Set against a backdrop of pre-Renaissance Italy (a larger than life time, with swaggering condottieri, Machiavellian plotting, and high stakes in politics and war) convent-bred orphan Bellarion is sidetracked almost immediately upon setting out on a journey from the monastery at Cigliano to study at Pavia. The adventure and practical lessons he finds along the way replace the further education he craves...'Half god, half beast, ' the Princess Valeria once described him, without suspecting that the phrase describes not ...
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Set against a backdrop of pre-Renaissance Italy (a larger than life time, with swaggering condottieri, Machiavellian plotting, and high stakes in politics and war) convent-bred orphan Bellarion is sidetracked almost immediately upon setting out on a journey from the monastery at Cigliano to study at Pavia. The adventure and practical lessons he finds along the way replace the further education he craves...'Half god, half beast, ' the Princess Valeria once described him, without suspecting that the phrase describes not merely Bellarion, but Man.Aware of this, the anonymous chronicler who has preserved it for us goes on to comment that the Princess said at once too much and too little. He makes phrases in his turn-which I will spare you-and seeks to prove, that, if the moieties of divinity and beastliness are equally balanced in a man, that man will be neither good nor bad. Then he passes on to show us a certain poor swineherd, who rose to ultimate eminence, in whom the godly part so far predominated that naught else was humanly discernible, and a great prince-of whom more will be heard in the course of this narrative-who was just as the beasts that perish, without any spark of divinity to exalt him. These are the extremes. For each of the dozen or so intermediate stages which he discerns, our chronicler has a portrait out of history, of which his learning appears to be considerable
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Seller's Description:
Good. Size: 0x0x0; Bound in publisher's cloth. Hardcover. No dust jacket. Shelf wear. Gutters starting. Italian-born Rafael Sabatini ranks among the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas for his tales of high adventure, swashbuckling antics and valiant heroes. He is perhaps best loved for Scaramouche, Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk, all of which have been adapted into hugely-successful films.
Bellarion is a cracking tale of mediaevel derring-do. it tells of the lawlessness of the Italian states and the rise of mercenary bands. There is also the standard love interest of misunderstood love and suppressed passion; a good read for both male and female. Sabatini's description of one to one combat is superlative as is his sadness at the result.