Garibaldi

by Lucy Riall

  Most of all, La Civiltà Cattolica issued dire warnings about Garibaldi's republicanism and socialism, all the while glorying in any evidence of bad feeling among the nationalists. In a review of the anonymous pamphlet Garibaldi politico, one of the few liberal publications openly hostile to Garibaldi in this period,201 the paper likened the revolution to Saturn devouring his own offspring (recycling a Piedmontese comment on Aspromonte in 1862).202 The Italian revolution ‘has been until now a great devourer of its children’, and while the monarchist party had been eaten by the democrats it was now trying for a ‘return match, helping others to devour its devouring party’. This ‘spectacle’, concluded the paper, was inevitable: ‘all that is done against God and his Church is foolish and transient … in this world the eternal justice of the Almighty frequently punishes the sect which hates Christ’.203

  Conclusion

  In this chapter, I have sought to show that there is a great deal of political and symbolic interest in the last years of Garibaldi's life. He was a more successful, and much less marginal, figure than is often assumed. His perception of the economic, social and political problems affecting early-liberal Italy was not wholly misplaced, nor were his unstinting efforts to establish a broad-based radical movement with as wide an appeal as possible. For somebody so established and successful, he showed a remarkable ability to reinvent himself, and to adapt to the different political circumstances prevailing after Mentana; and in his willingness to risk his fame and defy infirmity by continuing to campaign for radical change we should recognise an impressive display of physical and intellectual courage. Much of what we perceive as disappointing in Garibaldi's later career is a product of the political conflict in this period: of his convincing attempt (ably reinforced by his colleagues) to pose as the victim of political betrayal and of official efforts to marginalise him or to deny him a serious political role.

  A study of Garibaldi in this period can also tell us a great deal about the broader process of nation-building in liberal Italy, and especially about its problems. First, Garibaldi and his radical associates claimed to represent the Risorgimento, and they appropriated its symbolic system. They spoke for the ‘real’ Italy which had been betrayed and excluded by a dishonest and feeble government, and in so doing they pre-empted and challenged government attempts to symbolise the nation and inspire a more official sense of national belonging. Second, in his attacks on the Church, identified as the true enemy of the nation, Garibaldi also placed part of the blame on the government for failing to combat clericalism, and for collaborating in its policy to mislead and corrupt the Italian people. At the same time, the Church was far from idle. In the person of the Pope and through its control of the Catholic press, the Church entered the modern battle for the hearts and minds of Italians. It set up the Pope as the victim of Italian aggression, it mocked all efforts to construct a secular sense of community, and it identified Garibaldi as the symbol of demonic ‘Revolution’. In effect, the task of nation-building in liberal Italy was not just frustrated by the persistence of regional and local loyalties or the prevalence of popular ignorance; nation-building was also undermined by disagreements among the nationalists, and by the Church, which proposed and promoted a very potent, rival version. In the process, both the radicals and the Church adopted extreme rhetorical stances and forced the governing party to occupy a weak and unconvincing middle ground.

  The struggle to invent official symbols of Italian national identity was more than just a stand-off between the king, Vittorio Emanuele, and the General, Garibaldi. It was also a three-way fight between these two figures and the Pope. It is unfortunate that we know relatively little about the impact of this struggle on public opinion, although it might help to account for the perception of failure long associated with the Italian experience of nation-building. It is even hard to say who came out in front at the end of the culture wars, although it is very unlikely that it was the new state and its official version of national belonging. Not only had the state suffered a preventative propaganda strike at the hands of Garibaldi and his associates, but it was also faced with the charisma of Pius IX, who had ‘the Hand of God’ and a significant section of international public opinion on his side.

  The extent of the radical victory can also be questioned. One aspect of the Italian national discourse which emerges very clearly from a study of Garibaldi's efforts in these years is the rather narrow range of discursive options open even to the radical nationalists. Until the early 1860s, the radicals proved unable (or unwilling) to distinguish their language and symbols from those of the moderates; and increasingly thereafter, a kind of linguistic convergence occurred around the symbols and metaphors of the Catholic religion. Although we have seen in this book that the means of production and dissemination of the nationalist discourse were modern, linked to the expansion of print culture, popular theatre and associational life, at least part of the content and structure of this discourse was deeply traditional, based on biblical narrative and on the use of religious metaphors and symbols which divided the world into heroes, villains, victims and martyrs. This mixture of the secular and religious can explain both the emotional reach of Italian nationalism and its equivocal political impact. We have seen that Garibaldi was a master of the technique of modern politics – the short speech and the striking look – but there was also much in his presence which was pure ancien régime. As Garibaldi grew older, he left his bandit role far behind, and it became increasingly difficult to separate his image from that of a suffering saint. This elaboration worked rather well as an anti-government metaphor, but it was a weak weapon against the rhetoric of the Church, and it laid him particularly open to the kind of scornful attacks and political mockery which became a feature of the Catholic press’ approach to him. There are some striking similarities in the representations and descriptions of Garibaldi and Pius IX, but we should not assume that Garibaldi was always the more convincing public personality.

