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SILVIO PELLICO DA SALUZZO “RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT”: It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour — for the horse was soon tackled — was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. This is the whole history of “My Prisons.” I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax- bill that I refuse to pay it. HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project My Prisons HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS 1789 June 24, Tuesday: Silvio Pellico was born at Saluzzo in the Italian Piedmont. HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO 1798 Silvio Pellico, at the age of 10, composed a tragedy inspired by a translation into Italian of the poems of “Ossian.” NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT My Prisons “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS 1810 Silvio Pellico became a professor of French in the Collegio degli Orfani Militari in Milan, Italy. HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO 1815 Silvio Pellico’s play “Francesca da Rimini,” a historical tragedy, the Paolo-and-Francesca story of a passionate love and the romantic ideal (most of the play deals with the theme of temptation and our strenuous struggle against the trickiness of sin). HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS 1818 Silvio Pellico’s tragedy Francesca da Rimini was produced with success by Carlotta Marchionni at Milan. Its publication was followed by that of the tragedy Euphemio da Messina but the Austrian authorities over Milan would not permit the staging of this new one. HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO 1820 October 13, Friday: The playwright Silvio Pellico was arrested on charges of “carbonarism,” which is to say (carbon paper not yet having begun to be used for purposes of subversion of the established order), political conspiracy against the Austrian authorities. HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS 1821 February: Silvio Pellico was transferred to the prison “Piombi di Venezia” to await trial. HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO 1822 February: Silvio Pellico was condemned to death. (Eventually his sentence would be commuted to 15 years of carcere duro, but then he would be released in 1830.) DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. March 26, Tuesday: The convicted playwright Silvio Pellico was taken into custody to be delivered to serve his court-assigned sentence in prison. In a duel between Sir Alexander Boswell and a Mr. Stuart, the son of the biographer was killed. My Prisons “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS April: Silvio Pellico was confined in Spielberg’s fortress at Brünn (today’s Brno) in Moravia. HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO 1823 February 22, Saturday: The death sentence of the playwright and political conspirator Silvio Pellico was reduced to 15 years of “carcere duro.” HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS “RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT”: It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour — for the horse was soon tackled — was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. This is the whole history of “My Prisons.” I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax- bill that I refuse to pay it. March 25/26: During the night Silvio Pellico was transferred, as Political Detainee #303, to Spielberg’s fortress at Brünn in Moravia (today’s Brno). HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO “RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT”: It was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, “How do ye do?” My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker’s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour — for the horse was soon tackled — was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off, and then the State was nowhere to be seen. This is the whole history of “My Prisons.” I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax- bill that I refuse to pay it. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT My Prisons “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS 1830 October: After more than seven years as Detainee #303 at Spielberg’s fortress at Brünn (today’s Brno) in Moravia, Silvio Pellico was pardoned and returned to Turin, where he would live as a librarian working for Barolo’s marquis and write less successful historical tragedies while undergoing a spiritual crisis: “Ester d’Engaddi” (1830), “Gismonda da Mendrisio” (1834), “Leoniero da Dertona” (1834). THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project My Prisons HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO 1832 Silvio Pellico was able to publish his account of his years at hard labor in Austrian prisons, LE ME PRIGIONI: and thus “This is the whole history of ‘My Prisons’.” RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT Prison is not a metaphor. Here is the New-York prison on Blackwell’s Island, during this year: Dr. Charles Knowlton’s THE FRUITS OF PHILOSOPHY, OR THE PRIVATE COMPANION OF YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE, printed in Boston, described the various ways to prevent conception and recommended coitus interruptus and douching after sexual intercourse — and Dr. Knowlton was on his way to prison, for obscenity. HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS HDT WHAT? INDEX MY PRISONS SILVIO PELLICO WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF My Prisons “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SILVIO PELLICO MY PRISONS 1833 A stone jail was erected in the rear of the courthouse of Auburn, New York. When a state investigative team toured the women’s quarters of the prison, it was appalled at the conditions it discovered there. Isabella Van Wagenen (Sojourner Truth) moved, with Elijah Pierson and the Reverend Robert Matthew (the Prophet Matthias), to a utopian commune called Zion Hill in Sing Sing, New York. However, Pierson would soon be murderized, and in the resultant disruption of the commune she would lose all her personal belongings — at which point she would return to New-York and start over again as a servant, for the next eight or nine years — until her mystical experiences would again draw her into testimony.1 Silvio Pellico’s LE ME PRIGIONI was translated into English, leading us toward Thoreau’s “This is the whole history of ‘My Prisons’.” RESISTANCE TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT 1. The builders of the penitentiary that came to be known as Sing Sing after the town it was near had intended that it be referred to as the Mount Pleasant State Prison — but such an institution would not long support the irony of such a name.