“dialogued poem” which obviates the need for performance, and theLettre à M. Chauvet speaks of tragedy as “explaining what men have felt, wanted, and suffered through their acts,” as a recreation of historical moral truth.

Apart from the Inni (especially “La Pentecoste”), the tragedies remind us of motifs in “Marzo 1821” and “Il cinque maggio,” of the former's appeal to the Italic community “of arms, of tongue, of altar, / Of memories, of blood and of heart” to cleanse itself of internal conflict and rid itself of foreign masters, and of the latter's philosophy of triumph and death, the recognition of the vanity of human ambition, and the solace of faith. Historical drama afforded Manzoni a broader canvas than poetry for the representation of human reality, for the psychological portrayal of the actions of men in time; if his readings of Goethe and Schiller, Corneille and Racine, Metastasio and Calderón, and above all Shakespeare, had taught him anything they had taught him this. Furthermore, Italy presented a natural backdrop for drama. He lived in a tragic country, whose history since the disappearance of the Roman Empire read like a graveyard's inventory: death by plundering invasions, internecine discordances, political ineptness, death by occupational atrocities, servility, in short, death by ill-fortune. In the adventures and misadventures of his homeland, whose intellectual and moral greatness was systematically strangulated by suffering and corruption, were to be found many subjects worthy of the best writers. Of all the modern tragedians, Shakespeare most felt the tragic pathos of human life and best knew how to dramatize history poetically. Manzoni always retained a keen sensitivity for the mystery of the one and the complexity of the other, so that his attraction to the author of Coriolanus,Richard II, and Henry IV is easily understood.

Poetry, of course, means style. By virtue of its truth, tragedy moves the reader, but it fails if the characters do not speak “truly,” that is, if they speak in the artificial rhetoric of the past. Manzoni clearly is conscious of doing something new for Italian theater, so subserviently bound to the manner of Alfieri. Even if Carmagnola reflects the historically-centered models of Goethe's Egmont and Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy, in what concerns the play's linguistic manner Manzoni does innovate, in opposition to his illustrious compatriot:

I hope to finish a tragedy that I began with great ardor and hope to do at least something new in this country. … After having read Shakespeare well, and things that have been written lately about the theater, and after having thought about them, my ideas have really changed regarding certain reputations: I dare not say more. … But what pains people have taken to do poorly! … What care to make men speak neither as they speak normally nor as they could speak, to separate prose from poetry, and to replace it with the coldest rhetorical language least apt to elicit sympathetic responses!³

In his quest for subject matter, he came upon the story in Sismondi's Républiques italiennes (end of Book 7) of the fifteenth-century condottiere, Count Carmagnola (a plebeian who became a soldier of fortune), who left the service of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan, whose dominions he had reconquered and amplified, disgruntled at the Duke's shabby treatment of him, and entered that of his Venetian enemies, whose armies he led victoriously against the former master, only to be suspected of treason by the Doge and the Senators, condemned and executed. The fated life of one man, whom Manzoni deemed innocent (though modern historians disagree), and the fratricidal history of a people—these elements shaped Manzoni's inspiration. The Count's innocence coupled with the sharp contrast between his courageous loyalty and the petty distrust of those wielding political power seemed good material for tragedy—for national tragedy, since the destruction wrought by such egoism paved the way for the country's unhappy future. It is significant that the historical tableau reveals what one critic calls “the Italy of the quattrocento with her grandeurless discords, passionless wars, crafty politics devoid of daring or magnanimous ambition.”⁴ This kind of realism was typical of Manzoni's peculiar brand of Romanticism.

How did he construct his play? He did so not only by opposing Alfieri's classical lexicon but also by discarding the unities of time and place, and by considering unity of action not in the Racinian sense of all events leading to and evolving from a central crisis but in the “historical” sense of the events surrounding the life of one man during a single and self-contained period. In the Preface, Manzoni analyzes five objections to the unities; the most succinctly stated is the fifth: “Finally, these rules stand in the way of much beauty and cause many inconveniences.” And that says it all. In its five acts, Il Conte di Carmagnola moves about readily from the Hall of the Senate in Venice to the Count's house to the Duke of Milan's camp, the Count's tent in the opposite camp, and the Hall of the Chieftains again in Venice, back to the Count's tent, then to his house, and finally to his prison, and all of this takes place in over six years of history (1425-1432). The author thus gave the unities “a hard slap in the face.”⁵

The play opens with Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice, discussing with his Senate the Florentine Republic's offer to join forces and wage war against the Duke of Milan. The Doge favors the war, particularly now that he can employ the services of one who had served the Milanese well but who had fled the Duchy when Visconti had attempted to have him murdered. This person is, of course, Carmagnola, who is introduced into the Senate chamber to state his views. Hortatory and eloquent, Carmagnola confidently promises victory.

                              … of an open enemy
The open enemy am I now. I shall serve
Your interests, but do so frankly and with purpose
Stated, as one who is certain
That he undertakes a just cause. …
Now is the time to beat him: seize
This moment: boldness now is prudence.

Upon his leaving, Marino, one of the Chiefs of the Council of Ten, expresses diffidence of the Count, who could turn against Venice just as easily as he now proposes to turn against Milan. But Marino's counsel of prudence, through which the Machiavellian consciousness of Venetian political life is revealed, is opposed by Senator Marco's praise of Carmagnola; as his friend, he can vouch for the Count's integrity. His remarks carry, the Doge's desires are voted, and Marco personally bears the news to Carmagnola's home. The Count joyfully anticipates his revenge over Visconti, despite his friend's admonition to proceed cautiously, since not all Venetians look upon him favorably:

This is the day that destiny
Seals my life; for since this holy earth
In her ancient glorious bosom
Has welcomed me, and named me her son,
This will I to be forever, and I consecrate
This sword forever both to its defense
And greatness.

The second act is a study in contrast, rising from microcosm to macrocosm, and ending lyrically in a lament over Italian disharmony. First we note the discordance in the Milanese camp among the various mercenary captains (Angelo della Pergola, Guido Torello, Niccolò Piccinino, Francesco Sforza, among others) concerning the feasibility of doing battle, finally resolved by their leader Carlo Malatesti's decision to attack. Then we are taken to Carmagnola's camp where, under his persuasive leadership, all receive without controversy the news of the deployment of Visconti's forces on the plains of Maclodio. In the end, the Chorus intervenes to forecast the Venetian victory, and above all to deprecate fratricidal warfare, thus coloring the old historical story with new political and humanitarian shades:

Of one land are they all, one tongue
Do they all speak; the foreigner
Calls them brothers. …
Oh ill-fortune! Have these foolish warriors
No wives, have they no mothers? …
Oh ill-fortune! ill-fortune! ill-fortune!
With dead the land is now already covered. …
As in the air the grain is spread
From the fully turning airing blade,
So all about the vast terrain
The beaten warriors all lie scattered. …
The brothers have killed the brothers. …
Meanwhile from the circling Alps
The foreigner turns his gaze downward:
He sees the strong who bite the dirt,
And counts them each with cruel joy. …
The foreigner descends; and he is here.
Victors! Are you weak and few?
But this is why he comes to challenge you,
And eagerly awaits you on those fields
Where your brother perished. …
All made in the image of a single One,
All children of a single Redemption,
In any hour, on any portion of the land
That we go through this mortal life,
We are brothers, tightly bounded in a pact;
Cursed he who breaks it,
Who rises up above the weeping weak,
Who grieves a soul immortal!

In the third act, in which Carmagnola's soldiers free a number of prisoners and he defends their gesture (“This is a custom of war, as well you know”) to two objecting Commissioners of the Venetian Republic, the Count's fortunes begin to wane. His unwillingness to pursue mercilessly the vanquished Milanese and his magnanimity with the prisoners are misinterpreted, and suspicion over his behavior with the foe is heightened when he is seen in polite conversation with those who in former times had ridden by his side. The Commissioners return to Venice to inform the Senate of Carmagnola's suspected treason.

