Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Among the historical events of the nineteenth century, the struggle of the Italian people for liberty and unity occupies an outstanding place. But, while this movement, known as the Risorgimento, was so important in the development of European politics and, consequently, could not fail to attract the attention of English writers, Americans were naturally much less exposed to its influence. The United States was not a world power in those days; with existing means of communication it seemed remote from Europe, and its policy was to remain aloof from the problems and complications of the Old World. In these circumstances it would not be surprising if the stirring events of the Risorgimento awoke few echoes across the Atlantic.
1 Gallavresi, “The British Friends of the Italian Risorgimento” in Contemporary Review, cxxxvi (1929), 356.
2 Irving made few political observations. G. S. Hellman, Washington Irving Esquire, p. 35; C. D. Warner, Washington Irving in “American Men of Letters” series, p. 36. Cp. Goggio, “Washington Irving and Italy” in Romanic Review, xxi (1930), 27 ff.
3 Bryant's poems advocating liberty for Spain include “The Spanish Revolution,” a youthful production not listed with his collected poems, “Spain,” “Romero,” and “A Brighter Day.” The Greek theme is developed in “The Greek Boy,” “Song of the Greek Amazon,” “The Greek Partisan,” “The Massacre at Scio,” and “The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus.” Poems showing an interest in liberty in other countries are “The Damsel of Peru,” “Hymn of the Waldenses,” and “William Tell.”
4 Poems devoted to the theme of Greek independence or making definite allusions to it are: Halleck's “Marco Bozzaris,” Pierpont's “A Birthday in Scio,” George Hill's “Meditation at Athens,” “Freedom” by James G. Brooks, and “The Child of the Sea” by Estelle A. Lewis.
5 Whittier, “Yorktown” (1847). “Safe now is Spielberg's dungeon cell.” Lowell, Introduction to the journal called the Pioneer (1843). “In this country, where freedom of thought does not shiver at the cold shadow of Spielberg.”
6 So Robert Walsh, who was well equipped for interpreting existing conditions, eulogized the medieval republics, which now were sunk in servitude. See his essay on “Republican Italy” in Didactics, composed before 1836.
7 Mary E. Phillips, James Fenimore Cooper, p. 196. Cooper had a remarkable love for Italy and appreciated more than most Americans of his day the good qualities of the Italian people. Cp. Lounsbury, James Fenimore Cooper in “American Men of Letters” series, p. 68 ff.
8 Pellico was imprisoned in 1820 and released in 1830. Eleutario Felice Foresti was released in 1836 after spending seventeen years in prison. He came to the United States and served as a professor in Columbia College. Lowell, at the time of his first visit to Rome, caught a glimpse of Pellico, and states that he seemed so dry that it was hard to believe that he had spent so many years in a damp dungeon. See H. E. Scudder, James Russell Lowell, a Biography, i, 341. Pellico's narrative was available to the American public as early as 1833, when Thomas Roscoe's translation appeared in London and New York. Another translation, made in America and published at Cambridge in 1836 by Mrs. Andrews Norton, was provided with notes by Pellico's friend and fellow-prisoner, Piero Maroncelli. See McKenzie's edition of Le mie prigioni and Francesca da Rimini, pp. 4, 123.
9 H. A. Beers, Nathaniel Parker Willis in “American Men of Letters” series, p. 118.
10 Written at Pisa, 1834. This poem and “To the Appenines” represent the chief literary result of this trip abroad. W. A. Bradley, William Cullen Bryant, p. 143.
11 Written at Pisa, 1835.
12 Journals, iii, 86.
13 Ibid., iii, 127.
14 Ibid., iii, 7. Taxes seemed high on account of the general poverty; actually they were less than one-third the rates of France. See Bolton King, History of Italian Unity, i, 107.
15 Emerson, op. cit., iii, 136. Cp. King, op. cit., i, 59.
16 Emerson, op. cit., iii, 144.
17 “Progress of Culture,” in Letters and Social Aims, p. 170.
18 Emerson, Journals, iii, 172. Emerson wrote verses while in Rome and Naples, which find a place in his complete works, but these do not touch upon contemporaneous conditions.
19 H. S. Gorman, A Victorian American, p. 196.
20 J. T. Morse, Jr., Oliver Wendell Holmes: Life and Letters, i, 156, 294 ff.
21 “Campanile di Pisa” and “Letter from America to a Friend in Tuscany” in Poems (1893).
22 “To—. Lines Writen after a Summer Day's Excursion.”
The beauty which old Greece and Rome
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home.
Cp. S. T. Pickard, Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, i, 366.
23 “Bolivar,” “Toussaint L'Ouverture,” “The World's Convention,” “Thiers,” “Kossuth,” “To Ronge,” “To Follen,” “One of the Signers,” “Freedom in Brazil,” “The Conquest of Finland,” Introduction to “To Pius IX.” Cp. Pickard, op. cit., i, 361.
24 “Columbus,” “Ode to France,” “Kossuth”; also articles about Hungary, France, and Ireland, one in the Boston Courier, and others in the Standard of the American Antislavery Society (1848–1851). Cp. Scudder, op. cit., p. 304; Norton, Letters of James Russell Lowell, p. 173.
25 Letter to Doctor Howe. See Scudder, op. cit., p. 331.
26 Cp. Whittier, “The Freed Islands” (1846).
We have sworn
The death of slavery. When it falls,
Look to your vassals in their turn,
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,
Your prisons and your palace walls.
Largely because of an interest in the reforms of Pius IX, Tuckerman's Italian Sketch Book was brought out in a third edition.
