Ghosts of Solitude: Guido Gozzano reader of Petrarch. An episode of the 20th-century reception of <i>Rvf</i> 35

Abstract

The essay offers a comparative analysis of Guido Gozzano’s poem “Un’altra risorta,” from the collection I colloqui (1911), and the Petrarchan sonnet “Solo e pensoso” (Rvf 35), of which Gozzano gives a modern and partially ironic rewriting. Sonnet 35, together with a constellation of elements drawn from other poems from the Canzoniere concerning the theme of love surviving the loss of beauty and the passing of time, gives to the modern poet the thematic and lexical frame to describe his condition of sceptical, disillusioned lover. Gozzano’s poetry represents in this sense a significant episode of twentieth-century Petrarchism and the critical and problematic relationship of contemporary poetry with the language of literary tradition