MAMELI, GOFFREDO (1827–1849), Italian poet and patriot, was born at Genoa of a noble Sardinian family. He received a sound classical education at the Scolopi College, and later studied law and philosophy at the university of Genoa. When nineteen years old he corresponded with Mazzini, to whom he became whole-heartedly devoted; among other patriotic poems he wrote a hymn to the Bandiera brothers, and in the autumn of 1847 a song called “Fratelli d’Italia,” which as Carducci wrote, “resounded through every district and on every battlefield of the peninsula in 1848 and 1849.” Mameli served in the National Guard at Genoa, and then joined the volunteers in the Lombard campaign of 1848, but after the collapse of the movement in Lombardy he went to Rome, where the republic was proclaimed and whence he sent the famous despatch to Mazzini: “Roma! Repubblica! Venite!” At first he wrote political articles in the newspapers, but when the French army approached the city with hostile intentions he joined the fighting ranks and soon won Garibaldi’s esteem by his bravery. Although wounded in the engagement of the 30th of April, he at once resumed his place in the ranks, but on the 3rd of June he was again wounded much more severely, and died in the Pellegrini hospital on the 6th of July 1849. Besides the poems mentioned above, he wrote hymns to Dante, to the Apostles, “Dio e popolo,” &c. The chief merit of his work lies in the spontaneity and enthusiasm for the Italian cause which rendered it famous, in spite of certain technical imperfections, and he well deserved the epithet of “The Tyrtaeus of the Italian revolution.”
See A. G. Barrili, “G. Mameli nella vita e nell’ arte,” in Nuova Antologia (June 1, 1902); the same writer’s edition of the Scritti editi ed inediti di G. Mameli (Genoa, 1902); Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, Italian Characters (London, 1901); A. Luzio, Profili Biografici (Milan, 1906); G. Trevelyan, Garibaldi’s Defence of the Roman Republic (London, 1907).