page_title: Isabella di Morra
section_title: Poetry
hierarchical_section_title: Isabella di Morra / Poetry
caption_attribution_description: This is a photo of a monument which is part of cultural heritage of Italy. This monument participates in the contest Wiki Loves Monuments Italia 2017. See authorisations. (wiki-ID: 0770219) The authorisation for taking photos of this object was provided by the World Wide Fund for Nature Italy.
context_page_description: Isabella di Morra was an Italian poet of the Renaissance. An unknown figure in her lifetime, she was forced by her brothers to live in isolation, which estranged her from courts and literary salons. While living in solitude in her castle, she produced a body of work which did not circulate in the literary milieu of the time. Her brothers eventually murdered her for her suspected secret romance.
  Thirteen poems by her have survived to this day. This work is considered among the most powerful and original poetic expressions of Italian literature from the 16th century, employing topics and techniques which make her, according to some scholars, a forerunner of Romantic poetry.
context_section_description: The poems of Isabella were discovered when the authorities entered her estate to investigate the murder. There are ten sonnets and three poems, which were published posthumously. She has been associated with the 1500s literary movement known as Petrarchism, a revival of Petrarch's model launched by Pietro Bembo. Although her form, vocabulary and phrases follow the Petrarchist fashion of the period, she is distinguished by her gloomy and distressing tone, possibly influenced by medieval poets such as Dante Alighieri (especially the Inferno chapter and Rime Petrose lyrics) and Jacopone da Todi. Her poetry is very personal, influenced by her own family condition and forced isolation; she wrote on impulse in order to vent her frustration, without any literary adornment or formal elegance.
  Unlike other women's poems, which are principally based on a celebration of idealized love, in Isabella's work there is only space for existential pain, grudge and loneliness, making her a distinctive figure among Petrarchist poets of the time. Marriage is the only way to love, which would not only satisfy her social and feminine position, but would be the only way to escape the oppressive environment she lived in. Her poetry describes the grief she feels at being isolated, being separated from other literary people, and missing her father, with Nature as the primary interlocutor of her verses.
  Isabella herself defined her style as "bitter, harsh and sorrowful" (amaro, aspro e dolente) or "unmannered and frail" (ruvido e frale). Fortune is the main antagonist of her work, blamed for depriving her of happiness and freedom. Fortune is her personification of mankind's cruelty towards "every good-natured heart" (ogni ben nato core), implicitly condemning a world in which tyranny and violence prevail over virtue.
  She expresses repugnance towards her homeland, described as an "infernal valley" (valle inferna) and "cursed place" (denigrato sito), surrounded by "lonely and dark woods" (selve erme ed oscure), inhabited by "irrational people, without intelligence" (gente irrazional, priva d'ingegno), and crossed by the "turbid Siri" (torbido Siri, today known as Sinni) the river running in the valley below her castle, whose continuous murmur as it flowed downstream into the sea increases her sense of isolation and despair. She imagines throwing herself symbolically into her loved and hated river, perhaps alluding to suicide. This has led to the singular theory that her sister Porzia and Diego Sandoval were corresponding and then became victims of the murderers; accordingly Isabella, affected by the tragedy, threw herself into the river, since there is no clue as to where she might have been buried.
  She scans the sea waiting for a ship to bring good news about her exiled father (who lived comfortably in France, ignoring her fate), in the vain hope that her condition would improve with his return. Charles V (known as "Caesar" in the lyrics) is accused of "preventing a father from helping his daughter" (privar il padre di giovar la figlia) and Francis I is the "great king" (gran re), to whom all hopes for her own liberation were addressed, but they were shattered as the French monarch was finally defeated by his rival, making Isabella even more depressed. Her mother is portrayed as an old and miserable woman unable to control her children; her brothers are "extremely and disgustingly indolent" (in estrema ed orrida fiacchezza) blaming Fortune for depriving them of the kindly nature enjoyed by their ancestors and explaining  their uncouth and despotic manners by saying: "by those who,through ignorance, do not understand me , I am, alas, reproached" (da chi non son per ignoranza intesa i' son, lassa, ripresa).
  She also paid tribute to the poet Luigi Alamanni, who took refuge in France after a conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later Pope Clement VII. She writes about her "pitiful end" (miserando fine) and "now that I feel my bitter end near" (or ch’io sento da presso il fine amaro), which leads one to think she was aware of her imminent murder
caption: The Sinni river at sunset
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