10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 e nno r uge “[T]he wildest of adventurers, or one at the relation of whose crimes the world must shudder”: The Venetian Bravo as a Literary Character in Zschokke, Lewis, and Cooper “Take care, Prince,” said I, incautiously; “We are in Venice! ” Friedrich Schiller, The Armenian; or, The Ghost-Seer� 1 The Picture of a Bravo After his unexpected coming into money and subsequent release from Marshalsea debtor’s prison, Mr Dorrit, now a gentleman, takes his family on a grand tour of Europe, which includes a prolonged stay in Venice� One day, his daughter Little Dorrit, the eponymous heroine of Charles Dickens’s penultimate completed novel, visits the Venetian home of the painter Henry Gowan, “an ill conditioned man” (Dickens 637) who, out of sheer “perversity” (636), has made friends with a dubious character named Blandois� When Little Dorrit and her sister are led into the artist’s studio, the first object that confronts her is “Blandois of Paris in a great cloak and a furtive slouched hat, standing on a throne platform in a corner” (641)� Blandois is acting as a model to the painter, who explains to the astounded ladies what the scene could mean: “There he stands, you see� A bravo waiting for his prey, a distinguished noble waiting to save his country, the common enemy waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an angelic messenger waiting to do somebody a good turn - whatever you think he looks most like! […] Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio, […] a murderer after the fact� […] He was formerly in some scuffle with another murderer, or with a victim, you observe,” said Gowan, “and these are the tokens of it�” (641) Of course, the painter is unaware that the man in question is really a murderer and thus how fitting the costume of a Venetian bravo, a notorious hired assassin and outlaw, is for Blandois, but his witty pun “cattivo sogetto”, which can mean both ‘hideous subject’ and ‘devious character’, hits the mark nonetheless� When he wrote and published Little Dorrit between 1855 and 1857, Dickens could obviously rely on his English readers’ familiarity with the popular 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 54 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 image of the Venetian bravo� The shadowy assassin had become, by then, an all too well-known stock figure in cliché-ridden adventure tales set in Venice. In the years following the success of Matthew Lewis’s The Bravo of Venice. A Romance (1804), a translation of Heinrich Zschokke’s novel Abaellino der große Bandit (1794), a considerable number of novels was published which featured bravos or bravo-like characters� These tales capitalised on the bravo’s reputation of being a murderous villain and thus catered to the popular demand for all things Gothic, which meant, however, that the bravo practically disappeared with other Gothic stock characters when the middle-class reading public got tired of Gothic romances� 1 In contrast to Little Dorrit, however, where, ironically, the costume of the bravo matches the villainous character of Blandois, a discrepancy between appearance and character is a common feature of most bravos we encounter in popular romances, as “the bravo also attracted writers interested in investing the apparently irredeemable villain with complexities that resist the type” (Simpson 156)� In these novels, the bravo usually turns out to be a heroic adventurer who uses the mask of the notorious assassin to accomplish his mission� Obviously, the ideal scene for these stories of shifting and mistaken identities is the dark Venice of la legenda nera, the city of intrigue, masks, deception, denunciation, political murders, secret legal proceedings, and la piombi, the high-security prison that, according to legend, culprits entered across the Bridge of Sighs, never to return (Sage)� 2 As Victor Sage points out, the Venice of Gothic tales is characterised by “the paradox […] of an excessive control in the same space as extreme lawlessness” (51-52)� It is not only to Little Dorrit (Dickens 665) that the whole city seems like a prison, and, as many Venetian-set narratives illustrate, the ultimate challenge - in addition to mastering the dangers lurking around every corner or finding one’s way through the maze of little streets and canals - is to get away from the city� It is no coincidence that one of the most famous adventure stories is Giacomo Casanova’s account of his spectacular escape from Venice, Histoire de ma fuite des prisons de la République de Venise qu’on appelle les Plombs (1788)� Adventures may thus lie in the risky world that seems enticing, exciting, unprecedented, and unknown outside the strict confines of the city� Crossing the threshold into Venice, however, may just as well be the beginning of an adventure as we can only suspect what is lurking behind the 1 According to Sutherland, by 1820, Gothic fiction “was regarded as déclassée” (336)� The bravo was a relatively late addition to the various myths about the city on the water, highlighting the “dark” or “black” Venice, which had always been part of narratives about the city but practically replaced the old myths of a glorious, wise and just Venice (if not la città galante) after the end of the republic in 1797� 2 See also Ruge� The Venetian Bravo 55 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 beautiful façade� This is, after all, what for Georg Simmel made Venice “the classical city of adventure” (“Venice” 46)� The greatest adventure, though, as Casanova’s example shows, may take place on the threshold itself� When the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper published The Bravo in 1831, the last novel with a Venetian bravo as its principal character, his intention was not, as he makes clear in his preface, to imitate the romantic bravos (even though he did so in some respects) but to present Venice as a republic that has betrayed the political ideals of its founders� The eponymous character is merely an instrument, and ultimately a pawn to be sacrificed, of a materialistic, power-conscious oligarchy that has turned La Serenissima into a police state� As it was for Byron, for Cooper Venice’s “lot is shameful to the nations”, if not, of course, “most of all [to] Albion! ” (Byron, “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” l� 149-151)� Instead, the corruption of Venice is presented as a warning to the then still young American republic which, Cooper feared, was in danger of giving up its original social contract in favour of a rising plutocracy (Scannavini 136). The first European reviews of Cooper’s Bravo immediately realised that the novel differed from the popular romances of Zschokke, Lewis, and their imitators in its critical ambition, even