The Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi (Penguin Classics)
by Alessandro Manzoni
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alessandro ManzoniBrand: Penguin Group USA
Translator: Bruce Penman
Introduction: Bruce Penman
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1984-03-06
ISBN: 014044274X
Number of pages: 720
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of The Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi (Penguin Classics)
Book Review: Christian Romanticism response to Voltaire's "Candide"
Summary: 5 Stars
Unanimously considered the greatest modern novel in Italian literature, "I Promessi Sposi" demonstrates
a truly remarkable breadth of themes: literary theory and historical research, politics and theology, patriotism and faith, the meaning of providence, of happiness, of good and evil "which are never separated by a clear cut".
Linguistic and historical research kept the author busy - in fact obsessed - for decades. Many novels are intertwined into this one novel, many fully shaped, rich characters, some historical, other fictional, play it on the stage of the thirty years war, of the decadence of Italy and Europe, of the plague in Milan. It could be read over and over - so I did - each time it would say something new.
In fact this is a book each and every educated Italian used to be very familiar with. Only the works of Dante can compare as for the influence on the education of the Italian.
But this is first and foremost a deeply "scandalous" novel: in the big history, whose horrors Manzoni does not spare us, there unfolds the small story of two little people, two simple, poor, ignorant, peasant kids, "vili genti mecchaniche": a factory worker, Lucia, and a fisherman, Renzo. They do not have much, they do not ask for much; they just wanted to get married. Their expectations, their lives, are shredded into pieces because of the insignificant, silly caprice of a childish man of power, to whom they are, as human beings, quite simply worthless. While Voltaire ridicules the optimism of his time as he recounts the misadventures of Candide through uncountable horrors, Manzoni instead dares to talk of providence at the same time as he narrates of the young mother in Milan that delivers her dead daughter Cecilia, dressed in white, her hair perfectly combed, to the loathsome "monatti" (who will bury her in a common grave with other victims of the plagues) while asking them to come back in the evening to pick up the corpses of her other daughter, now still alive, and hers; he dares to talk of love of the God at the same time as he recalls the story of the "untori", poor innocents believed to be responsible of spreading the pestilence, who were rounded up, tortured and then executed; at the same time as he describes a world with no law but brute force, no justice for the weak, no value for human life. Truly scandalous, I find it. In fact, almost sublimely stupid. After all, "a scandal for the jews, stupidity for the gentiles", Saint Paul had written of his beliefs.
Of course Manzoni is perfectly aware of all that: a former Volterrian himself and an atheist/rationalist before his conversion, the beloved grandson of Cesare Beccaria - one of the most read authors of the age of enlightenment and the father of modern criminology - Manzoni does not renounces his rationalist past; instead he conceive his faith as a completion, and he explores it with the method of reason; here with the methods of historical reason he investigates theology in a very practical way. Whatever our personal beliefs, he will not disappoint us in challenging them.
As for the literary quality, the reader can judge by himself, from this excerpt, the episode of Cecilia, that Renzo witnesses in Milan (from http://www.bartleby.com/21/34.html):
Having entered the street, Renzo quickened his steps, trying not to look at these obstacles further than was necessary to avoid them; his attention, however, was arrested by a remarkable object of pity, such pity as inclines to the contemplation of its object; so that he came to a pause almost without determining to do so.
Coming down the steps at one of the doorways, and advancing towards the convoy, he beheld a woman, whose appearance announced still-remaining, though somewhat advanced youthfulness; a veiled and dimmed, but not destroyed beauty, was still apparent, in spite of much suffering, and a fatal languor--that delicate, and, at the same time, majestic, beauty, which is conspicuous in the Lombard blood. Her gait was weary, but not tottering; no tears fell from her eyes, though they bore tokens of having shed many; there was something peaceful and profound in her sorrow, which indicated a mind fully conscious and sensitive enough to feel it. But it was not only her own appearance which, in the midst of so much misery, marked her out so especially as an object of commiseration, and revived in her behalf a feeling now exhausted--extinguished, in men's hearts. She carried in her arms a little child, about nine years old, now a lifeless body; but laid out and arranged, with her hair parted on her forehead, and in a white and remarkably clean dress, as if those hands had decked her out for a long-promised feast, granted as a reward. Nor was she lying there, but upheld and adjusted on one arm, with her breast reclining against her mother's like a living creature; save that a delicate little hand, as white as wax, hung from one side with a kind of inanimate weight, and the head rested upon her mother's shoulder with an abandonment deeper than that of sleep; her mother, for even if their likeness to each other had not given assurance of the fact, the countenance which still depicted any feeling would have clearly revealed it.
A horrible-looking monatto approached the woman, and attempted to take the burden from her arms, with a kind of unusual respect, however, and with involuntary hesitation. But she, slightly drawing back, yet with the air of one who shows neither scorn nor displeasure, said, `No! don't take her from me yet; I must place her myself on this cart: here.' So saying, she opened her hand, displayed a purse which she held in it, and dropped it into that which the monatto extended towards her. She then continued: `Promise me not to take a thread from around her, nor to let any one else attempt to do so, and to lay her in the ground thus.'
<<
One of my favorite chapters has always been Sixth: http://www.bartleby.com/21/6.html
Summary of The Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi (Penguin Classics)
Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister Unnamed' in their struggle to be reunited. A vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, The Betrothed's exploration of love, power and faith presents a whirling panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life and is one of the greatest European historical novels.Classics Books
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