Testo | 2017 | N. 74

This paper propose a first investigation about influence of Manzoni model on Giorgio Bassani’s works. Manzoni was a very important model for Bassani, as evidenced by many references in his essays and by a lot of intertextual links in his poetry and prose. Bassani is one of the authors in second half of twentieth century who have taken more inspiration from Manzoni in order to renovate Italian narrative. This paper shows all the quotations and the allusions of Promessi sposi reachable in Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini. To better understand the cultural itinerary of Bassani, during 1955-1958, in order to validate the links between Manzoni’s masterpiece and the novel on Finzi-Contini family, are analized even Bassani’s essays and interviews.

In the writings of Franco Fortini the work of Manzoni is at the same time a theme of meditation for the critic and a source of inspiration for the poet. This paper is therefore intended to draw the main lines of Manzoni last influence (namely of the Inni Sacri and the historical essays) in Fortini’s verses and proses, pointing out the centrality of the tragic relationship between history and human destiny as pivot of such productive intercourse.

The critical writings by Zanzotto on Manzoni show an attention to I Promessi Sposi and to the Inni Sacri that can be found also in the works of the author of Vocativo. La Pentecoste, called «a true IX Symphony» echoes in some verses of a poet particularly interested in the «miracle of languages» and in its implications. Between religion and psychoanalysis (see Viktor Frankl’s The Unconscious God), Zanzotto’s poetry looks for a difficult or impossible hope.

This paper analized both the Pasolini’s opinions on Manzoni works and some direct or indirect suggestions of Manzoni, that could acte on Pasolini poetry, prose or cinematographic art. Altough Manzoni is not a primary model for Pasolini in his works appears some interesting ideal or litterary reference to Manzoni’s works, by analogy or by contrast.

In his interpretation, so personal, focused, and so partial, Giovanni Testori isolates in the Promessi Sposi the shadiest moments, like, first of all, the character of the nun of Monza, to whom he accords his preference both in the homonymous pièce and in the Promessi sposi alla prova. Doors and thresholds that mark Gertrude’s life translate into image the drama, the dizziness of human freedom, capable of the worst turpitude and of the most celestial pity, as an original comparison with the most celebrated threshold of the novel shows, the one of Cecilia’s mother.

This paper is the transcription of an interview with Emilio Isgrò in which the artist discuss his recent works (made by a very personal technique: the “cancellatura”): the interventions, very similar to a interferences, on 35 copies of original Promessi Sposi and on a reproduction of famous Alessandro Manzoni portrait made by the painter Francesco Hayez.

In this interview by Massimo Migliorati, Fabio Pusterla show how Manzoni’s works are present in his lessons in Lugano Liceo Cantonale and above all how are influencing his poetry.