faithfully repeats and disseminates all you say; you are a writer who dips his pen, now in blood, now in ink, though for the time being, to judge by your completed works, the uninitiated observer would be inclined to the opinion that so far you have written them entirely in blood, at the point of a dagger! Don’t deny it! Who is in a better position to understand this than I, who have written several bloody masterpieces with my ancestral sword? The last time, when we faced each other with swords in our hands, we must have been engaged in an as yet unwritten but perfect dialogue, a dialogue that, at that particular moonlit moment, we considered finished, with its own full stop or period to mark the end. But now I understand that you truly are a writer,” he declared with the same ambiguous air of satisfaction, “a writer who travels the world collecting material for his books!” He nodded vigorously in enthusiastic approval, his eyes shining with rapture. He was like an old man in his second childhood finally comprehending a complex web of relationships: it was as if he fully believed that the person he had sought out was indeed a writer and that the belief filled him with astonishment and delight. “So now you are coming to an end of your years of wandering! Vital years they are, too, ah yes… there was a time when I myself… but of course I have no right to compare myself to you, because I have composed no great work, no, not even in my own fashion: my work was my life and nothing more, a life that I had to live according to rules, customs, and laws, and in that enterprise, alas, I fear I have almost succeeded. Almost, I said, dear boy, and I beg you not to split hairs in your desire for exactitude, for I too have learned enough to know that we should be as precise in our use of words as possible if we want them to be of any value or help in life. Almost, I said, for you see, I, who am not a writer, find every expression difficult and am simultaneously aware of both my difficulty and of my inability to solve it. Indeed, there is nothing more difficult than expressing oneself without ambiguity, especially when the speaker knows that his words are absolute, that behind each sentence stands the specter of death. And I really do mean death, you know, yours or mine,” he added, his voice quiet and calm.