Mario Rapisardi

Mario Rapisardi (25 February 1844, Catania – 4 January 1912, Catania) was an Italian poet, supporter of Risorgimento and member of the Scapigliatura (definition but refused).

As a boy, he was taught "grammar, rhetoric and the Latin language" by two priests and "a psicontologico mixture that he thought was philosophy" by a friar. To please his father, he then unwillingly took the usual course in jurisprudence, but never wanted to take the laurea in that or any other faculty. He wrote at this time "there is nothing noteworthy in my life, unless it is this, that - for good or ill - it formed me, destroying the wretched and false education I had received [up to then] and instructing and educating me, in my own way, to be outside whatever school, whatever sect, scornful of systems and prejudices".

He began his poetic career at fourteen with an ode to sant'Agata, in which he dared to recommend the freedom of his fatherland (then under the Bourbon regime), and in 1863 published a volume of verses under the title Canti. In 1865 he came to Florence for the first time, returning there often later in his life. There he got to know Giovanni Prati, Niccolò Tommaseo, Atto Vannucci, Pietro Fanfani, Andrea Maffei, Giuseppe Regaldi, Erminia, Arnaldo Fusinato, Francesco Dall'Ongaro, Terenzio Mamiani and other "illustri e buoni", as he later called them. Also in Florence he published his La Palingenesi in 1868, recommending a religious revival for humanity. It got good reviews, and Victor Hugo read it and wrote to Rapisardi, saying "...[it is a] noble poem. You are a forerunner".

In 1870 he received a teaching post at the University of Catania. Don Pedro II, emperor of Brazil, attended one of his lessons in 1876 and recommended him to the last book of Dante's De Monarchia. Rapisardi was made ordinario of Italian literature at the university in 1878, and presented the inaugural lecture of the academic year there in 1879. His topic was "The new scientific concept", one he saw as brave seeing as he was delivering the lecture "before the authorities, in this country and on this solemn occasion".

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