I Promessi Sposi

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Title page of the 1840 edition

I Promessi Sposi (German: The bride and groom , formerly Die Verlobten ) is the name of a historical novel by the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni , the first version of which was published in 1827 and the final version of 1840–1842 in Milan. The subtitle Storia milanese del secolo XVII, scoperta e rifatta da Alessandro Manzoni (“Milanese history from the 17th century, discovered and reorganized by Alessandro Manzoni”) identifies it as a mere retelling of a found source. In truth, it is the first example of the modern Italian novel and, after Dante's Divine Comedy, is considered the most important work of classical Italian literature.

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In a preface, the author explains that he had found the story in a “faded and scratched handwriting” by an anonymous man from the 17th century, where it was told in such a puffy-baroque manner (of which he wrote one on the first two pages Sample gives) that he has decided to reproduce it in his own words. Because, in his opinion, it is a "beautiful, what am I saying, wonderful" story that should not remain unknown to the readers. She plays in the years 1628-1630 in the Duchy of Milan , which was then ruled by Spain, as well as in neighboring Bergamo that the Republic of Venice was one, and is about two mutually promised young people, Renzo and Lucia, in Lecco on Lake Como living and want to marry, but are prevented and persecuted by the local feudal lord Don Rodrigo, who has his eye on Lucia, which is why they have to flee Lecco. Lucia finds refuge in a nunnery in Monza , where the enigmatically beautiful and noble nun Gertrude, usually referred to only as "the Signora", takes care of her (her dramatic story based on a true story in chapters 9-10 as "a novel in a novel." "Is told.)

Renzo in the 1840 edition (illustration by Francesco Gonin)

Renzo goes on to Milan , where he gets caught up in a popular uprising over high bread prices, is accused of being a political agitator and arrested, but escapes and is able to flee to a cousin living there in a night walk across the border to Bergamo. Meanwhile, at Don Rodrigo's instigation, Lucia is kidnapped from the monastery and brought to the castle of an even more powerful feudal lord, who is far and wide feared as a brutal robber baron and is always referred to as "the unnamed". However, this great tyrant is so deeply impressed by Lucia's pious innocence and gentle purity as well as an encounter with the popular Archbishop of Milan Federico Borromeo that he converts to a devout Christian and henceforth acts as an unarmed Prince of Peace and benefactor of his subordinates. He makes sure that Lucia finds accommodation with a wealthy family in Milan, where soon afterwards - it is now the year 1630 - a plague epidemic, imported by mercenaries of the Thirty Years' War , breaks out. When Renzo learns that Lucia lives in Milan, he goes in search of her, wanders through the city devastated by the plague (which is very impressively portrayed - Manzoni's description of the Milanese plague belongs to the series of great literary depictions of the plague since antiquity ) and finally finds Lucia, after he had already thought her dead - he himself has recovered from the disease and is therefore immune to it - in the plague hospital, where she, originally admitted as a patient, now works as a nurse after having also survived the illness. A poignant reunion after two years of separation! The two have finally met again and, since the evil Don Rodrigo has since died of the plague, they can marry undisturbed. Happy ending with the bunch of children and grandmother in a place near Bergamo, where Renzo from now on lives as a good craftsman and respected owner of a silk mill. Everything has turned out well after so much misfortune and hardship, and when the two happily married people ask each other at the end what lesson can be learned from all this, they come to the conclusion “that misfortunes and hardships often come because they are Has given reason to come, but that even the most cautious and innocent lifestyle is not enough to keep them away, and that when they come, whether through your own fault or not, your trust in God tempered them and made them useful for a better life can be. This conclusion seems right to us, although it was drawn by ordinary people, that we want to put it at the end here, as it were as the core of the whole story. "

Lucia (ditto)

Origin and reception

It took twenty years from the idea to the final version of the novel. After Manzoni had only written poems and dramas up to then, he came up with the plan in 1821, inspired by the great success of the historical novels by Walter Scott , to write a book not only for the educated elite, but for the whole Italian people. It should be his contribution to the national unity of Italy. In addition to a stable story, he also needed a language that was understandable throughout Italy, which at that time - unlike in France, England or German-speaking countries - did not yet exist: One wrote either in the respective dialect or in a language still strongly influenced by scholarly Latin Artificial language (Manzoni himself spoke Lombard in Milan and otherwise mostly French).

