... Every one feels in it a new creation. The instrument of this
renovation is criticism.... The sense of the real continues to develop
itself; the positive sciences come to the top, and cast out all the
ideal and systematic constructions. New dogmas lose credit. Criticism
remains intact. The patient labor of analysis begins again....
Socialism re-appears in the political order, positivism in the
intellectual order. The word is no longer liberty, but justice.
... Literature also undergoes transformation. It rejects classes,
distinctions, privileges. The ugly stands beside the beautiful; or
rather, there is no longer ugly or beautiful, neither ideal nor real,
neither infinite nor finite.... There is but one thing only, the
Living."
GIUSEPPE GIUSTI
I
Giuseppe Giusti, who is the greatest Italian satirist of this century,
and is in some respects the greatest Italian poet, was born in 1809 at
Mossummano in Tuscany, of parentage noble and otherwise distinguished;
one of his paternal ancestors had assisted the liberal Grand Duke
Pietro Leopoldo to compile his famous code, and his mother's father
had been a republican in 1799. There was also an hereditary taste for
literature in the family; and Giusti says, in one of his charming
letters, that almost as soon as he had learned to speak, his father
taught him the ballad of Count Ugolino, and he adds, "I have always
had a passion for song, a passion for verses, and more than a passion
for Dante.
Pages:
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296