Aleardo Aleardi Bust

Aleardo Aleardi brought the emotional language of Romantic poetry into the politics of Italian unification. Born in Verona in 1812, he studied law at Padua alongside Giovanni Prati and Arnaldo Fusinato, two other writers represented in the Pincio collection. Literature and political affiliation developed within the same circle of friendships.

His opposition to Austrian rule led to imprisonment. After the war of 1859 he lived in Brescia and continued to publish political verse. I sette soldati, issued in 1861, considered Austrian soldiers who had died far from their homes. The subject complicates a simple division between patriotic poetry and sympathy for an enemy.

Aleardi later taught aesthetics in Florence and became a senator. He died in Verona in 1878. His career connects the literary salon, the prison, the classroom, and parliament: four settings through which nineteenth-century writers participated in public life.