Paolo Mossa

The name of Paolo Mossa occupies a prominent place in Sardinian poetry “in limba” and his compositions have become the heritage of many tenor or polyphonic choirs.
The critics of the history of literature have reproached him for a certain archaic attitude, at a historical moment in which Arcadia had died and been buried in Italy. In short, the poet of Bonorva continues to sing pastoral idylls and rural themes in ways, and in a language, surpassed by the times. According to Michelangelo Pira, this happened because Mossa was not aware of the role of the Sardinian language in Sardinia at that time. He lived his role as a poet with subordination to the dominant language and culture that was already Italian. In short, the formal perfection of the themes was not accompanied by an interest in the social or political issues of the time. Mossa asks nothing more from her Sardinian rhymes than to have fun and be superficially consistent with the arcadic metric. Real life, apart from love skirmishes, is absent from his texts. However, there is no lack of a certain sentimental pathos, the melancholy, the desire to escape.
He was born in Bonorva in 1821 and died on August 6, 1892. After completing his secondary studies in his native country, he continued his university studies in Sassari. After interrupting the latter, he returned to his native country where he dedicated himself to his land properties. In the last years of his life, having found himself participating in political struggles and involved in village rivalries, he was killed by three assassins on his way back from the

countryside.

Update

4/3/2025 - 19:21