Te rediviva Saffo ognuno estima Pari d’ingegno, e d’arte a quella prima: Ma per costumi e voglie in tutto sei (Vanto maggior) dissimile da lei!
Parini about 1777 dedicated an ode to Lady Pellegrina Amoretti d’Oneglia on her graduation from the University of Padua, _La Laurea_, in which he said that if instead of studying law she had given herself to literature she would have been the equal of Sappho. In 1782 Verri published _Le Avventure di Saffo_, in which there is a paraphrase of the second ode. This romance was written in good literary style and had some fine thoughts and considerable Greek atmosphere. It went through more than a dozen editions, and was twice translated into French. In 1787 Parini celebrated the seductive qualities of a Venetian Signora Cecilia Tron in a poem of which I quote the first two stanzas:
Che più dalla vivace Mente, lampi scoppiavano Di poetica face, Che tali mai non arsero L’amica di Faon;
Nè quando al coro intento Delle fanciulle lesbie L’errante violento Per le midolla fervide Amoroso velen; ...
One evening in 1827, as the story goes, the great Manzoni in the presence of Lamartine called La Palli, the happy-hearted Italian poetess, a “Saffo novella.” Eurica Dionigi was called the “Saffo Lazia,” and Anassilide was named “Saffo campestre” by the inhabitants on the Piave. Their verses, however, fall far short of the real Sappho. In 1857 Giovanni Meli published _La Morti di Saffu_; and many another Italian writer has published poems in her honor, Gemma, Cipolla, Botti, etc.
Tragedies on the subject of Sappho in Italy have been few, among others those of Luigi Scevola (1815) and Salvatore Cammarono (1842); that of Leopoldo Marenco (1880) pictured Sappho as one of the Furies who was rejected by Phaon when he became enamored of another woman. Giovanni Pacini (Naples, 1840) first produced an opera on the theme, but changed the figure of Phaon to one who fell in love with Sappho and became jealous of Alcaeus, but was ready to die with him.
In recent years Carducci, in his _Primavere Elleniche_, makes Sappho and Alcaeus follow Apollo across the Aegean in a boat drawn by two white swans:
D’intorno girano come in leggera Danza le Cicladi patria de’l nume, Da lungi plaudono Cipro e Citera Con bianche spume.