Literary Celebs: Amalia Guglielminetti, Guido Gozzano and the Price of Fame

“L’unica poetessa che abbia oggi l’Italia,” Gabriele D’Annunzio declared of Amalia Guglielminetti, who began her literary career at the age of eighteen in 1901 with the ode “Al giglio sabaudo” celebrating the birth of Princess Jolanda of Savoy. In the following decade, emerging onto the rich cultural scene of her native Turin, the Italian center of both the worker’s movement and the drive for female emancipation, she would bring forth three of the most important books of poetry of the new century: Le vergini folli (1907), Le seduzioni (1909), and L’insonne (1913). Adopting classical forms such as the songbook, the sonnet, and the tercet, her self-fashioning showcases various masks of the modern “donna nuova,” from the femme fatale to the emancipated woman. While linked to such traditional figures as Sappho, Gaspara Stampa and other female poets of the Renaissance, she was also praised for her “stupefacente originalità.”

The front cover of a biography of Amalia Guglielminetti, written by Mario Gastaldi, that also contains an image of Guido Gozzano.

Moreover, her early career, in its rapid rise to literary success, parallels that of her intimate friend, intellectual interlocutor and fellow poet, Guido Gozzano. Their epistolary exchanges, numbering some one hundred and twenty-six letters, dated between 1906 and 1912, shed light on their mutual admiration, tense romantic engagement — more literary than amorous —, and common “will to fame.”

Within the context of women writers of the early twentieth century, as well as within that of the modern Italian poetic canon, this research seminar revisits Amalia Guglielminetti’s literary accomplishments for critical reconsideration. While focusing on the dialogue in letters and in verse between these two poets from Turin during the high point of their literary celebrity, I will also trace the factors that have marginalized the female writer in relation to her male counterpart(s), denying her the fame that she so richly deserves. This event was recorded on November 7, 2024.

Speakers:
Professor John Welle

For more information visit the event website.