Giovanni Pascoli
Giovanni Pascoli, (b. Dec.
31, 1855, San Mauro di Romagna, Kingdom of Sardinia—d. April
6, 1912, Bologna, Italy), Italian classical scholar and poet
whose graceful and melancholy Italian lyric poems, perfect
in form, rhythmic in style, and innovative in wording, were
an important influence on the crepuscolari (“twilight
poets”; see crepuscolarismo).
Pascoli had an extremely
painful childhood: his father was mysteriously assassinated
when he was 12, his mother died when he was 13, and five
other children in the family died by the time he reached
adulthood. He also experienced a long period of
psychological duress while studying on a scholarship at the
University of Bologna under the great poet Giosuč Carducci.
Pascoli was arrested and imprisoned for a few months in 1879
for preaching political anarchy. Following his imprisonment
he took his younger siblings to live with him, and from 1882
began a career of teaching, first in secondary schools and
then in various Italian universities, as professor of Greek,
Latin, and Italian literature. In 1905 he was appointed to
the chair of Italian literature at the University of
Bologna.
Pascoli’s first literary
work, a great success, was Myricae (1891; “Tamarisks”), a
volume of short, delicate, musical lyrics inspired by nature
and domestic themes and reflecting the psychological unrest
of his student years. Some easing of inner turmoil is
apparent in his next volume, usually considered his best,
Canti di Castelvecchio (1903, definitive ed., 1907; “Songs
of Castelvecchio”), a collection of moving evocations of his
sad childhood and celebrations of nature and family life.
Subsequent volumes include the classically inspired and more
formal Poemi conviviali (1904) and two collections
influenced by Virgil’s Georgics, Carducci’s work, and the
French Symbolists: Primi poemetti (1904, originally
published as Poemetti, 1897) and Nuovi poemetti (1909).
Pascoli’s Latin poems won poetry prizes and exhibited a
fluent skill; Gabriele D’Annunzio considered him the finest
Latin poet since the Augustan age. During his later years
Pascoli wrote several nationalistic and historic poetic
works, notably Poemi del Risorgimento (1913). English
translations of his poems were published in 1923 and 1927.
He also translated poems of Wordsworth, Shelley, and
Tennyson. An Italian literary award, the Pascoli Prize, was
established in 1962 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of
his death, and his birthplace was named San Mauro Pascoli.
