by Lucy Riall
However, this elite culture was profoundly affected by the French invasions and occupations of Italy which took place between 1792 and 1815. The French Revolution and Napoleonic wars represent a watershed in the politics of the Italian peninsula: the ensuing upheavals shook the legitimacy of the ancien régime states; upset the already delicate relations between state, Church and nobility; brutally modernised and centralised the administration of power; and repeatedly altered Italy's internal and external frontiers. The revolution in government brought about social change in that a new generation and a new class of men, with new ideas and values, came to fill important positions in public administration and the army.19 Perhaps most significantly for our understanding of the rise of nationalism in Italy was the experience of the shortlived Jacobin Republics (1797–9), which sought to transform the way people thought about politics. The Jacobins introduced new political symbols and rituals and a new language of politics, and encouraged new forms of political engagement and belonging. And although many intellectuals denounced the revolution, they did embrace some of its principles, and the arrival of the French gave an enormous stimulus to intellectual life, especially in cities like Milan, which saw the establishment of forty journals between 1796 and 1799.20 Most of all, the old elite language of italianità proved receptive to the introduction of a new political vocabulary of revolution, which had words like ‘nation’ and ‘patria’ (fatherland) at its core.21
In short, Italian national identity was derived from the culture of the eighteenth-century elite, but this culture was first transformed by the French Revolution and then by Napoleon. Restoration Italy did the rest. The revolutionary period was followed by a public backlash after the return of Italy's ancien régime rulers in 1814–15 as part of a general settlement created by the Congress of Vienna, which restored (most of) Italy's internal frontiers and placed the whole peninsula within an Austrian, and thus conservative, sphere of influence. The antirevolutionary backlash sought to punish and ‘purge’ those who had supported the revolution and to repress its symbols – to outlaw the use of revolutionary images, rituals and language – as well as to cancel some (although by no means all) of its political ideas and administrative legacy.22 Political discussions of italianità, associated with the vocabulary of revolution, were stifled by government censors. But since the censors in Restoration Italy were concerned with an ostensibly political threat, they largely failed to notice and control the growing popularity of the idea of Italy in the arts: in poetry, novels, opera, histories and painting. In fact, under the influence of the romantic movement, whose arrival in Italy was announced by Mme de Staël in 1816, studying Italy's past, painting Italian subjects and writing and singing about Italy became highly fashionable.23
Italian romanticism is usually seen as less interesting than its English or German counterparts. It is said to be largely derivative of the romantic movement in northern Europe; to represent less of a break with the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment; and to have developed in Italy only when it was already past its peak elsewhere. For our purposes, however, the artistic merits of Italian romanticism are less important than its impact and reception, and here it is worth noting that romanticism in Italy was less conservatively inclined and had a broader reach than romanticism elsewhere. Partly because it was more consensual, romanticism in Italy was able to incorporate both a strongly religious dimension and progressive eighteenthcentury ideas. This consensus meant that while Italian romantics united around what they called the ‘modernisation’ of Italian literature and rejected the rigid conservatism of the academy, they could do this without denying the weight of their own history and culture. They spoke of the need for art and literature to reach the people and of a literary, linguistic and artistic tradition which was specifically ‘Southern’ and had its roots in the medieval period. In this way, Italian romantics could openly engage with problems of the present while embracing specific aspects of their ‘national’ past.24
In post-revolutionary Italy, the concern with Italy's past probably owes as much to this new culture of romanticism as it does to previous narratives of italianità. Banti suggests that the romantic literary and artistic forms through which italianità was expressed in Restoration Italy meant that it reached a far wider audience than a ‘cold and remote work of [political] analysis’ might have done.25 For example, the historical adventure novel was something of a publishing phenomenon in the 1820s and 1830s. Walter Scott's medieval romance, Ivanhoe, was published in nine separate editions between 1822 and 1854, and Italy produced its own version of this genre, most notably with the novels of Alessandro Manzoni, Domenico Guerrazzi and Massimo d'Azeglio.26 Generally, through the works of such writers, as well as the poetry of Foscolo and Leopardi, the operas of Rossini, Bellini and Verdi and the paintings of Hayez, the idea of Italy met with public acclaim and touched a chord in public emotions. In this way, the conservatism and censorship of Restoration Italy can be said to have indirectly stimulated the growth of a Risorgimento culture. It helped to introduce future Italian patriots to an Italian nation whose appeal was all the more powerful because it was first heard in romantic novels, paintings or song.
