Die geistigen Grundlagen des Risorgimento

The history of the Italians' sense of national unity began several centuries prior to the efforts to implement a concrete realization of this national unity on a political level. Through the vehicle of language, Dante had already created the foundation for a cultural sense of unity. Expressions pregnant with patriotic passion were to be found as early as Petrarch, and later with Machiavelli and Guicciardini. But, as much as the Italy of the Renaissance period was aware of its cultural preeminence over the other peoples of Europe, the striving toward national unity was essen­ tially alien to it. The two words "renaissance" (Italian: "rinascimento") and "risorgimento", though they may be very similar in their meaning ("rebirth" - "resurrection"), characterize two historic phenomena of two completely dissimilar magnitudes. The primary position in the scale of values of the Renaissance period is occupied by the esthetic, the protagonists of the Renaissance movement are the artist and the man of letters in the service of a noble patron of the arts; from the sociological point of view, this is a phenomenon of the elite. On the other hand, the intellectual of the "risorgi­ mento" aimes at winning over all parts of the people to his cause, he parti­ cipates in political and military life, the guiding star of the "risorgimento" movement is the ethic-political-national idea.