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Fourteenth Scene
The XIX
Century
(James Morton; apart Dante and Virgil)
(When the
curtain rises again Dante and Virgil are watching James Morton surrounded by
industrial machines and stacks of agriculture products. He’s on his own and
calls repeatedly for company; but only Lord Digheels will answer his call;
there are two doors: an entrance door on the left and a sorting door on the
right; a bench is set in a corner, on the right side of the proscenium)
James Morton (increasing gradually his voice): Can
anyone hear me? Come on! Get out of there!
Fifteenth Scene
(The above said and Lord Digheels,
Lieutenant of Dorset; apart Dante and Virgil)
Lord Digheels (sorting out quietly from the entrance
door; he holds a leather-bound volume on his hands): Who is screaming up there?
J. Morton: At last you decided to sort out!!!
Lord Digheels: Ah, it’s you again?!? What are you
shouting about once more?
J. Morton: I’ve already told you thousands of times: I
don’t want to stay alone!!! I need someone to talk to… someone to join with… I
can give you half of my land if you get me someone in touch with!!!
Lord Digheels (reading
from his book of laws): And I’m tired of repeating it. In the book of laws the 1797 Unlawful Oaths Act forbids any seditious
meetings and assemblies. And now stop crying out, please!
J. Morton: Call Lord Melbourne, for me please!
Lord Digheels: He cannot go out! As a matter of fact
we are very busy full filling the
eternal compilation of statutes and human laws.
J. Morton: Please call at least my step-brother
Charles Wallaston!
(But Lord Digheels
already goes back to the entrance door and
the lights are off on crestfallen James Morton ; Dante and Virgil will appear
under a new light, aside the scene)
Sixteenth Scene
(Dante and Virgil)
Dante: Can you please explain to me what has gone
on just up there? Who is the man
shouting out? And the other man with that book on his hands?
Virgil: Yes, I think I can, my son. But first of all
you need to know something more about the nineteenth century society…and it’s a
long story indeed… so let’s take a seat on this bench, if you’re willing to listen the story!
Dante (enthusiastically, while they go to the bench)
I’m looking forward to hear your story master!!!
Virgil (taking seat in the bench): Have you seen all
those machines all around by the way?
Dante: Yes I’ve noticed them! They look so strange…so
eccentric…The skyline itself looks so rummy…
Virgil: Of course it does! This century has really
changed the world!!!. If the 18th century has changed the human
thought, we can say that the 19th has changed the material
conditions of Human hood! Those
machines have contributed to fill the world with goods…
Dante: May we say that this improved the people’s
level of well being?
Virgil: Unfortunately I’m not sure of that…
Dante: How do you say that master?
Virgil: Because the distribution of the result was
unfair, seeing the already rich people increasing their incomes and the poor
people increasing in poorness…
Dante: I see…
Virgil: Furthermore
the inhabitants of the world have reached now a billion in this century!!!
Dante: Gosh! It’s quite a lot!!! In my era they didn’t
reach three hundred millions!!!
Virgil: Even in the last century they were just an
half!!!
Dante: And this increasing population has to do with
the quarrel we heard up there?
Virgil: Yes, in my opinion is strictly related. But
let’s go step by step.
Dante: Yes master! I’ve heard that a great copy of
machines were invented to release the human fatigues and make living more
pleased!
Virgil: Well, it’s only one face of the medal as a
matter of fact!!!
Dante: What did it go wrong then?
Virgil: What’s wrong it’s the human soul, so selfish,
so greedy of richness, ‘you know?
Dante (sadly) I see…
Virgil: Well, let’s go on in our story. In 1834, when
that bawl took place, a group of workers tried to join their forces together in
order to face the rich owners and get a better salary!!!! But the shouting man,
as you called him, exploiting an unfair law, forbidding any sort of union
between workers, made the the workers arrested after an unjust trial. And that
what’s passed in the story as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Dante: I see now the counterpass: the man up there is
damned to stay alone for ever…
Virgil: that’s it!
Dante: But may I ask you a question?
Virgil: Of course you can!
Dante: You talked about an unjust trial but you also said
there was a law against the poor workers. It seems to me a contradiction!?!
Virgil: Only if you don’t distinguish between natural
rights and positive laws!
Dante: I think I know what you mean: a man should have
the courage to break the state’s laws to affirm the natural rights which are
written in the soul of any man by God
Himself!