The central argument of Alberto Banti's work is that the Risorgimento texts produced by romantic writers and artists in Restoration Italy created the symbols, images and metaphors which Italian nationalists like Mazzini were then able to make their own. Hence, the national–patriotic discourse gave shape to the political struggles of the Risorgimento and offered an identity to united Italy. According to Banti, this discourse used a number of key themes which were common to all Risorgimento texts and are repeated in the political rhetoric of all Italian nationalists: the nation is conceived as a voluntary pact amongst a free and equal fraternity, and is also a natural and organic community, an extended family and a shared historical identity. The nation is, in other words, envisaged as a community established by bonds of nature, affection and history. For example, in L'assedio di Firenze, a historical novel about the end of the Florentine Republic in 1530 and the final defeat of Italian independence and liberty, Guerrazzi describes the fatherland as the place which ‘first gives you life and the air that you breathe and the light which you see and the love of your father and mother’.27 Yet, as Guerrazzi's novel makes clear, the fatherland is under threat, and Italy's more recent past must be written as a story of decadence, foreign oppression and internal division. Hence, another common theme of Risorgimento narratives is suffering and danger – a hero betrayed, a virgin dishonoured, a land oppressed by foreign tyranny – and with this threat comes an equal emphasis on the redemptive power of courage, rebellion and martyrdom.
One of the most popular of all Risorgimento narratives was the Sicilian Vespers. This popular rising in Palermo against the French in 1282 was studied by two historians (Nicolini in 1831; Amari in 1842), was painted no less than three times by Hayez (in 1822, 1835 and 1844–6), and was the subject of an opera by Verdi in 1853. For Amari, who was Sicilian, the outbreak of the revolt – when a Frenchman was killed with a single blow for insulting the honour of a Sicilian woman on her way to church – ‘restored Grecian virtue to the people of Palermo, and the latter to the whole island’. ‘Our people’, Amari maintained in a specific reference to the Vespers as a national foundation story and in an attempt to make Sicily part of an Italian narrative, ‘proudly preserves until today the memories of that ancient fierce virtue.’ The broader significance of the Vespers was that it could be depicted as the first successful fight for national independence against foreign oppression (although it is also worth pointing out that Amari, Hayez and Verdi all had problems with the undeniable presence of mob violence in the ensuing massacre of Frenchmen).28 The exceptional resonance of the Sicilian Vespers was due to its potent combination of Risorgimento themes: of sexual aggression perpetrated by a foreign oppressor as well as courage in upholding and defending the honour of the national community, represented here by the threat to a ‘pure’ woman.
In
Risorgimento narratives like the Sicilian Vespers, these themes of foreign aggression, defiance in the face of oppression, and redemption are represented and played out in the actions of individual characters or protagonists. They are the main means by which the reader is drawn into and identifies with the plot and they are responsible for driving the plot – or their adventure – forward. The most important of these protagonists is the hero. According to Mario Praz, romanticism produced a new kind of rebel hero, a unique and memorable individual who rejects the dictates and constrictions of society to remain true to his own belief in freedom and justice, and who is prepared to sacrifice his happiness and even his life for these convictions.29 This hero takes his place in the romantic novel, especially in the historical adventure novels favoured by Italian romantic writers, as a brave and intensely physical individual: ‘prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him … the hero is a leader … [with] authority, passions and powers of expression far greater than ours’.30 But the hero can also be the ‘perfect knight’, who embodies older, chivalric ideals of loyalty, sobriety and perseverance.31 Thus, in Risorgimento narratives, the hero is a virile man and an attractive lover, and a courageous soldier who is ready to lead his community against the enemy; he is also an honourable man who is prepared to die to defend his principles, and in fact he is nearly always destined for a dramatic death which will save and ‘redeem’ the community. As we will see in the next chapter, this idealised Italian, a brave, virile and honourable hero, finds a seemingly reallife counterpart in the figure of Garibaldi.
