Mameli’s anthem: the story
We owe the city of Genoa Il Song of the Italiansbetter known as Mameli’s anthem. Written in the fall of 1847 by the then 20-year-old student Goffredo Mameli and set to music a little later in Turin by another Genoese, Michele Novaroil Song of the Italians was born in that climate of patriotic fervor that was a prelude to the war against Austria.
The immediacy of the verses and the impetus of the melody quickly made it the most loved song of the unification period. Not by chance Giuseppe Verdiin his Anthem of the Nations of 1862, entrusted precisely to Song of the Italians – and not to the Royal March (song of the House of Savoy and official anthem until 1946) – the task of symbolizing our homeland, placing it alongside God Save the Queen and Marseillaise.
It was almost natural, therefore, that the October 12, 1946 the Mameli anthem officially became the national anthem of the Italian Republic.
Who was the poet and soldier Goffredo Mameli
Goffredo Mameli dei Mannelli was born in Genoa on 5 September 1827 (son of Adele – or Adelaide – Zoagli, descendant of one of the most illustrious Genoese aristocratic families, and of Giorgio, from Cagliari, commander of a fleet of the Kingdom of Sardinia). A very precocious student and poet, with liberal and republican sentiments, he joined Mazzinianism in 1847, the year in which he actively participated in the great Genoese demonstrations for reform. Animated by a strong passion for words, he composes Il Song of the Italians and dedicated his life entirely to the Italian cause: in March 1848 the poet-soldier, at the head of 300 volunteers, reached Milan insurgent and then fought the Austrians on the Mincio with the rank of captain of the Bersaglieri.
After the armistice he returned to his hometown Genoa, where he collaborated with Garibaldi together with whom he will reach Rome where, on 9 February 1849, the Republic. Despite the fever, he was always on the front line in the defense of the city besieged by the French: on 3 June he was injured in his left leg, which had to be amputated due to gangrene.
Mameli will die of the infection on July 6, at half past seven in the morning, at just 22 years old, when he had already (literally) written the history of Italy. His remains rest in the Janiculum Ossuary Mausoleum.
How the Mameli anthem was born
The best-known testimony of how the anthem was written is that given, albeit many years later, by Anton Giulio Barrili, also a patriot and poet, friend and biographer of Mameli.
“There, on an evening in mid-September, in the house of Lorenzo Valerio (in Turin, ed.), a fine patriot and writer of good name, we were doing music and politics together. In fact, to get them to agree, several hymns that emerged in that year for every part of Italy were read on the piano, from that of Meucci, of Rome, set to music by Magazzari – Of the new year already l’alba primiera – to the very recent by the Piedmontese Bertoldi – With the blue cockade on his chest – set to music by Rossi.
At that moment, a new guest enters the living room, Ulisse Borzino, the illustrious painter that all my Genoese people remember. He came from Genoa; and turning to Novaro, with a piece of paper that he had taken out of his pocket at that point: – He said to him; Goffredo sends it to you. – Novaro opens the piece of paper, reads it and is moved. They all ask him what he is; they crowd around him. – A wonderful thing! – exclaims the master; and he reads aloud, and raises his entire audience to enthusiasm. – I felt – the Maestro told me in April 1975, having asked him for news of the Hymn, for a commemoration I had to hold for Mameli – I felt something extraordinary inside me, which I cannot define now, with everyone the twenty-seven years that have passed. I know that I cried, that I was upset, and I couldn’t sit still.
I placed myself at the harpsichord, with Goffredo’s verses on the lectern, and I strummed, I murdered that poor instrument with convulsed fingers, always with my eyes on the hymn, putting down melodic phrases, one on top of the other, but a thousand miles away from the idea that could fit those words. I got up dissatisfied with myself; I stayed a little longer at the Valerio house, but always with those verses before my mind’s eye. I saw that there was no remedy, I took my leave and ran home. There, without even taking off my hat, I threw myself at the piano.
The tune strummed in the Valerio house came back to my memory: I wrote it on a sheet of paper, the first that came to my hands: in my agitation I overturned the lamp on the harpsichord and, consequently, also on the poor sheet; This was the original of the Fratelli d’Italia anthem.”
Mameli’s anthem: the complete text
Brothers of Italy
Italy has awakened,
Of Scipio’s helmet
She put her head around it.
Where is the Victory?
He gets the chioma,
What a slave of Rome
God created her.Let’s gather together as a cohort,
we are ready to die,
we are ready to die,
Italy called.We have been for centuries
trampled on, mocked
because we are not People,
why are we divided:
collect us one
flag, a hope:
to merge together
the hour had already struck.Let’s unite, let’s love each other,
union and love
reveal to the people
the ways of the Lord;
we swear to set free
the native soil:
united for God,
who can win?From the Alps to Sicily
wherever Legnano is,
every man of Ferruccio
he has the heart, he has the hand,
the children of Italy
si chiaman Balilla,
the sound of every ring
Vespers rang.They are rushes that bend
swords sold:
ah l’aquila d’Austria
he has lost his feathers;
the blood of Italy
drank, with the Cossack
Polish blood:
but her heart burned.Long live Italy,
she woke up from sleep,
of Scipio’s helmet
she put her head on it.
Where is the victory?!
He gets the chioma,
as a slave of Rome
God created her.
Mameli hymn: the meaning, references and quotes
Il text contains numerous references to the history of Italy. “Scipio” is “Scipio Africanus”, or Publius Cornelius Scipio, Roman general who defeated the Carthaginian general Hannibal in the Battle of Zama and concluded the Second Punic War by liberating ancient Italy from the army of Carthage. Italy, therefore, metaphorically surrounds its head with the old helmet of Scipio to rebel, wake up (“awaken”) once again. “Vittoria” instead it is an invocation to the goddess, long linked to the history of Rome by God’s design and who now consecrates herself to the new Italy by offering her “the hair”, her hair, to have it cut.
The “cohort” instead it is a military unit of the Roman army, corresponding to the tenth part of the legion. In the refrain Mameli, which culturally had very classical connotations, refers to the call to arms of the Italian people. “Stringiamoci” becomes “stingiamci” for a simple matter of metric.
The last four stanzas, disused and less known, contain other references: in the second there is hope (“speme”), in the third the Mazzinian idea of a strong and free people united by the will of God, in the fourth the references to battle of Legnano against Barbarossa (1176), to the Florentine leader Ferruccio who heroically opposed Charles V of Habsburg. And again: “Balilla” is the child who gave rise to a popular revolt in 1746 against the Habsburg occupiers, the “Vespers” are the Sicilian sunsets, the scene of the rebellions of 1282 to remove the Angevins from Sicily.
In the fifth stanza there is the decadence of the Austrian empire (“Eagle”) undermined from within by the Polish people, oppressed by the Austrians (and by Russia, the “Cossack”) like the Italian one. The verse was initially censored by the Savoy government to avoid friction with the Austrian Empire.