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Giorgio Zorzi Baffo - (1694-1768)
Giorgio Zorzi Baffo
Giorgio Baffo, Noble Magistrate and Insatiable Lover of Women
Neither his noble lineage nor his high office brought Zorzi Baffo fame!Son of the valiant Sopracomito of Galera, Ludovico Baffo, who led daring actions against the Turks in 1650 and participated in the Battle of the Dardanelles (1694) and the victory at Scio, Zorzi Baffo distinguished himself with his Erotic Works.
His writings on the conquest of love bring him closer to a woman in his family who had been captured at sea by the Turks: her parents were sold as slaves and she was sent to the harem.
She became the wife of Sultan Amurat III and in 1568, she gave birth to the future Mohammed III.
She exercised long domination under the reigns of her husband and son.
She may have benefited from the grateful protection of Mary Magdalene, in whose honour the Baffo family built the church of Santa Maria Madalena in 1222!
Gorgio Zorzi Baffo by Michèle Teysseyre Baffo readily cited the power and erotic gifts of this relative, who had undoubtedly passed them on to her illustrious descendants...
Baffo Author of "satirical" writings full of malice
Baffo was a philosopher poet who dedicated his writings “to men and women who love to laugh and know how to look on the bright side of things” And “there is no criticism or offence against people, nor is there any mention of God or kings.”As a good Venetian, Baffo spoke neither of politics nor religion, but only of "beautiful and delightful things", i.e. breasts, mouths, buttocks and female and male genitals.
And he specified that he wrote "sonnets full of love affairs, told naturally and without ambiguity".
Like Rousseau, Baffo observed that distancing oneself from Nature is the cause of all evil: religion and private property, known as the marriage contract, have deprived man of his freedom to love whom he wants, when he wants.
Happiness according to Nature is sexual pleasure, the satisfaction of desire that brooks no limitation and always triumphs over prohibitions and prejudices.
But Baffo painted the relationship between the sexes in the crudest light, using the most daring and shocking popular language, served by the humour of a man of the Enlightenment who sought the truth with the lucidity of a logician.
Erotic sculpture in Venice Sexual desire is unlimited: it wants all females.
But while animal rut is seasonal, in humans, on the other hand, it has the advantage of lasting all year round: such is its privilege (according to Baffo).
And poor human reason is merely the servant of amorous passion: scholars, religious figures, magistrates and wise men are just as much subject to it as the ignorant.
The greatest privilege of man is therefore not Thought but Desire, raw desire aroused by the sight of the female sex, from which all men are born and, consequently, all societies and their history.
The Origin of the World is the female sex!
The Eternal Return according to Baffo: Man comes from the female sex and returns to the female sex.
His reflections emphasise the vanity of material wealth, which in reality serves only to satisfy sexual desire, squandering it on gifts for the fair sex.
Similarly, precious moral values are abolished when men openly admit their sexual fantasies...
Such is the power of sex, the origin and ultimate cause of human actions.
Leda and the Swan Of course, romantic relationships do not only lead to financial ruin.
They also bring health problems and the suffering that accompanies them... and here is a rather bitter exchange of love notes between the two sexes, who accuse each other of playing dirty tricks and promise never to have anything to do with each other again.
But once they've recovered, everything starts again between them, and the male sex realises that if women care so much about their beauty and appearance, it's to attract men and please them; in fact, in their own way, they are pursuing the same goals as them!
All this to give you an idea of the erotic writings of a Venetian who experienced the incredible freedom of morals in 18th-century Venice and the pleasures enjoyed by his contemporaries: Goldoni, Da Ponte, Casanova and his actress mother, who was a friend of his.
Of course, Baffo did not publish his Erotic Works under his own name for fear of the Inquisitors of the Republic.
But his compositions circulated anonymously and his writings were known and recited in the cafés and wine bars of Venice...
Baffo's double life: the amoral man and the magistrate
Giorgio (or Zorzi) Baffo belonged to an ancient patrician family. The Baffos, who came from Parma to Mestre, settled in Venice in the year 827.They were among the sixty-four families that belonged to the Order of the Quarantie before 1297.
The Quarantie were composed of three sections of forty magistrates each, making a total of one hundred and twenty members, all of whom were nobles.
The Grand Council was presided over by the Doge and his six councillors and by the three heads of the Quarantie.
Epitaph by Guillaume Apollinaire Palazzo Bellavite By birth, Giorgio Baffo was a member of the Venetian government.
In 1720, he was elected to a position within the urban magistracy of Venice, which was responsible for supplies.
In 1732, he joined the Quarantia Criminale by thirty-one votes to five.
This score suggests Baffo's seriousness and importance, as the Criminal Court was the most prestigious section of the Quarantie: not only did it deal with criminal cases, but it also supervised the accountants of the Serenissima.
Giorgio Baffo served in the Quarantia Criminale until his death in 1768.
Gorgio Zorzi Baffo
Luxurious Poems from 18th-Century Venice by Michèle Teysseyre
This book presents the best poems by Giorgio Baffo, presented and illustrated by Michèle Teysseyre.As Michèle Teysseyre says in her introduction to Baffo:
“Baffo loves sex with enthusiasm, candour and greed:
that of a child caught in the act, fingers smeared with cream and mouth reddened with jam; without shame or fear of punishment, except of "indigestion", that is to say, venereal discomfort
To fully appreciate Baffo's poetry, its rawness, its earthiness, and even its obscenity, you have to try to read it in the original language; because, like food or wine, certain local characteristics lose their flavour when taken out of context:
like sarde in saor or bianco bon taken at the counter of an osteria, the round, slightly lisping sounds of the Venetian dialect seem to cut into the very flesh of the city:
“farse menar l'osello” or "un culo fatto a mappamonda" are examples of a type of humour that is very difficult to translate!
Gorgio Zorzi Baffo The Venetian dialect — which is also the language in which Goldoni wrote his comedies — is a delight in itself, a prelude to the feast of the senses and words to which Baffo invites us and which I have tried to capture in images as accurately as possible.”
Michèle Teysseyre
What more can be said when everything has been said so well?
Except to urge you to get hold of this delicious book, which almost single-handedly sums up the spirit of 18th-century Venice, so well represented in all its excesses by Giacomo Casanova.
Below is one of the poems by Giorgio Zorzi Baffo, contained in the book by Michèle Teysseyre. It is entitled:
In Praise of the Nun
Gorgio Zorzi Baffo
Dear Moniche, who, between two columns, Is placed there, like a capital, For a dome you have two big buttocks
And the hole in your bum, above, is your sky.
Because everyone adores you,
You stand covered with a white veil,
And if someone lifts it up and shows you,
Every bird falls victim on your altar.
You seem to me like the sacred wood of Diana;
At the entrance is a pair of large moustaches,
Which lead to the ark of the manna.
Night and day you perform great miracles,
For the water that springs from your fountain
Gives life to the dead and spirit to the foolish.”
Giorgio Zorzi Baffo
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