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James Fenimore Cooper
THE BRAVO (1831) Paperback. 2007. 392 pp. ISBN 10: 1426440596 ISBN 13: 9781426440595 Publisher: BiblioBazaar Reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com Would you recommend this book to others? YES * * * * * The Republic of Venice was in early decline. Turks had taken away some of its eastern possessions. The Portuguese were busy developing new sea lanes around Africa to India and China. England, France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire were knitting themselves together while the isolated city on the Adriatic lagoons was contracting. Venice in the 1400s was relying more and more on Dalmatian mercenaries for internal policing. Its government was becoming secretive, oligarchical and tyrannical, a band of aristocratic thieves repressing the people. Along comes James Fenimore Cooper in 1831 with his historical novel THE BRAVO. He and his family have lived in Europe since the 1826 publication of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and will be there another two-plus years. He conceives it part of his life's mission to describe Europe to his fellow Americans. He wants them to overcome their obvious awe of Europe's economic, social and political achievements and to become prouder of America's. One way to do this is to hold up his writer's pen and mirror to the Republic of Venice as it was 400 years earlier, still rich, much admired for its onetime real justice but becoming tyrannical in its relentless early decline. THE BRAVO (meaning hired assassin) is a political novel displaying the structural cruelty and injustice of a famous oligarchy lyingly calling itself a republic. Here is a young man, Jacopo Frontoni, son of Ricardo Frontoni. Ricardo had been falsely convicted of cheating the Republic of money. When the Senate discovered its error, it covered up the truth rather than admitting fallibility. Ricardo was left to rot in prison. Meanwhile his wife and daughter died. Three years ago his son Jacopo had discovered his father's whereabouts and was permitted to visit him in prison. But the Senate exacted a pound of flesh. Jacopo had to agree to become the State's secret agent. He killed no one, but he had to agree that whenever it suited the State lyingly to hint that he was the man behind this or that citizen's death, he would stay silent. Another great act of injustice occurred when the Senate and the Councils of Thirty and Three (the latter secret and the highest body of Venice) kept denying the rightly inheritance of Duke Don Camillo Monforte of Santa Agata, nephew of a Cardinal of Rome. Nor would the authorities allow the Duke's marriage to a young orphan, Violetta Tiepolo, whose life he had recently saved from drowning. Perhaps saddest of all is the story of ancient Antonio Vecchio. In youth this fisherman had served gallantly in wars with the Turks. His son had been killed doing similar service on sea to the Republic of Venice. Then the State had conscripted the sole support of his old age, his young teen age grandson, to pull oars on the galleys. No petitions, no achievements of old Antonio can move the City of Saint Mark. As a disturber of the peace, Antonio is assassinated. Jacopo is blamed and tried. Love, assassination, the canals and sunsets of Venice, gondola races for high stakes, political and moral corruption in the 15th Century: all this and more make THE BRAVO a riveting novel. Watch the relatively young Senator Paolo Soranzo slowly turn his conscience away from Christian simplicity once he is secretly elected to the Council of Three and has to rule on the fate of the bravo, Jacopo Frontoni, once the latter's utility to the state is over. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/used-book/the-bravo-james-fenimore-cooper ~97a05~275038690 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com Headline: Has God endowed man with two souls? One for public affairs? One for things private? Reviewer's rating of THE BRAVO: * * * * * Imagine Venice around 1445. It calls itself a Republic, Queen of the Adriatic. It is still wealthy, it has lands beyond its marshy border. But it is in decline. It has lost territory to the Turks. Portuguese navigators were circumnavigating Africa to open new markets in India and China. Venice which also named itself for its patron, Saint Mark the Evangelist, had once been a model state, carrying