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Don Tarquinio: A Kataleptic Phantasmatic Romance
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
- GenresFiction
257 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1905
About the author
Frederick Rolfe
59 books54 followersEnglish writer, novelist, artist, fantasist and eccentric. Rolfe is also known as Baron Corvo. His best known work is the novel Hadrian the Seventh.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 28, 2021
short novel about one day in the life of a young italian renaissance gentleman who finds favour with a cardinal, and ultimately pope alexander VI, via an adventure with cesare borgia. it works quite well as a companion to rolfe's borgia history book, since this is basically a single fictional character getting involved around the edges of some of the political intrigue covered in that book. the style is baroque and full of ornate and sometime made up words, as in rolfe's other 'historical' books, and the framing device of it being a translated manuscript allows rolfe to put in cute little footnotes explaining things. quite nicely written overall but it feels a bit slight because of how short it is.
July 15, 2013
Couldn't someone have to decency to adapt this, instead of that Showtime atrocity? The cloak and dagger plot with Cesare and Pietrogorio should be cinematic enough.
June 12, 2026
SPOILERS AHEAD
This is a book that takes place in the 1500s, and is a tale told by the main character to his son Prospero about his much younger self, most of which takes place in the course of 24 hours. It stars two young man, one of whom is Don Tarquinio, who have travelled to Rome so Don can appeal to the current pope to lift the ban that was placed upon his family. He falls in love with a girl really early on, goes swimming with his buddy (whose young musculature is described ravishingly), and goes to a tavern where he gets into a swordfight and frees two Celtic slaves, a boy and a girl, and they marry each other. In this tavern there is also a moment where he is talking to this male waiter and then he desists from telling Prospero what happened for the next fifteen minutes. I am pretty certain that he did something homosexual here. At this point in Rome’s history, they are being invaded by barbarians, whose tents are outside the city. So Don Tarquinio and his friend meet a luminary who quotes plenty of Greek, and they cook up a plan I can’t honestly follow about how they want to deliver Rome’s king into the enemy lines for some reason? I am woefully unknowledgable about history, and the book is written very carefully as if it was a real text from the time and the audience already knows the political and historical climate, so I had difficulty following. They try to get advice from another young man, one of the luminary’s young boy servants, who can tell things in his sleep (kataleptic) but the potion they give him kills him, and they throw him into the Tiber to hide the body. They want Don Tarquinio to go to another camp of friendly Romans to deliver a message on his back. The message is created with a weird sort of wax that seeps into his skin and can only reveal the message once black smoot is put on it. He makes a nighttime journey to the enemy camp. He successfully makes the journey, and is panicked to find that the message seems to be indelibly imprinted into his back. After he returns he carouzes with his friend some more and abuses some servants (makes sense, since he is a noble), and finally has a chance to meet the pope. Don’s natural narcissism only nearly gets in the way of undoing all of his efforts, but he manages to appear penitent and self-effacing long enough to make the pope lift the ban, with the condition that he goes to the holy land to fight as a knight. Even though he isn’t very excited about the last part, Don is ecstatic that the ban was lifted. He marries the girl, returns home briefly, carouzes drunkenly for weeks, and leaves for the holy land.
That’s the book. It’s pretty short, but packed thoroughly with references and accurate language, which makes it very dense and footnote-heavy. I can safely say that probably the best part of the book is the verisimilitude and recreation of the period. The promised comic adventures were there to some extent, but no actual laughs were present. The book does show in spades what I have been told are Fredrick Rolfe’s defining stylistic elements. Rampant but somewhat self-aware narcissism, pedophilic homosexuality, and extreme violence which is almost certainly tied into the homosexuality.
