GIORDANI, PIETRO. - Writer, b. at Piacenza on 1 Jan. 1774, d. at Parma on 14 Sept. 1848. After completing his studies in philosophy and law at Parma, he joined his brother in the Benedictine monastery of S. Sisto at Piacenza. Already a subdeacon, in June 1800 he left the Order and took employment as secretary of the provisional government of the Alpi Apuane; three years later he requested and obtained a dispensation from his vows.
He attempted various offices; in 1808 he was pro-secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, but in 1815, on account of his liberal ideas, he was expelled; at Piacenza, where he went, comforted by a substantial paternal inheritance, for an inopportune piece of writing he was sent into exile by the duchess Maria Luisa; from Florence in 1830 he was driven out by the grand duke together with Poerio; at Parma in 1834 he was imprisoned. Despite these adventures, G. lived out his ideal of the perfect writer, faithful to the tradition of the "good and sufficient" language of the golden fourteenth century, in the highly elaborate and full prose of his panegyrics (Allo imperatore Napoleone; Ad Antonio Canova), in his discourses (Per le tre legazioni riacquistate dal Papa; Della religione in Italia, an unfinished work against the papacy; Degli improvvisatori e dell'ordine dello studiare la storia e della tortura data a Galileo), in his works of philology (Istruzioni a un giovane italiano per l'arte di scrivere; Dei volgarizzatori trecentisti; Degli studi degli Italiani nel sec. XVIII), in his polemics (Il peccato impossibile) against the theologians, in his translations and in his deservedly famous epigraphs. Hostile to the Church, he nevertheless had praise for the religious value of Manzoni's work, and he worthily reappraised the great Jesuit writers of the seventeenth century: Bartoli, Segneri, Pallavicino. His so-called religion was rather the myth of the word, that is, the cult of pure formal beauty and of a sober and harmonious eloquence, which still today stands out in and distinguishes his vast, fragmentary output, which enjoyed, among other things, the very great admiration of Leopardi (of whom G. was an intimate friend and revealer) and of Carducci. The Opere (decr. 5 Sept. 1825) and the Epistolario, edited by A. Gussalli (decr. 7 Apr. 1856), are on the Index donec corrigatur.
Bibliography6 works
Giovanni Fallani