Before the offered rapture dumb;
Tears and still tears your sole expression:
Bedew my bosom with them--come!
EDMONDO DE AMICIS
(1846-)
n 1869, 'Vita Militare' (Military Life), a collection of short stories, was perhaps the most popular Italian volume of the year. Read alike in court and cottage, it was everywhere discussed and enthusiastically praised. Its prime quality was that quivering sympathy which insures some success to any imaginative work, however crudely written. But these sketches of all the grim and amusing phases of Italian soldier life are drawn with an exquisite precision. The reader feels the breathless discouragement of the tired soldiers when new dusty vistas are revealed by a sudden turn in the road ('A Midsummer March'); understands the strong silent love between officer and orderly, suppressed by military etiquette ('The Orderly'); smiles with the soldiers at the pretty runaway boy, idol of the regiment ('The Son of the Regiment'); pities the humiliations of the conscript novice ('The Conscript'); thrills with the proud sorrow of the old man whose son's colonel tells the story of his heroic death ('Dead on the Field of Battle'). "When I had finished reading it," said an Italian workman, "I would gladly have pressed the hand of the first soldier whom I happened to meet." The author was only twenty-three, and has since given the world many delightful volumes, but nothing finer.
These sketches were founded upon personal knowledge, for De Amicis began life as a soldier. After his early education at Coni and Turin, he entered the military school at Modena, from which he was sent out as sub-lieutenant in the third regiment of the line. He saw active service in various expeditions against Sicilian brigands; and in the war with Austria he fought at the battle of Custozza.