Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play — and Kindle via Send to Kindle
- ✓ Choose your format — EPUB, PDF, or Kindle
- ✓ Instant download after purchase
- ✓ Yours to keep — no subscription
My Prisons (Le mie prigioni)
1832 · translated from the Italian · 240 pages
My Prisons (Le mie prigioni)
by Silvio Pellico
Pellico was arrested as a Carbonaro conspirator in 1820, sentenced to death, and had the sentence commuted to fifteen years in the Spielberg fortress in Moravia. He served ten. My Prisons is his account of them, and it is famous less for the politics than for what happened to him inside: a recovery of the Christian faith, and a refusal of bitterness that his fellow patriots found almost insulting. It did more for the Italian cause than most arguments did.
The convert behind the argument
Pellico had drifted from the faith of his upbringing into the literary and revolutionary world of Milan before his arrest. The Spielberg years brought him back — his own account records long reflection on the sacraments and on how he might face execution — and he emerged in 1830 a devout man with no appetite for revenge on the Austrians who had jailed him. Note that he is marginal on this shelf's convert criterion: this is a faith recovered rather than one arrived at for the first time.
Summary
The book moves chronologically from the arrest in Milan through the Venetian prisons, the trial, the death sentence and its commutation, and then the years at the Spielberg — the cold, the hunger, the illnesses, the jailers, the fellow prisoners, and above all the interior life of a man with nothing to do but think.
Its power is in the restraint. Pellico describes brutality without rhetoric and refuses to hate his captors; the passages on preparing himself for execution, and on his own inconsistency — how liable a man is, when most firm and pious, to fall suddenly into weakness — are the ones readers remember.
Published in 1832, it was translated across Europe within a few years and became one of the most widely read books of the century. It was said that it did the Austrian empire more damage than a lost battle, precisely because it made no accusations at all.
Who was Silvio Pellico?
Silvio Pellico (1789–1854) was an Italian writer from Piedmont, known before his arrest for the tragedy Francesca da Rimini and for his work on the liberal Milanese review Il Conciliatore. He joined the Carbonari and was arrested by the Austrian authorities in 1820.
Condemned to death and then to fifteen years' harsh imprisonment, he served ten at the Spielberg fortress before his release in 1830. He lived quietly afterwards in Turin, published Le mie prigioni in 1832, and wrote little else of consequence.
Common questions
- What is My Prisons about?
- Silvio Pellico's memoir of the ten years he spent in Austrian prisons, chiefly the Spielberg fortress, after being convicted as a Carbonaro conspirator in 1820 — and of the Christian faith he recovered there.
- Why is Pellico described as marginal on the convert criterion?
- Because he was raised Christian and drifted away rather than starting from unbelief; the Spielberg years brought him back to a faith he had once held. We flag that plainly rather than overstating the case.
A note on the text. My Prisons (Le mie prigioni) is in the public domain. What you're buying is our edition: the careful typesetting and correction. The original text is also available free here.