Alessandro Manzoni structured his tragedies Il Conte di Carmagnola and Adelchi on a dialectic between history and eternity, excessive evaluation of time and transcendence of territorial ambitions. This author aimed at creating Christian tragedies that would represent man's earthly battle for sovereign might and the final realization of the vanity involved in the struggle for control over the world. Following the example of Shakespeare as an historical dramatist, Manzoni sought to understand the centuries-old tragedy of Italy by going back to the records of the internecine warfare of city-states during the Renaissance and the imperial expansionism of the Longobard realm in the eighth century. The Italian writer hoped to portray that moment in the interior life of his dramatic heroes when they would perceive the futility of their violent and vainglorious deeds and would turn their gaze from the battleground of this world to the freedom of Heaven. In this essay I shall explore the dimensions of time and space in Il Conte di Carmagnola and Adelchi as the major forces working within Manzoni's dramas of eternal Christian fate.¹

By breaking with the unities of place and time the Italian author allowed himself the opportunity to represent the conflict for dominion as it occurred over a wide range of territory for a period of time that would last several years. Manzoni defended his deliberate violation of neoclassical practice in both the preface to Il Conte di Carmagnola and the Lettre à M. Chauvet, where he justified the innovations of his first play against the attacks of the French critic Victor Chauvet. By affirming the principles of a “sistema romantico” or “sistema storico,” the Italian playwright wishes to found literature upon the truth of established historical facts. Romantic historicist drama would be free of the merely formalistic unity of pseudo-aristotelian rules so as to achieve a superior unity out of the playwright's undertanding of human motives behind the documented deeds of archival records.² Manzoni believed that Shakespeare had already created such a Christian historicist drama, in works like Richard II that revealed the tormented heart of a ruler whose sense of dignity compelled him to abdicate from his throne.³ Modern drama, built solidly on history, would lead spectators beyond “cette sphère étroite et agitée” (p. 278) to behold the emptiness of involvement in human time and space while comprehending the need to yield to the force of eternity.

In his desire to be true to history Manzoni prefaced Il Conte di Carmagnola with a list of actual historical characters and a list of “invented” characters, and in order to anwer some of the questions raised by Adelchi he compiled a Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia. The territorial sphere of both plays is not a space of love and joy but one of hatred and warfare.⁴ The Count of Carmagnola exemplifies that earthly combativeness in his career as a condottiere, first for the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti and later for the Venetian Senate. Manzoni learned of the mercenary warrior's tragic downfall in reading Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques italiennes du moyen âge. The dramatist stituates the events of his play from 1425 to 1432, from the time that Carmagnola, out of offended pride against the Milanese lord who had dismissed him, persuaded the Venetian government to enlist him as its military leader against the Lombard forces. Despite the count's initial victories several of the Venetian oligarchs doubted his loyalty and finally succeeded in ordering the general's execution following a series of defeats on the battle-field. The dramatist envisioned Carmagnola as a tragic figure whose faith had met betrayal by ruthless political leaders. The count rose to the height of being a commander-in-chief from a humble origin as a shepherd. Yet he felt no ties to the meadows and wheatfields of his native region. At the play's start Carmagnola is living in Venice as an exile from Lombardy. Having lost all his estates and possessions, this general without a war to fight is seeking a battlefield, his only true space of intimacy as he is a soldier and not a landholder or politician. Only with the declaration of hostilities between Venice and Lombardy does Carmagnola feel at ease as he contemplates vengeance against the monarch who stripped him of rightful honors. Manzoni constructs his drama around a mercenary warrior who holds to a rigid standard of professional loyalty but who faces cynical politicians intent on manipulating and sacrificing those that serve their regimes.

Although the break with unity of place allows the author numerous changes of scene from act to act as well as within the acts themselves, the tragic center of Il Conte di Carmagnola remains within the constricting atmosphere of the governmental chambers of the Venetian Republic. In the drama's definitive version the first act opens with a plenary session of the Venetian Senate while the last two acts start in the cabinet of the fearful Council of Ten. The presence of the Venetian government hangs ominously over the otherwise free and open battle-field of Maclodio, where Carmagnola achieves in Act Three his greatest victory only to offend two official commissioners from Venice by releasing all military prisoners. Just in the manner of neoclassical style dramatists like Racine who saw tragedy as a closed avenue ending in destruction, Manzoni concentrates his play upon the fear, treachery, and suspicion hovering over the Venetian governmental chambers. Since Carmagnola's prison cell and the place of his execution are most likely located within the complex of government buildings, the tragedy is always centered in the murderous inclosure of a political institution. Even though the general thinks of himself as the master of his life, it is his enemy, the “invented” character councilor Marino who determines the outcome of time's fatal course.

To maintain the drama's focus on the site of political conspiracy in Venice, Manzoni alters history by moving the place of an assassination attempt against Carmagnola from the actual event at Treviso to the Most Serene City. News of the unsuccessful assassination convinces the Venetian Doge of the count's loyalty to the regime of St. Mark, and in the play's opening address the Doge denounces in words ringing with hypocritical irony the murder attempt as an insult to the peaceful sanctuary provided by Venice:

Che vile opra di tenebre e di sangue
Sugli occhi nostri fu tentata, in questa
Stessa Venezia, inviolato asilo
Di giustizia e di pace …

(I, ii, 9-12)⁵

But Venice will prove to be for Carmagnola a place of “tenebre e di sangue” and of “perfidio della trama” (I,i,22), where in the very same assembly room where he receives the command of the country's armies he will fall victim to the machinations of his enemies. The dramatist contrasts Carmagnola's loyal service to his adoptive land with its unjust punishment in juxtaposed terms of solar brilliance and conspiratorial darkness in the scene where the count affirms his innocence:

Ciò che feci per voi, tutto lo feci
Alla luce del sol; renderne conto
Tra insidiose tenebre non voglio.