though that did not work to the novel’s credit (Dainat 26)� 3 However, there were also many similarities� Like Abaellino, Jacopo Frontoni, as Cooper calls his bravo, is no base cutthroat. The first is a persona invented by an unjustly disgraced nobleman who hides behind the bravo’s mask to bring down a group of dangerous conspirators against the Venetian state, to regain his reputation and get the girl� The latter is a genuine bravo, albeit one who was forced into service and who, in spite of his terrible appearance, is really a good-natured man innocent of the various heinous crimes he is charged with and who eventually turns against his masters - even though that means his certain death� The novels discussed here owe a lot to popular romances and adventure narratives� Zschokke’s Abaellino der große Bandit signals its indebtedness to the German Räuberroman in its title; Lewis’s translation is connected to the Gothic romance through the fame of the author of The Monk; and Cooper’s Venice is full of Gothic terror� As we shall see, Cooper deliberately refrains from exploiting the potential of the adventure story in order not to compromise his political critique� I argue here that Cooper’s choice - conscious or unconscious - to model his central character on the stock figure of the bravo who is noble at heart not only contributes significantly to his novel’s failure but destroys the stock character forever� 3 On the reception in America, see Scannavini� 56 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 2 The Stereotype If Cooper’s Bravo was not greeted enthusiastically by many critics, this had less to do with the novel’s many aesthetic flaws than with its political message. While American reviewers resented Cooper’s finger-wagging to his countrymen, Italian critics were piqued by the novel’s denunciation of the Venetian republic as a “cruelly inhuman form of state which forces its citizens into duplicity” (Corbineau-Hoffmann 272, my translation), and they criticised Cooper’s historical mistakes and inaccuracies� Among other things, the Italians pointed out that the role of the bravo “never existed in the domains of the Repubblica” and that “more study of Italian usages […] would have better instructed the author” (Scannavini 144)� As it turns out, however, the author knew his Venetian history better than his native detractors� As Mila Manzatto has shown, bravos were very common in the Venetian domains at the time the plot takes place: Il bravo, figura attestata fra il Cinque-Seicento con un'immagine sociale di latore ed esecutore di violenza, da cui il suo ancoraggio alla categoria dei criminali nella legislazione dell'epoca, e la conseguente folta presenza negli atti processuali, scompare dalla scena storica all'inizio del Settecento. (155) 4 The historical bravo, according to Manzatto, was a member of a private army in the service of local lords who operated in the territories belonging to Venice as well as in Lombardia, a “soldato mercenario, al servizio di un signore per proteggerlo, per difenderne i beni, per affrontare i suoi nemici” (Battaglia, qtd� in Manzatto 157, italics in original)� This is the type of bravo encountered by the curate Don Abbondio at the beginning of Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (1827): The curate, having turned the corner, directed, as was his wont, a look toward the little chapel, and there beheld what he little expected, and would not have desired to see. At the confluence, if we may so call it, of the two narrow lanes, there were two men: one of them sitting astride the low wall; his companion leaning against it, with his arms folded on his breast� The dress, the bearing, and what the curate could distinguish of the countenance of these men, left no doubt as to their profession� They wore upon their heads a green network, which, falling on the left shoulder, ended in a large tassel, from under which appeared upon the forehead an enormous lock of hair� Their mustachios were long, and curled at the extremities; the margin of 4 “The ‘bravo’, in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, socially portrayed as a messenger and executor of violence, considered a member of the category of criminals by the legislation of the time, who, as a result, frequently appeared in trial documents, disappeared from the scene of history at the beginning of the 18 th century” (Manzatto 156)� The Venetian Bravo 57 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 their doublets confined by a belt of polished leather, from which were suspended, by hooks, two pistols; a little powder-horn hung like a locket on the breast; on the right-hand side of the wide and ample breeches was a pocket, out of which projected the handle of a knife, and on the other side they bore a long sword, of which the great hollow hilt was formed of bright plates of brass, combined into a cypher: by these characteristics they were, at a glance, recognised as individuals of the class of bravoes� (3-4) The bravi have been waiting for the curate to warn him, on behalf of their master Don Rodrigo, not to wed the eponymous bride and bridegroom on the following day� The bravi’s task is to deliver the message, but their threatening appearance and reputation leave the frightened Don Abbondio in no doubt that they are prepared to enforce the order with violence if necessary� It is impossible - and negligible here - to distinguish between the historical bravo and the stereotype� What matters, though, is that the widespread phenomenon of the bravos in Lombardy and especially the mainland territories of Venice can be seen as a symptom of political crisis in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries� The republic of Venice, it seems, was either unable or unwilling to sustain the monopoly of violence in its dominions after the fifteenth century, which resulted in growing numbers of vagabonds, banditi, and bravi (Manzotto 158). One of the first historians to describe this phenomenon and its impact on the ultimate decline of Venice was the Frenchman Pierre Daru in his Histoire de la République de Venise (1819): The nobles of the mainland had to pay homage to the Venetian aristocracy; this was because of justified suspicion that these nobles were dissatisfied with their political insignificance. Thus the government established a system to maintain divisions between families and to destroy the more powerful nobles� The government thought its interests lay in perpetuating hatred, and therefore it tolerated crimes that manifested and cemented private grudges� Normally such crimes were commissioned to those disreputable men called bravi, whom the rich, the timid, and vindictive women kept in their pay� This profession was encouraged by the sale of pardons� (qtd� in Povolo 497) Thus, together with