for all its people, rich and poor. But even in its very early days of decline, Venice as a state existed for the rich and was ruled by a Senate, a Council of 30 and a Council of Three. Much of James Fenimore Cooper's 1831 novel, THE BRAVO, describes the rottenness of the 15th Century Venetian State. We see its oligarchic leaders conspiring together -- to keep wealthy Duke Don Camillo Monforte of Sant' Agata from his rightful inheritance and status in Venice; -- to prevent Don Camillo's marriage to the wealthy, orphaned heiress Violetta Tiepolo; -- to keep an honorable civil servant Ricardo Frontoni imprisoned just over the Bridge of Sighs for a crime the Senate knows he did not commit; -- to blackmail Ricardo's son Jacopo Frontoni to pretend to be a private assassin (or "bravo") in order to visit his dying father in prison; -- to assassinate an ancient fisherman Antonio Vecchio for pleading incessantly and in public that the State release his 14-year old sons from compelled duty rowing in Venice's war galleys, and on and on. We see the newest member of the all powerful secret Council of Three slowly placing his public conscience above his private morals in agreeing to the old fisherman's murder for reasons of state. We see the lovely Violetta Tiepolo's state-appointed guardian, Senator Alessandro Gradenigo scheme to prevent the arrest of his rotten son Giacomo. In all this author James Fenimore Cooper, 2/3 through an eight year stay in Europe, is at pains to show his fellow Americans the clay feet of Europeans, even of Englishmen. Most Europeans misunderstand and despise the young United States of America. The example of hypocritical Venice shows them they have no reason to be ashamed of their political accomplishments in North America. Americans rule themselves, without a police state, a secret police, a spy system and secret agents willing to assassinate anyone the State finds inconvenient. At the same time Cooper familiarizes Americans with Catholic priests, bishops and cardinals that they have been raised to think of as incarnate fiends. In THE BRAVO, a saintly Carmelite monk Father Ferdinand Anselmo is the confessor of the young Violetta Tiepolo. Decades earlier, still a layman, Father Anselmo had proposed marriage to Donna Florinda, now Violetta's companion and maidservant. Violetta could not make up her mind and Anselmo became a monk. That monk eventually testifies that the bravo, Jacopo, did not murder the old fisherman Antonio. He also witnesses the wedding (forbidden by the Senate of Venice) of the Duke of Sant' Agata and the heiress Violetta. Venice's cruelty, violence and rank injustice push its fishermen and gondola operators close to open rebellion over the mysterious death of old Antonio. The Carmelite monk tries to explain to young Violetta that powerful Venetians have come to act as if God had given each of them two souls. The Ten Commandments, honor and justice were for their private souls. The survival and power of Venice was the only subject of their public souls. This novel has it all: the rich art and architecture of mighty Vienna, the pageant of the Doge's wedding of his city to the Adriatic, public boat races, power politics, love, religion, murder and a passion for justice. Oddly, the author does not mention even once the ubiquitous alley cats of the Queen of the Adriatic. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/reviews/james_fenimore_cooper_the_bravo -1443502.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) epinions.com April 12, 2010 Title of this review: "Strike the Neapolitan smartly, but spare his life." Reviewer's rating of THE BRAVO * * * * * Pros: Venice of palaces and churches illustrated by Tintoretto and Titian. Gondola races. Political injustice. Romance. Cons: Uncertainty of the century in which the story is set. Ultra-harsh portrayal of Venetian injustices. The Bottom Line: This novel lacks only the famous cats of Venice. A gorgeous, powerless Doge. Greed. Injustice. Structural violence. Rich grinding down the poor. Wedding of Venice and the Adriatic Sea. aohcapablanca's Full Review: James Cooper and Donald A. Ringe Jr. - The Bravo Be warned: I like THE BRAVO, James Fenimore Cooper's novel of 1831, very, very much. It would please me greatly if you elect to read it. A bravo in vaguely 16th, 17th or 18th century Venice was a hired assassin. The bravo for whom the novel is named is young Jacopo