Act IV takes place some years later, during which time the Count, despite several military mishaps, has been able to maintain his proud, sometimes haughty, posture. But the opposition between Marino and Marco erupts when the latter is charged by the former with guilty indulgence toward his friend and patriotic negligence toward the Republic, and when Marco protests his faithfulness to Venice, he is made to prove it by signing an agreement to leave the city to fight the Turks at Thessalonica, without warning the Count who is to be lured back to Venice deceptively and face trial for treason. Marco feels trapped and signs; later he analyzes his action along with his conscience with a fine psychological awareness matched only by his distress and feeling of impotence:

                                                                      … Before today
I knew not myself! … Oh what a secret
I came upon today! …
… in witness I have summoned heaven
Of my odious cowardice … its sentence
I have underwritten. … I too have my share
In his blood! Oh what did I do! … I let myself
Be thus terrified? … This life? … Well, often times
It can't be spared without a crime:
Did I not know it? Why then did I promise?
For whom did I fear? for me? for me? for this
Dishonored head? … or for my friend?
My refusal would have hastened the blow,
But not deterred it. Oh my God, Who all discern,
Unto me reveal Your heart: that I might see at least
Into which abyss I now have fallen, if I've been
More foolish or more craven or ill-fortuned. …
                                                            … I extended him my hand;
He shook it, gallant man, and at this moment that he sleeps,
And the foe's upon him, I withdrew it;
He awakens, seeks me out, and I have fled!
He scorns me, then he dies! …
                                                                      … And I am yet
But at the edge of precipice; I see this,
And I can withdraw. … Can I not find
A way? …
Oh impious ones, in what a net abominable
You have webbed me! Now there is for me
No noble counsel; whatever I choose, I'm guilty.
Oh atrocious doubt! … But I do thank them: they have
Established me a destiny: along a single way
They have shoved me, and I hasten there; at least
I'm favored that I never chose it; I choose nothing, and whate'er
I do derives from force and will of others.

Carmagnola receives the Senate invitation. His friend Giovanni Francesco Gonzaga warns him to be on his guard, but in typical fashion the Count, apart from his desire to be reunited with his wife Antonietta and his daughter Matilde, trusts in his own sense of loyalty and in his friend Marco. He returns happily to Venice: “Yet entirely happy / I cannot be: for who could tell me / If I shall ever see so fine a camp again?”

The final act is the most intense of the play. It takes place at night, in the chamber of the Council of the Ten, where the Doge speaks in sibylline tones insinuating accusations as he goes along—all of which makes Carmagnola soon recognize the trap into which he has fallen. He responds righteously, but to no avail. He is sent off to prison, where his final colloquy with Gonzaga and then with his wife and daughter (who faint in anguish) reveals what the author really intended to bring out in his character: magnanimity, pride, nobility, and tragedy.

                                                  … Tell my comrades
That I die innocent: you were the witness
Of my deeds and of my thoughts, and this you
          know. …
                                                            … I am
The one betrayed. …
Oh piteous God, in this moment so cruel
You lead them off, and I do thank You. Friend,
You succor them; from this ill-omened spot
You remove them, and when light again they'll see
Tell them naught remains for them to fear.

Critics have not disagreed in pointing to the tragedy's basic weakness: the psychological incompatibility between great strength of character, displayed to the point of imprudent impetuosity, and small, shrewd, cold, calculating political maneuvers on the part of a suspicious oligarchy of potentates. It was on this irreconcilable dichotomy, however, that Manzoni consciously wanted to build his tragedy: of the noble Carmagnola he asks if “he is [not truly] a dramatic character?”⁶ The problem is not the concept but the execution, for the dichotomy remains dramatically unexploited, albeit moving. There is little sense of tragic accumulation of events, mainly because too many of them depend less on an individual flaw than on human weakness generally, and less on tragic consistency than on normal mutability under the dictates of suspicion or self-interest. “The catastrophe,” writes one critic about the protagonist, “finds him too different from before; we have two characters: a not too characteristic warrior, and a deeply melancholy man, with no strong bridge between the two.”⁷ And even if we may counter this argument by noting that there is nothing contradictory about melancholy courage, and that, like Corneille's Polyeucte, there is something abstract about this soldier accustomed to open combat and not covert schemes, we might still refer to the comment of another critic who says that Carmagnola is an adventurer who may be more courageous than shrewd, but who really has no noble ambitions, leaps at the chance of revenge against Visconti, and so becomes “a wolf among wolves”; how is it that this peasant who has risen to power unscrupulously is now so ingenuously trusting and done in by a betrayal the likes of which he must have witnessed frequently?⁸ But apart from Manzoni's insistence on historical accuracy—excessive to the point of dividing his characters formally between “Historical” and “Ideal” (fictional)—it is unfair to step outside the frame of the play. What Manzoni created was a Christian Romantic who ends like the Napoleon of “Il cinque maggio,” purified of the need for earthly conquest and glory, and only at this point “naught remains … to fear.” He may be “unverisimilar,” but then again, and artes poeticae notwithstanding, what tragic hero finally is not?

In a deeper sense, however, it is Marco who strikes us as the more tragic figure. He is the victim of the capricious twists of worldly events and of his own conflicting perspectives on loyalty; his noble impulses cry for the heroism he does not possess, and his anguish in retrospect stems not from confusion or blindness but from a lucid recognition of his unheroic essence. Marco's long, self-inquisitional monologue in Act IV, in which he plunges as far down to scrutinize his self as any character can, gives us an insight into Manzoni's real dramatic abilities, but the passage is too fleeting and the Count claims (as he should) too much of our attention. Still, in a very necessary way, Marco deepens the tragic tonality of the play, so that it would be hard to conceive it without him.

This tonality is maintained uniformly by the regular, almost military, rhythm of the cadenced endecasyllables. Monti may have found the style, in his words, careless and prosaic, but another contemporary, Pellico, understood Manzoni's attempt to bring the language down from Olympus, and in good Romantic fashion make the work accessible to those untutored in lofty poetic diction (the play is written in blank verse). Therefore, having no linguistic tradition of this sort to back him up, Manzoni experimented with a balanced and simplified, yet musical, language, lest the drama not communicate directly with the public.⁹ We must recognize that whatever appeal Il Conte di Carmagnola may still have is due in large measure to the sense of immediacy provided by the language.

According to the preface, Manzoni inserted the Chorus concluding Act II in order to have a “little corner” for himself, somewhere for him to enter the play, not in the Classical sense of interpreting the action and alluding to its denouement, but in the sense of a metahistorical comment—more intensely poetic, to be sure—on the ills of Italy and mankind. Apart from standing out because of its different pattern of versification,¹⁰ the Chorus introduces new subject matter which many have deemed too inconsistent with that of the rest of the play. Manzoni's explanation is twofold:

The Chorus was certainly inserted with the intention of defiling … wars. … It seems to me that the spectator, or the reader, may bring to a drama two types of interest. The first comes from seeing men and things represented in conformity with that kind of perfection and desire which we all have within us. … The other interest comes from a representation closer to the truth, to that mixture of greatness and pettiness, reasonableness and foolishness, which we see in the big and small events of this world. This interest relates to an important and eternal part of man's mind: the desire to know what really is, to see as much as possible in ourselves and our destiny on this earth. Of these two types of interest, I believe that the deeper one, and the one more useful to stimulate, is the second. …¹¹

Extraneous though it may be in a strict sense, then, the Carmagnola Chorus was to allow the useful and “modern” meaning not to go unnoticed, and it was to give the poet himself not so much a role in the play as an opportunity to give vent to his most urgent historical consciousness. Its function combined ethics with aesthetics: in reinterpreting the fundamental character of Greek choruses as he saw them, it was “… in no way a caprice or an enigma but what he really … wanted it to be: ‘a personification of the moral thoughts inspired by the action, an organ for the sentiments of the poet who speaks in the name of all humanity.’”¹²