the vagabonds and bandits, the bravos destabilised the Venetian dominions of Terraferma with their criminal activities� These apparently included contract killings encouraged by the Venetian oligarchy, who - as it turned out, erroneously - hoped to benefit from the latent anarchy. It is possible to see why Cooper, who named Daru’s Histoire as one of his principal sources, chose to make the “liminal figure” (Manzotto 158) of the bravo the eponymous character of his novel about the decline of the republic� 58 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 Yet, Cooper’s bravo differs significantly from the historical bravi in that he is a loner, acts under direct orders from the senate, and operates within the city of Venice, not in its mainland territories� For this kind of bravo, Cooper, even though he denied it, may be indebted to the works of Heinrich Zschokke and Matthew Lewis� 3 Gothic Venice As we have seen, “the paradox […] of an excessive control in the same space as extreme lawlessness” (Sage 51-52) became a common feature of adventure stories set in Venice at the end of the eighteenth century� Until then, the dark underside of Venice had been the world of petty crime, prostitution, carnivalesque inversion, deception, denunciation, and political intrigue and conspiracy - hardly ever, though, of hired assassins� Why and how the literary character of the bravo came to show up in Venice almost a hundred years after an exemplar of the historical species was last mentioned in legal documents is not known. In all likelihood, however, the first Bravo-narrative was Heinrich Zschokke’s novel Abaellino der große Bandit, published in 1794 and made popular in the English-speaking world through Matthew Lewis’s translation� Together with Christian August Vulpius’s Rinaldo Rinaldini der Räuberhauptmann (1799), Zschokke’s novel is seen as one of the foundational Räuberromane, even though, in contrast to Rinaldini, Abaellino is not a robber, despite the epithet of “bandit”� In fact, Zschokke’s hero is outraged when mistaken for a “robber”, 5 as is Matteo, the leader of the band of bravos whom Abaellino joins at the beginning of the novel: “‘Scoundrel! ’ interrupted Matteo, frowning and offended, ‘amongst us robbery is unknown� What? Dost take us for common plunderers, for mere thieves, cut-purses, house-breakers, and villains of that low, miserable stamp? ’” (Lewis 18) 6 � Nonetheless, Abaellino is one of the two novels that brought the character of the noble hero whom misfortune has made an outlaw from Germany to Italy� 7 As is well known, the popular robber romances are conventionally traced back to Friedrich Schiller’s drama Die Räuber� There is, however, another text by Schiller which had an even 5 “Zum Teufel, seht Ihr mich denn für einen Banditen an? ” (Zschokke 9)� Cf� Matthew Lewis’s translation: “Hell and confusion! Do you take me for a robber, then? ” (Lewis 10)� I quote from Lewis’s translation, which follows the source text fairly closely, though with a tendency to enlarge it� 6 See Zschokke 17� 7 “Zschokke und Vulpius markieren den Übergang vom Drama zum Roman und den Wechsel des Schauplatzes nach Italien� Mit keinen anderen Namen verbinden sich ähnliche Einschnitte in der Gattungsgeschichte” (Dainat 19)� The Venetian Bravo 59 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 more decisive influence on Zschokke’s Abaellino� Der Geisterseher (1788-89), a Gothic mystery set in Venice, makes use of a number of “specifically Venetian thematics - masquerade, for example, and the notion of labyrinthine architectural space” (Sage 55) in order to create a particularly Gothic atmosphere� In Schiller’s story, two young German aristocrats are caught up in a monstrous conspiracy against one of them, a prince from a small German state� As part of the perfidious intrigue, the Prince is lured into a typical Venetian set-up in a gaming house, in which he strikes one of the card-players who insults him� His friends counsel him to leave Venice instantly because the next thing that will happen in the Venetian plot is that he will be assassinated by a Venetian ‘Bravo’, whom the card-player will hire for a few shillings� (Sage 56-57) Interestingly, a bravo is not mentioned in the German text at all but does appear in the English translation (to which Sage’s summary, which I quote, apparently refers)� 8 Nevertheless, the episode from The Ghost-Seer seems to be the first suggestion of contract killings as a Venetian ‘custom’, as it were. Before the Germans can escape or an assassin can strike, the prince and his companion, the Count of O, are ordered to follow a group of men who identify themselves as officers of the Venetian state inquisition: They conducted us under a strong escort to a canal, where a boat waited for us� We were ordered to embark; but before we quitted it, our eyes were blindfolded; and, upon our landing, we found that they led us up a stone stair-case, and then through a long winding passage over arches, as we could discover by the repeated echoes that sounded under our feet� We soon arrived at another stair-case, which in twenty-six steps brought us to the bottom� We then heard a door creak upon its hinges; and when they took the bandage from our eyes, we found ourselves in a spacious hall, encircled by an assembly of venerable old men� All appeared in sable robes, and the hall hung with black cloth, was dimly lighted by a few scattered tapers� A deadly silence prevailed through the assembly, which caused in us an awful sensation too powerful to be described� One of the old men, who appeared to be the principal state inquisitor, came near to the Prince, and spoke to him with a solemn countenance, whilst another set before him the Venetian� (Schiller, Armenian 17-18) 8 Cf� “‘Sie sind verloren, gnädigster Herr’, sagten diese [die Freunde des Prinzen], ‘wenn Sie nicht sogleich die Stadt verlassen� Der Venezianer, den Sie so übel behandelt haben, ist reich und von Ansehen - es kostet ihm [sic! ] nur 50 Zechinen, Sie aus der Welt zu schaffen’” (Schiller, Geisterseher 13). Compare this to the first English translation from 1800: “‘You are lost, gracious sir’, said a Frenchman, ‘if you do not leave the city directly� The Venetian, whom you handled so roughly, is rich enough to hire a bravo; - it will only cost him 50 sequins to be revenged by your death�’” (Schiller, Armenian 16)� 60 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 The Venetian is no other but the man who provoked the Prince in the tavern: “Do you acknowledge this man to be the same that you used so roughly in the coffee-house? ” “Yes! ” answered the Prince� Then turning to the prisoner - “Is that the person you would have assassinated this evening? ” The prisoner answered, “Yes�” Immediately the judges opened the circle, and we saw, with