Alessandro Manzoni

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Alessandro Manzoni, oil painting by Francesco Hayez; in the Brera Gallery, Milan. (credit: Alinari/Art Resource, New York)

(born March 7, 1785, Milan, Italy — died May 22, 1873, Milan) Italian novelist and poet. After spending much of his childhood in religious schools, Manzoni wrote a series of religious poems, Sacred Hymns (1815), and later two historical tragedies influenced by William Shakespeare, Il conte di Carmagnola (1820) and Adelchi (performed 1822). He is best known for the novel The Betrothed, 3 vol. (1827), a masterpiece of world literature and the most famous Italian novel of its century, in which, prompted by a patriotic urge to forge a language accessible to a wide readership, he employed a clear, expressive prose that became a model for many subsequent Italian writers. Manzoni's advocacy of a united Italy made him a hero of the Risorgimento; his death prompted Giuseppe Verdi's great Requiem.

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Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) wrote "I promessi sposi", or "The Betrothed", Italy's most widely read novel. His works signaled the unique direction of Italian romanticism.

Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan on March 7, 1785. His parents, elderly Count Pietro and young Giulia, separated shortly after his birth. Educated at religious schools, Manzoni subsequently joined his mother in Paris, where she was living. In that cosmopolitan atmosphere, imbued with the ideas of the Enlightenment, Manzoni came in contact with many of the great minds of Europe. His poems from this period include "On the Death of Carlo Imbonati" (1806), a contemplative elegy reflecting genuine fondness for his mother's Parisian lover.

Manzoni's Protestant marriage to Enrichetta Blondel in 1808 was reconsecrated according to Roman Catholic rites in 1810. Although many have spoken of his "conversion," it would be more appropriate to state that Manzoni outgrew his early anticlericalism and matured intellectually during the gradual return to his traditional faith. His Inni sacri (Sacred Hymns) constitutes the artistic representation of this rekindled spirit. These hymns, intended to commemorate Christian holidays, indicate Manzoni's desire to "bring those great, noble, human sentiments back to the fold of religion from which they stem." Although he had planned 12 hymns, only 5 were completed: "The Resurrection" (1812), "The Name of Mary" (1812-1813), "Christmas" (1813), "The Passion" (1814-1815), and "Pentecost" (1817), of which the last is considered artistically most successful. In all these are found Manzoni's Enlightenment views on human equality and the brotherhood of nations fused with the belief that religion and the Church have benefited mankind.

Dramatic Works

Manzoni's study of theater history, especially the works of Shakespeare in French translation, awoke in him the possibility of pursuing truth through dramatic works based on psychological realism. He sought plausible tragedies with protagonists whose sufferings would cause the viewer to meditate on life and the transcendent forces at work upon man. Insisting that such works must stem from reality and history - not from farfetched plots or actions - Manzoni wrote two important verse plays. The Count of Carmagnola (1820) treats the Renaissance Italian warrior who, unfairly accused of betrayal, was condemned to death. However, in presenting this instance of extreme injustice that would emotionally move the spectator, he neglected character development in the count. Manzoni's preface to this play offered historical background and distinguished between invented and real characters in the belief that the essence of poetry lay in the reconstruction of the moral truths of history, not in the invention of detail or character.

Faulted for disregarding the traditional dramatic unities, Manzoni wrote a lengthy defense, "Letter to M. Chauvet on the Unities of Time and Place within the Tragedy" (1820), in which he held that all obstacles to the plausibility of a play (for example, obedience to classical rules) must be discarded. His next play, Adelchi (1822), omitted the prefatory historical clarifications, but Manzoni appended a commentary that provided the factual basis for this play on Adelchi, a Lombard prince compelled to wage war against Charlemagne. The essence of the drama concerns the inner conflict of the protagonist, torn between desires for revenge and Christian reconciliation, a dilemma posed by Charlemagne's repudiation of Princess Ermengarda, Adelchi's sister. Set in 722-774, this tragedy, lamenting political factionalism, stirred 19th-century Italians beset by similar civil strife.

Manzoni's quest for artistic truth was evidenced in numerous theoretical works, especially his letter of Sept. 23, 1823, to Cesare d'Azeglio, which clarifies Manzoni's views on what romanticism should be. Rejecting several literary clichés (among them the presence of witches and ghosts, the idolatrous use of mythology, and the servile imitation of foreign writers), Manzoni developed a romanticism that was fundamentally religious in feeling and held that a study of real things could lead to the discovery of historical and moral truths. This conception, differing greatly from that of other European romantics, brought Manzoni much closer to the realists of the following generation.

