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Giovanni Ruffini and Doctor Antonio: Italian and English Contributions to a Myth of Exile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Allan C. Christensen
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Extract

When first published in 1855, Doctor Antonio immediately caught the imagination of English readers, in part because it seemed a beguilingly unusual creation. Although written by a former Italian exile, Giovanni Ruffini, it had been composed in an English that struck critics as of the purest in its evocative simplicity and fervid earnestness. And while narrating a familiar story of an English heart captivated by the beauty of Italy and its inhabitants, it told the story largely from the unaccustomed viewpoint of an Italian protagonist. This Italian also perceived a charming freshness in the English heroine's idealistic vision of his country. Perhaps the novel thereby conveyed the subtle but interesting impression that the Italy of the Englishman's romantic dreams owed as much to the imagination and desires of the English beholder as to the realities of Italy itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 12 , Spring 1984 , pp. 133 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1. Pertusio, Mario, La vita e gli scritti di Giovanni Ruffini (Genova: F. Chiesa, 1908), p. 57.Google Scholar English translations of the Italian sources are those of the writer of this article; when not given in the text, the original Italian appears in these notes.

2. Cattaneo, Giulio, “I romanzi inglesi di un italiano del risorgimento,” introduction to Lorenzo Benoni and II Dottor Antonio by Giovanni Ruffini (Roma: Gherardo Casini, 1968), p. ix.Google Scholar

3. Cagnacci, Carlo, ed., Giuseppe Mazzini e i fratelli Ruffini: Lettere raccolte e annotate (Porto Maurizio: Tipografia Berio, 1893), p. 180Google Scholar: “…troppo spiritualista, cioè troppo pensato. II gusto inglese si pasce di fatti, e non andategli a dire delle tendenze in questo o quel paese, ne gli parlate di filosofia.”

4. Cagnacci, , p. 192Google Scholar: “Finchè non si rassegna a trattare gli Inglesi da Inglesi, ed a smorzare quella sua concitazione d'idée e di stile, che urta i loro nervi, non ne faremo niente.”

5. Letter to Eugene Lee-Hamilton, quoted by Corrigan, Beatrice, “Giovanni Ruffini's Letters to Vernon Lee, 1875—1879,” English Miscellany, 13 (1962), 218n.Google Scholar

6. Obertello, Alfredo, “L'opera di Giovanni Ruffini in Inghilterra,” in Giovanni Ruffini e i suoi tempi: Studi e ricerche, a cura del Comitato per le onoranze a Giovanni Ruffini (Genova: comitato regionale ligure della Società nazionale per la storia del risorgimento, 1931), pp. 436–42Google Scholar, has commented in terestingly on these notebooks, now preserved in archives in Genoa; they clearly deserve further study. Cattaneo, p. x, suspects that Ruffini collected a repertory of phrases that did not really have authentic expressive value.

7. Corrigan, , p. 205.Google Scholar

8. Micca, Cesare Botto, “Giovanni Ruffini e il libretto del ‘Don Pasquale,’” Rivista di Bergamo, 10 (1931), 540.Google Scholar

9. Cagnacci, , p. 305.Google Scholar

10. Although Ruffini had once read at least La Chartreuse de Parme, he appears – rather curiously – to have remained unimpressed by Stendhal (see Corrigan, pp. 212–13).

11. Cagnacci, , p. 255Google Scholar: “… Tunica persona che in quattro anni di soggiorno in questo paese m'abbia dimostrato simpatia vera e fattomi risovvenire ch'io son uomo, e che posso esser trattato con riguardo e delicatezza.”

12. Quoted by Corrigan, , p. 182, from The Autobiography and Letters of Mrs M. O. W. Oliphant (Edinburgh, 1899), PP. 97—98.Google Scholar

13. Cattaneo, , p. x.Google Scholar

14. Cozzolino, Itala Cremona, “La donna nella vita di Giovanni Ruffini,” in Giovanni Ruffini e i suoi tempi, pp. 402–04.Google Scholar

15. Linaker, Arturo, Giovanni Ruffini (Torino, Firenze, Roma: Fratelli Bocca, 1882), p. 102Google Scholar: “Mio scopo essendo di raddrizzare la poca favorevole opinione sul nostro conto prevalente in Francia e in Inghilterra, era naturale ch'io mi servissi della lingua d'uno dei due paesi ai quali mi indirizzava.”

16. Obertello, , pp. 432–33.Google Scholar

17. Letter in English to John Hunter, published by Obertello, p. 432. The linguistic errors in the first sentences may be the fault of Obertello's transcription.

18. Obertello, , p. 466.Google Scholar

19. Cozzolino, , pp. 397, 402Google Scholar, and Obertello, , pp. 466—71Google Scholar, comment on the various drafts of Ruffini's two novels that are preserved in the archives of Genoa and that demonstrate the extensive corrections of Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Jenkin.

