Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis is an epistolary novel that is loosely inspired by a highly successful 18th-century genre and, in particular, by Die leiden des jungen Werther (The sorrows of young Werther) by J. Wolfgang Goethe; the novel's only voice is that of Jacopo Ortis, the author of letters that go to only one person, his friend Lorenzo Alderani, who has the job of introducing short recollections between the letters for greater narrative coherence.
So the novel's total protagonist is Jacopo, a character who is partly autobiographical, partly constructed on literary models; the name comes from a news story that had struck Foscolo, the suicide in Padua of a student from Friuli, Gerolamo Ortis.
The action starts in the days of the Treaty of Campoformio, when Jacopo, fleeing Venice to escape the Austrians' reprisals, takes refuge in the Colli Euganei hills. Here in the peace of the countryside he falls in love with Teresa, a young girl whom her father, pressed by economic factors, has promised in marriage to the wealthy nobleman Odoardo. While requiting the passion of Jacopo, reaching the point of giving him a kiss, Teresa does not dare to rebel against her father's will and rejects the young man, who decides to leave. In the second part, which is introduced by a preamble by Lorenzo, after taking leave of Teresa, Ortis takes a trip around Italy; in Milan he meets Parini; in Ventimiglia at the borders of the country he makes pessimistic reflections on the possibility for progress and history. Bitter, disappointed and obsessed with the idea of suicide, Jacopo decides to return to Colli Euganei, where in the meantime Teresa has married. After a final tormented meeting with his loved one, to whom the last letter is addressed, and a quick trip to Venice to salute his mother, Jacopo kills himself with a stab wound. The tragic epilogue is told by Lorenzo, the faithful executor of the suicide victim's final wishes.
Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (The Last letters of Jacopo Ortis): Plot
