F. M. Molza, Elegiae et alia, Torino, RES, 1999, pp. 202

The edition of Elegiae et alia edited by Massimo Scorsone and Rossana Sodano (1999) restores dignity to the figure of Francesco Maria Molza, overcoming the old biographical prejudices linked to his dissolute life and death from syphilis. This philological work, based on the Vatican manuscript that the poet was completing before his death, offers a more faithful text than previous editions from the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Molza's Muse is not a simple imitation of the classics (such as Tibullus), but possesses a "lively and personal" descriptive capacity, ranging from private autobiography to the major political themes of the time, such as the Sack of Rome or the eulogies of Charles V. The work thus emerges as a complex mosaic in which humanistic erudition blends with a visual and melancholic sensibility, culminating in the famous elegy "Ad sodales," in which the poet, foreseeing his end, intertwines personal memory and bitter historical reflection.