THE CAFFÈ. – The first newspaper of collective collaboration, a direct expression of the Milanese “Accademia dei Pugni,” founded in the home of the Verri family, and thus of the “Società del Caffè,” published in Brescia daily from 1 June 1764 to the end of May 1766.
Its eleven contributors, including the brothers P. and A. Verri and C. Beccaria, addressed topics of public economy, legislation, agriculture, natural history, medicine, various literature, and morals in a witty and sometimes paradoxical style, in keeping with eighteenth-century taste, while avoiding those of politics and religion. The articles were presented as reports of discussions among the patrons of an imaginary café opened in Milan by a Greek exile: hence the title.
The C., widely circulated in Italy and abroad, provoked lively polemics, especially with Baretti; it then ceased publication due to disagreements between A. Verri and C. Beccaria.
Faithful to the motto “facts, not words,” the “caffeinati” fought strenuously against every kind of authority and prejudice in favor of sincerity and freedom of opinion, CONCILIATORE, IL (v.).
The C. has been criticized for the Gallophilia evident in certain articles and for its careless style. Yet more substantial contradictions might be pointed out if it were not noted that precisely in the subtle and hidden antithesis between the generally Enlightenment approach to problems and the prescient sensitivity of inquiry lies the vitality of the newspaper. Faith in the illuminative power of reason explains the anti-arcadian, anti-purist, and anti-pedantic struggle waged by the writers of the C. against all remnants of the past, and the lively need for a firm moral conscience. Yet one can also discern, particularly in A. Verri, a tendency to listen, beyond definitive clarity, to the voice of the “sensus interior,” that is, the “path of the heart,” to recognize the priority of inspiration and feeling over reason. Thus alongside a rational declaration of cosmopolitan Europeanism (wrongly taken as an abdication of Italianness) one may find, as in the well-known article by Carli on The Fatherland of the Italians, Romantic forerunners in the affirmation of the uniqueness of the Italian nationality, historically and concretely defined.
Two complete reprints of the C. were issued: one in Verona in 1766 and one in Milan in 1804, both in two volumes. Partial anthologies are those of L. Collino (Torino 1930), V. Lozito (Da quattro periodici, Milano 1923), and E. Colombo (ivi 1945).