Giosuè
Carducci (1835-1907) revived Petrarch's
vision of poet as vates,
and became the unofficialnational
poet of a unified Italy, receiving the Nobel
Prize for Literature
in 1906.
He was born in Val di Castello in Tuscany,
where his father was a doctor and a member of the Carbonari
that advocated unification. Politics obliged the family
to move several times in Giosuè's boyhood, but in
1856 the young man received his Ph.D. from Pisa University,
and took a teaching job at a provincial high school, bringing
out his first collection of poetry, Rime, the following
year. Until appointed professor of Italian literature at
Bologna,
Carducci had many financial difficulties, however. He became
the head of the household upon the deaths of his father
and brother, and his marriage to Elvira Menicucci in 1859
soon produced a family to support. But Carducci turned himself
into an energetic and popular lecturer, an uncompromising
literary critic and then a leadingopponent
of church power. His Jacobin verses created many controversies
in the 1860s and 70s, though he had settled into supporting
the monarchy by 1890, when he was made a senator
for life. In his last years, Carducci was active in politics,
proselytising for Italian influence and territorial expansion.
Carducci's
poetry
Though
only a small part of Carducci's
output was verse (4 in 30 volumes of collected works), those
poems
and translations
are Carducci's claim to significance. Lyrics in traditional
form appeared in Levia gravia (Light and Heavy: 1861-71),
Giambi
ed epodi (Iambs and Epodes: 1867-69) andRime
nuove (New Verses: 1861-87). He was not merely conventional,
however: in Odi
barbari(Barbaric Odes: 1877-89), Carducci tried
to import
Graeco-Latin forms into Italian verse: interesting experiments
at least (as were Darío's
similar
attempts in Spanish). Much now appears very dated: Carducci's
oratory, the passionate declamation
on Italy's place
in the world, the Roman past. He is the last of the great
classical European poets, very different from his contemporaries
(Tennyson
and Swinburne
in England, Baudelaire
and Mallarmé
in France, and certainly Bécquer
in Spain) where late Romanticism was developing into Symbolism
and the Modernist concerns of
the twentieth century.
Carducci
and classical poetry
Carducci was opposed
to the Romantic solipsism of Leopardi,
and built a vigorous reaction
based on classicism
and realism.
He believed in the dignity
of life, and strove for a poetry that was sane, virile
and strong-willed. Inevitably that led to his becoming linkedwithD'Annunzio
and Fascistopinion,
and to pouring out homilies that have not
worn well. But Carducci's optimism is not false, only oversimple
to a century disgraced by war and genocide, one to which
Montale
— the only modern Italian poet to rival Carducci in
popularity — appealed more movingly with his dark
view of the agony and solitude in human beings. Classicism
celebrates balance,
continuity
and restraint, and it's hardly surprising that Carducci
is not much read today. But he is worth the effort. Many
of his shorter pieces do speak poignantly from the heart,
particularly those dealing withpersonal
loss and nostalgia
for his nativeTuscany
and other haunts,
and those which fuse contemporary situations with their
rendering inclassicalliterature.
