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Alessandro Manzoni Biography

Name: Alessandro Manzoni
Birth Date: March 7, 1785
Death Date: 1873
Nationality: Italian
Gender: Male
Occupations: writer

Further Reading
· The recommended translation of Manzoni's masterpiece, The
Betrothed, is by Archibald Colquhoun (1951); it is complete and very
readable and has the advantage of being based on Manzoni's last revised
text. Joseph Francis de Simone, Alessandro Manzoni: Esthetics and Literary
Criticism (1946), gives the most comprehensive English review of Manzoni
scholarship and attempts to situate the artist in the literary environment
of his time. Other studies are Archibald Colquhoun, Manzoni and His Times
(1954), and Bernard Wall, Alessandro Manzoni (1954).
· Colquhoun, Archibald, Manzoni and his times: a biography of the
author of The Betrothed (I promessi sposi), Westport, Conn.: Hyperion
Press, 1979.

Encyclopedia of World Biography

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

Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan on March 7, 1785. His parents,

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

Manzoni's Protestant marriage to Enrichetta Blondel in 1808 was

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

Dramatic Works

Manzoni's study of theater history, especially the works of Shakespeare in

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

Faulted for disregarding the traditional dramatic unities, Manzoni wrote a

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

Manzoni's quest for artistic truth was evidenced in numerous theoretical

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

I promessi sposi

Manzoni began his masterpiece in 1823; it appeared after several

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

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

This mere summary cannot pay adequate tribute to Manzoni's subtle

irony, satirical wit, historical knowledge, and extraordinary ability to create
both major and minor characters to populate the universe that he so
credibly brings to life.

Manzoni's important role in Italian letters stems from his discovery of a

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