Un incubo di guerra, tra Virgilio e Pascoli: la chiusa del Pueri ludentes di Camillo Morelli (1915)

Camillo Morelli (1885-1916), philologist and teacher of Latin Literature at the Military College of Rome, was poet and soldier, died fighting during the Great War. One of his Latin poems, the Pueri ludentes, written at the end of 1914 and awarded with the magna laus at the certamen Hoeufftianum 1915, shows Morelli’s skills in adapting the classical hexametric forms (especially of Vergil) to the representation of social and political passions of his age. Looking at Pascoli’s Latin Poetry as a model too, the writer reveals, especially in the final verses (vv. 182-217), the brutality of the conflict, showing a feeling of dislike and distrust towards Men, destined once again to succumb to their most violent instincts through the War.