Virgil: Yes son, you’re absolutely right! I see you
are really a good pupil!
Dante: What also can you tell me about this century?
Virgil: Quiet a lot! What do you want know about?
Dante: Anything my master! I’m so thirsty of knowledge
and I feel so ignorant…
Virgil: Only clever people feel like that…
Dante (pleased) Thank you master…
Virgil: First of all I would like to tell you that the
century began with Great Britain and
Ireland merging to become the United
Kingdom.
Dante: As far as I know UK is on verge to become a
great, strong country…
Virgil: You know well. In 1805, as a matter of fact,
UK defeats French and Spanish and starts dominating the seas. But it’s
already an empire and much more because in a decade Napoleon will be defeated at Waterloo…
Dante: I’ve read another world was born after that…
Virgil: Surely after that… but I’m not so sure it was
because of that…
Dante: What do you mean master?
Virgil: Have you read that in 1819 in England, 60.000 gather in a field and
listen to a call for universal suffrage? And that a magistrate sends a force to arrest the main
speaker, Henry Hunt?
Dante: Is it anything related to the Cato Street Conspiracy?
Virgil: In my opinion the arrest of Henry Hunt is
prodromal to the Cato Street Conspiracy; but the roots of all that are not to
be found just in there…
Dante: May be can be found in the Congress of Vienna?
Virgil: Though all the facts are connected to each
other, talking of the roots, not only for the parliamentary reform in England
but for all the reforms maturing all over Europe, I would
quote the Enlightenment revolution! In its thought, in its instances, we found the real roots of the new world…
Dante: (with anger and surprise) Good Heavens! I would
never have said a guy like that François-Marie Arouet could have been so
impressive in the story of human intellectual evolution…
Virgil (smiling comprehensively): Don’t think only of Voltaire, my son ! Think also of Montesquieu, Locke, Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, d'Holbach, du Châtelet
and all the group of the Encyclopédie! You cannot say they don’t have all been thinkers
of great thickness!
Dante:
You’re right as usually, schoolmaster! Because of my poodle against Voltaire we
glided superficially over a milestone of human thought…I’m very sorry about
that!
Virgil(with
sympathetic malice): Don’t worry my son!
We will find the Encyclopédidts’ thought
later on in the Purgatory on more than a philosopher!!!
Dante:
Give me some names please!!!
Virgil:
Here you got three of them: Cesare Beccaria, Karl Marx e Friedrich
Nietzsche! Not to mention the Americans Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson!!!
Dante:
(with admiration) Oh master! How can you be so utterly remembering!!!
Virgil:
(humbly belittling): Don’t forget I’m
older than you!!! And please, don’t forget that things are never so neatly as
black and white might show!!!
Dante:
What do you mean by that master?
Virgil:
I want to tell you that some countries
may go forward while others seem to go back…
Dante:
Make an example, please!!! Just to allow me to understand better!!!
Virgil:
I’ll tell you! More and the less in the same period of the Cato Street
Conspiracy in Spain the
Inquisition, which had been already ended
by the Revolution, with King Ferdinand's return it is revived. And a Jew is burned at the stake, also a Spanish
Quaker schoolmaster who replaced "Hail Mary" with "Praise be to
God" in school prayer. It’s true that it has been described as the last of
such executions, but as a matter of fact we are in 1826.
Dante: It sounds almost unbelievable!!!
Virgil: Do you want another example of these
contradictions?
Dante: Please master!
Virgil: Over a
decade, while Pope Gregory XVI bans railways in his Papal States, calling them
"ways of the devil”, the first telegraph line in the world, between the American cities of Baltimore and
Washington, is connected!
Dante: May we say then that it was a struggle between
religion and scientific revolution?
Virgil: From one hand! But on the other hand we had
people, like French writer Victor Hugo,
who tried to unite revolution and religion!
Dante: I see… I was too patriotic and narcissistic to go beyond Italian romanticism…Giacomo Leopardi, Ugo Foscolo and Alessandro Manzoni , people like that, ‘you know?
Virgil: You’re not to be blamed for that, my son! Of course you have also read about the Sturm and Drung’s German authors?
Dante: For sure I have!
Virgil: Yet there is an event which spread all over Europe!
Dante: What are you referring to, master?
Virgil: I’m talking about the springtime of peoples, the revolutions of 1848!
Dante: Please tell me about that master!
