This Italian book was written as a series of letters from Jacopo to his friend Lorenzo. Jacopo is a young patriot who flees his hometown Venice after some finding himself on the losing side of a political battle. In a town to the west of Padova where he goes, he meets a girl, Teresa, and falls in love with her. She, however, is already forcibly engaged to a man, and her father will not relent, so she is stuck.
His letters to Lorenzo start out a mix of his infatuation with Teresa, and complaints about the political situation. But he becomes progressively more enamored of Teresa until he is hopelessly in love with her. His unhappiness is compounded by the facts that 1) her father really likes him, 2) Teresa’s fiancé likes him too, both of which would make any attempts on Teresa all the more betraying, and 3) Teresa herself is obviously NOT in love with her fiancé. These facts mix together to make Jacopo utterly miserable, and finally he commits suicide.
My first impression of Jacopo was that he would be called, in today’s vernacular, “a whiny little b****”. But at one point of the story, he communicates that he and Teresa had a moment where the barriers came down and they kissed. There is fallout from this, but through the next days, he is enraptured and nothing in the universe can bring his spirits down. Then the impossibility of a further relationship sets in and he is more despondent than ever. His outlook is utterly dependent on circumstances. When his personal life is good, nothing in the world is bad. When his personal life is frustrating, the entire universe is a toilet that needs to be flushed.
This is of course not unique to Jacopo, nor is it the sign of some incipient madness in him. We are all liable to be impacted by circumstances. But reading this brought some awareness to my own mind as to the effect of circumstances. Jacopo is dominated by his own thoughts and is a slave to his predicament. He’s almost autistic in his abandonment to his own world and his own problems. There is something pathetic in his self-absorption. That said, there were passages communicating his own regret to Teresa over his insertion of himself into her life that resonated deeply with me. As Jacopo tries to leave Teresa alone, so as not to disturb her life any more, his thoughts turn to the political battles and he produces some worthwhile, even if ultimately pessimistic, thoughts about the nature of humanity. But while there may be some truth in his assessments, they are too focused on the negative, because he personally is unable to see beyond his own problems.
In the end, his commitment to ending his own life, but not before he makes good and sure to let everyone involved with him how miserable he is, drags everyone down. It’s safe to say this story won’t be made into a Hallmark movie. Maybe Lifetime (if they could recast Jacopo as a woman), but not Hallmark.
One last note on the book; not the work, but on this particular version of the book. I ordered the book from a place called Bookshop.org. I had heard about this because it supposedly supports smaller independent bookshops, which appealed to me rather than buying from Amazon. But both the Italian books I ordered were print-on-demand versions. These are notorious for being barebones. There is no forward, no end notes, and everything about them just screams “CHEAP!” After having gotten a bunch of print-on-demand books from Amazon, I decided to use Bookshop…. and now this. I don’t know what kind of “small, independent” booksellers are doing print on demand, but I feel ripped off. I’m gonna have to go to buying Italian books from Italy if I want a real version.