| Clemente Luigi Donnino Bondi | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 27, 1742 Mezzano Superiore, Italy |
| Died | June 20, 1821 (aged 78) Vienna, Austria |
| Occupation | poet, translator, religious |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Literary movement | Classicism |
Clemente Luigi Donnino Bondi (June 27, 1742 – June 20, 1821) was an Italian poet and translator.
Clemente Bondi was born in Mezzano Superiore not far from Parma. Fatherless at young age, he had the opportunity to study thanks to an uncle who was supply officer of Parma seminary. In 1760 he joined the Jesuit order, at the end of his studies he was transferred to Padua, where he attended to teaching. After the dissolution of the Jesuit order, which occurred in 1773, Bondi wrote a polemical work addressed to Pope Clement XIV. This written forced him to take refuge in Tyrol. Back in Italy later, became the librarian of noble family Zanardi in Mantua. During a trip to Milan made friend with the Archduke Ferdinand of Habsburg-Lorraine. When in 1796 the Archduke moved to Brünn (now Brno in the Czech Republic) called Bondi with him. The literary man was charged with the education of Ferdinand’s children and the task of librarian. In 1810, the Archduke turned his home in Vienna, taking with him Bondi who remained in the imperial capital until his death in June 1821.
The literary activity of Clemente Bondi, began during his exile in Tyrol. During this period he wrote a tragedy Il Melesindo and the poem La giornata villereccia. The richest period of his artistic production, however, was during his stay in Mantua, where he had the opportunity to frequent a lively intellectual circle. In the years spent in Mantua he wrote: La Felicità in 1775, La Moda in 1777, Le Conversazioni in 1778, L’Incendio in 1784. All the works of Bondi were first published in 1798 in Venice, in a six volumes edition titled Opere edite e inedite in versi e in prosa 'by the Venetian Adolfo Cesare. This edition seems to contain a number of texts that the author disowned later. In the years with the Archduke Ferdinand, the literary activity of Bondi was rather poor. His main concern at this time, was to revisit the poems written by him previously and to look after a new edition issued in Vienna in 1808 with a note stating that it was the complete edition, the only one correct and authorized by the author. In 1801, Adolfo Cesare, the Venetian publisher of the first edition, in meantime had published a seventh book completing his edition of 1798. The activity in which Clemente Bondi was more able, however, was as translator of classical texts: the Aeneid, the Georgics, the Eclogues of Virgil and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. His work was appreciated for the rich captions and notes accompanying its translations, so that it dubbed him the Delille of Italy.