On balance, Il Conte di Carmagnola is an acceptable but not an exceptional tragedy. It can be read well, and can be appreciated if the reader interpolates the missing warmth and intensity, for there is more poetry than passion, more lyricism than drama, in it. We need not go as far as Foscolo who deplored it, or as the Biblioteca Italiana and London's Quarterly Review, which criticized it severely, but we can understand the reservations.¹³ Structurally, particularly in the interrelationships between scenes, it is well conceived; otherwise, Manzoni himself recognized repeatedly the weaknesses of his “little romantic monster”¹⁴ and did not need the critics' “open derision.”¹⁵ Pellico, however, liked it, though he thought that it dragged somewhat because the characters came too close to the truth. And Goethe praised it, taking up the cudgels in its defense in rebutting the journals. While he did not quite understand the need for Manzoni's distinction between historical and fictional characters, he was clear in his high regard: “I esteem Carmagnola very much, very much. … It is noteworthy for its depth; and the lyrical part is very beautiful. …”¹⁶

Goethe also extolled Adelchi, “something greater by reason of its argument.”¹⁷ He had advised Manzoni to choose in the future a subject with deeper pathos, and this the second tragedy has, not necessarily because the subject matter is more moving but because it is handled by the poet with more consistent mastery. It is artistically unified and presents a total poetic experience. But it did not become so painlessly. Manzoni was “not at all happy” with the original version, “and if … one ever were to sacrifice some tragedies, this one would not escape suppression. I imagined the character of the protagonist based on historical data … but I noted that for all of that there was nothing historical about what I did. … The result is something with a romanesque flavor which does not agree with the whole and which shocks even me as it would a badly disposed reader.”¹⁸ And when he went about revising it, he erased “perhaps a thousand verses.”¹⁹ Indeed, the second version, the one Goethe knew, was “purified”: many of the harsh political allusions, such as to the Pope's greedy temporal ambitions or to the servile alliances with foreign predatory powers, are toned down and diffused throughout the tragedy by innuendo, implication, and overtone, thus permitting the protagonist to stand out in greater relief. This does not mean that the political suggestiveness of the play, with reference to the suffering of contemporary Italy under foreign domination, was erased: we need only read the two choruses to be reminded that Manzoni wanted the analogy with the Risorgimento. As the censor said: “Whom did Mr. Manzoni take us for? Does he perhaps believe that we do not know what he is aiming at?”²⁰ Manzoni's was not a call to arms, however; his Christian conscience could not permit incitement. Besides, for him the Risorgimento was a spiritual phenomenon, an appeal to men's civic and Christian consciences, and Adelchi, as its protagonist unquestionably suggests, stems from Manzoni's disappointment over the pitiful failure of liberal agitations (in Naples, Sicily, and Piedmont during that year, 1821) to make any headway toward independence. In fact, there are those who see Murat's failure in the inspiration of Carmagnola as an anticipation of Adelchi.²¹ This play is so strongly pessimistic that it almost strikes a jarring note in Manzoni's generally unruffled philosophical manner.

Yet this was the ethical result rather than the historical purpose, about which he wrote to Fauriel: “I want [to depict] the fall of the Lombard kingdom … ; everybody regards the Lombards as Italians …, and you can see that by looking at things this way they judged falsely the facts, laws, people, everything … I should like you to send me some modern works (excluding the best known) by those who for better or for worse have tried to disentangle the chaos of practices (of medieval barbarians), and who above all have spoken about the conditions of the natives, subjugated and owned—which is the point on which history is the poorest.”²² As usual, his desire for historical accuracy outstripped necessity, and in his intense research he went to great lengths to verify details. A typical example is his letter to Luigi Paroletti, his cousin in Turin:

French and Italian historians who talk of Charlemagne's descent into Italy in 773, merely say that he took the mountain route and reached the rear of the armies of Desiderio, his enemy and king of the Lombards, who had made camp at the Alpine Chiuse, which he had fortified, and which without doubt is Susa. But the author of a chronicle in the Monastery of the Novalesa, who wrote during the following century and filled his book with stories, goes into greater detail, which, though mixed with fable, still might be worth looking into, since that place where Charlemagne sojourned for a while could contain a parcel of the truth. So then, he says that an unknown passage was indicated to Charlemagne, and that by following his guide he marched from the Novalesa per crepidinem cuiusdam montis in quo usque in hodiernum diem Via Francorum dicitur [along the base of a certain mountain which in our day continues to be called the Road of the Franks]. I find a Villafranca in the Aosta valley, which, given the similarity of the names, makes me suspect it to be this Via Francorum. Descending from this mountain, according to the chronicler, Charlemagne arrived in planitiem Vici, cui nomen erat Gavensis [on the level ground of Vico, the name of which was Giaveno]. The commentator interprets Giaveno, but I cannot find this Giaveno on my insufficiently detailed maps. Now, I should like to know if, by leaving the Novalesa, there is a road that leads through the mountains to Giaveno, and from there to Susa, and approximately how many days it takes to cover it.²³

This time, Manzoni not only preceded his tragedy with “Notizie Storiche,” as he had done with Carmagnola, but he also engaged in true historiography with his elaboration of the “Notizie” in the form of Discorsi sopra alcuni punti della storia longobardica. The historical situation of Adelchi (barbarian Longobards lording over the enslaved Latin people who look to the Pope to mitigate their suffering, and the Pope's beckoning the Franks into Italy, thus pitting barbarians against barbarians—not unlike pitting Austrians against French in the nineteenth-century context—but ultimately doing nothing to alleviate the agonies of the weak, oppressed Latins) blends intimately with its poetic inspiration through which the situation is relived. In this case, poetry more than ever becomes the spirit of history, “a vital and indissoluble wedding of history and fantasy, where fantasy is totally incorporated into history, and history dissolves totally into fantasy.”²⁴ The “literary” society evoked—the courageous palladin, his faithful friend, the beautiful suffering lady, the prevaricating traitors, the rash defiance of one king and the obstinate power of the other—acts like an aura rising from the solid substratum of history.

The drama reveals a world presided over by force, by thirst for conquest, in which the conflict for Manzoni is “between the law of the Gospel and the historical necessity of violence.”²⁵ At the beginning of the play, which opens in the royal palace in Pavia, a squire announces the arrival of Longobard King Desiderio's daughter Ermengarda, who has been repudiated by her husband Charlemagne, King of the Franks. Spurred by pride and vengeance, Desiderio's thoughts turn to Pope Adrian who, with the proper inducements, could put Charlemagne's nephews on the Frankish throne (they had been driven out by their uncle and were at Desiderio's court with their mother Gerberga²⁶). Prince Adelchi disagrees, urging that his father first regain the Pope's support by restoring to him the lands he had promised years before to restore. Greatly saddened over his sister's treatment, he exclaims:

                                                                                … Oh bitter price
Of kingdom! Oh state … more woeful
Than that of subjects, if even their gaze
We are obliged to fear, and hide our forehead
For shame; and if we cannot even honor
The ill-fortune of someone beloved
In the open sun!
.....                                                                                          Remember
Of whom we are the kings; for in our ranks
Mingled with the faithful, and perhaps far more than
          they,
Lurk our enemies, and that the sight
Of a foreign banner changes every enemy
Into a traitor. Oh father, to die the heart
Alone suffices; but the victory and kingdom
Are for him who rules over the peaceful.

These last words adumbrate the catastrophe, which seems fated even if by chance the Longobards should win. Nonetheless, his practical nature insists that, if any chance exists, it cannot take place without vacating the Vatican territory: “Let us clear out the Roman lands, and friends / Be of Adrian, for he so wishes.” But Desiderio is too fired with the need for immediate military action:

                                                                      … To perish,
Perish on the throne or in the dust I would
Before I suffer such a shame. Let not
That advice escape your lips again: your father
So commands you.

Ermengarda's already painful situation is compounded by the king's brash attitude; her words sigh typically with a combination of lassitude and entreaty:

My sorrow does not ask so much; I only wish
To forget; this willingly the world accords
The wretched. Oh, enough! In me
Let ill-fortune end. I was to wear
The candid badge of friendship and of peace:
But heaven willed it not; ah, may it not be said
I brought discordance everywhere I went
And tears, for all to whom I was to be
A pledge of joy.

