A Constant  Journey: Venice, Brescia, Milan (1806-1808)

In March 1806 Foscolo returned to Italy from France with four months leave and he went to Venice where he saw his mother and sister again after almost 10 years. He met Ippolito Pindemonte in Verona via Isabella Teotochi Albrizzi and praised his translation of the Odyssey. This period and the time he spent with Pindemonte, who had planned a graveyard poem, led to the idea for the poem Dei Sepolcri, which was probably composed in September. Foscolo moved between Veneto and Lombardy in 1806 and 1807; he printed Esperimento di Traduzione dell’Iliade, in collaboration with Vincenzo Monti in Brescia at the Bettoni publisher; in this period he had a great deal of correspondence with the Countess of Brescia Marzia Martinengo Cesarasco, with whom the writer had a long relationship. In the meantime, Foscolo remained an employee of the War Ministry, but he had managed to be dispensed from regular service and remain in Milan to carry out assignments as a translator, memorialist and historian; in 1806 he completed the translation of Relation de la Bataille de Marengo by General Berthier; the year after he started to edit an edition of Scritti di Raimondo Montecuccoli, a 17^th-century commander whose writings were being re-published by order of the War Ministry with the aim of promoting an Italian military tradition. Foscolo committed himself to the project convinced that it would bring him a handsome profit, but it only received a government grant and the work turned out to be a failure from the economic point of view. In the meantime, the Republic became part of the Empire in 1806; in these difficult circumstances Foscolo maintained a cautiously balanced relationship with the world of power, obtaining the post of Professor of Eloquence at Pavia University in March 1808.