:Giosuè Carducci

File:Giosuè Carducci1.jpg

He was born in Valdicastello in Pietrasanta, a small town currently part of the Province of Lucca in the northwest corner of Tuscany, which at the time was an independent grand duchy. His father, a doctor, was an advocate of the unification of Italy and was involved with the Carbonari. Because of his politics, the family was forced to move several times during Carducci's childhood, eventually settling for a few years in Florence.{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Carducci, Giosuè|volume=5}}

From the time he was in school, he was fascinated with the restrained style of Greek and Roman Antiquity, and his mature work reflects a restrained classical style, often using the classical meters of such Latin poets as Horace and Virgil. He translated Book 9 of Homer's Iliad into Italian.

Carducci was awarded a scholarship to study at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. After graduating in 1856, he began teaching school. The following year, he published his first collection of poems, Rime. These were difficult years for Carducci: his father died, and his brother committed suicide.

In 1859, he married Elvira Menicucci, and they had four children. He briefly taught Greek at a high school in Pistoia and then was appointed Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Bologna. Here, one of his students was Giovanni Pascoli, who became an eminent poet himself and later succeeded him at the university.

Carducci was a popular lecturer and a fierce critic of literature and society. In his youth he was an atheist,Biagini, Mario, Giosuè Carducci, Mursia, 1976, p. 208. whose political views were vehemently hostile to the Catholic Church. In the course of his life, his views on religion shifted towards a socially oriented theism which he exposed in his famous "Discorso sulla libertà perpetua di San Marino" ("A Speech on San Marino's Perpetual Freedom"), pronounced on 30 September 1894 before the authorities and people of that ancient Republic and celebrating "the Universal God of Peoples, Mazzini's and Washington's God".[https://www.liberliber.it/mediateca/libri/c/carducci/la_liberta_perpetua_di_san_marino/pdf/carducci_la_liberta_perpetua.pdf Carducci la liberta perpetua] liberliber.it

His anti-clerical revolutionary vehemence was prominently showcased in one famous poem, the deliberately blasphemous and provocative {{ill|Inno a Satana|it|A Satana|quote=y}} ("Hymn to Satan"). "Satan" / "Lucifer" was considered by Italian leftists of the time as a metaphor for the rebellious and freethinking spirit. The poem was composed in 1863 as a dinner party toast, published in 1865, and then republished in 1869 by Bologna's radical newspaper, Il Popolo, as a provocation timed to coincide with the First Vatican Council, a time when revolutionary fervour directed against the papacy was running high as republicans pressed both politically and militarily for an end to the Vatican's domination over the papal states.Carducci, Giosuè, Selected Verse/ Giosuè Carducci: edited with a translation, introduction and commentary by David H. Higgins, (Aris & Phillips; Warminster, England), 1994. See also: Bailey, John Cann, Carducci The Taylorian Lecture (Clarendon Press, Oxford) 1926.

While "Inno a Satana" had quite a revolutionary impact, Carducci's finest poetry came in later years. His collections Rime Nuove (New Rhymes) and Odi Barbare (Barbarian Odes) contain his greatest works.One prominent English translation is The Barbarian Odes of Giosuè Carducci, translated from Italian by William Fletcher Smith, (Manasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Co., 1939). The translation is reviewed in {{cite journal

| last = Dismukes

| first = William Paul

| title = The Barbarian Odes of Giosuè Carducci by William Fletcher Smith

| journal = Italica

| volume = 17

| issue = 1

| pages = 29–30

| date = March 1940

| doi = 10.2307/475605

| jstor = 475605

}}

He was the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1906. He was also appointed senator by the King of Italy (1890).{{cite book|last=Scalia|first=Samuel Eugene|title=Carducci|publisher=S.F. Vanni|location=New York|year=1937}} In politics he remained a strong Liberal throughout his life; through the years he progressively evolved from republicanism to a sort of support to constitutional monarchy.{{cite book |last1=Bickersteth |first1=Geoffrey Langdale |title=Carducci |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924027533805 |date=1913 |publisher=Longmans, Green |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924027533805/page/n39 14]}} He was a Freemason{{cite news |last1=Gilbert |first1=Sari |title=Freemasonry in Italy Has Had 2 1/2 Centuries of {{sic|Contro|vesy|hide=y}} |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/06/02/freemasonry-in-italy-has-had-2-12-centuries-of-controvesy/800d7499-43d2-4366-9508-24cc83128811/ |access-date=28 July 2021 |newspaper=Washington Post |date=2 June 1981}} of the Grand Orient of Italy.{{Cite web|url=http://www.grandeoriente.it/che-cosa-e-la-massoneria/massoni-celebri/|title=Notable Italian Freemasons|accessdate=25 April 2024|archive-date=1 October 2015|archive-url=https://archive.today/20151001081206/http://www.grandeoriente.it/che-cosa-e-la-massoneria/massoni-celebri/|url-status=bot: unknown}} His father Michele, a physician, was also a member of the Italian Carboneria.{{cite web|url=https://www.iltirreno.it/versilia/cronaca/2023/11/22/news/cosi-l-impronta-della-massoneria-ha-segnato-l-ex-perla-del-tirreno-1.100426109|title=Versilia, così l'impronta della Massoneria ha segnato l'ex Perla del Tirreno|author=Adolfo Lippi|date=November 22, 2023|language=it}} Although his reputation rests primarily on his poetry, he also produced a large body of prose works.{{cite book|last=Tomasin|first=Lorenzo|title="Classica e odierna". Studi sulla lingua di Carducci|publisher=Olschki|location=Florence|year=2007}} Indeed, his prose writings, including literary criticism, biographies, speeches and essays, fill some 20 volumes.{{cite book|title=Selections from Carducci; Prose and Poetry with introduction, notes and vocabulary by A. Marinoni|publisher=William R. Jenkins|location=New York|year=1913|pages=vii–ix|no-pp=true}} Carducci was also an excellent translator and translated some of Goethe and Heine into Italian.

