Niccolò Tommaseo

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Engraving Niccolò Tommaseo
by Václav Mára (printed 1881)
Niccolò Tommaseo (photography)
Niccolò Tommaseo, statue by Francesco Barzaghi on Campo Santo Stefano in Venice

Niccolò Tommaseo (born October 8 or 9, 1802 in Šibenik , † May 1, 1874 in Florence ) was an Italian writer , politician and one of the most important lexicographers of Italian . He wrote How Others Breathe and left behind 233 books and 162 “opuscoli” (essays and small works) on almost all areas of intellectual life and philosophy. In the last few years before his death, he went blind, but continued to dictate tirelessly.

Life

The young journalist

Tommaseo was born the son of the Italian textile merchant Girolamo Tommaseo and a mother with Croatian ancestors. He was first put into a boys' seminar in what was then Spalato , but then studied law in Padua and was awarded a doctorate in law at the age of 20. However, he soon followed his passion for literature . In Padua Antonio Rosmini , the “philosopher prince” and priest, becomes his guiding star, in Milan he worships Manzoni and wars against Leopardi .

1827 he moved to Florence , working for the quarterly magazine anthology of Giampietro Vieusseux (1779-1863). After two of his polemical articles, albeit anonymous, by which Austria and Russia see themselves offended, the antology is closed by the censors, Tommaseo has to leave Tuscany under pressure from the diplomatic missions of Austria and Russia in 1834 and goes to Paris.

Political activity of the years in Venice

In the same year he published his work Dell'educazione (On Education, 1834), which had three editions within two years, the political book Dell'Italia (On Italy, 1835) and the novel Il duca d'Atene (The Duke of Athens, 1836). Dell'Italia earns him the description of the secret police: ... a hot partisan of revolutionary propaganda ... one of the most rebellious and fearful subjects ... a bitter enemy of constitutional governments.

From 1838 on he lived in Venice , where his commentary on Dante had appeared a year earlier . There he published his Nuovi scritti (1839–1840, 4 volumes), the Studj critici (1843, 2 volumes) and his famous collection Canti popolari toscani, corsici, illirici, greci (1841–42, 2 volumes).

An adaptation of the legation reports relating to the history of France in the 16th century (1838, 2 volumes) is published, and he publishes the collection of letters of the Corsican revolutionary Pasquale Paoli , Lettere di Pasquale de 'Paoli (1846). He was influenced by Catholicism , but confessed to a “moderate liberalism” early on and, although torn between his Dalmatian homeland and Italy, was an ardent patriot and nationalist throughout his life. Years later, he lamented his dual Dalmatian-Italian identity: "I am unfortunate, who divided his life between a nation that was still in its cradle and one that was on its deathbed."

In 1842 his psychological novel ante litteram Fede e bellezza (Faith and Beauty) appears, which has been reprinted several times and is regarded by Italian literary scholars as his masterpiece. His role models are above all Antoine François Prévost (Manon Lescaut) and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (Volupté).

In 1847 he was sentenced to three months imprisonment as a revolutionary in Venice. Freed by force on March 17, 1848, he was one of the figureheads of the protest against Austrian rule in Venice alongside Daniele Manin . When the republic is proclaimed, parallel to the unrest in Vienna, he becomes minister of education and culture for five months in the provisional government under Manin. In this chaotic period of disagreement among the revolutionaries, he became increasingly intransigent and wanted to resist the siege by Field Marshal Radetzky "to the last polenta".

Exile in Corfu

After disagreements with the more diplomatic Manin, he was sent to Paris as ambassador, but he was too headstrong and resigned after a short time in 1849. When Venice surrendered to Radetzky on August 30, 1849, Tommaseo was among forty others on the wanted list, but evaded persecution through exile in Corfu , where he was forced to stay for ten years. The division of the family inheritance provides him with a modest livelihood.

He also writes incessantly from exile. As a political writer and champion for the unity of Italy, however, he increasingly distrusts military solutions and sees, for example, the solution to the Roman question not in the conquest of the Vatican , but in a renunciation by the Pope , whose secular rule he he in Roma e il mondo (Rome and die Welt, 1854) mercilessly condemned without giving up his Catholicism.

In Corfu he married the widow Diamante Pavello. She helps him with his increasing visual impairment up to complete blindness (caused by syphilis , which he contracted in Paris), and writes down his texts together with others. At times, Tommaseo uses three desks in neighboring rooms for his writing aids when dictating.

Return to Italy and last years

There are divergent information about his return to Italy (see above). He initially refused to make a statement that he would stay away from politics and no longer have anything printed. But in 1859, on the express order of Cavour, he was issued a passport with which he could officially enter Italy (the Sabaudian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia ). In the same year he moves to Florence, where he dies of a stroke fifteen years later.

In Florence he worked on the journal l'Imparziale Fiorentino , which was founded in 1857 by Michele Luci, son of Prince Poniatowski . His opposition to the Kingdom of Savoy was total, in 1866 he refused a seat in the Senate, and he also turned down the Order for Civil Merit, with which a small pension was connected.

Appreciation

Tommaseo was one of the most respected writers of his time. He had a versatile and lively agile mind and was considered a critic of great influence. From 1851 he was a member of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence.

