Clemente Bondi

The literary career of Clemente Bondi began during his exile in Tyrol. During this period he wrote a tragedy, Il Melesindo, and the poem "La giornata villereccia". The richest period of his artistic production, however, was during his stay in Mantua, where he had the opportunity to frequent a lively intellectual circle. In the years spent in Mantua, he wrote: La Felicità (1775), La Moda (1777), Le Conversazioni (1778), and L’Incendio (1784). The complete works of Bondi were first published in six volumes in 1798 in Venice, in an edition entitled Opere edite e inedite in versi e in prosa by the Venetian Adolfo Cesare. This edition seems to contain a number of texts that the author disowned later. In his years with the Archduke Ferdinand, Bondi wrote little. His main concern at this time, was to rewrite poems and to edit a new compilation in Vienna in 1808, with a note avowing this complete edition was the only one vouched by the author. Meanwhile in 1801, Adolfo Cesare, the Venetian publisher of the first edition published a seventh book completing his edition of 1798.

Clemente was more able as a translator of classical texts, including: the Aeneid, the Georgics, the Eclogues of Virgil and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. His work was appreciated for the rich captions and notes accompanying its translations so that it dubbed him the "Delille of Italy".

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Clemente Bondi.

• Barbarisi, Gennaro (1969). "BONDI, Clemente Donnino Luigi". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 11: Boccadibue–Bonetti. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-88-12-00032-6.