I promessi sposi

Manzoni began his masterpiece in 1823; it appeared after several revisions and title changes as I promessi sposi (1827). Aware of linguistic and other shortcomings, he dedicated the next 13 years almost exclusively to recasting this long novel, which achieved definitive form in 1840. This work, in which Manzoni assumes the role of editor of a discovered manuscript, affords him ample opportunity to reconstruct historically the events and circumstances of early-17th-century Italy and to give literary expression to his view of history and man.

The plot consists of the persistent attempts of Lucia and Renzo to marry despite the obstacles posed by the lustful, corrupt nobleman Don Rodrigo, whose machinations separate the young lovers and expose them to frequently melodramatic travails. Only at the end, when Manzoni has demonstrated that a firm faith in God can alleviate man's sufferings, does he eliminate the evil Rodrigo via the plague and permit Renzo and Lucia to marry in their native village, where they resume their interrupted lives 2 years later.

This mere summary cannot pay adequate tribute to Manzoni's subtle irony, satirical wit, historical knowledge, and extraordinary ability to create both major and minor characters to populate the universe that he so credibly brings to life.

Manzoni's important role in Italian letters stems from his discovery of a national prose language, his creation of the first modern Italian novel, and his giving literary expression to nascent nationalistic ideals. These triumphs overshadow the polemics surrounding the interpretations of religion and society in this work, in which Manzoni truly succeeded in capturing the spiritual essence of his nation.

Further Reading

The recommended translation of Manzoni's masterpiece, The Betrothed, is by Archibald Colquhoun (1951); it is complete and very readable and has the advantage of being based on Manzoni's last revised text. Joseph Francis de Simone, Alessandro Manzoni: Esthetics and Literary Criticism (1946), gives the most comprehensive English review of Manzoni scholarship and attempts to situate the artist in the literary environment of his time. Other studies are Archibald Colquhoun, Manzoni and His Times (1954), and Bernard Wall, Alessandro Manzoni (1954).

Additional Sources

Colquhoun, Archibald, Manzoni and his times: a biography of the author of The Betrothed (I promessi sposi), Westport, Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1979.

Quotes:

"When a friend, then, indulges in the joy of unburdening a secret on to another friend's bosom, he makes the latter, in his turn, feel the urge to taste the same joy himself. He implores him, it is true, not to tell a soul; but if such a condition were taken absolutely literally, it would at once cut off the flow of these joys at their very source. The general practice is for the secret to be confided only to an equally trustworthy friend, the same conditions being imposed on him. And so from trustworthy friend to trustworthy friend the secret goes moving on round that immense chain, until finally it reaches the ears of just the very person or persons whom the first talker had expressly intended it never should reach."

Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni
Born	7 March 1785(1785-03-07) Milan, Italy1
Died	22 May 1873 (aged 88) Milan, Italy
Occupation	Poet, novelist
Genres	lyric, tragedy, novel, essays
Literary movement	Romantic
Influences Voltairianism, Walter Scott
Influenced Italian historical novelists: Tommaso Grossi, Massimo d'Azeglio
[www.alessandromanzoni.it Official website]

Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni (March 7, 1785 – May 22, 1873) was an Italian poet and novelist.^[1] He is famous for the novel The Betrothed, one of the major works of Italian literature.

Contents 1 Biography 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

Biography

Manzoni was born in Milan, Italy, on March 7, 1785. Pietro, his father, aged about fifty, belonged to an old family of Lecco, originally feudal lords of Barzio, in the Valsassina. The poet's maternal grandfather, Cesare Beccaria, was a well-known author, and his mother Giulia had literary talent as well.^[2]

Alessandro Manzoni was a slow developer, and at the various colleges he attended, he was considered a dunce. At fifteen, however, he developed a passion for poetry, and wrote two sonnets of considerable merit. Upon the death of his father in 1805, he joined his mother at Auteuil, and spent two years mixing with the literary set of the so-called "ideologues", philosophers of the 18th century school, among whom he made many friends, notably Claude Charles Fauriel. There too he imbibed the anti-Catholic creed of Voltairianism, and only after his marriage, under the influence of his wife, did he exchange it for a fervent Catholicism.