27 Curtis was in Italy in 1846, when the discontent which soon broke out into active revolt was general. He sent home letters to the press which have never been collected. It appears, however, that he had a genuine appreciation of national movements and that his judgments on contemporary policies and events were sound. He was interested in the people as persons, races, and political communities. His attitude toward Pope Pius was sympathetic. See Edward Cary, George William Curtis in “American Men of Letters” series, pp. 40, 50.
28 “To a Lady with a Head of Pope Pius Ninth.” Cp. Whittier's “From Perugia.”
Is this Pio Nono the gracious, for whom
We sang our hosannas and lighted all Rome;
With whose advent we dreamed the new era began
When the priest should be human, the monk be a man?
29 For Whitman's interest in liberty elsewhere see “To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire,” “Spain 1873–4,” “France (1794),” “O Star of France 1870–71”; also the review of Hazlitt's Napoleon (1848).
30 Each fetter sundered is the whole world's gain !
And rather than humanity remain
A pearl beneath the feet of Austrian swine,
Welcome to me whatever breaks a chain,
That surely is of God and all divine.
See the author's introduction to these verses.
31 King, op. cit., i, 316.
32 Ibid., i, 91, 367 ff.; ii, 11–12.
33 Scudder, op. cit., p. 214.
34 He was in Italy 1833–1834 and in 1837–1839; he published The Italian Sketch Book, 1835, and Isabel or Sicily in a Pilgrimage, 1839. Duyckinck, Cyclopaedia of A merican Literature, ii, 582.
35 Italian Sketch Book, third edition, 1848, chapter on Modern Italy and preface.
36 To Pius IX in 1848 (Sonnet xii); To the Same in 1849 (Sonnet xiii).
37 Cp. the attitude of Mrs. Browning in Casa Guidi Windows.
38 Cp. King, op. cit., i, 334.
39 Though this poem refers to the events of 1849, it seems not to have been composed till 1853.
40 Norton's account is the best treatment of Italy by an American man of letters at this period. He found Turin and Genoa flourishing under a government that was bent on reform, although retarded in its progress by the apathy of the masses, who failed to appreciate free institutions. Piedmont was the stronghold of liberty and Genoese trading vessels were its messengers. With prophetic insight he recognized that Lombardy was destined to fall to this power. In addition to many other references to the subject, a whole chapter is devoted to the corruptions of the papal territory, whose inhabitants are depicted as thoroughly debased and accustomed to bribery and espionage. “No state could be more rotten and retain its vitality.” Only in the case of the ruler of Tuscany does the author seem to be unfair. The Grand Duke was really a kindly man with good intentions, whose rule was far from harsh and even characterized by a certain degree of toleration. Yet he is called by Norton “an insane bigot.” Notes of Travel and Study in Italy (1856), pp. 3 ff., 72 ff. Cp. the preface of this work, written in 1859, and King, op. cit., i, 66.
On the other hand, Hawthorne, who was in Italy at the very end of the period discussed (1858), shows the typical traveler's attitude of largely ignoring contemporary politics. Although conscious of the defects of the papal administration, he gives no intimation that forces are secretly at work to cause a great upheaval in the near future. French and Italian Note Books, pp. 338, 348, 384, 409, 468.
41 Cary, op. cit., p. 76.
42 In Monologues and Lyrics.
Now the snakes that in Italy's bosom lie
Are the twins Suspicion and Jealousy.
43 Scudder, op. cit., p. 384; Lowell, Leaves from My Journal (1854), pp. 124, 143, 150, 154, 204, 205. Motley, speaking of Florence in 1855, says: “Provided a man does not talk politics or read the Bible he gets on well enough.” The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, i, 188.
44 The robber kneeling where the wayside cross
On dark Abruzzo tells of life's dread loss
From his own carbine, glancing still abroad
For some new victim, offering thanks to God.
45 King, op. cit., i, 369; Gallavresi, op. cit., p. 360.
46 It should be noted that Longfellow did not make his translation until 1869. It cannot, therefore, be cited as an evidence of his interest in Italy during its struggle for freedom, although it should also be borne in mind that he was writing little in that period. He was doubtless attracted more by the beauty of the original than by its subject matter.
Mercantini's poem, La spigolatrice di Sapri, has always been popular. The author was a teacher and patriot, a writer of patriotic songs, which were favorites with the soldiers. The best known is probably the “Hymn of Garibaldi.”
47 His translation of a poem by the seventeenth-century writer Vincenzo da Filicaja, with the title “To Italy,” was not made until 1865 and would not seem to indicate any special interest in the Risorgimento. Cp. Gorman, op. cit., p. 242.
48 Forevermore, forevermore,
The reign of violence is o'er.
49 “Santa Philomena” deals with the Crimean War. Cp. Outre Mer, p. 257, where he notes the abuse of animals.
50 Introductory note to “Enceladus.”
51 Longfellow's Poetical Works, Riverside Edition, Vol. iii, p. 65.
62 Then Freedom sternly said: “I shun
No strife nor pang beneath the sun,
When human rights are staked and won.—My voice Magenta's charges sped.“
63 Cp. The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, i, 323, 327; iii, 244.
54 Lowell mentions Italy in a later poem “The Washers of the Shroud” (1861), perhaps because of recent events there:
The fatal remnant must be cleansed ere dawn:
For Austria? Italy? The Sea-Queen's isle?
55 This poem is incorrectly listed under the year 1858 in the chronological table of Whittier's works. Cp. Pickard, op. cit., ii, 423.
56 King, op. cit., i, 88.
57 Called simply “Italy.” Although this is the last poem published by Bryant on an Italian subject, he gave an address on “Italian Unity,” and the last act of his life was to deliver a eulogy of Mazzini in connection with the dedication of a statue to the Italian patriot. See Bradley, op. cit., pp. 195, 201.
58 Cp. the poetry of Mrs. Browning on the Italian question, Casa Guidi Windows and Poems before Congress.
