Elisabetta Caminer Turra and the “Giornale Enciclopedico” in Venice: gender consciuosness (conciousness) and Enlightenment between periodical literature and letters

 

The same person. Not difference at all. Just a different sex

(Virginia Woolf, Orlando)

 

 

Did women have an Enlightenment?[1]

From generation to generation women’s stories are private lives in public histories[2]: does it make any difference in writing a woman’s life? Does it have any link with the gendered[3] perspective we use in writing a woman’s life?

Women’s history, or story, makes sense when it is read in the framework of the general Story[4]. Public and private writing cannot be understood if studied as different objects.

It seems to me that it is in this connection between public and private that it is possible to see the link between general and personal history, as Gianna Pomata puts it[5].

A private life in a public framework: as the feminist historians state, this is the case of Elisabetta Caminer Turra’s life.

Looking at Caminer’s life there is a question we can ask: did the free sexual and intellectual life that a small number of privileged women could experience in Venice during the age of Enlightenment have any meaning for the emancipation of the women?

I believe Caminer’s writing can be a case. And its analysis can be a possible way for studying women’s writing during the modern age.

 

Most of the studies about women and Enlightenment consider women as an object of writing[6].

My paper is an attempt to analyse the age of Enlightenment from a women-centred perspective: to highlight the intellectual person of Elisabetta Caminer Turra as a writing subject.

In this direction I think it is useful to make a relation between Elisabetta Caminer Turra’s periodical literature-public writing-and her rich corpus of private letters writing.

The comparative analysis of periodical literature and letters shows that public and private life are never divided in Caminer Turra’s writing: the periodical writing does not cut off the gender identity as well as the letters often speak about work and intellectual relationships[7].

Reconstructing Caminer’s story, through the public writing of the articles she wrote in her paper and through the private writing of her letters, has a double meaning. A private and a public one: to try to understand her identity and her subjectivity as a woman; to focus on women’s history during the age of Enlightenment.

Carolyn G. Heilburn says that there are four different ways of Writing a woman’s life[8]: a woman writing about her own life: autobiography; a woman writing her own life as a story: fiction; an author writing about a woman’s life: biography; to tell, in women’s history, the destiny of a woman’s life before she has lived it.

I am sure these four approaches for writing a woman’s life are strictly related: may I write a woman’s biography, or invent a fiction whose protagonist is a woman, or describe women’s destiny, without tell anything about my own life? May I write an intellectual biography without a little bit of autobiography in it?

In the attempt of writing Caminer’s intellectual biography, am I looking for her identity as a woman or for mine? Am I looking for an intellectual maternage? Are feminist historians looking for intellectual maternage in writing women’s history?[9]

These are some of the questions I am trying to work out while I study Caminer’s writing.

 

Elisabetta Caminer was born in Venice in 1751: she was the daughter of one of the most important journalist (journalists) of the time, Domenico. Her mother was a housewife and she organized for her daughter a very normal destiny: she wanted her to be a dressmaker.

Elisabetta did not receive any institutional education. When she was very young, she was sent to be trained in how to sew, embroider, be a good housewife. She used to bring with her books borrowed from her father’s library: while she sewed, she read the epic stories by Virgil, the love poems by Ovid and the classical tragedy by Euripides; the philosophical works by Voltaire and Montesquieu; the language treaty by Leon Battista Alberti and the poems by Angelo Poliziano and Jacopo Sannazzaro.

After a while Elisabetta decided that she had learned enough from the spinsters who pretented to teach her practical feminine jobs: she informed her mother that she had no intention to continue her sewing instruction, and she never undertook that type of work again.

She realized she was interested in reading literature and, probably, in writing it.

In 1763, when she was only twelve, she published her first poem, celebrating a noblewoman from Venice. In 1769, when she was nearly eighteen, Elisabetta Caminer published her first translation from French into Italian of a comedy by François d’Arnaud.

With this translation she starts her career as a translator, specialised in the translation of French modern comedies of the genre larmoyante.

