The Three Crowns
In Italy, for a long time, many dialects coexisted orally but only ecclesiastical Latin predominated in writing. Certainly, some regions - Umbria for example - saw the appearance of texts in the vernacular, but this was nothing compared to the linguistic revolution that was to take place in Tuscany, the cradle of Florentine, also known as Tuscan, the ancestor of Italian as we know it today, and above all the cradle of the Three Crowns, these major poets, the first of whom is so famous that his first name alone is enough to identify him: Dante Alighieri. Born in Florence in 1265, he was raised in a family of the lower nobility. Orphaned by his mother and father, he married Gemma, to whom he had been destined since the age of 12, but it was his chaste and almost silent love for Beatrice that would permeate his entire work. His muse, whom he met in 1274 and did not see again until nine years later, died in the prime of life in 1290. The deep despair into which Dante sank inspired him to write La Vita Nuova, an almost mystical ode to the passion of love. The poet will then try to experiment in his Rhymes, and will become the most fervent representative of the Dolce Stil Novo current, this "new soft style" which will intellectualize the feelings and will invite to refinement. After love came politics, and with it the long exile that led Dante to flee Florence where he had been condemned to the stake. On this endless road, he will devote himself to writing, writing De Vulgari eloquentia, an unfinished treatise in which he will study the different dialects and will make the wish of a unitary and unifying vulgar language. He will devote himself then, until the end of his life, in 1321 in Ravenna, to his masterpiece, the Comedy which, only after his death, will be qualified of Divine. This long poem of one hundred songs is divided into three parts, Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. It tells the story of Dante's spiritual misguidance and his path to redemption, following in the footsteps of Virgil and Beatrice. The success was immediate and such that The Divine Comedy allowed the Tuscan to spread far beyond the regional borders.
History is teasing and likes to repeat itself. Our second "Crown", Francesco Petrarca, was born in 1304 in Arezzo, his family having had to flee Florence because of the father's political relations with Dante. Petrarch, as we call him in French, lived in Carpentras, Montpellier and above all in Avignon where he also experienced the shock of a platonic love with Laura whom he saw for the first time on Good Friday, April 6, 1327. As with Beatrice, some doubt the very existence of this young woman, but it is true that she inspired him to write some of the most beautiful sonnets that he composed in his retreat in Vaucluse. His major work, the Canzoniere, was written in Tuscan, but the man, a diplomat and humanist, also used Latin for his historical writings, including Africa, which brought him fame and the laurel crown of poets in his time. At his death, in 1374, he left the Trionfi unfinished. His friend Boccaccio, also a great admirer of Dante, was born in 1313. His relationship with women was equally complex, oscillating between admiration for his muse and first love, Flammetta, which is found in several of his works, a frank eroticism, and a real misogyny that is felt particularly in one of his stories, Il Corbacccio (The Raven). But Boccaccio has gone down in history above all for the Decameron, the "book of ten days". It is certainly the great plague of 1348 that gave him the idea of this collection (of one hundred short stories) which features seven young women and three elegant men who lock themselves in the church of Santa Maria Nuova to escape the epidemic, and pass the time by telling stories, from the most tragic to the most sensual. Boccaccio was to prose what Dante was to poetry, a precursor.
From the Renaissance to obscurantism
These three poets generated their share of admirers and imitators, but with the Renaissance that began in the 15th century, it was the Ancients who were brought back into the limelight, with Antiquity becoming a fantasy of the blessed era when men lived in harmony. The century then devoted itself to the translation and compilation of ancient works, a return to the classics that rhymed, at first, with a return to Latin, before the so-called vulgar languages were once again valued, notably thanks to Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). This alliance gave birth to humanism and classicism, which had a lasting influence on Italian literature, while poetry became popular. Indeed, tired of imitating, it recycled with a new breath, like the chansons de geste of the Middle Ages which became chivalric poems in which love took precedence over war, the psychology of the characters over the simple account of events. Finally, the 15th century saw the birth of Nicolas Machiavelli, who tried to regain the good graces of the powerful by dedicating The Prince to Lorenzo II of Medici, perhaps as a sign of a new century that was already complex from a political and religious point of view.
