Akademik

(1835–1907)

   A poet who led Italian letters back to the classical tradition and away from the romanticism of Giacomo Leopardi, Carducci was born in Lucca (Tuscany) but spent almost all of his working life as a professor of rhetoric at Bologna University. In 1901, Carducci republished his life’s work in a sixvolume edition. The poems that have best withstood the test of time were published between 1861 and 1887. The most famous, perhaps, is “ASatana” (“Hymn to Satan,” 1862), in which he vaunted atheism and rationalism at the expense of all transcendental philosophies, German idealism, as much as traditional Catholicism, although he was a fierce anticlerical. In 1876, he was elected to Parliament as a republican but never took his seat. In his latter years, however, his views became less intransigent and radical and became tinged with nationalism and a sense of Italian cultural superiority (he supported, for instance, Italy’s colonial wars). By the 1890s, he was a popular national institution. Nominated to the Senate in 1900, in 1906, he, together with Camillo Golgi, who won the prize for medicine the same year, became the first Italian to win the Nobel prize. When he died in Bologna the following year, his funeral was attended by huge crowds.

   See also Literature.