(V, ii, 91-93)

Within the dark confines of patrician bureaucracy neither justice nor mercy can prevail as the count's accusers succeed in having him condemned to death. Total deprivation of light and life on this earth results from advancing the territorial aggressions of an authoritarian state.⁶

While the dramatist recognizes in the Count of Carmagnola an exceptional being who bound his destiny to the caprices of Fortune, Manzoni also sees in his hero's fate an abiding human situation for all individuals who yield to the temptations of earthly desire and ambition. From his Christian viewpoint the writer beholds the mortal weakness of even those forceful beings who aspire the most to achieve greatness. In the same way that Victor Hugo in the preface to his drama Cromwell states his intention to portray the paradoxes of the human soul and the circumstances of life in compromising society,⁷ so too does the Italian playwright seek to represent the conflicting forces in his characters and their world:

quel misto di grande e di meschino, di ragionevole
e di pazzo che si vede negli avvenimenti grandi e
          piccoli
di questo mondo; e questo interesse tiene ad una parte
importante ed eterna dell'animo umano, il desiderio di
conoscere quello che è realmente e di vedere più che
          si può,
in noi e nel nostro destino su questa terra …(8)

For Manzoni the playwrights who succeeded best in depicting the vacillations of the heart and the promises left unfulfilled in society were Shakespeare and Schiller. As a Christian the Italian author acknowledges the moral fragility of the soul born in sin and continually led into sinfulness through the need to dwell in a world thriving on deceptions and petty concessions to expediency. Although Manzoni does not deny the possibility of greatness, he points out the limitations and the ultimate disillusionment of founding hopes on worldly attachments and temporal aspirations.

Carmagnola realizes that illusory victory at the battle of Maclodio. Manzoni constructs all of Act Two in six scenes to illustrate how the count becomes the master of the warring arena and those who have to combat within it. While the first three scenes at the Lombard camp show how the mercenary captains are divided over the decision to initiate hostilities or to perform a strategic withdrawal, the final three brief scences reveal the harmony of spirit in the Venetian camp where all the captains and their soldiers rally around the count's leadership. Carmagnola becomes the battle's metteur en scene directing all the moves of the bellicose players. But, as Manzoni stresses, this earth has many battlegrounds that are not all situated on open fields. Although Carmagnola wins the battle, the spying Venetian commissioners who consider him a traitor report his suspicious activities to the Venetian bureaucrats who will in time prove to be the victors in this tragedy by combatting the count's pride and impulsiveness with their guile. For it is the force of time that undermines the general as the envious circle of Venetian conspirators patiently wait for the inevitable reversal of military triumphs, allowing a few years to pass until they lure Carmagnola into a trap of no return. On his last mission to Venice, supposedly to confer with the government on terms of a peace treaty, Carmagnola sets off on what seems a glorious journey across the cities of the realm where deceitful officials vie to pay him every honor. In reality the doomed commander-in-chief is travelling a road of infamy that will end in imprisonment and death.

Statecraft in the world of Manzoni's first drama functions as an art of victimization to destroy the opportunity for a harmonious rapport between government officials and courageous private citizens. The author introduces two “invented” characters to contrast the opposing directions of the Venetian regime: Carmagnola's chief enemy the councilor Marino and the general's friend Senator Marco. The count considered his friendship with Marco as a special favor from Heaven to protect him in his dangerous career, but in the tense atmosphere of Venetian political affairs an agent of Realpolitik like Marino possesses every advantage over idealists like Marco who dwell in an unreal time and space. Although at first Carmagnola hoped to become Marco's spiritual double by emulating the senator's noble and generous nature, by the play's close the soldier learns that every man is alone on this earth and the only enduring attachment will be beween man and God. For this tragedy seeks to illustrate the injustice pervading the institutions of society. Marco, Manzoni's “personaggio ideale,” will also realize his isolation after the Council of Ten compels him to sign a document promising not to warn the count of the government's intention to arrest him on a charge of treason. The senator perceives that one cannot remain both a loyal citizen and a faithful friend because public service and the absolute obedience it requires call for the sacrifice of private relationships. In defending the count on the floor of the Senate, Marco forgot his own counsel to his friend that they were not born “In luoghi e in tempi ov'uom potesse aperto / Mostrar l'animo in fronte …” (I, ii, 400-401). On the highest level of leadership in the Most Serene Republic any rapprochement between individuals might lead to compromise and betrayal to the authorities. The very verb “avvicinarsi” bears the danger of extermination, and when it is used in Act IV, i, 168, to suggest a possible reconciliation between Carmagnola and the Visconti duke that “drawing near” has fatal consequences for the general. Membership in the hierarchy of the state prevents anyone from establishing an “individual distance” to make possible some measure of personal privacy.⁹ Only those like Marino who can master dissimulation may hope to survive and prevail in the government's stifling atmosphere since only a brief moment of self-revelation will suffice to fall from lofty rank and perish. Marco's loss is all the more devastating as he not only fails to uphold a personal trust and therein compromises forever his integrity, but his acquiescence to state authority also sends him into a future of exile on a perilous diplomatic mission to Thessalonika. That very nation for which the senator has forfeited freedom of conscience casts him out like a criminal suspect. Remorse over his act of treacherous silence and realization of his immediate exile precipitate an identity crisis for Marco:

