Casa Guidi Windows - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Details
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In 1847, Elizabeth and Robert Browning settled in Italy to consummate one of history's most famous literary romances. Elizabeth called their new home the Casa Guidi. There she witnessed the events of the early Risorgimento, Italy's intensifying struggle for nationhood against foreign hegemony, and was inspired to produce some of her finest work, including "Casa Guidi Windows" (1851).
The poem begins with the sound of euphoric celebrations wafting through the titular windows, reflecting, in its first half, the air of hopeful optimism that filled the streets of Florence on 12 September 1847, when Grand Duke Leopold II restored civil liberties to the citizens. But the second half of the poem, following Leopold's betrayal of his people and the Austrian army's reoccupation of the city on 25 May 1849, is characterized by bitter denunciation. In between is the failed Revolutions of 1848. Each half captures the very different moods of their respective circumstances, providing distinct "windows" into society, and representing both the romance and reality of effecting lasting change.
Browning's poem is a highly political piece of writing, but it is also intensely personal. Turning her gaze both outward and inward, she symbolically identifies herself with Florence, considering her own marital aspirations and struggle for independence in light of the city's political situation and attempted rebirth.
Melville remarked that "Mrs. Browning was a great woman." In his copy of "Casa Guidi Windows," he underscored a footnote: "The event breaks in upon the meditation, and is too fast for prophecy in these strange times." Lucy M. Freibert comments: "In Clarel, too, historical events and sights break in upon Clarel's meditation.... Clarel, like Browning's persona, muses over past and present, trying unsuccessfully to predict or prophesy, in the midst of nineteenth-century intellectual conflict, what will be the outcome of human endeavors."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning died at Casa Guidi on 29 June 1861, without living to see the outcome of the Risorgimento's endeavors.
Casa Guidi Windows:
Supplemental:
- Correspondence from Cornelius Mathews to Elizabeth Shaw Melville
- Italy in 1848 part 2 of 5
- Radetzky March composition by Johann Strauss (celebrating the 1848 victory of the Austrian Empire over the Italian forces during the First Italian War of Independence)
Extracts:
- "Slipt from the Grand Duke’s gouty tread, / Florence, fair flower up-lifts the head." ("Marquis de Grandvin at the Hostelry")
- "It was not long after 1848; and, somehow, about that time, all round the world, these kings, they had the casting vote, and voted for themselves." ("The Piazza")
This meetup is part of the series The Risorgimento.