  The view of Italy as a weak and failed nation is a persistent one and, in the years after national unification, Italy's foundation story was recast as a tragic romance. Yet, as I have suggested in this chapter, this narrative is in part the product of political embellishment. That is, the ‘failure’ of Italy reflected the significant economic, social and political challenge of national unification but it was also the result of a polemic, in which the political loser(s) sought to denigrate and diminish the achievements of the victorious side. The effect of this polemic on the national discourse was to maintain at its very centre the persuasive contrast between a poetic vision of national belonging and the prosaic disenchantment of Italy's governments; in this way, the contrast which had been such a powerful weapon in the hands of the political opposition during the Risorgimento was to remain in place after the unification of Italy. On the radical side, few used it with more skill or to greater lasting effect than Garibaldi.

  The crucial point to recognise, however, is not so much that Italy was an unsuccessful nation as that it was a politically divided one. In many ways, the emphasis on a failed Italy in this political conflict, the strong focus on national heroes and national martyrs, on national ‘resurgence’ and national betrayal, points us to the overwhelming victory of the Italian nationalist discourse. Its success is shown by the dominance of patriotic language in political debate and the great capacity of the nationalist imaginary to provoke a passionate sense of political involvement. Perhaps what emerges most clearly from a study of the culture wars of early-liberal Italy is the absolute centrality of ideas of the nation to an increasingly bitter struggle for political power.

  CONCLUSION

  THE MYTH OF GARIBALDI

  We only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper.

  Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

  When Garibaldi died in 1882, The Times expressed its shock at the loss of a man who had ‘fascinated two hemispheres for thirty years’. He had, according to the paper, accomplished ‘a miracle of national regeneration
… To him … Italy is indebted for an ideal of manliness and individual self-reliance.’ ‘A nation is better for an ingredient of romance in its history’, the paper concluded, and Italy had ‘that ingredient copiously in the entire career of Garibaldi’.1 These words sum up neatly the combination of political wonder, literary fantasy and physical excitement which Garibaldi's name evoked for the nineteenth-century reader. In the conclusion, I want to reflect further on the ingredients of his ‘fascination’.

  In the course of the preceding chapters, I have shown how a political cult of Garibaldi as an Italian hero was conceived of, fashioned and promoted during the crucial transition years of the Risorgimento and Italian unification. The original purpose of the cult was to embody and publicise a political sense of italianità, to identify an imaginary narrative of romantic heroism with a living, military leader, and to encourage Italians to ‘regenerate’ themselves. The cult was prepared and executed with remarkable precision by Mazzini and his followers and, in the long decade of 1848–60, it combined with a broader campaign in the press and accompanied a programme of political–military action. By unification, the cult of Garibaldi had helped make visible and convincing a heroic (‘manly’) ideal of Italy which had hitherto existed in literature, music and the visual arts, or only in the closed, underground circles of political conspirators. After the unification of Italy, the heroic image of Garibaldi was at once the most prominent and persuasive symbol of the new Italy, and a constant reminder of its varied disappointments.

  I have suggested that a study of the Garibaldi cult can show us how nineteenth-century revolutionary and radical leaders, without a hold over government, administration or public finance, and long before the organisation of mass political parties in the 1880s, made use of the new technologies of mass communication to reach, constitute and persuade a substantial radical public. During the events of 1859–60 the cult became a myth in and of itself, based on a narrative which was at least partly invention and which embodied key themes and ideas of Risorgimento culture. A striking feature of this myth was the free, and outwardly flawless, mix of fact and fiction, and the recasting of political struggle as popular entertainment. There seems little doubt that Garibaldi's image was something manufactured and ‘managed’, which borrowed the tropes of adventure romances, harnessed the techniques of theatrical performance, and took on the liturgical and ritual aspects of religious practice.2 In this way, the creation of the myth of Garibaldi reflects both the political possibilities of modern communication techniques and the scavenging tendencies of nationalist rhetoric, which seeks to construct a popular and persuasive political ideology by appropriating and manipulating pieces of existing discourse and practice.

  Yet the process of political communication did not flow in one direction only, and the nationalist scavenging was far from random. First, the political ‘fascination’ of Garibaldi was very carefully staged for particular and/or different audiences: Garibaldi and those around him strove to establish a fit between his image and the fashionable tastes for fictional heroes, and much of his popular success was due to an acute sensitivity to the narrative demands of his public. So we should not assume that his audience was passive, and must recognise instead that they played an active role in creating the hero they desired. Second, Garibaldi's style was not entirely eclectic, but drew on three main sources. It was based on an established set of republican rituals, it pressed into service romantic metaphors and narratives of rebellion, and it made great use of his personal, and physical, attraction. Garibaldi's charisma was artifically fashioned, but it also fitted the man, his politics, and his audience's expectations.

