Generazioni napoleoniche e libertà elleniche. “Un inutile testimonio”. La Grecia immaginata di Santorre di Santa Rosa

Santorre di Santarosa represents the most well-known case of a generation that, orphaned from the Napoleonic model but not yet afflicted by nostalgia for the lost hero, cannot coexist with the rhythms and rules of the “restored world”. While many cross the Atlantic recognizing in the wars for the freedom of the Latin-American nations the terrain of a new adventure, others respond to the call of Greece and its ancient freedom. Santorre di Santarosa is the most visible element of a canvas woven with proud nostalgias for the Napoleonic era. A philhellenic foyer of which this intervention wants to give an account by verifying, on the one hand, the permanence and transformation of a “Napoleonic heritage” in the Italian protagonists of the struggle for the independence of Greece and, on the other, to analyse again Benedetto Croce’s judgment on this «liminal generation» that writes in the 1920s the last pages of its history.