Michele Ginotta’s most political poem, Dux, composed in Sapphic stanzas, might have been intended for the poetry competition organised by the Fascist Teachers’ Federation under the same name, won by Luigi Illuminati with a triptych also titled Dux (D’Andrea 2023). Ginotta also submitted his composition to the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum in 1930, though it did not win praise (Ginotta 1930; van Binnebeke 2020: 227n110). One of the jury members, Carl Wilhelm Vollgraff, Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Utrecht, noted in the margin that the poem was ‘not too bad but not worth printing’ (in Dutch: ‘niet slecht maar toch niet de moeite waard om te drukken’). With verses 37–40, he commented: ‘exaggeration’ (‘overdrijving’), and with the final stanza: ‘Gross exaggeration’ (‘schromelijke overdrijving’).

In 1934, Ginotta republished the poem, with very few changes (Ginotta 1934: 2–4). The collection in which it appears mainly consists of Latin translations of poems and extracts by renowned Italian writers, including Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, Pietro Metastasio, Luigi Clasio, and Giosuè Carducci, along with some original poems and riddles. It was reviewed in Il mondo classico the following year by an anonymous reviewer praising the collection and its ‘inspired Sapphic ode in honour of the Duce’ (Anonymous 1935: 237).

The text presented is based on Ginotta (1934: 2–4) but also considers the earlier version he submitted to the Certamen Poeticum Hoeufftianum in 1930 (= H).

Bibliography

Latin texts

Ginotta, Michele. 1930. ‘DUX’. Typoscript. Haarlem, Noord-Hollands Archief, 64. 833, nr. 34.

———. 1934. Poesis specimina. Turin: Chiantore.

Secondary sources

Anonymous. 1935. ‘Cenni bibliografici e notizie varie’. Il mondo classico 5 (5): 232–47.

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.

D’Andrea, Paola. 2024. ‘Echoes of the Vates Reverberating: A New Reading of Luigi Illuminati’s Dux in the Context of the Eponymous Poetic Competition (1929–1930)’. In: Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Lovaniensis: Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies (Leuven 2022), edited by Florian Schaffenrath and Dirk Sacré, 283–95. Leiden: Brill.