APS TOGETHER
Day 45
The Betrothed by Alessandro ManzoniChapter 34 (to end)
April 6, 2023 by Michael F. Moore
“Descending from one of those doorways and moving toward the convoy came a woman whose appearance suggested a youth that was advanced but not yet passed. She radiated a beauty that was shrouded and dimmed but not ruined by great emotion and fatal languor: the soft yet majestic beauty that runs in Lombard blood. Her gait was weary, but not unsteady. Her eyes were dry, but showed the sign of many tears. In her grief there was something peaceful and profound that attested to a soul fully aware of and alive to pain.”
Amid so much horror, Manzoni depicts one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the novel, which the Italians know as “The mother of Cecilia.”
During the pandemic I did a reading of this scene, for a wonderful online program “Tutti a Casa,” out of the NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. As I read you will see the 1922 silent film of the novel directed by Mario Bonnard.
“Off he ran, clenched fist in the air, knuckles ready for anyone that got in his way.”
Primo Levi wrote an essay about this episode, titled “Renzo’s fist,” arguing that,
“It is completely unnatural to run while holding one's fist in the air. It is hampering, even for a few steps: it results in a greater waste of time than would be needed to clench and raise the fist a second time.”
Says one fussy writer to another.
