The most disturbing part of my re-reading was, however, Manzoni’s account of the untori poisoners mass hysteria. All the stages we experienced in the coronavirus pandemic are there in I promessi sposi: the first warnings from doctors being ignored mass gatherings acting as “super-spreader” events the authorities deliberately downplaying the seriousness of the situation the disease being referred to as “pestilential fevers”, then as “a limited form of plague”, before the delayed recognition of the seriousness of the contagion the health system being overwhelmed thousands of families being locked down in the Lazzaretto (the quarantine station at the doors of Milan) unprecedented levels of mortality across the land.

These passages made for extremely uncomfortable reading. When re-reading these chapters, I could not help but compare the actions of my ancestors with those of my contemporaries. Manzoni assembles actual historical sources to document its appearance and progress within the Milanese state. From Chapter XXXI onwards, however, the plague becomes the driving force of the novel. Most of Manzoni’s novel is dedicated to the misadventures of the titular betrothed, silk weavers Renzo and Lucia, beleaguered by dissolute nobleman Don Rodrigo and his sinister cast of allies. Would my pandemic reading of I promessi sposi reveal something new? Truly, with every re-reading, I took away something different from I promessi sposi, such as Manzoni’s invention of modern literary Italian, or the interplay of his text with the illustrations by Francesco Gonin.

In his essay on “Why Read the Classics”, Italo Calvino argues that “a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say”. Then it and other Italian classics became a way to remind myself that, whatever my circumstances, a part of me would always remain Italian. That is, until after leaving Italy, I was finally able to read it out of choice and not compulsion. The status of “classic” weighed heavily on it and, while I admired the book, I could never get myself to love it. Like most Italians, I first read I promessi sposi as part of my school education.

My pandemic meeting with Manzoni certainly falls under the label of re-reading. Sally Blackburn-Daniels has discussed the pleasure of re-reading in her recent blog post. The first major Italian novel, Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi/The Betrothed was published in 1840 and is set during the plague epidemic of 1629-31 (you can read an 1844 English translation here: vol 1 and vol. Italian literature has long had a familiarity with pandemics.

The betrothed by alessandro manzoni