GOZZI, GASPARO. — Born in Venice on 4 Dec. 1713, died in Padua on 25 Dec. 1786. A writer of classical elegance, his classicism is rich in human irony even if often somewhat uniform in its attitudes; he is best known for the Gazzetta veneta, L’Osservatore, Il mondo morale, which are collections of dialogues, monologues, and various moral reflections, marked by that keen attention to “les moeurs” so typical of the eighteenth century.
His gentle skepticism is entirely on a literary plane. He deplores the harm wrought by irrational fortune, inwardly longs to “live quietly,” yet on the other hand feels the demands of the “heart,” flees from “raison” that knows no virtue, respects the “end of the most holy laws,” and, what is most significant in the history of Italian spirituality, is in direct polemic against the pyrrhonism of Pierre Bayle, against Enlightenment abstraction, against “the vanity of wishing to appear a bold spirit.”
A balanced sense of tradition led him to polemicize against the Lettere virgiliane of Saverio Bettinelli, the latter being an expression of a amused “esprit géométrique” entirely bent on dissecting the Divina Commedia.