Giovanni Mazza (1877–1943), born in Torre del Greco (near Naples), is one of the most famous Latin poets of the twentieth century. He graduated in literature at the University of Naples and taught geography and history at the Scuola di Avviamento Professionale in his native town. Additionally, he offered private lessons in Latin. He published his first collection of poems, composed in Italian between 1896 and 1900, in 1902 (Mazza 1902). When Mazza resumed publishing poetry in the 1920s, he abandoned Italian in favor of Latin (reasons for this choice discussed in Mazza 1988: xiii–xvi). Mazza had his first Latin poems printed in 1928 (Mazza 1928a; Mazza 1928b; Mazza 1928c), but he had already submitted Latin verses to the Certamen Hoeufftianum in 1925 (Sacré 2020: 225–226; van Binnebeke 2020: 269). Between 1928 and 1933, he received five times magna laus at this competition (Giustiniani 1979: 105). He also received three honorable mentions at the Certamen Ruspantinianum of the University of Rome (Mazza 1988: xix). His Latin poetry is generally of high quality (Sacré 2016: 427) and covers a range of different subjects, including his native land, the fugacity of youth, and the death of his daughter Vincenza (ca. 1925). Overall, Fascism is a marginal subject in his literary work (Sacré 2016: 433–434); his poem Italia renata most explicitly reflects on it (Mazza 1930; Mazza 1931, repr. in Mazza 1988: 49–55, with an Italian translation). For this poem, eulogizing Benito Mussolini and Fascist Italy in Alcaic stanzas, Mazza won magna laus at the Certamen Hoeufftianum in 1929 (on the poem, see also Barton 2020).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Mazza, Giovanni. 1928a. Quattuor anni tempora. Amsterdam: Academia Regia Disciplinarum Nederlandica.

———. 1928b. Quattuor anni tempora. Torre del Greco: Palomba & Mazza.

———. 1928c. Retina, seu Herculanei excidium. Torre del Greco: Palomba & Mazza.

———. 1930. Italia renata. Amsterdam: Academia Regia Disciplinarum Nederlandica.

———. 1931. Latina carmina. Naples: Di Lauro.

———. 1988. Poesie latine e italiane. Edited by Armando Maglione and Biagio Scognamiglio. Naples: Peerson.

Other work (selection)

Mazza, Giovanni. 1902. Prime rime. Naples: F. Starace.

Secondary sources

Barton, William M. 2020. ‘Pastoral and the Italian Landscape in the ventennio fascista: Natural Themes in the Latin Poetry of F. Sofia Alessio, G. Mazza, and L. Illuminati’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 77–104. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Binnebeke, Xavier van. 2020. ‘Hoeufft’s Legacy: Neo-Latin Poetry in the Archive of the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum (1923-1943)’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 245–325. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Giustiniani, Vito R. 1979. Neulateinische Dichtung in Italien 1850-1950: ein unerforschtes Kapitel italienischer Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte. Tubingen: Niemeyer.

Sacré, Dirk. 2016. ‘Two Unknown Poems by Giovanni Mazza (1877-1943)’. Humanistica Lovaniensia 65: 427–437.

———. 2020. ‘The Certamen Hoeufftianum During the ventennio fascista: An Exploration (With Unpublished Poems by Vittorio Genovesi and Giuseppe Favaro)’. In Studies in the Latin Literature and Epigraphy of Italian Fascism, edited by Han Lamers, Bettina Reitz-Joosse, and Valerio Sanzotta, 199–241. Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 46. Leuven: Leuven University Press.

Han Lamers