[6] The Swedish Academy awarded him the prize "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces.

"[7] He was born in Valdicastello in Pietrasanta, a small town currently part of the Province of Lucca in the northwest corner of Tuscany, which at the time was an independent grand duchy.

In the course of his life, his views on religion shifted towards a socially oriented theism which he exposed in his famous "Discorso sulla libertà perpetua di San Marino" ("A Speech on San Marino's Perpetual Freedom"), pronounced on 30 September 1894 before the authorities and people of that ancient Republic and celebrating "the Universal God of Peoples, Mazzini's and Washington's God".

[10] His anti-clerical revolutionary vehemence was prominently showcased in one famous poem, the deliberately blasphemous and provocative "Inno a Satana" [it] ("Hymn to Satan").

The poem was composed in 1863 as a dinner party toast, published in 1865, and then republished in 1869 by Bologna's radical newspaper, Il Popolo, as a provocation timed to coincide with the First Vatican Council, a time when revolutionary fervour directed against the papacy was running high as republicans pressed both politically and militarily for an end to the Vatican's domination over the papal states.

The poet in fact organized his compositions several times and in different ways and gave a definitive arrangement only later in the edition of his Opere published for Zanichelli between 1889 and 1909.

In the verses of the collection we can immediately see his imitation of the ancient classics, of the stilnovo style, of Dante and Petrarch and, among the moderns, Vittorio Alfieri, Monti, Foscolo and Leopardi.

But the Carduccian spirit is already visible; his love for the beauty of style, the purity of sentiments and the celebration of liberty, as well as the ability to appreciate all that is genuine, therefore also the language of the common people.