The Museum of the Risorgimento, Bologna is housed in the Casa Carducci, the house where he died at the age of 71, and contains an exhibit on the author.

Carducci confessed his sins and was reconciled to the Catholic Church in 1895.{{Cite web|date=2021-05-14|title=Inside the secret conversion of Italy's Christopher Hitchens|url=https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2021/05/inside-the-secret-conversion-of-italys-christopher-hitchens/|access-date=2021-05-14|website=Crux|language=en-CA}} On 11 September 1978, Pope John Paul I mentioned him as a "model" for university professors and teachers of Latin.{{cite web | url=https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-i/it/angelus/documents/hf_jp-i_ang_17091978.html | title=Angelus, 17 settembre 1978 | Giovanni Paolo I }}

It is not always easy to follow the development of Carducci's poetry through the collections he edited. The poet in fact organized his compositions several times and in different ways and gave a definitive arrangement only later in the edition of his Opere published for Zanichelli between 1889 and 1909. The following is a list of poetic works published in one volume, then rearranged into the 20 volumes of his Opere.

• Rime, San Miniato, 1857.
• {{ill|Levia Gravia|it}}, 1868.
• Poesie, Firenze, Barbera, 1871.
• Primavere elleniche, 1872.
• Nuove poesie, 1873.
• Odi barbare, 1877.
• Juvenilia, 1880.
• Levia Gravia, 1881.
• {{ill|Giambi ed Epodi|it}}, 1882.
• Nuove odi barbare, 1882.
• {{ill|Rime nuove|it}}, 1887.
• Terze odi barbare, 1889.
• Delle Odi barbare. Libri II ordinati e corretti, 1893.
• {{ill|Rime e ritmi|it}}, 1899.
• Poesie. MDCCCL-MCM, 1901.

Below are the poetic volumes in the Opere. The volumes, however, do not correspond to the chronological order with which the poet had published his first collections, but refer more than anything else to the distinctions of genres and therefore we find poems of the same period in different collections. The collections follow this order:

• Juvenilia, in six books, 1850–1860
• Levia Gravia, in two books, 1861–1871
• Inno a Satana, 1863
• Giambi ed Epodi, in two books, 1867–1879
• Intermezzo, 1874–1887
• Rime Nuove, in nine books, 1861–1887
• Odi barbare, in two books, 1873–1889
• Rime e Ritmi, 1889–1898
• Della Canzone di Legnano, Part I, 1879

The first collection of lyrical poems, which Carducci collected and divided into six books under the title Juvenilia (1850–1860), is undoubtedly inspired by the classical tradition of the Amici pedanti group that was constituted at that time for the purpose of fighting the romanticism of the Florentines. In the verses of the collection we can immediately see his imitation of the ancient classics, of the stilnovo style, of Dante and Petrarch and, among the moderns, Vittorio Alfieri, Monti, Foscolo and Leopardi.

But the Carduccian spirit is already visible; his love for the beauty of style, the purity of sentiments and the celebration of liberty, as well as the ability to appreciate all that is genuine, therefore also the language of the common people.G. Bertoni, La lingua poetica di Giosue Carducci, in Regia Università di Bologna, cit., pp. 91–95

• Jessie White Mario

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{{reflist}}

• [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1906/press.html Nobel Prize Presentation Speech]
• Carducci Essentials: the Poems of Giosuè Carducci Translated in English, {{ISBN|979-8467766706}} LiteraryJoint Press, 2021

{{commons category|Giosuè Carducci}}

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• {{Gutenberg author|id=43982}}
• [http://noblib.internet-box.ch/NLEW.php?authorid=6 List of works]
• {{Nobelprize}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Giosuè Carducci |sopt=w}}
• {{Librivox author}}
• [http://xoomer.alice.it/ilcarducci/index.html Carducci: all the poems]
• [https://www.poesiedautore.it/giosue-carducci Carducci poems] Original Italian text

{{Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates 1901-1925}}

{{1906 Nobel Prize winners}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Carducci, Giosue}}

Category:1835 births

Category:1907 deaths

Category:Burials at Certosa cemetery

Category:People from Pietrasanta

Category:19th-century Italian poets

Category:Italian male poets

Category:Nobel laureates in Literature

Category:Italian Nobel laureates

Category:University of Pisa alumni

Category:19th-century Italian male writers

Category:19th-century atheists

Category:20th-century atheists

Category:Translators of Homer

Category:Italian Freemasons

Category:Writers from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany

Category:Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa alumni