The Poetry Apprenticeship

Foscolo displayed a precocious vocation for poetry right from the start of his stay in Venice, as shown by his continual writing and by the Piano di Studi of 1796, which records the readings and plans of the author who had just turned 18. The writer already alluded to previously-sent “canzonette” (canzonets) in the first letter conserved in the Foscolo’s Epistolario , which was written to his friend from Brescia Gaetano Fornasini on October 29 1794 (Ep. I, 3-5) and invited him to read and correct “due odi e un sonettuccio” (“two odes and bad sonnet”). It is likely that Foscolo had written poems in the years before that were lost, just like most of his youthful compositions were, as they were simply considered part of his apprenticeship, including his linguistic apprenticeship, and the author had decided to destroy them. The first collection of poems that can be attributed to Foscolo, Versi dell’adolescenza of 1794 (EN II, 237-251), was almost exclusively devoted to the subject of love. Another small collection of verses from 1796 includes compositions about funereal and family subjects and is dedicated to his mother seven years after the death of his father. Other thematic compositions of differing metre collected under the title of Versi giovanili (EN II, 285-341) were written between 1795 and 1799; the political verses, which document a period in which Foscolo adhered to revolutionary ideals, are of particular interest.

Fame for the very young poet arrived with the tragedy Tieste, inspired by the works of Vittorio Alfieri and represented in Venice on January 1797 and which  Foscolo cites as his literary debut in Saggio sulla letteratura contemporanea (Essay on contemporary literature) of 1818: “I started my career a year before the fall of the Venetian Republic with a tragedy entitled Tieste”. Edippo, another tragedy written in that period whose presence was demonstrated by the Piano di Studi, was recently found among the papers of Silvio Pellico, a draft of which has been attributed to Foscolo with persuasive arguments.