An author with an avid interest in history, especially that of Italy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton focused his historical fiction, Rienzi: The Last of the Tribunes, on a real-life figure named Cola di Rienzo. He proves an idealist who brings peace to various contentious forces in 14th-century Rome. More important, he succeeds in establishing a republic, which he serves as tribune.
Displeased with his utopian ideas, Rome’s citizens revolt against his forced government, a fact that Rienzi refuses to accept. As he explains to his son-in-law, Adrian: “the People love me, the Barons have fled from Rome, the Pontiff approves” and “never since the days of the old Republic, did Roman dream a purer and a brighter aspiration… Peace restored—law established—arts, letters, intellect, dawning upon the night of time… the People ennobled from a mob, brave to protect, enlightened to guide, themselves. Then, not by the violence of arms, but by the majesty of her moral power, shall the Mother of Nations claim the obedience of her children.”
His words prove particularly ironic in light of the grisly end he meets at the hands of unhappy citizens following the entry into Rome of Montreal, the Knight of St. John. Although Rienzi proves victorious over Montreal, supervising his public execution by beheading, the Tribune will not survive such fractiousness. The crowd burns his home, driving Adrian with Rienzi’s daughter Irene to escape, and leaving the senator’s loving wife, Nina, to die in the flames as their home collapses. As for Rienzi, a crazed crowd in the streets of Rome dismembers him.
The novel supposedly served as a message to politicians of Bulwer-Lytton’s own day. He warned against forcing freedoms upon people not yet ready or willing to accept the responsibilities accompanying independence. In an appendix to the novel, the author notes that Rienzi did not “fall from his own faults,” was not killed by his excesses or “the vulgar moral of ambition,” but rather he “fell from the vices of the People.” In the end, a small group of 150 soldiers led by the Count of Minorbino entered Rome, forced Rienzi to abdicate, and met no resistance from the people as the soldiers “overthrew their liberties, and restored their tyrants.”
As he did in his earlier novel The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Bulwer-Lytton incorporated details gathered during his travels to Italy. He explains in his preface that he put aside Rienzi for a time to complete work on Pompeii, but that thoughts of the tribune haunted him as he delayed finishing the second novel. He wrote that he felt a “duty” to complete his novel about a “very remarkable man” who he felt had been “superficially judged, and a very important period crudely examined.” He adds that while his plot is definitely a “Romance,” he adheres with great “fidelity” to “all the leading events of the public life of the Roman Tribune.”
The novel has been reproduced in various dramatic forms, including an 1842 Richard Wagner opera, dedicated to Frederick August II, king of Saxony. Of interest to fans of historical fiction, the novel continues to be read in both print and electronic form, particularly by those who enjoy Bulwer-Lytton.
Bibliography
Christensen, Allan Conrad. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Fiction of New Regions. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
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