Abstract
In the very first lines of the Syntagma, Campanella recalled his own precocious and natural aptitude for poetic expression. As an adult, this aptitude took on a certain poignancy and sharpness, and came to be directed towards the expression of difficult philosophical matters. The poetic production that has come down to us was transmitted primarily in two collections. The first included the poems of his youth, completed prior to 1601. The second consisted of compositions put together and published under the title Scelta di alcune poesie filosofiche. The poems of Campanella’s youth survived in the so-called “Ponzio Codex,” located by Amabile in the nineteenth century. They include eighty-two poems, mostly sonnets, of which only fourteen would be included in the Scelta. The codex is named after Ponzio because it conserves the poems that Campanella’s friend and fellow prisoner Pietro Ponzio collected, until the codex was confiscated in the prison of the Castel Nuovo in August of 1601, after a violent argument between the inmates. All that Campanella himself tells us is that many of those compositions were written in the earliest days of the imprisonment, for the purpose of instilling courage in his fellow detainees and friends and so as to help them resist the terrors of torture. Transposing episodes and characters from the events in Calabria into verse, Campanella expressed his certainty about being on the side of reason and justice. He refers to the conspirators as noble and chosen spirits, united in their determination to fight against the violence and ignorance of tyranny in the name of liberty and truth and united in disdaining - with the aid of the ‘ardor’ of reason - the most atrocious tortures and persecutions.
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Notes
- 1.
The collection of poetry was published for the first time in Amabile, Congiura, III, doc. 436-517, pp. 549-581.
- 2.
Poesie, p. 519.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 519.
- 4.
Ibid., pp. 490, 492, 494.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 504.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 498ff.
- 7.
Ibid., pp. 528, 500.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 488: ‘Vicino è ’l dì, che le cervici altiere/e i colli torti e le lingue bugiarde/farà pasto di tigri, orsi e pantere.’
- 9.
See ch. 3, notes 5, 34, 41.
- 10.
Poesie, p. 564.
- 11.
Ibid., pp. 568-571.
- 12.
Regarding the known copies, see Francesco Giancotti, ‘Note e Tavole sul Testo,’ in Poesie, pp. C-CIV; Id., ‘Postille a una nuova edizione delle Poesie di Campanella. 1-3,’ B&C, 4, 1998, pp. 423-426. The Neapolitan exemplars are held in the Biblioteca Croce and the Biblioteca Oratoriana dei Padri Girolamini. This second copy - on which, see L. Amabile, Il codice delle lettere del Campanella … e il libro delle Poesie dello Squilla della Biblioteca dei PP. Girolamini in Napoli (Naples, 1881) - is of the highest importance, because it contains autograph corrections by Campanella, which have been for the most part lost following the havoc wrought by an inept restoration justly deplored by Firpo; see ‘Storia della poesia campanelliana,’ p. XI, in the anastatic edition of the Scelta published by him (Naples, 1980).
- 13.
See Arnaldo Di Benedetto, ‘Da Campanella a Manzoni: Due Note. I. Sul luogo di stampa della Scelta d’alcune poesie filosofiche di Settimontano Squilla,’ Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana, 112 (1995), pp. 421-425; ‘Notizie campanelliane: Sul luogo di stampa della Scelta d’alcune poesie filosofiche,’ B&C, 3 (1997), pp. 154-158. Even before the Scelta was sent to press, Johann Valentin Andreae had translated and published six sonnets in German in 1619 (see Italo M. Battafarano, ‘Attorno ai sonetti di Campanella tradotti da J. V. Andreae,’ Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, Sezione Germanica, XX, 1977, pp. 7-45). In 1802, Johann Gottlieb Herder would translate and publish twenty-seven of the poems (then in Sämmtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan, vol. III, Berlin, 1881, pp. 332-354). But only in 1834 would Gaspare Orelli, professor of philology at Zurich,succeed, after years of fruitless research, in tracking down a copy of the extremely rare old edition in Wolfenbüttel and in editing a modern (if imprecise) version of the Scelta, which A. D’Ancona inserted into the edition of the Opere that he put together.
- 14.
For the vast bibliography on the poems, see the fine list in the Poesie, pp. CLI-CLV.
- 15.
Syntagma, p. 42.
- 16.
See ch. 8, pp. 154-155.
- 17.
