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Reading Il Caffè: scientific method and economic knowledge in the “School of Milan” 289

ethical and aesthetic, as we can see quite clearly in the poetic analysis
36
of Dante’s Divine Comedy . Here is how Pietro Verri begins:
What inconceivable sort of people might those pedants ever be who, in sit-
uations which are made to excite those quivers in the soul called sentiment,
instead of surrendering to the magic of the illusion, draw their pendulum or
calipers from their pocket to examine them frigidly and to pass judgment on
them? You set before them a painting full of poetry and expression […] [and
they] limit themselves to criticizing the draftsmanship and the proportions of
a leg or a finger, the uncertain crease in a stocking, or other small defects of
the sort, and, puffed up by this discovery, they forego real pleasure with a
lightheartedness that ill suits the rarity with which [such moments] occur
37
among the series of our sensations .
There could be no more programmatically explicit declaration of the
spirit of inquiry adopted by the intellectual circles we are considering
than Alessandro Verri’s article The Obeisance (‘Le riverenze’) which is
satiric as is the Report Concerning a Prodigious Comet Observed in
Milan (‘Relazione d’una prodigiosa cometa osservata in Milano’), in
which his brother, Pietro, in high astronomic style, parodies the
38
prodigious hats worn by Teresa Blasco, Cesare Beccaria’s wife . In the
Obeisance (FR 73–8), Alessandro appealed to “friend Demetrio”, host of
the imaginary café in which his circle periodically gathered, exhorting:

Tell your writers of the Caffè that I am about to publish a very instructive
work, whose title will be A Mathematical-Logical-Political Treatise on the
Obeisance. The title is weighty and I hope to make it brilliant in invention and
erudition. You know, oh blessed Demetrio, that the men of our times want
analysis, demonstrations and algebraic calculations everywhere; I, as a
sensible man, shall use that language and furnish the theory with which to
calculate the disposition and character of nations and men concerning the
diverse ways of bowing. Let me explain myself. Let us consider the human
body as a line perpendicular to the horizon; this line I call felicity; let us
consider the man lying upon the ground as parallel to the horizon; this line I
call misery; the angle which these two lines form is, in fact, 90 degrees: that
is, a right angle; now, I shall show that all possible bows are comprised
between these two terms; and I shall propose the solution of the nature of so-
cieties and men derived from the angle to which they are accustomed. I shall

36 FR1, 50-5.
37 Ibid., 50.
38 P. Verri, Relazione d’una prodigiosa cometa in Milano-1763, in P. Verri, Cose varie
buone, mediocri, cattive del conte Pietro Verri fatte ne’ tempi di sua gioventù, le quali con
eroica clemenza ha trascritto di sua mano nell’anno 1763 ad uso soltanto proprio o
degl’intimi amici suoi, in Schettini, M. (ed.), Milano in Europa, Milan, Cino del Duca
editore, 1963, pp. 103-112. I should like to thank professor Carlo Capra for bringing
this work to my attention.

n.43 Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Agosto 2018
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)