However, grace endures and Italy continues to radiate culturally speaking, this is facilitated by the importance that Venice takes in the printing sector where the German brothers Johann and Wendelin von Speyer, then the French Nicolas Jenson who will eventually join Johannes de Colonia. The Serenissima became a welcoming hostess for many writers in need of publication, including the terrible Pierre L'Arétin (1492-1556) who also knew how to get paid not to write, his pen being reputed to be so biting that it earned him the nickname "Scourge of the Princes". His irreverent Regionamenti and two of his satirical comedies(Il Marescalco/LeMaréchal, Il Filosofo/LePhilosophe) were published by Belles Lettres. The flourishing industry made Venice the leading producer of printed works in Europe, but it could not withstand the austerity of the Counter-Reformation: the Inquisition constantly issued new lists of banned books, the trial of Galileo (1564-1642) being one of the most memorable consequences. The rigorism was also reflected in the language, which was dictated by the Academy of the Crusca founded in 1582. This noxious climate will not calm the agitation of Le Tasse (1544-1595) to whom one already lent a fragile mental health. His Jerusalem Delivered (published by GF Flammarion), published without his knowledge, was unsurprisingly subject to the wrath of the Academy... but was republished six times in just a few months. In fact, the publication of the first Dictionary set the tone of the times: by defining a language derived from the Tuscan language of the 14th century, it certainly tended towards unification but also imposed limits, leaving little room for innovation and imagination. This forced immobilism affects by extension the literature and only one name really stands out of the XVIIth century, that of Giambattista Marino (1569-1625) who composed (at the French court!) L'Adone (1623), long poem of 40 000 verses evoking the loves of Venus and Adonis. Disavowed by the Church which judged it libertine, by others who catalogued it inane, pompous or excessively lyrical, from this work derives nevertheless the marinism, only current which really raises the baroque with which it is confused.
The Age of Enlightenment
As an omen that obscurantism was coming to an end, in Rome, in 1690, people close to Christine of Sweden founded the Academy of Arcadia - a reference to the pastoral work L'Arcadie by the Renaissance poet Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530). Once again taking up the values of Antiquity, this circle wanted to be democratic, open to everyone and spread numerous "colonies" throughout the country. The literary objective is to offer a way contrary to that of marinism, by initiating a simple but elegant language. This revival constitutes a favourable basis for the development of illuminism, a European current of thought which suggests that (divine) illumination is above all interior. The ideas flew and flew, in Milan were published the newspaper Il Caffè created by Pietro Verri and the essay of Cesare Beccaria against the death penalty, in Naples it was the philosophers Giambattista Vico and Francesco Mario Pagano who exposed their thoughts marked by modernity and humanity. On the stage, Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793) reformed the theatrical art and was inspired by the Commedia dell'Arte while wanting to get rid of the masks, to the great displeasure of the traditionalists whose repeated attacks will push him to expatriate. As for him, Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) digs the autobiographical vein, more or less fantasized... but in French please! The Lombard Giuseppe Parini (1729-1799) remains one of the most eminent personalities of this time, although we are not given to be able to read him in French, but already the neoclassicism bows before the romanticism, even if this one, under the pen of Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), is still adorned with a classical style... and with a touch of nationalism. How indeed not to discern in The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis (editions Ombres), story of an impossible love that ends with a suicide, the deep despair of the author who had placed all his hopes in Napoleon Bonaparte ... before he gave Venice to the Austrians? In any case, The Betrothed replays the theme without the political note: against the backdrop of the great plague and civil war, Lombardy from 1628 to 1630 becomes the mythical setting for the passion of two souls oppressed by a jealous lord. Its author, Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), never ceased to revise his masterpiece, deeming it appropriate to rid it of Milanese turns of phrase in order to respect Florentine grammar as closely as possible, finally revitalizing a Tuscan that would soon become the national language. Thus - and without forgetting Giacomo Leopardi who, despite his early death at 38 in 1837, is perhaps the greatest Italian Romantic(Songs, in bilingual at Rivages) - the Risorgimento, "resurrection", is already underway.