                                        Io prima d'oggi
Non conoscea me stesso! … Oh che segreto
Oggi ho scoperto! Abbandonar nel laccio
Un amico io potea. …

(IV, ii, 271-274)

The senator has permitted others representing the state to define his identity and to determine the distant space he will occupy in the future. Like Count Carmagnola the senator has been lured into a “laccio” or an “agguato” as he speaks of an “abbominevol rete” that others have stretched out to trap him. Marco sees himself as dangling “all'orlo … del precipizio” (IV, i, 331) or already fallen into the “abisso” (IV, i, 290) of moral compromise. The terms that the senator uses to describe his bewilderment are of a spatial nature as he faces in full isolation his destiny of exile. Marco attempts to place responsibility for his faithlessness to Carmagnola by blaming the Venetian government that denied him any other choice but to sign the document pledging silence. Marco prefers to remain in a zone of consoling inner darkness, rejecting the enlightenment that would come from accepting moral responsibility for his decision.¹⁰

After his arrest and condemnation to death the Count of Carmagnola undergoes a spiritual conversion where he recognizes the vanity of all his earthly ambitions. At this point in the tragedy, by the final act, the warrior's wife and daughter at last enter into the drama. For it is only at this moment of inner illumination that the two women can have a place in the tragedy. During the first four acts there was room merely for combat, but now that the general's fate has been sealed and every avenue of action has been closed forever to the soldier, he can give free rein to the yearning for tenderness that he has repressed in his heart. Before the last meeting with his wife and daughter—the single intimate scene in the drama—the general surveys his military career and contemplates the honorable death it should have brought him:

                                        O campi aperti!
O sol diffuso! o strepito dell'armi
O gioia de' perigli! o trombe! o grida
De' combattenti! o mio destrier! tra voi
Era bello il morir. …

(V, ii, 232-236)

Carmagnola now realizes that after the joys of worldly combat there arrives a supreme happiness: death as the consolation that his most powerful enemy cannot take away from him as he finds peace and redemption. The count's final words to his family are of resignation and comfort, not of the tormenting revenge which poisoned his years of exile from Lombardy. This warrior no longer thinks of fighting for thrones, crowns, or realms since his one longing is for the impregnable asylum offered by God. In death as a Christian this fugitive general discovers the shelter which can never fail him. He has seen across the abyss between soul and body, man and God which Victor Hugo defines in the preface to Cromwell as the melancholy of separation. A spirit of forgiveness at last elevates Francesco Bussone Count of Carmagnola above this petty world of territorial combat. In the narrow enclosure of his prison cell this condottiere who once seemed to hold the destiny of nations in his hands releases himself from all earthly bonds to know Heaven's eternal deliverance.

Manzoni designed still another dimension for his first tragedy than the drama of an innocent soldier condemned to death who finds peace by renouncing the treacherous world. In the play's preface the author explained that the chorus which appears between the second and third acts would serve as a “little corner” where he might make a lyrical comment on the universal meaning of the actions occurring in the drama. The battle of Maclodio gives rise to the chorus, which reflects on the horrors of fratricidal wars. The ground which is disputed in the battle is not a beloved land that soldiers defend against outside enemies but rather an arena for greed and the false ambitions of territorial aggrandizement. Throughout the chorus' account of the battle only fragments of land are visible as the ground vibrates from the friction of hoofs and feet. Sword thrusts move over the entire plain. In attempting to identify the warring phantoms the chorus discovers that they all come from a common fatherland:

D'una terra son tutti: un linguaggio
Parlan tutti: fratelli li dice
Lo straniero: il comune lignaggio
A ognun d'essi dal volto traspar.
Questa terra fu a tutti nudrice,
Questa terra di sangue ora intrisa,
Che natura dall'altre ha divisa,
E recinta con l'alpe e col mar.

(Chorus, ii, 17-24)

Despite the boundaries and barriers Nature created to defend the land from foreign invasion the native's rapacity has left it open prey to alien armies. For the country with its internal strife has become a “Fatal terra” (Chorus, i, 107) that will not be able to resist enemy aggression since the inhabitants would never unite against an outside foe. But rejoicing over ruling a divided people will not endure forever as the conquerors will one day experience divine retribution for subjugating the land. The chorus' final message is of the common destiny that awaits both victors and vanquished:

          Tutti fatti a sembianza d'un Solo,
Figli tutti d'un solo Riscatto,
In qual ora, in qual parte del suolo
Trascorriamo quest'aura vital,
Siam fratelli; siam stretti ad un patto.