Regarding this famous sonnet entitled ‘Della plebe,’ see G. Ernst, ‘Sapiente e popolo in Campanella. Rileggendo il sonetto “Della plebe”,’ in Bene navigavi. Studi in onore di Franco Bianco, ed. M. Failla (Macerata, 2006), pp. 283-294. For a fuller version, see G. Ernst, ‘“Il popolo è una bestia varia e grossa.” Passioni, retorica, e politica in Tommaso Campanella,’ in Renaissance Learning and Letters, ed. D. Knox and N. Ordine (forthcoming). For an English version of some of the compositions in the Scelta, see The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella, translated by John Addington Symonds (London, 1878); a recent reprinting of that translation (complete with the Italian text and Campanella’s own prose exposition) can be found in T. Campanella, Sonnets, ed. S. Draghici (Washington DC, 1999).
- 18.
Scelta, n. 29, madr. 10 in Poesie, p. 144: ‘Alfin questa è comedia universale;/e chi filosofando a Dio s’unisce/vede con lui ch’ogni bruttezza e male/maschere belle son, ride e gioisce.’
- 19.
Poesie, p. 338.
- 20.
Ibid., pp. 363-364: ‘Tu, morte viva, nido d’ignoranza,/ portatile sepolcro e vestimento/di colpa e di tormento,/peso d’affanni e di error laberinto,/mi tiri in giù con vezzi e con spavento,/perch’io non miri in Ciel mia propria stanza,/e ’l ben ch’ogn’altro avanza:/onde, di sua beltà invaghito e vinto,/non sprezzi e lasci te, carbone estinto.’
- 21.
See madrigals four and five of the Canzone quarta in Poesie, n. 79, pp. 369-370. For the lines cited below, see madrigal 1, p. 367: ‘Ma smorza ogni doglia/chi nella mente sua il gran Senno cole,/seco vuole e disvòle,/ di lui se stesso in se stesso beando.’
- 22.
Ibid., p. 382: ‘Io mi credevo Dio tener in mano,/ non seguitando Dio,/ ma l’argute ragion del senno mio,/ che a me ed a tanti ministrâr la morte./ Benché sagace e pio, l’ingegno umano/ divien cieco e profano, se pensa migliorar la comun sorte,/ pria che mostrarti a’ sensi suoi, Dio vero, e mandarlo ed armarlo non ti degni,/ come tuo messaggiero,/ di miracolo e pruove e contrassegni.’
- 23.
Ibid., p. 404: ‘Ma un solo è Dio, da cui sarà finito/ tanto scompiglio, e la ragion nascosa/aperta, onde peccò cotanta gente.’
- 24.
Ibid., p. 409: ‘Fa alla sua tana - giorno quando è notte:/ oh, leggi rotte!/ Oh, leggi rotte! ch’un sol verme sia/ re, epilogo, armonia, - fin d’ogni cosa’; p. 408: ‘Ei legge pone, come un dio.’
- 25.
An attempt that would be appreciated by Giosuè Carducci, who would reproduce the three elegies in his collection La poesia barbara nei secoli XV e XVI (Bologna, 1881), pp. 401-407.
- 26.
Poesie, p. 452ff.; see ch. 6, p. 104.
- 27.
The work was handed over to G. Schoppe in 1607, so that he might organize its publication. But at the end of the following year the German scholar, having encountered difficulties with the editor Giovan Battista Ciotti regarding a Venetian edition, advised the author to translate it into Latin and to attempt to publish it in Germany - something that Campanella did in the course of 1609.
- 28.
The work would be reprinted at Paris, in 1636 and 1637, preceded by a dedication to Cardinal Richelieu and accompanied by a Defensio, in which the author demonstrated how his doctrine was fully in line with the doctrines of the Church Fathers and the Scholastics.
- 29.
See for example Michel-Pierre Lerner, ‘“Campanellae deliramenta in Tartarum releganda”: une condamnation méconnue du De sensu rerum et magia en 1629,’ B&C, 2 (1996), pp. 215-236.
- 30.
Amabile, Congiura, II, p. 370.
- 31.
Senso delle cose, p. 23.
- 32.
Lettere, p. 324.
- 33.
Senso delle cose, pp. 3-4.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 7.
- 35.
Ibid., p. 8.
- 36.
Ibid., p. 11. On the concept of sense, see Massimo L. Bianchi, ‘senso (sensus),’ in Enciclopedia, vol. 1, coll. 351-364.
- 37.
Ibid., p. 24.
- 38.
Ibid., p. 26.
- 39.
Ibid., p. 27.
- 40.
Ibid., pp. 38-39.
- 41.
Ibid., pp. 39-40.
- 42.
Ibid., p. 41.
- 43.
For a summary of the lost work, see ibid., p. 47ff.
- 44.
Ibid. p. 60.
- 45.
Ibid., p. 61.
- 46.