Two other protagonists are central to Risorgimento narratives. The villain betrays his community and the hero to the foreign oppressor for glory and/or for money: he thereby ‘collaborates’ in the decline and humiliation of the community. The heroine – who represents in some sense the quest or prize of the historical adventure – is a convinced patriot, a virtuous mother, a sister and/or a lover, whose honour and sexual purity are threatened by the villain or the foreign oppressor, and sometimes by both at the same time. The relationship between the hero and heroine introduces the themes of romantic love and/or family attachment, giving the hero the opportunity to appear gentle, kind and sensitive to us rather than merely fearless and violent.32 This relationship and its opposite – the evil designs of the villain or foreigner on the virtuous heroine – bring sex into the plot, a device which clearly attracted audiences, if the success of the Sicilian Vespers is anything to go by. At the same time, what Alberto Banti calls ‘this figurative triad of the national narrative’ (hero, villain, heroine) evokes the gospels and relies heavily on religious references. Thus, the hero can equally be seen as a Christ figure who fights and sacrifices himself for a holy cause. Moreover, like Christ, his actions and his suffering save the community from dishonour and show the way to resurrection (or risorgimento), while the villain is a Judas figure whose betrayal of the community drives the plot forward.33
The Vespers, and the use of similar episodes in Italy's past, point us to what is perhaps one of the most powerful and constant of all Risorgimento themes, which is that of war and the culture of war. The plot of almost all Risorgimento narratives involves a battle or series of battles, and the hero is usually a military man. In Guerrazzi's L'assedio di Firenze, the hero is the reallife military leader, Francesco Ferruccio, ‘the valiant Ferruccio’ who fights to the death with a tiny army to defend Florentine (and Italian) liberty and independence against Imperial and Papal agression. In D'Azeglio's Ettore Fieramosca, ossia la disfida di Barletta (‘Hector Fieramosca or the challenge of Barletta’), the young patriotic hero, Fieramosca, leads a duel between thirteen French and thirteen Italians to defend Italian honour against the accusation that Italian soldiers are only good ‘for intrigue and betrayal’ and are ‘the worst soldiers who ever put foot in a stirrup and wore a breastplate’. But the Italians win the day and return to Barletta, to be welcomed as heroes by the local population.34
There is, of course, nothing unusual about the emphasis on war in Italian adventure stories. The history provided in the novels of Scott, Dumas and other contemporary nonItalian writers is almost invariably a history of war, armed struggle and violence.35 It is nevertheless worth remembering, since the Risorgimento and Risorgimento rhetoric are not often associated with militarism. Indeed, as a foundation story for the Italian nation, war is an extremely ambivalent one: it is as much, if not more, a narrative of defeat, of ‘battles lost’, as a story of military success.36 Yet, war is important since it provides the basic plot of most Risorgimento narratives; it ties together the themes of oppression, resistance to oppression and redemption even in defeat, and it produces one of the crucial ingredients of popular success: identification with, and exaltation of, the valiant hero who defends national honour. Equally, war provides Risorgimento culture with a crucial – and otherwise largely absent – link to political rhetoric. In a tradition which goes back to Machiavelli, the story of battles lost is associated with the corruption of Italy's rulers, while military victories – such as the ‘challenge’ at Barletta – are linked to the selfless heroism of individuals or small groups acting on their own initiative, usually without (or despite) government intervention.37
If Banti is correct in locating the origins of a national–patriotic discourse in Italy in preexisting narratives – such as the story of Christ or wellknown military episodes in Italy's history – then the great achievement of Italian writers and artists in this period was to respond to the challenge of romanticism by creating a more popular Italian literature, which recast these stories in an individual and heroic vein, and which linked their plot lines of love, sex, religion and violence to new ideas of community, association, independence and liberty. Yet this romantic vision of Italy had no immediate political objective. An Italy that was past was imagined by the romantics, and was imagined in suggestive and