His love for the Countess of Albany, persisting
through the vicissitudes of her tragic marriage, had rallied the
scattered forces of his nature. Ambitious to excel for her sake, to show
himself worthy of such a love, he had at last shaken off the strange
torpor of his youth, and revealed himself as the poet for whom Italy
waited. In ten months of feverish effort he had poured forth fourteen
tragedies--among them the Antigone, the Virginia, and the Conjuration of
the Pazzi. Italy started up at the sound of a new voice vibrating with
passions she had long since unlearned. Since Filicaja's thrilling appeal
to his enslaved country no poet had challenged the old Roman spirit
which Petrarch had striven to rouse. While the literati were busy
discussing Alfieri's blank verse, while the grammarians wrangled over
his syntax and ridiculed his solecisms, the public, heedless of such
niceties, was glowing with the new wine which he had poured into the old
vessels of classic story. "Liberty" was the cry that rang on the lips of
all his heroes, in accents so new and stirring that his audience never
wearied of its repetition. It was no secret that his stories of ancient
Greece and Rome were but allegories meant to teach the love of freedom;
yet the Antigone had been performed in the private theatre of the
Spanish Ambassador at Rome, the Virginia had been received with applause
on the public boards at Turin, and after the usual difficulties with the
censorship the happy author had actually succeeded in publishing his
plays at Siena.
Pages:
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464