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Introducing Modernity: French, Italian, and Comparative Perspectives

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Baudelaire and the Making of Italian Modernity

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature ((PMEL))

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the main argument of the book, presenting the theme of poetic modernity from a comparative perspective. It investigates why Baudelaire has been considered as the poet of modernity since the publication of the second edition of his verse collection Les Fleurs du Mal (1861), a claim that continues to these days. This is compared to Baudelaire’s own definition of modernity, linked to his re-formulation of Romanticism as the art of modern times. The chapter then introduces the Scapigliatura, examining how existing scholarship has struggled to recognise the modernity of the movement. It discusses the Scapigliatura’s use of terms such as ‘realism’ and ‘Romanticism’ in the 1860s, presenting a new definition of the Scapigliatura’s modernity associated with Baudelaire’s own interpretation of the term. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the relations between the Scapigliatura and Futurism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the Futurist manifesto ‘Noi rinneghiamo i nostri maestri simbolisti ultimi amanti della luna’ (TIF, 302–306), published in 1911. The term ‘passéist’ (‘passatista’) to describe Baudelaire’s poetry is used by Marinetti in Guerra sola igiene del mondo (1915), in TIF, 334.

  2. 2.

    Even though Baudelaire officially published his first poem, ‘À une Créole’, in the periodical L’Artiste on 25 May 1845, according to Arsène Houssaye, director of the journal, Baudelaire published four sonnets in L’Artiste in December 1844 under the name of his friend Alexandre Privat d’Anglemont. See Pichois (1975, 1259–1260).

  3. 3.

    For these artistic features in German and English Romanticism, see Nemoianu (1984, 26–27).

  4. 4.

    Judgement of the 6e Chambre de Police Correctionnelle du Tribunal de la Seine. La Gazette des tribunaux, no. 9483, 21 August 1857, 829. Repr. in Guyaux (2007, 247).

  5. 5.

    ‘Presentazione’. Almanacco del Pungolo , I (1857). Repr. in Farinelli (2003, 211).

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    ‘Introduzione’. In La Scapigliatura e il 6 febbraio . Milan: Redaelli, 1862. Repr. in Farinelli (2003, 214).

  8. 8.

    ‘Prologo’. In La Scapigliatura . Rome: Stabilimento Tipografico Italiano, 1880. Repr. in Farinelli (2003, 214).

  9. 9.

    Henceforth I will use the term ‘Decadentism’ to indicate specifically the Italian movement, and the more neutral ‘Decadence’ to refer to the literary tendency that developed in fin-de-siècle Europe.

  10. 10.

    Scapigliatura: da Giuseppe Rovani a Carlo Dossi. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1924. This volume has been republished, with some modifications, with Mondadori (Nardi 1968). Henceforth, I will use this last edition as reference.

  11. 11.

    See Boito’s ‘A Emilio Praga’ and ‘A Giovanni Camerana’; Praga’s ‘All’amico’, ‘Versi scritti in un giorno buio’, ‘Monaci e cavalieri’, dedicated to Boito, and the collection Fiabe e leggende, dedicated to Camerana; Camerana’s ‘A Emilio Praga’ and ‘Ad Arrigo Boito’.

  12. 12.

    See Praga’s poem ‘Sulla tomba di I.U. Tarchetti’ (PP, 306–307), written in September 1871 and posthumously published in Praga’s fourth and last verse collection, Trasparenze (1878).

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  1. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Alessandro Cabiati

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Cabiati, A. (2022). Introducing Modernity: French, Italian, and Comparative Perspectives. In: Baudelaire and the Making of Italian Modernity. Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92018-0_1

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