A volume recounting the dark sides of Manzoni’s genealogy.
Historian and bibliophile Pier Carlo Masini‘s surprising discovery dates back to 1996 and starts from an apocryphal manuscript found on the antiquarian market. With an extraordinary insight – that a fake manuscript can also contain true news – and with patient research work comes to identify the forger (Nino Bazzetta de Vemenia) and to supporting the resounding hypothesis: surfaced here for the first time and never surfaced in Manzonian memoirs, would configure in the Manzoni-Verri-Beccaria dynasty a situation whereby Pietro Verri would be Alessandro’s grandfather and uncle, Giovanni Verri would have his natural son by Giulia, his niece and lover, Alessandro Manzoni Beccaria would be neither a Manzoni nor a Beccaria, but a Verri on his father’s and mother’s side, the result of a risky relationship between blood relatives.
The essay has the structure of a gripping literary detective story set in the enlightenment and libertine Milan of the later 1700s. Pier Carlo Masini also examines other anecdotes contained in the apocryphal manuscript, sketching a sharp and unconventional portrait of the writer and his work up to his final days. The NovaCharta publishing house re-edited the text – published by Biblioteca Franco Serantini editions in a limited edition and long sold out – on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni’s death with the goal of rereading his biography in a more problematic key, less congealed and more “close” to us, able to grasp deep down the reasons for his taking refuge in writing as well as in religious faith.
The volume is enriched with an Iconographic Note by the editor dedicated to the main protagonists of the story and a preface by publisher Vittoria de Buzzaccarini, whose great-grandfather Bernardo Arnaboldi Gazzaniga at the writer’s death had bought Manzoni’s house to preserve it as a museum.
Andrea Tomasetig, antiquarian bookseller and editor of the reissue of only 300 copies, presented the volume during a literary walk, the Passeggiata Manzoniana, held November 21st. Texts on the theme (by Pietro Citati, Natalia Ginzburg, Guido Bèzzola, Vincenzo Consolo and the Author), read by actor Andrea Zuccolo, accompanied the route from Casa Manzoni to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
