Aleardo Aleardi

Aleardo Aleardi (14 November 1812 – 17 July 1878), born Gaetano Maria, was an Italian poet who belonged to the so-called Neo-romanticists.

Aleardo was born in Verona in 1812, and took an active part in the movement of the Risorgimento. In 1848 he went to Paris, invited by Daniele Manin, to garner support for the Venetian Republic. He was arrested twice: at Mantua in 1852 and at Josephstadt in Bohemia in 1859. After the unification of Italy he became a member of parliament, then in 1873 a senator, and finally a professor of aesthetics at Florence, where he died in 1878.

Aleardo Aleardi - whose name was Gaetano Maria, then he turned into Aleardo - was born in Verona in 1812 by Maria Channels and Count Giorgio Aleardi. After studying law at the University of Padua together with friends John Meadows and Arnaldo Fusinato, he returned to Verona, interest in poetry and art criticism. Among his earliest compositions there are Marriage (1842), an exaltation of marriage as an expression of civilization, and the Arnalda Roca, in 1844, a poem that has historical protagonist a young woman who dies defending his honor: there is already in it the search for scenic effects and dramatic color that is typical of the entire production next dell'Aleardi. The first success was achieved in 1846 with the two Letters to Mary, in verse, in which the poet turns to friend proposing a platonic love: it is an opportunity to express his belief in the immortality of the soul and pour out his emotional suffering in a spirit of romanticism way.

Frequent visitor to the salon of Countess Anna Serego Gozzadini Alighieri, he courted the daughter Nina, dedicating numerous poems. The riots of 1848, was sent to Paris by Manin to ask for help reconstituted Venetian Republic. He was arrested in 1852 and imprisoned for several months in the fortress of Mantua was followed by a period of depression and, in 1855, the idyll Raphael and the Fornarina, where the affectation of the poem is likely to reach the poor taste. Often compared to the Meadows for the common languor sentimental, but to the subject, the luck dell'Aleardi declined at the end of the nineteenth century to get some recognition from the Cross, which he took over the sincerity of the poet in the forms of dubious taste and made him a precursor the pastures, and De Lollis, who saw in him the romantic poet of transition, torn between classicism and realism.

...
Wikipedia