Giacomo Leopardi – poet and philosopher

The tragic life of a brilliant Italian writer

Giacomo Leopardi, depicted in a portrait in 1820

One of Italy’s greatest 19th century writers, Giacomo Leopardi, died on this day in 1837 in Naples.

A brilliant scholar and philosopher, Leopardi led an unhappy life in Recanati in the Papal States, blighted by poor health, but he left as a legacy his superb lyric poetry.

By the age of 16, Leopardi had independently mastered Greek, Latin and several modern languages and had translated many classical works. He had also written some poems, tragedies and scholarly commentaries.

He had been born deformed and excessive study made his health worse. He became blind in one eye and developed a cerebrospinal condition that was to cause him problems for the rest of his life.

He was forced to suspend his studies and, saddened by an apparent lack of concern from his parents, he poured out his feelings in poems such as the visionary work, Appressamento della morte - Approach of Death - written in 1816 in terza rima, in imitation of Petrarch and Dante.

His frustrated love for his married cousin, and the death from consumption of the young daughter of his father’s coachman, only deepened his despair. The death of the young girl inspired perhaps his greatest lyric poem, A Silvia.

The scholar and patriot Pietro Giordani visited Leopardi in 1818 and urged him to leave home. Leopardi then spent a few unhappy months in Rome, but returned to live in Recanati.

After accepting an offer to edit Cicero’s works in Milan in 1825, he left home again.

Giacomo Leopoldi on his death bed in 1837

He spent the next few years travelling between Bologna, Pisa and Florence while he wrote a collection of poems and a philosophical work.

His frustrated love for a Florentine beauty, Fanny Targioni-Tozzetti, inspired some of his saddest poetry.

Leopardi finally settled in Naples in 1833, where he wrote the long poem, Ginestra.

The death he had long regarded as the only escape from his unhappiness came to him suddenly in 1837 during a cholera epidemic.

His genius and frustrated hopes during his life had found their way into his poetry which has long been admired for its intensity and musicality.

Casa Leopardi: The poet's home in Recanati is now a museum

Travel tip:

Leopardi was born and lived for most of his life in Recanati, a town in the province of Macerati in the Marche region of Italy.The great tenor Beniamino Gigli was born in Recanati in 1890 and sang in the choir at Recanati cathedral as a boy. The Italian paternal ancestors of the Argentine footballer Lionel Messi are also believed to have originated from Recanati. Leopardi's house is now a museum.

The monument at Leopaldi's tomb in Parco Vergiliano, Naples

Travel tip:

Leopardi was buried at first in the atrium of the church of San Vitale at Fuorigrotta but in 1898 his tomb was moved to the Parco Virgiliano in Naples and declared a national monument.

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Pope's would-be killer pardoned

Turkish gunman 'freed' but immediately detained

Pope John Paul II's historic meeting in prison with Mehmet
Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who attempted to kill him

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Italy’s president, signed the order granting an official pardon to Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, on this day in 2000.

The Turkish gunman had spent 19 years in jail after wounding the pontiff in St Peter’s Square in Rome in May 1981 but John Paul II, who had forgiven Agca from his hospital bed and visited him in prison in 1983, had been pressing the Italian government to show clemency and allow him to return to Turkey.

However, at the same time as granting him his freedom under the Italian judicial system, Ciampi also signed Agca’s extradition papers at the request of the Turkish authorities, who required him to serve the outstanding nine years of a 10-year jail sentence after being convicted in his absence of the murder of a Turkish journalist in 1978.

He was handed over to Turkish police, who escorted him onto a military flight to Istanbul airport on Tuesday night.

The pontiff pressed the Italian authorities
to show clemency towards Agca

At the time, a Vatican statement described the Pope as "very happy" about the pardon and said that John Paul II’s satisfaction was all the greater for the pardon being carried out during the Roman Catholic Church's Holy Year, the theme of which was pardon and forgiveness.

The attempt on the Pope's life had come on May 13, 1981 as he drove across St Peter's Square in an open car to hold a general audience with a crowd of 20,000 people.

