Sepulchre

The theme of the sepulchre, closely linked to that of death, is not present only in the poem that mentions it in the title, it is also in many of Foscolo's works. From a personal point of view, Foscolo attributed emotional importance to the tomb right from the Versi giovanili in which he expressed grief at the death of his father; in the sonnet Un dì s’io non andrò sempre fuggendo the poet's condition of rootlessness assumes a tragic, existential value with respect to the death of loved ones and the sepulchre becomes the symbol of a personal and family memory that helps to overcome the pain of the external loss. The subject of the sepulchre in personal terms is also linked to the themes of mourning for the dead and of "compassion", one of the driving values of human civilization according to Foscolo, as well as to that of the homeland. In the tragedy Ricciarda family sepulchres also have an active role in family tensions and, despite the dark setting, exercise a positive role within the tragic dynamics the protagonists are caught up in.

But the sepulchre was also a highly popular literary theme at the end of the 18^th century which Foscolo interpreted in a totally original way, combining it with the demand for a patriotic historic memory and giving funeral monuments a civil and ethical value. In the poem Dei Sepolcri the theme is inserted into a philosophical-civil system which, within a secular vision of human existence, considers the public utility of funeral monuments that are capable of transmitting the civil and patriotic values that poetry can immortalize to future generations. In this way the sepulchre, an inspirer of virtue and a place of memory, becomes a symbol of the importance of history (recalling the famous admonition contained in the Pavia inaugural lecture: “O italiani, io vi esorto alle storie” ("Oh Italians, I exhort you to histories"), Dell’origine e dell’ufficio della letteratura (On the origin and role of literature, chapter XV) to reaffirm the values of the homeland and of the nation in the present.