Confessions of an Italian

PENGUIN CLASSICS

CONFESSIONS OF AN ITALIAN

IPPOLITO NIEVO was born in 1831 in Padua, then under Austrian rule. He died before he reached the age of thirty, when his ship, en route from Palermo to Naples, went down in the Tyrrhenian Sea in early 1861. He was, Italo Calvino once said, the sole Italian novelist of the nineteenth century in the ‘swashbuckler, rambler’ mould so dear to other European literatures. A patriot and a republican, he took part with General Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Thousand in the momentous 1860 landing in Sicily to free the south from Bourbon rule. During Nievo’s short life – which spanned the better part of Italy’s independence and unification drive, the Risorgimento – he produced numerous volumes of poetry, fiction and journalism, among which Confessions of an Italian, written in 1858 and published posthumously in 1867, is his best-known and most enduring work.

FREDERIKA RANDALL has degrees from Harvard and MIT and has worked as a cultural journalist for many years. Her translations include Luigi Meneghello’s Deliver Us and Ottavio Cappellani’s Sicilian Tragedee, and her English language version of Sergio Luzzatto’s Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age won the Cundill Prize for History, awarded to both author and translator. She has received a PEN Translation Fund Grant and a Bogliasco Fellowship. Randall lives in Rome.

LUCY RIALL was educated at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge. She is Professor of the Comparative History of Europe at the European University Institute in Florence and Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and has held visiting positions at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, the Freie Universität, Berlin, and the University of Freiburg. She is an expert in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, with a particular focus on the politics and culture of Italy. Her publications include Sicily and the Unification of Italy, 1859–1866 (1998); Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (2007); Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State (2009); and Under the Volcano: Revolution in a Sicilian Town (2013).

Chronology

1796 French Revolutionary armies under the command of General Napoleon Bonaparte invade northern Italy. They defeat Piedmont and sweep eastwards across the Lombardy plain in the direction of Venice.

1797–8 In Venice, the Doge abdicates and the end of the Republic of Venice is declared. France and Austria sign the Treaty of Campo Formio, which places the Italian peninsula under French control. French-dominated republics are set up: the Cisalpine Republic (northern Italy), the Roman Republic (central Italy) and the Parthenopean Republic (southern Italy).

1799 Following France’s defeat at the hands of the Second Coalition, the Italian republics collapse. Italy’s old rulers are restored amid horrific violence, notably in Naples.

1800 Having seized power in Paris, Napoleon invades Italy again and defeats Austria at the Battle of Marengo.

1801 Austria recognizes France’s domination of Italy in the Treaty of Lunéville.

1806–1809 Napoleon consolidates his Italian possessions by directly annexing Piedmont and part of central Italy (including Rome) to France, and creating a number of new French satellite kingdoms. These years bring sweeping changes to the administrative, legal, social and economic structures of the Italian peninsula. Italians themselves, especially in the major cities, are affected by the cultural innovations of the French Revolution (1789) and by the experience of war and soldiering.

1814 The Congress of Vienna meets, following the defeat of Napoleon in Europe.

1815 The Congress of Vienna restores Italy’s pre-Napoleonic rulers and partly reinstates its boundaries, but does not reestablish the Republic of Venice. Austria is now the dominant power in the peninsula, with Lombardy and Venetia part of the Habsburg Empire.

1820–1 Revolutions in the southern Italian Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in Piedmont challenge the authority of Italy’s Restoration governments. They are suppressed with the aid of the Austrian Army.

1831 Revolutionary uprisings in central Italy are suppressed, following Austrian intervention. A young nationalist, Giuseppe Mazzini, establishes a new revolutionary organization, ‘Young Italy’, to fight for ‘the conquest of Independence, Unity, Liberty for Italy’.

November: Ippolito Nievo is born in Padua to Antonio Nievo and Adele Marin.

1834–7 Insurrections inspired by Mazzini take place across Italy. These are easily repressed, resulting in the execution, imprisonment and exile of his followers.

1837 Mazzini arrives as an exile in London, where he will live until his death in 1872.

Nievo moves with his family to Udine (Friuli).

1843 In Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (Of the Moral and Civic Primacy of Italians), Vincenzo Gioberti proposes the idea of an Italian federation under the Pope. The book establishes the (short-lived but popular) notion of ‘neo-Guelphism’ and adds momentum to the growth of moderate liberalism as an alternative to Mazzinianism.

1846 Election of Pius IX as Pope. He introduces a number of reforms in the Papal States.

1847 The periodical Il Risorgimento begins publication in Turin. Its editor, Camillo Benso di Cavour, is a moderate liberal.

Nievo finishes his schooling in Verona and returns with his family to Mantua, where he enters the local high school.

