Not that he was a very great one, one of those who would later be studied in schools, but in some works of both fiction and theater, the two genres in which he ventured, he achieved results of moderate literary quality, which would require a well-deserved reconsideration. , despite the fact that he was a very popular author in his day.
He was endowed with a natural descriptive vein, which he was able to refine as an autodidact with the careful and profound reading of the masters of narrative, especially the French, Daudet and Zola first. Thus he arrived at a personal style of his own, not very far from verismo, even if different from that of Verga. His was rather a realism aimed at representing the infinite and varied feelings of the human heart, in the environment from which they came, which was obviously not the same as Verga's.
A “particular” realism
He loved documenting himself long before composing a novel, especially if he wanted to reconstruct a historical context: he read, got information, questioned people, looked for witnesses. Also for this reason he was defined as a verist writer. And then, with his rounded handwriting, she would jot down the text, which he would read to the group of friends with whom he surrounded himself and with whom he often spoke, to bring the work to that grace and that stylistic perfection, which was almost a he trademark of him.
The result was a faithful and not at all trivial reconstruction of the world he wanted to portray, tinged with wit, warmth and sympathy, which he then also instilled in real life, among friends and acquaintances, who, as the chronicles of the period tell us, they took to calling him in a friendly way: Momi.
Public success and literary quality
In his day he achieved great success with the public, documented by the circulation of his books and by the crowds that flocked to the theaters where his works were performed, further confirming that success with the public and artistic qualities can be combined.
And it is not by the will of a cynical and cheating destiny that they must necessarily be separated. Manzoni, in this sense, was its primary and absolute emblem. Rovetta can be a confirmation of this, albeit at an infinitely lower level.
Of him one could, if anything, add with an excess of fussiness that the works most rewarded by the public, which were beyond any doubt Mater Dolorosa for the novel and Romanticism for the theatre, were not the most artistically successful, or at least that other of his works, less affected by popular favor, reveal a greater artistic quality. But this would only be nitpicking.
A criticism that is not always benevolent
Critics reproached him for a certain superficiality in representing souls and environments, a not excessive penetration into the spirit of the time and into the social context, a certain lack of substance and the absence of his own personal style. He should have gone deeper into the treatment of the characters, characterized them better, brought his style, his type of writing, to maturity.
Not always acceptable criticisms and in any case quite generic and adaptable to any work and to any author. Not everyone, of course, thought so. It seems that Carducci, at the time deus ex machina of Umbertine literary criticism, credited him with good literary skills, perhaps also to differentiate him from Verga, for whose novels he had a profound aversion.
The Fortune
His greatest success came in 1882 with Mater Dolorosa, almost at the beginning of his literary career. The novel was immediately a resounding success with the public. It was reprinted several times and continued to be so for decades and decades, so much so that twenty years later it was in its 18th edition for Baldini and Castaldi, one of the most important publishers of the period.
The book then continued to circulate and to make generations of readers cry, and especially female readers, for another few decades, until the Second World War, when the name of the author and his work rapidly entered the shadow of obscurity.
The life
When Mater Dolorosa comes out, the writer has just turned 30. He was born in 1851 in Brescia, into an eminent and well-to-do family, one of the best in the city. On his father's death in 1860, when he was only 9 years old, his mother, called Rovettina in the circles, opened a busy salon in her beautiful and noble mansion, where she received friends, acquaintances and the best brains of the city and the country. , including Giuseppe Zanardelli, the famous poet Aleardo Aleardi and others.
Definitely still young and attractive, she arouses feelings and passions that go beyond simple friendship and acquaintance, and more than one of the characters who fall head over heels for her.
The son grows up in the living room and brilliant environment that gravitates around his mother, little concerned about his education, which is certainly not adequate to the rank and level that the prosperous family conditions would allow. She makes up for it by assigning him private tutors as captain, more to clear her conscience than to fulfill a specific moral duty. However, the young Gerolamo has the opportunity to maintain relationships with the visitors to his house and to see from within him that beautiful society that he would later portray in his works.
In 1867 the mother remarried Count Almerico Pellegrini of Verona and moved with her son to the new city. But the relationship between the two begins to deteriorate, the education of the child is certainly not the parent's priority, misunderstandings arise, misunderstandings increase, which will then push the young man to break away from his mother. This happened at the beginning of the XNUMXs, coinciding with the death of his maternal grandfather Giacinto, with whom Gerolamo had a special relationship and which in all probability was the one for which he had not severed relations with his mother even earlier.