He was hit by four bullets, wounding him in the stomach, his left hand and his right arm.  Two of his aides were also injured in the attack, as were two bystanders.  John Paul II suffered considerable loss of blood but attributed his survival to the Virgin of Fatima, whose feast day falls on May 13.

Agca was arrested by Italian police as he tried to flee the scene. He was sentenced to life imprisonment two months later, although it was always likely he would be released. It is rare for criminals in Italy to remain incarcerated much beyond 20 years, even for very serious offences.

The gunman, who spent the last part of the sentence in Montacuto prison near Ancona, had kissed John Paul II’s ring when he was visited in his cell in 1983 at the Rebibbia prison in Rome and later described the pontiff as his friend and thanked him for the help he had given to his family in Turkey while he remained imprisoned.

The open vehicle in which Pope John Paul II was
travelling when the assassination attempt took place

Despite three investigations and two trials, mystery has long surrounded the assassination attempt. It was at first believed to be linked to Bulgarian and Soviet secret services as part of a communist plot to kill John Paul II because of his influence in his native Poland, where he had helped to loosen the grip of the communist authorities.

Agca had allegedly told the pontiff when they met in 1983 that he had been instructed to kill him by the Bulgarian secret services on behalf of the Russian KGB but, at a second trial in 1986, prosecutors failed to prove that Bulgarian secret services had hired him on the orders of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, a court in Istanbul had sentenced him in absentia to death for his part in the murder of newspaper editor Abdi İpekçi, carried out by a far-right Turkish paramilitary group, the Grey Wolves. The sentence was later commuted to a 10-year jail term.

Bernini's awe-inspiring sweep of colonnades makes
St Peter's Square instantly recognisable

Travel tip:

St Peter’s Square – Piazza San Pietro – took shape under the supervision of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1656 and 1667, under the direction of Pope Alexander VII, who wanted an appropriate space in front of the basilica "so that the greatest number of people could see the Pope give his blessing, either from the middle of the façade of the church or from a window in the Vatican Palace". Bernini, who had been working on the interior of St Peter's for many years, chose to enclose the square within colonnades, using simple Doric columns so as not to detract from the majesty of Carlo Maderno’s basilica façade but created a sense of awe with the sheer size of the sweep of colonnades on each side. The Egyptian obelisk, erected in 1586, was retained as the centrepiece. One of the two fountains was built by Maderno in 1613 and matched by the addition of a second by Bernini in 1675.

Travel tip:

The coastal town of Ancona, about 7km (4 miles) from Montacuto, is a bustling port that at first glance can appear to lack obvious charm but which possesses much history, bearing witness to its Greek and Roman past. The 18m-high Arch of Trajan, built in honour of the emperor who built the city’s harbour, is regarded as one of the finest Roman monuments in the Marche region. The Duomo – also known as the Basilica Cattedrale Metropolitana di San Ciriaco – is equally impressive, as is the Lazzaretto, the pentagonal building constructed on an artificial island in the 18^th century as a quarantine station designed to protect Ancona from diseases carried by infected travellers.

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Charles Emmanuel II - Duke of Savoy

Ruler who was notorious for massacre of Protestant minority

Charles Emmanuel II's good work for Turin was
overshadowed by his persecution of minority

Charles Emmanuel II, who was Duke of Savoy for almost his whole life, died on this day in 1675 in Turin.

His rule was notorious for his persecution of the Valdesi – a Christian Protestant movement widely known as the Waldenses that originate in 12^th century France, whose base was on the Franco-Italian border.

In 1655, he launched an attack on the Valdesi that turned into a massacre so brutal that it sent shockwaves around Europe and prompted the English poet, John Milton, to write the sonnet On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.

The British political leader Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, proposed to send the British Navy if the massacre and subsequent attacks were not halted, and raised funds for helping the Waldensians.

More positively, Charles Emmanuel II was responsible for improving commerce and creating wealth in the Duchy. He was a driver in developing the port of Nice and building a road through the Alps towards France.

