NIEVO, IPPOLITO. – Writer, born in Padua on 30 November 1831. He soon became inspired by the ideas of the Risorgimento, took part in the war of 1859, and the following year in the Expedition of the Thousand; on his return, having embarked at Palermo, he perished in a shipwreck in March 1861.
A highly prolific writer, he published collections of lyrical poetry (especially: Le lucciole and Gli amori garibaldini), was a dramatist (notable among his works are the historical tragedies Spartaco and I Capuani), and a political and social polemicist in considering the problems raised by the unification of Italy; but he was above all a narrator, from his scattered youthful stories (among them, most poetic, Il Varmo), to his first cumbersome novels (Angelo di bontà; Il conte pecorario, etc.), and finally to his decidedly representative work, Le confessioni di un italiano (published posthumously in 1867 under the title Le confessioni di un ottuagenario), in which the author attempts, as he himself says, to measure the past of a great people through an individual story. A representation tending toward unity of the entire Risorgimento cycle, the novel displays its finest artistic qualities in evoking the childhood of its protagonist, the Venetian Carlo Altoviti, in a castle in that Friuli where N. himself lived his happiest hours; but something of that memory imbues all of Le confessioni with an aura of enthusiastic and thoughtful youth. A troubled conscience, N. was the representative of a generation dominated by the vague theism of Mazzini’s teaching.