Brunamonti-Bonacci, Maria Alinda

BRUNAMONTI-BONACCI, MARIA ALINDA. - Poet, b. in Perugia on 21 Aug. 1841, d. there on 3 Feb. 1903. At the age of fifteen she published her first Canti, arousing mistrust on account of her remarkable precocity. In 1860, having moved with her family to Recanati, she echoed in her Canti nazionali the patriotic enthusiasm for the battle of Castelfidardo. In 1868 she married Pietro Brunamonti, professor of Philosophy of Law at the University of Perugia, and returned to her native city, where she lived almost continuously until her death.

Nourished by rigorous studies and endowed with exquisite sensibility, she knew how to give a classically noble cast to lofty thoughts and to fresh and vivid images. Her first inspirations, to which she often returned, were religious: «the firstfruits of her song were for Mary». Following in the footsteps of Zanella, who held her very dear, she attempted scientific-apologetic themes. She assiduously sought moral symbols in the aspects of external nature, as emerges above all from the collections: Nuovi canti (Città di Castello 1887) and Flora (Rome 1898). In the Discorsi d'arte and the Ricordi di viaggio (published posthumously in 1905), B. gives proof of such delicacy and perspicacity as to make one regard the prose pages as the most complete manifestation of her personality.

Silvio Pasquazi