Dell’Invenzione

Planned in November 1849 and published in 1850 in Opere varie, the dialogue entitled Dell’Invenzione is the point of arrival in a long meditation on issues concerning literary and artistic creation. In particular, the dialogue reflects the final stage in Manzoni’s complex intellectual relationship with Rosmini, which was based on sincere devotion and respectful friendship, but included several “hurdles” that caused Manzoni some difficulty. In their conversations and correspondence, these problems come across in Manzoni’s explicit declarations of doubt: one early doubt concerns the innate character of the idea of being; another concerns solutions to the problem of the origin of language. The dialogue to a certain extent “performs” the various reflections and doubts that set Manzoni on a path towards Rosmini’s way of thinking, entrusting the articulation of those reflections and doubts to a lively discussion between two interlocutors named Primo (First) and Secondo (Second). They are heard by a third interlocutor who is the author’s fictional counterpart and, apart from one fleeting line, acts as silent spectator and judge. The discussion revolves around three questions, with Manzoni’s replies clarifying his debt towards Rosmini’s philosophy. The first question concerns aesthetics, namely the sense of truth, or the idea, in art (“What do artists do when they invent?”). The second relates to metaphysics and the transcendent origin of the idea (“Where was the idea before it came to our minds?”). The third concerns morality, or transcendence of the idea of justice. In Manzoni’s long and tormented meditation on art and literature, the dialogue introduces a new idea that is not found in his Lettre to Chauvet. As something that is completely independent of historiography, poetry can achieve the revelation of an idea, of that which (in Rosminian terms) is eternal in the world, and thus a truth that historical narrative cannot communicate: poetry “almost speaks another language […] because it has other things to say”.