She asks to retire to a convent, in whose solitude she might through prayer bring peace to her heart. When Charlemagne's ambassador arrives, there is no changing Desiderio's mind, particularly since the legate talks of Longobard restitutions to the Vatican, and the king urges his noblemen to war. A good part of them responds to his rousing words. The act ends, however, with another part of them bent on betraying their king; they meet at the home of Svarto, a common soldier bitter over his commonness and unscrupulous in the method he plans to adopt to overcome it.

                                        … At the bottom of Fate's urn,
Covered over by a thousand names, my own
Does lie; if this urn is not shaken, at the bottom
It will lie forever, and I shall die
In this obscurity of mine, without anyone ever
Knowing that I dared to leave it well behind.
I am naught. …
Who thinks of Svarto? who cares to observe him?
What foot turns to reach this lowest limit?
Who hears me? or who fears me? Oh, if boldness
But bestowed award! If only destiny had not
Commanded in advance! and if the empire
Were with swords contested, then you'd see,
Proud dukes, just who among us would obtain it.
If only it were up to the adroit! I read your hearts,
All, but mine is shut to you. Oh! how much
Astonishment would hit you, and how much disdain
If you ever were to find out that a single wish,
A single hope, now binds me to you. …
Some day to be your equal! You might think
I want my fill of gold. What's gold? to throw it
At your subject's feet, now that is destiny; but humble
And defenseless to extend my hand to grab it,
Like a beggar. …

He volunteers to take the message of the duke's betrayal to Charlemagne; the trip is risky, but a nobleman would be detected more readily than he:

If at roll call someone calls my name and asks:
Where is he? let one of you say: Svarto? I saw him
Running long the Ticino; his steed
Got frisky, from his saddle shook him off
Into the waves; he was with arms, and surfaced not
          again.
Hapless one! they'll say; and none
Will speak again of Svarto.

The second act moves to the Frankish camp in Val di Susa, where Charlemagne expresses concern over the feasibility of crossing the Alps. His predicament lasts until the arrival of Martino, Deacon of Ravenna sent by his Archbishop, who informs him of the Longobard position at the Chiuse (“… there crowded / Are the horses and the arms; there gathered / A whole people stands …”) and of the existence nearby of a hitherto unknown pass through the mountains—the one he took to slip unnoticed by the Longobards, and the one Charlemagne should take to descend upon the enemy from behind. Once Charlemagne's worries are erased, his true personality is revealed: the dominator, who in the face of conquest can easily discard moral responsibilities such as his repudiation of Ermengarda for purely political expediency:

                                        … I see again
The star which sparkled at my leaving,
Then lay hid some time. What seemed
To push me away from Italy was but
The ghost of error; lying
Was the voice that said inside my heart:
No, never, no, on the soil of Ermengarda's birth
You cannot be king. Oh world! I am
Of your blood. You are alive: why then
Stood you before me stubbornly,
Tacitly, afflicted, in act of rebuke,
Pallidly, as if come from the tomb?
God has damned her house; so was I then
To stay united with her? …
                                        … A king cannot
Travel his high road, without having
Someone fall beneath his feet. …
.....                                        … Three more days,
Then the battle and the victory; and after that
Rest in lovely Italy, amid the fields
Waving with the grain, and in the orchards
Laden with fruit unknown to our fathers;
Among the ancient temples and the palaces,
In that land cheered by song, prized by the sun,
Sheltering in its bosom the world's lords,
And God's martyrs; where the shepherd supreme
Raises both his palms, and blesses
Our banners, where we have as enemies
A puny people, still divided
Among themselves at that, and half-way mine. …

The beauty of Italy attracts, and her divided citizenry makes the prey that much more enticing for someone for whom no law exists except success.

Adelchi dominates the third act; he is duty-bound to defend the honor of the kingdom, yet knows deep inside him that all is to no avail, and that an unhappy destiny hovers over the Longobard enterprise. For this reason, when his close and devoted friend Anfrido mentions the word “glory,” his melancholy reply fits not only his profile but also the whole temper of the drama:

                              … Glory? my
Destiny is to crave it, and to die
Never having tasted it.

He fights as he must, for a condemned cause. But he fights valiantly, even while all else crumbles about him, and in so doing offers a sharp contrast with the defecting dukes: Guntigi, Ildechi, Farvaldo, Indolfo, etc. The cowardly sight even revolts a noble, Frankish warrior, Rutlando (alias Orlando, or Roland), who cries his disgust to Charlemagne:

                              … Oh king, I call you
As witness, and you too, you Counts, for on this
Vile day I unsheathed not my sword; let him today
Wound whome'er he wishes. Frightened, scattered flock,
I shan't pursue it. …
.....                              … Friends?
This we would have been much more, had we at the
          Chiuse
Crossed arms. They asked me for the king; I turned
My shoulders; you will see them now. No, if I knew
What kind of enemy we marched against, for sure
I would not have moved away from France.

Anfrido dies with honor, and Adelchi chastizes the “Day of infamy and ire,” seeking for himself the same kind of honorable death. At this point, Manzoni introduces one of the two Choruses of the tragedy, a pessimistic comment on Italy's destiny:

From the mossy porches and the failing Forums,
From the woods and from the screeching smithies,
From the furrows laved with servile sweat,
A people frequently dispersed arises,
Perks its ears, uplifts its head
Rocking with new rumors rising.
.....In their looks and faces, confused and uncertain,
Suffered contempt mixes contrastingly
With the wretched pride of times gone by.
.....And on deserters, with sword flaming,
Like ransacking dogs loosed running,
Right and left he sees the warriors come;
He sees them, rapt in a joy unknown
Surveys the battle with lithe hope
And dreams the end of his harsh service.
.....Would the wished prize, promised to the brave,
Be—deluded ones—a shift of fortune,
That a foreign people end your sorrows?
Return to your proud ruins,
To the faint-hearted jobs of your parched workshops,
To the furrows laved with servile sweat.
The stout will mingle with the foe surrendered,
The new lord will mix with the old;
On your neck will ride both nations.
They share the serfs, they share the herds;
They pause together on the blood-soaked fields
Of a dispersed race without a name.

Act IV finds Ermengarda in the monastery of St. Salvator in Brescia where she dies, the fragile victim of her enduring love for Charlemagne and of an irrational, insensitive world which substitutes blood for beauty and violence for peace. Among her dying words, she recalls to the abbess her sister, Ansberga, the happier times of yesteryear:

Smiling days! Do you remember? We crossed over
Mountains, rivers, forests, and with every dawn
The joy of waking grew. What days!
No, speak not of them, I beg you! Heaven knows
If I thought that ever in a mortal heart
So much joy could be contained, and so much sorrow!
You weep for me! Oh, wish you to console me?
Call me daughter: for at this name I feel
A martyr's fullness, and it floods
My heart, and casts it out into oblivion.

The scene concludes with the Chorus returning to sing the death of the afflicted heroine. It is one of the author's finest poetic efforts and, like the previous Chorus, is often included separately among his “lyrics” in the exclusive sense. It may be imagined as a chorus of nuns, to whom Manzoni has lent his most intimate feelings, and contains three parts: the heroine's final moments, the reevocation of her tragedy, and moral reflections on the theme of “provident ill-fortune,” the Providential intervention of God in the turmoiled affairs of Ermengarda who through her suffering redeems her Nemesis-plagued race and attains salvation.

