ARICI, CESARE. - Neoclassical poet, b. June 12, 1782 in Brescia, d. 1836. He was first enrolled in the criminal court, and then was professor of eloquence and history at the Liceo. In the last years of his life he was also appointed secretary of the Brescian Athenaeum.
Much praised by Monti and by Giordani, he was famous above all for his didactic poems: La coltivazione degli olivi, Il carollo, La pastorizia, L'origine delle fonti, ingenious and formally most elaborate, but cold and devoid of poetic inspiration. He put his stylistic skill to the test by translating all of Virgil into blank verse and by pretending to translate from the Greek the Inni di Rocchille. These last works of his were intended as a contribution to the anti-Romantic polemics, which were then raging and in which he also took part directly. Later this attitude of his gradually softened, so much so that one can observe in him a certain evolution and a certain drawing closer to the Romantics, as appears from his poem in blank verse Il campanato di Brescia, from his sacred hymns and from an epic poem, of which he wrote only 11 cantos, La Gerusalemme distrutta.
His evolution, however, did not make his thought any deeper or his feeling any more intense; but it remained an entirely external and stylistic experience. He started out from Parini and from Monti, but as other poets and other literary genres became fashionable he went along imitating them. For this reason in his works one can note influences of Foscolo, of Manzoni and even of Leopardi; but just as the classical world was not relived, recreated and adapted to the times by him, so the Bible and the inspiration he drew from it in his last years did not give him the strength to raise himself poetically to a genuinely religious meditation and feeling.
Bibliography2 works
Giambattista Salinari