An Introduction to Italian Poetry Quiz

Answer: Yes

Identified by most scholars with Florentine noblewoman Beatrice Portinari, Beatrice is one of the most famous of literary muses - even though Dante Alighieri hardly had any real contact with her during her short life. In his poetry collection "La Vita Nuova" (The New Life"), his only major work composed before his exile from Florence in 1301, Dante relates the story of his love for Beatrice within the tradition of courtly love - whose object is viewed with almost religious reverence, and strictly from a distance. In fact, Beatrice became a sort of spiritual guide for the poet - even more so after her untimely death (probably in childbirth) in 1290. According to the poet's account, he and Beatrice were almost the same age, and met when they were both 9 years old. Most of the story told in "La Vita Nuova", however, is fictional and allegorical, as Dante and Beatrice are likely to have never met again after that first time.

In the "Divine Comedy" (composed between 1308 and 1321), Beatrice is first of all the catalyst whose intercession allows Dante to journey though the afterlife. She serves as the poet's guide in his journey through Heaven ("Paradiso"), replacing the Roman poet Virgil who, as a pagan, was not allowed there. She first appears at the end of the "Purgatorio", in the Garden of Eden, and proceeds to scold the poet for straying from the path of virtue. Purified by his heartfelt confession of his sins, Dante is ready to ascend to Heaven with his guide. During their journey through the celestial spheres, Beatrice grows more beautiful as they approach the presence of God; she eventually leaves the poet to take her rightful place in the Empyrean (the highest level of Heaven), among various eminent women from the Bible.

Dante and Beatrice were a favourite subject for Romantic and Late Romantic artists, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The painting in the picture, by Danish painter Poul Simon Christiansen, dates from 1893.

Answer: sonnet

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) was one of the earliest humanists, and most of his work was written in Latin - a language he considered superior to the Italian vernacular, in particular for writing about philosophy, history, or religion. However, he owes most of his fame to the "Canzoniere" - originally titled "Rerum vulgarium fragmenta", or "Fragments of Things Written in the Vernacular Tongue" - a collection of 366 poems (317 of which are sonnets) written in Italian. The subject of these poems is Petrarca's love for a beautiful, golden-haired woman named Laura, whom he met for the first time in 1327 in Avignon (southern France). Though frequently identified with a French noblewoman by the name of Laura de Noves (whose portrait is shown in the photo), married to an ancestor of the notorious Marquis de Sade, some scholars believe she was not a real person, but an idealized character representing the "laurels" of poetic inspiration and fame.

Compared to Dante's love for Beatrice, Petrarca's love for Laura comes across as more realistic and less spiritual, with frequent references to the lady's physical beauty and the ardent feelings she arouses in the poet. Being unrequited (as in the tradition of courtly love), this passion brings him a mixture of immense joy and unbearable pain. Laura's death in the great plague epidemic of 1348 (the Black Death) devastated the poet - as expressed in the second half of the "Canzoniere", titled "In morte di Madonna Laura" ("Written Upon the Death of My Lady Laura").

Although Petrarca did not invent the sonnet, he perfected the form whose invention is credited to 13th-century Sicilian poet Jacopo da Lentini. Like the Shakespearean sonnet, the Petrarchan sonnet has 14 lines: however, they are divided in two quatrains and two tercets rather than three quatrains and one rhyming couplet. An example of a Petrarchan sonnet in English literature is "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" by William Wordsworth.

Answer: hippogriff

A noted humanist and diplomatic for the ducal House of Este of Ferrara, Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) owes most of his literary fame to his sprawling romance epic "Orlando furioso" (The Frenzy of Orlando, 1516). Written as a continuation of "Orlando innamorato" (Orlando in Love) by Matteo Maria Boiardo, like the latter it is loosely based on the medieval cycle known as the "Matter of France" - the heroic deeds of the paladins (knights) of Charlemagne. The poem is written in the ottava rima scheme - stanzas of eight lines each, with an ABABABCC rhyme scheme - also used by Lord Byron for his "Don Juan".

