Silvio Pellico was an
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
writer, poet, dramatist and patriot.
Biography
Silvio Pellico was born at
SaluzzoSaluzzo is a town and former principality in the province of Cuneo, Piedmont region, Italy.The city of Saluzzo is built on a hill overlooking a vast, well-cultivated plain. Iron, lead, silver, marble, slate etc...
(
PiedmontPiedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...
). He spent the earlier portion of his life at
PineroloPinerolo is a town and comune in north-western Italy, 40 kilometres southwest of Turin on the river Chisone.-History:In the Middle Ages, the town of Pinerolo was one of the main crossroads in Italy, and was therefore one of the principal fortresses of the dukes of Savoy. Its military importance...
and
TurinTurin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
, under the tuition of a priest named Manavella. At the age of ten he composed a
tragedyTragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
inspired by a translation of the Ossianic poems. On the marriage of his
twinA twin is one of two offspring produced in the same pregnancy. Twins can either be monozygotic , meaning that they develop from one zygote that splits and forms two embryos, or dizygotic because they develop from two separate eggs that are fertilized by two separate sperm.In contrast, a fetus...
sister Rosina with a maternal cousin at
LyonLyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, he went to reside in that city, devoting himself during four years to the study of French literature. He returned in 1810 to
MilanMilan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, where he became professor of French in the Collegio degli Orfani Militari.
His tragedy
Francesca da RiminiFrancesca da Rimini or Francesca da Polenta was the daughter of Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna. She was a historical contemporary of Dante Alighieri, who portrayed her as a character in the Divine Comedy.-Arranged marriage:...
was brought out with success by Carlotta Marchionni at Milan in 1818. Its publication was followed by that of the tragedy
Euphemio da Messina, but the representation of the latter was forbidden.
Pellico had in the meantime continued his work as tutor, first to the unfortunate son of Count Briche, and then to the two sons of Count Porro Lambertenghi. He threw himself heartily into an attempt to weaken the hold of the
AustrianThe Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire, which was centered on what is today's Austria and which officially lasted from 1804 to 1867. It was followed by the Empire of Austria-Hungary, whose proclamation was a diplomatic move that elevated Hungary's status within the Austrian Empire...
despotism by indirect educational means.
Of the powerful literary executive which gathered about Counts Porro and Confalonieri, Pellico was the able secretary the management of the
Conciliatore, a review which appeared in 1818 as the organ of the association, resting largely upon him. But the paper, under the censorship of the Austrian officials, ran for a year only, and the society itself was broken up by the government. In October 1820 Pellico was arrested on the charge of carbonarism and conveyed to the Santa Margherita prison. After his removal to the
PiombiPiombi is a former prison in the Doge's Palace in Venice. The name of the prison refers to its position directly under the roof of the palace, which was covered with slabs of lead...
at
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
in February 1821, he composed several Cantiche and the tragedies
Ester d'Engaddi and
Iginici d'Asti.
The sentence of death pronounced on him in February 1822 was finally commuted to fifteen years of jail in harsh condition, and in the following April he was placed in the
SpielbergŠpilberk Castle is an old castle on the hilltop in Brno, Southern Moravia. It began to be built as early as the first half of the 13th century by the Přemyslid kings and complete by King Přemyslid Otakar of Bohemia...
, at
BrünnBrunn or Brünn may refer to:Places* Brünn, the German form of the Czech city Brno* Brunn, Upper Palatinate, a town in Bavaria, Germany* Brunn, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a municipality in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany...
(today's Brno), where he was transferred via
UdineUdine is a city and comune in northeastern Italy, in the middle of Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic sea and the Alps , less than 40 km from the Slovenian border. Its population was 99,439 in 2009, and that of its urban area was 175,000.- History :Udine is the historical...
and
LjubljanaLjubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
. His chief work during this part of his imprisonment was the tragedy
Leoniero da Dertona, for the preservation of which he was compelled to rely on his memory. After his release in 1830 he commenced the publication of his prison compositions, of which the
EsterEsters are chemical compounds derived by reacting an oxoacid with a hydroxyl compound such as an alcohol or phenol. Esters are usually derived from an inorganic acid or organic acid in which at least one -OH group is replaced by an -O-alkyl group, and most commonly from carboxylic acids and...
was played at Turin in 1831, but immediately suppressed. In 1832 appeared his
Gismonda da Mendrizio,
Erodiade and the
Leoniero, under the title of
Tre nuove tragedie, and in the same year the work which gave him his European fame,
Le mie prigioni, an account of his sufferings in prison. The last gained him the friendship of the Marchesa di Barolo, the reformer of the Turin prisons, and in 1834 he accepted from her a yearly pension of 1200 francs. His tragedy
Tommaso Moro had been published in 1833, his most important subsequent publication being the
Opere inedite in 1837.
On the decease of his parents in 1838 he was received into the Casa Barolo, where he remained until his death, assisting the marchesa in her charities, and writing chiefly upon religious themes. Of these works the best known is the
Dei doveri degli uomini, a series of trite maxims which do honor to his piety rather than to his critical judgment. A fragmentary biography of the marchesa by Pellico was published in Italian and English after her death.
He died in 1854, and was buried in the Camposanto at Turin.
While Pellico's tragedies are generally considered mediocre, the simple narrative and naive egotism of
Le mie prigioni has established his strongest claim to remembrance, winning fame by his misfortunes rather than by his genius. Genius or not, "My prisons" most certainly led to the political genius that was the Italian Risorgimento and Unification. The pamphlet was translated into virtually every European language during Pellico's lifetime.
Popular culture
Silvio Pellico gave his name to a little community (1,500 inhabitants) founded in
ArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
by Italian immigrants from
SaluzzoSaluzzo is a town and former principality in the province of Cuneo, Piedmont region, Italy.The city of Saluzzo is built on a hill overlooking a vast, well-cultivated plain. Iron, lead, silver, marble, slate etc...
.
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