Emilio Praga (1839-1875)
Emilio Praga, together with Arrigo Boito, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti and Giovanni
Camerana as well as the painters Daniele Ranzoni and Tanquillo Cremona founded
the Scapigliatura movement in the mid-19th century; its characteristics: a
deep-rooted aversion to the sentimentalism and conformism of late Romanticism
and a conviction that the only valid subject of poetry was "truth". In the end,
however, the group failed to create a new poetic movement and remained purely
avant-garde writers in revolt, in both life and art, against middle-class
conformism, "official" literature, the patriotism of the Risorgimento and all
other forms of social and literary convention. |