Paolo Abriani

Paolo Abriani (1607  26 April 1699) was an Italian classical scholar, translator and Marinist poet.

Paolo Abriani
Born1607
Died26 April 1699(1699-04-26) (aged 91–92)
Occupations
  • Poet
  • Classical scholar
  • Translator
Known forItalian translation of Horace and Lucan
Writing career
LanguageLatin, Italian
Genre
Literary movement

Biography

Paolo Abriani was a native of Vicenza, Italy. Little is known about his parents or early life. He entered the Carmelite Order at 20, taking the religious name Francesco.[1] After completing his studies of Philosophy and Theology, he was actively employed in preaching.[1] Afterwards he taught at Carmelite colleges in Genoa, Verona, Padua, and Vicenza.[1] In 1654 he left the Carmelites and became a secular priest.[1] He spent most of his later life in Venice,[2] where he died in 1699, at the age of 92.[1]

Abriani is best remembered for his translations of Horace's Ars Poetica and Odes (1663 and 1680). In his translations Abriani tries to adapt classical meters to a vernacular, thus anticipating Giosuè Carducci's Barbarian Odes.[1] Abriani's translation were a great success, and were often reprinted.[3]

Works

Abriani's Poesie, first published in 1663, belong to the Venetian branch of Marinism, in which sensuality is strictly controlled by moral, even moralistic, considerations.[4] He published a collection of academical discourses on literary and antiquarian topics, entitled Fonghi because they grew, as he said, like mushrooms in his uncultivated mind.[1]

Among his other works are particularly important:

  • Il Vaglio, a defence of Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered against the remarks of Matthew Ferchi (Venice, 1663; 1687);[1]
  • L'Arte poetica di Horatio tradotta in versi sciolti (ibid. 1663);
  • Ode di Horatio con la ristampa della poetica (ibid. 1680);
  • La guerra civile ovvero Farsaglia di M. Anneo Lucano, a translation of Lucan's Pharsalia (ibid. 1668).[1]

Notes

Bibliography

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