'The seed that we have sown will remain' : Giuseppe Mazzini and the 'hero' of Arthur Hugh Clough's Amours de voyage

Abstract

'Poetry will sing to us the joys of martyrdom; the immortality of the vanquished; the tears that expiate; the sorrows that purify; the records, hopes, and traditions of the past world twining around the cradle of the new', the Italian statesman and writer Giuseppe Mazzini expounds in his 1835 essay 'Faith and Future.' According to this poetic manifesto, Arthur Hugh Clough's Amours de Voyage would be considered an abject failure in its depiction of an English anti-hero in Rome who rejects 'martyrdom.' However, I will suggest that parallels in action and thematic concerns between the two principal plots of Clough's 'five-act epistolary tragicomedy, or comi-tragedy' presage an association between the protagonist Claude and Mazzini in terms of their shared obsessions. The chronological framework of Clough's Amours largely coincides with the French siege of the short-lived Roman Republic. The latter was established in February 1849 when 'the elected assembly in Rome [ ... ] opted to constitute a new republic and declared the temporal power of the papacy to be at an end.' At this time Mazzini returned to Italy (from London) and, while initially reluctant to participate in the foundling government, strong encouragement from the assembly led him to agree to govern as one member of a triumvirate. 'So began the hundred days that were the one period in his [Mazzini's] life when he had practical experience of government', Denis Mack Smith writes, and a period during which Mazzini's faith in an ideal Roman republic appeared to translate into reality. Yet, despite his rule winning Mazzini more 'widespread support' than he had ever enjoyed, the fledgling, independent state lasted only a few months. France's President, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, sent General Charles Oudinot to assume control of the city in April and, while Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteer army temporarily resisted the siege, the French forces prevailed at the end of June by, controversially, bombarding the city.