CESAREO, GIOVANNI ALFREDO. — Poet and critic, b. in Messina on 14 January 1861, d. in Palermo on 6 May 1937. After a turbulent youth, from 1898 he taught Italian literature at the University of Palermo for 37 years. Ineffable sufferings, which he regarded as expiation for his faults, gradually led him to religious conversion.
At first indulgent toward the literary fashions of his time (Poesie, Bologna 1912), he revealed himself as an original poet in three volumes: I canti di Pan (ibid. 1920), I poemi dell’ombra (ibid. 1923), Colloqui con Dio (ibid. 1928), which are the history of a soul troubled by mystery, tormented by the conflict between spirit and sense, purified by suffering and religious anxiety (cf. the lyric In Galilea).
Among his many volumes of literary criticism and history, the following are especially noteworthy: Le origini della poesia lirica e la poesia siciliana sotto gli Svevi (Milan 1924), La vita e l’arte di G. Meli (Palermo 1924), Studi e ricerche sulla letteratura italiana (ibid. 1929). He continually reflected on art with a philosopher’s insight and an artist’s experience, and in his Saggio su l’arte centrice (Bologna 1919) arrived at an idealistic conception of art; this, however, he himself transcended in his later critical writings, in which, for example, Dante’s poem is regarded not only as a creation but as a revelation, not only as the product of human genius but as an effect of Grace.