Francesco Sofia Alessio (Radicena, 1873 – Reggio Calabria, 1943) was a schoolteacher and one of the best-known Latin poets of the twentieth century. He also wrote poetry in Italian (e.g. Sofia Alessio 1930). Sofia Alessio obtained his teaching licence in 1894 and then taught in primary schools for several decades. In 1928, he became a librarian in Reggio Calabria, where he lived for the remainder of his life (for his biography, see introduction by Borgese in Sofia Alessio 2002: 37-46).

A self-declared autodidact of Latin (Sacré 2009: 375), Sofia Alessio was considered one of the main epigones of the illustrious Latin poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912) (see Sorbelli 1922: xiv-xix), against whom he occasionally competed in the Certamen Hoeufftianum. Sofia Alessio’s fame as a Latin poet is mainly due to his many successes in the Certamen between 1907 and 1936; he won three gold medals (1917, 1920, and 1921) and was awarded magnae laudes fourteen times (for an overview of his award-winning poems, see Gabrieli 1938: 423-424n50; for information on the poems submitted to the Certamen, see Sacré 2009: 397-400; see also van Binnebeke 2020). Most of his successes took place in the 1910s and early 1920s, while his later submissions were rarely awarded prizes. Sofia Alessio considered this a consequence of the replacement of the Dutch professor Jacobus Johannes Hartman (1851-1924) as the president of the jury. Like several other Italian Neo-Latin poets in the late 1920s and 1930s, he often lamented what he perceived as a bias against Italian authors on the jury’s part (see Fera 2006: 316-320; Sacré 2009: 376-377). In 1921, the Italian Neo-Latin poet Alfredo Bartoli criticised Sofia Alessio for plagiarising images and entire plots from Giovanni Pascoli’s Latin poetry, and another Italian Neo-Latin poet, Giuseppe Morabito (1900–1997), soon joined Bartoli in this criticism (Fera 2006: 320-325; Paradisi 2006 assesses Sofia Alessio’s imitations more positively). 

Sofia Alessio’s Latin poems have been described as “quite simple and sometimes naively romantic, if not sentimental…, characterised by strong and candid religious feelings and a profound affection for ancient Rome as well as for the unpretentious country life of Southern Italy” (Sacré 2009: 377; cf. Fera 2006: 313-314). Many of his poems are religious in content, dealing with popular devotional figures (e.g. Francis of Assisi or the Virgin Mary) or with the life of early Christians under Roman rule (a theme which Pascoli often explored as well; see for instance his Pomponia Graecina). Several other poems recreate situations from Roman antiquity without focusing on Christian history specifically. Despite Sofia Alessio’s fervent nationalism and support for the Fascist regime (Fera 2006: 315), poems dealing with Fascist themes only represent a small portion of his entire Latin production. During his life, Sofia Alessio published two collections of poems (Sofia Alessio 1905; Sofia Alessio 1920); all of his Latin poetry was republished between 1993 and 2002 (Sofia Alessio 1993; Sofia Alessio 2002).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Sofia Alessio, Francesco. 1930. Apotheosis Vergiliana. Reggio Calabria: Officine Arti Grafiche Vitalone.

———. 1932. “In Benitum Mussolini.” Il Mondo Classico 2: 73–75.

———. 1936. “Italiae ingenium et officium.” Alma Roma 23 (1): 4.

———. 2006. “Lettera di Sofia Alessio al Primate d’Inghilterra.” In La poesia latina nell’area dello stretto fra ottocento e novecento. Atti del Convegno di Messina, 20-21 Ottobre 2000, nel centenario della nascita di Giuseppe Morabito (1900-1997), 330–33. Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di studi umanistici.

Other works of the author

Sofia Alessio, Francesco. 1905. Carmina. Poesie latine con traduzione italiana. Messina: Paolo Trinchera Editore.

———. 1920. Musa Latina. Poemetti latini con traduzione italiana. Naples: Elpis.

———. 1930. Inno a Virgilio nel bimillenario della nascita. Radicena: Tipografia Calabria Nuova.

———. 1993. Musa Latina. Poemetti latini. Varapodio: De Pasquale.

———. 2002. Musa Alessiana. Carmi, odi, epigrammi latini. Translated by Ugo Verzi Borgese. 2 vols. Gioia Tauro: Tauroprint.

Secondary sources

Barton, William M. 2020. “Pastoral and 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, 245–322. 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.

Fera, Vincenzo. 2006. “Microcosmo Letterario Meridionale: Morabito Tra Francesco Sofia Alessio e Alfredo Bartoli.” In La poesia latina nell’area dello stretto fra ottocento e novecento: atti del Convegno di Messina, 20-21 ottobre 2000, nel centenario della nascita di Giuseppe Morabito (1900-1997), edited by Vicenzo Fera, Daniela Gionta, and Elena Morabito, 311–35. Messina: Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Umanistici.

Gabrieli, Giuseppe. 1938. “Partecipazione degli italiani al concorso poetico latino di Amsterdam.” Roma. Rivista Di Studi e Di Vita Romana. 16: 416–26.

Paradisi, Patrizia. 2006. “Sofia Alessio e Pascoli.” In Musae saeculi XX Latinae. Acta selecta, edited by Dirk Sacré, Joseph Tusiani, and Tom Deneire, 241–91. Brussels/Rome: Istituto Storico Belga di Roma.

Sacré, Dirk. 2009. “Francesco Sofia Alessio (1873-1943): Some Overlooked Poems.” Humanistica Lovaniensia 58: 375–400.

———. 2020. “The Certamen Hoeufftianum during the Ventennio Fascista: An Exploration (with Unplublished 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.

Sorbelli, Tommaso. 1922. “La nuova poesia latina in Italia.” In Alphonsi Mariae Casoli e S.I. Mutinensis Lyricorum liber. Novissimi poetae Latini Thoma Sorbelli curante 1. Modena: Vincenzi e Nipoti di D. Cavallotti.

Nicolò Bettegazzi