Torre dell'orgoglio

Torre dell'orgoglio is the image of a fortress Massimo Alberti constructs in his imagination when he feels himself opposed by Lelia Camin, his uncle, and a hostile, mocking, indifferent world. The tower’s imagined height and armor make pride seem like protection, but its isolation also exposes the cost of that defense: Massimo pictures himself alone, even as grief and human ties continue to draw him outward.

Naming and Image

The chapter heading Nella torre dell'orgoglio gives the image a structural role in the narrative: Massimo’s tower is not a physical place but a mental refuge. After leaving the café alone, he is bitterly and fiercely satisfied with himself. In thought he raises the tower to the clouds, covers it in steel and gold, and relishes its seeming impregnability. The grand materials turn wounded self-regard into an imagined stronghold, while the emphasis on being alone makes clear that its security depends on exclusion.

The tower gathers several kinds of opposition into one scene. Massimo sets himself against Lelia, his uncle Luigi Alberti, and the broader world, which he experiences as hostile, ridiculing, or indifferent. Pride does not resolve those conflicts; it gives him a commanding image from which to contemplate them. The height is therefore both a fantasy of mastery and a sign of retreat.

The World Outside the Fortress

The surrounding family and inheritance conflict gives that sense of opposition concrete stakes. After Marcello Trento’s handwritten will is opened, Lelia is named universal heir, while Teresina receives a daily legacy of five lire, exempt from tax. A telegram from Girolamo da Camin identifies him as Lelia’s father and announces his arrival; although the telegram describes her as a minor, Lelia says she is twenty and a few months old. The mismatch between the claim of minority and her stated age places questions of authority and independence in the same unsettled world against which Massimo imagines defending himself.

Girolamo’s later conduct makes the struggle over control more tangible. He hopes to secure as much as possible of the Trento estate’s movable property during the few months before Lelia comes of age, while presenting himself as humble and contrite in the hope that she will grant him a generous allowance. He also wants to persuade his associate Francesco Molesin to accept favorable terms in dealing with creditors. These calculations help explain why the surrounding world is not merely an abstract adversary, although the narrative locates the tower itself in Massimo’s response to opposition rather than in any contest for property.

From Imagined Escape to Practical Plans

Massimo’s fantasy begins to carry him beyond the city. Instead of turning toward via del Monte Napoleone, he walks on toward Porta Nuova and then past its arches, thinking about where he might take his tower outside Milan. The image shifts from a private defense to a possible change of life: an idea of applying for a mountain medical post, first suggested among the chestnut trees at La Montanina, returns to him. Yet at the underpass the reality of the city’s geography brings his thoughts back down to earth. The imagined fortress can travel wherever his mind takes it; the walking man remains in the streets of Milan.

His next decision is also less solitary than the tower suggests. At home Massimo first writes to Donna Fedele to explain why he will not attend the funeral. While writing, he thinks instead of visiting the cemetery at Velo in a few days, accessible from Seghe station between trains. He tears up the first letter and writes another, announcing that he will arrive at Seghe at noon on July 4 for the visit and expressing the hope that Donna Fedele will accompany him. The reversal does not erase his pride, but it sets the fortress beside mourning and a request for companionship.

Significance and Contrast

The image’s force lies in the gap between the invulnerable stronghold Massimo imagines and the choices he actually makes. He sees himself as alone above a hostile world, yet his thoughts return to a mountain post, a dead man’s cemetery, and Donna Fedele’s company. The tower enlarges his defiance into a monumental picture, while the walk and the rewritten letter show that his life still runs through concrete places, obligations, and relationships.

A later scene in Valsolda offers a related contrast between imagined independence and practical limits. When Donna Fedele decides Lelia cannot remain there, Massimo recognizes that she must leave with her; they discuss an arrangement for Lelia to stay with Donna Fedele’s cousin in Santhià, subject to her father’s permission. This is not presented as a return to the tower image, but it shows how decisions about Lelia remain bound to care, safety, and paternal authority. Against that practical world, Massimo’s solitary fortress reads as a vivid, temporary construction of pride rather than a lasting escape.