It was the end of 1900 when an accidental meeting in Venice would change, oversetting them, the poetress Vittoria Aganoor and Umbrian parlamentarian Guido Pompilj’s solitary existence.
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Vittoria was immediately struck by this man she would call «the strong soldier for Good», in fact in him she saw «a clear ethical dimension connected to a humanitarian and solidarity based impulse which had been previously unknown to her».[1] At the time, Guido held the position of Undersecretary of the Ministry for Finance in the 1st Saracco Government. As will be described by his close friend, Giuseppe Marinelli, Guido had an «undemostrative character, hard, undeterred, wanting in conciliating sentiment, had an aim in view, careless of the obstacles, and despising whoever blocked his way. He didn’t bend before anyone’s wishes, that’s why he had many opponents who, whilst admiring his lively mind, could not explain his indomable and contemptuous attitude».[2] Still, in private he was capable of showing «a sweet lovingness, almost of a childish kind”; furthermore, his conversation was “witty and cheerful, never mordant or sarcastic, always circumspect and enthusiast together».[3]
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Vittoria, then forty-five-year old, started writing to Guido and «pouring out all of […] herself into the letters – emotions, longings, activities and concerns – getting so to scrape Pompilj’s laconic discretion».[4] Actually, the forty-six-year old Guido, bound up in his own policy preoccupations, didn’t think to share the rest of his life with a woman anymore. Though, soon this woman to whom «nobody who had nearly approached her would have been able to avoid the irresistible charm radiated by her small body all grace and lightness; by her big dark and deep, passion twinkling, gloom and misty eyes; by her candy and ladylike amiability»[5] won Guido’s heart, so that he started loving her more and more so as to become a single identity.
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The letters became increasingly fond and kind up to the one of 16 May 1901 where she stood ready to marry him, confident to have found «the perfect companion, who, taking all her soul, would give all his in return, without any restriction or limit».[6] Vittoria, defying conventions, wrote:
«[I] always thought that getting loveless marriage is a shame; maybe it’s false, but this is what I always thought. In the past I had a liking for someone whose body I was merely keen on, but I knew I was charmed by the looks and nothing more, and that their souls and mine were totally different. That, I thought, it’s not the true and full love. Why would I like getting married now? Because it would be the only way to live with You, for You, next to You; because, if there was an alternative way to do this, I wouldn’t ask You… I mean, I would have never asked You to marry [me] […] Know […] that not only I would have left Venice for Rome, but even for Siberia indeed [in order to] live with You and settling for any habit of his».[7]
In November that year, they got married in Naples and their love became all-absorbing and full, «united in mutual respect, kept together as by common artistic and cultural interests as by an identical appreciation of simple and rural things they could find in the beloved lake Trasimeno»[8] on the which banks they chose to live just married, in that Villa Alta at Monte del Lago, Guido’s birthplace. Vittoria and Guido lived years of an intense and absolute love, as deep as only the blue can be: incomprehensible and impenetrable like the depths of the waters and unbounded like the blue of the skys. Thus when Vittoria died in May 1910, following an ovarian cancer surgery, Guido despairing killed himself leaving the words «I couldn’t, I would not survive without her».[9]
[1] A. Chemello, Vittoria Aganoor e il suo mondo, in M. Squadroni (curated by), Vittoria Aganoor e Guido Pompilj. Un romantico e tragico amore di primo Novecento su Lago Trasimeno, [Perugia], Soprintendenza archivistica per l’Umbria, 2010, p. 135.⇑
[2] Quoted from M. Chierico, cit., p. 14.⇑
[3] G. Muzzioli, Guido Pompilj e Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj. Commemorazione popolare, Perugia, Guerra, 1910, p. 5.⇑
[4] P. Pimpinelli, Vittoria Aganoor. La poetessa, in M. Squadroni (curated by), cit., p. 111. ⇑
[5] G. Mazzoni, in «La Favilla» fasc. ill. in honour of Vittoria Aganoor (Jul.-Aug. 1910) quoted from L. Grilli, Introduzione, in V. Aganoor Pompilj, Poesie complete, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1912, p. IV.⇑
[6] «La Donna», 20 May 1910, quoted from F. Girolmoni, Il fondo bibliografico Aganoor Pompilj della Biblioteca comunale di Magione, in M. Squadroni (curated by), cit., p. 184.⇑
[7] Letter from Vittoria to Guido Pompilj dated 16 May 1901, quoted from L. Ciani, Aganoor, la brezza e il vento, Nuova S1, Bologna 2004, p. 92.⇑
[8] G. Chiodini, Vittoria e Guido. Un suicidio concordato, in «Il Messaggero Umbria», 23 Apr. 2010. ⇑
[9] ASPg, Fondo Aganoor Pompilj. Ada Palmucci, Testamento di Guido Pompilj, 4-5/5/1910.⇑
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Laura Zazzerini
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