He also reformed the army so that it did not rely on mercenaries, forming five Piedmontese regiments and reviving the cavalry, as well as introducing a standardised uniform.

Charles Emmanuel with his mother Christine Maria

Charles Emmanuel restored crumbling fortifications and many of Turin’s most beautiful buildings were built on his initiative. He also continued the development of the Palazzo Reale, which had been built by mother, Christine Marie of France, during her regency, as a new residence for the Court of Savoy.

He was born in Turin in June 1634. His father was Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy, who died when Charles Emmanuel was just three. His maternal grandparents were Henry IV of France and his second wife Marie de' Medici.

Charles Emmanuel was only four when he succeeded to the title following the death of his older brother, Francis Hyacinth. Because of his age, his mother governed as regent. He showed little interest in affairs of state himself as he grew up and even after turning 18, when he might have taken charge in his own right, he invited his mother to extend her regency, allowing him to continue to enjoy the carefree life of a wealthy young man.

It was only with the death of his mother in 1663 that he was forced to take responsibility for governing the Duchy.  Apart from his persecution of the Valdesi, he also flexed his military muscles in a war against Genoa which was inconclusive.

Charles Emmanuel was Duke of Savoy
from the age of four years old

His first marriage was rather forced on him by his mother, who paired him with Françoise Madeleine d'Orléans, daughter of her younger brother, Gaston, Duke of Orléans. They were married in April 1663 but the marriage lasted less than one year because of the death of his new wife in 1664. They had no children.

This freed him to marry Marie Jeanne of Savoy, whom he had first met in 1659 and fallen in love with her. They married in May 1665 and had one son, who would become Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, future King of Sicily and later Sardinia.

Charles Emmanuel II is also thought to have fathered at least five illegitimate children by three different mistresses.

He died in Turin a few days short of what would have been his 41^st birthday, leaving his wife to act as regent on behalf of Victor Amadeus.  He is buried in Turin’s Duomo – the Cathedral of St John the Baptist.

The Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista in Turin

Travel tip:

The Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista, to give the Turin Duomo its Italian name, is the seat of the Archbishops of Turin. It was built between 1491–98 on the site of an old Roman theatre and adjacent to an earlier campanile built in 1470. Designed by Guarino Guarini, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud – the resting place of the Shroud of Turin - was added in 1668–94, Guarini having been called in to complete a project begun in 1649 by Bernardino Quadri at the behest of Charles Emmanuel II.

The Palazzo Reale is at the heart of Turin

Travel tip:

The Royal Palace of Turin – the Palazzo Reale – was built on the site of what had been the Bishop’s Palace, built by Emmanuel Philibert, who was Duke of Savoy from 1528 to 1580, who chose the site because it had an open and sunny position close to other court buildings. Opposite is the Palazzo Vecchio or the Palazzo di San Giovanni, which was later replaced by the grand Ducal Palace. In 1946, the building became the property of the state and was turned into a museum. In 1997, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Corrado Alvaro - writer and journalist

Novelist from Calabria won Italy's most prestigious literary prize

Corrado Alvaro

The award-winning writer and journalist Corrado Alvaro died on this day in 1956 at the age of 61.

Alvaro won the Premio Strega, Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, in 1951 with his novel Quasi una vita – Almost a Life.

The Premio Strega – the Strega Prize – has been awarded to such illustrious names as Alberto Moravia, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Elsa Morante, Primo Levi, Umberto Eco and Dacia Maraini since its inception in 1947.

Alvaro made his debut as a novelist in 1926 but for much of his life his literary career ran parallel with his work as a journalist.

He was born in San Luca, a small village in Calabria at the foot of the Aspromonte massif in the southern Apennines. His father Antonio was a primary school teacher who also set up classes for illiterate shepherds.

Corrado was sent away to Jesuit boarding schools in Rome and Umbria before graduating with a degree in literature in 1919 at the University of Milan.

He began his newspaper career writing for Il Resto di Carlino of Bologna and Milan’s Corriere della Sera, both daily newspapers, for whom he combined reporting with literary criticism.