(Chorus, ii, 121-125)

No matter what part of the war-torn world different peoples occupy, they are brothers in a single Redemption that promises to lift them to the peace of a celestial home.¹¹

That attempt to introduce the destiny of nameless masses into the context of a dramatic work forms the background for Manzoni's second tragedy Adelchi, where the confrontation between two Germanic warrior peoples determines the fate of the subject Latin population. Time in Adelchi effaces man's dream of domination and glory. Temporal process constantly undermines the efforts of the various characters to define a sphere of sovereign action or tranquil retreat for themselves. The play's action occurs from 772 to 774 when Carlomagno leads his Frankish army to victory in defeating the Longobards who rule northern and central Italy. Within less than two years radical political, social, and legal transformations take place with the fall of the Longobards, who established their control of Italy in the sixth century. Time's rapid passing compels each major character to behold his or her individual destiny. Movement across time is a passage from the certainty of the past toward the unknown and unexpected. The illusions of the characters who imagine themselves as the makers of history are either shattered on coming into conflict with eternal justice or integrated with the destiny of the nations that are subjected to historical change. Time's ultimate effect would seem to be loss and surrender.

Of all the characters the Longobard monarch Desiderio relies most on time as the force which will confirm him as the supreme arbiter of fate in the Christian world. In his determination to bring Italy completely under Longobard control Desiderio does not hesitate to invade the territory of Pope Adriano even though he realizes that the Franks will probably intervene to protect the Church. The experiences of a lifetime have convinced the king that if he acts swiftly and rapaciously, he will surely overcome every obstacle to triumph. For Desiderio ascended to the throne by usurping the rightful place of Prince Rachi, brother to the previous ruler Astolfo. His power rests on the support of potentially treacherous nobles, who are willing to follow their monarch in wars of territorial conquest so long as they can increase their own fiefdoms. Desiderio understands that time is a force which may bring unforeseen vicissitudes: “E di vicende e di pensier il tempo / impreveduto apportator …” (Act I, iii, 260-261). But the king deludes himself that he can remain in control of the temporal process defending his realm from interior and exterior threats. The elderly monarch believes that history is a myth which is remade from day to day and that he is destined to retain the central role of authority in the myth of the Longobards.¹²

Victor in past struggles and ruler of the present, Desiderio intends to take advantage of an affront by Carlo against the honor of the Longobards in order to rally his family and allies in a definitive battle with the Franks. Previously he united his dynasty with that of the Carolingians by having his daughter Ermengarda married to Carlo. But after the Franks repudiated that marriage, Desiderio uses that humiliation as a pretext for war with the Franks:

                                        Quando all'oltraggio
Pari fia la mercé, quando la macchia
fia lavata col sangue; allor, deposti
i vestimenti del dolor, dall'ombre
la mia figlia uscirà. …
… E il giorno
lunge non è. …

(Act I, ii, 72-76, 79-80)

Desiderio anticipates a future when the uncertainties of the present will vanish through the shedding of Frankish blood to avenge the outrage to his daughter. The stress on temporal conjunctions (quando) and adverbs (allor, lunge) in the king's speech reveals the explosive tension within Desiderio as he projects himself and his nation toward a perilous destiny.¹³ He intends to remove Carlo from the Frankish throne and force the Pope to anoint as the new Frankish monarchs the sons of Gerberga, Carlo's widowed sister-in-law who sought refuge at the Longobard court: “Che le innocenti teste / unga, e sovr'esse proferisca preghi” (Act I, ii, 88-89). The use of the subjunctive mood in “unga” and “proferisca” points out the unreal time zone toward which the king projects his grandiose desires. Prince Adelchi attempts to remind his father that his predecessor Astolfo almost lost his throne after Pope Stefano II asked the Franks to enter Italy and protect the papal states from appropriation by the Longobards. But Desiderio refuses to heed the lessons of the past as he envisions a future where all obstacles will fall before him.

On the afternoon when the Frankish army succeeds in penetrating the Alpine defenses of the Longobard forces, the kingdom which Desiderio built upon brutal exploitation collapses within a few hours. Only then as the king views the ruin of his illusions does he look back to the past, to the hateful time when the first Longobard ruler descended into Italy:

Maledetto quel di che sopra il monte
Alboino sali, che in giù rivolse
lo sguardo, e disse: questa terra è mia!

(Act III, viii, 319-321)

Desiderio at last comes to see time as a hostile force that can take away all that it has given. By confronting time the monarch understands that the Longobards were always destined to perish by sword and flame. By deluding himself that he could determine the future of dynasties and pontiffs, Desiderio has acted as the agent of temporal change. Then in the course of a few months one Longobard stronghold after another surrenders to Carlo, and Desiderio soon finds himself the prisoner of the Franks. Although the loss of his kingdom and liberty causes the elderly monarch to arrive at an awareness of time as a force of discontinuity effected by divine justice, he acknowledges personal guilt only upon beholding his dying son Adelchi. The prince discloses to his father how the hour of death has permitted him to comprehend life's mysterious destiny: “Gran segreto è la vita, / e nol comprende / che l'ora estrema …” (Act V, vii, 342-343). Desiderio's future will now be one of total isolation as he contemplates spending the final years of his life in a faraway Frankish monastery where Carlo will imprison him. The Longobard king is the last figure to be seen on stage, lamenting by the body of his fallen son as he looks forward to the loneliness of his future exile.¹⁴

Through divine election Carlo emerges the supreme leader over all the Christian realms of western Europe. It is a God-directed destiny rather than his own resoluteness that enables the Frankish ruler to plant the royal lance on Italy's soil. In his first stage appearance Carlo admits to a papal legate his apprehensions about attacking the Longobard fortifications and barriers created by Nature:

Chiusa è la via? Natura al mio nemico
il campo preparò, gli abissi intorno
gli scavò per fossati; e questi monti
che il Signor fabbricò, son le sue torri
e i battifredi. …

