Page:The National Idea in Italian Literature.djvu/44

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

the character of faction and of sect, identify itself with the nation. Gioberti already indicated, in Cavour, the statesman who would collaborate with the king in the work of Italian renovation. And, looking to the future of Europe, he declared: "The adequate constitution of our nationality will only be effectuated by one of those universal and unconquerable commotions which free the peoples from the tutelage of their rulers, and make them the arbiters of their own destinies" (7).

Mazzini and Gioberti are the prophets of the Risorgimento. In poetry, the republican idealism is represented by Mameli; the monarchical faith by Giovanni Prati. Niccolò Tommaseo speaks for the Italians of Dalmatia, his "seconda Italia." In 1856, Daniele Manin—the heroic defender of Venice in 1849—followed Gioberti: "Io, repubblicano, pianto per primo il vessillo unificatore: Italia col Re Sardo." The meeting of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel in the liberated South on October 26th, 1860, symbolises the union of the revolutionary and monarchical forces that had delivered and were making Italy: "Saluto il primo Re d'Italia" (8).

32