Vittorio Alfieri: the Artist in His Creation

Vittorio Alfieri: the Artist in His Creation Erasmo G. Gerato The Florida State University This study aims at discussing the tragic nature of Vittorio Alfieri as evidenced by his work, particularly his Vita (an autobiographical work that has often been defined as his own personal tragedy), Saul (which is considered by most critics as one of the finest tragedies ever written by Alfieri), and the Oresteian tragedies namely, Agamemnon and Orestes (which he derived from the classical works of Aeschylus and Seneca). In the first part we have presented Alfieri's tragic nature and discussed how it is reflected in his own literary corpus. An attempt was also made to demonstrate how the main characters of the tragedies most often reflect a complexity that tends to show great affinity to the author's personality. Alfieri's introspective analysis of his own personal nature is strongly reflected in the main characters of some of his best tragedies . In the second part we have traced the importance of the Oresteian tragedies in Alfieri's literary corpus and shown how these support and strengthen the above observations. Vittorio Alfieri appears as a truly colossal figure in the Italian literature of the eighteenth century, especially when compared to other Italian writers of that same period, as for example.Metastasio, Gaspare and Carlo Gozzi, or Baretti, with the sole possible exceptions of Giuseppe Parini and Carlo Goldoni. In fact, not since the days of the Renaissance, particularly those of Machiavelli or Torquato Tasso, had Italy been favored with the presence of such a great literary figure as Alfieri's. Indeed, we would have to return to Tasso in order to find a writer whose unique and fiery temperament and greater poetic expression is most akin to Alfieri's. One can note that in these two writers, their aspirations and personal experiences come in closest harmony to their own artistic inspiration and literary expression. It is primarily for this reason that one feels justified in comparing Tasso's works to Alfieri's. It thus becomes clear that, just as the love for the description of battles and jousts, the intrigues of the majestic, the fantastic and the supernatural elements which could have become material for the narration of clamorous actions, moved and inspired Tasso to create his poetic masterpiece, The Jerusalem Delivered, the same can, and will be shown to be true for Alfieri as well. For Alfieri, it was his love offreedom and his heartfelt hatred of 92ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW tyranny and all of those tyrants who were forcing whole nations to live in a state of semibarbarism and slavery, which prompted him to dedicate himself to the classic tragic style of writing, the style that showed itself to be most akin to his personality. In his exhaustive and acclaimed essay on Alfieri, Bruno Maier states that many of Alfieri's personal characteristics are to be attributed primarily to his aristocratic background and upbringing. Indeed, when one speaks of personal characteristics, the intrinsic qualities present within each individual render a study relatively more complex. Maier states that if Alfieri's nature took an ever more tragic personal tendency, this also was directly related to his environment: "è senza dubbio da collegare alla sua origine aristocr ática quella natura altera, orgogliosa, ribelle, che indusse l'Alfieri ad appartarsi sdegnosamente, il più possibile, dalla società del suo tempo ed a vivere in un clima di fiera solitudine, con la donna amata e con pochissimi amici devoti, tutto intento alla sua attività o, piuttosto , alla sua 'missione' letteraria."1 If we read the Vita, the true nature of its author as well as the interrelationship between the work and its writer becomes evident . His solitary, ill-tempered, arrogant, proud and fiery personal characteristics help us to understand why Alfieri chose the classic tragic style of writing as his foremost form of poetic expresión. Alfieri was convinced that man is nothing but a mere continuation and reflection of his childhood, and that his personality remains intrinsically what it manifested itself to be as a child. On this, Alfieri states that,'T uomo è una continuazione del bambino."2 We feel that the above seemingly simple generalization is a key factor...