A. Torri Library – Biographical Notes

Alessandro Torri (originally, in fact, Turri) was an extraordinary—though perhaps somewhat overlooked—figure in the literary life of early nineteenth-century Verona, Florence, and later Pisa. He was born in Verona in 1780 into a family of respectable, though not wealthy, which nonetheless maintained contacts with the local nobility, ties that Torri sought to keep alive throughout his life despite his liberal convictions. In Verona, he held various public offices and took part in the turbulent political events that marked the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Firmly anticlerical, he was among the founders of the prestigious Società Letteraria di Verona (1808), which is still active today. After the events of 1814 (the fall of Napoleon and the subsequent Restoration), he resigned from his public offices.

He attended the salon of Anna Serego Alighieri, around which the first Risorgimento-oriented circle of the city formed. In those years, Torri learned the craft to which he would remain most devoted: that of publisher-bookseller, scholar of bibliographical traditions, and editor of texts. Harassed by an Austrian police officer, he decided to leave Verona—much to the dismay of eminent fellow citizens such as Ippolito Pindemonte, Giuseppe Zamboni, and Andrea Maffei, who signed a public letter of commendation for him on 26 May 1822. Torri spent four years in Florence, where he met and associated with Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, and then in 1826 moved to Pisa, where he would remain, apart from a few brief returns to Verona, until his death in 1861; this was the most flourishing and intellectually productive period of his life.

In Pisa he became partner of the publisher, bookseller, and man of letters Giovanni Rosini (owner of the Tipografia Capurro, named after one of his employees). The most important and controversial work associated with this partnership (alongside Dante’s Opere minori, which Torri published with other presses) was the edition of the Ottimo commento della Divina Commedia. After his break with Rosini, Torri moved to the Lischi printing house. During this period - although still monitored by the authorities, who “considered him a Freemason connected to the Verona Lodge and an active Carbonaro, and therefore a ‘bitter enemy of the Austrian Government’” [1] - he held several public offices. He served as secretary of the Istituto Infantile di Pisa, was a corresponding member of several Academies from Pisa, and played a leading role in the successful Nuovo giornale de’ letterati.

Torri should be remembered as an important bibliographer–publisher of the Restoration and the Italian Risorgimento, and his chief contribution from a historical standpoint lies above all in “the valuable assistance he provided to scholars in Verona, Tuscany, and throughout the country” [2], rather than in the direct elaboration of original intellectual content.

As a scholar of Dante, he must be placed historically in that vibrant period which both precedes and anticipates the establishment of a scientific critical method derived from modern philology, and which follows - and ultimately brings to a close - the tradition of erudite humanists, the forerunners of classical editions. He drew several criticisms from the most discerning contemporary scholars; nevertheless, it is important to note that his edition of the Ottimo Commento remains, to this day, the only one available - though much debated - and so significant that it prompted the need for a facsimile reprint: L'ottimo commento della Divina Commedia. Testo inedito d’un contemporaneo di Dante, edited by Alessandro Torri, reprinted with a preface by Francesco Mazzoni, Bologna, Forni, 1995. His work on other texts, such as the Vita nuova, is likewise far from negligible. D’Ancona wrote that Torri’s Dante edition was, at the time, “rich in comparisons and observations, and will always remain the best guide for obtaining a stable and reliable text of the works it contains, derived from the best of all manuscripts and printed editions. Moreover the fortune so favored Torri as to lead him to discover a copy of the extremely rare edition of the Tesi defended by Dante on water and land in 1320 in Verona…” [3].

Through his work as an editor, Torri maintained connections with personalities such as Leopardi, Manzoni, Giusti, and Da Ponte. In addition to the Dante editions already mentioned, it is worth to recall at least his editions of Pindemonte’s poems, the Novella di Giulietta e Romeo by Da Porto, the Elegia su un cimitero campestre by Thomas Gray, and the Imitazione di Cristo, which Torri still attributed to Thomas Gersen.

[1] SIMONI, Pino, Profilo bio-bibliografico di Alessandro Torri, «Studi storici Luigi Simeoni», v. XLII (1992), pp. 117-146, qui p. 121

[2] ivi, p. 123

[3] D’ANCONA, Alessandro, Cenno necrologico, “La Nazione”, 19 giugno 1861