Nationalist commitment and aristocratic deference diverged in Risorgimento-era Italy
Evidence
Panzini contrasts Cavour’s refusal to pay any official respects to the Austrian Emperor when he visited his Italian possessions in 1857 with the attitude of the Lombard aristocracy who paid him homage—including one lady who decorated her balcony with a tiger-skin in his honour. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1960
Categorization
- SHARE: A vivid single anecdote for someone interested in Gramsci or Italian unification — the tiger-skin balcony detail makes the aristocratic collaboration concrete.
- XREF: connects to: Italian aristocratic deference to foreign rulers persisted even as nationalists refused it; Early Italian nationalists failed because aristocrats withheld support; Nationalism’s political role depends on the class configuration of its power bloc — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 21
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Italian aristocratic deference to foreign rulers persisted even as nationalists refused it; Early Italian nationalists failed because aristocrats withheld support; Nationalism’s political role depends on the class configuration of its power bloc — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 21