The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni: Day 41
Chapter 32 (to end)
Superstitions abound.
“As crime grew, so did madness.”
Not even the educated, who should have known or did know better, were immune.
I never thought we would experience the scenario that Ripamonti describes:
“While the whole city was turned into a giant cemetery by the corpses scattered about or piled up, always before your eyes, always between your feet, there was something uglier, more deadly, in those furious recriminations, in those unhinged, monstrous suspicions… not only was the neighbor, the friend, the guest, to be distrusted, but even those names, those bonds of human charity—husband and wife, father and son, brother and brother—became words of terror. And—how awful and shameful to say!—the family meal, the nuptial bed—were feared as traps, as places that might conceal the pestilential venom.”
Manzoni cannot withhold a critical note concerning Cardinal Borromeo:
“We wish we could more fully praise his glorious and loving memory, and depict the good priest, here and in many other respects, as superior to most of his contemporaries. But we are forced to see even a mind as noble as his fall victim to the sway of public opinion.”
Here I used the plural “we” rather than “I,” feeling that the author was reaching for complicity with his readers.
Join us on April 10 for a virtual discussion of The Betrothed with Michael F. Moore.
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Excellent depiction of struggle between good sense vs common sense and ensuing “public insanity.” “The learned borrowed whatever delusions of the common people suited their own ideas. And the commoners borrowed whatever they could understand, and as best as they could understand, from the hallucinations of the learned. And from the combination of the two, an enormous tangle of public insanity was formed.” With good sense becoming a “family secret” ruled by fear: “Good sense did indeed exist, but it stayed hidden for fear of common sense.” Love the image of an enormous tangle because it describes how public opinion functions.
However, I’m that reader (no offense intended) who “might not necessarily care to know the rest of our story after dwelling on these cases.” These last chapters reminded me of sections, especially the epilogues, in War & Peace that meander, at times tediously, from central stories. I’m relieved and happy to “return to our characters, whom we shall not abandon again until the end.”
The plague is a health and public welfare calamity but, as Micheal suggests, also sadly results in the breakdown of society: “a general increase in crime”; “As crime grew, so did madness”; “hallucinations of the learned”; “an enormous tangle of public insanity”; “feeble human intellect clashing with its own delusions”; and, perhaps, worst of all “not only was the neighbor, the friend, the guest, to be distrusted, but even those names, those bonds of human charity - husband, and wife, father, and son, brother and brother – became words of terror.” Devastating.