Ada Negri

Poet

• Born: February 3, 1870
• Birthplace: Lodi, Italy
• Died: January 11, 1945
• Place of death: Milan, Italy

Biography

Ada Negri was born on February 3, 1870, in Lodi, Italy, to Giuseppe and Vittoria (Cornalba) Negri. When her father died of typhus in 1871, her mother was left without income and sent her daughter to live with her grandmother, Giuseppina Panni Cornalba, a concierge at the palace of the Cingia family. Negri’s mother found work as a weaver at the local textile factory, working thirteen-hour days for little compensation, while Negri stayed with her grandmother, either helping her in the palace or playing with the Cingia girls. Cognizant of the class and social differences between her and the Cingias, a resentful Negri would strive to out-play the girls at games. Humiliated by and resentful of her lowly circumstances, she would work hard to succeed in school, enrolling in Scuola Normale Femminile in 1881 to study to become a teacher.

Six years later, Negri satisfied the requirements for the diploma, and when she was eighteen years old she received the diploma and her elementary school credentials. After a temporary substitute teaching position at a girls’ boarding school in Codogno, Negri began teaching a group of peasant children in Motta Visconti. Her unruly students intimidated her at first, but she overcame her fears by using unorthodox teaching methods, such as distributing fresh sweet rolls from the bakery of her landlord’s daughter to reward and control the children.

At the same time, Negri began submitting her poems to Italian newspapers. She caught the eye of Raffaello Barbiera, the editor of Illustrazione Popolare, a Milanese publication. Barbiera liked her moralizing style and published her first work. In 1892, Negri published her first collection of poetry, Fatalità (translated as Fate, and Other Poems, 1898). The publisher of this collection found appeal in the novelty and freshness of Negri’s simplistic style yet pertinent themes of rebellion and social justice. The book also found a following of readers whose attention to her first work saw it through several reprintings.

Now a voice a for the Socialist Party, Negri was transferred to Gaetana Agnesi, a girls’ school in Milan. She was awarded the Giannina Milli Prize for her poetry in 1894. The following year she published another popular volume of poetry, Tempeste. Some of Italy’s most well-respected writers, including Benedetto Croce and Luigi Pirandello, criticized Negri’s work, claiming her poetry was defective in metric form, lacking in imagination, and filled with hurried generalizations. Negri’s work ultimately underwent a transition, moving away from socialist themes toward more personal and ultimately biographical material, exploring motherhood, misunderstood women, and late-blooming love.

In 1896, Negri married industrialist Giovanni Garlanda, who with his brothers owned a textile factory in Valle Mosso, and the couple later had two daughters, Bianca and Vittoria. However, their marriage proved disastrous because the two held opposing views, with Garlanda expecting Negri to accept his more bourgeois values. By 1913, Negri fled her marriage, moving to Zurich, Switzerland. There she wrote short stories, publishing them first in Italian periodicals and then including them in Le solitaire, a short story collection published in 1917. The themes of these stories are about women identifying and creating their own autonomy.

When World War I began, Negri participated in the efforts of the Italian Red Cross. By the end of the war, Negri began to tame her writing, approaching it with a more detached voice. She published an autobiographical novel, Stella mattutina (1921; Morning Star, 1930) and several short story collections in the 1920’s and 1930’s. She died in Milan on January 11, 1945.