Poetry
Sepulchres
Dei Sepolcri
Ugo Foscolo · 1807
Opening lines
All’ombra de’ cipressi e dentro l’urne
Confortate di pianto è forse il sonno
Della morte men duro?
In the shade of cypresses and within the urns
comforted by tears, is the sleep
of death perhaps less hard?
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from it.wikisource.org
Synopsis
The poem is addressed to the poet Ippolito Pindemonte, with whom the author was discussing a recent decree, coming from France, that pushed burials out of the towns and regulated their uniformity. What is the point of a tomb, the poet first asks, when death has carried everything away? He answers that tombs serve the living: they keep the memory of the departed and inspire virtue, and he calls on the great dead to awaken the patriots of his time.
Context
The poem responds to the Edict of Saint-Cloud, issued by Napoleon in 1804, which required burial outside the towns. Written in 1806, it appeared in Brescia in 1807 from the printer Bettoni: two hundred and ninety-five hendecasyllables. Michel Orcel produced a bilingual French translation, under the title “Les Tombeaux”, in the Villa Médicis series in 1982; in English, J. G. Nichols translated it under the title “Sepulchres”, in a bilingual edition from Alma Books.
Who it is for
A poem of slightly fewer than three hundred lines, dense and elevated, which calls for slow, attentive reading.
Prizes and reception
According to Alma Books, it is the author's masterpiece and one of the most studied poems in Italy.