Tommaso Grossi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommaso_Grossi. Tommaso Grossi (January 20, 1791 – December 10, 1853) was an Italian poet and novelist. He was born in Bellano, on the Lake Como, and graduated in Law at University of Pavia in 1810, and proceeded thence to Milan to exercise his profession; but the Austrian government, suspecting his loyalty, interfered with his prospects, and in consequence Grossi was a simple notary all his life. That the suspicion was well grounded he soon showed by writing the battle poem La Prineide (1814) in Milanese, in which he described with vivid colours the tragical death of Giuseppe Prina, chief treasurer during the Empire, whom the people of Milan, instigated by Austrian agitators, had torn to pieces and dragged through the streets of the town (1814). The anonymous poem—subversive even in being an incunable of the surfacing Western Lombard dialect as a literary language— was first attributed to the celebrated Carlo Porta, but Grossi of his own accord acknowledged himself the author. In 1816, he published other two poems, written likewise in Milanese—La Pioggia d'oro (The Shower of Gold) and La Fuggitiva (The Fugitive). These compositions secured him the friendship of Porta and Manzoni, and the three poets came to form a sort of literary triumvirate of Romanticism in Lombardy. Grossi took advantage of the popularity of his Milanese poems to try Italian verse, into which he sought to introduce the moving realis…