The Floating Book

by Michelle Lovric

  Thus, instead of an organised guild, as in Germany, with everyone knowing his place, there’s a complete free-for-all, in other words the usual disorganised, catastrophic Italian anarchy.

  So now here is Jenson the Frenchman with his letters and his sly ways, running rings around the Venetians, who are easily dazzled by a little bit of beauty.

  How can I describe my feelings to you? It’s like watching a thousand gold coins you earned the hardest way now sinking into the Venetian slime. I know you meant to be helpful when you reminded me how the great Gutenberg spent the price of forty houses before he printed a single book. That he slaughtered 375 calves to make his first Bible – veal-chops must have been cheap in Mainz that year! But you see I am a mere man, a mere family man, a mere businessman, not a God like Gutenberg. Not a visionary. I cannot stand by to watch the money trickle in slowly or not at all. One in every ten printing businesses here has already failed. Only Jenson prospers. I hear rumours that the printers Sweynheim and Pannartz in Rome are on the verge of bankruptcy. The action of the Venetian Collegio may well do the same to me.

  Then, to insult me further, in one of Jenson’s first books — Decor Puellarum – he has made what he apparently claims as a mistake but which I know to be his dishonest claim for immortality. He has dated his book M. CCCC LXI, ten years earlier than the actual date it came out. He has thus tried to steal from my poor brother Johann the title of being the first printer in Venice. Jenson would rather suffer the brief shame of an error in his edition in order to steal the regard of eternity. He thinks distantly and coldly, like a mechanical apparatus. This is the kind of man I have unwillingly taken on as rival.

  You will ask me, no doubt, what other books he chooses to publish. In this he’s not a visionary. Jenson plays safe, repeating editions done already by us or the other north Italian printers so in this last year he has put out Cicero’s Tusculans, Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and Aulus Gellius. His most important first edition is only a Macrobius, Scriptores rei rusticae, including Cato, Varro, Columella and Palladius. But he’s wooing the college of physicians with medical texts now, and has also done a Gloria Mulierum of religious tracts for married women, to keep the Church happy.

  Here in Italy, as you know, noble blood is everything. So one always hopes one’s book will enter the library of one of the great collections, the Sforza of Milan, the Medici of Florence, the Este of Ferrara, Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino or the princes of Rome. Now I hear that the Jenson volumes are pushing ours out of these few high places. He has allied himself to all our regular customers, including the Priulis and the Agostinis, and I believe he has even persuaded them to invest in his business! The Agostinis, a big banking family here, are getting Jenson endless supplies of the best paper. He’s rolling in their money. And because of that, he can get the best illuminators – even Gerolamo (you know, the one who’s always painting monkeys in his margins).

  He has dedicated an edition already to Felice’s friend and our own patron Domenico Zorzi … and through Domenico I fear that Felice’s beautiful ideas are now being cut into Jenson’s forms. It was told me by my wife that Jenson and Felice have been seen drinking together and a toast was made, to Gutenberg, by the two of them, with Jenson telling Felice: ‘Gutenberg himself was a scribe, in the first place.’ You can imagine the effect of this on our divine Felice, who absorbs flattery like a coarse cloth drinks milk.

  Domenico worries me, too, by the way. If only he can stop dabbling disgustingly with a well-known Jewish whore about the town! The rumours are pointing at him again and he must be careful. It is the Venetian instinct to hate foreigners.

  Lussièta says that the Germans (apart from myself!) have failed to win the affections of the Venetians. We are tolerated only because our fondaco yields them one million ducats a year. The old prejudices against our race are coming out, I fear. Everyone in Venice enjoys attributing boorishness to us and exquisiteness to the French: they are predisposed to love Jenson’s work more than ours.

  Now if I, Wendelin von Speyer the German, were to be more extravagant in the type designs, the illustrations, my presswork or the quality of my paper, there would be mutterings of pride and decadence. I would be condemned as sensational or vulgar. But whatever Jenson does is immediately the rage. He has a way of making everything a delicacy.

