Teamwork

The idea, writing and revision of Manzoni’s novel were, at least in the phase from Fermo e Lucia to the first edition of 1827, very much based on “teamwork”. The first idea of writing a novel, which of course arose naturally out of his poetics and his interest in historiography, developed in a literary environment (with friends working on the Conciliatore or engaged in the Romantic polemic) in which the question of the new literary genre (new in Italy’s classicist tradition) was most certainly discussed. References to this debate, which one can easily imagine taking place also in the house on the via del Morone during conversations in front of the fireplace, appear in the first Introduzione to Fermo e Lucia, when the author, who seems to be addressing his literary friends, ironically defends himself from any possible accusation of having written a novel, “a proscribed genre in modern Italian literature”. The letters of 1821-1823 testify to the intellectual and material support of his close friends during the first draft of his work. The Fauriel correspondence records the phases in the gradual clarification of Manzoni’s ideas upon the work already underway: ideas on which he asked for his friend’s expert advice. In Milan, Gaetano Cattaneo (one of his old Cameretta friends) provided him with books and historical documents - such as the seventeenth century gridari (edicts) and Walter Scott’s novels, borrowed from the Biblioteca Braidense at Brera. From 1824 to 1827, the entire group of friends participated actively in the rewriting phase of Manzoni’s work, each playing a specific and important role. Tommaso Grossi attended to relations with the publisher Ferrario, saw to typographical details, and took the manuscripts from Brusuglio to Milan. Along with Grossi, Cattaneo, Luigi Rossari and Giovanni Torti corrected the proofs. Rossari also acted as trusted consultant during the linguistic revision of the text.