Summary of Alfieri’s tragedies: style, structure and protagonists, the titanism and the reasons that pushed this author to write tragedies.
Vittorio Alfieri was a writer and important tragedian and his most famous tragedies can be grouped according to their subject:
- Greek mythology topic: Antigone, Agamemnon, Orestes, Myrrha ;
- ancient historical subject, especially Roman history: Antony and Cleopatra , Brutus I, Brutus II ;
- medieval historical topic and modern history: The Pazzi conspiracy, Rosmunda, Maria Stuarda ;
- biblical character, as a subject stories taken from the Bible, only one work: Saul
Alfieri maintained that the content of a theatrical work must be illustrious, high. The protagonists of Alfieri’s tragedies are always exceptional characters: kings, tyrants, politicians. It is important to note that their drama is not psychological, but a historical, civil drama.
Alfieri’s tragedies make explicit his political ideas and also the principle according to which poetry is an instrument to exhort freedom: this is the instinct that pushes the hero , the exceptional individual, to experience a conflict with power and in this conflict the hero often faces death.
The heroes of Alfieri’s tragedies are men crushed by fatal events, struggling to affirm their own dignity, seeking the freedom of their passions. In this, suicide often becomes the only way out and the highest tragic ideal.
The reasons for the tragic choice
In the assiduous and rigorous commitment to tragic writing, Alfieri identifies the purpose that can give meaning to his life, incessantly striving towards something unknown and therefore dominated by a sense of emptiness, boredom, discontent.
Traditionally, tragedy represented heroic and exceptional human figures, it seemed the poetic genre most suited to express Alfierian titanism, the tension towards limitless greatness.
In constructing his heroes, monumental figures of exceptional stature, the poet gave vent to his aspirations, projected himself.
According to a widespread opinion in the literary world of the time, tragedy had not yet found a satisfactory realisation in Italian culture: it was believed that Italy lacked a great tragic poet, worthy of the ancients and on a par with classical French tragedy, which in the previous century had produced the masterpieces of Corneille and Racine .
Tragedy was also considered the most sublime and difficult genre: in that arduous and still wide-open field, Alfieri saw the right opportunity for self-affirmation , to express his originality and greatness and to satisfy his own burning need for glory.
The structure of Alfieri’s tragedy
Alfieri takes a polemical position towards the great classical French tragedy. The writer reproaches the French tragedians for the slowness of the action which led to a lack of interest, the monotonous and singsong progression of the rhyming couplets.
According to Alfieri, poetic inspiration must be based on a passionate impulse, a sentimentally and ardently experienced content.
For this reason the dramatic device must banish every superfluous element, that is, it must avoid secondary characters, not indispensable to the economy of the action, and concentrate only on a very limited number of main characters , those between whom the tragic conflict is truly created .
Alfieri’s style in tragedies
The style must be rapid , concise , essential , capable therefore of expressing all the passionate heat of the dramatic core. The lines are mostly short, monosyllabic words abound: there is a search for extreme conciseness.
For Alfieri, the tragic style must be clearly distinguished from the lyrical and epic styles: the latter tend towards song, while tragedy expresses conflicts between individuality, ideas and passions , and therefore cannot “sing”.
For this reason Alfieri aims at a style that is diametrically opposed to the melodious style of French tragedy, furthermore in him there is a contemptuous rejection of Metastasio ‘s melodrama .
To avoid the singsong, which for him is an indication of a drop in passionate tension and therefore of coldness, the poet focuses on a hard, harsh, anti-musical style ; the tools he uses for this purpose are the continuous variations of rhythm, the continuous presence of pauses and fractures within them, the presence of strongly arched enjambements, the presence of harsh sounds, with hard clashes of consonants.
Alfieri punctually respects the three Aristotelian unities of time, place and action: his tragedies usually take place over a period of time that does not exceed twenty-four hours, have a fixed scene and a unitary action, built around a single dramatic nucleus.
However, this is not an extrinsic adherence to the rules: the choice responds to authentic and heartfelt needs in the poet: first of all that of giving order and discipline to his tormented interior world, which can only find a sort of catharsis in classical forms; on the other hand, the rigorous unity of the action and the brevity of the time span are perfectly in harmony with the need for a tense, rapid and pressing tragic structure, which is the central point of Alfierian poetics.
The need for discipline is manifested in Alfieri’s own way of working. In his Vita he explains that the elaboration of each tragedy is divided into three fundamental moments:
- to conceive : it consists in conceiving the subject of the tragedy, in distributing it schematically, in a summary form, in acts and scenes and in establishing the number of characters, following the inspiration;
- to lay out : consists of writing the dialogues in full in prose;
- versifying : means to write dialogues in verse, Alfieri uses the blank hendecasyllable, which with him establishes itself as the tragic verse par excellence.
Creation is originally a spontaneous process, which draws nourishment from the most irrational components (the first two phases), but then that content must be disciplined in a rigorous form.
Both conditions are necessary for the poet: tragedy cannot be born if there is not that initial enthusiasm, but equally it cannot exist if it does not find its perfect formal organization.
Alfieri did not usually have his tragedies performed in public theatres and intended them only for private performances, among groups of aristocratic friends.
This private choice was born from a rejection of contemporary theatre , considered frivolous and vulgar, of the actors of the time, judged completely incapable of playing the parts of its heroes, and finally of the public in any case, considered insensitive and mediocre.
In the first tragedies the dream of superhuman greatness is projected, the titanic thrust of self-affirmation beyond every limit and obstacle, but at the same time the clash with a hostile reality looms which suffocates that thrust and manifests itself in a bitter feeling of living, in a pessimistic conception of man, of his insufficiency and impotence and which intimately corrodes the heroic ideal.
Alfieri’s Titanism
Titanism is a typical attitude of Romanticism, but it already makes its full appearance at the end of the eighteenth century, in certain trends of pre-romantic culture. The term derives from Greek mythology: the Titans were giants who had dared to rebel against Zeus.
With reference to the rebels of myth, titanism was called an attitude of rebellion and defiance towards every form of authority and oppressive power that weighs on men: God, destiny, tyranny, the law.
It is a rebellion that arises from a yearning for superhuman greatness and infinite freedom, which does not tolerate limits or constraints of any kind; a revolt that does not start from a calculation of forces and probabilities of victory, but dares to challenge the oppressive power even if it knows it is inevitably doomed to defeat.
In Alfieri one can find titanic attitudes: there is in him a proud sense of his own spiritual exceptionality, in contrast to a mediocre and vile humanity, a tension towards a superhuman greatness, an anxiety for the absolute affirmation of his own ego, which translates into intolerance for any constraint, into an exasperated aversion towards the oppressive absolutism of his times.
For this reason, in the treatise On Tyranny and in many tragedies, the writer traces the lines of a heroic figure who generously rises to challenge the opposing power, even at the cost of his life.
Tyrannical power is invincible; but the hero, even if defeated, is never tamed internally, and faces sacrifice and death without hesitation in order to affirm his choice of freedom.
