In the Cave of Polyphemus

Abstract

In the very first lines of the Syntagma, Campanella recalled his own precocious and natural aptitude for poetic expression. As an adult, this aptitude took on a certain poignancy and sharpness, and came to be directed towards the expression of difficult philosophical matters. The poetic production that has come down to us was transmitted primarily in two collections. The first included the poems of his youth, completed prior to 1601. The second consisted of compositions put together and published under the title Scelta di alcune poesie filosofiche. The poems of Campanella’s youth survived in the so-called “Ponzio Codex,” located by Amabile in the nineteenth century. They include eighty-two poems, mostly sonnets, of which only fourteen would be included in the Scelta. The codex is named after Ponzio because it conserves the poems that Campanella’s friend and fellow prisoner Pietro Ponzio collected, until the codex was confiscated in the prison of the Castel Nuovo in August of 1601, after a violent argument between the inmates. All that Campanella himself tells us is that many of those compositions were written in the earliest days of the imprisonment, for the purpose of instilling courage in his fellow detainees and friends and so as to help them resist the terrors of torture. Transposing episodes and characters from the events in Calabria into verse, Campanella expressed his certainty about being on the side of reason and justice. He refers to the conspirators as noble and chosen spirits, united in their determination to fight against the violence and ignorance of tyranny in the name of liberty and truth and united in disdaining - with the aid of the ‘ardor’ of reason - the most atrocious tortures and persecutions.