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Giacomo
Leopardi |
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Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), the greatest Italian
poet since Dante, loved what is not
directly given in life. Born to minor
aristocracy in a sleepy backwater of the Italian Marches,
Giacomo preferred study in his father's enormous library
to the normal pleasures of youth. By 22 he had mastered
seven languages, translated the classics, written a treatise
on astronomy and composed a long poem in ancient Greek.
His learning
outstripped the tutors engaged to prepare him for the priesthood,
and indeed that of most scholars. The self-styled 'walking
sepulchre' came to despise
the consolations of religion, to compose satiric fables,
and to periodically fall in love with women who hardly
noticed him. When eventually allowed to visit Rome,
he was profoundly disappointed, travelling in the years
afterwards round the larger cities of Italy as the guest
of a wealthy liberal elite who genuinely admired the literary
productions but were treated to scornful
comment. Leopardi became increasing eccentric in his
dress, behaviour and eating habits. Nearly blind at the
end, his ill-health exacerbated by excessive study. Leopardi
died in Naples of an asthmatic attack.
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Leopardi's achievement |
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The Romantic
hero, presented with rumbustious humour in Byron's Don
Juan, and more cynically in Pushkin's Eugene
Onegin, becomes in Leopardi a man fixated on the lost
and distant. But if despairing, the poetry was often beautiful.
Leopardi incorporated words or phrases from earlier poets,
but he vitalized his meaning by scrupulous attention to
sound and rhythm while employing the simplest of vocabularies.
Informed
by extended scholarship, the poetry has the restraint and
clarity of classical literature. And although a life seen
as pain and boredom, with only futility
in supposing otherwise, was not
unexpected, though possibly debilitating,
it allowed Leopardi to concentrate on his shadow world of
'solid nothingness'. The cornerstones were remembrance and
infinity, and through these Leopardi opened the door to
modernism's divorce from social obligations, to a poesie
pure that anticipated the Symbolists.
His best
known works are To
Sylvia (an elegy on a peasant girl struck down in the
bloom of youth), poems in Operrata
Morali
(poetic fables exemplifying Leopardi's philosophy of despair)
Canti
and
Pensieri
(short meditations in the manner of Pascal).
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Leopardi
& 19th century Italian poetry |
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Though often placed second only to Baudelaire
in being responsible for the modern
existential consciousness,
Leopardi's work has not taken among English speakers—
which may be true of Italian
poetry generally, outside the moderns: Ungaretti,
Montale
and Pavese.
Leopardi drew on the Bible,
Greek
tragedy, the Latin
poets, Dante, Tasso,
Montaigne
and the Enlightenment
thinkers, but immediately influenced very few. Vittorio
Alfieri's (1749-1803) best work was for the stage, and
Ugo
Foscolo (1778-1827) transplanted a classical perfection
of form to a nationalistic setting. Alessandro
Manzoni (1785-1873) is better known for his great novel,
while Giuseppe
Belli (1791-1863) wrote 2200 vivid, not to say racy
sonnets in the Roman vernacular. Giosuè
Carducci (1835-1907) was a reaction to romantic excess.
Giovanni
Pascoli (1855-1912) 'wrung the neck of eloquence', and
Gabriele
d'Annunzio, as much showman as poet, strove for an intoxicating
musicality.
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Reading Leopardi |
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Italian is a popular language and many internet sites will
help you learn or brush up your skills. Try: chiappetti,
cyberitalian, languagequest,
dealtime,
abroadlanguages,
worldlanguage,
pimsleur or
others listed on the search engines. Native speakers will
find these sites useful: ilnattore,
palazzograssi,
liberliber,
bonghi
and canti,
Leopardi's poetry has been much
translated
— recent renderings include those by Vivante,
Marinelli,
Rexroth,
Kline
and Grennan
—and you can hear Leopardi read at ilnattore.
Leopardi's poetry is also available in cheap paperbacks
and as CDs from Italian
and German
publishers. Those with the necessary funds and time should
consider Italian study centres and tours, e.g. worklink,
scuolainsieme,
webitaly,
ilrittrato,
italycommunity,
centropuccini,
italian.org, c.l.
centre and belforte.
Others will have content themselves with books: De Sanctis/Redfern's
History of Italian Literature (1968), J.H. Whitfield's
Short History of Italian Literature (1960) and Leopardi's
Canti (1962) are good places to start. Other sources?
— the bibliography of Leopardi is very
extensive,
especially in Italian.
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