But now the writer is thirty years old, he is making a name for himself with his works, he no longer has anything or anyone to hold him back, and disliking some decisions on the division of his grandfather's inheritance, he decides to leave Verona and settle in Milan. He will never return to his mother's house and will cut off all relations with her.
The move to Milan
In the Lombard capital, Rovetta soon came into contact with the literary and artistic world of the city, which was particularly lively at the time. He frequented Marco Praga, Giuseppe Giacosa, of whom he would almost be considered the heir, and Giovanni Verga, whose Malavoglia were released in the same year as Mater Dolorosa, in 1882, but with a much lower success than his. Indeed, to be honest and using the same words of the Sicilian novelist, I Malavoglia were a sensational and irrevocable fiasco, which would then be repeated seven years later with Mastro don Gesualdo.
Two "amazing" failures, one could say, demonstrating how cynical the history of literature is, while Rovetta's works, which begin to appear regularly year after year, are always present, and with great prominence, in the windows of booksellers , as if they were first fruits from which it is not possible to ignore.
Rovetta is proud of his condition. He prides himself on being one of the few who can live comfortably on the fruits of his talent, which was very rare at the time, without having to ask his family of origin for anything. The group of friends, given his affable character, expanded further and included Eugenio Torelli Violler, the founder of the "Corriere della sera", Giannino Antona Traversi, Renato Simoni, Domenico Oliva, Arrigo Boito, Federico De Roberto and others.
They become the social group to refer to for the increasingly well-known and successful novelist. Rovetta will therefore spend the rest of his life in the Lombard capital, surrounded by the affection of readers and the closeness of friends.
A respectable production
In all he composes about ten novels, some volumes of short stories, and over 25 texts for the theatre, equally divided between comedies and dramas. There are over 40 works, the result of a daily, tenacious, careful, continuous activity, but never as frenzied as it was happening to Salgari in those years.
His "pieces" also appear in the most prestigious newspapers and periodicals of the period, such as "Il Corriere della Sera", "La Stampa", "Il Capitan Fracassa", "La Tribuna", "La Letto", "La Nuova Antologia". His measured and polite prose knows how to pleasantly entertain readers, almost as if it were a reflection of his personality.
But that's not always the case. When the narration extends to political and historical themes, the tones become harsher, gloomy, pessimistic and deeply bitter on the fate of that nation in which the ideals of the Risorgimento, in which he and a large part of the country had believed so much, are so miserably failed.
And it was precisely this sense of failure of the historical movement of our Risorgimento that led him to compose in 1892 The Tears of the Neighbor, a novel set in Austrian Milan before 1859, from which he would later derive the original nucleus of his major drama, Romanticism.
This novel also achieved good success with readers, as well as the subsequent The first lover of 1892, The barrage of 1894, The lieutenant of the lancers of 1896, The idol of 1898, The young lady of 1900, and other works, among such as the comedy The Dorina trilogy of 1891 and the tales of Casta diva of 1903.
Theater
The other artistic sector to which Rovetta dedicates himself is the theatre, where he made a name for himself at a very young age, in his early twenties, with Un volo dal nido performed in 1877. Then came other works, among which we cannot forget dishonest of 1892. But his greatest success would come with Romanticism in 1901, a drama in 4 acts which is the revelation of the year.
The work traces the stages of Italy's long journey towards national unity in tones that are sometimes emphatic, but tinged with profound disenchantment and bitterness, with a sure effect on the public.
The drama is staged by the company of Tina di Lorenzo and Flavio Andò, co-founder with Eleonora Duse of a famous theater company. And it was immediately an extraordinary success with the public. Throughout Italy he gets a long trail of acclaim, ovations, endless applause. When he attends the performance, Rovetta is carried in triumph by the audience. The work remains in the cartel for a long time and always manages to sell out.
Also represented by other companies, huge sums of royalties are paid to the author. Unofficial rumors even speak of 50.000 lire a year, a respectable figure for the times.
Later the drama would also be transposed to the cinema, with the interpretation of Amedeo Nazzari and Clara Calamai: in other words, the best of the time!
Doubts about death
He died suddenly in 1910 at the age of 59, arousing sincere disappointment in the city and deep condolences among his many friends and acquaintances, underlined by the many written testimonies.
In all the repertoires, encyclopaedias and literary histories in which he is mentioned, it is reported that the death occurred by suicide, having squandered the huge personal and family assets. But the rumor also circulates of his natural death, due to a fit of nephritis from which he had been suffering for some time. We are waiting for the entry relating to his figure to be completed and appear in Treccani's Biographical Dictionary of Italians to have a definitive word.
