Vittorio Alfieri painted by David's pupil François-Xavier Fabre, in Florence 1793.
Count Vittorio Alfieri (January 16, 1749 -
October 8, 1803), was an Italian
dramatist, considered the "founder of Italian tragedy."[1]
Early life
Alfieri was born at Asti in Piedmont.
His father died when he was very young, and he was brought up by his mother, who married a second time, until, at the age of
ten, he was placed in the academy of Turin. After a year at the academy, he went on a
short visit to a relative at Coni. During his stay there he composed a sonnet chiefly borrowed
from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio, the only
poets he had at that time read. At thirteen, Alfieri began the study of civil and canonical law, but
this only made him more interested in literature, particularly French romances. The death of his
uncle, who had taken charge of his education and conduct, left him free, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy his paternal
inheritance, augmented by the addition of his uncle's fortune. He began to attend a riding-school, where he acquired an
enthusiasm for horses and equestrian exercise which continued for the rest of his
life.
Having obtained permission from the king to travel abroad, he departed in 1766, under the care
of an English preceptor. Seeking novelty in foreign cultures, and being anxious to become acquainted with the French theatre, he
proceeded to Paris, but he appears to have been completely dissatisfied with
everything he witnessed in France and did not like the French people. In Holland he fell in love with a married woman, but she went with her husband to Switzerland. Alfieri, depressed by the incident, returned home and again began studying literature.
Plutarch's Lives inspired him with a passion for freedom and independence. He
recommenced his travels; and his only gratification, in the absence of freedom among the continental states, came from
contemplating the wild and sterile regions of the north of Sweden, where gloomy forests, lakes
and precipices encouraged his sublime and melancholy ideas. In search of an ideal world, Alfieri passed quickly through various
countries. During a journey to London he engaged in an intrigue with a married lady
of high rank. Having been detected, he was forced to leave the country. He then visited Spain and
Portugal, where he became acquainted with the Abbe Caluso, who remained through life the most
attached and estimable friend he ever possessed. In 1772, Alfieri returned to Turin. This time he
fell for the Marchesa Turinetti di Prie, but it was another doomed affair. When she fell ill, he spent his time dancing
attendance on her, and one day wrote a dialogue or scene of a drama, which he left at her house. When the couple quarrelled, the
piece was returned to him, and being retouched and extended to five acts, it was performed at Turin in 1775, under the title of Cleopatra.
Literary career
From this moment Alfieri was seized with an insatiable thirst for theatrical fame, to which
he devoted the remainder of his life. His first two tragedies, Filippo and
Polinice, were originally written in French prose. When he came to versify them in Italian, he found that, because of his
Lombard origin and many dealings with foreigners, he was poor at expressing himself. With the view of improving his Italian, he
went to Tuscany and, during an alternate residence at Florence and Siena, he completed
Filippo and Polinice, and had ideas for other dramas. While thus employed, he became acquainted with
Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, who was living with her husband
(the former "Bonnie Prince Charlie" at Florence. For her he formed a serious
attachment. With this motive to remain at Florence, he did not wish to be bound to Piedmont. He therefore resigned his whole
property to his sister, the countess Cumiana, keeping back an annuity which was only about half his original income. Louise,
motivated by the ill-treatment she received from her husband, sought refuge in Rome, where she at length received permission from
the Pope to live apart from him. Alfieri followed her to Rome, where he completed fourteen
tragedies, four of which were published at Siena.
For the sake of Louise's reputation, he left Rome, and, in 1783, travelled through different
states of Italy, publishing six additional tragedies. The interests of his love and literary glory had not diminished his love of
horses. He went to England solely for the purpose of purchasing a number of these animals, which he took back to Italy. On his
return he learned that Louise had gone to Colmar in Alsace, where
he joined her, and they lived together for the rest of his life. They chiefly passed their time between Alsace and Paris, but at
length took up their abode entirely in that metropolis. While here, Alfieri made arrangements with Didot for an edition of his tragedies, but was soon after forced to quit Paris by the storms of the
French Revolution. He recrossed the Alps with the
countess, and finally settled at Florence. The last ten years of his life, which he spent in that city, seem to have been the
happiest of his existence. During that long period, his tranquillity was only interrupted by the entrance of the Revolutionary
armies into Florence in 1799. Though an enemy of kings, the aristocratic feeling of Alfieri
rendered him also a decided foe to the principles and leaders of the French Revolution. He rejected with the utmost contempt
those advances which were made with a view to bring him over to their cause. The concluding years of his life were laudably
employed in the study of the Greek literature and in perfecting a series of
comedie. His assiduous labor on this subject, which he pursued with his characteristic
impetuosity, exhausted his strength, and brought on a malady for which he would not adopt the prescriptions of his physicians,
but obstinately persisted in employing remedies of his own, resulting in a worsening of his condition.
He died in Florence in 1803. His last words were "Clasp my hand, dear friend, I am dying".
Character
Alfieri's character may be best appreciated from the portrait which he has drawn of himself in his own Memoirs of his Life. He
was evidently of an irritable, impetuous, and almost ungovernable temper. Pride, which seems to have been a ruling sentiment, may
account for many apparent inconsistencies of his character. But his less amiable qualities were greatly softened by the
cultivation of literature. His application to study gradually tranquillized his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at
the same time in perfect possession of those good qualities which he had inherited from nature: a warm and disinterested
attachment to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy
to embody in his dramas the actions and sentiments of Grecian heroes.