Since 1865, Tommaseo and Bernardo Bellini have published the monumental Dizionario della Lingua Italiana , which has been continued to the present day and which is still the basis of Italian lexicography today.

His correspondence with the great minds of his time includes many thousands of letters.

Works (small selection)

  • Nuovo Dizionario de 'Sinonimi della lingua italiana (New Dictionary of Synonyms, 1830, 7th edition 1887, 2 vols.)
  • Dell'Italia (1835)
  • Commento alla Divina Comedia (1837)
  • Dizionario estetico (Aesthetic Dictionary, 1840, new edition 1872).
  • Canti popolari toscani, corsici, illirici, greci (1841–42, 2 vols.)
  • Scintille (Sparks, 1842)
  • Fede e bellezza (1842)
  • Supplizio d'un Italiano a Corfù (Against the Death Penalty, 1855)
  • Le lettere di Santa Caterina di Siena (1860, 4 vols.)
  • Il secondo esilio (1862, 3 vol.), A collection of his political writings
  • Della pena di morte discorsi due (Two speeches on the death penalty, 1865)
  • Nuovi studj su Dante (1865).
  • Dizionarietto morale , Successori Le Monnier, Florence 1867, anastatic reprint Le Monnier, Florence 2002 for his 200th birthday, ISBN 88-00-82103-0
  • Life of Rosminis
  • Dizionario della Lingua Italiana , (1865–1879, Vol. I 1 - IV 2).

Dizionarietto morale

A remarkable special case among his works is the moral dictionary . The “little book” has 268 pages. Like hardly any other work by Tommaseo, it shows its many facets clearly: paradox, oxymoron, irony, brilliance, ingenuity, political boldness, astuteness, puns. In a myriad of thought fragments, aperçus, aphorisms, he comments on politics and everyday life. In its unsystematic structure, albeit in alphabetical order, it reminds the German reader of the Sudel books by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg , in moralism and language also of the Austrian aphorist Karl Kraus . Some quotes:

  • There is no good science without a clear conscience.
  • Much of the logic could be reduced to a treatise on the comma: magnum opus.
  • Some slander by telling the truth.
  • Marriage is like death. Only a few arrive prepared.
  • Politics is the art of gaining authority by pretending to have it.

And with many keywords there is only one reference to another, for example:

  • Doctor . see donkey .

Afterlife

Eight years after his death, in 1882, a monument to Tommaseo, the work of Francesco Barzaghi, was unveiled in Venice on Campo Santo Stefano (official name Campo Morosini , but hardly any Venetian knows it) . The statue became as popular with the Venetians as the freedom hero had been, and was given the affectionately meant nickname "il Caccalibri" (in the Venetian dialect "el cagalibri"), "the book shit", because it was raised under his zimarra , the long frock coat Stalls, a pile of books welling up, symbol of Tommaseo's encyclopedic knowledge, his well-readiness and his rich book production (and a trick by the sculptor to give the figure more stability). A memorial plaque was placed on the house where he died in Florence.

literature

  • Bernardi: Vita e scritti di Niccolò Tommaseo (Turin 1874)
  • K. Hillebrand in the Allgemeine Zeitung (May 1874).
  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Tommaseo, Nicolo . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 46th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1882, pp. 96–106 ( digitized version ).
  • Pietro Paolo Trompeo: Tommaseo, Niccolò in Enciclopedia Italiana , Volume 33, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1937.
  • Aldo Borlenghi: L'arte di Niccolò Tommaseo , Meridiana Verlag, Milan 1943.
  • Raffaele Ciampini: Vita di Niccolò Tommaseo , Sansoni, Florence 1945.
  • Mario Puppo: Tommaseo , La Scuola, Brescia 1950.
  • Aldo Borlenghi: Niccolò Tommaseo e il romanticismo italiano (NT and Italian Romanticism), Milan 1967.
  • Ettore Caccia: Tommaseo, Niccolò , keyword in Enciclopedia Dantesca , Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1970.
  • Arnaldo Di Benedetto: I racconti storici di Niccolò Tommaseo , in the anthology Ippolito Nievo e altro Ottocento , Liguori, Naples 1996.
  • Annalisa Nesi: Tommaseo, Niccolò , keyword in Enciclopedia dell'Italiano , Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 2011.

Web links

Commons : Niccolò Tommaseo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d Dino Basili: Presentazione zum Dizionarietto morale , Le Monnier, Florence 2002. P. VIII f.
  2. ↑ Here the sources differ. Anonymous according to Enciclopedia Treccani : Tommaseo, Niccolò. Retrieved April 27, 2018 . which, however, is not always reliable, he returned to Italy in 1854; other sources such as Dino Basili date the return to 1859. This seems more credible because of the issue of a passport in 1859 that officially allowed him to return.
  3. ^ Membership list of the Crusca
  4. ↑ Dietmar Polaczek Moralist of Young Italy - The Literature and Revolutionary , in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 31, 2002, literature.
personal data
SURNAME Tommaseo, Niccolò
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian writer, politician and one of the most important lexicographers of Italian
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1802 or October 9, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Šibenik
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1874
Place of death Florence