In 1806–1807, while at Auteuil, he first appeared before the public as a poet, with two pieces, one entitled Urania, in the classical style, of which he became later the most conspicuous adversary, the other an elegy in blank verse, on the death of Count Carlo Imbonati, from whom, through his mother, he inherited considerable property, including the villa of Brusuglio, thenceforward his principal residence.

Manzoni's marriage in 1808 to Henriette Blondel, daughter of a Genevese banker, proved a most happy one, and he led for many years a retired domestic life, divided between literature and the picturesque husbandry of Lombardy. His intellectual energy in this period of his life was devoted to the composition of the Inni sacri, a series of sacred lyrics, and a treatise on Catholic morality, forming a task undertaken under religious guidance, in reparation for his early lapse from faith. In 1818 he had to sell his paternal inheritance, as his money had been lost to a dishonest agent. His characteristic generosity was shown on this occasion in his dealings with his peasants, who were heavily indebted to him. He not only cancelled on the spot the record of all sums owed to him, but bade them keep for themselves the whole of the coming maize harvest.

In 1819, Manzoni published his first tragedy, Il Conte di Carmagnola, which, boldly violating all classical conventions, excited a lively controversy. It was severely criticized in a Quarterly Review article to which Goethe replied in its defence, "one genius," as Count de Gubernatis remarks, "having divined the other." The death of Napoleon in 1821 inspired Manzoni's powerful stanzas Il Cinque maggio, one of the most popular lyrics in the Italian language. The political events of that year, and the imprisonment of many of his friends, weighed much on Manzoni's mind, and the historical studies in which he sought distraction during his subsequent retirement at Brusuglio suggested his great work.

Round the episode of the Innominato, historically identified with Bernardino Visconti, the first manuscript of the novel The Betrothed (in Italian I Promessi sposi) began to grow into shape, and was completed in September 1823. The work was published, after being deeply reshaped by the author and revised by friends in 1825–1827, at the rate of a volume a year; it at once raised its author to the first rank of literary fame. It is generally agreed to be his greatest work, and the paradigm of modern Italian language.
In 1822, Manzoni published his second tragedy, Adelchi, turning on the overthrow by Charlemagne of the Lombard domination in Italy, and containing many veiled allusions to the existing Austrian rule. With these works Manzoni’s literary career was practically closed. But he laboriously revised The Betrothed in the Tuscan idiom, and in 1840 republished it in that form, with a historical essay, La Storia della Colonna infame, on details of the XVII century plague in Milan so important in the novel. He also wrote a small treatise on the Italian language.

Statue of Alessandro Manzoni in Milan.

The death of Manzoni's wife in 1833 was preceded and followed by those of several of his children, and of his mother. In the mid 1830s he attended the "Salotto Maffei" salons in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei, and in 1837 he married again, to Teresa Borri, widow of Count Stampa. Teresa also died before him, while of nine children born to him in his two marriages all but two pre-deceased him. The death of his eldest son, Pier Luigi, on April 28, 1873, was the final blow which hastened his end; he fell ill immediately, and died of cerebral meningitis. His funerals were celebrated in the church of San Marco, with almost royal pomp. His remains, after lying in state for some days, were followed to the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan by a vast cortege, including the royal princes and all the great officers of state. But his noblest monument was Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem, written to honour his memory.

See also

• The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

References

1. ^  "Alessandro Manzoni". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Alessandro_Manzoni. 
2. ^ This article incorporates text from the article "Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alessandro Manzoni

• Alessandro Manzoni poems
• I Promessi sposi (The Betrothed) English version
• The fifth of May (English), The betrothed (English) and other works

v • d • e Western Lombard language Dialects and dialect groups Brianzöö (Brianzoeu) Canzés · Canturino · Monzese Comasco- Lecchese Comasco · Laghée · Intelvese · Vallassinese · Lecchese · Valsassinese Others Milanese (Meneghin) · Bustocco and Legnanese · Ticinese (Ossolano) · Grigionese  · Varesino (Bosin) · Southwestern Lombard (Pavese · Lodigiano · Nuaresat · Cremunéez) · Alpine Lombard (Valtellinese · Chiavennasco) · Spasell (slang) Literature Writers Bonvesin de la Riva · Carlo Maria Maggi · Carlo Porta · Giuseppe Parini · Giuseppe Bossi · Alessandro Manzoni · Tommaso Grossi · Delio Tessa Related topics Insubric grammar (Milanese) · Classical Milanese / Alternative Insubric orthographies · Plural inflection

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

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