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The Territory > The Poliziano |
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Angiolo Ambrogini called Poliziano
Montepulciano, 1454-1494
The most elegant Humanist poet. He wasn't yet sixteen year old when he translated into Latin verse the four books of the Iliad
and this work, praised by Lorenzo
the Magnificent, earned him the protection of this literary prince, who always had a great affection for the poet.
Born in Montepulciano in 1454, Angelo Ambrogini called Poliziano from the Latin name of his hometown (Mons Politianus), he arrived
in Florence as a boy, and as said, obtained the protection of the Medici family, of whom he was always affectionately devotion.
And in Florence his life, that continued until the end of 1494, he developed quietly, dedicating everything to his preferred studies
and to teaching art, oratory and poetry to the learned in that University until 1480.
At twenty years of age he had the University chair for Greek and Latin in the Florentine University. He was very well educated,
and taught Latin and Greek. He left a mixed collection, in which he had gathered vast critical and philological material;
and equally rich in learning was his Epistle.
He wrote operas in Latin, versions in Greek, lectures in verse that he held at the University, and a Commentary on the Pazzi
Conspiracy; in Greek various epigrams. But his major glory is associated with his vernacular writings. In his operas, songs
and ballets, and in respect of these, he revealed an incomparable lively, clear and fresh musicality. In 1480 he wrote, after
a request from the Gonzagas, the fairy tale of Orpheus, a dramatic composition according to an outline of the scared representation,
which was the first profane drama in a vernacular tongue.
And with great care he applied himself, and often took up, his major work, the Stanza for the Joust of Piero dei Medici the
Magnificent, in which he wanted to celebrate Giuliano's victory in a tournament. The work remained unfinished. Poliziano was
not a poet of vast inspiration, but he surpassed all his contemporaries for elegance of style, joyful and coloured performances,
intuitive clarity and happiness of nature. He knew how to perfectly blend the popular liveliness with the new humanistic way and
with the refinement of the culture, and through him the vernacular became, for the first time, the true language of the aristocracy
who were no less than Lorenzo, Pulci and the same Boiardo
As a humanist, Poliziano, was the best of his period: as a Latin poet he competed for the Pontano Palm award. But his fame,
above all, was due to his vernacular works, the Stanza for the Joust, Orpheus, Ballets and Observations. It wasn't, that
Ambrogini, a sovereign soul, with a capacity to closely depict a personality or a character: it was rather the boyish soul that
beat with the naive admiration for the beauty of nature, that totally and joyously abandoned itself with the flow of sensations and
transformed into poetic ghosts.
For this reason Poliziano was the writer who first gave the sense and inspiration to the Renaissance and transformed for the reader
the same impressions that a viewer received before certain simply naïve paintings of some of the painters of the 1400's.
Even more, Poliziano introduced them to the Renaissance, with its refinement and richness, and from which the eight line of the
Stanza for the Joust was first modelled, which referred to the Ariosto, and which only he could surpass.
What freshness in certain performances of the Stanza, that marvelous harmony in the single elements, that declared all the
intensity of interior visions! Yet Poliziano succeeded in obtaining these effects, although the Stanza was a primitively
inspired theme a poem of strength, imposing a contingency of experience, which was that of celebrating the victory sustained
by Giuliano di Medici in a joust held on the 28th January 1475. But he had been able to, little by little release his own
internal ghosts from the awkward obligatory theme (Poliziano was not made for court poetry) and by the development of his
overwhelming learning, he discovered the true centre for his inspiration: the serene contemplation and naivety in the beauty
of nature.
From here the lack of unity, that others had needlessly negated, in the Stanza: the dominate figures must give the tone to
the short poem, Iulio and Simonetta, for them to be depicted happily in certain exterior aspects of detail, that are devoid
of intimacy: but extraordinarily poetic in the context in which they are framed, the atmosphere in which they move and live.
Not so much an art of the fine and complicated senses or of the deep psychological intuitions: but an art of mostly pictorial
inspiration, that was realized in marvelous fragments, that are otherwise little masterpieces.
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