Foscolo, Ugo

(1778–1827)

   A kind of Italian Shelley, Ugo Foscolo was a poet, classical translator, and patriot who was born to an Italian father and a Greek mother on the isle of Xante. He grew up in the then Venetian town of Spalato (modern-day Split, in Croatia), then moved to Venice. His first significant work, a pamphlet entitled Bonaparte Liberatore (Bonaparte the Liberator), was written in Venice in 1797 and celebrated the victory of the French revolutionary armies that occupied northern Italy and established the Cisalpine Republic in 1796. Foscolo moved to Bolognaand Milanto take part in political activity in 1797 and fought bravely in defense of the Cisalpine Republic in 1799 when the Austro-Russian forces strove to restore absolutist rule in northern Italy. Foscolo subsequently served for some years in the French army in both Italy and France itself.

   Foscolo’s literary masterpiece, his 1807 collection Dei Sepolcri (literally, On Tombs), was written after Napoleon had crowned himself king of Italy—a move that Foscolo, a former Jacobin, made no protest against. When Napoleon was defeated, Foscolo was treated kindly by the Austrians, despite the fact that he was by now one of the most well-known and most outspoken nationalists in Italy. In March 1815, however, he fled to Switzerland, and from there to England, rather than accept the restoration of Austrian rule in Venetia and Lombardy. In England, he tried to live like a gentleman, but before long he had become a chronic debtor, with a string of mistresses and illegitimate children to maintain or, more usually, to neglect. This last period of his life saw him produce some of his best work, however. His essay Discorsi sulla servitu d’ltalia (On the Servitude of Italy, 1819) immensely influenced the young Giuseppe Mazzini, while his many essays on Italian literature, especially on Dante, are still regarded as important works of criticism today. Foscolo died in disgrace and poverty in Burnham Green, near London, in September 1827. In 1871, after the liberation of Rome, the poet’s remains were transferred to Italy, and Foscolo was interred in the vaults of Santa Croce Church in Florence, a building he had described as the last resting place of many “Italian glories” in Dei Sepolcri.