He finished a first version with the working title Fermo e Lucia in 1823, but did not give it to print (it was only published in 1915 under the title Gli sposi promessi ), but immediately began a thorough revision and revision, the result of which was then in 1827 in three volumes appeared, now under the title I Promessi Sposi (the so-called "Ventisettana"). But even this version did not meet Manzoni's linguistic and thus cultural-political demands, as it still contained too many Lombard elements, and so, encouraged by the enormous public success, which surprised him himself, he made numerous editions, most of them pirate prints, translations in All major European languages ​​- to a renewed revision, this time especially of the language, in order to align it even better with Florentine Tuscan , which since Dante and Boccaccio has been considered "the incomparably most beautiful and richest" form of Italian. The result of this so-called “flushing in the Arno” ( risciacquatura in Arno ) finally appeared in a three-volume illustrated new edition (the “Quarantana”) from 1840–1842, which has since been considered authoritative and forms the basis of all translations.

However, the first version from 1827 was immediately translated into German - not least thanks to a very positive assessment by Goethe , to whom Manzoni had sent his work to Weimar and who was very impressed with it - even in two competing versions, the first of which is still in the the same year came out in Berlin in 1827, the second a quarter of a year later in Leipzig. After that, new German translations appeared on average every ten years, five more in the 19th century alone, always under the title Die Verlobten , and another eight in the 20th century (some of which, however, clearly relied on their predecessors or - like that of Lernet-Holenia - did not place emphasis on completeness). The most recent new translation was published in 2000 by Burkhart Kroeber under the title The Bride and Groom .

The nun of Monza (ditto)
The unnamed

style

Characteristic of Manzoni's narrative style, as can be seen from the closing remark quoted above, is that he likes to and often uses the fiction of the found and allegedly only edited handwriting to make his own comments about the narrated events, the actions, thoughts and motives of the people or generally to interweave the circumstances of the time and the conditions of the epoch. As a result, he not only manages to accommodate information about historical facts that is important for understanding, but also to ground the whole story with a quiet, often melancholy irony . Sometimes he even allows himself to interrupt the narrative in order to insert page-long reports on historical circumstances, for example in the first chapter full four pages with quotes from historical documents about the (futile) efforts of the ruling Spaniards to fight the mischief of the so-called Bravi who offered themselves to the noble lords as henchmen, henchmen, bodyguards and, if necessary, contract killers , or in Chapter 12 about the political and economic background of the Milan “Bread Uprising” into which Renzo gets, or finally in Chapters 31–32 almost fifty pages about its origins the great plague of 1630 and the ideas that prevailed in the minds of most about it at the time - an independent historical essay embedded in the novel , for which Manzoni studied contemporary documents and representations. Sometimes also quoted verbatim.

In the narrative passages, Manzoni's style is mostly of a great, almost cinematic clarity: rooms are always described very precisely, as are the gestures, looks and postures of the people acting in them, as if they were to be staged for the eye of a camera. The beginning of the novel is built like the beginning of an epic film: From a great height you can see Lake Como down as if from a plane or helicopter, which slowly sinks until it is almost at the height of the bridge of Lecco and finally, after a sideways swing, even at the level of the pebbles that the pastor kicks off the path during an evening stroll along the bank. For a long time, the story of the two bride and groom is told from a frog's eye perspective , but always from completely different perspectives, yes, the change of perspective is downright a stylistic feature, as is the spoken speech and the inner monologue , which is supposed to be given much later by Flaubert and Joyce , the so-called fathers of modernity. Manzoni’s original approach becomes even clearer when one compares him with other Italian novelists of his time, such as Massimo d'Azeglio or Cesare Cantù , whose historical novels the Manzoni admirer Umberto Eco describes as handicrafts and illegible.