With her soft braids spreading
Over her troubled bosom,
Her limbs slow, and bedewed
With death her white visage, she
Pious lies, trembling
Her eyes seeking sky.
As dew upon a tuft
Of grass that has turned arid
Makes life again freshly
Flow inside the withered blades,
Which rise once more green
In the tempered dawn;
So into her thoughts, by
Love's ungodly virtue wrought,
Descends the cooling balm
Of a friendly word; her heart
Delights in calm joys
Of another love.
Descended from a line
With oppressors blameworthy,
Whose numbers spelled courage,
Whose offense became reason,
Blood their right, and fame
Was in no pity,
Provident ill-fortune
Placed you among the oppressed;
You die lamented, calm,
And descend to sleep with them:
No one will insult
The accused ashes.
You die; may your lifeless
Visage be reformed in peace,
As once it was careless
Of an erring destiny.
It colored only
Slight virginal thoughts.
Thus from the clouds rent through
The setting sun appears,
And behind the mountain
Crimsons now the trembling West,
Boding good farmers
A day more serene.(27)

The scene shifts quickly to the walls of Pavia, the town to which Desiderio has retreated, and where Guntigi prepares the final betrayal in a speech ringing with Shakespearean overtones:

                                        … Loyalty? So let the saddened friend
Of a fallen lord, the one who, stubborn
In his hope, or, say, irresolute, stood
With him until the end, and with him fell,
Cry Loyalty! Hah, Loyalty! and with it
Let him be consoled—all right. For whate'er consoles
In it we wish to trust—no hesitation. But when
We might lose all, and yet we can
Save all; and when the lucky one, the sire
For whom God declares himself, the consecrated
Charles sends me a messenger, wants me his friend,
Invites me not to perish, wants to separate
Me from the cause of misadventure. …
What for, though always shunned, does this word
Loyalty return to assail me,
Like a troubling bore? it always hurls itself
In the midst of all my thoughts, consulting them,
Upsetting them? This Loyalty! All destinies
Are fine with her, and death is beautiful. Who says
          so?
The one for whom you die. And so the universe
Repeats it with a single voice, and shouts
That, be he mendicant or derelict, the loyal man
Is honor worthy, more than is the traitor
Leisuring with friends. Ah, is that so? But if he's
          worthy,
What's he doing being mendicant or derelict? …

The final act, in the Royal Palace at Verona, seals the end of the Longobardic world. The petulant natures of the two rival monarchs makes it impossible for them to behave toward each other with civility, each only too quick to berate the other. Vanquished, Desiderio begs Charlemagne to spare his son's life and let all other matters rest, not indulge his greed, for “Heaven abhors immoderate desires,” and when the Frankish king balks, he erupts:

I begged you, so I did, though at the test
I should have known you! You deny it; on your head
The treasure of revenge grows thicker.
Deceit has made you victor; let the victory
Make you proud and merciless.
Step on the prostrate, and climb; you offend God. …

to which the irritated victor responds:

Silence, you who are defeated. What's this? Just
          yesterday
You dreamed my death, and now you beg forgiveness,
Which would be meet if, in the easy hour
Of hospitable discourse, delighted I
Would be rising from your table! …

Still, before the nobility of Adelchi, who is carried in mortally wounded from the field of battle, even Charlemagne softens and acquiesces to the Prince's words of friendship. To his father, at whose side he has stood dutifully though in full knowledge of the vanity of the situation, Adelchi utters dying:

Life has its great secret, and the final hour
Alone can understand it. …
Rejoice you are not king, rejoice that every course
Of action is now blocked: no place is there
For friendly, harmless deeds; all that remains
Is to do wrong, or suffer it. A force ferocious
Possesses this world, and it bears the name
Of Law. The bloodied hand of our ancestors
Seeded injustice; our own fathers
Cultivated it with blood; by now this earth
Will not yield another harvest. …

As the final curtain falls, Adelchi gives up his “tired soul” to Heaven.

The plot's underpinning reflects ideas Manzoni derived from French historians like Fauriel and other liberal thinkers of the Restoration, primarily Augustin Thierry.²⁸ The latter's dualistic vision of conquerors and conquered, oppressors and oppressed, with, in Adelchi's case, Italy representing the Third Estate amid the clash of races bent on domination, gives the play an historical justification in the light of which the characters, fictional or real, engage a dimension of life greater than themselves. As one critic put it, Adelchi is “the soul of exile.”²⁹ More than anyone else, he feels the guilt of his “race” and knows both the Papal diffidence and the reciprocal hatreds separating Longobards from Franks from Italic Latins. In the subtle ways of his restive conscience, he has compassion for the Italians, his serfs, for, as Croce stated, he is aware that the world is not based on the opposition between good and evil, rather on the shock of vital interests,³⁰ on whichever side these may lie. He has, then, a pragmatic sense of ruling, which with reference to personal behavior becomes transmuted into exemplary ethics. It is erroneous to try to see in him a typically Romantic hero. True, he is Romantic in his many inner contradictions: his desire for glory, yet his unwillingness to attain it by calculation, hypocrisy, or “politics”; his stern regal bearing, yet his inability to react with justified ferocity against traitors; his will to avenge the insult to Ermengarda, yet his too profound Christianity to throw pity to the winds; his confidence in his courage and in himself, yet his awareness that it will not avail his sister, his realm, or his father. He is Romantic in that he feels he was born for greatness, yet he kills its potential by his unquestioning faith in duty and by the attendant resignation. His stoic front hides a gentle heart. But his world-weariness is not Romantic lassitude in the poetic manner of Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen; it is the realization of Christian renunciation, far more convincing than Chateaubriand's attempt to portray it in René through the mouth of Father Souël. To say, with De Sanctis,³¹ that Adelchi realizes the ideal of the Inni (in preparation of Father Cristoforo and Cardinal Borromeo in I promessi sposi) strikes us as exaggerated, or needlessly facile. He does, however, represent the apogee of Christian fatalism in the theater; he does not permit himself to withdraw from the historical determinism which affects his duty, and if he obeys the dictates of necessity, he does so with his arm and not with his sword.³² There may not be in him the agony of doubt, but there is the anguish of engagement. If only for this reason, he has been compared with Alfieri's Ildovaldo in Rosmunda, the Marquis de Posa in Schiller's Don Carlos, Sophocles' Antigone and Shakespeare's Cordelia, but above all with Hamlet—with the one exception, apart from the unparalleled depth of the Shakespearean hero, that Adelchi's is not a philosophical nature that stifles action but an active nature for which philosophy despairs. Hence he is to some extent a solitary hero in the Shakespearean tradition, but to a larger extent a representative hero, imbued with religiosity, illustrating a particularly symbolic situation.³³ In Western literature, he comes as close to the Christian tragic hero as we may witness; his only rival is Corneille's Polyeucte, but Adelchi's inner travail does not admit comparison with the former's abstract stoicism. We may admire Polyeucte; we feel for Adelchi.

Like her brother, Ermengarda is portrayed not as deluded by life but as a conscience of life. Both are victims, to be sure, but through their openness to justice, love, and charity something of them survives. Manzoni deifies his heroine, for in a sense she is Italy; he makes her ethereal, emerge like an elegy in an epic of armor, or, as Ulivi put it, like “the kind of blended and afflicted musicality we associate with Racine's Phèdre and Athalie.”³⁴ But more than Italy, she is humanity, its drama. Though her emotions bear the stamp of regal refinement, she is more loving than queen,³⁵ and her passion churns only inwardly; outwardly it is tenderness and sacrifice, that is, an expression of spirituality. When Manzoni inscribed a copy of I promessi sposi for his daughter Enrichetta, he wrote in it, recalling his recently deceased wife, what her name meant to him—something which could justifiably apply to Ermengarda (or the novel's Lucia): “faith, purity, wisdom, love of one's own, benevolence toward all, sacrifice, humility, all that is holy, all that is lovable (St. Paul).”³⁶

Manzoni's genius for characterization is not limited to I promessi sposi or to the protoganists of this play, for next to Adelchi and Ermengarda, the other characters do not pale. He knew that he was side-stepping tradition when he created the role of Charlemagne, as he wrote to Cousin: “Charlemagne … will be neither Ariosto's leader of the paladins, nor the saint of some ecclesiastical authors, nor the legislator of some great men, nor the wise man of some university faculty, nor the rascal of some philosophers, nor the hero of those who received pensions from his younger brother, but someone who after all that may still turn out to be a poorly conceived character.”³⁷ He turned out well, however, the “most composite” character in the play, the “pure politician and all-time Caesar,”³⁸ who has as many personalities as there are situations for them in which to function. Indeed, Galletti alludes to “the Caesarian profile of Napoleon,”³⁹ but a more apt reminiscence would conjure up the Machiavellian prince, for whom the political end is the only rule, necessity must be faced with resoluteness, and power is not to be measured by petty ambition. If his language swells with the pomp of victory, it is because he can still remain human, or rather return to his humanity, after the deed has been accomplished and the power accrued.

