The Classics

Like Leopardi, the other great “romantic” of the time, Manzoni was thoroughly acquainted with classics. His familiarity with Greek and Latin authors comes across clearly in his early poems, where the use of classical themes, forms and styles was inevitable in young writer schooled in Parini, Alfieri and Monti, namely the last great classicist writers in Italy. Among the Latins themselves, Manzoni read Horace as well as Virgil, which encouraged a reflective note in a number of his early poems, which make use of the heroic or erotic repertory of the classics but include the poetry of philosophy and moral reflection too (Horace was also Parini’s favourite poet). Classical sources are also found in the Inni Sacri, with their numerous biblical references, and in the civic odes (for example, Napoleon is called uom fatale – “fateful man” – with an adjective similar in meaning to that used by Virgil for Aeneas, or by Livy for Scipio Africanus). There are also frequent references to the classics in Manzoni’s writings on literature, philosophy and history, with precise bibliographic details. In the Promessi Sposi, however, his relationship with the classics is of a rather different sort, with a “serious” use of classical sources. In the ending in Chapter XXXVIII, for example, Lucia expresses the moral of the story “smiling sweetly”, an expression translated literally from an ode by Horace (and before him Catullus and the Greek poetess Sappho). The novel also contains a parodying and irreverent use of classical mythology, however, which harks back to the early days of the romantic polemic. One of the most beautiful ancient legends, the story of Cupid and Psyche (narrated by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses, aka The Golden Ass) is recalled by the narrator in connection with a farcical situation in Chapter XV, where the innkeeper of the “Full Moon” is compared to Psyche gazing upon the beauty of the sleeping Cupid in the light of an oil-lamp: after finally putting the drunken Renzo to bed, the innkeeper leans over to look at him and mutters Pezzo d’asino! (“Idiot!).