Rivista Di Studi Italiani 107 Contributi Giovanni Berchet
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RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI CONTRIBUTI GIOVANNI BERCHET AND EARLY ITALIAN ROMANTICISM PIERO GAROFALO University of New Hampshire Durham, New Hampshire iovanni Berchet occupies a pivotal position in the development of a Romantic aesthetic in Italy. His meditation on the role of literature in Gsociety, Sul ‘Cacciatore feroce’ e sulla ‘Eleonora’ di Goffredo Augusto Bürger. Lettera semiseria di Grisostomo al suo figliuolo (1816; On the “Fierce Hunter” and “Leonora” of G. A. Bürger. The Semiserious Letter from Chrysostom to His Son), was one of the most influential texts in the Classicist-Romantic polemic and provided a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between European and Italian Romanticism. In his literary works, Berchet sought to establish a dialogue with society. To achieve this goal, he employed an accessible language that spoke to a broad audience in opposition to the elaborate and artificial language that was intended for a select few and was characteristic of Italian literature. As a poet, translator, literary critic, and patriot, Berchet is also representative of a particular cultural activism that emerged during the Risorgimento in northern Italy. He spent twenty-four years in exile as a result of his political activities. His poetry was extremely influential from both a stylistic and thematic perspective on nineteenth-century lyric production; however, since the mid- twentieth century, literary critics have attributed much of the success that his poetry achieved amongst his contemporaries to its political content and to the historical moment. Berchet was born at n. 42 via Cerva in Milan on 23 December 1783. He was the eldest of Federico and Caterina Silvestri’s eight children. The family was originally from Nantua near Geneva. Federico was rather authoritative and ran a cloth shop in which he expected Giovanni to assume his filial duties at a future date. To this end he encouraged and directed his son’s education. Berchet began his studies under the tutelage of a family friend, Don Premoli in 1790. He continued his schooling, which was decidedly classical, with the abbot Pietro Mazzucchelli who later became the prefect of the Ambrosian Library. He then enrolled in the Arcimbolde Schools run by the Barnabite order; however, before Berchet could finish the curriculum, his father had to 107 GIOVANNI BERCHET AND EARLY ITALIAN ROMANTICISM withdraw him in the early 1800s, because he needed his assistance. Although Federico employed his son in the family business, he continued to encourage him to study modern foreign languages in particular, French, German, and English – because they had a commercial application that Latin and Greek lacked. Giovanni, however, was far more interested in literature than in commerce. In this period he wrote Inno per le nozze di Alberigo Rovida e di Cristina Forni (Hymn for the Wedding of Alberigo Rovida and Cristina Forni), which was published in Milan by the Stamperia di Giovanni Giuseppe Destefanis around 1807. Written in thirty-five Anacreontic strophes, the hymn displays his classical education – in particular, Horace and Catullus and his affinity for the mythological motifs of eighteenth-century poetry. He also befriended other young Milanese literati including the painter Giuseppe Bossi (1777- 1815) and the translator Felice Bellotti (1786-1853). He composed an ode All’ulcera (To the Ulcer), which has remained unpublished because his editors deemed it too vulgar, and he co-authored with Count Giuseppe Taverna (1754-1833) Ottave a rime obbligate (Ottava Rima with Set Rhymes), a twenty-four line poem in which they alternated composing verses. That same year Berchet published his translation in hendecasyllabic blank verse of Il bardo (The Bard. A Pindaric Ode, 1757) by Thomas Gray (1716-1771). Bardic poetry along the Ossianic model was very popular in Italian literary culture and was invested with aesthetic and political signification in the early nineteenth century. Berchet’s preface to Il bardo underscored the importance of poetry in the formation of a national consciousness. In the Giornale della Società di Incoraggiamento in 1808, Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) reviewed the work favorably, though not without specific criticisms that included challenging the decision not to render the ode in prose. This review served to introduce Berchet into Milan’s literary circles and to meet the satirical poet Carlo Porta (1775-1821) with whom he developed a close friendship. The relations that Berchet formed in this period reinforced the development of his aesthetics, which were more consonant with Foscolo’s poetics than with those of Vincenzo Monti (1754-1828) the doyen of Milanese culture. In 1808, Berchet published the satire I funerali. In addition to drawing on Horace, who is cited in the epigraph, the text bears the influence of Foscolo especially Dei Sepolcri (1807; On Sepulchers) and of Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799) in particular, Il giorno (1763-1804; The Day). The poem describes the cult of the dead in a lost age of