Next to him, Desiderio appears less composite than complex, because in his case we cannot speak of a pure Machiavellism but of a confusion between fever of ambition, of dominion, rough pride and petty egoism on the one hand, and on the other genuine paternal compassion and sporadic bursts of magnanimity. Of all the characters who walk Manzoni's stage, he remains the most difficult to grasp, beneath the obvious superstructure of a barbarian prince, and therefore the one who arouses the most curiosity. The broad, ethical dimensions of the crisis escape him; his vision is fragmented by his impulses, good and bad. This is not the case with the leading traitors, Guntigi and Svarto, who bring to mind “the tragic morality of Shakespeare,”⁴⁰ without, however, overpowering us with the fearsome evil of the Iagos. Their vision is not fragmented; they have a clear view of “real” life, stripped of idealistic charismas, and use cold logic to legitimize ugly calculation. Guntigi's “Loyalty” monologue drips with sophistry and ably conceals the void of his conscience, while Svarto climbs to become Count of Susa, acting like an elemental incarnation of that earthly “force ferocious” that Adelchi speaks of, before which decency has no chance, and in whose throes “ill-fortune” is merciful when it is “provident.” Too bad that both Guntigi and Svarto, limited to their respective corners of the play, do not develop more forcefully throughout it, and that, as Carducci remarked, they are not endowed with a deeper, Michelangelesque or Shakespearean trait or two. Still, in their own corners, they remain impressive.

In the brief lapse of dramatic time from near the end of Act III to near the beginning of Act IV, Manzoni concentrated the lyrical essence of the tragedy in the form of two Choruses, regarded by many as the fruit of his historical and ethical meditation. Structurally, they “peak” the action by revealing its symbolism and by allowing the poet to intervene so as to draw the play out of itself, to summarize and to teach. Their importance in Manzoni's mind cannot be minimized: he talked about having had to “rhyme the two lyrical choruses …, in order to draw attention to what is most serious and poetic in the subject matter. …”⁴¹ Thus their aesthetic placement serves a philosophical end, for by being juxtaposed they signal once again the tragic dualism in Manzoni's world view, the sense of collective and individual tragedy which underlies his pessimism regarding things of this earth. The first one is Italy's Chorus, or as Russo calls it, “a sorrowful epic of war,” the peripeteia of a whole society aroused and dismembered by superior forces and adverse historical traditions. The same critic notes too that the national motif is colored with Manzoni's Christian consciousness, and that while we may speak of a certain “contemplative pessimism,” we may also speak of another “active pessimism,” that of teaching the people to work and be virtuous for their own inner redemption.⁴² The second, Ermengarda's Chorus, points to the ensuing private tragedy, the solitary destiny of the individual, who in the nature of things will always be frail and haplessly suffering if he is going to be honest. Only endurance or forebearance marks the life of the good, at the end of which hope lies in the Providential reward of being removed from it. There is, shall we say, poetry in morality, and in the morality of death.

Before and after the two Choruses, the structure of the tragedy—the scene by scene progression and the feeling of spaciousness emerging from it—adumbrate the narrative artist of the novel. The interrelationship of the parts, rather than tightly confine the play according to Classical norms, yields through the subject matter to a broader, we might suggest cosmic, sense of the whole. Nowhere is this sense more pronounced than in Martino's recounting of his arduous journey across the beautiful Alps. Little knowing that the Franks will turn out to be invaders and not liberators,⁴³ he represents the Italian people's hope, a hope which becomes lyricized in the form of a sublime account of the country's natural beauty:

                                        … Here
No trace of man appears, but only forests
Of firs intact, rivers unknown, and trailless
Valleys; all was quiet: I heard
But my own steps, and from time to time
The torrent's thunder, or the unexpected
Falcon's screeching, or the eagle's darting
In early morning from its raised nest, roaring
Above my head, or in the afternoon
The sylvan crackling of the pine cones
Stung by the sun. I journeyed thus three days
And I spent three nights under tall plants
Or in the gorges. My guide was the sun;
With it I arose, and then I followed
Its course, facing last its setting. I walked
Uncertain of the road, and crossing over
From vale to vale; or if at times I saw
Rising before me the summit of a cliff
Accessible, and I did reach the top,
More peaks more sublime, stood
In front and all around, still others whitened
From crest to base with snow, almost
Like pointed, steep pavilions, pegged
Into the earth; still others, iron-firm,
Like walls erect and insurmountable. The third sun
Was setting when I scaled a lofty mountain
Which raised its forehead higher than the rest
And was one long green slope, its summit
Crowned with trees. …

Passages like this one highlight Adelchi. They make it Manzoni's lyrical masterpiece and, together with Il Conte di Carmagnola, augured well for the future of Romantic theater in a Europe seeking the theatrical ground for its new literature. Goethe alluded to Manzoni's “new dramatic school.” But the Romantic “school” of historical drama went in other directions, in those—primarily in Germany and Austria—of Kleist, Hebbel, Grillparzer, and Ludwig (and the little recognized Grabbe and Büchner), while in France, Manzoni's intellectual center, it sank into the soap-opera platitudes of Hugo's Hernani, Ruy Blas, Lucrèce Borgia, Les Burgraves, etc. Disenchanted with such productions, Sainte-Beuve looked back to the promise held forth by Manzoni's dramatic works: “When I think of those two beautiful columns which seemed to shape for us in advance the portico of the edifice, providing we followed the example, I can hardly not blush at what, under our very eyes, has happened to this dream of a theatre.”⁴⁴

Goethe was correct: Manzoni's theater was “new.” While the characters do stand out, they leave an impression on us more through what they do not say than through what they say, and therefore do not overpower us like Phèdre, or Lear, or Oedipus. Manzoni's propensity to write for readers rather than for spectators aided this attenuation which, combined with his ethico-historical concerns, produced what has been called a narrated representation. On this basis, one critic⁴⁵ has pointed to Manzoni's modernity, since his conception anticipates Brecht's epic theater, although the latter's objective depiction of events cannot blend with the former's subjective poetization of them. Still, there remains the same “ethical dissatisfaction with the conventions of the traditional stage,” and conceived as an epic narrative, Adelchi presents possibilities involving stage and public, that is, a collective experience, which would be difficult in the conventional manner of stressing the imposing hero and the impressive heroine.⁴⁶

The underlying pessimism is the same. More pagan and naturalistic, Shakespeare does not concern himself with Christian renunciation; Manzoni does, and Brecht does not know it. Greek Fate became Destiny in Shakespeare and Marxist struggle in Brecht, while Manzoni saw existence more Jansenistically as an infirmity, in which participation means fighting and in which good actions turn to, or are annulled by, worldly evil. Not the least cause for worry is history's ability to place fine men and women, princes or paupers alike, in the roles of oppressors; necessity makes no allowances for good will, and in short order all hands become soiled. Nonetheless, “fighting and active participation are the primary condition for salvation. … Of course, to participate by fighting is not an optimistic solution, and we might say that, along with admiration, a historical pietas veils the eyes of the poet when he looks at man's tumultuous incursions.”⁴⁷ We may either obey reluctantly, like Adelchi, or absorb sacrificially, like Ermengarda. A troubling fatality hovers above our heads; Thierry's racial determinants look, more philosophically, like Jansenistic determinism if we consider, somewhat like Russo, the unreconcilability between the Jansenistic world of Grace inhabited by Adelchi, Ermengarda, and Martino, and the Machiavellian world of Realpolitik inhabited by Desiderio, Svarto, and Charlemagne.⁴⁸ Hence the veracious, tragic atmosphere of Adelchi. We cannot feel that if the aberrations of the hero's historical age were rectified, all would end well. If tragedy must encourage a metaphysical attitude through a poetic cosmology, then Adelchi fits the mode, and the notion that Christian tragedy is not possible because of the promise of salvation does not apply. For Manzoni, Providence operates in the infinite rather than in the finite, preparing salvation with pain and ill-fortune, “but abandoning the earth and the living to the whirlwind of evil and to the anguish of eternal shipwreck.”⁴⁹