Frontoni. Like the many other characters of this tale Frontoni is full-bodied, three-dimensional, credible. He is an agent of the slowly decaying Republic of Venice. His life interacts with the handsome Duke Don Camillo Monforte of the Papal States wrongly denied his inheritance by a greedy Venetian oligarchy. The Duke loves a young heiress, whom Venice (also widely styled San Marco for its patron saint) wishes to wed someone else in the Republic's selfish interests. There is an old fisherman named Antonio whose mother nursed along with him sixty years ago a cynical Senator Alessandro Gradenigo, now a member of the mysterious, all powerful Council of Three. This novel details at length the annual wedding of Venice and the Adriatic Sea by its reigning figurehead Doge. We see exciting gondola races. We see old Antonio race against the masked bravo Jacopo. We learn why Venice is slowly declining as the rising Turks seize its Eastern possessions. We learn of the structural violence inherent in an oligarchy of the rich and powerful that remains powerful by oppressing its poor subjects and spying on them like Communist East Germany hundreds of years ago. This novel has revenge, romance, politics, identities masked again and again, corruption, divided consciences in a Catholic city-state of the marshes, the Queen of the Adriatic, in one guess at the century -- seven decades before Martin Luther. Enough of the leading players and the atmospherics of a so-called just republic upheld by the coerced oars of citizens compelled to row the war galleys! In THE BRAVO James Fenimore Cooper, mid-way through nearly eight years living in Europe with his family, had a point to make with his fellow Americans whom he would ere long rejoin across the Atlantic. That point was: stop thinking of yourselves as inferior to Europeans! With the possible exception of Switzerland there was no country in old Europe, not even Mother England, that compared with the USA in institutions promoting equality before the law, justice and personal freedom. In THE BRAVO Cooper made his case for America by taking the most evil government in Europe he could find: Venice of hundreds of years earlier. The novel's most evil characters are rich oligarchs who have chosen to be evil on behalf of their state. In private life they can be loving, faithful husbands and fathers. But their public conscience is ruled by the raison d'etat of a dying, tyrannical government. And its best characters are humans tempted to sin or to rebel against constituted authority. * * * * *
Let me conclude with a sketch of one very minor character, a Jew named Hosea. He illustrates that divided conscience that every character in THE BRAVO is made to exhibit. Access to finance is vital to Venice's wealthy oligarchs as their Republic's external posssessions are wrested from them. The role of Jewish money lenders is sketched in Chapter VI. The wily Senator of the Council of Three learns from the bravo that his own wastrel son Giacomo (whom he would like the heiress to wed) is in the hands of the money lenders. Indeed, we meet the great Jewish banker Hosea at the end of a long stream of nighttime visitors to Senator Grandenigo. He brings secret intelligence about Duke Monforte. Nineteen chapters later Hosea appears again. Led by Senator Grandenigo's corrupt son Giacomo, the pair offers a large sum of money to the bravo Jacopo. He pretends to accept their commission to assassinate the Duke. This will remove a romantic rival of Giacomo and make it more likely that Giacomo will marry the heiress and therefore have the wherewithal to repay his colossal debts to the Jewish money lender. Giacomo Grandenigo several times indicated that the Duke must be killed. Not only that: but Jacopo should strike him, kill him, sink him so deep that "the water will never give back the secret." Words of a thorough Christian villain with no redeeming characteristics! Yet Hosea the Jew is made of softer stuff. He argues: "Signore Giacomo, ... I see no necessity
for a home thrust, Master Jacopo; but a smart wound, that may put
matrimony out of the head of the Duca ... ''T will be more than
sufficient for our purposes, if we cause the Neapolitan to keep house
for a month."
Cooper continues: " ... Hosea: he was a rogue rather than a
villain. ... his blood curdled at the extremity to which Giacomo would
push the affair, and he lingered to utter a parting word to the Bravo.