Though titled after the most famous of the paladins, Orlando (Roland in French and English), the poem has an extremely intricate plot, with many different strands woven together, featuring vivid characters, plenty of humour and drama, and fantastic elements inspired by mythology and folklore. The romance element is also strongly highlighted, as established right in the opening lines: "Of loves and ladies, of arms and knights I sing/Of courtesies, and many a daring feat" (translation by William Stewart Rose, 1823-1831). Indeed, Orlando loses his mind because of his unrequited love for a beautiful Chinese princess, Angelica (who eventually elopes with a humble squire), while love pushes other characters to risk life and limb multiple times.

Among the many fantastic and magical elements in "Orlando furioso" there are wizards and sorceresses, enchanted castles, a trip to the moon, and creatures such as the sea monster Orca and the hippogriff, a creature with the front half of an eagle and the hind half of a horse. In Ariosto's account, the hippogriff is a winged steed born of the union of a mare and a griffin (half lion, half eagle), which can fly faster and farther than any other creature. In the illustration by Gustave Doré shown in the photo, the Saracen knight Ruggiero, mounted on the hippogriff, battles the Orca to free Angelica, who has been offered as a sacrifice to the sea monster. A hippogriff named Buckbeak appears in several volumes of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series.

Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte

Like Wolfgang Goethe, who was one of his major influences, Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) lived at the turn of the 19th century, and his work features elements of both leading cultural movements of that historical period - the Enlightenment and early Romanticism. A highly educated man, fluent in various languages (including English), staunchly committed to republican and patriotic ideals, he spent the last 11 years of his life as an exile in London, where he took refuge to escape the Austrian police.

Though he also wrote novels, plays and essays, Foscolo is mainly remembered for his poetry, characterized by a degree of emotional intensity and focus on the individual experience that marked a drastic departure from the classical style of many late 18th-century writers, hinting at the beginnings of Romanticism. Its most celebrated work, the ode (or "carme", as defined by the poet himself) "Dei sepolcri", was dedicated to a fellow poet, Ippolito Pindemonte (known for his translation of "The Odyssey"), with whom Foscolo had been discussing the Napoleonic edict of Saint-Cloud (1804), which required all burials to take place outside the city walls, and also imposed various restrictions on funerary monuments.

Consisting of 295 lines divided into four parts, the poem is a meditation on death, memory, and the relationship between the living and the dead. With its many references to classical antiquity, juxtaposed with Gothic elements, "Dei sepolcri" illustrates the tension between the ideals of the Enlightenment and those of Romanticism. The third part of the poem celebrates the "urns of the strong" in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence - the monumental tombs of famous people who contributed to Italy's greatness: Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei (whose tomb is shown in the photo) and Niccoló Machiavelli (Dante, Petrarca and 18th-century dramatist Vittorio Alfieri are also mentioned). In 1871, Foscolo's remains found their final resting place in the same church; his empty tomb in the churchyard of St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick, stands as a memorial.

Answer: Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) was the scion of a noble family of the town of Recanati, now in the Marche region, then part of the Papal State. In precarious health since childhood, he further undermined his constitution with his "mad and desperate" studies - which, however, allowed him an escape from the stifling atmosphere of his family home, and made him one of the most erudite people of his times.

During his short life, Leopardi wrote a number of philosophical works inspired by materialism. However, his lyric poetry, among the finest examples of Romantic poetry, was by far the most effective vehicle for his profound (and deeply pessimistic) reflections on human condition. One of the 36 poems included in his collection "Canti" (1835), the 15-line poem "L'infinito" (Infinity) was inspired by the view from a hill not far from Leopardi's home in Recanati. With its vivid imagery and emotional depth, the poem explores the concept of infinity and the human desire to understand and connect with it. Other poems included in "Canti" are considerably longer - the longest being the 317-line "La ginestra" (The Broom), in which the titular plant, growing on the arid slopes of Mount Vesuvius, symbolizes humble acceptance of the inevitability of fate and the hostility of nature.

The portrait in the photo, painted by Stanislao Ferrazzi on the occasion of the first centenary of Leopardi's birth (1897), depicts the poet in his early 20s.

Vittorio Alfieri was an 18th-century poet and dramatist; Alessandro Manzoni, known for his novel "I promessi sposi" (The Betrothed), lived through most of the 19th century, while Giosuč Carducci was the first Italian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1906).

