On the Origins of Making Italy: Massimo D’Azeglio and ‘Fatta l’Italia, bisogna fare gli Italiani’

Abstract

This article clarifies the origin of a phrase that has been central to Italy’s nation-making project since the mid-nineteenth century, ‘Fatta l’Italia, bisogna fare gli Italiani,’ and which has been erroneously attributed to statesman Massimo D’Azeglio since approximately 1866. It traces the permutations of the phrase through the publication history of D’Azeglio’s I miei ricordi, its resurfacing in the writings of Ferdinando Martini at the fin de siècle, and finally its reappropriation by Gabriele D’Annunzio and Fascism. Investigating this history shows how ‘making Italy’ emerged as a common trope in the nationalist discourse by exposing the ways in which interpersonal relationships shaped its textures, and, in doing so, how personal and political spheres also became intertwined in Italy’s national project. In such ways, D’Azeglio’s maxim signifies the dialectical tensions between poiesis and negation — tensions that mutually constitute and destabilize the contours of the modern Italian nation-state.

Keywords:

• Massimo D’Azeglio
• Ferdinando Martini
• nationalism
• rhetoric
• Risorgimento
• Fascism

I would like to extend a heartfelt grazie mille to Albert Ascoli, Mia Fuller, and Barbara Spackman for their generous feedback and unwavering support on this and so many of my other endeavors.

Notes

1 The spatial constraints of this essay preclude an examination of the rhetoric of negation, which I have addressed in-depth elsewhere (Hom Cary, 2007: 41–86).

2 Silvana Patriarca gives an excellent overview of these and other texts concerning Italian nationhood and national identity that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s (Patriarca, 2010: 1–19 and 2001a: 21–34).

3 The majority of citations from I miei ricordi are taken from Massimo D’Azeglio’s original manuscript, housed at the Raccolta Azegliana, F. 000001, B. 0572, Carta 1–12, Archivio dell’Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento, Rome. The other citations, given with page numbers, are taken from the 1949 edition, published by Einaudi and edited by Alberto M. Ghisalberti, which is a direct reproduction of manuscript.

4 On the reappropriation of ‘character’ in contemporary scholarship, see Silvana Patriarca (2010 and 2001b: 309).

5 The early editions of I miei ricordi published from 1867 to 1934 do not include the clause ‘che sappiano adempiere al loro dovere.’ In 1949, Einaudi published the first version with the original phrase. The editor, Ghisalberti, asserts that his edition is more faithful to the author’s manuscript.

6 See Giuseppe Fumagalli (1934: 358). The saying, ‘Italia farà da sé’ had likely been around before Carlo Alberto, as there is evidence it was used in diplomatic letters during the 1840s. Even earlier, at the turn of the nineteenth century, Italia farà da sé was apparently the slogan of a secret society called ‘I Raggi,’ which anchored the anti-French resistance in Tuscany during Napoleon’s reign. See Massimo Viglione (1999: 212–15) and the Dizionario del Risorgimento nazionale (1930: 851–52).

7 The letter from Massimo D’Azeglio to Gasparo Barbèra, dated September 3, 1865, is also cited in Raffaele Mariano (1905: 465).

8 This entire episode is related in both Ferdinando Martini (1896: 98–99) and Americo Scarlatti (1935: 35–40).

9 De Rubris’s poetic pen name likely came from his study of Dante. In the version of the Vita Nuova that De Rubris edited, there is an inscription that bears his name, Marco Rossi, translated into Latin: Marcus de Rubris (Alighieri, 1921: frontispiece).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Malia Hom

Dr Stephanie Malia Hom is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Oklahoma. She is the author of several articles on topics such as the vocabularies of Italian nationalism, and identity and mobility in Italian migrant literature. She has recently completed a book manuscript titled, Destination Italy: Tourism, Nation, Place, which explores how mass tourism constructs Italy as a land of vacation, and is currently at work on a book project concerning Italian colonial mobilities.

Correspondence to: Dr Stephanie Malia Hom, University of Oklahoma, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, & Linguistics, 780 Van Vleet Oval, Room 206, Norman, OK 73019, USA. Email: [email protected]