"'Thou are said to carry a sure stiletto, honest Jacopo ... A hand of thy practice must know how to maim as well as to slay. Strike the Neapolitan smartly, but spare his life.'" Cooper described Hosea as "a wary villain, and (one) who greatly preferred such secondary expedients as might lighten the load on his conscience" (Ch. XXV). How Verdi or Puccini managed to overlook Cooper's Shakespearean novel of Venice, THE BRAVO, as the basis of a lush romantic even gothic opera is beyond me to explain. What is clear is that this book is grand story telling at its most convincing. Try it. Please let me know if you agree! -OOO- Recommended: Yes -OOO- http://www.epinions.comreviewThe_Bravo_by_James_Cooper _and_by_Donald_A_Ringe_Jr__/content_508522434180 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) bn.com Headline: A 15th Century Doge of Venice: "titular sovereign of that still more titular republic" Rating of the novel: * * * * * Writing his 1831 novel THE BRAVO midway through a lengthy sojourn in Europe, James Fenimore Cooper took mid-15th Century Venice as precisely the kind of government that the new USA was not. "Venice, though ambitious
and tenacious of the name of a republic, was, in truth, a narrow,
avulgar, and an exceedingly heartless oligarchy" (Ch. XI).
Its leader, the Doge, was a puppet trotted out for ceremonial occasions such as the wedding of Venice with the Adriatic, lavishly described in THE BRAVO. The Doge was "the titular sovereign of that still more titular Republic" (Ch. X). Cooper wanted his fellow Americans to think better of themselves. All too accustomed they were to accept European views of the New Worlders as ignorant, uncreative, uncivilized and generally inferior. Cooper saw the U. S. Constitution as something new in the world. In the USA men were citizens, not subjects. Government existed to assure justice and good to all citizens, not just the rich. How better show Americans their opposite in virtue, especially in equal justice for all, than by holding up a mirror to Venice in mid 15th Century, in early decline? It was already a tightly controlled police state. Profligate sons of the mighty are shown great indulgence and not likely to be severely punished. But simple fishermen can be imprisoned on false charges or sent to the galleys to protect the Republic, a service never required of sons of the powerful. A bravo is a paid assassin. In the novel young Jacopo Frontoni is known throughout Venice as a bravo. He is feared because, despite his reputation, the Senate, the Council of Thirty and the dread secret Council of Three never moves against him until the very end. Much of Cooper's great work of historical fiction slowly explains how Jacopo was made to seem a bravo for the ruthless "good" of the Venetian state. Jacopo's short, unhappy life intersects with that of the daughter of the warden of the prison beyond the Bridge of Sighs where Jacopo's father lies dying. Their lives in turn intersect with those of a powerful Duke prevented by Venice from wedding a rich orphaned heiress. The heiress, Donna Violetta Tiepolo, has a Carmelite priest spiritual advisor who explains to her the evils of the Venetian State. He also hears the final confession of a spirited old fisherman Antonio Vecchio who asks no more of Venice than that it free his 14-year old grandson from duties on the war galleys. THE BRAVO introduced to Americans of the Trail of Tears years pre-Reformation Catholic Italy in all its individual heroism and corporate depravity. We see gondola races for rich prizes. We hear the serenades of gondoliers. We marvel at the ability of a dying state like Venice to assume first place in the consciences of most of its patricians. We suffer with poor fisherman and spied upon private gondoliers. Venice is Communist East Germany 500 years before the Berlin Wall. A grand tale! -OOO- http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Bravo/James-Fenimore-Cooper /e/9780554232775/?itm=16&USRI=james+fenimore+cooper+-+the+bravo =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) amazon.com Title of this review: "Give me my child, or give me nothing." Rating of THE BRAVO: * * * * * Who is Antonio Vecchio? Old Antonio is a fisherman, a master gondolier in his youth. He had also served with honor in Venice's wars with the Turks and has the wounds to prove it. His son also died in harness fighting the Muslims for patriotic love of the Republic of Venice. Now, around 1450, Venice is in decline and surrounded and hounded by powerful