innocence and contrasts this idyll with the decadence of the present. I funerali’s 266 hendecasyllabic blank verses narrate the funeral of a rich and corrupt man named Cratero and the hypocrisy of society. Its presentation is classical and conforms to the poetic models most in vogue in the early nineteenth century. In addition, the satire’s imagery is somewhat derivative. The strong moral impetus evident in I funerali’s condemnation of the corruption of values situates the text in a 108 PIERO GAROFALO literary tradition that finds its most immediate precedent in the production of Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803). The poem Amore, which he published the following year, suffers from the same stylistic limitations as I funerali. The text’s epigraph comes from the tragedy Cato (1713) by Joseph Addison (1672-1719). Composed in 504 hendecasyllabic blank verses, the satire juxtaposes the simplicity and honesty of country living to the decadence and corruption of city life where love is sacrificed to the altars of lust and wealth. The seventeen textual notes included with the composition do not serve an explanatory purpose, but instead provide a forum for authorial commentary as well as an opportunity for Berchet to display his erudition. Conventional, neoclassical, and mannered, Amore is as much a literary exercise as a poetic expression of his literary formation. While Berchet continued to work for his father, he turned to translating in order to free himself from the constraints of commercial employment. He collaborated with the Milanese publisher Giuseppe Destefanis who launched a series of modern European works in 1809. Since these translations were released without crediting the translators, the only text that can be definitively attributed to Berchet is Il vicario di Wakefield (The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766) by Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774), although he has been frequently credited with Il visionario (Der Geisterseher) by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805). He completed Il vicario di Wakefield before 10 March 1810. In addition to the financial compensation, Goldsmith’s novel allowed Berchet to experiment with his own poetic style. Berchet’s father realized that his eldest son’s character and interests were not suited for commercial enterprises therefore he encouraged Giovanni to pursue a government career. On 10 August 1810, Berchet left the family business and obtained a modest position as the administration office’s second clerk in the Senate chancellery of the Kingdom of Italy. His new employment facilitated his participation in the cultural life of the city. With Bossi, Bellotti, and Porta, he frequented the Scala Theater and other literary salons. In May 1811, he traveled to Florence and Rome. This brief tour, which included a meditative visit to the Church of Santa Croce, only served to reinforce his patriotic fervor. Back in Milan, he became a fixture at theatrical representations. Following the performance of Gioacchino Rossini’s (1792- 1868) Demetrio e Polibio by the Mombelli Company on 6 July 1813, Berchet published a “musical letter” titled Lettera sul dramma ‘Demetrio e Polibio’ cantata nel Teatro Carcano (1813; Letter on the Drama “Demetrius and Polibius” Sung in the Carcano Theater). In this article, which the author presents as a letter dated 27 July 1813 to a distant friend, Berchet asserts the primacy of the public’s reaction over that of the critics’ interpretation. He praises the actors, and inserts Rossini’s production into a specifically Italian context. The theoretical underpinnings of Berchet’s argument are poorly articulated; however, his preference for melodrama anticipates the 109 GIOVANNI BERCHET AND EARLY ITALIAN ROMANTICISM development of his own poetics. Beyond an aesthetic evaluation of melodrama, the polemic had a political undertone, and Berchet aligned himself with the “melodists” against the “harmonists” the former associated with an Italian musical tradition, the latter with a German one. Berchet maintained this musical preference throughout his life and in fact, when in Berlin in 1834, he demonstrated a similar impatience with the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Following the battle of Leipzig (16-19 October 1813), Napoleon’s control over the Kingdom of Italy began to erode and effectively ceased to exist with the lynching of the finance minister Giuseppe Prina during a violent protest in Milan on 20 April 1814. Although Berchet nurtured the hope that an independent Italian state could emerge from the collapse of the French Empire, his primary concern at the time remained Lombardy’s liberation from Napoleonic oppression. Therefore when the Austrian general Bellegarde occupied Milan eight days after Prina’s execution, Berchet did not view this new political situation from an entirely negative perspective. During this turbulent period, he left the city at times to visit his younger brother Carlino in Como. While on these getaways he composed Frammenti di un poemetto sul lago di Como (Fragments of a Poem on Lake Como), which was part of a longer composition Il Lario influenced by Foscolo’s Le Grazie (The Graces).