Vittorio Alfieri

Alfieri was born at Asti, Kingdom of Sardinia, now in Piedmont. His father died when he was very young, and he was brought up by his mother, who married a second time, until, at the age of ten, he was placed in the academy of Turin. After a year at the academy, he went on a short visit to a relative at Coni (mod. Cuneo). During his stay there, he composed a sonnet chiefly borrowed from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio, the only poets he had at that time read. At age thirteen, Alfieri began the study of civil and canon law, but this only made him more interested in literature, particularly French romances. The death of his uncle, who had taken charge of his education and conduct, left him free, at the age of fourteen, to enjoy his paternal inheritance, augmented by the addition of his uncle's fortune. He began to attend a riding school, where he acquired an enthusiasm for horses and equestrian exercise that continued for the rest of his life. Having obtained permission from the king to travel abroad, he departed in 1766, under the care of an English tutor. Seeking novelty in foreign cultures, and being anxious to become acquainted with the French theatre, he proceeded to Paris, but he appears to have been completely dissatisfied with everything he witnessed in France and did not like the French people. In the Netherlands, he fell in love with a married woman, but she went with her husband to Switzerland. Alfieri, depressed by the incident, returned home and again began studying literature. Plutarch's Lives inspired him with a passion for freedom and independence. He recommenced his travels, and his only gratification, in the absence of freedom among the continental states, came from contemplating the wild and sterile regions of the north of Sweden, where gloomy forests, lakes and precipices encouraged his sublime and melancholy ideas. In search of an ideal world, Alfieri passed quickly through various countries. During a journey to London, he engaged in an intrigue with Lady Penelope Ligonier, a married woman of high rank. The affair became a widely publicised scandal and ended in a divorce that ruined Lady Ligonier and forced Alfieri to leave the country. He then visited Spain and Portugal, where he became acquainted with the Abbe Caluso, who remained through life the most attached and estimable friend he ever possessed. In 1772, Alfieri returned to Turin. This time, he fell for the Marchesa Turinetti di Prie, but it was another doomed affair. When she fell ill, he spent his time dancing attendance on her, and one day wrote a dialogue or scene of a drama, which he left at her house. When the couple quarrelled, the piece was returned to him, and being retouched and extended to five acts, it was performed at Turin in 1775, under the title of Cleopatra.

From this moment, Alfieri was seized with an insatiable thirst for theatrical fame, to which he devoted the remainder of his life. His first two tragedies, Filippo and Polinice, were originally written in French prose. When he came to versify them in Italian, he found that, because of many dealings with foreigners, he was poor at expressing himself. With the view of improving his Italian, he went to Tuscany and, during an alternate residence at Florence and Siena, he completed Filippo and Polinice, and had ideas for other dramas. While thus employed, he became acquainted with Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, also known as the Countess of Albany, who was living with her husband, Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie"), at Florence. For her he formed a serious attachment. With this motive, to remain at Florence, he did not wish to be bound to Piedmont. He therefore ceded his whole property to his sister, the countess Cumiana, keeping for himself an annuity that was about half his original income. Louise, motivated by the ill-treatment she received from her husband, sought refuge in Rome, where she at length received permission from the Pope to live apart from him. Alfieri followed her to Rome, where he completed fourteen tragedies, four of which were published at Siena. For the sake of Louise's reputation, he left Rome and, in 1783, travelled through different states of Italy, publishing six additional tragedies. The interests of his love and literary glory had not diminished his love of horses. He went to England solely for the purpose of purchasing a number of these animals, which he took back to Italy. On his return, he learned that Louise had gone to Colmar in Alsace, where he joined her, and they lived together for the rest of his life. They chiefly passed their time between Alsace and Paris, but at length took up their abode entirely in that metropolis. While here, Alfieri made arrangements with Didot for an edition of his tragedies, but was soon after forced to quit Paris by the storms of the French Revolution. He recrossed the Alps with the countess, and finally settled at Florence. The last ten years of his life, which he spent in that city, seem to have been the happiest of his existence. During that long period, his tranquillity was only interrupted by the entrance of the Revolutionary armies into Florence in 1799. Alfieri's political writings were among those which had contributed to the revolutionary atmosphere. His essay, Della Tirannide, denounced absolutism and was dedicated to liberty as a universal right. In Del Principe e delle Lettere, he declared poets to be the heralds of freedom and human dignity and the natural enemies of tyrants. He supported the American Revolution and wrote a collection of odes published as L'America libera and dedicated a play about the ancient Romans to George Washington. When the French Revolution broke out, he supported its initial liberal phase, but the violence of the Reign of Terror turned him strongly against the radical Jacobins. Despite Alfieri's increasingly anti-French sentiments, he was honored when the French army arrived in Italy and Napoleon himself attended a performance of Alfieri's Virginia, a play set in ancient Rome in which the people demand liberty and rise to overthrow a tyrant. Alfieri's ideas continued to influence Italian liberals and republicans such as Piero Gobetti throughout the Risorgimento and well into the twentieth century. He spent the concluding years of his life studying Greek literature and perfecting a series of comedies. His labour on this subject exhausted his strength and made him ill. He eschewed his physician's prescriptions in favour of his own remedies, which made the condition worse. He died in Florence in 1803. His last words were "Clasp my hand, my dear friend, I die!" He is buried in the Church of Santa Croce, Florence next to Machiavelli.

