Searching for new languages: modern Italian poetry

Abstract

Tradition: stimulus or millstone? In newly unified Italy, the Italian literary tradition was particularly venerated. The period's leading poet, Giosue Carducci (1835-1907), in the vigorously anti-Romantic preface to his Rime ('Poems') of 1857,had identified only three poetic currents as worthy of cultivation in an 'Italian Italy': Classical Latin; the medieval and Renaissance tradition from Dante to Tasso; and the neo-Classical current from Alfieri to Leopardi. Carducci wrote academic studies on Dante, Petrarch and Leopardi, and echoed Dante's civic poetry in his invectives against those of his own contemporaries who seemed unworthy of their country's past. Both as a passionate Republican and democrat before 1871, and subsequently as a Monarchist, Carducci saw poetry as an elevated civic calling: the 'Congedo' ('Envoy') to the Rime nuove ('New Poems', 1887) famously pictures the poet as a blacksmith who, in his fiery soul, fashions glorious national memories into swords to fight for freedom, shields for protection, and garlands to celebrate victory. Thus, to inspire his contemporaries, Carducci’s public poetry draws on episodes from Italy’s history, often linking them into an ideal narrative culminating in unification. He celebrates Italy’s Roman heritage, the triumphs of its free medieval communes, its famous poets and, especially, the heroes of unification. Even his metrics illustrate his belief that the past could nourish the present: his Odi barbare (‘Barbarian Odes’) aim at the effect of classical Latin verse forms, as read during the ‘barbarian’ period when distinctions between vowel lengths were lost and rhythms were based instead on tonic stress.