(Act II, i, 36-40)

The Frankish king, wondering if God has intentionally obstructed the way for the invading army, is planning to return to a war against the infidel Saxons where victory would signify the triumph of the Christian faith. Carlo remains unmoved by the legate's predictions of a “secondo regno” until Martino, the deacon of Ravenna, arrives in the camp with news that he has found a path through the mountains. Martino's lengthy description of his hazardous journey through unknown Alpine passes and gorges serves to convince Carlo that God guided the deacon's steps, that nothing can deter the advance of Frankish troops.¹⁵ Once his freedom to move has been secured, Carlo hails the star of his destiny to reign:

                                        La stella
che scintillava al mio partir, che ascosa
stette alcun tempo, io la riveggo. …

(Act II, iii, 292-294)

The lingering doubts which are expressed in the imperfect tense of “scintillava” and the past absolute of “stette” give way to the resoluteness of a warrior intent on conquest. Time, as Manzoni also noted in the ode Il cinque maggio, is a wave that can carry one on to triumph or pull him down to humiliating defeat. On later confronting the captive Longobard king, Carlo declares that Heaven decided the outcome of the war between them since it chose the Frankish ruler for a glorious destiny that could not be altered: “… né lamentar posso un destino, / ch'io non voglio mutar. Tal del mortale / è la sorte quaggiù …” (Act V, iv, 151-153). Carlo's use of the adverb “quaggiù” clearly indicates his concern with earthbound warfare. God and religion for this victorious ruler become allies in the conquest of the world.¹⁶ The present and the future belong to Carlo, not as the genuine champion of faith but as a man whose fate has harmoniously coincided with the movement of history.

Triumph comes to Carlo partly because of the fear and greed of the treacherous Longobard nobles who desert their king rather than lose their estates and titles. Most of them are the “fedeli,” vassals sworn to defend their lord to the death. But in the third scene of Act IV the warrior Guntigi reflects in a soliloquy that “Fedeltà” brings no material rewards to the loyal vassal who is reduced to begging on account of his devotion to a fallen king. Having already lost the town of Ivrea to one of Carlo's men, Guntigi agrees to betray Desiderio in order to become count of Pavia; and he even risks his son's life as a pledge of “fidelity” to the Franks. The most outstanding example of the worldly honor that an astute traitor can achieve falls to Svarto, who rises from an obscure soldier in Act I to win the title of count of Susa for serving as an intermediary between the Longobard nobles and Carlo. Carlo exploits the fear of territorial dispossession among the Longobard leaders to win them to the Frankish cause. Manzoni's pessimistic view of earthly existence is evident in this drama from the victory of all those venal nobles and soldiers who transfer their allegiance to safeguard their parcels of territory or to gain new holdings. Although an individual like Guntigi tries to rationalize his faithlessness by affirming his bravery and attributing his acts to the need to preserve the integrity of the kingdom, it is attachment to titles and fiefdoms that motivate him and his fellow “fedeli” in deserting their monarch. For while truly courageous warriors perish in the dust of battlefields, traitors like Svarto and Guntigi inherit the land. The future belongs to the faithless.¹⁷

In the letter to Chauvet the dramatist accused French classical playwrights like Corneille and Racine of having devoted too important a place to love in their works, largely because the unity of time had forced them to describe a violent passion which might explode in a period lasting less than twenty-four hours. But with the character Ermengarda the Italian writer produced as passionate a creature as any Racinian figure like Hermione in Andromaque. Throughout the greedy chaos of human savagery where self-interest wins out, Ermengarda remains an innocent who has given herself to love. Never succeeding at breaking her attachment to the past, Ermengarda attempts to find a zone of peace and forgetfulness. In her voluntary exile in a convent at Brescia, the former queen makes a sham appearance of living in resignation to the injustice her husband committed against her. To others she insists she is no longer dwelling in the time of lost happiness: “… ogni passata / cosa è nulla per me …” (Act I, iii, 231-232). Her passion, however, remains very much alive since she suffers from Carlo's unwillingness to reciprocate her affection. For love is an emotion that must be shared across time, or the unreturned feelings will carry the lover to murderous resentment (as in French classical tragedy) or as here to maddening despair. The years of a loving marriage represent for Ermengarda the high moment of love as analyzed by Benjamin Constant in his novel Adolphe: “Love is only a luminous point, and nevertheless it seems to lay hold of all time. A few days ago it did not exist, very soon it will exist no longer; but as long as it exists, it sheds its splendor over the time that must follow.”¹⁸ That luminous point in time stays within the cloister of the spirit where Ermengarda harbors a melancholy which will turn to delirium after she learns that Carlo has taken a new queen. Instead of severing ties with the past she has wished to hold onto the memory of her marriage by requesting she be buried with her wedding ring and all her regal insignia. In her heart she has wished to be remembered as Carlo's bride. News of Carlo's second marriage, rather than providing a final release from bonds with the past, plunges her into a frenzy where her tormented imagination goes back to the time when she and her cherished mother-in-law Bertrada used to accompany each other on imperial journeys in full assurance of Carlo's devotion to them. Through her delirium Ermengarda crosses temporal bounds in a frantic attempt to restore in the present the period of her life when she experienced love and respect. On the verge of death the queen awakens to an awareness of the past as an agonizing nightmare: “… Da un triste sogno / io mi risveglio” (Act IV, i, 202-203). Having lost the illusion of a resplendent past, Ermengarda can no longer withstand the oppression of the present and the emptiness of the future, from which she retreats in death.¹⁹

Between the first and second scenes of Act IV, Manzoni adds his own prayers in a chorus hoping that the dead Ermengarda will know eternal peace. The chorus reviews the queen's entire life in an appeal for her to be free of the burden of memories: arrival in France, Carlo in his glory as a warrior king, the consoling sights of physical Nature. Manzoni's chorus serves to filter the events of the past in order to transcend the passion of unrequited love as it entreats the queen's soul to put behind her earthly emotions:

          Sgombra, o gentil, dall'ansia
mente i terrestri ardori;
leva all'Eterno un candido
pensier d'offerta, e muori:
fuor della vita è il termine
del lungo tuo martir.

