Saverio Baldacchini (born Francesco Saverio Baldacchini Gargano; 24 April 1800,

Barletta Barletta () is a city, ''comune'' of Apulia, in south eastern Italy. Barletta is the capoluogo, together with Andria and Trani, of the Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani. It has a population of around 94,700 citizens. The city's territory belong ...

- 13 March 1879,

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

) was an Italian politician, writer and poet.

Life

Born into an aristocratic family originating in

Amantea Amantea ( Calabrian: ; ) is a town, former bishopric, ''comune'' (municipality) and Latin Catholic titular see in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy. It is the twentieth municipality in the region by population, while f ...

, he was the son of Giuseppe Baldacchini and Giovanna Vecchioni. His father died when he and his brother Michele were still very young and so the family moved to Naples, where he studied under the historian

Carlo Troya Carlo Troya (also spelled Troja; 7 June 1784 – 28 July 1858) was a historian and politician who served as Prime Minister of the Two Sicilies from 3 April 1848 until 15 May 1848. Politically, he was a liberal Neo-Guelph who supported Italian unif ...

, published political essays whilst still a student and finally ended up in exile after the failure of the 1820-1821 Revolution. He travelled extensively in Italy, Paris and Britain, reaching as far as London and becoming friends with politicians and intellectuals such as Carlo and Alessandro Poerio. He also took part in the debate between classicism and romanticism. He returned to Italy in 1837, where he backed Basilio Puoti's moves for

purism Purism, referring to the arts, was a movement that took place between 1918 and 1925 that influenced French painting and architecture. Purism was led by Amédée Ozenfant and Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). Ozenfant and Le Corbusier fo ...

in Italian literature. He wrote an essay in Puoti's honour, in which he sought to refute accusations of pedantry against Puoti, perhaps arising from a misunderstanding of ''Ultimo dei puristi'' by Francesco De Sanctis. In 1840 Baldacchini married the widowed mother of

Ruggero Bonghi Ruggero Bonghi (20 March 1826 – 22 October 1895) was an Italian scholar, writer and politician. Ruggero Bonghi was born in Naples and after being widowed his mother remarried in 1840 to Saverio Baldacchini, a major influence on Bonghi. Exi ...

, who was greatly influenced by his new step-father. He became more and more involved in moderate liberal politics, founding several daily newspapers and in 1848 becoming a deputy to the Neapolitan Parliament for the college of Bari. There he headed a movement to put the constitution into immediate effect and became president of the Commission for Public Education. After Ferdinand II's coup and the replacement of

's government with that of Gennaro Spinelli di Cariati on 15 May 1848, Baldacchini left politics to devote himself to writing. After

Italian unification The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...

he returned to politics, taking an active interest in reforming the school system of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and strengthening

Naples University The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...

and the

Accademia Pontaniana The Accademia Pontaniana was the first academy in the modern sense, as a learned society for scholars and humanists and guided by a formal statute. Patronized by Alfonso V of Aragon, it was founded by the poet Antonio Beccadelli in Naples during ...

. He was elected as a deputy in the Kingdom of Italy's parliament for the Barletta college and was President of the Chamber's Library Commission from 1863 to 1865, but he was defeated by Pasquale Petrone in the repeat of the cancelled 1865 elections. His nomination as a senator in 1868 was not confirmed Mario Quattrucci
''op.cit.''
A. Fino, ''Cattolici e Mezzogiorno agli inizi del '900. "Il buon senso" di Nicola Monterisi'', Congedo Editore, Galatina 1989, p. 38. The case was cited in E. Pagliano, ''Il Senato e la nomina dei senatori'', in «Archivio giuridico Filippo Serafini», 1906, n. 77, pp. 369-415 (cit. 377), ora fra
documenti (p. 9)
della

Camera dei Deputati The Chamber of Deputies ( it, Camera dei deputati) is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Senate of the Republic (Italy), Senate of the Republic). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meani ...

and a few days later had a

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

, leaving him paralysed for the rest of his life.

Opera

Purist and classicist, Baldacchini was sensitive to romantic influences in art literature, and after the release of the poem Ugo da Cortona (1839) he found himself at the center of the classic-romantic controversies, as for some he was romantic, for others an exemplary classicist. Come sintetizzò Guido Mazzoni, Saverio Baldacchini «romanticheggiò classicamente». He also wrote a novel in verse Claudio Vannini or The Artist (1835),

Works

Poems

* ''Ugo da Cortona : canti di Saverio Baldacchini''. Napoli: Off. Tipografica, 1839 * ''L'Ideale : versi alla primavera del 1857''. Napoli: Stamperia del Fibreno, 1857 * ''Riposi ed ombre : versi''. Napoli: Stamperia del Fibreno, 1858 * ''Polinnia : versi raccolti nell'inverno del 1859''. Napoli: stamperia del Fibreno, 1859
on-line
* ''Espero, Inedite di Saverio Baldacchini : 1850-1860''. Napoli: F. Giannini, 1867 * ''Claudio Vannini o l'artista : canto''. Napoli: De Stefano e soci, 1836
on-line
* ''Nuovi canti e traduzioni''. Napoli: Stab. tip. Ghio, 1869 * Rime scelt

Prose

* ''Prose''. 3 voll. Napoli: Stamperia del vaglio, 1873 * ''Purismo e romanticismo'', a cura di Edmondo Cione. Bari: G. Laterza, 1936

References

Bibliography (in Italian)

* Leonardo Ambrosini, ''Saverio Baldacchini: l'uomo e il patriotta, lo scrittore e il poeta''. Bari: Società tipografica pugliese, 1924 * Mario Quattrucci
''Baldacchini Gargano, Francesco Saverio''
in «Dizionario biografico degli Italiani», vol. V,

Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana The ''Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti'' (Italian for "Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Letters, and Arts"), best known as ''Treccani'' for its developer Giovanni Treccani or ''Enciclopedia Italiana'', is an Italian-language en ...

, Roma 1963.
Treccani
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baldacchini, Saverio 1800 births 1879 deaths People from Barletta 19th-century Italian poets 19th-century male writers 19th-century Italian politicians Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Kingdom of Italy) Italian people of the Italian unification