Modern Italian Poets

Modern Italian Poets

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Title: Modern Italian Poets
Author: W. D. Howells
Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8171] [This file was first posted on
June 24, 2003]
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Language: English

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MODERN ITALIAN POETS
ESSAYS AND VERSIONS
BY
W. D. HOWELLS
WITH PORTRAITS

CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
ARCADIAN SHEPHERDS
GIUSEPPE PARINI
VITTORIO ALFIERI
VINCENZO MONTI
UGO FOSCOLO
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
SILVIO PELLICO
TOMMASO GROSSI
LUIGI CARRER
GIOVANNI BERCHET
GIAMBATTISTA NICCOLINI
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
FRANCESCO DALL' ONGARO
GIOVANNI PRATI
ALEARDO ALEARDI
GIULIO CARCANO
ARNALDO FUSINATO
LUIGI MERCANTINI
CONCLUSION

PORTRAITS.
VITTORIO ALFIERI
VINCENZO MONTI
UGO FOSCOLO
ALESSANDRO MANZONI
TOMMASO GROSSI
GIAMBATTISTA NICCOLINI
GIACOMO LEOPARDI
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
FRANCESCO DALL' ONGARO
GIOVANNI PRATI
ALEARDO ALEARDI

INTRODUCTION
This book has grown out of studies begun twenty years ago in Italy,
and continued fitfully, as I found the mood and time for them, long
after their original circumstance had become a pleasant memory. If any
one were to say that it did not fully represent the Italian poetry of the
period which it covers chronologically, I should applaud his
discernment; and perhaps I should not contend that it did much more
than indicate the general character of that poetry. At the same time, I
think that it does not ignore any principal name among the Italian poets
of the great movement which resulted in the national freedom and unity,
and it does form a sketch, however slight and desultory, of the history
of Italian poetry during the hundred years ending in 1870.
Since that time, literature has found in Italy the scientific and realistic
development which has marked it in all other countries. The romantic
school came distinctly to a close there with the close of the long period
of patriotic aspiration and endeavor; but I do not know the more recent
work, except in some of the novels, and I have not attempted to speak
of the newer poetry represented by Carducci. The translations here are
my own; I have tried to make them faithful; I am sure they are careful.
Possibly I should not offer my book to the public at all if I knew of
another work in English studying even with my incoherence the Italian
poetry of the time mentioned, or giving a due impression of its
extraordinary solidarity. It forms part of the great intellectual
movement of which the most unmistakable signs were the French

revolution, and its numerous brood of revolutions, of the first, second,
and third generations, throughout Europe; but this poetry is unique in
the history of literature for the unswerving singleness of its tendency.
The boundaries of epochs are very obscure, and of course the poetry of
the century closing in 1870 has much in common with earlier Italian
poetry. Parini did not begin it, nor Alfieri; it began them, and its spirit
must have been felt in the perfumed air of the soft Lorrainese
despotism at Florence when Filicaja breathed over his native land the
sigh which makes him immortal. Yet finally, every age is individual; it
has a moment of its own when its character has ceased to be general,
and has not yet begun to be general, and it is one of these moments
which is eternized in the poetry before us. It was, perhaps, more than
any other poetry in the world, an incident and an instrument of the
political redemption of the people among whom it arose. "In free and
tranquil countries," said the novelist Guerrazzi in conversation with M.
Monnier, the sprightly Swiss critic, recently dead, who wrote so much
and so well about modern Italian literature, "men have the happiness
and the right to be artists for art's sake: with us, this would be weakness
and apathy. When