Cesare De Titta (Sant’Eusanio del Sangro 1862 – 1933) was a priest, a secondary school teacher, and a poet in Latin, Italian, and the Abruzzese dialect of his native region. For this reason, he referred to himself as a ‘three-hearted poet’, echoing Ennius’ tria corda, which represented the three languages in which he wrote (Gamberale 2013: 243–273). While his family’s economic conditions were not such as to allow him a regular cursus studiorum, De Titta distinguished himself early on as a highly talented schoolboy. Thanks to a scholarship granted by the local council of his native town (Celenza 1985: 140), he first studied Latin and Greek at the Seminary in the nearby town of Lanciano (Chieti), which he entered at the age of sixteen in 1878. After completing the normal five-year curriculum in just three years, he spent the period from 1881 to 1889 at the Seminary of Venosa (Potenza). There, he acquired a thorough mastery of Latin, studying the poetry of Horace and translating Catullus. In Lanciano, he also started his career as a teacher of Latin and Greek (Russo and Tiboni 2004: 351); later, he was appointed dean of the Seminary. His translation of Catullus (1890), which also included essays on various translating issues, earned him a higher teaching qualification in Latin and Greek, by appointment of the Ministry of Public Instruction. This qualification enabled him to return to his native region, where he taught Latin and Greek, first at the Seminary, then at the ginnasio ‘Vittorio Emanuele II’ in Lanciano.

Already before the ventennio fascista, De Titta was a prolific writer of Latin poems. At the end of the First World War, for instance, he compiled the Latin inscriptions that still decorate the Monument to the Fallen Soldier in the ginnasio in Lanciano, erected in memory of the pupils who had lost their life in the trenches. Another Latin epitaph was dedicated to his friend Salvatore Caporaso (1890–1929), war veteran and poet himself. De Titta’s poetic inspiration mainly derived from the work of Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907) and Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912). He also produced Latin translations of Carducci’s ode Alle Valchirie and Gabriele d’Annunzio’s Elegie romane (1900) (Menna 2004: 759–788). Both Carducci and d’Annunzio praised him for the Latin versions he produced of their works (Illuminati 1925: 195 = Illuminati 1961: 53). D’Annunzio, a life-long friend, also commissioned Latin verses from De Titta on different occasions (Biordi 1967: 21).

During the ventennio, De Titta also engaged with themes concerning the Fascist regime in his literary work. As a protégé of the Minister of Public Instruction, Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), he relied on Gentile’s help at different points in his career, as did his friend Luigi Illuminati. De Titta often expressed his gratitude and admiration for Gentile in Latin verses. In 1923, for example, he composed the poem Novum studiorum curriculum…, dedicated to the School Reform promoted by Gentile. In February 1926, he sent a letter to Gentile, which included four elegiac couplets for Mussolini. The letter (without the Latin poem) is preserved in the archives of the Fondazione Giovanni Gentile in Rome (see the Bibliography, below). As we can infer from a letter Gentile wrote to De Titta, the minister showed this poem to Mussolini, who then recommended its publication (it was published in the journal Educazione politica and, again, in De Titta’s collected poems in 1986). Moreover, in 1932, De Titta composed the poem Libera nos, Domine, dedicated to Dino Grandi (1895–1988), then Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was carrying out an anti-bellicist campaign in the League of Nations to endorse a gradual disarmament (ca. 1932).

After retiring from teaching in 1926, De Titta spent the remainder of his life in his native Sant’Eusanio del Sangro. He stimulated an intense cultural activity, gathering poets, intellectuals, and powerful figures of the time, including d’Annunzio and Gentile, in his villino, an Art Nouveau cottage, named ‘Fiorinvalle di terra d’oro’. This building, then known as the ‘cenacolo di Fiorinvalle’, today hosts the Casa-Museo De Titta, which preserves De Titta’s personal library and personal archive (Verratti 1962: 55–63).

Bibliography

Archival sources

Letter of Cesare De Titta to Giovanni Gentile, dated to 15 February 1926. Fondazione Roma Sapienza – Archivio Giovanni Gentile, s. 1 Corrispondenza, ss. 2 Lettere inviate a Gentile, De Titta Cesare, doc. 25.

Letter of Giovanni Gentile to Cesare De Titta, dated to 25 February 1926. Fondazione Roma Sapienza – Archivio Giovanni Gentile, s. 1 Corrispondenza, ss. 3 Lettere di Gentile, De Titta Cesare, doc. 14.

Latin texts

De Titta, Cesare. 1922. Carmina I. Lanciano: Carabba.

——. 1952. Carmina II. Florence: Sansoni.

——.  1986. Carmina III. Lanciano: Itinerari.

——. 1930. Cantus et Flores, per il Bimillenario di Virgilio. Lanciano: Carabba.

Translations

Catullus, Gaius Valerius. 1890. Epitalamii ed altri carmi: saggi di traduzione. Translated into Italian by Cesare De Titta (with accompanying essays on translating issues). Lanciano: Carabba.

D’Annunzio, Gabriele. 1905. Elegie romane. Translated into Latin by Cesare De Titta. Milano: Libreria editrice lombarda.

Secondary sources

Biordi, Raffaello. 1967. Gabriele d’Annunzio e la terra d’Abruzzo. Rome: Palombi.

Celenza, Franco. 1985. Polifemo e l’intruso: viaggio in Abruzzo al centro della questione meridionale. Pescara: Goliardica.

Gamberale, Leopoldo. 2013. ‘Tria corda. Cesare de Titta fra italiano, dialetto, neolatino’, Atti e memorie dell'Arcadia, 2: 243-273.

Illuminati, Luigi. 1935 ‘La poesia latina di Cesare De Titta’. In Atti del III Congresso Nazionale di Studi Romani. Vol. 4. Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani, 193–201. Reprinted in Illuminati (1961: 51–62).

——. 1961. All’Aria aperta. Appunti e discorsi. Teramo: Martelli & Falzon.

Menna, Mirko. 2004. ‘Traduzioni in latino delle Elegie Romane di Gabriele d’Annunzio’. Critica letteraria 32: 759–788.

Russo, Umberto, and Edoardo Tiboni. 2004. L’Abruzzo nel Novecento. Pescara: Ediars.

Verratti, Vittore. 1962. Frammenti letterari. Lanciano: Cooperativa Editoriale Tipografica.

Paola D’Andrea