Italy was searching for a common identity and tending towards unification, and from a linguistic point of view this was achieved with a children's book so familiar that one would forget that it contributed so much to the popularization of Tuscan among Italian children: The Adventures of Pinocchio, which Carlo Collodi (whose real name was Carlo Lorenzini, born in Florence in 1826) published from 1881 in serial form in Giornale per i bambini. In the 19th century, the resurrection was also synonymous with rebellion against the established order, a trend that was embodied in a literary and artistic movement that developed in northern Italy, in Milan to be precise, the Scapigliatura, which could be roughly translated as "bohemia". If the rejection of norms and aesthetic dogmas, the admiration for Baudelaire, and the frequentation of bars rather than the beautiful salons constitute their common points, the authors assimilated to this current - Arrigo Boito, Emilio Praga, Carlo Dossi... - follow each one of their personal ways, which creates an interesting eclecticism... but horrifying for Giosuè Carducci (1835-1907) who prefers to maintain his values and to cherish his desire of a truly literary language. The first Italian Nobel Prize of literature that will be awarded to him in 1906 will give him reason, his peers will give him wrong. The trend remained towards innovation, with the decadence embodied by Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) and Gabriele D'Annuzio (1863-1938), and even towards audacity with Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973). The avant-garde finally imposed itself with the Manifesto of Futurism published on February 20, 1909 in the French Figaro. This current, which advocated a future that rhymed with speed and machines, was derailed by the First World War, especially since its signatory, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, himself had a rather troubled history that distanced him from those he had managed to unite.
The paradox
Thus, the twentieth century will live under the rule of a double inclination - the desire to experiment will compete with censorship, realism with criticism, melancholy with irony - which will become almost a paradox: Italian culture will decline while the corpus of illustrious writers will only grow. Without aiming to be exhaustive, we must first mention the authors who were born in the nineteenth century but whose talent asserted itself in the new century. The case in point is Italo Svevo (1861-1928), who gave up writing for twenty years after having his first manuscripts rejected, and who only began to write again when he met James Joyce in 1903. The First World War interrupted Svevo's work again and he became famous only in 1923 with The Conscience of Zeno, now a classic. The career of the playwright Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was hindered by his wife's poor health, and it was only after announcing that he was giving up the theater that his play Six Characters in Search of an Author triumphed in Milan in 1921. Thirteen years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, a prize he shared with Grazia Deledda (1871-1936), whose work is now republished by Cambourakis(Cosima, Le Lierre sur l'arbre mort, Elias Portolu, Dans l'ombre, la mère, etc.), and with the discreet Eugenio Montale, a man of few words whose poetry is discovered by Gallimard(Os de seiche, Satura). Shy, almost reclusive, Montale is the opposite of his younger brother of two years, Curzio Malaparte born Curt Erich Suckert in 1898 in Tuscany. Sulphurous, insolent, politically opportunistic, Malaparte is nonetheless eminently talented, and the reading of La Peau and Kaputt (in Folio or at Denoël) can only convince the most reluctant. Le Guépard, the only novel by the Sicilian Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa published posthumously in 1958, is of the same ilk, the film adaptation by Visconti with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon having completed its entry into history.