  Trained in making coins, he did his casting himself. Himself! Neither Johann nor I could ever have done that. We always needed craftsmen for this part of the work. Jenson’s is perfection, or at least some magical combination of tiny humanities which makes it more beautiful than imperfect. It seems to me that he loves, more than the letter itself, the white space, that airy egg, that appears inside the letter, through its open parts. His letters seem to have a little halo inside them. Among ourselves, we have started to call Jenson’s Roman ‘White Letter’.

  His serifs, weightless but strong, contribute a delectable effect of squareness to the rounded capitals. The lower case is of plump proportions, his ascenders and descenders unusually long. His ‘e’ has a slanted central line. The stroke of Jenson’s ‘d’ is slightly prolonged; his ‘q’ has a shorter, thicker tail than ours … the refinements, as you see, are minute, but the horrifying thing is that each one is for the better! He dots his ‘i’s slightly to the right, where ours are dotted just above, and yet somehow his seem juster! How can this be?

  Jenson’s typeface is so beautiful that it takes all the attention for itself, so that people rave not of the content of his books but of the glamour of his letters.

  And in this they – I mean the book-buying classes in Venice – miss the point. Printing is better than scribal manuscripts because even the neatest human hand interferes with the text. It brings in another personality, interposed between the writer and the reader. Johann and I above all tried to return to the classical model, to create a typeface free of the illegible exuberance of the scribes, particularly the Italians, who are far too flamboyant. Even though I count the great Felice Feliciano among my friends, I still think even his work lacks discipline, which may reflect the disturbances of his private life – I understand he conducts an improper relationship with a married Dalmatian woman of this town – and perhaps has a corrupting effect on his work. I go about recommending marriage to everyone, of course, but Felice is not the kind who can love one woman.

  (Look at me, distracted by gossip! Like a Venetian!)

  Though we all talk of him, Jenson himself is still anonymous. It seems he is a pale grey shadow of a man with scarcely any personality to speak of It’s practically an invisible enemy who is haunting me. He’s something like connective tissue between organs, a thing that does not exist in its own right. He never writes his own introductions, preferring an editor to do so. I would have to admit that his colophons are more modest than ours: he’s too self-confident to boast of the contents of his books.

  And what a businessman! He always knows just how many copies to print. He never needs to reprint, his editions are bigger than our own, and yet he’s never left with stock filling up his magazzino with wasted profit …

  I have always been a little too tender-hearted for my customers. I’m sentimental about them precisely because they buy our work, which seems like love to me. Some of them just cannot afford to pay the whole sum at once. So I allow them three instalments. Jenson, on the other hand, never gives credit; he has no heart. And can you guess what effect this has upon the Venetians? Yes! They actually borrow money to buy Jenson’s books!

  Perhaps the joy I find in my wife costs me something in the stamperia. Guilt (at rising a little late sometimes, at rushing home to her at night) is what I feel when I see the grossness of our own ink furring and choking up our forms. When it dries it is dingy, smearing and unpleasant to the eye. We cannot afford to boil the linseed oil as long as Jenson does, and when we heat the varnish in the blacking we burn and rubify it so that it loses its brisk and vivid complexion. If we try to stint on the expensive blacking then the ink becomes insufferably p
ale.

  I must tell you that Jenson uses a black ink of a glossiness that I have not even once in three years been able to achieve: it’s like velvet, intense and passionate. And this luxurious pitch he stamps on to paper of tints and textures of the greatest elegance, in a uniformity of register that makes me want to weep. There are no blotches, ever! Well, of course, probably there are, but he is too vain to let any such pages be seen outside his stamperia. I imagine him late at night, scrutinising each folio, tearing up any with the slightest imperfection, all while I drowse in Lussièta’s arms, work long forgotten.

  And now Jenson is spoken of as the man who prints as Felice writes, as Bellini paints! I am not a vainglorious man, God knows, but this hurts me for that was the role I coveted for myself.

  I digress. Jenson is also attracting stellar editors, such as the Latinist Ognibene da Lonigo, that sycophant of the Gonzagas at Mantova – this for prestige, and for the popular vote – that cranker-out of christening poems Antonio Cornazzano. It hurts me to see how my own men are tempted by his blandishments. Merula, I no longer trust for he just sways like a pendulum back and forth between myself and Jenson. Another ambidexter is Gerolamo Squarzafico, who helped with my Italian Bible last year and edited the Latin works of Boccaccio for me – he has gone over to the other side too!

  Only young Bruno Uguccione stays faithful to me, but I hear talk that he is wretchedly in love with some cruel older woman who rejects him and uses him badly. Bruno himself has lost the shine on his work: he does what he must, and is always accurate, but I know that he only wants to talk about Catullus, and you can imagine that this is the last subject on which I at present wish to dwell.

  All this would not matter if it were not for the state of the market. It is overcrowded with books. It wants novelties.

  And guess! Jenson is doing small prayer books, which he contrives to charge more expensively than those of the normal size! I hate those small prayer books! (God forgive me.) They are a typical Jenson stroke of genius. His paper, more delicate than ours, can be folded into smaller sections without making a great book that gapes open like a cave. Almost anyone can carry one easily in their sleeve, or hold it comfortably in the hand while learning passages by heart. There’s something about this miniaturisation that is irresistibly refined. Of course the Venetians love it, and they walk about the town holding his little prayer books in their hands, like small beloved pets, advertising Jenson’s work for him.

  I’m doing what I can to keep my head above the water. I have gone into partnership with Johann di Colonia, who has lately married my dear brother’s excellent widow Paola, and Johann of Manthen. They have enlisted in service eminent scholars and correctors.

  I do not know what more we can do, apart from grow fishtails and become Venetians … sometimes I have the illusion of doing just that. I begin to feel at home in my own sestiere, looking with distrust on the faces from Cannaregio or Santa Croce. Then I remind myself with a smile that they are all Venetians and it is I who is the foreigner.

  I have something else to tell you.

  As you suspected would happen, there’s already trouble about the Catullus. There’s suddenly a mad priest on Murano who’s hot for my blood. Somehow it’s become known that I’m thinking of printing him, and this cleric’s using Catullus as an example, to show why the new art of printing is only for the Devil, that we print only obscenity and pagan literature. I see more difficulty coming from this direction. I can hardly defend the book. It tears at my own loins, if you must know the truth. I thank you for the honesty of your letter in which you admitted that the sampling of poems I sent you last month has the same effect upon you. But it is literature, and it is life, and I do not wish to shelter the public from it just to save my own skin.

  So despite all, I’m still thinking of publishing him.

  Your brave son

  Wendelin

  * * *

  Some might say I spend too much on foodstuffs when we are far from rich and the business suffers sadly since Jenson set up his press. I disagree! Food is more than something to put in your mouth. Done right, it also warms the soul. So I buy all the good things I can find.

  When I go to market, the fine foods tempt my outstretched hand and deride my purse that is not so full as my desire to please my man. I look at each autumn peach, each apricot, and imagine if it will please him. I put in my basket only figs so fresh the milk yet drips from their prods.

  Even though I have other things on my mind there these days.

  I try to talk to the wives of Rialto. Just in a casual way, of course. I don’t let on a thing.

  ‘What news of the Frenchman? The one who’s started with the quick books?’ I ask, as if it meant not a bean to me, as if my heart did not thrust at my ribs when I spoke. I do not wish them to know how I tremble for my man, for if I did then the fear would soon catch on, the way plague does.

  When the plague first comes, like any bad thing, we Venetians snub it; we give it no truth. If we hold out against it, we feel with all our hearts that it might go away whence it came, with the pilgrims, no doubt, dirty as they are.

  But once we give it truth and own that the disease has come once more amongst us, well then the plague swells and fills the town with death, quick as a spring tide.

  So it is with bad news. This is why I will not have it said out loud in any place that my man’s quick books are not the best. Not once.

