Poesie (Poems 1802-1803)

Foscolo published his first collection of poems, comprised of eight sonnets and an ode, in October 1802 in Pisa's “Nuovo Giornale de Letterati”; an edition of Poesie made up of 11 sonnets and two odes was published in Milan in April 1803 by the publisher De Stefanis; in the same year the definitive edition including the whole corpus of poems that, after the attempts of his youth, precede Dei Sepolcri came out of the publisher Agnello Nobile: 12 sonnets (the extra one is Un dì s’io non andrò sempre fuggendo) and two odes. The collection's epigraph is a verse of Horace's Sermones (II 6, 62): “Sollicitae oblivia vitae” (‘oblivion of an agitated life’), which defers to the idea of poetry acting as consolation for disappointments and uncertainties that principally assume a political significance in this part of Foscolo's life. After the Lyon Congress of 1802, the Italian situation seems to deny patriots like Foscolo any chance of active participation in political life; in these circumstances, writing poetry constitutes an alternative space of intellectual liberty and a way to condemn the degradation of his time to posterity. The themes present in this limited group of poems are the usual ones of Foscolo's writing: exile, death, the value of beauty and art as consolation, family affection and recollection, the exultation of poetry. The book Poesie features some of Foscolo's most famous compositions, such as Forse perché della fatal quïete, Né più mai toccherò le sacre sponde, Un dì s’io non andrò sempre fuggendo, as well as two odes A Luigia Pallacivini caduta da cavallo and All’Amica risanata. The collection also includes an self-portrait sonnet Solcata ho fronte, occhi incavati intenti, written almost as if in competition with Alfieri's Sublime specchio di veraci Detti.