CAVALLOTTI, Felice. — Writer, politician, orator, born in Milan on 6 Nov. 1842, died in Rome on 6 March 1898. He took part in Garibaldi’s second expedition to Sicily, fought at Milazzo, the Volturno, and Vezza. Of a romantic temperament—Carducci called him “the last of the romantics”—he aspired to be, with his tribunician and Victor Hugo-like bearing, a soldier, politician, journalist, playwright, poet, and scholar.
See, on this point, his historical dramas: I pezzenti, Alcibiade, I Messenii. Often embittered in his unbelief, he translated from the German Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1865). As a deputy he opposed the parliamentary right, later becoming an adversary of the left as well, waging lifelong polemics and writings against Francesco Crispi both personally and politically. These polemics frequently led to duels: he fought thirty-three of them; in the last, against Deputy Ferruccio Macola, he met his death. His lyric poetry is linked to the Milanese Scapigliatura (very popular was the Marcia di Leonida, for the fallen of Mentana); his theatre does not stray from the themes, settings, and conflicts of the nineteenth-century “drama lacrimoso”; great success attended the Cantico dei Cantici, a one-act play staged in 1881, in which the text of Holy Scripture serves as the “go-between” for the love of Antonio, on the eve of his ordination, and his cousin Pia. “The plot holds together only by the author’s desire to spite the priests” (B. Croce). A complete edition of his works appeared in 10 vols. (Milan 1895-96).