(Chorus, iii, 13-18)

From having always enjoyed the comforting presence of others, Ermengarda passed to a sterile isolation where memories of a beloved time tortured her. As long as the former queen directed her thoughts to precious images of her earthly existence, she persisted in what was a martyrdom for love and her husband's ruthless political expediency in sacrificing her. In its desire to liberate Ermengarda from the barren past the chorus declares that although Desiderio's daughter was born of a royal family, destiny placed her among the dispossessed of the earth: “te collocò la provvida / sventura in fra gli oppressi” (Chorus, xviii, 103-104). In dying Ermengarda and the masses of the oppressed will find salvation away from the anguish of life in this world. By taking her rightful place among the oppressed Ermengarda will at last realize the tranquility of an eternal realm beyond the bounds of this temporal sphere.²⁰

In this play's Notizie storiche Manzoni confesses to his dissatisfaction with Adelchi as an overly imaginary character. The playwright's original drafts for the drama emphasize the prince's desire to rectify the wrongs of his father by planning to restore lost papal territory and especially to achieve the unification of Longobards with Latins as a single nation.²¹ That dream of justice continues into the drama's definitive version where Adelchi sees time as a constant conflict between filial responsibility and his longing for glory as a builder of a nation. Royal heritage as a warrior had made him a destroyer. Adelchi shares with his father an appreciation of time as the bearer of destiny, and like his sister he wishes to see justice realized within this world. Adelchi views himself as a creature without a clear direction in life. After accepting the “asta reale” from his father, Adelchi became a joint ruler whose exploits on the battlefield reinforced the barbarous hold of the Longobard regime. His past is that of an active partner in bloodshed: “… Risponda / il passato per me …” (Act I, iii, 286-287). The past possesses an irrevocable quality about it that weighs the prince's actions in the present and immediate future. But Adelchi rebels against his identity as a pitiless conqueror, for he desires to gain for himself lasting fame as a builder rather than a demolisher:

… Oh! mi parea,
pur mi parea che ad altro io fossi nato,
che ad esser capo di ladron; che il cielo
su questa terra altro da far mi desse
che senza rischio e senza onor, guastarla.

(Act III, i, 74-78)

The repetition of “mi parea” and the subsequent imperfect subjunctive indicate the appearance that the prince would like to produce in his earthly enterprises to join divinely appointed destiny with well merited honor. Adelchi rejects his father's abuse of regal power to extend the country's territorial bounds and would prefer to remain what Manzoni in his youthful poem In morte del Carlo Imbonati calls a “giusto solitario” standing aloof from malefactors.²² Although he regards the present as a desert of hopelessness, the prince considers his first duty to be obedience to his father. Heaven destined him to be son, prince, and king. If that fate involves participation in the evils of Desiderio's regime, Adelchi will offer no effective resistance. The prince's situation recalls that of Hamlet who cannot escape taking part in the decadent dynasty that will end at his death.

Pride as a warrior and a sense of outrage for the affront to his sister impel Adelchi to the battlefield, where he nearly succeeds in reversing the tide of history against the Frankish troops until the cowardice and greed of Longobard vassals undermine his valorous deeds. Even with the total collapse of his kingdom Adelchi refuses to commit suicide, hoping to flee to Byzantium in order to return one day to renew the struggle. In the midst of defeat this joint monarch remains convinced he has a mission to accomplish in this world, “a far quaggiù” (Act V, ii, 64), and he uses the same adverb (“quaggiù”) as Carlo to express his continuing concern to take part in the compromising affairs of statecraft. At this moment in the drama Manzoni significantly departs from history by placing Adelchi's death shortly after the surrender of Verona rather than as actually occurred years later following exile at the Byzantine court. The author's intention is to have the prince share with Desiderio his final receptivity to time as judge and redeemer of human acts.

In the course of events Adelchi would withdraw from his violent participation in his father's belligerent activities so that he might reflect on the historical role he had accepted as unavoidable. His patience in performing the part of an historical agent in wars of aggression must be explained by Adelchi's readiness to live intensely the myth of Longobardic grandeur which Desiderio advanced to inspire his nobles and troops. It would have been the prince's personal choice to be able to modify that myth, reinterpreting the greatness of the Longobards as a people who could rule wisely and fairly over Germanic and Latin subjects alike. But Adelchi yielded to negative destiny, renouncing the opportunity to alter historical necessity. Time is seen here as a negative force compelling individuals to pursue one mythic course instead of another. At the moment that the Longobardic myth completely vanishes around him, Adelchi reaffirms the negativity of the temporal process: “… il tempo toglie / e dà …” (Act V, ii, 101-102). His kingdom is lost, and the insult to Ermengarda has not been avenged. Although time has indeed taken away more than it has given, Adelchi recalls how earlier in the play he remarked that “Il tempo / porterà la salute …” (Act III, ix, 383-384). In dying the prince recognizes that “salvation” is a spiritual and not a temporal concern. He realizes that he is moving out of history toward eternity, from the finite to the infinite. Through death he will leave behind his historical role in violent human time. Adelchi consoles his father by reminding him that loss of the kingdom has also placed the old man outside the passing of events:

