Two friends and an island
Two acquaintances at a long-ago party had recognized an obscure literary reference in an out-of-print book by a long-dead author:
Dolce far niente: ‘Sweet doing nothing’
Three Italian words had sparked a conversation that kindled a friendship that inspired a group of friends to purchase a ship named Rocinante and sail her for three years, over 4,000 nautical miles to the Canary Islands.
In my pocket, a telltale phrase imprinted on a coin.
Why had my friends to named their project Dolce far niente?
Searching a PDF for clues
I downloaded the book, a biography titled Magellan: Conqueror of the Seas, written by Austrian author, Stefan Zweig.
I typed the search phrase Dolce far niente.
It appears just once in the entire text:
For years this new Odysseus continued to enjoy the embraces of his dusky Calypso, with no demon of ambition to expel him from a dolce far niente Eden.
This ‘new Odysseus’ was the Portugese explorer, Francisco Serrao — a close friend and cousin to Ferdinand Magellan.
We remember Magellan as the first European explorer to circumnavigate the globe. He died before reaching his ultimate goal, the Maluku Islands (Moluccas), also known as the Spice Islands.
Few recall the name of Francisco Serrao, the first European to set foot on the Spice Islands, who wrote a series of letters to Magellan, describing details of the islands, and their location.
Magellan was, through his friendship with Francisco Serrao, to learn more about the Spice Islands than almost any other man of that day; and his friend’s adventures among them were to lure him into the greatest and boldest adventure of his time.
Stefan Zweig’s biography of Magellan is the story of two friends who take radically divergent paths in life — one destined to glory, the other to be forgotten by history.
In Zweig’s telling, the more successful of the two is Francisco Serrao.
Their tale begins some 13 years before Magellan’s great voyage.
Europe’s insatiable demand for spice
in 1506, Magellan and Serrao set out as young sailors in Portugal’s first naval expedition, to capture a series of Muslim trading stations that controlled access to the Asian spice trade.
Talk of God and Glory aside, it was Europe’s taste for astronomically expensive and exotic spices from Asia that launched the Age of Discovery.
Indian spices had to pass through at least twelve hands before they reached the table, and only the wealthiest Europeans could afford them.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the terms Arabian, Persian, and Indian were, to European ears almost synonymous with select, exquisite, distinguished, precious, and expensive …. No other article of commerce was so much coveted as were Oriental spices.
Sixteen-century Europe’s insatiable demand for spice inspired generations of young men to seek their fortunes at sea. These voyages of trade and conquest were the first early steps toward European domination of the planet, and global trade.
In Magellan’s age, no destination had more appeal than the legendary Spice Islands, the single source of clove, nutmeg and mace, hidden away in the eastern archipelagoes of present-day Indonesia.
In his later, historical voyage to circumnavigate the globe, Magellan was searching for a westward passage to reach the Spice Islands where, according to Zweig, he was also hoping to reunite with an old friend.
Two young friends part ways
To reach the Spice Islands sailing eastward from the Indian Ocean, that first Portuguese naval expedition had to pass through the Straits of Malacca (modern-day Singapore).
Arriving in Malacca in September 1509, the Portuguese presented themselves as a peaceful trade mission. Unbeknownst to them, the Sultan of Malacca had already received word of the fleet’s conquests in India, and was only pretending to play along.
Caught by surprise, the fleet barely escaped the trap.
Most of the sailors left on shore were massacred, but a handful slipped away in a small boat, thanks to the daring intervention of Magellan, who barely managed to escape with the fleet.
Magellan’s friend and cousin, Ferdinand Serrao, survived the massacre in Malacca and eventually found his way to the Spice Islands, where he made his home on the island of Ternate.
Serrao was that “new Odysseus,” free of any “demon of ambition” living a happy life with his native wife in his “dolce far niente Eden.”
An author reveals his bias
Writing from far-away Ternate, Serrao continued to exercise a “decisive influence” upon his friend, Magellan, even inspiring him to his historic mission, according to Zweig:
To begin with, Francisco Serrao’s renunciation of the world seemed to have no bearing upon the life and exploits of Magellan. In reality, however, the epicurean choice of his friend exerted a decisive influence upon Magellan’s life, and therewith upon the history of maritime discovery. Across the vast oceanic distances the pair, connected by ties of close friendship, remained in unceasing contact. Whenever opportunity offered of sending a missive to Malacca and thence to Portugal, Serrao wrote in great detail to Magellan, giving enthusiastic descriptions of the wealth and the amenities of his new home.
Zweig speculates that Magellan and Serrao planned to reunite on Ternate, once Magellan’s voyage of discovery reached the Spice Islands.
[T]he pair must have concerted some sort of plan, for after Serrao’s death there was found among his papers a letter from Magellan wherein the latter promised to come to Ternate as soon as possible.
However, Magellan would not meet Francisco Serrao again, nor would he ever reach Ternate. He died in battle in the Philippines just short of the Spice Islands.
Of 265 men who set sail with Magellan, just 18 finished the voyage alive.
Perhaps this is why Zweig declares Ferdinand Serrao to be “perhaps not the most heroic, but probably the wisest and the happiest of the conquistadors and capitanos of the Great Age of Portugal.”
He, Francisco Serrao … had had enough of war and adventure and the spice trade. Without more ado, he leapt from the heroic world into an idyllic one, having determined to adopt the wholly primitive, splendidly slothful manner of life of these friendly savages. … The only service he was called upon to perform was to act as military adviser in case of war. In return, he received a house of his own with a sufficiency of slaves and a pretty brown-skinned wife, by whom he had several whity-brown children.
As the colonial British would later phrase it, Serrao had gone native.
[T]he warm balsamic climate, had seriously undermined his sense of military discipline. He no longer cared a fig or a pepper-corn whether, ten or twelve thousand miles away in Europe, a monarch might be grumbling. He felt he had done more than enough for Portugal, had carried his skin to market too often. Now he was going to seize his chance of enjoying his own life after the manner of the naked and carefree inhabitants of these fortunate islands.
“We are not hippies”
All this was food for thought, so I decided to broach the subject with my Russian friends one evening after dinner on Rocinante.
What about it guys? What is Dolce far niente?
The Noble Savage, pure in his uncivilized innocence? The 21st century hippie turning away from materialism to live a simple life in nature?
“We are not hippies,” the Russians told me.
Perhaps my friends, like Francisco Serrao, had “seized the chance of enjoying” their lives, of discovering their very own dolce far niente Eden?
“Not really.”
I formulated my question more plainly: What had given them the idea buy a ship, learn how to sail it, and set off on a voyage at sea that might well last a lifetime?
The two friends spoke in animated Russian for several minutes.
“We wanted to find an island with no assholes,” the one finally said.
At a party one night, he explained, the friends set out a collection box with this simple written appeal: “For an island without assholes.”
By the end of the night the box was nearly half full.
Within a year, my friends had purchased Rocinante.
Pictures of Rocinante
Mike W wrote in to say: “I think a picture of the actual boat would have helped hugely as I was thinking the whole story was a metaphor for a while.”
No metaphors here. Just a boat.
