Editing Ugo Foscolo (section)

==Politics and poetry==
Foscolo, who, for unknown reasons, had changed his Christian name Niccolò to that of Ugo, began to take an active part in the stormy political discussions which the [[fall of the Republic of Venice]] had triggered. He was a prominent member of the national committees, and addressed an ode to [[Napoleon]], expecting Napoleon to overthrow the Venetian [[oligarchy]] and create a free republic.<ref name=EB1911/>

The [[Treaty of Campo Formio]] (17 October 1797), under which, the French having indeed forced the dissolution of the ancient Republic of Venice, then handed over the city and the [[Veneto]] to the [[Habsburg Monarchy|Austrians]] (in exchange for the [[Austrian Netherlands]]) gave a rude shock to Foscolo, but did not quite destroy his hopes. The state of mind produced by that shock is reflected in his novel ''[[The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis]]'' (1798), which was described by the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as a more politicized version of [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]]'s ''[[The Sorrows of Young Werther]]'': "for Foscolo's hero embodies the mental sufferings and suicide of an undeceived Italian patriot just as Goethe's hero places before us the too-delicate sensitiveness, embittering and at last cutting short the life of a private German scholar."<ref name=EB1911/>

The story of Foscolo's novel, ''[[The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis]]'' had a groundwork of melancholy fact. Jacopo Ortis had been a real person; he was a young student from [[Padua]], and committed suicide there under circumstances akin to those described by Foscolo.<ref name=EB1911/>

Foscolo, like many of his contemporaries, had thought much about suicide. [[Cato the Younger]] and the many classical examples of self-destruction described in [[Plutarch]]'s [[Parallel Lives|''Lives'']] appealed to the imaginations of young Italian patriots as they had to the heroes and heroines of the [[Girondins|Gironde]] in France. In the case of Foscolo, as in that of Goethe, the effect produced on the writer's mind by the composition of the work seems to have been beneficial. He had seen the ideal of a great national future rudely shattered; but he did not despair of his country, and sought relief in now turning to gaze on the ideal of a great national poet.<ref name=EB1911/>

After the fall of Venice, Foscolo moved to [[Milan]], where he formed a friendship with the older poet [[Giuseppe Parini]], whom he later remembered with admiration and gratitude.<ref name=EB1911/> In Milan, he published a selection of 12 [[Sonnet|Sonnets]], blending the passionate sentiments shown in [[The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis|"''Ortis''"]] with classical control of language and rhythm.

Still hoping that his country would be freed by Napoleon, in 1799 Foscolo enlisted as a volunteer in the [[:it:Esercito del Regno d'Italia (1805-1814)|National Guard]] of Napoleon's [[Cisalpine Republic]], was wounded at Cento, near Bologna, and taken as prisoner to Modena. Liberated after the French armies took Modena, he took part in the battle of the [[Battle of Trebbia (1799)|Trebbia]] (1799) and was wounded again in defence of the siege of [[Siege of Genoa (1800)|Genoa]] (1800).<ref>{{langx|it|[[:it:Ugo Foscolo#L'arruolamento nella Guardia Nazionale (1799-1801) |Ugo Foscolo - Enrollment in the National Guard (1799-1801)]]}}</ref> Following the battle of [[Battle of Marengo|Marengo]] (1800), he returned to Milan, and there gave the last touches to his "[[The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis|''Ortis'']]", published a translation of and commentary upon [[Callimachus]], commenced a version of the ''[[Iliad]]'' and began his translation of [[Laurence Sterne|Laurence Sterne's]] ''[[A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy]]''.<ref name=EB1911/> He also took part in a failed memorandum intended to present a new model of unified Italian government to Napoleon.

In 1804, Foscolo returned to military service in Napoleon's cause, attached to the Italian Division of Napoleon's army, based in [[Boulogne-sur-Mer]], as part of [[Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom|Napoleon's invasion force against Britain]]. Foscolo himself was stationed in [[Valenciennes]], where he fathered a daughter, Floriana, by Sophia St John Hamilton, daughter of [[Lady Mary Hamilton]].<ref>{{langx|it|[[:it:Ugo Foscolo#Gli anni in Francia (1804-1806)|Ugo Foscolo - the years in France (1804-1806)]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web
| title = Voyages in text: Ugo Foscolo - 1802-1814 - In Frances, military service in the Italian Division
| url = http://www.internetculturale.it/opencms/directories/ViaggiNelTesto/foscolo/a13.html
| url-status=dead
| language = it
| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130422035205/http://www.internetculturale.it/opencms/directories/ViaggiNelTesto/foscolo/a13.html
| archive-date = 2013-04-22
| access-date = 2024-01-04}}</ref>

Following the defeat at [[Battle of Trafalgar|Trafalgar]] (1805) and Napoleon's abandonment of his plans for invasion, Foscolo returned to Italy in 1806. Before leaving France, however, Foscolo once again met [[Alessandro Manzoni]] in Paris. Some seven years younger, Manzoni was still living in the house of his mother [[:it: Giulia_Beccaria|Giulia Beccaria]]. Studies have noted very close analogies (textual, metrical and biographical) between the poetry of Foscolo and Manzoni in the period 1801 to 1803, such as those between Foscolo's ''All'amica risanata'' ("''To the healed friend''"), an ode to [[Antonietta Fagnani Arese]], and Manzoni's ''Qual su le cinzie cime'' ("''Who, on the peaks of Cynthus''")<ref>Pierantonio Frare, ''Foscolo e Manzoni – rapporti biografici e polemiche testuali'', in ''Rivista di letteratura italiana'', XVII, 1 (1999), pagg. 29–50</ref><ref>''Poesie di Alessandro Manzoni prima della conversione'', co note critiche di Alberto Chiari, LeMonnier, Firenze, 1932; and then in Franco Gavazzeni, ''Alessandro Manzoni: poesie prima della conversione'', Einaudi, Torino, 1992</ref><ref>Gianmarco Gaspari,''Beccaria-Foscolo<---Manzoni'', Annali Manzoniani, I (1990), pagg. 197-218, also cited in ''Letteratura delle riforme'', Sellerio, Palermo, 1990, pagg. 232-258</ref>

