Abstract
Reviewed by: Stefano Muneroni, University of Alberta, Canada
Giuseppe Manitta’s edited collection of essays about Giosuè Carducci is one of the most important critical contributions about this poet and intellectual to have come out in recent years. The idea for this collection originated with conversations among old and new scholars of Carducci and coalesced around the long-standing topic of his modernity and contemporaneity. The nine essays that comprise the book canvass the scope and range of Carducci’s contributions to literary and critical studies, explore the frequent positions he took in cultural and political debates of his time, and probe his influence on future generations of writers. The book is particularly important for exploring the enduring legacy of Carducci’s poetry and criticism and for locating him at the center of modernity.
The first essay, penned by editor Giuseppe Manitta, considers Carducci’s interpretation of Giacomo Leopardi, Alessandro Manzoni, and Vincenzo Monti in order to frame Carducci’s response to classical models and their inscription into a new national literature. Carducci’s understanding of a new poetic language is inspired by Italian classical models but aspires to be modern. The ideas of change and transformation, inherent to modernity, are at the very core of the author’s understanding of the civilizing mission of Italian culture. However, his notion of modernity is always filtered through his fascination with classical models. Manitta calls Carducci a precursor of Decadentism and considers his unique brand of modernity ‘classical,’ maintaining that the author shared with modern poets a sense of melancholia and dissatisfaction toward reality. In his essay Al Beato Giovanni della Pace, Giorgio Bàrberi Squarotti carries out a close reading of Carducci’s satirical hymn published in 1886 and written to ridicule the decision of the archbishop of Pisa to reintroduce the worship of 13th-century hermit Giovanni della Pace. Bàrberi Squarotti reads Carducci’s political and moralistic attack against the rejuvenation of the cult as a critique of the Catholic Church, which Carducci saw as hypocritical in its theological rigidity and dictatorial in its wielding of political power. Carducci also maintained that Christians experience their faith as a ‘romanzo,’ a fictional narrative that is entirely predicated on a performance of religiosity and not necessarily supported by true faith and devotion. His satire extends also to Rome, which in his opinion had lost all the luster and glory of classical Rome and was, during his time, corrupt and immoral like the Rome described by Pietro Aretino. This failure to live up to the ethical standards of the past is all the more damning for Carducci due to the fact that Rome had just became the capital of Italy. Carmine Chiodo’s ‘La modernità di Carducci critico e il Parini’ provides excellent analysis of the literary criticism and critical methodology Carducci applied to the study of ‘Il giorno’ by Giuseppe Parini. Chiodo explores Carducci’s layered critical approach, paying special attention to his exploration of the original socio-cultural and historical conditions of Parini’s work, and his close textual and philological analyses. The modernity of his study, according to Chiodo, lies in Carducci’s attempt to locate Parini in his own historical time while probing his relevance in modern post-unification Italy. The following essay by Emerico Giachery is aptly titled ‘Divagazioni Carducciane,’ as it probes Giachery’s personal memories and emotional connection to Carducci’s poetry and life. The author reminisces on how Carducci accompanied him in his illustrious career as an academic, but he also focuses on how the reception of Carducci’s work shifted in time from central to peripheral. This essay is particularly significant because it is the only one in the collection that addresses Carducci’s female relationships and the role they had as inspiring muses at different points in the poet’s life. The brief, yet extremely vivid, portrayals of Annie Vivanti, Dafne Gargiolli, and Silvia Pasolini Zanelli shed light on Giosuè Carducci’s private life and move past conventional representations of the poet. In the essay that follows, Angelo Manitta addresses what is for many critics and readers the most irreverent and uproarious of Carducci’s works, the famed and defamed ‘Inno a Satana’, originally published in 1865 and reissued in 1869 during the opening of the First Vatican Council. The poem immediately came under attack from the Catholic press for its depiction of Satan as the champion of all things modern: reason, science, and progress. In order to understand Carducci’s anticlerical stance, Manitta proposes to compare the later poem to the ‘Inno a Geova’, which appeared 10 years earlier. He argues that Satan is never placed in an adversarial position to God but, on the contrary, Satan advocates like God spiritual awakening and idealism. Manitta concludes that it is the conflict between Carducci’s faith in God and the ironic anticlericalism of the ‘Inno a Satana’ that are significant of the author’s modernity and the crisis it reflects.
There are other valuable contributions included in this collection: Alessandro Merci discusses the reception of Carducci’s works between the 19th and 20th centuries; Giacomo Nerotti writes a historically detailed chronology and commentary of Carducci’s political career as city councilor in Bologna from 1869 to 1872 and 1886 to 1902; Pantaleo Palmieri probes the rhetoric and idealism of La libertà perpetua di San Marino where Carducci, as Italy’s most renowned poet of his time, educated his fellow citizens on the values of tolerance, solidarity, individual freedom, and reciprocal understanding; finally, Elena Rampazzo looks at futurist artists’ responses to Carducci’s work, mainly Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1908 Les Dieux s’en vont, D’Annunzio reste and Paolo Buzzi’s La morte di Carducci. She argues that Carducci’s modernity is essentially memorialized by the attention he received by the futurist avant-garde movement that considered Giosuè Carducci closer to their sense of modernity than to the outmoded poetic sensibility of 19th-century poets and intellectuals.
The contributors to this collection take on the titanic task of exploring the role of Carducci in contemporary Italian studies while surveying and contextualizing the lengthy bibliography already available about the author. While they do succeed in delivering a dynamic and interesting tome, they are implicitly challenged by the very focus of their research. How does one summarize Carducci’s critical and literary output and discuss its influence on literary modernity in less than 200 pages? Nevertheless, while there are areas of Carducci’s work and personal life that for reasons of space never receive the necessary attention, Manitta’s edited collection makes a significant contribution to the study of Carducci’s legacy and paves the way for future scholarly research on this central, yet often neglected, artist. This book will surely prove a useful tool for anybody interested in Carducci, but mostly for specialized readers such as students and scholars working in 19th- and 20th-century Italian literature.