Un tràmite mazziniano nella diffusione del Belli romanesco e un poeta ritrovato: i ‘Sonetti umoristici’ e Felice Cicconetti

Belli’s masterpiece in Roman dialect was not published during the author’s lifetime; instead, it was bound to secrecy for the most part, with only 23 of his sonnets managing to surface during this period. The first edition that brought together a significant collection of his poems in Romanesco was Sonetti anonimi, and it made no mention of Belli as the author; it was published secretly in 1864, just a few months after the poet’s death, by an action committee of irredentists inspired by Mazzini. Following a careful inspection of the manuscripts that gave rise to the collection, this article clarifies the role played by the architect Felice Cicconetti in the endeavour. It reconstructs the profile of this little-known figure and definitively attributes to him a corpus of five sonnets of political satire originally believed to be the work of Belli and later of an unknown exponent of the so-called ‘popular tradition’. An analysis of these poems highlights their verve and vitality-appreciated by Umberto Saba--and thus recognises Cicconetti to be one of Belli’s first imitators.