La Chioma di Berenice (The Lock of Berenice)

La Chioma di Berenice poema di Callimaco tradotto da Valerio Catullo volgarizzato e illustrato da Ugo Foscolo (Callimachus's poem The Lock of Berenice translated by Valerius Catullus translated into italian and illustrated by Ugo Foscolo) was published in Milan by Genio Tipografico in November 1803. The volume is composed of an introductory Argomento (Discussion), four critical discourses by the author, Catullus's Latin text, the text of the poem accompanied by notes and variations and, finally, the Italian translation in blank endecasyllables; the elaborate publication ended with 14 Considerazioni (Considerations) on questions concerning the text's philology and history. Callimachus's Poem, few fragments of which remained, told the story of the sacrifice of Berenices who had given her lock of hair to Aphrodite to save her husband, the Pharaoh Ptolemy III; according to legend, the lost lock turned into a constellation.

Foscolo wrote in Discorso Primo (Discourse One) that the publication was not addressed “a’ dotti, bensì a que’ che tentassero nuova strada di studiare i classici” ("to the learned, but to those who try a new road to study the classics"); erudition, which the poet lets free in the vast comment that accompanies the text, is not resolved in abstract grammatical or philological questions or in pedantic details, it is necessary to put the poem into its historical and cultural context. Study of the classics must be accompanied by historical documentation which, according to Foscolo, is necessary to understand the spirit of the poem; he reiterated a high conception of poetry (suggested by reading Giambattista Vico) that used myths and tales from ancient times to transmit civil and political values that had a fundamental role in the societies of the past. Condemnation of the present and of the marginal role of the poet, who in his time was denied all chance of political intervention, is implicit in this line of argument. Therefore, La Chioma di Berenice is an important work for reconstructing the ideology of Foscolo in the transition from his Jacobin activism to the Napoleonic era .