Ada Negri facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ada Negri
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Negri in 1913
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| Born | 3 February 1870 |
| Died | 11 January 1945 (aged 74) Milan, Italy
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| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | Poet |
Ada Negri (3 February 1870 – 11 January 1945) was an Italian poet and writer. She was the only woman to be admitted to the Academy of Italy.
Biography
Ada Negri was born in Lodi, Italy on 3 February 1870. Her father, Giuseppe Negri, was a coachman, and her mother, Vittoria Cornalba, was a weaver.
Her childhood was characterized by her relationship with her grandmother, Giuseppina "Peppina" Panni, who worked as a caretaker at the noble Barni family's palace, in which Negri spent much time alone, observing the passage of people as described in the autobiographical novel Stella Mattutina (1921).
She attended Lodi’s normal school for girls and earned an elementary teacher’s diploma. At eighteen, she became a schoolteacher in the village of Motta Visconti near the Ticino river, in Pavia. She was encouraged to continue her education by her teacher Paolo Tedeschi, who had recognized her precocity in her strong imagination and capacity for learning. In Pavia, Negri lived in Palazzo Cornazzani, the same building where Ugo Foscolo, Contardo Ferrini, and Albert Einstein also inhabited at different points in history. Her first volume of lyrics, Fatalità (1892) established her reputation as a poet and she was appointed to the normal school in Milan. Her second book of poems, Tempeste (1896), describes the helpless tragedy of the forsaken poor.
On 28 March 1896 she married industrialist Giovanni Garlanda of Biella, who had fallen in love with her from reading her poetry. By 1904, they had two daughters named Bianca and Vittoria. Vittoria died in infancy. In 1913, Negri separated from her husband and moved to Switzerland with Bianca. Afterwards, she constantly migrated. She was a frequent visitor to Laglio on Lake Como, where she wrote her only novel, an autobiographical work titled Stella Mattutina (Morning Star). The book was published in 1921 and translated to English for publication in 1930. In March 1923, Negri began an extended stay on the island Capri, where she wrote I canti dell'isola.
In 1940, Negri was admitted as the first female member of the Italian Academy. However, this achievement stained her reputation later in life because members of the Academy had to swear loyalty to the Fascist regime. They were rewarded by the government with various material benefits.
Negri was one of the contributors of Lidel, a nationalist women's magazine published between 1919 and 1935. Her work was widely translated during her lifetime, with individual poems published in newspapers in the U.S. and elsewhere.
On 11 January 1945 her daughter Bianca found Negri dead in her studio in Milan. She was 74 years old.
The actress Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chałupec) adopted the stage surname "Negri" in emulation of the poet. The actress Paola Pezzaglia was the ideal interpreter of her poetry on stage.
Criticism
Benedetto Croce described her work as "facile, tearful, completely centered on the melodiousness and readiness of emotions—poetics that are somewhat melancholy, idyllic-elegiac." He dismissed her, writing that a "lack or imperfection in artistic work is most particularly a feminine flaw (difetto femminile). It is precisely woman’s maternal instinct, her 'stupendous and all-consuming' ability to mother a child, that prevents her from successfully giving birth to a fully realized literary work."
However, other critics saw her as "someone whose vision focused on the toils of life in a way few other writers did during those troubled times. Her naturally lyrical soul knew, in the major parts of her works, how to transform with an imprint of originality the sufferings, the bitterness, the joys of an entire generation." She was described as a writer who "abolished established conventions, and shaped her lyrics according to the rhythms of the heart, in sync to whatever it is that makes the winds blow, gives rise to the waters and pulse to the stars—a poetry infinitely free, capricious and precise."
Her work and her life continued to be haunted by the injustice of life, and she even refused to allow her final volume of poetry to be published until World War II ended. Like many Italian writers of this period, her reputation after 1945 suffered from being associated with the Fascist movement, having received the Mussolini Prize in 1931. The prize was funded by Corriere della Sera.
Works
Poetry
- Fatalità (1892)
- Tempeste (1896)
- Maternità (1904)
- Dal profondo (1910)
- Esilio (1914)
- Il libro di Mara (1919),
- The Book of Mara, translated into English by Maria A. Costantini, Italica Press (2011)
- I canti dell’isola (1925)
- Songs of the Island, translated by Maria A. Costantini. Italica Press (2011)
- Vespertina (1930)
- Il dono (1936)
- Fons amoris (1946), published posthumously
Prose
- Le solitarie (1917)
- Orazioni (1918)
- Stella mattutina (1921)
- Morning Star, translated by Anne Day. Macmillan Co., (1930). Republished, Sublunary Editions (2021)
- Finestre alte (1923)
- Le strade (1926)
- Sorelle (1929)
- Di giorno in giorno (1932)
- Erba sul sagrato (1939)
- Oltre (1947) published posthumously
See also
In Spanish: Ada Negri para niños
