«Le streghe non ritornano»? Michelet, Manzoni e una poesia di Franco Fortini

Abstract

The essay examines Franco Fortini’s Via Cardinal Federico (Paesaggio con serpente, 1984) as a poetic rewriting of history and memory, engaging with Manzoni’s Promessi sposi and Michelet’s La Sorcière. Fortini highlights the contrast between Cardinal Federico Borromeo, exalted in Manzoni’s novel, and the witches he condemned, whose names resurface from oblivion. The poem connects to Fortini’s critical reading of Michelet, which rejects psychoanalytic interpretations and reclaims the witch as the prophecy of a forthcoming revolutionary justice. The comparison with Storia della colonna infame and Fortini’s broader dialogue with Manzoni, also reflected in his university teaching, leads to a meditation on guilt, judgment, and historical responsibility, turning the memory of persecution into an allegory of modern oppression and an appeal to enduring justice.