Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Leaning Italian from a Napoleonic deserter 

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VALENTINI, Francesco. LETTERE AD UN AMICO concernanti degli schiarimenti sulla regole della lingua italiana ad uso degli studiosi di questa favella. Berlino:, 1817. £3,000

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MANUSCRIPT IN INK. 8vo, pp. [6], 105, [1] blank; in a single neat hand throughout, within ruled border; a single correction on page 69, and an inkblot below the text on the same page; otherwise, aside from some occasional light slotting and foxing, clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary silk-covered boards, with decorative black borders, and ‘F.V. All’ Illustre Signore Conte G. di Meuron’ in black in centre of upper cover; pink endpapers; some wear and staining to covers, but still an attractive item.

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A superb manuscript, finely bound in silk, made prior to publication, and presented to the author’s pupil, of this introduction to Italian grammar by the Berlin-based Roman language teacher and lexicographer Francesco Valentini (1789-1862).

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Valentini began his medical studies in Rome around 1809, but was forced soon after to abandon this to serve as an army surgeon in Napoleon’s Russia campaign. However, he deserted (according to de Botazzi’s biography, with an adventurous escape) and ended up, in 1813, in Berlin. In order to make a living, he began to teach Italian, quickly establishing a wealthy and influential clientele, including the Empress Augusta and her sister, and the future Kaiser Wilhelm I; he was awarded the title of royal professor of Italian language and literature in 1825, although despite his best efforts he never secured a position at the University, where he had lobbied for the foundation of a chair of Italian literature and language.

Among his earliest pupils was the dedicatee of the present work, the Swiss-born Prussian diplomat Charles-Gustave de Meuron (1779-1830), who presumably was taking private Italian lessons after joining the diplomatic service in 1817. This course was the one of several works Valentini published on Italian grammar and style, and was printed in very small numbers in 1818 by Dümmler; we have been able to locate only two copies of the published version, in Bari and Siena. It consists of eight letters, covering the basic grammatical building blocs of Italian: articles, prepositions, nouns, pronouns, diminutives, the conjugation of verbs, and more. Valentini presents neat tables of verbs, an extensive poetical vocabulary of Italian words and their French equivalents, and multiple examples to demonstrate correct usage to his pupil.

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Although Gärtig alludes to an 1816 Tableau pour conjuger tous les Verbes réguliers, that work appears now to be lost, with this being the first of Valentini’s published works. He is best known now for two works: a four-volume Gran Dizionario grammatico-pratico italiano-tedesco, tedesco-italiano, published between 1831 and 1836 in Leipzig, and the beautifully illustrated Trattato su la Commedia dell’Arte printed by Wittich in Berlin in 1826. in 1836, he founded the Società Italiana, a German-Italian cultural society in Berlin. An exhibition devoted to his work, and his influence on the spread of Italian language and Culture in Prussia, was held in 1988 at the Freie Universität in Berlin.

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A note with the manuscript states: “Cahier de lettres et cours d’itaien ecrit par Francesco Valentini trouvé dans des archives de la famille de Pury dans une ferme à Fontaines et trouvé par Paul Diacon Décembre 1970”, alongside what appears to be a placeholder for the German Ambassador to, presumably, Italy. 

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See G. de Botazzi, Italiani in Germania, Turin, Roux Frassati, 1895; Anne-Kathrin Gärtig, ‘Il Romano Francesco Valentini (1789-1862) Maestro di lingua e lessicografo a Berlino’, Ricognizioni 10, 2018, 15-31.

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