All of their experiences ask us, how would you do? Set in Lombardy, not this past winter, but in the 17th century, it covers the whole horror of that plague, in whose deadly grip all suffered, many dying, many failing in virtue, and some shining as bright as a human soul ever has. Best, however, might be Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed. In addition to the great books he mentions, there is Procopius’s History, Defoe’s Journal of the Plague year, and perhaps Camus’ The Plague.

Many thanks then to Glenn Arbery for reminding us, recently in these pages, of some of the great books set in plague times, and suggesting that their study might sustain us in somewhat similar times today, of pan-virus and pan-panic. And when suddenly the chance to teach Russian novel, not taught since her exile, came my way, I consulted her, and she said, “Well you can always read it alone, but it’s different isn’t it, when you read with the students.” That settled it, though it was a third preparation, and read we did, Anna, Brothers, and War and Peace, best class I’ve ever been in. As Louise Cowan, the founder of the University of Dallas with her husband Don, used to say, yes reading great books makes you melancholy, and that’s why we do it together. Moreover, the great dead can be appreciated together. True, Nietzsche added, “or a philosopher,” who has the best of friends among the dead, but as he, living solitarily, came to suffer, and perhaps see, not for long. Only beasts and gods can live outside the city, solitary like Polyphemos, observes Aristotle. We should stay far away from each other, but can we bear to?

Plague makes each of us the possible carrier of death to others, and all those others the possible bringers of death to us, and thus it, the measures it requires, and the panic it stirs, weaken the very communities we need to live, and to live well, as large as a country and as small as fellowships, of families, of parents and children, of man and wife, and of friends. No book shows how little we care to find out the truth, how little we know ourselves, how even less we know others, how rumor, prejudice, and illusion, rule our world as Alessandro Manzoni’s “The Betrothed.” Set in Lombardy in the 17th century, it covers the whole horror of a plague in whose deadly grip all suffered.

The betrothed manzoni new translation