Giovanni Pascoli: Un focolare per l’èra nuova

Abstract

A booklet, published in 1899 but symbolically dated 1900, clarifies the extent to which Pascoli believed himself to be Leopardi’s poetic successor. For Pascoli, the main responsibility of poets of the “new era” was to imbue mankind with a sentiment of fraternity, being the only possible reaction to the scientific recognition of life’s emptiness. The new poetry would enable man to evolve from the incomplete status of homo sapiens to that of homo humanus. This is the value of the poem Il focolare, in which the illusory comfort of an empty hearth represents the only possible consolation for all men.