The new century begins with the birth in 1901 of Salvatore Quasimodo, whose Poetic Works (Corlevour editions) are perhaps less known on our side of the border, but nevertheless earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959. Then there is Carlo Levi (1902-1975) and his masterpiece Christ Stopped at Eboli, which has the merit, in addition to a magnificent writing, of being interested in southern Italy so often neglected, and above all Dino Buzzati (1906-1972), who can be compared to the absurd of Kafka, surrealism, and even existentialism, but who is finally unique in his genre. His novel The Desert of the Tartars, in which the soldier Giovanni Drogo tirelessly watches the opposing army, or his collections of short stories - The K, The Dream of the Stairs - have kept all their freshness. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a famous couple is going to explore reality in its most scabrous aspects - for him, Alberto Moravia, to whom we owe The Contempt, The Boredom, Me and Him -, and in its most tragic aspects - for her, Elsa Morante, the author of La Storia, inspired by the Second World War. The reality is still unbearable under the pen of Cesare Pavese, so much so that he will eventually decide to put his own end by committing suicide in 1950, at 42 years. His novels - The Beautiful Summer, The Devil on the Hills, Between Lonely Women -, his poetry - Death Will Come and It Will Have Your Eyes -, as well as his diary - The Craft of Living -, keep the memory of his despair and his immense talent. Anna Maria Ortese (1914-1998), for her part, was to take on several focuses, abandoning magical realism for neo-realism. Several of her texts enrich the catalogs of Gallimard(L'Iguane, La Mer ne baigne pas Naples, La Douleur du chardonneret) and Actes Sud (Mistero doloroso, Femmes de Russie, Deux larmes dans un peu d'eau). Like these writers, Primo Levi will also be honored with the Strega Prize for his writings with a strong autobiographical accent: a survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp, he will have as much difficulty distributing his first text, If this is a man, as he will have in overcoming the horror of his past, as some consider that his fatal fall down a staircase in 1987 was not involuntary.
A century always abounding
The generation born in the 1920s is no less fertile. It includes Mario Rigoni Stern (1921-2008), who also draws on his memories of the war in The Last Card Game (Belles-Lettres). Although not much translated compared to his importance in Italian literature, we are allowed to get the inevitable History of Tönle in a new edition from Gallmeister. Pier Paolo Pasolini, assassinated in 1975 near Rome, also left a fundamental work, a genius jack-of-all-trades who excelled as much in the world of cinema as in that of writing, as evidenced by his poetry(Feuilles de langue romane, published by the magnificent Ypsilon Editions, or Je suis vivant chez Nous), his essays(La Langue vulgaire) or his novels(Une vie violente, Les Ragazzi, Actes impurs).
Although born in Cuba, Italo Calvino was raised in the country of his parents, who were then in the grip of the Mussolin regime. Resistance fighter during the war, he will turn away from the realist path to take the fantastic one, without abandoning his critical spirit as confirmed by his trilogy(The Viscount forfendu, The Perched Baron and The Non-Existent Knight) and even his novels structured according to an Oulipian logic(The Invisible Cities, If on a winter's night a traveler). Finally, it would be impossible to forget Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996), belatedly recognized for her raw and inimitable verve(The Art of Joy, I, Jean Gabin, The University of Rebibbia), Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019) who played with languages by mixing Sicilian with Italian and with genres by devoting himself to the detective story with his series on Commissioner Montalbano, and of course the playwright Dario Fo who was the last Italian of the twentieth century to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 (L'Arche: On ne paie pas ! On ne paie pas!, Histoire du tigre, Mort accidentelle d'un anarchiste).
From then on, Italian letters continue to fulfill their promise by aligning bestsellers. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is not the least famous, although it represents only a small part of the work of this professor emeritus who died in 2016. We must now also count with Elena Ferrante, whose birth in Naples in 1943 is just known, and whose international success of her saga The Prodigious Friend will not have escaped anyone. Erri De Luca has also been in the news ever since Montedido, winner of the 2002 Femina Foreign Prize, as well as Alessandro Baricco, who made a name for himself in 1997 with his translations of Silk and Novecento. The new generation seems ready to take over: Paolo Cognetti received the Strega Prize and the Foreign Medici Prize in 2017 for The Eight Mountains, and Andrea Donaera, born in Puglia in 1989, is already convincing of his singularity with I am the beast and She, who never touches the ground, published by Cambourakis in 2020 and 2023 respectively.