The rarely high quality, due heavily to the aforementioned verisimilitude, is present on every page, but as an enjoyable and memorable experience it can be lacking. I did fail to comprehend a decent amount of important plot elements, and I think all three of these facts would make this a good reread someday. Don Tarquinio is, pretty intentionally, a narcissistic, stubborn and inflated character, but the story is meant to point towards his eventual maturity, with the ending. It is pretty telling for Rolfe’s sexuality (moreso than the rest of this book already is) that the story Rolfe decided to tell to exemplify the coming-of-age of a rowdy boy to a mature man, is interested exclusively in when he is still a virile 15-year old boy.
As my first book by Fredrick Rolfe, it lived up to my expectations in terms of themes and craftsmanship, but not so much in terms of enjoyment or even in "cool points."
This is a book that takes place in the 1500s, and is a tale told by the main character to his son Prospero about his much younger self, most of which takes place in the course of 24 hours. It stars two young man, one of whom is Don Tarquinio, who have travelled to Rome so Don can appeal to the current pope to lift the ban that was placed upon his family. He falls in love with a girl really early on, goes swimming with his buddy (whose young musculature is described ravishingly), and goes to a tavern where he gets into a swordfight and frees two Celtic slaves, a boy and a girl, and they marry each other. In this tavern there is also a moment where he is talking to this male waiter and then he desists from telling Prospero what happened for the next fifteen minutes. I am pretty certain that he did something homosexual here. At this point in Rome’s history, they are being invaded by barbarians, whose tents are outside the city. So Don Tarquinio and his friend meet a luminary who quotes plenty of Greek, and they cook up a plan I can’t honestly follow about how they want to deliver Rome’s king into the enemy lines for some reason? I am woefully unknowledgable about history, and the book is written very carefully as if it was a real text from the time and the audience already knows the political and historical climate, so I had difficulty following. They try to get advice from another young man, one of the luminary’s young boy servants, who can tell things in his sleep (kataleptic) but the potion they give him kills him, and they throw him into the Tiber to hide the body. They want Don Tarquinio to go to another camp of friendly Romans to deliver a message on his back. The message is created with a weird sort of wax that seeps into his skin and can only reveal the message once black smoot is put on it. He makes a nighttime journey to the enemy camp. He successfully makes the journey, and is panicked to find that the message seems to be indelibly imprinted into his back. After he returns he carouzes with his friend some more and abuses some servants (makes sense, since he is a noble), and finally has a chance to meet the pope. Don’s natural narcissism only nearly gets in the way of undoing all of his efforts, but he manages to appear penitent and self-effacing long enough to make the pope lift the ban, with the condition that he goes to the holy land to fight as a knight. Even though he isn’t very excited about the last part, Don is ecstatic that the ban was lifted. He marries the girl, returns home briefly, carouzes drunkenly for weeks, and leaves for the holy land.
That’s the book. It’s pretty short, but packed thoroughly with references and accurate language, which makes it very dense and footnote-heavy. I can safely say that probably the best part of the book is the verisimilitude and recreation of the period. The promised comic adventures were there to some extent, but no actual laughs were present. The book does show in spades what I have been told are Fredrick Rolfe’s defining stylistic elements. Rampant but somewhat self-aware narcissism, pedophilic homosexuality, and extreme violence which is almost certainly tied into the homosexuality.
The rarely high quality, due heavily to the aforementioned verisimilitude, is present on every page, but as an enjoyable and memorable experience it can be lacking. I did fail to comprehend a decent amount of important plot elements, and I think all three of these facts would make this a good reread someday. Don Tarquinio is, pretty intentionally, a narcissistic, stubborn and inflated character, but the story is meant to point towards his eventual maturity, with the ending. It is pretty telling for Rolfe’s sexuality (moreso than the rest of this book already is) that the story Rolfe decided to tell to exemplify the coming-of-age of a rowdy boy to a mature man, is interested exclusively in when he is still a virile 15-year old boy.
As my first book by Fredrick Rolfe, it lived up to my expectations in terms of themes and craftsmanship, but not so much in terms of enjoyment or even in "cool points."
August 29, 2012
Highly entertaining adventure of a young man.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews