Friends ' comments

During the teamwork experience of writing and rewriting Manzoni’s novel, Claude Fauriel and Ermes Visconti, two friends who were particularly sensitive to literary issues, wrote notes of particular importance on the manuscript itself. Correspondence between Manzoni and Fauriel had begun some time earlier, with Manzoni expressing his ideas on the historical novel and informing Fauriel of his progress. In November 1823, before Manzoni started rewriting Fermo e Lucia, Fauriel arrived in Milan, with the twenty-nine year old Mary Mohl-Clarke, his new partner after Sophie de Condorcet. The Manzoni family (particularly the teenage Giulietta) thoroughly enjoyed Fauriel’s lively company at the house on the via del Morone, including his contribution to the evening conversations with Manzoni’s Milanese friends. Fauriel had read Manzoni’s complete novel, and wrote notes (discretely, in pencil) on the first eight chapters, advising Manzoni to cut the long episode concerning the nun of Monza, thus providing a similarly negative judgement on that seedy story as Monsignor Luigi Tosi, the Manzonis’ confessor who continued to be concerned for Alessandro’s morality. Ermes Visconti, a friend of Manzoni since his school years and one of the most outstanding Romantic intellectuals, carefully annotated (in pen) the remainder of the book, inserting frequent humorous notes indicating where to make cuts or changes. His observations were oriented towards realistic and verisimilar treatment of the characters, according to a poetics that Manzoni had set out clearly in his Lettre to Chauvet. For example, Visconti advised Manzoni to bring forward the inner turmoil of the Conte del Sagrato (later to become the Innominato) to the meeting with Don Rodrigo (when he asks him to kidnap Lucia) so as to ensure greater realism in the psychological development that leads the rogue to conversion. As in many other cases, Manzoni took heed of his suggestion.