It is this fact which is especially palpable in Manzoni’s
work, and Manzoni was the chief poet of the Romantic
School in that land where it found the most realistic
development, and set itself seriously to interpret
the emotions and desires of the nation. When these
were fulfilled, even the form of Romanticism ceased
to be.
ALESSANDRO MANZONI was born at Milan in 1784, and
inherited from his father the title of Count, which
he always refused to wear; from his mother, who was
the daughter of Beccaria, the famous and humane writer
on Crimes and Punishments, he may have received the
nobility which his whole life has shown.
[Illustration: Alessandro Manzoni.]
In his youth he was a liberal thinker in matters of
religion; the stricter sort of Catholics used to class
him with the Voltaireans, and there seems to have
been some ground for their distrust of his orthodoxy.
But in 1808 he married Mlle. Louisa Henriette
Blondel, the daughter of a banker of Geneva, who,
having herself been converted from Protestantism to
the Catholic faith on coming to Milan, converted her
husband in turn, and thereafter there was no question
concerning his religion. She was long remembered
in her second country “for her fresh blond head,
and her blue eyes, her lovely eyes”, and she
made her husband very happy while she lived.
The young poet signalized his devotion to his young
bride, and the faith to which she restored him, in
his Sacred Hymns, published in this devout and joyous
time. But Manzoni was never a Catholic of those
Catholics who believed in the temporal power of the
Pope. He said to Madam Colet, the author of “L’Italie
des Italiens”, a silly and gossiping but entertaining
book, “I bow humbly to the Pope, and the Church
has no more respectful son; but why confound the interests
of earth and those of heaven? The Roman people
are right in asking their freedom—there
are hours for nations, as for governments, in which
they must occupy themselves, not with what is convenient,
but with what is just. Let us lay hands boldly
upon the temporal power, but let us not touch the doctrine
of the Church. The one is as distinct from the
other as the immortal soul from the frail and mortal
body. To believe that the Church is attacked
in taking away its earthly possessions is a real heresy
to every true Christian.”
The Sacred Hymns were published in 1815, and in 1820
Manzoni gave the world his first tragedy, Il Conte
di Carmagnola, a romantic drama written in the
boldest defiance of the unities of time and place.
He dispensed with these hitherto indispensable conditions
of dramatic composition among the Italians eight years
before Victor Hugo braved their tyranny in his Cromwell;
and in an introduction to his tragedy he gave his
reasons for this audacious innovation. Following
the Carmagnola, in 1822, came his second and last
tragedy, Adelchi. In the mean time he
had written his magnificent ode on the Death of Napoleon,
“Il Cinque Maggio”, which was at once translated
by Goethe, and recognized by the French themselves
as the last word on the subject. It placed him
at the head of the whole continental Romantic School.