Virgil: Well, for a strange connection, all started with the publication of the Communist Manifesto, published in London by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels…
Dante: Why do you say it was a strange connection?
Virgil: Because the 1848 revolution started in Paris on February; but there was not a French translation of the Manifesto available when the first riots rose up against what was left of the ancient feudal order…
Dante: What did this Manifesto say of such an importance?
Virgil: I’ll tell you what; though I’m not at all a communist, I have still in my mind the incipit of the Manifesto: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"
Dante: It sounds really impressive!
Virgil: Believe it or not the materialist conception of history, contained in the first section of the Manifesto, is bound to influence the relations between men and states, for the centuries to come!
Dante: I’m trying to translate this statement to my personal experience in the Florence of my youth life…
Virgil: Very interesting… And what do you think about?
Dante: Well, there is a struggle, but it was between
Guelfs and Ghibellins first; then between Black and White fractions of the winners…
Virgil: And then?
Dante: They were struggles between political
activists… and they seem to me quite belonging to same class… not different
classes struggling to each other, yet struggle inside the same class…
Virgil: I see what you mean… But you cannot deny you
were struggling for conquering the power, the institutions, the banks, the
means of production, can you?
Dante: Well, maybe I can’t… What happened afterward?
Virgil: At the
beginning the aristocrats and the men in charge, headed by royal absolutism, released the Constitutions, recognizing all
the rights requested by the rioters…freedom of speech, press liberty, better
condition of labor and life…’ you know?
Dante: And how long did all that last?
Virgil: Before 1848, idealism and reason were at the forefront of people's
minds. However, after 1848, the concept of Realpolitik and action arose. This
new toughness of mind rejected high-minded ideology for action, and marked the
end of the Enlightenment.
Dante: All went lost
then?
Virgil: Oh, no for sure
my son! The man’s history is all made by ups and downs, you know? At least you
can be satisfied: Italy reached its unity in 1861 but starting the march on
1848, if I’m not wrong!!!
Dante: You’re never wrong master! What about France?
Virgil: As soon as 1871 French forces crushed the
Paris Commune, and as many as 30,000 "Communards" and innocent
Parisians are summarily executed. I save you the history of the new Napoleon,
the emperor, known as Napoleon the III, for I think you might be tired of this
century….
Dante: I never get tired of hearing you talking
master!!!
Virgil: There would be hundreds of things to be said….
Dante: May I say one?
Virgil: of course you can!
Dante : I apologize in advance for what it might seen
a sort of boast…
Virgil (in benevolent tone): Oh come on, Dante! Don’t be so shy every time!
Dante: In 1888, in Florence, a society is founded after my name!
Virgil: Eventually you are collecting what you sewed my son! You deserved all the awards they gave to you all over the world!
Dante: Thank you master!
Virgil: But remember that before that, we must remark, in 1883 that Karl Marx dies and John Maynard Keynes and Benito Mussolini are born. Please remember the last two names: we will heard of them in the next century!
Dante: Both in this part of the journey.
Virgil: One is suffering in the Hell but the other one is in Paradise!
Dante: What about this century? Other names to be remarked?
Virgil: Well in the same 1883 the Ottoman sultan, Abd al-Hamid II, has his former prime minister, Midhat Pasha, strangled. He was not what can be called a good boy, ‘you know?
Dante: Yes, I’ve heard of him!
Virgil: I want to remind that at the end of this century the Aspirin was discovered; First commercial film was released , studies in Hysteria by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud launch an Age of Analysis and finally in 1896 Olympic Games revived in Greece.
Dante: May I ask you something before we go?
Virgil: Go on!
Dante: I would like to talk of the Dreyfus Affair…If you don’t mind of course…
Virgil: By Jove! I don’t mind at all! But though the Dreyfus Affair starts at the end of the XIX century it sees its end a couple of decades in the following century and even more!
Dante: Is that a problem master?
Virgil: Not really my son! But the Affair leads us in the next century of our journey!
Dante (perplexed): And you didn’t plan to go so further?
Virgil: I don’t have any plans at all my son! If you want we can get straight in the middle of the Dreyfus Affair?
Dante (excited): Does that mean that I could talk with the men involved in Affair?
Virgil: At least you’ll be able to see them… but not certainly Alfred Dreyfus himself! For he has deserved to rest anywhere else but in the Hell Do you understand?
Dante: Yes, master! As you command!
Virgil: So, let’s hurry up! It’s not a long way from here!
Exeunt
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