To be sure, Hamlet, who looks upon his fellow man's hypocrisy and injustice with equal aversion as Adelchi, cannot invite death as confidently as his counterpart because he has no faith in the beyond. But Adelchi is no less anguished and his tone no less pessimistic. For this reason, the play should not be considered an exemplum to which the human traits of its characters are subservient, or in which inspiration drew exclusively from the Christian fountain; in fact, the emphasis rests on the personality, albeit not overpowering, moving as best he can in an evil world toward an attainment, in some cases, of the Christian ideal. If the play's expressiveness stems from a refined religiosity, its humanity stems from a sensitive psychological assessment of human behavior. “The thought that moves the drama is doubtlessly Christian, but the feeling that penetrates every scene is one of horror for universal injustice and disdain for triumphant perfidy.”⁵⁰ Sansone insists that in its finest moments, Adelchi expresses not Manzoni's religious but his secular pessimism, his tragic sense of life,⁵¹ and to this we must add that he does so to the point of near crisis. His “freest poetry” (the expression comes from Croce⁵²) may be free in a sense other than versification. For Adelchi rings surprisingly with doubt, with the agonizing questions of Job: why do the good suffer?; why do they die without realizing their good?; how can Ermengarda be cast aside so shamelessly?; why are Svarto's ambitions fulfilled?; how can Charlemagne stoop to an acceptance of human fraud when his own knight Rutlando shudders? In other words, where is this divine, Providential justice which ultimately controls human history from above, which shapes the historical design? In the long run, Christianity shows itself in Adelchi only in the way its heroes accept death, in the “provident ill-fortune.” The rest is cast with bleak thoughts.

Notes

1. Letter to Attilio Zuccagni Orlandini, January 4, 1828, quoted from Manzoni: tutte le opere (Roma: Avanzini e Torraca, 1965), pp. 66-67.

2. Giovanni Orioli, in ibid., p. 67.

3. Letter to Fauriel, March 25, 1816, Epistolario, I, 140.

4. Galletti, p. 384.

5. Letter to Fauriel, March 25, 1816, Epistolario, I, 140.

6. Letter to Gaetano Giudici, February 7, 1820, Epistolario, I, 172.

7. Momigliano, p. 177. To the contrary, Francesco Flora sees in Carmagnola's “religious acceptance of death” the culminating sign of an essentially “poetic” character (Storia della letteratura italiana [Milano: Mondadori, 1940], III, 204-6).

8. Galletti, pp. 389-90.

9. See Orioli, p. 67.

10. The Chorus is in sixteen octanes (seven decasyllables and a final nonasyllable) and in rhyme: abacbddc.

11. Letter to Gaetano Giudici, February 7, 1820, Epistolario, I, 172-73.

12. Alberto Chiari, Introduction to Il Conte di Carmagnola (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1947), p. xxxvi.

13. Foscolo actually despaired: “Poor us! Poor belle lettere! … What a sacrilege!” The Biblioteca italiana (February, 1820) said scoffingly: “We have hundreds of such tragedies …,” and the Quarterly Review urged Manzoni to stick to splendid odes and not disgust the public with weak tragedies (December, 1820). See Epistolario, I, 193-96.

14. Used for Adelchi, though in his mind the epithet applied also to Carmagnola: letter to Fauriel, March 6, 1822, Epistolario, I, 228.

15. Letter to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, January 23, 1821, Epistolario, I, 191. In this letter of gratitude for the German poet's “favorable judgment,” Manzoni expresses surprise that critics “saw almost everything differently from the way I had imagined it; they praised those things to which I had given less importance, and took as oversights and inadvertences … those parts which were the fruit of my most sincere and persevering meditation.”

16. Epistolario, I, 194. Goethe's long analysis was in Über Kunst und Alterthum of that year. Manzoni admitted to Goethe that the character distinction was due to “too scrupulous an attachment to historical accuracy” (Epistolario, 1, 192), and of Fauriel (March 6, 1822, Espistolario, I, 231), who was preparing a French translation, he requested a deletion of the distinction. A German translation was readied by one Arnold.

17. See Epistolario, I, 194.

18. Letter to Fauriel, December 3, 1821, Epistolario, I, 218.

19. Letter to Fauriel, March 6, 1822, Epistolario, I, 228.

20. Quoted in Epistolario, I, 197.

21. See Chiari, p. xxxiii.

22. Letter to Fauriel, October 17, 1820, Epistolario, I, 187-88.

23. Letter to Luigi Paroletti, 1820(?), Lettere inedite, pp. 6-7.

24. Filippo Piemontese, “L'ispirazione storico-religiosa dell'Adelchi,” Convivium 1 (1949), p. 4.

25. Galletti, p. 391.

26. Manzoni later asked Fauriel, when translating into French, to leave the historical names as they were, for even if they sounded coarse that could not be helped, but to make the fictional ones “less baroque and closer to their Germanic root … since I have had to distort them in order to Italianize them” (Letter to Fauriel, March 6, 1822, Epistolario, I, 230).

27. While the whole play, like Carmagnola, is in endecasyllables, the two Choruses stand out rhythmically through their change in meter. “Italy's Chorus” (the first) contains eleven stanzas of six 12-syllable verses each, rhymed aabccb. It has a slow, deliberate cadence, creating an effect of sad solemnity. “Ermengarda's Chorus” (the second) is made up of twenty stanzas of six 8-syllable lines, with only 2 and 4 rhyming, and 6 with the previous 6. The effect is totally different: it moves along effortlessly, and more lyrically and more serenely than the first.

28. See the study by Cesare De Lollis, Alessandro Manzoni e gli storici liberali francesi della Restaurazione (Bari: Laterza, 1926).

29. Bollati, quoted in Orioli, p. 69.

30. Benedetto Croce, “Alessandro Manzoni,” in Saggi e discussioni (Bari: Laterza, 1952), p. 118.

31. Francesco De Sanctis, Letteratura italiana nel secolo XIX, ed. L. Blasucci, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1953), I, 101.

32. Croce, p. 120.

33. However, we are not of the opinion, held by some, that the characters in Adelchi in the long run become rigidified into symbols of Manzoni's thought. In varying degrees, each has his own complexity which precludes the vagueness of abstraction or the neatness of allegory.

34. Ulivi, p. 101.

35. See Emilio Santini, Il teatro di A. Manzoni (Palermo: Palumbo, 1940), pp. 79-87 passim.

36. Letter to Coen, May 20, 1834, Epistolario, I, 479.

37. Quoted in Galletti, pp. 394-95.

38. Filippo Piemontese, Manzoni (Brescia: La Scuola Editrice, 1953), p. 161.

39. Galletti, p. 395.

40. Momigliano, p. 188.

41. Letter to Fauriel, March 6, 1822, Epistolario, I, 228.

42. Russo, pp. 19-20.

43. Momigliano (pp. 186-87) suggests that the reason Martino does not reappear in the play after scene 3 of Act II is that he represents the great hope for Italian liberation, to be executed by the Franks, and when this hope is crushed (as Italy's Chorus tells us) by subsequent disillusion, there is no need for him to return on stage. He vanishes with the hope. Russo stresses too heavily the “presence of God” and the “poetry of faith” in this description of nature's wonders (Alessandro Manzoni: liriche, tragedie, e prose [Firenze: Sansoni, 1951] p. 180). We see it primarily as a structural device.

44. “M. Fauriel,” in Portraits contemporains (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1889), IV, 206.

45. Nino Borsellino, “Panorama della letteratura critica sull'Adelchi,” Quaderni del teatro popolare italiano, no. 1 (Torino: Einaudi, 1960), p. 147.

46. See a brief discussion along some of these lines in Luciano Codignola, “Aless. Manzoni: Adelchi,” in ibid., p. 142.

47. Ulivi, p. 89.

48. Russo, “Parere sull'Adelchi,” in Ritratti e disegni storici.

49. Galletti, pp. 405-6.

50. Ibid., p. 396.

51. See his Opera poetica di Alessandro Manzoni, the discussion of Adelchi which centers around this point of view.

52. Croce, p. 117.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Alessandro Manzoni: Tutte le opere. Edited by Bruno Cagli, a cura di G. Orioli, E. Allegretti, G. Manacorda, and L. Felici. Roma: Avanzini e Torraca, 1965.