enemies. Antonio's 14-year old son has been drafted to row in the war galleys of "the Queen of the Adriatic," a state sometimes styled simply "Saint Mark" or San Marco for its patron saint and its cathedral.James Fenimore Cooper's 1831 novel THE BRAVO tells of Antonio's valiant efforts to wrest his young grandson's return from the immoral world of the galleys by a cold, heartless government of Venice. First Antonio sought help from his "foster brother," whom his lower class mother had suckled along with him six decades and more earlier. Being a foster brother counted in those centuries. The two lads were even playmates for a few years. But Antonio grew up to be an impoverished fisherman. His blood brother is now Senator Alessandro Gradenigo, a rich grandee, member of the secret Council of Three. If anyone could return a 14-year old impressed seaman to his grandfather, it would be Antonio's distinguished foster brother. But like all ruling oligarchs of cruel Venice, the Senator's conscience is moved by only two considerations, the national security of the Queen of the Adriatic and his narrow and personal family self interest. He cautions Antonio to endure the Republic's wisdom in silence. Senator Gradenigo instructed a young man named Jacopo Frontoni to counsel old Antonio to keep his complaints to himself. Jacopo is a young, illiterate Venetian whose fisherman father had been a close friend of old Antonio. Jacopo is currently years into being blackmailed by the government to serve as its unwilling secret agent and go-between. This is the price of being allowed occasional visits to the Doge's prison to visit his dying father, wrongly imprisoned and never freed by the Senate even once it knew its mistake. Jacopo is reputed far and why to be a favorite "bravo" or hired assassin in high favor with the government Venice has a great feast day on which its glorious figurehead leader the Doge symbolically reenacts the wedding of Venice and the Adriatic Sea on which its lagoons open. Antonio enters a mile and a half gondola race open to all. He is allowed to win by a mysterious masked competitor (Jacopo Frontoni). Before the race Antonio had begged an enraged Doge for his grandson's return. As winner of the race, Antonio again petitions the Doge, offering back his prize: a golden oar. He pleads: "Give me my child, or give me nothing" (Ch. X). Later he even offers the rich wedding ring tossed into the sea by the Doge during the wedding ceremonies. In the end, in a hearing before the dread Council of Three (including his masked foster brother) Antonio is accused of stirring up mobs against the state. Not only is Antonio's petition denied. But the Council of Three determines his death. Will Antonio be assassinated? Will Jacopo decline to do the deed? Read THE BRAVO and find out! There are several other stories set on the canals and in the palaces of the slowly dying Venice. A duke loves a young heiress whom he has saved from drowning. The state of Venice has other plans for both. A Carmelite monk is the heiress's confessor. He becomes drawn into the government's terrible plans for poor old Antonio. Senator Grandinego's worthless son is protected from his dissolute gambling by aging oligarchs who lick their lips over their own youthful indiscretions. There are smugglers, a Jewish money lender named Hosea, wine salesmen, young women both virtuous and no better than they need to be. There is gorgeous Venice itself, filled with works by Titian and other masters. There is politics. Author James Fenimore Cooper held up a mirror to the most corrupt, evil, hypocritical state that he could discover in Europe. His point was to reinforce a running sermon he made to his fellow Americans that they had nothing to be ashamed about in their own constitution, habits and virtues -- in comparison to Europe's tyrannical worst. Yes, America had to be on guard against the rich and ambitious slowly seizing control of a noble political experiment, as had happened 500 years earlier in Venice. But for the moment Americans were citizens, not subjects. They ruled themselves. They were not slaves of a police-state resembling 20th-century East Germany but run by vicious aristocrats. A grand novel, deserving reading and re-reading! -OOO- Your Tags: james fenimore cooper, 15th century venice, antonio vecchio, jacopo frontini, father ferdinando anselmo http://www.amazon.com/Coopers-Novels-James-Fenimore-Cooper/ dp/1145918697/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270898422&sr=1-4 |