Contribution to Italian literature
It is to his dramas that Alfieri is chiefly indebted for the high reputation he has attained. Before his time the Italian
language, so harmonious in the Sonnets of Petrarch and so energetic in the Commedia of
Dante, had been invariably languid and prosaic in dramatic dialogue. The pedantic and
inanimate tragedies of the 16th Century were followed, during the Iron Age of Italian
literature, by dramas of which extravagance in the sentiments and improbability in the action were the chief characteristics. The
prodigious success of the Merope of Maffei, which appeared in the commencement of the 18th
Century, may be attributed more to a comparison with such productions than to intrinsic merit. In this degradation of
tragic taste the appearance of the tragedies of Alfieri was perhaps the most important literary event that had occurred in Italy
during the 18th century. On these tragedies it is difficult to pronounce a judgment, as the taste and system of the author
underwent considerable change and modification during the intervals which elapsed between the three periods of their publication.
An excessive harshness of style, an asperity of sentiment and total want of poetical ornament are the characteristics of his
first four tragedies, Filippo, Polinice, Antigone, and Virginia. These faults were in some measure
corrected in the six tragedies which he gave to the world some years after, and in those which he published along with
Saul, the drama which enjoyed the greatest success of all his productions, a
popularity which may be partly attributed to the severe and unadorned manner of Alfieri being well adapted to the patriarchal
simplicity of the age in which the scene of the tragedy is placed. But though there be a considerable difference in his dramas,
there are certain observations applicable to them all. None of the plots are of his own invention. They are founded either on
mythological fable or history; most of them had been previously treated by the Greek
dramatists or by Seneca. Rosmunda, the only one which could be supposed of his
own contrivance, and which is certainly the least happy effusion of his genius, is partly founded on the eighteenth novel of the
third part of Bandello and partly on Prevost's
Memoires d'un homme de qualite. But whatever subject he chooses, his dramas are always formed on the Grecian model and
breathe a freedom and independence worthy of an Athenian poet. Indeed, his Agide and Bruto may rather be considered
oratorical declamations and dialogues on liberty than tragedies. The unities of time and place are not so scrupulously observed
in his as in the ancient dramas, but he has rigidly adhered to a unity of action and interest. He occupies his scene with one
great action and one ruling passion, and removes from it every accessory — event or feeling. In this excessive zeal for the
observance of unity he seems to have forgotten that its charm consists in producing a common relation between multiplied
feelings, and not in the bare exhibition of one, divested of those various accompaniments which give harmony to the whole.
Consistently with that austere and simple manner which he considered the chief excellence of dramatic composition, he excluded
from his scene all coups de theatre, all philosophical reflexions, and that highly ornamented versification which had been so
assiduously cultivated by his predecessors. In his anxiety, however, to avoid all superfluous ornament, he has stripped his
dramas of the embellishments of imagination; and for the harmony and flow of poetical language he has substituted, even in his
best performances, a style which, though correct and pure, is generally harsh, elaborate and abrupt; often strained into
unnatural energy or condensed into factitious conciseness. The chief excellence of Alfieri consists in powerful delineation of
dramatic character. In his Filippo he has represented, almost with the masterly touches of Tacitus, the sombre character, the dark mysterious counsels, the suspensa semper et obscura verba, of the
modern Tiberius. In Polinice, the characters of the rival brothers are
beautifully contrasted; in Maria Stuarda, that unfortunate queen is represented unsuspicious, impatient of contradiction
and violent in her attachments. In Mirra, the character of Ciniro is perfect as a father and king, and Cecri is a model of
a wife and mother. In the representation of that species of mental alienation where the judgment has perished but traces of
character still remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in
killing Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding that, at the same time, he had inadvertently slain his
mother.
Whatever may be the merits or defects of Alfieri, he may be considered as the founder of a new school in the Italian drama.
His country hailed him as her sole tragic poet; and his successors in the same path of literature have regarded his bold, austere
and rapid manner as the genuine model of tragic composition.
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri published during his life many sonnets, five odes on American independence and the poem of Etruria, founded on the assassination
of Alexander, duke of Florence. Of his prose works the most distinguished for animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on
Trajan, composed in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of Pliny's eulogium. The two books entitled La Tirannide and the Essays on Literature and
Government are remarkable for elegance and vigour of style, but are too evidently imitations of the manner of Machiavel. His Antigallican, which was written at the same time with his Defence of Louis XVI, comprehends an historical and satirical view of the French Revolution. The posthumous works of Alfieri consist of satires, six political comedies and the
Memoirs of his Life work which will always be read with interest, in spite of the cold and languid gravity with which he
delineates the most interesting adventures and the strongest passions of his agitated life. He and the Countess of Albany are buried at the church of Santa Croce at Florence. He is buried between the tombs of Machiavelli and Michelangelo.
See Mem. di Vit. Alfieri; Sismondi, De la lit. du midi de I'Europe; Walker's Memoir on Italian Tragedy; Giorn. de Pisa,
tom. Iviii.;
References
- ^ s:The New Student's
Reference Work/Alfieri
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