Tutte le poesie di Alessandro Manzoni. A cura di A. L. Castris. Firenze: Sansoni, 1965.

Liriche. A cura di Attilio Momigliano. Torino: Einaudi, 1932.

The Sacred Hymns and the Napoleonic Ode. Translated by Reverend Joel Foote Bingham. London/New York: H. Frowde, 1904.

Alessandro Manzoni: Tragedie. A cura di P. Egidi. Torino: Einaudi, 1921.

Adelchi, tragedia storica. A cura di Giorgio Derzero. Torino: G. B. Paravia, 1947.

Il Conte di Carmagnola. A cura di Alberto Chiari. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1947.

I promessi sposi: storia milanese del secolo XVII scoperta e rifatta da Alessandro Manzoni. Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1933.

I promessi sposi. Edited by L. Gessi. Roma: A Signorelli, 1960.

I promessi sposi. Edited by Pietro Mazzamuto. Palermo: Palumbo, 1955.

I promessi sposi. Edited by Alberto Moravia. Torino: Einaudi, 1960.

I promessi sposi. Edited by Giuseppe Petronio. Torino: Paravia, 1946.

The Betrothed Lovers. With a biographical introduction by G. T. Bettany. London/New York: Ward, Look, 1889.

The Betrothed. With a critical and biographical introduction by Maurice Francis Egan. New York: Appleton, 1900.

The Betrothed. With an introduction by James, cardinal Gibbons. New York: The National Alumni, 1907.

The Betrothed. Edited by Charles W. Eliot. Harvard Classics, vol. 21. New York: Collier, 1909-1910.

The Betrothed. Translated, with a preface by Archibald Colquhoun. London: J. M. Dent, 1951/New York: E. P. Dutton, 1956, 1959.

The Betrothed. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961.

Epistolario di Alessandro Manzoni. Edited by Giovanni Sforza. Milano: Paolo Carrara, 1882.

Lettere inedite di Alessandro Manzoni. Edited by Ercole Gnecchi. Milano: L. F. Cogliati, 1900.

Carteggio di Alessandro Manzoni. A cura di Giovanni Sforza e Giuseppe Gallavresi. 2 vols. Milano: U. Hoepli, 1912-1921.

Secondary Sources

Chandler, S. B. Alessandro Manzoni: The Story of a Spiritual Quest. Edinbourgh: Edinbourgh University Press, 1974. A general view of Manzoni's works, rich in insights relating to how all of them successively permit a unitary development toward a spiritual view of life.

Chiavacci, Angelica. Il “Parlato” nei “Promessi sposi”. Firenze: Sansoni, 1961. A good discussion not only of speech and dialogue but also of how the whole novel is aesthetically and implicitly dialogued.

Colombo, Umberto. Manzoni e gli “umili”. Milano: Edizioni Paoline, 1972. Stresses the notion and the meaning of the commoner in the novel, making good use of recent scholarship.

Costa, Sarnio, and Mavaro, Giuseppe. L'opera del Manzoni nelle pagine dei critici. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1962. A helpful anthology, with introductory notes, of Manzoni criticism.

Croce, Benedetto. A. Manzoni. Bari: Laterza, 1930. A seminal study in Manzoni criticism, relating to questions of historiography, language, aesthetics, didacticism, and the oratorical nature of the novel.

De Lollis, Cesare. Alessandro Manzoni e gli storici liberali francesi della Restaurazione. Bari: Laterza, 1926. A look into the intellectual formation of Manzoni and the attitude of “deheroization” of history, along with certain ideas of Thierry.

De Sanctis, Francesco. Manzoni. Edited by C. Muscetta and D. Puccini. Torino: Einaudi, 1955. Fundamental observations, in the historical method, focusing on Manzoni's liberal, democratic inspiration, his dramaturgy, the novel as fictionalization of religious, philosophical ideas, and his psychological perceptiveness.

D'ovidio, Francesco. Nuovi studi manzoniani. Caserta: Editrice Moderna, 1928. In the lineage of De Sanctis and the historical method, looking into the popular-national character of the novel and its genuine historicity.

Gabbuti, Elena. Manzoni e gli ideologi francesi. Firenze: Sansoni, 1936. Manzoni's analytical mind in contact with the Ideologues and the question of the nature of things relative to truth, knowledge, language, and art.

Galletti, Alfredo. Alessandro Manzoni. Milano: A. Corticelli, 1944. A capital study on the total Manzoni in a context of intellectual history and what today would be called comparative literature.

Getto, Giovanni. Manzoni europeo. Milano: U. Mursia & C., 1971. An excellent compilation of essays from 1960 to 1970 dealing with Manzoni internationally: the baroque novel, France, Rousseau, Schiller, Shakespeare, and Cervantes.

Goffis, Cesare Federico. La lirica di A. Manzoni. Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1967. The maturing continuity of Manzoni's thought, and the possibility of lexical analysis to penetrate the soul of the poet.

Gorra, Marcella. Manzoni. Palermo: Palumbo, serie Storia della critica, 1959/1962. A valuable review of the avenues and problems of Manzoni criticism.

Graf, Arturo. Foscolo, Manzoni, Leopardi. Torino: Chiantore, 1945. Manzoni's romanticism, his primacy in historiography, and the psychological dimension measured against the presence of the supernatural.

Marcazzan, Mario. “Il paesaggio dei Promessi sposi,” Humanitas, 1198-1203 no. 3, (1948). The relationship between nature, characters, and the novel's meaning.

Mazzamuto, Pietro. Poetica e stile in Alessandro Manzoni. Firenze: Le Monier, 1957. The Chauvet letter background of Manzoni's poetics, a fine appreciation of the relationship between irony and his tragicomic direction, and its influence on his realism.

Momigliano, Attilio. Alessandro Manzoni. Milano: Principato, 1966. A loosely discoursed but insightfully penetrating appreciation of the total Manzoni, stressing the notions of musicality and of the essential unity of his works.

Montano, Rocco. Comprendere Manzoni. Napoli: G. B. Vico Editrice, 1975. A tightly and clearly argued interpretation of Manzoni's realism with reference to the Absolute, the narrative, the problem of history and art, the happy ending, the role of language, the notion of moralism, and the intellectual background of the novel.

Pellizzari, Achille. “Estetica e religione di A. Manzoni,” Studi manzoniani, edited by G. de Robertis, Vol. 1. Napoli: Perella, 1914. Generally favoring historical criticism over aesthetic approaches to Manzoni, and his tie with Jansenism and its spiritual values.

Petrocchi, Giorgio. La tecnica manzoniana del dialogo. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1959. An expert exegesis on the relationship between speech and character (psychological, moral, and otherwise) in the novel.

Reynolds, Barbara. The Linguistic Writings of A. Manzoni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950. A valuable attempt to direct attention to unedited or insufficiently researched linguistic essays of Manzoni or to the philological problems he raises.

Russo, Luigi. I personaggi dei “Promessi sposi”. Bari: Laterza, 1952. A profound, though sometimes too religiously oriented, analysis of the main characters of the novel.

Sansone, Mario. L'opera poetica di A. Manzoni. Milano-Messina: Principato, 1947. A convincing look into the coherence of Manzoni's lyricism, or the poetic internalization of his most fundamental ethical convictions.

Ulivi, Ferruccio. La lirica del Manzoni. Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1967. The intellectual background and the aesthetic experiences of the poetry, before and after the conversion, including the tragedies, considered as poetry.

Wall, Bernard. Alessandro Manzoni. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954. A rapid—often too rapid—introduction to Manzoni and the major features of his more important works.

Zottoli, Angelandrea. Umili e potenti nella poetica del Manzoni. Roma: Tumminelli, 1942. An illuminating comparison of Manzoni and Thierry with reference to the historyless “subaltern” classes and the implications for the historical novel.