The whip of writers
The literary whip was a paper of literary criticism, built and wrote by
Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti(1719-1789), and this paper was very famous for
tones very strong and offensive; in fact author wrote judgement very offensive
against books and Italian writers; he despises contemporary poetry of a society
called Arcadia, for ancient Greek land, and we can consider that verses of
poems of these poetry are very poor, and he considered them poetaster, and we
can’t consider that he was right. But often emerge also personal motive, so
some attack to poetry and playwright as Carlo Goldoni, a prolific Italian playwright
of 18th century, that wrote 200 comedies, and he has had also praise
of Voltaire, that wrote a letter to Goldoni and he called himself as more great
admirer in France; but very and very rightly Baretti asked how it is possible
to admire a Italian comedy if the admirer not knows Italian language; anyway
Baretti criticizes characters of some comedy, but he takes alone some
inaccuracy, and stop, he sees alone errors, Goldoni is sometime is boring, very
boring, but these critic motives are very poor, because he take alone some
image and not all comedy. I think that he wanted alone fame and success that he
tried to obtain with these strong judges, and he was also, I repeat, also
offensive, but some verse of his poem, was as much poor and boring. Somebody
would comment that is necessary to see first owner qualities and after to
consider other, then Christ talked: “Why you see the straw in eyes of your
brother and not see beam in your eyes?”. Therefore Baretti is boring when he is
polemic, this is always, because he critics all and everybody but after he does
not give nothing that merits very praise. Baretti is a critic, offensive,
polemic and may useless.
Alessandro Lusana
