Antonio Cesari

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Antonio Cesari

Antonio Cesari , as a religious priest of the Oratorians, also Father Antonio (born January 17, 1760 in Verona ; died October 1, 1828 in Ravenna ), was an Italian (or for a substantial part of his life Lombard-Venetian ) linguist , writer and literary theorist .

As a translator of ancient Roman classics of Latin literature into Italian (for example the works of Horace , Terenz and Cicero ), he was at the same time passively shaped by literary classicism , as it actively influenced it.

Life and effect

After Cesari joined the religious congregation of the Oratorians originally founded by Filippo Neri in the 16th century , he completed a Catholic theological training there, was then ordained a priest and was also known under the title of Father ("Father Antonio"). Due to his literary ambitions, he devoted himself in particular to research into Latin and early Italian-language literature .

He is considered an outstanding representative of literary purismo (literary “purity”) in the Italian states of the early 19th century. While under Napoleonic -französischer hegemony standing domination over the regions of the later National State Italy he wrote in the years 1808-1809 his major theoretical work, the " discussion on the current state of Italian " (Italian: Dissertazione sullo stato presente della lingua italiana ). In it he suggested the Italian language , as it had been developed since the Renaissance, especially in Florence at the Accademia della Crusca , as a common language for all regions of the Apennine Peninsula , which are linguistically fragmented due to the many different dialects . In 1817 the Accademia della Crusca accepted him as a member, not without taking offense at the title of his vocabolario.

Funerary monument to Antonio Cesari in the Verona Cathedral

Basically Italian was a language of education , which, like all Romance languages from the Latin had developed, and the first time of Dante Alighieri in the early 14th century (ital. Trecento ) as Volgare Illustre in Italian literature was expressed. Antonio Cesari was one of the writers of the early Risorgimento (the national unification movement of Italy), for whom Alighieri and his pupil Giovanni Boccaccio had historically derived, nationalistic roles.

Lingering controversy

In the further course of the Italian unification movement, the attitude of the scholars of Purismo , which was still considered culturally rigid and dogmatic during Cesari's lifetime, was softened by other poets of the Risorgimento, such as the novelist Alessandro Manzoni . The generation of Italian poets that followed Cesari was more influenced by Romanticism and the majority advocated a common Italian language in which the perspective and forms of expression of the population were to form the decisive basis of poetry and journalism spread.

After Manzoni had published his first tragedy Il Conte di Carmagnola ( The Count of Carmagnola ) in 1819 (a work that broke with the classic conventions of the unity of place and time), this publication, which the purists perceived as a taboo break, sparked a dragging and violent publication led controversy; a dispute in which the famous German-speaking poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe interfered in his later years in favor of Manzoni, although Goethe, as an important representative of Weimar Classics - has been particularly interested in the cultural development of the Apennines since his trip to Italy between 1786 and 1788 -Peninsula - the theses Cesari was originally quite benevolent.

Works (selection)

  • Vocabolario della Crusca . Ramanzini, Verona 1806/11 (7 volumes).
  • Dissertazione sopra lo stato presente della lingua italiana . Antenore, Rome 2002, ISBN 88-8455-553-1 (reprint of the Verona 1810 edition).
  • Bellezze della Commedia di Dante . Salerno, Rome 2003, ISBN 88-8402-432-3 (4 volumes; reprint of the Verona 1819 edition).

literature

Web links

Individual documents, notes

  1. ↑ Waltraud Weidenbusch: The Italian in Lombardy in the first half of the 19th century (p. 78 f.); Günter Narr-Verlag Tübingen, 2002, ISBN 3-8233-5874-X ( see Google Books)
  2. ↑ The Italian nation-state was founded as a constitutional monarchy ( Kingdom of Italy ) in 1861 as a result of the Second Italian War of Independence, 33 years after Cesari's death
  3. ↑ Membership catalog of the Accademia
personal data
SURNAME Cesari, Antonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Father Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian linguist, writer and literary theorist
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Verona
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 1828
Place of death Ravenna