Domenico Caminer, her father, was at that time the editor and the director of one of the most important Venetian literary journals: the Europa letteraria, started in Venice in 1768. The first number of the Europa letteraria is published in September 1968: Elisabetta Caminer signs with her initials (E. C.) the first article of the journal.

In 1772 Domenico officially introduces his daughter to the readers: “Concorse e concorrerà” to publish the paper “anche la figlia mia E. C.; l’estremo suo affetto per lo studio, e l’indefessa sua attenzione fecero sì, che non discara sia stata finora quella parte, che nel giornale ella prende”[10].

During the summer 1772, Elisabetta Caminer gets married to (Antonio Turra, “esperto Botanico” e “buon Naturalista” from Vicenza, as she writes to one of her correspondents.

It seems, reading the private letters written by Elisabetta between 1771 and 1773, that she is really in love with her husband: he is not only a “tenero sposo”, but also an “amico sincero”. He is “l’uomo più rispettabile, più adorno di solide qualità, più affettuoso che possa ritrovarsi”.

Elisabetta is aware that her private life could modify her public life as an author: once she is married, she needs to move from Venice to Vicenza. The Europa letteraria is still printed in Venice: she does not want to give up her job and to spend her life at home as a kind housewife. As soon as she reaches Vicenza, she writes to Melchiorre Cesarotti, who is in Padua: “il Giornale di mio padre continuerà ad essere anche mio, da ch’io non cesserò mai di lavorare in esso”.

The director of the paper is still Domenico, but looking at the journal it is clear that the collaboration of Elisabetta is more and more important: in the years between 1770 and 1777 she signs most of the articles, and she shows she has the most independent and modern ideas.

Domenico is a professional journalist and he knows that it is necessary to be politically correct: he always refers to a “un giusto raziocinio”, as the proper style to use in writing articles. Elisabetta is now becoming a professional journalist as well and she tries to follow the guidelines given by her father: to be honest in judging and reviewing books, to be fair in writing about good and bad books. In 1770 she writes in a letter, referring to her job as a journalist: “una Giornalista deve essere per necessità imparziale”.

It is evident, from the title of the paper, that the Europa letteraria is a journal coherent with the Enlightenement movement: it is a literary journal, which means that it reviews literary books, but also books of philosophy and politics. A lot of pages of the journal are dedicated to a survey of bibliographical information (Novelle letetrarie or Libri nuovi). England, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany...and Italy, of course, have their contemporary literature reviewed in this survey.

In May 1773 the Europa letteraria changes its name: it becomes Giornale Enciclopedico, “vale a dire universale”, as the director Domenico explains. The adjective, “universale”, refers  to the large variety of subjects treated in the paper: literature, theatre, news, historical information, fashion...

Elisabetta writes in the paper reviewing the modern French theatre and the Italian comedies written by Carlo Goldoni in Venice, advertising her own translations from French of the contemporary comèdie larmoyante. She is entusiasthic of the political ideas of Cesare Beccaria, against the death penalty, and of the scientific discoveries in the field of the human physic, by Lazzaro Spallanzani, and of the modern chimic, by Lavoisier.

She polemically fights against the ancient customs and laws of the Enlightened society, which still discriminates between women and men on the topic of education, marriage, sexual relationships. Elisabetta writes trying to destroy taboos and bias that oblige women to barbarian usages of childbirth, nursing and miscarragies. She reviews in her paper the Declaration for the Rights of the Women, published in London by Mary Wollostonecraft in 1792.

From January 1777 the editorial office of the Giornale Enciclopedico moves to Vicenza, where Elisabetta now lives with her husband. Elisabetta becomes, from now until her death (July 1796), the director of the paper, but Domenico still writes the news from Venice.

Elisabetta informs the collaborators that it is possible now to send their writings both in Vicenza or in Venice: “Gli uomini di Lettere faranno un piacere continuando a diriggere i loro Opuscoli, Estratti, Scoperte...alla Sig. Elisabetta Caminer Turra a Vicenza, o al Sig. Domenico Caminer a Venezia, da’quali potranno aver il Giornale” (Avviso pel Giornale Enciclopedico, February 1777).

