Vittorio Alfieri
Vittorio Alfieri (born January 16, 1749 in Asti , † October 8, 1803 in Florence ) was an Italian poet and playwright in the Age of Enlightenment .
Life
Vittorio Alfieri was the son of rich and distinguished parents. His father, Count Antonio Alfieri, died early, after which he was raised by his mother until 1758. His uncle then sent him to the military academy in Turin , where he received only a poor education. From 1766 until 1772 he made extensive trips through Europe. After returning to Turin, he lived in this city as a noble idler, and out of hatred of any coercion did not pursue a military career. Then he turned to literary occupation and in 1774 wrote his first tragedy, Antonio e Cleopatra . The success of his dramatic attempts strengthened his belief in his poetic destiny. He made up for missed schooling, learned Latin and went to Tuscany in 1776 to learn pure Italian. In Florence in 1777 he met Luise Stolberg , Countess of Albany, wife of the English pretender Charles Edward Stuart , and felt a deep affection for her.
In order to be completely independent and to be able to stay in Florence, Alfieri left his fortune and goods in Turin in exchange for a pension to his sister, the Countess Cumiana. In 1780 the Countess of Albany left her husband, who allegedly had treated her violently, and lived for some time in a monastery in Rome . Alfieri followed her there and now lived with her. In Rome he also completed 14 tragedies, some of which were later added. Out of consideration for his girlfriend's reputation, he left Rome again and traveled around Italy in 1783. After returning from a trip to England in 1785 he went to the Countess of Albany in Colmar in Alsace , where she had moved. He then lived with her alternately in Alsace and Paris , but from 1787 only in the French capital.
When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, Alfieri was in England and returned to Paris. As an ardent Republican, he enthusiastically welcomed the revolution and celebrated the taking of the Bastille in an ode . However, the events of the next few years, particularly the Tuileries storm of August 10, 1792, changed his mind, and in 1792 he did not leave France without danger. First he went to Belgium , but then went back to Florence with his partner, where he spent the last decade of his life with her. His property left in Paris was confiscated by the convention, and he also lost a large part of the rest of his property, which had been placed in French funds. Since then he has harbored an irreconcilable hatred of the French, which was intensified by the events that followed in his fatherland and which he expressed eloquently in his Misogallo , which appeared only ten years after his death . He still wrote a lot and tried with good success to learn the Greek language . Excessive work made him sick and, suffering from gout , he spent the last few years in a dark mood, secluded from the world. He died in Florence in 1803 at the age of 54. There his ashes were buried in the church of Santa Croce under a splendid tomb created by Canova . A statue of Bini was erected for him in Asti in 1862 .
His strictly formal, classical tragedies were permeated by the republican ideas of freedom of the late 18th century and his disgust for all forms of tyranny . As a result, the works of this Enlightenment had a great influence on the Italian freedom movement of the 19th century, the Risorgimento . He is considered to be the inventor of the tram-logedy .
Works
- 22 tragedies, including Antonio e Cleopatra (1775), Filippo (1783) and Sofonisba (1789)
-
Vita di Vittorio Alfieri . Rizzoli, Milan 1987 ISBN 88-17-16593-X (autobiography)
- Vita. My life . Translated, with notes, an afterword and a bibliography by Gisela Schlüter , Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mainz 2010 ISBN 978-3-87162-072-0
- Opera . Casa d'Alfieri, Asti 1981 ff. (40 vol.).
- From tyranny. Translated by Heinrich Schweitzer, Zwickau 1822 (first German copy; first printed in Kehl in 1789), 2 small volumes
- Lettere Inedite Di Vittorio Alfieri Alla Madre, a Mario Bianchi, E a Teresa Mocenni (online at Archive.org ); Translated for example: Unpublished letters from VA to his mother, to Mario Bianchi and to Teresa Mocenni , published in 1923
literature
- M. Fubini: Alfieri, Vittorio. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 2: Albicante – Ammannati. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1960.
- Arnaldo di Benedetto: Il Dandy e il sublime. Nuovi studi su Vittorio Alfieri . Olschki, Florence 2003, ISBN 88-222-5206-3
- Edoardo Costadura: The nobleman at the desk. On the self-image of aristocratic writers between the Renaissance and the Revolution . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2006 ISBN 3-484-55046-5
- Paola Luciani: L'autore temario. Studi su Vittorio Alfieri . Fiorentina Books, Florence 2005 ISBN 88-87048-81-9
- Rosanna Maggio Serra (Ed.): Vittorio Alfieri. Aristocratio ribelle . Electa, Milan 2003 ISBN 88-370-2425-8
- Daniel Winkler : body, revolution, nation. Vittorio Alfieri and the republican tragedy project of the Sattelzeit . Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2016 ISBN 978-3-7705-6129-2
Web links
- Literature by and about Vittorio Alfieri in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Vittorio Alfieri in the German Digital Library
- Works by Vittorio Alfieri : text, concordances, word list and statistics
- Daniel Winkler: The Gulf of Naples as a stage for a double-moving self. E / motions in Vittorio Alfieri's "Vita scritta da esso" 1808. PhiN 85, 2018, 62ff (with English summary)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Alfieri, Vittorio |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian poet and playwright |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 16, 1749 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Asti , Kingdom of Sardinia |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 8, 1803 |
| Place of death | Florence , Kingdom of Etruria |