Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (The Last letters of Jacopo Ortis): the protagonist

Driven by a strong tension of ideals, by an absolute desire that is reflected in his every gesture and thought, Jacopo is in debt to the Alfieri model, to the Plutarchian hero who aspires to extreme pureness and intends to take his life experiences all the way, whether these concern love or political commitment. This aspiration to absolute individual virtue, which seeks to define the protagonist's tragic experience in terms of voluntary sacrifice and salvific attitudes, has been given a Christological interpretation by Maria Antonietta Terzoli [Il libro di Jacopo: scrittura sacra nell’Ortis (The book of Jacopo: sacred writing in Ortis, Rome 1988)], who reveals in the hero references to Christ which are more explicit in the Zurich edition, as if Foscolo in exile had meant to stress the novel's apologetic intent.

But Jacopo also has strongly romantic connotations, in that he is a hero who opposes the world with powerful individuality, who remains outside any compromise and who favours fantasy, tempestuous, wild nature and the liberty to think and act. The recognition of the primacy of passion is at the origin of a constant rift with all forms of social existence: intolerance of political compromise and bourgeois conventions (represented primarily by Odoardo) lead Jacopo to absolute isolation as a man and as a poet, as emerges during the meeting in Milan with Parini.

So the decision to commit suicide seems the only one that is coherent with this vision of life, which rejects all compromise and feeds into the subject's difference with reality: Jacopo's growing alienation from the history of his time, from the prospects of progress and rebirth, from any concrete historic commitment as a man of letters and a patriot, accompany the tragic romantic disappointment that, by taking Jacopo away from any possible illusion, delivers him definitively to death.