Don Rodrigo (ditto)

In fact, the novel was the exact opposite of sedate and conventional in its time: it was not situated in a romantic-heroic Middle Ages with noble knights, damsels and squires, but in the 17th century during the Spanish rule, a time of Italian slavery; the heroes simple, poor and pious country people who are harassed and persecuted by ruthless feudal lords, so that they have to flee from them, whereby they are brutally torn apart and only find each other after 800 pages. As a result, the whole thing is not a real love story, because most of the time the two fiancés are separated, each on his way through the turmoil of time. But this is precisely what Manzoni uses to portray this confusion in a broad, multi-layered, colorful panorama saturated with bitter world experience. Using the finest socio and psychological analysis tools, he narrates the complex class and social classes of the Italian 17th century, so that his readers suddenly recognize the main features and problems of Italy of their time (and even many of today's ones).

The bread unrest in Milan

Literary meaning

Manzoni's novel has for Italian literature - if one can make such comparisons at all - the meaning that Goethe's Faust has in German-speaking countries, or to put it with his last English translator Bruce Penman: “If Dickens had only written one novel and If there were no Fielding or Thackeray , if this novel had anticipated the theme of a successful national liberation movement and had a deep, lasting, and benevolent influence on the English language, then we would have a book that was on par with the Promessi in our literature Sposi in the Italian. ”The novel is compulsory reading in secondary schools, every Italian knows it, many members of the older generation can still know the beginning by heart, there are mountains of secondary literature. This excessive canonicalization and constant commentary has given it the reputation of a dusty classic that many Italians have no use for. In contrast, Umberto Eco likes to say, "I love this novel because I was lucky enough to read it for the first time before I was tortured with it at school."

As far as the language is concerned, Manzoni's decision to write the novel entirely in the Tuscan of the educated Florentines made a contribution to the development of a generally understandable Italian literary language that can hardly be valued highly enough, which is most likely to be related to the importance of Luther's translation of the Bible for German Compare language.

Confrontation between Brother Christophorus and Don Rodrigo

expenditure

  • 1827: I Promessi Sposi, 3 volumes (Eng. Die Verlobten, translated by Daniel Leßmann, Berlin 1827, rev. 1832, and also, Die Verlobten, translated by Eduard von Bülow. Leipzig 1828, rev. 1837)
  • 1840–1842: I Promessi Sposi, published in series (by Guglielmini and Redaelli, Milan), 3 volumes together, with illustrations by Francesco Gonin

Modern editions:

  • I Promessi Sposi, ed., Included. u. come over. by Guido Bezzola, with illustrations by Francesco Gonin, 2 volumes, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milan, 1961, 1977, ISBN 88-17-12114-2
  • I Promessi Sposi, ed., Included. u. come over. by Vittorio Spinazzola, Garzanti, Milan 1966, 1993, ISBN 88-11-58037-4
  • I Promessi Sposi, ed. by Fausto Ghisalberti, Hoepli, Milan 1992, ISBN 88-203-2013-4
  • I Promessi Sposi, ed., Included. u. come over. by Angelo Stella, Biblioteca della Pléiade, Einaudi-Gallimard, Turin 1995, ISBN 88-446-0028-5

German translations:

