a literary work to the memory of the Freemason Giuseppe Garibaldi, a leading figure of the Italian Risorgimento movement, as well as to Carducci, his beloved teacher and close friend. In the meantime he began to collaborate with the magazine Vita nuova, which published his first poems later collected in Myricae. In 1894 Pascoli was called to Rome to work for the Ministry of Public Instruction, and there he published the first version of Poemi conviviali. Later he moved between cities living in Bologna, Florence and Messina, but remained always psychologically rooted to his original, idealized peasant origins. In 1895 he and his sister Maria moved into a house at Castelvecchio, near Barga, in Tuscany, bought with money gained from literary awards. The political and social turmoil of the early 20th century, which was to lead to Italy's participation in World War I and to the advent of Fascism, further strengthened Pascoli's insecurity and pessimism. From 1897 to 1903 he taught Latin at the University of Messina, and then in Pisa. When Carducci retired, Pascoli replaced him as professor of Italian literature at the University of Bologna. In 1912, already ill of cirrhosis (from alcohol abuse), Giovanni Pascoli died of liver cancer at the age of 56 in Bologna. An atheist, he was entombed in the chapel annexed to his house at Castelvecchio, where his beloved sister, Maria, would also be laid to rest. In 2002 was found Pascoli's autographed Masonic will, in the shape of a triangle (the triangle is a Masonic symbol). Poetics Although he was not an active participant in any literary movement of the time, nor showed any particular propensity towards contemporary European poetry (as opposed to D'Annunzio), he manifests in his works mainly spiritualistic and idealistic tendencies, typical of late nineteenth century culture marked by the progressive exhaustion of Positivism. Overall his work appears to be followed by a constant tension between the old classicist tradition inherited from his teacher Giosuè Carducci, and the new themes of decadentism. His poems center on domestic life and nature. However, even in that period of Positivism and scientism, Pascoli believed that life is a mystery; only symbolic associations discovered in the humble things of nature can lead man to catch a glimpse of the truth behind mere appearances. A core aspect of Pascoli's poetry at this time was his imagistic focus on small things ("piccole cose"). Pascoli abandoned