NIEVO, IPPOLITO. - Writer, b. in Padua on 30 Nov. 1831. Inspired early on by the ideas of the Risorgimento, he took part in the war of '59, and the following year in the expedition of the Thousand, returning from which, having embarked at Palermo, he perished in a shipwreck in March '61.
A very prolific writer, he published collections of lyrics (especially: Le lucciole and Gli amori garibaldini), was a playwright (worth remembering 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 the scattered youthful tales (among them, most poetic, Il Varmo), to the first contrived novels (Angelo di bontà; Il conte pecorario, etc.), and finally to his decisively representative work, Le confessioni di un italiano (which came out posthumously in 1867, under the title Le confessioni di un ottuagenario), where the author attempts to measure, as he says, against an individual history, the past of a great people. A tendentially unitary representation of the entire Risorgimento cycle, the novel displays its best artistic qualities in evoking the childhood of the protagonist, the Venetian Carlo Altoviti, in a castle of that Friuli where N. himself lived his finest hours; but something of that memory stamps all Le confessioni with an aura of enthusiastic and pensive youth. A restless conscience, N. was the representative of a generation dominated by the vague theism of Mazzinian teaching.
Bibliography6 worksOn his life: D. Mantovani, Il poeta soldato, 2nd ed., Milan 1931. On the writer: B. Croce, La Letteratura della nuova Italia, I, Bari 1914,
BIBL.: On his life: D. Mantovani, Il poeta soldato, 2nd ed., Milan 1931. On the writer: B. Croce, La Letteratura della nuova Italia, I, Bari 1914, pp. 116-38; R. Bacchelli, in the introd. to Le più belle pagine, Milan 1939; E. Cecchi, in the preface to Le confessioni di un italiano, Turin 1942; M. Marcassan, I. N. e le Confessioni, Milan-Messina 1942; L. Russo, Ritratti e disegni storici, II, Bari 1946, pp. 170-82; F. Ulivi, Il romanticismo di I. N., Rome 1947.
Ulivi, Ferruccio. “Nievo, ippolito.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VIII, col. 1876. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952. https://azioneromana.com/article/nievo-ippolito.
MLA
Ulivi, Ferruccio. “Nievo, ippolito.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. VIII, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952, col. 1876. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/nievo-ippolito.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec8_nievo_ippolito,
author = {Ulivi, Ferruccio},
title = {Nievo, ippolito},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {VIII},
pages = {1876},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1952},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/nievo-ippolito}
}
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