20. Guerrini, Olindo, “Giovanni Ruffini,” Brandelli: Serie Terza (Roma: A. Sommaruga e Co., 1883), pp. 53–55.Google ScholarObertello, , pp. 437–38Google Scholar, does not seem aware of the possible relevance of Romeo and Juliet to the phrases he lists. See also Cattaneo, pp. xi, xvi–xviiGoogle Scholar, and the anonymous Guida alia lettura di Ruffini (Roma: Istituto Polgrafico dello Stato, 1959), p. 13.Google Scholar

21. Guerrini, , p. 53Google Scholar; Cattaneo, , pp. x–xiGoogle Scholar. The Guida alla lettura di Ruffini, pp. 43–44Google Scholar, quotes relevant statements by Francesco Flora and Natalino Sapegno. In his letter to his mother referred to in my note 4 above, Ruffini suggests that he consciously sought a more subdued and sober English style, and so the result was not due only to some innate quality of the English language.

22. Cozzolino, , p. 400.Google Scholar

23. Pertusio, , p. 87.Google Scholar

24. Thomas Constable, whom Ruffini so esteemed as the “Roi des Editeurs” (see Corrigan, , p. 233Google Scholar), discovered some last-minute problems about property rights that British law did not guarantee. So he rushed to visit Ruffini in Paris and informed him that they must bring out a simultaneous Paris edition of the novel. Constable was enchanted then by the devoted cooperation of Cornelia Turner and Henrietta Jenkin that made it possible in the course often days to print a book of 450 pages, correct the proofs, paginate, and put the book on sale (see Cozzolino, , p. 405Google Scholar). Obertello, , pp. 473–76Google Scholar, challenges the usual view that Doctor Antonio was an unqualified success in England, for he finds that many journals ignored it and as of May 1856 the novel still had not covered Constable's costs.

25. A certain Tuscan gentleman insisted to Gallenga that any Italian who really wished to read the work could make do with the French translation, and another declared: I racconti son fatti per bambini; l'età nostra aspira a gravi cose; l'ltalia fa senno, ed è stucca di romanzi. Abbiamo archivi storici, sistemi e scuole di filosofia, manuali, enciclopedie; vogliamo libri che ci istruiscano, non che ci divertano; che ci maturino il senno, non che ci sol-letichino L'immaginativa.“ (“Tales are made for children; our era thinks of serious matters; Italy has reached the age of discretion and is sick of novels. We have historical archives, philosophical systems and schools, manuals and encyclopaedias; we want books that instruct us rather than amuse us, that mature our judgment rather than tickle our fancy.”) These remarks of an Italian Gradgrind are reported by Bar-tolomeo Aquarone in his introduction to the first Italian translation of Doctor Antonio (Milano, 1856)Google Scholar. Although Linaker, , p. 75Google Scholar, attributes the translation to Marina Carcano, it was evidently by Aquarone himself, and Signora Carcano became the translator of a new edition of this novel and of other novels by Ruffini about twenty years later (see Corrigan, , p. 195).Google Scholar

26. Obertello, , p. 475Google Scholar; Corrigan, , p. 213Google Scholar; Cagnacci, , p. 398.Google Scholar

27. Guerrini, , p. 48Google Scholar, discusses the irony that such books were first thought dangerously seditious and later ended up as mild and tranquilizing texts for adolescents in religious schools.

28. Pertusio, , pp. 89–90Google Scholar; Momigliano, Attilio, “II Dottor Antonio,” II Corriere della Sera, 25 aprile 1931, p. 3Google Scholar; Linaker, , p. 98;Google ScholarGuida alla lettura di Ruffini, p. 10.Google Scholar

29. Cavassa, Umberto V., “Lettere dall'Esilio,” in Giovanni Ruffini e i suoi tempi, p. 193Google Scholar: “… quella accorata dolcezza romantica che fu l'atmosfera – ed è difficile oggi precisare quanto sincera e quanto artificiosa – della vita di quel 1830 rimasto nella fantasia degli uomini come simbolo d'un tempo meravigliosamente stupendo e stranamente appassionato.”

30. Guerrini, , p. 49Google Scholar: “ Al di là del 1848 ciappare un'epoca eroica di sacrifizi e di persecuzioni che ci stupisce, ci co-stringe alla venerazione, ma che è fuori della nostra vita e delle nostre passioni. … Chi sente oggi piú tutta quella straziante poesia dell'esilio che ha fatto piangere una intera generazione di vit-time?”

31. Cavassa, , p. 195.Google Scholar

32. Linaker, , p. 71Google Scholar; and see letter referred to in note 5 above.

33. Momigliano, , p. 3Google Scholar: “E perció II Dottor Antonio è uno di quei libri dinanzi ai quali non tentiamo la critica, perché ci sembrerebbe di profanare qualche cosa di sacro: quel fondo di sanité inconsapevole che finiva di formarsi allora e che, spesso dimenticato ma nonmai cancellato del tutto, é rimasto per sempre la luce della nostra esistenza.”