Writing to Lazzaro Spallanzani, on January 23rd. 1777, she tells him about the changes in the editorial office, stressing the fact that she is now the director only because her father is too busy with the editing in Venice: “Il Giornale Enciclopedico, ch’era una volta l’Europa letteraria, passa da Venezia a Vicenza. I molti affari del padre mio non permettendogli di farsene un’occupazione principale, egli acconsente ch’io me ne addossi il pensiero, onde questo giornale possa riescire...più scelto e più esatto che i molti oggetti ai quali egli s’applica non gli lasciavano fare”.

Elisabetta wants to hide her capability as a literary author and as a very intelligent cultural organizer. But she can’t. One month later she has assumed the direction of the paper, an intellectual man from Vicenza accuses her of being arrogant and presumptuous: “Avete sentito qual aria si dà questa Signora che lo compone?”, asks the readers the anonymous reader of the journal.

Elisabetta is not modest enough to suffer without replying. She is aware she is an “uneducated” learned woman; she is aware of the gendered bias against women; she is aware that intellectual society does not like women talking, speaking and, above all, writing. Notwhitstanding this, she writes: “Io sono troppo profondamente convinta della tenuità del mio ingegno e de’pochi studi che ho potuto fare per aver mai la ridicola vanità di credermi qualche cosa di serio”. And she adds: “tranquilla e indifferente io starò senza inquietarmi compilando il mio Giornale”.

She is a journalist, the director of an important paper: in her writing, following the stereotypical model for the women, she appears to be modest, uneducated and not aware to have intellectual capabilities. On the opposite, in her life (for what we know through the private letters and reading deeply in the paper) she is everything but not a modest and uneducated woman.

A lot changes from 1768 to 1777, when she starts her collaboration on the paper directed by her father: now Elisabetta is a married woman, she lives in Vicenza, she has a different and major responsibility in the journal, she understands that it is necessary to earn money from her intellectual job. Luckily, her husband Antonio Turra is a doctor, and he probably has some money to spend for the project that his wife has in mind: Elisabetta wants to be an editorial manager.

She knows that if she wants to sell her paper all over Italy,it would be better to build up a printing-house. She does so : writing to Clementino Vannetti, in Aprile 1779, Caminer explains her active role in the priniting house and the passive role of her husband. The new prinitng house (Stamperia Turra) “è aperta a nome di mio marito coll’idea di stampare il Giornale, ed in cui quantunque egli non abbia ingerenza perché la non sarebbe cosa conveniente per esso, tutti i profitti son suoi”[11].

Throughout all her life, Elisabetta Caminer is in touch with the most important intellectual men of the Italian Enlightenment: she writes and receives letters from the scientist Lazzaro Spallanzani, the linguist Melchiorre Cesarotti...the poet, author of comedies, Francesco Albergati Capacelli, writes to her, admiring Elisabetta’s intelligence and beauty.

What it is necessary to stress in reading Caminer’s private letters is the fact that her work as a journalist and as a translator is always the main issue in her writing: she writes about her job as an editor, asking suggestions or asking the correspondents to send her articles to publish  in the Giornale Enciclopedico.

Melchiorre Cesarotti seems to be happy of the changes in the editorial office of the Enciclopedico and tries to suggest a new editorial form for the paper: “Approvo appieno che si trasferisca a Vicenza l’Europa letteraria”, he writes in 1777, and suggests to Elisabetta to go on with the editorial line imposed by Domenico. For being a journalist, it is necessary to write in a fair style, to be polite in the judgement of everybody’s literary works: “Le vostre riflessioni ed i vostri elogi si gusteranno tanto più se si leggeranno senza interesse personale”.

In February 1777, presenting her new role as a director to the readers, and announcing to them the transfer of the editorial office in Vicenza, she explains her ideas about the aim of the paper, in the article that is the main source for understanding her editorial programme. In the Avviso per Giornale Enciclopedico, she writes: “La parola Enciclopedia significa concatenazione di cognizioni, e lo scopo di questo giornale si è di raccogliere appunto e di presentar unite le cognizioni diverse”.

