Carducci, GIOSUÈ

Carducci, GIOSUÈ, who is generally regarded by his countrymen as the foremost of contemporary Italian poets, was born at Val di Castello, near Pietrasanta, in the province of Pisa, 27th July 1836. He was the son of a physician, and his youth was spent in study. In 1860 he was appointed to a professorship in the university of Bologna. He has been throughout his life a staunch Republican, and in 1867 was for a short while suspended from his professorship for having signed an address to Mazzini. In 1876 he was returned to the Italian parliament as member for Lugo di Romagna. His earliest poems, Juvenilia and Levia Gravia, were written in imitation of Manzoni and Alfieri. Cold and artificial, they contrast strongly with their author's later works. Signs of a transition in sentiment and in style appeared in the Decennalia, which dealt mainly with political events of the years 1860-70. The change became complete in the Nuove Poesie, in which Carducci, taking Hugo instead of Manzoni for his master, gave fiery expression to the most advanced political views. These poems are remarkable for the sustained power and dignity of the language and the frequent nobility of the thought. The Odi Barbare, written in metres borrowed from Horace, have excited the ardent admiration of Italians; to foreign critics, however, Carducci seems in these pieces to have erred in the rejection of rhyme. Carducci has been claimed as a leader by the veristi, the members of the Italian 'naturalist' school, on the strength, it would seem, of his revolutionary opinions and antagonism to the followers of Manzoni. But the productions of Zola's Italian disciples have nothing in common with Carducci's works, in which ideal aspirations and a genuine love of beauty find expression in language impregnated with classical culture.