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Vincenzo Monti
Vincenzo Monti (19 February 1754 – 13 October 1828) was an Italian poet, playwright, translator, and scholar, the greatest interpreter of Italian Neoclassicism in all of its various phases. His verse translation of the Iliad is considered one of the greatest of them all, with its iconic opening ("Cantami, o Diva, del Pelide Achille l'ira funesta", lib. I, verses 1–2) becoming an extremely recognizable phrase among Italians (for example, being the text shown when opening a font file in Microsoft Windows).
Monti was born in Alfonsine, Province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna the son of Fedele and Domenica Maria Mazzari, landowners. He was educated at the seminar in Faenza and at the University of Ferrara, where he studied medicine and jurisprudence.
Monti derived from his classical education a taste for the elegance of Virgil and of the Arcadian poet Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni. In 1775 he was admitted to membership in the Academy of Arcadians, for which he took the pastoral name 'Autonide Saturnino'. In the following year he composed the Visione d'Ezechiello ("Ezekiel's vision"), a Dantesque Vision, in terza rima, written under the influence of Alfonso Varano, which he dedicated to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the Papal Legate in Ferrara. The Cardinal was struck by Monti's promise as a poet and invited him to Rome, where he settled in 1778.
In Rome, where he lived for some twenty years, until 1797, Monti composed odes and a variety of lengthier works. He served as secretary to Duke Luigi Braschi Onesti, enjoyed favour at the court of the enlightened and judicious Pope Pius VI, the uncle of his patron, and soon gained a leading position in Roman literary circles.
Soon after his arrival in Rome, two remarkable archaeological finds, the busts of Pericles and of Aspasia, unearthed at Tivoli and Civitavecchia respectively, provided the theme of La Prosopopea di Pericle (1779), Monti's first Roman ode. This was followed by La bellezza dell'universo (1781) and the Ode al signor di Montgolfier (1784). In the former, which is in terza rima, the beauties of Nature from the time of the Creation are depicted, in a sequence of magnificent images; the latter was written to mark the first ascent of the brothers Charles and Robert Montgolfier in their hydrogen balloon, which took off in the Tuileries on 1 December 1783. The Ode al signor di Montgolfier is typically 'Montian' in its spirit of eulogy and in its exaltation of scientific enterprise within the context of Greek myth.
The Ode al signor di Montgolfier, which was composed in the form of a canzonetta with lines of seven syllables arranged in four-line stanzas, was recited in Arcadia in 1784, the year of its composition. In the same year Monti began one of his most distinguished poems, La Feroniade, a mythological composition of Virgilian inspiration in which he extolled the plans of Pius VI for the drainage and reclamation of the Pontine Marshes. The poem is in three cantos in versi sciolti. But although Monti worked on it occasionally throughout his life, it was left incomplete at the time of his death.
An unhappy love-affair at this time provided inspiration for Al Principe Don Sigismondo Chigi and Pensieri d'amore (1783) – the latter, with its perhaps too faithful rendering of passages from Goethe's Werther, being unique among all his poetry for its emotional content.
In 1785 Monti published his tragedy Aristodemo, which was received with great favour. Encouraged by this success, Monti undertook a new tragedy in the Alfieri manner, this time with a subject drawn from fifteenth-century Italian history, Galeotto Manfredi. In 1791 he married the actress Teresa Pichler who bore him a daughter, Costanza, and a son, Francesco (the latter dies at only two years old). Through her the singer Fanny Eckerlin is his niece.
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Vincenzo Monti
Vincenzo Monti (19 February 1754 – 13 October 1828) was an Italian poet, playwright, translator, and scholar, the greatest interpreter of Italian Neoclassicism in all of its various phases. His verse translation of the Iliad is considered one of the greatest of them all, with its iconic opening ("Cantami, o Diva, del Pelide Achille l'ira funesta", lib. I, verses 1–2) becoming an extremely recognizable phrase among Italians (for example, being the text shown when opening a font file in Microsoft Windows).
Monti was born in Alfonsine, Province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna the son of Fedele and Domenica Maria Mazzari, landowners. He was educated at the seminar in Faenza and at the University of Ferrara, where he studied medicine and jurisprudence.
Monti derived from his classical education a taste for the elegance of Virgil and of the Arcadian poet Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni. In 1775 he was admitted to membership in the Academy of Arcadians, for which he took the pastoral name 'Autonide Saturnino'. In the following year he composed the Visione d'Ezechiello ("Ezekiel's vision"), a Dantesque Vision, in terza rima, written under the influence of Alfonso Varano, which he dedicated to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the Papal Legate in Ferrara. The Cardinal was struck by Monti's promise as a poet and invited him to Rome, where he settled in 1778.
In Rome, where he lived for some twenty years, until 1797, Monti composed odes and a variety of lengthier works. He served as secretary to Duke Luigi Braschi Onesti, enjoyed favour at the court of the enlightened and judicious Pope Pius VI, the uncle of his patron, and soon gained a leading position in Roman literary circles.
Soon after his arrival in Rome, two remarkable archaeological finds, the busts of Pericles and of Aspasia, unearthed at Tivoli and Civitavecchia respectively, provided the theme of La Prosopopea di Pericle (1779), Monti's first Roman ode. This was followed by La bellezza dell'universo (1781) and the Ode al signor di Montgolfier (1784). In the former, which is in terza rima, the beauties of Nature from the time of the Creation are depicted, in a sequence of magnificent images; the latter was written to mark the first ascent of the brothers Charles and Robert Montgolfier in their hydrogen balloon, which took off in the Tuileries on 1 December 1783. The Ode al signor di Montgolfier is typically 'Montian' in its spirit of eulogy and in its exaltation of scientific enterprise within the context of Greek myth.
The Ode al signor di Montgolfier, which was composed in the form of a canzonetta with lines of seven syllables arranged in four-line stanzas, was recited in Arcadia in 1784, the year of its composition. In the same year Monti began one of his most distinguished poems, La Feroniade, a mythological composition of Virgilian inspiration in which he extolled the plans of Pius VI for the drainage and reclamation of the Pontine Marshes. The poem is in three cantos in versi sciolti. But although Monti worked on it occasionally throughout his life, it was left incomplete at the time of his death.
An unhappy love-affair at this time provided inspiration for Al Principe Don Sigismondo Chigi and Pensieri d'amore (1783) – the latter, with its perhaps too faithful rendering of passages from Goethe's Werther, being unique among all his poetry for its emotional content.
In 1785 Monti published his tragedy Aristodemo, which was received with great favour. Encouraged by this success, Monti undertook a new tragedy in the Alfieri manner, this time with a subject drawn from fifteenth-century Italian history, Galeotto Manfredi. In 1791 he married the actress Teresa Pichler who bore him a daughter, Costanza, and a son, Francesco (the latter dies at only two years old). Through her the singer Fanny Eckerlin is his niece.
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