the utmost horror, the head of the Venetian separated from his shoulders. “Are you satisfied with this sacrifice? ” said the State Inquisitor. The Prince fainted in the arms of his conductors. “Go,” he continued, with a terrible voice, as he turned towards me, “and think in future more favourably of the administration of justice in Venice�” We could not learn who our unknown friend was, who had thus delivered us, by the arm of justice, from the diabolical plans of the assassin� We reached our habitation terrified in the extreme. It was midnight. (ibid.) This is Gothic Venice at its best� While the seemingly supernatural elements of the plot, like necromancy, for example, are eventually explained, the horror of the decapitation scene, which anticipates the secret tribunals of Cooper’s Venice, derives from the fact that the Germans do not know the identity of the inquisitors (which is, in fact, never revealed, as Schiller did not finish the novel)� It is likewise left unanswered whether the venerable men are really representatives of the republic or whether they belong to a secret Jesuit-like society, “the stereotype of the Holy Roman Empire, carried to us in the corrupt microcosm of the Venetian Republic” (Sage 58)� By contrast, there is no such disturbing indeterminacy in Heinrich Zschokke’s Abaellino. Right at the beginning, the readers are informed by the hero himself that the figure of Abaellino is a disguise for a disgraced nobleman from Naples who has fled to Venice - a character confusingly called Obizzo by Zschokke and Rosalvo by Lewis� 9 Before long, we are also told that the bravi, whose band Abaellino joins, were hired to commit a series of political murders by a group of malcontent patricians who aim to destabilise the citystate so that they can take over� 10 Their enemies are the kind Doge Andrea (or Andreas in Zschokke) Gritti and his loyal councillors� At the beginning of the narrative, Rosalvo, dressed as a beggar, resembles a Byronic hero, full of bitterness and dangerously capable of violence: “Fate,” he at length exclaimed in a paroxysm of despair, “Fate has condemned me to be either the wildest of adventurers, or one at the relation of whose crimes the world 9 Lewis simplifies the bravo’s name to “Abellino”. To make matters even worse, Lewis changes Abellino’s name to Rugantino in the second edition of The Bravo� 10 This scenario will have reminded English readers of Thomas Otway’s tragedy Venice Preserved (1682)� The Venetian Bravo 61 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 must shudder� To astonish is my destiny� Rosalvo can know no medium; Rosalvo can never act like common men� Is it not the hand of fate which has led me hither? Who could ever have dreamt that the son of the richest lord in Naples should have depended for a beggar’s alms on Venetian charity? I—I, who feel myself possessed of strength of body and energy of soul fit for executing the most daring deeds, behold me creeping in rags through the streets of this inhospitable city, and torturing my wits in vain to discover some means by which I may rescue life from the jaws of famine! Those men whom my munificence nourished, who at my table bathed their worthless souls in the choicest wines of Cyprus, and glutted themselves with every delicacy which the globe’s four quarters could supply, these very men now deny to my necessity even a miserable crust of mouldy bread� Oh, that is dreadful, cruel—cruel of men—cruel of Heaven! ” […] “Yet will I bear it—I will submit to my destiny� I will traverse every path and go through every degree of human wretchedness; and whate’er may be my fate, I will still be myself; and whate’er may be my fate, I will still act greatly! Away, then, with the Count Rosalvo, whom all Naples idolised; now—now, I am the beggar Abellino […]�” (Lewis 11) 11 As it happens, the hero will become adventurer and villain� In addition to the bravo, he decides to impersonate a dashing Florentine youth called Flodoardo who jumps to the doge’s aid and courts the beautiful Rosabella� It is strongly suggested that the boundaries between the roles the Neapolitan chooses for himself are permeable� Actually, Rosalvo seems to enjoy changing back and forth between the roles and sometimes even conflating them. This is shown most effectively in the spectacular finale in the Doge’s palace, where the Neapolitan stages the exposure and arrest of the conspirators - much to the dismay of the court in the disguise of the bravo Abaellino� In particular, the hero relishes the disconcerted reaction of Rosabella: Rosabella opened her eyes; their first look fell upon the bravo. “Oh, God of mercy! ” she exclaimed, “he is still there� Methought, too, that Flodoardo -� No, no; it could not be! I was deceived by witchcraft�” Abellino advanced towards her, and attempted to raise her� She shrunk from his touch with horror� “No, Rosabella,” said the bravo, in an altered voice, “what you saw was no illusion� Your favoured Flodoardo is no other than Abellino the bravo�” “It is false! ” interrupted Rosabella, starting from the ground in despair, and throwing herself for refuge on Camilla’s bosom� “Monster! thou canst not be Flodoardo! such a fiend can never have been such a seraph. Flodoardo’s actions were good and 11 Cf� the German: “Das Schiksal hat mich zum Abentheurer oder gar zum Bösewicht verdammt” (Zschokke 10)� 62 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 glorious as a demi-god’s! ‘Twas of him that I learned to love good and glorious actions, and ‘twas he who encouraged me to attempt them myself; his heart was pure from all mean passions, and capable of conceiving all great designs� Never did he scruple, in the cause of virtue, to endure fatigue and pain, and to dry up the tears of suffering innocence—that was Flodoardo’s proudest triumph! Flodoardo and thou—! Wretch, whom many a bleeding ghost has long since accused before the throne of heaven, darest thou to profane the name of Flodoardo! ” Abellino (proud and earnest)�—Rosabella, wilt thou forsake me? Wilt thou retract thy promise? Look, Rosabella, and be convinced: I, the bravo, and thy Flodoardo are the same� He said, removing the patch from his eye, and passed a handkerchief over his face once or twice� In an instant his complexion was altered, his bushy eyebrows and straight black hair disappeared, his features were replaced in their natural symmetry, and lo! The handsome Florentine stood before the whole assembly, dressed in the habit of the bravo Abellino� Abellino�—Mark me, Rosabella! Seven times over, and seven times again, will I change my appearance, even before your eyes, and that so artfully that, study me as you will, the transformation shall deceive you� But change as I may, of one thing be assured: I am the man whom you loved as Flodoardo� (Lewis 83-84) We