Durante la chiusura al pubblico dell’Istituto, in questa pagina vi proponiamo testi e riflessioni di amici e scrittori, talvolta scritti per l’occasione, scelti ogni giorno per voi. Un modo di rimanere vicini, anche nella distanza.
‘A tremendous companion: Ugo Foscolo in London’
It is well-known that the Italian Romantic poet Ugo Foscolo spent the last years of his life in London. Foscolo arrived on 12 September 1816 and lodged for a few days at the Hotel Sablonière in Leicester Square, a favourite haunt of Italians missing the familiar flavours of home cooking. Soon enough, Foscolo was to move to at least further 23 addresses in London, following a trajectory that took him from Soho through to Mayfair, Fitzrovia and Chiswick.
Foscolo’s impetuous temper and passionate nature made him the favourite of several London circles, and the least favourite of others. One fateful March evening in 1824, at a literary tea party held at the crowded parlour of the painter’s Benjamin Haydon in Lisson Grove, Ugo Foscolo and the English poet William Wordsworth held a polite exchange that soon developed into a dramatic clash of personalities. Haydon struggled to bring back the tea party to the level of politeness and calm the audience. A year later, in 1825, Walter Scott was to sum up Foscolo thus: ‘ugly as a baboon, and intolerably conceited, he spluttered, blustered and disputed, […] and screamed all the while like a pig when they cut his throat.’
Two London blue plaques discovered in my peregrinations across London immortalise the presence of the headstrong Foscolo in London, and the fateful night when two of these most accomplished Romantic poets clashed like titans over the theme of selfishness of humankind.
Katia Pizzi, Director IIC London