Rienzi, Last of the Roman Tribunes

Baron Lytton Edward Bulwer Lytton

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. To Alessandro Manzoni, as to the Genius of the Place,

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• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819932017
• Langue: English

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RIENZI,
The Last of the Roman Tribunes
by
Edward Bulwer Lytton
Then turn we to her latest Tribune's name,
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee,
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame—
The friend of Petrarch— hope of Italy—
Rienzi, last of Romans! While the tree
Of Freedom's wither'd trunk puts forth a leaf,
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be—
The Forum's champion, and the People's chief—
Her new-born Numa thou!
Childe Harold, cant. iv. stanza 114.
Amidst the indulgence of enthusiasm and eloquence,Petrarch,
Italy, and Europe, were astonished by a revolution,which
realized for a moment his most splendid visions. —Gibbon,
chap. 1xx.
Dedication of Rienzi.
To Alessandro Manzoni, as to the Genius of thePlace,
Are Dedicated These Fruits, gathered on The Soil ofItalian Fiction.
London, Dec. 1, 1835.
Dedication,
Prefixed to the First Collected Edition of theAuthor's Works in 1840.
My Dear Mother,
In inscribing with your beloved and honoured namethis Collection of my Works, I could wish that the fruits of mymanhood were worthier of the tender and anxious pains bestowed uponmy education in youth.
Left yet young, and with no ordinary accomplishmentsand gifts, the sole guardian of your sons, to them you devoted thebest years of your useful and spotless life; and any success it betheir fate to attain in the paths they have severally chosen, wouldhave its principal sweetness in the thought that such success wasthe reward of one whose hand aided every struggle, and whose heartsympathized in every care.
From your graceful and accomplished taste, I earlylearned that affection for literature which has exercised so largean influence over the pursuits of my life; and you who were myfirst guide, were my earliest critic. Do you remember the summerdays, which seemed to me so short, when you repeated to me thoseold ballads with which Percy revived the decaying spirit of ournational muse, or the smooth couplets of Pope, or those gentle andpolished verses with the composition of which you had beguiled yourown earlier leisure? It was those easy lessons, far more than theharsher rudiments learned subsequently in schools, that taught meto admire and to imitate; and in them I recognise the germ of theflowers, however perishable they be, that I now bind up and layupon a shrine hallowed by a thousand memories of unspeakableaffection. Happy, while I borrowed from your taste, could I havefound it not more difficult to imitate your virtues— your spirit ofactive and extended benevolence, your cheerful piety, yourconsiderate justice, your kindly charity— and all the qualitiesthat brighten a nature more free from the thought of self, than anyit has been my lot to meet with. Never more than at this moment didI wish that my writings were possessed of a merit which mightoutlive my time, so that at least these lines might remain a recordof the excellence of the Mother, and the gratitude of the Son.
E. L. B. London: January 6, 1840.
Preface
to
The First Edition of Rienzi.
I began this tale two years ago at Rome. On removingto Naples, I threw it aside for “The Last Days of Pompeii, ” whichrequired more than “Rienzi” the advantage of residence within reachof the scenes described. The fate of the Roman Tribune continued,however, to haunt and impress me, and, some time after “Pompeii”was published, I renewed my earlier undertaking. I regarded thecompletion of these volumes, indeed, as a kind of duty; — forhaving had occasion to read the original authorities from whichmodern historians have drawn their accounts of the life of Rienzi,I was led to believe that a very remarkable man had beensuperficially judged, and a very important period crudely examined.(See Appendix, Nos. I and II. ) And this belief was sufficientlystrong to induce me at first to meditate a more serious work uponthe life and times of Rienzi. (I have adopted the termination ofRienzi instead of Rienzo, as being more familiar to the generalreader. — But the latter is perhaps the more accurate reading,since the name was a popular corruption from Lorenzo. ) Variousreasons concurred against this project— and I renounced thebiography to commence the fiction. I have still, however, adhered,with a greater fidelity than is customary in Romance, to all theleading events of the public life of the Roman Tribune; and theReader will perhaps find in these pages a more full and detailedaccount of the rise and fall of Rienzi, than in any English work ofwhich I am aware. I have, it is true, taken a view of his characterdifferent in some respects from that of Gibbon or Sismondi. But itis a view, in all its main features, which I believe (and think Icould prove) myself to be warranted in taking, not less by thefacts of History than the laws of Fiction. In the meanwhile, as Ihave given the facts from which I have drawn my interpretation ofthe principal agent, the reader has sufficient data for his ownjudgment. In the picture of the Roman Populace, as in that of theRoman Nobles of the fourteenth century, I follow literally thedescriptions left to us; — they are not flattering, but they arefaithful, likenesses.