are told that “[l]ove struggled with abhorrence in Rosabella’s bosom”, as she still believes that the man before her killed several fine men in his role as undercover bravo, but she cannot hide that she is fascinated by both facets of her lover: “[S]he threw upon him a look innocent and tender as ever beamed from the eye of an angel, and that look betrayed but too plainly that the miscreant was still master of her heart” (84)� In the end, it is the bravo she gives her heart to: “‘Abellino,’ said Rosabella, and extended her hand to the handsome bravo� ‘Triumph,’ cried he, ‘Rosabella is the bravo’s bride�’” (89)� 12 It should be noted, however, that the novel’s hero is not innocent� In fact, he is responsible for the death of quite a number of people� He treacherously stabs Matteo, the leader of the bravos, and, in the role of Flodoardo, arrests the remaining members of the band, who are subsequently executed� Finally, he kills the Prince of Monaldeschi in “honorable combat”, a man who was not only his “inveterate enemy” who had dispossessed him and destroyed his reputation back in Naples, but who was also his chief rival for the hand of Rosabella (88)� Thus, Rosalvo’s / Obizzo’s killings in disguise are honourable killings of a gentleman, for which he cannot be blamed� 12 Once again, the German original differs significantly: “‘Abaellino! ’ jauchzte Rosamunde, und küsste den schönen Banditen mit Glut� ‘Rosamunde,’ rief Abaellino und vergas [sic! ] in dieser Umarmung die ganze Welt” (Zschokke 93)� The Venetian Bravo 63 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 As Rosalvo knows well, his success rests on his exceptional talent for disguise, which comes in handy in Venice� As the scene quoted above has shown, it is the striking contrast between the beautiful Flodoardo and the hideous Abaellino, which is particularly effective in the fictional text. But what about its effect on the reader? Consider for example the following description of Abaellino: If the reader is curious to know what this same Abellino was like, he must picture to himself a young, stout fellow, whose limbs perhaps might have been thought not ill-formed, had not the most horrible countenance that ever was invented by a caricaturist, or that Milton could have adapted to the ugliest of his fallen angels, entirely marred the advantages of his person� Black and shining, but long and straight, his hair flew wildly about his brown neck and yellow face. His mouth so wide, that his gums and discoloured teeth were visible, and a kind of convulsive twist, which scarcely ever was at rest, had formed its expression into an internal grin� His eye, for he had but one, was sunk deep into his head, and little more than the white of it was visible, and even that little was overshadowed by the protrusion of his dark and bushy eyebrow� In the union of his features were found collected in one hideous assemblage all the most coarse and uncouth traits which had ever been exhibited singly in wooden cuts, and the observer was left in doubt whether this repulsive physiognomy expressed stupidity of intellect, or maliciousness of heart, or whether it implied them both together� (Lewis 15) As Victor Sage notes, the effect of this description is comic rather than terrible� One does not have to agree with Sage that the result in both Zschokke and Lewis is “a very ‘stagy’ mixture of satire and Gothic romance” (60), but it seems obvious that neither of them intended to write a truly shocking story of terror� This is corroborated by the narrator’s “Conclusion” (“Nachschrift” in the German original), where he wonders whether the readers would be interested in hearing more about the Neapolitan count’s life and adventures: “but before I begin Rosalvo’s history, I must ask two questions - First - do my readers like the manner in which I relate adventures? Secondly - If my readers do like my manner of relating adventures, can I employ my time better than in relating them? ” (Lewis 90)� 13 13 Lewis expands Zschokke’s brief conclusion (“Nachschrift”) considerably, which I quote here in its entirety: “Freilich wäre es so unrecht nicht, wenn man sich jezt zwischen den Graf Obizzo, der schönen Rosamunde und dem alten Doge hinsezzen, und Obizzo’s Erzählung von seiner Herkunft und seinen ehmaligen Abentheuern, die ihn nach Venedig trieben, mit anhören könnte - allein hier sind vorläufig nur zwei Fragen zu beantworten; die alles entscheiden� Erstlich: hört man mir gern zu, wenn ich 64 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 Zschokke must be credited with having reinvented the figure of the Venetian Bravo� He brings him from the dominions of Venice to the city proper and makes him get rid of the band of banditi in order to act on his own� 14 Instead of pursuing criminal activities, including murder for money, he becomes a kind of protector of the community who acts in the shadows while retaining the bravo’s notoriety� At the same time, the terrifying image is reduced to a mere masquerade, and a rather comic one at that� Regardless of whether Cooper knew Lewis’s translation of Zschokke’s romance or not, it was their kind of adventurous bravo he inherited and had to deal with� 4 The Last of the Bravos: James Fenimore Cooper’s Venice “I have not decided on the name, but I believe it will be ‘Bravo’” (qtd� in Simpson 168n12), Cooper told Charles Wilkes while writing The Bravo� “I find Monk Lewis has a story called ‘The Bravo of Venice’, which may induce me to choose another title” (ibid�)� We know he did not change the title� Nevertheless, he must have been aware that the decision to keep it would invite comparisons between Lewis’s immensely popular book and his own, but it seems that he was shocked by the hostile reviews, which included charges of plagiarism� 15 It is of course futile to speculate whether Cooper had read Lewis’s translation of Zschokke’s Abaellino or William Dunlap’s translation of Zschokke’s dramatisation of his own novel� 16 There is no denying, however, that Cooper retains Zschokke’s decisive changes to the stock character: in Cooper’s novel, too, the bravo’s area of operation is the city of Venice rather than the Terraferma, and he is the only one of his kind as there is no indication that there are, or have been, any other bravos active in the city� What is new in Cooper’s version is that Jacopo Frontoni is the man he appears to be� The Märchen erzähle? - Zweitens: Hab ich auch Zeit genug übrig Märchen zu erzählen? -” (Zschokke 94)� 14 “I will be the only dealer in this miserable trade […]” (Lewis 21)� 15 For example in the notorious review signed by “Cassio”, published in the American magazine Athenaeum in 1832, Cassio condemned the novel in its entirety: “We have forgotten the plot, we have forgotten the hero and heroine, we have even forgotten in