Ugo Foscolo’s The Last Letters of Jacobo Ortis was
written right before the Risorgimento, which was the start of Italian
unification after being long divided into different states. Foscolo, through
Jacobo Ortis, displays his strong sense of nationalism towards Italy, even
though he explains his sadness of Italy always being ruled by different hands.
Even though Ortis had to flee his homeland to escape
political persecution, he still loves Italy as well as understands the
personified state of what Italy has gone through in its history. “And why must
I accuse you, my homeland, and sympathise with you, with no hope at all of ever
being able to improve you or help you?” (Foscolo 90). His nationalism is built stronger
throughout his life, especially towards the end, because he feels the pain of
Italy as his own. Italy was constantly in the hands of different powers, being
torn into factions, and Ortis is able to sympathize with it because while he
feels a sense of a homeland, he had to be stripped away from it to escape
persecution. He is constantly wishing for Italy to be at peace where he would
one day be able to return to his hometown, but that day did not come for him.
Ortis’s nationalism brought about many discussions to his
friend, Lorenzo, about an idealistic, unified Italy. When talking of a
revolution he states, “But make sure that it be without massacres, without
sacrilegious reforms in religion, without factions, without proscriptions and
banishments, without the aid and the blood and the depredation of foreign arms…I
would exhort Italy to accept her present state peacefully, leaving to France
the misfortune…like all those thrones which are founded upon dead bodies”
(Foscolo 36). Ortis believes in unity without arms and a land where the people can
live peacefully without being persecuted for their beliefs. Part of his
distress in this book was due to his love of country, but inability to fix the
problems that have arisen in it. This caused him to have a longing for a desire
that was never fulfilled in his lifetime.
I'm afraid I must disagree with your view that Jacopo's nationalism grows as his life goes on and actually grows more secluded to the Venetian islands individually. The cause being that when traveling across Italy and its broken up states he finds himself treated different. The story of the peasant that was once a student where Jacopo taught adds to his despair toward the growing division between the different regions and begins to dilute his belief and hope for a unified Italy. This dilution compacts onto Jacopo's desire to return to his homeland of the Venetian Islands as he does not feel at him in the other regions of Italy.
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