Gente in Aspromonte was Alvaro's
breakthrough novel in 1931

After serving in the Italian army during the First World War, in which he was wounded in both arms and spent a long time in hospital, he resumed his journalistic career as a correspondent in Paris (France) for the anti-Fascist paper Il Mondo. In 1925, he supported Benedetto Croce’s Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals.

Alvaro’s debut novel L’uomo nel labirinto – the Man in the labyrinth, published in 1926, explored the growth of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s, when his politics made him the target of surveillance by Mussolini's Fascist regime. Worried about the possibility of arrest, he moved to Berlin in 1928, and subsequently spent time in the Middle East and the Soviet Union.

On his return to Italy, having had little success with his early novels, he made a breakthrough in 1931 when Gente in Aspromonte, his 1930 novel about an uprising in the area around his home village, won a 50,000 lira prize sponsored by the newspaper La Stampa after impressing a judging panel including the novelist and playwright Luigi Pirandello.

Ironically, given that he was previously under scrutiny as an anti-Fascist, his 1938 novel L’uomo è forte – Man is strong – led him to be accused of being a Fascist sympathiser because its content was strongly critical of communist totalitarianism. Nonetheless, the book won the literary prize of the Accademia d’Italia in 1940.

Alvaro lost his father in 1941 but retained his connection with Calabria through his mother, who had moved from San Luca to nearby Caraffa del Bianco, where his brother, Massimo, was parish priest.

The monument to Corrado Alvaro in Reggio Calabria

During the Second World War, Alvaro was briefly editor of the Rome newspaper Il Popolo but he was forced to flee Rome in the later years of the war to escape the Nazi occupation, taking refuge in Chieti, where he assumed a false name, Guido Giorgi, and made a living by giving English lessons.

In 1945 he was co-founder of the Italian Association of Writers, of which he became secretary two years later, a position he retained until his death.  He continued to write for prominent Italian newspapers and penned several more novels and a number of screenplays.

His Strega Prize in 1951 came in a vintage year for Italian literature, coinciding with the publication of L'orologio – the Clock – by Carlo Levi , Il conformista – the Conformist – by Alberto Moravia , A cena col commendatore – Dinner with the commander – by Mario Soldati and Gesù, fate luce – Jesus, make light – by Domenico Rea.

Alvaro died in Rome from lung cancer, having previously undergone surgery for an abdominal tumour. He is buried in the small cemetery of Vallerano in the province of Viterbo in Lazio, about 80km (50 miles) north-west of Rome, where he had bought a large country house in 1939.

His memory is celebrated both in Lazio and Calabria.

In Vallerano, a street, a library and an elementary school are named in his honour, with a statue at the entrance to the library.  The city also established a Corrado Alvaro literary prize in 2015.

In Calabria, the Aspromonte National Park contains a cultural itinerary that includes San Luca and a ‘literary park’ in his name. The regional capital, Reggio Calabria, honoured him with a monument in Piazza Indipendenza.

San Luca is on the eastern slope of Aspromonte

Travel tip:

That Alvaro’s home town of San Luca, situated on the eastern slopes of Aspromonte, could produce a literary giant of his standing is remarkable given its history as a stronghold of the N’drangheta – the Calabrian mafia – and the fact that in 1900, when Alvaro was five, it had no drinking water and a 100 per cent illiteracy rate. The only way to reach the village during his childhood was on foot. The convent known as the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Polsi, founded in 1144 by Roger II of Sicily, is situated in a spectacular setting at the foot of a deep gorge just outside the town.

The Loggia del Palazzo dei Papi in Viterbo

Travel tip:

Viterbo in Lazio is regarded as one of the best preserved medieval towns in Italy, with the historic San Pellegrino quarter, which features an abundance of typical external staircases, at its centre.  The Palazzo dei Papi, which was the papal palace for about 20 years in the 13^th century, and the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, which dates back to the 12^th century, has a 14^th century Gothic belfry and was largely rebuilt in the 16^th century, are among a number of impressive buildings.

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