Lelia Decides to Go to Valsolda

Lelia Decides to Go to Valsolda is an inward turning point set in motion by Massimo Alberti’s letter to Donna Fedele. Reading that his religious crisis has become inseparable from his love for her, Lelia imagines a life with him beyond the world that has hurt him; the decision to go to Valsolda takes shape as an answer to his confession and to the future he describes.

The Letter and Its Confession

Massimo tells Donna Fedele that, if his crisis concerned only his changing beliefs, he would want to live. He imagines turning from religious speculation and devoting himself to the poor, living modestly, and finding a companion he could love in body and soul. But he feels that this possible life is closed to him: his longing for death comes instead from a renewed passion for Lelia, which he can no longer resist. His confession makes her not merely the object of his desire but the person around whom his imagined future, and his despair at being unable to reach it, have gathered.

The letter makes that desire concrete through small acts of remembrance. In solitude, Massimo says, he gazes at a scrap of paper on which Lelia once wrote a book’s title; in imagination, the words become her face. He recalls the scent left on the paper and the music of Schumann’s Aveu as she played it, linking her presence to both a physical keepsake and a shared musical memory. His intimate disclosure to Donna Fedele, whom he addresses with filial warmth, therefore exposes the depth of his attachment before Lelia responds to it.

Lelia’s Response

As she reads, Lelia’s reaction precedes reflection. The letter seems to ignite her; her sight clouds, and she feels herself overwhelmed by a force before which her will bends. She lays the open pages on the bundle of rhododendrons in her lap, gathers the flowers in trembling hands, and presses them to her face while kissing the words in secret. The gesture joins the letter’s declaration to the flowers she is carrying, making her response both bodily and private.

Lelia immediately imagines herself as the companion Massimo longs for: they would live together modestly in a mountain refuge, outside the world, and her love would console him for past bitterness and sustain his wish to do good. She even accepts, within this vision, his willingness to live without resolving the mystery of the divine and to face eternal sleep. The prospect overwhelms her, and she tries to recover command of herself by looking at a wild carnation trembling in the wind, an image that echoes the shaking of her hands.

From Private Joy to Resolve

At the end of the letter, Donna Fedele warns Lelia that she has helped ruin a soul and asks her to remember and pray for her. Lelia does not linger over the warning. Instead, she returns repeatedly to Massimo’s passionate confession, kisses the pages, and finally puts the letter against her breast. Her selective attention marks the force of the reversal: the appeal to responsibility and prayer is present, but in this moment she gives herself over to the promise of mutual love.

The change registers in her conduct as well as her thoughts. She delights in the cold wind, the mountains glowing in the setting sun, the rocks darkening in shadow, and the rhododendrons moving beside her. She rises with her arms spread as if embracing a world that has become hers, then hurries back toward the villa, eager both for her room and for the pleasure of keeping her secret among other people. Her delight continues in private: she locks her door, places the rhododendrons by her bed so their flowers hang over the pillow, sets one in a crystal glass for supper, and plays Aveu with intense feeling. The journey toward Valsolda thus begins here as an emotional commitment, expressed through the letter she keeps close, the flowers she arranges around herself, and the music that recalls Massimo’s words.