Description
The bust of Ceccardo Roccatagliata Ceccardi stands in the Giardini Pubblici of La Spezia: a large portrait in Carrara marble dedicated to a Ligurian poet with a turbulent life.
The bust is the work of the sculptor Aldo Buttini and was placed in 1930, on the initiative of the Università popolare della Spezia. The city has also named a street after the poet.
Who was he? Ceccardo Roccatagliata Ceccardi was born in Genoa in 1871 and grew up in Ortonovo, in Lunigiana, where his mother had moved with her children. Conditions were close to poverty: he walked to and from school.
It was his mother who taught him a love of poetry, with Shelley and Keats, but also Victor Hugo and Leopardi. Memories of that childhood in Lunigiana return in the sonnets of Apua Mater.
He studied law in Genoa, but had to leave university and for a long time led a troubled life. He worked as a court reporter for the newspaper Il Caffaro and followed the trial of the bandit Musolino in Lucca. He also fought two duels.
In Genoa he frequented the Libreria Moderna and the Caffè Roma. In 1898 he described himself, in a Livorno newspaper, as "a distant brother of Tristan Corbière and Rimbaud and a little cousin of Verlaine."
With the painter Lorenzo Viani, tied to him by a deep friendship, and the writer Enrico Pea, he created the Cenacolo di Apua, later turned into the "Republic of Apua". Ceccardo was its president and Viani its lieutenant.
In 1903 he criticized in the newspapers the restorations of the paintings in Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, causing a scandal. In 1915 he volunteered for the First World War, together with Alceste De Ambris and Giuseppe Ungaretti.
He died in 1919, in Genoa, shortly after obtaining a chair in Italian at a technical institute in Parma. His ashes are in the crematorium temple of the Staglieno monumental cemetery.
Critics regard him as a forerunner of twentieth-century Ligurian poetry, the line that runs from Camillo Sbarbaro to Eugenio Montale. His books include Viandante and Sillabe ed ombre.
The bust is the work of the sculptor Aldo Buttini and was placed in 1930, on the initiative of the Università popolare della Spezia. The city has also named a street after the poet.
Who was he? Ceccardo Roccatagliata Ceccardi was born in Genoa in 1871 and grew up in Ortonovo, in Lunigiana, where his mother had moved with her children. Conditions were close to poverty: he walked to and from school.
It was his mother who taught him a love of poetry, with Shelley and Keats, but also Victor Hugo and Leopardi. Memories of that childhood in Lunigiana return in the sonnets of Apua Mater.
He studied law in Genoa, but had to leave university and for a long time led a troubled life. He worked as a court reporter for the newspaper Il Caffaro and followed the trial of the bandit Musolino in Lucca. He also fought two duels.
In Genoa he frequented the Libreria Moderna and the Caffè Roma. In 1898 he described himself, in a Livorno newspaper, as "a distant brother of Tristan Corbière and Rimbaud and a little cousin of Verlaine."
With the painter Lorenzo Viani, tied to him by a deep friendship, and the writer Enrico Pea, he created the Cenacolo di Apua, later turned into the "Republic of Apua". Ceccardo was its president and Viani its lieutenant.
In 1903 he criticized in the newspapers the restorations of the paintings in Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, causing a scandal. In 1915 he volunteered for the First World War, together with Alceste De Ambris and Giuseppe Ungaretti.
He died in 1919, in Genoa, shortly after obtaining a chair in Italian at a technical institute in Parma. His ashes are in the crematorium temple of the Staglieno monumental cemetery.
Critics regard him as a forerunner of twentieth-century Ligurian poetry, the line that runs from Camillo Sbarbaro to Eugenio Montale. His books include Viandante and Sillabe ed ombre.