Cardinal Federigo Borromeo reprimands Don Abbondio

Remarks

  1. ↑ The literal translation of the title would be "The promised (other) spouses," that is the sense of "The Betrothed", but since Manzoni not the usual Italian word fidanzati has chosen, but just a bit altertümlichere and upscale name Betrothed, lends itself as the German title - similar to the English The Betrothed - "The bride and groom".
  2. ↑ A version of this story that is more than twice as long, which can be found in Manzoni's first draft of the novel from the years 1821–1823, was published as an independent story after the Second World War under the title La Monaca di Monza and has also been filmed several times (Ger . The nun of Monza, translated by Heinz Riedt, Munich 1966; dtv, 1988)
  3. ↑ See here
  4. ^ The bride and groom, German by Burkhart Kroeber, Munich 2001, pp. 854f.
  5. ↑ Since there was no copyright protection yet, new publications could be reprinted freehand at any time without the authors having any benefit. In a letter to his cousin in December 1839, Manzoni complained about this: “I can assume that the first edition was made up of forty editions, one of which was from me, in a thousand copies; the others are likely to have amounted to 59,000. That means, I only received one sixtieth of the income. ”( Lettere , Milano 1970, II, p. 118). In order to combat the evil of pirated prints, Manzoni decided to have the revised edition illustrated from 1840 to 1842 at his own expense, which made his expenses so high that he had no financial success this time either.
  6. ↑ As Eckermann reports, Goethe found “that Manzoni's novel surpasses everything that we know in this way […] Manzoni's inner culture appears here at such a height that anything can hardly match it; it makes us happy as a thoroughly ripe fruit. And a clarity in the treatment and representation of the individual like the Italian sky itself. ”(Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe , July 18, 1827)
  7. ↑ Here, however, it has become too much for Goethe. As Eckermann reports, he said on July 21 that Manzoni was “an excellent historian [...], which has given his poetry the great dignity and efficiency that raises it above everything that is usually imagined as a novel ". But two days later, when he got to the plague chapters, Goethe found “that the historian is playing a nasty trick on the poet in that Herr Manzoni suddenly takes off the poet's coat and stands there for a while as a naked historian. And this happens with the description of war, famine and pestilence, which things are already disgusting in themselves, and which now become unbearable through the cumbersome detail of a dry, chronic description. The German translator must try to avoid this mistake, he must melt the description of the war and the famine by a good part and that of the plague by two thirds, so that only as much remains as is necessary for the persons involved to interweave. ”- Fortunately, the first German translator Daniel Leßmann did not take this advice of the old privy councilor to heart and only left out“ a few side features ”in the plague chapters, since, as he writes in a follow-up, they are only for Manzonis Compatriots or even just for his fellow Milanese citizens. - At least Goethe concludes his critical remarks with the sentence: "But as soon as the characters in the novel appear again, the poet is back in full glory and compels us again to the usual admiration." (Eckermann, Talks with Goethe , 23 July 1827 )
  8. ↑ Umberto Eco: Postscript to the ›Name of the Rose‹ . Munich 1984, p. 57f.
  9. ↑ So in the foreword to his translation The Betrothed, Penguin Books, London 1972, p. 12.
  10. ↑ The bibliography in the thin print edition of the renowned Biblioteca della Pléiade by Einaudi-Gallimard, Turin 1995, lists well over 100 titles.
  11. ↑ A detailed investigation with text samples from the translations is offered by the dissertation by Stefania Cavagnoli-Woelk, which was prepared by Johannes Hösle in Regensburg, Contributi per la storia della recezione tedesca dei Promessi Sposi di Manzoni con particolare riguardo alla traduzione, Roderer, Regensburg 1994.

Film adaptations

Secondary literature in German

  • Walter Anderson : Contributions to the topography of the "Promessi Sposi" . In: Acta et commentationes Universitatis Tartuensis (Dorpatensis) . B, Humaniora. XXV, Dorpat 1931, hdl: 10062/18781 .
  • Wido Hempel: Manzoni and the portrayal of the crowd as a narrative problem in the "Promessi sposi", by Scott and in the historical novels of the French romanticism . Schrepe, Krefeld 1974, ISBN 3-7948-0158-X .
  • Johannes Hösle: Alessandro Manzoni “The Fiancee” . Fink, Munich 1975 (= literature in dialogue , volume 7).
  • Hugo Blank: Goethe and Manzoni: Weimar and Milan . Winter, Heidelberg 1988, ISBN 3-533-03985-4 .
  • Werner Ross (ed.): Goethe and Manzoni: German-Italian Relations around 1800 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1989, ISBN 3-484-67001-0 .
  • Friedrich Wolfschrift, Peter Ihring (ed.): Literary tradition and national identity. Literary historiography in the Italian Risorgimento . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-484-50319-X .
  • Hugo Blank (ed.): Weimar and Milan: Letters and documents on an exchange about Goethe and Manzoni . Winter, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-533-04537-4 .
  • Franca Janowski: Alessandro Manzoni . In: Volker Kapp (ed.): Italian literary history . 3rd, expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2007, ISBN 3-476-02064-9 , pp. 266-272.
  • Michael Bernsen, Stories and History: Alessandro Manzoni's 'I promessi sposi' , literature. Research and Science 32, Berlin: LIT Verlag 2015. Review in Romance Studies

Web links

Commons : I promessi sposi  - collection of images, videos and audio files