emotive ways, but in the postrevolutionary climate of Restoration Italy there were few obvious signs of Italy's present existence. Many (although not all) romantic intellectuals were far from interested in politics, preferring to adopt a more melancholy or nostalgic attitude towards political questions. And however passionate the readers of romantic novels were about these stories and their heroes, they were still part of a tiny and restricted – if admittedly expanding – section of the population, who were actually able to read Italian.38 In this respect, the Restoration censors were not wrong to ignore romanticism. For the rest, Italy was precisely what the Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, described it as – ‘a geographical expression’. It had ‘no national traditions of sacred monarchy’,39 no secular symbols of national ‘belonging’, a language which was written and spoken by few, and a past which, while it could be reassigned by romantics to celebrate a cultural italianità, was equally, if not more, credible as a narrative of ‘division and weakness and mutual enmity’.40
Risorgimento
It was in his conception of this problem of credibility, and in his answer to it, that Mazzini's political genius lies. Banti argues convincingly that the popularity and diffusion of the national–patriotic discourse was due to its manipulation of religious and historical tropes – to its ‘capacity to evoke remembered echoes, known images [and] values already recognised’41 – and to its expression in broad, popular genres such as novels and opera. But, as an explanation for the rise of a political movement in Italy after 1830, this is surely to confuse the meaning of the nation with the nation as a cause: it is to reintroduce the nation and a sense of national belonging as the causal explanation for the rise of nationalist movements. Thus, while the ‘culturalist’ explanation of Banti tells us much about how the idea of the nation was created in Restoration Italy and what it meant to contemporaries, it tends to neglect the crucial part played by political activists in extracting political meaning from, and manipulating and popularising, this cultural manifestation. It was Mazzini who transformed the idea of Italy expressed so powerfully in literature into an equally powerful political ideo
logy. Mazzini perceived, brought out and added a political dimension to Italian romanticism and tied the romantic idea of Italy to a political mixture of Jacobinism and romantic socialism. It was he and his followers who made the connection between the nation as a romantic cultural identity and nationalism as a democratic political movement. It was they, in turn, who dedicated all their practical energies and resources to promoting this ideology to as wide an audience as possible, and sought to construct a successful political organisation around it.
To understand Mazzini's strategy, and the role he envisaged in it for Garibaldi, we must also appreciate that he faced an uphill struggle. He had to make this link between the romantic, nostalgic idea of Italy and his volunteerist Jacobin ideal of political engagement effective, persuasive and generally accepted. Probably the clearest expression of Mazzini's understanding of the difficulties involved was his insistence on the unity of ‘thought and action’. He always argued that the revolution needed intellectuals who produced art and literature as much as soldiers who fought wars, and that the revolution in thought and revolutionary action should be part of the same moment. For Mazzini, art and literature reflected politics. Cultural decline had followed the extinction of republican freedom in Italy; renewed creativity would follow its revival.42 But writers, according to Mazzini, had also to be ‘the advance guard of liberty’.43 He took pains to encourage political engagement in artists and writers, and was himself a (politically engaged) critic and writer before he became a political activist; in fact, his earliest public interventions were in support of Italian romanticism. Throughout his life he acted as an art critic and literary reviewer, writing in English, French and Italian, partly for money but also to maintain a political dimension in cultural debate. Mazzinians, and those influenced by Mazzini, also experimented with new and popular literary forms, such as the historical novel and the autobiography–memoir. Others painted or wrote music, poetry and songs.44 Even Mazzini's most political writings were suffused with a romantic aesthetic: as we have seen, the political ‘general instruction’ appealed to the family, to the past and to God, and used a language borrowed entirely from Manzoni and Guerrazzi.