what small portion of the work we were interested” (qtd� in Scannavini 140)� According to Scannavini, “[k]nowledge of Dunlap’s Abellino or Lewis’s The Bravo was insistingly denied by Cooper himself and by Susan Fenimore Cooper” (147n10)� 16 Zschokke turned his novel into a play in 1796� The immense success of the play soon overshadowed the novel (Dainat 240n268)� When Lewis published his translation of the novel in 1804, most contemporary English critics believed the play to be Zschokke’s original version of Abaellino’s adventures and, therefore, considered Lewis’s novel a reworking rather than a translation� The play was translated into English by William Dunlap as Abellino: The Great Bandit. Boston, Russel and Cutler, 1802� The Venetian Bravo 65 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 bravo’s terrible outward appearance is not grotesquely overdetermined as that of Abaellino but very effective nonetheless (or, rather because of that)� His appearance is in fact so impressive that at one point he even irritates the powerful senator Gradenigo, a member of the dreaded Council of Three (who apparently ‘runs’ him as his agent): The Bravo resumed his disguise with the readiness of one long practised in its use, but with a composure that was not so easily disconcerted as that of the more sensitive senator� The latter did not speak again, though he hurried Jacopo from his presence, by an impatient movement of the hand� (Cooper 1, 91) 17 The look of the bravo is not - or at least not simply - a masquerade, but, conversely, Frontoni skilfully uses masks to hide his infamous identity� Yet the image of the bravo is also a kind of screen as Jacopo appears not to work as a contract killer at all� In fact, he never once uses violence and claims to be “innocent of shedding blood” (Cooper 2, 210)� He is thus a secret agent, a spy, operating as the link between the leaders of the state and Venice’s criminal underworld� He deals, for example, with wine smugglers like the shifty Annina, who is also an informant, and organises secret transports of people and things� In these exploits, he skilfully uses all kinds of disguises, whereas he, somewhat paradoxically, appears in public as a bravo, where people habitually shun him because of his terrible reputation of being an assassin in the service of the state� He appears openly on the piazzas of the city as a constant reminder of the power of the state: 18 The citizens marvelled that one like me should go at large, while the vindictive and revengeful took the circumstance as a proof of address� When rumour grew too strong for appearances, the [Council of] Three took measures to direct it to other things; and when it grew too faint for their wishes, it was fanned� (211) But the bravo is also a decoy� Those foolish enough to approach him in order to use his service as an “avenger of private wrongs” (89) will be reported by him to the authorities who can then use this information against them: “I was applied as a public Bravo, and my reports, in more ways than one, answered 17 I quote from the American edition of The Bravo in two volumes (1852)� 18 “‘This Jacopo is one that should not go at large in an honest city, and yet he is seen pacing the square with as much ease as a noble in the Broglio�’ - ‘I know him not�’ - ‘Not to know the boldest and surest stiletto in Venice […] is to thy praise� But he is well marked among us of the port, and we never see the man but we begin to think of our sins, and of penances forgotten� I marvel much that the inquisitors do not give him to the devil, on some public ceremony for the benefit of small offenders.’” (Cooper 1, 111). Of course, this is exactly what is going to happen at the end of the novel� 66 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 their designs” (210)� In other words, Jacopo is an ingenious invention of the despotic rulers: His ‘bravoness’ is a symbol of what the state is capable of when threatened, but it is also a cover for his secret activities in the service of that very state� Notably, Jacopo is not devious and duplicitous by nature and not a mercenary� He is forced to serve his masters because they have his aging father in their power, who was arrested on trumped-up charges (ibid�)� He seems to have no illusions about the republic, but he is also not corrupted or cynical� Jacopo’s good nature shows itself in his secret visits to his father in the piombi but most strikingly in a spectacular gondola race where he lets the old fisherman Antonio win� He also supports Antonio’s suit to free his young grandson who was forced into military service� Jacopo even facilitates a hearing of the old man’s petition before the “secret and stern tribunal” (Cooper 1, 174) of the Council of Three (a scene that is reminiscent of the court scene in The Ghost-Seer but without achieving a comparable Gothic atmosphere) - a favour with possibly dangerous consequences for the bravo himself� It is not until Antonio is murdered by the secret police, though, that Jacopo turns against his employers� During a dramatic nightly encounter in the Jewish burying ground on the Lido with Don Camillo Montforte, a duke from Naples, who came to Venice to claim his inheritance (a revenant of Rosalvo? ), the anguished Jacopo opens his heart: 19 “Then they have proved too ruthless even for thee? ” said Don Camillo, who watched the contracting eye and heaving form of his companion, in wonder� “Signore, they have� I have witnessed, this night, a proof of their heartlessness and bad faith that hath forced me to look forward to my own fate� The delusion is over; from this hour I serve them no longer�” (Cooper 2, 38) Jacopo has finally realised that the senate has deceived him and will not keep its promise to let him and his father go free after a certain amount of time� Instead, he learns that they will kill his father whenever it is convenient for them� In fact, Jacopo is ostracised immediately because he is assumed to be 19 In the context of the novel, the place of the encounter is symbolic� The Venetian Jews are portrayed as cunning, greedy, chicken-livered usurers who - how could it be otherwise in Cooper’s Venice - also report to the Council� Like the untrustworthy Annina’s, their meanness is offset against the bravo’s ‘purity’� Thus, according to the novel’s logic, Jacopo’s open antisemitism (“Thou likest not the Hebrew, Jacopo” (Cooper 1, 88)) is not a flaw but an asset. However, the fact that he withdraws to the Jewish burying ground when he is at the lowest ebb and muses that he will soon share the fate of the “heretics” (Cooper 2, 41) suggests that he realises at last that he is not any better� As far as I can see, the fact that Cooper unhesitatingly deploys the crudest anti-Jewish stereotypes has not been found worth mentioning by the novel’s