Sprezzatura (September)

“Sprezzatura is a ‘word that is untranslatable par excellence,’ with not even a close translation outside Italian, but then it is not exactly in Italian. The term is… a self-conscious invention by the sixteenth-century writer Baldassare Castiglione, to label his own idiosyncratic concept of a gentleman’s seeming indifference to polish; he made it up as much as Lewis Carroll made up mome raths.” (Adam Gopnik, ‘The New Yorker, May 26, 2014) Sometimes no word quite suits. Oh! to be Castiglione, inventing perfect words with “studied carelessness”, “a nonchalance that conceals our artistry”. But it’s September 2018. Only in our dreams!