Answer: nature

When he was just 12 years old, Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) experienced a personal tragedy that impacted his whole life: his father Ruggero, who was returning home in his horse-drawn carriage, was shot and killed by a man who was never apprehended. In the following years, Pascoli lost his mother, a sister and two brothers, and the family's economic status declined sharply. In spite of these tragic events, he managed to achieve a more than respectable position as a university professor, and produced a large body of poetry (both in Italian and Latin) and other writings. He was also politically active, having embraced Socialism while a student at the University of Bologna. However, his life was not a happy one: very close to his sister Maria, he never married, and died relatively young of alcohol-related issues.

Pascoli's lyrical, evocative poetry explores themes of nature, childhood and memory. His first collection, "Myricae" (1891), contains some of his very best work, marking a break from the classicist tradition and the lofty historical and patriotic themes of his teacher, Giosuč Carducci, to concentrate instead on the observation of nature and simple domestic life. The "nest", representing the family hearth, is one of the recurring images of Pascoli's poetry, and has a prominent place in one of his best-known poems, "X agosto" (10th August), written in memory of his father. Like other contemporary poets - especially those in the Symbolist vein - Pascoli explored the endless possibilities of language, in terms of sound and imagery, with his widespread use of onomatopoeia, analogy, and synesthesia. This is most evident in Pascoli's shorter poems, delicate yet vivid sketches of country life. Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney translated part of "Myricae" into English: the book, titled "The Last Walk", was published in 2013, just before Heaney's death.

Some of Pascoli's later work also explored social and political themes. A particularly interesting example is the narrative poem "Italy" (1904), focused on the plight of a family of Italian immigrants to the US, which includes words and phrases in English, as well as Italian-English contaminations - such as "fruttistendo" (fruit stand) or "stima" (steamboat).

Answer: his association with the Fascist regime

Like all larger-than-life characters, Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) tends to divide public opinion regarding his actual merits as a literary figure. Frequently mentioned in the same breath as Giovanni Pascoli for his role as an innovator in the somewhat staid landscape of Italian literature, his contributions are often overshadowed by his decadent lifestyle (including high-profile affairs with famous women, such as celebrated actress Eleonora Duse) and his reckless military feats (referenced in the portrait in the photo), which made him a hero during the Fascist era. Though his allegiance to Mussolini's regime is much less clear-cut than many would like to believe, there is little doubt that he modeled much of his persona on Nietzsche's Superman.

D'Annunzio lived intensely, and his literary output - which comprises plays, novels, short stories, autobiographical works, and various poetry collections - was accordingly copious. Though much of it has not aged particularly well, some of his poems have earned enduring fame because of their impact on the development of modern Italian poetry. This is the case of "La pioggia nel pineto", which epitomizes D'Annunzio's sensuous use of language. Written in the form of a song with a refrain, the poem is part of the 1903 collection "Alcyone", inspired by a summer stay on the Tuscan coast with Eleonora Duse. In this collection, D'Annunzio explores the musical potential of language joined to a sensual, almost pagan worship of nature. In "La pioggia nel pineto", the words are chosen for their sound as much as their meaning, and the rhythm of the verses - which do not follow a regular scheme - suggests the sound of the rain falling on the leaves of the plants that populate the wood.

D'Annunzio's contribution to Italian culture did not stop at literature, but extended to music (he collaborated or inspired a number of composers, including Giacomo Puccini and Claude Debussy), the visual arts, and even cinema and the budding advertising industry. The sumptuous estate on the shores of Lake Garda where he spent the final years of his life is now a museum.

Answer: Futurism

In terms of courting controversy, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944) makes Gabriele D'Annunzio look almost tame. However, although many of the statements contained in his "Futurist Manifesto" (1909) may sound abhorrent to our modern sensibilities, there was more to Marinetti than mere shock tactics - as demonstrated by the influence that some of the ideas expressed in that manifesto had on art and literature in Italy and elsewhere.

