En: Giosuè Carducci

Giosuè Carducci

Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giosu%C3%A8_Carducci

Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci; also Giosue Carducci in later years; 27 July 1835 – 16 February 1907) was an Italian poet, writer, literary critic and teacher. He was very influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces".

Biography

He was born in Valdicastello (part of Pietrasanta), a small town in the Province of Lucca in the northwest corner of the region of Tuscany. 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.

From the time he was in college, 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.

He graduated in 1856 from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and 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 Italian professor at the university in Bologna. Here, one of his students was Giovanni Pascoli, who became a poet himself and later succeeded him at the university.

Carducci was a popular lecturer and a fierce critic of literature and society. He was an atheist, whose political views were vehemently hostile to Christianity generally and the Catholic Church in particular.

I know neither truth of God nor peace with the Vatican or any priests. They are the real and unaltering enemies of Italy.

he said in his later years.

This anti-clerical revolutionary vehemence is prominently showcased in one famous poem, the deliberately blasphemous and provocative "Inno a Satana" (or "Hymn to Satan".) The poem was composed in 1863 as a dinner party toast, published in 1865, 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 fervor directed against the papacy was running high as republicans pressed both politically and militarily for an end of the Vatican’s domination over the papal states.

In 1890 he met future writer and poet Annie Vivanti, with whom he started a love affair. Carlo Emilio Gadda reported that

Carducci used to travel with a suitcase in which he kept a huge pair of Annie Vivanti's panties... every once in a while, he opened the suitcase, took out the panties, sniffed them and got intoxicated from them.

In 2004, the uncensored letters between her and Carducci were published.

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.

He was the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1906. He was also elected a Senator of Italy.[14] In politics he remained a strong Liberal throughout his life, although he vacillated between a preference for republicanism and constitutional monarchy.[15] Although his reputation rests primarily on his poetry, he also produced a large body of prose works.[16] Indeed, his prose writings, including literary criticism, biographies, speeches and essays, fill some 20 volumes. 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 exhibits on the author.

Hymn to Satan

To you, creation’s

mighty principle,

matter and spirit

reason and sense

Whilst the wine

sparkles in cups

like the soul

in the eye

Whilst earth and

sun exchange

their smiles and

words of love

And shudders

from their secret embrace run down

from the mountains, and

the plain throbs with new life

To you my daring

verses are unleashed,

you I invoke, O Satan

monarch of the feast.

Put aside your sprinkler,

priest, and your litanies!

No, priest, Satan

does not retreat!

Behold! Rust

erodes the mystic

sword of Michael

and the faithful

Archangel, deplumed,

drops into the void.

The thunderbolt lies frozen

in Jove’s hand

Like pale meteors,

spent worlds,

the angels drop

from the firmament

In unsleeping

matter,

king of phenomena,

monarch of form,

Satan alone lives.

He holds sway in

the tremulous flash

of some dark eye,

Or the eye which languidly

turns and resists,

or which, bright and moist,

provokes, insists.

He shines in the bright

blood of grapes,

by which transient

joy persists,

Which restores fleeting

life, keeps

grief at bay,

and inspires us with love

You breathe, O Satan

in my verses,

when from my heart explodes

a challenge to the god

Of wicked pontiffs,

bloody kings;

and like lightning you

shock men’s minds.

Sculpture, painting

and poetry

first lived for you, Ahriman,

Adonis and Astarte,

When Venus

Anadyomene

blessed the

clear Ionian skies

For you the trees of

Lebannon shook,

resurrected lover

of the holy Cyprian:

For you wild dances were done

and choruses swelled

for you virgins offered

their spotless love,

Amongst the perfumed

palms of Idumea

where the Cyprian

seas foam.

To what avail did

the barbarous Christian

fury of agape,

in obscene ritual,

With holy torch

burn down your temples,

scattering their

Greek statuary?

You, a refugee,

the mindful people

welcomed into their homes

amongst their household gods

Thereafter filling the throbbing

female heart

with your fervor

as both god and lover

You inspired the witch,

pallid from endless enquiry,

to succor

suffering nature

You, to the intent gaze

of the alchemist,

and to the skeptical eye

of the sorcerer,

You revealed bright

new heavens

beyond the confines

of the drowsy cloister.

Fleeing from material

things, where you reside,

the dreary monk took refuge

in the Theban desert.

To you O soul

with your sprig severed,

Satan is benign:

he gives you your Heloise.

You mortify yourself to no purpose,

in your rough sackcloth:

Satan still murmurs to you

lines from Maro and Flaccus

Amidst the dirge

and wailing of the Psalms;

and he brings to your side

the divine shapes,

Roseate amidst that

horrid black crowd,

of Lycoris

and Glycera

But other shapes

from a more glorious age

fitfully fill

the sleepless cell.

Satan, from pages

in Livy, conjures fervent

tribunes, consuls,

restless throngs;

And he thrusts you,

O monk, with your memories

of Italy’s proud past

upon the Capitol.

And you whom the raging

pyre could not destroy,

voices of destiny,

Wycliffe and Huss,

You lift to the winds

your waning cry:

‘The new age is dawning,

the time has come’.

And already mitres

and crowns tremble:

from the cloister

rebellion rumbles

Preaching defiance

in the voice of the

cassocked Girolamo

Savonarola

As Martin Luther

threw off his monkish robes,

so throw off your shackles,

O mind of man,

And crowned with flame,

shoot lightning and thunder;

Matter, arise;

Satan has won.

Both beautiful and awful

a monster is unleashed

it scours the oceans

is scours the land

Glittering and belching smoke

like a volcano,

it conquers the hills

it devours the plains.

It flies over chasms,

then burrows

into unknown caverns

along deepest paths;

To re-emerge, unconquerable

from shore to shore

it bellows out

like a whirlwind,

Like a whirlwind

it spews its breath:

‘It is Satan, you peoples,

Great Satan passes by’.

He passes by, bringing blessing

from place to place,

upon his unstoppable

chariot of fire

Hail, O Satan

O rebellion,

O you avenging force

of human reason!

Let holy incense

and prayers rise to you!

You have utterly vanquished

the Jehova of the Priests.

Giosue Carducci

See also

• Freimaurerische Dichtung Giosué Carducci, Literatur 1906 (wurde 1862 Mitglied der Loge „Galvani“, Mitbegründer der Loge „Felsinea“ in Bologna, später affiliiert in der Loge „Propaganda Massonica“ in Rom)
• Rezension: Heinz Sichrovsky (Hg.) – Als ich König war und Maurer Natürlich werden mit Beiträgen etwa von Giosuè Carducci oder Kurt Tucholsky auch die Gefilde fortschrittlicher Politik gestreift. Immerhin wird von Ersterem das Wirken Luzifers als segensreich eingestuft.
• It: Grande Oriente d'Italia
• En: Masonic Noble Prize Winners •Giosue Carducci (1835-1907): 1906 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Brother Giosue was Initiated in Lodge Felsinia Bologna in 1862. He joined Propaganda Masonica Lodge Rome. There are at least four Giosue Carduccia Lodges named in his honour, Nos 103 and 853 Bologna, No 686 Florence and No 820 Follonica.