1848 January–March: Revolutions across the Italian peninsula lead to the granting of liberal constitutions. In Milan the Austrian Army is driven out of the city following the celebrated cinque giornate or ‘five days’. In Venice a Republic is declared. Piedmont declares war on Austria, and volunteers move from all over Italy to fight in the war, but the Piedmontese are defeated at the Battle of Custoza. The Pope grants a constitution in Rome, but, after the murder of his Prime Minister, Pellegrino Rossi, flees Rome for Gaeta in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

In Mantua Nievo’s high school is closed by the Austrians. He moves to Cremona to complete his schooling, returning to Mantua only at the end of the year.

1849 February: A republic is declared in Rome. Grand Duke Leopold flees Tuscany and joins the Pope in Gaeta, and a republican ‘triumvirate’ is set up in Florence.

March: Piedmont declares war on Austria again and is, once again, defeated, this time at the battle of Novara.

July: In Rome, after two months of heroic resistance by Italian volunteer armies, the French Army succeeds in restoring papal government. In Florence, the Tuscan Grand Duke is restored by the Austrian Army.

August: The Venetian Republic falls to its Austrian besiegers.

Nievo moves to Pisa and takes part in the revolutionary struggles against the Grand Duke. He begins a passionate correspondence with a young woman, Matilde Ferrari.

1851 Nievo begins studying law at the University of Pavia.

1852 Cavour becomes Prime Minister of Piedmont, where he introduces a programme of economic and political reforms. From now on, helped by the presence of Italian exiles in Turin, Piedmont becomes a beacon of liberalism in Italy.

Nievo moves to Padua. His relationship with Matilde Ferrari ends badly, provoking him to write a short novel, Antiafrodisiaco per l’amor platonico (An Anti-aphrodisiac for Platonic Love).

1853 A Mazzinian uprising against the Austrians in Milan is brutally suppressed.

1855 Nievo graduates in law from the University of Padua. He embarks on a literary career, concentrating on experimental verse, short stories and pamphlets clearly expressing his anti-Austrian, radical political views.

1856 Nievo moves between Udine and Milan. In the latter city he lives with his cousin Carlo Gobio and his wife Bice, with whom Nievo falls in love. In November Nievo is summoned to trial by the Austrian authorities for his short story ‘L’Avvocatino’ (The Little Lawyer).

1857 The Italian patriot Carlo Pisacane’s attempt to lead a revolutionary expedition to southern Italy ends in disaster at Sapri. This tragedy creates a crisis in confidence among the followers of Mazzini.

Nievo defends himself brilliantly at his trial and escapes with a fine.

December: He begins work on Confessioni di un italiano.

1858 A secret pact is signed between France and Piedmont, whereby Piedmont agrees to provoke Austria into declaring war and France promises to come to Piedmont’s assistance.

Nievo finishes the manuscript of the Confessioni and spends several weeks recovering from exhaustion at Regoledo. He tries but fails to find a publisher for the Confessioni.

1859 In April Austria declares war on Piedmont, and France comes to Piedmont’s aid. Following the victorious battles of Magenta and Solferino, France signs an armistice with Austria at Villafranca. Nationalist dreams are dashed when only Lombardy, and not Venice, is ceded to Piedmont.

Nievo volunteers to fight in the war and becomes one of the Cacciatori delle Alpi (Alpine Chasseurs), sent into the mountains to fight with Garibaldi. Bitterly disappointed by the Peace of Villafranca, Nievo returns to Milan and the house of Carlo and Bice Gobio, where he takes up writing again.

1860 March: Plebiscites in central Italy lead to the union of Tuscany and Emilia with Piedmont-Lombardy. In return for French agreement to the union, Nice and Savoy are ceded to France.

May: Garibaldi leads the expedition of the ‘Thousand’ to Sicily and lands in Marsala on the west coast of the island. By the end of the month his forces have seized control in the capital, Palermo.

July–September: Garibaldi conquers the whole of the Two Sicilies and arrives in Naples.

September: To halt Garibaldi’s progress, the Piedmontese Army invades the Papal States and the two armies meet at Teano, north of Naples.

October: Plebiscites in southern Italy vote for union with Piedmont, with Vittorio Emanuele II as king.

Nievo publishes a volume of poetry, Gli amori garibaldini (Garibaldian Loves) in Milan. He is among the ‘Thousand’ and leaves for Sicily in May, and he is given a position in government, in charge of financing the army. The post is a difficult one and Nievo is accused of financial malpractice by Cavourian agents.

1861 4 March: Nievo leaves Palermo for Naples on board the Ercole, carrying with him the account books from Garibaldi’s expedition. The ship sinks and Nievo is drowned. Hs body is never found.

17 March: Declaration of the Kingdom of Italy, with Turin as its capital and Vittorio Emanuele II of Piedmont its first king.

1866 Venice is ceded to Italy following the Austro-Prussian War

1867 Confessioni di un italiano is published by Le Monnier of Florence as Confessioni d’un Ottuagenario (Confessions of an Octogenarian).

1870 Rome is occupied by Italian troops and is declared the capital of Italy. The Pope refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the new state and declares himself a ‘prisoner of the Vatican’.

Ippolito Nievo