critics� The Venetian Bravo 67 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 Antonio’s murderer� But not even then does the bravo make use of his renowned stiletto� 20 Instead, his resistance takes the form of organising the escape of Don Camillo and his lover Violetta, a ward of the senate, whose rich inheritance the state plans to secure for itself� When he learns of Don Camillo’s desperation at Violetta’s abduction by the secret police, the bravo finds her and, using his secret contacts, gets the couple safely out of the senate’s reach� As Scannavini points out, the abduction of Violetta by the government’s thugs should start, conventionally, a series of escapes and pursuits leading to some kind of happy - although qualified - ending. As reviewers complained, however, this does not happen. The subplot loses momentum, it is functionally abandoned and quickly resolved, to move on to Jacopo’s undeserved death sentence� (145) In fact, as Lance Schachterle has shown, Cooper had originally conceived of a spectacular sea chase but eventually abandoned the already finished chapters. These chapters, according to Schachterle, “narrate an exciting quest by sea as Don Camillo, the Bravo, and their associates sail after Don Camillo’s abducted bride” (87), which may have been expanded into an “adventure narration of naval pursuit” (Scannavini 146)� Schachterle suggests that such an adventure narrative was discarded because it would have detracted readers from “Jacopo and his plight” (91)� This is probably so, but Jacopo is also denied an adventurous episode in which he could excel and, possibly, die a heroic death while saving the lovers� Thus, what is left for him to do is speak wry parting words to Don Camillo and calmly face his destiny: “Don Camillo Montforte, […] distrust Venice to your dying day� Let no promises - no hope - no desire of increasing your honours, or your riches ever tempt you to put yourself in her power� None know the falsehood of the state, better than I, and with my parting words I warn you to be wary�” “Thou speakest as if we were to meet no more, worthy Jacopo�” The Bravo turned, and the action brought his features to the moon� There was a melancholy smile, in which deep satisfaction at the success of the lovers was mingled with serious forebodings for himself� “We are certain only of the past,” he said, in a low voice� 20 The idea that a small stabbing weapon was the bravos’ favourite means of assassination may go back to the painting Il Bravo (1515-20, probably by Titian or Giorgione), in which a young man is surprised by another man (probably the Bravo of the title), who hides a dagger behind his back� The painting may be found under https: / / www� habsburger�net/ de/ medien/ tizian-der-bravo-um-151520 (accessed 8 Aug� 2020)� 68 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 Touching the hand of Don Camillo, he kissed his own and leaped hastily into his gondola� The fast was thrown loose and the felucca glided away, leaving this extraordinary being alone in the waters� The Neapolitan ran to the taffrail, and the last he saw of Jacopo, the Bravo was rowing leisurely back towards that scene of violence and deception from which he himself was so glad to have escaped� (Cooper 2, 156) Cooper’s Venice is hell� It is reminiscent of the Venice of Byron’s drama The Two Foscari (1821) where Marina, the wife of one of the title characters, refuses to be lectured on the virtues of the republic: Keep Those maxims for your mass of scared mechanics, Your merchants, your Dalmatian and Greek slaves, Your tributaries, your dumb citizens, And masked nobility, your sbirri, and Your spies, your galley and your other slaves, To whom your midnight carryings off and drownings, Your dungeons next the palace roofs, or under The water’s level; your mysterious meetings, And unknown dooms, and sudden executions, Your “Bridge of Sighs,” your strangling chamber, and Your torturing instruments, have made ye seem The beings of another and worse world! Keep such for them: I fear ye not� I know ye; (II�1 299-312) However, the result of Byron’s apparent debunking of the old flattering myths was just another myth, as John Ruskin eventually realised: The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efflorescence of decay, a stage dream which the first ray of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow deserved sympathy, ever crossed the ‘Bridge of Sighs’, which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice� (Works 10�8-9) Cooper’s Venice is, despite his intention, the Venice of romance, where Jacopo Frontoni takes leave of his dying father in the piombi before he is arrested on the Bridge of Sighs� Yet Cooper denies his protagonist both an adventure episode where he could excel and a flamboyant accusation of the hypocritical city fathers comparable to Marina’s� On the contrary, the bravo is divested of the only feature that makes him remarkable as his terrible reputation turns out to be a mere construction of his masters� He is not a mercenary who sells The Venetian Bravo 69 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 his service to those who pay but rather a slave who is “to be pitied” (Cooper 2, 211)� After all, as an early reviewer put it, Cooper’s bravo does not seem much more than a victim “of his own ill fame” (Scannavini 138)� 21 He may be, as I suggest, the victim of his literary predecessors’ ambivalent fame as well� It was perhaps inevitable that sooner or later Byron’s “worse world” and the liminal character of the bravo would come together� Perhaps Cooper was inspired to place a bravo at the centre of his narrative by the role of the bravi in the erosion and eventual demise of the Venetian republic which he had encountered in Daru’s Histoire, while his literary predecessors (of whom he had at least heard) may have induced him to use the liminal character to get to the heart of Venetian corruption� Obviously, there is no room for a romantic hero in Cooper’s Venice, so his version of the bravo turns out to be more stoic than heroic� However, as I have argued, his story of the brave bravo is full of awkward pathos reminiscent of the kind of sentimental romance Cooper did not want to write� It is likely that Cooper would have agreed with Simmel’s description of Venice as a city of lies: Here, at St Mark’s Square, at the Piazetta, one senses an iron will to power, a dark passion that stands like a thing-in-itself behind this cheerful appearance� […] But in Venice, where all that is cheerful and bright, free and light, has only served as a face for a life that is dark, violent and unrelentingly functional, the city’s decline has left behind a merely lifeless stage-set, the mendacious beauty of the mask� (“Venice” 43-44) 22 Cooper’s (perhaps inevitable) failure to exclude “the