A very famous exile
Everything sometimes begins with a misunderstanding, and this is the one that seems to have struck the copyists of Ovid's verses when the poet, in a moved recollection, recalled his last meeting with a close friend, Cotta, on the road to exile, which forced him to leave Rome for the dark shores of the Black Sea. The fault that led to his relegation remains as mysterious as the geographical notions of those who, a priori, confused Aiethalis Ilva (Elba Island) and Aletha Silva (Aletha Forest), according to the seductive hypothesis of Jerome Carcopino (1881-1970), historian and member of the French Academy. Moreover, although the famous Latin poet did not set foot on the shores of Elba Island, the latter seems to have adhered to the principle of "to live happily let us live hidden", since for many centuries it was particularly discreet in literature, unless it was too busy managing the disputes that were at stake. Quoted by Paolo Giovo, an Italian historian born around 1483 and better known in France under the name of Paul Jove, and then in a few rare travel accounts of the 18th century, it became the object of much attention at the beginning of the 19th century because it housed a choice guest, Napoleon I, who was also forced into exile, who stayed there for 300 days from April 1814 to February 1815. His flight and then the Waterloo stampede would later lead to another banishment, much more severe since he would not return from St. Helena, but this is already another story. Apart from the fact that the emperor was undoubtedly thinking about his return in force from his Elbo homes, he used his free time to make a few changes to the island, widening a road there, changing a regulation here, which left a vivid memory for the natives. Although he did not write during this period, apart from an abundance of correspondence and a few laws, his exile was discovered under many pens, that of André Pons de l'Hérault, a revolutionary(Napoleon, Emperor of Elba Island, Éditeurs libres), but also that of Regula Engel-Egli who accompanied her husband, a Swiss soldier, during the Emperor's campaigns(L'Amazone de Napoléon, Cabédita editions), or that of Mameluck Ali, his humble servant(Souvenirs sur l'empereur Napoléon, Arléa editions). Napoleon left behind his library, which was added to the Portoferraio collection.
Other visitors
Born in 1830, Carmine Crocco led a life of brigandage which earned him the nickname "Napoleon of the brigands" and above all, a life sentence on the island of Elba where he died in 1905. Putting this (very long) time to good use - he had been arrested in 1864 and tried in 1870 - he wrote his memoirs which can be read under the title Ma Vie de brigand (My Life as a Brigand ) published by Anacharsis. Another prisoner will not have had this leisure, as his conditions of detention were so ruthless. Giovanni Passannante was only 29 years old when in 1878 he tried to stab King Umberto I of Savoy in the cry of : "Down with misery". Sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on the island of Elba, but his imprisonment was so terrible - in a tiny cell plunged into darkness and without any human contact - that he went mad. His death in a psychiatric hospital in 1910 did not mark the end of inhumanity, his burnt body was preserved only with his brain exposed for decades in the Museum of Criminology in Rome. His trial had inspired the poet Giovanni Pascoli to write an Ode to Passannante, of which only a fragment remains; decades later, a Nobel Prize winner in literature, Dario Fo, had to sign a petition so that the remains of the anarchist could finally be given a decent burial in his native village... in 2007. But Elba was also gentle, as it was for the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who spent the summer of 1947 there and is said to have found there both the memory of his home town, Swansea, and inspiration, as he is known to have written his most beautiful verses while he was still living in the family home. His collection In Country Sleep and other poems was published in 1952, a year before his precarious state of health, afflicted by alcohol consumption, finally killed him prematurely at the age of 39. In French, his autobiography Portrait de l'artiste en jeune chien was published by Points, which also shared the publication of his poetry with Gallimard. Another shooting star in the world of literature, Hervé Guibert spent many wonderful seasons on the island of Elba in the company of his photographer friend Hans Georg Berger, to the point of asking to be buried there when AIDS finally took over in 1991. There he wrote Fou de Vincent (published by Minuit), a text that rivals, if not in notoriety at least in sensitivity, the famous À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie. Finally, the American novelist Joanna Scott chose the island as the setting for her strange Tourmaline.
