The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni: Day 48
Chapter 37
Join us on April 10 for a virtual discussion of The Betrothed with Michael F. Moore.
“A few impetuous drops drummed and bounced off the dry white road, raising a cloud of fine dust. A moment later, those drops became a shower, and before he could even reach the alley, the rain started coming down in torrents.”
Not only does the rain wash away the pain of the past two years, it also washes away the plague.
Renzo returns to Agnese with the happy news. But in a gesture we will all unfortunately recognize, he takes protective measures when they sit down to talk:
“I’ve just come from Milan and, as you’ll hear, I was in the plague up to my ears. Yes, I’ve changed my clothes, from head to toe, but it’s a nasty disease. It sticks to you, sometimes, like a curse.”
We learn the terrible fate of Sœur Gertrude:
“After much raging and struggling, she had repented and confessed. Her current life was a voluntary punishment so severe that no one could imagine anything worse, short of death.”
I wonder at the expression “voluntary punishment” (“supplizio volontario”).
And of the end met by Don Ferrante, a pedant to the end:
“His fretus—meaning, on the basis of these arguments—he took no precautions against the plague. He caught it and went to bed to die, like an operatic hero, blaming it on the stars.”
There’s a cruel irony to Manzoni’s use of Latin here, in a book that is constantly pointing to how language and literacy are used to deceive and oppress the lower classes. (Not to mention Don Ferrante’s library, which ends up at the kinds of book stalls one sees lining the Seine in Paris today.)
Join us on April 10 for a virtual discussion of The Betrothed with Michael F. Moore.
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I love the opening paragraph of this chapter. Manzoni's description of the rain is a lovely metaphor for both the emotional renewal felt by Renzo and the others, and the plague coming to its end. The rain water seems like a baptism into a new life for Renzo. Manzoni's linguistic choreography of the actual rain as it falls is exact and evocative.
Renzo's line, when he says:"And plague or no plague, for a few hours at least I want us to be happy" is moving and true. Renzo knows the importance of snatching out of time the passionate transitory, to paraphrase the poet Patrick Kavanagh.
I burst into tears at Renzo's care not to pass any lingering contagion to Agnese, with appreciation for his concern for her -- so resonant of our time with covid. Lots of little beauties to add, but my notes aren't near at the moment.