Italy · 100th anniversary of the death of Giovanni Pascoli

Issue date10 Oct 2012

Total mintage15,000,000

EU maximum15,000,000

Editions2

Edge lettering2 ★ × 6, alternately upright/inverted

Inscription2012 / RI / 1912 / R / MCC / G. PASCOLI

DesignerMaria Carmela Colaneri

mintInstituto Poligrafico e Zecca Dello Stato, Roma

Issue occasion

The commemorative coin marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Giovanni PASCOLI, a poet from Romagna and a significant representative of Italian literature in the late 19th century. The design features his portrait, flanked by the years “1912” and “2012”, the monogram “RI”, the mint mark “R”, and the initials of the engraver Maria Carmela Colaneri; below, “G. PASCOLI” is arranged in an arc.

The design

The coin features a portrait of the poet Giovanni PASCOLI, who originated from Romagna and was a representative figure of Italian literature in the late 19th century. To the right of the portrait are the year of issue — “2012” — and the monogram of the Italian Republic — “RI” — while on the left are the poet’s year of death — “1912” — the mint mark — “R” — and the initials of the engraver Maria Carmela Colaneri — “MCC”. Beneath the coin’s design, the name “G. PASCOLI” appears in an arc.

The outer ring of the coin depicts the twelve stars of the European flag.

Background on the topic

Giovanni Pascoli was born in 1855 in San Mauro di Romagna. His childhood was marked by several deaths within the family. In particular, the murder of his father, whose background was never clarified, left its mark on his later work. Recurring themes in his poems are the loss of family security, memory, death and the search for a protected domestic “nest”.

Pascoli studied in Bologna under Giosuè Carducci. In his younger years, he was close to socialist circles and was temporarily imprisoned, but subsequently withdrew largely from active politics. He initially worked as a teacher and later as a university professor in Messina, Pisa and Bologna. In addition to Italian poems, he also wrote poetry in Latin.

His best-known collections include “Myricae” and the “Canti di Castelvecchio”. Pascoli frequently focused on rural ways of life, animals, plants, sounds and inconspicuous everyday objects. In doing so, he used onomatopoeic words, changing rhythms and often fragmentary sentence structures. This style differed from the more rhetorical and classicist tradition of the 19th century and influenced Italian poetry in the following century.

Pascoli explained his poetic ideas in the text “Il fanciullino” (“The Little Child”). In it, he describes the poet as someone who perceives the world with the wonder-filled gaze of a child and recognizes hidden relationships between things. At the same time, his work remained connected to the social and political tensions of the young Italian nation-state. In a speech, he supported the Italian war in Libya and interpreted colonial policy as a way out of poverty and emigration.

The choice of Pascoli as the coin’s motif is connected to his established position in Italian literature education and in the country’s cultural memory. His life also connects his origins in Romagna with academic places of activity in several parts of Italy. The round-numbered anniversary of his death provided the formal occasion to commemorate this part of the history of national literature.