Читать книгу Art in Theory - Группа авторов - Страница 39

Amusingly, given that the newly discovered land of America was named after him, Amerigo Vespucci was something of a charlatan. Born in Florence, he had a moderately successful business career working for the Medici family. By 1492 this had taken him to Cadiz in Spain, and he subsequently became a kind of quartermaster for some transatlantic voyages. In 1499 he sailed on the voyage of Alonzo de Hojeda. As well as commercial abilities, Vespucci was well‐read and could tell a story. Two letters which he later wrote from Lisbon to important figures in Italy (in which he claimed a status and experience he never actually had) involved a powerful mixture of observation and fantasy, and, striking a chord in the European imagination, they had an impact on subsequent visual representations of the New World and its people. The extracts reprinted from the letter of March or April 1503, here establish the claim that America is a new continent and rehearse various features of the indigenous inhabitants, ranging from acute observations about personal adornment to what quickly became well‐worn European clichés about nakedness, sexuality, absence of culture and religion, and cannibalism. They are taken from The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci and other Documents Illustrative of his Career, translated with notes and an introduction by Clements R. Markham, London, The Hakluyt Society 1894. We have used the undated American reprint by Burt Franklin, Publisher, New York, pp. 42, 45–7.

Alberico Vesputio to Lorenzo Pietro di Medici, salutation. In passed days I wrote very fully to you of my return from the new countries, which have been found and explored with the ships, at the cost, and by the command, of this Most Serene King of Portugal; and it is lawful to call it a new world, because none of these countries were known to our ancestors, and to all who hear about them they will be entirely new. For the opinion of the ancients was, that the greater part of the world beyond the equinoctial line to the south was not land, but only sea, which they have called the Atlantic; and if they have affirmed that any continent is there, they have given many reasons for denying that it is inhabited. But this their opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth. My last voyage has proved it, for I have found a continent in that southern part; more populous and more full of animals than our Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us. […]

As regards the people: we have found such a multitude in those countries that no one could enumerate them, as we read in the Apocalypse. They are people gentle and tractable, and all of both sexes go naked, not covering any part of their bodies, just as they came from their mothers’ wombs, and so they go until their deaths. They have large, square‐built bodies, and well proportioned. Their colour reddish, which I think is caused by their going naked and exposed to the sun. Their hair is plentiful and black. They are agile in walking, and of quick sight. They are of a free and good‐looking expression of countenance, which they themselves destroy by boring the nostrils and lips, the nose and ears: nor must you believe that the borings are small, nor that they only have one, for I have seen those who had no less than seven borings in the face, each one the size of a plum. They stop up these perforations with blue stones, bits of marble, of crystal, or very fine alabaster, also with very white bones and other things artificially prepared according to their customs; which, if you could see, it would appear a strange and monstrous thing. One had in the nostrils and lips alone seven stones, of which some were half a palm in length. It will astonish you to hear that I considered that the weight of seven such stones was as much as sixteen ounces. In each ear they had three perforations bored, whence they had other stones and rings suspended. This custom is only for the men, as the women do not perforate their faces, but only their ears. Another custom among them is sufficiently shameful, and beyond all human credibility. Their women, being very libidinous, make the penis of their husbands swell to such a size as to appear deformed; and this is accomplished by a certain artifice, being the bite of some poisonous animal, and by reason of this many lose their virile organ and remain eunuchs.

They have no cloth, either of wool, flax, or cotton, because they have no need of it; nor have they any private property, everything being in common. They live amongst themselves without a king or ruler, each man being his own master, and having as many wives as they please. The children cohabit with the mothers, the brothers with the sisters, the male cousins with the female, and each one with the first he meets. They have no temples and no laws, nor are they idolaters. What more can I say! They live according to nature, and are more inclined to be Epicurean than Stoic. They have no commerce among each other, and they wage war without art or order. The old men make the youths do what they please, and incite them to fights, in which they mutually kill with great cruelty. They slaughter those who are captured, and the victors eat the vanquished; for human flesh is an ordinary article of food among them. You may be the more certain of this, because I have seen a man eat his children and wife; and I knew a man who was popularly credited to have eaten 300 human bodies. I was once in a certain city for twenty‐seven days, where human flesh was hung up near the houses, in the same way as we expose butcher’s meat. I say further that they were surprised that we did not eat our enemies, and use their flesh as food, for they say it is excellent. Their arms are bows and arrows, and when they go to war they cover no part of their bodies, being in this like beasts. We did all we could to persuade them to desist from their evil habits, and they promised us to leave off. The women, as I have said, go naked, and are very libidinous, yet their bodies are comely; but they are as wild as can be imagined.

They live for 150 years, and are rarely sick. If they are attacked by a disease they cure themselves with the roots of some herbs. These are the most noteworthy things I know about them.