In 1807, occasioned by Napoleon's 1804 decree forbidding burials within city limits,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780198183327.001.0001/acref-9780198183327-e-1038 |title=Dei Sepolcri |first=Peter |last=Hainsworth |publisher=Oxford Companion to Italian Literature |date=2005 |access-date=2024-01-05}}</ref> Foscolo wrote his ''[[Dei Sepolcri]]'' ("''On Sepulchres''"), which may be described as his sublime effort to seek refuge in the past from the misery of the present and the darkness of the future. The mighty dead are summoned from their tombs, as ages before they had been in the masterpieces of Greek oratory, to fight again the battles of their country. 

[[File:Foscolo - Dei sepolcri, 1809 - 6059669 TO0E070314 00003.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.05|''[[Dei Sepolcri]]'', 1809]]
{{Quote box|title=From ''[[Dei Sepolcri]]'', 1807|All'ombra de' cipressi e dentro l'urne<br />
confortate di pianto è forse il sonno<br />
della morte men duro? Ove piú il Sole<br />
per me alla terra non-fecondi questa<br />
bella d'erbe famiglia e d'animali,<br />
e quando vaghe di lusinghe innanzi<br />
a me non-danzeran l'ore future,<br />
né da te, dolce amico, udrò piú il verso<br />
e la mesta armonia che lo governa,<br />
né piú nel cor mi parlerà lo spirto<br />
delle vergini Muse e dell'amore,<br />
unico spirto a mia vita raminga,<br />
qual fia ristoro a' dí perduti un sasso<br />
che distingua le mie dalle infinite<br />
ossa che in terra e in mar semina morte?|Lines 1–15<ref>{{cite web|last1=Foscolo|first1=Ugo|title=Dei Sepolcri|url=http://www.classicitaliani.it/foscolo/fosco01.htm|publisher=Classicitaliani|access-date=17 March 2015|year=1807}}</ref>
''English translation:''<br />
Beneath the cypress shade, or sculptured urn<br />
By fond tears watered, is the sleep of death<br />
Less heavy? — When for me the sun no more<br />
Shall shine on earth, to bless with genial beams<br />
This beauteous race of beings animate — <br />
When bright with flattering hues the coming hours<br />
No longer dance before me — and I hear<br />
No more, regarded friend, thy dulcet verse,<br />
Nor the sad gentle harmony it breathes —<br />
When mute within my breast the inspiring voice<br />
Of youthful poesy, and love, sole light<br />
To this my wandering life — what [[Wiktionary:guerdon|guerdon]] then <br />
For vanished years will be the marble reared<br />
To mark my dust amid the countless throng<br />
Wherewith the Spoiler strews the land and sea?<ref>From Robert Walsh, ''The American Quarterly Review'', Volume 16, p. 77</ref>
}}

In January 1809, Foscolo was appointed to the chair of Italian rhetoric at the University of [[University_of_Pavia|Pavia]]. In Pavia, Foscolo resided at the [[Palazzo Cornazzani]], later home to [[Contardo Ferrini]], to [[Ada Negri]] and to [[Albert Einstein]], respectively.<ref>{{cite web |last1=University of Pavia |title=Einstein, Albert |url=https://museoperlastoria.unipv.it/en/albert-einstein-2/ |website=Museo per la Storia dell'Università di Pavia |publisher=University of Pavia |access-date=7 January 2023}}</ref> His inaugural lecture "''On the origin and duty of literature''", was conceived in the same spirit as his ''[[Dei Sepolcri]]''. In his lecture, Foscolo urged his young countrymen to study literature, not in obedience to academic traditions, but in their relation to individual and national life and growth.<ref name=EB1911/> 

The sensation produced by this lecture played no small part in provoking the decree of Napoleon by which the chair of rhetoric was abolished in all the Italian universities under Napoleonic control. Soon afterwards, in 1811 Foscolo's tragedy of [[Ajax the Great|Ajax]] was presented at Milan, with little success; and because of its supposed allusions to Napoleon, he was forced in 1812 to move from Milan to [[Tuscany]].
 
The chief fruits of his stay in [[Florence]] were the tragedy of ''Ricciarda'', the ''Ode to the Graces'', left unfinished, and the completion of his translation of [[Laurence_Sterne|Laurence Sterne's]] ''[[A_Sentimental_Journey_through_France_and_Italy|Sentimental Journey]]'', including his own fictional memoir  ''[[:it:Notizia_intorno_a_Didimo_Chierico|Notizia intorno a Didimo Chierico]]'' ("''News concerning Didymus the cleric''") (1813), covering much of the same ground as that of [[Laurence_Sterne|Sterne's]] main character, the Reverend Yorick; which he (Foscolo) had begun during his service at [[Boulogne-sur-Mer]]. In his account of [[:it:Notizia_intorno_a_Didimo_Chierico|Didimo Chierico]], Foscolo throws much light on his own character. His version of Sterne is an important feature in his personal history.<ref name=EB1911/>

Foscolo returned to Milan in 1813, until the return of the Austrians in 1815; from there he passed into [[Switzerland]], where he wrote a fierce satire in Latin on his political and literary opponents; and finally he sought the shores of England at the close of 1816.<ref name=EB1911/>
[[File:Edwardes Square, London 12.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|right|Blue plaque in [[Edwardes Square]] in west London]]