CESAROTTI, MELCHIORRE. — Writer, born in Padua in 1730, died at his villa in Selvazzano, near Padua, in 1808. Having lived amid the political turmoil, like Monti he praised now Napoleon, now the Austrians, according to the shifting fortunes of the Venetian Republic. After completing his studies at the Paduan seminary, he taught rhetoric there; later he moved to Venice as a tutor in the Grimani household. In 1768 he was appointed to teach Hebrew and Greek at the University of Padua; and in 1779 he became secretary of the Venetian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts.
He demonstrated his qualities as a writer through translations
Cesarotti, Melchiorre - Portrait. Engraving by S. Rosaspina. Rome, Institute of Archaeology and Art History.
from Demosthenes, Aeschylus, Homer (notably his prose and verse version of the Iliad under the title *La morte di Ettore*), and also translated works by Voltaire and Gray, seeking to infuse the translated authors with the sensibility and color of his own time (cf. his theory *Su i traduttori*). He ventured into narrative, fables, and poetry with *Rime* and *Prouéa*, that is, *Provvidenza*, a poem in which, after explaining the doctrine of free will and the rationale of divine rewards and punishments proportionate to human and national conduct, he celebrates Napoleon’s deeds as the bringer of happiness to mankind. Of his philological researches and his love of philosophy there remain a *Corso ragionato di letteratura greca*, an *Essay on the Philosophy of Language*, and an *Essay on the Philosophy of Taste*. He advocated the necessity of a common language not based on the precepts of writers and academies but grounded in all Italian dialects. He also devoted himself to literary criticism with a *Discourse on the Origin and Progress of the Art of Poetry* and a *Reasoning on the Delight of Tragedy*. His name remains linked to the poetic version of the *Poems of Ossian* by James Macpherson, an epic that stirred Europe with its free and fanciful return to the forces of nature. His versatility and restlessness fall within the scope of encyclopedic thought eager for liberal innovations.
Cesarotti’s works are collected in 40 volumes (Pisa 1800–13).