Francesco Guicciardini in other languages

Over the last ten years the figure of Francesco Guicciardini has received a good reception beyond national borders. Abroad, his work has mainly spread to France:  the multi-annual edition of his Correspondence, which is still in the making, had its first volume published, by P.Jodogne, back in 1986. This publication contributed significantly to the spread of fame of this historian from Florence. Just two years later (1988), the translation of Ricordi politici e civili appeared, edited by J.-L Fournel and J.-C. Zancarini.

The years from 1994-1998 were a period of intense translation work and the  following works emerged: the Ricordi translated by J.Méhu (1994; the Histoire d’Italie (1996)  and the Écrits politiques, both translated in 1997 by J.-L. Fournel e J.-C. Zancarini; le Considérations à propos des discours de Machiavel sur la première décade de Tite-Live (translated by L. de Los Santos, 1997) and a new edition of the Ricordi (1998), translated by A. Pons and F. Bouillot.

During the first decade of the XXI century, translations of his work drew to a halt but were compensated by an anastatic facsimile of the first French edition of the Ricordi (1576), accompanied by a sixteenth century translation, edited by V. Lepri and M. E. Severini: the work, which was released in 2005, served as a model for similar efforts in other European countries. In 2017, Severini published a critical edition of the previous anastatic printing of the Ricordi. This global approach to the works of Guicciardini, which is mostly French, culminated with a translation, which appeared in the same years for the publishing house Garnier, of works that were little know and unpublished elsewhere: Consolatoria, Accusatoria et Defensoria (edited by F. Courriol, 2013).

The anthology edition L’expérience de l’autre: les premières missions diplomatiques de Machiavel, Vettori et Guicciardini contains passages from Guicciardini’s diplomatic relations with Spain (J.-M. Rivière, 2018).

The next country after France to  distinguish itself for its tireless translation of Guicciardini’s work is Japan: in the last twenty years, three editions of the Ricordi  have been published, edited by N. Mitsuaki (1998 and 2018) and T. Sueyoshi (1998). The later, in particular, was responsible for making Guicciardini known in the land of the rising sun: in 1999 the translation of Storie fiorentine was prepared and, the following year that of Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze. However, the most important result was the complete translation into nine volumes of the Storia d’Italia, which was released from 2001 to 2007 – an editorial operation that can boast very few of global equivalence. In other parts of the world, the agreed preference of Guicciardiniani experts is markedly of an intimate and aphoristic nature (in particular the Ricordi,) compared to his historical texts which instead claim universality, especially the Storia d’Italia. And so, within the Spanish-speaking context, the Ricordi enjoyed the privilege of being translated in the early 1988 by Hermosa Andújar. Nevertheless, the past ten years have nourished a series of Spanish or bilingual editions: it is worth noting the translation of Storie fiorentine, published in Mexico by da H. Gutiérrez García in 2012, the Diálogo sobre el gobierno de Florencia edited by Hermosa Andújar (2017),  the anthology work Un embajador florentino en la España de los Reyes (edited by M. Teresa Navarro Salazar, 2017) and lastly, a very recent translation of the Ricordi, by M. Manzano (2020). In the same years, the prolific studies of Guicciardiniani in Spain gave rise to the publication of an anastatic facsimile of the Storia d’Italia, translated in 1581 by A. Flores through the initiative of Benavides da Baeza (2014). Within the English-speaking context, the diffusion of the historian from Florence fluctuates and his writings seem to be used more as a collection from which aphorisms can be drawn rather than actual texts featured by their own autonomy and distinctiveness. Indeed, complete translations of his works are rare: it is only in 1994 that a first translation appears in English of the Diaologo del reggimento di Firenze by A. Brown and, subsequently, a translation of Discorso di Logrogno emerges (1998, by A. Moulakis) and the Ricordi (2000, translated by N. Hill Thomson). Neither the Storia d’Italia – the last English version of this text dates back to 1970 – nor his other works have been independently published over the last thirty years.

Scattered passages taken from his work are often inserted into anthological prints in English. Over recent years it is worth noting Cambridge translations of renaissance philosophical texts, 2. Political philosophy (1997); The sweetness of power: Machiavelli’s discourses & Guicciardini’s considerations (2002); Debating foreign policy in the Renaissance: Speeches on war and peace by Francesco Guicciardini (2017); The defeat of a Renaissance intellectual: Selected writings of Francesco Guicciardini (2019).

Also in Russia, a country with a long history of translating Guicciardini, there have been important translations in the XXI century. The Ricordi were translated in 2004 for an edition curated by Muravyova and Feldstein, on behalf of the Russian Accademy of Science, and re-edited in 2009 and 2017. Instead, in 2018, a two-volume translation by Yusima was released of the Storia d’Italia for the Russian Academy of Science.

Beyond the countries mentioned within the denoted time period, there is no other that can claim a similar, systematic transposition of Guicciardini’s works. The Ricordi have recently been translated into Chinese (2014), as has an anthology of his maxims (2012). The Ricordi have also been released in Holland (2017), translated by P. Rademakers. In the Basque, the Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze came out in 2019, edited by J.M Elexpuru Arregi. There seem to be no recent translations in Portuguese or German.