The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini!

Our book today is an old favorite: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, here in the durable John Addington Symonds translation from 1887. Cellini started dictating the book in 1558 when he was 58 and clearly warmed to the novel task as he got going, and that feeling of making-it-up-as-he-goes-along momentum sends a current of electricity through the book. It’s a preposterous kind of electricity, but that’s the book’s addictive charm. Any anecdote, no matter how simple, has the potential to work an entire Rafael Sabatini novel into a single line:

I set out upon the road to Paris. This was a delightful journey, except that when we reached Palissa a band of venturers tried to murder us, and it was only by great courage and address that we got free from them. From that point onward we travelled to Paris without the least trouble in the world. Always singing and laughing, we arrived safely at our destination.

I re-read The Autobiography on a regular basis (as I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve also traveled with it, rather extensively and never with a single moment of boredom), and when I read it in English, I almost always pick Symonds’ version even though that’s probably lazy of me and there are two later and excellent translations out there (and in here, since of course I have multiple copies). I like the way his humor curiously complements the often schoolboy-style joshing quips Cellini adds to even his most tense stories, like when he winks at “the gods help those who help themselves” while telling of one of his daring escapes from prison:

After scaling the roof, I took one end of my linen roll and attached it to a piece of antique tile which was built into the fortress wall: it happened to jut out scarcely four fingers. In order to fix the band, I gave it the form of a stirrup. When I had attached it to that piece of tile, I turned to God and said: “Lord God, give aid to my good cause: you know that it is good: you see that I am aiding myself.”

Cellini lived for seven years after the close of his Autobiography, and I doubt anybody’s ever read it who doesn’t wish he’d just kept producing it for that whole time. The book is just boundlessly energetic, and it’s so hilariously, bumptiously swaggering and absurd that it can divert you from just about any annoyance, for just about any amount of time. Cellini intended it as a celebration, but it’s really a gift.