100th Anniversary of the Death of Giovanni Pascoli

Portrait of Giovanni Pascoli, the Romagnan poet and one of the most representative voices of late 19th-century Italian literature. To the right of the portrait, the issue year "2012" and the Italian Republic monogram "RI" are engraved; to the left, the poet's year of death "1912", the mint mark "R", and the initials of engraver Maria Carmela Colaneri "MCC". Below the design, the name "G. PASCOLI" arcs across the coin.

Giovanni Pascoli ranks among the most influential poets of Italian literature around 1900. Born in 1855 in San Mauro di Romagna, he developed a poetry that distilled the rural life of the Romagna, nature and the world of ordinary people into a symbolically charged, musically refined language. His style broke with classical tradition and paved the way for modern Italian poetry: Pascolian symbolism, metrical innovation and a distinctive sensitivity to sound made him a pioneer of the Novecento. His best-known work, the poetry collection Myricae, first appeared in 1891 in several expanded editions and remains to this day a core text of Italian literary history.

Pascoli's life was marked early on by loss: the murder of his father Ruggero in 1867, never fully solved, left deep traces in his work and worldview. Grief, the motif of the orphaned child, and the longing for the protected family nest — il nido — run through his poetry as recurring core themes. Pascoli lastly taught as professor of Latin literature in Bologna, succeeding Giosuè Carducci in his chair. He died on 6 April 1912 in Bologna. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his death, Italy honoured him in 2012 with this commemorative coin.