Godi che re non sei; godi che chiusa
all'oprar t'è ogni via: loco a gentile,
ad innocente opra non v'è: non resta
che far torto, o patirlo. Una feroce
forza il mondo possiede, e fa nominarsi
dritto: la man degli avi insanguinata
seminò l'ingiustizia; i padri l'hanno
coltivata col sangue; e omai la terra
altra messe non dà. …

(Act V, viii, 351-359).

The prince understands that he too must be cut down together with the blood-stained harvest of injustice. This earth offered only two paths: that of victim or malefactor. While death releases Adelchi from the atavistic heritage of crime, defeat prevents Desiderio from committing further atrocities. For to remain in human time signifies to take part in the commission of injustice and to perpetuate tyranny. Death offers the liberation of the heavenly kingdom.²³

Eternity is the realm where the voice of earthly desire and ambition never reaches to disturb the harmony of souls who have achieved the reward of peace. The Count of Carmagnola, Ermengarda, and Adelchi in dying all hope to participate in Heaven's unending glory. On this earth warriors like Carmagnola and Prince Adelchi met defeat in their passionate combat for power and renown. Queen Ermengarda experienced that attachment to mortal love marked by an agonizing discontinuity in time from which she could never recover. Manzoni's two tragedies demonstrate how only attachment to divine love would be permanent. The stage representation of military and political history should lead spectators away from hostile space and time to the transcending salvation of Christian destiny in God. In his dramas Alessandro Manzoni moves beyond historical conflict to the serenity of the Eternal.

Notes

1. The present essay combines my observations from previously published studies: “Historical Time and Eternal Fate in Adelchi,” La Parola del Popolo, 24 (August 1974), 71-73; and “The Transcendence of Human Space in Manzonian Tragedy,” Studies in Romanticism, 13 (Winter 1974), 25-46. As a theoretical guide I have followed some of the lines of investigation suggested by Georges Poulet, Studies in Human Time, tr. Elliott Coleman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1956).

2. Carlo Cordié, “La recensione di Victor Chauvet al Carmagnola del Manzoni,” Convivium, 25 (1957), 464-474, presents Chauvet's original review from the Lycée Français of May 1820 along with an introduction on the French critic's career. Natalino Sapegno, “La Lettre à Chauvet e la poetica del Manzoni,” Ritratto di Manzoni ed altri saggi (Bari: Laterza, 1961), pp. 75-100, regards the letter to Chauvet as surpassing the polemic against dramatic rules and constituting a major advance in the formation of a Romantic poetics for Italian literature. Peter Farina, “A. Manzoni on the Dramatic Unity,” The USF Language Quarterly 11, No. 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1972), 48-50, examines Manzoni's views on theatrical unities as expressed in the preface to Il Conte di Carmagnola, his Lettre à Chauvet, and especially the essay Del Romanzo storico.

3. For Manzoni's analysis of Richard II consult the Lettre à Chauvet sur l'unité de temps et de lieu dans la tragedie, in Tutte le opere di Alessandro Manzoni, ed. Giuseppe Lesca (Florence: Barbéra, 1946), pp. 257-259. Aside from his rigid neoclassical criteria, Chauvet did render some insightful criticisms about Manzoni's first drama, particularly the weakness of bringing the general's wife and daughter into the play only in the final act, where Carmagnola's religious conversion also comes as a shock to totally unprepared spectators.

4. For the sentimental attachment to human space, place, site or locus see Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, tr. Maria Jolas (New York: Orion, 1964), pp. xxxi-xxxii. While Bachelard's study stresses a joyous space, it will be demonstrated in my essay that earth space for Manzoni is a realm of contention. Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 116, comments on the primitive human desire to acquire control over land.

5. All quotations from the two tragedies can be found in Vol. I of the omnibus edition of Manzoni's works by Alberto Chiari and Fausto Ghisalberti (Milan: Mondadori, 1957), which includes early drafts for the plays, as in the eighth scene of Act I for Carmagnola where the count's peasant father appears on the street in Venice asking directions to his son's house.

6. In the Chauvet letter, pp. 263-264, Manzoni mentions the “lutte entre le pouvoir civil et la force militaire” that caused the count's destruction. A resolutely independent general could never survive the efforts of Venetian oligarchs to bend him to their will.

7. Cf. Préface du Cromwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), passim.

8. From a letter by Manzoni to Gaetano Giudici, February 7, 1820, as cited by S. B. Chandler, Alessandro Manzoni, The Story of a Spiritual Quest (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974), pp. 30-31.

9. Ardrey, pp. 158-159 and 162, analyzes the role of “individual distance” to create a zone of withdrawal for reflection.

10. Chandler, Alessandro Manzoni, pp. 34-35, argues that Marco never truly looked into the secret chamber of his heart because of his failure to recognize his moral obligation to aid the general. But Luigi Derla, Il realismo storico di Alessandro Manzoni (Milano: Cisalpino, 1965), pp. 74-75, claims that Marco's tragic situation rests in the lack of any choice since the Venetian state negated all freedom and forced Marco to obey.