Ibid., pp. 73-74.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 81.
- 48.
Ibid., p. 90.
- 49.
Ibid., pp. 131, 97, 136, 135, 132.
- 50.
Ibid., p. 133.
- 51.
Ibid., pp. 159, 98.
- 52.
Ibid., pp. 97, 133.
- 53.
See Guido Giglioni, ‘magia naturale,’ in Enciclopedia, vol. 1, coll. 265-277.
- 54.
Senso delle cose, pp. 168-169.
- 55.
Ibid., p. 177.
- 56.
Ibid., pp. 183, 188.
- 57.
Ibid., p. 184.
- 58.
Ibid., p. 188.
- 59.
Ibid., pp. 186-187.
- 60.
See ibid., l. IV, ch. 10, p. 189ff.
- 61.
See ch. 4.1.
- 62.
Ibid., p. 197.
- 63.
Ibid., p. 235.
- 64.
Letter to Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, 30 August 1606, in Lettere, p. 26.
- 65.
Ibid., p. 15.
- 66.
Ibid., p. 16.
- 67.
Ibid., p. 55.
- 68.
Ibid., pp. 134-135.
- 69.
L’ateismo trionfato, 2 vols. (Pisa, 2004); the first volume contains the critical edition of the work and annotations; the second contains an anastatic reproduction of the ms Barb. lat. 4458 of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, repository of the autograph version.
- 70.
Ateismo trionfato, I, pp. 3-5.
- 71.
Ibid., pp. 17-18.
- 72.
Giorgio Spini, Ricerca dei libertini. La teoria dell’impostura delle religioni nel Seicento italiano (19501), new edition (Florence, 1983), pp. 85-86.
- 73.
Ateismo trionfato, I, pp. 92-93.
- 74.
Ibid., p. 100.
- 75.
Ibid., pp. 100-101.
- 76.
Ibid.
- 77.
Ibid.
- 78.
Ateismo trionfato, I, p. 169; see Ath. triumph., p. 175: ‘De Americanis cum admiratione audivi, quod confessione peccatorum utebantur: plebs principibus, principes regi, rex Soli confitebantur: Sol autem deo, ut putabant; et panem quasi eucharistiae manducabant, formantes idolum ex pasta, et distribuentes et communicantes in illo, quem vocabant nomine Dei sui, sicuti nos Iesuchristi. Profecto isti ritus si fuissent cum cognitione veri Dei, et eius instinctu vel lege a Deo instituta, nequaquam irrationabiles essent, sed palam est esse commenta diaboli, simiae Dei.’
- 79.
Ateismo trionfato, I, p. 105 (Ath. triumph., p. 113); Campanella would refer to the persecutions brought down on the community by Jakob Hutter based in Moravia and chased out of there by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1622: see Roland Crahay, ‘Une référence de Campanella: l’utopie pratiquée des Anabaptistes,’ in Le discours utopique (Paris, 1978), pp. 179-192: 182ff.
- 80.
Syntagma, p. 110.
- 81.
See Luigi Firpo, ‘Appunti campanelliani. XXI. Le censure all’Atheismus triumphatus,’ GCFI, 30 (1951), pp. 509-524. See also Ernst, Religione, p. 73ff and the texts cited in the following notes.
- 82.
Enrico Carusi, Nuovi documenti sui processi di Tommaso Campanella, GCFI, 8 (1927), doc. 72, p. 351.
- 83.
See Germana Ernst, ‘Il ritrovato Apologeticum di Campanella al Bellarmino in difesa della religione naturale,’ Rivista di storia della filosofia, 157 (1992), pp. 565-586.
- 84.
The texts of the debate are contained in Germana Ernst, ‘Cristianesimo e religione naturale. Le censure all’Atheismus triumphatus di Tommaso Campanella,’ Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, 1989, 1-2, pp. 137-200. On the issue of Campanella’s suspected Pelagianism, see the last chapter of the recent monograph by Jean Delumeau, Le mystère Campanella (Paris, 2008), p. 499ff.
- 85.
Carusi, Nuovi documenti, doc. 94, p. 358.
- 86.
‘Risposte alle censure dell’Ateismo triunfato,’ in Opuscoli inediti, pp. 9-54.
- 87.
Ath. triumph., p. 8b.
- 88.
Carusi, Nuovi documenti, doc. 100, p. 359. On the censorship of Campanella works, see Saverio Ricci, Davanti al Santo Uffizio. Filosofi sotto processo (Viterbo, 2009).
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Ernst, G. (2010). In the Cave of Polyphemus. In: Tommaso Campanella. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 200. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3126-6_7
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