When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study [scrittoio]. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity [umanità] reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them.

Mit diesem Brief des nach der Rückkehr der Medici gestürzten und aufs Land abgeschobenen Machiavelli aus 1513 eröffnet Andrew Hui seine Studie The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries (Princeton University Press 2024), die die Entwicklung dieses intellektuellen Gehäuses der Renaissance zwischen Freuden und Gefahren, in der der Humanist sich ganz dem Studium der Literatur (und der Künste) widmen kann, nachgezeichnet wird. Das dabei ganz wesentliche geistige Zwiegespräch mit der Antike ist Gegenstand des ersten Kapitels.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691243320/the-study?srsltid=AfmBOor_ijvHrcJm3VRwb_uq15cK0zMP2BC5-pp8n2EhGUn9dHLS4NeK