Carducci at Pontelungo

Abstract

The essay retraces, through the Dreyfus case and the testimonies that left Giuseppe and Riccardo Bacchelli, a paragraph of Carducci’s fortune considered in its resonances and implications, either during the late Risorgimento, or after the World War II, when the legacy of Enotrio Romano still nurtured and guided democratic and liberal political choices. The section about Carducci of Riccardo Bacchelli’s Critical Essays, examined in terms of the Dreyfus affair and the defence that Zola made of it, finally succeeds in understanding what Carducci’s influence was capable of.