  Therefore last week I asked for news of Jenson in a light voice as I might ask the fish man if the smelts are by chance fresh on this day. The news I heard was this: on one side that he’s a most beautiful man, tall and dark of eye with long silky moustachios; on the other side that he’s small and fair as a doll with golden curls and a ring in his ear.

  I see, I mutter to myself, no one has seen him yet.

  But the Frenchman’s errand boy has been to Rialto this day, and that little rapscallion told tales of great new lettering lovely as jewels. The folk gathered round to listen and the boy, who must have got his job with his silver tongue, had them eat from his hand and soon there were a score or so gathered round. He told them that his master has caught the hearts of the nobles, and at this the rabble all swoon with pleasure, second-hand pleasure, snobs that they are.

  The boy boasted of the pains his master takes to make each single letter and each page, how he toils for all things to be perfect.

  At this, I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  For it cannot last, not if Jenson is too slow with new things. You see, we of this town must have some new thing each day, be it good or bad, just so long as it is new. So Jenson has invented one new typeface. It has taken him years. It will take him years to do another one.

  For an instance, today Jenson is completely forgotten by all those who gasped at the boy’s tales yesterday. The talk is all of one red hen from San Erasmo Island.

  This hen, the owner swears, was her best layer for two years. Then, last year, it turned itself into a cock! First it changed from cluck to crow, and then it grew a crest and strutted round the yard as if it were the king. The real cock was old and did not give a fight. But the next year, which is this one, a brave new cock took over the yard. Straight away the hen’s crest moulted off, and this year it has made as many eggs as ever. The owner, a fat old island girl, brought her to market, sitting on her clutch. You could still see the stubs of the old crest poke out through the plumes on the top of its head. The crowds round that hen were bigger than the one round Jenson’s boy the day before.

  When I saw this my heart slowed to a quick tap. All will be well, I told myself. My man will win; he has a new thing each day.

  I added: And my man has this Catullus, the most new thing that there can be, for he is old and new at once and he knows, though he does not know, the heart of all of us.

  We still do not know if we shall print it, but I think we shall. I think we shall.

  On the way home from market, I saw a most bizarre thing: my sister-in-law Paola in close coll
oquy with a red-haired man, one not of this town. So deep in talk was she that she saw me not, though I brushed past her handsome silken skirt, the gift, no doubt, of her new husband, Johann di Colonia.

  Aha! I said to myself, That Paola disposes of her husbands so fast she must line up the next one while still honeymooning with the last.

  I turned up my nose and marched past without showing her that I’d caught her out in her intrigues.

  At dinner last night, I told my man with satisfaction: The word at Rialto is all about the red hen from San Erasmo. They have already stopped talking about Jenson.’

  I did not mention Paola and her red-haired man. I could not think of a decent way to put it, which would not distress him. Best to talk of the decline in wonder about Jenson, and forget her.

  The relief on his face was reward enough for all my spying and prowling in the stinking streets of the market. I’m determined, too, that there’s more to be found out, and more to be done about Jenson, and that I am the one to do it.

  Chapter Two

  … and she reared his infancy

  on the perfumed juices of flowers.

  Felice asked: ‘Why have you conceived no children, Sosia?’

  ‘I don’t know. I take no precautions against it. I just don’t seem to need to.’

  ‘You know about these things?’

  ‘Well, if I was to follow the advice in Rabino’s books! – I’ve looked in there. It’s all most amusing …’

  Felice raised an eyebrow encouragingly. Sosia continued.

  ‘Avicenna, one of his favourites, says that we should avoid simultaneous spendings – and that afterwards I should jump violently seven times backwards to dislodge the seed. I’m also supposed to insert a pessary made of colocyth, mandrake, sulphur, iron dross and cabbage seed mixed with oil. There’s another one, Albert the Great, a Dominican, from two hundred years ago, who says that women should spit three times into the mouth of a frog, or eat bees, so as not to become pregnant.’