page_title: Giuseppe Giusti
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Giuseppe Giusti / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Monumento a Giuseppe Giusti, nella piazza di Monsummano Terme (PT, Italy) a lui intitolata
context_page_description: Giuseppe Giusti was an Italian poet and satirist.
context_section_description: Giusti was born at Monsummano Terme, now in the province of Pistoia.
  His father, a cultivated and rich man, accustomed his son from childhood to study, and himself taught him, among other subjects, the first rudiments of music. Afterwards, in order to curb his too vivacious disposition, he placed the boy under the charge of a priest near the village, whose severity did perhaps more evil than good. At twelve Giusti was sent to school at Florence, and afterwards to Pistoia and to Lucca; and during those years he wrote his first verses.
  In 1826, Giusti went to study law at the University of Pisa. He disliked the subject. Partly because of a political satire he wrote that displeased authorities, it took him eight years, instead of the customary four, before he eventually earned a law degree in 1834.  On graduating, Giusti proceeded to establish himself in Florence, Italy, claiming to his parents it was to practice law, but he instead pursued his literary interests. Despite earning a degree, he would never practice law.
  He lived gaily, though his father kept him short of money, and learned to know the world, seeing the vices of society, and the folly of certain laws and customs from which his country was suffering. The experience thus gained he turned to good account in the use he made of it in his satire.
  His father had in the meantime changed his place of abode to Pescia; but Giuseppe did worse there, and in November 1832, his father having paid his debts, he returned to study at Pisa, seriously enamoured of a woman whom he could not marry, but now commencing to write in real' earnest in. behalf of his country. With the poem called La Ghigliottina (the guillotine), Giusti began to strike out a path for himself, and thus revealed his great genius. From this time he showed himself the Italian Béranger, and even surpassed the Frenchman in richness of language, refinement of humour and depth of satirical conception. In Béranger there is more feeling for what is needed for popular poetry. His poetry is less studied, its vivacity perhaps more boisterous, more spontaneous; but Giusti, in both manner and conception, is perhaps more elegant, more refined, more penetrating.
  In 1834, Giusti, having at last earned a degree legal profession, left Pisa to go to Florence, nominally to practice with the advocate Capoquadri, but once there, he set out to enjoy life in the then-capital of Italy, Tuscany, where he devoted himself to literary interests.
  He fell seriously in love a second time.  As before, he was abandoned by his love. It was then he wrote his finest verses. Although his poetry was not yet collected in a volume, for some years it passed from hand to hand, as was often the custom, and his name gradually became famous. The greater part of his poems were published clandestinely at Lugano, at no little risk, as the work was destined to undermine the Austrian rule in Italy.
  After the publication of a volume of verses at Bastia, Giusti thoroughly established his fame by his Gingillino, the best in moral tone as well as the most vigorous and effective of his poems. The poet sets himself to represent the vileness of the treasury officials, and the base means they used to conceal the necessities of the state. The Gingillino has all the character of a classic satire. When first issued in Tuscany, it struck all as too impassioned and personal. Giusti entered heart and soul into the political movements of 1847 and 1848, served in the national guard, sat in the parliament for Tuscany; but finding that there was more talk than action, that to the tyranny of princes had succeeded the tyranny of demagogues, he began to fear, and to express the fear, that for Italy evil rather than good had resulted. He fell, in consequence, from the high position. he had held in public estimation, and in 1848 was regarded as a reactionary. His friendship for the marquis Gino Capponi, who had taken him into his house during the last years of his life, and who published after Giusti's death a volume of illustrated proverbs, was enough to compromise him in the ey
caption: Monument to Giuseppe Giusti in Monsummano Terme.
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