Alfieri's character may be best appreciated from the portrait he drew of himself in his own memoirs of his life. He was evidently of an irritable, impetuous, and almost ungovernable temper. Pride, which seems to have been a ruling sentiment, may account for many apparent inconsistencies of his character. But his less amiable qualities were greatly softened by the cultivation of literature. His application to study gradually tranquillized his temper and softened his manners, leaving him at the same time in perfect possession of those good qualities he inherited from nature: a warm and disinterested attachment to his family and friends, united to a generosity, vigour and elevation of character, which rendered him not unworthy to embody in his dramas the actions and sentiments of Grecian heroes.

Alfieri caught a "chill on his stomach" while out driving on 3 October 1803. His health deteriorated, and he died in his chair on 8 October. He was buried in the church of Santa Croce, Florence. Louise arranged for Antonio Canova to erect a monument in his memory. This took 6 years to be executed, being finally installed in Santa Croce in the autumn of 1810.

The name of Vittorio Alfieri was never registered in the official publications of the Piedmont Freemasonry. It is proven that Alfieri was initiated in the regular Masonic Lodge "Vittoria" of Naples, which was an obedience of the Gran Loggia Nazionale "Lo Zelo", founded in 1874-185 by aristocrat Freemasons closely linked to the queen Maria Carolina of Austria. Many of Alfieri's friends were Freemasons, as it is attested by the documents conserved in the centre of studies located in the town of Asti. The first edition of the Alfieri's tragedy was published in 1763 and sent to the following notable Freemasons: the von Kaunitz brothers of Turin, Giovanni Pindemonte e Gerolamo Zulian in Venice, Annibale Beccaria (brother of Cesare), Luigi Visconte Arese e Gioacchino Pallavicini in Milan, Carlo Gastone Rezzonico in Parma, Saveur Grimaldi in Genoa, Ludovico Savioli in Bologna, Kiliano Caraccioli which was Venerable Master in Naples, Giuseppe Guasco in Rome. On 27 August 1782, the name of Alfieri is cited in the Tableau des Membres de la Respectable Loge de la Victoire à l'Orient de Naples ("List of the members of the Venerable Lodge "Victoire" in the Orient of Naples") as Comte Alfieri, Gentilhomme de Turin (count Alfieri, gentleman of Turin). Some months later, the Savoia dynasty banned any Masonic activity from the Piedmont and the Great Master Count Asinari of Bernezzo was obliged to transfer his title to the prince Diego Naselli of Naples. Naples became the official seat of the Italian Scottish Rite Freemasonry. His poetry Vita, published in 1775, says: Egli ti additi il murator primiero, Del grande Ordine infin l'origo estrema E se poi ti svelasse un tanto arcano, Avresti tu sì nobili concetti E ad inalzare il vol bastante mano? Ah, scusatela si, fratei diletti; Non ragiona l'insana, oppur delira Quando canta di voi con versi inetti. The chapter continues mentioning the Scottish Rite degrees of Venerabile, primo Vigilante, Oratore and Segretario.

English translation of all 22 tragedies by Charles Lloyd and Edgar Alfred Bowring: The Tragedies Volume 1 & Volume 2 at the Internet Archive