Marinetti grew up in a rather unconventional milieu for that time (his parents were not married), and eventually decided to forgo a law career to became a writer. His literary production ran counter to the Symbolist and Decadent aesthetics that characterized much of the turn of the 20th century: among the most significant elements of Futurism are the glorification of cars and speed and the embrace of revolutionary and patriotic violence - as well as the rejection of the past in favour of modernity (as the movement's name suggests). Not surprisingly, Marinetti enthusiastically embraced Fascism, and even helped Mussolini draft the Fascist manifesto.

Marinetti's most significant contribution to Italian poetry is his experimentation with forms of concrete poetry (in which the visual arrangement of words on the page is more important than their actual meaning), which he called "parole in libertŕ" - words set free from the strictures of syntax and punctuation. An example of this revolutionary approach is "Zang Tumb Tumb" (1914), in which the Battle of Adrianople during the First Balkan War (1912-1913) is related through concrete poetry and sound poetry - as illustrated by the title, which renders the sound of cannon fire.

Italian Futurism was extremely influential for the development of later avant-garde movements, but also produced a number of high-profile visual artists. The photo depicts Umberto Boccioni's first major Futurist work, "La cittŕ che sale" (The City Rises, 1910), now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Answer: World War I

In the first few decades of the 20th century, Italy produced a bumper crop of outstanding poets, each of them with their own individual features. Born in Egypt, Giuseppe Ungaretti (1880-1970) grew up in an international milieu, and spent some time in France as a young man before finally moving to Italy. There he enlisted in the Army when Italy intervened in WWI in 1915: his first important poetry collections, "Il porto sepolto" (The Buried Port, 1916) and "Allegria di naufragi" (The Joy of Shipwrecks, 1919), were born of his experience fighting in the trenches of the Italian front (depicted in the photo).

Ungaretti's early poems are often stark and spare, dispensing with punctuation, and relying on a few vivid images to convey the pain and devastation caused by the war, or his reflections on the nature of existence. One of his most famous works, "Mattina" (Morning), consists of two lines for a total of four words: "M'illumino/d'immenso" (I illuminate myself/with immensity). His later works, however, are more complex in language and content, emphasizing the spiritual and mystical aspects of human existence. Hermeticism, with which Ungaretti and other poets were associated in the 1930s, was inspired by French Symbolist poetry, as well as poets such as T.S. Eliot and Federico García Lorca. The movement's name referred to the use of sequences of analogies that were often extremely difficult to interpret - hence "hermetically" closed or sealed.

Like other Italian intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century, Ungaretti had a close association with the Fascist Party - which, after the end of the regime, caused him to be blacklisted from the university for a few years. However, his poetic output barely touched upon the political turmoil of those times, focusing instead on the human condition and his own life experiences - such as the death of his 9-year-old son in 1939.

Answer: Liguria

Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) was born in Genoa, the capital of Liguria. However, he spent most of his life away from the region - first in Florence, and then in Milan. Besides his activity as a poet and translator (mainly from English), he also worked as a reporter and journalist. In 1967, because of his outstanding contribution to Italian culture, he was named as a Senator-for-Life by then-President of the Republic Giuseppe Saragat.

Montale's literary breakthrough came with the collection "Ossi di seppia" (Cuttlefish Bones, 1925), a stark meditation on the human condition expressed through powerful images inspired by nature, in particular the rugged landscape of Liguria's Riviera di Levante (Eastern Riviera). The deep pessimism expressed in "Ossi di seppia" reflects Montale's sense of alienation from the world around him - a consequence of the rise of Fascism, which he vehemently opposed. The coastal landscape and the objects (like the titular cuttlefish bones) deposited on the shore by the waves represent the fragility and ultimate meaninglessness of human existence. In fact, like T.S. Eliot (who coined the term), Montale makes use of the "objective correlative" - a series of objects or situations that becomes the formula of a particular emotion.

In Montale's later work, his language and imagery became more complex and sometimes obscure, and the figures of the women he loved (including his wife, Drusilla Tanzi) throughout his life acquired a prominence that has elicited comparisons with Beatrice, Laura, and other famous muses. The poet was already 79 years old when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions".

The photo shows a view of Punta Manara, the tip of a promontory east of the city of Genoa. The Mediterranean vegetation that grows on the Ligurian coast is frequently mentioned in Montale's work.