Il cinque maggio
ode by Alessandro Manzoni
Il cinque maggio is an 1821 ode by the Italian poet Alessandro Manzoni, written after the news of Napoleon’s death on 5 May 1821. It opens with the famous line «Ei fu.» (“He is gone.”) and reflects on Napoleon’s rise and fall, the limits of worldly glory, and Providence.
Background
Manzoni read the Gazzetta di Milano of 16 July 1821 at his villa near Milan and, struck by the report of Napoleon’s death, drafted the poem quickly over three days in mid-July. A first autograph draft dated “18 Luglio [1821]” and a clean copy from late July survive in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.
Form and themes
The ode has 18 six-line stanzas in seven-syllable lines (settenari); the usual rhyme is ABCBDE. The poem moves from the shocked announcement of death («Ei fu.») to a brief survey of triumphs and defeats and ends with a Christian meditation on the vanity of fame and the possibility of grace.
Publication and reception
Austrian censorship blocked publication in Milan. The ode circulated in manuscript and was first printed outside Austrian control, then appeared in Italy in 1823 with the Turin publisher Marietti. The poem was soon known across Europe; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe translated it into German and published ‘‘Der fünfte Mai’’ in Über Kunst und Alterthum (1823).
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This entry incorporates text from “Il cinque maggio” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.