She is sure that a good paper must be able to communicateto the readers “utilità” and “piacere” (usefulness and pleasure). But, again, she knows that she is a woman and that she is better not to speak with the “I”. Talking about the publication and her role in it, she uses the impersonal form. She is not “I”, the author of the paper, but simply: “L’Autrice di questo foglio”.

In the same year 1777 and two years later, in April 1779, despite tha fact that she ensures that her literary criticism will be “ragionato” and “civile”, Elisabetta Caminer proves to the readers of the Giornale Encilcopedico and to her correspondents that she is not able to follow the politically correct and impersonal editorial way of her father.

Caminer does not say “I”, she declares to be “modesta” and “indifferente”, a quiet and nearly silent woman...

But what she does is completely different from what she says: between 1777 and 1779 Elisabetta publishes in the paper the survey invented by Clementino Vannetti, the Lazzaretto Letterario; and in April 1779 she publishes on the columns of the paper one of the most polemical and intelligent articles of the entire publication, Ricerche sommesse intorno ad alcuni dei riflessi giusti e necessari-che qualcuno oserà di non credere nè necessari nè giusti-sul Giornale Enciclopedico.

During her career Elisabetta Caminer, the director of the Giornale Enciclopedico, looks for her own intellectual space: she manages to find it behind the fair rules imposed by Domenico, behind the social rules that want the woman to be silent and quiet; object, not subject of writing.

She writes pages and pages of literary reviews, critical essays for her translations, private letters... In her public writing she attempts to cover her modern and intelligent critical positions using some rhetorical conventions. Her literary style is sarcastic and brilliant: through it she wants to catch the attentionn of her readers on a new, modern and enlightened culture. Making jokes in the paper and in the letters she knows how to destroy the watershed of the gender threshold. For thirty years she talks, in her public and private writings, of the “tenuità” of her “ingegno”, of her “deboli forze”, of the “scarsezza del suo talento”. But she is also able to reply to the because she knows that her career as a journalist is important and she does not want, for any reason, to give it up.

Replying to the anonymous reader from Vicenza, author of a disappointing pamphlet about the Giornale Enciclopedico, Elisabetta Caminer announces to him that the paper has been published for a long time and that she has no intention to stop editing it (she writes: “scorre l’undecimo anno” of the journal she now directs; “non siamo d’umore di sopprimerlo, né di alterar il nostro piano per far piacere a voi.”[12])

In the years between 1777 and 1783 she seems to be tired and overwelmed from her new role as director of the Enciclopedico. On May 24th 1782, she writes to Pagani Cesa in Bassano del Grappa: “L’affare del mio Giornale è divenuto serissimo; cambiamenti decisivi, una società formata...tutto questo unito alle mie infinite altre occupazioni fanno di me una schiava”.

Caminer is in society with different people for the printing of the paper: Alberto Fortis is one of the major contributors of the Europa letteraria until 1770. Until 1782 Elisabetta has an editorial and economic society with Giovanni Scola; finally, until 1790 she is again in society with Alberto Fortis.

From 1790 until her death she is the only editor of the paper: the Enciclopedico, that had been printed in Vicenza by Turra from 1780 until 1789, is now printed again in Venice by Giacomo Storti. It is now printed in a smaller and cheaper format.

Reading the letters of the last years of Caminer’s life it is clear that she is having some familiar and personal problems, added to some financial difficulties over the printing of the paper. Writing to Lazzaro Spallanzani in July 1789 she seems to be tired and worried for the future of the Giornale Enciclopedico.

