Solitudes: Italian Poetry at the Origins of European Literature

By the end of modern times, the solitary man had become a destitute and infirm man, though curable with the balms of sociability; today, the ＂hyperconnected＂ condition of the contemporary men is quite the opposite: their infirmity a new and more dangerous one. The paradox of the solitude of the poet, who distances himself from everyone to be able to speak to everyone, is one of the myths par excellence of Italian literature. In Solitudes, Giorgio Ficara pens the stories of great solitary poets from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century: Petrarch, lost in an unattainable dream of inner peace and solitary life; Tasso, alone in the small circle of creation; Alfieri, who yearns to be alone amidst the voices of the world; Foscolo on his lonely way to the heliconic peaks; Leopardi, whose effective solitude of the poet-philosopher faces the divine solitude of nature; D’Annunzio, alone in front of a necklace that breaks. For all of them, solitude ＂in the end is destiny itself, the necessity to which one is subject at the acme of poetic expression＂. Over the centuries, this intellectual legacy of solitary life has become one of the many ways in which Italy deeply influenced European literature and culture at large.

Giorgio Ficara, University of Turin, Italy; Igor Candido (editor), Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.