A mysterious voice inside your heart. Part 3.

A mysterious voice inside your heart. Part 3

In support of what I have told so far I would finally put two very fascinating witnesses, from the world of literature. The first comes from Alessandro Manzoni, our national author. Few have noted that such an "interior locution" is experienced also by the Unnamed to the heart of The Betrothed, his masterwork and our national novel, published in 1827. When in fact Lucia, kidnapped by this powerful and unnamed Spanish prince on behalf of the evil Don Rodrigo, is escorted to his castle, the Unnamed, this negative hero, who organizes continuous misdeeds, but who, soon, will reach his conversion, notices, with unusual agitation, from a castle window, the carriage approaching.

And he wanted to call one of  his henchmen, the "Kite", and send him straight up to the carriage, in order to send it back, and lead it to the palace of Don Rodrigo. But an imperious "NO" that rang in his mind, dispelled that design. (Chap. 20)

 

 

When, shortly after, the Unnamed receives the chief of his henchmen, the Kite, who was caught by compassion for Lucia, he would still like to get rid of the girl and immediately send her to Don Rodrigo: he has no idea that the young woman, with her humble faith, will be the means of his conversion. Then:

And raising his head, in the act of command, to the Kite, - Now, - he said, - set aside compassion: ride a horse, take a companion, two if you want; and go to the home of Don Rodrigo, whom you know. Tell him to send out ... but right now, because otherwise ...But another interior "NO", more imperious than the first, forbade him to finish. - No, - he said in a firm voice, as if to express to himself the command of the secret voice - no, go and get some rest; and tomorrow morning ... you'll do what I tell you! (Cap.21; emphasis added).
We are in the exact middle of the novel, which tells how two poor young people of Lombardy in 1600, Renzo and Lucia, can not get married because of the persecution by the powerful lord of their country, Don Rodrigo; and this one has Lucia be kidnapped by the Unnamed, a prince (actually he was a Visconti) who lives outside the law and is so powerful and feared that the author does not write his real name. But the conversion of the Unnamed is the key point of the novel, the time when the story finds a real revolution: since then, the prince becomes a help to Lucia. Few have noticed it, but the imperious "NO" is the focus of the story, the one that generates the upheaval: it is the Chief speaking. According to witnesses contemporary to Manzoni, he stated that the Unnamed was the character closest to his personality: and, without any doubt, the writer was inspired by his own conversion to describe that tormented character. 

As it is well-known, the key moment of Manzoni's conversion took place on April 2, 1810, during the celebrations in Paris for the marriage between Napoleon and Marie Louise of Austria; Manzoni lost his wife Henrietta in the crowd and, in a panic, took refuge in the church of Saint-Roche, close to the Tuileries: here something mysterious happened that would definitively draw him close to God. What it was, remains a mystery. Besides, all biographers are quick to explain that the process of return to the faith of the author must have been long, the result of prolonged meditations; and yet, something specific must have happened, as a turning point. The parallel with the Unnamed leads me to believe that the writer heard a commanding voice, like the one that thundered in the Unnamed's soul a "NO"; the one that, during his dissolute life, sometimes seemed to whisper: "I am, though."

The God of whom he had heard of, but Whom, for a long time, he did not bother to deny nor to recognize, as he was busy only to live, now, at certain times of killing without reason, without fear of danger, looked like crying to him: I am though (Ch. 20). "I am": the name of the biblical God.

                                              The  real castle of the Unnamed, in Lombardy

The other literary example comes from the world of the "last ones", from the "suburbs", the "periphery", as Pope Francis would say: it is Filumena Marturano, by Eduardo De Filippo, one of his finest plays, staged for the first time in 1946. It is the story of a prostitute who, with difficulty, manages to grow with dignity her three children; then she gets married to one of her clients, after a life of hardships, which began in the poorest Naples, where her parents pushed her to prostitution when she was only 17 years old. She tells how she decided to keep her first child, when her colleagues advised her to have an abortion, in the famous monologue of "Our Lady of the Roses": it must absolutely be seen in the interpretation by Mariangela Melato or, even better, by Titina de' Filippo, in the Naples original dialect.

                                    

t was three o'clock. I was walking alone on the street. I was gone from home since six months.(Alluding to her first feeling of motherhood) It was the first time. And what do I do? To ask for advice? The advices of my friends came back to my mind: "What are you waiting for! You get away from this worry! I know a very good one ...". Coincidentally, walking walking, I found myself in my alley, in front of the little altar of Our Lady of the Roses. It was well (she puts her fists on her hips and looks up to an imaginary effigy, as talking to the Virgin from woman to woman):"What should I do? You know everything ... You know as well why I have sinned. What should I do?". But she shut up, she did not answer.(Excited) "You do that, don't you? The more people talk to you, the more you get silent? ... I'm talking to you! (With vibrant arrogance) Reply!"(Mechanically, retracing the tone of voice of someone she did not know and that, at that time, spoke from an unknown origin) '' Children are children. "I froze. I was so firm.(She stiffens in front of the imaginary effigy). Maybe if I had turned around I would have seen or known where the voice came from: from a house with a balcony left open, from the nearby alley, from a window ... But I thought: "And why right now? What do people know of my problems? It was you, then ... It was Our Lady! I addressed her right in her face and She talked... (..) Children are children! "And I swore solemnly.

 

This monologue was played by Titina de' Filippo in front of Pius XII. Eduardo, one of the greatest men of the theater of '900, can only have taken the subject from the street of Naples, which he knew so well: behind this monologue one feels a true fact. But even if it were not true, this is the truth of art, one describing true life: and it makes shudder. It makes us shudder like the fact that, in our nights, we suddenly feel,a precious, firm, confident, authoritative voice inside our heart: "I am."

                                              The English version of Filumena Marturano