It is impossible to reconstruct exactly what is happening in Elisabetta’s private life. But we know that she is having some problems with the sale of the paper, with the diffusion of it and the subscriptions, with the censorship...She seems to be aware of the links between private and public life: she has some health problems, her paper is not going very well. Elisabetta promises that, once she has solved her private problems, she will work hard for the edition of the Encilopedico: “Rivoluzioni importantissime accadute in casa mia, per le quali sono stata lungamente vicina a fare i passi più decisivi per la vita di una donna, e che da poco hanno avuto un esito felice, mi hanno tenuta agitata per modo, che non solo i miei amici più cari, i miei affari più premurosi hanno dovuto soffrirne, ma io medesima non sapeva più di me stessa. La mia salute se ne risentì...il malumore mi oppresse; e quando potei rimettermi...mi trovai avvolta nel caos degli affari trascurati e di mille impacci...Il Giornale ha sofferto delle sciagurate combinazioni che ho accennato...Lavoro in furia adesso per rimettermi in mese”, Elisabetta writes to Spallanzani.

But in the paper of the years 1794-1796 Caminer signs only two articles: most of the paper is now made up of bibliographical news and the polemical and critical tone of Caminer’s reviews is not present anymore.

In June 1795 Elisabetta signs the last article in her paper. One year before her death she still clarifies the aims of her intellectual adventure: “Fremano pur quanto possono gli Apologisti indiscreti della pudicizia; noi non ci asterremo per questo dal seguire la massima fondamentale del nostro istituto, di giovare cioè e di piacere alla massa dei nostri Lettori”.

From 1768 until 1796 the pages of the Giornale Enciclopedico tell the readers about the Italian contemporary literature by Giuseppe Baretti, Cesare Beccaria and Melchiorre Cesarotti; the European pre-romantic poems by Ossian; the new comedy by Carlo Goldoni; about Rousseau, Voltaire and the Encyclopédie; modern chemistry by Lavoisier, the progress of medicine...The paper says a lot about women and women’s images: learned women, witchces, saints, spinsters and monsters.

 

Looking at the literature produced in the XVIII century, during Elisabetta’s life or soon after her death, we know that she was considered an outragous woman, who attemped to destroy the gendered social and cultural watersheds. To think, to read, to write, to show her own presence with the ability of her mind or with the beauty of her body, means for a woman to cross the thresholds. A woman who uses her mind is not an honest woman : we read in the eighteenth century documents that Elisabetta lived a perverted life, being in love with different lovers more than with her husband; we read that she was an atheist, that she was punished by God for all her sins with a terrible illness. We read that she is damned to die of breast cancer, in terrible pain, because during her life she showed she was conscious to have intellectual abilities.

Seeming to have a gendered consciousness, Caminer denies the social statements that want the woman to be a silent object.

Probably the age of Enlightenment starts to change women’s status; at least it starts to think about women from a different perspective: the perspective of the few women able to think, to talk, to publish their books. Elisabetta Caminer Turra is one of these, few and privileged, women: she uses the written word as a weapon to challenge social constraints.

In the words of her writing, Elisabetta tells us the story of her brief life: the “ingenua fanciulla, “tranquilla e indifferente” contributor of the paper directed by her father Domenico, becomes the spoilt “signora vicentina”, a slave vexed by her jobs; a neglected woman, “ammalata d’un male pericoloso”.

In Caminer’s writing pubblic and private are the tools for a mirror game: Elisabetta is conscious of her gendered identity and she plays to hide it in the words she uses in the paper. She is conscious that she has an important role as the director of the Enciclopedico; she knows that her job is to be a journalist, and she never forgets it. On February 21st 1796, tired, ill, unable to work anymore, she writes to Lazzaro Spallanzani: “Sono quasi due mesi che non mi alzo di letto. Febbre giornaliera, dolori. Vi scriverò, su tutto: intanto, per carità, l’estratto del libro che mi avete promesso”.

 

1751-1796: a short life. 1768-1796: a tireless intellectual activity. It is easy to make confusion with the lives: professional and private life.

Public and/or private life? Public and private are confused in the thin yellow pages of the paper, in the unclear lines of the letters, in the pale blue ink used to write pages and pages of letters.

Writing the self: is Caminer’s life a fact or a fiction? Does she write her own self or do I write her self? Does she tell the history of her life or does she invent a story? Do I invent the story of her life?

She tells the History and she invents a story. So do I. The reader can imagine whatever he/she likes.

 

 

Documents:

cartina geografica di biblioteche nelle quali ho reperito la corrispondenza

lettere fotocopiate