My Ten Years' Imprisonment - Silvio Pellico
Details
On October 13, 1820, Silvio Pellico (1789-1854) was arrested on suspicion of being a member of the Carbonari--a secret society of revolutionaries opposed to Austria's repressive foreign occupation of Italy. After a perfunctory trial, he was condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment with hard labor.
The account of his ten years' imprisonment (Le Mie Prigioni, 1833) is a classic of Italy's struggle for liberty. It was hugely popular, translated into every European language, and inspired widespread sympathy for Italy's nationalist movement, dealing a deadly blow to the cause of the Austrian government.
Transcending mere memoir, Pellico's story is a poetic and moving declaration of trial and tribulation, and a meditation on solitude, friendship, and faith. Said one reviewer: "It breathes a spirit of such profound resignation, such exalted peace, such heroic piety that the stoniest heart must be touched by it."
Said another: "Every page contains a practical illustration of the powerful aids of a sound and genuine philosophy, based upon religion, in fortifying the mind, and enabling it to triumph over the most appalling disasters. Every page breathes the purest spirit of philanthropy, and may be quoted as a specific against the cynicism and irritability which blacken and degrade human nature, and hold it up to scorn and contempt."
My Ten Year's Imprisonment:
Extracts:
- "So Silvio Pellico from cell-door / Forth tottering, after dungeoned years, / Crippled and bleached, and dead his peers: / ‘Grateful, I thank the Emperor.’" (Clarel, 1.37)
- "A man it was less hoar with time / Than bleached through strange immurement long, / Retaining still, by doom depressed, / Dim trace of some aspiring prime.... / Anon, among some ramblers drawn, / A murmur rose “’Tis Silvio, Silvio!’ / With inklings more in tone suppressed / Touching his story, part recalled: / Clandestine arrest abrupt by night; / The sole conjecturable cause / The yearning in a patriot ode / Construed as treason; trial none; / Prolonged captivity profound; / Vain liberation late. All this, / With pity for impoverishment / And blight forestalling age’s wane." ("Pausilippo. (In the time of Bomba)")
- "Yes, when, as with this old man, your evil days of decay come on, when a hoary captive in your chamber, then will you, something like the dungeoned Italian we read of, gladly seek the breast of that confidence begot in the tender time of your youth, blessed beyond telling if it return to you in age." (Confidence-Man, 21)
This meetup is part of the series The Risorgimento