11. Chandler, ibid., p. 35, discusses the wavering between temporal and extratemporal viewpoints in the chorus and Manzoni's inability to reconcile history with eternity. Giorgio Petrocchi, “Il momento letterario del Carmagnola,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 147 (1970), 43-66, compares the different versions of the play and judges them as vacillations on Manzoni's part between an early political-historical vision of Carmagnola to a later religious-ethical portrait. Schiller in writing his tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots, also moved from a political to a religious interpretation.

12. In his Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica in Italia, Manzoni contended that the Longobard rulers and their Latin subjects never constituted a single people. Longobards and Latins had separate legal systems, and it was Longobard count-judges who tyrannically settled all disputes between the two nations. Manzoni feared that Italians would always remain a slave people under foreign domination, and in the chorus following Act III of Adelchi the author speaks to all Italians warning them of the heritage of being a “volgo disperso che nome non ha.” Claude Lévi-Strauss, “History and Dialectic,” The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 254-255, acknowledges the role of myth, such as that of the French Revolution, to be an historical agent inspiring practical action in succeeding generations of Frenchmen. Desiderio adroitly manipulates the myth of Longobardic grandeur.

13. Gilberto Lonardi, L'esperienza stilistica del Manzoni tragico (Florence: Olschki, 1965), p. 16, in commenting on Desiderio's refusal to learn from the past notes how words like “quando,” “allor,” and “lunge” demonstrate the king's mental life in an undetermined future.

14. Manzoni remarks in the play's Notizie storiche that according to historical records Desiderio's wife Ansa was alive during the Frankish war and that she accompanied her husband to imprisonment. By placing Ansa's death prior to the tragedy's time span the author heightened the effect of the king's final isolation.

15. Lonardi, op. cit., pp. 32-45, analyzes Martino's speech with its constant repetition of “Dio” or “Iddio” to indicate God's silent presence throughout the Alpine crossing.

16. Luigi Russo, “Parere sull'Adelchi,” Ritratti e disegni storici, 4th ser. (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), p. 50, considers Carlo's conventional religiosity to be a political ploy. Derla, pp. 133-135, speaks of Manzoni's tendency to devaluate heroes. In the Discorso sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica, pp. 173-177, Manzoni attributes Carlo's military success to his singular ability to unite different ranks of Frankish society into his army.

17. Chandler, Manzoni, p. 58, observes how Guntigi justifies his new allegiance by referring to Carlo as the “consacrato” of God, thereby excusing treachery as obedience to divine will. Attilio Momigliano, Alessandro Manzoni (Milan: Principato, 1964), pp. 187-188, studies Svarto's desire to lift himself from his lowly post. Eurialo de Michelis, Studi sul Manzoni (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), p. 124, points out that Svarto seeks personal advantage to gain power in his society, in contrast to the Venetian councilors of Il Conte di Carmagnola who act primarily out of a sense of duty to the state. Giuseppe Toffanin, Sul Manzoni (Naples: Libreria Scientifica, 1972), pp. 52-53, compares Guntigi and Svarto to Iago.

18. Cited by Poulet, Human Time, p. 215.

19. Russo, p. 87, accurately states that Ermengarda's words “ogni passata / cosa” reveal a passion which remains very much alive. I strongly disagree with Russo, pp. 96-100, where he dismisses Ermengarda's delirium as rhetorical artifice. Aurelia Accame Bobbio, Alessandro Manzoni, segno di contraddizione (Rome: Studium, 1975), p. 189, judges Ermengarda as an expiatory figure whose suffering in part redeems the wrongs perpetrated by her Longobardic dynasty.

20. Chandler, Manzoni, pp. 63-64, analyzes the chorus to show that God stands outside of history as an eternal refuge for tormented individuals like the queen.

21. Arnaldo Fratelli, “Adelchi, personaggio inventato,” Sipario 15, No. 164 (1960), 4, discusses Manzoni's displeasure at changing the historical facts concerning Adelchi. In Act I, Sc. 2, and the start of Act V for the play's original draft, the dramatist advanced Adelchi's plans for the union of Latins with Longobards, but then Manzoni broke off noting “Scartate tutto e rifar l'atto in modo più conforme alla storia.” While Giacinto Margiotta, Dalla prima alla seconda stesura dell'“Adelchi,” Studio Comparativo (Florence: Le Monnier, 1956), passim, believes the first draft to be related to Manzoni's patriotic aspirations as expressed in the ode Marzo 1821; Filippo Piemontese, Studi sul Manzoni e altri saggi (Milan: Marzorati, 1952), pp. 86-87, asserts that the playwright's disillusionment with the wars for Italian liberation had little influence on the drama's revision.

22. Chandler, Manzoni, pp. 15-17, analyzes the carme on Imbonati's death, where the poet points out the unequal warfare between the solitary man of just character and the numerous brotherhood of the evil.

23. Benedetto Croce, Alessandro Manzoni (Bari: Laterza, 1946), p. 119, suggests that death revealed nothing to Adelchi but gave him a sense of resignation to the world's injustices. Alfredo Galletti, Alessandro Manzoni (Milan: Mursia, 1958), p. 294, illustrates Manzoni's attempt at a Christian drama as a representation of human misery and weakness that only Heaven can relieve.