  Garibaldi represents an alternative, and democratic, tradition of political heroism often overlooked by historians more interested in the origins of the authoritarian personality cults of the twentieth century. His popularity also reflects changes in the public sphere, from an elite-dominated world of letters to the more democratic world of popular or ‘low’ literature enjoyed by both men and women. By looking at press reports, popular biographies, prints and songs about Garibaldi, and at reactions to them, we can trace the popularisation of romanticism, and its partial fusion with political culture. In attacks on Garibaldi, we can also follow the struggle for control of the new, popular (although not yet ‘mass’) culture produced by this union. Perhaps most importantly, through the creation of a cult of Garibaldi we can gain an understanding of how activists tried to connect with cultural change and direct it to specifically political ends. Garibaldi reminds us that in our attempt to understand the formation, language and impact of nationalist movements in modern societies we cannot just focus on cultural production but should also seek to analyse political action, and that we should also consider the role of political struggle in creating a language of nationality and the public response to it.

  In my view, the cult of Garibaldi was the product of a vibrant movement of political radicalism which flourished in the mid-nineteenth century, and it was part of radicalism's attempt to promote, and insert itself into, an international mood of popular romanticism. The mix of romanticism and radicalism anticipated and helped to form a new, more spectacular style of political communication, characterised by the cult of personality, the borrowing of techniques developed for literature and the theatre, and the use of the press. This style, and the political symbolism which it produced, represents an early and in some respects defining stage in the emergence of mass politics in the nineteenth century.

  Since this ‘radical moment’ has been relatively neglected in recent research, we can only speculate about the reasons for its decline or, more accurately, for its diversion into the more antagonistic and chauvinistic political symbolism of the later-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nevertheless, if we look at Garibaldi we can observe a tendency for the charismatic construction to float free from its political moorings. The biography of Garibaldi was something of a collaborative effort, and while this ‘interactive’ aspect of Garibaldi's celebrity helps to explain its success, it also means that its political significance could be disputed. Garibaldi's image was always vulnerable to manipulation. Although the reworking of his legend occurred mainly after his death, along with the gradual defeat of radicalism, it was foreshadowed in Garibaldi's controversial attempts to maintain control over the use of his image in the years before he died. Just as radicals had been able to contest and reshape the public sphere by appropriating new methods of communication, so could conservatives and clericals wrest control from them using the very same techniques.

  Long before his death, control of Garibaldi's image had become a powerful instrument of political propaganda and political authority, and this was because popular identification with him could reach fanatical levels. The cult of Garibaldi was very successful. The creation of his heroic reputation owes a great deal to existing cults of hero worship, but it had a reach and a resonance which was almost unprecedented, especially when we remember that he was excluded from political power. It was international (he really was a ‘hero of two worlds’), visually spectacular, and it worked; Garibaldi was immensely famous, his presence could provoke mass demonstrations of popular enthusiasm, and from the late 1850s his name guaranteed large donations of money and encouraged a rush of volunteers to fight with him. Garibaldi's charisma provoked intensely passionate feelings of political belonging. Men and women felt personally involved with Garibaldi and were emotionally touched by his experiences. They not only supported his political aims but also identified their own romantic sensibilities, radical ambitions and/or religious hatreds with his struggle to ‘free’ Italy from foreign or ‘priestly’ oppression.

  This unusual achievement comes down largely to timing and to place. Garibaldi's emergence and definition as a popular hero was a symptom of political modernisation. It coincided with a popular revolution in publishing and reading, which helped writers, publishers and readers to challenge elite control of the public sphere, and made it possible to promote him – a revolutionary out
sider – on a hitherto unparalleled scale. Garibaldi reached much of his public through the leisure activity of reading and other forms of visual entertainment, and the public's response to him was conditioned by these media. Mazzini and Garibaldi were among the first to seize this development for political purposes, so that lack of competition also helps to explain the unrivalled nature of their publicity triumph. At the same time, the popular resonance of Garibaldi owed much to the persistence of tradition. That is, his appeal as an exceptional leader made sense to a culture where notions of the superhuman and (especially) the sacred still had a real political and social significance, and where people believed in kings, saints and miracles, or were at least nostalgic for them. This is perhaps most obvious in the case of Italy itself, with its strict religious hierarchy built around the charismatic figure of the Pope and popular faith in the miraculous power of saints,3 but it is also evident, if sometimes expressed more obliquely, in the press reactions to Garibaldi's successes in Britain and the United States. It is perhaps this nineteenth-century mix of tradition and modernity, and of democracy and dictatorship, which best explains the political reach and emotional impact of Garibaldi.