Preserving generally the real chronology of Rienzi'slife, the plot of this work extends over a space of some years, andembraces the variety of characters necessary to a true delineationof events. The story, therefore, cannot have precisely that orderof interest found in fictions strictly and genuinely dramatic, inwhich (to my judgment at least) the time ought to be as limited aspossible, and the characters as few; — no new character ofimportance to the catastrophe being admissible towards the end ofthe work. If I may use the word Epic in its most modest andunassuming acceptation, this Fiction, in short, though indulging indramatic situations, belongs, as a whole, rather to the Epic thanthe Dramatic school.
I cannot conclude without rendering the tribute ofmy praise and homage to the versatile and gifted Author of thebeautiful Tragedy of Rienzi. Considering that our hero be the same—considering that we had the same materials from which to choose ourseveral stories— I trust I shall be found to have little, if atall, trespassed upon ground previously occupied. With the singleexception of a love-intrigue between a relative of Rienzi and oneof the antagonist party, which makes the plot of Miss Mitford'sTragedy, and is little more than an episode in my Romance, havingslight effect on the conduct and none on the fate of the hero, I amnot aware of any resemblance between the two works; and even thiscoincidence I could easily have removed, had I deemed it the leastadvisable:— but it would be almost discreditable if I had nothingthat resembled a performance possessing so much it were an honourto imitate.
In fact, the prodigal materials of the story— therich and exuberant complexities of Rienzi's character— joined tothe advantage possessed by the Novelist of embracing all that theDramatist must reject (Thus the slender space permitted to theDramatist does not allow Miss Mitford to be very faithful to facts;to distinguish between Rienzi's earlier and his later period ofpower; or to detail the true, but somewhat intricate causes of hisrise, his splendour, and his fall. )— are sufficient to preventDramatist and Novelist from interfering with each other.
London, December 1, 1835.
Preface to the Present Edition, 1848.
From the time of its first appearance, “Rienzi” hashad the good fortune to rank high amongst my most popular works—though its interest is rather drawn from a faithful narration ofhistorical facts, than from the inventions of fancy. And thesuccess of this experiment confirms me in my belief, that the truemode of employing history in the service of romance, is to studydiligently the materials as history; conform to such views of thefacts as the Author would adopt, if he related them in the drycharacter of historian; and obtain that warmer interest whichfiction bestows, by tracing the causes of the facts in thecharacters and emotions of the personages of the time. The eventsof his work are thus already shaped to his hand— the charactersalready created— what remains for him, is the inner, not outer,history of man— the chronicle of the human heart; and it is by thisthat he introduces a new harmony between character and event, andadds the completer solution of what is actual and true, by thosespeculations of what is natural and probable, which are out of theprovince of history, but belong especially to the philosophy ofromance. And— if it be permitted the tale-teller to come reverentlyfor instruction in his art to the mightiest teacher of all, who,whether in the page or on the scene, would give to airy fancies thebreath and the form of life, — such, we may observe, is the lessonthe humblest craftsman in historical romance may glean from theHistorical Plays of Shakespeare. Necessarily, Shakespeare consultedhistory according to the imperfect lights, and from the popularauthorities, of his age; and I do not say, therefore, that as anhistorian we can rely upon Shakespeare as correct. But to that inwhich he believed he rigidly adhered; nor did he seek, as lesserartists (such as Victor Hugo and his disciples) seek now, to turnperforce the Historical into the Poetical, but leaving history ashe found it, to call forth from its arid prose the flower of thelatent poem. Nay, even in the more imaginative plays which he hasfounded upon novels and legends popular in his time, it is curiousand instructive to see how little he has altered the originalground-work— taking for granted the main materials of the story,and reserving all his matchless resources of wisdom and invention,to illustrate from mental analysis, the creations whose outline hewas content to borrow. He receives, as a literal fact not to bealtered, the somewhat incredible assertion of the novelist, thatthe pure and delicate and highborn Venetian loves the swarthy Moor—and that Romeo fresh from his “woes for