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Updated: May 26, 2025
This is the landscape which the two sixteenth century novelists of Siena, Fortini and Sermini, so lovingly depicted in their tales. Of literature absorbing in itself the specific character of a country, and conveying it to the reader less by description than by sustained quality of style, I know none to surpass Fortini's sketches.
Far away behind the hill of cypresses Vincigliata still stands on guard, on the hilltop Castel di Poggio looks into the valley of Ontignano and guards the road to Arezzo and Rome. Here there is peace; not too far from the city nor too near the gate, as I said: and so to Firenze in the twilight. Cf. Fortini and Sermini for instance.
It is not a dialogue: those short exclamations exploding from every side, all referring to the same thing, never repeating themselves, and yet always varying the same theme. At the end of the Novelle of Gentile Sermini of Siena, there is a chapter called Il Giuoco della pugna, the Game of Battle. Here are the first lines of it: 'Apre, apre, apre. Chi gioca, chi gioca uh, uh!
But though he did not copy Sermini, yet Sermini's work provided him with the form of the subject, and was the theme for Rabelais' marvellous variations. Who does not remember the fantastic quarrel of the cook with the poor devil who had flavoured his dry bread with the smoke of the roast, and the judgment of Seyny John, truly worthy of Solomon?
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