ambivalent beauty of adventure” (Simmel, “Venice” 46) from his narrative compromises his attempt at exposing the iron will to power behind the glorious façade� 5 The Venice of Cloaks and Daggers “Before me the dagger of the cloaked bravo or of the jealous husband gleams, and I hear the splash of the body as it falls into the dark canal” (James 194)� William Wetmore Story’s vision of a Venice where violence lurks around 21 Frontoni himself appears to corroborate this: “I consented to let them circulate such tales as might draw the eye of the public on me� I need not add, that he who lends himself to his own infamy, will soon attain his object” (Cooper 2, 211)� 22 “Hier, am Markusplatz, auf der Piazzetta, empfindet man einen eisernen Machtwillen, eine finstre Leidenschaft, die wie das Ding an sich hinter dieser heitern Erscheinung stehen� […] [H]ier aber, wo all das Heitere und Helle, das Leichte und Freie, nur einem finstern, gewalttätigen, unerbittlich zweckmäßigen Leben zur Fassade diente, da hat dessen Untergang nur ein entseeltes Bühnenbild, nur die lügenhafte Schönheit der Maske übriggelassen” (Simmel, “Venedig” 300)� 70 e nno r uge 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 every corner, quoted by Henry James in William Wetmore Story and His Friends (1903), expresses a nostalgic longing for a dangerous city of the past that never existed - a longing that Henry James, John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, and other writers who stayed in Venice did not share, even though they were well aware of it� 23 According to James, William Wetmore Story, a sculptor, found inspiration “in a country where the breath of the centuries of violence was still in the air and where the fancy could still so taste it […]� So the lingering lurid, in Venice, did more for the charm than […] the ghostly Grimace of Carnival” (194-195, italics in original)� If nineteenth-century writers mention the Venetian bravo, it is usually to distance themselves from the stereotypical masquerade� John Ruskin, for example, lists the bravo among other hackneyed Venetian motifs that made him abandon his tragedy Marcolini in 1836 (when he was 17)� “[W]hen I had described a gondola, a bravo, the heroine Bianca, and the moonlight on the Grand Canal, I found I had not much more to say” (Praeterita 146), Ruskin recalled later when he had become contemptuous of all myths of Venice� 24 When Cooper came into money after his first literary successes, he decided (like Mr Dorrit) to travel around Europe with his family� When he arrived in Italy in 1828, he was, according to Nathalia Wright, “prepared to encounter bandits; he decided Italy’s reputation for them was exaggerated” (115)� Like Byron and many others before him, Cooper expected to see a Venice as described by Ann Radcliffe in The Mysteries of Udolpho - and possibly by Schiller and Lewis� If, as Wright suggests, Cooper’s stay in Venice made him see the city more realistically, his Venetian novel shows no evidence of this� 25 23 James comments Story’s vision as follows: “He sees, in fine, what we all used to see, or what was obligingly seen for us (for consequent clearing of the air); that operatic side of the picture in which the idea of ‘crime’ recurs very much as one of the indispensable rhymes of the libretto” (194-195, italics in original)� 24 As Erik Simpson (155) points out, young Ruskin’s aborted tragedy was probably inspired by an episode in Samuel Rogers’ popular narrative poem Italy (1830) where a naive young man named Marcolini is hanged for a murder committed by a ruthless bravo, but, as we have seen, the hired assassin had come to literary fame earlier in the course of the vogue for Räuberromane and Gothic tales� On Ruskin’s growing disillusionment with the mythical Venice, see Hewison� 25 Ruskin sneers at Cooper’s naive use of the Venetian setting in a letter to his father: “It is marvellous how ridiculous the common novel-sentiment about Venice appears to anyone who really knows anything about it; but more marvellous still that a seaman like Cooper should never have found out that the lagoons were shallow - and should have represented the State inquisitors as drowning a criminal in the lagoons” (Ruskin, Letters 207)� In the same letter Ruskin writes: “The republicanism and the abuse of the Venetian government are also so absurd that it may be worthwhile taking notice of them in a note, as I daresay this book is an authority with the Americans about Venice” (ibid�)� The Venetian Bravo 71 10.24053/ REAL-2021-0003 What is more, his plan to present a cautionary tale from Old Europe as a deterrent to his fellow Americans appears not to have been as successful as he wished (Scannavini 137)� 26 Thus, Cooper’s innovative treatment of the figure of the bravo falls doubly flat, and the literary character is finally extinct, even though he lingers luridly in the visions of painters, sculptors and writers� Works Cited Byron, Lord, George Gordon� “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”, Canto the Fourth� The Complete Poetical Works, edited by Jerome J� McGann� Oxford: Oxford UP , 1980� ---� “The Two Foscari�” The Complete Works of Lord Byron� Paris: A� and W� Galignani & Co, 1837� Corbineau-Hoffmann, Angelika� Paradoxie der Fiktion. Literarische Venedigbilder 1797-1984� Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993� Cooper, James Fenimore� The Bravo. A Tale� New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1852� Dainat, Holger� Abellino, Rinaldini und Konsorten. Zur Geschichte der Räuberromane in Deutschland� Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1996� Dickens, Charles� Little Dorrit� London: Penguin, 2008� Hewison, Robert� Ruskin on Venice: ‘The Paradise of Cities’� New Haven: Yale UP , 2010� James, Henry� William Wetmore Story and His Friends. From Letters, Diaries, and Recollections, vol. 1. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1903. Levine, Robert S� Conspiracy and Romance: Studies in Brockden Brown, Cooper, Hawthorne, and Melville� Cambridge: Cambridge UP , 1989� Lewis, Matthew G� The Bravo of Venice. A Romance, by Heinrich Zschokke�, translated by M� G� Lewis� 1886� Fairford: The Echo Library, 2015� Manzatto, Mila� “Il Bravo tra Storia e Letteratura�” Acta Historiae, vol� 15, no� 1, 2007, pp� 155-178� Manzoni, Alessandro� The Betrothed� London: Richard Bentley, 1834� Povolo, Claudio� “The Creation of Venetian Historiography�” Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297-1797, edited by John Jeffrey Martin and Dennis Romano� Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP , 2002, pp� 491-519� Ruge, Enno� “Enchanting Venice: Der Romantische Blick auf Venedig� Byron, Turner, Ruskin�” Unwirklichkeiten. Zum Problem der Realität in der Moderne. 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