Ultimate letter di Jacopo Ortis

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Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (German: Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis ) is the name of a letter novel by the Italian author Ugo Foscolo . It first appeared in 1802 and in its definitive form in 1817.

construction

The fictional editor Lorenzo Alderani explains in a preface to the reader that he is presenting the letters of his friend Jacopo Ortis in order to erect a monument to the unknown virtue. The reader knows from the start that Ortis has since passed away. The letters that follow now extend from October 11, 1797 to the night of March 25th to March 26th, 1799. They are exclusively those from Ortis, Alderani merely adds a few explanations necessary for understanding, especially at the end.

content

Jacopo Ortis is a young Venetian who believed that Napoleon would unite splintered Italy, which turns out to be an illusion after the peace of Campo Formio . A few days earlier, the young patriot, threatened with persecution, went into exile in the Euganean Hills. There he immediately begins to write his letters. In exile he met Teresa, the daughter of a Venetian aristocrat, and fell in love with her. Even if she reciprocates his feelings, she has to keep her promise to marry the wealthy Odoardo. It stays with a single kiss. After an unsuccessful discussion with her father, Ortis travels through northern Italy and visits places that are important for the glory of the Italian nation, such as Florence, where he stands in awe of the tombs of Galileo, Machiavelli and Michelangelo, or Ravenna, where he holds the urn of "father Dante " embraced. He suffers equally from national disgrace and from renunciation of love. The thought of suicide has been with him from the start; only the idea that an uprising of the Italians against foreign rule is still possible if they reflect on the past artistic greatness, and the hope of a connection with Teresa hold him back. When he learns that she has married, he stabs himself.

reception

Foscolos Ultime lettere is generally considered to be the first novel in Italian literature. Heroic gestures (even if he remained inactive) and noble melancholy made the novel a great success with contemporaries. The parallels to Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther - the structure of the letter novel, the unhappy love for someone else's bride, suicide - were quickly recognized, even when Foscolo emphasized that, unlike Goethe, he was concerned with the political situation of his country and not about romantic Weltschmerz. Giuseppe Mazzini , one of the protagonists of the Risorgimento , learned the novel by heart in his youth.

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Laura Fournier-Finocchiaro: Foscolo et la tradition italienne dans les écrits de Giuseppe Mazzini, in: Enzo Neppi u. a. (Ed.): Foscolo e la cultura europea , Cahiers d'études italiennes 20 (2015), pp. 269–283
  • Franca Janowski: Ugo Foscolo's way of changing horizons between neoclassicism and romanticism, in: Volker Kapp (Ed.): Italian Literature History , 3rd edition Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2007, pp. 249-254
  • Joachim Küpper: On the Italian novel of the 19th century. Foscolo. Manzoni. Forgot. D'Annunzio , Steiner, Stuttgart 2002
  • Manfred Strauss: Ugo Foscolo - Ultimate lettere di Jacopo Ortis . In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . 3rd, completely revised edition. Edited by Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Stuttgart / Weimar: Verlag JB Metzler 2009
  • Winfried Wehle : Nation and Emotion. About the commitment to make politics with literature - The Foscolo case, s. http://winfriedwehle.de/wp-content/themes/ww1/media/aufsatz/Foscolo_Unita.pdf