A. Maurois
Ed. Dall'Oglio
pp. 468
I could begin this article talking about how, a few days ago, while I was setting up the stamps, I came across a small Italian stamp that celebrated the 135 ° anniversary of the death of Lord Byron.
Why?
It occurred to me immediately that in fact, being Byron one of the greatest poets in the world, I had little to amaze.
When I took Byron's book back in the evening, I had a new question in mind!
Lord Byron, or George Gordon Byron, VI Baron of the Byron, was born in London in the 1788, died in Missolongi in the 1824.
Considered one of the greatest English poets of the time, he lived a life always on the edge. Always fought between good and evil, to live he needed strong emotions that he sought in travels and in love relationships with the many lovers, among them, the most loved was the one who most resembled him, the half-sister Augusta.
The relationship with his mother was conflicting. With the father inexistent, the first years of life were not simple and left an indelible mark on the little Byron as on the mother.
Byron felt he was made for action, but a deformity in his feet forced him to a strange walk that did not prevent him from being a good swimmer.
Lord Byron was also a politician, his office gave him access to the House of Lords.
To my surprise, I realized that Byron had also been in Italy. Bologna, Venice, Ravenna, Pisa and Genoa are the main cities in which he spent a few years, just before embarking on his latest adventure in Greece.
In Bologna he had joined the Romantic Society, it was therefore a Carbonaro. His prestige and money placed him above the rest and being English the risks of his conspiratorial activity were less. The Carbonari group of Ravenna, known as the "Americans", had elected him as its head. Is this perhaps the reason why it deserved to be remembered on an Italian postage stamp?
In Ravenna, in the house where he lived, guest of his last lover, he organized an arsenal in which he collected 150 rifles and gunpowder for the revolution. Count Guiccioli was not very happy. Going to have the wife's mistress in the house, but that these attitudes to revolutionary was too dangerous even for a person of his wealth and in his position.
Byron and the landlord were the subject of police reports, describing them as dangerous conspirators. But while in his private life common sense was completely lacking, when it came to conspiring, it seems that Byron was very wary.
He was enthusiastic, courageous, but also prudent and full of common sense, and it seems that from the beginning he had many doubts about the organizational skills of the conspirators. In fact, he thought that if the Italian conspirators had not succeeded in uniting, they would have come to nothing.
So indeed it was. In March of the 1821 the Neapolitans insurgent (some months earlier!) Were defeated by the Austrians. The King repudiated the constitution he had just granted and everything returned to normal. In the wake of that defeat there were repressions throughout Italy and the family of his lover was forced into exile, perhaps just to hit Byron.
Indeed, the removal of her lover reached the goal of also removing Byron who followed her on her pilgrimage to Genoa.
His carbonara adventures were over, not so much can be said of his desire for adventure that led him to take the defenses of the Greeks against the Turks, which brought out the man of action (and he did however understand the true nature human!) but it cost him his life.
An excellent book, compelling, despite the "poetic" extracts, certainly not my favorites, which allowed me to know Byron and, through it, part of Italian history.
Alessandro Rugolo
