Vittorio Alfieri: The Artist in His Creation

Abstract

This study aims at discussing the tragic nature of Vittorio Alfieri as evidenced by his work, particularly his Vita (an autobiographical work that has often been defined as his own personal tragedy), Saul (which is considered by most critics as one of the finest tragedies ever written by Alfieri), and the Oresteian tragedies namely, Agamemnon and Orestes (which he derived from the classical works of Aeschylus and Seneca). In the first part we have presented Alfieri's tragic nature and discussed how it is reflected in his own literary corpus. An attempt was also made to demonstrate how the main characters of the tragedies most often reflect a complexity that tends to show great affinity to the author's personality. Alfieri's introspective analysis of his own personal nature is strongly reflected in the main characters of some of his best tragedies. In the second part we have traced the importance of the Oresteian tragedies in Alfieri's literary corpus and shown how these support and strengthen the above observations. Vittorio Alfieri appears as a truly colossal figure in the Italian literature of the eighteenth century, especially when compared to other Italian writers of that same period, as for example,Metastasio, Gaspare and Carlo Gozzi, or Baretti, with the sole possible exceptions of Giuseppe Parini and Carlo Goldoni. In fact, not since the days of the Renaissance, particularly those of Machiavelli or Torquato Tasso, had Italy been favored with the presence of such a great literary figure as Alfieri's. Indeed, we would have to return to Tasso in order to find a writer whose unique and fiery temperament and greater poetic expression is most akin to Alfieri's. One can note that in these two writers, their aspirations and personal experiences come in closest harmony to their own artistic inspiration and literary expression. It is primarily for this reason that one feels justified in comparing Tasso's works to Alfieri's. It thus becomes clear that, just as the love for the description of battles and jousts, the intrigues of the majestic, the fantastic and the supernatural elements which could have become material for the narration of clamorous actions, moved and inspired Tasso to create his poetic masterpiece, The Jerusalem Delivered, the same can, and will be shown to be true for Alfieri as well. For Alfieri, it was his love of freedom and his heartfelt hatred of