Illusion in Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis

            In Ugo Foscolo’s book, Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, there is an evident theme of illusion. The protagonist, Jacopo Ortis, states that, “everything, everything that exists for men is only their fantasy. . . We construct reality in our own image. . . Our passions are in the last analysis only the consequence of our illusions” (Foscolo 61). This quote defines Ortis’s perception of life. Ortis proposes that men create illusions to bear the burdens of everyday living. Everything man feels is only a fantasy he created to fuel his desire to live and to give him a purpose. He continues to suggest that humans construct their reality based off of their inner feelings and inner selves; one constructs his own unique reality based on his individual fantasies. Lastly, he states that passions are a direct result of illusions.

            Ortis, a young, patriotic, scholar, is ruled and dominated by his passionate personality. He falls madly in love with Teresa, a beautiful woman engaged to another man. However, Ortis’s passion is not quenched by these boundaries. On the contrary, he associates Teresa with the divine, always thinking of her as “a heavenly creature” and “(his) angel” (Foscolo 21; Foscolo 138). He states that, “if I agreed to tear this veil away from my eyes, I should have to close them straightaway in everlasting sleep, for without this angelic light, life to me would be terror, the world a chaos” (Foscolo 50). Teresa has become the purpose of his life. He is searching for God and a promise of eternal life, and he finds this promise in Teresa. As God is a refuge for his followers, Teresa has become Jacopo’s refuge. He is afraid of nothingness and the void after death, but with Teresa he is able to believe in eternal love and eternal life. He wholeheartedly believes in the infinite love between himself and Teresa, and he reveres her over God, saying, “I have never adored (God) as I adore Teresa. Blasphemy! She, equal to God? . . . Everything is chaos, everything vanishes, and everything turns to nothing. God becomes incomprehensible to me, and Teresa is always before me” (Foscolo 71).

            Without Teresa, Ortis believes “everything turns to nothing” (Foscolo 71). He is frustrated, because, he does not truly believe in God’s omnipotence and, therefore, he does not wholeheartedly believe in God’s promise of life after death. However, after Teresa marries her fiancé, Ortis wonders, “is it indeed true that this image of a heavenly angel exists here, in this vile world, among us? And I suspect that I may have fallen in love with a creature of my imagination” (Foscolo 63). Ortis realizes that Teresa was an illusion of divinity. She cannot satisfy his craving for spiritual fulfillment on this earth, for they must be separated.  His passion for her, as he stated earlier, was “only the consequence of (his) illusions” (Foscolo 61). With these illusions expelled and his passions quieted, he commits suicide. Without illusions, Ortis cannot construct his own reality, and he believes there is only nothingness (Foscolo 61).