Da Ponte, l’America e il “buon selvaggio”. Edizione critica, traduzione e commento dell’Elegia I dell’Accademia Poetica di Treviso (1776)

As is well known, the Accademia Poetica of 1776 constitutes a turning point in the life of Da Ponte, due to its innovative Rousseauian theses, which the Poet supported for the first and last time. The Latin poems that punctuate it (I, V, VIII, XI) have been comparatively less studied and are generally unfavorably appraised, as coldly imitative compositional devices. Following a recent trend of studies on Lorenzo Da Ponte’s Latin texts, and his classical culture in general (including the authors’ own edition of Carmen VIII), the paper presents a critical edition of the 100 couplets of Elegia I (by E. Malaspina), the first Italian translation (by M. Calcagno), and an exhaustive commentary (by A. Crotto). This new edition allows us to see how the text, despite its web of literary references – above all to Vergil, Horace and the Elegiac poets – is generally less successful than Carmen VIII, due to its unstable and fragmented structure. As regards the content of the poem, the paper sheds new light on the acquisition of the theses advocated by J.J. Rousseau regarding the “noble savage”, and their integration into the classical topos of the Golden Age Myth.