Ippolito Pindemonte: Verona Poet and Classicist Opponent of Romanticism

Born in Verona in 1753 and died in 1828, naturally inclined to solitude and enamored with rural life, Ippolito Pindemonte was, along with Monti and Foscolo, one of the advocates of classicism against romanticism.

Lord Byron, describing the “famous poet from Verona,” outlined this profile: “He is a slight man, with fine and pleasant features, good and gentle manners, with an overall very philosophical appearance, around sixty years old or more. He is one of the best living poets, a charming, small old gentleman.”

Origins and Education

Descended from a noble family related to the Maffei, he studied at the San Carlo College in Modena, where he excelled in classical literature and in metaphysical and moral sciences, earning the title of Prince of the Academy. Like few others, the “dearest” Ippolito knew how to enjoy the pleasures of rural life and solitude.

Places and Memories

In the park of the Maffei Marchesi, in Valeggio sul Mincio, now Sigurtà Park, a plaque commemorates his verses: “Yes, delightful is the flow of life here — that I would scruple to become a hermit here.” In the “Rural Poems,” composed in Avesa, he praised “Melancholy”: “Sources and hills — I asked the Gods: — I will finally hear — paid I will live —…”

Works and Dedications

To him, who had begun the poem on “The Cemeteries,” Foscolo dedicated the splendid ode “The Sepulchres,” so much so that he interrupted his poem and composed a letter with the same Foscolian title (1807).

His nymph Egeria was Lèsbia Cidonia, also known as Paolina Grismondi, one of the most delicate poets of all time. The meeting with young Ippolito took place in spring 1778: “There still lives some good priest,” recounts Benassù Montanari, “who still remembers with a smile the great promenade of Paolina arm-in-arm with Ippolito when the sky was serene, along a double row of espaliers…”

Acknowledgments and Evaluations

Ippolito Pindemonte was, almost universally, judged at the time to be one of the greatest living poets: and it was an era when — considering only the great — poets were not few. A figure who also honored Valeggio.