Today, amid the continuing disastrous flood situation in Emilia-Romagna, Italy commemorates the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of a magisterial compatriot, Alessandro Manzoni, author of a historical novel which defined the modern Italian language: ‘I Promessi Sposi’:(‘The Betrothed’).

Manzoni’s aim was to provide a basis for a resurgent, unified Italy with a written language that could be understood and used by anyone born in the peninsula. In a country where the majority used local dialect s to communicate it cannot be emphasised how seminal Manzoni’s achievement was in.writing the first novel in what may immediately be recognise as a modern Italian language purged of archaic latinisms and convoluted phraseology. Manzoni, together with those other greats, Mazzini and Garibaldi, can, therefore, be equally regarded as a unifier of Italy.

I have visited Manzoni’s house in Milan, the city which more than any other embraces his literary creations, and several of the places where the novel’s action takes place. This includes the former Milanese leper hospital or lazaretto where plague victims were isolated, the stunning lake Como, the monastery of Monza where that famous nun was immured, the area around Lecco and, of course, his tomb in Milan’s monumental cemetery.

Among previous posts I have also found one describing a local place of idyllic beauty and inspiring concerts. Here Manzoni loved to stay in the house where his eighth daughter, Vittoria who married Giambattista Giorgini an academic and politician from nearby Massarosa, spent her summers and her last days dying of tuberculosis. Manzoni also found refuge here during 1848, that turbulent ‘year of revolutions ‘.

It can, therefore, come as no surprise that another great Italian’s creation, Verdi’s Requiem, is dedicated to Manzoni.

(Below: Giambattista and Vittoria)

.To read this post describing the villages around Pieve a Elici click on the link below.

Little Luciano