“The Earl took up lodging near Cobham, and he insinuated himself so much into His Lordship’s good graces that he induced her to be extremely kind to him. Her visits continued for some time before they were discovered by a faithful servant. The Count used to climb the garden wall, when his Lordship made him pass through a window, and left early in the morning along the same path. The window, accidentally left open one morning after the Count’s escape, made the servants suspect that a theft had been attempted, and one of them stayed up the next night to raise the alarm in case of another attempt: and when the Count he arrived, His Lordship let him in as usual ».
The Count is Vittorio AlfieriHis Lordship is Penelope Pitt, wife of Lord Ligonier, a senior English officer. The year is 1771 and within a few weeks a scandal broke out: the young Piedmontese gentleman (22 years old) weaves a relationship with the Lady of the same age, becomes her “ostensible Cicisbeo(“Companion” to be shown) and is discovered by her husband, who challenges him to a duel. Alfieri, according to the code, does not escape although he is a very poor swordsman, and is smeared. Then he leaves London with her lover, while the offended husband decides to ask for a divorce. A few days later the story is in the public domain, first in the gazettes, then in the periodicals, which do not spare color and prudence (the quoted passage is taken from The Town and Country Magazine). These unraveled events and the consequent trial (Lord Ligonier proceeded with the divorce and asked Alfieri for damages, who regulated them “in the French way”, leaving) are reconstructed in a tasty and well-documented essay by Bartolo Anglani: “The London” novel “”. Anglani carefully reconstructs the context in which a certain tabloid press develops and Lady Pitt’s strategy which in fact aimed at divorce to assert her freedom, and known how the fame of Alfieri “playboy” would not have been forgotten years later .
The essay appears in the volume “Vittorio Alfieri in the culture and literature of Italy and Europe”proceedings of the conference organized byPeloritana Academy of Dangers of Messina in October 2020. In reality, the conference, organized before the pandemic, did not take place for health reasons. However, the contributions, being ready, were also collected and published. They are available free of charge in electronic format at: https://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/APLF/issue/view/281/showToc or here.
The conference was conceived by Giuseppe Rando, former professor of Italian literature at the University of Messina, who notes the antithetical interpretations of Alfieri’s work. And he underlines: “Starting from the 1980s, an innovative orientation opened up (and is still operational) in Italy that has shifted the critical discourse on Alfieri from the fumistries and preconceptions of ideology to the documentary concreteness of history and of philology “, adding that the conference intends to draw up an initial balance, highlighting” still unknown aspects of critical fortune and of what is clearly foreshadowed as a real Alfieri renaissance “.
The volume also contains essays by Stefano De Luca (“Tyranny / despotism. Alfieri’s contribution to the European debate”), Christian Del Vento (“Alfieri and the French pre-revolution (1787-1789)”), Guido Santato (“Alfieri” prophet “of the unification of Italy”), Marco Sterpos (“The alfierism of the young Carducci”), Carla Forno director of the Alfieri Study Center Foundation in Asti (“” What will happen, I don’t know. Vittorio Alfieri and the Chénier brothers’ Paris “) and Giuseppe Rando («Vittorio Alfieri’s lesson in Leopardi’s life and” thoughts “»).